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Monday, September 29, 2014

recovery

yesterday:

horseman bailing
home - shopping - chatting

moe clark's WITHIN launch - what a fantastic performance!
it was SPECTACULAR. i'm very glad i choose the "couvert + album" option at the door! if the album's even half as good as the performance it will have been worth it

quick between-bus subway snack next to resonance because the latter's cash only
indian food and revenge of the nerds - holy sexist shit, batman!

today:

slow morning with a very sick gd
watching from table to able
spirited away
argumentatively vegan (see previous post)
too much pizza
deadman wonderland

argumentatively vegan

i'm just going to repost the thread here. i'm not even bothering to deal with capital letters or spelling / grammatical errors.

---
it's far easier to care about animal cruelty when you don't have the guilt of consuming animal products. (within reason, we're far from being completely off animal products outside of our diets)

Animal products and animal cruelty are not the same thing and certainly don't have to be.

perhaps not in theory, but in practice that's just not true. (by that i mean people don't care / have the resources to make it true)

Of course it is true, if u want to eat meat which is free range and slaughtered 'well', u can do that, it just costs more. Maybe what really irks u is that the majority of people simply don't care.

if you look into "free range" you'll see how much of a misnomer it is. this is not a question of what irks me, my status is saying that it's easier for someone who isn't protecting their diet to see what's going on and think about it.

what do you mean 'protecting their diet"?
We live by consuming the life of others, everything that was ever consumed was once alive. If you have ever watched nature you will know that cruelty and violence happens on an industrial scale. We are the first animal on planet earth which endeavors to live 'ethically.'


vfmp: "Protecting" as in "attempting to justify" one's dietary choices.
Humans are the ones committing cruelty on an unmatched and (actually) industrial scale.
And as far as living ethically, our species still has a whole lot of room for improvement.

lol, I commend you on becoming the first homo-sapien which has become a herbivore vfmp, but the rest of us in the human race are omnivores with canine teeth and pancreases

vfmp: Last I checked, I also had canines and a pancreas. Cool theory though

an aunt: It is so easy to reduce meat product consumption and/or go for the free range. A little restraint from everyone would make a huge difference to the scale of cattle, pigs and chicken farming industry which is linked to animal cruelty.

an old co-worker: I think that's the point, no? People don't want to care. If you care you have to do something about it, and it's much more convenient to do nothing, to change nothing.

indeed. and italics-man, modern history might be with you but the science is not. the last few years (in particular, we have decades of studies in fact that were ignored due to industry power) of nutrition research make it freakishly clear that consuming animal products - while an important ability in terms of long-term evolutionary survival - is actually really bad for us, and the root cause of most of our medical maladies.
if you're at all interested in the science, check it out for yourself, if you're not, your arguments fall under the category of "protecting your diet".

neuroscientist: Strictly speaking its not true for kids. They absolutely need meat for optimal brain and body development, however after maturation, every adult would benefit from obtaining protein from plant sources rather than meat. Undercooked meat can be especially bad, its really a risk thing. You're more likely to damage yourself with meat. That said some people cant really afford to eat optimally and meat can be cheap, bones too, organs are the worst for you and now people eat them as a delicacy which is pretty fucked. Most people do protect their diet and stay with the comfortable. The original point is totally valid, I'm confused as to where I stand because steaks are delicious. Theory got trumped again.

i'll stick with the science, thanks. and the facts are all available. if everyone would invest as much time investigating and educating themselves instead if arguing armed with a century of industrial propaganda our society would be in a very different shape. check out the video link i just posted.

that's nonsense and the "health" industry is just as much of a multi million dollar industry as the meat industry. Food processed in the way it is in mass production is bad for you, too much sugar, salt, additives etc. But there is no evidence whatsoever that well farmed unprocessed meat is bad for you, quite the contrary. We are omnivores we are supposed to eat a wide variety of foods. The digestive tract is not supposed to process only beans and fibre.

There are a host of proteins in animal protein in the correct ratios for us that are impossible to synthesize. Acids like creatine are essential for health growth. Both the health AND the meat industry expend enormous efforts to front "scientific trials" to prove the validity of their arguments. If you want to send me some information from an independent source that is peer reviewed I will happily read it with an open mind.


italics-man, there is TONS of evidence. and you're totally proving my point - instead of educating yourself, you're arguing with "common knowledge" that's been informed by... not science. and the research is all available, we're talking respectable peer-reviewed journals. if you're willing to invest this much time arguing with me, but not investigating, what does that tell you?

