Thursday, July 16, 2026
Wednesday, July 15, 2026
the bridge deal is apparently that canada collects the tolls, pays everything down first (including the amount michigan owes) and then uses 50% of profits after that, for the first 15 years, in building infrastructure around the bridge, on both sides of the border.
ok.
i live here. i'm not opposed to that. more bike paths and more parks and better sidewalks and roads sound good to me. in fact, there was an infrastructure component in the initial deal, and i haven't been over it, but michiganders should take note that canada paid for all that development on the detroit waterfront. i'm happy to pay for more. i'll use it.
a discourse on middle powers is certainly not a waste of time. however, the discourse, as it exists, is often fraught with factual inaccuracies and poor level of empirical analysis.
the idea that american hegemony declined after the fall of the berlin wall, for example, is little more than russian propaganda. an empirical analysis demonstrates that american hegemony has increased dramatically since the 1980s, and especially since 2003. america is today dramatically more powerful than it ever was during the cold war, and has less rivals for global control than it did then (source: chomsky). arguments or projections otherwise are just not based in facts, they're magical thinking. they're nonsense.
further, the premise that american hegemony could exist without the american hegemon to enforce the hegemony, which is almost always what proponents of middle power collusion actually want, is absurd on it's face. this is the christian missionary trying to convert the lion. it's sheer stupidity. it's utter folly.
....but that doesn't mean that the model of the middle power within the system of american hegemony is without value. indeed, it's a system that many seek and would benefit from. those seeking independence of american hegemony generally don't take the time to understand exactly what exists outside this bubble they seek to escape from. the grass is always greener where the dogs are shitting, or so a dead rock star once said.
i'll volunteer to continue criticizing the advocates of middle power collusion. i agree that that's not going anywhere. but i'll hold to the value of middle powers on the world nonetheless.
the idea missing from the argument against middle powers is that america needs allies. all hegemons have allies. when you lose your friends, you lose your influence. you'd think a specious 80s capitalist like trump would tie together meeting friends and spreading influence. so, america needs the middle powers as much as the middle powers need america, and this denial needs to be addressed from both sides.
trump will be gone soon and we'll kiss and make up. but, in the mean time, it's actually valuable that we all take the time to understand the limitations of our theories and the mistakes inherent in our ideologies. we will be better off if we learn from this.
turkey is not a legitimate nation-state or a real country, it's a usurping military dictatorship enforcing imperialism and colonialism everywhere it goes. it has no indigenous turkish population. it has enforced it's language, religion and culture strictly through violence and it remains the sick man of europe, on the brink of historical cessation.
there was a time not long ago when turkey had imperial control over north africa, the levant, the arab peninsula, southeastern europe and mesopotamia, but a fundamental outcome of the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries was that turkey's imperial project was severely curtailed and reversed and many of these conquered and subjugated peoples rose up and declared independence for themselves. however, this process is incomplete. there remain subject kurdish, armenian and ionian populatons, and the longstanding illegal occupation of constantinople also needs to be addressed. further wars through the 21st and perhaps 22nd centuries will finish this process of the abolition of the turkish state, and return sovereignty to the remaining subjugated populations of greeks, kurds and armenians. it would appear that a new round of popular uprisings in this illegitimate usurper state is imminent.
the illegal occupation of constantinople remains one of the greatest injustices of modern history and it will be a day of great liberation when the turks are finally permanently expelled from the city, and the greeks take their rightful place as sovereigns of their own capital.
those who seek to align with the turks as a rising power are flat out stupid. turkey remains a collapsing empire and a sick society lost in backwardsness that has no future but elimination. the permanent and total cessation of the turks state is both imminent and desired by all freedom-loving peoples. those advocating for turkish power in the 21st century need to be wiped away, into the latrine of history.
it's a child-like analysis intended for juvenile minds that want to differentiate periods of time into a false dichotomy of "war" and "peace", as though wars have definitive ends and there exists states of non-war between periods of states of war. only an ignorant child would see the world in those terms.
yes, war is perpetual. peace does not exist. that's pretty fundamental. you have to get over that basic point of fact if you want to sit at the grown up table.
Tuesday, July 14, 2026
Monday, July 13, 2026
i can't do this all at once. so, rather, the way i'm going to do this is to start with school novels.
- the chrysalids (found used years ago, penguin uk) (moved to grade 10)- i remember reading the crucible because i remember the character names, but i don't remember when. (found new, penguin) (moved to grade 10)
- i have almost no memory of grade 11 english- i think it was largely canceled due to the ice storm
like everybody else, i read some boring books in school and some good books in school. i remember the good books, and largely enjoyed reading them. you didn't have to pull my teeth to get me to read something, i'd do that with minimal prodding. the good books were classic texts that i want to have copies of and, at times, have had copies of on my shelf, but sold, or lost, or had damaged, or had stolen. the boring texts were almost universally "canadian content", although they never made me read any atwood until university, and i actually enjoyed it.
i took english every year from grades 1 to 13 and was initially admitted to university as a math-physics student. i mostly took science, math and computer engineering courses in my first stint at university and then went back to study law as well. i did take reading courses for breadth and there are a number of courses in history, classics, english literature, gender studies, and other topics that i was enrolled in that it's going to take me a little bit of time to collect all of the information regarding but that i want to fill in first.
i'm going to update this page as i gather information.
very early childhoood texts i will skip or only mention in passing:
- lots of dr seuss
- mister/mrs /miss books
- the curious george books
- beatrix potter series
- shell silverstein
- the hockey sweater
- the mare's egg
4th-9th grade independent reading for journal (both real and inserted, not necessarily in this order) that i will collect as i go through the journal phase and not before:
a) books i actually remember reading:
1. isaac asimov [working on]
2. jules verne (i was younger) <---soon
3. ray bradbury
4. hg wells
5. arthur c carke
6. cs lewis
7. lewis carroll
8. stephen king
9. tom clancy
10. dean koontz
11. robert ludlum
12. michael crichton.
13 john grisham
14. arthur conan doyle (i was younger) <----soon
15. hans christian anderson (i was younger) <----soon
16. grimm brothers (i was younger) <----soon
17. i had a book of greek mythology my grandmother gave me that included stories like icarus. i will do a section on "greek mythology for kids". i was younger. <---soon
18. aesop. i was younger. <---soon
19. saint exupery
20. william goldman <---soon
21. eb white (i was younger) <---soon
22. i read the king jame's bible from start to finish at the start of the summer between grade 5 and 6. i was not raised religiously, but i've been a staunch atheist ever since.
23. mark twain
24. rudyard kipling (i was younger) <----soon
----------
artistic license for exaggeration:
25. philip k dick (i was older)
26. alduous huxley (i was older)
27. tolkien (i was older)
28. wllliam golding (i was older)
29. frank herbert (i think i read a chunk of dune at my grandmother's because she was reading it, but didn't finish it)
30 roald dahl (my grandmother bought me a copy of james and the giant peach, and i read it, but it was left at her place and that was the extent of the roald dahl. i'll rectify that.) <----soon
31 douglas adams (i was older)
32 michael ende (i used to watch the neverending story a lot) <---soon
33. eta hoffman (i was older, but i liked the nutcracker) <---soon
34. dickens (i was older, but i remember a christmas carol)
35. hp lovecraft (i was older)
36. william gibson (i was older)
37. i should read the three star wars books. i never did. i saw the films. i wasn't much of a star wars fan, actually. even as a young kid, i found films to be kind of low brow. i've always preferred to read a book than watch a film.
38. i did read some rand as a kid but didn't finish it, which was unusual for me. i thought it was awful.
