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.
Thursday, September 26, 2019
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.
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.
at
22:55
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.
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.
at
22:47
for clarity.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/saudi-arabia-coup-egypt
the liberals are supposed to do better than this.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/saudi-arabia-coup-egypt
the liberals are supposed to do better than this.
at
22:20
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.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/31/egypt-secular-protests
the liberals are supposed to do better than this.
at
22:07
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.
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.
at
21:57
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.
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.
at
20:47
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.
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.
at
18:20
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.
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.
at
10:32
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.
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.
at
09:58
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.
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.
at
09:21
"not taking teenagers seriously is ageist".
yeah?
you're an idiot.
the liberals are supposed to do better than this.
yeah?
you're an idiot.
the liberals are supposed to do better than this.
at
07:35
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.
sorry.
the liberals are supposed to do better than this.
at
07:28
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.
the liberals are supposed to do better than this.
at
07:20
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.
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.
at
07:10
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.
"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.
at
00:03
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