As I stated before "If you want to send me some information from an independent source that is peer reviewed I will happily read it with an open mind." Otherwise stop pretending that the scientific community is some kind of homogeionous group that has "decided" that meat is bad for you. That is a straight up lie.

italics: watch the video i just posted and check out nutritionfacts.org - all sources are listed. there, i've done what you asked for. i'm not "pretending". check out the documentary forks over knives too.

tpj: I'll just put this here. the secrets of food marketing

Michael Greger and "Forks and Knives" lol, just a tip but as a rule agenda based vegan scientists like Greger who cherry pick data and documentaries which base their studies on debunked studies are not the Independent information I asked for. Next you'll be asking me to read "The China Study." Check out this study from 2014 in Austria concluding the ill effects of non meat based diets. Concluding vegans are twice as likely to develop allergies, 50% increase in cancer, 50% increase in heart disease and lower quality of life.

[talics' comment calling my mental state into question was deleted by him after my response]

okay, i'm going to ignore the name calling and actually respond to the valid points that you raised:

1. dr greger's agenda is health through nutrition. when you make claims like "who cherry pick data", feel free to back them up with actual counter-papers. if you look across nutritionfacts.org you'll see all sorts of interesting things that will surprise you - i felt the same way you did until i came across that stuff, and the reason i found it so compelling is that it's not all "ra ra eat vegan"; he's extremely careful about showing all sides of what he's read and is very good about differentiating between obvious conclusion, reasonable conclusion, and what a study suggests / implies.

2. i've just looked into the china study criticism, and quite frankly i'm now sitting on the fence until i see something solid regarding the criticisms and the responses to them. after a quick look and some intriguing video through multiple sources i'm now suspicious, but the criticism that i did find has some serious flaws if you think about them for more than two seconds. so never mind forks over knives, then. unless you can ignore the china study references and want to see fascinating and disturbing things about the media and marketing.

3. the austrian study is very interesting, because it talks about vegan diets but doesn't take into consideration how educated / responsible those vegans were. it's INCREDIBLY easy to become vegan and eat badly. anybody who becomes vegan and doesn't know that they need to worry about b12 and vitamin d, for example? they're cruising for mental illness. anybody who goes vegan and eats fried / processed vegan food? avoiding bad foods doesn't mean the same thing as eating healthy. vegan doesn't mean "whole foods", and even "whole foods" doesn't mean getting the full spectrum of nutrition. which is why one needs to educate oneself about nutrition and eat responsibly.

it's definitely better to eat a relatively healthy meat-based diet than an unhealthy vegan-diet. what's even better, though, is learning about nutrition (something schools, the media and by and large THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT have neglected), and making informed decisions.

i urge you to watch dr greger's presentation in spite of your misgivings.

I commend you on a very considered response. I am certainly no expert on matters of nutrition, and the Austrian report is relatively new but does seem to be reputable and peer reviewed. My point is merely that the issue is not settled as much as those on either side would like to pretend it is. There has been a huge increase in all kinds of diseases due to the way our food is processed and prepared, for example the large rise in heart disease has shot up since the 1920s. There are so many factors which can account for this from our lifestyles to pollution to just the fact that we are living way longer than our ancestors did. At the very least if meat is harmful at all it is very likely to be dwarfed by a cacophony of other things which would have a far more meaningful impact on health. Regarding criticism of Greger there are many, Harriet Hall is probably the best known. No one criticizes the studies he uses just that he omits other studies which do not support his views and that he is clearly a man with an agenda. Another interesting study is a WHO study who reluctantly concluded "A very small inverse association between intake of total fruits and vegetables and cancer risk was observed in this study."

again, me becoming vegan was not a knee-jerk emotional reaction, i was initially decidedly anti-vegan and only switched as the evidence began to pile up.

on the face of it, that WHO study seems to suggest that high fruit and vegetable intake isn't enough to counter the effects of animal product intake. i'd like to know more about the study before i accept those conclusions without context.

regarding the criticism of dr greger, i'm aware of it and looked into it before. the claims are all made without counter-argument, without pointing out the significance of the studies he's purportedly left out. once again, i urge you to watch from table to able and hear what he's discovered.

all i'm asking is that everyone invests time looking into these things, not hanging on to the first things they find that justify not looking into these things. it's one thing to agree that people should make up their own minds, but it's quite another to do so without taking into account the enormous disparity between the knowledge the academics have and the knowledge that's disseminated through the medical community and the financially motivated media.

one of the reasons i keep pushing the presentation, by the way, is because he addresses your concern that the issue isn't settled. the scary thing is that all the academic bodies and even the meat, dairy and poultry industries acknowledge all the evidence, but their responses cross the line of absurdity. sometimes in a humorous way, sometimes not.

Sunday, September 28, 2014

linkage!

google translate goes medieval on the german:

business suit onesie. genius.

how do you want your kids to turn out?
teaching kids independence
teaching them to be successful

social insurance made me fill out a form before they return money that they stole from me accidentally overcharged me.

