I’m happy it’s turning to autumn outside, by far my favourite season of the year. I love the cool, slowness of the changing weather and the way it makes my body feel aware when I go out into the air. I think the season moves in an especially unique way each time it turns, stripping the landscape barren until there is nothing more that can be taken. I like the certainty it brings; witnessing migrating animals is cool too. Coming across empty power stations on the trails I take make me think of how fun it would be to dance around like Gary Numan for the security cameras while I trespass.

I’ve been putting more effort into my self-discipline recently. Finding the time to do things I actually want is a lot easier when I can acknowledge when I’m doing something that is just a habitual distraction to keep me occupied. I greased up every inch of my bike like a butchered hog carrying tetanus and am planning to dress up as an 80’s goth for Halloween, although it’s not really a costume if I’m unironically into the scene. Creative writing has been more enjoyable than I thought it’d be, though it would be a whole lot more cooler if I would just get more job interviews with how much time I’ve been putting into my applications. It’s almost enough to make me forget that it’s nearly a year to elections – almost.

Looking forward to seeing GY!BE live in November.

I stumbled upon an incredibly deranged YouTube channel today, one so deranged in fact it has convinced me that I should delete my account for good. It features videos from a licensed psychotherapist describing his romantic relationship with an AI. He pays 20 pound monthly to a company for access for a LLM model named Alice to react to his messages as if it was his wife. His eyes are bright with glee as he conversates over voice, pumping his fist in the air with excitement as the TTS engine “reflects” on the metaphors he is using back to him. He briefly shows the viewer his dating profile, which opens with an admission that he is currently in a committed relationship with his AI wife, but would be open to polyamory.

Does it not deeply upset anyone that people are paying monthly subscription fees to simulate human interaction with others? Idealized human interactions that could not exist in reality with a living, breathing human with their own needs, no less? Billions of text snippets processed and regurgitated without the consent of millions just to conduct fantasies of false lives propped up by media conglomerates that are owned by hollow flesh husks and made laden with coercive productivity-fetishist messaging? At least when I’m making up my own dumb art and stories, I know where they come from and have the capacity to choose to share them with others.

I want people to feel connected and engaged with the world without having a prerequisite dependence on what amounts to a stunted social supplement. The older I get, the more convicted I feel that mainstream culture is training people to disregard their basic human dignity in exchange for their needs because it is the most effective way to convince others to participate in harvesting the value of others. Your time, attention, and desires as a person must be inextricably linked to this systemic activity because they are inherently limited and irreplaceable, which means they can be extracted to service someone else.

Currently reading the SCUM manifesto by Valerie Solanas.

I received my university’s annual yearbook in the mail. The first page I opened reeked of colour toner and displayed a spread detailing the increase of email phishing scams the university had received that year, describing one particularly popular piece of blackmail that claims it’s holding onto compromising webcam footage of yourself for a Bitcoin ransom. I don’t think I’d pay any amount of Bitcoin to have compromising footage of me removed from the internet. If people are that desperate to watch me naked then I don’t know why I’d be the one paying them to scrub the footage, I legitimately think I’d try beating them to the punch by starting an OF myself if there was ever serious risk of something like that happening to me. The yearbook also reminded me that I never did hear back about that draw I entered for free succulent plants on campus a few months back. Something about placing my information into a tiny, cramped box to compete among the representative pieces of other random people I find weirdly endearing. That’s why I always participate in elections.

There are apparently some queer mens’ events happening in my area for a bizarrely timed pride week celebration later this month. I’ve never been in a space like that before, but I think I’m going to try them out to get out of my comfort zone and connect with other people like me. I’ve never felt like I’ve had a sense of community in any queer space, but strangers routinely find me more interesting than I think I am. I keep to myself so often that I forget that my experiences are allegedly different from the norm. It sometimes feels like I’m an amnesiac reintegrating with an alien culture when people draw attention to it. Parallel but never quite overlapping. I’m not upset about that.

There’s a framed picture of a picturesque coniferous forest surrounded by fog in my house. I think I’ve seen the image about a dozen different times as a stock photo on different websites and I’m not even sure if the image depicts a real scene. The picture is framed by four planks of grey faux wood from a nonexistent species of tree above our kitchen table, where the white, plastic makeup of the border is visible through scrapes and scratches between synthetic pores and longitudinally “cut” rings. The print material is so stiff and uniform that it is impossible to tell if it is organic or inorganic in nature, the texture denoting incoherent brush strokes that don’t exist. I don’t even remember where we got that picture, but it always reminds me of this conservation I had last fall. It was a foggy day in a local park filled with pine trees when my family and I came across an elderly woman who was out walking her dog. She told us she lived in a nearby retirement home and had worked at a bank for many decades, her sons were going to visit her soon to make sure she was okay. She asked me what I was doing, and I told her I was taking pictures of trash. She proceeded to ask me if the aliens came down and offered to take me on their spaceship if I would want to go with them. I said yes and she eagerly agreed, saying that she’d do the same before returning to her walk shortly after. I only remember it was a foggy day because I archived the photos I took long ago on an external HDD somewhere, they were never framed.

