Not the most exciting of weeks but some small changes, at least compared to my big decision last week to focus on one narrative solo project til it's actually done. Going back to a little farm work, requested and received my criminal record for the first time, guys! It was necessary for an employment office procedure. Neat, huh? Well, I'm not charged with anything. Boo! The heat is still terrible. I'm so over the summer... I don't want to be but I haven't had a (relatively) coherent thought for weeks.
Week 28.
I wasn't feeling great on Monday but my sister got the best news. She's officially accepted into the high school of her choice! It's an artsy type of school and her main course is costume design, which is probably the most fun thing I can imagine doing in high school. I'm a little jealous even, my high school years were not that fun. Here's the cat being dumb:
On Tuesday we went to the public pool for the first time this summer. It was kind of lame and overcrowded as usual, kids doing full-on cannonballs hopefully right next to you and not onto you. Someone still desperately trying to get their laps in even with 20 ten-year olds directly in their way. Still beats no pool!
Re-started a short stint of work at the kiwi place on Wednesday, very early. We're up at 5:30 and there at 6 or 6:30 and working til half-past noon. No breaks, by the way! It's not so bad til the sun starts burning everything in sight. Worst part was that there's some kind of tall grass that's not cut at all and leaves like a million cuts all over. Then the fertilizer gets wet and if it touches already agitated skin you're left with what looks close to chemical burns. It hurt... What I do love about this job though is that the boss is usually not around and I can just let my mind wander while the body's already memorized the same, repetitive but exhausting tasks. I drive a tractor too. And listen to music. Recently, much downtempo.
In good news, the government-sanctioned installation of insulation and drywall on the third floor is done! Come autumn, I may be able to move into my actual room! I'm gonna need input/advice on decoration and all that from friends and readers, of course.
Angel mode.
Murder mode.
Same as Wednesday, we worked through Thursday and Mo had his friend from class come over and the two of them hung out and played Xbox. Then they went to play football for some god forsaken reason. The sun don't set til like 10 PM... I dropped by the outlet store and saw the most nostalgic stickers ever. I used to have lots like these as a kid and was kind of tempted but sadly I can't find much use for puffy stickers, as cute as they are.
My childhood!
Friday we started pruning the deformed kiwis, I felt bad for these little rejected freaks. The kind of kiwis you don't see at the store: two kiwis formed into one, weirdly long kiwis, and kiwis with tails.
Unrelated beans.
Saturday I did two artfight attacks, I'll probably do like 1 or 2 more and that's it for the year. The comic awaits! I actually said I'd keep website projects at bay for now but I did apply to make a Witch Hat fanlisting all the way back in June so that will be my last mini-project for now.
Chill Sunday, except that my period started, which was not chill. But I'll live. And I did! Wonderful news for some, terrible news for others. So, we go on...
The end.
I'm gonna try to stay a bit more on top of the blog this month, catching up made me queasy but also relieved when it was done in June. Not sure why but this blog kind of helps me keep my sanity, a little.
This Week I'm Excited For...
It will be the national day of France next week and I'm no patriot of any country but I do like France (thanks for letting me stay here, France) and the national day is also known as Bastille day, for the fortress that was broken into during the revolution. Sure, they only freed like 7 prisoners in the process of getting to the arsenal but the whole shebang did end with the toppling of the monarchy which is pretty awesome. There will be fireworks, and I do love fireworks.
Song Of The Week...
I was googling other songs like Orbital's Halcyon, begging for something even a little close. Someone on Reddit luckily left a bunch of songs in a post, one of them being Global Goon's Afterlife. It's so gorgeous! Reminds me a little bit of Susumu Yokota, though without much of the orchestral abundance. And this one song I was crazy about called Razzleberry Thicket by RunFoxRun. Or maybe they're not that similar... I don't know, it's the mood or something!
Happy July, friends. It's Artfight season for all those that celebrate and participate. I'm taking it slow this year and trying to get a few attacks out to my mutuals. Also working a little more with kiwis again, in this damn heat... it sucks! But I'm surviving.
