trying to separate these three different identities is sometimes a hard task. maybe i should clarify it a little for myself, if not for others, so i'm not freaking myself out over it.

1) initially, dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja was my general posting identity. it's just a string of random characters, strategically chosen so that d starts and a ends. it means nothing, and just came out of the annoyance of trying to find a username that didn't have a number at the end of it, as those are always eyesores. some time around 2007 or 2008, i started posting very heavily on the cbc site using variations on this theme - there were dozens of accounts set up, all eventually deleted, and in the long run eradicated by the government. they disabled them all, one by one. i was hoping to get some of these conversations for the blog, but it's unlikely i'll get much, besides what's archived over email, which isn't much. and that's a shame, truly. there were some great debates there that are now lost. no thanks to michael ignatieff...

that handle ended up converted into a facebook page, which was essentially a link dump, that ran from around 2010-2014. i have most of the facebook page in archive; the tail end of it is the beginning of this blog.

while that handle was initially for everything, it is now strictly the political side of my posting persona, although it also functions as the general blog site. over time, much of that will get doubled to the music site.

2) deathtokoalas was initially an email address that i set up to send dumpfiles home from work, when i was doing tech support for microsoft. at the time, there weren't a lot of good options for sending large files over email. that was 2006/2007ish. i didn't start posting on youtube under this moniker until early 2014, and, when i did, i used it for everything - music reviews, politics, social criticism and also to market my own tunes. i shut that moniker down in early 2016, but it lingered, and i set the blog back up in 2019, to specifically focus on music reviews & media criticism, with the political component split off to this blog, and the music journal split into it's own space, as well. deathtokoalas also has a socratic dialog component to it that began with the dstkgfutydtikguyfduyogfia concept but has largely been lost, so lengthy debates will end up there, whether they fit the general theme of the blog or not.

yet, as deathtokoalas became this overreaching youtube identity when it existed, it's sometimes hard to split ideas away from it. in my mind, i seem to still want it to be this general youtube identity so i want the blog to contain all youtube posts, and i keep having to force myself to enforce the separation...which is hard, psychologically....

so, for example, there's times when i posted my music to youtube, and i want to crosspost the memory to the deathtokoalas blog, but i have to stop myself from doing it, as the music journal takes that task over, totally. the fact that it was posted under the deathtokoalas moniker at the time does not matter; the music journal is for music, this blog is for politics and deathtokoalas is for media commentary, specifically. let's get it right, jess.

3) and then there is the music journal, which will in the end double as a broad general journal, as well. it includes notes on recording (when it is happening), cross-references to blogs about recording and posts about where to buy completed recordings. so, that means it will take over that component of the deathtokoalas identity, and i can't be upset about deathtokoalas losing it.

ok.

i think i had to type that out to clarify it for myself in my own head. great. moving on...

i will be slightly updating the february and march deathtokoalas journals to ensure i'm being consistent and complete. i went back and updated the links for the music blog, at least, after all. it will not be long before i move into april, and let's hope i can pick this up.

i'm sure he has lots of questions to ask.

for example - should we thank him for his contribution?

if you take this guy seriously at this point, you're a buffoon.

he sure has a lot of gall, though. really. this is a guy with a deeply racist history, and we're supposed to think he's doing anything besides capitalizing on the situation for his own political gain?

it's a joke. he's a joke. and, you should treat his "concern" with scorn.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-adam-arrest-video-1.5609446

windsor is just so incredibly boring.

i'm a big city person. i didn't move from ottawa to windsor; i wouldn't move from a larger town to a smaller one. i don't want to live in a small town, i want to live in a huge city.

i moved from ottawa to detroit. really.

so, even if they were to re-open here tomorrow, i could very well just stay in for months.

when i first moved here, it took a year to get border documents and i went to a total of three concerts on this side of the border.

and, i'm not going to just aimlessly go for drinks, that's boring.

you know, there is an airport in windsor.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/u-s-travel-restrictions-covid-19-land-border-fly-1.5607741

this is stupid. i took a plane to florida once in the 90s; that's it. and, i'm so ideologically opposed to air travel, that i couldn't imagine myself actually getting on a plane for any reason at all. if i'm going to toronto, for example, i'd rather hitchhike.

but, it's starting to look like detroit may be reopening relatively soon. 

how much would it cost? out of curiosity?

