watery sex

i'm always annoyed with israeli tardiness, even if i've become a little guilty of it myself. but my tardiness is usually confined to a couple of minutes, five, maybe ten at a stretch. but comixer made an impression two weeks ago with an hour and a half, and this morning at 10am he agreed to 11am, and at 10.50 he sent a message to say he'd be fifteen minutes late, and that fifteen proceeded to double.

that's a stressor for me. even if we're meeting for something enjoyable. the other stressor was the malfunctioning climate control in the mall and the overall lack of internet connectivity from any of its many coffee shops; eventually i gave up and went to streets, where i found a plug point and an empty table next to two friends from the creative writing workshop.

comixer arrived, and after i convinced him to focus on comics (as opposed to answering student emails) i discovered that he was sketching unrelated stuff... oh, well. it's a start, i guess. at least he was available for artistic input, and by that i mean that through his responses i figured out how to phrase my requirements understandably.

and i gotta say, i am excited by the scene i'm scripting right now. it functions as a background to the main story, and it's so damn crazy that only ovid could have mentioned it merely in passing - it pushes the comic across a sexually explicit boundary, but i believe that i can do sexy without doing pornographic. i can't believe i'm having so much fun with this ^_^

after an hour or two, i caught the bus to the office. it was the bus driver who recognizes me, and he's also one of those suffering from a severe case of klapvoet: the inability to apply gradual pressure to either accelerator or brake. in addition to being smacked sharply in the face while opening my netbook, i got motion sickness even before resuming working on my script and i eventually hopped off quite nauseous :(

work: for the first time in days, everything was fine throughout our systems. i'd given up on them before going to bed, and that means that we have a mystery on our hands. software development is not supposed to be mysterious. microsoft: i blame you.

on another note, i spent two and a half hours messing around with perl to write a script that would save us more time on a task that will hopefully remove the necessity for one of my closing projects, only to complete it and discover that the required rewrites were far more complicated than i originally expected and turning all of that effort into a total waste. or, almost total - i kind of enjoyed playing with perl and i guess i'll be paid for it :P

i got home in time to eat dinner and join pg for a walk. walking with zombies, run! really isn't as invigorating; unless that word also covers the sensation of wanting to run because walking is inappropriate when you're hearing about... oh, never mind. no need to post spoilers of that sort here ;)

on a friend's recommendation pg and i watched a boy and his dog when we got back. it's AWESOME! and its serving as a basis for the fallout series is completely transparent. i thoroughly loved it. holy crap, 70's! you had amazing movies!

now it's time to get to bed, we're off super-early (even earlier than ugh o'clock!) to go to my cousin's kid's barmitzvah at the western wall. oh, yippee. jerusalem + august heat + smart clothing = :S

---i totally didn't mention my grades - i have two of them back, an almost-perfect one for my shakespearean paper (the last minute reversal) and my humour analysis was close on its heels - score! now back to fretting about the other two...

on the grass

yesterday began with a sharp start pre-alarm...
after a forgotten experience, a few of us decide it's time for a road trip. i end up walking the last bit.
we find a cheap hostel and go missioning around on my blades- i find myself in a store having a sing-along with some s&m chick from the panic ensemble grotesque [a mere construct of my mind, unfortunately]

upon my return to the hostel i set my blades down beside a pillar outside (i'm now wearing sandals). some cops appear to take a dislike to me, chase me down and put me in their patrol car...
they give me shit, but i'm don't play along - they have nothing on me. i threaten them with multiple complaints and eventually, frustrated, they give up and drop me off.

i pick up my blades and walk into a friend and his family who are all having dinner outside the hostel. i urgently tell him what's up, he disappears inside... and walks out with two humungous joints to "calm me down". one of the cops was still keeping an eye on me, though - out of the corner of my eye i caught him rushing off to report to his friends.

