prophesy

i left later than i should have to pick up the car (of course), and arrived at the address to find no cars, having been explicitly informed by the app that no further instructions were necessary. i tried calling the car sharing service, but their lines were down, and it took a while (and some helpful people) before i happened upon the vehicle and realized that the directions were simply wrong.

i made the pickup, and told waze to get us to the airport, and it gave us all sorts of weird directions that neither my mother nor my son were able to read. so my stress levels were kinda high by the time we finally made it onto the highway going in the right direction. when we finally arrived and parked, the signage led us astray (it's incorrect on shabbat, at least, i'm not sure what happens during the week) and sent us in circles with broken elevators before we finally entered the terminal.

at least from that point things went smoothly, and we had time to be ripped off for coffee and sit down with my mom before her flight. after we saw her to the security checks, we made our way back to the car with only one incident (i didn't realize we could only pay for parking at the exit, and made the mistake of getting out of the car and walking all the way back to the locked up pay machines), and aside from the shock of how expensive an hour or two's parking was the drive home was uneventful (fortunately, because we encountered some really insane drivers on the way home). i dropped mr smear off at home, returned the car, and on my walk home managed to get hold of the service hotline and complain and was offered a voucher as compensation.

this afternoon, after returning from the car ordeal, we watched the starship troopers movie together. i've always loved starship troopers; it's not a perfect movie, but it's a fun action film with some interesting ideas. so i'm embarrassed to admit that it took me this long to finally get around to reading the book.

in addition to what i wrote earlier, it's also surprisingly prophetic, considering that it calls out the kind of irrational 20th century ideology that's infected the west and the movie producers who tried really, really hard to misrepresent, subvert and undermine everything the author was trying to say. that's not an adaptation, it's a deeply disrespectful bastardization. thank god the original ideas hold up so well that so many people didn't "get" the "satire".

we're about to enjoy a late dinner, mr smear and i have showered and taken out the recycling, and my nervous system is bouncing up and down because i keep thinking about tomorrow's tasks.

i guess i'm really grateful for having had a couple of days off, a lot of which felt like actual days off even though i was pretty busy.

a calm before the farewell

my mom and i caught a bus to azrieli, we picked up a couple of things and then moved on to try and meet up with the mongoose. we got off the bus at dizengof center, walked up to the square to pick up a coffee, then walked all the way back to the square to meet up with the mongoose, only to end up having to leave again to meet him on the way back to the square again :P

at least we managed to see the baby and deliver her gift! the catch up was quick, and then we were off to do some last-minute shopping before coming home for the afternoon.

gd wasn't able to go anyway - isn't able to go anywhere, with her toe being so bad - so my mom, mr smear and i walked to an unfamiliar synagogue (relatively) nearby.

at least i wore pants and not shorts? i was hands-down the least appropriately-dressed there, everyone else was in white button shirts. the liturgy and nusach were familiar from my youth, and it was really nice not only to have a shared singing experience but to hear mr smear singing along as well :)

for mr smear, his reaction to the baby right behind us and the woman with tourette's on the other side of the mechitza was (relative, for him) admirable, my mother seemed comfortable enough from her side, and although i did feel like an outsider it was overall a good shul experience.

i'm not sure how gd would handle it, though. she's softened on the sitting separately thing, but i think she'd find following along a bit tough with her own marked siddur (she wouldn't be the only one) and i think the biggest obstacle is how far away it is.

kiddush and dinner were quite late, but both were lovely. even though my mom's been here for two friday nights, this was the only one where it was just us doing it our way, together as opposed to on a video call.

we were all pretty tired last night, but to keep things interesting my mom started getting sick and we have to take her to the airport in less than half an hour... FFS.

and gd's toe is only getting worse...

and mr smear still not 100%...

i just finished reading starship troopers:

"Controversial". I've read some suggestions as to why it may have been called controversial. I'd heard many times before how one of my favorite movies was intended to be satirical, and failed.

I've also served in the military, and am living through a crisis in the west where the people yelling loudest "for" democracy and "against" fascism have no idea that they've succumbed to communist, terrorist propaganda and are, in fact, begging for the opposite.

