that gurgle you’re hearing is my poor tummy…

my icky fluish feeling the other day has manifested itself as possibly a bacterial gastroenteritis. i spent the afternoon at patient first yesterday, and they are still running tests to determine origin. i got some drugs and a marvelous bland diet to follow – that is, when i can keep food down- and am pretty much down for the count this weekend. i feel pretty damn yucky.

---

i’ve been able to catch up on a wee bit of movie-watching the past couple weeks. today’s rental of choice was capturing the friedmans, which has been a pretty big letdown. not that i was all jolly over a documentary chronicling pedophilia and incest, but getting the grand jury prize at sundance does lead me to expect more than the cinematic equvalent of tofu. zzzz.

Popularity: 1% [?]

i think its rad that i got rejected for a capital one credit card. (perhaps its not so rad but i know the limit on my other card and my car lease – my credit should be fine. or was, when i last checked on it a year ago when i got the car.)

* * *

how awesome is it that i just paid 2.15 for a gallon of gas? esp when i bought not one gallon, but roughly 11.

i also just got word from meg in nyc that she saw yoffy last night. thats rad in and of itself – i like the fluidity of my friends jumping cities and popping up in different places. but meg mentioned the prom party to him and he said something about coming to it dressed only in sweat bands.

Popularity: 1% [?]

package: received to where it was headed. now we wait. for a long time.

im exhausted. i had a really nice time visiting roxy last night. even though the drive was about twice as long as normal cause it was fri afternoon rush hour.

racing back here, showering, eating, racing to school for solid 7 hours of programming, followed by discussion and posting of the progress.

we will be in the lab again tomorrow, trying to wrap up some of the looser ends, so we can try to get ahead.

i have whats left of the evening off; im trying to decide how it should be spent – more homework, playing with processing, reading, gameboy, scanning pictures for the site (once scanned, ill have another 100 to post…).

hm. maybe i should start doing cocaine.

Popularity: 1% [?]

---

abdelilah is one of my best friends. he’s also my one of my best friends here in morocco. he’s been a teacher, a roommate, and a drinking buddy for the last two years, though we’ve known each other for three or more now. just for those who haven’t noticed me drop his name off and on.

anyhow, the other night he was supposed to meet us at california, and ended up coming an hour late. he got there and said he got a crazy phone call. some guy called and just started talking to him. abdelilah got annoyed and told him to identify himself or he would hang up, not having a clue who the guy was. the guy said he was his brother.

abdelilah’s oldest brother left to join the army when abdelilah was still a baby. his few memories of him were from a couple months around the age of five when his brother came home on sick leave, having been wounded in the leg. abdelilah has six brothers and three sisters, by the way, himself being the youngest. anyhow, when abdelilah was six, his oldest brother was captured by the polisario on the border with algeria in 1981, leaving his wife and child without knowing what had happened to him.

over the following ten or fifteen years, reports came on the news reporting certain moroccan units having been killed, often vaguely referring to abdelilah’s brother. fellow soldiers would pass through the village now and then saying that they thought they had seen his brother’s corpse on the battlefield. family members with access to other news sources would visit and tell of his possible death. other soldiers that had been held in captivity were released, telling the family that his brother had still been left behind in prison. one or twice a year some new piece of news would come to his family, living in a small village in the mountains, claiming his brother had died once again. the family suffered greatly, never knowing for sure what had happened.

then, about six years ago, they got a very short message from the brother, from prison, saying that he was alive and was allowed to ask for a coat. the following year another short, censored note came, asking for some shoes. the letters stopped coming again. abdelilah’s father had died before the first note had come.

then abdelilah’s brother was finally released, after 23 years in a polisario prison. and he called the family. and he called abdelilah. then abdelilah came and had some drinks with us.

his brother is in agadir right now, and will be returning home to his family’s village in the next week or two once he gets all his paperwork cleared, bringing him back, bureaucratically, from the dead. ever since i first met abdelilah we had talked about his brother, and what had happened to him. he was taken in his early twenties; he’s fifty one years old now.

peace

Popularity: 1% [?]

