Too late, next time

 On a whim, I decided to check the Paramore website. I thought this decade I'd move on, and listen to other bands more, but nope, so far, still a lot of Paramore.

They're coming to Toronto on Monday November 7th!

... and the tickets are all sold out.

I mean, they're playing at a venue I've never heard of before, and the last time I saw them, they were at Scotiabank Arena which is probably the biggest venue downtown other than the SkyDome. So maybe there just weren't that many tickets anyway. Kinda sucks; oh well.

The cool thing is there are a bunch of great bands playing at HISTORY (the venue I've never heard of) soon, like Bright Eyes, Silverstein, and Muse.

The prices though... ugh... 50 dollars minimum and then the fees. And then there's the fact that these kind of things start really late. I'm in my 30s man, I can't go to shows that start at 8 and then the actual band that I want to see doesn't come out till 11:00pm; I'm usually trying to fall asleep at that time.

I think my best option is just to wait for one of those nifty music festivals; that way, I can at least listen to music during the day and then, again, try and fall asleep while listening to whatever electronica or heavy metal headliners are playing that night whilst I commiserate in my camping tent.

Song of the day (it's a long one, but it's a classic):

Keeper of the Seven keys by Helloween

Freewrite the Pool

 If the cut first cut wasn't deep enough

The rush wasn't enough from any lover's

When I'm used to something new

Scared cared of the copywrite

The free write continues

Don't leave me hangin'

I'm overland, can't stop giving you up

If I survive I'll crash back in

No one hurts my head like you

The illusions the golden promise the blue dream

Crash right back into you; the rush is gone

More healing to add

 I'm thinking I've decided to add Metric to my list of bands that help me out when I'm having a rough time.

Up until like 5 seconds ago, I thought Feist was the lead singer of Metric, but apparently not. Well, Feist and Emily Haines both played in Broken Social Scene, which also happens to be a pretty cool band, though I tend to confuse them with Death Cab for Cutie.

Anyway, I went to the local library a few years ago and picked out a Metric album, Synthetica, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Played a few songs on repeat. Skipped the annoying kitten song a couple times. But damn, some really evocative synthwaves from that album.

Which brings me to today's Song of the Day, Dreams So Real (because I really miss remembering them).

Freewrite the onyx

 I walked today, a lot, the most I've walked at one point to another and back in one go in a long time yes it was at least a few months because although biking gets me places faster I don't do as much walking when I bike so if I walk then I will be lifting the earth down because the concrete is there.

One of the mini-projects

 I finally finished one of my my mini-projects today.

It involved a highlighter, a book by Jamie Oliver, and my sheer cold will.

The second time I got Covid-19 vaxxed

 I'm going to attempt to quickly improve my narrative skills.

Freewrite the crimson

 People say that you'll die these are lyrics from Arcade Fire faster than without water all in all it's just a lie to scare your suns and scare your dotters luckily the downloaded version is not the one I'm listening to that one has a dot in th middle that stops people from pirating songs SMILE SMILE every time you close your eye every time you close your eyes FROWN FROWN

FROWN FROWN

FROWN FROWN

I am SO sick of hearing about PB

 No, not lead. Pickleball. So sick of it. SO sick of it.

It's a terrible sport for a couple different reasons

• The micro-plastic. I literally just realized this now. These old farts (SORRY for the ageism but HONESTLY, in Toronto, it's 65+ everywhere) are playing this game with these stupid plastic balls on outdoor tennis courts. This leaves micro-plastic EVERYWHERE, right? I mean, think about it. You hit this stupid plastic thing over and over on the concrete, and eventually, the ball collapses from lack of structural integrity. This leaves micro-plastic on the tennis/badminton courts that tennis balls and badminton shuttlecocks do NOT leave in as much quantity. This is all reasoned out in my head.
• "Oh, are you a 3.5 player? Oh no, you're you 4.0 player? No no no, 2.0 players here, 3.0 players there".... this is LITERALLY Nosedive from Black Mirror. Okay, okay, not literally, it's within the context of a sport, but I still hate that my folks are obsessing over this stupid shit and whining about not being able to complete tournaments because they're not just right enough for you, like, holy shit dude, if you don't want to play the fucking game, find a different one
• I'm fucking angry because I can't find my badminton racquets and my mom swears she hasn't seen either of my bags (yeah, I hate losing my stuff, especially when one of the racquets participated in multiple tournaments) And yes, my racquet participated even though it's an inanimate object

