useless (valium mix)

this is the original version slowed down to half speed, which i actually briefly considered releasing as the final version as i felt it was aesthetically appropriate.

recorded in jan, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/useless-valium

i was actually wondering, on a whim, if being a habitual smoker could lower the risk of tapeworm and other parasitic infection. still wondering; it doesn't appear as though anybody's studied this. know a kid studying biology? there's an iconoclastic research topic for them...

this is neat though, and contributes to the "you didn't think all these life forms around us were going to just give up and quit evolving, did you?" anti-anthropocentric view i periodically post on.

http://www.personal.psu.edu/afr3/blogs/siowfa12/2012/12/one-of-the-few-benefits-of-smoking.html

to clarify: i was wondering if it might be a natural explanation for tobacco use. well, lots of animals do lots of things to get rid of parasites. maybe humans smoked tobacco for that reason. entirely rational.

yeah, i think i might be on to something. not nicotine, but ayahuasca:

"Its purgative properties are important (known as la purga or "the purge"). The intense vomiting and occasional diarrhea it induces can clear the body of worms and other tropical parasites,[28] and harmala alkaloids themselves have been shown to be anthelmintic[29] Thus, this action is twofold; a direct action on the parasites by these harmala alkaloids (particularly harmine in ayahuasca) works to kill the parasites, and parasites are expelled through the increased intestinal motility that is caused by these alkaloids."

they're systemically reducing the supply. it's evil.....
http://truth-out.org/news/item/19725-laura-gottesdiener-on-housing-and-fighting-back-against-dreams-delayed

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19770-can-unarmed-peacekeeping-work-in-syria-it-has-in-south-sudan

this narrative is built on a comparison of the nsa leaks to the forces that disintegrated the soviet union, drawing an unstated comparison to afghanistan. it's not the best comparison. by it's nature as a centralized system, communism required the mass of people to at least go along with it. capitalism, on the other hand, relies on apathy to maintain itself.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19614-governing-in-the-dark

http://truth-out.org/news/item/19779-one-million-k-12-students-are-homeless
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19759-wikileaks-mediastan-the-true-fifth-estate-bringing-the-first-amendment-to-the-world

http://www.cnas.org/jacob-stokes-discusses-maliki-visit

ugh. and no. canada doesn't have an organized left.
http://rabble.ca/news/2013/11/bye-bye-ford-and-harper-would-their-departure-have-any-benefit-canadas-left

i think the bigger question is whether the middle east has awoken to the americans' byzantine strategy in the area. between turkey looking towards china, israel going insular, egypt being disciplined and the saudis flipping out, one has to wonder if the long term effects of obama's reaching out to iran isn't the collapse of american influence in the region.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/11/01/the_us_saudi_royal_rumble

see, i think if you look at the greater context, the larger fear is that iran is falling under chinese hegemony - and if that happens with any level of seriousness then the entire containment/sanctions/regime-change strategy is dead.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/04/the-dna-of-iranians-and-under-secretary-sherman/

hrmmmn. my predictions about the rest of the world rejecting us banks as a result of the iranian oil embargo have so far not been realized. yet, it's maybe too soon to retract.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/11/01/is_china_about_to_crack_down_on_jp_morgan_too

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bevis-longstreth/the-financial-case-for-di_b_4203910.html
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/jesse/2013/11/austerity-and-politics-ford-scandal
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/11/01/is_libya_beyond_repair
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/11/4/tuesday_director_oliver_stone_on_the
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/council-canadians/2013/11/canada-quietly-ratifies-controversial-international-investm
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/04/killing-peace-2/
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/04/kerr-n04.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/04/syri-n04.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/05/egyp-n05.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/clemency-for-torturers-but-not-for-edward-snowden/281142/

this is nazi shit.
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18292-post-9-11-cia-and-pentagon-forced-doctors-to-become-torturers-study-charges

the australians are pushing back, though.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/05/pers-n05.html

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/11/5/oliver_stone_on_50th_anniversary_of
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19825-noam-chomsky-de-americanizing-the-world
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/05/a-short-history-of-populism-in-america/

at the very least, it suggests that turkey is interested in maintaining it's independence from nato. and perhaps the collapse of a russian threat gives it a little more confidence.
http://www.cnas.org/richard-weitz-discusses-motivation-for-turkish-missile-purchase

wow. what a bunch of government propaganda...
http://aptn.ca/pages/news/2013/11/04/feeling-heat-ring-fire/

