submission revisited

so... the speed of light is safe. perhaps... perhaps journalists should be made familiar with the scientific process as part of whatever other rites of passage they supposedly undergo?

---
thursday:

i managed an early morning breakfast with my niece, followed by line anxiety at the post office, before heading off to class. co-conspirator stole the show, so i spent her part of the lesson comparing comic scripts to their resulting artwork and daydreaming of an aphex twin version of edgar allen poe's annabel lee, which is apparently about necrophilia.

i spent the couple of hours after lunch working on my seminar paper, finally submitting it (!!!) before walking into an incredible anime screening: i don't even recall the titles of the different series we watched, just that they were all breathtakingly well made and interesting.

i rushed back home, exhausted, and power-walked with pg to the climbing wall for a productively painful evening. we were both sore afterwards... "this shit" fingers :P

dinner... and work.

---
friday:
i got to bed after posting, and woke up in the early afternoon. after bits of not doing much, i went to meet urchin for coffee before hitting levontin 7 for a fantastic poetry reading in honour of karen alkalay-gut. the performance by roy yarkoni and yael krauss of panic ensemble was amazing.

i joined a couple of college buddies for drinks afterwards, then scrambled to get home in time for dinner with pg's family, which was pleasant. when we got home, we got through half of life of brian before conceding that we need subtitles for pg :(

---
i don't know how i feel about the queen of england, or her birthday. but i know how deep fried man feels.

oh, well. at least the future is coming: we can print body parts, now.

nine-to-fiver

it doesn't matter how much time i've spent in bed, nor at which angles i spent it, my back is driving me demented. it's not even pain anymore, just perpetual, intense discomfort.

i woke up early yesterday and sat in front of my computer until evening. i'd talk up the wonders of working from home, except that after realizing that i pulled the equivalent of a nine to five without leaving the apartment, and didn't have any time to focus on anything else, i wasn't feeling them.

shit :/

---i did get an hour of studying done afterwards. i got all itchy again, and i suspect that i'm allergic to the book - and not just the content. stephen booth may be interested in a completely different aspect of shakespeare's sonnets than i am, but i think it's more the ink or the pages that are setting me off. my father was allergic to newspaper ink, and we used to laugh at him reading his paper with a handkerchief over his nose and mouth.

...

in the evening we watched bright star. pg didn't enjoy it as much as i did, and i only thought it was passing good. one thing that especially caught my attention: fanny's brother picks up the violin at some stage and plays what sound like somewhere out there. looking at wikipedia, that's a song what wasn't around in the early 1800s. just saying.

we watched the first two episodes of futurama. good news, everyone! pg's never seen it. i now have an excuse to watch it all again =D

going to bed early, rising late, returning to bed in the hope that it'd sort my trapezius out, waking up just as badly...

---i've finished with the graphical aspect of the revised presentation of the poem that i constructed for the poetry event last year, and am now on to the tedious one which involves making an html version of my spreadsheet. wordsworth and co-conspirator amaze me with their disorganization - we could have been done within a week of the event if anyone had known what was going on. nope, i won't be doing anything like this with them again.

i now have two hours to prepare my character for tonight's gaming session... aaargh! not enough!

---ZOMG: a new version of syndicate that i might have to play. if it's the same world strategically as the first, i'm in.

the last day of class

yesterday:

1. handing in the paper at 3am, checked and fairly confident.

2. waking up early enough to go past the post office and pick up my certificate.

3. discovering a palette of cheap amstel.

4. birthright taking over campus, hunting a class. discovering what a total bitch co-conspirator can be.

5. first beer. everyone being awkward about passing around food.

6. break between classes. MA class brought in tons of delicious goodies.

7. second class: already exhausted (food overdose?). a milton goodbye.

8. off to work. two hours of design arguments. an hour discussing shakespeare and the underlying issues of israeli society.

9. an evening spent doing NOTHING. as i told my boss - the semester is over, it was a long one, and now i need to recuperate a little.

10. zoning out in front of community until bed. great series :)

today:

no 'net. repeatedly.

1. roof and plumbing inspection, and payment. lots of cash, and i'll be concerned until the first proper rain demonstrates how well the job was done.

2. saying goodbye to the old office. walking out with a large whiteboard (can one ever have enough whiteboards?) and a cable for my new monitor.

3. more 'net issues, and they appear to be with my pc. i must work. i just want to go back to bed. this might hurt.

thank you, ben franklin

late to bed and early to rise, makes a man slightly psychotic and a bit irritable. first class was tough, but ended with a great telling of a story about the creation of memory. i was on my way from that to the old office, in good spirits, when i got a phone call from the new office.

the upgrade i performed hadn't been functioning at all. i had to go back.

fortunately it wasn't too tough to sort out, but i wasn't feeling particularly positive about having caused them a day's loss of data. the cto shrugged, i shrugged, and i was on my way out when the ceo made my day: i suspect he reads good management articles. he took me quietly aside and informed me that they're incredibly pleased with me and my work.

you know what? that made my day.

i had a great breakfast for lunch next door with pg and my mum, and then we went together to campus. aside from a bit of touring before class, i sat down to get some of the reading done and was interrupted by pg's brother and his girlfriend for a pleasant chat until i had to run. the class was sometimes interesting, but mostly i just played sudoku between points of "oh, cool".

the event that wordsworth and co-conspirator organized was surprisingly good. most of the participants were interesting, all the items were short, and it was all done with a sense of humour and i think that it was remarkably successful overall.

my mum and i headed back home to pick up pg and then meet with some cousins for a very pleasant dinner nearby; pg has made cookies and i've now given up on the readings (perhaps i'll manage some more before class).

bar's out

well - i had to wait six years to put my tongue bar back in; it's a year and a half later and i've finally decided that it's not worth the limitations. goodbye, vestige of a childhood.

