the defeater record is better than the last few, but i'm not feeling like it's going to be enough to drag me out.

i think i'll make a judgement on wedenesday that will depend on the weather.

but, this could be a super quiet month; the most exciting venue this month seems to be the dso.

i think i'm actually more excited about new records by 65dos and swans. if i can plan the toronto trip around 65dos...

i don't see anything in windsor over the next few days, either.

i may end up skipping this little blip altogether. *shrug*.

so, i need to get some groceries and get to some more serious focus on the court stuff. we're 'there', now. it looks like i've got the cash to put aside to plan this.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.  

so, let's see what defeater's been up to recently.

i haven't really been that interested in them for quite a while, either.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.  

yeah.

rattle & hum, then.

i'll catch you when you come back with a full band...

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.  

the joy formidable show on wednesday is....unplugged.

it's just worrisome because it screams 'hipster'. i don't want to judge them on their decibel level, exactly. i'm just a little worried that it might not actually be very fun.

there's some bands that you kind of expect to play loud, and that may actually not be very interesting, otherwise.

and, it's an early show in ferndale, too. so i've gotta show up for 19:00 to catch an acoustic set? eh...

let me check some samples.

they may have gone full hipster, in which case count me out.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.  

so, i'm going to need to cross-reference the music facebook page, a frustrating process due to the lengthy nature of doing so. they don't let you jump. you have to scroll back through hundreds of posts. it's enough to get off of it, which i have, but i insist on maintaining it for some reason.

it could take all day.

so, i'll need to multitask.

i need to pay rent, get groceries and get a start on the legal thing today, although i don't expect to look at it seriously until wednesday or thursday, depending on further circumstances. after 19:00 tonight, i'll also need to actually set up the recording machine properly for the first time since jan, 2018 (!) to get those liner notes filed and take a serious look at the next batch of material.

if i can get out to a few shows over the next few days, i'd like to.

but, i could be posting further releases by this time, tomorrow morning.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.  

first liner note release for inri000

these are the first demos i recorded, written 1994-1996 and recorded in the second half of 1996. this corresponds to the end of my 15th year and the beginning of my grade 10 school year. on the one hand, it's an intriguing document of a socially maladjusted teenage punk. on the other hand, it's a 15 year-old kid learning how to use a recording studio (and how to play the drums). influences are displayed on my sleeve just a little too loudly at times.

i was attempting to create something that could be described by the words disturbing, schizophrenic, unique, bizarre, twisted. looking back, i think i succeeded more than i realized at the time. this is a difficult listen that would be appealing to fans of the obscurantist reaches of 80s punk and 90s grunge. i manage to maintain a strange sense of melody, though. in truth, my current adult self is somewhat impressed with my teenaged self at this current point.

that being said, it should not be forgotten that i was fifteen. i am at times rather crude, and i display a childlike understanding of certain issues. most poetry written at the age of fifteen is not particularly insightful. again, though, i surprise myself at points.

this is the first time i'm publishing these demos in any form. i've remained frighteningly self-conscious of them over the years. over the last seventeen years, the audience has been extremely limited. initial reactions suggested i take some time to perfect my performance skills, particularly my drumming skills. however, this indicated a lack of understanding of my intent in the overall sound. the playing is quite purposefully abstract with the aim of exploring mental illness.

the demos were initially dub-mastered onto a 110 minute tape that would have flipped after the eighth track. that tape was at some point recorded into a soundblaster and compressed very heavily; this is the only source of the material that i still have. so, i had to decompress the files from those 128 (or worse) kbps mp3s and run them through some digital mastering equipment in an attempt to "undo" the compression. what that is is a half-effective trick to recover data that is in actuality forever lost. nonetheless, i should point out that while these files were recorded entirely in 1996, they were substantially digitally modified in late 2013. finalized on june 26, 2016. first liner note release added on sept 30, 2019. as always, please use headphones.

i consider this an archival release with little direct listening value. i've pointed out repeatedly that i was 15. however, various segments have been isolated and pulled out for a higher listenability value over here:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inricycled-a

this release also includes a printable j-card insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries in doc & pdf from all phases of production (1993-1996, 2013-2019). as of sept 30, 2019, the release includes a 47 page booklet that includes journal entries from the remastering process over sept-oct, 2013. 

credits

released December 25, 1996

j - guitars, effects, bass, drums, vocals, keyboards, tapes, found sounds, percussion, production.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-cassette-demo-1

the liberals are supposed to do better than this. 

so, as promised, here is an example of the first run of the liner notes.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TybN3uKUhEH1KKD8HphcYoFc-r59NqrN

this is just a dummy file; the final result will be three or four times this length. but, considering that my music archive is now nearly 700 pages, why did i cut it down to a mere 47 pages?

a mere 47 pages? these are liner notes. back in the day, when people bought records, a 47 page booklet with digital photos would be the deluxe edition, guys.

the bulk of the writing in the music journal actually exists for the context of the aleph discs, where it will be used as the front-end for an interactive multimedia presentation. this is coming down the road. for right now, what you get is a truncated version of the journal that is relevant solely in the context of it being liner notes. if you want the full journal, it's up for download, too. 

this is one of the things that we've lost in the digital age, so what i'm doing is trying to find a way to bring that back, in a way that makes sense to people that think that physical media is an anachronism. but, they're liner notes - you don't put things like reviews of other people's work, or conversations with friends, in your liner notes. you save things like that for the actual journals.

the above document will be inserted into the following download within a few minutes, in pdf and doc form. future liner notes will not be posted in this fashion.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-cassette-demo-1

the liner notes are also a perpetual work in progress, and they have to be. the next update will be at the finalization stage in mid-2016, which i hope to get up asap, but will also include notes published to youtube over 2014-2015, as well as other things. there will need to be a third update in 2026 (or 2027) that adds all of the loose ends, including the alter-reality posts.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

i'm cutting myself off on the reconstruction at the start of 2018, for now. i'll have to go back after, but i just want to catch up until the end of period 2, and then get back to what i was doing. i'm otherwise going to get stuck in a loop and never be able to catch up.

so, while all the ranting i've done since mid-2018 is going to eventually get worked into the liner notes, insofar as it is relevant to each release, it'll have to wait until i start cleaning up periods 3 and 4, in a comparable process.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

to get your head around the totality of what i'm doing...

i'm tempted to include the pre-existing alter-reality notes for this release, but i'm not going to. note that this won't actually come up again in the alter-reality until 2026, as i've pushed it back by ten years. i should just be focused on catching up for now, and then focusing on two rather than ten different realities. i have a tendency to over-complicate things and then got lost in the trivialities.

so, the second release will correspond with the finalization period and include notes on the release that were posted between 11/2013-06/2016. i'd hope to get this up asap, actually.

then, the third and final release will happen at the end of 2026, and should include everything, in complete totality.

is it more clear what i'm doing, yet?

