i had some vegetable alphabet soup this morning, with some toast, an avocado and an orange. i put the cucumber off until i could get some dill and yeast but didn't get a chance to get out today. so i made the cucumber soup without the dill.

i am not very nice to cucumbers. they gave me red peppers, which are good, and cherry tomatoes, which are ok, but the onions and cucumbers are (with lettuce) the triad of useless vegetables. you'd might as well just drink a glass of water. that's why i'm making soup out of it.

i enjoy pickles, but they're not really food.

here's my hacked recipe

=====

- melt three tsps of olive oil margarine in a large sauce pan

- dump a bulb (yes a bulb) of garlic in and cook for 3 minutes, until a little brown

- add a lime that's been segmented and with each segment cut in half and a dash of vinegar. cook for one minute/

- add 450 ml of vegetable broth (a half carton), one tbsp of cayenne and some pepper. i avoided salt. let it come to a simmer and simmer for five minutes

- dump about 375 g of yogurt into a large soup bowl. i used biobest probiotic because it has fortified vitamins and that's no longer mandatory in canada.

- the recipes call for a blending step. i would avoid this. i tried it and it wasn't pleasant.

- i would just dump the saucepan of simmerimg soup on the yogurt, which will cool it down

- add an avocado (diced)

- add hemp seeds

- add dill, if you have some

- add about 100 g of grated cheddar cheese, or more

- i would suggest adding a tbsp of nutritional yeast and some frank's, as well

i am serving with two slices of buttered (olive oil margarine) toast, a second avocado and an orange.

if i do this again, i'll avoid the blender and add the extra ingredients. adding the ingredients converts these useless cucumbers into something worth eating.

how is it?

it's bitter, but it's supposed to be. the missed ingredients could tone it down a little.

yes, this awful weather in eastern north america is climate change.

meteorologists are confused by what they're seeing - the weather is moving the wrong way. the blocking pattern isn't so weird, but the idea of the atlantic dominating weather in the midwest is unheard of.

...except that it isn't. this has been increasing for years. i posted quite a bit about this a few years ago, when it was the hot atlantic sea surface temperatures that were extending the summer here. well, it works both ways, is what we're learning.

if i were in boston or new york, or the swamps of the potomac, i'd be very worried, as it signals you're about to fall into the sea. detroit is becoming a maritime climate, and the boswas seaboard is tipping into domed status.

but what is even more concerning is that we're watching the gulf stream collapse. this was one of the most publicized outcomes of climate change, the collapse of the gulf stream. all of the factors surrounding climate change will lead to a hotter atlantic, and don't let people trick you into thinking otherwise, but these things are cyclical, and they oscillate. this will cycle out and  come back, but it's something new and different, and the patterns are legitimately novel.

this is something that has changed.

- if it made sense to build an oil pipeline to nova scotia, the private sector would do it. they aren't because it doesn't. this is an expensive boondoggle that the government should avoid.

- i actually like doug ford's tunnel idea in principle, but i want to see a serious feasibility study. the basic observation, that the 401 is brutally congested, is correct. you don't want to see more giant highways built further north. a better idea may be to try to reduce the amount of traffic moving by truck and increase the amount moving by electrified rail, and if they do end up digging, they might want to consider expanding the subway network under the 401 and pairing it with freight traffic moving parcels.

new swans out today and i'd grade it as interesting but i have to listen to it a lot more first.

i take the atypical position that swans was best in the 90s and are better at being psychedelic than at being metal.

this song could not possibly be about taylor swift.

(more likely, it is about courtney love. but there's a real chance it's about madonna.)

as expected, the attack doges were released on elon musk immediately.

if i were him, i'd get out of the country.

i actually support the state department order directing that visa applicants to harvard should be explicitly vetted for anti-semitism, but would argue it should apply to all visa applicants, not just people going to harvard.

let's not overreact or be sensationalist. as a strong critic of islam, i've constantly been forced to try to maintain levity in recent years.

trump's disdain for the educated is not fascism. it is not anything close to fascism. however, he does have a very real stalinist streak and what the united states should be seeking to avoid right now is the kid of devastating anti-intellectual purges that occurred in the soviet union under lenin and stalin.

the soviets killed or locked up all the smart people, then wondered why they couldn't compete. america may be driving the smart people away, or in the process of deporting them, but they are not killing or imprisoning people and there is really no good evidence that they are on the brink of it.

we remain in the era of orwell. don't forget that. trump is in truth overseeing american decline get itself over the hump, and start free-falling off the cliff.

it's a cara cara orange, actually.

more vitamins. the things are beastly.

nobody actually cares.

the idea that the king of england is going to come save us from a yankee invasion is retarded. the prime minister of the uk has clearly told us the americans have priority - sorry. most people aren't even taking it seriously enough to denounce it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/29/king-charles-politics-monarchy-visit-to-canada

it's better without the salt. doesn't need any at all.

very hot and sour.

it's probably more hot and sour than french onion. but they're kind of the same thing, up to the capsicum. french onion + chilis = hot and sour.

onion soup round two this morning, tweaked slightly.

- melt 3 tbsp of olive oil margarine in a large saucepan (i bought this).

- add one onion (i have two purple onions) and four small cloves of garlic, 2 tbsp of thyme, one tbsp of basil and one tbsp of cayenne pepper. i also put some (onion) salt and pepper in. i then let it cook on medium for 25 minutes.