---thursday:

bladed to university, left my shoes in my locker. i hope i don't get stopped at the entrance, because then i'd have to tread barefoot all the way to my shoes.

first class: tons of exercise carrying the giant speaker from the student union to the classroom. only to discover that the cable we'd been provided with was absolutely useless.

rushing between classes (and returning the speaker) to grab a bowl of noodles, and eating while walking was kinda weird.

---sonnets. between wyatt, spenser and shakespeare we had ourselves a field day - only one example from each, but it was nothing short of inspirational. unfortunately, i ruined shakespeare's first sonnet for everyone - the lecturer didn't want to continue - by suggesting arnold schwarzenegger's role in junior as an example of increase being brought about in a male subject...

i tend to say a lot during most of my classes, and i'm always worried about being "that guy", the one vocal idiot who's always ruining it for everyone else. i'm always careful (or, i try to be) to give others a chance to speak and sometimes i open my mouth and feel bad for doing so. that's usually the end of it, except that when this class was over co-conspirator made a remark about the quantity that i share and the lecturer pounced: "are you trying to shut him up?". when i put forth that i *had* felt like i'd gone too far, i was taken completely by surprise by an aggressive outburst from another student: "NO! please! don't stop! i also hate it when people talk too much, but everything YOU say is intelligent and interesting!"
she went on a little more than that, and i was overwhelmed and a bit flustered... very pleased, though. i hope i appeared to be as flattered and grateful for the compliment as i am.

anyway, the sonnet masters blow my mind (all the italians included), and analysing their works is intense.

---it was then time for the orientation course - we have a schedule problem, and we're definitely going to have to sort this out. my part of the lecture didn't go nearly as well as i'd planned...

i bladed home to pick something up that needed to go to work, and occupied myself there for a few hours before returning to watch an episode and a bit of the wire (i passed out after the "bit"). i went to bed early, and slept well.

---friday:

i spent the morning deciding whether to continue working with flex and upgrading my sdk. then i met up with sorter and we went to play on the roof of my apartment's patio. it took a couple of hours and it doesn't look like much, but it's cheap and i suspect it might just do the trick! and if it doesn't, then we were all wrong about the source of the problem and i didn't spend thousands of shekels on something unrelated.

i spent the afternoon coding and blogging, and fighting with pg over rubbish (i think we both feel bad about that), then went to her parents for dinner. i ate too much and have been doing so a lot lately. i suspect it's related to the sleep deprivation. after dinner we played with magnet balls, and it turns out i have a knack for them :)

---today:

waking up early, getting picked up by cousins to make a video for kc's wedding. it was a really fun morning filled with hilarity, which was followed by a huge lunch at her parents' which was absolutely delicious but demanded siesta. i woke up and had a loooooong talk with my mother (we eventually understood each other, we're apparently in interesting times) and am waiting for botchman to get in touch with me because i've had a magnificent artistic idea and i need to put together a group to execute it }:D

now for a movie, or something.

---anti-vaccination crisis - they were going too far from the beginning, but this?!

chest pain

i went to bed around 2am, and around 4 or 5am i was up and incredibly uncomfortable. pg must have sensed it, because she woke up soon afterwards and both of us lay in bed, miserable, until the alarm went off at 6.30am. except for when i got up to go to the toilet. on my way back i yawned and stretched, and somehow the stretch made the area around my sternum really sore, like i'd pulled a muscle or something :S

early mornings aren't good for us. but my disk-on-key had not only been found by the caretaker, but he'd sifted through its contents and discovered my phone number. i'm surprised and impressed! i arranged sound equipment for the shakespeare lecture i'm auditing, sorted out thursday's room confusion and had coffee while discovering that while my kindle may be cool, it can't handle indexing thousands of books without draining the battery (so i've just deleted everything except for what i need for my studies). what a silly issue!

french class - not bad, although annoying can't-keep-his-trap-shut dude sat right behind me.

i was buggered by the time i got to work:
"have you lost weight?"
"not really"
"oh. well you look like shit."

the guys left for lunch as i arrived, and it was only after they got back that i was told that there was no reason for me to come in. thanks. rabbitcvs / nautilus / whatever was ruined by the previous upgrade and couldn't be reinstalled, but i did manage to get svn workbench running before i left and it's actually quite a neat little package.

back to school: nim is away for a couple of weeks, and the class was way more interesting without her crowding it. afterwards, a quick snack, excellent mocha at aroma with wordsworth and co-conspirator, and then the three of us walked to our favourite professor's for a long meeting that had both highly entertaining elements and a bit of group shouting therapy. the hardest part was right at the end, when i informed the professor that i'll be cancelling her class; it's true that it's for financial reasons, but i felt uncomfortable when her line of thought turned to "how can we help you more" (my bursary award is quite sizeable) and it was tough to explain that i'll be in a much better position if i defer the courses and don't overload myself.

at least i think i managed to not offend her. i say hopefully.

wordsworth gave me a ride back home, and i would have done some work if i hadn't been so occupied with my kindle, pg's computer re-install, and a train of thought that stretched from checking my bank account and discovering that i've been underpaid this month, to determining the likelihood that i was underpaid last month, to whether or not i'm familiar enough with the tech to take the job i've been interviewed for, to sending mmf a letter of resignation stating all of the reasons for my general unhappiness and expressing the hope that we can still be friends.

although, as pg pointed out, we might well be past that judging by the way i've been treated.

as i said to my mum: i'm feeling better about it already. and tomorrow's a strike; no studies and no public transport, so i've an excuse to work from home.

americans aren't stupid

so aside from the green card scam, i had a day at work wherein i made a bit of progress but didn't give a damn about it. on my way out my boss offered to get me a book on css, an offer i declined without hesitation.

do not want.

in the other office, i fine-tuned something that was giving us trouble and convinced the boss that the change i requested to make last week (a request that was slammed immediately at the time) is a good idea for a number of reasons. it looks like it'll be a fun challenge, and when we succeed i'll have less bureaucracy to deal with during my night shifts :)

wordsworth gave me a ride to co-conspirator's birthday sleepover; i would've slept over if i didn't have other responsibilities... her attitude towards her birthday was a bit off-putting, though. i almost decided against going just because she was testy about it being important.

it's just a birthday.

the food was pretty good, but although it was nice to see everyone the arrangement was a tad awkward. once things got going i settled in, however, and overall the experience was pleasant and i might have enjoyed staying the night...

coming back home was a bit of a mission - i think all the buses i needed were finished for the night. pg had already gone to bed by the time i walked in, but i discovered something at my desk that made me smile and say: "best - girlfriend - ever". a pillow re-sewed to the first step of an invader zim-style costume (think bloaty's pizza hog).

