in defense of working canadians, the fact is that singh hasn't integrated. it would be one thing if there was this kind of a reaction against an ujjal dosanjh or a niki haley - that would simply be racist. these people have integrated; they're just like us. but, singh's claim to fame was fighting against helmet laws on religious grounds. he wears a ridiculous beard, and he won't take his turban off. an aversion to this kind of thing isn't inherently racist, as there is a political basis underlying the argument. by refusing to integrate, he's wearing a set of political beliefs and ideologies on his sleeves that voters have every right to back away from.

i might rather make the opposite point - that electing somebody that refuses to shave off his magic beard would be a massive step backwards into the void of pre-modern ignorance.

i just wish we had a better option.

it was easy to predict that core ndp voters were not going to like jagmeet singh very much.

unfortunately, it's starting to look like they may be unwilling to support the liberals for more or less the same reason.

as the ndp and the liberals one-up each other to pander to ethnic voters, there appears to be a large migration from the ndp to the conservatives underway, and it is probably being driven by a backlash against the pandering.

the beneficiary of the coming ndp collapse may turn out to be andrew scheer, and that is not rational - because he supports the same policies, and many that are worse, too.

here is the noise trade smashwords link for the july archive of this blog:

https://books.noisetrade.com/j/072013-dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja-22
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026589

i first decided to remove myself from facebook some time around the end of 2013, not due to any kind of security concern but due to being fed up by the terrible interface and incredibly slow servers. a few years later, i found myself with a similar desire to extricate myself from the youtube comments section, as the interface changes made it almost impossible to actually use. but, old habits die hard, and it took several attempts before i could really pry myself off, not having any kind of permanent success until i designated the migration as a time-wasting tactic while i successfully kicked the tobacco addiction, in the first half of 2016. this left me with thousands of pages of writing that i was going to need to eventually repost to a more user-friendly platform, which ended up being the blogger interface on google. faced with the need to build liner notes for my very first recording at the end of 1996, it was at the beginning of 2017 that i first sat down with the intent to rebuild my music journal as a singular whole, with the eventual plan of cutting it up and appending it in installments within the discography.

my life hit a roadblock in the middle of 2017 as a consequence of a shift in ownership of the building i was living in, which led to multiple legal battles (still ongoing) and two separate moves. the situation eventually worked itself out for the better, but it slowed me down dramatically and left me with a very large back log in working through the loose ends around closing my first two period discs that i am only finally beginning to clear in the spring of 2019. this added period of reflection has allowed me to think this through over and over, and add increasing levels of detail to the journal, and subsequent pending liner notes. while not every month is going to be equally exciting, the level of detail in what was initially a journal is now more like a series of novellas. the first entry, which is only the second half of july, is 222 pages long.

i am not going to summarize the story, but it is available on the web over here: musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/07/.

this is a compilation of written correspondences that includes facebook posts, messenger chats and emails with friends and family members, in an attempt to build the context around my move from ottawa to windsor in early august, 2013. this was a pretty heavy two weeks, and the narrative consequently has an arc of it's own, but the story being told here is how i rebuilt my studio over the second half of 2013. 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.

the events documented in this journal occurred in july, 2013 and were compiled into a narrative in several stages over the years 2014-2019. journal completed on mar 31, 2019. released and finalized in doc and pdf format on april 14, 2019. doc0713. 

credits

released August 1, 2013

j - editing, participant

esa - participant
illuminous - participant
mom - participant
sister - participant
nana - participant
step-mother - participant
the youngest aunt - participant
jeff - participant
dad - participant

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/07-2013-music-journal-2-2

ok, so we're going to do this in two ways.

first, i've set up a noise trade account, where i can post all of the pdfs. i've done it like this rather consciously, as it allows me to accept donations without explicitly charging, and i think that this is important, in context.

however, i'm also going to set up downloads for the music journal entries in the bandcamp store, which means i have some exciting news: i will finally have a new product for sale within a few hours

here's the new link:
https://books.noisetrade.com/j

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.

readable archives are now at the following sites:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/deathtokoalas
https://www.lulu.com/search?contributor=jessica+murray
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NI_sEi1t9NxTeOB9Es3A2Ge8ji4iTXit?usp=sharing

i still haven't really slept all weekend - a couple of two-three hour slots, that's it. it's a welcome change, but i'm still getting re-used to it.

the clean-up operation on 07/2013 is now done. i have four dynamic documents - one for the travel blog, one for the dtk site, one for this site and one for the music journal. what i'll want to do is set up a subscription for each one, somehow, and then got on to august asap.

now, i need to eat, and we'll see how much longer i'm awake for.

i don't know anything about these groups, but this is something that should not happen in a free and democratic society. further, they have no due process - no way to defend themselves.

on a democratic internet with a concept of due process and a functioning rule of law, facebook would be required to seek an injunction and get a court order before it is able to do this, and these groups would be entitled to appeal the decision in a court of law.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5141557/facebook-bans-extremism-hate-policy/

there are lots of reasons that i'm disappointed in this government, even if i didn't really have high expectations for it.

and, this isn't the reason i'm not voting for it; the reason i'm not voting for it is that it has utterly failed to take any meaningful action towards reducing emissions at all, whatsoever. emissions are up and are going to continue to rise. in my view, they had one job and they failed.

but, this is the kind of thing that i'm going to be actively campaigning against.

the idea of separating the behaviour of a religious group from it's own ideology, or of arguing that religion is not an ideology, is directly out of 1984. this is doublespeak, and it is wrong; this is an ignorant, anti-intellectual decision that sets a dangerous, worrisome precedent that must be rigorously countered.

it's not about the sikhs precisely, it's about the broader implications. this makes me embarrassed to be a canadian.

all things otherwise aside, i do not want to live in the kind of society that this decision projects. and, as great as a threat that climate change is to the planet, it is this kind of backwards thinking that is a far greater threat to the country.

i will obviously not be voting for the conservatives. i remain a leftist; this is a left-wing critique. but, when i vote against trudeau in the upcoming election, this is the idiocracy that i'm voting against, more-so than anything else.

and, i will not separate my decision from the ideology that informed it

https://globalnews.ca/news/5162913/goodale-terror-report-language/