With that in mind, there's nothing "controversial" being peddled in this book. What is in this book is a phenomenally accurate depiction of military service, warts-and-all, a compelling notion of civic duty, and - barring one technically heavy pre-battle scene - it's a thrilling glimpse into what galactic war could be like.

...

someone proferred the name of the 2D side-scrolling aerial combat video game where you battle waves of enemies and shoot down ducks in between levels that we used to play on the ps3: minisquadron!

the coughing chorus

 it hasn't stopped. his fever went down a bit, but it's not staying down, and his cough doesn't seem to be getting better. emotionally, he's taking a stimulant that's heightening his emotional intensity, and combined with his usual truculent (my new favorite word) default it's been a really hard day.

this morning i helped ozdoc make her radio interview shareable (thanks, facebook, for making it nigh-impossible to share audio files), and i read a bit more of the fifth percy jackson novel.

at this point, i'm so disappointed by the writing quality nosedive that i'd put the book down if i didn't want to just get through it for closure. riordan thoroughly betrays percy's character in the underworld scenes, and rips the reader out of the world with silly gags, and it's now very clear to me why percy jackson never achieved harry potter-like status in the zeitgeist.

...

i don't know what it was specifically, but something triggered me this morning regarding the ai is slowly destroying your brain video; that "folie à deux" isn't just confined to AI and to individuals, but it's the exact same mechanism that's causing mass psychosis on a global scale: it started with search filter bubbles more than two decades ago, then evolved to ad-tech driven social media driving engagement by sowing division.

this explains why flat earthers are a thing, and antivaxxers are a thing, and how the political spectrum ceased to be a spectrum and everyone decided that anyone with opposing views is extreme, insane, and evil.

...

i packed my laptop into my bag, dressed for rain, and headed out to find a quiet corner to write in. i managed to get in more than two hours of focus time, churned out an article i'm proud of, and generated a video for it using notebooklm that i'm really happy with.

on my way home - in the pouring rain - i picked up a globe for mr smear. he seems happy with it, in spite of all the country names being in hebrew...

once home, i had a quick late-lunch and then hopped on a call with my lead, who's setting me up for a meeting with a potential client. so i've got some homework to do.

the rest of the evening was a mixed bag of chilling with mr smear (watching jujutsu kaisen) and enjoying dinner, and fighting over ridiculous shit. after he went to bed gd and i had it out, and we're both feeling pretty sensitive to the fact that we're now acutely retroactively aware of all of our missteps that brought us to mr smear's more toxic behavior.

it feels pretty awful.

anyway, i've spent the past couple of hours playing around with AI and watching things while mindlessly minesweeper-ing, and i'm about to balatro for a bit before bed and hope that by some miracle mr smear's cough settles and he gets some sleep.

not least because he's supposed to go to a manga-drawing workshop tomorrow which he was really excited about...

a quiet winter's day

balatro until late again. and a fair amount of it today.

i started the day slowly, finishing the fourth percy jackson novel and leaving the following review:

a bittersweet experience, a great story but clearly rushed.

the first three books of the series set a really high bar, and i wondered how it could be that the percy jackson franchise hasn't gained as much traction as the harry potter one.

but then i read #4.

while the story itself is great, with lots of exciting and clever elements, riordan and his editors seem to have started taking their readers for granted, and a whole lot of things just seem lazy. and i find myself offended by every single incorrect usage of the word "shined" as opposed to "shone"; if those editors got paid, the publisher should demand its money back. 

**SPOILERS** 

two scenes in particular of the glaringly obvious cardinal sin of breaking the fourth wall to tell, rather than show. one of them is kelli the monologuing empousa:

“a vampire, you say?” kelli laughed. “that silly legend was based on us, you fool. we are empousai, servants of hecate.” “mmmm.” tammi edged closer to me. “dark magic formed us from animal, bronze, and ghost! we exist to feed on the blood of young men. now come, give me that kiss!”

seriously.

and then there's the telekhines receiving on-the-job sex-ed in the forges.