(note: try it with fresh spicy peppers, habanero maybe, and let me know)

- dump a can of chick peas in a large bowl (not a normal purchase, a food bank specialty)

- i don't have fancy bread, but i broke up two three slices of brown bread that they gave me

- sprinkle some grated cheese on the bread (i'm using mozzarella, which i bought)

- i don't have wine. i do have tamarind soup mix, which they gave me. this is an asian thing. it's a fruit they eat with fish soup. i dumped it into a one quart mixing bowl with a bit of vinegar and stirred it up. it smells like wine.

- after the onions were brown, i dumped the tamarind soup and two beef soup cubes (which they gave me) into the pan and let it come to a boil before reducing heat.

- i let that simmer for about ten fifteen minutes to let it boil off a bit

- i then added the rest of the container of vegetable soup broth they gave me, which filled the pan up, and let it go for another ten minutes, until it was broiling.

- i then filled the pan up with vegetable soup broth. i didn't measure this. i might have used chicken, but i have vegetable broth that is older. i let it come back to a simmer and then sit for another ten minutes.

note that you want to be stirring this regularly through the process from the start.

- i put a tbsp of paprika, a tbsp of cumin and tbsp of hemp seeds (i bought these and put them on everything) in the bowl and dumped the soup in.

- i put all of the mozzarella on top of the soup (i used 200 grams, grated)

- i added some frank's and some more pepper. i would have added a tbsp of nutritional yeast but i'm out.

i am serving it with a side of avocado and orange for key vitamins.

this is consequently really a recipe for chinese hot and sour french onion soup.

or SUPER MEGA AWESOME chinese hot and sour french onion soup. stylized.

the remnant broth of my french onion soup tastes like a chinese soup called hot and sour soup, which makes sense because i used the tamarind as a sub for the wine. 

i will always get hot and sour soup when i go to a chinese restaurant. every time. this is a good find.

onion soup is not something i have a lot of experience with. i've had it made for me by friends of friends, and i've had it in restaurants. i've never made it before. it's the kind of food my mom would eat, but i don't remember her ever making it.

the chick peas are helpful as a meat sub. good idea.

the tamarind soup subs as a fruity red wine very, very well.

it doesn't need extra salt and i may cut out the added salt next time. besides that, i have to say it's pretty good.

so, here's my hacked onion soup recipe, based on some guides online. i never buy onions, this was given to me by the food bank.

- melt 3 tbsp of olive oil margarine in a large saucepan (i bought this).

- add one onion (i have two purple onions) and four small cloves of garlic, 2 tbsp of thyme, one tbsp of basil and one tbsp of cayenne. i also put some (onion) salt and pepper in. i then let it cook on medium for a while.

- dump a can of chick peas in a large bowl (not a normal purchase, a food bank specialty)

- i don't have fancy bread, but i broke up two slices of brown bread that they gave me

- sprinkle some grated cheese on the bread (i'm using mozzarella, which i bought)

- i don't have wine. i do have tamarind soup mix, which they gave me. this is an asian thing. it's a fruit they eat with fish soup. i dumped it into a one quart mixing bowl with a bit of vinegar and stirred it up. it smells like wine.

- after the onions were brown, i dumped the tamarind soup and two beef soup cubes (which they gave me) into the pan and let it come to a boil before reducing heat.

- i let that simmer for about ten minutes to let it boil off a bit

- i then added the rest of the container of vegetable soup broth they gave me, which filled the pan up, and let it go for another ten minutes, until it was broiling.

- i put a tbsp of paprika, a tbsp of cumin and tbsp of hemp seeds (i bought these and put them on everything) in the bowl and dumped the soup in.

- i put the rest of the mozzarella on top of the soup 

- i added some frank's and some more pepper. i would have added a tbsp of nutritional yeast but i'm out.

i am serving it with a side of avocado and orange for key vitamins.

and i'll let you know in a few minutes.

i had eggs again on monday (same thing, exactly) and quinoa on tuesday and wednesday morning. i found some cheap quinoa at the food basics. i did add a can of corn to each bowl, as well as some cherry tomatoes, which are not a part of the standard meal, but it was otherwise pretty much what's on the diet sheet. tonight, i'm making some onion soup, which is a bit of an experiment.

the idea i've settled on is that i'll use the food bank items to embiggen my diet sequence and in the process slow it down a little. i've doubled up on this run, which i do sometimes anyways, because there were items i wanted to eat quickly. i can replace some items - the slim jim can replace the salami or bacon, for example. there are a handful of things i'd buy anyways, but these are largely unusual food items for me, and i asm learning a few new recipes.

so i'm currently cooking the soup and i'll let you know the recipe and how it is, it's a little unusual to say the least.

the americans are asking for 61 billion dollars to join their missile defense system.

we should tell them they're not allowed to use our airspace unless they sign us up for free.

this should be called the "donald trump implementation bill".