*sigh*

---
stupid is as stupid says: a denier of global warming writing for the wall street journal?
more slamming of the same moron

weekend something

it's late, i gotta be in bed already. a list! a list will solve the problem!

---friday:

friday's early morning meeting at cake art. i'm fairly certain the waitress was flirting with me. the keish was great.

one-legged beast-fighting: i couldn't use my left foot and was made to fight, one-legged, against the big dude. that could've gone badly, but it didn't so i feel good about it.

buscope (bush cafe?) dinner with pg: it's a place right close by that does steak and eggs breakfast all day. it wasn't the best steak, but the service was sterling and the music was great.

i was in time to get a ride with scrapper to his and botchman's farewell. we made it up to botchman for nobody having rocked up to his twelfth birthday party, only to discover that the story he'd told us was meant to be a joke.

---saturday:

another early morning meeting. this time at landver, with a good breakfast but a terrible table vibe as co-conspirator and wordsworth had... words. all sorted out fairly quickly, though. the second part of the meeting bored me to lots of angry birds.

i promised pg i'd take her to the "luna park" - and so i did. it was a hot day, and my system doesn't handle quick direction switching at high g's. i managed four rides, having saved myself for the big ones, and enjoyed them even though they made me feel horrible. it took coke to fix me up after the first two, and another coke and an ice-cream after the second - it was the only thing i could consider eating :P

watching the people was an experience and the cultural incompatibilities were blatant. also - the games are a rip-off.

we had frozen yoghurt for dinner, which was delicious, and then i left for gasoline's house-warming. most of the evening was awkward - especially with her flatmate - but some of it was a lot of fun and overall i drank too much.

---sunday:

another stupid-early meeting. i was barely functional and then the coffee machine, as is its wont, stole my shekel. we spent an hour building the presentation - the good stuff was all mine. everyone loved the "0 = A LOT" slide. the head of the department even quoted that after we were done :P

the talk with the new students was long and i'm fairly certain i wouldn't have understood much if i hadn't studied this last year, which only makes the case for us giving an orientation course that much stronger. during my bit, i really did need the guys standing near me reminding me not to leave things out: of course it's an actual course! didn't i say so?!

back to work. still tired. the boss found the flaw that was annoying me last week, the fix was quick. lunch with harry potter was more fun than lunch with the girls: they spotted me and i couldn't not join them :/

jquery's sexyselect add-on is a bitch. after much struggling to tweak it according to the design i was given, i gave up and performed all the bits manually. it took about half an hour; setting up the add-on has cost me at least a day or two so far.

i was under time-pressure to save my work and pack up at the end of the day; that sense of urgency didn't leave me until... nope, still here. after doing some quick editing in the other office, i rushed off to return to tel aviv to meet with kc's father, who'd brought a couple of boxes of books that i'd left with them in 2004.

and i'd been wondering where some of them were, and automatically assumed grootbek had sold / lost / stolen them. [the discussion that led on from that got pg really angry with me for still being friends with him - what??? we went to his wedding after he did all that horrible stuff to you?! - i suppose she's not entirely wrong...]

nothing more frustrating than finding my old copy of shakespeare's complete works after spending a semester squinting at the shakespeare iphone app... *sigh*

i took apart, after more than five years - marathon man's computer. i've tried enough to contact him about it, it's now on its way to being recycled. it had a internal zip drive that might work.

facebook lists don't help: you have to manually click on everyone you're trying to invite. and some of those invites don't get sent, so you have to do them again. and i'm trying to invite a lot of people to saturday's events...

i was fasting for tomorrow's breath test, and pg offered me watermelon when i wasn't concentrating. i double checked the amount of time i needed to fast, and it's changed from ten hours, to six, and now one. one hour. i could've relaxed about food this evening :(

twingling nerves

yesterday was exciting! well, the second half at least.

i got up stupid early (7am) to get some work done on the event website, and was fairly productive until i had to leave for work. the meeting with the insurance guy was set for 11am - it was only about noon when he finally rocked up. turns out he's from the same company :S

i got a bit of work done, but not enough that i don't have to do anything on the weekend. my 4pm meeting on campus had completely slipped my mind... boy, were we all surprised when i jumped up at 3pm, explained the situation, hurriedly handled most of a meeting that had been deferred from the morning while simultaneously packing up...

i made it to the university in good time. unfortunately, i arrived without my beloved phone cover: i'm guessing i must have dropped it on the bus. as soon as i realized it was missing i called up the bus operators, who registered the details but explained to me that they have no way to contact their drivers.

REALLY?!?! and this on the bus line that has wi-fi? so the drivers have internet, the drivers have cellular phones, but the company can't get in touch with them??? bloody liars.

the worst part of this story is that the bus line goes past our apartment, and i only realized that i could have simply called pg and asked her to hop on and check after i'd finished talking to the monkeys. by that time it was too late :(

it was super-heated on campus. the walk up had me disgustingly sweaty. i was surprised to discover that the girl that i thought i was going to meet was the *other* girl-with-the-same-name from the master's students...

the hand-over was very different to what i expected. i thought i was going to get a bunch of info, tips and tricks, who-knows-what - instead, i was informed that i already know everything there is to know about the content management system and that i already had the keys to the department's blog (it's on blogger).