“now, younglings,” the instructor said, “what is the proper name of our kind?” “sea demons!” one of them barked. “no. anyone else?” “telekhines!” another monster growled.

i'm still feeling a bit gross and weak, but i'm definitely doing better. mr smear's still pretty sick, though, very feverish. it's been a rough day for him. but in spite of that, he's always ready to jump up and down in front of the screen playing minecraft...

i thought we'd watch the fellowship of the ring together (the extended edition), but after i woke up from passing out i realized that so had mr smear, and then he decided he wasn't interested in continuing :(

i spent some time finishing the draft of that algorithm i mentioned a few weeks ago, and i'm about to get up for my third round of dish duty, which is honestly the only thing that's gotten me out of my chair / off the couch today.

upgrades

 after teaching mr smear how to open hard plastic packaging and reset a modern combination lock, he left for school with the lock still on the table. i automatically ate the leftover half of his pancakes, apparently my body's still trying to make up for all the burned calories yesterday... i'm back up to 80kg again :/

i invested a bit of time tidying up my desktop and fleshing out a design for one of my side projects, and discuss (in broad terms) building a tarot deck with gd, and then headed out to draw cash, get an update about gd's scope appointment, pick up a coffee and order a tasting kit of carolina reapers (amongst other hardcore peppers), replace mr smear's watch battery, and then return home past the hardware store to pick up anti-mold stuff and usb-c chargers (now that i know).

i spent some time setting those up (rearranging things in general), then sat down to split up AI covers to add to my playlists (i've been obsessed with synthknot the past couple of days).

my new employer contacted me to set up work accounts, along with meetings to prepare for my onboarding. i mean, they could have just employed me a month earlier...

i passed out while finishing the incal, but i did finish it.

the unhinged ravings of a perverse amateur author with one of the most unlikeable protagonists i've ever encountered and a literal deus ex machina at every turn. BUT. fantastic artwork, incredibly psychedelic delirium at cosmic scale. as much as i might have been turned off by the writing, the overall experience was so good that i'm glad i didn't put it down.

i blocked youtube on the ubuntu macbook, but later caught mr smear using chatgpt thinking we wouldn't catch him...

lifting mr smear's toenails is traumatizing for the lot of us.

we've just finished eating an early dinner, i'm about to supervise mr smear's reading homework, and then i'm off to a "house party" that gco's organized...

slow day

 yesterday:

mr smear and i are getting into a much healthier homework groove.

i finished reading blindsight yesterday:

blindsight is mindblowingly ambitious, and it does a damned good job of delivering. having said that, there're some intense sequences that i just had to allow myself to not totally follow, and i'm sure that i wouldn't have been nearly as impressed if i wasn't already deeply fascinated by a lot of the ideas watts has stitched together.

i started reading the first percy jackson book yesterday (mr smear's on no. 5 already), and it's really good.

a surprise intro interview in the evening, i felt like it went well but they haven't got back to me yet.

mr smear's punishment was over, so we finally continued watching awakenings.

i played disco elysium until around 1am.

today:

i actually slept pretty well last night, and i had a couple of intense dreams. unfortunately, most of the morning was me still half-asleep and in a dream state, with every act a struggle...

mr smear wanted to go to school on his own, so until gd dragged me out the house to accompany her to the hairdresser i alternated between napping, reading percy jackson, and watching more jujutsu kaisen*. 

* so far, nothing too crazy for mr smear

while gd got her hair cut, i nursed a coffee and mostly stared out the window... primarily because my eyes were giving me trouble. it looks like ocumetrics is finally doing human studies...

the only other outing i had today was being sent to pick mr smear up from school with umbrellas because we were worried it might rain. for the rest, i basically did very little.

mr smear's homework was tough, but not unpleasant - i struggled to explain to him how to translate a multidimensional graph into various average calculations, and he struggled to understand, but we got through it eventually, and in good spirits.

then we finished awakenings, with lots of feelings all round.

it's been a bit of an uncomfortable evening: i watched random shit on youtube and played minesweeper challenges, when i should have been doing pretty much anything else. i should be reading, or playing a proper game, not this time-killing bullshit.

a big bigtalk talk

 it's the middle of the night, i've just spent an hour or so playing slay the spire and minutescape (and leaving the following review for the latter):

after three hours, i don't know whether i recommend this or not. on the one hand, it feels like there's a story incoming, and it has a certain meditative quality to it (if i play late at night it's like a lullaby with achievements). on the other hand, i honestly can't tell whether i'm getting better or whether my improved times are just a combination of bonuses and luck, and it feels like a really, really slow grind either way.

otherwise, it's bothering that my eyes are still quite irritated after a week of the drops that i was given for five days.

