Sermon on the Couch

Domestic violence drops in for a visit

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 14:00:00 +0000

I punched my wife for the first time today. Here's how it happened. Spoiler alert: it's not my fault. It's my uncle's, and that creep's in my bedroom. Also, Clay's and Josh's.

I had a tough night.

I was hanging out with my uncle and my aunt. We were talking about how his co-workers have no sense of humor. He plays pranks on them and they just don't appreciate it. Oh, they laugh, but the laugh doesn't reach their dead eyes. Sometimes it doesn't even reach their mouths, they just make huh huh sounds like they're trying their best but the botox is a cruel master. Also, my uncle takes them all on vacation sometimes, but they don't appreciate that either. They want to be taken to Thailand or something, but he only takes them to the cold Appalachian mountains, way up in Maine, and puts them through a grueling bootcamp. It's for their own good of course. Engineers sit more than ever these days. If they don't give their body a little shock every once in a while to remind it who works for whom, one day it's going to give them a big one. They're going to need a friend with a defibrillator to un-shock themselves.

But his co-workers? Zero appreciation. Not that my uncle needs it. He's the kind of guy who can laugh at a joke in a packed auditorium and lose zero volume when no one else laughs. Maybe he gets even louder, who knows.

I don't know my uncle very well is what I'm trying to say.

Then I realized my parents were about to come home, and I was only wearing a loin cloth. I decided I'd better go change. I ran upstairs to my room, flashing my uncle and his wife a little on the way I think, those one-size-fits-all loin cloths have a different standard for "fits."

When I got to my room, it was pitch dark. Then it was slightly less so, because there was a truck pulling into the driveway. That would be my parents. They must have bought a truck on the way home. I turned on the light, because I'd forgotten my night-vision goggles and saw a strange man standing in front of me. I didn't have time to decide whether he was a threat or not, because I punched him in the face.

I think I woke up mid-punch. I guess the shock of seeing a stranger in my room in the safest little town in the country flipped a Rambo switch I didn't know I had. But it also threw me right out of the Matrix and back into the real world, or at least one level up in the simulation. I felt my fist connect with meat and realized I had just punched my wife in the shoulder. We've only been married for a few years so we still sleep in the same bed. We even laugh at each other's jokes sometimes. Huh huh. And now I punch her sometimes, unprovoked.

In the moon's weak light, filtering through the shades alongside the rapt gazes of the sleep voyeurs across the street, I saw my wife turn her head towards me and crack her eyes open.

"What?" she said in a sleepy and indifferent voice, like I'd just gently whispered her name into her ear instead of permanently tattooing my knuckles into her deltoid.

"Nothing," I said. "I just remembered a joke."

But she was already asleep.

So the question is, in light of this new information, should I work out more or less?

Hold on. I forgot to say why it's Clay's and Josh's fault. It's not on principle. It's not because we have some kind of pact where we share the blame for everything. That would be cool, but I can probably find safer partners in that enterprise. Preferably someone in a coma. It's because we're scheduled to meet at the Brooklyn Zoo gym Tuesday night, two days from now, and I woke up at 2AM with the strongest antipathy to the idea. I reached over my wife, grabbed my phone, checked the time and made a mental note: 2AM - strong antipathy to Brooklyn Zoo. I'm a very responsible person.

Then I lay there for thirty minutes, or maybe two hours, tossing and turning and whining to myself about how I was going to have to drive for nearly two hours there, only to have to drive nearly two hours back a few hours later. I really didn't want to do it. Really really. I'm not sure I remember not wanting to do something so strongly in the recent past as I didn't want to do all that driving.

Why had I agreed to it? They're just friends, fuck 'em right? I don't need friends. Sleep is what I need. If scientists had to choose between sleep and friends, they'd pick sleep any day of the week. How long can you survive without friends? No one's successfully tested the upper limit. How long can you survive without sleep? A few days if you're not competing on an international level? QED. That is why the American Heart Association, as of the year 1776, strongly recommends that when faced with the either-or choice of friends vs sleep, you should always choose sleep.

The punching incident came soon after this. Thanks for nothing guys, and see you in Brooklyn. I'll bring the blame game.

Clay's disgusting joke

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 22:33:00 +0000

Clay is a wonderful person. I feel like I should say this now, in case you're only looking for one takeaway before you stop reading. Have a nice day.

Still here? Ok, so Clay told me this disgusting joke. I wouldn't say it's objectively disgusting. It's not disgusting cause of the blood. It's not disgusting cause of the incest. It's disgusting because I've already attached the label "disgusting" to it in my mind, and now it's too late to reevaluate. It's disgusting, and that's final. In fact it gets more disgusting every time I think about it, without thinking about the content of the joke at all. Like the fisherman's fish that grows with every telling. The curse of having a good memory, eh?

Now, if it were up to me, I wouldn't breathe a word about this to anyone. Clay is a friend, why would I want to replace him in everyone's head with a disgusting joke? Think about it, what's the most memorable impression you have of Clay? Was it that time he made you laugh? That's sweet. If it's also true, then I'm insanely jealous. Was it the time he said something really profound, and you thought to yourself, "holy shit, Bob, I had abandoned all faith in enlightened thought!" If that was the case, pass that holy shit forward, I could use some enlightenment in my diet.

For me it was Clay's joke. Every time I think of Clay, I think of blood and incest, and the griffin's squawk the joke tore out of my throat before I curled up into a fetal ball and mourned the loss of our friendship's innocence. Or as Jews say, celebrated our friendship's bar mitzvah. And still, I consider him a dear friend, which tells you something about how wonderful he is. It doesn't tell you anything about me. I'm just a man with no innocence left.

So if it were up to me, I would try in vain to forget this for the rest of my life. Just a little more garbage on the ever-growing mental landfill. Unfortunately, it's not up to me, because past me, specifically me from two days ago, the fucker, already leaked the events to the press. We can only pick up the pieces now, and lie to each other that they fit. Don't worry, it's not that hard. Picasso did it for a living.

Here's where things get complicated. Clay didn't just tell the joke to me. Ben was also present. Yes, that Ben. The second one from the left in my mental picture. He's grinning, because he loved the joke as much as I did, and he's looking worried now that I dragged him into this. He should be, he's not getting out of this one easy.

Still, this is a containable situation. As long as everyone just sits back, has a beer, maybe a lobotomy, and doesn't wax too curious, this joke can be buried forever.

Alas, someone waxed. You know who you are. You know what you did. Steph, please come forward. Can you hear me? A little closer to the mic? How about now? Yes, well, you just couldn't put your curiousity in your mind vice and crush it, could you? You had to ask. Remember, you pushed that domino.

After buttering me up with compliments on my unique hairstyle, Steph asked me if she should ask Clay to tell her his joke, or if it was better left unheard.

Steph: ok, now that I've buttered you up with compliments, should I ask Clay to tell me the joke? Or do I not want to know?
Me: the joke that I warned him explicitly, in a public forum, against telling anyone ever again?
Steph: yes, that joke. Why, was there another joke?
Me: yeah, Clay told me this great joke about this Russian war hero that...no wait that was me. Also you should ask Ben about the difference between jelly and...never mind.
Steph: ooh, do I want to know that one?
Me: I think you're too far down the rabbit hole. You're stuck, like Winnie the Pooh
Steph: you're right, the only way is through. Oops, pooh, through, that rhymed, sorry about that. Also, how did Winnie the Pooh manage to get his big bear head into a rabbit hole in the first place?
Me: he used his poetic license
Steph: I'm going to ask Clay to tell me the joke
Greek Chorus: the old Steph is dead! Long live the new Steph!

Did you see how nonchalant I was? Well I wasn't really. Meanwhile, in a chat with Clay:

Me: Clay, you're going to have to leave the country
Clay: shit. How long do I have?
Me: about thirty seconds
Clay: not enough time. Just hold me
Me: [hold Clay emoji]
Clay: it's been thirty two seconds. I'm still alive. Was this a joke? Oh shit, Steph just messaged me
Me: put her on hold! Don't answer any of her questions! Pretend she got the wrong number!
Clay: she's asking me to tell her that joke! I told you that in confidence!
Me: Ben made me do it!
Clay: ok, this is no time to panic. We need to think. There has to be a way out. I've been answering her messages with a five minute delay from day one, for just this eventuality
Me: really? I need to refactor my thirty seconds estimate then. Hold on
Clay: hurry
Me: uh...ok, the math shows that if we didn't waste time doing the math, you would have had just enough time to escape to Canada
Clay: phew. And fuck
Me: Amen to fuck
Clay: ok, wait, I think have an idea
Me: I think I just had the same idea
Clay: on three?
Me: on three
Clay: one
Me: two
Clay: Ben!
Me: Ben!
Clay: ok, what did you mean by "Ben!"? Cause I meant we need to get our story straight with him, so we can substitute in a different joke without Steph suspecting anything
Me: exactly. Except that'll never work, because Steph might have already gotten to him. You know how intelligent she is
Clay: shit, I wish it was her trying to dupe me. Or her trying to dupe you. You know, something feasible
Me: or Ben
Clay: which Ben?
Me: the second one from the left in my mental picture
Clay: right. For a second I thought you switched them. Ok, so what did you have in mind?
Me: well first, Ben's lost. Collateral damage. We don't know if Steph got to him already, so we can't trust a word he says. We can only trust each other. Because we would never lie to each other, never ever, right?
Clay: right. Well...if we're being completely honest with each other from now on, remember when I told you your sun hat looked good?
Me: it's one of my best memories from the trip
Clay: oh. Well, in that case, I don't think I properly conveyed how much I loved it. Some things just aren't meant to be expressed in words. By me
Me: wow, that's beautiful. All those words you didn't say, they're really speaking to me
Clay: yes. But go on. Ben's lost, you were saying. Who's Ben?
Me: "who's Ben?" exactly. It's sad to lose four people in one go, but we have no choice. It's just you and me now. Here's what we say in the group chat, or rather what you say: "guys, I know you're wondering what the joke was that Mark said I should never tell, so in the interest of never telling it again, here it is." Then you paste the substitute joke
Clay: perfect. I'm going to find a plausible replacement right now. What do they know about the joke? Just that it's disgusting, right? Piece of cake. Googling "mildly sick joke"
Me: and when any of the Bens say something like "that's not the joke!" we have to act all affronted
Clay: like, "Ben, I thought we were friends! We snored to each other, doesn't that mean anything to you? Why would you want to frame me like that?"
Me: poor Bens, I wouldn't want to be in their shoes now
Clay: who's Ben?
Me: right, sorry. But you do need to know his name, in case he says something in the chat
Clay: good point
Me: ok, it's settled then. You tell the joke in the group chat, we commit the Bens to a mental asylum if necessary, and we can all move on with our lives. Steph won't think you're a monster
Clay: because I'm not
Me: you're a man that got mixed up with the wrong joke. It could have happened to anyone
Clay: ok, I've got the perfect joke

[Chat with Steph]

Steph: I bugged Clay till he told me the joke. He says he's going to tell the whole group in a minute
Me: oh yeah? How are you feeling?
Steph: uh, fine? A bit underwhelmed if anything. Kind of offended, actually. You guys thought a little bestiality would freak me out?
Me: bestiality?
Me: I mean, yes. Bestiality

[Group chat]

Clay: guys, I know you're wondering what the joke was that Mark said I should never tell, so in the interest of never telling it again, here it is:

Dr. Jesse had sex with one of his patients and felt guilty all day long.