i gave her a lot more info than she gave me: i'd been talking to the head of the faculty's IT department in the morning and the english department on the way from the office, and i've secured permission from both sides to join the faculty dev team for the express purposes of moving our website from the completely unusable and unsupported cms to joomla. the alternative? waiting for them to get around to it during the first semester... i don't think i'll really have enough time to do stuff then :P

on the way to meet the dev team, i ran into gco's girlfriend and she offered to arrange the meeting for me (it turns out everyone had left for the day anyway) - then i headed to the bus stop to go to the old office.

that didn't work - wr and co-conspirator caught me waiting for the bus, and there went an hour of my day. it was a fun, interesting hour, though - we've got a candidate for class rep and a platform on which to push her; wordsworth and i have found a way to let co-conspirator participate in the orientation course (i had reservations at first, but we resolved them in the interest of avoiding group politics), and she taught me a thing or two about the master's course registration process... it's good to know people who have time to harass the entire faculty :)

our enthusiasm for the course is contagious, apparently: wr, now going into his final - no really, his FINAL year* - wants to take the course too :P

* he has one course left to go to complete his degree... he's been studying the same degree for about seven or eight years now.

it was on that note that i left (again) for work. the first person i ran into was sorter, and we sat outside for coffee and business for a short while - i was happy to report progress, he had a lot to say about financial sources, and between the two of us this little project has rather a lot of potential. the best part is that as soon as this month is over i will have time to dedicate to it, and it's fun regardless of whether it succeeds or not. we don't have to invest in anything else until we're ready to release an alpha version... so an even split of the profits might be good pickings :)

i'd had a long email argument with -someone in the morning about the way i'd written one of the classes, and it continued as soon as the two of us were sitting together. much flurrying on the whiteboard later, and i finally managed to untangle my proposal into a flow diagram. it's funny how the second it was drawn up properly it became so simple and sensible! and how important it is to have two people working on the same code.
that freed up my next hour or so for documenting things before grabbing the bus home.

i decided i'd spend some time with pg before working, and we sat reading together after dinner, then playing tekken... tekken was interrupted, though, by a phone call from pg's ex. she disappeared for a while, then returned with a pile of cash, a guitar, and a retelling to raise the hackles. at least she told the creep off, and explained that she never wanted to see or hear from him again. story over - i'm glad i didn't have to intervene.

we played a bit more, and then i did a *little* bit of work... but sleep overpowered me. and not just any sleep - a complete, deep, *satisfied* sleep in appreciation for a week well done and *knocks wood* my life being in a good place right now. it's taken what seems like forever, but i'm financially stable and doing jobs that i like, i'm reading and gaming again, i'm making time for friends in addition to being in a fantastic relationship, and i believe that if i work really hard i might be able to keep this up ^_^

---getting up at 7am was night impossible, and 7.30 was only slightly easier. i've now posted, done the translation for the event, and am off for breakfast with urchin.

[twingling]

quick breakdown

i just realized what time it is, and i'm disappointed because i've gotten so little done today. i'm definitely going to sleep tonight - tomorrow's a big day.

reading richard wright on the way to class was horrifying... his depiction of post-slavery in the southern states of america was enlightening - or endarkening. i highly recommend a glance. it's works like these that make me glad i'm studying again - we're just being exposed to snippets, and my reading list has expanded to impossible lengths :)

the same security guard has made a point of stopping me twice and being excessively thorough when everyone else is merely glanced at. he's making me feel like it's personal...

there's a penalty for being the first to use the hot water in our building: it takes three minutes to heat up. when you're in a hurry, that's annoying.

after hearing about the coolest honeymoon ever - going across the states during convention season with a spouse equally into comics and gaming - i was informed that i should answer icon's call for papers. when i protested "but i don't have anything to talk about!" i was laughed at, and then i blushed and realized that i always have *something* to talk about :P

first class was more interesting than usual; perhaps influenced by my earlier reading. i'd found du boise's texts gripping too...

the introductory lesson to shakespeare's measure for measure was mind-blowing. our lecturer made a great case for opening up the new testament, and the twists and turns and tricks of equivocation in the play were most intriguing. the only thing i definitely disagreed with him about is in calling it a comedy. i was impressed by scenes based on great wit, but the context was so dark that i didn't find myself actually laughing.

on the way out of class, i had a long and exciting chat with one of the girls about LARPing - i've begun trying to get hold of some from my friends from UCT, and if that doesn't work i'm going to write my own after exams. 'cause i'll have time ^_^

i spent a few minutes with co-conspirator organizing a megaphone; great solution, that, and i'm glad i thought of it. reading spiritual / metaphysical poetry through one of those will most assuredly be special :P

after enjoying an all-important ice-cream on the way off campus, i almost got on the bus before my boss sent me a just-in-time sms telling me not to bother. i went to wait on the other side, confronted by the question of whether or not to report the tiny packet on the bench to the police as a suspicious object until some stranger came and took it away (i'm fairly certain it wasn't hers). i then missed the stop to come here (old office), but i'm not really counting hours anymore so i don't care.

the previous development head helped me out with a weird flex problem i was having, only once it was solved another one popped up, this one with a super-helpful error number but no information concerning where in the code it has been thrown. after much searching i went back to the same guy, who showed me that flex has a logging system. the logging system is a shining example of how bad the flex documentation is - and the design's not at all intuitive either; i haven't really gotten very far :S

aside from a shocking response, it's been a fairly uneventful evening. i have wrapping paper printed for pg's birthday present, and it's past time i go home.

---eli pariser - filter bubbles: if you remove the "i" from his name... this is fascinating, and disturbing. it's like the algorithms are performing similar functions to our brains in filtering, only with even less precision...

poor me: a weekly review part iii

[continued...]

i slept like the dead on the couch, and was woken a bit later to vacuum, and take a call from co-conspirator. i didn't have the energy, but i told her i'd update her once i'd done the park at night.

after having discussed things with ru55, and then grabbing some tips online, pg and i took her electric grill up to the roof and i cooked my first steak. it came out beautifully. it was a perfect night and we smoked a nargila for dessert, and life was good.

it took a while to set up the subtitles for shaun of the dead for pg, but i got them going eventually. i then set upon my poetry paper before going to bed around 2am, not making it there before discovering that i wasn't in a good situation.

it took a while to get to sleep.

