ritual insanity

yesterday the ceasefire went into effect. more psychological warfare, more terrorist propaganda, more anxiety. at least the first three hostages made it out alright, which was an enormous relief. i don't understand the schedule for the rest of the jesus-fucking-christ *third* of the hostages they're holding, but at this point i don't trust or believe anything to hold or make sense.

it's a relief that trump is now the american president. at least he's less likely to make things harder for us than the democrats have been...

...

i'm a bit tired, and sore. it's just past midnight, my brain's a bit fuzzy.

i dropped mr smear off at school, completely oblivious to the fact that it was a field trip day. and he'd left his phone at home. i came back, and then gd and i went off to our guidance session.

amongst other things, all three of us (the therapist, myself, and gd herself) learned that gd has been losing patience with the "play therapy" sessions. and i realized that we're going to have to be very careful about signing him up for the art school lottery...

we bussed home, i had breakfast, and then took off for the dermatologist. i had a list prepared, and was relieved to learn that most of the things that have been bothering me are just irritating getting-older-with-overly-sensitive-skin things, nothing dangerous or infectious (well, aside from one minor thing that i knew about, and now need to see a plastic surgeon for).

her exact description was "you have a ginger's skin" :P

on the way to pick mr smear up i saw photos from the field trip, and by then it was too late to cancel his hebrew tutor... fortunately, she was able and willing to make up the lesson in the evening.

a little later, while waiting for the kids to return, i had an awkward conversation with our hardcore-democrat friend's hardcore-democrat parent, and things got a bit uncomfortable.

mr smear got off the bus so grossed out that he wouldn't stop (literally) spitting, which was quite embarrassing. he claimed to be feeling sick, but i'm pretty confident it was psychological because he'd been sitting next to a sick, coughing kid the entire ride :/

on our way home, we purchased his next hebrew book: a translation of the first harry potter. i hope this goes well!

the next couple of hours were a mix of getting mr smear to do his homework, trying to read more about the exercise i'm doing, and then eventually taking my kindle to the couch and reading/napping for a while.

...

mona lisa overdrive: five stars for vision and depth, but it's hard to follow.

i recently re-read neuromancer, which has aged superbly and is nothing short of miraculous. i chased that with count zero, which takes a while to get warmed up and ends with a character abruptly tying up all the loose ends.

and then there's mona lisa overdrive. brilliant world-building, phenomenal ideas and a grand vision for bringing everything across the three novels together... but for the most part i found it incoherent. some scenes blew me away with how ingeniously and cleverly they were rendered, and some just left me feeling confused about who was doing what and why. i still enjoyed reading the book, but i feel like i missed a whole lot of stuff and i would need to go back and re-read it to put all the pieces together.

what i'd *really* like, though, is to see this adapted into a graphic novel or television series. i feel like gibson may just have been biting off a little more than even he could chew.

...

i took mr smear to his tutor and spent half an hour with a decaf coffee while studying the code, with a south african voice engaged in an intense conversation about investec nearby and an enormous flock of monk parakeets in the trees across the road erupting in a loud debate that lasted a few minutes and drew angry yells from someone in the building.

i picked up mr smear and we returned home, i helped him with his math homework and we watched the simpsons over dinner.

...

so far we're up to '92 (season 3), and there're two simpsons predictions nobody ever talks about:

1. with all my criminal buddies

2. otto the school bus driver not having a valid license. i'm not going to share it, but we have a video of mr smear's class stuck on a bus last year chanting "shame! shame!" at their bus driver after he arrived with an expired license 🤣