feeling responsible, i rush through to my room and out the rear window to find a hiding place amongst the randomness of the back yard; i eventually find a good spot to ditch the damned things but i'm too late: a number of cops pour into the yard and see where i've been: i know they'll know where to look.

i woke up with my heart pounding and both my hands numb and lifeless - i hate it when that happens :(

my ipod accompanied me to an early shopping run, and for the first time in a while i drank freshly squeezed orange juice... a pity that the oranges i've acquired are a tad on the bitter side.

the blade to campus was tougher than on monday - perhaps having done around 25km a few hours before had something to do with that. also, it was a little hotter than the preceding days. i was horrifically sweaty.

wr arrived just as we were excitedly ascertaining the validity of the exclamation that our first, horrid professor had cancelled our freud-abuse session, and informed us of some amusing intrigue involving a couple of our professors and a terrifying lack of fashion sense.
a few of us formed a circle on the grass - i was planning on studying some, but the conversation bounced back and forth with great rapidity between anime and literature... it's the end of week four, and bonds are forming :)

i don't know why there was a band playing on the grass outside gillman, but i am glad for the coffee promotion - free black coffee with cardamom? sweet.

so fiction is defined by the consensus reality at time of publication? unless it's auto-biographical? a class argument on galileo, the bible and historical fallacies simply extended the pleasure of the day :)

---it has been suggested (thank you, pg) that the reason so much weird shit happens to me is because i continue to demonstrate the inability to ignore people and the world around me. it makes a certain sense... most people do their damndest not to get involved; i do tend to go out of my way.

on a slightly different note: i've now opened up another side to my blog with some of my works, and have been out of the army for more than five months. maybe i should stop being so anonymous?

---i had lunch with comixer and eidetic - a long debate over the definition of "the city". it seems that by the end comixer was convinced that moving to central tel aviv is the right thing to do :P

the blade to work was smoother, and i spent the next three hours re-familiarizing myself with perl (apparently it doesn't matter how much one prays, perl is still the best way to perform certain tasks. i still hate it, though) and debating the meaning of empathy with a couple of my co-workers.

i ditched work to meet up with scrapper, botchman and footcruncher at my place. we spent the evening playing tekken and having a really good munchkin session; the final battles saw me with some really useful cards in hand, and the guys were shocked at how much suspense i can introduce to a simple card game :D

as we closed shop (i had to hurry, i'd left pg waiting again) i suddenly realized an awful by-product of my phone upgrade - my lending list is gone! now i have no idea who's got what :'(
[now downloading the nokia software - maybe i can resurrect something]

i hurried to pg's, and everything was all good. we finally watched the end of sherlocke holmes - it's a slightly different sherlocke holmes, but it's a lot of fun and captured the essence of the original characters. i think it's jude law's best performance.

i slept at pg's, then woke up at 6am to come back here and... presumably... study. there's been a far sight more "other" than "study".
that's just it, really. i'm going through yet another transition phase, with a hundreds different faces all clamouring for attention.

---there's a strike on campus today; this is a quick paraphrase from the president of the university:
"you guys are 'the people' - and the greatest advantage to our country. the country needs to treat you right."

another two days down - part i

[post divided retroactively]

there's me gliding along the beachfront waterways on my surfboard, avoiding monsters at dusk. i turn into a side-street, into an enclosed neighbourhood, just beginning to buzz. the first circular stairs are uninviting, so i go on to the next; climbing up to the landing and unsure of which way to turn.

i'm staring out at the gorgeous view and wandering what i'm aiming for when akiva - a tall, blonde south african - storms out his door at the opposite end of the foyer to chuck me out for trespassing. i try to explain but he tries to forcefully remove me, going so far as to attempt punching me in the 'nads.
i don't take well to this, i protect myself then punch him squarely in the face before locking up his arms... once he's calmed down we talk amiably. the enormous window through which i'd been viewing the sunset has turned out to be a gigantic movie screen - i compliment the awesome setup before we say goodbye and he goes back inside.