(for those of you who don't read hebrew, i informed them that my present occupation is "staying overseas")

awesome journalism example

jetpacks are always interesting to hear about

interceptor cell towers? (O_o)

here's a great look at burning man

facebook liking can be bad for you - i hate facebook filters.

knots

thursday:

good start to the new year, relaxed pretty morning

canada immigration online address change apparently easier than i expected

minor successes

td representative agreeing with me after trying to explain their reasons for spamming to me and giving up

good noon gym session, working hard and stretching

big junior chai peace offerings?
the awkward happy-new-year call from the cleaning lady
js binding frustration when it was just a bug
complex pseudo-progress

twilio app error when i'm in a hurry - injected analytics code by my webhost (000webhost), time to move? they provided a quick fix at least, but so far openshift's looking pretty good

forgotten mention: cotton candy grapes, huh?

not exactly a lovely evening at godmother's, uncle hate exploding (we kissed at the table, but his humiliating us wasn't necessary)  and gd's general alienation (not unlike pg's)

yesterday:

uncovering water mythology - no linger stressing about hydration, though it is important

lip / tooth discomfort

another gorgeous how-summer-should-have-been day

feeling pretty shitty about godmother's

sneezing so hard i hurt myself

flash developers wearing the flash t-shirts

work: failing in new and exciting ways

thrice too early for birthday lunch
fourth time's a charm / half-hour queue

intensely uncomfortable chat with mom

screwy issues until finally... unsuccessful results

last minute recalling dinner's in the fridge, already late and sudden desperation to hit the washroom

walking out feeling... stressed. anxious. not precisely thrilled to enter the weekend / new year

dr greger's awesome in real life, also surprisingly tall. fantastic talk, super-important stuff, and his q&a session demonstrated both the breadth of his knowledge and his humility when he's uncertain

slam team scheduling screwup

sagirl and co and ron abuelo for a cool sidewalk pub evening

gd emotional purge (both of us), no energy for anything else

today:

sleeping in
gearing up for an unpleasant call to godmother

much-needed talk with my mom

the israeli vegan revolution
esther the wonder pig inspiration
agreeing on trigger warnings for animal cruelty images

f***ing berri uqam signage, how the hell did i end up at beaudry instead of mont royal??

chemtrails protesting versus standing up against politicians ignoring court rulings on real environmental issues 

quick panthère
excellent coaching session
chill time waiting for horseman

Saturday, September 27, 2014

gearing up

a friend just posted the following privately, so i'm reposting without attribution:

Remember that Israel bombed the nuclear reactor in Syria on September 6, 2007 ? Now imagine Israel hadn't. Now imagine that ISIS has nuclear weapons.

you can't win a war if you're too busy being politically correct to acknowledge you're fighting it. i refer to brother rasheed's speech that i posted before.
the essence of war is violence. moderation in war is imbecility.
- john fisher

Thursday, September 25, 2014

happy new year!

it's a bit weird that i'll be working tomorrow...

yesterday:

all i really remember from my dreams are having returned to the cabin (treehouse?) worrying about sunstroke because my face was burning, and nothing was cooling me down

emma watson goes from spew in harry potter to heforshe in real life?
http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/2014/09/emma-watson-un-speech-feminism

forgotten gym shorts so no lunchtime training

social security form's "occupation": "staying overseas"

non-standard vagrant
admin privileges NOT helpful

dr pepper treat turns to fizz splash embarrassment

windows line endings fail

coming home to the ugly smell of evolution (red peppers) and a slightly inebriated spouse

bluff
deadman wonderland

today:

5.30am you're going to fall off the bed! why are you always on the edge? showing gd http://thedoghousediaries.com/3586 and us both getting hysterical

not sleeping well until just before the alarm
can't-get-out-of-bed winning solution

slow-motion morning, questions of etiquette (rosh hashana) and work responsibility

the kind of day that we should have had all summer, foggy and cool then sunny and warm

newk'd pushap lunch and embarrassing no-cash for cash-only dessert

first coffee at 1pm pride
second coffee half an hour later shame
rooibos chai surprise from big junior

all because gstreamer documentation is pitiful

psychedelik prog station pulling me through, and reminding me that i *need* a party

far too much junk food 

it's strange leaving before six

super-awkward toronto cousin wishes, better godmother wishes but ear pressing the "1" button repeatedly must've been uncomfortable for her

vegan chag! digital siddur

[serious sense of humour failure]
[regeneration]

scratching the beard, hairs falling out

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

manic-ish monday

the another uncomfortable evening
a quiet morning, gd returning home in time for breakfast and to make my leaving as difficult as getting out of the warm bed earlier

the return to duolingo

morning exhaustion is not a good start to the week; i'm reminded of almost falling asleep during the beginning of last night's yoga class

lunch break burned on israeli documents from pg

updating ubuntu on my dev machine was a big mistake.

our album is finally ready! check it out at: http://tpc2014.bandcamp.com/album/throw-collective-team-2014

gorgeous sunset but annoyingly windy
heavy-ish and awkward shopping
techno plus traditional salad plus deadman wonderland (really, really good!)

gd making me practice for childraising for the second episode

super-scratchy beard

Monday, September 22, 2014

happy tree sunday

another not-great night.

