good morning. i've been up all night playing civ 2. how was your night?
it's been a pretty good summer, so far. i've very much gotten into the routine of staying up all night and sleeping during the afternoon, which is a habit i can trace back a few years to when i used to live with my mom. when she got a new tv, she moved the old one into the basement, which is where my bedroom was. it was a nice, big tv - but very old. wood frame, with two dials on the front. uhf/vhf. it was around as long as i can remember, so it must have been from the 70s. at first, i used to stay up to watch conan and then get tired and fall asleep right after or even during it. i had to, because conan was the funniest thing to ever exist in the history of the universe. but, the habit of staying up late is something that builds on itself. you stay up a little later, you sleep in a little later; eventually, you're up all night. soon, i found myself watching muchmusic after conan; they always played better music at night. then, i was staying up even later to watch reruns of the original star trek series, which they were interestingly playing on cbc kingston. maybe somebody in the station went to high school with shatner, or something. kingston used to be the capital of canada, but it was eventually moved up the rideau river here to ottawa because kingston was considered to be too vulnerable to a sneak attack by american forces. those bastards are always trying to invade us, so we have to be careful. it's about half way to toronto, which is still close enough to get channels here in ottawa on basic cable. within a few years, i'd guess i'd seen pretty much the entire series - much of it several times.
i even found myself staying up even later, mostly for the purposes of reading. by the time i'd got to high school, i'd read almost everything that stephen king had ever written. i also read a lot of science fiction including a lot of isaac asimov, especially the foundation series. the gaia theory narrative was very interesting to me. some nights, i would stay up reading until lunch time. this wasn't always really a choice, either - sometimes i just got lost in it.
so, the idea of staying up all night is not something that's new to me. i'm only 15, but i've been doing this regularly over the summer for many years, already.
it is a little different this year, though, for a few reasons. one is that i'm not living at my mom's this summer. mom didn't really care when i went to bed. dad doesn't either, really, but my stepmother claims she is a light sleeper and doesn't want to be woken up because she has to work in the morning. also, i might wake the dogs up (we have two golden retrievers). i'm well aware that there's an unwritten and unenforced rule that i should be in bed, but i also know that nobody is going to give me grief so long as i don't wake anybody up. the other reason it's different this year is that there's central air here. my mom has never had an air conditioner, and in fact there were even no windows in the basement. so, conan or not, there was some greater value in sleeping through the hot days and living in the cooler evenings. it can actually get pretty hot in canada in the summer!
this has been my schedule for most of the summer:
1. wake up after 2:00 pm. 3:00, often. 4:00, sometimes, even.
2. eat. well, usually. sometimes, dad says not to eat before he goes because he's making something. or, he might leave a note. sometimes, he even phones to tell me not to eat - and, i'd better not, too. he gets strangely depressed when you won't eat his food, like he's failed at life or something. i think it's some kind of repressed italian cultural thing. that's the exception, though. usually, they eat out on their way home from work. so, i usually feed myself. i expect to feed myself.
3. play guitar until everybody goes to bed.
4. play civ 2 until the sun comes up, or later.
5. sleep until the afternoon and start again.
is that a pretty good summer? i think it is, actually. although, i'm not sure if they're really aware of my sleeping schedules. i think they mostly think that i just get up early, and am awake all day.
one of the things i enjoy about playing civ 2 all night is listening to music when i'm playing. the newest, greatest thing in my walkman is the new i mother earth record, scenery and fish. i did already have the first record, dig, although i found it a little dense to get into, at first. it was just a little more challenging than the grunge that came out in '93 and '94. so, it kind of sat for a while until i went back to it. right now, i'm actually listening to both of them.
i find that the lyrics are really quirky at points, which i kind of like. they kind of want to tell a story, but they're kind of tongue-in-cheek about it, too. it's kind of like that they know they're cliched and are simultaneously revelling in it and poking fun at themselves for it. i think that's called post-modernism, but i'm not completely sure. what i really, really like are the guitars on the record. the fact that the guitars on this record are just a bit more advanced than the grunge records i've been listening to for the last few years puts them in just about the right space for me, right now. it's kind of more like the stuff my guitar teacher shows me: jimi hendrix, stevie ray vaughn, eric clapton, carlos santana. or, maybe it's kind of like that it's half-way between the blues that i'm being trained in and the alternative rock (pearl jam, smashing pumpkins, soundgarden) that i'm listening to a lot of. either way, tracks like pisser and earth, sky and c are immensely fun to rock out to through headphones.
i mentioned in the last update that i was helping my dad build a room in the basement. it's something we've been doing on the weekends, mostly - and it's almost done. he already bought his drum kit, so he has to build it, now. that's what he said, anyways. we put all this pink insulation in between the walls, and then we put in sound-proof ceiling tiles to stop the sound from traveling upstairs. the last thing we have to do is put an outside layer of drywall around the wood joists. i tried to do as much as i could, but i really only had two tasks: (1) hold things still and (2) stay out of the way.
he says that it should be done by august. he seems really excited by the prospect that i may bring some people over, as he's a little concerned about how much time i spend by myself. i don't really know anybody that would want to come over and start a band, though.
it's past my bed time, so i'm going to sleep. enjoy the i mother earth: it's something special, i think.