...

after seeing mr smear off this morning, i went to the hospital where they printed out his most recent allergy test results, then took those to the clinic to request authorization. then i returned home, grabbed my gear and headed to the office. the morning was a hot mess, which included welcoming the new english devops, syncing with my boss*, arguing about scope with bigtalk in front of the new guy because he insists on not understanding how to work with others, and juggling a bunch of support requests from all over the place.

* about bigtalk, and my own plans. it was awkward to realize that he'd joined the meeting while on vacation in greece - i hadn't noticed he was on vacation, but he insisted on continuing because he knew that i wouldn't have set the meeting if it wasn't urgent and important - but we're clearly aligned on what's happening with bigtalk. and his feedback for me and my own intentions was very positive, so that was nice.

gd and i had a parental guidance session in the middle of the day, and it wasn't at all easy. mainly because we have very different ideas about screen time and socialization; i'm worried about undoing our progress with mr smear by fuzzying the boundaries, even while i don't think giving him more "holiday" is a bad thing.

i was surprised that he hadn't asked me for the next one piece volume today, until he sent a video he'd made in flipaclip which i'd forgotten i'd installed for him. i watched the video on my way to pick up lunch, and it was so well done - albeit eerily gen alpha - that i giggled helplessly the whole way out the building. i felt compelled to share it with some of my coworkers, which led to potentially bringing in another coworker to the game hacking fold :)

the next hour or two were more of the same from the morning, and then i left early to get my hair cut. i literally passed out in the chair while the hairdresser worked, and aside from one thing i needed him to fix it seemed to go well.

on the bus home i had to work to solve a weird networking issue, and a little bit when i arrived as well, but after taking the last tortit ice cream from the freezer (and having to share it with mr smear, who'd previously asserted that he didn't like it any more) and jumping in the shower, we had a great leftover dinner (more of gd's not-onigiri) and finished watching stargate (which we all thoroughly enjoyed).

i read some more of the neverending story to gd and mr smear after he finally got into bed, after which i soon passed out myself. and then woke up a couple of hours ago.

never a dull moment

 yesterday was perfect, right until the end. mr smear came home, we grabbed our gear and headed to the pool. he put in the work, and he's improving dramatically. he's learning how to handle showering and changing in a locker room, and after that we returned home for a calm and peaceful afternoon. he did creative stuff on the old macbook with ubuntu (he made a really cool pacman image with gimp), while i tried to repeat thursday evening's steps in unity on my windows machine. we watched the "season" finale of asterix & obelix - the big fight, which was great fun even though it's totally not canon, and right after all that wonderful stuff gd and i got into a huge row that took forever to... not quite resolve, but to bring to an end and leave lots of stuff to think about.

today:

i didn't sleep well last night, partially due to waking up in the middle of it feeling a lot of unpleasant feelings. i ended up "sleeping" quite late, and waking up with a really sore neck.

my damaged toenail flipped a bit this morning, so it was time to remove it. it... seems okay? i hope it regrows safely...

it's fair to say that i've spent most of the day watching youtube videos and doing really hard quests minesweeper.

we watched a minecraft movie together, but mr smear left half an hour in to go to his friend. i can see why he loved it so much, and it's definitely entertaining in a very jack black kind of way, but it's not quite gd or my cup of tea. so we rewatched léon: the professional after that, which i haven't seen since high school. there were three things i remembered from that movie: mathilda sitting by the stairs swinging her legs, mathilda walking with the plant, and the explosive moment that me and my friend laughed at in triumphant relief just as his dad walked in a furiously berated us for enjoying such intense violence.

i think i appreciated it much more for having read nabokov's lolita, i thought the playfulness of the two characters was beautiful and found the transformation from something sexual endearing.

in the evening, with a little help from looking at my coworker's thursday evening code, i managed to get my first unity project doing an approximation of what i'd intended, i've documented every step for myself and i'm looking forward to our next session.