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/comfront/2013/11/honduras-trade-and-investment-expense-human-rights#.UnlClfkSK_I.twitter

well, they have to adjust, as the emperors are fiddling.
http://jacobinmag.com/2013/11/socialism-in-one-village/

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/11/04/this_is_not_a_court_this_is_a_coup_chaos_mohamed_morsy_trial
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2013/04/26/when-media-uncritically-cover-pseudoscience/#.UnlZKb8W1RQ

http://truth-out.org/news/item/19841-a-field-guide-to-losing-friends-influencing-no-one-and-alienating-the-middle-east
http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/05/cia_pentagon_drone_war_control
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/kgrandia/2013/11/christy-clark-and-allison-redford-choose-short-term-politics-over-fu

why doesn't anybody realize that iran is in the process of joining the sco?
http://fpif.org/strange-bedfellows-israel-arabs-united-opposition-iran/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/08/turkey-china-defence-idUSL5N0IT1XY20131108
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-09-13/news/42041650_1_shanghai-cooperation-organisation-india-today-khurshid

http://www.cnas.org/daniel-lakin-escaping-false-choices-in-the-middle-east
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/06/exem-n06.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/the-workforce-is-even-more-divided-by-race-than-you-think/281175/

i dunno. maybe obama can find the answer by repeating more reagan quotes.
http://atfp.co/1bcsqcE

http://fpif.org/u-s-official-propagates-myths-iran-nuclear-energy/

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18298-median-wage-falls-to-lowest-level-since-2008-as-incomes-at-the-top-soar

great news. it's only through high unemployment that people will ever come together to start doing some real work for themselves and for society.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/07/euro-n07.html

i highly doubt that the market has learned much from the dot com boom. i say buy in bulk - and sell quickly.
http://theatln.tc/16Jzsar

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19842-obama-must-be-called-out-not-coddled-on-keystone-xl-bait-and-switch
http://www.mediacoop.ca/video/montr%C3%A9al-26-octobre-2013-%E2%80%93-chomskymtl-askchomsky-e/19617
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/07/obamas-inversion-of-organizational-mission/
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/11/07/uranium-investors-eye-nafta-challenge-in-quebec/
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/11/08/justin_trudeau_tom_mulcair_battle_for_downtown_toronto_tim_harper.html

http://www.socialist.ca/node/1976
http://atfp.co/1bg2KvB

the thing is that the government lacked legitimacy because the elections were boycotted by everybody except the islamists in the first place. (and don't forget that morsi's crime was leaning towards co-operation with iran.)
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/08/putting-egypts-coup-on-trial/

http://libcom.org/blog/police-evict-journalists-tv-studio-following-5-month-occupation-08112013

i've often made a show of zooming by gridlocked cars, yelling and screaming, making hand signals - demonstrating how much faster i'm moving than they are.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/11/simplest-way-get-people-biking/7516/

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10986
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19895-bam-bam-bam-the-lostness-of-man
http://libcom.org/history/why-blackadder-goes-forth%E2%80%99-could-have-been-lot-funnier

this is very hard to take at face value.
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/10/how-france-scuttled-the-iran-deal-last-minute

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/11/08/the_nuclear_handshake_saudi_arabia_pakistan

i'm not really getting his point, here. he's citing marx, but he seems to be arguing against communism.....?

the article he's rebutting is fairly clear to me: if you invest, you will get rewards. whether the investment is coming from capitalists and banks or a "worker's state" seems secondary to the obvious point, which is indeed a no brainer. the article also points out rather clearly that a substantial part of the increase in productivity is the result of mechanization. the entire thing is a horrific straw man. i'm not sure if it was purposefully ignored or not, but the point made was that mechanization requires an educated workforce, that investing in education will lead to better and better technology which will increase in productivity.

missing the point is one thing, but where this kay guy goes through the looking glass is when he seems to suggest that this is terrible because it reduces the amount of labour required. but, that's the whole premise of communism: that increases in technology will lead to super production, which will emancipate humanity and usher in a new era of "civilization".