lucid dreaming: shopping with mom, it's crowded and she cuts through everyone in front of me and disappears, i go the wrong way and she finds me and sends me on a mission. having to go around the giant building to check bags and it's a huge complex filled with odd stores and with a definite feeling of abandonment. i can't find helpful signs. my phone is in the trunk of the car and i'm stuck, "like when you're dreaming" i think to myself
and i lose my shopping cart after leaving it to explore for a minute. i search for it eventually finding that the ground's sloped and it's rolled over a ledge and fallen to the floor below, landing  upside down on its contents (including a pizza box).
i eventually give up and trying running back around, cursing loudly and inappropriately as i'm acutely aware of a woman and her small boy as i pass them.
there's a road i need to follow, i remember it from the way there, a bit steep and covered in loose gravel so i launch myself and surf the loose stones until i arrive at a giant red-painted wooden building that i need to climb - the wood pokes out in an interesting design and i climb really quickly, practically running up the side until i get stuck halfway. i manage to ignore my fear of heights and realize that the wood is special, my shoes have a great grip, and i just manage to pull myself over a tricky bit and i'm standing on the ledge of someone's balcony, there's an unstable cupboard with a couple of artifacts in it that i meed to transfer my weight correctly into. "i can do that", i step gingerly in, one foot then the other, placing them carefully. the cupboard begins to tip towards to edge but i manage to stabilize just in time. no time to breathe, i make a bit of noise as i step out and think that nobody who lives this high up would be worried about burglars. i turn to face the door and there's a cat quietly staring at me... and behind the cat a fairly large black dog lying on his belly, kind of like a german shepherd and with a marvellous underbite exposing his tongue and most of his lower teeth. i hold out my palm in friendship and he allows me to pet him before i wake up.

a good morning, slow, finishing signal to noise and blown away by it
so much warmer outside
midi 6 lunch
home for yoga mats in the rain
centre du rasoir disappointment but finding what i wanted at winners
happy tree yoga great, headstand(s) surprise and three month contracts

p.m. awesome, yeh! awesome

doggy bag made a homeless man's night for only the second time even though that's the main reason i take it every time

drama in three parts: happy tree friends / dryer / android google password ui blunder

the rest of solomon kane, good fun but that's as far as it goes

Sunday, September 21, 2014

the rest of today kinda... not good

a day of bees
godmother visit and long lecture in. what i was explaining i'd learned
eating indecision, strip search and unhappy chihuahua post owner's root canal

gd's pinched nerves ruining the evening, so no more booking tickets online - it's the second time i've asked for a refund on the sin city sequel!
solomon kane and junk food in lieu of dinner: so far, great fun
dave mckean and neil gaiman - signal to noise is gorgeous
rls driving me nuts, painful and distracting

Saturday, September 20, 2014

gearing up for winter

yesterday:

previous night blowing off the religious south african - how does he not know where namur is?
SxS chat, change in the wind

another stunning bright crisp morning
awkward boss quarterly speech
ams success
weird man in the kitchen being awkwardly friendly who was hired by my manager

plamondon mission

buying mezuzot in montreal is a curious mix of french, english, hebrew and yiddish. that's one way to spend a lunch break on a peaceful friday afternoon...

ams mp4 format confusion and useless logging wasted a lot of time

rls again

delayed satisfaction, pleased manager and stepping out early into a beautiful, fresh "it's the weekend!" sensation

mama ramen find, worrying about lip balm with colour when it's fine

another case solved, *then* shopping
picturesque but posting on instagram only not facebook

ffix

pizza! and steamed veggies

jim jeffries bare

today:

not a good night, just kind of okay

lying in until the last minute
danny gilboa's hayom shehaosher yagia in my head
writing this while stepping off the curb - jarring and embarrassing

not as embarrassing as losing my cool with rabbit... who was badgering me :P

ffix time

snowboard bag blues:

the excitement for finally buying my board (and boots) is only dampened by the ugly plastic snapping sound of "i should've just carried my frickin' board in my hands" instead of using my bag. because now i have a bag in need of fixing and i'm carrying everything anyway.

at least they're throwing in a service. and *damn* that was a fast service!

...

oh, and the sudden metro heat when my blood was already boiling didn't help

Friday, September 19, 2014

just thursday

groovy start
getting shit done
mom work disappointment and phone / bank hack war declared

what a beautiful, crisp and sunny morning, the last seagulls wheeling their goodbyes and i'm grateful to be alive today

only i'm hating my face as my ear spreads to my beard. timing is everything, i guess it's partially a result of saturday's laser intensity.

it's been a year of decades, i feel. my father's death, and now my first real outbreak since i contracted it ten / eleven years ago. at least i can finally relax about being asymptomatic. i'm clearly not.

meeting room with hotel breakfast muzak
more studying
easy ios update

swiftkey sucks. because privacy invasion with no explanation.

no energy for poetry, gorgeous sunset
pinched nerve returns after a day off

iphone imovie experience pretty impressive!