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

this feels good.

i've got something done, almost.

but, i won't be able to plow through with november, which will allow me to publish several liner notes, just yet.

it does look like the summer is finally over, though, so i'll be going out a lot less and getting a lot more done this month, starting mid-week.

i told you the crash was coming. this is actually about two weeks earlier than last year, but not quite as intense.

what happened last year is that it just stayed stuck around 10 degrees for three months, so that, by the time we got to december, it was actually unusually warm. i'm holding out hope for an early spring, so let's hope the winter doesn't get too harsh.

but, this is where my predictions for the year end - i'm calling for uncertainty this winter. it could be brutal, that's what the models are calling for. but, if the error that the models were making was too little solar input, it's going to start flipping the other way, now, and it might not be.

i have low confidence; we're on the cusp.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

so i've got these files updated. running totals are...

music document (1996-2019): 4598 pages @ 5x8
politics document (16/07/2013-31/10/2013): 1104 pages @ 5x8
dtk document (16/07/2013-31/10/2013): 210 pages @ 5x8
travel document (16/07/2013-31/10/2013): 133 pages @ 5x8

running fall semester (sept-dec) documents....@ 5x8
politics: 606 pages
music: 236 pages
dtk: 144
travel: 44

2013 ytd (from 16/07/2013) documents @ 5x8:
politics: 1104
music: 676
dtk: 210
travel: 133

complete archive: 9443 pages @ 8x11

november should be similar in scope to october, but starting to switch over to the music as the primary focus. it will probably be shorter, in total.

last thing left to do before i move on is to finally construct this first liner note, inri000.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

so, the travel blog is updated.

next thing to do is to distribute the files into the more comprehensive, running documents.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

the noise trade link for the october, 2013 archive of the travel blog is now up...

http://books.noisetrade.com/j/102013-travel-blog

now,  i need to actually post it to the blog...

unfortunately, noise trade did not work out as a hosting solution, and i never got a clear answer as to why. but, i decided in the end that the site was full of ads and unworkable, anyways.

the readable version of the october archive for this blog is now available as a standalone in the music journal package at bandcamp:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/10-2013-music-journal

...or as a component in the full first reconstruction phase archive, available in the following places:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026660
https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/jessica-murray/full-first-reconstruction-phase-travel-blog/ebook/product-nm4jeq.html
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13M7Vvz2hLiuGdywPL2oNRgUY3nmn26E6/view

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

i still have the travel blog to do, and then i'll need to do a first pass on the liner notes for inri000, which i've committed to posting at the drive.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

the noise trade smashwords link for the 417 page pdf of the october, 2013 archive of this blog is now up...

http://books.noisetrade.com/j/102013-dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026610

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

but, i will repeat: it is a better idea to focus on degrowth, and relinquish control back to the natives.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

here's a research project for you, if you insist on it.

back in the 1800s, canada faced a major problem trying to populate the "frontier", by which i mean the prairies provinces, stretching all the way from the rockies into northern ontario. no matter what we tried, we couldn't get anybody to settle up there, because it was cold and dark (for much of the year) and isolated. so, we became paranoid that we were going to lose control over the western provinces to american settlers, which probably wouldn't have happened because it was cold and dark and isolated, but which was a consuming fear by the british authorities, nonetheless.

when i talk about may's insistence on settling saskatchewan being a commitment to settler colonialism, i'm not talking out of my ass. it's exactly what she's talking about, except that she doesn't seem to have learned the lesson - even with climate change, it's still cold and dark and isolated, and still incredibly difficult to settle.

african-americans didn't want to live in rural canada in the nineteenth century, and african climate refugees aren't going to want to live in rural canada in the twenty-first century, either.

the british eventually realized that the only way they'd manage to settle the region would be to find migrants that were acclimatized to the weather. so, instead of trying to attract freed american slaves or even german settlers, which migrated in large numbers to the much warmer united states, they made a broad appeal to northern europeans - norwegians, finns, ukrainians, russians, swedes and even the damned scots. while there are still the descendants of french settlements across the west, large swaths of the prairies are, today, majority northern european in ancestry.

you can say what you want about this, but the lands would not have been colonized any other way, for better or worse.

nowadays, these northern european countries have some of the highest standards of living in the world, although i wonder why nobody's talking about air-lifting ukrainians into saskatchewan. these are rural people that are used to a cold climate. it might actually work. the ukrainians aside, these countries are not likely sources of mass immigration into canada any time soon.

but, if the goal is to people or repeople the frontier, some thought needs to be put into finding people that will stay there.

so, that's the research project: where in the world are there people that are being threatened by climate change, that are used to living in rural communities (rather than cities) and that can handle cold climates?

the only thing i can think of is japan.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

one of the data points, if you care to analyze them, that's come out of the mismanagement around the syrian refugee file is the realization that a high percentage of them actually just want to go home.

there's a lesson there - all of that money may have been better spent on foreign aid.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

to be clear - i'm not taking a fiscally conservative position on this. i don't care about the public purse, or "taxpayers' dollars". print the money. fine.

but, when you don't fund your humanitarian schemes, when you just leave it up to the market, those schemes will fail and, when they fail, they will have unintended and unimagined consequences for everybody else. that's what this looks like.

look at the data on the syrian refugees that trudeau brought in. do we want to repeat this colossal catastrophe? 

if not, then let's make a choice: if we're going to do this, let's make sure we do it right by funding it properly, and if we're not going to pay for it, then let's think up something else. 

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

i would rather see the greens come out with a policy that says "we're going to bring in this number of refugees, and we're going to build this number of houses to compensate for it, and the existing housing crisis", rather than pretend they're going to settle them in rural saskatchewan, where everybody knows they won't stay.

as it is, the correct way to read into it is that they're not planning on properly funding the social services required to facilitate their humanitarian goals, which is the same failed strategy we've seen from the liberals.

and, again: i would rather see the foreign aid budget increased. we talk about these foreign aid goals, then never meet them. this is better seen as an opportunity to do that than it is as a way to uphold the settler-colonial process...

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

"but, i don't care about the poor."

that's right, you don't.

so, stop pretending that you do. 

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

so, what is the right way to interpret the green party's pledges on immigration?

it's a commitment to canada's ongoing existence as a colonial state. that's how you work this out - the message that they're broadcasting is that the colonial process remains paramount, that immigration takes priority over degrowth, and that the state will carry on, as before.

and, depending on which angle you're approaching it from, you can either interpret that as the greens being less scary than you thought, or them essentially being another status-quo neo-liberal party that's carrying on with the process of settler colonialism like the rest of them.

a serious, long-term environmental strategy is going to have to get the growth rate down, and that's going to mean accepting relatively low levels of population density. a solution to this comes when the rest of the world looks like canada, not when canada looks like the rest of the world.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

so, how do you "save atlantic canada"?

you don't. you accept that the economic base in the region is relatively small due to the geography and the climate, you let the region exist as a low-rent haven for artists and retirees and you give control back to the indigenous groups, where requested.

the best thing that the government can do for this region is back off and leave it alone.

and, if climate change opens up more economic opportunities in the long run, people will come on their own. 

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

you can't improve the economy via immigration. that's reaganomics, and it's the kind of thinking that has caused the problems we see in these communities, as it is. you need stimulus, and then the people will come on their own, when employers ask them to.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

canada has been trying to "save atlantic canada" via immigration for decades.

they just move to toronto as soon as they can. it's an empirical question, with little ambiguity around it.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

this is delusional.

they're going to go to toronto, montreal and vancouver and drive up the cost of rent - and further contribute to the climate crisis.

you don't grow an economy via immigration, that's supply-side economics, and backwards right-wing style thinking. the reason these areas are economically depressed is because there is no existing economy. if you airlift thousands of people in, they'll just starve. but, they won't starve, they'll leave. you need to create the economic opportunities first, then bring the people in.

if she wants to offer canada as a safe country for climate refugees, she should be more honest about what she intends to do, and what that will look like in the end, and then let people vote for or against it, if they're so inclined. the reality is that such a plan is going to necessitate massive amounts of social spending, and they are at least talking about a gai, however they should be more explicit about the social costs involved in this kind of thing, and the consequences it will have on the existing poor.

but, the idea that you're going to populate the empty areas of this country by settling "climate refugees" in them is moronic and should be treated that way.

https://election.ctvnews.ca/green-party-prepared-to-accept-tens-of-thousands-of-new-climate-refugees-1.4615695 

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

it's a 400 page document, this is a long and dry process. i'm 75% done, but i need to stop here and there to breathe and refocus.

i want to release that fragment under the throatmotor moniker, but it wasn't my band. it was supposed to be throatmotor. but it doesn't sound like throatmotor.

i'm going to need to contact trevor about it, and don't actually know how to.

