audio permanently closed for inri009.
===
this is the final version of something i'd been playing with since about '94 or so, and by this time the track had become something that was beyond absurd. in a way, this is the culmination of everything i did in this period. it's the central track of my inri years: it's both the first thing i spent any time seriously writing and the ultimate realization of the musical ideas i was exploring. it's the longest track on the first demo. the drum programming is deep, there's an orchestration through sequencing, synth parts in the background, lead guitar work coming to the forefront - it's everything thrown together at a coherent level, really for the first time.
that this is the central track of this period maybe demonstrates how ridiculous i was and how ridiculous my musical vision was. maybe it also demonstrates just how young i was.
the remaining tracks in this period sort of pivot after this.
i should be clear: this is pretty much the most terrible song that you could possibly imagine existing, and that was kind of the intent. the shock value is entirely up front. but at the same time, it's just so terrible that it's kind of funny, and that was entirely intended as well.
you could maybe say something about how somebody like alice cooper ripping live chicken heads off in the middle of a performance is just about the most tyrannical thing you could imagine somebody getting away with on stage. it's just *so* ridiculous, that you can't help but laugh - even as you're horrified.
it's a phase a lot of teenagers go through. i guess the difference between me and a hundred thousand other kids is that i was exploring it through composition.
-
now that i'm an adult, this isn't something i would write or promote. yet, i sort of am by uploading it. the interest here is to document the existence of a troubled child. well, and to document myself - i was that troubled child.
the history of the track is perhaps a little less obnoxious than may be suspected. i was actually being taunted by somebody in the eighth grade. that person had never met and never would meet my mother. it's just a remark that young boys make. freudian analyses aside, i don't think there's really that much conscious thought put into it.
my decision to write a song about it was half a joke and half a response to being teased. i listened to and feigned laughter at a lot of oppressive jokes when i was younger; to an extent, i regret not speaking up, but i can state with honesty that i never felt comfortable taking part (now, self-deprecating humour, often of a sexual nature, is another thing). this reaction, on that "fuck you" level, shouldn't provide for any specific discomfort.
however, the fact that i explored the topic in a deeper level of depth than my taunters did perhaps might, and perhaps should. i need to bring you back to my aims in recording this early demo: i was trying to be as disturbing and shocking as i possibly could be. my taunters provided me with a particularly disturbing subject matter to explore, and i took full advantage of that.
this track is certainly disturbing and certainly shocking. success? well, i guess. looking back, i've always been torn between regret and satisfaction. i still am...
initially written in 1994. first full recording in 1996. recreated in mar, 1998. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013. reclaimed & remixed on july 18, 2015. released jan 7, 2016. sequenced jan 6-8, 2016. finalized on july 20, 2016. as always, please use headphones.
the album version of this track appears on my first record, inri (inri015): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-3
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1996, 1998, 2013, 2015, 2016).
credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, vocals, drum programming, drum kit, synths, sequencers, sampling, digital wave editing, production
released march 20, 1998
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/i-did-your-mom-2
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
refinalizing skaters (inri005)
lead track added to inri005. audio permanently closed.
===
this is maybe a little hard to understand, if you weren't a teenager in a very specific period - about '91-'99, the 90s i guess, when the nu metal shift "corrected" things and tough guys went backing to being metalheads.
that period overlaps with a period when punk fashion moved from subculture to dominant culture. as with any other failed social revolution, the period is more defined by certain subculture traits being co-opted than it was by any meaningful change in social attitudes, even if it did correspond with a move towards liberalizing social attitudes in the older members of gen x.
i remember playing this for my aunt, who was a teenager in the 80s, and she was just confused by it. in her day, the skaters were the skinny punk kids that got picked on by the meathead jock metal heads. as mentioned, i think people that were teenagers in the 00s may more readily associate with this as well.
but the 90s were weird in this sense. skater culture in the 90s was defined by a sort of thuggish machismo gang mentality that overlapped more into gangster rap than punk rock. what you had where i grew up was a lot of upper middle class white kids skating because it was advertised to them as the "cool thing to do" and in the process co-opting this sort of survivalist 'hood mentality into a tool of oppression that they used to bully and intimidate the kids that, a decade before, would have identified as skateboarders. those kids may have maintained an interest in punk rock, but weren't generally accepted into the skater clique - which was essentially the "in group".
the culmination may seem a little surreal nowadays, if for no other reason than that it's been forgotten. but i remember sneaking through back alleys, evading skateboarding gangs made up of kids into slayer, while i had socal punk music blasting through my headphones. and i'm sure you'll get similar stories if you ask around - or maybe you were also that kid.
on one hand, this track was constructed to be sort of precious, and i think that it is. it's a pretty catchy pop song, really. on the other hand, i think i was trying to be a bit tougher than i actually was. i wasn't one to back down from confrontation - i'm still not. while i think it's true that i could have taken most of these brats one-on-one, i probably would have mostly chosen not to. see, the fear was always more that they'd convert the boards into weapons and then jump you. in canada, guns aren't much of a concern, but knives are.
...and the fear often came out of trivial reasons. talking with somebody's girlfriend. having a pair of headphones or a pair of shoes that might be worth something. basic thug shit.
in hindsight, the analysis here is a little simplistic. suggesting that these kids are going to grow up into pimps is problematic on numerous levels, although i can state with blunt honesty that a number of the people the song was about have grown up to be petty criminals with lengthy criminal records. i have to own that lack of depth and how it comes out in sometimes less than ideal statements, but i'm going to once again blame that on my age.
overall, i like this track on both a musical and thematic level. i just wish i had articulated myself a little bit better.
===
there was a specific story that influenced the track. when i was in the ninth grade, one of these skater bro types took it upon himself to start body-checking me into lockers. it was well understood that this person was older, but that just gave him more clout in the school's skater clique; he knew the older kids that they looked up to. i was never certain if he was on his second or third try at grade 9.
this wasn't the first time somebody had tried to get physical with me, but it was an escalation that i couldn't really tolerate. people flicking my ears was an annoyance, and especially so when it was a game, but it's the kind of thing one withstands. these were full on, run-at-me body checks that seemed to be designed with intent to harm.
i actually tried a few different tactics before i reacted. i tried sitting behind in class until he left, but it was visibly starting to make the female teacher uncomfortable that i was just sitting around waiting after class - and perhaps not unreasonably so. as for bringing it up with the teacher? well, this guy went out of his way to look for a teacher watching before he took a run. i couldn't be followed around by a teacher all day. i had to react on my own.
so, i tricked him into running at my open leg, which had him fall face first into the locker. he did not see the retribution in the act; he got up looking for a fight. as i was walking toward the exit, which was a staircase downwards, he took another run at me - which i dodged. that was an adrenaline filled movement, i tell you - he was full of stupid, hot rage and sidestepped like an angry bull. but, i still had to time it. there was no escape. he ended up falling down several flights of stairs and breaking his leg. consider what would have happened if i hadn't moved - even considering that i may have helped him lose his balance, a little.
from that point onwards, i lived in fear of being swarmed. rumours were floating around that i'd better stay away from certain people - which was a broadcast to me to stay low. i got the message, and spent the next several years sneaking around back passageways in and out of the school. i learned where the cuts in the fences were, how to detour across floor levels to follow the crowd, how to time the bus (we had public transit passes - and that fact alone probably spared me broken bones) to come in to class during the national anthem and other various scheduling and transiting tactics to avoid being alone at critical junctures. and, then i started to enjoy living that way, too.
i don't think that student came back the next year, so i'm not sure if he ever finished grade 9. but, part of the reason i'm telling you this story is that it helps paint a clearer demographic picture of the narrative that i'm presenting. if you remove the "skater" designation, this could be a story about gangs in schools that could be applied equally well across any other grouping. it just happened to be that the gangs at my school were populated by white skater kids, some from the welfare projects and others comfortably middle class. that might help to explain what some might see as a difficult reference point.
== =
i've presented this track in chronological ordering because i wanted to tell the story of the track itself. looking through my releases, it may be difficult to tell what is an ep from what is a single, and what is an ep from what is a record. this is an ep, and not a single. it's an ep because it's a conceptual ordering of the tracks, rather than just an exploration of a single incarnation of a specific track.
i don't deny that the lyrics are painful. and, wasn't i supposed to be getting rid of painful vocals? well, perhaps. but, note that no vocal takes of this track make it on to any of the abum-format presentations of it, excepting inricycled. the vocals are tied into the concept of the ep, which is a narration of the song as it developed.
so, chronological ordering is the only rational way to present the tracks. further, a comprehensive exploration of the track's development actually becomes necessary, in order to narrate it's entire development.
i'm not going to take this approach to every single. i just think that this track had to be preserved in this kind of way.
initially written in 1997. recreated in jan, 1998. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013. reclaimed july 1, 2015. deconstructed dec 18, 2015. compiled on jan 4, 2016. finalized on july 6, 2016. lead track added and refinalized july 20, 2016. as always, please use headphones.
this release is compiled on inriℵ0:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/merch/inri-box-set
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1997, 1998, 2013, 2016).
credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, drum programming, drum kit, sequencing, vocal noises, vocals, samples, production
released january 12, 1998
===
this is maybe a little hard to understand, if you weren't a teenager in a very specific period - about '91-'99, the 90s i guess, when the nu metal shift "corrected" things and tough guys went backing to being metalheads.
that period overlaps with a period when punk fashion moved from subculture to dominant culture. as with any other failed social revolution, the period is more defined by certain subculture traits being co-opted than it was by any meaningful change in social attitudes, even if it did correspond with a move towards liberalizing social attitudes in the older members of gen x.
i remember playing this for my aunt, who was a teenager in the 80s, and she was just confused by it. in her day, the skaters were the skinny punk kids that got picked on by the meathead jock metal heads. as mentioned, i think people that were teenagers in the 00s may more readily associate with this as well.
but the 90s were weird in this sense. skater culture in the 90s was defined by a sort of thuggish machismo gang mentality that overlapped more into gangster rap than punk rock. what you had where i grew up was a lot of upper middle class white kids skating because it was advertised to them as the "cool thing to do" and in the process co-opting this sort of survivalist 'hood mentality into a tool of oppression that they used to bully and intimidate the kids that, a decade before, would have identified as skateboarders. those kids may have maintained an interest in punk rock, but weren't generally accepted into the skater clique - which was essentially the "in group".
the culmination may seem a little surreal nowadays, if for no other reason than that it's been forgotten. but i remember sneaking through back alleys, evading skateboarding gangs made up of kids into slayer, while i had socal punk music blasting through my headphones. and i'm sure you'll get similar stories if you ask around - or maybe you were also that kid.
on one hand, this track was constructed to be sort of precious, and i think that it is. it's a pretty catchy pop song, really. on the other hand, i think i was trying to be a bit tougher than i actually was. i wasn't one to back down from confrontation - i'm still not. while i think it's true that i could have taken most of these brats one-on-one, i probably would have mostly chosen not to. see, the fear was always more that they'd convert the boards into weapons and then jump you. in canada, guns aren't much of a concern, but knives are.
...and the fear often came out of trivial reasons. talking with somebody's girlfriend. having a pair of headphones or a pair of shoes that might be worth something. basic thug shit.
in hindsight, the analysis here is a little simplistic. suggesting that these kids are going to grow up into pimps is problematic on numerous levels, although i can state with blunt honesty that a number of the people the song was about have grown up to be petty criminals with lengthy criminal records. i have to own that lack of depth and how it comes out in sometimes less than ideal statements, but i'm going to once again blame that on my age.
overall, i like this track on both a musical and thematic level. i just wish i had articulated myself a little bit better.
===
there was a specific story that influenced the track. when i was in the ninth grade, one of these skater bro types took it upon himself to start body-checking me into lockers. it was well understood that this person was older, but that just gave him more clout in the school's skater clique; he knew the older kids that they looked up to. i was never certain if he was on his second or third try at grade 9.
this wasn't the first time somebody had tried to get physical with me, but it was an escalation that i couldn't really tolerate. people flicking my ears was an annoyance, and especially so when it was a game, but it's the kind of thing one withstands. these were full on, run-at-me body checks that seemed to be designed with intent to harm.
i actually tried a few different tactics before i reacted. i tried sitting behind in class until he left, but it was visibly starting to make the female teacher uncomfortable that i was just sitting around waiting after class - and perhaps not unreasonably so. as for bringing it up with the teacher? well, this guy went out of his way to look for a teacher watching before he took a run. i couldn't be followed around by a teacher all day. i had to react on my own.
so, i tricked him into running at my open leg, which had him fall face first into the locker. he did not see the retribution in the act; he got up looking for a fight. as i was walking toward the exit, which was a staircase downwards, he took another run at me - which i dodged. that was an adrenaline filled movement, i tell you - he was full of stupid, hot rage and sidestepped like an angry bull. but, i still had to time it. there was no escape. he ended up falling down several flights of stairs and breaking his leg. consider what would have happened if i hadn't moved - even considering that i may have helped him lose his balance, a little.
from that point onwards, i lived in fear of being swarmed. rumours were floating around that i'd better stay away from certain people - which was a broadcast to me to stay low. i got the message, and spent the next several years sneaking around back passageways in and out of the school. i learned where the cuts in the fences were, how to detour across floor levels to follow the crowd, how to time the bus (we had public transit passes - and that fact alone probably spared me broken bones) to come in to class during the national anthem and other various scheduling and transiting tactics to avoid being alone at critical junctures. and, then i started to enjoy living that way, too.
i don't think that student came back the next year, so i'm not sure if he ever finished grade 9. but, part of the reason i'm telling you this story is that it helps paint a clearer demographic picture of the narrative that i'm presenting. if you remove the "skater" designation, this could be a story about gangs in schools that could be applied equally well across any other grouping. it just happened to be that the gangs at my school were populated by white skater kids, some from the welfare projects and others comfortably middle class. that might help to explain what some might see as a difficult reference point.
== =
i've presented this track in chronological ordering because i wanted to tell the story of the track itself. looking through my releases, it may be difficult to tell what is an ep from what is a single, and what is an ep from what is a record. this is an ep, and not a single. it's an ep because it's a conceptual ordering of the tracks, rather than just an exploration of a single incarnation of a specific track.
i don't deny that the lyrics are painful. and, wasn't i supposed to be getting rid of painful vocals? well, perhaps. but, note that no vocal takes of this track make it on to any of the abum-format presentations of it, excepting inricycled. the vocals are tied into the concept of the ep, which is a narration of the song as it developed.
so, chronological ordering is the only rational way to present the tracks. further, a comprehensive exploration of the track's development actually becomes necessary, in order to narrate it's entire development.
i'm not going to take this approach to every single. i just think that this track had to be preserved in this kind of way.
initially written in 1997. recreated in jan, 1998. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013. reclaimed july 1, 2015. deconstructed dec 18, 2015. compiled on jan 4, 2016. finalized on july 6, 2016. lead track added and refinalized july 20, 2016. as always, please use headphones.
this release is compiled on inriℵ0:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/merch/inri-box-set
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1997, 1998, 2013, 2016).
credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, drum programming, drum kit, sequencing, vocal noises, vocals, samples, production
released january 12, 1998
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Consultation: Proposed Amendments to Regulations Affecting Trusted Traveller Programs / Consultation : Modifications au règlement régissant les programmes des voyageurs dignes de confiance
the canada border services agency
English Version *** La version française suit ***
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is conducting a public consultation regarding proposed amendments to Regulations under the Customs Act governing Trusted Traveller Programs (TTPs). The amendments will clarify the eligibility criteria that will replace the good character provision, the conditions of the authorizations, and the circumstances leading to suspension and cancellation of membership.
