****ly, i'm so ****ly...

i find it unpleasant that my friends either aren't interested in the same things i am, and i have trouble connecting with people who are, or they're otherwise occupied by families and jobs. it's all very depressing.

so no frisbee this evening, and no shakespeare at the tmuna.

i would have gone for a drink - ta2's playing next door - but i'm not fond of drinking alone and i'm always awkward about going to bt's bar without company. instead, i've been playing with my guitar and moping.

i came across a ye olde page of mine from many years ago, on a backbone far, far away - and was brought back in time to my initiation into the cape legion of adventurers and wargamers: swordschool and one other accompanying me in my lab coat to harrass and freak out members of the student body attempting to make use of the elevator.

at least the caretaker finally arrived. we sorted out the maintenance fees for the rest of the year, we discussed a pipe that's been bothering me and he explained the renovation possibilities.

at least i'll be going rollerblading in a few.

phd's productivity graph: too true

for the first time ever, gmail's targeted ads hit their mark :P

frank zappa - Don't Eat The Yellow Snow, Nanook Rubs It, St. Alphonzos Pancake Breakfast, Father O'Blivion (or whatever that means)

a little bit overboard,

although i've now realized something that's been missing from my life. aside from generous quantities of carrot cake, vodka and that english lime cordial we grew up with in south africa, a few very expensive rum & cokes and a great night out with wr celebrating ta2's birthday (i'm a bit embarrassed, after too much to drink i flipped a word on my contribution to his birthday card that made it seem a bit... stupid).

lake came up with a superb solution to one of the problems i was having with the phone, and the rest will have to be solved in time...

run down

i ran the same time as usual but twice the distance and with a constant scowl. it was the breathing exercises and ministry mantras that kept me going, and more than once i had to resist the urge to run off the track, get on my knees, raise my hands to the skies and yell "NO MORE!!!"

let's just say that i am definitely, 100%, without any doubt in my mind, never signing on again. it doesn't matter the incentive, i cannot handle being an island of sanity in a reality that's defined by some of the most highly qualified and intellectually capable morons around.

i'm actually beginning to identify with nystire, and i'm angry because i'm starting to see that the only way that i'm going to be able to retain my mental health over the course of the remainder of my service is to put my headphones on and pretend that i can't see anyone.

it has begun. now i'm going to be just like the jerk - maybe he's not really a jerk? maybe he's just another unfortunate sod that gave up? it just crossed my mind that if i'm ever this unhappy even when i get to my dream-job, i'm going to just give it up and do something else. there is no point in being upset to the point of distraction.

and i was mostly kidding last night when i suggested that i'm on the path to becoming an alcoholic.

---
last night i spent an hour or so making a costume that turned out absolutely hysterical! unfortunately, as funny as it is it doesn't actually look like anything identifiable, so not really appropriate for this holiday. i'll try again tomorrow morning. i couldn't set up my webcam to take photos. that sucks.

a couple of hours of organizing, and i sent off an sms to tell ze germans that i was on my way - the response was a cool "cool". it takes me twenty minutes to walk north, the idea being that we'd all hop a taxi together to go south... only when i got there, i rang the doorbell and nobody was home to reply. i called to find out what was going on and they'd already arrived, having forgotten about me.

i've been trying to figure out how to take this without being offended, but i really can't. how the hell do you abandon a friend, and not even have the basic decency to send him a message so that he'll turn around?

instead, i went to ta2's party and mistakenly had a couple of drinks with ptsd. he can out-drink me by a long shot, and she him, so let's just say that i wasn't ship-shape by whatever hour i stumbled out of there. wr arrived at some point, and it was good to see him, but ptsd is - on a verbal level, at least - aware that i'm not interested and she still keeps flirting. i find that quite off-putting.

i woke up smarting, but managed to sort myself out and made it to the lawyer's office on time. i finished there quickly, and then made the mistake of missioning (and it's a mission and a half) to the mortgage bank, which was closed for the holiday. that was very frustrating, and i should have known better.

all the running around did give me an opportunity to catch up on the penny arcade / pvp dnd podcast - really entertaining. i'm going to have to look for a game at some stage.