No matter how much he tried to forget about it, he just couldn't.

The guilt was overwhelming.

But every once in a while he would hear a reassuring voice in his head that said:

"Jesse don't worry about it. You aren't the first medical practitioner to have sex with one of his patients and you won't be the last. Just let it go, Jesse."

But invariably another voice in his head would bring him back to reality, whispering:

"Jesse... Jesse... you're a veterinarian, you sick bastard!"

Steph: lame. This joke was so oversold
Clay: I blame Mark
Me: hey, what's a little hyperbole between friends?
Ben: uh Clay...I don't remember you telling that joke

[Chat with Clay]

Clay: here we go
Me: remember, present a united front

[Group chat]

Clay: what?
Ben: no, you definitely told a different joke. Does the word "jelly" ring a bell?

[Chat with Clay]

Clay: wtf? He's trying to stick his own jelly joke on me!
Me: stick him in the mental hospital. All four of them!

[Chat with Steph]

Steph: I thought the jelly joke was Ben's
Me: uhh...

[Group chat]

Irad: what's the jelly joke? It sounds legit
Clay: I have no idea, ask Ben
Ben: don't be coy Clay, tell the man the joke. Irad likes a good joke
Me: yeah Clay, tell the man the joke

[Chat with Clay]

Clay: wtf man?
Me: sorry. The pressure...

[Chat with Steph]

Steph: wait, the jelly joke was Clay's too?
Me: ugh, I can't do this anymore. Okay, the truth is, Clay's sick. I've just been covering for him
Steph: wow. So you guys have been lying to everyone this whole time? Is there even a "jelly" joke or are you just getting all our hopes up?
Me: "our hopes up?" Steph, I think you might have a problem. Being disgusted by a joke isn't exactly winning a Nobel prize
Steph: tell me the fucking jelly joke! I have a right to be digusted!

[Chat with Clay]

Me: hm, I'm not sure Steph is who we thought she was
Clay: fuck you, dude. I'm in Canada

[Group chat]

Ben: well if Clay won't tell his joke, I will!

Birthright with Israel Outdoors, and extended adventures in Israel

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 15:37:00 +0000

I took notes for the first few days of the trip so I could blog about it later, but fell off the bandwagon around when we headed for Jerusalem. Oh well, I guess we'll have to do it again some time.

***

It's been a long first day, with lots of short-term memory abuse, along with more traditional forms of travel-induced stomach troubles. Grandma, I follow humbly in your footsteps.

The first adventure was the check-in at the airport. I was making small talk with other trip participants, and had just finished dropping an information bomb on serverless tech on a fellow coder (known to future me as Josh S), when it was my turn to check-in with El Al airlines. For the non-Hebrew speakers out there, El Al means "flying jew." The conversation went something like this:

Woman: where do you live?
Me: New Haven, Connecticut. But honestly, New Jersey.
Woman: who do you live with?
Me: my Chinese grandma
Woman: has she ever been to Israel?
Me: no
Woman: have you been to Israel before?
Me: once, when I was a small Chinese child
Woman: how old were you?
Me: around eight or nine. Or seven or ten or eleven.
Woman: do you know anyone in Israel?
Me: yes, I have some family there, and friends of family
Woman: oh yeah, like who?
Me: well, my sister lives there now. She took the birthright trip and never came back
Woman: really? She never came back?
Me: you're right, she probably came back
Woman: you don't know if your own sister came back to the US?
Me: well she's in Israel now, I don't remember the details of her back and forth
Woman: where in Israel does she live?
Me: uhh, I think around an hour from Tel Aviv?
Woman: you don't know the name of the city?
Me: no
Woman: so you're not close with your sister
Me: Israel's the size of New Jersey, that's not close enough?
Woman: do you know where your other family members live in Israel?
Me: uhh...no
Woman: how is that possible?
Me: good question, my mom asks me that all the time. "You met with your friends and didn't ask what their jobs are? Does Eric have a girlfriend? Did Lee end up changing his name to Peter? Are you sure you didn't stay home-"
Woman: stop talking. Next question: do you celebrate the Jewish holidays?
Me: I did as a kid
Woman: which holidays?
Me: Hannukah, ...Purim, I think?
Woman: how did you celebrate them?
Me: by eating too much? Sometimes we lit things on fire. Sometimes my grandma would take me to the synagogue
Woman: you said Purim. Do you know what Purim is about?
Me: mm, I remember waving little gizmos around and making a racket
Woman: [sighs]. Do you belong to any congregation?
Me: no
Woman: do you ever go to the synagogue?
Me: no
Woman: do you have a synagogue in your town?
Me: yes! There's one right down the street from my house
Woman: what's it called?
Me: uhh...I call it the local synagogue
Woman: how do you not know anything about anything!?

At that point, she wrote TOO INCOMPETENT TO BE DANGEROUS in large invisible letters on my forehead and let me through. It was lucky for her, she seemed to be headed for a heartattack.

Apparently I had it easy. Some people got grilled by several agents, and then got slips of paper with a room number and time for a second interrogation. "Don't be late!" the paper read, "or you won't be interrogated." Winn, in particular, seemed to have gotten the full treatment, and Dmitry was unfortunate enough to have passed a Lebanese person in the street during his four years in college, which made him a person of interest. None of us were used to such rigor from security, and there was incredulity and jokes to go around.

Before boarding, right in the middle of our second ice-breaker exercise (what did I miss, guys?), I got called in for a bag search, which I admit, freaked me out a little, but I think the search team was warned that further questions would get them nowhere. They did find the pound bag of cocaine I'd smuggled into Ben's guitar, but it was within the airline's limits.

The plane ride was uneventful, the best kind of plane ride. I met more friendly people, including my future roommate Justin, who gave up his aisle seat to big Dave and sat between us, looking decidedly un-Jewish. He was probably extra Jewish on the inside, I decided, though he looked far too skinny to have an inside at all. Justin, care to defend yourself?

Looking back to standing in line at the airport, some people were still in their shells, me included. Not everyone though. Andreas was eminently approachable. Hal was a font of friendliness. I'm sure others had their friendly faces on, but from the suffocating safety of my comfort zone, people looked cool and intimidating. Josh S made standing in line look so impressive, I briefly considered changing careers. I made a brave (and good) decision and forced myself to talk to him. Ellie was standing somewhat warily on the sidelines of a nearby conversation, and I remember hesitating to introduce myself. I imagine my face broadcast the same wariness, because she didn't volunteer for friendship either. "I'm a turtle," she told me later, when there was no doubt that we'd hit it off.

***

Our first night, we stayed in a kibbutz in the Golan Heights, near the Syrian border. The little cottages were not what I envisioned a kibbutz to be like. In my mind it was more like a barracks from the flash-forward cut-scenes of the future in the Terminator movies. I didn't even realize we were in a kibbutz till Lila mentioned it to me the next morning on the bus. It felt like one of those little communities in the Poconos, cozy and mostly comfortable, with the addition of a dining hall, a Yoga & Bullshit room, and half a dozen stray dogs, enough for them to enjoy each other's company, but not so many that thoughts emerge of shrugging off the yoke of human oppression.

It was a tough night, despite having been awake for over twenty four hours. There were three of us in the room, two friendly guys and a sarcastic guy. There was no ice to be broken--Ben and Clay are warm inside and out--and conversation was effortless. We chatted for a while, then turned off the light and somehow got to telling jokes. Really really bad jokes, the kind that make you laugh and cringe at the same time. The kind you're not sure you should tell anyone ever. Ben, thank you for the jelly joke. Clay, don't ever tell that joke again. Yes, that joke. We eventually ran out and said good night, both disgusted and pleased with each other and ourselves.

"Good" was the wrong word.

I was on the cot near the window, Clay was in the middle, and Ben was at the other wall. Oh, that poor wall. It snored all night like it was dying of enphysema. The other walls relayed its suffering with breathless enthusiasm, the echoes layering into a hideous harmony.

Clay doesn't sleep well under duress apparently, because all of the times I woke up to the raspy tune of a lawnmower choking on gravel, the din was punctuated by frustrated sighs in his voice (it was dark, so I suppose Clay could have been out cold while Ben engaged in Tuvan ventriloquism). Several times an angry "fuck!" pierced the air, to be quickly drowned out by fresh material from Sweeney Todd's garbage disposal. At one point Clay reached over and violently shook Ben's bed, which was followed by an eerie but short silence. Ben resumed drilling for oil with a vengeance thirty seconds later. I wish I'd recorded the two of them. We could have probably sold it to a contemporary art museum.

In the morning, the first thing Ben said was, "how did you guys sleep? I couldn't sleep all night!" We instantly forgave him.

***

Breakfast at 8AM was an exercise in self-control that I didn't score well on. Buffets bring out the worst in me. I tried to remember what foods were high in fiber but I wasn't sure I saw any there other than cereal, which I'm irrationally prejudiced against. I stared at the spread and tried to ask each item mentally, "can I poop you out?" They weren't optimistic. I ate them anyway. Spoiler alert: there was pooping sometime later.

On the bus and during lunch, Daryl, Clay and I discussed law and the legal system. Daryl's a lawyer, and she loves the law. No, love is too weak a word, she luuurves it, you know? She loaves it, luffs it, two F's, yes. (Annie Hall, anyone?). I wish I could remember all the stuff I learned, but I'll have to settle for hoping I internalized some of it. Thanks, Daryl, I wish I was that passionate about software engineering! Or anything.