The CBSA website provides detailed information on the changes, as well as the rationale behind them.
As a valued stakeholder, you can provide your feedback on these changes by replying to this email no later than 11:59 p.m. (EDT) on August 19, 2016.
Regards,
Program and Policy Management Division
Traveller Programs Directorate
Programs Branch
Canada Border Services Agency
*****************************************
Version française *** The English version precedes ***
L’Agence des services frontaliers du Canada (ASFC) mène une consultation publique concernant des modifications proposées au règlement en vertu de la Loi sur les douanes régissant les programmes des voyageurs fiables. Les modifications indiqueront clairement les critères d’admissibilité qui vont remplacer la disposition de bonne réputation, les conditions d’autorisations et les circonstances qui mènent à la suspension ou à l’annulation de l’adhésion.
Le site Web de l'ASFC fournit des renseignements détaillés sur les changements ainsi que le raisonnement qui les justifient.
En tant qu’intervenant important, vous pouvez nous faire parvenir vos impressions sur ces changements en répondant à ce courriel d’ici le 19 août 2016 à 23 h 59 (HAE).
Salutations,
Division de la gestion des programmes et des politiques
Direction des programmes pour les voyageurs
Direction générale des programmes
Agence des services frontaliers du Canada
jessica
if you want some consultation, my view is that cross-border travel is a right and not a privilege and that upcoming legislation should reflect that in reducing red tape for cross-border travel, not erecting further walls and barriers. the border should not be a barrier to movement in any kind of way. i was hoping that the change of government in canada would lead to less hassle at the border. so, the general crux of this movement seems disappointing.
the canada border services agency
The Canada Border Services Agency thanks you for your comments regarding the proposed changes to the Presentation of Persons (2003) Regulations. Comments received will be addressed in the Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement published in the Canada Gazette following the completion of the public consultation period.
Thank you.
Program and Policy Management Division
Traveller Programs Directorate
Programs Branch
Canada Border Services Agency
English Version *** La version française suit ***
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is conducting a public consultation regarding proposed amendments to Regulations under the Customs Act governing Trusted Traveller Programs (TTPs). The amendments will clarify the eligibility criteria that will replace the good character provision, the conditions of the authorizations, and the circumstances leading to suspension and cancellation of membership.
The CBSA website provides detailed information on the changes, as well as the rationale behind them.
As a valued stakeholder, you can provide your feedback on these changes by replying to this email no later than 11:59 p.m. (EDT) on August 19, 2016.
Regards,
Program and Policy Management Division
Traveller Programs Directorate
Programs Branch
Canada Border Services Agency
*****************************************
Version française *** The English version precedes ***
L’Agence des services frontaliers du Canada (ASFC) mène une consultation publique concernant des modifications proposées au règlement en vertu de la Loi sur les douanes régissant les programmes des voyageurs fiables. Les modifications indiqueront clairement les critères d’admissibilité qui vont remplacer la disposition de bonne réputation, les conditions d’autorisations et les circonstances qui mènent à la suspension ou à l’annulation de l’adhésion.
Le site Web de l'ASFC fournit des renseignements détaillés sur les changements ainsi que le raisonnement qui les justifient.
En tant qu’intervenant important, vous pouvez nous faire parvenir vos impressions sur ces changements en répondant à ce courriel d’ici le 19 août 2016 à 23 h 59 (HAE).
Salutations,
Division de la gestion des programmes et des politiques
Direction des programmes pour les voyageurs
Direction générale des programmes
Agence des services frontaliers du Canada
jessica
if you want some consultation, my view is that cross-border travel is a right and not a privilege and that upcoming legislation should reflect that in reducing red tape for cross-border travel, not erecting further walls and barriers. the border should not be a barrier to movement in any kind of way. i was hoping that the change of government in canada would lead to less hassle at the border. so, the general crux of this movement seems disappointing.
the canada border services agency
The Canada Border Services Agency thanks you for your comments regarding the proposed changes to the Presentation of Persons (2003) Regulations. Comments received will be addressed in the Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement published in the Canada Gazette following the completion of the public consultation period.
Thank you.
Program and Policy Management Division
Traveller Programs Directorate
Programs Branch
Canada Border Services Agency
how about this- they're the same damned thing.
paul jay's a smart guy, and i get what he's saying. he's roughly twice her age. and, it kind of does show here at points. if we rewind back eight years, paul jay was loudly making the argument that obama would be better on iran than mccain. bomb bomb iran, right. that was a clear and present danger. and, was he right? well, i think he kind of lost the plot on iran, actually. he got lost in the western propaganda narrative of the issue being about hegemony, rather than about competition. and, i've yet to see him really address the whole "russia-is-stacking-iran-with-anti-aircraft-systems" thing - which was kind of key in inking something now, or losing the leverage of the sanctions forever. so, kinda.
i'm not convinced that mccain would have actually bombed iran.
likewise, is hillary less belligerent than trump? hillary's a true believer. we're not really sure what is driving trump, besides ego. i reject the narrative that trump is in control: i think he's being handled, and making very few of the decisions in the campaign. as such, i think the reagan comparison is historically useful: he's a figurehead. the party is operating behind his back and over his head. so, this argument - which is coming directly from the clinton campaign - that trump has a bad temperament is largely moot. he can throw things at the wall and stomp his feet all day, that doesn't mean he's going to get his way.
i think the same thing is basically true of hillary. look at the email scandal, for example. she avoided indictment because she had no oversight over her staff. so, you look at the issue in libya - for example - and you have to wonder how much influence she really had. there's been enough information released to conclude that she at most had an executive role. that is, she basically signed off on things that were brought to her. that's the only reason she's not going to jail.
so, if trump wins, the party will be operating behind his back. if clinton wins, the party will be operating behind her back, too. in the end, she may take a little bit greater interest in being briefed than he will. but, i think there would be very little difference.
fwiw, on the gore invading iraq issue? check out some of gore's statements while it was happening. he left very little up to imagination: he all but stated that he would have invaded iraq. further, he called for more troops repeatedly. that's right out of his own mouth. i've looked this up a dozen times already, i don't really feel like doing it again. the idea that he would have behaved differently is not grounded in the facts.
i don't think hillary likes golf. so, it's not clear what she'll be doing when she's on vacation for ten months a year.
paul jay's a smart guy, and i get what he's saying. he's roughly twice her age. and, it kind of does show here at points. if we rewind back eight years, paul jay was loudly making the argument that obama would be better on iran than mccain. bomb bomb iran, right. that was a clear and present danger. and, was he right? well, i think he kind of lost the plot on iran, actually. he got lost in the western propaganda narrative of the issue being about hegemony, rather than about competition. and, i've yet to see him really address the whole "russia-is-stacking-iran-with-anti-aircraft-systems" thing - which was kind of key in inking something now, or losing the leverage of the sanctions forever. so, kinda.
i'm not convinced that mccain would have actually bombed iran.
likewise, is hillary less belligerent than trump? hillary's a true believer. we're not really sure what is driving trump, besides ego. i reject the narrative that trump is in control: i think he's being handled, and making very few of the decisions in the campaign. as such, i think the reagan comparison is historically useful: he's a figurehead. the party is operating behind his back and over his head. so, this argument - which is coming directly from the clinton campaign - that trump has a bad temperament is largely moot. he can throw things at the wall and stomp his feet all day, that doesn't mean he's going to get his way.
i think the same thing is basically true of hillary. look at the email scandal, for example. she avoided indictment because she had no oversight over her staff. so, you look at the issue in libya - for example - and you have to wonder how much influence she really had. there's been enough information released to conclude that she at most had an executive role. that is, she basically signed off on things that were brought to her. that's the only reason she's not going to jail.
so, if trump wins, the party will be operating behind his back. if clinton wins, the party will be operating behind her back, too. in the end, she may take a little bit greater interest in being briefed than he will. but, i think there would be very little difference.
fwiw, on the gore invading iraq issue? check out some of gore's statements while it was happening. he left very little up to imagination: he all but stated that he would have invaded iraq. further, he called for more troops repeatedly. that's right out of his own mouth. i've looked this up a dozen times already, i don't really feel like doing it again. the idea that he would have behaved differently is not grounded in the facts.
i don't think hillary likes golf. so, it's not clear what she'll be doing when she's on vacation for ten months a year.
social media is free media.
trump had a real advantage, as his tactic needed to be to moderate - which is what he would have been expected to do anyways. all he needed to do was pick a kasich-type moderate and he'd instantly rebuild the base. clinton, on the other hand, had to find some way to balance the centre with the left.
by picking pence, he is grabbing the ball and running out of bounds. he just gave up the entire centre. that was his advantage. moderate republicans are going to flock to clinton, now.
i don't think those numbers mean anything. i suspect that they reflect ignorance more than anything else. kneejerking. or, maybe clinton's team was right all along - that a substantial amount of bernie's supporters were just frustrated men.
i'm leaning more towards kneejerking, right now.
i think it will ease up.
but, i mean, keep in mind that you're talking about small percentages, too. 2%. 3%. would i find it surprising that 2-3% of sanders supporters were just flat out, open misogynists? not really.
---
if you vote for johnson as a protest vote, it sends the message that you want more tea party policies. so, why not just write in charles koch? or ted cruz?
---
AS Deckard
There is no 'Libertarian left.' Libertarians fall on the right of the American spectrum, as we're generally more focused on the economy than social issues.
Daisy Chains
Actually, the Libertarian Party represents mostly right-wing Libertarians... Left-Libertarians, Green Libertarians, Anarchist Capitalists/Voluntaryists etc are going to vote for Jill Stein.
jessica
no libertarian left, huh. lol. bakunin? proudhon? kropotkin? malatesta? dawkins? chomsky?
thomas paine?
godwin? wollstonecraft?
(deleted)
see, i think tyt are right-wing assholes pretending to be liberals :P
the language used in american political discourse is not just confused, it's actually deeply orwellian. you can barely make sense of it. it's not some accident.
the term libertarian comes out of the french revolution and means something like anarcho-communist. libertarians completely reject the concept of market theory, and for good reason - markets are the absolute anti-thesis of any coherent concept of freedom.
the way americans use the term "libertarian" maps politically to the concept of "classical liberalism" virtually everywhere else in the english-speaking world.
the democrats and republicans are both conservative parties. they're just different variants on it.
i think the only real liberal party left standing in the anglosphere is the liberal party of canada.
---
(deleted)
"Anyone who embraces libertarian economic policies isn't liberal."
a statement like this needs to be translated for non-americans. what the poster meant to type was:
"Anyone who embraces liberal economic policies isn't a socialist."
which is true enough. but, again: the language is not confused by accident.
---
millionfish animation
What are Johnson's policies?
Just a Channel
Libertarian basics: "can we solve this problem with more freedoms? If so, we go that route". Look up Penn from Penn & Teller on YouTube describing him being a Libertarian. He covers it very well.
jessica
all you need to survive is a gun and a bunker full of canned food. get off my lawn!
it's clown-car stuff; you can't take even really take him seriously.
---
Peter Perfect
Johnson is a loon! He wants to abolish social security, medicare, medicaid and all entitlements.
jessica
or we could cut military spending, instead?
RocketmanRockyMatrix
No entitlement mentality.
jessica
yeah. and, that is very frustrating after sanders' campaign, which really reduced to an articulation of the universal declaration of universal rights. we were making progress. and then this.
i am entitled to human rights, and fuck you if you disagree.
----
Chris Teal
i support johnson because of his social issues...i care not of economics.
jessica
i think it's really hard to make that argument regarding johnson and specifically in the context of it being an american election, because his economic policies have such dramatic negative social consequences. it's not something trivial like a debate over deficit spending. it's either disingenuous or poorly thought through.
i mean, i cringed pretty hard when hillary supporters started accusing sanders of privilege. but, it kind of rings accurate when applied to johnson. you can only make that argument if you're pretty wealthy to start off.
Trent Richards
I get the feeling that issues that you call social aren't social at all. Government services are a fiscal matter, not a social one. Social matters are things like Gay Rights, Affirmative Action, and The War on Drugs. Fiscal matters are things like Taxation, Government Spending and Trade Regulation. Government services all fall under the government spending section. It would be a rare thing for someone to oppose universal health care for instance if money wasn't involved. The fiscal aspect of these services are all that ever gets debated. That is why these are called fiscal matters.
jessica
the term "socio-economic" has meaning for a reason. the point i'm making is that you can't coherently argue that you support his social positions, but oppose his fiscal opinions - unless you haven't thought through the social implications of his fiscal policy.
i may have been overheard some time last fall arguing that i didn't care about fiscal issues, but that was in the context of an election where the canadian social system was not in any serious jeopardy and the issue was really nothing more important than deficit spending. what i meant was that i don't care if the government runs a deficit or not.
that's very different than voting for legalized marijuana and shrugging off the abolition of corporate taxation. you'd have to have smoked yourself stupid...
RocketmanRockyMatrix
Libertarians are for human rights.
jessica
libertarians tend to uphold orwellian concepts of human rights, as brought to you by anti-humanist liberals like rawls. the "free market", when applied to labour particularly, is completely inconsistent with any concept of human rights. you can't tell somebody to work or starve, then tell them they have rights. rather, what you do instead is come up with these ridiculous mental gymnastics that give people the right to starve.
----
Pallas AnitaSarkeesian
Feel the Johnson and end the FED. Gary Johnson 2016!
jessica
i don't think that ending the fed would be such a good idea, actually. you'd have big bankers manipulating currency rates at a whim. the markets would crash. you wouldn't know how much bread costs on a daily basis.
i'm all for a revolution, but i don't think you guys need to make the same mistakes made during perestroika.
Sonyaliloquy
'Feel the Johnson'? Might wanna try for a different slogan.
jessica
i think it's great: vote gary johnson to get fucked over.
---
Joeybrah
His economics are pretty simple, lower taxes. I think everyone can relate...
ApesAmongUs
Relate that it's stupid? Yea, I've seen a lot of stupid in my life.
jessica
well, once they implement self-regulation over academic accreditation, it should at least lower tuition. is mom smart enough to start a university? let the market decide!
home-schooling for the win!
---
Nakas Dougen
The libertarian ideas are the exact opposite of democratic socialism, it's beyond me why he has appeal with the Bernie crowd and the tyt audience
Wmarshal
Think he means his ideas on war, the handling of the middle east in general, and over all freedoms.I disagree with him on alot of things, but his thoughts on war is what won me.