the network went down today so we didn't get any work done, and when it was up i had so much difficulty that it didn't really matter anyway. and besides, i was having too much fun with my section-mates :S

i did get invited for the polygraph, though - the guys were laughing hysterically because i gave the girl who called me up a really hard time: "don't you guys have, like, a brotherhood of security that operates throughout the army?"
she took it well... the only thing i could've done better would have been: "don't worry about it, i know why you're inviting me and i'm ready to confess to everything!"

i am feeling a bit better, but i've got to go shopping now so that i can have dinner. at least the shower's still holding up. with all the mess from the costuming yesterday, i find my room looks like a reflection of my mind: cluttered and confused.

wisdom and padding feet

these are jack's lungs. jack's lungs are fully buttered and abused.

to run backwards through the events of the past 24 hours:

just bussed back home and showered, after really good iced-coffee at hdg's. i'm chewing gum that i grabbed earlier from a girl at the flame bar offering to her friend.

this was after sitting with her friend (my "date", as it were - bd) while she closed up shop, after the two of us had met up at the flame bar around 4.30.

until then i'd been sitting with spot, wr and ta2 at the cocktail room, listening to the second dj playing an incredibly eclectic selection of oldies interspersed with hip-hop, to which one of the sexier girls had removed her shoes and begun dancing in a fashion that could be described as vastly sexy and slightly adorable.

we'd come in from the flame bar, where i was visiting rockon and meeting a girl who turned out to be friendly with people from the programme i was on in '98, in addition to her cute friends. the kid left us about halfway through our visit.

the flame bar was our second stop, the cocktail room being the first.

between the two we said goodbye to spot's sister and friend after organizing freshly squeezed fruit-juice that didn't merely hit the spot, it impacted causing it to explode into a million pieces. we were all too full from such a large quantity of liquid to move, let alone drink some more.

it's great having ta2 back, we let him know just how bad his replacement was and did a bit of socializing before heading out again to continue with the "white night" deal.

i haven't mentioned how much drinking and smoking was being done for a reason.

we walked down rothschild, viewing all the strange people and shows (and ogling all the pretty girls), and lost csn and her friends just before we turned off the road.

we stopped by the hdg's work to eat, and the hot dog i took damn-near killed me. it was way too much food after the run.

spot's sister proved to be just as clumsy as spot, after spot proved incapable of opening beer-bottles gracefully.

we walked from our building to king george as soon as the kid got home. i'd just showered after getting home from the run, and i'd gotten home disgusting. i believe (i haven't got access to the results) i managed the 5km run in half an hour, even though i'm sure that i walked about half a click when i began to feel dizzy. i'm still proud of myself for managing relatively comfortably without any training and having been feeling sick and stuffy for the last couple of days (especially this morning).

my primary mistake was trying to keep pace with a friend of mine who's obviously been working on this run. the first kilometre was fine, but after that my body began drifting and squealing and i had to slow down.

i started the race with kc's sister and a couple of friends from university, after having been abandoned by my team-mate and missing the start for the 10km race which i'd signed up for. huh, that would've made for an amusing story.

tahoma and i spent some time with spot in our neighbour's apartment, after putting on our spanky new shirts in ours. we'd walked there after registration, and i found out at the end of the race that we'd actually had a choice of shirts, and because they didn't tell us we got given the "regular" ones and not the unit ones. and the unit ones were nice.

i'd run into him while registering, which i got to on time after changing post-cafeneto, where i'd eaten a serious meal to prepare for the exercise (you're supposed to eat about two hours before). spot joined me and we chatted about NM.

everyone passed out on the shuttle to tel aviv, one of the guys actually missed his stop and i had to direct him back - it sucks when that happens.

by the end of the day i was using the tool i'd written, and i'm an extremely satisfied user. especially because all of the current problems reside with the application the tool is meant to test, so nystire and i are in the clear.

i spent the whole day (that i was on base, at least) working on the tool and feeling wasted from the lack of oxygen and possible throat / chest infection i'm nursing. in the meeting that i missed in the morning the tool had received extremely high praise - i think that praise is even more deserved now that the "about" dialog box contains an easter-egg displaying a picture of the dick who wrote the first version in a pink dress, clapping his hands with a silly look on his face and captioned (by me) "good job".