39. wyndham, which i read a little for school and enjoyed.
40. chaucer (i was older). do a section on chaucer, beowulf and other english mythology classics.
41. do a section on celtic mythology.
mythology to cover in more detail: celtic, english, germanic, norse, greek, roman.
only briefly touch on hebrew mythology.
note that the time frame here is before 1995 and really before 1990. texts from after 1995 are off limits.
nonfiction i read as a kid:
- my dad bought me hockey biographies, because he liked hockey. i never even learned how to skate. i read the game and biographies written by ghost writers for wayne gretzky, maurice richard and robert orr quite young.
===========
note: i can find documents called circular 14 at archive.org that have approved texts for each year, 1989-1996.
it changed in 1997, but i was in the last year of the old model. i did not shift to the new curriculum. at all.
note: be careful buying books on amazon. lame people just print books out to 8x11 computer paper, staple it together and call it a book. it's not even properly bound. this nonsense is going to get banned. for now, you have to check or you'll get ripped off.
update: i'm shifting much of this to bookoutlet.ca or to chapters to avoid this issue. i'll cross-reference. shop, even.
i might get an ereader soon. it won't be a kindle. but it won't be my primary reading source, it will be for bus rides and supplementary. i like physical books. i'm building a shelf - it's the point, to have it on your wall and say "these are my books, this is my library".
3rd/4th grade:
- journeys in mathematics 3 for grade 3, i think. later.
- journeys in mathematics 4 for grade 4, i think. later.
- course work: spelling, grammar. minimal in class reading, testing for basic reading comprehension. abstract learning through reading may be common at this age amongst white canadians that speak english as a first language, but not a part of the school curriculum.
- no recollection of any science, at all.
- tickle the sun english textbook by jaap tuinman had some passages that were read in class for grade 4, nothing that exciting. i'll buy this if i find it anywhere, but can't right now.
- my grade 3 teacher liked the beatles and would often play yellow submarine in class.
- very large amounts of busy work, especially in grade 4.
5th/6th grade:
-we watched a lengthy video called "voyage of the mimi" for english class, which i can't currently find for sale in book form anywhere. there was a school play for a christmas carol (found new, aladdin books) that i didn't participate in but there was no reading of the book in or out of class, students were just given lines to remember with no context. it was a complete joke. there were minimal in class readings, mostly of short stories that i don't remember. i remember listening to a 1930s recording of Leiningen Versus the Ants, which is weird and obscure and which i can't find anywhere. he was an odd guy. i remember reading sections of call of the wild by jack london in class (found new, oxford classic's, with white fang and short stories). i remember writing an essay on asimov's foundation's edge (found new years ago, bantam spectra) in grade 5, but it was because i was a gifted student and the teacher assigned it to me because he knew i was bored and was trying to get me to stop misbehaving because there was nothing challenging for me to do. he used to let me play tetris in the computer lab during math class, too. i should have been skipped a grade or two, but the principal kibboshed it under unjustified concerns about my "maturity level". she was a retard, broadly speaking. my standardized testing was consistently off the charts.
- course work: spelling, grammar. minimal in class reading, testing for basic reading comprehension. abstract learning through reading may be common at this age amongst white canadians that speak english as a first language, but not a part of the school curriculum.
- i do recall some small amount of newtonian force analysis, and work with newton meters. 2nd law. we did some measurements with metre sticks. nothing very exciting. extremely minimal.
- i don't recall any chemistry,
- my grade 5/6 teacher didn't believe in evolution, and it's a primary part of the reason i didn't have much respect for him, at the time. i used to often take library books out on cladistics. but there was no discernible biological instruction.
- i didn't attend the religious instruction and should have been at a public school, but my mother had me baptized at 3 for two reasons (1) the catholic schools started at k4 and the public schools started at k5, so i'd have to skip a year after preschool (defeating the point) if i were to go to public school but i could avoid the gap year by getting baptized and going to catholic school and (2) while my mom was herself a vaguely protestant scandinavian atheist, if not an explicit laveyan satanist, she was also an extremely racist person and she preferred to send her kids to the mostly white (franco-irish-italian) catholic school. my franco-italian dad's family were catholic a few generations back. he believed in hockey and always watched football on sundays.
- we actually did some programming with logos. no books.
- sail the sky english textbook by jaap tuinman had some passages for grade 5, nothing that exciting. i'll buy this if i find it anywhere, but can't right now.
- ride the wave english textbook by jaap tuinman had some passages for grade 6, nothing that exciting. i'll buy this if i find it anywhere, but can't right now.
- we took recorder lessons. ode to joy.
- the 5/6 teacher was also the coach of every sports team and that's what he actually cared about. he was a hard worker, and he spent a lot of time doing his job, which he clearly cared about, he was just a doofus.
- the school's french teacher was also the phys ed teacher.
- journeys in mathematics 5 for grade 5, i think. later.
- journeys in mathematics 6 for grade 6, i think. later.
- 5/6 was a little better than 3/4 but still had a lot of busy work.
adds are:
- a christmas carol, dickens (new, aladdin). it's a cliche. bookoutlet.ca.
- call of london/white fang, london (new, oxford). i liked these, for sure. they're well written. amazon.
- asimov, foundaton's edge (already have, bantam-spectra).
- the three jaap tuneman journeys hardcovers, which are well put together little course packs for kids, but probably very hard to find
- if i can find a print version of the voyage of the mimi, i'll collect it.
- leinengen vs the ants, stephensen is out of print because it was overt nazi propaganda. the author was an adamant nazi. i'm not worried about becoming a nazi, but there is no way to buy this in english except as an ebook of an article; it was never published in english beyond the initial article publication because it's just too overtly nazi. it's a weird thing to have such a prominent memory of. i remember almost nothing from elementary school as well as i remember this radio broadcast. it was truly chilling, and legitimately fascinating. them ants are smart.
==============
starting in 7, to 13, i acknowledge this list is an approximation. i've read everything in this list (and then some. i'll never have a complete list), but for each grade there may be a few titles that are added at the wrong time, or to the wrong grade, or that i read out of school. i just don't remember complex details about every book.
i ultimately want each grade level to have a nice list. it's more important that this is ready to go and is substantive than that it is completely accurate, although i'm trying here.
for that reason, as i'm not always sure about what was read in what grade, i'm going to move things around a little, to generate themed years. maybe the curriculum should have done that in the first place. so, while i think i read the chrysalid in grade 8, i'm going to move it and the the crucible to grade 10, where there' a cod war theme. grade 11 had a french revolution theme. grade 8 had a pre-enightenment theme. grade 12 was boring nineteenth century literature.
7th grade:
- i vaguely recall reading handouts in class but don't remember what it was. i think it was "canadian content".
- there was a novel in a brown cover that wasn't very good. i read it, but it was not well written. after doing some google searches, i think that the cover art style i'm remembering belongs to robertson davies novels. i am not collecting novels by robertson davies, as i don't consider them to be substantive or worthwhile or, frankly, to even be very good. they are 100% plot, 0% substance. robertson davies novels are just about people doing stuff, they don't hit upon any sort of abstract or interesting political, scientific, philosophical or historical themes. i find books about ordinary people just living their ordinary lives to be fucking boring wastes of time. they aren't even complex, or flamboyant, or abstractly written. his writing is described by critics as "readable", which should be an insult, not a praise. they are badly written, simplistic novels with boring plots and vacant development that are designed for the dumbed down, sunk browed, lowest common denominator to waste their lives consuming, to no meaningful end. i read several of them in high school, as "canadian content". fucking hosers. i think it was one of the deptford trilogies.
