A busy week.

On Monday I had a date with Miss Bee, on Tuesday with Miss J, and on Wednesday with Miss I.

Let's cheerfully forget about Miss J: she is a nice enough person, but thanks but no thanks. Far too weird for me. And I know weird...

Now, Miss Bee is a nice person too, quite attractive in her own right, intelligent, cheerful, interesting, charming even, but... she isn't a Miss at all. No, not that kind of "not a Miss at all" :-) About to be divorced, two kids, not really living somewhere, torn between friends and families: the work. Been there, done that, I would gladly see her again but I am not up for that kind of involvement. Besides, I am not that sure that she will actually carry on with her divorce plans and my policy is not to interfere with other people life anyway. Mine is busy and complicated enough  already, so thank you, it is tempting, but I will have to pass. Nothing new under the Sun. 

The interesting part is this: as it was a first date, we exposed our most recent relationships, and I had to talk about Miss I. I said something along the line of "A kind of soft relationship. You know, when no one is really getting it moving". Which isn't true. What would have been true to say would have been "When no one dares to get it moving", or "When no one is confident enough to get it moving".

Which brings us to Miss I.

A little context first: Miss I is finally out of her predicaments, things are looking good for her at last, and we have kind of acknowledged that we have forged some kind of still indefinite bond. Which is an improvement in a way. Another step in the long and tortuous route to wild cats bonding. I know that too...

We ended up in her hallway, having one of these open but veiled and heavily subtexted talks she is so fond of. I rarely congratulate someone, but here I have to give her credit: she has been very close of making me furious. I actually had to go out, telling her that I would write her soon. I had far too much to say and not enough composure left to take it in stride. Not to say that her points weren't valid ones. She got me thinking about a few things. More than a few actually. Yes, I have already conceded it, we do have very different outlooks on, mostly, everything. Yes, I hadn't given a thought about some of my feelings, and, yes again, I dare not go further. Because, the truth is that I do not understand her as much as I would like to feel, not safe, just that I am not heading in the wrong way. The conclusion is that I am now standing right where I was in December 2008 (the 28th, to be precise), which, I gather, was the way I had been feeling for a few months then. I have tried a few things, went to investigate supposedly greener pastures, tried to bury her, to no avail. And still I do not understand what she says she is expecting of me. It is driving me mad when I think of it. The more I try, the more I fail. The more she talks, the less I understand. Still, I keep on trying. And I honestly do not know why. I am a fucking pathetic mess. What I am trying to say is that I am trying to give her some answers, because I know that they will mean something to her, but I do not even know whether or not I have understood her questions. Sometimes it feels like I am a blind man talking about paintings, sometimes like I am talking colours with someone who has Daltonism. I just do not get it. It's like the first time I picked up a Rubik's cube. 

Anyway, I do not want to give up. There is something. We both feel it. We just cannot find a way to make it to the light. Maye it is me, maybe it is her, maybe it is both of us. Maybe we need more time just to learn about each other. Maybe, maybe, maybe...

I wrote her something along these lines, as I said I would, and I am still in the dark. 

I'll see soon enough ;-)

The story of S

Once again, I have spent the last Thursday evening with Miss I. It came as a surprise, as she was supposed to have something else to do. Anyway, as usual, she came up with a conversation that acted like a long fuse, the kind that triggers the sudden realisation that you have been missing on something for years, waking you up the following night. 20+ years in this case.

She asked me about someone I went to high school with. She knew her from college, and found S quite distasteful. I told her that she once was a very good friend of mine, and that she indeed turned out to be a less than a sterling person.
S is very intelligent: math and language oriented, with a lot of people skills and a daring attitude. She had a supportive family, was quite popular, fun to be with and a great friend of mine when I had trouble adjusting. My surrogate A at the time.
Then her older sister died. Her older sister was just like her, really brilliant. I do not know, I cannot explain what happened. The only thing I know is what I saw: a family being transformed. They all stayed together, of course, but, in a way, they took her death as a failure. They lost something more than a loved one. Something good was broken, and replaced by the intimate understanding that life is indeed too short.
I'll leave it at that.
Things changed, we were still friends but not that close any more. Then we grew apart.
We lost touch a few years later. I heard of her and her family. And what I heard through different channels, some of them very public, some other informal and very private didn't really made me want to get back in touch.
I'll leave it at that too.

But, beyond some vague feelings and half formed opinions, I hadn't seriously thought about this episode and how it had affected me, even though it got me to adopt a very well defined and consequential attitude toward some people.
Thanks to Miss I and a funny dream, I now know.
Basically, I have found out what I already knew and had never formulated.

Two kinds of people get my attention: those who serve, because they believe in something bigger than themselves ; and those who hack, in a very broad sense, because they question systems that shouldn't be able to deprive us from basic dignity.

But only those who exhibit these two traits gain my respect.
Serving without hacking is being a mindless drone. Hacking without serving is being blindly self serving. You must have purpose and the means and will to question your purposes.
 
Motivation, intention, will and means. We always get back to those.

39

Happy birthday to me ;-)

Sex and fury

So, Miss I and I went to watch a film at the Offscreen Festival, and she carefully selected this. Her main criteria was that it was the first film not part of a series she could see. Right.