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/bill-5-protect-ontario-by-unleashing-our-economy-act-guide-1.7542478

at this point, it's relatively clear that the republicans are not going to give putin what he wants and needs, in terms of security guarantees, to pull back from the dnieper. the change of tone from washington has been to be more condescending towards the russians, and that is not helpful. the russians are not quite equals, but they want to be treated with equity and not with disdain and superiority. trump is sending the wrong message and putin is correctly reacting to that wrong message.

putin wants bill clinton back and it doesn't look like he's going to get it, and trump is probably the best he's going to get, big macs and all.

one thing that has changed is that the white house seems to understand the urgency of the situation, and biden did not seem to understand the seriousness of what was unfolding. trump actually appears to have picked up more where obama left off, whereas biden was trying to carry on from the second bush administration. that's a shift in the right direction. however, i'm not convinced they're attaching enough seriousness to the situation.

there is no doubt that the russian response demonstrated deep operational incompetence. they hadn't done anything like this in quite a long time, and it showed; if some older generals in the kremlin, behind some bunker in moscow, thought they could just dust off the world war two manuals, they were misled by their longer concept of history. the whole world, including the russian intelligentsia, could see that the russian defense forces needed some work.

well, they've now had three years to work on it. and i want people to stop to think about that.

biden seems to have been trying to win a final battle in the cold war, so his name would be in the history books as the one that conquered, but it spectacularly backfired and he will instead be remembered as the boob that made a mess of eastern europe right when it was getting itself back on track (helping only his adversaries, the chinese). rather than knock the russians out, it has provided them with a catalyst to rebuild a continental sized military empire with new technology, new weapons capability and new military objectives. biden has awakened the russian bear, and we are beginning to see it start feeding.

the fool biden made the same mistake that hitler and napoleon made before him and he made it because he was ignorant of the history. trump may extricate america, but the real threat lies in a war in europe in the next ten years between germany and russia.

my friday meal was the kd + chickenballs (spaghetti & meatballs).

my saturday meal was composed of items i missed last week - a grapefruit, some raspberries, some ice cream, some carrots, etc. none of this was food bank items and i bought it all on friday night.

i didn't trust the eggs the food bank gave me so i wanted to eat them next. they seemed ok. eggs and bread are both a normal part of my diet, but these other items they gave me are not:

- beef cubes

- home fries

- slim jims

this is what i did.

first, i made some gravy with the beef cubes, which are intended as a base for soup, by using twice as much. it came out pretty good, and there's still some left. then i fried the home fries in olive oil margarine until they were scallop-y. in a bowl, i grated some mozzarella cheese (that was on sale. i bought it for the onion soup.) and put some more grated mozzarella aside. you put the homefries on the cheese, the gravy on the fries and the rest of the cheese on last and just let it sit for a few minutes, to let the boiling gravy cool down and the cheese melt. i added pepper and frank's (i have no ketchup). it's actually pretty good.

then i chopped one slim jim up and threw it in the pan. i let that fry for a few minutes as i made some toast. the fried slim jim comes up on the plate, and three eggs get fried in the remaining olive oil. i chopped some cheddar cheese for the toast and an avocado on the side.

excellent breakfast. wish i had a glass of juice. alas.

if you're curious, fried slim jim tastes similar to hot dog.

there are places in detroit for campfires and i used to know where they are.

that might end up being the thing in detroit this weekend, not the music.

i don't know if i'm too old or not yet.

movement is very loud in the new apartment and i don't really mind. i wouldn't usually go to the main festival, which has something like 100,000 people (gross), but i like to go to the smaller shows overnight, the ones that run from 11:00-7:00 in abandoned warehouses around detroit. i don't know how many i've been to over the years, now.

right now, the problem is the weather. it's not a little chilly. it's fucking freezing. i'm not stuck inside anymore, so i'd find a way to get there, but it's not any fun when it's freezing out.

the point is you put on minimal amounts of clothes and sweat it out in the heat. singing songs around the campfire in a parka has it's moment, but it's not the same thing.

next year.

maybe.

if i'm not too old. we'll figure that out over the next ten months.

why do british woman always look like they have osteoporosis at 43?

must be all the rain.

the ndp had better hurry this up because this government will not last long,

mr. carney is embarrassing himself and the country by siding with rapists and terrorists in gaza.

he needs to promptly shut the fuck up, and should probably even resign for his recent comments about israel.

the problem with the missile defense system 20 years ago is that it wasn't continent wide. it was designed to shoot down missiles shot at america over canada. we were even supposed to agree to the use of our airspace to get our cites destroyed as collateral. it was crazy.

this system is going to built much further north and it's a necessity to keep the russians out. like at kiev. we need some way to shot these down over the ocean.

it's not a decision to make. it's a no brainer.

will it work, though?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-should-firmly-reject-trumps-ludicrous-golden-dome-plan/

they don't fortify anything with b5 because it's supposed to be in everything, except it's not, or not in the things i eat.

i need avocadoes as a source of pantothenic acid, which i believe i had deficiency of due to not getting enough in my diet, which is supposed to be impossible.

i do have a toaster.

it's true.

calm down.

the avocadoes were on sale.

they gave me whole wheat bread, though.

i went to the food bank last week because i'm broke until the first of the month. it will balance out in a few weeks.

they gave me a lot of food i would never usually buy or eat, including several large cans of chick peas, raw onions, cucumbers, chicken nuggets, kraft diner and vegetable broth.

i held off of the chick peas tonight (i had some in my guac the other day). but i made the kraft dinner with vegetable broth as a sub for milk and margarine, which i don't have, and also fried the nuggets in the vegetable broth, which is actually really tasty. i then put the nuggets in the kd. i added paprika (vitamin a), hot sauce (sodium), cumin (iron), nutritional yeast (b vitamins, inc b12), two avocadoes (b5), garlic, pepper, caesar dressing  and some cheddar (these are core staples for me) and it's actually an awesome spaghetti and meatballs.

i will be making some onion soup, cucumber soup and brocolli soup - which i never make - just as soon as i get some olive oil margarine and some more cheese. i got some home fries for my eggs.

and i learned that goldfish crackers are an excellent source of iron.