- the circular 14 pdfs are reminding me that we had english txtbooks in grades 7-9, which sounds weird, but really isn't. university english courses often have course packs. also, grade 9 was middle school, not high school, despite being at the high school and not at the middle school. i need to find the txtbook, which had readings and excerpts.
- the circular 14 pdf indicates that grades 7-9 had a variety of textbooks approved for use. i've searched for information on a lot of the texts in the circular 14 for grades 7-9 from 1993-1995 and they are all extremely obscure, but the one that looks the most familiar is cycles (3) by mcclung. i can neither find the text or it's contents, which is what i want. i can't find the covers for the other two books. these books probably had the shakespeare, etc in them. if i can't find them, so be it.
- the jaap tuinman anthology, breaking ground, also looks familiar, not certain what grade. i can't find the other one, burning fire.
- perspectives 1 by ed hannan is a hit due to the decal in the front, not sure what grade. i can't find pctures of two or three.
- did we read shakespeare in the 7th grade? William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed, new.
- math book: journeys in math 7 and intermediate math 1 (mcgraw hill, dino dutton) both look familiar, and it's possible the second was used for grade 8.
- geography book: this was in french and was like a quebec history course rather than a canadian geography course. we spent 2/3rds of the class on the legendary plesiosaur in lake champlain, which was seen as a part of quebec (it's actually in new york). creepy, weird frenchie teacher. in the end, we got graded on our french, not on geography. there was a book but i can't find it.
8th grade (pre enlightenment era txts):
- a man for all seasons (found new, vintage/penguin)
- shakespeare, henry VIII. William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed, new
- i think we did the diary of anne frank, which in hindsight is creepy and weird. i'm not sure if i got the year right though. this is a reference text, so not now - when i try to collect the math and other books.
- i think there were handouts of sections of robinson crusoe. (found new, penguin)
- i'm pretty sure that the lottery by shirley jackson was a handout in the 8th grade.
- i'm sure there was some agatha christie as a handout in the 8th grade
- i read lord of the flies in the 8th grade in my stepmother's father's spare room one weekend overnight, as it was on the shelf when i was there. it made a bigger impression on me than the books i read for school, and was really more appropriate reading than the books i read for school. i collected it from his books when he died. it's one of the books that disappeared. (collected, disappeared, found new, ???)
- the circular 14 pdfs are reminding me that we had english txtbooks in grades 7-9, which sounds weird, but really isn't. university english courses often have course packs. also, grade 9 was middle school, not high school, despite being at the high school and not at the middle school. i need to find the txtbook, which had readings and excerpts.
- the circular 14 pdf indicates that grades 7-9 had a variety of textbooks approved for use. i've searched for information on a lot of the texts in the circular 14 for grades 7-9 from 1993-1995 and they are all extremely obscure, but the one that looks the most familiar is cycles by mcclung. i can neither find the text or it's contents, which is what i want. these books probably had the shakespeare, etc in them. if i can't find them, so be it.
math book: journeys in math 8
science book: grimace. the focus was on knowing what's alive and what isn't, in an epic delayed snub to thales. take that, rocks. your magnetism is not life, according to our rigour. memory heavy but not that profound. the virus remains ambiguous, alas, although a better and newer definition of life is much simpler - dna - and has to include anything that evolves.
history book: grade 8 history was relatively well constructed. i didn't learn much, but it went through riel, laurier, conscription crisis, silent revolution, pearson, patriation. it hit a lot of points. i don't think there was a textbook used.
9th grade:
- i remember reading shakespeare, but that's it. merchant of venice for sure. William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed, new
- i remember reading a boring novel with a tedious teacher, but don't remember what it was. i read it, but it was not well written. after doing some google searches, i think that the cover art style i'm remembering belongs to robertson davies novels. i am not collecting novels by robertson davies, as i don't consider them to be substantive or worthwhile or, frankly, to even be very good. they are 100% plot, 0% substance. robertson davies novels are just about people doing stuff, they don't hit upon any sort of abstract or interesting political, scientific, philosophical or historical themes. i find books about ordinary people just living their ordinary lives to be fucking boring wastes of time. they aren't even complex, or flamboyant, or abstractly written. his writing is described by critics as "readable", which should be an insult, not a praise. they are badly written, simplistic novels with boring plots and vacant development that are designed for the dumbed down, sunk browed, lowest common denominator to waste their lives consuming, to no meaningful end. i read several of them in high school, as "canadian content". fucking hosers. i think it was one of the deptford trilogies.
- the circular 14 pdfs are reminding me that we had english txtbooks in grades 7-9, which sounds weird, but really isn't. university english courses often have course packs. also, grade 9 was middle school, not high school, despite being at the high school and not at the middle school. i need to find the txtbook, which had readings and excerpts.
- the circular 14 pdf indicates that grades 7-9 had a variety of textbooks approved for use. i've searched for information on a lot of the texts in the circular 14 for grades 7-9 from 1993-1995 and they are all extremely obscure, but the one that looks the most familiar is cycles by mcclung. i can neither find the text or it's contents, which is what i want. these books probably had the shakespeare, etc in them. if i can't find them, so be it.
math book: journeys in math 9
science book:
adds for 7-8-9 are:
- a man for all seasons (new, vintage). i enjoyed this for the historical context, but i would have rather read utopia and in the end did. this was intended to get around the religious concerns with reading more's classic, which i thought was stupid and backwards and ignorant and still do. amazon.
- the chrysalids (already have, penguin uk). i legitimately liked this and grabbed it used when i saw it in a book bin. it's exactly the kind of science fiction i'd read piles of at that age and foreshadows some king texts like the dead zone.
- the crucible (new, penguin). i only remember reading this because i can identify the characters, clearly. but, because i can identify the characters clearly, i'm sure i read it. i'm wondering if i read it years later, with the scarlet letter, because i'm having difficult separating it. there's also the king angle via salem's lot or children of the corn. but it's usually read in middle school. i'm going to pick it up now and say i read it even if it's blurry. i may have read a section of it in a handout, maybe. amazon.
- robinson crusoe (new, penguin). i'm sure i read excerpts of this in middle school. i can't remember what grade. bookoutlet.ca.
- the lord of the flies (new, faber and faber). as mentioned, i read this in the 8th grade, but not for school. i greatly enjoyed this, and it's a more substantive text than the books read in school that year. i had a version that disappeared. so, i'm replacing that. i've had a little difficulty picking the right version to buy for the shelf. the cheap version on amazon doesn't appear on the faber & faber site, is dated to 1973 and claims it has a foreword by stephen king, which should be dated to after 2011. something is wrong there. i think it's a counterfeit reprint of a 1973 version with the added foreward, which may be to get around a censorship issue, about the word 'nigger'. there has been an attempt by extremely immature people to remove the word nigger from print sources that i strongly disagree with. nigger is a word like any other word and it's strictly up to the individual, including the individual writer, to decide when to use that word or not to use that word. nigger has a definition in the dictionary that is unique from all other words; sometimes, it's the most correct word to use, in context. the artist decides, not the censors. if people are offended, they should choose not to read the book. nobody has any right to tell an author that they don't have artistic freedom to use a word because they take offense to it; that is juvenile and immature and has no place in a developed cultural environment. if you really can't deal with it, you get up and leave. whether somebody is offended by a book or not is of absolutely no relevance whatsoever. i would suspect that i could avoid the censorship by getting that counterfeit version, but piracy is not a valid solution to censorship. there would be two publishing houses printing this text. the penguin version replaces the word nigger with the word indian, which is something i take offense to, not because i'm offended by the word indian, but because i'm offended by the idea that indigenous racism is softer than black racism. the author said nigger. it's entirely unjustifiable to insert indian in it's place; it's not less offensive, and it's worse that you think it is. the faber and faber version replaces nigger with n*****, which is the height of immaturity, but at least isn't distorting the intention of the artist. you still understand that he said nigger, you just say nigger the way that an eight year old says nigger, with a hushed sense of deviance, because you have the maturity level of an eight year old. ok. let them eat that. history will ridicule them for it. so, i ended up with the version with the king forward and the juvenile n***** in place of nigger. it ended up being about $20, which was a little more than the suspected counterfeit version and a little less than the unjustifiably altered penguin version. amazon.