.....and it turns out that the airport is completely closed, unfortunately:

http://www.yqg.ca/

foiled.

well, if it was under $50, i might have thought about it, depending on the show.......?

naw.

ok, i'm not done updating the playlists, but i don't want to do that anymore. i expected that to take, like, an hour - not a week

i'm going to eat and get back to reconstructing skeletons for the two smaller blogs this afternoon.

i want to support a revolution like the one that happened in france, not a revolution like the one that happened in iran.

and, if you think that means i'm not on your side, you're probably right.

listen - i know better than to conflate media reports of street movements with the views of people on the ground. there's no uniformity of thought in these movements; it's a collection of individuals with widely varying goals, and a general aversion to the status quo. it will run the spectrum from conservatives driven by some concept of morality to left-anarchists that want to burn the churches and banks down. as you know, i am on the very far left of this spectrum, but i'm sure i could find a clique of like-minded people if i went looking for them.

but, i have no interest in involving myself in the politics of race, or in the politics of religion, for that matter. this is not a healthy direction for the protest movement - it's going to end up looking like the iranian revolution, in the end, if we continue down this path. and, these foucauldians will get what they want. i consider this to be relabeled burkeanism, and i don't support any of it.

i would expect that if i were to go down on the ground and talk to people, it would only be a vocal minority of people that i'd find myself in any kind of serious disagreement with. i'd have broad levels of agreement with most of the people about what they're angry about, even if my prescriptions are well to the left of theirs. so, we might agree that there's a problem in the behaviour of the police, and then very adamantly disagree on what the cause of the problem is, and how to fix it, although some of the messaging in the media seems encouraging - it does seem as though there are more voices calling for police and prison abolition, and less voices calling for retribution or incrementalism, than i would have thought, based on the reports i've seen. i can't know what is happening around me without directly investigating, but, as mentioned, i'm not interested in doing it - i will wait this out, and reinvolve myself when the narrative switches back towards class. and, it will; there is no revolutionary potential or political future in the politics of race. it just reinforces the status quo.

the vocal minority that i'm going to disagree with the most are the group pushing neo-liberal identity politics, that essentially want to argue for a fairer playing field so that everybody can compete against each other more efficiently. these people (who are liberals, not leftists) show up at every left-wing protest, and try and dominate and control it, and somebody always has to stand up against them, which i've done in the past, but cannot do, in context - we need black voices to do this, this time. that's the trick the capitalists are using, here. the capitalist press will present these neo-liberals as the crux of the movement, because it reinforces the neo-liberal paradigm (look! the protesters just want the same thing as the banks do! they just want it faster. so, there is no movement.), but i do know better - i realize that it's just a small percentage of self-identified "leaders", who are largely being directed by or actually are undercover cops. the vast majority of the people assembled are well to the left of that.

i just can't be the person that shows up to this and makes these arguments, because the thing is designed to attack me for doing it. the moment that i uncover the charade for what it is, i'll get targeted as a racist. the thing is erected that way, and there's no escape from it.

i've tried to point out things, like burning the police station, that are more in line with a politics i can support, as a leftist. but, this is, broadly, a step backwards from occupy, in terms of political direction. i saw this coming; i think a lot of people did. it has to run it's course...

as a (mostly) white person, i just have to stand back and let the black voices work this out on their own. when they've worked this out, and want to get back to building a broad-based leftist political movement based around class, rather than a neo-liberal movement based around race, they can let me know.

i'm still waiting for the economy to fall, myself. this is not a lumpenproletariat; it's mostly a middle class movement. and, they just want a fairer playing field, to compete on. i don't particularly disagree, but it's not revolutionary in character. it's reactionary. it's conservative...