well, i made $2.10 busking this afternoon, from about 4:30 to about 7:30. but, i bought an extra large coffee....for $2.10.

i was parked outside a closed bank. it was probably the worst time of day.

i was going to go out tomorrow, but it's going to be raining. it's a tuesday night. i'm still probably better off charging and going back out for the night. yeah...

the charge on my mp3 player died a lot sooner than i thought, actually. it should have been more like five hours. i'm not sure what's up with that. but, i bought it in....2007? it's old. the flash drive will eventually die. i'm not sure if the charger will eventually fail.

i just don't want to sell any more cds, dammit.

and, the truth is that i enjoyed it, too. i said to myself walking out that there's worse things i could do on a nice tuesday afternoon than hang out and play guitar. and now i'm actually keen to go back out.

if i can get a third or a half of the way there, i'll feel better about selling a few discs. and, i think i can take this one day at a time, even. the best night is friday, but it's also the most expensive....ugh...

if the bank messes up due to the holiday on monday, and it might, i'll know on friday morning. if so, i could even only need to worry about thursday. and if the weather is shit, i could just be saving money up.

the property owners informed me this morning that the upstairs tenants (the smokers...) are moving out, so i would be unlikely to enforce any settlement in my favour, if it comes, unless it's the $89 worth of costs i put down. and, that would cover thursday and then some.

there's paths.

i know they're all remote...

if i can pull in $20 overnight, i have a chance to make it work. maybe the pawn shop will take the dvd player for $10. i can try. i don't know how long it needs to charge, but i hope i'm back out by 10:30. if i can do 11:00-2:30 that's the best chance i've got.

why don't these idiots ever learn?

metals are just as volatile as any other fiat currency.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/royal-canadian-mint-silver-superman-numismatics-1.4119986

this is the reality: the british never wanted to come over here and beat the indians to a pulp, what they wanted was to subjugate and tax them. that means converting them into happy, productive citizens, which is impossible when they're so traumatized from lives full of abuse that all they can do is get drunk.

it's hard language. that's intentional.

this may seem like it's shifting the blame, but i actually think it's extremely important and am in full support of not just asking him once but being vocal about the central problem being that the church was given too much autonomy to do something that should have been overseen more directly by the state.

that's going to upset people, too. but, listen..

colonialism has it's own set of interests, and they're hardly benign - sure. but, they're also actually directly opposed to raping and beating colonized groups to the point that they can't even function. i know that people want to create a kind of monolithic concept of colonialism as this force of aimless evil, and it's certainly always been disinterested in human rights, but it was not aimless: it was intended to maximize extraction. in the canadian example, the church was actually acting against both the short-term interests of colonialism (these populations were not converted into anything but dependants; they were utterly devastated) and the long-term interests of it as well (the state wanted to convert them into productive farmers that would further the colonial project, not reduce them to generationally dependent wards of the state).

this is tricky language. but, i don't think there's an answer in walking on eggshells. nor can we turn the clocks back. we need to be looking at more benevolent ways to integrate. what that means is agreeing on the barbarity of the catholic church as we try and move past their crimes.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-apologize-residential-schools-1.4124212

the easier way to do this is for all of the people that are reading this (ha...) to just download some of my music.

more broadly speaking, if you want to toss me some money, this is the way to do it. you don't even have to actually listen to it, if you don't want to.

i haven't gotten any actual sleep. but, i'm going to plan to be out for noon with an acoustic guitar, a set of headphones and an mp3 player full of a bunch of autechre records. i've been planning to basically record myself jamming over techno classics for a while, now. let's see where that takes me for the day.

i've got several hours on the charge, so it should be enough to get an assessment as to whether i should bother coming back tomorrow, and whether i should bring an electric and my belt-sized marshall with me, if i do. i don't want to pay for batteries on it. i'll keep an eye out for a public electrical outlet.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/

see, the price of the weekend is the reason i don't go to movement, and didn't plan for it. but, i'm kind of feeling like i want to burn out a little this year...because i'm not convinced i'm going to continue living this lifestyle much longer....

i was hoping i could get a few dollars for an extra dvd player i've had sitting around for years, but the model is listed on ebay for $10-$30. it's worthless. well, it's ancient. ancient dvd players? sure.

i sold off my vinyl over the last few weeks. the guy at the cd store thought he was ripping me off, and in a relative sense he may have been. i mean, he can no doubt resell it for quite a bit. but, vinyl is worthless to me. it sounds like shit. i'm sorry. i'm not drinking that kool-aid. i don't want the vibrations from the air conditioner upstairs and the cars outside when i'm listening to something. if somebody can sell a pile of shit for more than i can, good for them, but they're still selling a pile of shit. i got what i wanted for what i presented and it got me through the nights i wanted it to get me through. i have it all in superior quality on cd...