- shakespeare text, [William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed, new], $44 total. amazon.
===============================amazon purchase for $41 + lof + 44 = 85 + lof. i spent $37 for lof & animal farm, so i'm at 85 + 37 = $122.
10th grade (cold war theme)
- grapes of wrath (isu) (bought used years ago, sold years ago, found new, penguin). bookoutlet.ca
- animal farm (have never owned, just found new, penguin.) amazon.
- something about the brutality of ww1 and trench warfare specifically:
- all quiet on the western front?
- for whom the bell tolls, hemingway <--for sure
- johnny got his gun, dalton trumbo <---for sure
- there was something in the crmean war:
A Gallant Grenadier: A Tale of the Crimean War
F S Brereton <---pretty sure it was this
- the unknown soldier
- the chrysalids (found used years ago, penguin uk)
- shakespeare, romeo and juliet for sure. [William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed, new]. amazon. i am also getting a separate paperback at bookoutlet for $5.
- i think we did something set in 19th century america or earlier. puritanical.
i remember reading the crucible because i remember the character names, but i don't remember when. (found new, penguin)
- there was a first person narrative about escaping slavery to come to canada (moved to grade 8)
- there was a bigger focus on essay writing not tied to specific pieces of literature. just opinion writing, or to advance general arguments.
- i took enriched grade 10 english.
- i remember animal farm because the allegory slowed me down a little. i had to read up on it. i remember johnny got his gun because it's brutal. i think i just ripped through the hemingway, etc in an afternoon.
- i took enriched grade 10 math:
- advanced grade 10 science:
11th grade (french revolution):
- tale of two cities (found, new). i didn't find this that compelling as a piece of literature, but the historical context it was set in held my interest long enough to stop me from tuning out like some of the worse texts this year. this is an objective classic, even if it's a little slow.
- oliver twist (found, new). i have a stronger memory of oliver twist and that's why i'm splitting this back to grade 11.
- was the hunchback of notre dame grade 11? or 8?
- i think much of the grading structure was cancelled due to the storm. it was all based on exams.
- i think i do remember doing shakespeare, but i don't recall what.
- grade 11 bleeds into grade 12 for me because i think the classes were in the same room at the same time, but with different teachers that were both short older women.
- i don't remember an isu, unless it was dickens.
12th grade (boring nineteenth century classic slop):
- a streetcar named desire. i didn't think this was very substantive. i might say it was a go nowhere run-on story and flat out boring. i mean, who gives a fuck about these people?
- 1984 (isu). i still have the copy i read in 12th grade. (already have, penguin)
- the old man and the sea (found, new). i greatly enjoyed this. it's a strong delve into human behaviour. one of the best books i've ever read. i have never owned a copy until now.
- fifth business, robertson davies (this was brutal, the only thing i've read that is worse than ayn rand). i am not bothering with this one. i am not collecting novels by robertson davies, as i don't consider them to be substantive or worthwhile or, frankly, to even be very good. they are 100% plot, 0% substance. robertson davies novels are just about people doing stuff, they don't hit upon any sort of abstract or interesting political, scientific, philosophical or historical themes. i find books about ordinary people just living their ordinary lives to be fucking boring wastes of time. they aren't even complex, or flamboyant, or abstractly written. his writing is described by critics as "readable", which should be an insult, not a praise. they are badly written, simplistic novels with boring plots and vacant development that are designed for the dumbed down, sunk browed, lowest common denominator to waste their lives consuming, to no meaningful end. i read several of them in high school, as "canadian content". fucking hosers.
- the apprenticeship of duddy kravitz, mordecai richler. also brutally boring. not bothering with this.
- shakespeare, macbeth, i think [William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed, new]. amazon. i'm also getting a separate paperback at bookoutlet for $5.
13th grade:
- gravity's rainbow (isu)
- heart of darkness
- i think we did of mice and men in 13. it was after the grapes of wrath, so it was 11, 12 or 13.
- random bits of poe
- i vaguely recall some virginia wolff
- upton sinclair? jungle? excerpts?
- i think we read glass menagerie by tennessee williams but it's blurry
- i recall something by lord byron but it's blurry and it might be the wrong course
- shakespeare, hamlet i think. [William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed, new]. i'm also getting a separate paperback at bookoutlet for $5.
======================amazon buy:
1st year greek civ:
homer
sophocles
aristophanes
herodotus
plato
thucydides
2nd year english I (individual in society):
scarlet letter
dora
picture of dorian gray
frankenstein
narrative of the life of frederick douglas
yellow wallpaper, charlotte perkins-gilman
2nd year english II (sci fi):
war of the worlds (found new)
neuromancer
slaughterhouse five
handmsaid's tale
gulliver's travels
flowers for algernon
asimov, nightfall
3rd year engish I:
gender studies:
- dream of the walled city
- oranges aren't the only fruit
what the mess in hormuz is exposing is how broken the system of international governance has become in the years of neglect since iraq. this is actually europe's - and canada's - fault for refusing to uphold or administer it, and allowing the un to devolve into a powerless, empty anti-semitic israel-bashing club. if canada and europe had taken better care of these international institutions in the years since iraq, and not allowed american hegemony to run off the rails, we wouldn't be in this situation.
the media is clueless.
it is obvious that what is needed in the region is a un anti-terrorism force to go in and take control of the region and keep the iranians out of hormuz and also out of the red sea. the primary participants should be the gcc, but the europeans would need to be in the organizing seat.
american tolls to pay for something the un should be doing is unacceptable and disappointing but not an entirely unpredictable ramification of the european and canadian abrogation of global leadership since iraq. abstention from events around you is not a mature policy taken by mature adults. if europe doesn't want to take part in global affairs, it has little grounds to complain when it doesn't like the outcome.
this is a much bigger project than i thought. i don't have the cash on hand to do this all at once. i need to do this in phases.
today, i want to fill in obvious gaps, first. i'll focus on the list of science fiction authors after for the early 90s project, starting in 1989, when i was 8-14 years old.
the list of authors for the childhood journal that i'll be focusing on is:
1. isaac asimov
2. jules verne
3. ray bradbury
4. hg wells
5. arthur c carke
6. cs lewis
7. lewis carroll
8. stephen king
9. tom clancy
10. dean koontz
11. robert ludlum
12 john grisham
but i won't be able to collect many of those today.
