fly-by

i just got in from work, and it feels strange that, aside from interesting chats with my coworkers about the downward spiral of the state and the great potential for individuals to be friendly, i didn't do anything but graft. now for other graft, and then rollerblading :)

---
holy crap! *if* this is valid, it explains *everything*! specifically, my constant need to consume sweets and chocolate and my bit-of-a-belly that refuses to go away.

i'm not just going to give up on not sleeping though. has anyone heard of an alternative way to deal with leptin resistance?

there's a saviour in my thermos

i'm really glad i remembered to fill my thermos (rum / hot chocolate / marshmallows) before leaving yesterday.

---
i was reading the picture of dorian gray on the bus, and was fascinated by the thought that while good and bad may not be so easily read in one's physical aspect, youth and innocence can be. maybe not in such an extreme fashion as in the story, but i've become convinced that the reason i don't really look my age (or do i? is everyone just being "nice"?) is because i usually let my inner child hold the reins.

just a thought.

---
the authoritative arab girl in my class had borrowed my copy of alice in sunderland, and informed me that she'd lost it when we walked in. my heart skipped a beat and i'm pretty sure i went white before she laughed and handed it back :S

---
dante - al dente - pastafarian - "noodles" as opposed to "dreads" (censorship? really??)

i find it interesting that dante's purgatory was filled with poets and artists; that's disturbingly similar to our modern trend of incarcerating people for being "normally" non-conformist. the other conformists are imprisoned with television, money, sex, and work... oh, we're good.

---
the girl next to me asked me to explain "proliferation", and the italian complained about us "always talking in the back row".
"that's why you get bad grades"

the cheek! i got bad grades because i didn't have time to read *everything* and i don't have an eidetic memory. and because you're a sucky lecturer. shit.

i had a super-fast lunch while finishing dorian gray, then joined the study group in an empty class we'd found. some of the session was productive, some fun, and i think we covered a fair amount. i was highly amused to receive a call from a blocked number halfway through to arrange a meeting with the head of the student union, and all i could think of on my way back was zim's "a secret mission!" :P

we were just finishing up when the caretaker walked in, and launched into an angry tirade about how our presence in the unused classroom is illegal and who do we think we are to take over classes without permission? i apologized, informed him that we had no intention of breaking any rules and that we wouldn't do it again... and he continued to shout at us. wtf?!

...

second class began wiiiiiiiiith... a herring! salzige heringe! i'd completely forgotten about talking to one of the german girls in our class about them, and her friend brought her back a packet for me :D

---
i was struck by the thought that the post-modernist concept of reality is narcissism; the acceptance of a role does not preclude the necessity of that role's authority nor does it invalidate the appropriateness of the action.

it all means something because what you're interfacing with isn't just in your head.

---
when henri bergson's name was written on the board, i couldn't resist: "isn't that the opponent of cartesian dualism who resisted the reduction of
psychological phenomena to a physical state and insisted that there
is no point of contact between the extended and the unextended?"

"i think so - what do you mean?"
"i'm just being facetious, it's a monty python quote. i keep it in reserve just in case i'm ever asked if i have any questions."

yeah, i wasn't scoring many points with him yesterday :P

---
the poetry lesson was fun, although some of us got a bit carried away. when we got to mirror, i found myself staring at the words as if their form was the mirror, and that image was so entrenched when we finished reading it that i, in jest, quipped: "that's exactly what i see when i look in the mirror!"

"what, a young girl? or an old woman?" was the immediate response.

---
i was shocked by the ars trying to wrangle extra credit from the lecturer after class; he seemed constantly on the verge of threatening :S

i went to meet with the head of the student union, and we sat for about an hour introducing each other and the socialist-democratic values of the union. the attitude of TAU's student union and the way in which things are run is really impressive, and i was shocked at how quickly the guy turned a general complaint about student employability and market control into a practical first step to finding a solution. i've since begun jotting down points, and am planning to produce a manifesto soon.

i caught the last half an hour of a lecture on the post-war russian clampdown on holocaust films and the portrayal of jews, which was interesting, then caught the bus (almost losing my phone protector) and began using my iphone's french lesson flashcards.

i spent the first forty-five minutes at work coaching the other guy, then about an hour correcting an xml problem and discovering a pre-existing flaw in our system that simply hadn't been detected until now :/

---
i was on my way out when i discovered that the other guy had screwed up the trunk (our primary code branch) in the svn. after the horror of realizing that our svn has no rollback mechanism, we figured out how to manually rollback and i left him to it, irritated with him and hopeful that he's learned to work according to the procedure that we spent days putting together.

why is it so hard for people to follow the rules when they're in place to make their lives easier? [my irony-sense is tingling]

---
i wasn't in the mood for anything intellectual after that, but the marvel comic app wouldn't let me download their free material without logging in and i can't for the life of me remember my account details :P

pg welcomed me home, i put down my bags, showered and went to bed. it was a "hard knock sleep"; we kept bumping into each other throughout the night and there was one point at which i think i almost bit my tongue :P
so we were both a bit under the weather when our alarms went off this morning.

all i had to do was post this, prep my iphone for studying on the go and head to the university to join a march on the knesset; but i got the times wrong and they've left without me :(
i feel like a right idiot.

---
something reminded me this week of the concert my mother and i went to in central park - we were standing a few metres behind this camera, and it was INCREDIBLE!
and it was so nice to be surrounded by grown-up hippies :)

and on a completely different note: why worry?

a rabbit hole

i began writing a rabbit hole in ellora, and something compelled me to leave the t.s. eliot that i need for first class (in a few hours' time) to finish it.

or kind of finish it. if i've learned one thing from my miserable attempts at painting, it's not to close a work.

the lobby

today provided me with more ammunition for my theoretical thesis topic. i would have been just as excited, if a little happier, if i hadn't had to bear two, not one, ignorant confusion-producing weapons of mass-hypnosis. both into alternate healing, one only slightly less logical than the other. thank goodness our TA (who was taking the class) is bright enough to (attempt) squashing them! unfortunately, they're not so good with the listening :/

weleda (the unlikable jerk i've complained about a couple of times): "i'm a philosophy student" is not a valid basis for an argument. and your argument stinks. not a diluted kind of stink, either.

---
the day began with a coffee explosion: that's not the first time i've had trouble with the seats in our home building not being ground. every time i reach for my bag or twist in my chair things fly :(

i posted my "class anthem" in our group page, and was pleased to have it well received :)

i had a great lunch with pg (we discussed the ski trip that may or may not happen), and she returned with me to the location of the first class to retrieve my brolly. which had been placed, strategically, in the bin.

i spent a short couple of hours at work - the guy sharing my office whistles horribly - constructing an old-school batch file to relieve some of the testing tedium. i like "wasting time" when so much is saved afterwards, because the testing i did during the evening was an absolute pleasure as a result :D

meeting the "big cheese" ceo down from the states in the kitchen while on the phone with another potential employer... could've been timed better.

i returned to campus to vote in 2011's student union heads and hear a minister (i'm so bad with names!) talk beautifully for an hour and a half about leadership and the reconstruction of our dismembered democracy, then had to leave to meet with a man in a lobby; the whole thing reminded me too much of the suits i had trouble with in 2009.

finding the place was fun, though. the security guards and welcoming committees on all sides took very different approaches to answering "am i in the right building?"-type questions.