Alan Dershowitz and Noam Chomsky agree on almost nothing politically but both say that anti-Semitism was deeply rooted in the United States in the last century. They made the specific charge about Harvard University speaking in very different settings this spring.

https://mondoweiss.net/2017/08/dershowitz-chomsky-agree/

 I think the first Jewish maths professor was appointed while I was there in the early '50s. One of the reasons MIT (where I now am) became a great university is because a lot of people who went on to become academic stars couldn't get jobs at Harvard-so they came to the engineering school down the street.

https://www.variant.org.uk/16texts/Chomsky.html

it's not that trump doesn't have a point, it's that this is a stupid way to deal with it.

However, Chomsky questions the wisdom of boycotting Israeli academic institutions. "If we boycott Tel Aviv University because Israel violates human rights at home, then why not boycott Harvard because of far greater violations by the United States?" Chomsky writes. "Predictably, initiatives focusing on [academic boycott] have been a near-uniform failure, and will continue to be unless educational efforts reach the point of laying much more groundwork in the public understanding for them, as was done in the case of South Africa."

i haven't seen a survey, but i would strongly suspect approximately 0% of academic jews support a boycott of harvard to combat anti-semitism. i would challenge you to find me a single jew that supports this. it's utterly foolish, and it will severely harm the united states.

https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/noam-chomsky-questions-anti-israel-movement-s-effectiveness

this is utterly retarded.

kristi noem needs to grow up.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c05768jmm11o

so, the government told them to prove it and they dropped it altogether, instead, because it was just greenwashing pr bullshit in the first place.

it's a helpful change in the law. 

if you give a fuck, invest consciously.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/climate/canada-pension-plan-investments-net-zero-target-1.7540234

what?

we should put the irgc on the terrorist list and join america's sanctions against iran. regime change in tehran should be a primary foreign policy goal in ottawa.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/iran-canada-diplomatic-relations-1.7539652

the king of england can go fuck himself.

he's not welcome in canada. go home, you piece of shit.

mr. springsteen speaks freely with no consequences whatsoever.

which he takes for granted.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11187703/donald-trump-bruce-springsteen-feud-investigation/

if you were paying attention, you probably haven't yet forgotten that the liberals campaigned on building a made-in-canada missile defense system that we would run ourselves. it sounded like a replacement for norad.

but, i saw this coming.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11188525/donald-trump-golden-dome-missile-defence-canada/

we don't have trucks worth of free food from the united nations coming to canada to feed our starving poor.

we have volunteers in soup kitchens that never have enough to get the job done. this should be a government responsibility, overseen by paid staff funded by tax dollars. it shouldn't be run by volunteers.

i would call on the liberal government to stop politicizing the issue and get taxpayer money out on the street to feed the starving poor here in canada.

there are more hungry people in ms. anand's riding that are starving from the oppression of false scarcity in capitalism than there are in gaza, which is the biggest and best taken care of welfare state on the planet, and which doesn't deserve your sympathy or empathy at all. these are horrible people with terrible value systems.

the problem is that ms. anand exists in an informational bubble. she gets her data from unreliable sources, doesn't question them and doesn't seek any kind of balancing of information. it results in a phony perspective based on alternate facts in a make believe universe.

despite what you may have heard, there is no famine in gaza and there has been no use of starvation as a political tool. ms. anand, as a minister in the government, should have better fact checking mechanisms available to her, so that she doesn't repeat falsehoods spread by social media.

our cabinet ministers cannot be getting their facts from facebook or twitter and, when they are, it demonstrates a deep level of overwhelming incompetence. 

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/anands-one-sided-comments-on-israel-a-strategic-blunder

insistence on a two state solution is out of touch with reality and confirms the irrelevance of europe and canada in international relations in the region.

no relevant actor is calling for two states. 

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/canada-uk-france-warn-of-concrete-actions-against-israel-over-military-expansion/

the government should make a choice: does it support peacekeeping or does it support fueling more war in ukraine?

it should not try to do both.

and it can't. the world won't let it. we'll be roundly and correctly attacked as hypocrites.

if we can't or won't present peacekeeping as a replacement for active participation in ongoing conflicts, there is no longer any self-interest in supporting peacekeeping, and doing so becomes rather foolish. we're just squandering resources for nothing in return. it becomes a waste of our tax money that would be better spend on building more subsidized housing in canada.

the point of supporting peacekeeping was to avoid involvement in conflicts like ukraine by telling the americans "look, we'd rather contribute like this.".

but, canada is actually essentially leading the offensive against the russians in ukraine. 

so, what is the purpose of canadian peacekeeping, now, then?

we've lost the plot.

canada's quiet support for the cuban position in angola is actually one of the most intriguing and contradictory episodes of the cold war. it's not well understood.