Kevin Lai
he doesn't. if the a 3rd party candidate who leans republicans can take away some of would-be trump supporters, that opens the door for a 3rd party candidate for democratic-leaning 3rd party candidate (ie, jill stein)
Natalie Brown
The exact opposite of democratic socialism is fascism. Libertarian ideas intersect with liberal ideas on a social level. I'm a Liberal with Libertarian tendencies so the jump from Bernie to Gary seems quite natural to me...
Nakas Dougen
I believe from philosophical grounds that the most important thing for a human to be truly free is to secure their material conditions first.
It is not freedom neither liberty when a mother has to choose which of their 3 children they can afford to go to college.
It is not freedom or liberty when you have to 'choose' between health and disease based on your income.
It is not liberty when you can go bankrupt for getting cancer, you could not possibly know that.
Sure the world is a non Euclidean space but at the heart of everything lies class struggle, the struggle of the dispossessed be it traditional proletariat, underprivileged race or gender. The free market does not fix any of that and this is why all other western countries embraced free healthcare and a lot of them free higher education.
Libertarians would reverse labour law and make life much much harder for the average worker because he/she would lose much of what they gained through centuries of protest and fight.
I assume you are not working class, you do not work minimum wage. I know America confuses classic liberalism (based on the idea of protection of private property from state, kings etc and tolerance ) with traditional leftistsm (Stems from dialectical materialism and class struggle).
Philosophically speaking Social Democracies were created as a compensation between the capitalists (including conservatives and 'libertanians' or neoliberals) and Marxist socialism.
On almost every issue social democracy and libertanians fundamentally disagree. Non interventionism and protection of personal liberty are not necessarily features of social democracy, they just happen to coincide in American context.
Natalie Brown
Well we are in the American context, aren't we? We are also talking about people in a political race. Not philosophies and ideologies. While, yes, these 2 factors play in important role in who people decide to vote for for some people, for the majority this is not the case. Gary Johnson supports the ending of the war on drugs and allowing for recreational marijuana use, right for women to choose whether or not to have an abortion, protection of the environment, maintain the freedom of the internet, immigration reform (not just building a wall), and cutting military spending. In the modern American context these are all liberal ideas. All of these ideas i have heard get support from Bernie supporters. The jump is not as absurd as you make it seem.
jessica
i'm in agreement with you. but, i just want to point out that you're assuming certain things that right-libertarians would contest. so, you're right to point out that they would abolish minimum wage laws. but, they have this convoluted argument that, at the end, allows them to conclude that abolishing the minimum wage law will increase wages. remember the laffer curve? these are people that will stand up and look you in the eye and argue that decreasing corporate taxes will increase tax revenue. they'll come prepared with charts, too.
on the one hand, they're obviously wrong and not particularly hard to disprove. on the other hand, their voters and supporters and donors and social media advocates actually believe this stuff.
you need jobs before you can have unions to smash.
i'm not in favour of union-busting. but, america is post-industrial, and this language is anachronistic. unions are no longer a meaningful political force in the united states, because the percentage of the workforce that is unionized is insignificant.
a ubi is in fact a better answer, moving forward. we're moving into a reality where goods are made by robots, and there are very few jobs available servicing them. it's communism. ironically.
it's just that his dismantling of the financial system is going to make his ubi proposals impossible to implement. you need very strong controls on inflation for that to work. it's often promoted as a free market policy, but it can't work in an actual market. the rentiers would just steal everything.
(deleted)
jessica
again: you're talking about such a small percentage (2-3%), that there is no reason to build a theory. #berniebrosforgaryjohnson is good enough.
Chris Teal
because they are only thinking of economics...Johnson get my vote on social issues...seperation of church and state...check...end drug war...check..forgien policy...check i dont care about economics...there are rich and poor..always have..always will be
jessica
again: you can't separate these things, unless you're operating from a position of privilege.
consider abortion, for example. he wants to leave it to the states, and he wants to cut federal funding. so, you're going to end up with a decrease in access to social services as a consequence of his economic policies. you could say the same thing about his health care policies.
if you're wealthy anyways, you're not going to care. but, the vast majority of people will be far better off under hillary than johnson. and, trust me, i'm no fan of hillary - i think she should be convicted of war crimes and publicly executed. the libertarian economic/social policies are just that bad. it's barbarism.
if the choice is between corruption and barbarism, i'll pick corruption.
---
shazil888
Can't see Sanders supporters bleeding over to a Libertarian candidate. They either don't know the difference between a Progressive and a Libertarian, or they are easily swayed.
EarthianLifeForm
Because they still agree with Libertarians on 65% to 80% of the Libertarian platform and like Bernie Sanders, Libertarians are genuine, sincere, and not corrupt. Just like how Sanders is genuine, sincere, and not corrupt.
shazil888
Libertarians are Libertarians first and foremost because of their stance on limited government. That completely contradicts every major task that Sanders is trying to accomplish. Minimum Wage, Education, Healthcare, Regulation, Income Inequality.
I only see agreement on social issues, foreign policy (and that too is debatable), and drugs. In reality, that boils down to more like 15% to 30% agreement.
jessica
there is going to be some percentage of sanders supporters that are driven by conscious or unconscious misogyny, and will not support stein for the same reason they won't support clinton. an obscure minority, but it will exist. the numbers i've seen suggest that the bleed is roughly consistent with a reasonable estimate of the size of that group.
----
Twostones00
Gary Johnson won't protect the environment. Jill will. Jill has more attention than people think. Jill is a progressive much like Bernie.
TheJuranomo
We the people should protect the environment
jessica
this is another one of those twisted points, as libertarians will argue that the way to benefit the environment is not through regulation but through the enforcement of property rights. they forget to mention that this is also a license to pollute. but, hey. why should the gummamint tell me what to do on my property? it's almost like they have allodial title or something. the gummamint shouldn't have control over my fiefdom! isn't that why it's a fiefdom? wait? what?
see, if you cut the river up into pieces and sell it off then people will protect their parts of the river. because you always step into the same river, every time. it's your property, after all.
it's the same thing with the air. if you own the air over your property, then you have the right to keep the pollution out of it. because pascal's law is modifiable by an act of parliament.
we can always fine the particles, if they refuse to self-regulate.
Joe person
Yes he will, he's a huge supporter of the EPA
jessica
see, over here on the actual left, we consider the epa to be the perfect example of a captured agency. saying you support the epa as "good government" is equivalent to arguing that you're in favour of corporations buying off agencies in order to eliminate oversight - which is exactly how the epa actually operates.
so, it's kind of a trick. i know that the right hates the epa for land expropriation reasons, and that's "whatever". but, to cite the epa as an example of good functioning government is to argue in favour of open corruption and big money in politics, not to argue in favour of environmental oversight.
---
Zone gaming
For all those liberals who love Bernie, Gary Johnson is in favor of UBI something that even Bernie didn't really talk about. The fair tax is something that can easily be UBI.
jessica
but, his policies are starkly inflationary. how's $50/year sound?
trump had a real advantage, as his tactic needed to be to moderate - which is what he would have been expected to do anyways. all he needed to do was pick a kasich-type moderate and he'd instantly rebuild the base. clinton, on the other hand, had to find some way to balance the centre with the left.
by picking pence, he is grabbing the ball and running out of bounds. he just gave up the entire centre. that was his advantage. moderate republicans are going to flock to clinton, now.
i don't think those numbers mean anything. i suspect that they reflect ignorance more than anything else. kneejerking. or, maybe clinton's team was right all along - that a substantial amount of bernie's supporters were just frustrated men.
i'm leaning more towards kneejerking, right now.
i think it will ease up.
but, i mean, keep in mind that you're talking about small percentages, too. 2%. 3%. would i find it surprising that 2-3% of sanders supporters were just flat out, open misogynists? not really.
---
if you vote for johnson as a protest vote, it sends the message that you want more tea party policies. so, why not just write in charles koch? or ted cruz?
---
AS Deckard
There is no 'Libertarian left.' Libertarians fall on the right of the American spectrum, as we're generally more focused on the economy than social issues.
Daisy Chains
Actually, the Libertarian Party represents mostly right-wing Libertarians... Left-Libertarians, Green Libertarians, Anarchist Capitalists/Voluntaryists etc are going to vote for Jill Stein.
jessica
no libertarian left, huh. lol. bakunin? proudhon? kropotkin? malatesta? dawkins? chomsky?
thomas paine?
godwin? wollstonecraft?
(deleted)
see, i think tyt are right-wing assholes pretending to be liberals :P
the language used in american political discourse is not just confused, it's actually deeply orwellian. you can barely make sense of it. it's not some accident.
the term libertarian comes out of the french revolution and means something like anarcho-communist. libertarians completely reject the concept of market theory, and for good reason - markets are the absolute anti-thesis of any coherent concept of freedom.
the way americans use the term "libertarian" maps politically to the concept of "classical liberalism" virtually everywhere else in the english-speaking world.
the democrats and republicans are both conservative parties. they're just different variants on it.
i think the only real liberal party left standing in the anglosphere is the liberal party of canada.
---
(deleted)
"Anyone who embraces libertarian economic policies isn't liberal."
a statement like this needs to be translated for non-americans. what the poster meant to type was:
"Anyone who embraces liberal economic policies isn't a socialist."
which is true enough. but, again: the language is not confused by accident.
---
millionfish animation
What are Johnson's policies?
Just a Channel
Libertarian basics: "can we solve this problem with more freedoms? If so, we go that route". Look up Penn from Penn & Teller on YouTube describing him being a Libertarian. He covers it very well.
jessica
all you need to survive is a gun and a bunker full of canned food. get off my lawn!
it's clown-car stuff; you can't take even really take him seriously.
---
Peter Perfect
Johnson is a loon! He wants to abolish social security, medicare, medicaid and all entitlements.
jessica
or we could cut military spending, instead?
RocketmanRockyMatrix
No entitlement mentality.
jessica
yeah. and, that is very frustrating after sanders' campaign, which really reduced to an articulation of the universal declaration of universal rights. we were making progress. and then this.
i am entitled to human rights, and fuck you if you disagree.
----
Chris Teal
i support johnson because of his social issues...i care not of economics.
jessica
i think it's really hard to make that argument regarding johnson and specifically in the context of it being an american election, because his economic policies have such dramatic negative social consequences. it's not something trivial like a debate over deficit spending. it's either disingenuous or poorly thought through.
i mean, i cringed pretty hard when hillary supporters started accusing sanders of privilege. but, it kind of rings accurate when applied to johnson. you can only make that argument if you're pretty wealthy to start off.
Trent Richards
I get the feeling that issues that you call social aren't social at all. Government services are a fiscal matter, not a social one. Social matters are things like Gay Rights, Affirmative Action, and The War on Drugs. Fiscal matters are things like Taxation, Government Spending and Trade Regulation. Government services all fall under the government spending section. It would be a rare thing for someone to oppose universal health care for instance if money wasn't involved. The fiscal aspect of these services are all that ever gets debated. That is why these are called fiscal matters.
jessica
the term "socio-economic" has meaning for a reason. the point i'm making is that you can't coherently argue that you support his social positions, but oppose his fiscal opinions - unless you haven't thought through the social implications of his fiscal policy.
i may have been overheard some time last fall arguing that i didn't care about fiscal issues, but that was in the context of an election where the canadian social system was not in any serious jeopardy and the issue was really nothing more important than deficit spending. what i meant was that i don't care if the government runs a deficit or not.
that's very different than voting for legalized marijuana and shrugging off the abolition of corporate taxation. you'd have to have smoked yourself stupid...
RocketmanRockyMatrix
Libertarians are for human rights.
jessica
libertarians tend to uphold orwellian concepts of human rights, as brought to you by anti-humanist liberals like rawls. the "free market", when applied to labour particularly, is completely inconsistent with any concept of human rights. you can't tell somebody to work or starve, then tell them they have rights. rather, what you do instead is come up with these ridiculous mental gymnastics that give people the right to starve.
----
Pallas AnitaSarkeesian
Feel the Johnson and end the FED. Gary Johnson 2016!
jessica
i don't think that ending the fed would be such a good idea, actually. you'd have big bankers manipulating currency rates at a whim. the markets would crash. you wouldn't know how much bread costs on a daily basis.
i'm all for a revolution, but i don't think you guys need to make the same mistakes made during perestroika.
Sonyaliloquy
'Feel the Johnson'? Might wanna try for a different slogan.
jessica
i think it's great: vote gary johnson to get fucked over.
---
Joeybrah
His economics are pretty simple, lower taxes. I think everyone can relate...
ApesAmongUs
Relate that it's stupid? Yea, I've seen a lot of stupid in my life.
jessica
well, once they implement self-regulation over academic accreditation, it should at least lower tuition. is mom smart enough to start a university? let the market decide!
home-schooling for the win!
---
Nakas Dougen
The libertarian ideas are the exact opposite of democratic socialism, it's beyond me why he has appeal with the Bernie crowd and the tyt audience
Wmarshal
Think he means his ideas on war, the handling of the middle east in general, and over all freedoms.I disagree with him on alot of things, but his thoughts on war is what won me.
Kevin Lai
he doesn't. if the a 3rd party candidate who leans republicans can take away some of would-be trump supporters, that opens the door for a 3rd party candidate for democratic-leaning 3rd party candidate (ie, jill stein)
Natalie Brown
The exact opposite of democratic socialism is fascism. Libertarian ideas intersect with liberal ideas on a social level. I'm a Liberal with Libertarian tendencies so the jump from Bernie to Gary seems quite natural to me...
Nakas Dougen
I believe from philosophical grounds that the most important thing for a human to be truly free is to secure their material conditions first.
It is not freedom neither liberty when a mother has to choose which of their 3 children they can afford to go to college.
It is not freedom or liberty when you have to 'choose' between health and disease based on your income.
It is not liberty when you can go bankrupt for getting cancer, you could not possibly know that.
Sure the world is a non Euclidean space but at the heart of everything lies class struggle, the struggle of the dispossessed be it traditional proletariat, underprivileged race or gender. The free market does not fix any of that and this is why all other western countries embraced free healthcare and a lot of them free higher education.
Libertarians would reverse labour law and make life much much harder for the average worker because he/she would lose much of what they gained through centuries of protest and fight.
I assume you are not working class, you do not work minimum wage. I know America confuses classic liberalism (based on the idea of protection of private property from state, kings etc and tolerance ) with traditional leftistsm (Stems from dialectical materialism and class struggle).
Philosophically speaking Social Democracies were created as a compensation between the capitalists (including conservatives and 'libertanians' or neoliberals) and Marxist socialism.
On almost every issue social democracy and libertanians fundamentally disagree. Non interventionism and protection of personal liberty are not necessarily features of social democracy, they just happen to coincide in American context.
