scenery and fish and building rooms in basements and other things.

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.

the quake soundtrack is really, really, really awesome

i almost forgot about this thing. remember: i can't be on the internet too often, because it's only available on the computer in the shared room. but, school's out....not forever....so, i don't really have a schedule for the next few months.

my marks were pretty good. As in the important courses, Bs in the unimportant ones. i'm excited about not having to take phys ed anymore next year - it always drives my average down, every year. i get As in english and math and science and then this big, stupid ugly B in phys ed that takes me down a grade point. it's really unfair. who cares about phys ed? why should it kill my average like this? the other class i always get Bs in is french. i'd like to squirm out of it, but i know my dad won't let me. they say it's important to speak french in ottawa, but the truth is that i've never met anybody that speaks french here, ever. supposedly, you need to speak french to get a job in the government. well, that's easy: i won't work for the government, then. they made the rules, not me. i just find it really irrational to have to speak two languages and so i can't study for it because it's just a stupid idea. i'd rather be doing anything else at all. why can't we all just speak one language? i don't even care if it's english. i'd be happy to learn chinese starting tomorrow if it meant i only had to deal with one language. i'd even be happy to learn french tomorrow if i could forget about english altogether. what drives me crazy about learning multiple languages is the redundancy. it's inefficient. illogical. irrational...

i don't know what i'm going to do this summer. i usually spend the summer entirely by myself; i've never had any friends. i went to elementary school on an army base but i didn't live on the army base so there was never anybody around that i went to school with. so, i would just stay inside. last summer, i played a lot of guitar and read a lot of books. my stepmother wants me to get a job, but that sounds like a waste of time. what would i spend the money on? i'd rather not have money and have time than have money and not have time. i don't really understand why she's so insistent. dad says i'm still too young to work and i shouldn't worry about it, but he wants me to go get a social insurance number anyways, just in case. she gets really mad when he says that, and says i'll have to do chores, then, instead. she seems to honestly think that i have a responsibility to pay rent through manual labour in order to stay here. she calls it "room and board".

i hope that what happened last year doesn't happen again. i was having a nice summer until my step-mother took her yearly holidays and forced me to spend the day outside pulling weeds. she insisted i didn't tell my father. so, i was working six hours a day in the hot sun for a whole week. i assumed my allowance would go up as a result as i was doing more than my expected weekly chores, but when i inquired she told me that i was just paying the rent. this made perfect sense to her. it did not make any sense to me at all - so, i refused to pull weeds any longer unless she promised to pay up and she locked me out of the house. she said i was getting evicted. when my dad got home, i explained what had happened and a huge fight erupted. he told me that i was right and she was wrong and took me to the music store and let me pick out $100 worth of cassettes. he wanted me to understand that my labour was worth something and i should never work for free. he said she has a "chemical imbalance" and goes crazy sometimes and it's something we'll both have to live with forever. he said she understands that what she did was wrong. but, they fought about it for a long time afterwards. i don't know if i agree that she thought what she did was wrong.

i think at least a part of the summer is going to be spent in the basement building a sound proof room. dad used to play the drums when he was younger, and he wants a place where he can go back to playing them. my stepmother won't let him get a drum kit because it's too loud. so, he wants to get sound paneling and insulation for an isolated room in the basement. he says he'll need me to help him - and that i should bring some friends over to start a band once we're done. he'll even put a bass in there, too.

i listened to the new soundgarden record a lot this month and really like it, but it's been replaced in my walkman by the new nine inch nails record. my computer is too slow to run quake; i don't have enough ram for it. it can run wolfenstein, but i haven't played wolfenstein in a few years. i only play civ 2, now. but, my step uncle is a really big id games fan and he let me dub a copy of it. he thought the soundtrack was effective in the game, but that it was really funny that anybody might listen to it as music. he says he'd rather listen to the who.

i don't think it's as good as fixed, which is my favourite record of all time. it's different. it's kind of scary, almost. but, i've been listening to it nonstop since sunday and i just can't get out of it.

it's getting late, so i should pretend that i'm going to bed. i'm too old to have a bed time, but i know that people have to get up in the morning so i adjust to it in keeping quiet past a certain time. i can't say when my next update will be. maybe the room will be done?

really enjoying the new soundgarden record

i guess this is my new blog. wow.

i should be asleep, but it's a saturday night and my parents don't really force me to go to sleep. well, how can they, really? they need to sleep, too. fatalism is actually pretty rational, in context - it's an unresolvable problem. and i'm a bit of a hard-headed little punk rascal.

i just find that i only need a few hours of rest, not something crazy like eight hours. who sleeps that long? wow. i'm ok with four hours, really. so, what should i do for the rest of the night, then? toss darts at the wall? count sheep? lying in bed when you're really not tired is just simply being unproductive. if i'm going to be awake anyways, i'd rather stay up and read something, or listen to some music. i guess it's a good time to do some blogging, too.

i don't have internet access in my room, though, so i need to sneak into the spare computer room when i want to use the internet at night. i do have a computer in my room, but it only has windows 3.1 on it. i need windows 95 to use internet explorer. so, i probably won't be able to do this blog every night.

i've been up all night playing civ2 and listening to this new soundgarden cassette on my walkman. i skipped the afternoon class on tuesday (computer class, and i already know it all, anyways, so it's just a waste of time) to go down to the hmv at st. laurent to pick it up. i get a free bus pass from school, so i can go wherever i want in the city whenever i want, which is actually very liberating. much easier than bicycling. there's a music world at billings, too, but it's always over priced and under stocked. the hmv at st. laurent is only a few minutes up the transitway and always has what i want.

it's a little different than superunknown, a bit poppier, but it's still pretty good. parts of it remind me a lot of the beatles, and i really like the beatles a lot. parts of it are sort of weird, and i like that, too. i always like to hear things that i haven't heard before. i think i'd like to teach myself how to play some of these songs, too, but i'm wondering if maybe they're in weird tunings. i know soundgarden likes weird tunings. my ibanez has a locking bridge so i try to avoid weird tunings. maybe, i can figure out how to play them in normal tunings, anyways. when songs are in weird tunings, it's sometimes helpful to find tabs on the internet, because then i can figure out how to play it with normal tuning. sometimes, that means transposing the song up a key or two but it's all relative so it doesn't matter.

i've been playing civ2 ever since i got home last night. dad says i'm totally addicted, but it's a video game, not a drug, so i think that's a weird thing to say. but, i do sometimes play it all night, until the sun comes up and the dogs come running in and i have to pretend i'm sleeping. i like to change the civilizations i play with so that i can learn the names of the cities in different parts of the world. tonight, i am catherine the great of russia. i always liked to learn about geography, ever since i was very small. i knew all the capital cities in the whole world, almost!

i found a tab for burden in my hand, and it is actually in a weird tuning. i should try and convert it to normal tuning when i wake up tomorrow.

i should sneak back into my room now. shhh.