The burgers were good too.

***

It's been three days, and I've already lost three things. First, my water bottle. This is tragic, not just because it was a nice water bottle, but because it was Yuanechka's, which means I can't go back to the US or look her in the eyes ever again. I'll have to look at her breasts instead...which is what I've been doing all along anyway. Maybe I can go back after all?

I left the water bottle in the place we had lunch and law, and remembered it when the bus driver was pulling out, but couldn't bring myself to stop him. I let a single tear of pure masculinity roll down my cheek, and made my peace with cowardice.

The second was not my passport. What a relief! It was my Kindle. I searched through my entire backpack, then took everything out of it and looked on both sides of each item, in case it was hiding (except for the items that were folded into Mobius strips). It wasn't there. I leaned back in my chair and shook my head in disbelief. Then I noticed a big bulge in my pants pocket. It was my Kindle. Right next to the other bulge. My water bottle!? Sadly, no.

The third was my swim trunks. We visited the hot springs today, and spent an hour or two soaking ourselves in hot water and discussing biohacking techniques. Josh S swore by a breathing technique he'd learned from a Dutch superhero, Wim Hof, which Wim supposedly uses to hold his breath for extended periods of time, survive long immersions in ice water, enable his body to reject injections of Ecoli, and fit more than 280 characters in his Tweets. Wim trained twelve disciples in the art, and the results supposedly stood up to scientific scrutiny. Josh himself has tried the breathing technique and says he increased the number of pushups he could do in one set to 2X. Previously he could only do X. I know, as if X wasn't impressive enough!

But back to my lost swim trunks. I didn't realize I'd lost them till I started listing the things I lost just now, and while mentally reviewing the items in my inventory I hadn't lost yet, realized I should probably take my towel out of my backpack, as it's still wet. Unfortunately, my swim trunks were supposed to be rooming with the towel, and they were not. I must have left them in the changing room. Anyone could be wearing them now, but statistically speaking, it's probably someone famous.

***

We visited three countries' borders today: Lebnanon, Syria, and Jordan. We didn't cross any of them, as I imagine the forces of the bordering countries haven't heard of Birthright's peaceful mission, but we got within a mile or so and observed them with a mix of curiousity, fear, and incomprehension. Irad, our guide, gave us the gist of the current and historical geopolitical situation with each neighbor. We also went down into one of the bunkers, which was like descending into the belly of a submarine. It was a claustrophobic tunnel with metal walls, the rings reinforcing it at regular intervals making it look like I was inside the ribcage of a dinosaur. Or the belly of a giant worm.

Tomorrow we're getting some fresh Kosher meat in our group: six native Israelis. Our American group leaders, who sometimes feel like camp counselors with their infectious enthusiasm and encyclopedic knowledge of icebreakers, broke us into groups and assigned us an Israeli to prepare some kind of theatrical welcome for. Our poor Israeli is going to have a very strange idea of Americans. No stranger than the truth, but strange.

In other news, Clay and I decided to learn Hebrew, and then, like fucking heroes, went ahead and learned it. We are now fluent, check this out:

Ani mevin - I understand
Ani lo mevin - I don't understand

I think that pretty much covers any possible conversation we could have in this country. If they say one of those two phrases, I answer with the first pharse. Else, with the second phrase. Software engineering makes everything so easy.

***

Shit, this is where my notes get sparse. All it says is: "you loved it, bitch."

***

Extended adventures in Israel, after the tearful but hugful departure of over two thirds of the gang. We miss you, gang, but also, I miss you.
-------------------------------

Thursday morning, after breakfast with the other orphaned Extendables, I headed over to meet up with my sister Michelle to drop off my suitcase and do some troubleshooting for my startup, Tradle. I had to take a bus to get there, which was a little daunting, but with Google Maps I felt invincible, albeit dependent on a tiny, old and cranky battery for my superpowers. I felt less invincible when I realized the bus had zero English in it, not even the scrolling display with stop names. I arrived without issues however, or at least met up with someone who bore a striking resemblance to my sister. I camped out at her office for an hour or so, got chatted up by some of her co-workers, got my butt sniffed by some of the office dogs--brick and mortar dogs, not virtual or metaphorical ones, it's one of those retro offices--then decided to head over to Jerusalem and take a walk through the four quarters of the Old City.

I booked a night in a 4-bed mixed dorm at Abraham Hostel in Jerusalem, hugged my sister (or her replicant doppelganger) goodbye, rated her hospitality 5 stars on Google Maps, and hopped on the first of two buses. On the second bus, I was the only passenger, and spent the forty-five minutes or so of the trip chatting with the bus driver. He suggested, at length, that I not get stabbed walking in the Old City at night, and take a walk in the morning instead. I didn't take much convincing, but patiently listened to all forty-five minutes of it.

Abraham Hostel turned out to be an industrial mega-dorm, with the maximum occupancy of a small province in China. There was some kind of ecological lecture + panel scheduled for the evening, followed by a meeting of the UN in the adjoining hall. No amount of imaginary coffee made that seem survivable at the time, so I grabbed my free drink and the nearest friendly looking person at the bar and we went to browse the market and grab some dinner instead. My new friend turned out to be a Belgian psychologist who works with refugee children from Afghanistan. We had a nice chat, culminating in the rebranding of her profession as "brain engineer," before I headed in for an early night. There I go again, making engineers whereever I go. It's unsustainable is what it is.

Sleep was not to be, though Ben was thousands of miles away. Just as I was fading out, the door burst open, and a jolly gentleman in his late sixties or early seventies burst in and shouted Hi! at me in Russian. Naively, I responded in Russian. He lit up like a light bulb, shook my hand like he had just sold me a car, and asked me where I was from. Upon learning that I was from the US, he cried that it was an amazing coincidence because the person that had my bed before me was also from the US, and both the current and previous girl in the bunk above me were Italian. I didn't understand the import of this statement until later. Spoiler: those two people had asked to switch rooms because of a certain friendly someone. Two other people offed themselves when they panicked during their escape, and couldn't figure out which way the doorknob turned.

With the pleasantries concluded, the professor, as I'd dubbed him in my head, produced a folder from the room's desk's top drawer, and without preamble, began to lecture me on autogyros. I was unfamiliar with the term, but not for long. My poor ignorance, to be tortured at such length. tl;dr: the autogyro is superior to the helicopter in every way except financial success. But the world was finally ready for the autogyro, and he was the one to take it into the future.

Forty minutes later, the lecture drew to a close, but sleep was not on the dessert menu. Without so much as drawing breath, the professor launched straight into his next story: how he became an Olympic champion weight-lifter at the age of 62.

At one point, in the middle of this second high fantasy epic, the Italian girl came into the room and I was temporarily abandoned as the center of attention, as he tried to converse with her in Russian. She repeated his words back to him nonsensically, which he took for understanding, then rushed out before he could autogyro her. The weight-lifting saga resumed.

According to the professor, there are many categories in weightlifting competitions, and after conferring with a former champion, he chose the event that tested how many times you could lift a given weight in a limited span of time. He trained for three months, competed, won, then went home to present the medal to his wife and daughter. This was where the story took a strange turn. When he showed the certificate and the medal to his wife, she appeared not to believe him, or to use his terminology: "I could see it written on her face: bullshit!" Dismayed, he showed it to his daughter, whose response was along the lines of: "Dad, stop! It's not funny!" At that point he packed his things, walked out, and never saw them again.

Nap time? Wrong again. Next came the story of how to achieve happiness. tl;dr: take an item from your Problem drawer, and turn into a set of tasks to put in your Task drawer. When your Problem drawer is empty, close it so no more problems can get in.

Next came the story of why not to boil water. Why not? Boiling destroys its vitality!

Next came the parable of how men tricked women into abandoning telepathy as a form of communication in the garden of Eden, in favor of a much more deceptive form of communication, sign language, which itself was the early prototoype of spoken language.

At this point I have to admit that the whole time, I was begrudgingly fascinated. I desperately wanted to be left alone and get to sleep, and at the same time, I was consumed with curiousity for what was coming up next.

Eventually, another roommate arrived, a German kid, who looked half-amused, half-terrified at the prospect of a sleepless night full of educational programming. I knew that look. It was like looking into a mirror. The professor allowed him to turn off the light, however, and climbed into his own top bunk, but not before proclaiming that due to his drinking of bottled water (the water of vitality), he hadn't needed more than four hours of sleep a night in years. Seven hours later, I snuck out of the room to his delicate snoring. I thought I could hear words emerging from those fuzzy sounds, but it was probably just my brain taking poetic license, or secondhand schizophrenia. I'll have to see a brain engineer when I get back.

***

I was originally planning on staying with my sister in Ra'anana, but Andreas offered me to crash at their Airbnb in Tel Aviv. Or rather, Iron Man's Airbnb. It was a two-floor three-bedroom three-bathroom apartment, with a giant terrace looking out onto the city, a garage with a car elevator, and military bunker style shades that descended over the windows at the push of a button. I didn't mean to push that button, actually, and was careful about pushing any others afterward, in case they triggered some post-apocalyptic protocol, initiated a self-destruct sequence, or launched the apartment to Mars. I'm not sure how the owner planned to get us out of there if we decided to hole in.

Andreas, Justin and big Dave had rented the place for several nights, and security guard Ben had already made himself a little nest on the 2nd floor. I made myself another out of a lounge chair from the terrace and passed out upon reaching the horizontal. I woke up only once that night, to Ben screaming "why, Mark, why!?" He later explained that he was worried the lounge chair wasn't comfortable enough for me.

***

The 2nd day started slowly. No one had a clear idea of what they were doing, but everyone felt that time was limited. Panic slowly mounted, pressing on everyone's hangover. I was immune because I had a family visit scheduled for the afternoon, but I yelled at people a bit to fit in. Finally, the boys headed for a long walk to Jaffa, while I headed for some breakfast to kill time before my aunt picked me up.

***

Dave was leaving the next day, and I was invited to be the new Dave. I accepted, on the condition they call me Mark. We decided to extend the Airbnb for a few more days, rent a car, and drive it to all the places we'd missed or didn't get a close enough look at. I ordained myself Minister of Transportation, and took on the petty details of booking and picking up the car. I'd kept in touch with Ellie during the past two days, and she was now done with family matters. We planned to pick her up on our way to Haifa.