i run across this producerist garbage a lot. half the time, i think it's union propaganda designed to confuse workers into thinking that there's no future beyond the factory. yet, that's a conspiracy theory where none is necessary. occam's razor is that the guy's never actually read any socialist theory. the internet's a great place for people to run off about things they know little about, but it would be nice if sites like libcom were more carefully about what they give space to.

as an aside, what's the suggestion? lower wages in order to prevent mechanization in order to keep more jobs? if so, that's essentially identical to the ancap argument that the minimum wage should be abolished. the article would be better off in a place like ancap.com.

http://libcom.org/blog/decent-wages-decent-capitalism-08112013

the thing most people are missing is that his analysis isn't really leftist, it's more populist. counterpunch just ran an article on populism, but it only focused on the right-wing variety. there's definitely a historical strain of left-wing populism that brand is fitting into.

even as his "analysis" is frustrating in it's complete lack of any understanding of capitalism, i do recognize that it has a value. just speaking from personal experience, i was radicalized quite heavily by punk rock as a teenager. yet, as entertaining as jello biafra is, and as much as he was able to articulate certain things rather clearly, he was only a stepping stone towards more substantive analysis.

it's perfectly reasonable to write him off as a hack, but that doesn't mean he may not have an effect as a type of gateway. i just wish somebody could get him to name drop some people that are smarter than he is to make the path a little more explicit.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/08/russell-brand-the-posh-left-and-the-politics-of-class/

neither, it's class war. the tories know that right-to-work is unconstitutional in canada. in fact, it's even being ruled unconstitutional in the united states - a constitution with a far less comprehensive bill of rights.

this is an idea that is dead in the water. the supreme court will strike it down. they know that!

they know it doesn't create jobs, too. they know it doesn't create investment.

dalton did the same thing with teachers last year. he knows he can't take away their collective bargaining rights. yet, he did it anyways. and why?

what it's about is opening a front against workers. it's a type of vulgar marxism that takes for granted that workers are in perpetual conflict with their bosses. if workers are fighting for basic union rights, they're not fighting for better conditions and higher wages. the fact that it's unconstitutional doesn't matter - by creating the diversion, it saps organizing energy away, and puts off more substantive issues.

it also follows that if you let them get away with this they'll launch another attack. and another. and another...

...just as it follows that if they don't open up the front, if they don't try and take rights away, they'll be forced into concession after another.

so, it's not about jobs. it's about class war.

http://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2013/11/08/tories_say_righttowork_states_a_model_for_ontario.html

if you eliminate corporate personhood, you eliminate all legal accountability. corporate personhood is a legal fiction that was created to allow corporations to be sued. so, corporations can now no longer be sued in these places. it's going to be interesting to see how the court reacts.

i somehow doubt that people that argue against corporate personhood understand any of this.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10982

An unidentified State Department official refused to address the Pakistani minister’s criticism, declaring coolly that the issue was “an internal matter for Pakistan”.

i'll translate that: the pakistani minister's criticism was a political response designed to present a specific false image to pakistani voters, rather than a legitimate expression of outrage.

i saw an article a while back suggesting that there may be a connection between certain journalists and drone strikes, suggesting either that these journalists are cia or that they're being tracked.

it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the peace talks were a ploy to determine the whereabouts of certain "terrorists".

but i'm running on speculation, here.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/19905-drone-strike-served-cia-revenge-blocked-pakistans-strategy

this is actually good news if you're in ontario.

i'm kind of cringing at the idea of a "return to keynesianism" (which requires the broken assumption of a closed economy that is dominated by the local petty bourgeoisie and is protected by tariffs), though. we need to look forward in building new theories of economics that are built on currently existing assumptions rather than assumptions that ceased to be true some time in the 80s or 90s. from that perspective, these mathematical arguments between hayek and keynes are largely meaningless: they both assume a closed economy, so no matter how much math you run off the models are never going to accurately predict reality. i'm not aware of any kind of competing theory on the soft left that takes post-globalization as a beginning assumption and that honestly deluded liberals that still believe in capitalism could use as a moderating tool. the only ideas thinking on a global level are multinational corporatism and global communism.

but even if the multipliers don't pan out, even if the money ends up in the hands of lenders and multinationals that invest it on the other side of the world, it should create some short-term employment in construction, as well as a much needed facelift on infrastructure. maybe she got the memo on reinhart and rogoff. maybe the credit rating fascists took their boots off her neck. maybe she needs ndp support. doesn't matter...

but to get to my point: there's going to be a good chunk of cash coming down for infrastructure in the next few years. a lot of it should end up with municipalities. these municipalities are likely going to need a bit of a push to spend the cash on *sustainable* infrastructure, rather than on the carbon economy. in that sense, there's an opportunity here to actually get some input on building shit that needs to be built. yeah, i know, but maybe it's better to put off seizing collective ownership of it until it exists....