one thing that i've learned, though, is that microsoft's made it complicated / against the terms of usage to use vscode extensions in windsurf and cursor, so i've now returned to the vscode fold and subscribed to copilot once again. and now that i've taken care of that, i think i'm ready to get back down to business with the language project.

days off

i'm currently waiting for mr smear with a cup of coffee and my laptop, so i figure this is as good a time as any.

yesterday:

yesterday was absolutely brilliant. we started the day in good spirits, and left roughly when we intended to get the car and drive up to the kibbutz. gd's on meds that require drinking plenty of water and stopping frequently to pee, but we only really needed two stops and one of them involved the acquisition of a quantity of snacks.

the weather wasn't hot yesterday, it was a bit cloudy, which for the current season and mission meant it was perfect. we arrived at my cousin's place, chatted for a short while, and then walked to her car and headed out to an entirely vegan hummus 90 on the way to the kinneret.

the food was absolutely delightful, as was the vibe. we definitely ate too much and enjoyed every morsel ^_^

we then drove on to beit gabriel, which is an absolutely gorgeous place to sit and chat over a coffee while enjoying the view of the kinneret. our initial impression was solid as we walked into a really nice photo exhibit, but my brain wondered "do i smell popcorn?" and i was confused because i'd forgotten that we'd been told there was a cinema inside.

the stunning view of the kinneret on a perfect day with almost nobody else around was wonderful, only marred by the massive screen facing the entrance and showing the trailer for the a minecraft movie movie trailer. i was a bit disappointed that mr smear literally didn't notice the lake because he was so excited by the screen :/

at least - once the trailer was over - i was able to drag him outside, and he pulled out his kindle (to read minecraft books), which is as close to just enjoying being in nature as most children get these days.

from there we drove back past har tavor (mount tabor), and gd was really excited to see another location made famous by the bible. unfortunately, on the drive back gd's back began to hurt... we also got to witness just how little patience our cousin has for the ultra-orthodox :P

we got to see one of our kibbutz cousin's kids and family and spent a few minutes chatting with them, but by then sunset was approaching and we were starting to feel the pressure to hit the road.

it was dark by the time we left, and the drive back home was mostly gd suffering from discomfort and pain and waze leading us in a round-about way (which i believe was the best way, but it was completely unfamiliar) while crazy drivers bobbed and weaved amidst other crazy drivers.

we made it back to the parking spot with ten minutes to spare, very grateful that gd was (relatively) in one piece and hadn't needed a pit-stop. we all ended up going to bed very late, but by and large everyone had had an amazing day out, mr smear had been really cool for its entirety and we were all glad to have spent such good time with our kibbutz cousin and seen new things.

today (so far):

i didn't sleep particularly well, but i did sleep. in the morning, i finished reading of mice and men, and although i generally enjoyed it from the start, the end really blew me away.

i was disappointed to learn that mr smear gave the original dune book a try, and found it boring :(

...

after getting a few things squared away, i accompanied gd to the hospital to try and organize an appointment for her to get her foot seen to. after waiting our turn, the receptionist informed us that there was no point to speaking to her and that we needed to contact their offices.

when i told the woman who answered the phone what gd had been going through, she immediately became bizarrely defensive, and there was a mix of yelling at her and trying to reason with her before she agreed to book gd for an appointment that was only in a month's time (as opposed to a half a year's time that she'd threatened).

i then spent about twenty minutes on the phone trying to arrange a private consultation, eventually giving up (the phone menu system is rigged) and heading to our clinic, where we were fortunate to receive a personal recommendation from one of the receptionists.

so she has an appoint for three weeks' time, instead of a month. it's better than nothing.

...

herding our cat of a son to working on his hebrew class' holiday project was exhausting, so i piled some blankets over my on the couch and enjoyed a beautiful nap, which i was wrenched out of to bring him to his therapist. and now it appears to be time to go and pick him up and see what the rest of the day brings.