For the next two days, we criss-crossed Israel, treated each other to our respective musical tastes, learned to identify all the plants we passed (thanks Andreas!), engaged first shamefully, then shamelessly in selfie culture, and drank ourselves silly enough to go to a local strip club, which we were suprised to find out was more like an anteroom to a whorehouse. We went at a leisurely pace, achieved objectively little, but enjoyed a long look at the countryside and each other. It was great.

On the morning of the 18th, I drove Andreas and Justin to the airport, had breakfast with Ellie, and drove her to the bus station. Then I checked out of the apartment, and tried in vain to find parking in Tel Aviv. I finally found it, but at the cost of returning the car. Then I headed back to my sister's workplace. It was a deja vu moment.

***

Extended adventures in Israel, after the tearful but hugful separation from team Iron Man's Airbnb
-------------------------------

I had a very positive experience today in Israel, which had nothing to do with the local flora, fauna, cuisine, history, architecture, etc. It was the kind of experience that makes travel interesting for me.

Michelle and I were roaming the streets of Tel Aviv, me with a backpack and a suitcase, as my flight is tomorrow morning and I haven't made any accommodations for it, and Michelle with a backpack and a waterbottle with flowers in it. It's her birthday this week, so at any given moment she's packing flowers. There are also blanket forts in her near future.

We had just falafeled up, and were making our way to the bus stop.

Out of the corner of my eye something fell, and there was a clatter that could only have been a bike taking a spill. I whipped my head around to see a bike on the ground next to a telephone pole, a toddler strapped to the back of the seat, sticking out from it horizontally. The toddler didn't look particularly distressed. The mother, who'd probably dropped the bike as she was putting on her backpack, was bent awkwardly over it, trying to pick it up but unable to gain the leverage. My feet moved slowly in her direction. I think I would have been there in three seconds or so, when out of nowhere three figures whooshed in from different directions. The next instant there were four women picking up the bike together, one bracing the toddler with her hand. They had the bike up in seconds. I put my foot back back down where I'd lifted it from, and picked my jaw up off the dirty ground.

I aspire to always temper the pita of incredulity with the hummus of skepticism, but I don't think I've ever seen that before. I've seen people help strangers pick up a dropped item, hold doors open for them and perform various other courteous gestures. I've seen a college student give a $20 bill to a beggar, because he didn't have smaller bills. I've seen a man urinate on a police car. But for three strangers to respond simultaneously with the alacrity of trained lifeguards was not something in my experience bank. "I notice that I am confused," I recited the mantra of rationality to myself. I looked over to Michelle, and saw that she was practically bursting with pride for Israel, and I couldn't think of anything snide to say.

***

I didn't have accommodations for the last night, and had planned to crash at my sister's in Ra'anana, but Shoham offered me to crash at her apartment the instant she learned of my situation. I felt like I was imposing, but imposed anyway. Ra'anana seemed so far away... We met up for dinner at the Avocada with Claire and Ben M, where we shared three avocado-based entrees. Then Shoham took us to a bar with live music. It was some kind of high-powered riff-centric cousin of reggae, equally repetitive, but with no singing. It was skillfully rendered...but I can't honestly say I loved it.

Back at Shoham's, we chatted till around 2AM before going to sleep. We're both curious people-watchers apparently, and we compared notes on everyone from our group, trying consciously not to let conversation devolve into gossip. We had pretty different impressions of many people, which somewhat undermined my confidence in my assessments. Thanks Shoham!

Sponge Superpowers

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 18:22:00 +0000

Yuan Yuan called from her tour yesterday, and gave me an earful of righteousness about her uncultured clients who throw their garbage on the ground whenever they happened to be disposed to dispose of it, regardless of whether there's a trash can within 2 light years or 2 feet of them. All right, you got me, the 2 light years case wasn't actually tested using the scientific method.

Whenever this kind of thing happens, I feel as giddy as gossip girl who just got back to New York and first thing she sees when she opens the newspaper is the rumor she started while vacationing on Alpha Centauri B. Yuan Yuan is a human sponge for things I say, behaviors I exhibit, opinions I bray. She's like a gravitational vortex addicted to the nonsense that's accumulated in my star system. And of course, to her, they're all historical documents.

When I first met Yuan Yuan, I spent a good 3 months scolding her for throwing her trash on the ground of the street. The change didn't come naturally to her, though it wasn't for lack of trying: we would be riding home on our bike, her sitting behind me on the little platform behind the seat, and she would lean out, forcing me to turn the bike in that direction, and then she would attempt to slam dunk whatever trash she magically produced during the last 5 minutes, into the nearest trash can. More often than not, I would hear "damn, that was so close! Oh well, we tried our best." I would then give her mixed signals by not stopping to force her to clean it up.

It's been years now, and I still can't say she's broken the habit completely. But the righteousness about other people doing is now completely Pavlovian for her. I can't decide if this is an upgrade or a downgrade.

End of an era

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 16:48:00 +0000

Two 30-day trials are ending today: being vegetarian and blogging every day. That means tomorrow I can have a healthy KFC lunch and not tell a soul about it. The exercise and sugar-nazi trial are still in full swing, and the stretching trial died an inglorious death the same day I said we were going to start it up again. Coincidence? Morpheus said it's providence. Fasting on 3 apples a day once a week might as well become a trial since I've already done 1/4 of it. Maybe I'll change the fruit to chocolate bars.

I started a new book yesterday, the Black Prism. I got roughly five sentences in before I fell asleep so I'll be seeing them again tonight. The Mote in God's Eye has gotten flushed down the toilet. The Dresden Files got translated to Afrikaans and then the 6 million original English copies died in a tragic gasoline fight accident. I'm not about to learn Afrikaans just so I can finish that book. Another book got dumped, I forget its name but the relief I'm feeling didn't just come out of nowhere. Of the last 4-5 books I started, only Trash, Sex, Magic is still hanging in there. Angry fans litter the streets, don't stay out past curfew.

Tomato and Egg and Urbien

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 17:03:00 +0000

Yuan Yuan is off to Hangzhou for the next 10 days, on two back-to-back tours. Daddy's all alone at home putting the bread on the table, where it's currently growing mold. Tradition. Can't live with it, can't get moldy bread without it.

My roommate, a guy who works in finance, was asking me today what kind of stuff I work on. After completely confusing him with specifics he couldn't possibly understand without a basic background in Web technologies, I resorted to my best friend, the analogy. The analogy is a great device for when you've lost that caring feeling, when more important than "do they understand you" is "do they think you're working on some complicated shit." I'm a seasoned veteran of terrible analogies, and so I hit him right in the face with a tomato an egg parable. Try to imagine the following in Mandarin Chinese, the language it was first heard in.

Once there was a farmer, who loved to eat tomato and egg. How he came to love it is one of those mysteries of science. Perhaps his wife told him he better love it or else. Perhaps he had once been kidnapped by a tomato and egg chef and it's a permanent side-effect of the severe case of Stockholm syndrome he took away from that experience. Perhaps it was some kind of genetic predisposition that trickled down into his genes from the future. The past isn't the only force in genetics, as science fiction tells us.

In any case, this farmer loved tomato and egg more than anything in the world. But he had no freaking clue where tomatoes came from. He opened his prehistoric refrigerator over and over but they didn't appear to grow there. He looked out into the forest and didn't see any tomatoes swinging from trees. Even more baffling was the egg. How the hell did it get into that shell? And if it could do something like that, what else could it do? The people who hunted those must be very brave, he thought.

But then along came JQuery Mobile and Sencha Touch, and suddenly people could build web apps that actually had a chance against native apps. Really? No, not really. Ninjas could build those kind of apps, armed with Backbones and Zapiers and other magical gadgets whose names only six fingered people could spell correctly. Ninjas knew what to do when the JQuery Mobile page they swung to knock the banana off the tree worked liked a charm when swung to the left, but denatured the instant you swung it to the left. Ninjas could build steaks out of salads. The rest of us were still chopping down cells in the Excel forest, because everyone knows tomatoes have a non-zero chance of being found inside the trunk of a tomato tree cell. And the tomato tree, sneaky tree that it is, looks like any other tree!

All was lost. But all was not lost! Along came Urbien and they brought a tomato gun and an egg cannon with them, not to mention Jesus, who would multiply the ammunition whenever they were in danger of running out. All that was left for the non-ninjas to do was to design the models for their apps, to use their "domain expertise" (oops, 4 billion non-ninjas just fainted dead away) and write the recipe for tomato and egg. Suddenly entire armies of klutzes were leveling up and becoming ninjas just by waking up in the morning. Fine, the afternoon. For the sake of realism.

The moral of the story is that everything is relative. You may be an idiot, but tomorrow, when being an idiot is all you need to be to be able to paint the Sistine Chapel, you're no longer an idiot. You're eating a delicious plate of tomato and egg.

Of course the story I told my roommate was a little more embellished. I couldn't risk him understanding it all in one session. What would I have to say to him next time?

Yum

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 15:10:00 +0000

I had lunch with Yuan Yuan, her mom and her step-dad today. Just one lunch, not three. We went to pick up our butcher knife from her mom's place, she has a smithy or a special rock or something that sharpens knives. We got the knife. It's sharp. There will be no more playing the grapefruit game with the knife.

The lunch was an unexpected bonus. I wasn't really in the mood to see anyone other than Yuan Yuan and myself in the mirror, so when we went for a walk and Yuan Yuan suggested we pick up the knife, I said that that was fine as long as we didn't have to stay there and be social. Yuan Yuan swore a terrible oath that we would sneak in, grab the knife and run back faster than it is polite to run from family. But when we arrived, complications arose. Yuan Yuan's step-dad was in the vicinity, we didn't know in which direction to run and then Yuan Yuan's mom rushed out with a bag full of food, stuffed us both in her armpit and carried us to the nearest restaurant, where we ordered two dishes and a soup for appearance's sake and then unraveled the smorgasbord she'd prepared in the 3 seconds it took for Yuan Yuan to get her hands on the knife.

Lunch was fine, but it reminded me, very quickly and with tremendous special effects, why I don't like eating out. When I'm at home, in relative safety, there's no danger that I'll be kicked out or an impatient waiter will swoop in and clear the dishes before I can dislodge the half of a potato from my throat and shriek in protest. But whenever I go to a restaurant, my body, which is after all just a product of the long and painful evolution of a lonely starving monkey trapped on a glacier to this beautiful specimen of man meat, decides that it needs to stock up on food and turns into a Roomba, devouring everything on the table that's smaller than it and that doesn't skitter out of the way. This binge continues until the oxygen flow to the brain is all but cut off and the brain starts panicking and issuing gag reflexes and knee jerks. But by then 6-7 pounds of fuel has made itself a warm little nest in my belly. Blech. And I mean that literally.