Natalie Brown
Well we are in the American context, aren't we? We are also talking about people in a political race. Not philosophies and ideologies. While, yes, these 2 factors play in important role in who people decide to vote for for some people, for the majority this is not the case. Gary Johnson supports the ending of the war on drugs and allowing for recreational marijuana use, right for women to choose whether or not to have an abortion, protection of the environment, maintain the freedom of the internet, immigration reform (not just building a wall), and cutting military spending. In the modern American context these are all liberal ideas. All of these ideas i have heard get support from Bernie supporters. The jump is not as absurd as you make it seem.
jessica
i'm in agreement with you. but, i just want to point out that you're assuming certain things that right-libertarians would contest. so, you're right to point out that they would abolish minimum wage laws. but, they have this convoluted argument that, at the end, allows them to conclude that abolishing the minimum wage law will increase wages. remember the laffer curve? these are people that will stand up and look you in the eye and argue that decreasing corporate taxes will increase tax revenue. they'll come prepared with charts, too.
on the one hand, they're obviously wrong and not particularly hard to disprove. on the other hand, their voters and supporters and donors and social media advocates actually believe this stuff.
you need jobs before you can have unions to smash.
i'm not in favour of union-busting. but, america is post-industrial, and this language is anachronistic. unions are no longer a meaningful political force in the united states, because the percentage of the workforce that is unionized is insignificant.
a ubi is in fact a better answer, moving forward. we're moving into a reality where goods are made by robots, and there are very few jobs available servicing them. it's communism. ironically.
it's just that his dismantling of the financial system is going to make his ubi proposals impossible to implement. you need very strong controls on inflation for that to work. it's often promoted as a free market policy, but it can't work in an actual market. the rentiers would just steal everything.
(deleted)
jessica
again: you're talking about such a small percentage (2-3%), that there is no reason to build a theory. #berniebrosforgaryjohnson is good enough.
Chris Teal
because they are only thinking of economics...Johnson get my vote on social issues...seperation of church and state...check...end drug war...check..forgien policy...check i dont care about economics...there are rich and poor..always have..always will be
jessica
again: you can't separate these things, unless you're operating from a position of privilege.
consider abortion, for example. he wants to leave it to the states, and he wants to cut federal funding. so, you're going to end up with a decrease in access to social services as a consequence of his economic policies. you could say the same thing about his health care policies.
if you're wealthy anyways, you're not going to care. but, the vast majority of people will be far better off under hillary than johnson. and, trust me, i'm no fan of hillary - i think she should be convicted of war crimes and publicly executed. the libertarian economic/social policies are just that bad. it's barbarism.
if the choice is between corruption and barbarism, i'll pick corruption.
---
shazil888
Can't see Sanders supporters bleeding over to a Libertarian candidate. They either don't know the difference between a Progressive and a Libertarian, or they are easily swayed.
EarthianLifeForm
Because they still agree with Libertarians on 65% to 80% of the Libertarian platform and like Bernie Sanders, Libertarians are genuine, sincere, and not corrupt. Just like how Sanders is genuine, sincere, and not corrupt.
shazil888
Libertarians are Libertarians first and foremost because of their stance on limited government. That completely contradicts every major task that Sanders is trying to accomplish. Minimum Wage, Education, Healthcare, Regulation, Income Inequality.
I only see agreement on social issues, foreign policy (and that too is debatable), and drugs. In reality, that boils down to more like 15% to 30% agreement.
jessica
there is going to be some percentage of sanders supporters that are driven by conscious or unconscious misogyny, and will not support stein for the same reason they won't support clinton. an obscure minority, but it will exist. the numbers i've seen suggest that the bleed is roughly consistent with a reasonable estimate of the size of that group.
----
Twostones00
Gary Johnson won't protect the environment. Jill will. Jill has more attention than people think. Jill is a progressive much like Bernie.
TheJuranomo
We the people should protect the environment
jessica
this is another one of those twisted points, as libertarians will argue that the way to benefit the environment is not through regulation but through the enforcement of property rights. they forget to mention that this is also a license to pollute. but, hey. why should the gummamint tell me what to do on my property? it's almost like they have allodial title or something. the gummamint shouldn't have control over my fiefdom! isn't that why it's a fiefdom? wait? what?
see, if you cut the river up into pieces and sell it off then people will protect their parts of the river. because you always step into the same river, every time. it's your property, after all.
it's the same thing with the air. if you own the air over your property, then you have the right to keep the pollution out of it. because pascal's law is modifiable by an act of parliament.
we can always fine the particles, if they refuse to self-regulate.
Joe person
Yes he will, he's a huge supporter of the EPA
jessica
see, over here on the actual left, we consider the epa to be the perfect example of a captured agency. saying you support the epa as "good government" is equivalent to arguing that you're in favour of corporations buying off agencies in order to eliminate oversight - which is exactly how the epa actually operates.
so, it's kind of a trick. i know that the right hates the epa for land expropriation reasons, and that's "whatever". but, to cite the epa as an example of good functioning government is to argue in favour of open corruption and big money in politics, not to argue in favour of environmental oversight.
---
Zone gaming
For all those liberals who love Bernie, Gary Johnson is in favor of UBI something that even Bernie didn't really talk about. The fair tax is something that can easily be UBI.
jessica
but, his policies are starkly inflationary. how's $50/year sound?
j reacts to blocking highways as a political tactic
in all seriousness, coming from somebody that is in solidarity with their core message, this is a flat out stupid tactic. not because it upsets people - fuck you, i don't care what you think. what this does is provide the cops with an excuse for excessive force, and they'll absolutely use it. if you start seeing riot cops walking around, you can thank blm for it.
the left has completely lost the plot. strike action is supposed to be about finding ways to put leverage on the system. it's a way to meet power with power. this has been co-opted by religious nonsense and converted into a means to enforce the moral majority. power is supposed to understand that it's morally wrong and adjust. it's a message that is as air-headed as the people articulating it.
if they want to "stop production", the way to do that is to send moles into the police force and organize police strikes. it can be about pay to start, so long as the goal is eventually to get cops to reject their training in racial profiling. we need to collectively find ways to get cops to reject their command structure. that is the tactic that will be successful.
--
Chris Healy
Get out of the road. Some people actually have jobs to go to.
jessica
fuck your job.
Atheistic Luciferian
Fuck you, welfare queen.
jessica
i'm sorry? get back to work, you fucking slave.
dingusmungus
Enjoy the disability checks leech...
neatpete
Hey disability is probably considered a raise for those on welfare. Hes going out for dinner tonight
jessica
i produce more of value on disability than you ever will in your wage/slave labour.
what have you ever created to justify your existence, besides profit for your owners?
so, again: fuck your job. go run around in circles in a field, instead. it's just as useful.
Sheryl Goolsbee
People's job's are paying the taxes so that people can live in subsidized/HUD housing, receive medicaid, bridge card benefits, pay for the better school's that all kid's can attend, WIC, abortion clinics, county run hospital's that are widely used by the indigent, family planning centers (birth control centers), methadone clinics, county psych services, etc. People work to pay for all of these services offered in most communities.
jessica
right. because government couldn't work without taxes. derp. have you ever considered the idea of abolishing money altogether?
The Daily Digest
People may be forced to contribute to a lot of socialist, government programs. None of which are Constitutional.
That is what we are trying to change.
jessica
in fact, i don't really support taxation. with the current system, i don't think you should pay taxes unless you're very wealthy - but that if you are very wealthy, you should pay almost all your income in taxes. so, somebody making $100,000/yr should really only have to pay consumption taxes. but, somebody making $10,000,000/yr should fork over 70%+ in taxes. and, the corporate tax rate should be over 50%. i'm perfectly happy with printing whatever else.
so, chances are pretty high that i don't think you should pay taxes at all.
but, in the long run, as an anarcho-communist, i would prefer to abolish the concept of exchange in favour of the concept of need.
The Daily Digest
That's one way to completely break the economic system. Punish the creators and business owners and you take away any incentive. Just do a mediocre job, and don't be too successful. Worked great for the Soviet Union, eh?
Taxing does one thing - enables a huge government to steal more and more. If you like where our system is now, then you must love big (criminal) government.
Punishing success does not, and never will, work. Too many collapsed governing systems, that include your communism.
You give over your power to a government that is sure to screw its people. I think I'll stick with working on Capitalism.
jessica
i'm not going to have this debate with you because we have to start from a more basic point than you're conceding. i don't agree with your definition of terms like "success", "creators" and "punish". if we were to have this debate, i would be constantly pulling the rug out from under you - much as i just did with that tax argument.
but, i don't think america comes across very well when compared economically to the soviet union. your levels of inequality are deplorable. the vast majority of americans live in abject poverty. you have third world child mortality levels. and, your policies have led to rapid deindustrialization. whatever you want to say about the soviet union, america is anything but an economic success story.
The Daily Digest
There really is no debate. Communism requires relying on a central power - whether it starts that way or ends up that way. Central powers are always corrupt. Socialism, Fascism, and Communism have historically been abysmal failures. I've lived through each and know this to be.
As these three systems make their way into a system based on Capitalism, they corrupt it and eventually it fails. An example is our system in the U.S. today. We started allowing Fascism to take over our system back in 1913 (really before) when our monetary system was signed over to the banking cartels. Fascism, historically, will fail. Same with Communism.
Our levels of inequality are based on each person's willingness to participate. The reason we have a third-world anything in this country, is because of government intervention and controls. These take away the right of each person to decide for themselves, and allows government, with all the inherent corruption, to make the rules.
Communism, Fascism, and Socialism are all bound to fail. Unfortunately Capitalism ends up being co opted by these corrupt systems.
jessica
you don't know what any of those words mean.
but, let me ask you this question: why do you think it's so important to let foreign interests manipulate the exchange rate?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjLy71Y34r8
the left has completely lost the plot. strike action is supposed to be about finding ways to put leverage on the system. it's a way to meet power with power. this has been co-opted by religious nonsense and converted into a means to enforce the moral majority. power is supposed to understand that it's morally wrong and adjust. it's a message that is as air-headed as the people articulating it.
if they want to "stop production", the way to do that is to send moles into the police force and organize police strikes. it can be about pay to start, so long as the goal is eventually to get cops to reject their training in racial profiling. we need to collectively find ways to get cops to reject their command structure. that is the tactic that will be successful.
--
Chris Healy
Get out of the road. Some people actually have jobs to go to.
jessica
fuck your job.
Atheistic Luciferian
Fuck you, welfare queen.
jessica
i'm sorry? get back to work, you fucking slave.
dingusmungus
Enjoy the disability checks leech...
neatpete
Hey disability is probably considered a raise for those on welfare. Hes going out for dinner tonight
jessica
i produce more of value on disability than you ever will in your wage/slave labour.
what have you ever created to justify your existence, besides profit for your owners?
so, again: fuck your job. go run around in circles in a field, instead. it's just as useful.
Sheryl Goolsbee
People's job's are paying the taxes so that people can live in subsidized/HUD housing, receive medicaid, bridge card benefits, pay for the better school's that all kid's can attend, WIC, abortion clinics, county run hospital's that are widely used by the indigent, family planning centers (birth control centers), methadone clinics, county psych services, etc. People work to pay for all of these services offered in most communities.
jessica
right. because government couldn't work without taxes. derp. have you ever considered the idea of abolishing money altogether?
The Daily Digest
People may be forced to contribute to a lot of socialist, government programs. None of which are Constitutional.
That is what we are trying to change.
jessica
in fact, i don't really support taxation. with the current system, i don't think you should pay taxes unless you're very wealthy - but that if you are very wealthy, you should pay almost all your income in taxes. so, somebody making $100,000/yr should really only have to pay consumption taxes. but, somebody making $10,000,000/yr should fork over 70%+ in taxes. and, the corporate tax rate should be over 50%. i'm perfectly happy with printing whatever else.
so, chances are pretty high that i don't think you should pay taxes at all.
but, in the long run, as an anarcho-communist, i would prefer to abolish the concept of exchange in favour of the concept of need.
The Daily Digest
That's one way to completely break the economic system. Punish the creators and business owners and you take away any incentive. Just do a mediocre job, and don't be too successful. Worked great for the Soviet Union, eh?
Taxing does one thing - enables a huge government to steal more and more. If you like where our system is now, then you must love big (criminal) government.
Punishing success does not, and never will, work. Too many collapsed governing systems, that include your communism.
You give over your power to a government that is sure to screw its people. I think I'll stick with working on Capitalism.
jessica
i'm not going to have this debate with you because we have to start from a more basic point than you're conceding. i don't agree with your definition of terms like "success", "creators" and "punish". if we were to have this debate, i would be constantly pulling the rug out from under you - much as i just did with that tax argument.
but, i don't think america comes across very well when compared economically to the soviet union. your levels of inequality are deplorable. the vast majority of americans live in abject poverty. you have third world child mortality levels. and, your policies have led to rapid deindustrialization. whatever you want to say about the soviet union, america is anything but an economic success story.
The Daily Digest
There really is no debate. Communism requires relying on a central power - whether it starts that way or ends up that way. Central powers are always corrupt. Socialism, Fascism, and Communism have historically been abysmal failures. I've lived through each and know this to be.
As these three systems make their way into a system based on Capitalism, they corrupt it and eventually it fails. An example is our system in the U.S. today. We started allowing Fascism to take over our system back in 1913 (really before) when our monetary system was signed over to the banking cartels. Fascism, historically, will fail. Same with Communism.
Our levels of inequality are based on each person's willingness to participate. The reason we have a third-world anything in this country, is because of government intervention and controls. These take away the right of each person to decide for themselves, and allows government, with all the inherent corruption, to make the rules.