...

i picked up a chicken-liver laffa from gechalim on my way in to work that was far too tasty to be legitimately prepared, then eased into debugging. it's so satisfying to feel the system falling into place after spending such a long time fighting with its foundations! all it takes is a little care and an understanding of the importance of working correctly as opposed to quickly.

it's all very "the hare and the tortoise".

the speed of light

holy crap. i had one major item on today's agenda, and although i began this morning i ony managed to complete it in the evening. i supposed the fact that other stuff kept happening along the way had something to do with it.

some of that other stuff excites me, but until it's (more or less) ready to be published i can't link to it.

---
why is it so gorram cold?! pg came over just as i finished the reading for tomorrow, and we went to the square to play frisbee. it didn't start so well, but the second half of the session was smooth and we had great fun ^_^

sushi (hmmmph... we really should begin making our own) while watching expendables was cool. it's a fun movie. it's funny, but now that i've been studying literature theory i notice when something doesn't add to the genre. it's a classic action movie, done really well. i loved seeing rourke and lundgren in particular, and arnie's role was amusing. a nice bit of nostalgia :)

summary: lady audley's secret

this is a crowdsourced* summary, because sparknotes doesn't let its users post their own. something about standards, or quality, or some such rubbish. this is copied and pasted as is, so if there are any complaints about grammar, spelling, or startling inaccuracies (just kidding, at least there're none of those), post them below and they may or may not be taken care of.

* facebook groups are awesome for actual students

*GIANT SPOILER ALERT*

mary elizabeth braddon - lady audley's secret
the story starts when George was coming back from his trip (From Australia) after he made a lot of money… Gorge is coming back to his wife Helen after he left her because she told him that she is not happy because he has money to give her anything. Gorge comes from a rich family, but his father kicks him out if the family because he married Helen who is not from the upper class. George does not care and he marries Helen anyways, they went to Italy for awhile and had a great life, but after the money ran out and the new baby was born the problems started to appear. Because of that Goerge decided to go to Australia to look for gold and he leaves a letter for his wife that he will not come back until he has the money to give her the good life she wants.. . after he makes the money (after few years) he comes back, and as soon as he gets to England he sees his old friend Robert, they go together to see Helen but they see that she had died (they see it on the Times), George feels depressed and looses the well to live. So Robert takes him to his uncle (Mr. Audley) house. His uncle was a widower for 16 years but he marries this new young and very beautiful girl - Lucy Graham. He met Lucy at his friend's house, she was a teacher there – so au we see he marries down, but he falls deeply in love with her. When Lucy knows about this new visitor – George, she starts avoiding him. But one day, while she was away, George and Robert, go into her room and see her painting, after that George was not the same person anymore, and then disappears shortly after that. Robert could not just let go of this fact and starts investigating where did George go! After searching he finds many clues the Lucy (Lady Audley) is actually George's died wife , he confronts her with all the evidences and she breaks down and tell him the truth and claims that she have also killed George and all of that because she was mad! The uncle leaves Lucy, and she was sent to a madhouse. As for Gorge Luke finds him and saves him …robert is led by [the doctor] to luke, who is on his death-bed after being horribly burned in the fire that Lucy started to kill Robert who was getting closer to the truth at the pub, with phoebe (Luke's wife) taking care of him. after kicking her out, luke informs robert of his finding george in the bushes with a broken arm and of taking him home to his mother's for treatment after having assured george that his mother's memory is terrible. he then tries to get his mother to corroborate his story, but her memory is... terrible. he tells robert of the letters he was supposed to deliver and of his manipulation of lady audley, providing robert with the final pieces of the puzzle. he dies shortly after they part.
and then they all lived happily ever after except for Lady Audley of course

hear us roar!

we are humanity, and we are humanity's greatest threat. the only thing we should really be competitive about is physically isolating some parts from others so that when some of us implode, that implosion affects the rest as little as possible.

this piece by haraway is long and somewhat tedious, but filled with... filled with something important. if only it wasn't such a long read!

the more i think about it, the more i understand the locks in lady of mazes.

smelly links [+ comma]

dammit! the weekend was going swell until i woke up this morning and remembered that i hadn't taken out the laundry that i'd put in the machine early yesterday afternoon :S

after posting yesterday (the post before hares and coneys) i joined pg for an afternoon nap, then returned to study for a bit. i spent more time sorting out online documents than learning anything new, although a part of that was finally jotting down an abstract for my seminar paper :)

i returned to her place for dinner - the earlier frustration came to a head and i'm still not sure what it all means - then we settled down in front of the telly for dessert and a (i think) pretty good movie. early bed, early rise... early surprise :S

i'm running the washing again (i know it's not going to help that much, but i must try nevertheless), and have encountered a number of interesting cyber-tidbits:

ru55 is an audiophile, so this made me laugh from personal experience. one of the recent comics referenced wikipedia's list of common misconceptions: good to know! especially since it shows that i was wrong about something i said yesterday or the day before about columbus :$

pee for victory!

ewwww!!! ingenious three part snap at the marketing industry (and we're not big fans of marketers)

i think this is supposed to be french...

now: back to my education!

hares and coneys

i finally understand the difference! and now for the whopper:

i was always told that "guinea pig" translated into hebrew is שפן ניסויים (shafan nisuyim), and so that's what i've used. how surprised was i last night to discover that the actual term for "guinea pig" is חזיר ים (chazir yam) or "water pig"!

the first translation means "experimentation rabbit". i find this fascinating.

weakend

yesterday:

7am, waking up to read a fascinating paper on a picture of dorian gray.

that was followed by a short telephonic interlude to suffer at the merciless hands of a bureaucratic system which denies easy communication of needs to the provider: i was trying to make an appointment to see a doctor. eventually, after much frustration and venting the woman on the line got what i was going for and handled the majority of a second call to one of the clinics. all this to organize something i already have a (seemingly) clear referral for :S

---
i was most intrigued to see posts from dirk diggler living it up: seems he's getting his shit sorted out as well, and getting his priorities straight. i see this as an amusing reflection of my own life; i've been out of the fire for half a year now, and am slowly but surely finding my feet and rediscovering my heart.

it's amazing how the world can adapt itself to your needs when you know what it is you want out of life.

---
first class: learning about the penopticon (very mad max) - we were discussing the perceived dangers of being non-normative in modern society. let's send all humans to prison.
i was reminded of a disturbing section of the union (purchasable, too) that reminded me of system of a down.

