just in case i've been unclear - there's still years worth of music to complete.

however, i have to build the blog to complete the liner notes for inri000-inri074. then, i can move on.

i should be done by now, but life does not exist in a vacuum.

you never thought in a million years that you'd see another michael bolton joke, did you?

this is actually not the most despicable bolton in america.

the fucking walrus is back.

great.

year zero is a come back record, but it's also a coming-back-down-to-earth record.

at that stage in somebody's career, it's usually enough to get a solid record, and that's exactly what it is. it's just hard to put it in the right context, because it reaches so far beyond what it actually accomplishes. so, it kind of gets forgotten...

well, they got the vote through, but i still think that june 7 is going to be the new d-day.

this time the d means something.

disappointment.

so, hit the beaches like it's 1944 on june 6th, 'cause you're going to be crying in your bongs all summer...

with teeth was bad in 2005, and it's not much better in 2018.

i like the hand that feeds. but, it's a silly, vacuous thing. beside you in time otherwise stands out as a fragile outtake. the rest of it is really fluff.

it's a shame that he took the criticism of the fragile the wrong way. really.

so, the question du jour in the media is trying to figure out why wynne is so unpopular. and, a lot of people are going to come up with these cause and effect arguments, trying to find some mistake.

but, as everybody keeps pointing out, her policies are popular.

the hydro one thing was stupid, but it was only stupid because it let the opposition frame her so badly. and, i think that's the real crux of the problem: she didn't spin herself well. or, said differently, she doesn't have the media reach required to spin herself well...

this is a big problem in canada. the conservatives own all the media, define the narrative and may be finally starting to elect governments. the only thing that's prevented us from becoming a play thing of murdoch wannabes is the fact that we seem to know better - and, perhaps, the existence of the toronto star.

but, the liberals need to be more media savvy, moving forwards. nobody watches ctv or reads asper media, any more. they can and should be hitting people over the internet, to try and avoid or pervert the dominance of the old tory guard in the traditional media.

in the short run, wynne may end up as a casualty of her refusal to define her own narrative. and, the liberals need to learn from this, not complain about it.

perhaps reznor's last masterpiece and greatest work, this has long been my go-to record when i need to have a time-out for an hour.

it was barely released as a bonus disc to a live record in 2002.

a lot of people don't even know it exists at all.

trump may not really be getting the plot about why china has tariffs on american goods but america doesn't have tariffs on chinese goods (hint: they're largely american goods made in china, rather than chinese goods), but i actually applaud any steps taken to erect trade barriers that put an end to the existing relationship, which is both unjust and unsustainable.

the consequences of his actions might not be what he's thinking, either, but they'll no doubt be for the greater good, in the end.

i'm not a prophet, i'm a logician.

and, none of this makes any sense - unless the plan was to derail it from the start.

so, don't be a sap and blame the tories. trudeau set this up. it's his fault.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/government-cannabis-bill-live-die-vote-1.4586113

so, if gender is just a choice, should i be allowed in exclusive gendered spaces, then?

well, it's 2018. why are we still gendering spaces?

so, what i'd actually tell you is this: if you're intent on gendering the space, i can almost guarantee you i don't want to enter it.

but, i believe in democracy, which means i believe it's up to the people that inhabit the space to determine entry on whatever criteria they want, and not up to a legislature to enforce rules from a distance under the threat of coercion or force. i'd just ask them to question the value of their criteria...and to recognize the consequences of being exclusive....

any group that wishes to be exclusive can always be mirrored by a group that aims for inclusion.

now, that said, there's some spaces where exclusion does make some sense, and i would respect whatever decisions exist, should i be excluded, for whatever reason. but, i'd also probably be able to figure that out on my own, without having to be told.

it is the hornone itself that exists in a spectrum. this is the part so few people grasp.

have you ever wondered why some women are curvy bombshells and others look like boys their whole lives? some get more estrogen than others. it's complicated - genetics, environment, experience, diet - but there's not a gene for huge breasts or a gene for manly calves. it's just hormones. it's just chemistry.

all of these questions - not homosexuality, mind you, but gender - revolve around these hormones, what proportion of them we have and what proportion of them we want.

my first shrink tried to get me to answer why i didn't want to just take steroids, if i was unhappy with my body image - and i had no meaningful answer for him, other than that i didn't want to. there isn't one....

"so why can't i identify as a chair or a couch?"

so, what you're saying is that you want me to sit on your face, then?

"no, i'm just..."

you're obviously not a chair.

"you're obviously not a woman."

and, why is that obvious?