he has a soundcloud page up, actually. i'm the redhead in the lennon shirt in pic #2 (mr. angry). that was at the pride festival in ottawa, 2004.

i just played bass live as a favour to the guitarist. i didn't record anything with them. my bass parts were a little more...busy....which you can pick up from my own stuff.

https://soundcloud.com/throatmotor 

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

with the onset of climate change, you can't be the party of big oil and the party of rural canada at the same time.

there's a contradiction, there.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

actually, i pointed out months ago that it would be expected that the conservatives would have problems in the areas of ontario that were flooded earlier this year, and that's exactly what the polling is pulling out.

these people just lost their homes. and, the conservatives just want to lay pipelines in the carnage.

there is a potential for a long term shift in voting patterns, here.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

i just checked my fan on a lark and it's back to working again. that'll save me $20. good.

i'm not going to pretend this makes any sense, but i guess something must have overheated.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

and, yes, i know there are some old people that aren't rich, too.

so, you redistribute it. simple.

it's the most obvious thing in the world, and the only reason you're insisting on immigration instead is that you want to win elections. but, they're not the majority, any more. we don't have to be held hostage by them any longer. it's over.

if you're concerned about the social instability being caused by mass immigration, which you claim is necessary to pay for the boomers, then just give up on it and tax the boomers instead. i'll vote for you... 

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

the crisis here is not one of demographics, it's one of entitlement in the older generations. 

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

and, then, just stand back and let the population fall on it's own.

it's laissez-faire. you should like that. 

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

for all the talk of self-sufficiency and privatization under neo-liberalism, it's funny how the me generation constantly gets a pass, isn't it?

retirees have all the money.

let them pay their own way.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

i have a wonderful idea: why don't you tax the fucking boomers to pay for their own services?

they're the ones with all the wealth. 

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

if the government thinks it has this problem in front of itself with low birth rates that it needs to solve via immigration, then it needs to question the premise.

it's not just a climate issue. it's food security. it's pollution.

the fact that advanced economies have low growth rates is a good thing that we should be trying to export to developing countries, not a bad thing that we should try to fix.

and, this is the liberals. i'm not supposed to have to explain this to them....

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

but, it's also just a reminder that you're essentially just livestock, to the state - cattle to tax.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

everything else about the bizarre liberal student loan policy aside, it seems designed to incentivize people into having more children when the role of the government at this stage in history should really be emphasizing degrowth.

and, that's my actual takeaway from it - it's just another terrible climate policy that's going to make it that much harder to get emissions down.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

the link to the 10/2013 archive of the dtk blog is up.

the big one is next, but i need to eat, first.

https://books.noisetrade.com/j/102013-deathtokoalas

unfortunately, noise trade did not work out as a hosting solution, and i never got a clear answer as to why. but, i decided in the end that the site was full of ads and unworkable, anyways.

the readable version of the october, 2013 archive for this blog is now available as a standalone in the music journal package at bandcamp:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/10-2013-music-journal

...or as a component in the half year archive at smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026620

...or as a component in the first reconstruction phase archive, available in the following places:
https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/jessica-murray/full-first-reconstruction-phase-deathtokoalas-blog/ebook/product-zrgr94.html
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10DbwOVdqWt73rHNzWJWgEfduzREogExX/view

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

ipsos is not a polling firm, it's a propaganda arm of the conservative party.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

the fourth entry in the music journal series, which is the month of october, 2013 and is 99 pages long. i am not going to summarize the story, but it is available on the web over here: musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/10/.

this is a compilation of written correspondences that occurred around me over october, 2013. it includes facebook posts, messenger chats and emails with friends and family members, in an attempt to tell the story of how i set my studio back up in windsor after relocating from ottawa and republished my first demo, from 1996. the contents of this download are the dummy track, a word doc file and a pdf file, both written in a more readable, chronological ordering. i've also added the respective files for my other three blogs, for general interest, as well as 98 separate txt documents (essays, notes, scripts and web pages) that are referenced in the journal.

the events documented in this journal occurred in october, 2013 and were compiled into a narrative in several stages over the years 2014-2019. journal completed on sept 10, 2019. released and finalized in doc and pdf format on sept 28, 2019. doc201310.

credits

released November 1, 2013

j - editing, participant

esa (aka shelly teagan) - participant
mom - participant
the oldest aunt's wife - participant
the initial landlord - participant
teksavvy technical support - participant
cbsa technical support - participant

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/10-2013-music-journal

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

i honestly never intended to make it to 40, so i never planned my life around things i'd do at 40. i didn't even plan to make it to 30, really.

i don't want to romanticize death, because i'm not like that - i understand that we only get one chance, and once you turn off the electricity, that's it. logic is pretty ruthless here; you want to avoid that, as long as you can. right?

well, if you only plan around completing a certain set number of things, existence might not seem worthwhile any more.

barring some catastrophe, it does look like i'm going to make it there, and then what? well, i'm not going to change my outlook on life. i'm not going to discover goals i never had.

i need to finish my art, and i have quite a bit of it left, and we'll see what happens after that.

i'm not sure i'll ever feel as though my work is truly complete, but i don't think i'll last very much longer if i ever do. i don't think i'll prolong it....

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

here's the noise trade smashwords link to the october, 2013 archive of the music blog, in readable format

https://books.noiseTrade.com/j/102013-music-journal
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026608

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

since aaron wherry has outed himself as a liberal stooge, it's easy to put two and two together here and deduce that the liberals are about to start scare mongering about the bloc, which, as it happens to be, is another harperism.

the socialists and the separatists...coalition...hey, can trudeau prorogue before the throne speech? maybe he can call boris up and ask him if he has any tips.

the bloc does not want to join a coalition government, and will not agree to prop up the government. how do i know that? because they're the bloc, and they don't want to interfere with canadian politics. all duceppe promised to do last time was vote for the budget, and then his party got destroyed because of it; even that minimal of a commitment rendered them pointless in the minds of quebeckers. they're not there to gain power, they're there to be a pain in the ass. if wherry has a point, it might be that it might work; if you want to be afraid of something, it would be a hung parliament and the need to go back to the polls.

but, there's no need to fear because i'll tell you what will happen - the liberals and conservatives will prop each other up, just like they did in the 00s. they are, after all, the parties that are most similar to each other.

so, conservative minority? don't worry - the liberals will vote for the budget. and, that's a loop they can't get out of, because they can't gain momentum when they're propping the conservatives up. but, they'll do it, you can count on it.

and, a liberal minority? the conservatives will wait, and pull the plug when it's convenient. right now, that might not happen for a while...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/singh-may-green-ndp-minority-2019-election-1.5298332

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

the mood that i'm projecting here may be more widespread than the pundits want to accept.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

i think people are just fed up and that the greens are in the right place at the right time to benefit from it.

great.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

yeah, the polls are getting weird - mainstreet has the greens splitting the vote in rural ontario, which could help the liberals in weird places, and nanos has them nearly catching the ndp, nationally, finally - albeit mostly at the expense of the liberals.

fluctuations and whatnot. i'm not being alarmist.

but this isn't out of nowhere, and it's about that time in the cycle for the numbers to start moving.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

something you're going to notice as i move past period 3 and into period 4 is that the abstraction of the music is going to increase dramatically, to the point that you might not even call it music anymore. listen to the crash, for example. any music that i create in the future, past the end point in 2011, is going to be something like that - to the left of leftfield electronic noise, and with an audience that won't exist until i'm dead.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

if you want new and up-to-date and hip and fashionable, you probably should have tuned out a long time ago.

i've been anti-cool from day one. and, while i don't like retro much myself, i'd guess you do.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

i'm not going to keep doing this into my 50s.

i will cut myself off.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

no, listen.

musicians tend to get boring around the age of 30.

i'm lucky that i have a big pile of unfinished music that i wrote before i turned 30, and that i can spend my 30s cleaning up.

but, at my age, i'm largely past my creative cycle, and i'm not going to deny it, and pretend otherwise.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

if you're waiting for the concept record about trump, it's not happening.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

but, when am i going to post new songs?

i'm probably not going to.

i'm probably going to end the discography in 2011, with the caveat that there will be a few leftover pieces.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

so, i clearly got distracted pretty badly, but, again, that's hardly unproductive - i just published three releases.

i'm still alert, and think i can get a good move on what's left.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

inri097

last one for the night.