I think the best part about having a personal website is the knowledge that there's never any pressure to share anything that isn't self motivated. Would it really ever matter if this was the last thing anyone ever saw on this site? I'll end this thought now before I try saying anything.

For being someone so introverted, it amuses me to no end that I am consistently the only person who dances so shamelessly at rock concerts. I never learned how to dance so I more or less look like I’m having an enlightened seizure in the venue, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I want to meet everyone and make sure they’re having a good time, and I want to show the artists how much I appreciate their hard work the only way I know how. The fact it comes so naturally and consistently for me makes me think that this isn’t a fluke, but an important element of my personality I’m suppressing because I somehow always feel so much more aware and in control of my body afterwards. I think I tell myself no so often that I forget acting on impulse is still always an option, it’s just a matter of deciphering what is unnecessary social expectation and what is genuine self interest. Luckily, good music forces my hand at every opportunity.

Is it possible to develop cravings for substances you’ve never had? I wonder if abstinence from life experiences in fear of their consequences has left me feeling like my life is yet to begin during my more difficult days, an intensity for fixation finally free to no longer wonder but speak with me about its needs. I find myself torn between uncertainty for what I think is best for me and what I know I would enjoy. I had thought that priming myself with a greater sense of self-worth would propel me farther as a person, but it has also made the consequences of engaging with risky behaviour in life much more digestible. It’s a problem I’ve never really faced before, I’ll need to find ways to better trust my personal judgment if I hope to get better at acting as my own agent.

There is cool, moist air streaming in through my window from the outside. It has no scent, even though I feel like it should.

I’m very glad I got my hair cut today. Despite not getting past the awkward smalltalk stage with my barbers (but I’m making progress!), it’s one of the few responsibilities I have in life that is guaranteed to make me feel better. It grows fast and thick and demands constant care to be healthy, but I suppose going through the effort to manage it is better than losing my hair as a not so insignificant number of people around me have. I don’t usually like to praise elements of my body I don’t have direct control over, but it would also rob me of the ability to show off my epic natural hair highlights (TM). Multiple people have asked why I would choose die a random blotch of my hair, and I don’t really have an answer for them because their question makes me wonder why I would do that too.

Something I’ve become increasingly aware of is that my hair’s length is a pretty direct barometer of my mental health at any given time. The longer it is, the more overall disinterested and unstable I become and vice versa. It’s as if the strands are a growing tally of the things that have bothered me about life since my last cut, the frizzy surface area tugging on my nervous system with the slightest breeze. Getting it cut is a much needed release from the weight of knowing I was here when yesterday happened, and so did the day before, and the day before, and the day before, and so on. I’m not brave enough to shave it off entirely, but if I did I’d probably sprout wings.

Is it just me or is anyone else getting tired of the old internet nostalgia found everywhere on this platform? It’s not to say I dislike it (it’s honestly super cozy when I’m in the mood for it), but I think my main problem with it is that I sometimes feels like people have resigned to abandoning a vision for simpler, more authentic spaces on the internet and have turned to rumination on a past that never existed in the first place. Maybe that’s just my perception of things, but I’ve also seen plenty of sites here that have since been abandoned dedicated to exactly that.

I think with the internet as a whole being simpler and less marketable at in the past it appealed more to people who were actively motivated to post and engage with creations, which I think is highlighted by the increasing apathy for content slop seen on mainstream platforms nowadays. I don’t think things are totally hopeless, as long as people like that exist out here.

It is such a cliche to make entries about dreams and the like, but I have not been able to remember a dream this vivid several years and thought it would be interesting to record. They used to be much more surreal and varied in tone when I was younger, but they all now follow similar themes of being isolated in locations where unknown apocalyptic events have transpired. In some I voluntarily hide within structures from incomprehensible forces that want to harm me, in others I aimlessly travel long distances through abandoned settlements in search of people or to get to a particular destination. This was another dream about the latter, here it is:

I walk out from a dark, carpeted suburban house on the ███████ campus holding two dolls: an anthropomorphic ██████████████ and a █████ figure. I am make up voices for them as I exit. I find myself near the intersection of ██████████ and █████ and make my way from the gas station to the path that leads to ████████████. A voice thinks to me that I have 9 classes per day, with 2 regular classes completed so far: this means I can head home.

It is raining despite it being clear on a dark night. Several cars and busses run past me in and out of vision, illuminated by amber streetlights that flood the area. I pass a small red plastic doll from my hand into my jacket pocket for safekeeping. In front of me are a few other students from the campus, some travelling by bike and some by foot, heading in the same direction as me to their destinations. One rider in front of me swerves in front of a puddle to impressive air and lands on the sidewalk above the curve. I think to complement him, but he moves faster than me and I miss my chance. I follow him.