Our legal system is a dangerous institution enforcing a method of madness - convincing everyone that we're all harmful to society in direct contravention to what we have only recently begun to understand as a standard deviation in human nature - an ideology subverted by a perverse desire for machine parts while misguidedly double-speak-praising "individuality".

later in the day i discussed the idea with our lecturer, having been reminded of a specific case that i presided over, and he stated that prisons are a re-education system: teaching our run-of-the-mill law-breakers the skills they need to become real criminals and providing them with an underground contact starter-kit.

who's paying for the upkeep, again?

---
the lecturer returned my midterm paper untouched, after telling me unequivocally that he would never have taken off the marks his assistant did. considering the fact that he's doing me a pretty big favour by allowing me to write a paper for extra credit, i'm not sure if i should bring it up on monday... :S

we had a study group afterwards, with one of the arab girls taking command - she's one tough cookie. we got into a bit of a political debate which will need to be resumed at some stage, but all in all we learned some interesting stuff. she was really funny at the end - she wouldn't let us out the class until we agreed to take preparations for the next session seriously :)

i carried on reading the paper i'd begun the day with over lunch, then hurried to complete my six straight hours of the italian's studies.

what caused this to pop into my head? maybe it was the thought of the use of marijuana as an anti-fragmentation device: a necessary coping mechanism for modern living. [it has been suggested that the use of marijuana shouldn't really exceed weekly doses]

i upset the italian by referring to a general "you" instead of to "one" - i find the use of "one" contrived; would i use it if i hadn't thought of "you" first? it may simply be cultural.

i finally came up with a seminar topic, and our lecturer appears to be enthusiastic. he was a bit awkward saying goodbye afterwards, though. kind of like fes' "good day!"

the poetry class was great, and decidedly surprising. as in, i missed quite a few nuances and was thoroughly satisfied to have learned stuff. and we got our papers back - go me! another 100 (^_^)

i've decided that the old annoying dude in our class is a plant by the lecturer to demonstrate to us the concept of "the other" in a more direct context: i'm not the only one whose skin crawls whenever he opens his mouth :/

...

tgtbt's little brother got fantastic matric results! it's always nice to hear of my cousins doing alright :)

...

on the way home i was shot a dark look by a girl i asked to walk outside of the bicycle track: i wonder how long it's going to take for people to learn how the system works...

i was entertained by the techno jeep and picked up by khaos sektor vs k. lapso - evil no see before heading out to dinner with pg's family; great dinner.

after the meal i was lying with my neck at an auto-massage angle when my body began to shake - it would be really nice to have some assurance that i'm not actually damaged :(

once home i was made horribly aware of the damage done to my leg by my rollerblades on tuesday night, and then of the damage done to my bearings by riding in the rain and irresponsibly not cleaning them immediately afterwards. price: NIS 45 to replace the three bearings lost and two bus rides.
*sigh*

pg and i walked the long way around to see SxS before he left - it was a boys' night at actually's (one of ze germans), and we had an amusing time. the negative side of the evening was regarding ru55 - things with him seem to have come to a head.

...

we slept deeply last night, with great ambient in the background. i snuck out to replace the water filter, came back to say good morning, took my blades to the park to get them sorted out, came back to shop in the rain (and be driven nuts by a phone call from pg - i don't deal well with cryptic women-stuff, and although she apologized afterwards i still couldn't shake off the frustration), remembered to organize rum and on my way back witnessed a cat threesome beneath a car surrounded by a drizzle: it takes all kinds, i guess.

i spoke to yogi's dad and we're all cool about me accepting the role as CTO (assuming the guy's willing to pay me what i need). that's groovy.

now i'm off to pg's for coffee, then i guess i really should try to get some studying done :P

unboost

shit - i just had to redo a function for the flash project. i'd been trying to keep my changes to a minimum because i didn't feel confident with the environment, and in being overly cautious ended up writing a load of crap.

twice.

that's just shameful. i tidied it up, rewrote a particularly stupid function of my predecessor's, and felt really stupid about having missed all of it before :$

four days left on my trial version of flash cs5; i let the boss know and let him assume that i assume that he'll be picking up the bill for the license...

---
this morning i got to bed soon enough after posting, managing to sleep a peaceful four hours and waking up most impressed with pg for having slept well in spite of crashing when i had solid psy trance going :)

after such a great sleep, climbing into a crowded bus and having to force (hey!) my (watch it!) way (there's no space back there) through to the (oops! sorry) back of the bus to where eidetic was standing with enough space to swing a small cat was a bit tiring. honestly, i don't understand these people and their need for violent intimacy. innate frotteurism?

eidetic and i talked rubbish (as is our wont) until we were on campus, and i strapped in for a thrilling first class. i'm not sure if we actually learned anything. after i posed the question of what percentage of material on the syllabus we've covered, one of the girls provided what appears to be an accurate answer (slightly higher than i anticipated): 17.4%

the implications of this fact were brought home during second, when our lecturer used a simple word - "focalization" - and received nothing but blank stares in response. in disbelief, she introduced us to one of the basic vocabulary words we're supposed to be learning in first :(

twelve years later, and i still can't control it. *SPOILER ALERT* the following text is in black to hide it from anyone who hasn't yet seen the devil's advocate (if that's you - you WILL see it.) *SPOILER ALERT*
1998, i'm watching a movie at the theatre with a dodgy character who i shouldn't have been friendly with. it's late afternoon, the theatre's half-full, and i'm *in*, man. i'm totally focused on the movie.['cause it's an incredible movie]
then comes the scene - kevin shoots himself. my reaction was so sudden and automatic, that scene having become so real to me, that i didn't realize what i was doing until it was most definitely out there: i jumped out my seat screaming, horrified, "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

see, i wanted the devil to win. let's just say that my fellow movie-goers weren't too impressed with me.
fast-forward to today. pg's doppelgänger began saying something about kafka's the penal colony that i found so wrong as to shout "NO!" and then be *really* embarrassed afterwards (:$)

after class i went to thank the lecturer for putting vicarious in my head (we discussed the "sublime"). she let me know that she would've supported my argument yesterday against moral absolutism, and that she'd send my copy of alice in sunderland back to me soon. i don't know if she managed to read all of it, but if she's not going to see us for the rest of the semester then it's gotta come home.

i had lunch with pg, then walked with eidetic to the bus. i think i talked too much. it was on the bus that the flash boss caught me, and i found myself talking down to him whenever he made me repeat myself. i really shouldn't do that :/

work: i was completely focused - so much so that i didn't take enough breaks - and i got a whole bunch done. kinda like monday. i couldn't fight off the munchies though - this urgent need for chocolate has become nigh uncontrollable :S

my kibbutz cousin sent me through a couple of good ski deals, which i'm about to go over with pg who's just walked in.

the boost

pg and i went to bed early last night, and that didn't make waking up any easier. in fact, i'm prone to assume that all this sleeping has done me nothing but harm - this morning i felt positively ill.

it took so long to get out of bed that i hardly had time to cover the basic differences between java, asp and jsp - but it turned out that i didn't need to know any of it anyway.