Sunday, July 12, 2026
this was posted in feb, 2019:
i'm racking my brain for actual books that i read in grades 7 and 8 - and even 9 - and i'm not able to come up with anything. i remember being given photographed handouts and asked questions around an ability to prove very basic comprehension, or being asked to read short texts and then produce an opinion piece around it. but, i don't think anybody ever handed out books to us and told us to read them.
i went to both elementary school and high school under the rae/peterson curriculum (harris won when i was in high school, and didn't succeed in changing the curriculum until the year after i'd left), and i'm learning just now that it was kind of an experiment. i did not receive any actual marks until grade 10; my high school transcript, which i still have, simply states "completed" for grade 9. i have records of standardized testing where i scored in the 95th-99th percentile, but i don't have grades for these years.
what i remember about the report cards is that they had a long list of criteria, and you'd be evaluated on a points system, with 1 the highest and i think 6 the lowest. this was just the teacher's arbitrary, completely subjective opinion. i remember getting lots of 1s in english and math, 2s or 3s in phys ed and some pretty low marks in the "shows respect for authority" and "works well with others" categories. even my university profs would have scrawled "does not work well with others" on my report cards if given the chance, and i'm not particularly embarrassed about it - i don't work well with others, and i don't want to, either.
i'm not even sure i can pick out much of anything of shape in these years really at all. we were split into classes that taught core subjects, and then shipped into different rooms for specific topics. so, i remember having a science teacher, a french teacher, a geography teacher, a music teacher, a phys ed teacher, a home ec teacher, a history teacher and then a kind of general "grade 7 teacher" that was tasked with everything else, which i guess is math, religion and english. but, that really meant that the curriculum was focused on the peripheral subjects due to the more rigid scheduling, and that math & english were largely unstructured babysitting periods with a lot of pointless busy work. when we went to geography class, or phys ed, we were there for a short period with a defined curriculum; when we went back to the general class room, the teacher could organize it any way they wanted to, or not at all, which was often the actual reality.
so, the system put more of a priority on learning french or geography than it did on learning math or english. we did regular spelling bees in grade 8 english class. and, i don't really remember taking math in grade 7 at all. grade 9 was more structured, in the sense that there were separate math and english classes, but i still didn't get graded, and i still don't remember reading any actual books. i explicitly remember reading shakespeare, but we read it orally in the classroom. and, there's a text called the chrysalids that i can't otherwise place that i might drop into grade 9.
of course, there's some possibility that i don't remember any reading projects because i was so efficient with them. there's a few texts from later in high school that i remember putting off until the last minute and then reading through in an afternoon. there's certainly some possibility that i just devoured it so violently that it never really got digested. but, the thing is that i liked reading, so i don't know why that would have been true.
i think the truth is that i was mostly baby sat all the way to the end of grade 9, and consequently don't have a lot to report on.
if i remember something, i'll insert it, but i think the way we're going to do this is that i'll be doing independent reading over these years, instead.
the chrysalids was grade 8, and i have a copy of it that i found used. i also remember doing a man for all seasons in grade 8, and the shakespeare. the only thing i remember from grade 9 is the shakespeare, and i don't remember anything from grade 7 at all.
there are a few shakepeare plays i'm not sure if i read in class or not. i should get a collected shakespeare. that's a reasonable thing to have.
however, i read a lot on my own. i can generate a list of several hundreds of novels that i bought with allowance money and read on my own initiative from grades 3-9. starting around grade 9ish, i was spending more time playing guitar and less time reading novels, and the first demoes were recorded in grade 10 (1996). so, this is the period i'm really focusing on in rebuilding this.
i moved out of my mom's basement and into my dad's basement between grades 7 and 8. my mom smoked and my dad's third wife was highly anti-smoking (she used to smoke). she claimed my collection of science fiction and stephen king novels smelled like smoke and told me i couldn't bring them with me. so i left them there and never really replaced many of them. she was a clinical sociopath with no ability to comprehend sentimental value, so it didn't make sense to her to collect books; in her view, books should be read and disposed of immediately after, and keeping them around is just hoarding clutter. she hated keeping anything at all around past it's immediate use. when she realized this bothered me, she did try to compensate by buying me new books (because why would i want books i already read?), which ranged from ayn rand texts (which i just thought were boring and terribly written) to tom clancy novels (which were ok) to grisham, koontz and ludlum. i read most of what those four authors had written up to about 1995 or so, and i also bought some newer king, but i just didn't have time for books after i started playing guitar more seriously. i never replaced most of the king or the science fiction - asimov, clark, bradbury, wells, jules verne, cs lewis, lewis carroll, etc. i had everything stored on a large shelf outside of my basement bedroom. in later years, my mom claimed to still have these books and became evasive when i asked about getting them back when i was older. it was relatively clear that she wanted to keep them. i've been unsuccessful in even getting her to just write out a list of them for me.
if i'm doing this now, i wanted to see what i had written in 2019 and it's not all that helpful. that's ok. i'll have to just remember it.
i apparently also have a music list dated to the summer of 2008 to recover on my external drive.
hey, i've got some ideas for strain names for the tragically hip's new marijuana line.
10. blown brain cells at high dumb
09. the tragic-saline drip
08. a head in the last century
07. systolic equipment attached to the back of a motorized wheelchair
06. 50 mission ct-scan
05. new lung transplant is sinking
04. saliva trickling down
03. disgrace, too.
02. an inch an hour
01. head cave
they were always too pompous to understand irony, and wouldn't understand it if explained to them, now. the band that lost their singer to cancer at 53 is now selling marijuana. astounding.
they've always been a microcosm of everything that is wrong with canada, so i guess this is kind of an expectation.
at 18:39
"my new lung transplant is sinking, man - and i don't want to hack.
*cough*"
at 18:40
Location:
i'd give their first record a three in my rating system (where 0 is the highest and 10 is the lowest), and the rest is 4 or 5. there's a greatest hits ep in there of around a half hour of music that's worth salvaging.
i got most of the way through cleaning my bedroom last night and stopped to catalog my collection of novels at librarything. these are just the fiction texts right now, because the fiction texts are going to be on shelves on the wall (the last thing to install) in the bedroom and not on the library shelf. i also have a small overflow shelf that will hold books waiting to be read that, for now, will have everything on it, as i read and review fiction for the journal and alter-reality sections of the integrated multimedia project, which is first in the list. i finished entering the reduced fiction library i have left (it's only 70 books) and started typing out fiction books to buy to immediately fill in gaping holes when i had to pass out. i got sick yesterday when installing the aluminum. i think it was the glue, but i'm noticing some of these old books are giving me a sore throat. there's a type of hallucinogenic spore that lives in old books and can make you sick. i'm feeling a little better this morning, but i'm also now at 141.8 so it's time to make some toast.
i kept in the last bowl of soup i ate on...tuesday/wednesday.
this is a part of the process, as i had to move these old books into my bedroom and they've just been sitting out on top of boxes. they're all moving to the overflow shelf and will get up to the wall shelves in the next few months as i get through the journal project and move to the alter-reality. i'm going to buy a round of items this morning and add those to the list before i print the pdf and upload it to drive, but it's going to be similar to the cd collection. there will be a chronological list, an alphabetical list, an loc list and the library things pdf. the library things pdf will have information about exact pressings. all lists will have fiction and nonfiction, but i'm cleaning my bedroom so fiction is first.
i don't expect that i'm going to find as many book list snapshots as cd list snapshots, because i kept deleting it, and because the page didn't get as much traffic. i've long struggled with the question of whether this is pretentious or not; it clearly is, but it may be more pretentious to struggle with it. i think i should have a book list around in my insurance documents, when i had insurance in the 00s, but i tried to keep any list of books i uploaded anywhere restricted to references or reviews, strictly. so, the lists tend to be small, or focused on library books rather than books i owned. i'm worrying less about finding lists and filling the holes in out of memory for that reason. there's also the question of high school texts that i want to fill in while i'm at it and will be reviewing for the multimedia project, as well as some university level english texts that i sold and need to get back.