my little twilio project versus the wolf of wall street. it took me two hours to realize that i was watching an intensely amusing three hour movie that brought absolutely zero added value to my life. five minutes later i'd done something very, very cool.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

a doubloon for every time i...

deeply dreaming

taking an apartment at the last minute and excitedly showing it to my mother

me and my white horse being chased through magical lands by forces of evil
arriving at a castle and being forced to face two enemies one by one

feeling good morning for the first time in ages.
a very johnny clegg morning.

explaining "not enough hours in the day" to someone trying to bring me in to his idea with "startup potential"

stunning morning, pity about the ear making taking my sweater off an awkward experience

m3u8 mobile implementations officially fail - it took a lot of work to establish that

all-day rls and munchies and offending with "doubloons" when sneaking cash under the manager's keyboard
- sneak failed, making things superawkward to the point of being threatened to have my probation cancelled "for being too nice"

cent os is a pain to work with, even more so under virtualbox

a quick break by the water cooler when some guy walks past farting long and loud. not looking up.

twilio enthusiasm

reading documentation lack of enthusiasm

shopping, home, delicious dinner, searching for sugarman tears

music sync and wintery dry skin and ear treatment and finally dropping into bed at 12.30 (early-ish)

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

post-lunchday

yesterday:

the disappointing state of html5
employee satisfaction survey during my honeymoon period

walmart pants run and hurrying to join in the ink "fun"

vector coming out the anxiety closet

hac, scrapper, me, vector, and apparently loads of others

it's the guy skateboarding down the steep road carrying a bicycle frame in his hands.

gd ink sensitive and dripping-nose-chihuahua and mom being mom

p.m.

ear treatment for the first time in... a decade? bed after studying visa payment issues

---

today:

restless night, sweaty, a song that i think is michael jackson's stuck in my head

a dream involving a lot of driving, then some kind of evangelical church that begins its sundays with electro parties

waking up wrapped in each other's arms - it's getting harder and harder to get up in the mornings

long bank call with hopeful results

ear plaster pull becomes enlightening aubut mission
relaxed lunch / sprint day: mobile flash browser (photon) pushing big junior's buttons but i would have agreed even without results when i saw the ios price

pleasant bank experience, running into mti on the way

super-uncomfortable baton rouge alcoholic beverage misunderstanding so a few delicious sips of kiwi mojito out of the manager's own pocket

super exhaustion (greasy food?) and weirdest boring watching-porn afternoon

leaving late on a considerably more satisfying note

pharmacy and shopping, noticing that my nerves aren't pinching

back home for an all-important night of tidying, showering, eating well and relaxing

Monday, September 15, 2014

sunday night ugly

a headache and a bad neck massage with a chain reaction, hating soy sauce

today so far

miserable morning but with significant improvement, scrapper with a seemingly similar anxiety story, feeling powerless and framing it when gd asked how i could read just one issue of saga and i registered how little control i feel i have over my own time

feeling like i have a cold but not bad enough for a sick day

getting sick of waiting in line to use the office microwave and remembering that the floor has two. 

first proper sunday in a while

actually getting shit done
password policy preaching:

i'm campaigning. i've started sending the following email to the services that i use, in the vain hope that *someone* will listen...

Hi

I'm concerned by your website's password policy. It does not allow me to use a secure password and instead I have been forced to resort to a weak one.

I would be very grateful if whoever is responsible for your website's security policy would consider updating it.

For reference: http://xkcd.com/936/

Thank you

making progress with gd and my comic website
museum mission - finally using the mccord tickets i won and enjoying it thoroughly
big bank minus surprise: my pre-authorized visa payments just minused me painfully

miso soup and snowboard planning at miso - gd masochist wasabi

iga disappointment repetition

evening relaxed doing small things

watching more of the walking dead

Sunday, September 14, 2014

loving saturday night

winter's coming, heating's on
indian and the walking dead

big fight over ocd

...

dreaming of being a concubine, having fully developed arachnophobia and being bitten by a venomous fly and rushing to the hospital being attacked by bees

unmanageable stuffy nose

next dream teaching / assistant teaching
running back to the dungeon convent for a file that's not there, leaving naked being photographed by the nuns, having to buy "sporty" underwear at the school gift shop
waking up with numb arms

actually alive - summary and part ii

[... continued]

i got home for a quick refresh, tried and failed to use twilio to talk to my mum (just another example of the fine decision-making i've been doing), and found myself running late to get to the saq and pick up wine on my way. i walked out to surprising sweater weather, did some web development on my iphone while i walked, and remembered when i got there that i *hate* wine shopping. i know less about wine's categories than i do about weed's, and i know pretty much nothing about weed.

a man stormed through the metro car, disturbing quite a lot of people. i scowled at him, then cringed in disgust when i realized that he was sucking on his fingers and using them to hold the poles, then became fascinated and sympathetic when i realized that he's some degree of autistic and was managing to take the metro during peak hours. holy shit (O_o)

aside from my faux pas with a malt beer - the drinks weren't in an obvious place and so i grabbed the only thing i could find in the fridge, which was specially bought for the one person who couldn't consume alcohol - and a lot of awkwardness with vector, and then an hysterical incident in which gd shared something that disturbed one of godmother's friends enough to make him get up and walk away... so it was a pleasant yet significantly awkward evening. overall, it was fun.