---saturday:

pg transferred me a temporary solution and i got stuck into finished my paper. that was a tough paper, and made tougher by my previous failure. i managed to finish before pg's family started arriving...

the afternoon on the roof was great, everything went well except for the fact that her family aren't really big into meat. her father considered his steak to be underdone, and the truth is that the electric grill cooks so slowly that you'd have to double-kill the outside to get the inside bloodless, and i don't know if i'm psychologically capable of doing that. i enjoyed two steaks, and still had another two as leftovers by the time we were done. add the chorizos and i was stuffed - finishing the lunch with pg's exquisite triple-layer cream cake, great 60s folk music, a good cup of coffee and a nargila was fantastic.

i found being thanked at the end for hosting to be awkward. i don't feel like i did very much, and even though i live here now it's odd for me to consider myself as a host.

pg and i spent a while cleaning up, and i then bladed over to my old neighbour for a delightful and conspiratorially productive visit. i continued on to the park and figured out where we'd be. i was on my way back when i reported my success to co-conspirator; i was home already when she informed me that she'd done a round herself.

i was irritated, because she'd sent me a message during the day to ask if i'd gone and i'd ignored it because we'd talked and agreed that i would report when i had - i don't like how pushy she is. to then go and see without telling me, when i have other stuff to do, is not very nice.

when i approached her about this this morning she told me she'd only been during the day, so i guess that doesn't count, even though it was quite aggravating at the time.

i worked quite late,

---today:

and got up quite early (6.40). i finally finished the first draft of the file i'd been working on just before i had to go, and it was eerie seeing it run successfully first time. i checked my mailbox (no mail for me) and then began to use all my travelling as an opportunity to read the book i was told about on tuesday. the author is a guy i studied with (my first degree), and when i asked him what he was up to he proudly exclaimed "i've written a book!" our mutual friends claim to have read it and gave it rave reviews - i felt it worthwhile to pay the $7 to check it out on kindle.

so far, not so good. as far as style goes it's the second worst thing i've ever read*, and as far as content goes... well, quite frankly it's offensively stupid and miserable. it's a real page-turner, though. it's so bad that i *have* to find out if there's some character development, if there's a complete reversal. the protagonist is such a complete and utter douche that i feel my gorge rising at every utterance. this is what happens when a work of fiction is written by someone who has no talent, doesn't read and has zero appreciation for literature. but i'm hoping he's just really, really good at constructing completely foreign characters and then destroying them.

* psychotic american's efforts were even worse

i had a chat with mmf before class; now i understand the way the tax works, i think, and he's wired me the cash. the only problem left is that i need to find out whether my mortgage payment went through today because the internet access doesn't reflect changes fast enough. and it turns out that we had a misunderstanding concerning the amount i need to earn, so we're already up for our first renegotiation.

after class we made a promo video for this weekend's poetry event, and while it took much longer to produce it came out just as well. i'm quite pleased.

i stopped by (old) work for half an hour before going to physiotherapy; prior to the electrotherapy i was falling asleep, and i thought that would help me during. when your back's arched unnaturally and your eyes and teeth are shut tight, it's not so easy to nap.

my physiotherapist and i haven't gotten along from the start - today she really threw me when she stated that in order to treat me she "has the right" to shave parts of my beard (i forgot to shave again, and the tabs don't stick well). i do believe i "have the right" to not be treated if i don't want to look like an asshole. this isn't exactly life or death.

the rest of the workday was long and mostly uneventful. i returned home for steak leftovers (^_^) and have been working until stupid o'clock, and for most of the time my brain's been fuzzed. so i'm finally getting to bed.

i can't believe i've finally gotten all of this down!

reflections upon aging prematurely - part ii

[... continued]

the most surreal experience: stepping out of our tent in the evening only to be confronted by a girl fleeing security, jumping over the fence and screaming her goodbyes to us, seemingly personally. in my hazy state i couldn't figure out if i was supposed to recognize her or not... they caught her, and we couldn't figure out afterwards if she was just someone who'd snuck into the festival or if she'd tried to escape from something outside of it.

i knew that from 2am things were going to go crazy, so i tried to rest after organic's set. not so easy when the bass makes your body bounce even when prone. at 1am the sound seemed to fade out; that was when the dj began playing with the surround and it was magnificent even from 200m away.

2am: get up and dig. the music was preposterously good the entire night, totally indifferent to human physiology's need to sleep. i couldn't stop stomping until the final set, and even though i'm not a big fan of minimal it was so well-integrated with the full-on... bottom line: happiness overload. so many people going so crazy... and all remarkably similar to the last one. time really does stop for doof.

so: hearing loss, sore legs and chafing. on the brighter side, i think i know what my hair's going to look like dreaded. pg and i struck camp, but i got struck down in the process. i was truly exhausted. the goodbyes were... awkward. i was incoherent, and said remarkably stupid things. swak. to make matters worse, i was in no state to drive so pg had to take the wheel... at least we had space for a hitch-hiker. i like being able to "pass it forward" :P

once home, we did some shopping and then went straight to bed.

---tuesday:

the technician arrived to set up the internet, and told us that to actually get it to work we'd have to call support and have them talk us through it. i called immediately while he and pg were still sorting out the paperwork, only to discover that there's no reasonable way to get hold of support.

fantastic.

when i told him this, he explained that he was aware of the difficulties and would help us, even though he usually charges for the assistance. WTF?!?!

anyway, so we have internet at home now. that meant that i could video-chat with my sister (w00t!) and work on my seminar paper. a good thing, too: that's all i did until 3am the next morning. the final grind was tough.