Communism, Fascism, and Socialism are all bound to fail. Unfortunately Capitalism ends up being co opted by these corrupt systems.
jessica
you don't know what any of those words mean.
but, let me ask you this question: why do you think it's so important to let foreign interests manipulate the exchange rate?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjLy71Y34r8
j reacts to a longstanding recurring dream (thirty years....)
i just woke up from a recurring dream that i've been having for a
really, really long time. thirty years? it's not every night or
anything, but i definitely recognize it when i have it. i'm not going to
add this to the liner notes for confused because it's kind of
tangential, but it's a good example of the kind of thing that will end
up on the aleph-disc. i've also had this discussion quite a bit over
various fora, so it should be familiar to secret admirers.
despite what certain christian apologists may argue, this genetic v. environment debate is largely rejected altogether by science. christian apologists? well, this you-don't-have-a-choice nonsense is not science but a "progressive" opinion coming out of the religious fundamentalism of everybody following "god's plan". if you paid close attention in sunday school, this denial of agency in gender roles should be entirely logical to you. yet, it's truly hard to make sense of it, otherwise.
remember: i'm not a christian progressive. i'm an anarchist. so, i have a strong attachment to the idea of a tabula rasa. my politics make no sense if we're all genetically determined. if that were true, i'd have to concede to some conservative concept of "human nature" and fall into the standard hobbesian apologism for deep totalitarianism. i readily concede that humans are assholes, but i blame capitalism and not biology. that's the point of being an anarchist: that abolishing capitalism will abolish this right-wing concept of "human nature" and allow us the freedom to decide how and what we want to be. if we have no way out of this, we're stuck with the police state - and the most violent forms of repression and surveillance become justified. i don't have any patience for this middle-of-the-road liberal nonsense: we can either transcend capitalism or we can't.
and, i believe that we can. but, we need to be able to change. the technically correct statement comes from chomsky: we don't yet understand humans well enough to know if we have a nature or not. yeah, well you probably fell for a strawman. your source probably sucks, and that's your epiphany, there. the term is currently meaningless. but, the way it's thrown around has to essentially be right-wing propaganda. otherwise, just give me a gun and get the fuck off my lawn.
so, because i'm an anarchist and not a christian progressive, my biases are towards tabula rasa rather than genetic predetermination. and, because i don't get my science from left-wing political rallies, i've run into quite a bit of push back on my refusal to uphold certain types of loaded sloganeering. let's be clear on that point.
real scientists will tell you that there's no evidence for a genetic basis for gender nonconformity. in fact, it's not even considered to be a psychological condition, let alone a genetic one. think of it like this: suppose your daughter wants to wear pants. nobody even cares anymore. you might even buy your daughter pants without even thinking about it. but, suppose your son wants to wear a dress. well, that's seen as some kind of mental illness. the only mental illness here is repressed misogyny in the parents! yet, i'll acknowledge that it's an empirical question. sort of. what do the studies say?
the truth is that they're all terrible. one of the studies you see thrown around to argue it's genetic relies on the reversal of flawed notes. so, the doctor that did the study has acknowledged that he falsified data and even sexually assaulted the participants. such a study ought to be completely discarded. instead, advocates of the genetic theory just negate all of the notes. this is their core argument. see, the staunch truth is that this is the best they can do in terms of presenting evidence in favour of a genetic basis for gender non-conformity. they may also throw some studies about twins at you, but if you look at the data closely it invariably actually contradicts their argument.
what i can't make sense of is why any scientifically literate person would consider it to be a valid hypothesis in the first place. it's behavioural. genes don't code for behaviours. that's religious thinking. but, in the sense that it remains an empirical question, i need to see a properly designed study. unfortunately, such a study would no doubt be unethical.
i can accept some concept of hormonal imbalance as a complicating factor, but i remain convinced that the issue is primarily environmental. so, we have another straw man: i'm arguing it's a choice and that conversion therapy should be attempted. which is completely ridiculous...
the argument that we are shaped by our environment is not in any way the same as the argument that we have a choice in our sexual orientation or sexual identification. that should not need to be stated. i often have a difficult time arguing this point, because i can't even make sense of the implication. the reason, again, is that i'm not a christian progressive. i'm an anarchist. the only reason you would come up with such a ridiculous assertion is if you're framing the issue in terms of a religious debate. so, these christians come at you with this idea that it's a choice and you're evil or something (i don't even know...), and your response is "no. it's genetic.". so, if i'm rejecting the idea that it's genetic, i'm taking the side of the christians you're arguing with.
i've made this argument about nihilism. i've been accused of nihilism, because i'm so openly atheist. but, an atheist cannot even make sense of nihilism, because it's framed in religious terms. likewise, i cannot make sense of these arguments from progressives because they are framed in religious terms.
so, no i don't think it's a choice. not exactly. i think it's a consequence of the stochastic processes of the universe. see, that's another atheist thing: i believe in chaos and randomness. your life is not determined by some supernatural force. you were not "programmed" by anything or anyone. you are a consequence of chance, and may have come out entirely differently had certain events in your life been different.
so, when i think back to being a girly boy at the age of four or five, i think it's obvious that the reason is that i spent all of my time with girls. i had a mother, a grandmother, two aunts, a sister, a female cousin and little girls living in the houses around me. dad was around, but kind of distant. that's not genetic, and it's not a choice. it's just a function of chance. if i had an uncle or a boy cousin or there was a little boy across the path, things may have been different.
but, that doesn't mean it's a good idea to enforce an arbitrary gender binary, either. remember: not a christian progressive. an anarchist. i reject the nuclear family, too.
the recurring dream places me in a field with a baseball glove. it was t-ball, technically, not baseball. i'm very young - 4. 5. i'm supposed to be paying attention, waiting for a ball from the sky, but i don't really care. i'm more interested in picking flowers. well, i'm in a field. that's what i usually do when i'm in a field with my grandmother. a ball rolls by me, and i choose not to respond to it. my dad whirls in in a rage, scoops me up and brings me to the car. he's ashamed. that's the dream: remembering his shame.
it's a quiet drive back to my mom's.
when we get home, he takes me out of the car, walks me to the door and promises he'll never make me stand in a field by myself ever again.
--
my parents were both libertarians, although they wouldn't have identified that way. my mom was a poorly educated white person, and had political perspectives (or lack thereof) that would be stereotypically associated with a poorly educated white person - support for social services and redistribution, peppered with a lot of xenophobia and social exclusion. not so much into the gays. but, my grandmother was far more liberal (small and big l - card carrying, in fact) and had a bigger effect on me. my mom struggled with addictions and would disappear for weeks at a time. i have almost no recollection of the elder trudeau, other than that my grandmother loved him and my mother hated him.
my dad wasn't really white, but he was more of the typical canadian - "fiscally conservative and socially liberal". he was, for a time, this strange canadian political animal: a progressive conservative. not an old tory. a pc, meaning he had strong support for progressive social policies but demanded that they be paid for through responsible taxation. you could maybe call him a tax and spend liberal, except to point out that he demanded the tax as much as the spend, which is usually a straw man when applied to liberals (who don't actually care about deficits). he was the only person i've ever met that was in support of the gst in the 90s - because he didn't want to see spending cuts. he voted for kim campbell, and defended it until the day he died. yet, he was also in the group that was highly critical of the reform party and never dropped his opposition to harper, instead opting for the right-leaning side of the liberal party. his perspective on social issues was always staunchly libertarian, whether he ever really realized it or not. the gays never bothered him, so he didn't bother them. the chinese never bothered him, so he didn't bother them. the blacks....well, maybe they bothered him a couple of times, but it's better to just get out of their way.
the point is that they were both into hands-off parenting. i had huge free rein from a very young age. this is another reason why i'm decidedly gen x: they were both very opposed to helicopter parenting and very much into letting me develop "naturally". i've grown up as an advocate of free range parenting, as well (i am an anarchist, after all). but, i think that this perspective is important to point out in the environment v genetics debate.
the reason is that the assumption was always that i'd grow out of it - which is genetic determinism. after all, i have male chromosomes, so my inner male tendencies should eventually over power and i'll in the end grow into a man. i'm just being a kid.
what i was trying to get across in my liner notes is that this is a type of naturalistic fallacy. in the end, i would not just magically become a boy in the absence of any instruction due to genetic determinism. but, it leaves open the question: if there was stronger instruction, might i have?
i don't know. i really don't.
what i do think that i can state with a lot of certainty is that the segregation was a bad idea, and i reacted pretty strongly to it. my parents never did this, but the school system did. the more that the teachers told me i wasn't allowed to be a girl, the more i insisted upon it. but, if you understand kids, you know that's how kids are - they want what they can't have, and the more you say "no" the more they push back.
i would propose that the error in approach was less in telling me what i can't be and more in failing to teach me what i "ought" to be. "you can't have this candy" is one thing. "have this apple instead" is another. the kid can't just magically fill in the blank that it should have an apple instead of the candy, it just dwells on not having the candy. the apple has to be presented as an option before it can be accepted.
of course, the apple can also be rejected. might i have rejected the apple and insisted on the candy? see, if you take my position on this, you have to realize that this is not pre-determined. the choices i would have made would not have been in a vacuum - they would have depended on the people around me. i can't consequently know if i would have rejected the apple had it been presented to me. i can just point out that it was never really presented. i was just told i can't have the candy.
and, yes i do think this is the right way to think about gender roles in kids.
so, i'm left with a complicated set of alternate outcomes:
1) had the system not tried to beat the girl out of me,
a) i might very well have grown out of it on my own.
b) or, i might have grown into it younger.
that would have depended on the environment around me. but, at least i wouldn't have internalized it and it wouldn't have become this thing i struggled with.
2) on the other hand, had the system more rigorously enforced maleness in addition to penalizing femaleness,
a) i may have been more effectively masculinized.
b) or the internalization may have been that much worse.
i think the key thing is in rejecting 2a) as some kind of ideal. this "ought" ought not be an ought. randomness is what it is. shit happens. but, kids need positive reinforcement one way or the other, and the ability to make these choices in a way that is free of shame or coercion.
so, i can't say what choices i would have made in the absence of coercion. i can only point out how the presence of coercion affected the choices i did make.
despite what certain christian apologists may argue, this genetic v. environment debate is largely rejected altogether by science. christian apologists? well, this you-don't-have-a-choice nonsense is not science but a "progressive" opinion coming out of the religious fundamentalism of everybody following "god's plan". if you paid close attention in sunday school, this denial of agency in gender roles should be entirely logical to you. yet, it's truly hard to make sense of it, otherwise.
remember: i'm not a christian progressive. i'm an anarchist. so, i have a strong attachment to the idea of a tabula rasa. my politics make no sense if we're all genetically determined. if that were true, i'd have to concede to some conservative concept of "human nature" and fall into the standard hobbesian apologism for deep totalitarianism. i readily concede that humans are assholes, but i blame capitalism and not biology. that's the point of being an anarchist: that abolishing capitalism will abolish this right-wing concept of "human nature" and allow us the freedom to decide how and what we want to be. if we have no way out of this, we're stuck with the police state - and the most violent forms of repression and surveillance become justified. i don't have any patience for this middle-of-the-road liberal nonsense: we can either transcend capitalism or we can't.
and, i believe that we can. but, we need to be able to change. the technically correct statement comes from chomsky: we don't yet understand humans well enough to know if we have a nature or not. yeah, well you probably fell for a strawman. your source probably sucks, and that's your epiphany, there. the term is currently meaningless. but, the way it's thrown around has to essentially be right-wing propaganda. otherwise, just give me a gun and get the fuck off my lawn.
so, because i'm an anarchist and not a christian progressive, my biases are towards tabula rasa rather than genetic predetermination. and, because i don't get my science from left-wing political rallies, i've run into quite a bit of push back on my refusal to uphold certain types of loaded sloganeering. let's be clear on that point.
real scientists will tell you that there's no evidence for a genetic basis for gender nonconformity. in fact, it's not even considered to be a psychological condition, let alone a genetic one. think of it like this: suppose your daughter wants to wear pants. nobody even cares anymore. you might even buy your daughter pants without even thinking about it. but, suppose your son wants to wear a dress. well, that's seen as some kind of mental illness. the only mental illness here is repressed misogyny in the parents! yet, i'll acknowledge that it's an empirical question. sort of. what do the studies say?
the truth is that they're all terrible. one of the studies you see thrown around to argue it's genetic relies on the reversal of flawed notes. so, the doctor that did the study has acknowledged that he falsified data and even sexually assaulted the participants. such a study ought to be completely discarded. instead, advocates of the genetic theory just negate all of the notes. this is their core argument. see, the staunch truth is that this is the best they can do in terms of presenting evidence in favour of a genetic basis for gender non-conformity. they may also throw some studies about twins at you, but if you look at the data closely it invariably actually contradicts their argument.
what i can't make sense of is why any scientifically literate person would consider it to be a valid hypothesis in the first place. it's behavioural. genes don't code for behaviours. that's religious thinking. but, in the sense that it remains an empirical question, i need to see a properly designed study. unfortunately, such a study would no doubt be unethical.
i can accept some concept of hormonal imbalance as a complicating factor, but i remain convinced that the issue is primarily environmental. so, we have another straw man: i'm arguing it's a choice and that conversion therapy should be attempted. which is completely ridiculous...
the argument that we are shaped by our environment is not in any way the same as the argument that we have a choice in our sexual orientation or sexual identification. that should not need to be stated. i often have a difficult time arguing this point, because i can't even make sense of the implication. the reason, again, is that i'm not a christian progressive. i'm an anarchist. the only reason you would come up with such a ridiculous assertion is if you're framing the issue in terms of a religious debate. so, these christians come at you with this idea that it's a choice and you're evil or something (i don't even know...), and your response is "no. it's genetic.". so, if i'm rejecting the idea that it's genetic, i'm taking the side of the christians you're arguing with.
i've made this argument about nihilism. i've been accused of nihilism, because i'm so openly atheist. but, an atheist cannot even make sense of nihilism, because it's framed in religious terms. likewise, i cannot make sense of these arguments from progressives because they are framed in religious terms.
so, no i don't think it's a choice. not exactly. i think it's a consequence of the stochastic processes of the universe. see, that's another atheist thing: i believe in chaos and randomness. your life is not determined by some supernatural force. you were not "programmed" by anything or anyone. you are a consequence of chance, and may have come out entirely differently had certain events in your life been different.
so, when i think back to being a girly boy at the age of four or five, i think it's obvious that the reason is that i spent all of my time with girls. i had a mother, a grandmother, two aunts, a sister, a female cousin and little girls living in the houses around me. dad was around, but kind of distant. that's not genetic, and it's not a choice. it's just a function of chance. if i had an uncle or a boy cousin or there was a little boy across the path, things may have been different.
but, that doesn't mean it's a good idea to enforce an arbitrary gender binary, either. remember: not a christian progressive. an anarchist. i reject the nuclear family, too.
the recurring dream places me in a field with a baseball glove. it was t-ball, technically, not baseball. i'm very young - 4. 5. i'm supposed to be paying attention, waiting for a ball from the sky, but i don't really care. i'm more interested in picking flowers. well, i'm in a field. that's what i usually do when i'm in a field with my grandmother. a ball rolls by me, and i choose not to respond to it. my dad whirls in in a rage, scoops me up and brings me to the car. he's ashamed. that's the dream: remembering his shame.
it's a quiet drive back to my mom's.
when we get home, he takes me out of the car, walks me to the door and promises he'll never make me stand in a field by myself ever again.
