now with 120% more chi-- you know you know.

current quotes [these only stay up for a couple days]:

"We have to get off this tower! It was built by crazy people, and I don't think it's holding up very well!" -Dawn on Buffy the Vampire Slayer [30/01/02]

more me, me, marvelous me

[a boy]
[the roving pirate queen]
[some form of explanation]
[links-- huge, messy file]
[a list of things that are tasty]
[my lameass radio station]
[older pictures]
[buy me stuff]

this is deletia. you will be assimilated. or made fun of

[las pitas viejos-- the archive]
[the current pita entity]
served cold: [old taglines] [old banners]


i love email. yes i do. the texty-box really does work. please don't send me an empty texty-box message. it's boring for me.

[email me.]
[my guestbook]

I'm on MSN (, icq (30180836) and yahoo (rovingpiratequeen). look me up.

if you use multiple chat/IM clients you need [trillian]

for me: [login]

a few of my favourite peopleses

these people are my friends. i have other friends with no websites. and some of these websites are never updated. but i still check them. hope springs eternal, etc. etc.

[angie] is a superhero with a wonderful sense of the sublime
i'm pretty crazy about [james]
[jeff] is an internet ninja and a burner of CDs
though [jess] is but small she is fierce
[meghan] is the royal buffalo and supreme commander of my heart. (along with napoleon)

they have stuff you can buy to make yourself more like me

[pick*y cosmetics]
[abe books]
[emily strange]

interesting strangers

[little yellow different]
[the pillowfort]
[eric conveys an emotion]
[amplified to rock]
[mary chen]
[oh messy life]
[exploding dog]

a bunch of other links that didn't fit into the above categories but that are still pretty cool

[cjsr 88.5fm]
[acts of volition]
i dig [douglas coupland]
[sneak preview] (best video store in edmonton)
[random access memory]
[the fray]
[the onion av club]
[fifty fresh pitas]
[damn hell ass kings]
[atlantic unbound]
[art of the mix]
[red balloon]
[the new varscona]
[the sims]
[malcolm in the middle]
[wild colonials]
[disturbing search requests]
[hey! url!]
[u of a]
[divide by zero]
[1000 journals]
[feels like]

l < subversive > ?
boys [suck]

i've been
fucking imood
since march 1st, 2000!

I don't really know what to say.
Wednesday, February 6, 2002 @ 09:19 p.m.

and every breath we drew was hallelujah
Wednesday, February 6, 2002 @ 07:15 p.m.

I have an idea. Why doesn't everyone email me one sentence for my philosophy paper, which is about the existence of God, and then I'll piece them together and hand it in? More fun for you, less work for me! Wait...

Oh, come on. That's the best idea I've had in the last 7 minutes, at least.

Ok, here's one:
my dad: "it's five forty-four, time to go out the door..."
me: "hey, you made a rhyme!"
my dad: "I do it all the time!"

Oh: I changed the voicemail message on Angie's cell. It's now more fun to get her machine than talk to her... not because it's not fun to talk to Angie... but because my answering machine is the best. ever.

Hmm. Well, that's all, I suppose.

Tuesday, February 5, 2002 @ 05:05 p.m.

This one comes to deletia readers courtesy of my dad.

The Washington Post invited readers to make a new word by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter in a word and providing a new definition. The winners:

  2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
  4. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very, high.
  7. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
  10. Glibido: All talk and no action.
  12. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

dreams can be deceiving
Tuesday, February 5, 2002 @ 10:09 a.m.

My pilosophy prof (Bruce!) pointed out that yesterday that the sensory experience of seeing a tree in real life, and dreaming about a tree, are exactly the same. This made me realize that really, if we didn't have the twin ideas of "sleep" and "waking," which are really difficult to decpher anyway, at least for me... well, I mean, is there any evidence we're not all dreaming? After all, half of what happens in my life is weirder than what happens in my dreams.

He then went on to describe a Matrix-esque scenario in which an evil doctor ("dr. Braino") keeps our brains in vats of nutrient fluids and presents our brains directly with the concept of "tree." It seems unlikely to me that an experiment such as this one would get past an ethics committee, although, of course, if our brains are all floating in bathtubs in a universe we don't know exists, then ethics is probably just another neural connection misfiring... you know?

Anyway, it's far too early for this kind of talk, so here's a thought:

bye bye love
bye bye happiness
hello loneliness
i think i'm a gonna di-ie

God I love oldies radio. Have a good day.


we're all strange here
Monday, February 4, 2002 @ 02:44 p.m.

In Safeway I commented to my dad that I don't think Betty and Veronica's relationship would ever have survived their rivalry over Archie, and the cashier said, "That's why I stopped reading those comics."