---wednesday:

so i went to bed, and then woke up an hour or two later feeling sick as a dog. my throat was scratchy (as it is right now, on-and-off painful), and soon after i was so cold that i dragged myself out of bed to heat up in a hot shower. then i tried passing out on the couch so that i wouldn't disturb pg.

the bus to campus: i was *dead*. literally falling over. printing out my paper and handing it in seemed like a dream at the time, and i haven't yet experienced the catharsis that should've accompanied the action. it's like i cannot absorb the fact that it's finally done.

we had a class on sound poetry which required two cups of coffee to get through, and i sat with co-conspirator to advise her on her paper before stretching out on the grass with a couple of classmates to rest and chat. then i took a bus to herzeliya so that i could help mmf drive cars back to tel aviv.

on entering herzeliya: the guy with the hummer? all i could think of was "tiny penis". that was in opposition to the middle-aged guy who came careening past on his skateboard, and is made of win. i feel embarrassed for people who need to satisfy their egos with suits and expensive cars.

mmf and i both talk with our hands. i accidentally swatted his iphone out of his, which was embarrassing and unpleasant :$

after spending some time at his place (i suck at reading to children, apparently) and discussing work and studies, he introduced me to iphone multi-tasking and laughed at my lack of familiarity with something so basic. why on earth would i ever double-tap the button??? that's not very intuitive, IMO.

on the way home i stopped by the hardware dude to discuss hardware and psychedelics, and when i got in i went straight to bed. i woke up for dinner and went to my apartment to pick up mail and my doof shirt (^_^), and have a drink with the girls who have invaded my apartment. i'm well pleased at both the condition its in and that they're enjoying it. that's all i asked :)

i came home to study for the midterm and get some sleep. sleeping well was a shock after the previous week :P

[continued...]

wind-blown

what could have annoyed me after my previous post? my phone battery dying? my girlfriend misunderstanding me and waiting almost two hours for me to come home for dinner? a folder on my disk-on-key being stuffed up by my work pc's having a "moment", extended into a shutdown failure when i was in a hurry to get out of here?

then discovering that co-conspirator had "moved" all the shakespeare movies from the borrowed disk-on-key instead of "copying" them, so i got nothing?

at least iron man 2 made a satisfying replacement.

---today was a great day to leave the apartment late. i'd worked a little on my seminar, ordered an internet connection (which will only take, mmm, TWO WEEKS to be installed :S), and then hopped over to my apartment to have tea with dp and proofread (and rework) flyers for the festival :D

an hour at work, getting the important stuff done, and then i headed into the heavy winds to take a bus to herzeliya. i was tired and the traffic jam didn't do me any good.

i have a key to the new office, but no facilities. even the kiosk across the street wasn't serving coffee and had run out of pretty much anything else we'd have liked. i spent a spartan couple of hours hating web browsers for glossing over code errors - like misnamed functions - and eventually gave up hacking away at my netbook which is not only insufficient for software development but also appears to be experiencing battery and wifi troubles. so i ventured all the way back to *this* office, where i have a corner office and an extra large screen and a decent connection.

i hate computers: anyone who manages to write great software IN SPITE of all the idiots who wrote the software his has to run on is amazing.

i hate hardware in general: why does our espresso machine hate me so?

now getting ready to exercise. i hope the wind doesn't get us.

netless - part iii

[... continued]

second class, on shakespeare, and we discussed (amongst other things) the pirata ex machina in hamlet. on the back of my more serious argument that it demonstrates a side of hamlet that we've heard tell of but not seen (he's mentioned as having an excellent reputation as a man not to be messed with), rode my quoting the gamers :D

a good, philosophical lunch, including a fruitful argument with co-conspirator concerning her perspective.

i left for work a little concerned that i haven't heard from anyone; my boss did actually throw me a bone, though. and i did get started. kinda. it's something.

it's late. i'm off.

---noticing that your keyboard's REALLY dirty, so much so that quick wiping is totally ineffective, is disturbing.

trauma tune: sharing - part iii

[... continued]

sunday:

sunday had a tough start. i'd received an inspirational sms from co-conspirator... more so when she refused to even look at me.

the class was about pregnancy, and afterwards i convinced our professor that sonnet 116 is quite possibly about sex. i had lunch with pg, then walked down to the highway to catch a bus... forgetting to draw cash, walking all the way to the mall, returning again... i bought a ticket for the month. i don't know if i should have.

---the first meeting of my new job was really cool. it felt right. i had shit to contribute. the guys are smart and interested. i have a good feeling about this.

---what is it with anonymous phone callers not leaving messages???

on my way to the old job, i was engaged in a bureaucratic battle over classroom bookings. i think i came out on top, by being given direct contact with the person who is actually responsible for the building.

a productive work session, then the discovery that about NIS 1000 was missing from my salary. this is NOT the month for that shit to happen...

leaving with the sun still up?! absurd! pg and i went to play frisbee, but the park we chose was too dark and i wanted to play on the grass... so we returned, strapped on our blades, and did a proper run for an hour or so, wearing ourselves out completely but discovering a good frisbee park on the way :D

i burned the eggs. i gotta get used to the new setup.

---monday:

i studied till late last night, with the sound of thunder and rain accompanying me.
i woke up at 6.30am mid-dream to continue, and felt as prepared as could be by the time i walked in to the exam.

which ended bitterly. "i have come to register a complaint!" i announced, when the teacher left the classroom. most of us had had the same trouble, even though we'd done all the readings...