--
my parents were both libertarians, although they wouldn't have identified that way. my mom was a poorly educated white person, and had political perspectives (or lack thereof) that would be stereotypically associated with a poorly educated white person - support for social services and redistribution, peppered with a lot of xenophobia and social exclusion. not so much into the gays. but, my grandmother was far more liberal (small and big l - card carrying, in fact) and had a bigger effect on me. my mom struggled with addictions and would disappear for weeks at a time. i have almost no recollection of the elder trudeau, other than that my grandmother loved him and my mother hated him.
my dad wasn't really white, but he was more of the typical canadian - "fiscally conservative and socially liberal". he was, for a time, this strange canadian political animal: a progressive conservative. not an old tory. a pc, meaning he had strong support for progressive social policies but demanded that they be paid for through responsible taxation. you could maybe call him a tax and spend liberal, except to point out that he demanded the tax as much as the spend, which is usually a straw man when applied to liberals (who don't actually care about deficits). he was the only person i've ever met that was in support of the gst in the 90s - because he didn't want to see spending cuts. he voted for kim campbell, and defended it until the day he died. yet, he was also in the group that was highly critical of the reform party and never dropped his opposition to harper, instead opting for the right-leaning side of the liberal party. his perspective on social issues was always staunchly libertarian, whether he ever really realized it or not. the gays never bothered him, so he didn't bother them. the chinese never bothered him, so he didn't bother them. the blacks....well, maybe they bothered him a couple of times, but it's better to just get out of their way.
the point is that they were both into hands-off parenting. i had huge free rein from a very young age. this is another reason why i'm decidedly gen x: they were both very opposed to helicopter parenting and very much into letting me develop "naturally". i've grown up as an advocate of free range parenting, as well (i am an anarchist, after all). but, i think that this perspective is important to point out in the environment v genetics debate.
the reason is that the assumption was always that i'd grow out of it - which is genetic determinism. after all, i have male chromosomes, so my inner male tendencies should eventually over power and i'll in the end grow into a man. i'm just being a kid.
what i was trying to get across in my liner notes is that this is a type of naturalistic fallacy. in the end, i would not just magically become a boy in the absence of any instruction due to genetic determinism. but, it leaves open the question: if there was stronger instruction, might i have?
i don't know. i really don't.
what i do think that i can state with a lot of certainty is that the segregation was a bad idea, and i reacted pretty strongly to it. my parents never did this, but the school system did. the more that the teachers told me i wasn't allowed to be a girl, the more i insisted upon it. but, if you understand kids, you know that's how kids are - they want what they can't have, and the more you say "no" the more they push back.
i would propose that the error in approach was less in telling me what i can't be and more in failing to teach me what i "ought" to be. "you can't have this candy" is one thing. "have this apple instead" is another. the kid can't just magically fill in the blank that it should have an apple instead of the candy, it just dwells on not having the candy. the apple has to be presented as an option before it can be accepted.
of course, the apple can also be rejected. might i have rejected the apple and insisted on the candy? see, if you take my position on this, you have to realize that this is not pre-determined. the choices i would have made would not have been in a vacuum - they would have depended on the people around me. i can't consequently know if i would have rejected the apple had it been presented to me. i can just point out that it was never really presented. i was just told i can't have the candy.
and, yes i do think this is the right way to think about gender roles in kids.
so, i'm left with a complicated set of alternate outcomes:
1) had the system not tried to beat the girl out of me,
a) i might very well have grown out of it on my own.
b) or, i might have grown into it younger.
that would have depended on the environment around me. but, at least i wouldn't have internalized it and it wouldn't have become this thing i struggled with.
2) on the other hand, had the system more rigorously enforced maleness in addition to penalizing femaleness,
a) i may have been more effectively masculinized.
b) or the internalization may have been that much worse.
i think the key thing is in rejecting 2a) as some kind of ideal. this "ought" ought not be an ought. randomness is what it is. shit happens. but, kids need positive reinforcement one way or the other, and the ability to make these choices in a way that is free of shame or coercion.
so, i can't say what choices i would have made in the absence of coercion. i can only point out how the presence of coercion affected the choices i did make.
Monday, July 18, 2016
18-07-2016: talking through some sequencing decisions for inri004-inri009 (new inri009...)
tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/fuck-the-dead
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/skaters
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/useless
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/confused-2
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/hey-god-2
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/schizoid-terrorist-2
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/i-did-your-mom-2
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/relax
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/hurricane
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/fuck-the-dead
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/skaters
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/useless
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/confused-2
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/hey-god-2
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/schizoid-terrorist-2
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/i-did-your-mom-2
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/relax
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/hurricane
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1
refinalizing hey god (inri008)
bonus tracks added to inri008. audio permanently closed.
==
my recollection of the initial recording of this track is unfortunately somewhat vague. when we push our memories like i'm trying to, we become more likely to imagine the past in terms that never actually existed. so, how real is this vague memory of wanting to hear some backwards guitars? i fear that it's perilous to try and force my mind to be more specific.
it's at least fully consistent with what i know about the situation. this was initially the second track recorded in my basement studio in the fall of 1996. so, i was still at the point where i was looking to try things in the studio for the first time. as for backwards guitars? i was very interested in both zappa and hendrix (two of my biggest guitar influences) at the time, and that is actually blatantly obvious if you listen to inri000. they both used backwards guitars. there are multiple occasions on inri000 (and afterwards...) where the nods to both of these players are beyond heavy-sleeved. so, my vague memory at the very least makes sense.
how i made the jump from trying to create a backwards guitar solo to turning a song into a palindrome is another question and i don't really have a good answer besides stumbling upon it as i was listening to it. clearly, it is the case that this struck me as a good idea at some point along the way.
when i went to recreate the track in early 1998, i felt the need to recreate the palindrome effect. so, i never saved any version of the track in forward order (without the backwards overdub) or released it in any kind of way. for all these years, there has simply never been a forwards version of the track.
the remastering process over 2015 has finally given me the opportunity to create a forwards version and spin it off as a single for the express reason of documenting the track as it was actually initially written, which was as a fairly straight forward alternative pop song. that's a description that i do believe is very old. yet, i may be imagining the past, too...
the new album mix is a palindrome, as it always has been. the electronics mix is constructed using the same algorithm. the backwards mix is just literally that. combined together, the forwards and backwards mixes create the album version. the 2013 remasters are appended as bonuses.
initially written in 1996. recreated in feb, 1998. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013. reclaimed june 29, 2015. remixed july 15, 2015. compiled on jan 4, 2016. finalized on july 11, 2016. bonus tracks added and re-finalized on july 18, 2016. as always, please use headphones.
regarding the subject matter of the deleted vocals/lyrics, please see the following vlog (which is also available on inriℵ0).
credits
j - guitars, effects, bass, drum programming, digital wave editing, loops, vocals, drum kit, tapes, production
released february 11, 1998
==
my recollection of the initial recording of this track is unfortunately somewhat vague. when we push our memories like i'm trying to, we become more likely to imagine the past in terms that never actually existed. so, how real is this vague memory of wanting to hear some backwards guitars? i fear that it's perilous to try and force my mind to be more specific.
it's at least fully consistent with what i know about the situation. this was initially the second track recorded in my basement studio in the fall of 1996. so, i was still at the point where i was looking to try things in the studio for the first time. as for backwards guitars? i was very interested in both zappa and hendrix (two of my biggest guitar influences) at the time, and that is actually blatantly obvious if you listen to inri000. they both used backwards guitars. there are multiple occasions on inri000 (and afterwards...) where the nods to both of these players are beyond heavy-sleeved. so, my vague memory at the very least makes sense.
how i made the jump from trying to create a backwards guitar solo to turning a song into a palindrome is another question and i don't really have a good answer besides stumbling upon it as i was listening to it. clearly, it is the case that this struck me as a good idea at some point along the way.
when i went to recreate the track in early 1998, i felt the need to recreate the palindrome effect. so, i never saved any version of the track in forward order (without the backwards overdub) or released it in any kind of way. for all these years, there has simply never been a forwards version of the track.
the remastering process over 2015 has finally given me the opportunity to create a forwards version and spin it off as a single for the express reason of documenting the track as it was actually initially written, which was as a fairly straight forward alternative pop song. that's a description that i do believe is very old. yet, i may be imagining the past, too...
the new album mix is a palindrome, as it always has been. the electronics mix is constructed using the same algorithm. the backwards mix is just literally that. combined together, the forwards and backwards mixes create the album version. the 2013 remasters are appended as bonuses.
initially written in 1996. recreated in feb, 1998. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013. reclaimed june 29, 2015. remixed july 15, 2015. compiled on jan 4, 2016. finalized on july 11, 2016. bonus tracks added and re-finalized on july 18, 2016. as always, please use headphones.
regarding the subject matter of the deleted vocals/lyrics, please see the following vlog (which is also available on inriℵ0).
credits
j - guitars, effects, bass, drum programming, digital wave editing, loops, vocals, drum kit, tapes, production
released february 11, 1998
refinalizing useless (inri006)
hidden track added to inri006. audio permanently closed
==
the christmas of 1997 was a good one. in addition to getting a four-track recorder to multitrack with, i also ended up with a jx-8p for my birthday, which is in early january. now that i could use the computer a little bit, i decided that i was finally ready to do some serious recording.
i had committed myself to reapproaching the first demo tapes and rerecording certain tracks to reflect the uplift that they got from the drum machine; that is, i had already dramatically rewritten most of the tracks around the drum machine, so i felt i should rerecord them. now, i was going to need to uplift some of those tracks a second time with synthesizer parts. i knew which tracks i wanted to approach and how, but i wanted to ease myself in a little. so, i picked a new track as my first synthesizer experiment.
that is a large part of what this track is. i had the lyrics pre-written, actually, and knew that i wanted a spooky kind of atmosphere to the track. so, i was approaching the synth with the question of how to manipulate it into sounding "haunted". that may seem trivial, but please realize that i had never seen an actual synthesizer before - i'd just always used the presets on my sister's electronic piano. it was a small victory to get the patch by increasing the sustain on the preset, but it was a hard-fought battle.
after i got the track mixed down through the 4-track and mastered into the pc by sending the signal into the back of the soundblaster, some listening had me wishing that i had slowed the tape down a little. the track is a kind of a child's understanding of the existential, which i just felt would be more aesthetically in balance if i slowed the tape down and made it seem a bit more mournful. so, i wanted to go back and remaster it with the speed set a little slower.
i decided i should test it by slowing the track down digitally, first. what i was trying to do was get an estimate to use to remaster it at a different speed. i took a guess on half-speed to try and was going to incrementally reduce the reduction through trial and error until i got to a good point. then, i could set the tape speed by ear. i did not go through that process; i stopped at half-speed. for several weeks in 1998, the half-speed version was the final product for the track. i believe i even uploaded it to mp3.com slowed down this way.
i just instantly stopped at half-speed because, while the effect was more exaggerated than intended, that exaggeration was to greater effect than i imagined. i wasn't expecting the guitars to get that grungy, or the vocals to get that deep. when i heard it, though, i knew that this was the track.
in the end, i reverted back to the normal speed version, but this was done with much internal division. the reason that this is the last track on the demo is because i was holding out for space for the lengthier version. it was only due to a combination of space requirements and pull for conformity of sound through the demo that had me relent at the very end.
in hindsight, i do think that the short version fits better on the flow of the cd, and it will remain there - minus the vocals. yet, i also think that this slowed down version deserves it's own document. i've slowed down two other versions of the track, as well, to drag out the fun. the album version closes this collection.
originally created in 1998. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013. reconstructed in the summer of 2015 and then manipulated further in the summer of 2016. released & finalized on july 7, 2016. hidden track added and re-finalized on july 18, 2016. as always, please use headphones.
this release is compiled on inriℵ0.
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/merch/inri-box-set
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1997, 2013, 2016).
credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, synths, drum programming, vocals, digital wave manipulation, production
released january 22, 1998
==
the christmas of 1997 was a good one. in addition to getting a four-track recorder to multitrack with, i also ended up with a jx-8p for my birthday, which is in early january. now that i could use the computer a little bit, i decided that i was finally ready to do some serious recording.
i had committed myself to reapproaching the first demo tapes and rerecording certain tracks to reflect the uplift that they got from the drum machine; that is, i had already dramatically rewritten most of the tracks around the drum machine, so i felt i should rerecord them. now, i was going to need to uplift some of those tracks a second time with synthesizer parts. i knew which tracks i wanted to approach and how, but i wanted to ease myself in a little. so, i picked a new track as my first synthesizer experiment.
that is a large part of what this track is. i had the lyrics pre-written, actually, and knew that i wanted a spooky kind of atmosphere to the track. so, i was approaching the synth with the question of how to manipulate it into sounding "haunted". that may seem trivial, but please realize that i had never seen an actual synthesizer before - i'd just always used the presets on my sister's electronic piano. it was a small victory to get the patch by increasing the sustain on the preset, but it was a hard-fought battle.
after i got the track mixed down through the 4-track and mastered into the pc by sending the signal into the back of the soundblaster, some listening had me wishing that i had slowed the tape down a little. the track is a kind of a child's understanding of the existential, which i just felt would be more aesthetically in balance if i slowed the tape down and made it seem a bit more mournful. so, i wanted to go back and remaster it with the speed set a little slower.
i decided i should test it by slowing the track down digitally, first. what i was trying to do was get an estimate to use to remaster it at a different speed. i took a guess on half-speed to try and was going to incrementally reduce the reduction through trial and error until i got to a good point. then, i could set the tape speed by ear. i did not go through that process; i stopped at half-speed. for several weeks in 1998, the half-speed version was the final product for the track. i believe i even uploaded it to mp3.com slowed down this way.
i just instantly stopped at half-speed because, while the effect was more exaggerated than intended, that exaggeration was to greater effect than i imagined. i wasn't expecting the guitars to get that grungy, or the vocals to get that deep. when i heard it, though, i knew that this was the track.
in the end, i reverted back to the normal speed version, but this was done with much internal division. the reason that this is the last track on the demo is because i was holding out for space for the lengthier version. it was only due to a combination of space requirements and pull for conformity of sound through the demo that had me relent at the very end.
in hindsight, i do think that the short version fits better on the flow of the cd, and it will remain there - minus the vocals. yet, i also think that this slowed down version deserves it's own document. i've slowed down two other versions of the track, as well, to drag out the fun. the album version closes this collection.
originally created in 1998. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013. reconstructed in the summer of 2015 and then manipulated further in the summer of 2016. released & finalized on july 7, 2016. hidden track added and re-finalized on july 18, 2016. as always, please use headphones.
this release is compiled on inriℵ0.
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/merch/inri-box-set
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1997, 2013, 2016).
credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, synths, drum programming, vocals, digital wave manipulation, production
released january 22, 1998
j reacts to the protestant work ethic (in capitalism) as a type of severe child abuse
stop.
you don't get ahead in this society by working hard. teaching your kids this lie is poor parenting - child abuse, arguably.
rather, you need to teach your kids how to cheat, how to steal, how to lie and how to manipulate their way to an advantage over their competitors. 'cause you know what? that's what the other kids are being taught. and, if your kids are out there strutting around with their dunce caps on and spouting the idiocy of hard work to get ahead in propertarian capitalism, they're going to get the shit beat out of them - and nobody's going to care.
yeah. it's a shitty system. but you have a responsibility to give your kids a competitive advantage. so, don't drag them down with naive stupidity.
you want send your kids to school?
the only growth industry in north america right now is financial services.
bankers. stock traders. that's how you make money nowadays.
hard work? hardly. it's parasitic. that's the economy...
so, stop with the fucking calvinism. it's not just tiring. it's damaging to the next generation.
and, you wonder why i don't give a fuck? why i refuse to participate? i know i'm lucky to have been born where i am, but the perspective just makes the society that much worse.
you don't get ahead in this society by working hard. teaching your kids this lie is poor parenting - child abuse, arguably.
rather, you need to teach your kids how to cheat, how to steal, how to lie and how to manipulate their way to an advantage over their competitors. 'cause you know what? that's what the other kids are being taught. and, if your kids are out there strutting around with their dunce caps on and spouting the idiocy of hard work to get ahead in propertarian capitalism, they're going to get the shit beat out of them - and nobody's going to care.
yeah. it's a shitty system. but you have a responsibility to give your kids a competitive advantage. so, don't drag them down with naive stupidity.
you want send your kids to school?
the only growth industry in north america right now is financial services.
bankers. stock traders. that's how you make money nowadays.
hard work? hardly. it's parasitic. that's the economy...
so, stop with the fucking calvinism. it's not just tiring. it's damaging to the next generation.
and, you wonder why i don't give a fuck? why i refuse to participate? i know i'm lucky to have been born where i am, but the perspective just makes the society that much worse.
j reacts to her own political irrelevance for the remainder of this century
listen, i've actually been over this repeatedly.
i do not feel that my politics are realistically attainable within my life time. this is why i would prefer to reject society and live in poverty in order to focus on art. i am entirely aware that i am so far outside of the status quo, that i cannot be coherently understood - except in a revolutionary context.
i consequently offer a kind of acid test, right. i would expect the status quo to reject virtually everything i say. so, if you find yourself of the opinion that i'm kind of extreme? sure. i agree with you. and, you're the status quo.
just understand two things:
(1) i expect a very small audience, because of the nature of my comments. i would be the first person to be shocked by the prospect of my audience growing. this would imply that my analysis is incorrect.