i have not, as an adult, read as much fiction as i did as a kid. that might change as i get through these writing projects. however, my broad perception is that storybooks are for youngish people, and reading novels is broadly something that most adults shouldn't have too much time for. there are exceptions, but it's not as much of a grown-up artform as symphonic music. grown-ups are going to focus more on reading as an academic process, for diy self-learning. we learn from reading novels, but it's a type of learning more valuable for young brains than older ones, as it's not direct information. grown-ups generally need more useful data. there's certainly a place for abstract learning for adults, but there's not always the time. i have more time than many adults, and this is exactly the kind of thing i want to use it for (i'm an anarchist. it's a part of the theory.), but even i need to be reasonable: this has limited use value. there is also the simple fact that the artform has collapsed into itself in the last 50 years and that fiction is going to find itself in a serious crisis when the 70 year olds and 80 year olds (and 90 year olds) start imminently dying. there isn't serious replacement happening. the form may permanently change in the near future.
i'm going to have a fair number of very old plays in my list. there was a time before the novel. we are on the cusp of a time after one. but we're not there yet and my personal library will have an assortment of novels, i just need to carry out a recovery process before i post it anywhere.
let me eat, then get through that, and the pdf should be up by the end of the day.
Saturday, July 11, 2026
well, i now have my aluminum up on the ceiling. it's a slightly cooler day today but it's going to warm up tomorrow. it should keep the candle heat in as a basic test, i think.
it looks like the cement work i did outside the other day has held up well. i'm still peeling from the sunburn, but i have a little more cement to use up in the front, and then i'll need to buy some more and another couple of bricks to finish the job, on the outside. i haven't addressed it yet from the inside, but i'd might as well just relayer over the existing concrete, if i'm going to do it at all. it's cheap enough and easy enough. i just want it to completely dry out first.
the next thing to do is that general clean in here, which will include installing and updating a number of items. i'm going to do a kind of tidy u in the studio after, and then i'll need to get into the laundry and bathroom to do some updates, before i do a final finish in the kitchen. but i want to get those lists of lists in order first when i'm done cleaning the bedroom, and before i get to updating the laundry.
that's going to mean that i'm basically done in the laundry, the bathroom, the kitchen, the bedroom, the listening room and the library and need to focus on the side entry, the garage and the studio to finish up.
Friday, July 10, 2026
my bedroom ceiling is now completely full of amazon cardboard, taped over with weatherproofing tape. is this working?
yes.
it's stayed above 30 degrees in this room for weeks, even as the temp outside falls to 18, 19. we've had a couple of cool days and the temp in here has stayed put. it's great. i've found it helpful to run candles in the evening, but i don't have the heat on. it's just trapped in here.
the next phase is the aluminum, but i'm not sure i need it in the summer. i'll need it in the winter...
i'm going to clean in here and install a few things (shelves, mirror) while i'm at it. it will look closer to being done.
i bought some new sheets and some new pillows and they came in today. my old sheets had taken a little bit of abuse from sleeping with conditioner in my hair, which dulled them from bright pink to off-pink. and, my pillows have long sucked. i don't remember where they came from. i'm going to throw them on the couch. i also bought some new candles, two entrance rugs, a shoe mat and some more tape for the ceilings.
this is always constantly shifting around in circles, but let me write it out to understand it:
- i was putting the paneling up in the bedroom, and doing a few extra things in the laundry and bathroom before i moved to the kitchen
- i needed to get boxes out of the front in order to install the panels
- i wanted to organize boxes by room as i was getting boxes out of front (boxes from 2013 items in pile, to start)
- before i could get into the front, i needed to clear the stereo table out of the side and put it in the right place, where there were then boxes
- needed to move the boxes first.
- the boxes contain books that go on shelves.
- needed to install shelves in library and bedroom to move books to move stereo table.
- needed to clean area in front in order to install shelves
- needed to clean entire area to clean area in front around shelves
- needed caulking to clean entire area in front
- got some caulking, cleaned area (set up charging table, small shelf), moved shelving into the area, moved some other items out of the area, moved boxes of cds and wood to area
- set up library shelf, moved books to library shelf, used box for ceiling.
- decided to catalog books and cds and website with working profiles, organize by device
- in order to catalog, needed lists of old media
- wanted to set up listening area first so i could listen and catalog, after i had lists
- had to stop to clean bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, myself first
- had to get everything out of bedroom to do general clean
- had to set up listening room to get items out of bedroom <---done
now that i have the listening room set up, i'm going to listen to the cds that i already put on the shelf through my listening system and catalog them one by one. everything is now going through the 5 cd rotation, so 'll need to listen to everything five times before shelving it. after the fifth listen, i'll make sure that the information at discogs and at my web site are both up to date.
the pi isn't going to be set up immediately, but it should be set up soon. while some of these releases have reviews written, i'm not posting anything to the dtk site until it comes up in the web in the sense i described previously (starting with miles davis). i'm starting clean with the first davis release and it likely won't happen until all of the furniture is in place. right now, i'm just cataloging physical media, filling in holes and getting items out of boxes and onto shelves.
tonight, i'm focusing on getting everything out of the bedroom so i can get the aluminum up, and then on getting everything back in the bedroom. i then want to clean the bathroom and kitchen and then finish the list of lists, before i can get to doing things in the laundry, bathroom and kitchen again.
i have my listening room set up. sort of. i have what has recently been my main amp connected to my kefs (which are my preferred stereo speakers), with a pioneer turntable, a 5 disc cd/dvd player, a cassette player and the raspberry pi as media sources. the pi is itself connected to a variety of peripherals, and i'm going to connect it and the dvd player to a large external monitor on the wall. but, the pi is not installed yet, so it will be physical media until i get there.
i am disconnecting this listening system from my studio, and will be modernizing my studio monitors. my kefs still sound great, but they're 40 years old. i need something more digitally oriented.
i also got most of the cardboard up on the ceiling in the bedroom, and it's definitely helping a lot.
i'll be focusing on the general clean for the rest of the day and should be able to get some aluminum up on the ceiling very soon.
Thursday, July 9, 2026
i found my prolegomena to any future metaphysics. it was hiding in the fiction, under a copy of ulysses. that sneaky old kant. it's like the distance between the books only existed in my mind or something. but you can't get thinking like that, or you'll go crazy and start believing silly things like that euclid is absolute truth. such rubbish. but i'm glad i found it, because that was one of the ones that i couldn't clearly identify as stolen in a specific way.
i lost my figure with my weight over 150. i'm happy to see it coming back with my weight coming back down under 145.
i've been exhausted this week, and i think they got in here to drug me when i was outside fixing the concrete. it's had no substantive effect due to the weight loss. but these retards don't appear likely to give up. they think their pretend god and their dark age rules matter. it's pathetically sad. they're going to have to go to jail, and that's where they belong, it's just a question of figuring out the best way to get them there, and i'm increasingly looking at alternative tactics to get them arrested and charged. i just want them to go away and die somewhere and leave me alone. i don't care how we get at that end point.
i'm still focusing on getting the stereo set up first, then finishing a general clean, but i've been struggling with this sunburn since tuesday night. it's almost gone. in fact, as i mentioned, i should look better when the dead skin clears off, and fresh new skin pops up. i have pretty warm blood, but i do tend to shed, and if anything it's a little late this year.
lebanon does not yet have the ability to secure the areas it is demanding israel withdraw from and is acting against it's own self-interest in making those demands. lebanon should be seeking to work with israel to entirely eliminate hezbollah from the south of lebanon.