[shit feelings of rejection, but i don't recall specifics]

---
friday 29th:

it was a good morning, but made uncomfortable by the discovery that one of my teammates (vapid) had forgotten that she'd taken on the responsibility of interacting with some fine folks who'd agreed to host us that evening. in retrospect, maybe i just shouldn't have said anything but then things started moving and suddenly there were only the two of us who could make it and we'd been invited as a team.

[a severe pause last a few days]

IT HAS BECOME APPARENT TO ME: that i cannot keep up with my own journal. i have been overloaded, exhausted and stressed by events unfolding in a way that makes me feel like i'm chasing my tail and every moment i would usually reserve for writing has been repurposed for everything else... anything else...

so i'm taking a break (officially versus de facto), dumping my notes and i'll either resume when i have space to breathe or find other forms of expression for my ocd event-gathering.


[notes]

bell pleasant cancellation services [seemingly, that fucker didn't change my address]
back to warm and sunny

meeting ejaculation: jokingly hissing "increase storage!" and having big junior jump on it because he's been saying it for ages

morning success
afternoon hours for first step

MAKING SHIT WITH GD WORSE

distraction and heartbreak
difficult end of week
making a decision hours too late, thinking about it and realizing that being a professional shouldn't have had to mean adding another layer of stress to an already fucked up week

a cup of coffee and a giant middle finger to the world for not giving a shit about what i want

radiohead - just at starbucks when it had been on my mind

p.m. pickup with clenched teeth
trevor noah - african american

---
saturday 30th august:

supertongue surprising us at our back door
finding a wasp's nest
finishing the move from my apartment and two pharmacy visits for her insteps
woman's underwear in the taxi driver's glove compartment
atwater satay fail then mushroom delight
mouth party floss mirror metro fall
meeting horseman at mcgill
long underground mission, switching shirts with horseman
missing popeye's by five minutes and it being the primary point of the mission
liquid nutrition second smoothie fail
home gd being clumsy
not exactly napping
iga run, indian delivery
rick and morty and exhaustion
...
ren and stimpy used to be on netflix :(

---
sunday 31st august

good dreams, ending with a big family event seeing sick uncle looking good and bursting into tears
twilio tweaking

gd family sensitivity explosion
jolly good brunch with godmother
a votre sante and then the pharmacy when in a hurry

just enough time to find lease
anxiety inducer: what is it with everyone constantly changing the rules of the game? why is the universe challenging me?

amazing orange surprise sorbet at yeh!
handover fail lie: provigo is *not* in front of the building
assignment done!!! (forgetting the kettle)

shopping at jean coutu getting revenge on shitty french-only woman and iga does deliveries
pinching nerve

salif keita - madan (exotic disco mix) - finally found the track!
long dinner process with cookies and root beer

jim jeffries - alcoholocaust some hysterically funny, some grim and clever, some disappointing

early night tired frustrated irritated

---
monday 1st september:

labour day much needed

dreams:
hundred of wormy leeches burrowed into my skin
pg's sister making me follow her for ages in order to tell me that pg's trying to get pregnant

gd-proofing the apartment
mushroom hunting - another gorgeous sunny day to be avoiding for my hair removal
too many haircuts, pinched nerves, gd music dropbox rescue, arranging things, twilio, sagirl, mom

twilio "good enough" for mom call
mom's horror story, a nightmare of theft not only of what she had, but the generation of super debt

OF COURSE the tim horton's where sagirl and i were meeting is closed
coffee, chinese, the village (sky pub)

back home, good talks
tons of spiders and discussing parktown prawns
the new jim jeffries

---
tuesday 2nd:

insanely loud construction early in the morning
twilio fix might not be ideal [actually, it's looking pretty good right now]
superhot in the metro waiting to renew my pass

burning hours in the boardroom
why do i forget sunscreen EVERY time i leave?
quick and easy $200 for furniture... whoops! forgot key deposit
twilio success
excessive multitasking, programming success, vm transfer fail and [apparent] ffmpeg bug [we'd figure it out eventually] convincing me that i need to get into github

reading my poetry at people taught me about stm subscriptions

hearing hebrew at epicure then russian at the walmart thinking it was hebrew
quick recycle bin shopping and almost losing my headphones having to carry it through the rain then gd shouting enthusiastically into my headphones when i hadn't put the volume down

out of the metro car and into a spiderweb??
rain iga mission
[hormones and potential excitement]
a comforting sense that winter's coming and it's going to be a good one
dinner, laundry, hiccup hysterics
bluetooth ipad keyboard

gd's aunt paralysed broken c4/c5 and reconnecting with family

early bed

---
wednesday 3rd:

