Strangely Unaffected

I was going to have a completely different title, but I'll get to that in a moment. I was at a friend's house and walked home. I heard this raspy voice calling me "hey". I immediately knew who it was - the junkie (possible ex-junkie) that spent more time in lockup than at home. He's my childhood's boogieman. He would beat his wife repeatedly, and eventually she left him. I think it was after he held her over the porch railing and threatened to throw her off, but I'm not sure. Now he's in a wheel chair and barely talks, but he still scares me. I pretended not to hear him. It wasn't too difficult because I'm really tired and have a bit of a headache.

The title for this entry was supposed to be "My keychain is so much lighter now". I left the dorms for the third (and possibly final) time today. This time I went alone in a rental car, and boy was that hard work. I think I sweat 10 pounds off or something. Of course that was only part one; part two was bringing everything inside.

I thought that I should celebrate it somehow, but I only had half a bottle of vodka so vile that I didn't even bother taking it back. It's so horrible that I can't even take a whole shot of it and have to stop mid-way, something that never happens with any other vodka, even the crappy cheap ones. Plus, taking a shot of vodka on an empty stomach and then driving 80km back home isn't a really good idea. Hey, now I know what my friend and I will toast tomorrow. Tomorrow will also be exactly four years to my discharge from the military.

I recently read the top 100 quotes in Bash.org, and I couldn't stop laughing. I'm going through the 101-200 best quotes (as voted by the people who visit the site), and they're also quite hilarious. After that I'll just browse randomly, although that has the dual disadvantages of really crappy quotes and repeat of quotes. At least it's better than work.

I think that's all I have to say at the moment.

I have so much I need to do, and time isn't on my side. I have papers to start and finish, one of which is with two other people that I was supposed to call days ago. I have to find a job. I need to clear everything out of my dorms room. I need to do some community work because of a scholarship I got. I need to go to the dentist.

I have no strength left. I feel like an insect in the path of a hurricane, like a man in front of a tsunami. I can't deal with all of this. This is too much for me. I can't think of a single thing in my life that can give me the strength to deal with all of this.

I need a release from all of this. I need something that'll help me. I need a goddamn miracle. Where's Deus Ex Machina when you need one? Where's the fucking god now? I have people around me, but I'm all alone. Nobody can help me do those things, only me. And I don't want to. I lost my will to do anything. I just want these things to go away. I don't care how. I need a time machine. I need to go back and do things right. I hate this fucking situation.

I can't talk to anyone. Nobody really understands how things are going for me. Either the people already finished the university, or they haven't started. I have no focus. I don't know what I'm going to do a month from now. Even though every single thing I ever planned went wrong on some level, I still need a plan. I need a path to follow. All this supposed freedom is making me go around in circles. In order to do A I need for B to stop affecting me; in order to do B I need C to stop affecting me; in order to do C, I need for A to stop affecting me. Only I've got from A to G, and that's assuming you count all papers as one thing.

I've come a complete fucking circle. I am overwhelmed and can't feel a goddamn thing. Isn't that fucking great?

The thing is, you can never tell if the spam amount has increased. It's not as if you're keeping a tab on it; you don't leave it in your inbox in case you'll need to do some statistics on it; you just delete it (or tag it as spam if you're using hotmail) and forget about it. Yet you keep on wondering.

I think I've been getting more spam lately. Maybe it's because I had an argument with some stupid girl in one of my classes that kept forwarding all sorts of crap, ranging from all sorts of Red Bull endorsed activites (she's working for them), through the general hoax emails, and to stupid things about the university that I couldn't care less about. Letting out steam on that stupid little girl (mentally, not so much physically. I'm guessing she's 22-23) felt really good, and helped relieve some of the stress I was having. But almost immediately after my last email I got two spam messages at once. And the spam keeps on coming.

The most ironic thing is that I wanted to do that to her, but I don't know how. Signing her up to mailing list isn't going to work, because they've got an opt-in system - you have to confirm that you want to sign up. Maybe I'll contact some spammer. The problem is that then he'll have my email address, and that's something that I'm just not willing to do.

Everybody knows the good guys lost"

In 1988 Leonard Cohen knew how it is, and how it's going to be. The only thing worse than being wrong about what's going to happen is being right about it.

Yes, there's an armistice. Yes, there's going to be a multinational peace force in Southern Lebanon. No, things aren't going to change. The terrorists aren't going to disarm themselves. Why should they? They have the support of the hypocritical French, who suddenly object to attacks on civilians. Is that what they were doing in the 8 years of the Algerian war of independence? Not attacking civilians? Not resorting to acts of terrorism, including blowing up houses? Not applying collective punishment for villages suspected of helping the resistance? Hypocrites, the whole lot of them.

I need to get back to the dorms to clear it out. I also need to go back there because I can't study at home. I also need to talk to my two partners in one of the papers so we can divide the work. I also have things I need to do at home. And I can't seem to be able to do a single thing.

I've been in the passenger seat for a month now, and today it finally stopped. It started when I was at a friend's house and managed to will myself into searching for articles for an especially annoying paper. The university library's automated notification system wrongfully informed me that a book I had was due two days from now, which meant that I had to finish that specific paper in under two days. This gave me the strength to wade through countless boring pages, trying to find one article that would be in a closely related subject.