i'd like to remind or teach everybody, as the plot has been completely lost, that the purpose of pearson-trudeauvian peacekeeping at the height of the cold war was to avoid nato war commitments in conflicts we had ideological problems with.

so, rather than send troops to fight alongside white supremacists in angola or anti-communist forces in vietnam, we talked the americans into agreeing with us that it was valuable to stabilize africa by sending them food and textbooks.

from 1965-2005, canada was the most non-aligned member of nato. it's a difficult balancing act, as we had to try to align with the parts of american hegemony we liked while avoiding participating in the parts we didn't. and it didn't always work.

it's not clear that trump will accept these arguments. lbj did. nixon did. carter did. clinton did. reagan didn't.

peacekeeping is not something canada has ever done out of unselfish altruism. it's been a way to avoid harder war commitments in conflicts we conscientiously objected to.

frankly, there are not any such conflicts like angola, or vietnam, or iraq, in which america is currently involved in. canada went to afghanistan as a part of a un mandate, and that was the right choice. i would support canadian involvement in yemen, as these are legitimate bad guys and vicious barbarians that need to be wiped out. the closest thing to an iraq or vietnam is ukraine, and we are taking a very uncanadian position on that conflict, in supporting bellicose war rhetoric and very hot war that the americans are wisely trying to de-escalate. unlike iraq, a war of regime change in iran would actually be a noble enterprise. etc.

it is plausible that we might get asked to participate more in some of the proxy wars in africa, and support brutal parties that we are ideologically opposed to. that is the kind of thing that we invented peacekeeping in order to avoid, but there's a lot less of that in the world today than there was in 1970.

https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2025/05/canada-strengthens-support-and-commitments-following-2025-united-nations-peacekeeping-ministerial-meeting.html

there is no "trade war", it's just an excuse to ram through imf austerity packages and sell off public assets to american investors.

when i get this going in the next month or two, it may seem like the adherence to process is slowing me down, but it is actually going to dramatically increase my productivity by providing me with organization and structure.

i've been trying to do way too many things at once for way too long.

i'm not a twang guitar player. the songs i learned to play on the hondo telecaster included stairway to heaven, black magic woman and squonk - all les paul standards. yes, i was that kid playing the stairway solo at age 12. i replaced the telecaster with an ibanez with a locking bridge that was kind of not very strat-like; it was more like a prs. i have a replacement for that already, too. my hands are too small for les pauls; that's why i bought an sg. however, i am going to need a tele for the period 3 recordings, which are far more focused on live guitars than the period 2 recordings were, and i'm going to need everything to finish the period 4 material, which is psychotically dense and over-produced.

this rebuild consequently isn't going to merely be a performative exercise. i will use this stuff, and i will be anxious to get going, but i need to follow this process, and the mess of the last several years has just slowed me down that much more and made the need to adhere to process that much more clear.

at the least, once i get through 1989-1995, 1995-2003 should be relatively fast because it is mostly done. i will then mostly pick up again at 2003, where i left off in 2017.

i understand that listeners might be frustrated, but i have to get the entire package finished. for me, this is integrated. everything goes together. you'll have to wait, and that is more clear now than ever before.

i'm about 30% of the way through transporting items out of my storage unit and into my new apartment, which is about an hour walk, both ways. i'm a little out of shape, so it's actually good exercise for me.

i have mentioned that i'm going to be refocusing several times, now, and have been trying to kick back into some kind of productive cycle since the start of the pandemic, but keep getting distracted or sidetracked. at this point, trying to pick back up at the start of period 3, or trying to parachute back into the alter-reality would be difficult to even make sense of.

i am instead going to need to just start at the start and work forward. that means starting with the journal, in 1989, and just working through linearly. no alter-reality. no lynchian split narrative. just starting from the start and moving forward.

that means i'm going to be focusing mostly on building the offline writing, but also that i'm going to be restarting a number of blogs in real time, including the diet blog.

something i've been meaning to do since i moved to windsor is sample some of the local restaurants. the last month and a half has thrown me out of my diet and forced me to order food, which has got me back to thinking about that. i am intending on weekly restaurant updates at the diet blog, in addition to the diet blog itself. i've mostly eaten fast food over the last month, but i'd like to expand that to more of the local restaurants one by one. 

i also need to rebuild sections of my studio that were lost over the years, which is something i was doing before the house got bought and i had to deal with the legal fight over housing. i'll be doing that linearly, as well, as i go through the journal. i will get my first acoustic guitar, then my first electric guitar, and need to have emulations of them in my studio, for period 3 recordings. the first electric guitar was a hondo telecaster copy, which i have replaced with a hannah montana mini tele. it's actually a nice little washburn. i could repaint it a solid purple. the thing is that i have freakishly small hands, so i actually prefer miniature scale guitars. i also have an epiphone sg jr and a fender mini squire, both solid red. i will be looking for a comparable acoustic guitar, which my dad sold to buy me the tele. i still have my first amp, from 1992. i also need to get a recorder, as we had recorder classes in elementary school. my younger sister played piano from a very young age, and i also had that around. i'll rebuild slowly from there, and replace everything that was lost. i'll also need to fill in minimal missing sections of the existing discography, inri000-inri100 (1995-2005), but this is mostly a writing project that i've been eating away at since 2017.

