Lair of the Mad Canadian

3:31pm: GOOD GOD WHAT TOOK ME SO LONG
( Six years late, but I FINALLY GOT IT DONE )

8:37pm: THE GREATEST THING EVAR

7:52pm: so i cleaned my room for the first time since last May.
FUCK YEAH.


ALSO: Adventures As An Extra (or lack thereof)
(surprised i didn't bitch about this earlier)

BACKSTORY: I finally got off my bony ass and signed up with this extras agency way back in november or december. At the time, I had about 8 months worth of hair, and they were all like "GREAT! We need 70's-looking motherfuckers!" or something like that, and then it took 15 minutes for them to take a photo of me because I kept blinking.
So I'm waiting and waiting for the phone call, and a few weeks later I randomly check the voicemail and there's a message asking me why I didn't show up for the fitting they told me to go to several days earlier.

They never told me about any fitting.

So I silently raged for a week or two over one of my roommates not only failing to tell me but LETTING THE AGENCY THINK THEY WERE ME, and figured I was screwed with that agency since they now saw me as unreliable.

They called a couple weeks ago. For the same 70's-era show.

I DON'T HAVE 70'S HAIR ANYMORE.

FUCK.
SHIT.
FUCK.

11:30am: unusually coherent dream last night: I somehow ended up playing guitar with Tool in some concert. But since I had no idea how to play guitar, I had to fake it. Afterwards, watching my ridiculous spasming on stage from the tv footage of the concert, I was going "Oh god, I can't do this. The guitar isn't even plugged in. I've become Sid Vicious."

i dunno. I'm just glad I stopped getting that recurring driving-from-passenger-seat-with-legs-twisted-up dream.

9:27pm: HAR. I figured it out.

It's not more drugs I need, it's less.

The new anxiety/stress/heartburn bullshit is still there, but with my brain only half as wired it's a hell of a lot easier to deal with.

Of course, this means I'm feeling the side-effects from my other medication more, but dealing with that may just force me out of the rut of complacency those bloody pills let me slip into in the first place.


I swear to god, keeping my brain together is like playing simcity. I get everything running nice and smooth and then suddenly
DISASTER
WHAT
SDSGSFASFGFJKHL
SHITSHITSHIT
REBUILD
REBUILD

9:27pm: it's been coming and going for the last few months but now this fear has been sitting in my chest like a fucking bowling ball for three days straight. even going to sleep is making me panic.

please let this be temporary. please don't let this be me getting worse again. the last thing i need is more drugs.

8:27pm: ROBERT PICKTON: GUILTY AS SIN.

And thank god for that. Even if it's second-degree murder instead of first-.
A non-guilty verdict would have left the crown with virtually no case against him in the second trial.


I guess that despite some people's best efforts, the justice system occasionally does actually work. Go figure.

1:00am: i am seriously pissed off at having to lock all my recent journal entries because SOMEONE went and told just about every person i DIDN'T want reading this shit about it. I don't write stuff so people can use it to try and psychoanalyze me.

but fuck it. i've been relieved of a huge, unnecessary burden that stole two months of my life and left me in a state not far removed from the one i was in when i had to bugger off to ontario for a month to relax.

my life can, at last, continue. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

8:18pm: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

don't you just love religious propaganda?

6:45pm: "vacation" my bony white ass.
A couple weeks ago, my mother and my grandmother (two of the most stubborn people on the planet) got in an argument over the phone, and haven't spoken to each other since. The problem is, we're all going away on Sunday to spend a week in a cottage on the island.

Somehow, I have to go convince my grandmother to apologize to my mother tomorrow so the last details of the trip can be ironed out. Now, that in itself won't be too difficult since I'm pretty much the only person my grandmother will listen to, but I don't know if I can keep her from saying something that will just start the whole thing up again. Especially since my mother is sick and in pain and stressed right out and refuses to back down even an inch, and will take virtually anything as a personal attack. And THEN I'll have to keep peace between them for the entire week we're gone.

Christ, I can barely keep my own life together without help. I don't get involved in stuff like this. I've gone to great lengths not to get involved in stuff like this. But I can't just go home, or obey my instincts and shut myself in a room with a book this time or everything will go to hell. I have no idea how I'm going to deal with any of this, or even if I will be able. And even if I do, and they both have a relaxing time, I'll still be a wreck by the end of it all.

4:59pm: FSDFGASASG BLOOD DEATH DESTRUCTION AAAARGH
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST MY COMPUTER IS FIXED

god DAMN it. No games, no music, no ANYTHING, when I expected to have the damn thing fixed a MONTH ago. Still, I did get it done for free.