Chuck is good. Enough already

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 14:54:00 +0000

Started a new show today with Yuan Yuan - Studio 60 on Sunset Strip. We've been married to Chuck for the last...seems like 20 years but it's only been 3 and a half seasons. We usually watch while we eat lunch or dinner together but Yuan Yuan's been off to Korea and busy with other tours, so Chuck has been visiting us only once a week or so. Soon our viewings of the show will align with Yuan Yuan's period and then hopefully she'll decide she's ready for another. Pavlovian conditioning, my only hope.

Before a shitstorm erupts in the comments from the Chuck-loving crowd and turns this blog into a lonely and irrelevant sideline on an intergalactic flame war, let me set the record straight. I have nothing against Chuck. I like Chuck. It's often entertaining and sometimes hilarious. But it's getting very repetitive and way too emotional. In season 4, it doesn't go an episode without a heartwarming moment. We need more Buy More and less Chuck-Sara relationship issues. We get it, Chuck's a little girl and Sara's a big man with a gun, so Chuck has all these feelings and Sara has little phantom Tyrannosaurus arms where her feelings once were before they were amputated for good, but the steady onslaught from Chuck's pharmaceutical-grade pheromones finally overwhelm her (in every episode) and she starts getting sympathy pains and everything is "well" between them again.

Then there's Chuck's sister, who is completely intolerable. Mario couldn't stand her from the beginning. If there's anything Mario hates in this world, it's being babied and told "if there's anything you ever need, you come to me, you're my brother/son/nephew/mistress and I'm here for you always." Somewhere out there, Mario just felt the inexplicable but urgent need to run away as fast as possible. The only person Mario needs to be there for him is a bowl of mildewy soup. But I tolerated Ellie for the sake of contrast, which she struck spectacularly with Casey. Which brings me to Casey. Casey is slowly but surely turning into Chuck's sister. Ever since he reunited with his daughter, he's been discovering all these feelings and emotions and frankly it's disgusting. Casey was the goto guy for your dose of macho. Without him, this whole show is getting unbearably sappy.

I take it back, we didn't start Studio 60 on Sunset Strip. I was hoping for a self-fulfilling prophecy but the gods would have none of it. Just as we sat down to watch it, after I had downloaded the subtitles and made sure they matched, I unplugged my external laptop fan and set up my laptop on a chair near the bed so we could watch from there. When I hit play, VLC started spouting some nonsense about bad movie files and inauspicious weather conditions. I opened the show folder to try to start up the video from there again, and noticed the folder had disappeared. Turns out the folder was on the fan. And the fan wasn't a fan, it was an external harddrive. When I plugged it back into my laptop and reopened the folder, the first 5 episodes were gone. Somewhere on the other end of the galaxy, a black hole is slurping down one episode after another. The most epic slurping in the world, that we'll never see or hear or maybe even imagine, as black holes are so strong that they slurp up their own slurping sounds and webcam footage as soon as it begins to exist. But otherwise it would be all over the news in a billion years or so.

Language is musical

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Sun, 04 Aug 2013 14:24:00 +0000

I watched a TED talk a few weeks ago where the guy claimed he was going to make me fall in love with classical music, or if not fall in love with it, at least learn to appreciate it, or if not learn to appreciate it, at least learn to love classic rock. Except for that last part. He failed completely in his objective. I already have a good relationship with classical music: I listen to it very rarely but I can appreciate it. Classic rock on the other hand...

Despite his failure, the lecturer made a very interesting point that I carefully catalogued and put to use today when showing someone why normal English sentences sounded stilted in their rendition. The point that Mr. Classical Music made was that when you start out with music, you don't know what to stress, other than the mistakes. So the beginner will stress every note or at least every beat in a measure. When the beginner gets a little better (given the odds, chances were that this story would be about the 99.9% who quit, but did I mention I have incredibly good luck? The fictional beginners in my stories stick with it!), he/she starts putting accents every other beat, and then just at the first beat of the measure, and then eventually, according to Mr. Classical Music, the former beginner and now accomplished musician puts only a single accent in every phrase, or perhaps even in the entire piece, and the music magically stops sounding like an exercise and starts to sound like the classical music that everyone knows and loves and listens to at rave parties.

Jia Yan (female), one of our mutual friends, asked me today to listen to her read a few English sentences and tell her what was wrong with her pronunciation because she found it inexplicably abhorrent. I listened. To my own thoughts of course, not to a word she was saying. And after she was done, I pronounced a diagnosis based on no data whatsoever. I felt like an accomplished psychiatrist. I told her that the English language is like music, and like music it...and then I gave her the spiel on accents. She thought it was brilliant. Just kidding, she didn't understand what the hell I was talking about. But I felt quite intellectual. If I knew anything about wine, I'm sure I would have poured us both a glass and then lectured her on the proper way to drink it. I'm more of a Coca-Cola guy, so instead I taught her how to clean a toilet with it.

Gimme Books

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 16:54:00 +0000

I like being in the middle of several books at once, it feels like there's a lot more going on in life. I don't read or watch the news, and when my grandma tries to tell me about all the horrible stuff that goes on in the world because "you can live under a rock," I usually la-la-la her out or try to divert her attention onto a more worthwhile subject, like how soon we'll have a real space program and stop letting Einstein bully our spaceships around, which usually works and gets her yelling at me to stop filling her head with nonsense. In Lamb, which it feels like we've been reading in realtime as related to the events in the book, Biff and Jesus are still in India, on a little side-quest rescuing the daughter of an Untouchable from being sacrificed to some psycho-goddess. In The Mote in God's Eye, contact has been made with an alien race and a specimen has been brought on board and is being studied intensively. Or is she studying them? I may never find out, the book is a bit too old-school sci-fi, there's an 80% chance that I will abandon it unfinished.

Then there's Trash, Sex, Magic, which I only just started, so I don't really know what's going yet, except that some tree is being hacked down and some women living in the area keep referring to the tree in anthropomorphic terms. I guess the Trash has been introduced, but there's yet to be any Sex and there are only the vaguest premonitions of Magic. Will keep reading, eventually. Then there's the first book of The Dresden Files, about some magician living in the modern world, who it looks like will get involved in a cross-world jurisdiction murder case. I may drop this one too. Then there's the first book of a fantasy series called Riyria, which is goofy, but not funny enough I think to warrant further reading.

I changed my mind, I don't like being in the middle of several books at once. It's a symptom that none of them are good enough to monopolize my attention. Lamb is obviously amazing, but I've already read it several times, and Yuan Yuan has been busy lately so much of the enjoyment has evaporated as we've lost almost all continuity. But the others are on the whole disappointing. Somebody recommend me some awesome books please.

The Hao Women

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Fri, 02 Aug 2013 16:14:00 +0000

I just noticed Yuan Yuan put a recent photo of her family on my desk right next to my computer. It must have been there for the last month but it only just struck me as odd. It's all the women in Yuan Yuan's family, of which there are so many that the photo could pass for a Wellesley graduation ceremony keepsake. I don't know what it's doing next to my computer, maybe so I'm frequently reminded that I definitely got the best bear from the flock. One of the women in the photo is a baby, terrible dating material, can't hold a candle to the one I got. Can't hold a candle at all, that would be irresponsible parenting. Plus, that would be parenting, so there goes the romance. Then there's Yuan Yuan's mom, who's a bit traditional for my taste, though I always poke fun at her that she's not traditional enough. She knows I'm joking but she can never decide if she wants to get the joke.

Me: dinner's ready!
(we all sit down to eat)
Me: wait! We can't eat until the food's cold! It's to remind us that these days of plenty are not to be taken for granted, and that even cold food is better than no food at all. It's a great tradition, trust me. You're going to love it.
Yuan Yuan's mom: ...(looks at Yuan Yuan for help)
Yuan Yuan: don't listen to him, mom
Me: hey, no respect for your elders! ...Another fine tradition from the wild wild West. You'll fit in great, honey!
Yuan Yuan's mom: can we eat?
Me: yes, let's eat, but as long as we make it a new tradition to break a glorious tradition every time we break bread.
Yuan Yuan's mom: well, we can keep the good ones

Yuan Yuan's oldest sister is a dear, or so I thought for the first 10 minutes of meeting her. I even had time to plant a sloppy kiss onto her ass, saying she seemed like the gentlest one of the pack. Of course, 5 minutes later I was flat against the wall from the shockwave when her eldest son did an no-no and got a strong dose of traditional child-rearing. I'm still a little deaf in those ears. I'm surprised neither of us did a no-no in our pants. It must be all the conditioning Chinese people get from their cellphones. A little tip for you, if you're getting bad volume from your cellphone, hand it to a Chinese person and step 50 feet away. You'll hear the other side just fine. Some kind of technological racism, Mario and I are still investigating the science behind it.

Yuan Yuan's older sister is a cutie pie, the kind you want to feed candy until they're fat enough that they lose their appeal. She's the skinniest of the four and her face is vaguely chipmunk-like. She always looks like she's about to nibble something. Alas, looks can be deceiving, and when she recently stayed with us for 10 days, I saw into the heart of the beast. She came here with her 1-year old baby girl (7 years old in China), and proved to us that babies are quite resilient creatures. They can take a beating at every meal and be just fine. To be honest, it's the baby's own damn fault. If she'd closed her ears when she got screamed at and hadn't gone deaf, she could have gotten safely screamed at for the rest of her childhood and her mother wouldn't have to hit her so hard.

Mario was shocked by all the verbal and physical violence. Shocked enough to have an opinion if you can believe it.

Mario: she just smacked the baby right in front of us!
Yuan Yuan: you don't beat children in the US?
Mario: of course we do. We just have the decency to do it secretly and then lie about it.
Mark: she didn't even look embarrassed at losing her temper. I'm kind of jealous.
Yuan Yuan: so what do you do if you don't beat them?
Mario: we just give the kid a dirty look, as in "when we get home...you're dead"
Yuan Yuan: does it work?
Mario: ...

I tried to stay out of it though I felt sorry for the baby, but I was involved against my will. Somehow they noticed that the baby would eat better in my presence, so they started bringing me in as a consultant whenever the baby needed feeding. Her sister would say something about Uncle Foreigner to the baby in their dialect and the baby would eat like a charm. Later I found out that the sister was telling the baby that I was going to yell at it if she didn't eat the food right away. I was used, and not in a good way, no handcuffs or oils or anything. I was used to scary some appetite into a baby. Anyway, my relationship with her sister didn't suffer. We're friendly as always and she probably doesn't even notice how I skip to the table like a unicorn whenever she says it's time to eat.

