08-IV-2004.
Few days ago found a „Broadway shoe warehouse“, near Walmart at the mall, which we immediately renamed into „šuvar haus“. Šuvar was the party hack who invented the „vocationally directed“ high school system back home in the eighties, to which I was an unwilling accomplice, so this was a little reminder. The shop is a weird thing which we never saw before - no furniture, save for some mirrors and stools for tryouts. It's all just rows of boxes in one huge room, nothing else. They saved a lot on fixed expenses this way, and true enough, the prices were lower. We went there to get some sneakers for Lena.
Wrote this to Verizon:
Since the beginning of this month of April, my parents in Europe can't write to me to this email address. Luckily, I have other addresses at my disposal, but it took several days to just understand what's going on.
They have been writing to this address without problems for months - ever since you became my ISP. Now they are getting their messages to me bounced off. Here's the sample of what they get - note the bolded part.
> The original message was received at Wed, 7 Apr 2004 20:50:56 +0200
> from MDM-85-242.beotel.net [195.252.85.242] (may be forged)
> ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
> <sGradlj@verizon.net>
> (reason: 550 You are not allowed to send mail:sc018pub.verizon.net)I know you are doing your best to prevent spam, but I consider it a generally bad practice to write overzealously indiscriminating filters which throw out a baby with the water. Specially if you keep any track, you could have noticed that I was regularly responding to messages from that address.
At least you could have asked me.
I hope you will fix this soon, though I'm not holding my breath - you never answered my series of emails (last one was on August 28th) about connection breaks which are, BTW, still happening regularly. And if you think I should be using your special communication tool for addressing you, refer to those messages - I've clearly stated there why I will not do so.
I'm giving you a few weeks, and then I'm switching back to Earthlink if you don't get this fixed. They may be a little more expensive, but I never needed to write them. About Verizon DSL, I could write a book.
And a message from my folks comes like this:
>> * sinoc' sam pisao da c'u da probam da pos(aljem poruku na
>> "verizon", i sad je pis(em, da vidimo da li c'e linija da proradi.*
...and so on. Each ć is replaced with a c', š with a s(, ž with a z(, The horror.
David again managed to message me while I was in the bathroom. The UniJewel app is at version 0.1, justt a blank with no forms yet. Four hours of chat.
Similarly with Gary, Mohan, Ermilson Santos and the rest of the gang, long discussions, but not chat, in there it's emails, and better so. There's time for breaks and actual work between. It was about something called „relations rebuilder“.
Fresh joke among the rasejani:
An airplane takes off from the airport. The captain is Jewish and the First Officer is Chinese. It's the first time they've flown together and it's obvious by the silence that they don't get along very well. After about thirty minutes, the Jewish Captain mutters, "I don't like Chinese."
The First Officer replies, "Oooooh, no rike Chinese? Why dat?"
"You people bombed Pearl Harbor. That's why I don't like Chinese."
"Nooooo, noooo Chinese not bomb Peahl Hahbah. That Japanese, not Chinese."
"Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese... it doesn't matter, they're all alike."
Another thirty minutes of silence. Finally, the First Officer says: "No rike Jew."
"Why not? Why don't you like Jews?"
"Jews sink Titanic."
"The Jews didn't sink the Titanic. It was an iceberg."
"Iceberg, Goldberg, Greenberg, Rosenberg, Spielberg; no mattah, all same"
Too bad I can't tell this joke at work... (and it's utterly wrong, the Chinese is replacing l with r instead the opposite, and what are navy ranks doing on an airplane...)
Go invites us to an exhibition, where her director without a movie will be shown. It's a 3d animation of a director who recounts a story of an actor who was famous among the studios, played in dozens of famous movies, but appeared in none, because each time his scenes were cut out for time. I supplied the voice, few visits ago I just sat in the darker part of the room in Richmond, talked the stuff into the camera (with cap on the lens). She then processed the sound to make my voice even deeper, trailer style.
In the background, since beginning of month acquiring a Yamata overlock [sewing machine] dragged. It's for special purposes, and I have no clue what does it do but she needs it, I don't need to be versed in exactly everything. It had cost only 106$, and the correspondence with the Paypal, supplier and seler dragged until 14th, and then we got the delivery tracking number, and then it arrived.
On 14th, this photo of me reading Simmons's „Ilium“. The exercise rack we brought when we moved, and on it I hung one of those twisted neon lights, which we used for the pretend photo studio. The weight is only a two-pounder, not much, and I'll soon have to move to something bigger.
The impression remaining from it was that it's all just „fucking with gods“, this way or another. Kudos to imagination, the image he left in my head were quite impressive, but somehow each time they come down to a company of travelers in a weird surrounding. I guess one of those who always play the same role, compose the same song, tell the same tale. Many years later I read the second part and remember it far less, the story seems quite watered down and, of course, he had to perform one slaughterhouse, he loves to do that. Some ten-fifteen years later I was talke into reading the „Hyperion“ and it looked like more of the same, only this side more on the horror side, which gave him an excuse to reach for deus ex machina whenever it came convenient.
Mentions: David Krakovski, Gary Brandywine, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Mohan Merchant, rasejani, sGradlj, UniJewel, in serbian