The first month of summer is over! I had a very mixed month, quite busy, with an amazing finale! More on this in the media of the month. The heatwave has been ass, like no one in France has an AC and we are all dying. Thanks a lot, billionaires! We're gonna kill you all!
Goals
1. Artfight prep
Done, uploaded 2 new characters even and updated some art.
2. Prep for Code de la route
Not really, the meeting for the application got postponed too.
3. Summer zine with Alice
I've made some lists of summer movies and games but now I need to put the text together.
4. Sketch for Tom's OCs
Did not do...
5. Pre-write Blaugust 1-10
No, and I'm probably skipping out on Blaugust this year to focus on my comic.
6. Catch up on blog posts
Actually did do this which is great.
Best Of: June
Movies
If it isn't obvious from my previous posts, my movie of the month, probably of the year, is Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie. Eventually, if I stop lying, I will write an actual review but for now, here's a breakdown of my favourite moments that I can't stop thinking about. Beware the spoilers!
1. Army playing as they set out to do the Seven Inning Skydive. "If you build it, they will come!".
2.
The whiteboard in the RV. So stupid. The whole moment where they go
back to 2008. You know how what?! How when what?! If you went when how
what?! I'M GETTING FUCKED OVER, AREN'T I?!
3. "This doesn't speak for Toronto generally."
4. 'Creamed Corn vs. Can Opener' and Update Day for like 657058 or however many hours. Jail? Jail.
5. "If you've got a best friend, you won't even notice getting older."
6. Matt hitting Jay right on the mic causing it to peak super loud.
7. "He's a bit fat, he's a bit buff. He's my old friend Matt!"
8. The fact that Jared came into this timeline with Matt but who the fuck is Nikolai and can he be trusted?
9. Obama? Obamna!
10. Sugar? Cane sugar? Gelatin? And obviously the Alphabet Song. You get your A, B, C, D, E, F and don't forget ...G!
11. Snipping an actual powerline so their stupid cable has space.
12.
During the scene where Matt realizes he can't reach the electricity box
my sister was like: "Dude, just get an extension cable! One power caddy
would solve this." Yeah but the drama.
13. Jay going 'No!No!' in the dumbest voice to the cops telling him to pull over.
14. And of course,
the very end. Like Matt can't know for certain if Jay will chose to go
back to 2008 and undo their band break-up or if he'll just go back 2
days before he was a murderer and live his famous-Jay life. But he still
totally sacrifices himself. It's so demented but so wholesome.
Tempted to say they don't make movies like this anymore but... I don't think they ever did? Not exactly to the tune of whatever the fuck any Matt Johnson project has going on, especially anything NTBTS. It's very special to me.
TV Shows
Okay I'm starting to repeat myself but yeah because we re-watched the show before the movie, it's also obviously my pick for show of the month. Re-watched season 3 of Stranger Things with my sister this month as well but honestly that show sucks.
I can't remember how exactly I even found out about NTBTS to be honest, I think it was some clip on YouTube or something, and surprisingly it was not Update Day, and I was like 'what in the hell is this?!' because they were not being promo'ed like anywhere basically. Luckiest find of a life time. Instead of going on about the episodes again, I'm gonna rank my favourite episode openings (I think only the Banned List 2 doesn't have a specific opening reference). If you're unfamiliar with the show, each episode starts with an opening that references an existing film, game, tv show etc. but with a NTBTS spin.