================

inri086?

these are actually rock songs, albeit weird ones. i was shopping them around in the mid-00s, and nobody bit. we'll have a compilation demo up here as i found it, but i'm also going to need to actually finish them up.

i didn't want this to be a studio project, but what do you want me to tell you? i can't find anybody to jam with...and i've been looking for twenty years....

the cd-r from 2005 that i have consists of the first eight tracks, and i'm going to publish it that way, as is. i was considering adding a ninth track that i cut at some point, but decided against it - this will come up elsewhere. there is also a tenth demo in this collection that was dismantled into different tracks, and will eventually come up as a part of a similar collection dated to mid-2004.

there are two different types of tracks in this collection. some of these tracks will be worked into the trivial group or proverbs symphonies, whereas others will need to be completed as standalones in the 2004-2005 space, depending on where i think they best fit.

see, i'm tempted to label this proverbs, but don't actually want to. the tracks that weren't put aside for it don't have vocals. but, they weren't supposed to be trivial group, they were supposed to be a band project. i was using the pseudonym "whore to culture" for a little bit, but, in hindsight, i don't really like it - and i never finished anything under the label. i think that was mostly xenophanes, which is definitely trivial group, now.

on the other hand, were any of the trivial group tracks intended to be studio projects? no...they just all ended up that way...so that's less a difference and more a commonality...

and, are these tracks that different than trivial group? not in the form they're in. if i were to just play the trivial group tracks on guitar, they'd be sort of similar, wouldn't they?

in fact, i could conceivably expand this collection by isolating some of the other guitar tracks in the other trivial group stuff, but i don't want to do that, either. i mean, i could take the style way back - this isn't my first demonstration of impressionist jazz punk. i may consider creating a second companion disc that just has the guitar parts from all of the trivial group material, but i want to leave this specific disc exactly as it is, which is exactly as i found it.

these specific tracks were written at various points between 2003-2005 and performed via a line-in directly into my soundcard, with no effects, in my apartment on prince of wales in ottawa on august 21, 2005. a handful of cds were then burned, and left out randomly at various places around town where i hoped a drummer would find them. ripped back to digital on april 12, 2014. uploaded and published without further modification on sept 19, 2019. as always, please use headphones.

cover art by sarah. 

credits

released August 21, 2005

j - guitar 

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/impressionist-jazz-punk

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

i've also put this ep up for download.

===============

the very beginning of a long paused project built around the idea of converting ratios directly into music using matlab.

i'm going to leave this as a one-track single dated to november, 2004 and finish the idea, for release in....2020?

this was created for the requirements of math 4822, a course on wavelet theory, at carleton university in the fall semester of 2004. programmed entirely in matlab over a weekend in nov, 2004. uploaded and published without further modification on sept 19, 2019. as always, please use headphones.

credits

released November 30, 2004

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-spontaneous-combustion-of-leonardo-pisano

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

inri079

so, we'll need to re-publish this as physical media when the time comes, but the music is at least finished, so why not acknowledge as much and allow for download?

=============

an art show demo, uploaded as is. inri078.

it's not a complex story - sarah wanted to have a showing of some of her paintings in her apartment, so she asked me to write some music for it. i just took some of the things i was working on and put them together.

this would eventually become the core of the next symphony.

initially written and recorded over the second half of 2003 and the very beginning of 2004. compiled on january 23, 2004. ripped from cd-r on april 11, 2014. finally uploaded and published without further modification on sept 18, 2019. as always, please use headphones.

credits

released January 23, 2004

j - all sound

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/art-show-demo

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

no, i'm not attacking greta thunberg. i'll pick on people my own size.

what i'm doing is ridiculing the situation.

this is another one of those situations where there's no use in explaining myself further, you're able to follow what i've written or you're not. but, if i'm attacking anything, it's you.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

inri091 & inri092 cover art

so, we've got some new cover art up on what will probably inri085:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-spontaneous-combustion-of-leonardo-pisano

leanardo pisano is fibonacci - leonardo of pisa. i might change that to a wrinkled shot of fibonacci, but that gets the point across for now.

...& also for what will likely be inri087:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/xenophanes

But if cattle and horses and lions had hands
or could paint with their hands and create works such as men do,
horses like horses and cattle like cattle
also would depict the gods' shapes and make their bodies
of such a sort as the form they themselves have.
...
Ethiopians say that their gods are snub–nosed and black
Thracians that they are pale and red-haired

he could have just asked his daughter, though.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-greta-thunberg-climate-change-action-1.5299674

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

why don't i march any more?

i was always looking for a broader movement; i've never held out much hope that any specific protest is going to really accomplish much, and to a certain extent these marches are even really a symptom of the problem - if these people would march on factories instead of down streets, right? we'll know we're ready when we stop marching and start doing.

the march was always a meeting place, somewhere to try to network, and that was always it's real value, as a stepping stone to broader organizing. so, the most important thing that came out of occupy was that i found myself in a social group that included a lot of self-identified anarchists - not because of anything specific to the action, but due to the long term implications around movement building.

i more or less stopped entirely when i got to windsor. it's partly because i found myself immersed in my art, which is a good thing, but i could have made time. that i didn't had more to do with a level of cynicism that sunk in around the ubiquity of capitalism, and the realization that these activists would never be ready to actually change anything. they were, in truth, capitalists to their bones......and i just found myself wanting to get away from them.

there was never a point where i thought that a climate march would have any meaningful actual effect on policy, but there was a point where i thought it might be a good place to meet people to plan deeper organizing around. i've largely abandoned this, in favour of a technological determinism: we're going to have to wait for things to fail, first, and then react. sad, but probably true...

i like the politics, but i don't like the people.

i'll be more productive arguing with people on the internet than i will be marching.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

so, i put a sequence for the unofficial bundles up, as well.

https://www.youtube.com/user/deathtokoalas/playlists?view=50&sort=dd&shelf_id=49&disable_polymer=true

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

it's always hard to get valid information out of these sorts of events, but it doesn't seem like much actually happened today in egypt besides a round-up of some protestors. it almost seems like a sting - and, yes, they'll do that.

i want you to be careful not to fall into the narrative that the protests are being driven by "islamists". for all it's backing by the theocratic regimes on the peninsula, egypt is actually a fairly secular society that is more like turkey than saudi arabia or iran. egyptians are not particularly religious people, and islam is not particularly popular, there. broadly speaking, egyptian society doesn't even seem to have much of an aversion to restrictions on "religious freedom" that many westerners would consider a little over the top - they have stricter rules on islamic dress than most western countries do, and at times have even passed laws against beards. you'd be surprised, if you don't know about it. so, when you see or hear the egyptian government blame the protests on "islamists", it's essentially a smear - and a transparent one that's set up by design. the real threat to the rulers are of course the leftists, but the regime will actually demonize the religion as a conscious control tactic.

this is of course different from what happened in syria, when you had an actual, literal invasion of foreign backed terrorist groups into the country. there's nothing like that happening in egypt, which has a substantive defense force that could wipe out such a thing pretty quickly.

the 2011 protests were largely driven by secular leftists to start with, before the security force co-opted them. and, even as the government blames the unrest on islam, it will send agents to try and rouse up religious sentiment, both because it will make the protestors unpopular and because it will make them easier to control. if there are any protests allowed to continue at all, those protests will be at the mosques.