i would support a regional cooperation agreement between lebanon and israel once hezbollah is thrown out of the area, but that's up to them. lebanon is not like the other countries in the region; it is more like israel than syria or egypt.
while it would be helpful if netanyahu could clarify which villages are seeking annexation by israel, the premise is plausible and a contrasting report by al jazeera, which constantly presents false information, is hardly a valid source to contradict his claims. you can't believe anything they say. they're serial liars. i'd like to see a vote in the area before i take it seriously. but i'd rather see the regions that have recently been overrun by shia immigrants from syria annexed by israel than continue to be colonized by syrians under iranian domination. the indigenous inhabitants have largely evacuated the region and are now a minority in it. there's no answer that doesn't involve demographic overhaul, but the shia refugees should not be allowed to permanently settle there, they should be pushed back out.
in the short run, continued lebanese refusal to cooperate with israel is just going to result in dead lebanese people, a weaker lebanese state and a stronger iran. it's not smart.
i'm strongly opposed to endless, go nowhere tit-for-tat with iran, which is what has been going on and what the americans seem to want to do, in the endless delusion that the iranians are going to negotiate. i explicitly stated i'm opposed to that outcome and supported a single, immense, overpowering regime change offensive precisely to prevent it.
the americans could have done this very quickly, and they might have received some criticism for it from stupid people, but it would have been a smart thing to do and greatly benefited the region and the world. instead, they've done this the dumbest way possible by dragging it out as much as they can because they didn't want to do it at all, and now have an unavoidable, grueling, expensive, twenty year proxy war with the chinese in front of them that will distract them from other parts of the world and further ramp up their external debts.
this is the consequence of bad leadership.
so, i did eat again last night, slept a few times between getting through it and spent a lot of time in the bathroom. i was only out for a few hours yesterday, but i got a bit of a sunburn on my cheeks, which is unusual. that, combined with the sweating, acted as a bit of a catalyst to speed up the pore-cleaning exercise underlying the purpose of the weight loss, and i woke up yesterday looking pretty filthy. it is manifesting as vicious acne, but i'm actually getting at some deep ingrowns, which is exactly what i've been complaining about - this inability to wash my face fully because i can't get to the clogged pores underneath the layer of fat, which is an unexpected, unforeseen and unwanted consequence of accidentally gaining a lot of weight. i'm realizing that the outcome will be a dramatic improvement, once i get over this hump of awkwardness in the next few days.
for now, i've got my face layered with acne soap, which is letting me get in there and pull these annoying thread-thick ingrowns out, either with tweezers or just with my fingers. i can normally just pop blackheads out by squeezing them with my fingers, which has historically been key to sufficiently cleaning my face, but i haven't been able to recently due to that annoying layer of fat. i am almost back to being able to do that, which will rapidly clear my cheeks back out.
even if i can't see the clogged pores under the layer of fat, it still affects the way i look. the small amount of gravitational mass in the filth clogging the pore creates a downward pull that results in a sagging effect, even when my skin looks completely clear. getting that sag out is fundamental to my appearance as jessica, and my inability to do so while i've been carrying this extra weight has had an extremely negative effect on my overall appearance, even if my face looks clear. it hasn't actually been clear, because i haven't been able to get in there to wash it out.
so, i'm looking extra gross just right now but am going through a cleansing process and it should lift very soon.
for tonight, in keeping with the ever shifting nature of this apartment cleaning operation, i am realizing that i need to set the stereo up before i can clean in the bedroom, because i'm taking the stereo out of the bedroom, and need to move it to finish cleaning. so, step one is now the stereo setup, and 'm back to cleaning in the middle of the room first.
my face is burning. it hurts. my eyes are clogged with goop. that means it's working and it'll be better when it stops.
Wednesday, July 8, 2026
i want the rest of the world to understand that would happened in canada in 2018 was not the legalization of marijuana. marijuana had been functionally legal in canada for decades. it was functionally legal when i was a kid in the 90s.
rather, what canada did was normalize being a loser.
what the canadian state said was "it's ok to smoke an ounce of pot a day and live with your mom until you're 40. that's normal, now. don't beat yourself up over it. you're still good enough.".
the consequence now is that we have a generation of stupid that's been normalized to loserdom and we're going to have to grapple with that.
the results are going to be catastrophic. it's going to be seen as the single worst public health disaster of the 21st century, when the cancer rates and the brain damage data really come in. it's a policy that has no future but reversal.
in the short term, the least thing that the state can do is ramp up addictions treatment to get marijuana addicts off the drugs. unlike opiate addiction, marijuana addiction is treatable, it's not a waste of time and money. the state should be increasing resources on fighting marijuana dependency now, before it's too late.
Tuesday, July 7, 2026
i slept briefly after i ate, and didn't quite make it all of the way to the bathroom at the end. as mentioned previously, i've been dealing with immense diarrhea hours after i eat for weeks and i am tying it to being drugged with something. but the only effects of the drugs are diarrhea and acne. and headaches in between. it's quite odd. so, i took it as an opportunity to take a shower and do a general clean in my bedroom, which had otherwise been waiting for me to get to it in sequence, which is a process that is now taking too long. i got a little bit of that done, fell back asleep, woke up to the other half of it (the acne) and washed it all off. at that point, i decided to take advantage of the weather to do some work i had to do outside, instead, and then took a third sleep when i got in. in fact, i should eat again tonight, finish doing a general clean, order some things to finish the outside work and then get back to the music list tomorrow or the next day.
Monday, July 6, 2026
i just sorted through a lot of media and found a lot of music list data. no book data, yet, but i think i know where to look.
i'm at 143.8, so i'm going to stop to make some toast and clean myself a little.
i last had a big bowl of soup on thursday night / friday morning so i'm hoping it doesn't take too long to get back to 142. i want to get through the soup and the bread first now while i'm losing weight, and then eat through some other fridge stuff. i'm getting there, but i also know i look dirty and gross right now. *shrug*. there's nothing worthwhile to do here right now anyways.
my neighbours smell terribly and i actually don't know what the smell is. it might be a mouldy a/c. it might be drugs i don't recognize. i try to be fair when i meet people, but these particular african muslims are both startlingly ignorant and overwhelmingly disgusting people.
maybe while they're at, they can bring elvis back from the dead.
i've tired of this. it's farcical.
canadians need to stop burning poison as a part of their day to day lives. it's actually not that hard. the only excuse you have to use oil in 2026 is laziness. so, get up off your worthless fat asses and clean yourselves up a little bit. i'm fucking sick of it.
i'm disgusted by this country and the people that live in it.
yeah, i fell asleep again. ugh. sleep is boring. it's a waste of time. i don't understand cns depressants, or who would take them intentionally. it's boring and hellish and a wasted existence spent in a low productivity mental state. these people are better off dead.
so, i'm going to make my list of cd lists like i said, as best i can, and then i'm going to move to installing the stereo in the other room.