Yuan Yuan's younger sister, the last of the brood, is currently experiencing the dubious benefits of higher education. She's cute and friendly like the rest of them, but she also packs a temper like the rest of them (well, I got the mellow one), which I've luckily never seen firsthand. It's not her fault, she'd be a darling if she weren't so spoiled. And this is typical China - the youngest children get spoiled beyond all reason, in the name of love. If you see an obese child on the street, you can bet his spare butt cheek he's the youngest. One time I overheard during dinner that Yuan Yuan's mom loved her youngest daughter the most. I couldn't understand why she didn't love me more than all of them put together, but I stifled my righteous indignation and asked politely "why the f??" To which Yuan Yuan's mom replied, like I'd asked her why the sky is blue:

"Because she's the youngest."

Tradition. It even tells us who to love more. It's amazing how straightforward life can be.

Nonsense

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 13:52:00 +0000

Time-consuming things completely brainwash you. You work every day for a month and then you stop for a week and on the 2nd or 3rd day you'll be consumed by this horrible listlessness, like there never was anything to do but work in the first place. You could learn to be an ice-dancer, but it's summer, and you could practice your skateboarding tricks but the streets are covered with ice, and the other things that you could do and maybe even should do, you'll eh...do them...some other time. I've seen this happen to so many people - they start watching copious amounts of TV and then they can't imagine life without it, they quit their job and they have no idea who they are anymore, they get a divorce and suddenly they're not so interested in their mistress and don't really feel like buying that house for her anymore, they get a maid and they die of starvation when he/she forgets to take them out of the high chair. Getting you in that thing was hard enough. And who buys a house in this economy anyway? Or is it the other economy that you're not supposed to buy houses in? And why did I assume the maid was female? Maybe he/she is one of those androgynous people that you can't get a grip on, literally and figuratively, and when you finally get a grip, they sue you for them turning out to be the opposite of what you thought.

Yuan Yuan is in Korea again, so good luck finding anything in our apartment. I found the flame on under the fried rice today, half an hour after I made it, and the leftover rice had fused into a pancake, charred on one side and completely edible or at least lickable on the outside. I resisted the urge to lick it, in case my tongue decided it'd rather live on the pancake side of life, but I salvaged the top layer and now I've had it for dinner. It smelled like cancer but it looked pretty tasty so now it's in my stomach.

I had to do all my exercises alone today. There was no camaraderie, no team spirit, no high-spirited but pain-rich wailing as the timer counted down the last seconds, but there was that dream of chocolate at the end of the tunnel, and it turned out to be good enough. I haven't eaten it yet, I plan on smearing it on my face like a mud mask and then chasing my face around the room and trying to get it all into my mouth.

Ta mu ke lu si

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 14:51:00 +0000

If you've ever wondered how many syllables Tom Cruise become when transliterated in Chinese, it's 5. Ta mu ke lu si. One of the peculiarities of the Chinese language is that there are no syllables with two consonants in a row. Same goes for Japanese, which is why their speech sounds so machine-gunnish. That means words like schlargleclpctple (a rare dinosaur, even rarer than the other extinct 100% that are extinct) takes 3-4 times longer to pronounce in Chinese. So when we're reading together about Jesus' adventures in India and words come up with two consonants in a row that Yuan Yuan doesn't already know, she'll liberally sprinkle them with vowels. When I stop her and demand patronizingly if there's a vowel after the 's' in swill, and if there's not, why she's pronouncing it 'seewill,' she just bats her eyelashes at me innocently. When I'm well hydrated, I'll ask her how the consonant is pronounced on its own without a vowel before or after it.

Me: how do you pronounce the letter 's'?
Yuan Yuan: ess?
Me: no
Yuan Yuan: suh?
Me: no
Yuan Yuan: see?
Me: no
Yuan Yuan: suh?
Me: no, you've already tried that one!
Yuan Yuan: so?
Me: so it's still wrong!
Yuan Yuan: no, I mean it's pronounced 'so'!
Me: it most definitely is not
Yuan Yuan: then what is it?
Me: keep trying. Don't put any vowels after it, just give me the naked consonant.
Yuan Yuan: ooh, naked...
Me: don't get distracted!
Yuan Yuan: ugh...suh?
Me: no!
Yuan Yuan: I don't like this game.
Me: it's 'sssss'!
Yuan Yuan: suhwill?
Me: no! It's swill!
Yuan Yuan: swill. Got it. "He took a swill of his drink and suhpatuh it back out."
Me: spat!
Yuan Yuan: I know, I was just testing you

Somehow, despite the multitude of rather thick hints, it never occurred to me that Yuan Yuan simply didn't know how the consonants were pronounced on their own. I thought about teaching her, but then I got scared. Is she too old to learn? If I teach her, will her brain restructure itself completely? Is this ignorance what keeps her so childlike and lighthearted? How do I prevent her from figuring them out on her own one day? This must have been what Johnny Cash was talking about when he wrote I Walk The Line.

Blogging to procrastinate

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:34:00 +0000

I'm being a complete slacker with respect to my sketching. Each day I'm brimming with optimism from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed, thinking about how I can't wait to sketch, and saying positive affirmations to get myself in the mood, and not thinking about how I currently suck and that it takes at least 5 hours of practice to achieve mastery of a skill and that I still have 3-5 hours to go. So there's no shortage of positivity. The only thing there's a shortage of is actual sketching. I haven't touched a pencil in ~5 days.

Enjoying being terrible at something is a skill I would love to have. But even the great Mario, who can will himself to enjoy red bean paste snacks, is very hit or miss in this respect. He'll be fine with sucking at one thing, as long as he's already addicted to it and doesn't have to do it in front of other people, but then inexplicably refuse to even take a second strike on another.

Over the years I've created this self-image that I can learn to be awesome at anything in 5 minutes, or on the first try, whichever is faster. This self-image, while completely inaccurate, sometimes performs a magic placebo effect and everything clicks. But this self-image has its limits. Sketching, dancing, at one point singing, and a couple of other things seem to be in its Achilles heel, or off its grid, or in its blind spot. I don't know how it works, it's a very hand wavy science.

So the lesson is that I'm good at rationalizations and I'm using it against my sketching. Go. Sketch. Now!

Yuan Yuan the bear

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 16:58:00 +0000

My plank-holding times are steadily improving, but Yuan Yuan, whose body is some kind of mystery of science / voodoo, is gaining on me quickly. When we started out a few weeks ago, I could do 2 minutes and a bit. Today I hit 3 minutes 45 seconds, but then I had to lay there and drool on the floor for a while, until there was enough of a buoyant force for me to get up without popping an absicle. Yuan Yuan started out at a max of 40 seconds or so, and hit 2 minutes today, though she was whooping like a Native American at a scalping for the last 30. In a few weeks she'll catch up and overtake me. She could always do handstands longer than me (1 min 24 seconds), she can hold a bridge for 3 minutes, and she holds the record for jump-roping - 650 in a row. Mario would just shrug and say "that's impossible, I refuse to believe it," when she would beat us both at some new exercise. I often call her bear-related affectionate names, but I'm starting to think she might really be part bear. She sleeps a lot, 15 hours a few days ago, 10-12 regularly, she's super strong but she can barely do 5 push-ups, she can eat twice as much as me easily and being full is no deterrent, she's got a big head and her yawns are closer in shape to a banana (vertically) than an apple, she runs uphill faster than downhill, and she's covered with 3-inch long thick brown fur all over her body. The only thing not in her favor is that she's completely indifferent to meat. Maybe that's the only thing standing between me and a bloody puddle of me-leftovers.

The feminism / cheeseburger correlation

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Sun, 28 Jul 2013 15:14:00 +0000

I think I might be going to hell. I'm getting a C on a 30-day trial and I don't think Jesus would accept a mere confession or 3 "Hail 30 day trials" as penance. Today we made the decision to sacrifice a piece of our no-sugar trial to the devil. In exchange for the ability to eat one sweet a day (you get 10 consecutive minutes to eat it, then you turn into a pumpkin), we've signed up for an extra 30 day trial. Yuan Yuan will do 10 minutes worth of planks / wall sits / handstands, and I will do 5 minutes of wall sits / horse stance. Why do I get away with 5 minutes while she has to do 10? You see, in China we have this wonderful thing called gender inequality. It's a time honored tradition. Back when America was young and still on track, before the great invention (the cheeseburger) vanguarded the Renaissance of our midsections and set our national inertia so high, that at the enormous speed we had amassed, we flew right off the serpentine tracks of the Transtranscendental railroad, before all that apple-bottomed glory, men ruled the world and women sat at home tending to the children and waiting for Jane Austen to come along so there would be some proper motive for learning to read. And God saw that it was good and rewarded us with Amendments to the Constitution and feminists. That's called divine irony, because there's nothing God loves more than to throw everyone completely off balance with the introduction of balance. Meanwhile, China hasn't even gotten to the cheese part of cheeseburger, so their women aren't going to be voting any time soon. What I mean is that it was Yuan Yuan's idea, was it my fault I snatched up the opportunity when the first 5 minutes of my wall-sits came out of her mouth and didn't wait for the next 5?

Getting sidetracked aside, this might end up being harder than not eating sweets at all. I've already stifled most of my urges, and though I can't eat 99% of the edibles in any store on the planet, I've accepted my fate and hung my head and set up a little tent in the eggs and produce aisle of life. Finding myself in this new permissive world, I'm bound to be completely miserable, where before I was only hopeless. Now when I go to the store I have to wander around the mountains of sticky treasures and pick one thing to sate my mutinous appetite. It's Sophie's choice all over again.

Vysotsky can only show you the door, it's up to you to hit someone in the ear with it

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:12:00 +0000

Haven't written a song in a while, and I was listening to Vysotsky today and felt a bit inspired. The song turned out pretty cynical and didn't really go in the originally intended direction, but I think it turned out decent anyway. I've borrowed (heavily) from his song "Мой друг уехал в Магадан" (My friend left to Magadan), but I don't feel too guilty about it because apparently a lot of Vysotsky's song melodies borrowed heavily from the "standard" folk melodies. So it's not like I'm stealing from the rich, I'm stealing from poor, it's ok.