So, you want to make a film about the last hours of Christ’s mortal life. Fine. And you want to be really, really, really graphic about it so as to convey the awful, rending torture He went through in order to offer salvation to mankind. Okay. And you choose not to focus on the message of His lifetime (love), but rather the WWE-ready parts that a bloodthirsty culture such as ours will titter over and readily devour. Hey, it’s your sou… I mean, movie. Hey, call it Mad Max: Beyond Calvary if you want.

But, Mr. Mel Gibson, if you’re going to do something and call it an act of your faith, a calling from the Almighty, don’t license merchandise. Folks, I’m pretty sure Saint Peter won’t be checking for Nail necklaces at the gate. You want to be a good Christian? Give the $16.99 to a missions organization, drop it in the plate on Sunday or give it to the homeless guy on the corner. As for Riggs, err, Gibson: if you’re going to make a movie about a man whose sole display of anger was in turning over the tables of the money changers in temple, who called out those who would profit from religion, perhaps it might be wise to not glean some extra coin off of movie merchandising in His name.

‘Cuz, y’know, JC was all about the bling-bling, right?

Popularity: 1% [?]

Hypothetically, what do you think it would mean if the company you worked for asked you to hire a guy to work under you who has ten years more experience than you? Then, what if they decided to offer this person more money than you. What do you think this would mean? Would this mean that they think you would make a good manager and not mind the money issue? Or would it mean that the company is planning to give you a big raise to even things out at the end of the year? Maybe it means I need to start looking for a new job.

Perhaps on a related issue, we moved into our new house. This is part of the reason I haven’t posted in about a month. The phone’s on and we have the satellite dish set up; but no Internet yet. We’re still trying to figure out what to do. Since we now live outside of town, DSL doesn’t reach us. And since we already have the dish, cable modem is going to be expensive. I have dial-up through work, but I haven’t bothered to find out what the number is. But with the new house and all sorts of big things going on at work, I’ve hardly had any time for anything, no how.

We have mice in our garage. They come in through the cracks in our garage doors at night to snack on our trash. I’ve been battling the mice because I don’t want them to chew up my house. My methods are varied. I went to Lowe’s last weekend and bought two two-packs of traps and some pellets that soak up all of the water in the mice until they shrivel into little mouse-mummys. On the first night, all of my traps killed mice. I got rid of the traps, along with the dead mice. I may have fainted if I tried to lift the hinges off of their little broken necks.

Over the past week, more mice ate the pellets. Lisa came home from work on Wednesday and found a mouse that ate a pellet. It didn’t move, but it was panting because it was drying up in the middle of the garage. Lisa put it in a box with a paper towel and a little dish of water. She cried for it the rest of the night. It was dead by Thursday morning. I folded the flaps of the box over and sealed it shut. I wrote R.I.P. Mr. Squeak on the top of the box with my Chewbacca magic marker and left the oversized casket for the trash guys. Lisa cried some more. It’s a good thing that trash day is Thursday, but I don’t think I’ll be buying any more pellets.

I’ve thought of a good way to build a good non-lethal trap using a 1″x4″, a bucket, a dowel rod, a soda can and some peanut butter. I’ll be excited if it works. Stupid mice.

Popularity: 1% [?]

i just spent an hour and a half trying to make my canon xl-1 at work talk to premiere. if this ever happens to you (where you get a nice ‘no dv device available for capture’ message, this is the help page for you. thank the heavens for google groups. for the zillionth time.

ive reminded myself how superstitious i am the past few days.

i sent out an important package midday on wed and i can honestly admit i spent too much time signing multiple copies of the letter, trying to pick the right (read: good luck) surface to sign on, the orientation of the contents into the envelope, etc. (in fact, im nervous about even mentioning it for fear of a jinx. sigh.)

this might make me a loser, though i think its closer to simply insane.

Popularity: 1% [?]