---
i arrived for the testing about half an hour late, as i'd taken a severely wrong turn and been taunted by rain in addition to being lost. good thing i wore my ski jacket!

i was briefed (briefly, by a man who can barely speak) and seated in front of a station in a conference room packed with people hunched over their monitors and apparently fretting. instead of jsp, i was offered a choice between c++ and java: considering that i'd interviewed for jsp, i assumed java was the way to go, even though i would probably have handled the c++ more effectively.

first order of business: check message validity according to a provided protocol. aside from getting around java's enum with a regular class (because enums in java *suck*), it was all fairly straightforward... i wrote everything in visual studio because that's what opened automatically, but only once i was ready to compile did i realize that there was another ide available that was actually helpful.
then i got a bit stuck: i'd glossed over a minor detail in the instructions, and it took me a frustrated few minutes to figure it out. no matter! i required regex handling, and java's String class provides!
problem solved.

second order of business:
"okay, so i forgot to tell you that there's a performance requirement. your code runs in 2.5s - unacceptable. if you can just bring it down to below 1s..."
playing with my structures didn't make any difference; it suddenly struck me that i had no idea how complex the aformentioned regex matcher is. i rewrote a highly simplified version of it to see if it'd help me reduce my performance.

less than 400ms. all good.

third order of business: linux ftp, installation, editing and compilation. you have got to be shitting me. it had all the instructions, we just had to follow them. do applicants fail this section? really?!
the challenge was in the fact that one of the virtual machines (thank you, vmware) was so damn slow that the two of us who had completed the first bit were stuck waiting for about half an hour for the system to boot, and it was a half an hour where the "invigilator" wasn't around. at least i had my iphone with me, and i always have reading to do (thank you, kindle app!).

we couldn't even call the guy, because in his infinite wisdom he wrote down the wrong phone number on the board. wtf?! where do all these monkeys come from?! developers need to work with numbers, for chrissake!

last order of business: redesign a ui based on received complaints. all very basic stuff, and the only mistake i made was actually using the simulation software correctly when all we had to do was create something exportable to pdf. i really pulled out all the stops on that one.

everyone shuffled out when he yelled "time!", and i was done. i'm fairly certain i'm the only one who finished.

---
i walked out after almost four hours of testing and not a hint of caffeine, with a massive headache that had been following me since getting out of bed, feeling good about myself and not particularly affectionate towards a company that can make CS graduates feel stupid. one of the guys caught up with me to vent his frustration at not so much as completing the first part, and i explained to him that he's applying for a job programming and that's not what he studied.

i gave him a few pointers, i hope they help. poor bastard claims never to have failed at anything in his life before - i told him now's as good a time as any to begin. you can't succeed if you don't know how to screw up. don't they teach this stuff anywhere?

i walked into work, met with the boss, made myself a quick tuna-mayonnaise sandwich, drank coffee and sat down at my desk to... discover that i had half an hour to get to a mandatory guest lecture that i'd completely forgotten about :S

i ran out telling the boss that, officially, our meeting had been over the phone :P

---
i arrived *just* in time for an argument with one of the vegans in our rollerblading group, then settled down to hear a talk about diderot. it was an interesting talk with an intriguing point: the fact that the virtuous "ME" (or "MOI", if you're reading the french) doesn't push the argument in either direction bears witness to his sense of justice.

at the end of the session i made an ass of myself by having a go at him about his abuse of the word "happiness" and a bad example that he gave, to which he responded fairly well. i was applauded for telling him that i'd like to see him telling his best friend that he's not going to be happy with the woman he's marrying, and for backing that up with an argument that you can't say that someone who claims to be unhappy is wrong.
when his response to that ended with "that could just be self-delusion", i immediately quipped "isn't everything?" - one of the hosts immediately stood up and informed us that we were out of time.

one of my fellow students scowled at me afterwards for my inability to grasp that absolutist moralism is completely correct. what? because mommy and daddy told you so?!

in spite of its relevance, i shouldn't have tried to talk about in praise of doubt. i confused everyone because i couldn't actually put my reference in the form of a question :$

---
i waited for pg for a few minutes, who turned out to be a decidedly bad influence - instead of going to work for an hour, i went home and tried to rest. that was a really good idea. so was the thai food on the way: i see people smiling, and can only assume that they're enjoying the fantastic idea of walking with chopsticks in small cardboard take-away. i know i do.

---
once i'd determined that feeling sick and exercising are not known causes for auto-immune diseases (as much as i could), i re-laced my blades, quaffed an energy drink and joined pg and her mum on the way to the group. it was a good ride, although some of it was spent fighting with pg about the semi-planned ski-trip. unpleasant, but better to sort these things out before arriving there and being horribly disappointed:

i'm big into snowboarding. i don't know if that comes out so much on my blog, but i'm a complete addict and i enjoy letting go and doing stupid things like flying down mountain slopes at silly angles and pushing the experience as far as i can go, mostly less safely than is wise.

pg is happy to just ski, but with me. i thought we were talking about going together, meeting up for lunches and spending the evenings together while the rest of the time we'd be taking classes and going wild... but after some deliberation, it dawned on me that it's a different kind of ski-trip than i'm used to. if it's my money and not a romantic holiday, it's different. if it's hers ('cause i can't afford it right now) and it is, then i'll not only take what i can get but i'll enjoy it thoroughly - it's just a different headspace. it'll still be freakin' AWESOME to be strapped in and sliding, but it won't be about the challenge.

i can handle that.

---
after a pleasant course through the religious city of bnei brak, the lord gently informed us that that sort of behaviour has consequences by opening up the skies on our heads. we slipped and skidded home completely soaked.

---
physical notes for the day:

i've had a headache until soon after getting back from the rollerblading, and on my way into campus the right side of my jaw made an ugly cracking sound and it's been hurting me since.

i think *touches wood* that my helix has healed. i hope so, because i want to put the ring back already! this teflon thing doesn't have the look.

in order to combat dandruff (and i have hair now, so this is an issue) i've been doing the head & shoulders thing for a few days straight. i think it's made my hair breakable.

...

it's now past 4am, i've done most of the readings and i think i'm back in tune with my sleepless reality.

lazy reader

i didn't read nearly as much as i'd have liked last night... i was totally out of focus. pg watching zim behind my back didn't move me either way. the good news today was that i still managed to read further than i was supposed to, but that time could still have been spent more productively.

i walked onto campus surprised by the tent for the annual commemoration of the war on gaza - where's ours for sderot? i'm sensing a slant.

the italian started our day with discursive abuse and parentheses: he spends most of our classes talking to himself and amusing himself with only vaguely connected trivia. if i didn't know what "vaudeville" was, i would have written it down and fretted about its relevance to the material... what a horrendous course it's become!

a cyborg manifesto got me to thinking...

i finally understand that medium / message thing.

a description of the periodical press got me thinking of archie digests, for some reason.

after class, i got the ball rolling on our study group, and had a good talk with my kibbutz cousin. she's really had a rough time, and the last few months are no exception :(

i was so tired i almost lost my phone cover just before the second class. not cool.

things i shouldn't have said in our second class: "the difference between melville and wilde? wilde has the power of subtlety, and says remarkably interesting things".
when everyone agreed with me, he mocked our lack of taste - i couldn't control the urge: "it's a good thing sanity is defined by the majority!"
ironic how easily that can be manipulated - i don't believe in sanity, *because* it's so easy to turn on someone and claim them unreliable. i apologized to him afterwards, only to discover that he'd quite forgotten about it and i had to repeat the sentiment so he knew what he was forgiving.
don't you hate it when that happens?

work: lots of it. re-basing with our SVN is overly complicated. i think i got through the worst of my current project.