i arrived late to base, had a really good chicken-breast and eggplant-spread roll for brunch. at 6am i'd set my alarm for 6.15, and all i remember is waking up unhappily around 9pm. and fighting with a bus driver over the amount of time that a vehicle with an official frequency of 20 minutes should not exceed.

like a minute.

back to the present: i'm completely bombed and my body aches tremendously.

from nightmare to paper

for anyone with a weak stomache who's about to eat breakfast i'd suggest not clicking on the picture.
but of course, something will get lost in the translation - my hand-eye coordination never was very impressive :P [and my artistic ability's lacking to say the least]

i'm guessing the dream was inspired by two rather nutrition'ly endowed ladies making out with some guy at the bar last night, then dragging him off into the bathroom together. it was at that point that it was too late to tell the barman that the poor sod'd had enough beer.

WHO'S READING MY ARCHIVES?!
someone just commented on this post from last year, in which i quoted brigitte gabriel's transcribed speech from duke university. if you'll be so kind, please note that in the part of the post that i wrote, i didn't use the word moslem once. although the comment in question has reminded me of a simple, yet important point that i feel i have to make before breakfast:

islam is the enabler, and quite frankly i'm sick of people being PC and apologetic about this little fact. whoop-de-doo, islam may be a great religion (although i'm a bit biased the other way myself), but if terrorists and arabs-with-agendas and other boogeymen are hiding behind it THEN IT'S UP TO THE MUSLIMS TO DEAL WITH IT.

if you keep enabling, you are a part of the problem. i promise. and as such you deserve every ounce of criticism, and maybe even a little more than that.

yesterday evening:
reading nova swing and listening to tool, having coffee with spot and g/f 2, going to molly bloom's for magist's release / farewell / birthday party. i started talking to this cute girl, and i felt really bad at the end to disappoint her with my unavailability. actually, i was an asshole and took her number so as to disappoint her today instead. i walked to the cocktail room, got there feeling like hell, enjoyed a few hours at the bar chatting, then went off with ta2 for breakfast where we were joined by spot. and then it was time for bed.

and now that i'm awake (the nightmare was an excellent set of jump leads), it's second breakfast time.

renewed hope

<rant>spot and i were discussing writing a multi-player game using a serious shell script earlier, and he just suggested that i check out source code for the game online. he can't figure out what i find so offensive about not writing the damn code myself.</rant>

so i napped until 00.30, and then we took a minibus-taxi through to allenby. we began walking towards the cocktail room, when spot suddenly remembered that there's a girl who lives around there that he wanted to get in touch with, so he disappeared and the kid and i continued.

it was practically empty, and we enjoyed a nice, chilled and pretty much private evening drinking and talking. wr introduced me to the girl who works there - if she wasn't engaged my life would be even richer for the encounter :P

we began comparing tattoos, which resulted in a piercing conversation that got pretty detailed - enough that i'm now seriously considering a prince albert. that wasn't the only thing that i got out of the conversation though, and we kept chatting ... at least it's good to know that girls like that do exist, now i just need to find my own. or hope that she breaks off the engagement >D

the kid and i joined ta2 and wr at a gay restaurant in the area - really nice place, good food, and we were only hit on once by some weird french guy. then we got a ride home.

screening

great party! i definitely needed to let some aggression out. quite a few friends were there, too, and some very spankily-dressed cardboard boxes ;) [i suppose something rhyming with vixen would've been more appropriate :P]

ta2, wr and i went out for a rather good breakfast, and around 8am i returned home and crashed until 3pm ^_^
i enjoyed a great muesli breakfast, a pleasant chat with spot at cafeneto^*1, and afterwards watched stanley kubrick's lolita (finally), which was really good. and wasting an hour back-seat driving the kid's game of heroes was fun, too.

bedtime! tomorrow will make all the difference, i just hope it's in a good way.