3am, 5am shouting at supertongue not to snooze, gd "trouble sleeping", dreams interrupted midsentence and then me going back in time to redo the officer's course
dreaming a bad joke about cats sleeping outside and the oxford comma that can't be retold

gd comic collaboration agreement
gd finished saga vol 1 and is hooked on world war z

emails from slobodan not-quite milosevic
... realizing i've wasted half a day on vm issues...
comic test for one of my co-workers (hac)

staring dumbly at an android blindside
rough code review - big junior super-sensitive

surprise apartment juggling for friday handover

yawning and tiiiiired

hurried shopping forgotten nutritional yeast
urchin's exhibiting in jerusalem
ha - supertongue missed the ukraine festival by one week

of course the metro's stuck on me and my frozen goods
quick home run, then just missing two trains to get the the slam team meeting

starbucks servers: tiny girls with disproportionately large ears

it is so hard to listen to someone you don't respect as an artist
vapid's greeting touch making me uncomfortable

introducing gd to strip search

---
thursday 4th:

cool morning
comic site setup
gd and her friend discussing chinese astrology: when's the year of the luck dragon?

gorgeous hot sunny morning with a cool breeze

tell unfunnier jokes rather... i think i overdid it
work slow going, warcraft ii invite pressure
throwback thursday game, getting my ass kicked just like the old days

seether tickets acquired!

big junior's amazing find: ogv.js

i've never seen so many people brushing their teeth in the middle of the day before - i wonder if there's a literal kind of ass-kissing going on?

weather on is a cool app
aching hands and feet
absolute exhaustion, falling asleep at my desk, early third coffee

chicken and egg compilation, the difference 4gb of memory makes to a build
listening to techno feeling better

wasted again for kickboxing but working through dizziness

dehydrated, tired, knowing i gotta eat, dealing with "ovary acting" for the first time in my life

strip search

---
friday 5th:

farts of doom

phone alarm too quiet having to search for it

supertongue blaming a vegan diet she hasn't tried for gaining weight after a gluttonous long junk-food weekend made me angry

beautiful morning post-disturbing stomache, slightly better news from mom

super-quiet sunny streets and definitive weekend vibe, in spite of pinched nerve

good git morning
twilio progress while compiling
apartment handover / deposit cheque direct to pg

waste of compiling time

hac chat off the clock: not illustration but perhaps a climbing partner

twilio success, leaving just after the crazy thunderstorm

boxing coach abandoning us to his top guy and me to the man with the bum wrist, great class insane sweating made worse by metro heat and fast walk to get to masala palace before they closed, desperately needing the aircon and water and thoroughly enjoying the food (butter-free naan bread!)

gaming night resurrected at vfmp's

---
saturday 6th:

making the last metro
washable marker amusement (became a running gag)
laundry while overheating and twilio

great sleep
still muggy in the morning, waking up to big ugly bug climbing up my back

rained on, early poetry meeting and rabbit throwing water and just missing me

midi 6
not much rest, poetry soundcloud mom chat twilio fail

a horror story about a girl i went to school with who at age 34 finally found love and he was just killed in an accident

godmother visit, supertongue established as utterly weird
the dog's energy levels astounding

---
omg

the woman on the metro wearing giant headphones and staring straight ahead with stone-cold eyes while her kid screamed her little head off desperate for her attention, who didn't move until i'd glared at her furiously for at least fifteen seconds... everybody else pretending not to notice or smiling at me as if this was some kind of amusing "aw, shucks" kind of story.

it's so nice that they'll let just anyone breed, but loving parents desperate to adopt are turned away so easily.

---
mezuzot: on judaism and stories and barefeet and bare heads and pure hands and intentions

and real rest. and love children.

mak mak french / english fuckup and next time only ordering for one

posting with batman in the background

epic scifi fantasy dreams star wars robots try to fuck us up after surrendering and me on the run, stumbling across a bridge in a tunnel currently being used to extract a magic tome used in a ceremony and having to prove my intentions to those in the world on the other side

---
sunday 7th:

late sleep
yuna has only two good tracks (lullabies and fading flower)
haircut and stretching and late for kgb visit and him picking us up while we prepare for the day but we forgot to prepare gifts...

gd's rum vs whiskey sabotage

unbelievably perfect weather, sunny but cool with a definite sense of autumn

pharmacy and dollarama and complete exhaustion
steel panther - glory hole is an awesome (disturbing) music video

metro sleep

pre-slam meeting positive
meeting a fellow ex-lone-soldier
huge turnout for vogon poetry - the feature (fortner anderson)was truly awful. almost all of the rest of the poetry was amazing, everyone's been doing their homework this summer.

i took second and the team took a large some of money towards fundraising.

