Exchanged a couple of emails with Marina on 18th. She gave me a phone number to call her, complaining how she lacks internet skills, so she didn't even know whether she sent the message or not, and that she's got problems for quite a while. It's an office number, so „call me before 19h, it's 17:35 now“. Replied the next day, explained that I was on the plane from Houston and it was her midnight when I arrived, and, well, can't really help her problems with anything but information, for anything else I have either bad history or lack of means. And that I hate telephones, learned to hate them back at work, it was always users with problems who called. And even on information, internet is one, looks the same from there as from here.
It continued yesterday
how muc time did pas since te day you left to build yourself a beter life in tat too distant America?
To myself? I was okay enough at home. Come to think of it, I'd be okay almost anywhere. But I have children, and they had no future there. That's what I'm building.
I mis you a lot - te time didn't do (don't know how) realy anyting in te sense tat you keep apearing in my tougts and how I'd want to see you!!!
I'd love to see whole Zrenjanin... and maybe not. When I see how well Koštunica and Šešelj did [on elections], when I remember they introduced veronauka*, that the thieves are still not incarcerated - then what did change for [the] better? Perhaps it's better that I keep the memory of the indomitable spirit of resistance as it was before it lost its fizz.
It's not a complaint but I'd so love us to sit or just walk and talk at ease of al and everyting.
So would daddy, son. On the other hand, I may have grown old enough to be not soo interesting to listen to anymore. Sometimes I bore even myself when I hear how I retell the things I said before. Perhaps wisdom would be in becoming a better listener.
Are te tree years up already, after whic you said you'd drop by into tis faterland of ours. Eh?!!
If everything I said would have come true, where would I end up... the plans exist so they can be changed, and if some partly realizes**, the better.
This year so far, at least money-wise and in future prospects, that I'm lucky if I can plan two weeks ahead. We had times with cash to the roof, and when we omitted even peanuts from the shopping cart. At least I didn't get fat - stiil the same as ten or twenty years ago :).
As for coming to the old hood - children first. To me, this kind of virtual presence suffices. I read newspapers from home, communicate with several people from home - and at least I get spared the ugly bits, except when they start complaining and downright envy me. It's not that there's no uncertain times here, but that's sporadic and lasts a week or two a year. At home it was the other way around.
And that was the last of it.
(... 112 words...)
On the oldwave mailing list, discussing stuff with Škrba:
I wonder what really could Philip K Dick possibly have written, to make the story into enough matArial for this much.
Eh... when I only remember the nebulous „half man half lawnmower“... The scenario is deduced tom a King Steven's story, which is in the movie just an episode, which could have easily been left out :(. Then the development of the citizen's intelligence was flagrantly lifted from „Flowers for Algernon“, with the influence of scalpel on brain reflexes being replaced with that of VR. And, finally, the escape of the virtual mind into the phone network, which was stolen from a third story, the title of which I forgot. A pukeworthy amalgam. As one granny here would say, cun*s and potato mash patties.
Mind you, even the Matrix, one of the rare hollywood pieces in recent years which has a rounded story, was patched from I don't even know how many things, beginning from old Lem's "Futurologists' congress", and all the way to Gibson. Here they make them movies by recipe, from a cookbook, and the audience is such that rarely anyone takes a peek into the whole & substance, they rather just check whether it has the elements. That's how they're taught in school. What we were grudgingly going through in serbian classes under "analysis of a piece" and secretively wrote for ourselves, they take quite seriously around here... and in rare occasions, by rare persons, fathom deeper. But that's why in those technical details they go into thin guts - who has in which role taken upon someone else in some other role, is the sfumato in the scenes better or worse than that in the Blade Runner, is the action dynamics dropping here and there, and generally how much popcorn does an average viewer consume. And they weakly feel any pain for some essence out there, that's for the scientists - they only care about "is this fun or not".
It matters that you don't look like an eastern geiger. Is the xenophobia increasing in the surrounding?
When hiring, and even there the reactions are twofold. When they hire you, or consider for hiring, they look how to cut it as low for you, or you aren't interesting if you aren't cheap enough. If you're foreign, they expect you to lower it. That may be the reason I haven't quickly found a job last fall - didn't want to lower it, I know how much I can catch. Though, I still don't have those eighty kilos a year, but at least I'm of some fame and work with the faces of some fame, so I gained references.
The other reaction is when you start complaining some... then it's a "but you did come here, eh?". As in why did you come if you don't like it. I think to myself, fuck you mothers, I came to loot my share of what you looted from the rest of the world.
On the job front, Berix found some side show, where we're supposed to just bring an old app written by some old (but not so experienced) foxer, in CodeMine framework, and bring it up to speed with minimal intervention. Scouring the code to find the most obvious bugs first. Again, from our old customer, Joe.
Pouring čorba into the Corolla at the old pump on the corner, where the road to our place diverts from the twonyniner. The exit from the pump is rather steep, as it's on a slope and that side is lower. The spot where the exit connects to this sideroad the asphalt has lots of gouges, because many cars are low and the american safety laws require a lot of mass ahead of the front axle. So when they leave, they bump their schnozzle on the pavement. I didn't have that problem, the Corolla ain't that low and I saw what was going on so I'd stick to the right edge, thus lessening the angle.
This was the only time I saw how they used to use the pay cards, without a modem connection with any service which would check the account. The pump guy took my card, put it under double selfcopying paper bill, and passed some rubber roller over it, to impress the embossed digits. The whole check was in these mechanically copied digits and the hope that, probably, the operator would type them correctly.
----
* religion as a school subject
** becomes real, the original meaning of the word.
17-XII-2013 - 12-I-2026