like, he seemed excited about an unopened copy of joshua tree - as though they didn't make 50 million copies of it. some stupid person will no doubt pay for it. but, the item isn't worth the $2.00 i accepted for it, and you could no doubt find it in a garage sale in any given city on any given weekend for the same price or less - or just download it for free. it was the same thing with the stack of beatles records i threw away. you want these dirty records - in mono - that they've been mass manufacturing for fifty years? i know somebody will pay for them. but, the reality is that they're not actually worth the sleeves they're in. wouldn't you rather go for the remastered copy on cd? why the fuck not?

the point is that they're gone...

....and, now, i'm wondering if i'd might as well sell the turntable. but i don't think i'd get more than a few dollars for it, either. and, they're not *all* gone....i kept a few that i'll never play.

the turntable is selling for $100 (us) on ebay, meaning i'll be lucky if i can get $50 for it. that doesn't help me, in context. might as well keep it...for now...

no, to generate this much this fast, i'm going to need some kind of labour. could i spend a few days busking, maybe? hrmmn. i have no real experience doing this. but, i could conceivably spend the next three days at it. could i make $100/day? well, even i can do $50/day, i can probably get thurs/fri in. as mentioned, the weather may disqualify sat/sun, anyways.

i'm going  to take a nap and decide when i wake up.

so, i kind of feel like if i'm going to go at all then i should go all four nights.

according to my calculations, that would mean i would need at least $350, canadian. that's about $260 usd. yeah. the exchange gets pretty noticeable when you get over $100.

i have $0.18 in my account and will not have money enter it until wednesday morning, unless i fluke out on lazy bankers. weird things of the sort have happened before. i can't plan around it.

there's not really a good day for weather - it's kind of chilly over nights all of the nights, and it might rain on sunday. i'm thinking thurs/fri actually look like the best nights. friday is the most expensive cover.


let me think about this....

yeah, i'm not feeling the rachmaninov. it's by no means terrible, it's just very samey. if you're doing scheduling at the dso, i don't know why you pick such a generic period piece. or, maybe you want to pick a generic period piece? the only other thing i can think of is that the musicians dig it because they can show off a little.

i asked the question: does it sound like the composer is separated from the piece? kind of, yeah. it's a problem. composers get it in their heads that they have to give the critics what they want; the thing is that it never actually works out, or at least not in the long run. composers! write on the instruments you know!

again: it's not awful. i'd enjoy it. but, this could have been written by anyone over a long period of time; at no point does it demonstrate the idiosyncrasies i'm looking for, or the outbursts of expressive playing that i'm looking for. and, don't tell me that you can't express yourself on a violin the way you can on a piano, either. that is absolute bollocks.

proof:

i'm going to double check the dance parties to make sure i'm not skipping anything. but, the last couple of nights have been dj busts. that chiptune night turned out to mostly be a hip-hop night, which was a huge disappointment, especially considering the cost of beer at the place. and, the jungle night on the 20th was actually more like 60% dubstep, much to the frustration of several people i spoke to.

so, i'm kind of coming to the realization that i'm fucked one way or another. i mean, i'm seeking out niche sounds on purpose, here. i have niche tastes, and am pretty critical of the existing trends. but, the bars seem to want to cater more to regulars that don't check event listings and aren't interested in anything except what's fashionable. so, it seems to matter less what promoters are marketing things as and more what the people on the ground want to curate. or, that's the inescapable conclusion, anyways: the promoters can market what they want, but the djs ultimately seem to get instructions when they get there, and it's those instructions that seem to be paramount. therefore, cevin key night is actually rave night. chiptune night is actually hip-hop night. jungle night is actually dubstep night. and, if 30% of the people you tricked with the poster get irritated, it doesn't matter because the regulars get what they always want.

i will say this, though: there were more people at the jungle night than i've seen in a while, and the place was full until late. it was clearly a better draw than usual. they might want to rethink that strategy.

in the mean time, i need to be skeptical about what i'm wasting money on.

and, i mean, it's not even that i'm that picky. i'm really not. but, dubstep and hip-hop are literally the worst possible styles of electronic music to dance to. they're slow moving, uneventful, repetitive. i mean, i'd have more fun at a bon jovi night, or something. honestly. at least you can dance to it...

i need to figure this out now, though, because the rest of the week sort of revolves around it.