^*1 i still feel the same way about sunshine, but i've decided i'm not chasing after her, just hoping things'll somehow work out. i don't want to be "that annoying guy".

friday on base

i walked to the balcony, met up with the mongoose and his girlfriend, and we had a fun evening. aside from discovering that *both* the bartenders have boyfriends, and being seriously undecided about the appearance of a girl who appeared to be making eyes at me (it was dark. i'm not taking any chances). they gave me a ride back to ramat gan, the most irrelevant place in the country, around 3am, and i went straight to sleep.

i woke up in time to go have lunch on base. that's kinda sad. songbird's guarding, so i spent lots of the day keeping her company. erm - abusing her company, i really need help with the book i'm reading :$
oh, and playing some gta2.

i did laundry, and then put the laundry in the tumbledryer. lordy lord, i feels RICH o_O

i had dinner on base as well, and around midnight took a taxi most of the way to the zamir. i only discovered this morning that the israeli equivalent of minibus taxis operate around the clock on the weekend... bummer. but whatever, i arrived on time for a friggin' AWESOME, AWESOME party.

i was completely broken by 5am, having had too much to drink and having jumped up and down the entire night... i think the bartender likes me. i asked him for a coke, and i got a complementary shooter :B (i can't control the urge to double-tongue!)

wr and i joined ta2 and one of the door managers went for breakfast. when i got my coffee, and then wr got his chocachino with cream - the waitress took note of my expression (didn't say a word! or, at least not to her...), and came back a minute later with a bowl of cream for me.

1...

2...

3...

aaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

i've mentioned ta2 driving around with cat food. we're getting in the car, when he spots a stray cat. out comes the cat food, five little piles, and then suddenly 6 cats appear out from a hole in the wall. extremely cute :)

wr and i got dropped off at azrieli, then walked a bit before taking the minibus taxi. i got home around 8am, had a shower, and slept until 7pm. i woke up to 3 / 4 episodes of friends, and am shocked at how long it's been since i vegged in front of the telly. and how quickly i found my groove ;)

my host made some meaty / noodly goodness, which made a good breakfast, and now that i've done the dishes - until i couldn't take the kitty litter smell anymore, at least - i'm off to the lizard.

slight modification to my post

until just before arriving to work, my post was going to look like this:
hard partying. good sleeping.

but now that that's no longer the case, i figure i may as well put down some more details.

last night, i left work at 9pm, and took a slow walk around the block. i stopped at aroma for a roast-beef sammich... i have got to stop spending so much cash on food :S

i went past the lizard, and sat chatting with the mongoose and wr for a while, before eventually taking a loooooong walk to the zamir (i took a stupid turn - the roads are so bloody screwy in tel aviv).

the party was celebrating fourteen years of the alternative line, and it was brilliant. great music almost the entire night (one of the dj's got a little carried away with brit-pop at one stage), and it was all very sweaty and loud, and there were some fine, extremely talented young ladies.

ta2 gave me and wr a ride home (the mongoose didn't come... he went somewhere else with his girlfriend. the fool.) as is becoming the norm, and i slept about twelve hours. i woke up, and made my way to work.

i stopped in at the kiosk to organize myself some coffee. i managed to spill the entire cup all over the counter. they were pissed. "what, are you drunk?!"

"no. i just haven't had my first cup of coffee yet."

i just had a cigarette with the foxy girl here... we had one of those moments of silence. not awkward... not awkward because i understand that it's YOU who makes it awkward, not the silence itself. but when two people really can't think of anything to say, it's a bit of a bummer.

moonflake's midweek cuckoo is hysterical. follow the link to the posts regarding his application, and see my comment at the end for my thoughts on the matter.

someone with an invalid blogger login (???) posted a comment, and the post he commented on (midway through 2005) makes me smile to think that somebody other than myself is enjoying going through my journal :D

in response to his question - i don't know. something to do with high levels of adrenaline not being good for getting good quality sleep. better safe than sorry, either way.

now to transfer all my legal (yay!) mp3's to my player, and to get my ass over to the lizard for a drink, before the week begins. maybe i'll finally sign and deliver my contract when i get home.

grimy and sleazy

the way it should be ;)

last night, i left work and walked to the balcony. i talked to the two cute bartenders (although the new one, sadly, has an SO), and i cannot express in words just how happy i was. am. this week was just absolutely fantastic!! the whole idea of the air force transfer taking place, my replacement finally arriving...