Sunday, July 5, 2026
this is the top 45 cds in the list, organized by market value. this is a more intuitive way for most people to look at the data. it's a little less than half of what's up so far, and will end up being around 5% of the total.
i should point out that there are also a handful of cds at the bottom of the list that are actually so rare that they have never been sold at discogs and that i suspect would fetch quite a bit if they were.
but my cds are not for sale.
in fact, because i lost a few days, i decided to re-approach the cd list. i'm redoing a lot of what i already uploaded and i'm refocusing on just dumping the data in to start and organizing it properly afterwards.
i was initially going to add ten cds at a time and listen to them as they came up but i got stuck and i'm deciding that's not the best approach.
what i just did was add the first 100 cds to discogs. i think i underestimated the size of the cd collection, after some big hauls that i am only properly cataloging now. the total should actually be in the 900+ range in the end, and that doesn't include non-cds. there's big jazz and classical updates coming. even so, this is a minimal list that needs to be filled in.
i'm dealing with headaches tonight. the tenants upstairs appear to be smoking crack, which is something i thought i got rid of, and it's continuing to make me sick. i recently learned a lot about shifts to the right in the canadian judiciary over the last 20 years, away from liberal and progressive ideas about non-smokers' rights and towards backwards, regressive and conservative ideas about drug use as a personal choice, and i have to accept that while the law is still on my side, the judiciary isn't. the hard shift to the right engineered by justin trudeau and kim campbell has essentially abolished any right that canadians used to have to fresh air, in favour of retarded right-wing ideas about drug addiction as a personal choice. it's the total triumph of the culture of stupidity. the law is still on my side now, but the corporate political establishment is trying to completely legalize drugs in order to profit off of people dying, and the so-called liberal political class is happily facilitating this. if i want to assert my right to a drug-free environment, i'm going to have to approach this a little differently. the courts are unlikely to stand up for what is called negative rights in the current political environment; they are only likely to support positive rights, and only in a very right-wing context.
there is currently no legal way for normal canadians to protect themselves from the despicable and damaging habits of disgusting, dangerous and unhealthy drug addicts. normal canadians are being increasingly forced to consume their neighbours' drugs against their will, and the court is increasingly refusing to protect their rights to live free from drug use.
these losers are smoking crack in front of their kids. they don't have a health problem, they're demonstrating clear criminality. they belong in a jail cell.
so, because i feel like shit due to the bad habits of my neighbours, and because i may have difficulty in asserting my negative rights to live free from their interference in my health or my fresh air in the current political environment in canada and am going to need to figure out a different way to protect my rights and my health from their poor behaviour and bad habits, i'm going to instead spend the night focusing on updating some of these lists that i had put aside and try to get back to work in the morning, when i feel better. these losers tend to clear out during the week.
Saturday, July 4, 2026
i've been having this issue lately where my body is tired but my brain isn't and it manifests itself as piles of eye gunk forcing me to sleep. it's very weird; it's like i'm going into chemical sleep while still conscious and awake and frequently actually trying to work. scientists try to create this condition and fail and i'm getting there accidentally through sheer willpower to maximize productivity in individual projects in getting something done before falling asleep. my workaholism is putting me into a condition of waking sleep that is knocking me out by force.
i lost the last few days to this but i got some sleep this afternoon and should get some work done tonight, if some various things cooperate.
i was updating the cd list with cds 40-50 when i stopped to eat. i need to finish cleaning up the listening space so i can move some items out of the kitchen and into it, and then get back to creating the thermal barrier between the units in order to keep the heat in downstairs. then i need to make some updates to the laundry and the bathroom before finishing the kitchen.
the tenants above me are constantly creating water leaks as a result of their poor lifestyle decisions. it's very distracting and very frustrating, and causing me to waste large amounts of my time dealing with it.
Friday, July 3, 2026
yeah, well, that's what happens when you levy tariffs on people, you fucking idiots.
you shit in your own bed, then you complain about the smell.
your policies have failed. you're losers. you have nobody to blame but yourselves.
if the americans want canada to interact less with china, they should reduce the amount of tariffs they're levying, to start. otherwise, they will need to get accustomed to the status quo.
this is the harperesque scam that the carney liberals and their "new government" are trying to pull on you:
- cut the carbon rebate by 100%, which would have been about $150/quarter in 2024 dollars and close to $200/quarter in 2026 dollars, because it went up every year.
- increase the gst rebate by 20%, which is about $20
- claim that benefits canadians and the planet
clearly, mark carney thinks you're stupid, if he thinks you're going to fall for that, and the evidence suggest he's right - you are stupid and you are going to fall for that, at least in the short run.
well, i'm not falling for that. and i'm going to keep pointing out that canadians have been scammed by this government, until they get it and throw them out of office for it.
i appreciate the extra $20/quarter, but that's 10% of the $200/quarter i would be getting from carbon rebates.
my budget didn't go up $20, it went down $180. and i'll certainly be responding to that by trying to vote mark carney and his harper-strong conservative liberals out of office.
thankfully, the change was offset by the canadian disability benefit, for me, but that doesn't apply to everybody.
yeah, i'm starting to see articles claim that the new unelected fascist dictator in syria is in conflict with hezbollah because hezbollah was aligned with assad. this is 1984 level nonsense that would make orwell cringe. there's no truth to it at all.
the fascists in syria were proxies of the turks, but it was the americans that overthrew assad. the islamist/nazi syrian fascist terrorist group in charge in damascus right now is something we've seen little of in the west in recent decades: a cia-backed coup. it is for this reason that trump thinks he can order them around, not because they're in a conflict with hezbollah.
the natural fault lines between al qaeda (who is who is running syria, and who trump is trying to align with and gets excited about reaching around) and hezbollah are the old shia/sunni thing. these are both extremist factions, and their positions are extreme across the board; the al qaeda fascists think the hezbollah fascists are heretics and need to be wiped out for it. they do want to kill each other, but it has to do with religion, and at the end of the day the bottom line is that they share a common ideology of islamic extremism.
while assad was never aligned with hezbollah, and was never likely to align with hezbollah because he was trying to save secular arab socialism in syria, which is a common enemy of al qaeda and hezbollah, there is some non-remote possibility that al qaeda and hezbollah might put aside their differences to fight the jews, because they are of course both nazis at their core. everything else aside, the jews are the greater evil to both hezbollah fascists and al qaeda fascists. the recent cia-backed islamist coup in syria resulting in an iranian ally in damascus where there was none before would be called blowback.
trump has this inability to see himself for who he is, and it has led him to decide that groups that can't stand him (like the pakistanis and the syrians) are actually his bestest buds. he can't figure out who his friends are. the pakistanis don't like him at all, and neither do the syrians. the syrians are not going to take orders from trump and, if anything, might be trying to wiggle their way out of this relationship with the americans.
that said, i would not support syrian military involvement in lebanon and that's not what i said. the lebanese and the israelis need to work together to get rid of hezbollah, and they could benefit from international cooperation through the un, which would be prioritizing this as an issue if it weren't completely useless. but, syrian military action against hezbollah would probably result in a destabilized syria, and an isis resurgence. the iranians would bomb them from iraq. you might get a war between syria and iraq instead of syria and lebanon, and the syrians would lose. it's a stupid strategy thought up by a stupid person that nobody in the region or outside of it respects.
what i said is this:
however, the basic issue brought up in western media of syria acting as a transit point between lebanon and iran hasn't changed and still needs to be addressed. this should be tied to western funding.
the demands on (the fascist dictator currently in charge of) syria to maintain us funding, short of being dismantled and overthrown, should consequently be the following
1) take your shia refugees back from lebanon. all of them. do what you will with them.
2) coordinate with lebanon and israel in building a common front to just get hezbollah the fuck out of there and figure it out after
3) that includes preventing the desert from acting as a caravan transit medium
4) respect lebanon's sovereignty as a christian state and israel's sovereignty as a jewish state.
what that means in different terms is that syria should be told to make sure that it is not acting as a conduit, transit point, laundering location, bank or other kind of financial sink for hezbollah funds, weapons, colonizers or terrorists to enter lebanon. it's not about syria bombing hezbollah in lebanon, it's about syria policing the border with iraq.
and it's about taking back their shia, who are not wanted or welcome in lebanon by the lebanese.
Thursday, July 2, 2026
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