shredding

 mr smear appears to be sick, so he came early yesterday and he's staying home today...

i bought him a lock yesterday morning on my way to my client, and discovered an amazing stationery store across the road ^_^

i realized on my way to the office that the client's catering is saving me a significant amount of money per month, which is a really nice bonus!

my day at the office was a combination of onboarding, meeting new people from the team, investigating the build failure that turned out to be affected more than just me, and all of this punctuated by round after round of shredding documents i've been gathering for the last eight months.

i'm most of the way through :P

my team lead has authorized me to take off a week for the sukkot holidays - i'm really excited for the staycation!

also, a decent lunch, a couple of healthy snacks, and too much shame to take an ice cream after going upstairs to find that the ice creams were all right outside an office filled with people and only a glass wall separating them. so my weight's down a little today already (back to 80kg after a week or two hovering around 82, and i have some shame to thank for that.

on the way home i called up sailor, and we ended up talking about his trauma-bonding. i hope my advise was helpful, but i also woke up around 4am this morning with an interesting idea for a game based on my understanding of mental trauma and spent twenty minutes or so working on writing it up.

while mr smear completed his rosh hashana cards (this was before i understood that he and gd hadn't understood the hebrew lit homework instructions), i watched more of des bishop's breaking china series, which is really fun!

we watched a sad episode of the wonder years over dinner (the piano recital), and after mr smear went to bed (relatively early) gd and i finally finished watching the first season of ludwig together, and i crawled into bed soon after.

...

we seem to have been out of the lice woods for a while now, and mr smear just got invited to sleep over at the carrier. so here we are strategizing over how to manage the next outbreak before he's even told us whether he wants to go or not 🙄

big "oh, brother"

is nobody else concerned about the impact of these shows on our intelligence? i swear, everyone starts off being hooked by just how stupid these people are, and then two weeks later already identify with their characters and think of them as "geniuses".

or think that someone with talent and a brain would need television to make it.

reality television: the great reality re-writer.

a friend of mine responded to this sentiment as follows:
make it as what? you know, i feel roughly comfortable making the gross generalization that the people who find themselves on this show know that they are there for the chance to make it as being be famous. that seems to have become the thing we want most as a society now a days, to be recognized and worshiped and adored.. it's like everything is one big popularity contest.

and also, reality re-writer? let's not forget that it's a part of reality.. and it's ours to write ^_^

and about watching it myself, i found it amazing how intimate (one sidedly, but still) i felt with frida hecht after watching her for a few moments on the show. i know how she makes an omlette via extreme close up. i don't know my own mother -that- well

to be famous, and have lots of money. screw principles, screw relationships, and let's not get distracted from television reality by our politicians driving us into the sea even more effectively than the arab world can.

as for being ours to write - you know as well as i do that unless you're producing a show, you're not rewriting anything. at least (personally - the guy's a great singer / songwriter) you're talented enough to have a chance of affecting change, but should you have to be big on tv in order to do so? fuck that.

i don't have a clue who frida hecht is, nor how she makes an omelette - but i think i'd rather watch someone i have reason to care about in the kitchen instead of getting intimate with people who don't even know i exist.
what i read into this is that we're becoming so inept and uncomfortable with intimacy that we need to find it on the telly, and that leaves us with a disturbingly voyeuristic bond with everyone else who watches the same thing.

this is like that photo of the four japanese peeping-toms watching a couple having sex in the bushes, only they meet afterwards over a beer to discuss their technique. i think i'd rather be one of the couple in the bushes. i'd definitely rather be outside of the photo, having sex in the privacy of my own home with a girl i can be intimate with, and not with someone who i only picked up in a bar because she was drunk.

jesus, i'm weird.

--- 11.19pm ---
*has a reflexive moment*

you know what? i suspect myself of being just as fascinated by all the interest in reality shows as the viewers of those reality shows. it's like we're all doing the same thing, only i'm not watching a television. it's all very mise en abyme.

i feel dirty now.

[continued in stressmonger]

nerd-day

yesterday began with an email to a friend that leads me to assume that not everyone has a clue what nin is about. so here's the primer - not 100% accurate, but containing the general gist:

the first album trent reznor released (he [[kind of] ditched computer science to develop electronic music) is pretty hate machine

the second album, a lot rougher, is the downward spiral. it's a narrative album, and the main character slips to his destruction as the album progresses. the fifth track, closer, is possibly the only song about rape that makes most people want to sing along - disturbingly great track.

due to its popularity, meathead had a go at it. his version, closer to mario, is pretty off the wall and feels surprisingly right.

---
i was accused (by a fellow classmate) of not paying attention in the poetry class... i'm multi-tasking! i *think* i'm getting what's going on, at least :P

the phototaxis performed on campus after first, and their final song brought in the social-work students' rallying cries: yet another group of people important to the welfare of our society (like teachers) who won't earn more than the minimum wage. again: why do we have an education problem?

a two hour discussion and dissection of sir ronald harwood's collaboration: enlightening stuff! and good to feel a part of the MA programme :)

it was not the first time margaret thatcher's take on the parrot would be mentioned yesterday. brilliant! someone later linked me to some of graham chapman's funeral - touching.

wordsworth and i have begun putting together an orientation course for next year's first years... it would be really sweet to be able to train some innocents...

as quickly as i could, i bussed to the screen-test for beauty and the geek. after awkwardly finding the desk, signing away my rights and filling out the "how mainstream are you?" questionnaire,
i was invited in for the test. a fairly comfortable chat later - although i was uncomfortable answering questions concerning pg, i hadn't signed away *her* rights - and i was told "you're not a geek, dude".

the nerve! i was offended, and told her as much. i explained the difference between a geek and a nerd (firmly placing myself in the nerd camp for a moment), and that no, i hadn't actually watched any of the series or perhaps i would've known that, at least what i gleaned from her description, they're not interested in geeks or nerds but rather in people on the autistic spectrum.

creepy. a co-worker, and later pg, duly informed me that i don't want to participate on reality shows in general, and on that one in particular. i dunno... i thought it would be good for a laugh :P

i went to work, spending most of my hours back-seat driving xml verification. thrilling. then i bussed straight to pg's and we finished watching the seventh seal: fascinating film!

i got an early night, but woke up to take care of all the little things i missed yesterday and to catch up on the readings... here we go!

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israel is not always to blame [EDIT: link broken]. in fact, it usually isn't to blame. (in case you missed it, because it didn't make international headlines, we had another event [EDIT: link broken] this week)
it's distressing to consider just how influential global media is, and just how selective it is. so many years pleading "poor palestinians", the chances of them suddenly turning around and saying "oops! we were wrong all along!" is about the same as the american government suddenly ending the war on drugs.