1. S1E7 The Buffet - My Dinner with Andre
2. S2E2 The Boost - GoldenEye 007
3. S2E5 The B-Day - The Walking Dead
4. S1E6 The Boy - Crank
5. S237 The Band List - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
6. S2E6 The Banned - Hackers
7. S1E5 The Big Time - Entourage
8. S1E8 The Bank - Dog Day Afternoon
9. S1E4 The Blindside - Daredevil
10. S2E4 The Book - Simpsons
11. S1E3 The Bean - Home Alone
12. S1E1 The Banner - Jurassic Park
13. S2E3 The Buddy - Mrs. Doubtfire
14. S2E1 The Burger - Wahlburgers
15. S1E2 The Booking - Growing Pains
Games
We started playing Alan Wake on the 360 with my sister and brother for a laugh. You know Remedy writing if you know it. It's got that Life Is Strange je-ne-sais-quoi of European developers writing Americana. Even better because it's a Finnish studio writing a Twin Peaks-esque mystery horror. There's a bit of Twilight Zone, there's a bit of a buddy-cop comedy, there's a monster with no face, there's a fridged wife. I thought this would be an ironic fun type of thing, kind of like the actual certified Twin Peaks rip-off Deadly Premonition. No! It was enjoyed unironically!
I'm surprised by how much they packed into the last two or so chapters of the game, that's where the story finally picked up for me and got weird and it's own thing. Not like it does a bad job setting up the rules of the world but it does drag on. Yeah, at the end I actually started kind of liking Alan, mostly when he was kind of done with everything and had Barry to bounce off of. I want to play the second game now.
Books
Er...anyway...
Music
Went back to see what I haven't listened to from Alice's recs yet and realized I never finished listening to La Dispute's Rooms of the House for some reason. Well, put it on, listened to it a bunch of times. An excellent album. I'm no spoken word expert but it's amazing in their rendition of it. Lots of great songs and lots of stories you want to know about but that also sound quite horrific, but in a mundane way that life is a nightmare and we kind of all just act like it's not.
Animation
Didn't watch anything animated this month. Very sad...
I'm not crying, you're crying! Well, though I didn't cry, it was close. If it's not exactly obvious yet I've been re-obsessing with Nirvanna The Band The Show these days on the account of I finally saw the movie. It's fucking awesome. It's probably the best movie that's gonna come out in the 2020s! I had a swell time, even better that I watched it with my brother and sister. Now I'm just waiting to see what Alice thought about it. If you haven't seen it yet, go! Literally, fuck this blog, go watch the movie!
Had an otherwise mixed week. How much more exciting can it get?! Then crashed, as is mandatory because an endless high is impossible. More on this in the actual blog...
Week 27.
Monday was the day it actually happened. We finished up season 2 and went straight into the movie. Well, before that I had a meeting with my France Travail counselor, we talked about who called back from the job fair. The only person who contacted her was the owner of a hotel. I was under the impression that it was a one-month long trainee-ship that was paid, which is how it was pitched to me at the fair. Turns out it's unpaid. The hell!
We had a pretty cool teacher at our uni, who also worked in the animation industry in Hungary. And he said if there's one lesson to learn from me, don't ever do unpaid work. Work is work, full stop. And I live by that shit like nothing else! Oh, you lazy socialist, you might say, why should you be paid if you're untrained and still learning? And here's thing, while I'm making money for the firm, the firm pays me and that's that. I don't care how menial or unimpressive a job I do, that's a job that someone else will be paid for so I expect the same. Anyway, I turned it down, even the counselor was like, it's kind of a shit deal.
Finally made it to the post office to mail an important package. Then everyone was home and after completing season 2, we put the movie on. My god, man. I have a lot to say. So much. I don't even know where to start. It's a masterpiece. I guess I'll have to marinate and write about it some more in the end of the month blog.
How I was feeling after the movie...
Tuesday was my sister's last day of middle school. Ever! She came back incredibly pleased for three reasons: 1. School's officially out. 2. She won first place for the Big Challenge at her school. 3. She passed the first stage of her application to her high school of choice.
So because it was officially her summer vacation we finally decided to hit up the Chinese buffet in the next town over. They were begging to go for ages. They were like, 'can't you pick to go on your birthday?' back in April. It was my birthday but I was actually supposed to pick where they wanted to go. Bastards. We decided Wednesday was as good a day as any. In fact, a perfect day. Her first day of summer vacation AND Canada day. Boom, two birds, fewer stones.