Here's a decent translation of the Vysotsky song My Friend left to Magadan:

(translated by Margaret & Stas Porokhnya)

My friend has moved to Magadan
Play him a fanfare, play him a fanfare.
He went himself, his own free man;
He wasn't sent there, he wasn't sent there.

It wasn't that his luck turned bad
Or done to make somebody mad;
It wasn't part of some big act:
He simply packed

If someone asked him: "What's it for??
Why just abandon your life at random?
That place has killers by the score
That's where they crammed "em, that's where they crammed' em!"

He'd shrug - "Whatever people say
There's more in Moscow anyway"
Then pack up everything he can
For Magadan

I wouldn't say my race is run:
I'd jump the night train like in the old days
But I won't go to Magadan
Leaving my old ways, starting a new phase

I'll sing, my guitar on my knee,
Of all the things he's going to see
Of all that's left unseen, undone,
Of Magadan

My friend had nothing left to lose
It's his decision, it's his decision
He won't be beaten by the screws
He's not in prison, he's not in prison

But God made me another plan...
Or should I go to Magadan?
And like my friend just go to ground
And make no sound

If you don't speak Russian, Vysotsky can be hard to appreciate because he's not translated, nor is he easily translatable, so you'll have to take my word for it that he is an absolute genius lyricist and performer. He wrote 800+ songs/poems before he drank himself to death at age 42, and they range from hilarious, to mysterious, to romantic, to cynical anti-establishment provocations. He has tons of songs about the criminal element, songs from the point of view of inanimate objects and animals, songs about love, science, war, love, betrayal, sports, the mentally ill, you name it. Most of his songs he performs with just his slightly out of tune guitar, but some have been pretty well orchestrated and might be easiest for the non-Russian-speaking crowd to appreciate. You can try these:

Дом Хрустальный (Crystal House)
Белое Безмолвие (White Silence)
Баллада о вольных стрелках (Ballad of the free archers - a song he wrote for a Russian movie about Robin Hood)
Песня о вещей Кассандре (Song about the clairvoyant Kassandra - not for the faint of heart)

Every once in a while I try to translate one of his songs for the benefit of Mario or Yuan Yuan and I'm always disappointed with what comes out. It's mostly lost on Yuan Yuan, but Mario seems to appreciate it, either out of the goodness of his heart, or maybe because he was enamored with Russian previously and subconsciously adds colors to my grey translations.

The song I wrote today is tentatively titled Compromise

Am Dm
you started out pure, of intention
Dm6 E7
you were never gonna be like them
Am Dm
your life, (your own), your invention
G C B
you'd be damned if you'd be someone else

Am Dm Am
but then a splash of milk fell in your coffee
Dm Am
you said alright, but just tonight
Dm E7
and then one day you pushed away the cream
Am
and your coffee's white

you said, you wouldn't age a day
you'd never let yourself get fat
you'd stay sharp as a tack
you'd be the blackest black of cats

but you were young, you didn't know
and now your hair's seen its first snow
you've learned another word for lies
it's compromise

it's not that you, lost your ideals
you just lost your baby teeth
they thought they had it all figured out
before they ever had any meat

you shouldn't be so hard on yourself
that optimism comes off the shelf
you're still a wonderful guy
some day drop by

If you think the last chord sounds dissonant, it is a bit. It's a Am6, with the 6 not in the key of the song. Vysotsky loves to throw in at the end of his songs, just in case you thought you had his song figured out. And when Vysotsky says drink yourself to death, I jump off the bridge without a second thought.

Vovochka strikes again

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 12:43:00 +0000

Looks like some of these 30 day trials I'm on have to get restarted. Several of them died horrible deaths. The ones still going to strong are the vegetarian trial and the blogging every day.

The others, may they never rest in peace but get revived until they are completed are:
1. Pushups / planks. Sadly around a week ago, when I got sick, my arm also started hurting and not at all in that nice way like when you're getting scratched or a pretty girl is lightly biting you while you're trying to work and you give her dirty looks but don't punish her just yet because maybe if you don't, she'll keep going. But then of course you have to punish her so that she wants to keep doing it. Anyway, where was I? My arm hurt, and it wasn't from the sin of Onan, although if God were to pick one arm to go to Hell for that sin, it would be the same arm. Which reminds me, I read a great joke today about the apotheosis of Russian childhood mischief - Vovochka.

In case you don't know, Vovochka is a cornerstone of Russian joke culture. He is an irreverent reprobate, whether he happens to be age 5 or 30 in the joke, and he thrives on tearing down teachers, parents, and other grown-ups that stereotypically demand respect. Vovochka is also extremely sexual, which renders all innocent classroom questions dangerous territory:

"What does your daddy do?"
"How many watermelons could you carry and how?"
"Any questions?"

(Note: If you can't think of a filthy answer to all of those questions, you've probably never heard a Vovochka joke, or graduated from elementary school.)

The teachers typically know this and only call on Vovochka when completely exasperated with the other children's demented answers. Then Vovochka of course makes them regret it for the millionth time.

In this joke, probably one of the cleanest Vovochka jokes, Vovochka is inexplicably attending Catholic school:

Teacher: Remember, those children who get A's and B's are going to Heaven, and those who gets C's D's and F's are going straight to hell! Yes Vovochka, you have a question?
Vovochka: does anyone leave this school alive?

Here's one more:

Vovochka brings home an F in math.
Dad: why??
Vovochka: she asked me, how much is 2x3? I said 6!
Dad: but that's right!
Vovochka: then she asked me, how much is 3x2?
Dad: what the f*** is the difference?
Vovochka: exactly! I mean, that's exactly what I said!

Classic. Next time I'll tell you my favorite Vovochka joke of all time. Sadly I have to translate all of these from Russian into English by way of Chinese, so they lose some of their juice. Just don't tell Vovochka I said that.

So the pushups / planks trial is getting restarted officially tomorrow. I've been warming up for it during the last two days and the looks like my arm is back to full health.

2. The no eating sweets trial. This trial was actually going really well. Then I got sick. Usually when I get sick, I try to up my vitamin C dosage, even if just as a placebo. So I drank this just-add-water vitamin C orange mix for a few days. No worries, the craving is mostly gone, so this trial got restarted 3 days ago.

3. Reading with Yuan Yuan in English for 30 minutes every day. This one just didn't work out, Yuan Yuan went to Korea, and then when she came back she went on a tour around Beijing for a few days, coming home and crashing immediately every day. But we'll try to get it going again...though she's off to Korea in a couple days again.

4. Stretching. Restarting? Fine, I had to beg myself to restart it, but I agreed. Restarting this one today.

Protect your invariants

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 13:45:00 +0000

Ah, programming...

"You must program defensively, with the assumption that clients of your class will do their best to destroy its invariants."
--Effective Java (Joshua Bloch)

That is the world I live in. This is what they teach little SkyNet children in school today, so that when they grow up they'll feel benevolent towards the human race.

This book (Effective Java) and all books on writing better code have more violence in them than a season of 24. Other programmers, malicious and/or incompetent, are always conspiring to violate your classes, objects, invariants and other violable violabilities. Every other paragraph you get admonished to trust NO ONE, to code defensively, lest the converging hordes mutate your code's internals and then exploit those mutations to gain access to the Zion mainframe. Writing safe code is an extreme sport. Here are some other gems:

"Second attack on the internals of a Period instance."

"This would give the attacker free reign over all instances."

"Classes containing methods or constructors whose invocation indicates a transfer of control cannot defend themselves against malicious clients. Such classes are acceptable only when there is mutual trust between the class and its client or when damage to the class’s invariants would harm no one but the client."

The last sounds like something a lawyer might have me sign after I pretended to read it very carefully for 3 microseconds.

My new roommies and I are getting along famously. Monday to Thursday they're quiet and friendly, not asking me any coding questions, not zooming around like trapeze artists and shaking the walls with heavy Tomcat tomes and leaving bloody streaks of mosquito and human soup all over the apartment, not making soup out of spoiled vegetables. The last I see of them every week is Thursday night. The next I see them is Monday night. For 3 days and 3 nights a week, I am roommate-free. Mario, you have a lot to learn. About programming of course, the roommate stuff's irrelevant.

Stay right where you are

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Wed, 24 Jul 2013 15:28:00 +0000

Looks like Yuan Yuan's going to Korea again. She just got back two days ago from a luxury cruise tour there, where her responsibilities included holding onto her clients' passports and doing whatever the hell she wanted. Poor girl can't catch a break. This time she's flying, and it's a sight-seeing tour rather than a shopping tour (the 20 min sight-seeing / 2 hours shopping per site ratio is flipped). I don't see why people book tours at all, when they can just go by themselves or better yet, not at all. Which brings me to my second point. People should just stay where they are. What is the point of seeing places? The places would have to be pretty amazing to offset the annoyance of getting there, coming back, and dealing with housing and overeating issues (going somewhere else makes people think they should eat twice as much as usual). Until teleportation is invented, I'm going to sit tight and hang out in my room, which is already as amazing as a place can get.

I started A Mote in God's Eye today, while running errands. I feel like I'm being forced to get to know the characters before the interesting stuff starts happening. I don't like it. It better start cruising soon.

I finished The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman the other day. It was good, I felt completely immersed in the story. The characters were a tad stereotypical, but the world he created was quite magical. He used one of those cool literary devices that I like a lot in Strugatsky Brothers fiction, which they call "Refusal to Explain," where they don't even try to explain some of the bizarre things that happen. It's a bit of a wild card technique, but when used right it gives the reader this incredible itch that forces him/her to keep reading in hope of getting more clues to the mystery. All in all, quite an itchy book.

Tongue leprosy

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 17:18:00 +0000

I'm proud to say I haven't coded any new functionality in the last week. I've been exclusively redesigning and tinkering with old code. The code is looking a lot better, I think, but there are still design problems I don't feel equipped to solve. I have this one case where I can't figure out an elegant way out of a circular definition. I have a sort of abstract factory class Synchronizer which has two subclasses, ResourceSynchronizer and CollectionSynchronizer. As they are separate AMD modules, the subclasses need to import Syncrhonizer in their "define" statements. But then there's no way for Synchronizer to have a getSynchronizer() method that will return an instance of one of the two subclasses. In order to have such a method, it would need to either import the two subclasses in its define statement, completing the circle, or return a Promise to return a subclass, which would make getSynchronizer() undesirably asynchronous.