it's like after all the time i've been sucking from the rotten teat of a dead nurse, somebody's showing mercy and is inviting me into the kitchen for a glass of warm, frothy hot chocolate and cookies.

spot joined me after a while, and then left for the airport. with instructions to organize me an ipod from the duty free. more on that later :/

wr arrived soon afterwards, and i then had that "one too many". or was it two? it took a couple of hours of monty python quotes and general silliness for me to be able to focus again. by that stage, the party had shut down, so the two of us went with ta2. to be fair, i was under the impression that we were simply getting a ride home...

but no. not even a little. we went downtown, and entered a club that was extracted from the mind's eye of a goth/cyberpunk junkie. crazy music, sharp metal teeth, and all the huge, bearded, long-haired biker-types moshing and headbanging and playing their air-guitars, (some good looking) wimmen dressed both formal and extremely not-formal (unless standing on a street corner in the year 2020 is formal by that time) doing their spindly thing, grime and sleaze in every corner and being radiated by the walls themselves.

we went upstairs, where the music was higher-energy but not as deep, and sat there chatting with some strange strangers. well, not any more, i guess :P

anyway, it's a place that really is exactly as it should be. i don't know if i'm more impressed that it exists (and isn't too far from my place), or if i'm more disappointed (six years i've been here. six years. never heard of the place).

a short while after we got there, the music pulverizing my ears and my neck begin to loosen up from all the vibration, spot called to squick me over which ipod to organize. the options weren't great, so i picked the 60GB... i don't even know for how much. whatever.

just before leaving, i discovered that spot, in his infinite wisdom, had sent me an sms (when he *knew* where i was, we'd talked) giving me an even better option, and had left by the time i'd received it. schmuck. the only issue i have is that i'm looking at the prices online, and it looks like duty-free is more expensive... that's not good :S

when i got home i was wasted after a totally full day. i almost went straight to bed, but i managed to force myself to have a shower, and floss, because hey, that one day can make a difference. and making your bed smell of smoke, sweat and sleaze doesn't help anyone.

i woke up about six hours later, and took a cab to azrieli. i finally bought a perfect circle - thirteenth step, got me all excited. while standing in the line to pay, cbg walked in. pretty easily recognizable, but not my type as far as looks go. other than that, really cool chick. i had a good breakfast, good coffee, and then we said goodbye and i made my way to work.

i spent my afternoon doing some serious browsing. well, at least that's what i did after finally sorting out my new album. all i wanted to do was listen to a perfect circle - pet, but i inserted the disc and windows asked me if i wanted to install some software.

fuck no.

without installing the software, i can't listen to the disc... that's just screwed up. i just paid for the damned thing. not cool. i do a basic search, but i only came up with a method of copying it: i don't have a burner, i don't wanna, and i'm certainly not interested in installing more software on my workstation (which is what started this whole thing in the first place).

i began whining to nystire, hoping to find him familiar with the problem. after much debate over what exactly i wanted to do - no nystire, i don't want to rip to ogg vorbis :P - he provided me with a forum link. what was that about ockham's razor? i scanned the posts, and found a frighteningly simple solution: hold down the shift key while inserting the cd. i kept it down for a short while, then used media player to rip to wma, and now i can listen on my player.

and fuck them. bastards.

there are so many links that i wanted to post from the crypto-gram newsletter (and the articles are good, too), that sod it: go through them yourself.

as one commentator put it: "imagine a cop pulls you over for speeding. as he approaches, you realize you left your wallet at home. without your driver's license, you could be in a lot of trouble. when he approaches, you roll down your window and shout. "hello officer! i don't have insurance on this vehicle! this car is stolen! i have weed in my glovebox! i don't have my driver's license! i just hit an old lady minutes ago! i've been running stop lights all morning! i have a dead body in my trunk! this car doesn't pass the emissions tests! i'm not allowed to drive because i am under house arrest! my gas tank runs on the blood of children!" you stop to catch a breath, confident you have supplied so much information to the cop that you can't possibly be caught for not having your license now." [from one of the articles]

the two exceptions follow because i laughed so hard that i cried:
the turnpike prank (4 pages)
the all-natural test (also 4, i think)

serbians witchdoctors have weird cures
conventional greeting
i agree with scott mccloud completely
reasons not to donate blood.