"the problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present" - calvin

i think i need to go and find my girlfriend.

still a bit sugared

that witchless sleep was most necessary! i still managed to leave late for the bus... it's a talent.

as i got through the gate and began removing my earphones the prat from our class caught up with me, expressing his amusement that i'd been so busy reading (and listening to tool) that i hadn't noticed him waving at me. no shit. which one of us got political first? i don't know. that great start to the morning only improved as we walked in to another pop quiz; i haven't the foggiest notion of how i did, but it wasn't as positive as i'd like.

the lesson consumed me: discussions of the sublime (as opposed to the beautiful) and reading about cyborgs while simultaneously suffering a shower of inspiration...
someone accosted me afterwards in an attempt to discern the outcome of an argument i'd had with someone else a week or two ago. i'm sure he asked me if i'd seen or read something, i'm certain i answered him, and i can't recall what :S

i hopped straight to work and arrived in time for the farewell ceremony. very army, but there was good cake. i ate quite a lot. in addition to the munching, it was an afternoon of hard work and even a programmatic favour to one of the managers. i left in anticipation of a meeting with a triple krembo (it's like a sweetie pie) headache.

---
i cannot describe the meeting as anything other than an astounding success. assuming that i will be offered an acceptable salary, the title and function of CTO in a start-up with a startlingly good and exciting idea (and funding) sounds pretty good to me!

and he hasn't yet discovered what my resume means - his intuition seems pretty good :)

[this is the guy i quoted laing to]

---
i've shopped, now posted, and even read a few comics. it's time to prepare for tomorrow.

ding! dong!

first class is cancelled. back to bed.

thursday, friday, new year - part ii

[... continued]

friday:

early class, catch-up for the italian.
inspiration: not just anime nights, but another bi-weekly as well for all the "must-see" movies.

---quoting the lecturer: "ten centuries - what is that? i don't know the math... a thousand years, more or less?"
good grief. which reminds me, i've been helping pg with a piece on language's influence on math skills. the studies that have been done regarding the japanese and korean children's advantage over the american and french are decidedly unreliable, as there is so much else different that it is impossible to determine the validity of the tests or their results.

i propose taking an american community at random and teaching half the kids to count regularly and the other half to count using a new system:
1 ... one
...
9 ... nine
10 ... ten
11 ... ten one
...
19 ... ten nine
20 ... two ten
21 ... two ten one
... etc.

if that's the only meaningful difference between the two groups then we would be able to see the difference accurately. also, according to the accepted results there's far less chance of the children who learn the "new" math being at all disadvantaged as opposed to paving the way for a more efficient english.

---on the way out i was asked by a political science student why my family doesn't move to israel if things are so bad. i told her about a bunch of "me first! me! mine!" people who miss the important stuff because they're only interested in what's "important" according to some vague pseudo-scientific standard.
"really? is that what you think of us?" she asked, shocked.

the truth is, there's so much good in this country and that's the stuff that foreigners and immigrants see and feel. it takes a long time to get past the horrible stuff to see the beauty within; time that not many people really want to invest. that results in non-israeli enclaves, some of which are becoming really influential. which means we're losing the good stuff in israeli culture to a bunch of people who have only learned from them the bad (see principles - there're a few more in the pipeline).

---on the bus home i was inspired by wilde. the picture of dorian gray begins as a collection of interesting truths. i'm sold :)

i was accompanied by comfortably numb while carrying dry-cleaning home in the sun post-drizzle. i was greeted by a small frog waving a "happy new year!" flag - pg's been playing with her mum's art supplies :)
[even more fantastic was what she didn't present me with: a GIR rides piggy only with GIR disguised as a fish! ^_^]

i don't recall at what point in the day my mum called me, but aside from new year's wishes and old year's summaries we discussed the fact that yin's in cape town for new year's with a friend of hers and they're not going with tgtbt and family to the festival. i don't care if they don't dig the music; not seeing such an extraordinary and incredible event when you get the chance???

ridiculous.

i've also been asked by my mum to remove the soul patch. i'm so glad pg's behind me on that too :)

---i went to meet up with someone on the north side of town who was supposed to be waiting for me. when i called him up he told me he'd stepped out and would be back in ten minutes. i took a walk down the road, stopping in at a number of residences to be disappointed that nobody was home, and received a call from him saying that he was stuck in traffic and he'd be back in another ten minutes. i grabbed a toasted hotdog and slowly walked back to the meeting place... about ten minutes later he drove past, looking for parking.

i've ranted about this before: it's about a lack of respect for other people's time. if i had known that the ten minutes didn't include finding parking i might've behaved differently, instead of spending all of that half an hour sitting on a low wall waiting.

i hate waiting.

---i walked home briskly, strapped on my blades and flew over to urchin's to meet her family and help out a bit with their new year's preparations. now that i've met her brother's palestinian girlfriend i can see why she has such a profound influence on him - she's gorgeous.

i amused myself no end with a small, unhinged cupboard door that i'd laid flat on the floor and imagined as being an entrance to an orthogonal world.

a little rain made my travels back home a bit slippery; the guy working the kiosk was straight out of clerks ("i wasn't even supposed to be here today!").

i skidded straight to pg's for a hot shower and a glass of rum. aside from an excellent dinner with her family (there were some awkward moments, and one downright unpleasant one but the food was amazing), we had a really lazy evening. our plans went from the street party and a desert party to going to bed early.

---saturday:

i think that was the most needed sleep i've had since i last wrote a sentence like this. and it was good. we had a slow morning that was only improved upon by seeing us making pancakes and following them up with another nap.

---a chat with pg reminded me of a really embarrassing story from my youth (so of course, i'll share it with you). i was a pretty slow kid, and there were a lot of words that i'd picked up gists of without being informed of their actual meaning. i knew that "rape" was a violent act but i didn't know it involved sex.

i once jokingly shouted at my mother "if you don't let me go i'm going to rape you!" (thinking it could easily replace "kill" without being as bad). awkward.
no less awkward than finding myself at school, responding to "what do you want to be when you grow up?" with "a rapist".

---i left to get to work on the flash project - i was *so* glad, after spending a bit of time double-checking everything, to discover that the problem was on the user's side. they hadn't read the instructions. after a bit of facebooking i took a walk to the hotel to meet a cousin, her son and her mother-in-law for a couple of hours of non-stop chatter. it was a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours and it's always nice to meet new and likable family members :)

pg and i had a good dinner at coffeeholic, then separated so that i could write this and do some readings for the morning. as is apparent, this all took longer than planned: although she did help me digitize a page or two from my travel journal. wp sent me a message this morning that reminded me that i promised to send it to him... three months ago. and i haven't gotten more than halfway through japan yet...

boy, is it late. i need to get some sleep!