It tells the story of a girl intent on revenge. She witnessed her father assassination, became a pickpocket and a gambler and went on to avenge the murder. Naked. In the snow. On her way she meets a guy in love with the most ridiculous spy ever, a corrupt politician or two, her long lost mother, nuns with knives, a lesbian maid and gets whipped in a church. Yeah. Right. 

The main actress is nice enough, the score is nice for a 1973 motion picture (read: a kitsch fashion statement nowadays), and the scenery and props are just awful (read: they were laughable even in 1973). The scenery is particularly bad, with parts looking to be made for dwarves because the perspective is completely screwed. And the colours, especially the walls, are just plain ugly. So ugly it is shocking. 

The plot is good, when you consider that it is mainly an excuse for some bad (very) softcore porn scenes and bloody chambara (with bad fake artifical blood, of course, you know, the purple gruelly kind) with a female ass popping in and out of it.

Still, I liked it. It has some good scenes, isn't really boring, and is adequately played. All things being considered, if you take it for what it is worth and come to it without any expectations, it is good enough. And, the chances are you have never seen it before. An interesting experience, but not a film I'll watch twice. On some points it is better than Kill Bill. The main ones being that it is shorter, the plot is clearly an excuse for some visual carnage, and that it is just plain funny, deliberately or not ;-)

Twin Peaks vs. Grey's Anatomy

Until very recently, my only exposure to Twin Peaks was half an episode seen 20 or so years ago, and listening for hours to the score looping ad nauseam in an ex girlfriend's car for months. I progressively came to hate Angelo Badalamenti, but I hated driving more, so I put up with the music. Since then, I have been unable to watch a single episode past the opening credits.
Anyway.
I usually like Lynch, so I bought the Twin Peaks DVDs when they came out a few years ago, but I hadn't gotten around to watching then since.
Until now that is.
And I like it. There are quite a few characters that I like, my favourites being Audrey Horne and Maj. Briggs. The seer with the log before the opening credits is nice too. The story is typically Lynchian, which means to me nice for an hour or three, and hardly bearable beyond that.
And what do I do when I am bored watching DVDs? I pump iron. Then the boredom induced by the show strangely abates, as if both boredom sources were working against each other to keep me focused on something else I have running in my mind. I find this very satisfying in a weird way.

Until now, my favourite show for weight lifting was Grey's Anatomy. It is in no way comparable to Twin Peaks. Grey's Anatomy sheer inanity is at first compelling then extremely annoying. Twin Peaks has the same effect to me: its sheer strangeness is at first attractive then profoundly annoying. Add the score and the annoyance becomes insufferable. Until I pick up the weights. Then it becomes bearable again.
You can pick up Grey's Anatomy at any time, and you will understand it all. When you pick up Twin Peaks at random, you won't understand a single thing.

So, for completely different reasons but according to the very same weird process, these two series make perfect weight lifting background.

Something must be very wrong with me :-)

This is not a game

He did it.

Again.

He didn't invent cyberpunk when he wrote "Hardwired". Sterling and Gibson, among many others, were already there. 

He didn't invent "post-human-punk" when he wrote "Aristoï". Banks was already there.

He didn't invent science-fantasy or "arcane-punk" when he wrote "Metropolitan". Bradley and many others had already done that before.

He didn't invent space opera nor military SF when he wrote "The Praxis", Weber, Smith and many, many, many others had gone that way long before him.

But, each and every time, he makes a masterpiece. This guy is a kind of Bowie when it comes to SF: he takes what is currently floating around, put his own spin and create a very enjoyable and original piece.

This time, he wrote "This is not a game". Now, WJW is surfing on wave going back to Brunner's "Shockwave Rider", maybe even further. Recently, Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" renewed the theme, and even more recently there were the excellent "Little Brother" by Doctorow and "Halting State" by Stross. All of it is already in Brunner and Toffler, of course, but still, he dit it. Again. And it is very good indeed.

 

Thank you Mister Williams ;-)

Essential iPhone apps

Note: I started listing apps, then thought about linking them. The obvious place to start was the Apple web site. I have never found out how to search for an app from this site without having to launch the dreaded iTunes. As usual, a little googling brought me right on track.

Free

• Google: your Google stuff made available from a single place, but launched in Safari. Your Google apps stuff too, which is really nice.
• Wapedia: let's face it, the Wikipedia mobile site is bad. Their dedicated iPhone app is worst. Wapedia gives you bookmarks, contents table, and access to other wikis from the same interface.
• Tellmewhere: rate your favourite places, find people who share your tastes, get recommendations. It works pretty much anywhere: what aroundme could have been but isn't. Pretty much invaluable when you are lost in the city, looking for a restaurant you will like.
• Linkedin: like the web site, easier to use and integrates with your contacts.
• Kindle: Amazon's book reader.
• Kobo: Kobo's book reader.
• Stanza: Generic book reader.
• Shazam: ever wondered what is this tune you are hearing? Shazam will find it for you.
• Radio.BE: streamed Belgian radio stations.
• TV Gids Belgïe Lite: a TV guide in Dutch. As I do not have a TV nor do I speak Dutch, that's fine :-)

Paying

• Sleep Cycle: an app I have found there. It wakes you up gently when you start moving in your sheets a few minutes before your waking time. And it tells you how much you have slept, draws graphs and computes an average. My average total time is currently 4h 34m. And I was wondering why I was feeling tired these last few weeks ;-)