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 🤣

jump

yesterday:

mma was fine, although on the way there mr smear did something rude and lost screen time, and then threw a wobbly because he didn't appreciate their being consequences :/

while there, i tried to do something functional but ended up spending most of the hour reading pete collins' pain & gain, which is finished this afternoon.

i saw and enjoyed the movie when it came out, but a few days ago came across a discussion about it in which it was said that the movie wasn't as faithful to the original story as it was made out to be.

that... was an understatement. what an unnerving, harrowing tale. also, a dramatic emotional rollercoaster, right until the very end. sometimes truth truly is stranger than fiction.

gd wasn't up for making dinner, so mr smear and i took a walk and enjoyed falafel and chips, picking up a vegan curry for gd along the way. it was a very nice evening out.

today:

i definitely slept better last night. i got up this morning, sat down with my coffee, and then saw a worrying message from sailor that he'd left a package for us out in the hallway in case he was fast asleep.

wtf?!

i scrambled to get my rollerblades on, and was just passing a grocery store when the sirens wailed and everyone ran for cover. there were a lot of loud explosions, and i found out afterwards that gd had been on the can at the time and that's a pretty awful time to have to get to the shelter :(

i arrived at the wrong address, but didn't get caught by the spider who'd webbed the gate, then went back down the road to the right address, and sat with sailor for a really nice macha tea and a serious conversation about where he is and (possibly) should be.

then we agreed to meet up at the icon festival, and i returned home for breakfast before mr smear and i made our way there. gd, unfortunately, wasn't able to join us - at first because she was hurting, but then because she took a muscle relaxant :(

the festival was full of cool things, but overall it wasn't an exciting experience. mr smear really wanted to do the LARPing sword-fighting thing, but after a short time he found it pretty boring. maybe it's just boring with me :P

we came back home, and spent the rest of the day reading, doing homework, and messing about. i think i've been spending a lot of the time over the course of the past few days wondering about what i'm doing, or not doing, and trying to make peace with relaxing and being useless. i think it's okay for me to rest and be useless. i don't believe it, but i think it. is that enough?

the world at war

the war on the west is in full swing. i participated in a psyops webinar on thursday evening, and it was horrifying to have all the pieces of the puzzle come together to draw a picture of what we are - and have been for decades - actually up against. it's a massive, coordinated campaign not just against israel, but against the west in general, and it's far more insidious than quatar funding western universities.

it's the BRICS countries working together, specifically iran, russian and china, to subvert western values and ideologies. it's the tools they're using - students, social media, and filling roles in western institutions with ideologues (like the UN, and the ICJ). the noise from the past week or two in the news is directly due to this.

it's distressing, mostly because it's hard to come up with ways to combat it. the speaker was quite pessimistic, and i personally can't abide by that.

...

thursday:

a pretty good morning, feeling less stuffy/allergic (i'm still not 100%, but i'm not feeling sick at all)

frontend magic, but with some concerning findings. leaving work with less enthusiasm following an argument with the boss

the psyops webinar, and all the while working towards proving my boss wrong (and, in my opinion, succeeding)

friday:

after three days of sticking to the fasting regimen, i broke and had breakfast early...

comics shopping, learning (again) not to ask mr smear his opinion. we picked up the second bone volume in hebrew, a miles morales comic in hebrew (although it doesn't have nikud), and הילד הכחל, which so far seems to be a winner.

picking up vegan cholent, being proved wrong about the plastic bag leaking but fortunately not losing any clothing over it.

intervening to prevent a fight on the bus (gd called out a woman with tacky facial tattoos for being rough with her dog, who in turn responded with a curse)

forgetting i was on-call, fortunately the incident that occurred wasn't too severe. spending a couple of hours investigating and putting together a runbook, but ultimately my boss had a few additional tricks up his sleeve that were needed.

joining a pre-shabbat call on antisemitism that turned out to be not very interesting, particularly after the previous psyops talk

watching the rest of ice age 5 (i've skipped a few). at this point, the characters are clearly a vehicle for a story that doesn't have anything to do with them or their world. it's a fun movie if you watch it fore-armed with the knowledge that it's just an animated series of irreverant and random jarring or subtley (sometimes not-so-subtley) age-inappropriate gags that doesn't care about making sense.

reporting a neighbor's dog stuck on the balcony

passing out quickly on the couch

winding down or winding up?

 we've just watched the shoshani riddle, which is amazing. i know its director from our rollerblading group, and watching his journey - and his incredible discovery - was fantastic. i'm a bit sad that we only had hebrew subtitles, so we're in for a re-watch as soon as english ones are available.