(2) the size of my audience has not and will continue to not have any effect on my comments.
i'm a musician. check out my tunes.
i do not feel that my politics are realistically attainable within my life time. this is why i would prefer to reject society and live in poverty in order to focus on art. i am entirely aware that i am so far outside of the status quo, that i cannot be coherently understood - except in a revolutionary context.
i consequently offer a kind of acid test, right. i would expect the status quo to reject virtually everything i say. so, if you find yourself of the opinion that i'm kind of extreme? sure. i agree with you. and, you're the status quo.
just understand two things:
(1) i expect a very small audience, because of the nature of my comments. i would be the first person to be shocked by the prospect of my audience growing. this would imply that my analysis is incorrect.
(2) the size of my audience has not and will continue to not have any effect on my comments.
i'm a musician. check out my tunes.
to be clear: i have called for the public executions (after trials...) of both bush and clinton. this isn't partisan. they're both war criminals.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hillary-clinton-death-threat-execution-mike-folk-1.3683213
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hillary-clinton-death-threat-execution-mike-folk-1.3683213
j reacts to police strikes as a necessary leftist political tactic
cops are workers, too, and instilling a concept of class consciousness into the force - including fostering a tendency towards work stoppages - is an absolutely essential process for the left.
anything that gets them thinking more in terms of labour conflict and less in terms of a monopoly on force is a net positive.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-red-serge-protest-1.3667453
just about the only thing that i can think of that might actually succeed in reducing racial profiling, for example, would be rank-and-file police officers threatening or implementing a work stoppage over it. at the end of the day, the only way that this will stop is if they stop "just taking orders".
anything that gets them thinking more in terms of labour conflict and less in terms of a monopoly on force is a net positive.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-red-serge-protest-1.3667453
just about the only thing that i can think of that might actually succeed in reducing racial profiling, for example, would be rank-and-file police officers threatening or implementing a work stoppage over it. at the end of the day, the only way that this will stop is if they stop "just taking orders".
Sunday, July 17, 2016
"i suggest that dawkins is the logical conclusion to kropotkin and the natural basis upon which a post-leftist concept of scientific socialism should be constructed - arguably making him the most important writer of the 20th century, and certainly the most important writer on the (anarchist) left. you have to have some background in both dawkins & kropotkin to understand what i'm saying. here's a very terse introduction to the topic that at least constructs the relevant context:"
http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/the-god-delusion-and-anarchism
http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/the-god-delusion-and-anarchism
Saturday, July 16, 2016
new post at the alter-reality
july 16, 1996
good morning. i've been up all night playing civ 2. how was your night?
it's been a pretty good summer, so far. i've very much gotten into the routine of staying up all night and sleeping during the afternoon, which is a habit i can trace back a few years to when i used to live with my mom. when she got a new tv, she moved the old one into the basement, which is where my bedroom was. it was a nice, big tv - but very old. wood frame, with two dials on the front. uhf/vhf. it was around as long as i can remember, so it must have been from the 70s. at first, i used to stay up to watch conan and then get tired and fall asleep right after or even during it. i had to, because conan was the funniest thing to ever exist in the history of the universe. but, the habit of staying up late is something that builds on itself. you stay up a little later, you sleep in a little later; eventually, you're up all night. soon, i found myself watching muchmusic after conan; they always played better music at night. then, i was staying up even later to watch reruns of the original star trek series, which they were interestingly playing on cbc kingston. maybe somebody in the station went to high school with shatner, or something. kingston used to be the capital of canada, but it was eventually moved up the rideau river here to ottawa because kingston was considered to be too vulnerable to a sneak attack by american forces. those bastards are always trying to invade us, so we have to be careful. it's about half way to toronto, which is still close enough to get channels here in ottawa on basic cable. within a few years, i'd guess i'd seen pretty much the entire series - much of it several times.
i even found myself staying up even later, mostly for the purposes of reading. by the time i'd got to high school, i'd read almost everything that stephen king had ever written. i also read a lot of science fiction including a lot of isaac asimov, especially the foundation series. the gaia theory narrative was very interesting to me. some nights, i would stay up reading until lunch time. this wasn't always really a choice, either - sometimes i just got lost in it.
so, the idea of staying up all night is not something that's new to me. i'm only 15, but i've been doing this regularly over the summer for many years, already.
it is a little different this year, though, for a few reasons. one is that i'm not living at my mom's this summer. mom didn't really care when i went to bed. dad doesn't either, really, but my stepmother claims she is a light sleeper and doesn't want to be woken up because she has to work in the morning. also, i might wake the dogs up (we have two golden retrievers). i'm well aware that there's an unwritten and unenforced rule that i should be in bed, but i also know that nobody is going to give me grief so long as i don't wake anybody up. the other reason it's different this year is that there's central air here. my mom has never had an air conditioner, and in fact there were even no windows in the basement. so, conan or not, there was some greater value in sleeping through the hot days and living in the cooler evenings. it can actually get pretty hot in canada in the summer!
this has been my schedule for most of the summer:
1. wake up after 2:00 pm. 3:00, often. 4:00, sometimes, even.
2. eat. well, usually. sometimes, dad says not to eat before he goes because he's making something. or, he might leave a note. sometimes, he even phones to tell me not to eat - and, i'd better not, too. he gets strangely depressed when you won't eat his food, like he's failed at life or something. i think it's some kind of repressed italian cultural thing. that's the exception, though. usually, they eat out on their way home from work. so, i usually feed myself. i expect to feed myself.
3. play guitar until everybody goes to bed.
4. play civ 2 until the sun comes up, or later.
5. sleep until the afternoon and start again.
is that a pretty good summer? i think it is, actually. although, i'm not sure if they're really aware of my sleeping schedules. i think they mostly think that i just get up early, and am awake all day.
one of the things i enjoy about playing civ 2 all night is listening to music when i'm playing. the newest, greatest thing in my walkman is the new i mother earth record, scenery and fish. i did already have the first record, dig, although i found it a little dense to get into, at first. it was just a little more challenging than the grunge that came out in '93 and '94. so, it kind of sat for a while until i went back to it. right now, i'm actually listening to both of them.
i find that the lyrics are really quirky at points, which i kind of like. they kind of want to tell a story, but they're kind of tongue-in-cheek about it, too. it's kind of like that they know they're cliched and are simultaneously revelling in it and poking fun at themselves for it. i think that's called post-modernism, but i'm not completely sure. what i really, really like are the guitars on the record. the fact that the guitars on this record are just a bit more advanced than the grunge records i've been listening to for the last few years puts them in just about the right space for me, right now. it's kind of more like the stuff my guitar teacher shows me: jimi hendrix, stevie ray vaughn, eric clapton, carlos santana. or, maybe it's kind of like that it's half-way between the blues that i'm being trained in and the alternative rock (pearl jam, smashing pumpkins, soundgarden) that i'm listening to a lot of. either way, tracks like pisser and earth, sky and c are immensely fun to rock out to through headphones.
i mentioned in the last update that i was helping my dad build a room in the basement. it's something we've been doing on the weekends, mostly - and it's almost done. he already bought his drum kit, so he has to build it, now. that's what he said, anyways. we put all this pink insulation in between the walls, and then we put in sound-proof ceiling tiles to stop the sound from traveling upstairs. the last thing we have to do is put an outside layer of drywall around the wood joists. i tried to do as much as i could, but i really only had two tasks: (1) hold things still and (2) stay out of the way.
he says that it should be done by august. he seems really excited by the prospect that i may bring some people over, as he's a little concerned about how much time i spend by myself. i don't really know anybody that would want to come over and start a band, though.
it's past my bed time, so i'm going to sleep. enjoy the i mother earth: it's something special, i think.
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/07/scenery-and-fish-and-building-rooms-in.html
the vlogs will also be catching up over the next few hours:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCinQSeEtF0vSN1XVhQGfwKA
scenery and fish and building rooms in basements and other things.
good morning. i've been up all night playing civ 2. how was your night?
it's been a pretty good summer, so far. i've very much gotten into the routine of staying up all night and sleeping during the afternoon, which is a habit i can trace back a few years to when i used to live with my mom. when she got a new tv, she moved the old one into the basement, which is where my bedroom was. it was a nice, big tv - but very old. wood frame, with two dials on the front. uhf/vhf. it was around as long as i can remember, so it must have been from the 70s. at first, i used to stay up to watch conan and then get tired and fall asleep right after or even during it. i had to, because conan was the funniest thing to ever exist in the history of the universe. but, the habit of staying up late is something that builds on itself. you stay up a little later, you sleep in a little later; eventually, you're up all night. soon, i found myself watching muchmusic after conan; they always played better music at night. then, i was staying up even later to watch reruns of the original star trek series, which they were interestingly playing on cbc kingston. maybe somebody in the station went to high school with shatner, or something. kingston used to be the capital of canada, but it was eventually moved up the rideau river here to ottawa because kingston was considered to be too vulnerable to a sneak attack by american forces. those bastards are always trying to invade us, so we have to be careful. it's about half way to toronto, which is still close enough to get channels here in ottawa on basic cable. within a few years, i'd guess i'd seen pretty much the entire series - much of it several times.
i even found myself staying up even later, mostly for the purposes of reading. by the time i'd got to high school, i'd read almost everything that stephen king had ever written. i also read a lot of science fiction including a lot of isaac asimov, especially the foundation series. the gaia theory narrative was very interesting to me. some nights, i would stay up reading until lunch time. this wasn't always really a choice, either - sometimes i just got lost in it.
so, the idea of staying up all night is not something that's new to me. i'm only 15, but i've been doing this regularly over the summer for many years, already.
it is a little different this year, though, for a few reasons. one is that i'm not living at my mom's this summer. mom didn't really care when i went to bed. dad doesn't either, really, but my stepmother claims she is a light sleeper and doesn't want to be woken up because she has to work in the morning. also, i might wake the dogs up (we have two golden retrievers). i'm well aware that there's an unwritten and unenforced rule that i should be in bed, but i also know that nobody is going to give me grief so long as i don't wake anybody up. the other reason it's different this year is that there's central air here. my mom has never had an air conditioner, and in fact there were even no windows in the basement. so, conan or not, there was some greater value in sleeping through the hot days and living in the cooler evenings. it can actually get pretty hot in canada in the summer!
this has been my schedule for most of the summer:
1. wake up after 2:00 pm. 3:00, often. 4:00, sometimes, even.
2. eat. well, usually. sometimes, dad says not to eat before he goes because he's making something. or, he might leave a note. sometimes, he even phones to tell me not to eat - and, i'd better not, too. he gets strangely depressed when you won't eat his food, like he's failed at life or something. i think it's some kind of repressed italian cultural thing. that's the exception, though. usually, they eat out on their way home from work. so, i usually feed myself. i expect to feed myself.
3. play guitar until everybody goes to bed.
4. play civ 2 until the sun comes up, or later.
5. sleep until the afternoon and start again.
is that a pretty good summer? i think it is, actually. although, i'm not sure if they're really aware of my sleeping schedules. i think they mostly think that i just get up early, and am awake all day.
one of the things i enjoy about playing civ 2 all night is listening to music when i'm playing. the newest, greatest thing in my walkman is the new i mother earth record, scenery and fish. i did already have the first record, dig, although i found it a little dense to get into, at first. it was just a little more challenging than the grunge that came out in '93 and '94. so, it kind of sat for a while until i went back to it. right now, i'm actually listening to both of them.
i find that the lyrics are really quirky at points, which i kind of like. they kind of want to tell a story, but they're kind of tongue-in-cheek about it, too. it's kind of like that they know they're cliched and are simultaneously revelling in it and poking fun at themselves for it. i think that's called post-modernism, but i'm not completely sure. what i really, really like are the guitars on the record. the fact that the guitars on this record are just a bit more advanced than the grunge records i've been listening to for the last few years puts them in just about the right space for me, right now. it's kind of more like the stuff my guitar teacher shows me: jimi hendrix, stevie ray vaughn, eric clapton, carlos santana. or, maybe it's kind of like that it's half-way between the blues that i'm being trained in and the alternative rock (pearl jam, smashing pumpkins, soundgarden) that i'm listening to a lot of. either way, tracks like pisser and earth, sky and c are immensely fun to rock out to through headphones.
i mentioned in the last update that i was helping my dad build a room in the basement. it's something we've been doing on the weekends, mostly - and it's almost done. he already bought his drum kit, so he has to build it, now. that's what he said, anyways. we put all this pink insulation in between the walls, and then we put in sound-proof ceiling tiles to stop the sound from traveling upstairs. the last thing we have to do is put an outside layer of drywall around the wood joists. i tried to do as much as i could, but i really only had two tasks: (1) hold things still and (2) stay out of the way.
he says that it should be done by august. he seems really excited by the prospect that i may bring some people over, as he's a little concerned about how much time i spend by myself. i don't really know anybody that would want to come over and start a band, though.
it's past my bed time, so i'm going to sleep. enjoy the i mother earth: it's something special, i think.
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/07/scenery-and-fish-and-building-rooms-in.html
the vlogs will also be catching up over the next few hours:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCinQSeEtF0vSN1XVhQGfwKA
i don't know why it's so hard to just take him on face value: he got some concessions and he doesn't want trump to win. it's not that complicated. that doesn't mean i'd listen to him - because i don't believe her. but, we all know that an endorsement for jill stein is as good as an endorsement for donald trump. he's a senator. he has a certain responsibility to be responsible. he can't just be going around campaigning for protest candidates, fully aware of the possible consequences.
i mean, if there was some third option that could actually win, it would be a different story. he would then be endorsing clinton over that third candidate, and that would be egregious. but, that third option doesn't exist. it's really hillary or trump. those are your shitty choices.
i'm not a senator, so i don't have a responsibility to be responsible and i can go ahead and endorse stein, fully aware that it might elect trump. that's the freedom you have when you have no intention of actually running for office, right?
i mean, if there was some third option that could actually win, it would be a different story. he would then be endorsing clinton over that third candidate, and that would be egregious. but, that third option doesn't exist. it's really hillary or trump. those are your shitty choices.
i'm not a senator, so i don't have a responsibility to be responsible and i can go ahead and endorse stein, fully aware that it might elect trump. that's the freedom you have when you have no intention of actually running for office, right?