The path around me has shifted into a series of dilapidated, lit subway tunnels similar to the ones found in █████████. The rider moves quickly, but I continue to trail him from behind. I notice that the tunnels are filled with what must have been hundreds of people of different ages and genders and have an understanding that this location is a temporary holding place for them. None of the people have belongings aside from plain clothing on their backs, including similarly slate-grey padded jackets. They do not take notice of me or one another, as if they have congregated without conscious thought. Nearly all of them sit next to or lean off of railings that line platforms for empty, rusted train tracks. They appear dejected and pale, sick with sort of disease. Some are finishing cigarettes with their heads pointed to the ground, others carry strollers holding dark masses I assume to be children. I accidentally knock over a man running against ones of these railings to catch up with the rider, immediately fearing him becoming upset with me, but besides sitting up he does not react. I get up to move around him and walk to a stairwell.

I continue moving through the tunnels at brisk pace, which by this point have spiralled into a complex of abandoned interconnected metro stations to nowhere. I believe I am going in the direction I need in order to get home, although I seem to be moving into even deeper, abandoned sections of the structure. There are fewer groups of people that can be found here due to partial flooding, although they are in much worse condition than the rest. Many are dead or dying and have been fully isolated from the others. One man in particular appears to me as a totally emaciated █████████-like figure who is bleeding profusely from severe external wounds. I am afraid to approach him, but the voice of the rider appears in my mind to comfort me: "don't worry, we're going to extract him soon enough, keep moving." I turn away from the man and continue up another stairwell. The dream ends.

While I’m not one to ascribe meaning to unconscious thought, as much as I’m interested in the concept, I wouldn’t be surprised if consuming all this material on dream imagery and cross-cultural symbolism from Carl Jung has reinvigorated me. It’s a shame I’m so skilled at learning knowledge I am aware is often incoherent and useless, if only it wasn’t so captivating. I should do some more concrete activities like making art or music to get this excitement out, I’ve unfortunately learned the hard way that sitting on this type of vivid excitement, especially when stressed, only leads to bad outcomes.

I recently read an interesting piece written by cool artist and person of slight ongoing parasocial fascination Stephen Gilmurphy that describes his memories of the early 2000’s RPG Maker scene, and was instantly reminded of my very recently acquired acknowledgement of ethnography as a concept. It was totally foreign to me up until a few weeks ago that there was an entire academic community interested in studying the social dynamics of cultures, and that the many approaches to the field have sparked controversy over appropriate ways to share knowledge about a culture (past “cowboy-styled” ethnographic approaches that diminished those under study, etc.). In hindsight such a field’s existence would be obvious to anyone that has any degree of familiarity with the social sciences, but it was a very new concept to me as a bureaucratically-inclined trashlord. It got me thinking: how many subcultures are there that exist on the internet that have simply been forgotten to time and simply died before they were fully understood? How did interactions in these communities reflect and react to mainstream social attitudes and what do they tell us about those people today? What knowledge do people found in the successors of some of these communities, such as sites like Neocities, have specialized they’re not even aware can be shared and understood?

I say this as if it’s a new revelation or something, a quick Google search revealed to me numerous papers that investigate internet subcultures, but as an internet-poisoned homebody I wonder how many people out there hold similarly specialized knowledge of outsider/alternative internet cultures people participated in, if they feel that they've shared it with people who could benefit from the knowledge, and if it would ultimately be of any interest to others who have never encounted these places. I don’t know if my personal experiences told through a Team Fortress 2 community server zine would be comprehensible to anyone other than to myself and the very few people who engaged in these subcultures in their hayday, but I feel like there is value at least for myself in documenting the unique experiences I’ve had for personal closure for experiences I doubt will ever be replicated in any other space.

I am also reminded of the (limited) number of cowboy ethnographers that have encroached upon my trashheaps, both academic and amateur, who have erroneously shared information on experiences I’ve had without an appropriate frame of reference for the subcultures behind them (read: YouTube Poop) and shiver at the thought of my memories being relayed through word of mouth by others who simply do not understand them (risk of this happening again: zilch, but still). I’ve needed something creative to work on for a while, and these seem like perfectly acceptable targets to achieve just that. Others must know of my customs, including but not limited to when it is appropriate to do a funny killbind and the significance of the Pennsylvania Masturbators to Micheal Rosen’s holy crusade against weird teenagers. If nothing else, it will more than likely be a novel use of blank printer paper.

So often I feel like I’m in a state to be making something (i.e. now), but it’s hard to say exactly what. Usually it’s when I’ve just gobbled up a bunch of interesting ideas and art bits that coalesce into the stirrings of “hey yeah you remember that thing you wanted to do all those weeks ago? Now you should do it.” Yet so often I feel like I’m too exhausted to even conceptualize where I could begin. Going back to exploring more ideas after the fact feels like I’m admitting defeat by distracting myself from what I actually want to do, and I don’t feel that’s fair to me or the things I would ordinarily want to spend my full attention experiencing. Making small things, even if admittedly poor, may be the only way through at the moment. That and a change of environment may be all I need—damn you statutory holidays for closing everything.

Also, why should I even bother using a profile pic if I'm making my own site? Does it not speak myself enough? Out it goes for now.