Maybe using the malfunctioning bastard as the control centre of my life was a mistake. I was so charged up when I got back from Ontario that I cleaned my room top to bottom (for the first time in two years) and was all set to get all kinds of shit taken care of, then suddenly BRICK WALL SPLAT.

jesus christ I've got so much shit to catch up on. Two months X 100+ webcomics for starters, then the comic scans I pull off of bittorrent, then tv shows and music oh god it's going to take me another month just to get through it all. And rebuild my music playlist from scratch since I forgot to add it to the backup archive of the 10,000 songs that were on it. And I've got to go away AGAIN for a week because I have to carry everyone's shit because they're either too crippled up or 11 years old.

and now I've just looked up the GED testing dates, and I can't write the bloody thing until september. argh. I seriously hope I don't have to deal with too much shit getting work as an extra, because that's about the only thing I'm still gung-ho about.

godDAMN it's like the entire month of frustration is hitting me ALL AT ONCE and I can't fucking calm down. ASRAGDSAKJLGHADGHKL

4:02pm: "Uh, Joe, I think we forgot something..."
So I've survived the train trip through the States and made it here intact. The American border guard crossing into Washington was actually a really nice lady. (unlike the Canadian border guard, who had a hockey stick up his ass.) For some reason, I was like the second tallest person on the bus. It still feels weird to be taller than people. Once I got on the train I started writing down whatever shit ran through my head, which I now reproduce in legible english for you now.

( cut for train log )

3:16pm: RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE
So after feeling like shit since christmas and having the stupidest things trying to pop out of my mouth (and occasionally succeeding), I finally get my head screwed on as straight as it gets, and my computer decides to contract network polio and hopelessly cripple my internet connection. THREE FUCKING WEEKS i'm behind now. I had to use my brother's computer to post this. I haven't felt this isolated in years. I never thought losing net access would frustrate me as much as it has. If I didn't have about a hundred hours worth of tv shows already downloaded I probably would have put holes in the walls. My arm's a fucking mess as it is.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm fucking off to Ontario for a month to visit family. Four days on a train with a six-hour layover in Chicago, but it's better than the four hours of panic that an airplane ride would bestow upon me. I'm hoping I'll have a working computer waiting for me when I get back, but at least I'll have access at my dad's place.

10:36pm: okay fuck
Got some brand new shit to deal with, and the result is that it seems I'm not thinking quite as clearly as I normally manage.

In other words, I'm experiencing random bursts of stupidity.

Until I finish dealing with said shit, I'm going into lurk-mode so I don't do or say anything else that will make me want to throw myself out the window.

I may be gone for some time.

4:57pm: MY GOD IT'S A JOURNAL ENTRY
So I was by the Vancouver Art Gallery today, and they were filming a movie or TV show or something like they do all over the place up here nowadays. Since I actually had my camera this time, I snapped a few pictures.

( The army's in town... )

10:37pm: WE FOUND HIM.

well we actually spent the day chasing around sightings, and left a phone number with this hooker who sounded like she had throat cancer that said she saw him almost every day, and we found out he called when we were heading back. So we're going back AGAIN on saturday, and this time we'll know where he'll be ahead of time instead of twenty minutes late.

And I didn't notice it before, but Haney is fucking full of homeless people with bikes. This is just a really small ugly town on the river, but EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK there's some guy in old jeans and a denim jacket riding a bike. It's spooky.

Quote Of The Day: "Life is like a meat grinder: You only get out of it what you put in, but by then it's usually a bloody mess." - damned if i know

9:04pm: I just got back from an... interesting dinner with both of my parents. Which hasn't happened for as long as I can remember, since they split up when I was like two years old. It's not like I never saw him, hell I lived with him most of 2001-2002, but the last couple years they've become really good friends again and I didn't know until now. My little brother (half-brother if you want to get technical) came along because apparently he was a little concerned about not knowing my dad, and so he got to hear the whole story of all the bands my dad knew from DJ'ing in the early 80's and how my mother was pretty much the queen of new westminster because of who she was dating before she got romantic with dad. They were also both slightly drunk... XD

So me and dad are going back out hunting for my uncle tommorow and then we're (probably) meeting mom at this really good pizza place that is now a bar as well, and with no 10-year-olds in tow there's going to be even MORE inebriated reminiscing. I'm ambivalent (big words!) about this; I like hearing all these old stories from my parents' past, but I really don't like being around them when they're drunk. Eh, free food, I'm happy.

Quote Of The Day: "U.S. foreign policy is, in fact, based on the principle that human rights are irrelevant." - Noam Chomsky
(yes, the quotes are pretty much random)

4:55pm: So my dad's in town from Ontario, haven't seen him in two years (but we've been in touch), and we went looking for my wayward uncle who is currently homeless. We don't know if he's on drugs (again) or just broke, but we talked to a few people who've seen him over the past few days so we're going back on thursday to try and find him again.

good news is dad bought me a webcam and he's buying me a 160-gig hard drive which I desperately need.

Quote Of The Day: "But if we don't kill nature, how will we build our houses?" - some random LARPer.

11:08pm: I just read in the newspaper today that my old psychiatrist turned out to be a sexual predator. I guess I should be thankful he went after his female patients. It's a little unnerving, though, especially after finding out last year that one of my phys-ed teachers was also a pedophile.

JUST HOW MANY BULLETS DID I DODGE BACK THEN!?

