Browsing Haaretz’s site, I discovered that the intriguing movie Brick is showing in Israeli cinemas starting this weekend. Abigail saw it in the Jerusalem film festival and before that Kenneth Hite recommended it. I was skeptical that it would be released, but looks like it has. I really should go see it or something.
Tonight I get home, and as I’m about to get out of my parked car, I hear a crash; I turn around and see a car finish landing on its side, less then 20 meters from where I am. I reach for my camera, then stop and walk over to take a look. All around, people rush over, crowd in to help, shout if anyone called the paramedics or the police, gather to gape at this remarkable spectacle of two cars smashed together, one on its side with 3 people trapped inside, the driver struggling to get out, a woman beside him and another in the back. The other car has a wrecked front and a woman, apparently the driver, is crying hysterically outside it. I would too, if I was in her shoes. But I’m not, so I move back, and gape as people open the booth door, perhaps trying to get the woman in the back seat out, and I go home. Disappointed I didn’t take a picture, ashamed I thought to, before anything.
This morning, I met a girl in a dream.
I was in a car-park, waiting or searching for someone else, but she was there, and we started talking (or maybe the dialogue was just taken as read) and it hurtled past friendly as wakefulness rushed upon me.
I knew before I woke up that I wouldn’t remember her face, if she even had one. But she was nice, and in that slice of dream in which she existed, she liked me.
Sleeping late on Friday morning. Recently, it’s becoming a new social highlight of my week.
When I moved into my own apartment, I’d had some vague plan to set-up my computer as the center of a sort of home entertainment thing, essentially imitating Israel.
Once there’d been enough of an unpacking to have a living room, I got the computer hooked up to the TV and the stereo, and since then I’ve been consuming media purely through my Internet connection (I haven’t had TV reception since cancelling my cable subscription a couple of months before moving out of Hod HaSharon).
But surely, I thought, there must be more to this then just running over to the computer, setting up the show you want to watch in the media player, changing screen resolution, dragging the window to the TV part of the desktop, hitting full screen and rushing back (I remember a lot of rushing when I started out with this; also a great deal of having to get up to the computer to pause).
So when I got a new desktop computer, I got a wireless keyboard and wireless mouse, again imitating Israel. I think I had some notion of being able to use them in the living room without getting up to the computer, but the crappy resolution of the TV screen made that impractical.
Recently the level of discomfort from sitting in the bad chair by the desk, and of using the mouse, has been getting to me. I can’t concentrate enough to write, I said to myself (somewhat hypocritically: I do sit there uncomfortably for many hours reading the Internet or fiddling about, but that requires less concentration, I guess). So yesterday, while trying to write a session recap, I decided to give this a try: take the text editor I’m using (Kate) and put it in full screen mode, get rid of all the toolbars and sidebars (the default interface is much to cluttered to my taste), switch to a really big font, change to a low resolution (the one I use to watch TV), and settle comfortably on the sofa, with the wireless keyboard. Turns out that this works out not bad at all. I need to find the best posture, but I can actually work like this, it seems.
Of course, instead of writing the recap, I got so excited I decided to take a photograph, and post it to my blog, and write an entry (which has taken me over 24 hours…). Procrastination is a constant.
Not to pick on Greif specifically, but this habit people have of giving cutesy nicknames to their appliances, I’m begining to find it tiresome.
Giving something a name just gives it more power over you; Computers already have too damn much power over us. My car frustrates me enough without attributing intent to its breakdowns.
Hmmph. I’m thinking that even giving my blog a name was a foolish move.