Another problem I've run into is when I try to separate out a logical chunk from a bloated module and it turns into a seesaw and goes out of control. I'll be happily migrating things and then realize that I've gradually moved everything into the new module. Then I start to wonder if the separation was a good idea in the first place or if the code is just experiencing separation anxiety. On the other hand, the seesawing also doubles as a sifting process; as I move the code back and forth, it seems like it gets cleaner. Maybe if I do it enough, the code will disappear and everything will still work.

I think something's wrong with my tongue. There's a spot on the left side, roughly a centimeter in diameter, that's behaving like it's been severely burned, producing a numb tingly feeling when under the slightest pressure, and hurting when I bite it as hard as I can. I've studied it in a mirror and I think there might be a tiny alien trying to claw its way out. It looks cracked like parched land, and generally unwholesome. Maybe I'm allergic to something. Maybe it's not my tongue at all and it's actually someone foot with athlete's foot.

You call this a language?

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 13:07:00 +0000

English can be obnoxiously ambiguous at times. My parents and my sister went to the beach yesterday. When I wondered why Mahlet (my sister's best friend) hadn't gone with them and why I haven't heard much about Mahlet recently at all, and how Mahlet was doing cause I miss her, my dad said:

"I think she just loves us more now"

As long as you don't think about that sentence, it makes perfect sense. But once you start, you realize that it could mean pretty much anything in the world. It could mean that my sister loves my parents more now than she did before, or that she finally loves them more than she loves Mahlet, or that she loves them more than Mahlet loves them, or even that Mahlet loves my parents more now, so she graciously lets them have alone time with my sister. There's 46 other interpretations that I won't go into.

After I recovered from that soft gooey bitch-slap of ambiguity, I wondered for the millionth time how Chinese people do it. How do they ever understand who the hell they're talking about? In spoken Chinese, the pronouns "he," "she" and "it" sound identical. Not because I'm a foreigner and my ears are too big to hear the difference, but because they're all one and the same phoneme. Same goes for the plurals, "they" has three written forms - masculine they, feminine they, and undead they, but they all sound the same. This last one is only shocking until you realize that English only has one "they" to begin with, but it can help you appreciate the magnitude of the disaster that is the case of singular pronouns. Instead of he, she and it, you just have the singular form of they. And the same goes for possessive pronouns.

What this means, is that if a Chinese person is telling you a story about a heterosexual couple and their dog, you're hearing:

They says they doesn't want to get married, but they insists that they does, they just doesn't want to get married to they because they is so poor, and of course they has an opinion on it too, barking every now and then to punctuate the conversation. So I don't know what they is going to do. Maybe they will divorce they and marry that other girl.

Ha! You should be so lucky, getting that freebie at the end. Usually it's like listening to some kind of demented software interview brainteaser.

How to make a sandwich in Javascript

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Sun, 21 Jul 2013 16:29:00 +0000

Michelle, if you're reading this, start getting ready for our open mic duet. Don't even worry about the set list, I'll take full responsibility for picking the songs I like. Here's some that you might want to learn how to sing:

by Wings:
Let me roll it
Band on the run

by Blue Oyster Cult:
Burning for you
Take me away
Astronomy

by Led Zeppelin:
That's the way
D'yer M'ker
Houses of the Holy

by Dusty Springfield:
Son of a preacher man

by Save Ferris:
Come on Eileen (their cover rocks, you play the power chords, I'll practice the crazy ska rhythm)

by Squeeze:
Tempted

by Bogushevskaya:
Cafe Ekipazh

Let me know which ones you don't absolutely love so I can convince you otherwise. Everyone else go listen to these and imagine how well they'd sound if they sounded slightly worse. Pretty fantastic? Agree.

One and a half more days of freedom and then my favorite girl will be back to torture me. I need to think about what kind of things I can do now that I can't when she's around. Other than tell vicious lies on this blog with impunity, or sleep with other women. I guess I should get all my bad singing, bad drawing, and bad dancing out of the way so she doesn't have to do too much criticizing right after a hard week's rocking in Korea.

And now, a cool trick from today's JavaScript camp. I've used this before, but never in the general form:

function partial(fn) {
var args = [].slice.call(arguments, 1);
return function() {
return fn.apply(null, args.concat(arguments));
};
}

What this allows you to do is precreate functions when you know some arguments ahead of time. So for example, if you have a sandwich function:

function sandwich(bottom, top, middle) {
return {
bottom: bottom,
middle: middle,
top:top
}
}

...and you know a "good" sandwich always has a pancake on the bottom and a pop-tart on top, you can make yourself a shortcut function easily:

var goodSandwich = partial(sandwich, 'pancake', 'pop-tart');

This essentially hardcodes the (bottom, top) set of parameters and gives you back a function that expects only one parameter - 'middle'. So now you can use the goodSandwich function to make sandwiches with different contents but the same shell:

// equivalent to sandwich('pancake', 'pop-tart', 'turkey')
var goodTurkeySandwich = goodSandwich('turkey');

// equivalent to sandwich('pancake', 'pop-tart', 'Mark')
var goodMarkSandwich = goodSandwich('Mark');

// equivalent to sandwich('pancake', 'pop-tart', 'cheeseburger')
var goodCheeseburgerSandwich = goodSandwich('cheeseburger');

// equivalent to sandwich('pancake', 'pop-tart', sandwich('pancake', 'pop-tart', 'cheeseburger'))
var doubleDecker = goodSandwich(goodSandwich('cheeseburger'));

Mm, a cheeseburger wrapped in two pancakes and two pop-tarts. That'll get you bulimic in no time.

Getting shaved by visitors

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Sat, 20 Jul 2013 15:36:00 +0000

Yesterday's cold kept me delightfully bed-ridden all day. I lay there most of the day, sometimes draped over a chair like a wet towel, sometimes prostrate on the bed like a dead hooker, but always impossibly listless. I ended up reading all day, and I feel a little bit sorry for the book I demolished - Prodigy by Marie Lu - I would have probably enjoyed it more if I'd read it in a non-zombified state. Still, it was enjoyable if not quite enjoyed. It was as expected, not quite as interesting as Legend (the first book in the series). This is pretty typical of dystopian trilogies; the first book is about starting a revolution, earth-shattering realizations, the death of ignorance, and the next N sequels are about war and hypocrisy and all kinds of nonsense dealt with better in books that deal solely with war and hypocrisy. Prodigy did better in that respect than Hunger Games, Divergent, and the Matrix sequels, but it still suffered from the same side-effects.

I learned a new object oriented programming pattern today that provides a cool way to follow the open / closed principle.

In case you don't know, the open / closed principle says that you should design things to be extensible but not modifiable. Meaning you don't want people modifying your diaper design, but you do want people building plugins for it. The original design, once complete, should only modified if something is broken. And this seems to apply on many levels, from objects to systems. Now onto the pattern, called The Visitor.

The Visitor pattern basically has you build in an uber-simple but multi-purpose socket, that you can later build things to plug into. The socket doesn't need to know beforehand exactly what will be plugging into it, a vibrator or the Omega 13 device, it's the job of the Visitor implementor to build plugs for those devices. The result is that once you have the socket set up, you're virtually unlimited in what you can plug into it, without ever modifying the diaper.

Neat, though it seems a bit hacky to me. It appears mostly to be used when you want to take a function that might apply to many different objects, and encapsulate all the variants into an object. This object, which is called a Visitor but should really be called a DirtyDirtySlut, then plugs into those objects and provides a single service, albeit adapted per their needs. So you might have a ShaveVisitor object, that defines 10 different variants of the function visit(): bear.visit(), chicken.visit(), patrickRothfuss.visit(), etc, and when the bear or the chicken decide they need a shave, they call in the ShaveVisitor to visit (shave) them. And of course everyone who shaves, lives in perpetual fear because they have no way of knowing who the ShaveVisitor shaved before them, and because there are rumors going around that there's a new Butthole object which likes to get shaved all the freakin' time. And who wants to be the next one shaved after that?

Sick again

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Vayngrib) — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 13:17:00 +0000

I caught another cold yesterday night. I've had colds on and off for the last month. It's hard to tell if it's one long cold or if I've wandered into some kind of buffet and can't find the exit.

I went down to the pharmacy a few minutes ago and slammed right into the barrier between Chinese and Western medicine. In America, they usually ask you about the symptoms you're experiencing and then pronounce a diagnosis - you have a cold. No shit. Sometimes it's cancer. Then it's "oh shit." But things aren't so simple here. In Chinese medicine, there are several different types of colds, depending on the season and how you acquired them.

Me: I have a cold, can I have some cold medicine?
Pharmacist (a nice elderly lady): What kind of cold?
Me: Excuse me?
Pharmacist: is it from running the air conditioner, or were you in a cold place, or did you catch fire? (上火 - Catching fire - the most common ailment Chinese people complain about, symptoms ranging from diarrhea to constipation to scratchy throats to pimples and many more. In general, it means something is inflamed, and you need to fight that fire with something intrinsically cool, like cucumbers and water. Foreigners are generally mystified by the concept.)
Me: I...have no freaking clue
Pharmacist: shame on you, you don't even know your own body!
Me: could someone have sent the cold to me in an email?
Pharmacist: don't be a smart ass, you need at least realtime audio to catch a cold over the network. Here are three types of cold medicine, pick one yourself.

I ended up picking the "wind-heat cold" (风热感冒) medicine. The other prominent choice was "wind-cold cold" (风寒感冒) medicine. We'll see what happens. Or maybe we won't. Chinese medicine is very much a slow cure, you never know whether it helped or you managed to recover on your own.

One of the things Mario was always better at than me is urination. Not only could his stream cut metal (you could hear it from the local KFC), while my stream couldn't cut the line at the KFC, but he could empty out 0.75L at a time. I averaged 0.25L with a rare max around 0.4L. How do I know this? Occasionally the bathroom is taken, and there's a bladder emergency among the leftover roomizens. If the bathroom is occupied by a girl, everyone knows that there's imminent danger of permanent bladder damage, so they usually grab a bottle and pee in it. Then everyone else grabs a bottle and pees in theirs. Don't worry, we do this privately, we don't compare equipment or anything.

Anyway, I've never managed to fill a 0.4L bottle in one go, and no amount of practice or holding it in seemed to help. But this morning, that looked like any old morning, with no hint of the epic feats about to transpire, I woke up to a bladder emergency. The bathroom was taken by one of my new roommies, the one with breasts. I found an empty bottle, 0.45L, and filled it up with pee to spare. This is momentous day, make no mistake about it.