After I left my friend's house I decided that the next thing I need to do is cook for myself again. I haven't cooked in a month. I only cooked a simple pasta with a mushroom and cream sauce, but it still felt good to do it. After the first bite I felt better than I have in a while. The taste of hot food in the evening was a great counter to the no-food I had on-and-off throughtout the past month. Of course the downside to eating pasta is that it takes some time for it to digest, and in the meantime you can't really do much else.

Next I'll need to actually sit down and do the papers. I just need to find a place where I can concentrate on the articles. Maybe I'll go to the city library, or the college here in town. Maybe I'll be able to concentrate at home, although that doesn't seem too likely.

Now I wish this was a LiveJournal. This way I could have put the mood as "accomplished".

I think I'm going back to my old writing style. More self-aware, talking to an audience, and using unclear titles. I think it's better that way.

I went to my grandmother's house today (actually, yesterday, since it's past midnight) to fix something in her computer. According to my MSN Messenger logs I was away for an hour and a half. Now, walking there is six minutes, both ways; fixing the computer was fifteen-twenty minutes tops; which means that I spent all that time just talking to my grandmother.

I don't feel like I wasted my time. On the contrary. It was just so nice. I don't remember the last time I went over there and just talked to her. It may have been when I was twelve years old. Before my grandfather died. That's another part of my fucked up family's story.

I don't want to talk about my grandfather much, because that memory is still painful, even after 14 years. I was in the sixth grade and we went on my first ever two day trip from school. When I came back home my mother told me "your grandfather died yesterday". He had cancer and was in intensive care, but the fact that he died when I was on a field trip having fun was a bit too much for me.

Around the time my grandfather died my grandmother's sister died. Maybe she died a few months before, I don't really remember. Ten months after my grandfather died my grandmother moved in with her sister's husband. Not for anything other than saving money on day to day living. That is fuckup number one in this story. There are more. Then she leased her old apartment to a family. That's fuckup number two. Why? Because it's my grandparents house. I have so many memories from it. From the little garden where my grandfather grew chili peppers, through the little porch rail that would creak whenever we pulled on it, and to the time when we all counted the take from my grandparents' lottery stands after a really big raffle.

I didn't visit my grandmother at her new place. It just didn't feel like her home anymore. It wasn't the distance, because it was just a minute or two further along in the same street, which is also the same street where I lived. That's fuckup number three, and this one is all mine.

Today when I talked to my grandmother it was really nice. Sure, she hassled me a bit about the papers I need to finish, and about finding a girl, but we had a nice conversation. I really felt like she treated me like an adult, which is more than my parents do most of the time. It made me really sad, because I started thinking that I missed so many conversations like that over the past twelve years or so. When my father left home he started telling us that we didn't visit her enough. I couldn't tell him that it doesn't feel like my grandmother's home. It still doesn't feel like her home. At first she slept in the same room and bed as her brother-in-law (fuckup number four, to those keeping track), but a few years ago he decided that he needs more room, and so she slept in the smaller bedroom. With his sheer mass it's no wonder that he needs more room, and it really hurt me to see how my grandmother was being treated (I think I see a pattern here, although this is my paternal grandmother).

I'm trying not to think about the things I did and how things would turn out if I did something else, because that's the fastest way to become depressed. If you have even half a brain and an ounce of imagination you can turn any memory into something better than it is. You are not limited in your fantasy to feasible, logical, or achievable things. And when you compare your dream world to the shitty reality, it just depresses you. But sometimes you just can't help it. Sometimes you see the results of your own stupidity and you can't ignore them. But from there you have two options - mope about what you could have, or be thankful for what you can have. I'm going to choose door number two.

This has been a loooong time coming. I wanted to get this out of my system for quite a while now. I don't know why I held it in.

I don't hate him because he's "my mother's boyfriend"; I hate him for who he is. Personally. Individually. And it just kills me to feel this way.

I hate him for two main reasons. One, he's old. Now, it's not the fact that he's 60, and I know that at 52 my mother isn't really young either. It's not the age difference, because both my grandfathers were 8 and 20 years older than their respective wives. It's not because he's older than my dad. It's because he acts old.

They say "Age is mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter". And this is exactly the problem. He acts old. He walks like an old man, he drives like an old man, he smells like an old man. The fact that his mother lives with him only adds to the "old man smell" of his house, and the fact that she looks and acts so much older than my maternal grandmother just makes it all the more obvious. The most ironic thing about this is that since my mother started seeing him she has more energy, she goes out more often, she's happier. In short, she's acting younger.

The second thing is his behavior and general attitude. He was born in Yemen (Joey: Wow, that sounds like an actual country), and so his behavior towards women is... non-western. I don't mean that he hits my mother or anything, it's just that women aren't equal to men in this area, and I don't mean in "not getting paid the same", but in "HEY! You get your bitch ass back in the kitchen and make me some pie!" Whenever I'm over there (to fix his computer, which is another thing I hate doing, especially since my own computer is all sorts of fucked up), he tells her "bring him (me) some fruit". Never "please", never "could you", never "thank you". It's all "I'm the man, and you're a servant". Maybe my mother is ok with this, but I'm not. There shouldn't be that kind of master-slave relationship outside of historical movies and BDSM sex.