...

oh, yeah! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! two-thousand-ten-one is going to be even better than its predecessor!

thursday, friday, new year - part i

[post divided retroactively]

thursday:

bus drumming has become a habit: reading with good music in the background, i find my feet tapping and my free hand rapping on my leg and i don't care. and i'm not alone; i love seeing other people doing the same :)

i walked into campus with a really cute girl from our class, and our discussion was apparently so riveting that she followed me back out of the class to continue it while i went for coffee. as we got to the machines the cute girl that i'd sat next to the day before (and mentioned) walked past, and stopped to inform me that she'd had a really interesting dream about me... apparently we'd been arguing a lot. all i could do was be flattered, and apologize :P

---the italian lecturer: i spent the lession wishing he'd picked a different profession. what he does to poetry is unforgivable, and i dislike (intensely) the fact that we're to learn *his* point of view, even if there are a plethora of more plausible possibilities. he did redeem himself a little, though. *if* i score 100 on the final exam then i won't have to hand in a work for extra credit. if i don't, it will essentially be a topic of my choosing that can cover the entire history we've studied.

that's mighty generous.

a stray quote from his class: "it was a major major major major shift". reminded me of a certain character from catch 22 :P

i have begun conspiring to put together a study group beginning this week: we have less than a month to go before the final, and half of us haven't a clue what's potting. this course is heavy.

---i went for coffee with a couple of the girls, and as we left the building a guy walked past hurriedly. i *knew* i recognized him from somewhere, but without context i just couldn't place him! i spent the next few minutes driving myself nuts trying to figure it out...

a couple of weeks ago my appointment to see a skin doctor was cancelled on the day. on thursday, my new appointment (for tomorrow) was also cancelled. i called up to say that it was beginning to seem personal, and discovered, quite by accident, that both appointments had been for the wrong doctor.

fantastic.

i had lunch with pg and taught her basic binary arithmetic, then got my exam timetable so that i could figure out when to go snowboarding. tomorrow, we begin to arrange.

second class: i was thinking of watchmen's alien, and trying to figure out how to connect everyone through the massive threat of... humans. i was reading haraway - a cyborg manifesto and thinking about our future, laughing at our lecturer for his claim to be "living perfectly" and thinking about how that unhealthy mindset contributed to all of my polygraph trauma that transformed my reserve duty role to that of an expensive warden (i have no idea what my reserve duty will really be like :P).

after class, metaphor and i found the new anime class and performed a sound check (with only a minor altercation with the lecturer; all she had to do was say "i'm early, and i'm teaching". passive-aggressive is stupid, we couldn't know she secretly wanted to get started).

botchman picked me up on his bike, took me home through crazy traffic to switch bags, and then we continued on to the climbing wall. we hit the wall hard, and i was extremely satisfied afterwards. i think my hearing might have been a bit damaged by all the teenagers *screaming* at each other...

that guy from earlier? he works at the wall! what a crazy coincidence!

botchman gave me a ride to campus, and i arrived *just* in time for the anime evening. we had a whole bunch of new people - things seem to be rolling! ^_^
botchman went back to pick up scrapper, but they took far too long and missed metaphor's presentation on evangelion and why there are so many versions of it. it was an interesting talk, and absolutely brilliant watching it on a big screen.

metaphor asked us to introduce ourselves, and when it came to me i simple said "i like to break things by doing them the way they're supposed to be done". it's a fairly accurate explanation of most of my behaviour :P

---i was irritated by the flash boss - halfway through the movie he called me, and i ignored him. then he called me again and i scrambled outside to answer.
"is this an emergency?"
"no, no - "
"then can i call you back? i'm in the middle of something."
"oh, i just called to tell you that your program's not working. i've sent you an email."

if he'd just have let me call him back, i would've enjoyed the rest of the movie that much more. a little patience goes a long way and in both directions.

---after the movie we had time left over to watch something else, and i'd fortunately remembered to pack my discs on the way to campus in the morning. unfortunately, i'd left my schoolbag at home when i switched it for the climbing wall... :S

botchman and i went to play frisbee at rabin square, and it was good frisbee. what an excellent evening - wall, anime *and* frisbee!

---when i arrived home the first thing i encountered in the online arena was a debate over whether marilyn manson is more artistic than shakespeare. after reading a few interesting arguments, i put mine in:
okay - i've just been studying literature theory and i have what really is the only answer: you can argue and discuss all you want, there's no way to differentiate between any two accepted artists by "how artistic" they are.

the current academic consensus would probably swing the way of manson though, purely on the basis that he forces us to re-evaluate the things we think familiar far more intensely than shakespeare did, but then shakespeare was severely limited by his environment.
(and no, it doesn't matter if shakespeare was one man or many :P)

[edit: boy, was i ever wrong!]

it's always relative to the current condition of whatever society you're referring to. shakespeare was pretty damn roguish in his day, and although (as was stated above) his stuff wasn't original his perspectives and his crossovers (see "the merchant of venice") were seriously inspired and nobody can touch his verse. nobody.

technically, i'd go with shakespeare. provocatively (as in thought and emotional response) i'd have to go with manson. there's nothing like a debate that totally depends on perception: isn't it wonderful that all of us live in such different realities, as do/did our artists?

oh, and [thread owner]: shakespeare was held in VERY high esteem. may i suggest that you obtain a copy of "the norton anthology of english literature"? it's quite educational, especially the bits between the excerpts :)

pg and i watched hunter x hunter, and then it was long past time for bed.

[continued...]

it didn't end there

tacked on to the end of this post is the continuation of this morning's debate... just in case you were interested.

i hopped off to campus after posting, reading johnny mnemonic on the way. boy, am i pissed - i'm reading about molly and seeing jane. that's what watching the movie will do to you :/

today we were to vote for student union representatives, but i'm registered as a master's student so we had a choice of... one rep. oh, well.

the continuation of the debate (below) kept me occupied during what would otherwise have been a fantastically boring first class. i sat next to a really cute girl, and the thought arose that i can believe that being polyamorous is right while choosing to respect a partner who doesn't.

on the way to second, we heard amazing psychedelic progressive rock coming from the main square... it was tree, and they are legendary! i will be making a point of seeing them live again, they're absolutely brilliant ^_^

second class: i think the smell was coming from the guy sitting next to me. over a metre away. the class was alright, but the topic isn't very interesting and the paper downright unreadable. or maybe it's me... it suddenly occurred to me that i haven't been feeling well the past couple of days and i might simply be a bit sick. it was tough for me to keep focus.

i ran into pg on the way out, and she accompanied me to the language building so i could (try to) help her with her homework and get my results for a pop-quiz we had on sunday. she didn't understand and got tearfully frustrated, and i felt like an agitated idiot. apparently, she's upset about the studies interfering with our plans for new year's, and i'm personally irritated with my plans for the next half a year... or i could just have been pushing buttons today. my results were abysmal, too.

i had lunch with eidetic, then a debate on free will with a history student, then called my kibbutz cousin on the way to work. work was SVN trouble and java rewriting. i left early, began reading oscar wilde, and am about to get some other readings done:
i've heard complaints about keats from my classmonkeys, and am not thrilled :S

---
the debate:

"I agree that our current system is anti democratic.
Thats why I want to change it.