Anyway, the Big Challenge is an English challenge/competition sort of thing that my sister has been winning consecutively for like 3 years now. She's actually very good at it, she placed top 3 in the region and 217th in the country (and obviously placed first in her school). And that's without studying at all. I was like, imagine what you could do if you like, read a book or something? You'd totally demolish those kids! A month ago she came up to me and was like: "Who's James Joyce and Arthur Miller? They were on the Big Challenge test and I though they were in a band, like the Beatles." Uh huh. Hit singles: The Crucible and Ulysses.
She then said to me: you could totally wipe the floor with those kids. And I was like, yeah I totally could. Those fifteen year olds don't stand a chance. I'd annihilate there. Too bad I don't go to her school. Or am 27.
On Wednesday we were dropped off at the buffet by a family friend who went off with our mum on their own errands. Because we are stupid and there weren't many people around we decided it was time for some filmmaking. Here's a masterclass in editing:
I'm actually so bad at editing it's not even funny. I installed OpenShot a few months ago to make a Halo: Reach AMV but still didn't finish it. Made this monstrosity instead. Happy Canada day! Here's my brother lurking (sneaking?) about the buffet. He looks so suspicious even when doing nothing.
Looks like he's spiking the soy sauce...
He's not. But he looks so shifty.
French version of Best Friend Rice.
Afterwards we dropped by Easycash, the pawn shop-style place where we got our Xbox. I didn't find much but my sister picked up some really awful DVDs. The CD selection was atrocious. We also went to a recyclerie where I found a few cute knick knacks. Also, Artfight has officially started! I did an attack on day 1 which is kind of cool. Cuz usually I suck.
Cute little set-up.
Way back.
Thursday is kind of a cool day because it's the official half-way point of the year. Congrats, you've survived 50% of 2026! It feels like no time at all has passed. Seriously, time is running past me and it's freaking me out. Bad news is it's getting warmer again.
Friday, work and then dying. Also got chewed out for the most random shit by the family, mostly my sister and my mum. My sister has a new friend who's apparently in the know of the local lesbian scene (I didn't even know we had one! It's like having a gay scene in Random Shithole, Ohio, population 100. As far as I was concerned me and Tom were the gay scene). This was told to me with some kind of hinting look, like, hey maybe you should leave the house or something. I don't talk about this much (or maybe I do?) but I'm bisexual in a very nuanced, never-before-seen way: guys, while they are hot and cute are fundamentally undateable, but women (and enbies) are perfect in every way. If I had to ask someone out, it would likely be a girl. But I don't wanna! I'm in a really undateable time in my life myself.
However, my sister probably watched too many movies or something and assumes that I need to be a cool older sibling that just mysteriously has a girlfriend. How does this help her life? Who knows! I got bashed for being single and for not even trying by my own family who didn't give a shit about my dating life for like 10 years! What gives, man?! Anyone else have this much of an interrogation in their own home, unprompted and undeserved?
On Saturday, I had a sudden... like a kind of huge dip in everything. I just, sort of sat there and thought for a very long time about what the fuck I'm doing. Like in general. What is my life? I feel so overwhelmed. Which is kind of stupid because most people have way more than me going on and they handle it... better. I don't know if it was all the ambient, ethereal, trance music that I've been listening to or what, but the tiniest ray of clarity pierced the morbid atmosphere I've been curating for myself. Just decided I needed to make something. Really make something, something I've been promising to make for ages.
I'm going to quit a bunch of creative tasks I've planned for now. I was really excited to do Blaugust and to do a lot for Artfight but I don't think I've got the dog in me. Really, as soon as I decided... okay, I'll just not do it this year, I felt better. No crazy blog projects for now, no massive site updates yet. Just going to do one thing... my comic.
Finally, I'm gonna do my stupid comic! I've only been re-writing the same script for like 3 years. I'm still looking to do collaborative projects though, like the zine me and Alice are making. But for all my solo work, I'm pausing all of it just to do my comic.