Friday, July 15, 2016
i've used this analogy before. back in the 30s, the spanish anarchists had a choice between stalin and hitler. as the war unfolded, this unfortunate choice was also before the various peoples of eastern europe, most notably the ukrainians. now, this is an interesting analogy for both scenarios for different reasons.
for the spanish, they picked stalin as the lesser evil. well, the other option was hitler, so what were they supposed to do? the authoritarian marxists certainly seemed better than the fascists, right? but, they quickly took over and in the end carried out the massacre that broke the movement and brought in franco. conclusion: a lesser evil calculation can and will backfire when the choice has it's own prerogatives. might clinton ultimately tear down what calls itself the left? so, might the alliance be self-defeating?
the ukrainians on the other hand picked hitler as the lesser evil over stalin. well, consider the holodomar. it's hard to criticize the choice. conclusion: lesser evil calculations are also subjective and often less obvious than some think.
for the spanish, they picked stalin as the lesser evil. well, the other option was hitler, so what were they supposed to do? the authoritarian marxists certainly seemed better than the fascists, right? but, they quickly took over and in the end carried out the massacre that broke the movement and brought in franco. conclusion: a lesser evil calculation can and will backfire when the choice has it's own prerogatives. might clinton ultimately tear down what calls itself the left? so, might the alliance be self-defeating?
the ukrainians on the other hand picked hitler as the lesser evil over stalin. well, consider the holodomar. it's hard to criticize the choice. conclusion: lesser evil calculations are also subjective and often less obvious than some think.
j reacts to mike pence as the republican vp choice
mike pence is a dumb choice - he needs to win libertarians to have any chance at all, and he picks a conservative.
donald trump just proved that you do not need conservative support to win the republican party nomination. that is, donald trump's nomination process victory signals the death of "movement conservatism". he then picks a movement conservative as a running mate, demonstrating that he doesn't understand the significance of his own victory.
what pence does is negate any appeal that trump had to anybody at all. he's been marketing himself as an outsider/maverick type. what pence does is reduce him to a loudmouth, establishment talking piece. it reduces him to rush limbaugh.
mike pence completely destroys the donald trump brand.
or, you can look at it as it probably actually is - trump just sold his startup company to the republican party.
let's hope that some people are taking notice of the real consequence of this process: the reagan revolution is dead. the conservative movement is over. if trump wants to run as reagan, he will lose in a landslide. the party just rejected reagan!
the polling i've seen does not indicate that trump is having trouble holding evangelicals. it indicates he is having trouble holding libertarians, and isn't getting anywhere in the rust belt. if trump's supposed appeal to rust belt voters is his position on trade, pence actually undermines that. i mean, if they wanted the christian right, they'd have voted for it at some point in the last fifty years, right? they haven't. now, in the twilight of the conservative movement, they think they're going to win ohio on abortion? it's stupidity. pence will not reverse the numbers that exist, he will cement them in place.
the only way that trump is going to challenge clinton is if he can find somebody that matches his celebrity appeal, and can bring in libertarians at the same time. don't get me wrong: that's a tough sell. i've suggested jesse ventura would be a good pick. ron paul is in the right neighbourhood.
by picking mike pence, he's making exactly the same mistake that everybody that he beat made. and, i suspect that if somebody were to sort through the situation carefully, they'd see this is not a coincidence. i can almost guarantee you that this decision was made by a republican party insider cruz staffer that moved over after he dropped out.
....meaning that the party may get their nominee, in the end. but, it's tone deaf.
if mike pence is the vp choice, it all but guarantees that hillary wins.
in canada, the magic number is 30%. when you see the conservatives running around 30%, you know they've been reduced to their core of supporters - the type that will never vote for anybody else. it all but guarantees a liberal victory. this number has been determined empirically.
the american system is of course different, but it seems like the magic number that's coming out is 35%. that seems to be their bottoming out, their true-believer base.
trump's goal right now needs to be to get out of that rock bottom, to make the party appealing beyond it's base. pence does not do that. what he does is reassure the base.
besides stupidity, the other reason that this approach is taken is as a concession. it can be openly transparent: we're throwing away this election, and just turning inwards for a good circle jerk. see you in four years...
so, you could argue there's some kind of a poison pill in this - that it's an inside job to take him down. maybe, sure.
i don't think so, though. i think it's legitimate cluelessness, because it so deeply mirrors the tactics that his opponents took - and so deeply reflects establishment republican wisdom.
in a sense, it doesn't matter, though. let's say it's an attempt to take him down from the inside, so they can run a movement candidate in four years. that still indicates that they don't understand what just happened, and what is happening and will keep happening in the country. it's a special type of stupid to think that you can just wait this one out and that the demographic and ideological trends in the united states will suggest that ted cruz or somebody like him will be more competitive in four years.
at some point, the republicans are going to have to emerge from their echo chamber, react to the polling and move away from these hard right candidates that can't generate support. in the mean time, keep an eye on that 35% number. it may be around for a while.
donald trump just proved that you do not need conservative support to win the republican party nomination. that is, donald trump's nomination process victory signals the death of "movement conservatism". he then picks a movement conservative as a running mate, demonstrating that he doesn't understand the significance of his own victory.
what pence does is negate any appeal that trump had to anybody at all. he's been marketing himself as an outsider/maverick type. what pence does is reduce him to a loudmouth, establishment talking piece. it reduces him to rush limbaugh.
mike pence completely destroys the donald trump brand.
or, you can look at it as it probably actually is - trump just sold his startup company to the republican party.
let's hope that some people are taking notice of the real consequence of this process: the reagan revolution is dead. the conservative movement is over. if trump wants to run as reagan, he will lose in a landslide. the party just rejected reagan!
the polling i've seen does not indicate that trump is having trouble holding evangelicals. it indicates he is having trouble holding libertarians, and isn't getting anywhere in the rust belt. if trump's supposed appeal to rust belt voters is his position on trade, pence actually undermines that. i mean, if they wanted the christian right, they'd have voted for it at some point in the last fifty years, right? they haven't. now, in the twilight of the conservative movement, they think they're going to win ohio on abortion? it's stupidity. pence will not reverse the numbers that exist, he will cement them in place.
the only way that trump is going to challenge clinton is if he can find somebody that matches his celebrity appeal, and can bring in libertarians at the same time. don't get me wrong: that's a tough sell. i've suggested jesse ventura would be a good pick. ron paul is in the right neighbourhood.
by picking mike pence, he's making exactly the same mistake that everybody that he beat made. and, i suspect that if somebody were to sort through the situation carefully, they'd see this is not a coincidence. i can almost guarantee you that this decision was made by a republican party insider cruz staffer that moved over after he dropped out.
....meaning that the party may get their nominee, in the end. but, it's tone deaf.
if mike pence is the vp choice, it all but guarantees that hillary wins.
in canada, the magic number is 30%. when you see the conservatives running around 30%, you know they've been reduced to their core of supporters - the type that will never vote for anybody else. it all but guarantees a liberal victory. this number has been determined empirically.
the american system is of course different, but it seems like the magic number that's coming out is 35%. that seems to be their bottoming out, their true-believer base.
trump's goal right now needs to be to get out of that rock bottom, to make the party appealing beyond it's base. pence does not do that. what he does is reassure the base.
besides stupidity, the other reason that this approach is taken is as a concession. it can be openly transparent: we're throwing away this election, and just turning inwards for a good circle jerk. see you in four years...
so, you could argue there's some kind of a poison pill in this - that it's an inside job to take him down. maybe, sure.
i don't think so, though. i think it's legitimate cluelessness, because it so deeply mirrors the tactics that his opponents took - and so deeply reflects establishment republican wisdom.
in a sense, it doesn't matter, though. let's say it's an attempt to take him down from the inside, so they can run a movement candidate in four years. that still indicates that they don't understand what just happened, and what is happening and will keep happening in the country. it's a special type of stupid to think that you can just wait this one out and that the demographic and ideological trends in the united states will suggest that ted cruz or somebody like him will be more competitive in four years.
at some point, the republicans are going to have to emerge from their echo chamber, react to the polling and move away from these hard right candidates that can't generate support. in the mean time, keep an eye on that 35% number. it may be around for a while.
i walked out of that concert completely fried due to minimal sleep, overexposure to my ears (remember: i saw swans on tuesday, too), alcohol, nicotine and the other one that's still a few months away from open mention. so, i'm not done sleeping yet. but there was an experience near the end of the show that i want to say something about. it was one of those really surreal moments of racism that you just can't do much about besides point out loudly and shake your head about. so, i'm going to scream about it for a few paragraphs.
i mother earth were a kind of iconic canadian band in the 90s, and they were uniting here with a singer they hadn't played with in many years. the announcer said 18 years. i'm not sure if that's literally true or not, but it's been a while. the audience was consequently full of nostalgia: an older and mostly white crowd rocking out to records released in 1993 and 1996. much drinking, yes.
now, everybody knows you're not supposed to smoke anything at all in these kinds of outdoor bank concerts. you're just supposed to shut up and drink your over-priced beer. that is, of course, the economic purpose of this event: to sell over-priced beer. but, you can't actually enforce this rule once the sun comes down a little, the least important reason being that most people in the crowd at rock concerts like this actually don't agree with bans on smoking at outdoor concerts. many of them actually even smoke. and, not just cigarettes.
the smell of marijuana is pretty normal at outdoor rock concerts. it's a part of the experience - whether you're actually inhaling, or just taking in the aroma. it wouldn't be a real festival, without it. whatever the eventual legality of the substance in canada, that smell is not going to lift from the concerts of the nation. there will simply be a trail of corrected signs "thank you for pot smoking".
the spirit of this event, combined with the nature of the audience, actually at one point near the end of the set had joints passing around amongst strangers. somebody decided everybody at the show ought to be high. or it seemed that way. they were just circling around. my nose and eyes caught multiple burning around me.
so, i will acknowledge that there were people smoking pot in the audience. see, but that's just it - *everybody* in the audience was smoking pot. no exaggeration. nine out of ten, anyways.
so, you'll imagine how absurd it was to watch security swoop in, walk past several burning joints and key in on the only black guy in eyesight - who, yes, was caught green-handed. like, they took it out of his hand. ok. drug abuse. but, they had to blatantly walk by scores of stoned white folks to do this, and then scores more as they were escorting him out. 90 out of 100 people in the immediate audience were stoned. it was being openly passed around. but, only one person in the audience was black.
i didn't stay for the literal headliner, so i don't know if they came back later for more minorities, or even for some white folk - or maybe if they just backed off and let people have a good time. but i know what i saw and how obvious it was.
i don't really have any point besides the obvious one: it's really not ok. i don't know exactly who the security personnel were (mall cops?), either, but....i guess the way i should articulate this to organizers is that i don't want to see anything like that ever again.
of course, this has nothing to do with the band. the actual show was excellent, for what it was. tight. no fuck-ups. the tracks were identifiable, but expanded upon enough to play out. i'd need at least two hands to count the number of times i saw this band in the 90s, and they were always a strong live set like that. so, i will actually have some footage coming up in the next few days of i mother earth with edwin in 2016. that's something that is actually happening. there's some teaparty footage, too.
right now, back to sleep....
i mother earth were a kind of iconic canadian band in the 90s, and they were uniting here with a singer they hadn't played with in many years. the announcer said 18 years. i'm not sure if that's literally true or not, but it's been a while. the audience was consequently full of nostalgia: an older and mostly white crowd rocking out to records released in 1993 and 1996. much drinking, yes.
now, everybody knows you're not supposed to smoke anything at all in these kinds of outdoor bank concerts. you're just supposed to shut up and drink your over-priced beer. that is, of course, the economic purpose of this event: to sell over-priced beer. but, you can't actually enforce this rule once the sun comes down a little, the least important reason being that most people in the crowd at rock concerts like this actually don't agree with bans on smoking at outdoor concerts. many of them actually even smoke. and, not just cigarettes.
the smell of marijuana is pretty normal at outdoor rock concerts. it's a part of the experience - whether you're actually inhaling, or just taking in the aroma. it wouldn't be a real festival, without it. whatever the eventual legality of the substance in canada, that smell is not going to lift from the concerts of the nation. there will simply be a trail of corrected signs "thank you for pot smoking".
the spirit of this event, combined with the nature of the audience, actually at one point near the end of the set had joints passing around amongst strangers. somebody decided everybody at the show ought to be high. or it seemed that way. they were just circling around. my nose and eyes caught multiple burning around me.
so, i will acknowledge that there were people smoking pot in the audience. see, but that's just it - *everybody* in the audience was smoking pot. no exaggeration. nine out of ten, anyways.
so, you'll imagine how absurd it was to watch security swoop in, walk past several burning joints and key in on the only black guy in eyesight - who, yes, was caught green-handed. like, they took it out of his hand. ok. drug abuse. but, they had to blatantly walk by scores of stoned white folks to do this, and then scores more as they were escorting him out. 90 out of 100 people in the immediate audience were stoned. it was being openly passed around. but, only one person in the audience was black.
i didn't stay for the literal headliner, so i don't know if they came back later for more minorities, or even for some white folk - or maybe if they just backed off and let people have a good time. but i know what i saw and how obvious it was.
i don't really have any point besides the obvious one: it's really not ok. i don't know exactly who the security personnel were (mall cops?), either, but....i guess the way i should articulate this to organizers is that i don't want to see anything like that ever again.
of course, this has nothing to do with the band. the actual show was excellent, for what it was. tight. no fuck-ups. the tracks were identifiable, but expanded upon enough to play out. i'd need at least two hands to count the number of times i saw this band in the 90s, and they were always a strong live set like that. so, i will actually have some footage coming up in the next few days of i mother earth with edwin in 2016. that's something that is actually happening. there's some teaparty footage, too.
right now, back to sleep....
Thursday, July 14, 2016
13/14-07-2016: i mother earth & tea party at edgefest ninety.....bluesfest 2016?
concert footage:
1) jeff martin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEEpUJAofbY
2) tea party: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Jtjw6U39Q
3) i mother earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FTEh-Xiij0
review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/07/14.html
tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1
1) jeff martin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEEpUJAofbY
2) tea party: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Jtjw6U39Q
3) i mother earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FTEh-Xiij0
review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/07/14.html
tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1
this isn't even wrong.
you have to go through a bit of a winding path through history to get there: the hellenization of the middle east, followed by the absorption of the greek world by the roman empire, the partition, the eventual colonization of russia, the varangian guard and then the transfer of roman civilization to moscow following the fall of constantinople. but, ivan the terrible would not have existed had it not been for alexander. he would have been some backwards viking stuck somewhere between the dnieper and the don, paying exorbitant taxes to beijing.
you have to go through a bit of a winding path through history to get there: the hellenization of the middle east, followed by the absorption of the greek world by the roman empire, the partition, the eventual colonization of russia, the varangian guard and then the transfer of roman civilization to moscow following the fall of constantinople. but, ivan the terrible would not have existed had it not been for alexander. he would have been some backwards viking stuck somewhere between the dnieper and the don, paying exorbitant taxes to beijing.
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