which is why i would present the following proposal to my egyptian comrades as a tactic: avoid organizing on fridays. it's a setup. pick any other day. pick saturdays!

again: it's hard to get information out of these places, but you should assume that this is a secular protest for basic rights for now, regardless of what the state broadcasts, and regardless of how the western media picks it up. we'll see how that develops over time, and what kind of character it takes on - and whether it's still worth your moral support or not. but assume secularist, a priori.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/a-tense-and-divided-egypt-braces-for-more-protests-on-friday/2019/09/27/a7b779d4-e086-11e9-be7f-4cc85017c36f_story.html

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

"but, nobody listens to records. the future is in the singles market."

that's what they said in 1962, too.

and, even if they're right, that doesn't mean the albums market will cease to exist altogether.

i don't want to write singles. or, well, i do, but not like how you're thinking. i like big, epic records. that's enough of a market, for me.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

i had to crash this morning; i'm actually glad that i got a normal amount of sleep for the first time in a while. i'm done the spell check, and i got most of the internal cross-referencing done, at least. the music document increased by one page, whereas the dtk document increased by 7 pages. i still have to cross-reference the music document with the dtk document. then, i need to make sure i didn't drop any posts, before publishing and filing.

i should be done by the morning at the latest, i think. i hope.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

our constitution does not have property rights in it. trudeau won that fight, mostly because he had the ndp on his side.

and, it almost didn't have religion in it, it very well could have not had religion in it, but the west wouldn't have supported it, if it didn't.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

i've stated this before: it was an error for the elder trudeau, or for jean chretien as it may have fallen to him, to concede these points to the lougheed conservatives. if they couldn't get the signature without conceding religious rights, they should have given up. it should have been a deal-breaker. the liberals should have held to their convictions and fought harder to keep religion out of it - because they were right, and their arguments against religion in the constitution have panned out.

if we could open this back up again, i'd be on the side that the liberals were historically on, which is to get religion out of the constitution altogether.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

listen, i think i've been clear. i believe in a rights-based society, i believe in the rule of law and i believe in an enforcement mechanism.

but, i don't believe in property rights, and i don't believe in ethnic rights, and i don't believe in religious rights, either.

so, it's not a question over whether we're to have rights. we agree on that point. what we disagree over is what those rights are to actually be, which is a debate that we had not so long ago in canada, and which is clearly less closed than some would like to think.

further, the inclusion of religion in the constitution was an issue of major public debate - this wasn't obvious, wasn't without major detractors, including the elder trudeau, himself. it was the religious right, then and still led by alberta's conservative party, that insisted on the kind of language that we ended up with. if it was solely up to the elder trudeau, he wouldn't have given you the rights that his son is being criticized for not standing up for.

and, this goes back to these definitional debates about left and right, yet again.

there's nothing weird about me standing here as a left-liberal and questioning the role of religion in the constitution. we did that. it was the tories - the political ancestors of jason kenney, not of justin trudeau - that fought so hard to get that language in there, and that the chretien/trudeau liberals had to concede to to get the thing signed.

we see the consequences of that language, don't we?

and, i want my secular left back.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

for the swans fans...

https://www.youtube.com/user/deathtokoalas/playlists?view=50&sort=dd&shelf_id=48

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

no money until tomorrow morning.

so, it would seem as though i'm in tonight.

and, they are calling for rain with a high level of certainty, as well. 

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

what did i even to today? this was a bad month, in terms of productivity, really.

i can't get it back.

but, i need to pivot dramatically and really focus. i've been scatter-brained far too long, now. let's see if i can order myself a little....

there's not any use in finishing up the legal stuff for tomorrow, i'd might as well wait until monday.

i did want to start the alter-reality when i got through the rebuild. i wanted to start it for mid-1989. i guess it's not so bad if i do catch up, but i wanted to be done the rebuild by now. i don't want to juggle that - let's just pick up the pace on the rebuild.

i can plan around cleaning in here tomorrow or the next day. the p-trap seems to have held since this morning. i think it had something to do with his air conditioning, and it's actually getting cold tonight, so maybe i've put that off for a bit.

and, i'll see what i want to do this weekend when i find out oif the cash has come ino r not.

is that everything?

i wanted to publish the 10/2013 documents before the end of september, so that's what i'll be doing tonight. i have eaten. i may have to shower later, if it gets cold in here (and the heat doesn't turn on, which it maybe should).

i'm just banging my head against the wall on the political file - we're not in a revolutionary moment, we're in a reactionary moment, and it's just a question of navigating through it.

i can't be too hard on myself, or i'll get apathetic. the uploads and planning last week weren't awful; it had to be done, at some point, and i wasn't feeling well. i got some documents filed at the beginning of the week. yesterday was largely about the gas leak, and i'm just starting today, really. it's not so bad....

i just get upset with myself, sometimes. you might imagine that i'm mad at myself for other reasons, but i actually wish i had more writing and more music available. i can't get depressed, i just need to pivot.

so, i'll have to run these files through spell checks, cross-reference everything and clean them up. hopefully, they'll be published by sunrise, or so.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

but, we can do an accounting of this.

- the uprising in tunisia was legitimate, and did not get substantively co-opted. they're the single success case, and they should have been supported.
- the uprising in egypt was legitimate, but it got co-opted by the islamists, who were just fronts for the state. morsi wasn't leading a counter-revolution, exactly, but he was a fraud and a pawn. the end result was that the state was able to mobilize a religious movement to counter and drown out the real revolutionary movement. history records that morsi won the election, but it doesn't record that the revolutionaries understood what was happening, realized that the vote was a farce, and boycotted it out of protest. they knew that morsi was just a front for the old guard. and, when he was eventually torn down and replaced by a neo-mubarak in sisi, all the secularist left could do was shrug - we told you that that was what was happening.
- there was never a revolution in syria at all, there was just an invasion by foreign mercenaries. assad remains extremely popular in syria, and would easily win free elections, still.
- libya is what would have happened in syria if assad lacked popular support. but, talking about it like it was a revolution is disingenuous. this was a nato bombing campaign and basically a navy seals operation, more comparable to iraq or afghanistan.
- there were protest in turkey, but turkey is a democracy, and it's a different context. i'm always in solidarity with park drinking, though. especially during the day.
- there were also protests on the peninsula, but you can't do that there, and they didn't last long.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.   

i always said that the best way to help the syrians keep the death toll down in their fight against foreign terrorist groups would be to donate them some weapons.

they were using munitions that were manufactured in the second world war! these weapons killed indiscriminately, it is true. but, after years of sanctions, it was all they had.

eventually, the russians stepped in, thank god.

but, you can't blame them for defending themselves using what they had to defend themselves with. criticism of this point is really best directed at the sanctions...