Big day on Sunday. Tom came over earlier, for lunch, because we went to his house at 3PM last time and straight up fell asleep. Embarrassing. See now that we get to work at 7AM or earlier, our sleep schedule is no longer fucked up. Which is bad. Anyway, I made chicken wraps, everyone seemed to enjoy them well enough. We played a bunch of Most Wanted and Tom didn't appreciate the designs of my Eclipse and Supra but he was wrong. We also fucked around in Black Ops 2 and Tom went home at around 5PM, because he still has uni on Monday.
We went to a friend's house for a BBQ dinner later in the night. Their kid and me are childhood friends, like probably since I was 6 or 7 and he was 7 or 8. I don't see my childhood friends that often these days because we all live nearly continents apart so it's kind of weird to see them again after so long. He's also in a job-searching nightmare. Dinner was amazing, we shot the shit (I managed to find a way to recommend NTBTSTM, barely-any-sequitur style, I've been doing that with everyone all week... I think people hate me). And then the day was over and I was exhausted, all nice and not tucked in (fucking hot in here!). And so, the week came to an end.
The end!
Isn't it great that the blog's almost on time? I've actually caught up! Me and you will soon be on the same timeline (unless you're from the future, I don't have any Orbitz, sorry). Blog's gonna go on as usual in this creatively weird time for me so stay tuned.
This Week I'm Excited For...
Not much. Maybe starting a little kiwi work up again, which would be nice. Not really. Why am I lying? It's gonna be 40+ and I'm gonna be in a field, with practically no shade, no bathroom, and no water re-fills, and a boss who deducts lunch from the work day. It's gonna suck. I am actually excited for my sister to hear back from her high school of choice. If we don't get a call by Monday, she's not in but if we do she is and that's amazing! Wish her luck for me, alright?
Song Of The Week...
We were watching episode 6 of season 2, The Band List when the Hackers song started playing. Everyone is like, damn this is such a great song! Can't believe its from Hackers. I like it's camp but in reality I think Matthew Lillard is the only true redeeming quality of that movie. And this song obviously, which is amazing. It's been stuck in my head. I'm now on more 90s trance and ambient music than ever! I'm starting to leave the mortal plain...
Probably the longest title I've had on the blog so far. I'm sure it will get worse. I'm gonna start making Fall Out Boy songs happen over here! But yes, if you can't tell yet... I have literally one plan, a plan to rule them all, and that's watching some Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie this weekend. It's happening, fuck it!
Otherwise some job search stuff, some soul search stuff. Mostly a lot of being a downer. You ever look at the style of this blog, how cute I've bedazzled the place and go 'woah, the wholesome wallpaper is totally not matching this much profanity, banality, and gloom hidden behind all the furniture!'. I like to keep you on your toes.
Week 26.
Monday, I was an idiot. This time in a very new and fresh way. You
know that worry you have that you'll do something stupid, but you're
like, it's so stupid, there's no way I'll actually do it. Well... my
fear was always that I'd show up to a meeting but somehow get the place
wrong. And guess what.
Yeah, I showed up to the wrong TOWN for my
meeting with my France Travail counselor. That shit is so embarrassing.
The fellas working the office in this town looked at me like, 'oh, poor
you'. I think I would have felt better if they literally pointed a
finger, laughed, called me a moron. Fortunately, meeting rescheduled but
Jesus Christ. Took the bus for free though. Their machine was broken and whenever the passengers tried to pay the driver he'd wave them on, annoyed, saying, 'shit's free today!'. Awesome.
After class, Mo invited his friend Abde to Monique's pool along with the rest of us. My mum's friend was there too and so were Monique's niece and her boyfriend. Kind of a party! Turns out Abde is also a huge cinephile. Obviously, I asked what he likes, what he's seen recently. He was like, you know Scent Of A Woman? I was like, boy, do I! With Al Pacino! And he was like, yeah, he's amazing!