i'm basically in the same mental position i was in in 2013. i'm overwhelmed and having difficulty focusing on any one thing. if i pick up somewhere in between, i'm just going to start running around in circles again, like i've been doing since 2017. 2013-2016 was extremely productive, but i started in 1995 and should have started in 1989 and i focused only on the music and have since expanded the scope of the project to include video, writing and other types of media. this time, i'm starting in 1989 and moving comprehensively forward.

but i will also exist. i will eat. i will go to shows. i will have political opinions. i would like to start vlogging again. etc. all of these things will happen in real time, in the way that they must.

what i can't be doing is trying to exist in ten different spaces in time. i'm not a tralfamadorian. i can do two things at once. that is all.

that means that this mass of writing and video from 2013-2025 is going to have to wait until it comes up in sequence before i can finish it, and that's going to be quite a ways into the future. that's fine.

when the journal is done, it's done. 

regarding the stalker,  i don't seem to have shaken them, but the depth of the harassment is clearer now than it was two years ago and it is now crystal clear that i'm going to have to get them arrested and put in jail. that was not clear before. it is now. i'm dealing with a true believer. this person will not stop voluntarily, they must be forced to stop, and i will have to force them to stop.

this is an active combat vessel in the mexican navy:

the reason that trump has been keen on the russians is because - and he's right. i said it myself. - he realizes that the west needs russia in a fight against china. we will lose a war against china if we can't pull the russians back into our orbit, first.

trump is, however, dealing with realizing the unpleasant reality that putin is an asshole and any realignment has to deal with that fact, first, as a pre-requisite.

so, he's dusting off biden's plan, which was to arm the arabs, instead. right. when was the last time the arabs won a war against anybody? if china invades the middle east, they may have to deal with endless arab bombing attacks, but that is not the same thing as fighting a war, and the chinese can avoid the annoyance by not invading. the arabs lucked out on oil wealth, and spend trillions on weapons, but they don't know how to use them. they buy these 100 million dollar planes from lockheed martin and then pay american pilots to fly them. there are american military bases all over the middle east with defensive weapons systems and american military guys operating them. do you think these countries are going to fight for democracy and human rights when they have to? the middle east is a liability to defend, it's not an ally to align with.

where should america align, then?

well, who has defeated the chinese before?

1) japan.

2) vietnam.

3) mongolia.

4) china, itself.

all of these are self contained to the chinese geographic space except mongolia. the last time that chinese siege technology took on arab fundamentalism, the result was 100 million dead muslims. i see no reason to think the same thing won't happen again. 

only the russians actually beat the mongols, although other slavic groups (poles, ukrainians) also fought them off.

the geography determines the destiny and there's not any other possible outcome. yes, you protect the pacific. yes, you try to control indochina. does this stuff sound familiar?

but, at the end of it, we need the russians fighting on our side, or the chinese march straight through to france. there's no other way to parse it.

it is not a bad thing if canada post runs a deficit. it should not be expected to operate on a for-profit basis in the first place, it's a government service, it's not a business.

it should be restructured with the expectation of structural losses and for the benefit of citizens, not profit.

polievre, very strangely, has an upper class massachusetts accent.

i actually agree that carney is more like trump than polievre, and i'm no fan of polievre (i basically grew up in his riding, fwiw.). 

americans take heed: carney is actually very obama-like in a lot of ways, including his mannerisms, his slogans and the fact that he's a conservative that tricked the country into thinking he was a moderate. polievre, on the other hand, is actually more like george hw bush, or perhaps john mccain - he's an older style of conservative that has gone out of fashion in the united states as of late, but is not that far from where joe biden was on the spectrum.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/17/carney-canada-donald-trump-tariffs-far-right

canadians know what equalization is. it's when have provinces send money to have not provinces. if that is how trump wants to lower drug prices, it's good old fashioned wealth redistribution via taxing the rich and would be a better drug system than we have in canada, which americans never seem to realize has the second most expensive drug costs in the developed world.

trump also likes our immigration system.

in fact, trump's family is from canada. 

he likes canada so much he wants to marry it. the problem was that trudeau made him feel inadequate as a male and had to go.

we wouldn't have to go into provincial deficit  - which is not sovereign debt - if he'd levy export taxes on the americans.

we're basically doing exactly what trump wants us to at every level, like the bunch of spineless losers that we actually are.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-budget-deficit-1.7536110

i was able to find a bullshit report by the "canadian independent federation of businesses", whatever the fuck that is, but i was not able to find any sort of legitimate academic study.

the obvious clear losers of removing interprovincial trade barriers in canada would be quebec and ontario, where the winners would be saskatchewan and manitoba.

the police in canada are happy to root out any competition to the biker gangs.

just don't ask them to go after the bikers, themselves.

this is the great open secret in canadian politics that makes everything make sense once you understand it: the hells angels are the single most powerful corporation in this country.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/on-patrol/article/blood-family-mafia-targeted-by-police-operation-in-levis-sainte-claire/

Examples include a requirement that real estate services providers in Ontario have a local presence, limiting trapping and hunting guide licences and mandating the use of locally grown grapes in wine production.

great.

ugh.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/article/ontario-to-loosen-internal-trade-remove-barriers-on-alcohol-and-labour-mobility/

it's not a deal, it's a gift.