...

most of today was quiet, i did a lot of resting (i have a lot of catching up to do for the three nights of sleep i missed this last week) and i read through the bulletproof coffin collected edition. what an intriguing and fun read!

...

the end of the afternoon turned sour, mr smear railing against going out (as usual, and as usual after agreeing) becoming a continuation of last week's fight with gd. it was a very frustrating experience for both of us, but i feel like we got out of it in a relatively healthy way and we both have some homework to do.

i took him out for a walk, and we had what felt like a breakthrough which was rewarded (for both of us) with ice cream. then we stumbled across a large, mounted world map in good condition, and a hebrew-english dictionary that looks a lot better than the one we have.

...

i've just managed to get through a lot of the dishes, and i'm now getting ready for bed. my knee's definitely healing, but the fresh scab keeps cracking (the roastie's on the front) and i still have to sleep cautiously...

...

i'm nervous about reading the news. i was also nervously deliberating about whether to purchase a contentious graphic novel about the palestinians, but i think i need to put the money down to be able to share a review from an israeli perspective (which i wasn't able to find).

sat/sun

yesterday:

a quiet day, and i was still really tired. i managed to get a fair amount of work done on a new podcast episode, including at our local vegan cafe while mr smear dived into his new book. we watched inu-oh from start to finish and it was both disappointing and inappropriate for mr smear. the artwork was magnificent, the story itself was interesting, the music... the music was difficult to listen to, but the idea was good... but there was something fundamentally lacking.

we also started watching legend of the drunken master, which was apparently less inappropriate. but the movie starts with a bunch of disturbing stuff we didn't remember.

godsdammit.

i wanted to take mr smear cycling, but he was having none of it. he negotiated cycling next week - we recorded him agreeing - and instead walking to the climbing wall. it was a mostly good walk, although there was minor unpleasantness along the way and we arrived just as the wall was been closed due to an unexpected personal issue :(

today:

it was a pretty good start to the week, i got a bunch of paperwork filed even if i do have more to go, and i rollerbladed to the office, discovering a neat bike path that goes through midtown. it was a pretty good work day, even though i needed to snack a lot and there wasn't anything available, and i'm happy with how the first iteration of the tool i've been working on is shaping up.

getting my rollerblades on outside the building was unpleasant, but getting home was pleasant.

my only disappointment today is with mr smear not doing his homework again, which means it's going to start piling on... ugh.

$25 to see the end of louis ck

 i watched louis ck | back to the garden last night.

a few months ago, we purchased his new special, sorry, along with all his other specials for $25. it was brilliant. it was louis ck doing what he does best, and doing so while acknowledging his behavior and (pretty much) apologizing for it.

let me very clear: what he did was awful, and i was (and am) disappointed in him as a human being.

at the same time, he didn't manage - in my entirely subjective opinion - to cross the boundary where i could no longer separate the art from the artist*. his whole schtick is that he's always been a bit of a piece of shit, and his comedy has always been absolutely brilliant. although, now that i think about it, his 2017 special didn't really strike my funny bone, so let's say that his comedy has mostly always been brilliant.

* only two artists have managed to cross that boundary in my eyes: ian watkins, the voice behind shinobi vs dragon ninja which i can no longer listen to without being filled with disgust, and marilyn manson, who turned from hero to zero and took all of his music with him a few years back when it turned out his personal corruption matches what he's been singing about all along.

anyway, aside from the 2017 special i was able to enjoy it even while he himself made me uncomfortable, and his older work is mostly fantastic.

back to louis ck | back to the garden.

the first disappointment: i could skip past the jazz, but not the two decidedly uncharismatic, unfunny comedians he wheeled out to open for him. this was just like bill burr presents: friends who kill: did bill burr actually perform? i couldn't make it through the opening acts. where did they find these people? why do these events smell like great artists selling out? wtf is going on?!

but this time, i pushed through, and i bore witness to each and every excruciating minute of louis ck's performance. it was... it was louis ck, and it was louis ck doing louis ck-style bits. but he just didn't have any funny. he didn't have that light shining out of his eyes. his jokes... his jokes weren't funny. they weren't even interesting. there were three minor chuckles in the entire set, and then an almost-clever bible reading bit, and then nothing less than a resounding disappointment.