Mo got mildly annoyed that I was now the one hanging out with his new friend and tried to derail the conversation with his classic Danny Boyle propaganda. Have you seen Sunshine, though? What about Sunshine? It was already too late, Al Pacino was the star of the conversation.
On Tuesday I was mostly busy preparing docs for my meeting on Wednesday with an interim organization. Something screwy also happened with Aurora on the Xbox that I couldn't fix so I left it to do the next day.
Wednesday morning my mum's friend's daughter Naomi dropped by because she went to see the dentist and was gonna wait for her mum at ours. We picked up some stuff at the bakery and I made ice coffees. I am making like three cups a day for myself. I need to be stopped. Anyway, she was doing her own thing and I did a whole fresh re-installation of BadUpdate to the USB and all is back to normal but Title Updates are still fucked. She also told me about how she drives and now I feel totally secure about my own absurd levels of cautiousness considering it seems they'll just let whoever the fuck get a license.
Went to my meeting at about 11. Nice lady, she took all my docs and then I explained my situation to her. It's a special kind of organization that works with foreigners and helps with integration, work, housing, etc. Also helps addicts and other varied difficult cases.
For some reason, you know, despite the evidence, I've never thought of myself as a difficult case. I have literally no legs to stand on: endless school meetings about under performance, poor behavior, too confrontational and too much talking back, grades so bad they should have invented a negative-numbers scale just for me etc. Sporadic employment. And you know, that's without all the personal problems.
I guess I used to have a shame about it. Like, a real difficult case is someone who's totally out of control, and that's not me. It can't be me. But... I don't know, it probably always was. Is. In all areas of my life, not just work. Whenever I was still social, I was too much, kinda overbearing. And when I wasn't, it was like a 180: totally cold, if not hostile. I think I comforted myself by knowing there's someone worse than me. That's a stupid thought.
Now, I'm making peace with it, I guess. Yeah, I'm one of those people that struggles to do basic shit like find a job. I also feel like the world moved on without me, like I don't even know how to find a job anymore. 2021, the year I started my last full-time job, was only like 5 years ago but I feel like nothing is the same. And I was fired from that job by the way. FIRED. It was a shitty job.
So, either I'm embarrassed, full stop or I'm embarrassed and I move on. We'll see... either way, it better humble me. Don't usually think I'm above anyone else but when I feel really insecure I still think: at least I'm not addicted to drugs or something, as if that's a choice. It's rarely a choice. It's kinda dumb, right? To avoid judgement, I do the judging. Oh man, free me from this man-made hell, dude!
Uneventful Thursday and Friday, besides that we finally decided that we are going to watch all the Nirvanna The Band The Show stuff and then the movie. You know how annoying it is when something you should totally see in cinemas is not being screened anywhere near you?
On Saturday we managed to get through just about half of season 1 only. This pace is not looking good right now. Finished it on Sunday, but the movie was inevitably postponed to Monday... so this whole thing, it's a lie! But Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie The Weekend and Monday doesn't really roll off the tongue... unlike whatever the fuck I ended up calling this blog post.
That's uh...
'What flavour is that?' is like a sleeper cell phrase at our house. Anytime someone asks that, about like a pizza or an ice cream or whatever me and Mo look at each other, slowly saying 'that's, uh... good and plenty'. It never makes sense and no one ever knows what the fuck is going on but so be it.
It finally rained. I mean, not just rained, it was biblical! My sister and her friend went to the big parking lot outside our supermarket and took some great pics. Wish I knew how to take pics this good.
Absolute cinema.
Not a total success but it could be worse. Artfight is on the horizon too. Much to think about...
The end!
Yep, that's it. That's the week. It's over now.
This Week I'm Excited For...
Er... to actually watch the movie this whole weekend was dedicated to. Like, what are all these plans that never happen! Kind of in the spirit of things, I guess.
Song Of The Week...
This is a selection from the incredibly underrated video game, Blur. It's Bump by Spank Rock, specifically the Best Fwends remix. Makes me feel very cool when I'm walking down the street probably looking weird as hell.