"hi, friend!" said the stranger as i slowed, raising an eyebrow quizzically. i don't know what he said once he put his hand on my arm - don't touch the south african, dude. he got the message immediately, and only then did i discover that he's in my class...

it was raining, and i had no umbrella, so i wasn't going to meet with our class rep who isn't our class rep...

our second class was on hamlet, and was enlightening as usual. the idea that hamlet could well be a metaphor for the audience is mind-bending.

wordsworth and i had a loud and aggressive argument while waiting our turns at the cafeteria... he made an outrageous claim about shakespeare being nobody special and that took a while to resolve. if we resolved it at all. i think we were interrupted by a confused spectator. discussing literature in the science building? what were we thinking?!

we had a problem with the room for the shakespeare screening - this then became even more of a thing again, and i took it to the woman in charge of the building. i have acquired another direct contact, score!

the screening was interesting, but i nodded off a few times. i'm tired. i arrived at work to discover that the last paycheck is not the only one i've been shortchanged on, so it looks like this month might be okay. and like i shouldn't trust the company as much as i have been trusting them until now.

i've got some work done this afternoon / evening, but not enough to satisfy me. i'm going home, i'll make up for it in the morning.

ah! just got a phone call praising the manifesto... looks like the ball might begin rolling soon :D

trauma tune: sharing - part ii

[... continued]

friday:

i woke up early and got to the pharmacy only to discover that i've lost a prescription somewhere along the way... swak. on my way there i got to thinking about military logic, how people justify their choices: attractive and comfortable vs effective and uncomfortable. it's much easier to lie to oneself that the "strategically do nothing" option is meaningful.

i've actually seen that before, "strategic do nothing", on an official army letterhead.

i arranged a few things at home, and became nervous, excited, and a little confused. then i rollerbladed to the poetry meeting, where we sat in the hot sun for too long, with stupidly expensive cookies and praise and comments that seemed to go on forever. not my favourite meeting.

i then bladed to the climbing wall, for a psychologically stimulating (bi-directional, i think) climb with a friend, and just missed botchman and another friend as i had to rush to join the rollerblading group. that was a good route! although an angry driver with a baby in the back put everyone at risk with startlingly dangerous driving, then couldn't understand why we were upset with him... we made up for that with a few rounds in the underground parking lot, freaking out the old lady who was waiting for an elevator that we all rolled out of :P

i took my broken brain home to pg's, and helped out with the cooking that we were taking to her sister's.

---facebook fool!

i didn't think it through. as i said, my brain was broken. and i'd had a bit to drink. just excuses for my insensitivity, that led me to post an unfunny april fool's prank letting the world know that i was shirking off this mortal coil.

---after dinner we went to a friend's place for his birthday. the mongoose was there - and we had a huge fight (no, not the kind that you stop being friends for :P) when he discovered how little my new job is going to pay me. he's offered to pay me twice that, and couldn't understand why i was upset when about half a year ago they wouldn't employ me because i'd asked for too much money, even though i'd TOLD him i was flexible and desperate.

i hate the fact that employers hold the cards and ask the questions regarding cash in interviews, instead of making offers first.

---a depressing non-laugh: co-conspirator tried to call me in response to my death threat, twice, and i hadn't heard the phone ring. it turns out she was close to a couple of people who'd off'ed themselves, so it's understandable why she was upset with me. i apologized to all those offended and upset, but still felt really bad when i saw some of the responses and realized just how hurtful i'd been.

---saturday:

i had trouble getting to sleep because i felt so bad. in the morning, i went to my place to begin tidying and sorted the issue out with a final post:

the suggestion to take down the previous thread has been noted and accommodated - although usually i have a thing about not deleting posts, even if they do make me out to be a giant douche. just to be clear:

X, i was in a bit of an evil mood, i didn't mean to bring up anything like that, and for that i'm truly sorry. and Y and Z are right - TOTALLY not my style. for those who called - thank you! and everyone who said that someone should call, always right. and for anyone who ever contemplates suicide, it's really not the best option. EVER. it's the one mistake you will never be able to know how much you SHOULD regret, and it's making all the other mistakes that makes us human.

sorry i upset you guys, i wasn't really thinking too deeply about it and it was pretty insensitive.

X - there is no cry wolf on suicide with me, unless *gods forbid* i end up facing a degenerative incurable disease. i've known enough who did it - even one is more than enough - and i cannot identify with a person who can't see that there's *always* a better alternative.

so yeah, that was pretty crappy / stupid of me. sorry. not the best way to express my feelings on the topic, but i promise i wasn't intending anything harmful.

being human is awesome - screw all the vegans who say otherwise.

---cleaning house cleans heads, and a day filled with mechanical scraping and rubbing and packing was good for me. so was a phone call from my mother... it's weird that her wednesday had been awful too, though :(

i wonder how much practice one needs to blow up a long balloon. it's tough.

i was completely bombed by the time i finished cleaning in the afternoon*, and napped blissfully for a while before being woken up to go pick up marathon identifiers and eat waffles.

* i don't believe my apartment's ever been so clean! i even recovered that patio after the last sandstorm had rendered it unusable...

question for the day: what do you do with eggshells and glycerine? :D
pg and i finished digitizing my japanese experience, which has taken just a little longer than anticipated. perhaps we'll pick up the pace now that we're living together.

at 2am i met with dp to hand over the keys and give her the rundown of my home. we chatted far longer than was good for my sleep patterns :P

[continued...]

still shocked - need more time

[this post brought to you by diamond head]

all my troubles began yesterday with my inability to catch a quick nap before heading off to work. i went out to catch the bus, and one of our managers was on it... he decided to get off at the same station as me to see if it was any closer.

it wasn't. his response?
"i'm gonna slap the bitch outta you"

i spent the afternoon working, then continuing with my paper within the calm of the phone lines. the head manager who's stepping out brought chocolate ice-cream bites... they were frozen solid and cold. and not good to have in one's mouth when answering a call.

after the shift i spoke to someone about an interesting-sounding job. halfway through the conversation i was asked if i didn't feel overqualified for the job... my boss was standing far too close for comfort when i said "listen, the job i'm doing now? i don't wanna use dirty words, so i'm not going to describe what levels i've resorted to."