Another reason isn't so much about him as a person, but as "my mom's boyfriend". Whenever he's here and my dad comes to visit, my dad stays downstairs and I go over to talk to him outside. This is fucked up. Yes, he doesn't live here anymore. And yes, he's the one who left. But goddamit, he's still my father, and he shouldn't stay outside like a fucking stray dog when he comes to visit his kids.

It took me a long time to figure all this out. I couldn't understand why I didn't like him much more than my father's girlfriend. At first I thought it was because my dad had another girlfriend (or two), which made it even worse, because that means that I'll feel ok about this when my mother will start going out with different guys. Then it hit me. It's so much simpler to hate someone because of some attribute they have, like Arab, or American, or Christian. But when you have to hate someone on a personal basis, especially when this is someone that you can't get out of your life? That's hard. I wish I didn't feel like this. But then again I wish that my parents could still be married.

I went out drinking with my friend E. We took a bottle of vodka (Smirnoff, if you're wondering), two shot glasses, and some crackers (the food, not the white folks), and drove to the beach to get drunk and talk about shit. Between the two of us we finished almost half a bottle.

I never drank so much before, and I felt like it in the morning. I woke up at about 10:30 with a splitting headache and a dry mouth. I took something for the headache, drank some water and went back to sleep. I woke up two hours later feeling more refreshed than I have for a long time. I think this was just a mild hangover, but my only basis is American movies and shows where even mild sounds hurt someone with a hangover. I don't want to imagine a serious hangover. At least I did one of the things I wanted to do - get really drunk and have a hangover. Next on the list is getting so drunk that I lose control and/or can't remember the next day, but this'll have to wait a while.

E, on the other hand, wasn't so lucky. He couldn't fall back asleep past 9:30, and his mother is driving him nuts. That's bad enough when you're 100%, and it's even worse when you've got a hangover.

I'll post some real things later. I've got a few things I want to write about.

UPDATE - When we were drunk I sent an SMS message to E's ex. At the time she didn't respond, which made E kinda mad. He wanted her to be jealous, in a "see how much fun I'M having and you're missing" kind of way. Well, I saw that she posted a new entry in her blog at about 1:30am. I don't remember exactly when I sent the message, but I think it was about that time. Anyway, Operation "Get Ex Mad" has been a successful one.

I tried to place a bid on an online auction site for a laptop. The auction ends tomorrow, and I was operating according to a misguided belief that since nobody bid on it yet, nobody will. Hey, it worked once with my speakers, it could happen again.

Anyway, I was writing my credit card details, and when I pressed "submit" I got a warning message saying that "although the information is encrypted, it is being broadcast on a non-secure channel". Or that the site was secure, but the information is being broadcast without it. What? Are you serious? This is not a search item, it's fucking money! How can you not encrypt and secure that sort of thing?

I'm not worried about buying online. Heck, I've got more T-shirts that I bought online than that I bought in actual stores. But the reason I felt comfortable with that is that I knew that the information is encrypted. Maybe it's just a weird temporary problem. Maybe that site just doesn't know how to work with Firefox right. And to think that this site is the first one in Israel that instituted a policy to take care of the customer.

Oh well. I guess I won't be able to get a good laptop for practically peanuts. I probably wouldn't be able to do it anyway, but you can't win if you don't try.

That's great. It's great to see that people aren't all so militaristic and violent, and they realize that we can all "just get along". Although there's something I don't quite understand -- Why would anyone would listen to a shitty little university student union representative?

If that wasn't clear enough, I got an email from the university's student union (the first one since the whole crisis began, but nevermind that now), and they said that they're pursuing all avenues - "Political, national, and of course intra-universital". Maybe I'm overly cynic; maybe I know what the student union does, and moreso what it doesn't do; maybe I just hate those fuckers; but for the life of me, I don't see how a student union is going to affect anything, let alone a murdering terrorist organization led by fanatics and lunatics. I mean, in Israel. Sure, the student protests in actual democracies in the 1960s were successful, but this is Israel we're talking about here. We can't even do a single day of boycotting them. And to think that a bunch of politicians, in the worst possible meaning of the word, will do something, let alone take care of anyone else is beyond ridiculous. Hell, Al-Qaeda will stop its Jihad before the student union stops thinking about themselves.

I just hate them. I had three years of listening to their bullshit, their promises and their lies, of constantly being disappointed by their actions and lack of. Haifa has been under attack for three weeks now, and this is the first email they send? "We're going to do everything we can to make sure the students are taken care of". Get the fuck out with that. Sure, the students are getting shafted. Sure, we can't stop our lives because of this ("or else they win"). But saying something as stupid as "Needless to say not just us students are suffering from the war but also all the rest of the residents of the north whether they are children or adults in all aspects of life" (with no punctuation, by the way) is just... wrong. It's so far beyond wrong that it goes a whole fucking circle.