The reason parties buy votes of other parties is that they are held hostage by the fact that a coalition party can leave at any given moment.
If you have less parties - this can't happen.
Two or three parties is not totalitarian... its still elected parties and elected representatives...

As for your last sentance: if it has to be screwed up, let it be because i chose badly, and not because someone else chose for me.

Well, thats the nature of democracy isn't it?
I voted for a leftwing party and got an extreme right wing racist government instead.
Why? Because more people in Israel believe in the right wind racist way than the leftwing peaceful way.
Thats democracy..."

"you're still missing the point. the problem is that there's a coalition, and THAT's anti-democratic. your base assumption is that the coalition is necessary for X to happen, and what's wrong democratically is that X isn't supposed to happen. if there was no coalition the right wouldn't have enough power to resist opposition by the left.

"held hostage"? what's their purpose, that's being held hostage? if they can't get things to pass (i feel like i'm repeating myself) without opposition, then they're trying to do something that's not democratic."

"Why do you think the right wouldn't have power to resist the left?
Or vise versus?
Sounds to me like nothing could ever get done...

No, they are held hostage because members of their coalition don't give a shit about anything which they weren't elected for.
For example, Shas couldn't give a shit about the cost of School books in elementary school - as their constituency doesn't go to elementry school.
So instead they say - we'll cote for lowering text book prices - if the Haredim get another 50 million shekels. If we don't get the money - we'll vote against the text book prives being lowered.

Get it?
And this repeats itself for political things too... anything between Israeli-Palestinian relations, to social justice to law enforcement - all are affected by the fact that small parties care only about their small issues, and are willing to vote either way on other issues, as long as they get their demands."

" i get it, dude; you think that "getting things done" is more important than getting the right things done. happy totalitarianism.

i suddenly remembered an interesting parallel: nobody wastes time taking japanese hostages, because they won't get anything in return. we negotiate with terrorists, so the terrorists have incentive to kidnap us. when you give shas the sense that they can control everything with bribes, you give them incentive to do so."

"Err... as for your first point - wrong, I don't think that, nor do I understand where you got the impression from.
Don't put words in my mouth, it makes you sound dumb and childish.
Having a debate is one thing, demonizing people who don't agree with you is another.
Have fun debating with other people, I don't take kindly to childish behavior.

As for your second point - I agree, but other than changing the electoral system I have no idea how to change that..."

" i don't see where i put words in your mouth. sorry. and i'm not trying to demonize, i'm trying to say that the very idea of coalition or the need to "play" with our politics is a symptom of its totalitarian nature. i apologize if you found that statement personal in nature; it's a comment on a general outlook that our society takes and i think it's dangerously wrong. i really think you've been missing what i'm trying to say because you're defending something that i'm not arguing about.

having said that - the electoral system, in my opinion, is not at fault. the fact that everybody's playing a game instead of being able to vote for someone who claims to represent them is. again, i'm not saying everything would be utopian, i'm saying that it would be representative. in some respects, a totalitarian system isn't a bad way to go - but there are no controls to ensure that not everybody gets screwed.

what a bummer that nobody's discovered a good way to govern *humans*.

you know what? i'm irritated now. i'm talking about the fact that democratic politics shouldn't be manipulated, and you're arguing that i don't understand the maneuvering. i *get* it, bro. and i'm saying that it's *wrong*."

"No, I'm not saying that you don't understand the maneuvering...
You're under the impression that a single large part can't be representative.
I'm saying that there is no reason why there should be an Arab party, A Heredi party, and 3 different left wing parties.
There is no reason that there won't be one single leftwing party that its member's represent all different groups who have some tendancy to the left - such as the Arabs, the Labour members, the Merez members etc.

Three large parties, doesn't mean three specific notions towards a way of life.
It means three parties with general directions... just as the Democrats in the States don't always agree, no one says that a specific idea, such as providing for the elederly (hagimlaim), should constitute forming a new party..."

"have you ever thought about voting for a party interested in education and the environment? i've been voting either aleh yarok / hayerukim, to no effect. the reason it's "to no effect" is because they're representative of a lot more of us than are voting for them, but everyone's so fixated on the Big Parties and Left vs Right that they think that it makes a difference which one of those big ones get the majority of the votes.

it's all the same. our foreign policy is dependent on external forces more than our desires as a nation, and the country is going to shit because nobody's looking inwards and saying "hey! this needs to stop!"

i'm not saying that it *can't* be representative, i'm saying that it isn't. that fact is demonstrable in our "need" for a coalition in order to pass laws against the will of the majority. here, we see shas taking control OF ALL OF US to further causes which do not have a majority vote.

i, personally, don't want things to be "left" or "right". i believe in democracy as a platform on which these struggles and "crises of conscience" play out. each decision should be arrived at in a way that ensures that the majority of people who are voting are spoken for.

have you heard of שמאל הלאומי (national left)? i don't like half of what they say, but as far as political direction is concerned i think it's the only realistic / feasible way to go. that's my opinion, and if we didn't have all these fragments i'd be forced to vote for people i totally disagree with. because i'm neither left, nor right.

i'm an israeli who cares about israel and her internal policies. i'm not suggesting that you, nor anyone else, doesn't. what i'm saying is that it's at the top of my agenda. am i alone? if we had a functioning democracy we could find out. i don't *think* i'm alone."

"I know the Smol Leumi personally and tend to agree with 80% of what they say, but thats besides the point.

I agree that we need to care more about our social problems, but to be frank, I think many of our social problems could be solved or reduced if we solved our conflict with the Palestinians, and so I place that at a higher issue at the moment.
You can disagree with that point of view, but that doesn't invalidate it.

BTW, the things you said, which are true, are the reason I support Shelly Yechimovitch so strongly - she is the only person up there who cares about social justice anymore...

I think I've lost the point of our debate..."

"not at all - we have different priorities, we agree on general direction, we disagree on basic principles in spite of that. nothing was invalidated, all's good :)"

...

what a weak way to finish an argument :P

the driver

it's been many years - no, it's been never. last night *i* drove to the wedding (albeit with pg's car), and gave a ride to grootbek and yogi. what a pleasure to reciprocate!

the wedding was wonderful, although we may have consumed too much. the food was excellent. the music was great (mostly), and everything was as it should be.

i was pleased when SxS's cousin's wife took me aside to tell me that she's never seen me looking happier: everyone i've met within the last few years has met me in super-awkward mode and usually possessed of a rather glum disposition... i'm free!