Some time ago, like maybe a year or so, I was briefly hospitalized for a ruptured ovarian cyst. I stayed at the miseracordia hospital emergency room for around 8 hours. I was given a double dose of demerol for the pain and I lay still on a green hospital cot while my dad read aloud to me from US Magazine. Since then I think I've developed the painkiller daze as a sort of private fantasy: you don't feel anything, but better still, you don't think anything. You're not bored or physically tired but your mind is drowsy. At times I wish I could recapture that utterly satisfying nothing feeling at will, by clicking my heels or something. At times I have, but never by myself: an overnight flight to Nairobi, during which dreams and in-flight movies bled together, interlaced with sleeping pills; a history class where I took too many anti-inflammatories and tylenol with codeine and almost fell down the stairs, the strange UFO-lights flickering overhead, too bright on the backs of my eyes.

That's the fantasy, you see. Waking without thoughts or sleeping without nightmares. I know it's a dangerous place to be, like the frontier territory between life and death. I would never want to live there, but God, it's a nice place to visit.


  1. Just so I can picture him doing a gleeful website-mention dance: James.
  2. A very old X-Files episode: Have you ever experienced the phenomenon known as missing time?
  3. I'm OK, you know. I am actually.

"Besides, Canadian women are easier."
Friday, February 1, 2002 @ 04:54 p.m.

I made a tracklist for the mixtape I made for Meghan (titled "Ceci n'est pas un mixtape"), but now it's lost. It was sitting on my desk along with everything else I own, but when I went into my room just now, there was nothing on my desk at all. Clean. So: elves.

I bought the february issue of the utne reader today in HUB (along with chocolate milk and more minieggs). I am becoming one of those annoying fake subversive people who listens to indie rock, reads anything published by "the alternative press," smokes weird herbal cigarettes (OK, not yet, but it's only a matter of time), and talks about how much they hate pop culture while still shopping at the gap and professing to love Fishwich sandwiches (sub-question: fishwich... real word... yes or no?). I find this aspect of my personality/identity annoying and pretentious, but at the same time, I can't just turn away.

The fact is, I liked myself better when I was shallow and and more authentic. Perhaps I should buy the new issue of Maxim to restore the balance. After all, I once learned from that magazine how to hypnotize a lobster and make it stand on its head. It follows that I could make said lobster do my bidding... the idea is exciting.

In the tory business atrium today I saw a girl wearing a tank top over a normal shirt, and the first thing that came to my mind was, "but that's so inefficient."

Why does nothing ever feel new?

I sing! I dance! I beg!
Wednesday, January 30, 2002 @ 09:53 p.m.

Would someone please buy me this book?

Thank you. That is all.

how to build snowfort
Wednesday, January 30, 2002 @ 06:13 p.m.

  1. Pile all the snow from your yard, your driveway, and your neighbour's yard into a giant pile. Resist the temptation to jump in it. For the next week, keep on shovelling onto the top of the pile. Let it sit. This will let the snow settle so it doesn't collapse on you.
  2. After a couple weeks (orhowever long it takes to get a high enough pile-- if you live in Florida you may be waiting considerably longer), hollow out the inside using small shovels or your hands. Yes, this is cold, dark, kinda-scary work. No, you can't not do it. Not if you want to keep being my friend.
  3. Take a nostalgia trip back to my childhood. I always assume that my childhood was pleasant, but when I think about it, I don't think it was. I knew a lot less then and I think there were a lot of things that I found very discomfiting: violence, for example. I still find violence discomfiting (except of Buffy of course), but at least I have a better understanding of it. That's the theory, anyway-- what I tell myself.
  4. Once the inside has been hollowed out add any or all of the following bonus features: toboggan slide (by dragging out the garden hose and icing the slide, at night, when it's really cold), secondary entrance, arch over top of toboggan slide, small red-cheeked smiling childre, dogs running around and barking, hot chocolate, icicles when they were still safe to suck on, or snowfort-sized-furniture.

All of this, of course, was before the days of global warming, when we still HAD snow in the wintertime.

the search request. Hey, I aim to please. (Well, that's not true. I aim to please sometimes, mainly when it pleases me. But it's a start.)

The Internet is Dead
Wednesday, January 30, 2002 @ 02:14 p.m.

"Information has become a form of garbage, not only incapable of answering the most fundamental human questions but barely useful in providing coherent direction to the solution of even mundane problems. To say it still another way: the milieu in which Technopoly flourishes is one in which the tie between information and human purpose has been severed, i.e., information appears indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume and at high speeds, and disconnected from theory, meaning, or purpose." -Neil Postman, Technopoly

On my way home from my FMS lab last Tuesday, I found the coolest thing EVER. It's mounted in a display in the V-Wing. It's a pendulum, with two steel sections that swing independently of each other. The center bolt it swings from has a knob on it so you can swing it yourself. If you swing it a small amount, like maybe 5 degrees from the centre, it swings in a fairly predictable way, but the wider you swing it, the more wonky the pendulum goes. It's an illustration of chaos theory. I like to visit it to remind myself that my future is not predetermined because I am in many ways like a steel pendulum with two parts that swing independently of one another. One of the parts would be my brain, and the other would be my heart. That's not a very encouraging thought, actually.

hmmm... that was diverting yet pointless.