no rest for the ______

on my way home, i walked past the lizard, and was surprised to find it hosting a party. 8pm? what gives?

turned out to be a bat-mitzva party, so not something i wanted to attend. my mum called, and i chatted to her outside for half an hour, then chatted with wr for a bit while he worked. and then made my way home.

showered quickly, dressed, and taxied to meet up with spot. on my way there, i passed an area that always reminds me of lake. i realized last night that i can't actually be upset with her for not being in touch during the last couple of years - during the first week that i met her, she warned me that she's like that. so i guess i'm back to being ready to marry her at the drop of a hat :P (not that that's ever going to happen, but whatever)

i walked in to spot's gran's place, his cousins were still there. i had excellent cake, we sat around for a bit, and when i got bored i started reading knife of dreams. mistake. now i'm going to have to read it, instead of waiting patiently for the series to be completed.

we went to a coffee shop, and i had a huge (and really good) salad for supper. the waitress laughed at me, asked if i was on a diet. look - i ate a 330g burger for breakfast, i'm fairly confident that it's within my rights to eat a salad for - essentially - lunch, and still retain my sense of masculinity.

spot and i walked through to the zamir, but arrived early. i went to a kiosk to get smokes. they didn't stock gauloises, and when i asked for them, the asshole had the cheek to tell me that i wouldn't find anywhere in the area - so i may as well spend my money there on something that i didn't want. i walked a further 100m to the next kiosk, and bought them there, then returned just to show him. it didn't make a difference to him, but i felt a little better for it. i'm so fickle.

the party at the zamir was awesome. i don't know what the deal was supposed to be with astral projection... apparently it was them playing upstairs from 2 - 4, but when we went up to check, it was shitty. so we spent the night downstairs with awesome track after awesome track.

the only disappointment was a cute girl who flirted with me (and i back), who left in the middle of a great song, when i wasn't paying attention, without even saying goodbye. annoying!

after the party, ta2 joined us (or we joined him, it's his car) for a mission to find food. all the places in that area that are 100% 24 hours a day, ALWAYS open, were closed. we ran into wr at my coffee, and the funny / sexy waitress from last week. she was fascinated by my tat; it makes me feel good to have others appreciate it ^_^

sat for an amusing half hour over chocochino. then moved off to a place ten minutes' walk from where i live, that i've never seen / heard of before. brilliant food - philadelphia steak and cheese sammich, with excellent home-fries (although it was a waste of cash, 'cuz i had about 4 bites before i was stuffed completely... the sammich was HUGE).

ta2 gave spot a ride home, then me, and i was so wasted by the time i arrived home that i simply brushed my teeth and fell into bed.

slept beautifully ^_^

i got up 9 hours later, read a bit, and was then disturbed by some arsim messing around in our parking lot with their lawnmower-scooters. i flicked a lit cigarette at them, but the wind pushed it to safety. for the best, i guess. i don't really want a brick through my glass doors.

i've discovered that i'm going to a wedding of one of my first flatmates on the 19th. i'm trying to decide if i should congratulate them while talking like a pirate ;)
i have no clue what to get them! how much money do i give if i'm a soldier (soldiers are more or less exempt from large amounts), but also working for a salary (and he's one of the big bosses)??

i showered, and took a walk to azrieli, on the way discovering that a kiosk close by sells cadbury's chocolate! YEAH!

i went looking for tool - aenema, but i didn't recognize it because they don't have the name written on the cover. bastards. but i've been listening to samples of the album from amazon, and now i don't think i want it anyway :S

thank you, nystire:
not only do i now have access to those cartoons that i made outside of the army, but i now know the following (from wikipedia):

in ptolemaic egypt, idiotès was a term for soldier

excellent. so we're all professional idiots. at least that explains the general mentality.

oh, and operation acoustic kitty is just awesome.

rob zombie kicks ass. kmfdm too.