I'm very bad at dealing with liars. Firstly, I'm an amenable sort. Despite the very-much-bridled rage searing my soul, I don't like rocking the boat. Secondly, I'm something of a naif and believe, at my core, that we should all be able to get along, and that everybody feels this way. Imagine my shock when I discovered this is not true. So, when I can finally concede that the person I'm dealing with is not entirely prosocial, and break past the inhibition of avoiding a fuss, I have very little energy left to deal with the difficult bit.

   When you tell a liar, "You're a liar!" They naturally answer, "No, I'm not." Because they're a liar, of course. I can understand this academically, but don't really get it on a gut level. I can and have lied, but to ease social situations, or, when I was a child, to avoid getting into too much trouble. I don't lie recreationally, or for personal gain. So, when somebody lies about being a liar, I'm at a loss for what to do next. I'm not schemey enough to try and catch them in their lies, and not sneaky enough to spy on them or somesuch. I know they are lying, because the things they say do not match their actions, but I lack the means to gather evidence, basically.

   I live with a liar. A messy liar, to boot. Generally, his lying isn't a major issue, since we don't interact much, but the mess.... I try to keep a clean space. My own room, I keep quite tidy, because it is soothing, a manageable daily accomplishment, and it makes me feel worthy of good things. My room-mate uses the living room as his personal room, and does not keep it clean. But, he denies or mitigates any problem with this and the effect it has on me and his cat. It drives me up the wall. I've given up on mopping, and even given up on cleaning the bathroom, for the most part, because I am the only one of us investing any effort in the cleaning, and he is the one making most of the mess. And I have no idea how to contend with that.

   Have you ever played Pokémon? The first series, where you run into the Snorlax blocking the road. Living with my room-mate is like that. There is a big, indifferent obstacle in my life, and all it does is lay around. And me without my pokéflute. 

   I confronted him a couple days ago with the accusation that he is a liar, and the response was as above: "No, I'm not." I veered into accusations touching on some of my more fevered anxieties around the liars in my life, and his response was to feign concern for my mental health and play the victim. Here in Nova Scotia, if you call our Mental Health Crisis Line, they send a police officer. This is as counter-productive as you might expect. Twice now, my room-mate has done what is a sort of low-grade SWATting. No battering rams or shouting, but I have had to deal with both my baseline stress as well as having a goon with a gun marching into my home. They can pretend they're being helpful, though, so maybe that's worse, in a way.

   My room-mate has relocated, temporarily, to the unit upstairs, pretending to be worried for his safety, leaving me with the mess and positioning me as the bad guy. Lies, of course. I am angry; I have ranted and raved; but long before I reached those points, I had told my room-mate that what he was doing was bothering me. I've tried the reasonable method; I've tried the unreasonable method. What else is there?

   At least - for now, anyway - I have the space to myself, which helps. I worry, though, that if I commit to doing any neglected cleaning in my room-mate's absence, that he will then decide it is time to return and immediately  once again render my efforts futile. It is a sort of limbo, which I suppose is an improvement over the minor hell that preceded it. Of course, the upstairs living room is directly above my bedroom and is furnished with a powered recliner, so his absence isn't as silent as it could be.

   I don't like living here, honestly. But, I can't afford to live anywhere else, so I am effectively trapped between here and homelessness. As much as it scares me to think so, believing I am in a simulation or othersuch transitory space brings the comfort that one day the nightmare will end, and I will be returned to a real world with real people, and maybe - just maybe - things will be alright.


Today I mostly played "Valkyria Chronicles", which is pretty racist for a game that discusses how awful racism is. Got some cheevos, though, so that was nice. But, I'm feeling pretty low, so I didn't do much else.

Changelog
I'm still trying to get the "Tidbits" pages to look nice in portrait layout, but finding space for the extra elements is challenging. There are no longer side borders on the main container elements on content pages, though, to make extra space.

I've standardised the page headers, and they are no longer headers in the HTML sense, as I found those difficult to style properly. I liked the different, semi-themed borders, but keeping heights consistent while also representing each type of page was becoming taxing. But, I have saved the old header styles for posterity.

I'm moving back to using font-based units. They are still ultimately based on the height of the viewport, but it simplifies styling a website that is predominantly built around text.

Yesterday, I added a new story, and now there is also another new page.

The header of [Grande Marche Chromatique] has been enhanced for what I promise are accessibility purposes.