i hope manitoba is at least gracious enough to send us a thank you card.

if donald trump is failing at trade theory because he's making it too hard to access markets, ford is failing at trade theory by giving foreign producers access to ontario's markets for nothing in return. he's repeating exactly the same mistake that has hollowed out ontario's economy for decades. ontario's breweries will soon look like southern ontario's shuttered car factories.

the framers of our constitution were correct to erect interprovincial trade barriers and they should not be torn down without academic consultation. we should have studies and commissions before we act, and those studies would no doubt recommend leaving the status quo in place.

but doug ford doesn't care about studies or commissions, he cares about his gut - his gigantic beer gut. who needs to read books when you can drink beer, instead? 

the consequence of the giant beer gut is his shriveled up beer brain. 

we need more intelligent leadership in this province.

what does ontario get in return for allowing manitoban producers access to it's large and wealthy market?

the answer is nothing.

this is a good deal for manitoba, and a bad deal for small breweries in ontario, who will now face greater competition.

doug ford is just not very smart.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ontario-manitoba-internal-trade-agreement-alcohol-sales/

as expected, mark carney's cabinet indicates that the focus of his government will be on advancing the interests of bankers rather than workers.

i don't know why some people were so easily misled. all the guy did was drop some hockey metaphors. it's somewhat embarrassing, as a canadian.

i don't think his government will be very successful or last very long. the ndp, or elizabeth may, could very well take it down to stop them from passing a budget to the right of stephen harper. 

this looks brutal, and it's clearly being driven by elon musk, but it's only because it reflects a reality that is exceedingly uncomfortable in it's unexpected juxtaposition. americans don't want to accept or understand that slavery is complicated, it's not just a black and white issue. a full understanding of slavery in the united states means understanding the depth of irish slavery, it mean understanding the role that black slave traders played in africa and it means understanding that the system was essentially designed by arabs, before being taking over by spanish conquistadors moving south into north africa. we don't want to understand this. white supremacism is easier to grasp, because it entrenches us at the top of a hierarchy.

yes, these people are descended from colonizers that stole land from indigenous africans. that is a fact.

it's also true that those indigenous africans have since risen up and taken their land back, which leaves the descendants of the colonizers displaced and literal refugees.

they will make reliable republican voters.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/may/12/donald-trump-luxury-plane-us-china-trade-deal-tariff-latest-us-politics-news-live

yeah.

there is a mcdonalds across the street. they are open and working. you can go through the drive through. but i don't have and do not want a car.

instead of walk downstairs and open the door and order the 2-for-1 big mac, i have to order it from uber from a different mcdonalds across the city.

everything about this is idiotic.

why can't i just go inside and order a hamburger? 

it's like we're living in a backwards society like iran.

there is a mcdonalds almost directly downstairs, but it closes at 20:00, meaning i have to order delivery. this is utterly moronic

the pandemic is over. can we have 24 hour fast food again now? i'm tired of this bullshit.

i have a new apartment.

i got lucky. i had been unlucky for a bit. i was lucky for a bit before.

life is often more about luck than anything else. you've heard that; i've heard that. you learn that it's true.

i executed as well as possible, but i needed luck to succeed.

clearing items out of the hotel was somewhat challenging because they wouldn't give me the keys until friday morning. i thought they'd for sure give them over on thursday night, but they made me wait. i had to clear the hotel room by 11:00 am and they wouldn't give me the keys until 9:00 am. the only way i could do that - and i did - was by cramming everything onto a shopping cart and trekking it across town. i would have done that anyways, but if i had a headstart on thursday night then i would have done it in one trip; as it is, i had to leave some thing behind and walk back to get them, then bicycle them back in trips, and then do it again today. the bicycle trips that i would have done on thursday night got pushed to friday night and saturday and i lost not one but two days. that is now over with - everything is out of the hotel and into the apartment.

the electricity is on. the heat works. the fridge works; the stove less so. the shower has some problems. it looks like the place got half rebuilt and then halted, due to lack of interest. there are a few things that will need to be finished. it's a nice enough place, though. i'm just high enough up to get clean air from the windows and i'm very excited about that, as it's been too long since i've been able to open the windows in the summer and enjoy it. the internet works. the phone works. i think essentially all of the basics are in order.

the next thing to do i clean in here, and start taking things back out of storage. i should be able to cart out a fair amount of it while i'm waiting for funding from the city, but i'm also going to be focusing on items on a needs basis. for example, the first trip will get my measuring scale and some measuring cups, so i can start eating in my normal schedule again. i've just been eyeballing the cereal recently.

tonight, i need to do some loose ends like call teksavvy,  fill out the oesp form, etc and then get to cleaning, in preparation of the first storage run tomorrow.

this is a bigger apartment than the last one, and is more comparable in size to the apartment on tuscarora, but bigger.

i have actually been thinking about how to reapproach the discography for quite a while and will likely aggressively get back to work, if my conditions are controlled again. i will have far clearer workstations in the apartment than i have had in a while, and it should help me kickstart back into productivity quite quickly.

so, i'm hoping i can get back to work very quickly and that i get a lot of work done very fast. it will be a little bit different than previous, and more comprehensive.