*SPOILER ALERT*: evangelion reboot

finally - after years of thinking about watching them - i've made it through the evangelion reboot (1.11 - 3.33). i loved the original series since watching it through in 2001, and the first movie was great. the second movie? also great, although the closing music missed the mark so badly that it left a bitter taste in my mouth.

i've now finally watched the third, and i was mostly bored by the pacing and lack of coherence. there were some cool bits towards the climactic end, and then, at the end of the credits... a preview so cheap as to make me utterly disappointed with and disinterested in the entire franchise.

28/06/03

my god - i have watched a lot of movies today.

last night i caught most of mimic, which is one of the few horror movies that truly frightens, and repels me.
after that was lock, stock and two smoking barrels. turns out i forgot the whole damn thing...

i just watched solaris - not a bad film (ignoring the ten or so minutes of the cd that was so scratched that it would only play 3 to 4 seconds at a time - aaargh!), but seemingly pointless. i can only assume that it's about how nothing matters more than love? i dunno.

i've been trying since last night to download 28 days later, but i only succeeded in getting the trailer. looks good, but the download's still hovering around 500MB from 717, and i'm not sure when grootbek's going to come home and cancel it.
he always does that, and then claims no knowledge.

i've begun writing a multiplayer version of tron - i've been studying drivers (and learning nothing) for so many hours now that i just had to do some coding. it's really nice to be working in c++ again; i have to admit microsoft's system in vc++ for comments is nice.
respect where it's due.

as for the drivers, it's so hard to focus - it's all the same shit, and that which i didn't understand from the beginning has still not been explained.
not that i haven't learned ANYTHING.
i've learned to be a lot more patient with the system startup, and why i should be impressed when it takes so little time for the system to detect and install the correct drivers for things like usb mice.

not boring you, am i?

don't care.

so ja, my tron version is so far looking quite naff. okay, not visually. i have no clue what to do when i need graphics - i'll have to outsource. any volunteers that might be accepted will already have my email address. actually, anyone reading this who doesn't have my address should be shot on sight.

i'm planning some self-mutilation tonight - i'm shaving myself. my HEAD. no, the BIG one. i'm in shock over my haircut, still: if you haven't seen the photo's then go check them out. it's disgraceful.
never going there again.
and just think, that cost me the equivalent of around R70.
shameful.

i spoke to my taekwondo instructor today - i still have the go-ahead for the course, and i have to contact them tomorrow to find out when to go for my ECG. for some reason they think i might die on them. i don't get it.
surely, if you have a problem, you'd know about it?
and i thought *i* was paranoid.

i've got quite a bit of reading done today. i finished much ado about nothing, and although i didn't get every word or concept, i quite enjoyed it. i was wondering, though, about all the people on this planet who think that you have to be able to quote shakespeare word for word. i don't remember dick from hamlet, except maybe "now might i do it, pat". and i don't feel any less understanding of the story. in fact, it's quite sad just how much i DO remember.
damn school system.

i've begun reading count zero (william gibson), and the first couple of chapters are looking good.

and i spent some time listening to good ol' israeli music. i must admit, now that i understand some of them, the lyrics are really good. now i just have to understand ALL of them. so much WORK, living here.

*** later ***

it's now 22.45. at midnight, i'm going with some friends to see x-men 2, which is finally out in israel, and i'm right now trying to decide if i should shave or gel.
decisions, decisions.
on the weird side, i actually asked her for permission (to see the movie), as i told her we'd go see it together. there must be something wrong with me, as i've never done that before. and i knew that she didn't particularly want to see it anyway...

and finally, the starcraft news. i've had level 8 in the back of my mind for the past few days, because i've had no clue how to begin.
today, i thought i'd give it a try. not only did i manage to survive the first few minutes, but i totally wiped out the other side before completing the mission objectives.
that felt GOOOOOOOD.
i'm so proud of me.