a great evening ruined by vapid touching me inappropriately, the fallout under extreme headache / exhaustion and the night become a nightmare

---
monday 8th:

new pillow discomfort
not quite enough sleep
vapid sexual harassment email discomfort
general mood improvement but leaving late

decent relaxed recovering morning
getting december vacation permission and treating myself to harvey's (double veggie burger and salad)

booking tickets to south africa!!!

losing the extra-coffee war (four cups a day is now a thing)
new strategies, recalling why irc sucks

wasabi-pea tears in the parking lot
realizing the depth of the expression "christ on a stick"
shopping, almost walking into a double spiders trap
shopping fail [they ran out of everything], awesome cheeseless pizza instead

hot coffee is disturbing, that chained to fahrenheit 9/11
feeling uncomfortable, lying down to feel more so, eventually giving up and going to bed

seeing myself perform gives me insight as to how much i move around too much

---
tuesday 9th:

reading rabbit's poetry for our team album
learning that my jokes at work are appreciated
big junior definitely not digging me [but he chilled as the week went on]
vapid insulted by my email, her response exactly what women complain about when men get defensive
ffmpeg brain scratching - parameters in MICROseconds???

gd iga follow-up fuckup [still no food]
good kickboxing training - give 120%! empty the tank! then work harder!
hard knees and thanks for the sparring, but no.
the french dude's gotta return to france on the 22nd and he doesn't want to leave montreal

big easy shopping at the old supermarket
johnny clegg mode
discussing vapid and parents and siblings - unfortunately unrecorded and very poetic
late dinner and american beauty
on poetry professionalism

do i mind if gd reads one of my favorite books in bed???

---
wednesday 10th:

early rise, second rest sooo comfortable
too many tasks and indiegogo account fail
final vapid mail
big junior more pleasant
work going around in circles
volunteering for company's emergency response team
one of the slam team's computer microphone and mine are shittier than phones
remembering sunscreen on my way out!
opposing my own reference for the caretaker of my old apartment
arguing atheism with supertongue [just saw this on slashdot]
mind melting javascript revelations
big junior r&d support
contact a rabbi for gd conversion discussion

exhaustion, sasquatch metro company, popeye's
two toilet queue jumpers at the starbucks
cypher: a dumbass journalist-poet-wannabe, katalyst sharing surprisingly good stuff
vapid not showing up

ovary acting stress and the beginnings of a fun poem on the topic
dinner delight and how to train your pet dragon

---
thursday 9/11:

the kind of rainy morning your body gets out of bed for with your spirits still under the blankets
nystire finally taking his stuff from pg, repurchasing lady of mazes
big junior good start
returning to an old avenue of inquiry, small successes
noon cheque mission, no express queues and no visible instructions for depositing cheques. when will my bank accept photos through their app?
gd in too much pain to make plans
suspiciously delicious thali pushap
twilio test and mom chat
bell customer dissatisfaction - calling me to ask why i rated them badly and then giving me more reason to hate them?

big junior during a meeting: what's slashdot?

pleasant evening: though i shouldn't have badmouthed my previous coworkers, i felt arrogant and sasquatch could've understood all the wrong things. [i talked with him in the morning, it's all good]

örmagörd: the realization that 1000 in currency is called "a grand" and two grand is referred to as "two large" in slang and grand = large in french.

p.m. delight
jumping on the bandcampwagon: bandcamp is a UX masterpiece. it's obviously designed for artists who don't care for technological bullshit and difficulties and just want to get stuff done. slick and awesome.

wasting time on the youtube vids because the guy in charge needs his hand held - but still grateful to him for his efforts so having to be super polite about it.

GETTING NO WRITING DONE

---
yesterday (!!!):

1am to bed with the same beard line as before
waking up at something am with strep throat?

bell's friendly agent: "once in a blue moon accidents happen" uh-huh
ten degrees and shorts because of chewing gum and cold hands
big junior good meeting
bell cutting into my lunch again when i'm already short an hour

sneezing so hard my headphones fell off

interesting afternoon but feeling slow
ALMOST succeeding, partial better than nothing but still frustrating

stunning cold late afternoon walking into the weekend needing it

great winter pants at walmart!

youtube schmuck / being a little harsh... he switched the titles on my videos.
great evening until it turned super shitty with gd in pain and angry about it, my sinus headache stuffy brain tired

---
today:

nyquil stoned late wake no breakfast, rabbit visit, forgotten backpack running with it open and no razor for my laser appointment

good poetry with mcc

higher laser intensity: "women do this on their entire bodies". men have lower pain thresholds. i don't want to imagine further.
gd quick stop for a kiss "so cute!"
rejoining the meeting

good full sandwich at aux vivres + carrying dragon sauce + postponed coaching + mom call + dying phone no charger - then second mom birthday call using twilio freakin awesome. erm. PHreakin' awesome.

coming home, realizing that something's got to give and it's this. now done, going to chill a bit.