i was actually thinking a little today about how rfk, jr is an am embodiment of the collapse of american society. the kennedys are overrated, but their type of philanthropy has a certain flavour which we call "progressive" and has to do with positioning science at the centre of the political discourse. say what you want about rfk, jr, but he is not a progressive politician, he is the literal definition otherwise. the decline of the kennedy family through rfk is more than real, it has a specific flavour of irony to it.

in other news, windows xp extended warranty was also extended until 2045.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/bill-gates-pledges-his-remaining-fortune-to-the-gates-foundation-which-will-close-in-20-years/

the media blames it on these barbarian yemenis. they took down some f-18s, did they?

the chinese have some giant military installations in the region and they're the ones shooting at the americans in the red sea. they're clearly succeeding in hitting some targets.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/second-fighter-jet-falls-off-carrier-1.7528391

need to dot some is in the morning and it will be a day or two.

they can't rent this place because of the heating costs, but i have oesp. that's the trick. you get these inefficient electric heaters into oesp and it flips right over. i'll be saving up all summer.

that's the thing about oesp: it's not just $100/month, it's a $100 credit per month. so if you only use $30, $70 goes into the credit.

windsor is relatively mild. it's not ottawa. further, this is on the top floor.

i'll be fine.

or i'll sell my kidney.

no, i'll sell your kidney.

*googleyeyed smile*

i'll be fine. really.

it might have been less stressful, but this is how it happened.

so be it.

it's almost over.

it's not that bad. i spent a month in a hotel, not on the streets. i'm lucky, but i'm smart, too. i just need to be made whole for the costs, and you can be sure those costs are coming. 

i mean, this had to eventually happen. there's no way around it.

i was going to eventually have to move out of there, and i'm not dead yet. i might have been. that was very tenuous.

i figure this is life number seven.

gotta keep these near death experiences down, huh?

a few more days.

ok.

this has been quite the fucking challenge.

i'm just about there. i think i got it.

next step: retribution.

why is it that the landlords i've met in windsor over the last several years are consistently the dumbest people i've ever met?

it's startling.

the electric heater in this hotel sounds like it was programmed by autechre. 

or maybe i need to go to a party. like, now.

i had another false start collapse this afternoon and had to stop to sleep it off before i imploded. it's been very frustrating, as it keeps looking like things are coming together and then they don't.

in the next 48 hours, i need to either sign a lease and start moving stuff in or i need to find a room to stay in for a few more weeks, until i can sign a lease.

i'm trying. i'm looking more and more like my girly self self again, and that can only help.

i am exhausted.

i have been recovering from the harassment in a hotel, and it's taking some time to balance back out. it's getting there.

at times, i've thought they followed me here, but i suspect they might have now left. i dunno. see, i do have ptsd, and i it did trigger it, badly, and i will remember things that happened in that basement, randomly, for years, maybe the rest of my life. i don't think that is what happened this week. i don't have the confidence to be certain, and i actually usually do - it is usually not that difficult to figure out what's real and what isn't at all.

i suspect that they got me one of the last nights i was there. i started to wonder if they were swabbing door handles, but i think i settled on them burning something, to create smoke for me to breathe in. there really wouldn't be anything i could do, especially if they fumigated me when i was sleeping. i'd wake up smelling like i was at a campfire sometimes, despite having just taken a shower a few hours earlier, and have stayed in all night. i don't know exactly how they did it, but i was inhaling something, breathing something in.

i would subsequently pass it through my kidneys, and could feel it leaving, it was gross.

i am coming up against a feeling of frustration setting into hopelessness. there are apartments available right now, but the process of securing one has become overwhelmingly bureaucratic. i'm used to dealing with people face to face, not filling out applications like this. i'm finding the property management stage to be almost impenetrable and am increasingly running out of time.

i need to buy more time.

so, i'm asking you to go to my bandcamp site and buy some mp3s, or go to the paypal donation directly, even. 

i don't know how much more time this is going to take. i just know i need more time.

see, i don't quite understand this mentality.

the americans are expressing a willingness, however absurdly, to try to control canadian exports by "economic force". it's like the koalas have taken over the white house and want to conquer the world with the power of the invisible hand. these are frightening comments. however, that's what "51st state" means, right? it means controlling canadian exports.

so, in response to america expressing a desire to control our exports, we scheme up ways to gain leverage against them. then, we get confused when they start talking about controlling our exports some more.

i understand that our oil producers want a better price and are seeking to sell it to a buyer that's willing to pay more of a fair price for it. however, that should answer your question as to why america wants to control it. right?

there's other ways to get a fair price. you could insist on export taxes, as that is where most of the price hike would go anyways. the americans are telling you pretty loudly that they're not happy about you selling that item to those people; they think that item belongs to america.

while being too submissive about something like that is something to avoid, equally undesirable would be being pointlessly argumentative about it. 

perhaps you first might try renegotiating the price?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/one-year-after-the-trans-mountain-pipeline-expansion-why-isn-t-it-full-1.7525284

renting furnished apartments seems to be normal in other parts of the world, and i'm increasingly finding owners that insist on furnishing their apartments and then charging extra for it.

but that's a weird thing here and something most white people would not be interested in. i certainly wouldn't want to pay *more* for a furnished apartment; if i had to, i'd want to pay less for it. i have my own stuff. that's the point.

i don't to borrow your furniture or sleep in your bed. that's gross.