Warning: this post contains the word "metaphysical"
Monday, January 28, 2002 @ 04:03 p.m.

"The fact is, there are very few political, social, and especially personal problems that arise becuase of insufficient information. Nevertheless, as incomprehensible problems mo8unt, as the concept of progress fades, as meaning itself becomes suspect, the technopolist stands firm in believing that what the world needs is yet more information... Attend any conference on telecommunications or computer technology, and you will be attending a celebration of innovative machinery that generates, stores, and distributes more information, more conveniently, at greater speeds than ever before. To the question, 'What problem does this information solve?' the answer is usually 'How to generate, store, and distribute more information, more conveniently, at greater speeds than ever before.' This is the elevation of information to a metaphysical status: information as both the means and end of human creativity. In a technopoly, we are driven to fill out lives with the quest to 'access' information. For what purpose or with what limitations, it is not for us to ask..."

-Neil Postman, Technopoly

I admit I'm disappointed that no one sent me anything for my black notebook. If I had any internet clout I would start my own mail art project and it would be so. cool.

Also: I can't really tell you why, but you need need need to see this.

"That's gross!" "No, that's science!"
Sunday, January 27, 2002 @ 09:10 p.m.

  1. Sketch of helicopter design by Leonardo DaVinci.
  2. Molecular diagram of DNA.
  3. An etching of the HMS Beagle.
  4. "An artist's interpretation of the Big Bang"
  5. A dinosaur bone.
  6. A syringe.
  7. Linus Pauling with creepy grin on his face.

  1. A notebook full of strange dreams, two recipes (one for chicken casserole, one for chocolate mousse), The Sims Hot Date, one quilt with one corner burnt.
  2. A roadmap.
  3. A good friend, for the road.
  4. Sleeping bags.
  5. Two statues of Buddha.
  6. A thermos with hot cranberry juice.
  7. An incantation for faeries
  8. ice cream bars.

So, that should do it, I think.

"an alien?"
Saturday, January 26, 2002 @ 05:47 p.m.

An actual webloggish link
Friday, January 25, 2002 @ 08:39 p.m.

OK, I know I'm a geek... The Canadian Encyclopedia website has a huge collection of online trivia quizzes about... you guessed it... Canada! And shockingly, my Soc class actually provided the answer to one of the questions... rock on. Anyway, I'm sure no one else will be interested in this, but I think it's cool.

Shut up.

postcards from the end of time
Friday, January 25, 2002 @ 02:24 p.m.

I met him at the candy store. He turned around and smiled at me... you get the picture?
yes, we see.

I started a new black notebook a few days ago. If anyone wants to contribute any material to my giant paper empire, please feel free to send it to me and I'll glue it in. I only mention this because I have a bit of an obsession with record-keeping and perhaps creating a backup system of memories in case something happens to me. Deletia began as a purely private enterprise-- approximately 5 megs of text files written on my 286 over a period of several years-- but since then the original entity has been completely been replaced by the black notebook archive system and this supplemantary website.

I have a mini sockmonkey named Joseph, after my great-grandfather who died before I was born. His wife, my great-grandmother, lived almost to 100 and always kept a bowl of mints on her coffee table. I was a little terrified of her because she mostly spoke Russian and lived in a home which had a very discomfiting smell.

So there's my backup memory for the day.

While waiting for my FMS class to begin I made a list of my top ten non-sexual fantasies:

  1. Building James-Bond-supervillain-style mansion including underwater panoramic window, zen garden, hot tub, and shiny futuristic Star-Trek-esque kitchen. Also glass elevator from which to survey my domain.
  2. Packing my life into a single backpack and wandering alone around Europe, drinking dark coffee and smoking cheap cigarettes. Losing so much weight my family starts worrying about me.
  3. Driving down the west coast, across the desert, and not stopping until I reach the Gulf of Mexico.
  4. Finding the perfect job. Alternately: having a complete stranger approach me in an LRT station and tell me what I should do with my life.
  5. Long-term hospitalization for life-threatening but curable illness. Being given large doses of demorol. Becoming addicted to painkillers or sleeping pills. Recoverng. Becoming stronger due to tragic circumstances.
  6. Leaving the earth behind in a sudden burst of pure cogniscient energy or enlightenment. Abandoning my body. Figuring everything out, then suddenly realizing none of it matters.
  7. Somehow ascending romantic mortality and becoming pure charisma and light, so that no one can resist me. Leaving behind a trail of broken hearts everywhere I go.
  8. Staying in bed foever with reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Also: introduction of new Spike and Buffy sex hour).
  9. Endless summer, halter tops, and mixed drinks. Unlimited bandwidth; the server is never down; I become an Internet Rock Star. You can't even buy instant potatoes anymore, and no one is ever sad. (In other words: creating some kind of perfect universe.)
  10. Being able to evaporate into nothingness, withstand any kind of pain, and read/control minds. Only using my powers for good.
  11. More Sims expansion packs + a faster computer!
  12. Being able to count.

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