i'm descending the stairs, but now at the bottom is a lawn and it's daylight; there's a table with breakfasters blocking my way and i stop about five stairs up. there is a lady wearing black petticoats and a hood bent down on the grass and a fence that rises just to my waist-height behind her.
i'm looking for a gap to drop into when a little girl arrives, whose motion seems so unpredictable that i pause mid-movement and require the top of the fence to keep me from landing on anyone.

the man at the table eyeballs me as i wait, a little less patiently. "that's the queen, you know" he tells me. twice. i'm not sure what he means by that, and i drop down into the gap that's just reopened. as i land, the queen (still bent over) half turns towards me.
i bow.
no response.
i'm not sure she's noticed my gesture, so i take a step sideways and bow again - formally and a bit awkwardly.

the queen rises.
the queen salutes.
i salute back.
i wish her a good morning.

i turn and walk away, seeing her smile and face her companion, saying something in french about a "lieutenant" that makes me suspect she's detected my officerness. i grin and march smartly off.

---it's tuesday already? this is ridiculous.

saturday night:
i semi-studied (it was hard to focus); pg watched the tigger movie. i had dinner at her place, and then slept like a baby.

sunday:

on sundays we can go to class together. we got on the same bus as eidetic and the chemist - amusing - as well as a girl i did the officer's course with - not so amusing.

i recounted my security guard experience on our way through the gates, asking out loud if i *look* like an arab. then i remembered two things.
1) i'm not in the army anymore, so being an arab isn't supposed to be threatening to our security guards
2) i have a student card on which i look like i was captured from a terrorist cell

i felt like an ass for having asked...

the day began with two boring lectures. the second one was less so than the first, but i was bored because there were things i wanted to say but other people got there first.
the ultra-sensitive guy from wednesday managed to offend me back... we talked, things were cool, i stuck out my hand to shake his as i was turning to leave and he just left me hanging :P

i had lunch with comixer and the chemist, we talked about his project (i got to be helpful!) and then got political. dreary conversations, those.

between buses, pink floyd - dogs came on and i was transported back to yogi's old crib's couch, pre-military. i couldn't stop smiling when i thought of how much i've overcome and how little i've changed in my appreciation of the finer things in life. quite the opposite, actually - i'm proud of how i've come through :)

i learned not to take the 45; it doesn't get me home. i took the opportunity to go and buy ink for my printer, feeling sorry for the miserable-looking "best-dressed" goth dude (totally didn't suit him) and having a good laugh at the old guy who whizzed past the bus on rollerblades with a brightly-coloured walking stick.

i got a good deal on the ink, dropped it off at home and strapped on my blades to get to work. i know winter's coming because i wasn't sweating so much when i arrived...
the hours i did weren't particularly constructive. they were quite frustrating, actually. i was intrigued by one of the best / worst ads i've ever come across:
do you haz teh codez?
sheesh.

[continued...]

gliding - part i

[post divided retroactively]

today being friday bears witness to the fluid, exaggerated nature of the last two days. i've just woken up - as usual more for some misguided biological principle than for having acquired enough sleep - to perform a review of the whirlwind's beginning before venturing to tidy up the next seven days.

---tuesday night: return to the group was strange and wonderful. there was a lot more talking than blading, which was only to be expected, but the route was fun and the chatter almost entirely pleasant. the only thing that wasn't pleasant involved one of the girls: a couple of us were talking to her when her contact slipped. she disappeared, we carried on talking, and only later discovered that it had torn, and that she'd almost been left behind.

i felt like a real heel.

by the time we'd completed the run i had to desperately drink a coke to prevent myself from passing out.

i had lots of material to catch up with before wednesday's classes - pg came over to finish watching the 60's, i cracked open a beer once we'd both settled in to our respective positions in the lounge and we ended up going to bed around 4am, both still with slightly moist cheeks from the movie. i've seen it a couple of times now, and so can be touched even with my back turned.

aside from the movie in the background, i'd spent the three hours unhappily discovering that the primary text with its insipid, awkward construction was nothing more than a long vent against a previous claim. i'm still not sure what the point being made was.