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.   

i don't know why google keeps sending me to the guardian, which is a bourgeois paper.

but it just demonstrates the point.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/09/egypt-hopes-betrayed-mohamed-morsi

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.   

for clarity.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/saudi-arabia-coup-egypt

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.   

i guess there's now people out there that wouldn't actually remember this.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/31/egypt-secular-protests

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.   

right.

in syria, the "protests" were really just a pretext for a saudi-backed invasion. i've written about this here extensively, and the search function works, but the simple statement is that it wasn't the same thing as the "arab spring".

if you're going to criticize me, i really need you to do the research on what i actually said. i can have these debates, but i don't have time for strawmen arguments, or patience for people that want to imagine my positions. there's a lot of writing here; it's very specific. do the research, first, or shut up.

the saudis essentially took advantage of the situation in egypt to invade syria - that's what actually happened. why? because assad was threatening to bring in a democracy. i know that this is essentially the exact opposite of the western media narrative, but the truth is usually the exact opposite of what the military-intelligence-media complex tells you. so, we were told that assad was trying to suppress a democratic uprising and was slaughtering civilians; the truth is that he was trying to defend his country from an assault by a bunch of foreign terrorist groups, often using very old hardware, that were trying to stop him from bringing in a democracy, and assert a theocratic totalitarian state, instead. assad inherited a position of power that he didn't want, and then just wanted to dismantle it and go home; home was london.

why would the saudis do this? because they see any embrace of democracy by the arab world, whatsoever, as an existential threat. it's the old chomsky line - the last thing the united states or it's allies want in the region is democracy (note that chomsky's primary concern here has long been the well-being of the kurds). the mess in syria is maybe the most profound example of this, and certainly the most profound example in my conscious lifetime.

however, the protests in egypt were always real. so, when the saudis intervened in 2013 to back el-sisi, they were orchestrating a counter-revolution of a legitimate, if failed, revolution.

i don't have any support for the muslim brotherhood; it's maybe a little over the top to ban it, we need to allow for freedom of association, but i offer it to no solidarity at all. my solidarity is with the egyptian secular left, which is substantive, but disorganized. unfortunately, they boycotted the vote in 2011, which let the brotherhood win - a major mistake that should not be repeated.

why now? well, i don't know. but, the saudis are experiencing a moment of weakness, so it's perhaps a good opportunity, whether that was the actual calculus, or not.

but, standing with a secular arab left means that assad is on the same side as the protestors in egypt, and that the militants in syria are on the same side as sisi. this is the point that the media has tried to confuse you on....

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/26/over-1900-arrested-as-egypt-braces-for-more-protests

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.   

so, the bloc are floating this idea of banning people from voting unless they show their faces again, and i wish they'd just drop it, because it's too far and i'm sure it's hurting them, politically. it really makes them look stupid. there are valid arguments underlying the ban on religious symbols in the workplace, especially the classroom, but it's a lot harder to make sense of why somebody needs to take off their scarves to receive public services. i think there's a strong argument that the motives underlying the services ban actually are racist, which is undermining the more valid arguments around the workplace ban.

there's a lot to unpack, here.

first, is voting even a government service? i would have thought of it as exercising a right, not receiving a service. we certainly have a whole constitutional apparatus around voting rights, and denying them based on one's clothing is about as absurd as you could get. as i stated earlier - voting rights are absolute. the only time i can think of justifiably suspending them would be from behind a jail cell.

but, even if it was a government service, are these people not taxpayers? are they not entitled to services?

with voting, specifically, there's an issue of being able to identify the voter. i'm not saying that this has ever happened, but you could potentially steal an election by sending the same handful of women in niqabs over and over, if nobody checks their id. ok. it's not particularly controversial to suggest that you need to identify yourself before voting, but there's other ways to do that besides leaving your scarf at the door. the supreme court has ruled that stating a solemn oath is good enough, which is probably too lax - equipping at least one voting centre in each riding with staff that can accommodate the request to unveil in private is probably a better idea. but, whatever rules you want to put in place, you have to make sure they have the opportunity to vote.

it's going to be interesting to me to see how the bloc's recent momentum reacts to this. one would have thought it was obvious that you should keep quiet about this, given how people have reacted to it for however many years.

they may have shot themselves in the foot.

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/national/election-2019/bloc-quebecois-calls-for-end-to-veiled-voting/wcm/10b1508e-da1c-40e5-a07c-20ccbbc9bee8

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.   

i was critical about impeaching trump previously, because the message it would have broadcast to potential swing voters was that the democrats aren't interested in governing, which is why the lost the house in the first place. the best way for democrats to get these voters back would be to write detailed, quality legislation and try to push it through, even if it's a waste of time. i mean, it wouldn't be a waste of time anyways, because it could form the core of future legislation.

a democratic party that is keen on good policy would be likely to attract me, whereas a democratic party that just wants to play silly political games based on lunatic fringe msnbc conspiracy theories that are probably even actually cia propaganda would just leave me cold and turn me off. and, i'm the type of voter they need to get up and out to the polls.

but, the recent allegations are positively nixonian. there's a line that was crossed here that you can neither rationalize nor ignore. this isn't a political game any more; there's crystal clear evidence of openly criminal behavior, and they have a responsibility to move forward on it, even if it's bogs everything down.

i would rather they didn't, but now they kind of have to.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

so, what about this weekend?

friday overnight might be nice, if it doesn't rain, but it's looking like it's going to be a little chilly. i'd like to hit blanck mass on friday; i don't have any clear plan for saturday.

but, whether i can do that or not is going to depend on when the money enters into my account.

i'm supposed to get paid at midnight on the 30th, which is a monday morning. the banks are closed on sundays, so they can't process it, and i'd have to wait until the morning of the 1st. they can't do that, legally, so what they do is transfer the money into the account before the weekend starts. but, i've seen a lack of consistency on this point - sometimes it comes in on the friday morning, and sometimes it comes in on the saturday morning.

we'll find out in less than 24 hours. if the money comes in, and the weather co-operates, i'll be heading back out friday night. if the money doesn't come in until saturday morning, it doesn't matter if the weather co-operates - and i'm also certainly in for the weekend.

i'm behind on everything, obviously.

but, i want to publish the 10/2013 documents before the end of the month, so i'mgoing to make that the priority over the court issue.

again: there's no deadline on the appeal, and they've hardly been punctual, themselves. i'm going to need to plan to get to toronto to file, which probably won't be until november, anyways.

as mentioned previously: i don't think that last week was terrible. i got some things done that i wanted done. further, i've had some complications in here with the air quality.

if i can get the appeal documents finished early next week, i think i'm winning.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.  

see, this is what the oil industry has done here in canada - they've managed to frame the issue as one of consumer consumption patterns, and greenwashed it into a product.

stopping climate change is just something you buy off the shelf, and the more you spend on it, the more you worthy you are - tapping into the culture's dormant calvinist supremacism.

don't let them do this. it's bullshit.

no, you don't have to pay out of pocket to stop climate change, nor would that even work. it's the big polluters that need to pay for this, not you. 

https://globalnews.ca/news/5948758/canadians-climate-change-ipsos-poll/

the liberals are supposed to do better than this. 

so, last night was a band from montreal called fly pan am that i remember from a few constellation records releases from the late 90s and early 00s, but mostly the late 90s. i walked into the show without having heard their brand new record, and without being very familiar with their last two, either.

this was awesome back in the day, though:

i'm going to give a shout out to montreal favourite steve hackett via fly pan am, though. yes, that's phil on drums, for those keeping track of the phil posts.

i didn't get to the bar until after 22:30, more like 22:45, expecting to have missed the opening act, but i didn't. it was some kind of mope rock, defined by a guitarist with a loop pedal and a drum machine. fairly boring...

i spent most of the money i had left for september on last weekend, which, given the current forecast for october, is looking like it was a wise choice. but i didn't want to miss fly pan am, so i held to an extra $21.79 in my account. the plan was to pre-drink on the way in, pull that $20 out at the last minute and spend the remaining $8 (along with some change i had kicking around) on two beers at the bar.

which bar?

windsor has a total of one alts-y kind of bar, called phog. there's another spot around the corner that's fairly safe, called villain's, that has a bit of a younger crowd nowadays that i'm borderline too old for, but they don't do a lot of shows, so i usually just end up in there for a few minutes at a time. there used to be a bro-ish punk bar down the street, but it was too bro, and i never even went in there once. i didn't fit in at the marijuana bar when it was open and didn't really want to hang out there, with gamers and normies. before that, there was a slightly more diverse space and absinthe bar called milk, but it's been shut down for a few years, now. if you look around town, you might find the odd thing here and there, but the only seriously interesting venue for the entire time that i've been here has been phog.