Anyway, I'm going to link some random YouTube video below because I'm still addicted to that. BUT, and this is critical for anyone who follows this blog and yeah, this is health advice, and I don't give a shit because DISCLAIMER: I'M NOT A QUALIFIED HEALTH PROFESSIONAL (which is to say, not board certified by any means), I got rid of ALL portable/desktop electronics in the bedroom. My sleep is still awful, but I'm not taking an Ativan for it. As long as I get at least 4 hours of sleep, I can clearly write, though I must not go yelling outside for a bit because it's friday and fridays is teacher's night and you do not want to wreck your voice on fridays especially, car c'est le weekend! La fin de semaine! Yayyyyyy, I don't have a 5 day workweek.

Usually my favourite Arcade Fire song, poor spelling notwithstanding.

Freewrite the red

 Painfully, the voice repeats over and over again. Great horror story, terrible execution.

There is a lot of pain because the painful people keep writing shit without subtracting but I do not care because according to some legend somewhere I am both annoying and a special snowflake. I really should be in bed but I blame Athena from Overwatch for bringing this stupidfucked up OVERTIME bullshit. What the hell kind of algo is that. That shit can last way too long you even forget how to breathe.

Also, while I'm on the topic of unbanned Blizzard (oh my god I am SO SICK of hearing about your stupid fucking useless sexual assault trials like holy shit YOU FUCKERS ELECTED THE IDIOT, NOW DEAL WITH ROE V. WADE THERE ARE FUCKING KIDS DYING OF OPIATE ADDICTIONS LITEREALLY....) anyway, I should be in bed right now because it is WAY past my bedtime but no I am here COMPLAINING again because stupid motherfucking GOOGLE can't fucking get its code together.

LOOK. I started this blog when I was a teenager. It is NOT my job to fix the stupid encryption problem, I'm pretty sure you have my fucking address motherfucker and this is how FREE SPEECH WORKS because OBVIOUSLY I'VE NEVER KILLED anyone in my life so WHY do I feel like the authorities want me to die?

ANSWER: THEY'RE ALL EATING GARBAGE TOO!

Oh, and the voice that keeps telling me "there's something wrong with your head?" YEAH, NO SHIT, I KNOW THAT. IT'S NOT HELPING. YOU'RE LIKE TINNITUS, EXCEPT INSTEAD OF HEARING WHINING FAN MOTORS, I HEAR LOVELY LITTLE FEMEALE FLOWERS WHEN, YES, I AM TRANSGENDER, BUT NO, I DON'T FUCK WITH BIOLOGY.

HE

SHE

THEY

THEM

JE

TU

IL

NOUS

VOUS

VOUS ÊTES DES CONNARDS

Maintennant, j'ai toujours le choix de publier, et je vais le faire, et le fait que j'écris en français m'indique que ça n'est pas la fin du monde et le soleil se levera demain. Je le garantie à 100%.

More proof that AI still sucks

 I type this into Google: "How do you remove the video thumbnails that pop up after you finish watching a YouTube video?" and the results that pop up are still a mess for me to comprehend at first glass.

What I think it should at this point in time is directly give you a walkthrough (visual, audio, w/e) of how to turn off the flucking 16 videos that

[musical interlude, take a gander at what song at is]

but nowwwwwww these days are gone

ad now I find

opened up the door

HELP ME IF YOUC AN I FEELING DOWN

AND I DON'T APPRECIATE YOU BEING ROUND

HELP ME GET MY FEET BACK ON THE GROUND

won't you pleaaaaase, please help me

now, my life has changed

my independence

vanish in the haze

but, now and then, I know that I,

never done before

help me if you can im feeling down

and i do appreciate you being round

help me get my feet back on the ground

wont you please, please help me

now, these days are gone im not so self assured and now i find changed my min openeed the dors

ehlep

[musical interlude over, 12 videos pop up]

okay it's only 12 videos and how the hell did I end up watching this video again?

Conclusion: Browser tabs were a terrible idea.

Dry herb shopping

 I am going dry herb shopping, organic only. No, not spices.

I  have been torturing myself for the past couple days, if not weeks, after a fortunate somewhat cold turkey drop into Cannabis-free zone.

I tried to sign up for employment insurance or welfare or whatever and I'm just above a cutoff so I'm back to frugal living and boy is it sweet when you roughly know your budget.

Anyway this blog might soon turn into weed reviews so if you're not into that feel free to go elsewhere, or leave a message saying what turns you off 'cause really all I'm trying to do is attract something non-creepy into my life and you know what, this might just turn into a Free speech segment number (above 10).