---
the mundane:

work was unexciting, i got a callback for a job interview that annoyed me (they want me to come in for a day's testing next week), and i got frustrated on the way to the wedding because the honda's locking button doesn't unlock and it's not easy to differentiate between it and the window button. i hate bad interfaces.

---
the political:

remember, it's always a choice! in this case everyone who doesn't participate is choosing for a bunch of lazy anti-zionists to take our money."

"What makes you think a protest will help anything?"

"what makes you think that sitting at home will help? have you really given up? do you waste time voting? is the fact that you're not willing to try because you don't believe it'll work, or because you're using that as an excuse not to participate? are you okay with the fact that you, along with the majority of this country, have no representation?

what will it take for you to get and say something?
are you waiting for the real tragedy?"


"oh, I get up and say alot...
I just dont bother with protests anymore, as they don't work.
I'm trying to influence people around me so that next election they vote for big parties rather than small ones... for example."

"see, in my opinion that's NOT the way to do it - we *need* all of those little parties, because they represent whoever votes for them. what we need is for people to *stop* voting for the big ones, and to *ban* coalition governments as anti-democratic.

if you can't pass a law because you have too much opposition, perhaps it shouldn't be passed.

unless you can find a big party with a good plan and real concern for our future as its constituents. they didn't get so powerful because they care."

"I disagree.
The reason why we have so much instability is that there are so many parties with so many agendas whose votes need to be "bought" in order for the coalition to get the support it needs.

For example, the only reason these 100 million NIS are going to pay for Haredi laziness is that Netanyahu needs Shas's support in the coming takziv vote and so he needs to buy those votes.

If Shas members were members of Likud they wouldn't have nearly as much power as they do today.

Te fact that at any given time a party can withdraw from the coalition and break up the government is a joke.
To prevent this we need two parties or thee big parties, at the most."

totalwaste, small parties are always proven as inadequate as the big ones, once they are in office.
The only way to get the government to begin taking accountability for the people's needs is to start forcing them to take it.
In the courts and by forcing the government to change the electoral system.
Protesting won't do it, as they have learnt that if they tell a protester they will do what he wants, and then two days later change their mind - no one will remember."

"you don't realize that you've just proved my point? if a "democratic" government can't reach an agreement on something, then IT'S THE WRONG WAY TO GO. the very idea of "buying votes" is absurdly anti-democratic.

accountability? where? who? what?!

what you're asking for is a totalitarian government. which is pretty much what we have. just say it. pick your poison.

---
i suppose, at the end of the day, what interests me is not whether everything's screwed up or not.

if it has to be screwed up, let it be because i chose badly, and not because someone else chose for me."

[continued]

resurrection

wow - i just slept the whole night through. i've even done "not much" this morning, as the guy i was supposed to be meeting with isn't feeling well.

i just resurrected my new year's post from 2006/2007 - i don't know how it turned into a "draft"...

---
first order of business: i noticed that my posters advertising anime nights were covered by telemarketing advertisements, so i covered those in turn with the following announcement:

sell your soul for a handful of dollars per hour?
telemarketers are tools of satan!

i'm contemplating printing that out, possibly adding "and by 'tool', i mean 'penis that satan interrupts our dinners to rape our ears with'. don't be more of a giant penis than you need to be."

two amusing notes on the above:

first, a girl in my third class asking if it was me. when i answered in the affirmative, she was really pleased: "i *KNEW* it was you! it's so your style!"
i think that's the first time we've ever spoken, so i seem to be making a good impression :)

second: the poor woman who called me up later to ask me if i was interested in a new landline from netvision. she didn't see me coming, i guarantee :P

---
i ran into mmf's wife on my way to first class, as she was heading to hers... she's taking a course that i *really* wanted to sign up for: "from grimm to disney", and we discussed that for the few minutes that we had before the day began. children don't need morals in every story, and most certainly not disney's. if you do want to discuss values, then children DO need to learn that stupid choices lead to horrible consequences; there's no woodsman coming to save little red riding hood.

---
we learned about godwin, and i think his ideas were great! especially his concept of "law": our western legal systems are pathetic, and the idea of a judge treating each case on its individual merit is far superior and more naturally ethical than simply going according to precedent.

creating laws to deal with particular cases, laws which affect everyone equally, is dumb.

---
there's nothing like trying to use a urinal when there's a guy in the toilet stall behind you humming loudly to himself.

after class our lecturer (the italian dude is beginning to grate my cheese) informed me that i should be able to do a work for extra credit; i really don't want to have to redo his course. in fact, as much as i appreciate his enthusiasm and attitude i will never sign up for another of his classes again.

one of my fellow classmonkeys caught up with me afterwards and requested context free philosophy: asking someone like me "what's the first thing that pops into your head when i say..." and then throwing out a really complex philosophical paradigm is meaningless. the specific question, regarding man's power relation with nature, is something i hold two or three opposing views about. we discussed it for about fifteen minutes, and didn't get anywhere useful.

lunchtime was movie time, although i had to stop one of the girls from participating because she demonstrated the inability to suspend disbelief. seriously, that's an important and mandatory skill when watching movies!

i was putting up my posters when i bumped into one of the student union heads putting up his - we had a little chat, and he seems to like some of my ideas...

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the second class: mind rape. not only is our italian giving us his own books to read (not a problem, in my opinion) but he's making us read them in class and discuss points we find interesting. that's pushing it. it's as disconnected from the topic of our seminar as can be...

... our lecturer is really sensitive, and very defensive...

... i wasn't letting him get away with it. and i had a couple of others as support. we ripped into his work and argued the entire second half of the class. that wasn't enough - i even followed him back to his office. i eventually wrangled a slight concession before heading off to the last class of the day.

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we studied america, and i'm convinced that if i could get hold of a copy of the time magazine dated january 16, 1956, we could trace the poem through its articles...

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on leaving the class, my union connection and i discussed whores and strippers - i don't want to go to a lecture discussing it, my younger sister's been in the industry, and i find the whole topic distressing. norah vincent says it better than i can.

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i was caught by one of our managers as i walked into work and dragged along to buy liquor for the floor party - saying goodbye to our previous offices. i made a remark about him catching me with the norton anthology in my bag and it being really heavy...

"it's... like... a giant book... of knowledge. it's not the number of pages, but the wisdom contained within that makes it weigh so much"

from the anthology: ‎"we must continue to hope because, by keeping open the possibility of a better future, hope releases the imaginative and creative powers that are the only means of achieving that end"

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i spent a couple of frustrated hours trying to figure out ssh through php. i don't like it. around 10pm i went downstairs for the party... and was surprised at how seriously everyone was taking it! the decorations, the outfits, the attitude...

aside from an inspiring moment, a few drinks and jumping into an interesting debate on how we were fitter, stronger and happier prior to inventing "society", it was a chilled and amusing evening. i did have to go home relatively early, though, because i was broken before things got going and i knew i needed to crash.

i slept late, and am now about ready to get out of my pjs and make my way to work.