[*suddenly feels better after a quick break*]

on my way out i was reminded of aziz ansari because i usually rollerblade. with one gay co-worker and one straight, the three of us went down a gratuitously gory mental spiral, eventually reaching a low enough point with the following (you'll have to select it to read it, it's awful):
a gherkin merkin': badly shorn pubic hair over a small, green penis suffering genital herpes

so we called it quits.
[for those who've read the above - don't you wish you hadn't?]

i hopped over to the university, beginning the experience in the orange store. all i wanted to know what how to check my balance... the saleswoman had no idea either. while attempting her suggestions, i got to witness her using grimy tricks on other customers. they really do talk a lot of horseshit.

i walked inside to find a hanukkah headphone party. i had a beer while discussing idealism with co-conspirator (or do i refer to her as a union-mate?) before we headed to the student union meeting. it began late, so we talked a lot more. i have a lot of things to say.

first item on the agenda - an announcement regarding the fire last week. it's touching to hear all the stories about the people who took command and donated their time and helped physically with the ordeal. it's disturbing to hear all the stories about the government institutions (some aid ones in particular) and services who did as little as they could get away with.

the next couple of items were interesting too, and fortunately a bit more positive. there's a hint that we may have succeeded somewhere along the line...

i wasn't happy about leaving early, but i had promised to get to singer's first performance on time. if only the invitation i'd received hadn't been incorrect, i would've known that i had an hour more than i'd thought. i didn't have to miss the main item on the agenda :(

i decided on falafel on my way home, and walked into the place next door just as they were setting out the candles. all the patrons (including one really strange man and his child, i'm certain that kid's not getting the best genes in the pool) were stuck singing for their supper...

... i rushed home, strapped on my blades and got to the bar *just* one hour early. buggrit. i haven't seen her family since we stopped seeing each other, so that was a little... a little awkward. amusing, though, that nobody recognized me with hair :P

that extra beer... i tried to read, i tried to write, and eventually, circuitously, entered a conversation with the beautiful girl sitting at my table that lasted until the show started.
single-serve friends :P

that extra beer... that went to my head.

the performance was brilliant - i'm really impressed. thoroughly amused, too - the last song was the one singer and i argued over the most, and when she got to the Big Fix she made a really mischievous face at me while singing it her way :)

her one song got stuck in my head for most of the next twelve hours. not bad, not bad at all.

she finished earlier than anticipated, and i rolled out of there and into the group. we had one tough blade, but very social. i even found out who's borrowed my copy of johnny mnemonic! (after my phone upgrade...)

pg and i had an argument, and we irritated each other a lot with this one... i worked out my frustration with some serious exercise. my legs were strained by the time i finally got home (around 1.30am).

i walked in, quaffed an energy drink, showered and got to work on my paper. the only thing that got in the way was my windows installation. i'd forgotten how much i despise microsoft - windows 7's a huge improvement technologically, but some of their measures are still rather draconian.

around 4am sorter was giving me a few pointers as i prepared to put together the last page or two. i was all over the place comparing readings and fixing things when my whole neighbourhood lost power. no wireless, no light, a few hours left before the paper was due... not good.

not good.

---i figured it was best to go to bed and sleep a couple of hours, but the caffeine was still in charge and it must have taken me about half an hour to catch some z's. and two hours is just not enough sleep.

i spent about ten grim minutes snoozing, then dragged myself out of bed and got cracking. i put together the summary and tidied up some more, then made triply-sure that i had a copy to print when i got to campus.

yes! first print was smooth, first peer-review not so much. i grabbed her paper (for a moment she thought i was serious about replacing her cover page and handing it in as mine) and fixed the style issues, printed again and refused to look back.

our first class was the usual nightmare - only it gets a little worse every time. at least it had an amusing warm-up; we're all starting to get familiar with each other :)
so half the class have notes they don't understand, the other stopped wasting their time trying, and one or two *think* they got it but that's only because we've been talking about the same shit for the past six classes. it's a terrible course :(

the end of it was perfect, though. the professor talked about shklovsky (at least i think it was him) saying that in order to be art the representation must be difficult to understand. the more difficult, the more artistic. that was when it struck me as appropriate for her to be reflexively discussing an idea that represents her: she's an artiste. she's making it as tough to follow her as possible because that increases our exposure to her techne :/

---one of the girls mentioned a vampire smiley in class, and that always reminds me of the life of riley - one of the greatest webcomics i've ever read!

doughnuts waiting for us outside of class, a cup of coffee, and the next class (almost) made up for the first. i'd done the reading during the first (the lady with the dog) and had plenty of opinions and side-notes. even though i broke a genre boundary by bringing in an argument based on frank herbert (RIPASBF*) and robert jordan (RIPAPBF**) that scored me big brownie points with the lecturer. i'm well pleased, even though i probably shouldn't be :D

 * RIPASBF: may he rest in peace and his son burn forever
** RIPAPBF: may he rest in peace and his publisher burn forever

i tried telling the british girl in our class a little johnny joke, but she didn't get it :S

i had a quick, burny lunch with pg and eidetic, then stopped by wr to hear there's a girl looking to help out with anime night - *GLEE*!

i chatted with a couple of guys from our poetry class, then went out to the bus. while waiting, a blind man, his guide dog and a young girl stopped in the centre of the stop to wait for the bus. there were a couple of people right next to the man when, mid-sentence, he let one rip. he carried on as if nothing had happened, and everyone remained still and quiet - except me. i had to get some distance between us, and quickly, when the smell hit: the expression that struck me a short while later was "a guided fart".

i was D-E-D dead tired, and i almost slept on the bus (not a good idea for a short trip). once i'd arrived at work i realized that i was wearing the wrong shirt for the interview i was going to - not everyone appreciates "i wanna **** [princess peach] like an animal".
i got some work done, then rushed home to change to something less offensive.

on the bus, it suddenly struck me why statistics and people who put their faith in them bother me. just as plato's reflections, they seem to have power but are no more than misleading figures. when we use stats... we're facing the wrong direction.

forgetting my military training (har, har) i chose all the wrong buses to the interview, and was a bit late. in retrospect, i should have worn the original shirt. i think the guy was having a laugh at my expense, he was cryptic and had me off-balance from the start. it's not clear if he was impressed or disappointed, and his excessive wordiness afterwards makes me think it's not going to happen.

i went back to work, worked hard and well, then switched with one of the agents and spent the rest of the evening being mindless.

it's now really late, i have readings to do. going to a wedding this evening isn't a good idea. i hope it's not too late to cancel? and dammit, i haven't gotten back to the guy who interviewed me two weeks ago...