"well, you've said that you don't have a vagina."

but, that can be altered, if desired. you acknowledge, then, that gender is fluid, rather than fixed.

"but you don't have..."

i can get anything i don't have, alright? and, i can get rid of anything i don't want, too.

"not genes."

we can actually edit our genes, in theory. not much longer. but, you don't know what the genes code for do, you?

*pause*

"not exactly."

it's hormones. that's all.

sex is not innate. it's just chemistry. and, you can swap it back and forth all you want.

the green bonds and the infrastructure bank both just evaporated. they were in the platform, but there's no trace of them, now, anywhere.

no denials. no 'splaining. just nothing.

mulcair would have been as bad as notley....

it's less that i saw trudeau as some kind of saviour; they all supported the pipelines. they were all pro-oil. but, trudeau was at least presenting feasible ideas to shift.

what i was hoping was that we'd get both: we might have to stomach trudeau's support for pipelines (and fight it in court), while they put the money down on a proper transition strategy at the same time. if your goal is profit maximization, there's no contradiction in funding both sides. and, that seemed to be the best option.

instead, we got neither - and a real do-nothing parliament, all-around.

they sent dion packing a few months in and are unlikely to campaign on this again; either way, it would be hard to take them seriously.

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.ca/2015/09/ive-been-leading-up-to-this-for-while.html

the air has thankfully been clear so far today; the issue last night seems to have just cleared the air out of the room (which is what i wanted).

now, so long as nobody blows smoke in here from outside, i think i'm probably ok. finally...

see, and this is the wildcard in provincial elections - rino is popular, here.

this could be a three-way race. ford will do well with all the recent immigrants, the ndp will hold their own with older voters and rino will do well with the hipsters and students.

i dunno yet..

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/rino-bortolin-liberals-windsor-west-1.4587488

this is something approaching reliable polling, and the first thing i've seen in months - although it appears to have been taken over march break, which no doubt exaggerates the inherent pc bias in phone polling.

but, this is what the poll says:

cons - 40.7
libs - 22.2
undecided - 15.6
ndp - 15.1
greens - 5.3

correcting for the bias puts the conservatives a few points under 40, but it's not clear where it goes.

in our spectrum, conservatives tend to have a very hard time gaining undecided voters and as hard a time keeping leaning voters. their base is solid, but they don't usually move far out of it; the undecideds tend to lean heavily to the left. you can't distribute undecideds in canada. but, i'm willing to take this as the first valid snap shot in months.

and, what it suggests is that traditional liberal voters are currently disengaged. if they swing hard to the ndp, they could win a surprise victory - but, again, it's hard to understand what's taking them so long. if they vote liberal in the end, she has a chance. and, if they split, or stay home, then the conservatives win.

this is not dissimilar to what we saw in the last federal election, where the conservatives polled ahead until the last weeks, when the undecideds finally decided in favour of the liberals. i'm not convinced that we'll see the same end, but it's the same set-up: mass apathy across the spectrum, with two broad camps - the hardcore conservative base, and everybody else (which remains broadly abc in mindset).

https://www.mainstreetresearch.ca/ford-pcs-21-point-lead-wynne-liberals/

grenier is always wrong. he shouldn't have his job, any more.

his weighted average of polls has been wrong, wrong and wronger for years. the reason is that he mixes up good polls and bad polls, which just has the effect of polluting the data. he includes every poll he can find under the argument that it's a crapshoot anyways, and then gets essentially what he assumes.

are the liberals in worse shape than before? i don't know. because i haven't seen any reliable polling. and, that's the actually correct answer right now - we haven't seen any reliable polling so we don't know where the numbers are.

when we finally do get some reliable polling, it could be shocking because you've been conditioned to a foregone conclusion by all this tory media propaganda. but, you shouldn't be shocked - you should just learn the lesson you won't learn, which is that online "polling" isn't polling

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-ontario-polls-comebacks-1.4585921

no.

the ban on smoking near buildings is municipal, and windsor is one of the few cities that doesn't have one.

and, smoking out of a window is most like smoking on a balcony, which is not addressed anywhere - and would be difficult to argue.

there's no such thing as a non-smoking building, here. somebody could put it in a lease, but it's non-enforceable. so, i have no choice but to fight.

at the moment, i don't have an actionable complaint; i will no doubt be told to close the window, which i can't/won't do. i need a large amount of fresh air intake into the unit...

i know this is being done to irk me. so, i've done what i can to mitigate, and i'm going to have to wait them out. they don't want to smoke outside, and will eventually stop doing it.