that's not a request to go bother the introverts, wherever you are.

don't do it.

they don't want you to.

if i was at a party right now, i'd be sitting in the corner wishing i was at home.

i really, truly hate people, in general.

i am hoping the weather picks up soon, though. it might be nice to be at a concert....

i would happily be the bastard that killed jason kenney.

he'd regenerate, though.

again.

and again.

again: i don't celebrate christian holidays.

at all.

it's no doubt a function of the nature of the films...

the social network ost is a livelier, more engaging listen that actually holds up as one of his better records; the girl with the dragon tattoo ost is cold and disengaging, and more difficult to listen to actively, although i'm finding it functional as background music, right this moment.

i think you have to get your head around the idea that these are mostly jams, rather than compositions - you may be hearing some overdubs thrown in, but this is mostly being constructed on the fly, making it a type of twisted jazz, really. there's also a huge amount of sampling in both of these, which i'm not about to criticize from some position of purity, but do need to point out; as these are both mostly improvised works and soundtracks rather than standalone compositions, sampling exists in a different context. the reason you need to point it out, though, is that the tracks come in the form of templates.

reznor has a habit of repeating himself, and he's done the same thing with his soundtrack work - if you include ghosts, it really all bleeds into itself and starts to stagnate some time around 2012. you could argue, then, that it works best if you pull it all together into a ten or fifteen disc set and think of it as a single work.

i have no criticism beyond that point - everything he's done with ross in this style is enjoyable, as repetitive as some of it may be. but, standing in 2018, maybe it's time to move on.

i need to repeat.

if there is any discernible movement in the polling right now, it's away from the liberal party and towards the green party. and, this makes a lot of sense, given that trudeau has been a disaster for the environment, in his zeal to approve every pipeline that he can.

i'd like to see regional numbers, though, and they're not available. is this cross-country, or localized in bc?

federally speaking, there has not been any meaningful polling measuring a shift from the liberals to the conservatives at all. so, i'm not going to provide an explanation for something that there is no evidence of.

there has been a push by the tory media to frame a specific narrative using bunk "polling". that is all.

the liberals are down a little, but the conservatives remain flat. these votes are not moving from the liberals to the conservatives, but from the liberals to elsewhere.

the most likely explanation for this is that trudeau has not followed through on anything that he promised.

it appears that trudeau was given a longer than normal grace period to follow through, and this may have confused people into thinking that policy doesn't matter. most people don't follow the news daily, so it may have taken some time for the facts to get there. but, when reliable polling comes out and finds these lost votes floating around between "undecided", "ndp" and "green", it will be clearer that he's not losing votes on his right, but on his left.

that said, low turnout or a spike in the green vote could lead to a conservative minority.

satanism only makes sense in the framework of christianity.

real atheists rejects satanists as reactionary christians - and satanism as irrational.

something should also be said about the parallels between secular humanism and natural law theory, which is a christian idea, in origin. i'm not an advocate of natural law theory, exactly; it's not scientific inquiry, and science really needs to take precedence over logic. but, you can't really understand secular humanism without having read a little aquinas.

when somebody says "i'm not a christian", that doesn't only mean that they don't believe in angels and demons, or trinities, or zombies, or cannibalism.

it also means that they reject the christian value system.

of course, there are varying levels of rejection, and what that means is complicated. but, the key to understanding an atheist is removing yourself from the framework of christianity, first. it's very hard to understand the irreligious when you've spent your entire life chained in the cave of religion.

so, for something like drug addiction, a christian is going to frame the issue in terms of a value system that upholds hard work, and rejects sloth as a sin. a christian would consequently consider addiction as a "sinful" lifestyle that is rebellious, because it rejects "god". this would then be contrasted with a pious lifestyle. somebody that upholds sobriety would consequently be godly, in their rejection of sinfulness.

i've repeatedly ranted against the protestant work ethic and upheld sloth as a virtue.

but, this entire discussion exists within the framework of christianity itself, and the aim of an atheist is to reject this. a humanist would not care about what somebody might imagine that god would think of the scenario. an atheist does not believe in concepts of sin, and so does not interpret drug use or promiscuity through a filter of rebelliousness or sinfulness, but rather seeks to rationalize it by empirically analyzing it's effects on the individual's health.

so, where a christian may be tempted to certain behaviours as rebellious and sinful, because the issue was framed that way to them, an atheist is likely to flatly reject such behaviours as irrational and harmful to one's health - which is why the christians framed them that way in the first place.