phog is a great venue, almost an institution, but it's very small, and the owner has been trying for years to open up a bigger space for bigger bands, something he keeps failing at - because the market in windsor just isn't there. the market he wants to tap into is really in suburban detroit, which is a good distance up woodward, and saturated as it is. so, he's tried working with the theatre next door, which is always empty, and that fell through. he's tried working with a bar down the street called the rondo, which has since closed. his most recent attempt to get a bigger space was to help open a renovated bar across the street from phog, an old dance club. so, this is a new bar in town, and one i may end up at from time to time. fly pan am wasn't the first show, but it was the first show i was at.

so, i hit the machine on the way in, bumped into some people outside the bar, made sure i was at the right place, plopped my $20 down and took mt $8.00 + $2.00 in quarters to the bar for a beer.

tom is working the bar, for some reason. $6 for a cherry porter, a request that confused him; he seemed to think i'd want something a little lighter. but, i'd rather have a heavy beer with a fruity tinge than a lighter beer that tastes like bread mold. don't misunderstand me; the beer was good, and it was tall, and it was fairly strong, but i just didn't have $6 on me for another one. so, when i stumbled downstairs to find a smoke, i stepped into villain's to down a beer i could afford.

i was met face to face with somebody in a ridiculous tinfoil suit that was threatening to play a 12-string guitar at the open mic inside. well, ok. it turns out that he was essentially playing bass, backing up a singer-songwriter type on an acoustic guitar. they had some people excited about them, but i found them rather boring. this is an open mic night that i've considered playing at before - and in fact did play at years ago - but that obviously isn't the right audience for what i'd want to do. like, i really actually don't like "indie rock". they'd no doubt tell me to chill out, and stop playing so loud. i don't want to come down on them too hard - they're friendly. really. - but i've picked up these question marks as to why i don't go to villain's more often and the best way for me to answer you is to suggest that you don't know me very well. they wouldn't like my music very much, and i know that; i'm rarely impressed by what i see in there, either. it's nice to have the friendly space not far from where i'd rather be, but i keep it at an arm's length for a reason.

so, i finished my beer up, bummed a smoke, caught a quick toke on somebody's thc vape and made it in for the last half or so of a set by a detroit band called pato y pato. people outside suggested they sounded like tortoise, but i didn't pick that up. to begin with, they didn't have a guitarist; it was two keyboard players playing through a haze of guitar effects. i thought a better comparison was to fuck buttons, but they didn't have the same focus on song structures, or the aggressive lyrics. in some ways, it just sounded like kraftwerk. it was an enjoyable slab of sound, but kind of not more than that. sometimes, you don't need more than that. i'd advise not skipping them.

so, i went out for another smoke between sets and found myself back out at villain's, sharing somebody's bong, but i had to get back in to catch the set. i hate to smoke and run like that. they're finally opening up a store downtown in november, so the days of me buzzing around like a fly are nearly over.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/windsors-first-legal-pot-shop-slated-to-open-nov-1

i had no idea what fly pan am would sound like in 2019, and i don't think i recognized anything in the set, which seems to have been mostly brand new tracks. some of it made sense, while i found some of it lacking; i wasn't sure what to expect, but i wasn't expecting a standard punk rock band, and at points that's exactly what they were. they seem to draw more from their label mates, gybe!, nowadays then they used to (and, for those wondering what happened to skinny fists era guitarist roger tellier-craig, this is the band he came from and is still in). the instrumental interludes seemed to draw as much from industrial music as they did from musique concrete, which was always a big part of what they did, but has morphed into something different altogether. the post-punk aesthetic has evolved into a motorik, and apparently taken in some influences from black metal, perhaps via the black ox orkestar? it's a starker, almost nihilistic sound from a band that i remember as dubby and warm. i think i was entertained, overall - i was impressed at points, at the points it made sense based on their history, and less so at others, when it maybe didn't. hey, they got me talking. i'm glad i went...

they have a bandcamp site up:
https://flypanam.bandcamp.com/album/cest-a

so, i get out of the show and walk across the street to phog, where there are people smoking. i have about $0.75, usd, on me. i want another beer. there's now $1.79 in my account. sol? i left $6 usd from last weekend on my stove, thinking i might be able to use it for blanck mass on friday, in a pinch...

i'd have to walk home, get the $6 and bike back. can this be done?

i spent the walk back trying to put proper mathematical bounds on this process. i left about 21:50; my bank receipt said 22:32. so, it took me about 42 minutes to walk to the machine, which is about two minutes further than phog. let's say it took 40 minutes. i left at 1:08. can i make it in half the time? probably not. 75% of the time? if i walk quickly, efficiently, that's not absurd. and, if i can make it home before 1:40, then, could i make it back to the bar before 2:00?

time on the clock when i got in: 1:36. lots of time to get back and order a beer before last call...

so, within a few minutes, i'm back at phog, ordering not one but two beers (a sneaky trick right before last call, to extend the night). tom is at the bar again, and it's now clear why - he's entertaining some old friends that are back home from out of town, and he would do so a little late, on this night, which was fine, as it gave me the chance to finish the two beers that i bought before last call. so we're all clear about that.

one of the folks at the bar was an angry croatian nationalist. he was angry all night, and seemed to enjoy it - it was a bit of a shtick. but, what is the difference between a serb and a croat, anyways?

i asked him after bumming a smoke from him, outside.

"it's mostly about the religion, right?"

that's what i always thought, anyways.

i have to tell you that i always thought they were mostly the same, really, and could never really figure this out. i knew serbs. i knew croats. one was catholic, the other orthodox - kind of a minor difference, given that they're both christians. now, the bosnians are a more complicated thing, as are the kosovars, but why the fuck are the serbians and the croats and the slovenians going after each other, anyways?

religion. as always. right.

no - and he got pretty mad at me for suggesting it, too. he claimed it had to do with a different history, but that didn't get through my bullshit filter, either. they were both under turkic domination for a while (and both resisted it), and then they were both under austrian hegemony. before that, they were in the broad grouping of slavic raiders that set up on the outskirts of the empire, and periodically plundered greece. there's no history for either serbs or croats before that, and so you're stuck trying to figure out if they're ancestrally iranian or slavic, or something in between. even if you derive them from what herodotus called the "royal scythians", you're still stuck with the reality that their only history is greek until well into the middle ages, however far back you can extend it, and with whatever speciousness.

i asked him some questions, but i couldn't get a straight answer out of him, and it just left me remembering how stupid that nationalism is, as a concept. he may have been trolling me slightly, and i got that point. but, he honestly couldn't answer my question.

he could tell you he was proud to be a croat.

he could insist that the serbians weren't like him, and that his father was in the right when he fought against them.

but, he couldn't tell me what the difference between a croat and a serb really is.

he eventually stormed off, but i think he was just looking for an excuse to get home, as it was getting fairly late. it was almost 4:00 when i got home, took a shower, made some eggs and went to sleep.

so, that was fly pan am in windsor in 2019.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.  

"not taking teenagers seriously is ageist".

yeah?

you're an idiot.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

i would, personally, rather listen to distinguished scientists present peer-reviewed science than listen to children cry in public.

sorry.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.  

the tendency of the pseudo-left to elevate teenage girls to the level of spokesperson says a lot about their collective mentality.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

you want me to say something about this child, greta thurnberg?

the fact that you've got a little kid up there addressing world leaders, one who barely understands what she's saying, is a reflection of the absurdity that has come of the world body.

a functioning united nations would not allow a 16-year old to address them - that would be seen as a stupid waste of time.

the world body needs serious reform.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.  

so, i met an angry croatian nationalist last night. and, what is the difference between a serb and a croat, anyways?