---wednesday:

it's not easy getting out of bed early when you're lying next to someone who you know is going to sleep late.

it's been a heatwave week, and the crowded bus was even hotter than the air outside. all of us clambered out of the sardine can sweaty and uncomfortable to drag heels up the steps to the university. first class with the professor? after the morning's ugly readings? great.

i kept a seat for stg - who arrived seconds before we began and aggravated the ta (the ta's own fault, though - she put her gear on the seat next to me when i wasn't looking). score one negative mark. stg then informed me that she'd sent a whiny email to the ta concerning the quantity of prep-work: score two. this ain't your animation campus kansas anymore, sweety.

and then she left class early, to the professor's ire and agitation. it was suggested that names will now be taken before *and* after class. jeez. and score three.

the next class was much more fun - totally my style. we argued plato's allegory of the cave; not a lot of people seemed to be getting what was going on. i, personally, now consider myself an "anti-plato" in that i agree with the allegory, only i understand that it is not the thoughts that come first. those initial thoughts are derived from our physical sensory input. the fact that we have absolutely no way to consider that input in a meaningful manner doesn't detract from their reality.

i didn't have much time to talk with pg before she had to get to class and i to meet for cheap lunch with comixer (the mongoose's real best friend) and lawn arguments with both him and eidetic concerning the nature of scientific thought.

---what is science? when we talk of the physical realm, we have a method of analysing our observations to extract hypotheses and then testing them to ensure that they are correct. as there is only one physical space with one set of rules, the results of this process can only be correct if they are consistent with everything else we know - or vice versa. [see quantum physics vs theory of general relativity]

as the psychology of a human is inherently contradictory and open to interpretation, no such limitation or measure of accuracy is possible. the method is the same, ie. scientific, but it is possible to determine and prove two contradictory results.

having said that, it is still possible to call "bullshit!" on a piece of literary criticism.

---the debate also touched on the function of a university and the "new model" of it being a place to acquire lists of marks as opposed to an education, but that's a big topic.

i had to leave on an unfinished note - to everyone's dismay, apparently - to get to work. on my way to the office urchin called looking for advice regarding an interesting opportunity: she'll have to pay for it, but i threw her a positive voice because, as i told her, we only live once :)

aspie, the girl i work with who's always giving me shit (but we seem to be friends, it's always fun and awkward to fight with her) was excited and wretched; the only thing i wasn't impressed with was a weird moment when she crossed a line by tapping my head with her shoe. otherwise it was all business as usual :P

i'd intended to catch up on readings during my shift. i got through a bit, but as i was the only agent on duty and the lines rang for most of the two hours i didn't do enough to be satisfied...

...

i was supposed to meet with the director after work but he called to say he couldn't make it - i'm disappointed. then i spoke to a girl who's looking for subjects for a colour interpretation study on campus, and i'll be paid to participate. this is almost like agreeing to medical experiments... i'm not far off, i tell you :P

pg and i took a bus to the barbie, arriving there on time and an hour early (depends on which way you look at it). we went off to find food - i don't know about the quality of the chicken livers i ate, but the meal hit the spot) and talk about the chest-leading scenes from donnie darko: i think i may be on to something.

balabusta surprised me with how good they were, but hatachtonim gave a *real* performance. as usual. they kick ass! and pg appears to have enjoyed it too :))

it being a few hours before a long day we took a taxi home. i was convinced to take part in messing with our driver by the other drivers hanging around; he got really upset at first but then calmed down and was quite amiable on the way home :)

i completed honore de balzac - at the sign of the cat and racket before realizing that i wouldn't be able to continue without sleep.

--- dead sleep ---
[continued...]