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ontarios-economic-plan-to-shift-focus-from-austerity-to-spending-and-growth/article15303331/

yeah. assad's there to stay. and he's got a hell of a mess to clean up. does he send the theocracy in saudi arabia the bill?

see, the major concern to look out for in the future is what happens ten years from now when the country is back in order and he wants pay back. as out to lunch as the saudi attack was, he can't be left there. and i hope the russians have the foresight to realize that.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/06/saudis-fight-a-losing-battle-against-change/

that list of 14 stalled agreements is comical. it's correct about the ftaa. the rest had little to do with protest movements.

i'm going to ask a difficult question.

do you think it's easier to generate opposition to trade agreements in the western hemisphere due to racism around migrant issues? if not, why is opposition so much stronger to agreements like cafta, nafta, ftaa than it is to tpp, apec, etc.

the tpp isn't going to create a flood of migrants. is that a factor in the lack of opposition to it?

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19843-trans-pacific-partnership-we-will-not-obey-building-a-global-resistance-movement-to-transnational-corporate-power

i haven't looked into this, but, generally, areas that are not under treaty are considered to be owned in allodial by the state and parcelled out in aboriginal title to the inhabitants if they can prove use relative to a complex and sort of trivial set of clauses. i don't see why that would be different here.

it's a little weird that they're doing this through court battles, though, rather than treaty. yet, i guess that's what got forced on to them by the logging.

i'd expect the court to rule something along the lines of that a treaty negotiation needs to be started. it would be under the treaty that questions of logging and land-sharing would be discussed.

i know the nisga'a agreement implements some aboriginal concepts of land ownership, which are generally not exclusive. hunting grounds, for example, were often shared by multiple groups of people.

ironically, that's part of the reason that settlers were able to set up here so easily. the indigenous peoples on the *atlantic* coast largely only considered the areas directly around their settlements to be under their ownership. the rest of the land was owned by a 'creator' and free for general use. the settlers badly took advantage of that.

so, generally, these cases only wish to exert *explicit* ownership over the areas they live, and *joint* ownership over the areas they rely on for fishing and game. which is of course confusing in the british court system, although there are precedents - there were commons all over britain, as they are remembered today by the tragedy of the commons if by nothing else.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/key-b-c-aboriginal-land-claim-case-starts-before-supreme-court-1.2418130

well, ok, there's a framework in place - indicating that the government implicitly acknowledges the claim.

http://www.gov.bc.ca/arr/treaty/key/down/tsilhqotin_sea_amended.pdf

re: the recent shift in american strategy on iran.

i wouldn't expect the americans to stop the cyber-attacks, the sanctions or the attempts to stir internal revolt any time soon. reducing iran to a puppet regime remains an american strategic objective, so regime change is likely to remain an active goal.

but, as iran integrates more and more into military alliance with china and russia, the military option is becoming increasingly infeasible. and don't think this has nothing to do with syria.

that's forcing the americans to rethink how they deal with iran. i'd expect them to stop treating iran like an unruly lost colony and start treating it the same way it treats countries like china and russia - passive aggression.

that's going to piss off the israelis. more importantly, it's going to piss off the saudis. there's going to be some consequences. but there's not much they can do - iran has found a way out of this.

http://rt.com/op-edge/iran-sco-membership-summit-nato-821/

yeah, my analysis only works in canada, where the bubble is being propped up by banks.

it's hard to see how this mess ends except with mass homelessness, as idiotic as that is in a country with so much housing supply. yet, that sows the seeds of revolt. it's what is happening down there.

so, expect to see more squatting, and more riots when the cops get increasingly aggressive about it. more people in jail for being homeless. where's the breaking point?