"it's mostly about the religion, right?"

i have to tell you that i always thought they were mostly the same, really, and could never really figure this out. i knew serbs. i knew croats. one was catholic, the other orthodox - kind of a minor difference, given that they're both christians. now, the bosnians are a more complicated thing, as are the kosovars, but why the fuck are the serbians and the croats and the slovenians going after each other, anyways?

religion. as always. right.

no - and he got pretty mad at me for suggesting it, too. he claimed it had to do with a different history, but that didn't get through my bullshit filter, either. they were both under turkic domination for a while, and then they were both under austrian hegemony. before that, they were in the broad grouping of slavic raiders that set up on the outskirts of the empire, and periodically plundered greece. there's no history for either serbs or croats before that, and so you're stuck trying to figure out if they're ancestrally iranian or slavic, or something in between. even if you derive them from what herodotus called the "royal scythians", you're still stuck with the reality that their only history is greek until well into the middle ages, however far back you can extend it, and with whatever speciousness.

i asked him some questions, but i couldn't get a straight answer out of him, and it just left me remembering how stupid that nationalism is, as a concept. he may have been trolling me slightly, and i got that point. but, he honestly couldn't answer my question.

he could tell you he was proud to be a croat.

he could insist that the serbians weren't like him, and that his father was in the right when he fought against them.

but, he couldn't tell me what the difference between a croat and a serb really is.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this. 

yeah, my sheets are ok.

that's good. i got it in time...

the liberals are supposed to do better than this. 

i'm going to post another update on the smell before i take a shower, which i'm hoping helps quite a bit. we'll have to see if i want to launder my sheets tonight or not, but i'm leaning towards it. i didn't get to doing this yesterday, as i was getting ready to go out to the show - the review is coming soon.

i got back on sunday close to noon and spent much of the next 36 hours tossing and turning, but i was also trying to pinpoint the exact location of the ammonia smell. i have an old cabinet in front of my bed that is turned sideways, and is useful to put a monitor on (my laptop has a burnt out screen lamp in it). so, when i'm typing, my nose is a foot from the cabinet, because my bed is pushed right up to it. the amp, which is covered in 30-40 year old carpet, was previously keeping the cabinet (which is broken) in place. the stink was landing on the amp, and taking the amp out mostly fixed it, but it was always clear that it wasn't the actual cause of anything.

when the smell came back without the amp, the place the smell was landing wasn't clear. so, i lysoled around the cabinet a few times, over the floor, around the bedframe, etc - which helped me eventually figure out that the smell was coming from a combination of the boxspring, and the underside of the mattress.

so, i dismantled the bed yesterday afternoon and went over the whole area with a lot of lemon-smelling dish soap. i left it dismantled when i went out, and put it back together when i got home this morning at about 4:00. and, that seemed to work before the p-trap dried back out and released some more gas; i might need to do this again.

for now, what i've done in here is make coffee. if i can't blow the hydrogen sulfide around, maybe i can overpower it. we'll see how that works...

so, what happened? why does the boxspring smell now, when it was the amp before?

well, it could be because somebody came in here. i need to keep pointing this possibility out, but the absolute depravity of this is getting beyond baffling.

but, an ammonia smell would be the expected result of hydrogen sulfide exposure. so, there could be sewer gas in the boxspring. i suppose that some moisture, combined with a lack of air circulation, could have brought it back out. or, there could have been some gas leakage when i was gone...

i need to understand what's happening before i can figure out how to fix it, and how to react, otherwise. i have a naturalistic explanation, and if it's correct then there should be a reasonable way to fix it, so long as i can keep the gas from coming out, or get to it as soon as it starts.

for now, the next thing to do is clean a little in the other room and take a shower. i'll get back to the show review in a bit.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this. 

i blew the day, but i've got some writing coming...

the gas leak came back this evening around 18:00, so i had to fill the p-trap back up with water and dish soap before sealing the cleanout back up. i've blocked the leak, but not before it sent a bunch more shit into the air. i'm not going to get the fan back in here for another day or two, so it might get kind of rank.

i guess i'll have to do laundry again.....

there's a temperature gradient around the cleanout that may be contributing to the problem. i don't how normal that is, though - it goes right to the underground sewer, right? you'd kind of expect it to be a little cooler down there.

but, i suspect the bigger culprit is the dehumidifier upstairs.

i'm going to send him an email asking him to make sure that he's running water through the sinks and flushing toilets periodically, that he's not letting anything dry out.

as it is, i was up in the afternoon around 15:00-ish and haven't done much yet besides eat. lots of stuff to do, though.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this. 

nobody cares.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2019/09/25/green-partys-fully-costed-platform-gets-a-failing-grade-from-former-parliamentary-budget-officer.html

the liberals are supposed to do better than this. 

this comes up periodically. it came up last night.

i have had no plastic surgery. at all. no botox. no implants. no facial work. nothing.

just hormones.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this. 

the homeowner needs to be a reasonable person, it is true, but you also expect the court to be reasonable.

you could imagine a situation where a homeowner exits his house and chases the trespasser down, or doesn't give him a fair chance to leave before he shoots, or any other such aggressive behaviour. i think that most people would see something wrong with this, because our concepts of property are not absolute; the difference between you and i on this point is probably just that i'm willing to admit it, and you're not. a part of this comes in recognizing that trespassing can't be seen as an absolute wrong - he could have been in a car crash and looking for somebody to help his injured wife, or he could have been out hiking and convinced he was being hunted by a cougar, or he could be mentally ill and trying to find the end of the rainbow. you can't just assume that the motives of the trespasser are nefarious, and because you can't assume that, an over-reaction can't be justified by exposing the motives as nefarious, if they are, either. it's the homeowner's responsibility to try and establish the actual facts before acting, and they're consequently responsible for the consequences of failing to do so.

but, the court being reasonable means recognizing the limitations and stress that the homeowner is under.

i'd have to look at the exact facts fairly closely to make an informed analysis, and i'm not going to do that, but the trespasser has a hard case to make here.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-landowner-sued-by-injured-trespasser-precedent-lawyer-1.5296804

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

so, the liberals are very clear on how they see emissions reductions: it's your fault, and you have to pay to fix it. you need to pull your carbon footprints down by your own bootstraps.

they are insisting - through their policies - that this is essentially a consumption problem, and it needs to be resolved via changes in consumer behaviour. thoroughly right-wing, to the core.

we need a government that understands that this is a problem that was largely created by government and will need to be largely fixed by government, that incentives to consumers and tweaks to consumption will do very little so long as we maintain the system. the problem is not individual, not atomized, but systemic in nature.

so, this is a perfect example of the kind of policy that will not work, and should not be proposed, and should not be supported.

the greens have a better plan, here. and, this is the hard truth we need to face: if we want to fix this, we need to pay for it through public spending.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-climate-change-plan-home-retrofits-1.5296400 

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

chrystia freeland is fond of claiming that she gets paid in canadian dollars.

but, i'd like to see an audit.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

In August 2018, Baird appeared on Saudi-owned TV station Al Arabiya to comment on the diplomatic dispute between Canada and Saudi Arabia and urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to fly to Riyadh to apologize in person to the Saudi royal family.^[156] NDP MP Charlie Angus called the appearance "stunning" and suggested that the Ethics Commissioner should investigate the incident.^[157]

yup.

this is the guy that broke off relations with the syrians. and, he'd better be careful in saudia arabia, too. i've said this before: don't lose your head on the peninsula, baird.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.

so, will we take the lead on this as a force for multilateralism, tolerance and peace?

or will we remain shackled to the demented legacy of john baird - one of the most mindless, belligerent idiots that we've ever elected, in this country?

we made a mistake.

we're long overdue in reversing it...

so, i will repeat my call for the liberal government to take the lead in restoring international relations with the assad regime, in an attempt to move beyond the past.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/12/28/bashar-al-assad-was-diplomatic-outcast-now-former-arab-adversaries-are-restoring-ties/

 the liberals are supposed to do better than this.