... but like 50 bucks a half-quarter/eighth, are you kidding me. To be fair I was overjoyed when I was able to pay 50 bucks for a quarter out east, time is hopefully still moving slower over there 'cause here time is stuck in a blues hellhole.

Anyway I've decided: OBC and _!

In the hopes that I come visit here in the future like you usually do, it's okay it's okay it's okay it's okay it's okay it's okay it's okay.

I'm writing a lot. It's okay.

 I just had an olive. One olive. I used to dislike olives, or at the very least, not care for them...

but OH my COD I just had one olive and it's honestly one of the best tasting foods I've had in a very long time...

.. but I am hiding something from you. I did not only have one olive. I had at least 2 singular olives. One a couple days ago, and one just now (in fact, I can still taste the salty telescopic flesh of Kalamata).

The first one I had was better because its sogginess was limited by its freshness. In other words, fresher from the farm.

Why does no one reply to e-mail anymore?

 The blog title is the topic. This post ends off-topic.

This makes no sense. No, I am very serious. 

I have proof.

It's been over 72 hours since I sent an e-mail to some working professionals. It's the end of the day on Monday. I guess they must be busy because September is a stressful month - new routines and all that.

I also wrote an e-mail to a friend - multiple, in fact. And in my e-mails, I tend to be truthful, open, perhaps too much sometimes.

And somehow it scares me to ask people "have you read/did you get?" my e-mail. I think it's linked to the ridiculously stupid "seen/received/whatever" notification on iPhones and the like. The apps that tell you if the other person has received a message are totally bonkers.

Why should a phone tell us what the other person is doing? What the hell? Does NO one care?

I yell a lot about this kind of stuff outside (things like light pollution, cars go in potential No Cars Go neighbourhoods, sunny outbursts of radiant sunshine hippy stuff (e.g. tree hugging); this gets me in trouble because people don't like to hear disturbing things in non-threatening ways. They expect violence, and all we get are passive zombie entertainment machines that potentially cause mass avoidance of H2O (speaking of which, time for another sip of ice-2 water).

My point is machines interfere with human communication; perhaps more harm than good at this point. So that's why I still don't have an iPhone, still don't have my own Netflix account, and still refuse to not drink water every day somehow.

On the plus side the cherries were awesome this year. Best in a decade, easily. I'd post pictures but my crappy Nokia is broken again.

Therapy in Transit

 Written a decade+ ago by me, when I was in Vancouver.

Therapy in Transit

As a volunteer working in Burnaby and living in southern Vancouver, I face two, hour-
long commutes every day to get to work. Luckily, I avoid the big traffic on the Skytrain
because I travel West-to-East in the mornings and East-to-West in the afternoons. And
when I catch the Main bus to reach the Skytrain, I’m usually one of the first people on, so
I can sit down, relax, and reflect on the day ahead. Thus, I enjoy a relatively stress-free
ride to work everyday.
I’ll be honest: In the mornings, I am not a happy camper. I am usually a zombie; get on
bus, doze, get on Skytrain, doze, get to work, sit down. I think that without my commute
every day, I would be totally brainless at work. In some ways, taking transit is
therapeutic.
I often find myself riding the Skytrain, headed for no particular destination, getting off at
a station, taking a bus somewhere or another, and eventually making my way back on the
Skytrain grid to make it home again. I meet other wanderers, or if I don’t, I explore things
I’ve never seen before, and get a feel for a city that has so much to offer. I feel no
pressure, I have no expectations, and I go wherever the bus driver decides to drive the
bus.
The best part? Knowing that I’m lowering my carbon footprint by using sustainable
transportation instead of driving around producing unnecessary greenhouse gas
emissions.
I encourage everyone who really wants to experience Vancouver to get out of their car,
their bubble, and to use alternative, sustainable transportation to get around instead.

By the way, I'm not talking to you

 I eat gluten-free, not non-vegan.

Gluten-free =/ sugar

Why are gluten-free sections of all sorts of products FILLED with sugar?

What the hell?

Way to stab us in the back, grains.

Very little sleep,

Gabe

Song of the day for 2022/09/09

I guess it reminds me that we're not machines, we're not synthetic, we've got light and stuff.

Metal YMCA

My first impression was "hell yeah!"

Broke my phone!

 I am really saddened by what happened: I was taking a walk in the ravine and was cheering too loudly for the tennis players in their cages of steel white pickleball effortium.