this is why religion is so damaging to a healthy society, and why it is so important to rationalize away these concepts of "sin" and "rebellion", as they manufacture stupidity, rather than abolish it.

somebody rebelling against religion may consequently see an atheist and a religious conservative as somewhat equivalent, because they're telling them the same thing about their destructive behaviour. but, the truth here is that the reason this is happening is because rebellion is irrational - and the true thing to learn from this is that rebels are idiots.

ned would march downstairs and give these people a hug and try to get them to rehab, because their lives are valuable, and god loves them.

i'm out to destroy them and leave them for dead, because i don't fucking care about them at all.

i care about my health.

and, i'm not going to "chill out" and accept your ignorance about the dangers of second-hand smoke - i'm going to get a court to uphold my rights.

the flanders joke was that it's very hard (stupid, frankly) to love your neighbours, when your neighbours are people like the simpsons. but, the buffoon tries, anyways. it was a deep caricature of christianity.

a rational flanders would have built a moat between the properties, or moved away, or bombed them, or something - for the good of humanity. but, because he's a christian, he insisted on loving and forgiving and accepting them. and, that's the joke - it's about how stupid christianity is, because it would preach acceptance rather than seek to protect itself from obvious harm.

you're not supposed to identify with these people; it's satire, and they're literally cartoon characters.

fuck your neighbours.

i mean, i understand that there's a physical reality to the addiction.

this isn't a choice...

but i simply don't want this.

you can't even get me to watch a 30 minute tv show. how are you going to get me to waste entire weekends on drugs?

again: i'm just feeling indigestion, right now. it's not serious. i'm probably being paranoid. but, it's just not going to happen; it's not going to be a situation where i'm forcing myself to give up something i like for my health, but a situation where i'm eager to clear something i don't like out of my system, at whatever pain that comes with it.

i'm about as likely to get converted into an opiate addict as a devout muslim is likely to be converted into a bacon eater.

i'm not worried about getting addicted to anything. i am worried about going through withdrawals.

and, i will go through withdrawals, however difficult they are, and repeatedly, if forced to.

i have absolutely no romantic delusions attached to drug use, at all. i understand it's a chemical dependence that my body can defeat. and, about the only thing i'm likely to find myself concerned with is in maximizing productivity - and how impossible that is under the influence of opiates.

if this somehow gets me fucked up, i'm going to hate it, and cry for however long it takes to pass through.

cocaine is something i might develop an addiction to, if i were to play with it. but, my interest in depressants is zilch.

how do i feel?

head is a little blurry. stomach hurts a little. it's mild - just annoying, really. more indigestion than inebriation. if i need to, i'll get to the hospital; right now, i'm more likely to eat.

fwiw, it should be obvious that i don't celebrate christian holidays. at all.

but, this woman isn't going to rise on the third day, if she goes under tonight.

i'm very close to calling them in on heroin.

the smell is of acetic acid, and this seems to happen on friday nights, although it also sometimes smells kind of like soapy wine. again: i have no experience with heroin and would not be able to identify it, but research tells me that it smells like vinegar due to the cutting agents.

if anybody ever offered me heroin, it is unlikely that i would be able to refrain myself from beating the shit out of them.

i'm not sure why else there would be repeated vinegar smells rising from downstairs. on weekends. it seems obvious.

tonight is a thursday, but it's a long weekend. and, i'm holding back because i don't want an ambulance to wake her up.

it would be the easiest solution, wouldn't it? and, wouldn't it be a matter of time, anyways?

i mean, it's probably not something you heard from many kids in the 90s.

marilyn manson sounds like something my mom would listen to. yuck.

but, *shrug*.

i mean, it's maybe easier to understand why i was so revolted by manson when you consider that my mom was a massive ozzy fan.

yeah, my dad was a metalhead.

he was more into prog-metal, but he was a metalhead - he followed prog into metal when prog died. well, metal and blues. there was a lot of high-end blues done in the 80s.

and, my mom is really a metalhead. my dad just wanted the musicianship; he was less of a nerd than me, but leaned that way. my mom is full into satan-worship, leather jackets, motorcycles, gratuitous drug use and forehead beer can smashing. she's a stereotype.

and, it's absolutely the reason why i grew up hating metal.

but, this is a normal gen x reaction to the excesses of the baby boomers.