Quote of the Day: "There is a garden in the east, serene and perfect, but a seraph guards it with a flaming sword. For God has seven thousand names, and one of them is 'Bastard'." - Briadach the Blind

11:56pm: CAUTION - POLITICAL RANTING
I just finished watching Canadian Bacon, and aside from the laughs, one part really stood out. Namely, the fact that ten years ago terrorists were just "some creeps running around in exploding rental cars". And one attack later, they become the new evil in the wake of nazis and communists. And like opponents to capitalism were during the cold war, anyone speaking up against the US is potentially a part of that evil.

How the fuck did we let this happen?

There was a time when I honestly believed that the common people could change the world if they just pulled together. I thought that I was going to witness this happen, and be a part of it, when ten million marched in protest of a war that should never have happened. But it did happen, and I finally realized that there is no way to fix this society from within. The power has been in the hands of the few and the greedy for too long, and the only way they'll lose that power is through force, whether it be terrorism, revolution, or natural disaster.

But would taking an active role in that force be right, be moral? Morals may be in the eye of the beholder; but what good is striking a blow against the system if you are demonized by the very people you're trying to help, people who turn around and ask their oppressors to fix the damage you caused?


Well, this train of thought has certainly ruined my good mood. Fucking politics...

Quote Of The Day: "The more things stay the more they change the sane." - unknown

6:06pm: REJOICE, FOR I HAVE RETURNED.


And I am never fucking ever doing that again.

1:07pm: I'm fucking off to an island for a week.

Try not to destroy the world until I get back.

8:57pm: YARR, I BE PIRATIN'
What have I gotten myself into?



1350 pages. And I still have to find one for the first war. |P

I really need to do this, though. I've spent the last three years doing fuck all. I'm going to get this thing written, one way or another.

More when I stop reading all the comics I downloaded by torrent and actually get something done.

Quote of the Day: "The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are." - H.L. Mencken

1:26pm: Progress at last?
I think I caught a throat bug from the train ride back. I sound like I have lung cancer or something. I wish I had a microphone; I actually sound kinda cool except for the coughing fits after every sentence. It's not bothering me that much though, and it's giving me an excuse to stay home and recuperate from Fanime. Wish my pictures turned out better; I still haven't gotten the hang of that camera.

The train ride home was boring as all hell, since my headphones decided to DIE and left me with absolutely no music. The plus side of that is that I finally got the bloody plotline down on paper. I've had all these random bits of plot floating around in my head for a good year now (maybe longer), but I never really knew WHAT happened WHEN until now. It's amazing how everything clicked into place as I scribbled down the mnemonics. I was never able to do this with it's predecessor, which was running in my head for 3 or 4 years before it collapsed into a bloody mess without a word of it ever reaching paper. I'm just glad I was able to salvage SOME of the characters...

I got a basic history timeline written out as well, but that part will take some actual research to do in good form. I mean, I have to essentially REWRITE the last century of history, since World Wars I & II DIDN'T HAPPEN. This means I have to list out damn near everything that happened as a result of those wars (i.e. the end of the Ottoman Empire; the origin of the word "genocide"; the Cold War) and either change it or come up with a different reason for it to take place. I'm going to let the culture more or less parallel the real world; I already have to invent several others without having to reinvent our own.

I figure I'll take care of this first, then try and find a tectonic plate map so I can work on gaia's geography. This way I'll have a decent framework set up before I start fleshing out the backstories and such. Between this and learning to run the website for my ex-roommate's entrepreneurial venture, I may just make it through the rest of the summer without MIGHTY FUCKING BOREDOM hanging over my head.

-edit-
I take it back. This virus is starting to piss me off.

Quote of the Day: "I'm being verbally abused by a toddler over here. It belong to anyone, or can I throw it in a wood chipper?" - Jordan Kennedy

1:08am: Another entry beginning with "So"
So I'm sitting in the passport office with $90 in my pocket for the fee, waiting for (only!) an hour until my number comes up, and they tell me that it'll be ready on the 23rd, and mailed out to me within the next few days after that. I'm like "oh shit don't I have to be on a train on the 23rd to get to fanime on time?" so I ask if I can pick it up myself like I've seen other people doing and they say "yeah but it'll cost you an extra $10." I had to fucking pay them NOT to fucking mail it out to me. And also, $10 that I didn't have. So I ask if I can pay the ten when I come back and he says "No, you pay it all at once." So I'm like "shit, I ain't going back to the bank and waiting another hour" so I give him my bank card because supposedly I can pay by interac with it. Which I've never tried to before. But it worked, so I was like "hey cool." And then I got home and found out that the bloody convention starts on the 26th, not the 24th like I thought. So I called myself an idiot and downloaded Pearl Jam's new album and listened to it while I downloaded Sam Roberts' new album. Yes, downloaded. I'm poor. Sue me.

And in case you can't tell, I put absolutely no effort into making this entry sound even slightly intelligent. I'm falling asleep here. Gimme a break.

Quote Of The Day:"Do you know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I beat you with till you bloody well understand who's in charge!" - Jayne Cobb