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/11/why-your-rent-rising-faster-inflation/7484/

i don't think that "islamism" has a single source, but i don't think it's much of a reaction to zionism, either. the dominant force was probably soviet influence. the soviets were fundamental in organizing states in syria, iraq and elsewhere that were based on a concept of "arabic socialism". as in other places (east asia, africa, south america), the kremlin felt it was necessary to inject an ethnic component into the struggle in order to build greater solidarity. this isn't very socialist, but it happened.

the americans reacted to this by training mujahideens in afghanistan with saudi capital. this is the more direct source of the islamism we see.

counterpunch carefully straddles the line of anti-semitic conspiracy theory, and i've long been cautious of it. the articles they post often give the impression that they were written by jew haters that are toning down their language and rhetoric for polite consumption. this is one of them.

and i'm stating that from a perspective that is highly critical of israeli ethnic nationalism (i think this article does get the point right, despite it's wonky attempt to put islamic terrorism on the long list of crimes perpetuated by jews).

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/04/israel-and-the-dangers-of-ethnic-nationalism/

what is morality? for some people, it's something innate - something they feel. yet, that's probably an illusion. why do they feel that way?

my hypothesis is that people look to educational sources to try and understand morality - that it's entirely taught. those sources may be parents, teachers, philosophers. i've tended to prefer logicians, and have come out a secular humanist. for most people, though, the source is religion.

the ancient hebrew religion derived catastrophe as a result of turning away from god. byzantine religion assigned military defeat to impiety. modern calvinistic american religion argues that the poor are poor because it is their own fault - they are poor because god assigned them that way, like the untouchables in india. our collective lack of empathy stems from our collective concepts of morality. to change this, we need a religious revolution.

...preferably one to secular humanism....

http://truth-out.org/news/item/19780-are-heartless-people-simply-born-that-way
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/mead/V53.0395/Kahl.pdf

actually, they're both wrong. in the current economy, what's going to happen to that stimulus money is that it's going to go to pay down debt.

http://www.advisorperspectives.com/newsletters13/26-debate2.php

(stiglitz is more right though. and the argument about wage stagnation being an impediment to economic recovery, if not the outright cause of the current recession, is what i was looking for.)

see, i agree with stiglitz here, too. i think what krugman is saying is that percentages don't matter - it's the absolute amount that does. i'll agree with that. but krugman is citing a correlation. the question is whether there's a cause and effect relationship between tax cuts for the rich and spending by the rich, and the idea doesn't strike me as reasonable.

the upper middle class, maybe. the middle class? depends on the indebtedness. see, the hard part is finding where that line is. that requires some empirical analysis, not a deductive approach, and i'm not going to do that.

but it doesn't approach the real issue, which is indebtedness. and contrary to the calvinist media narrative, this isn't caused by some kind of entitlement but simply by historically low real wages.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/inequality-and-recovery/

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/inequality-is-holding-back-the-recovery/

the reagan deficits were the result of absurd war spending. they're comparable to the wwII and civil war deficits.

i think he makes some worthwhile points about why keynesian policy cannot work in an open economy, and why offshoring doesn't lead to comparative advantage. well, these are points i've made myself. i have a rant somewhere that explains the failure of free trade due to the size of the asian industrial reserve army (the trade is goods for labour, not goods for goods, so people are the commodity here, which is not inconsistent with ricardo's example, but creates a situation where free trade is impossible).

krugman, i also agree, is out of touch. he's living in the world that existed before clinton. ironic? maybe, but it's true.

that doesn't mean i think sovereign deficits matter.

they don't.

i wish stiglitz carried a higher media footprint than krugman.

i should point out that my marxism up there is vulgar; i don't think the point is lost, nor do you even really need to use marxist language to get to the basic point that massive supplies of asian labour decrease labour prices - which is exactly why labour is concentrated there.

see, and it *is* a comparative advantage if you identify the actors as multinationals and consumers. higher profits, lower costs. but it's not sustainable, because it cuts into buying power, which collapses both economies in the long run.

(not to mention the horrific living conditions that it assigns to asian workers)

but that analysis relies on understanding the trade as labour for goods rather than goods for goods, which is closer to colonial mercantilism than free market economics. as the differences in population are so dramatic, which means labour costs will always be lower on one side, it's almost impossible to construct a scenario where free market trade can actually function to a real comparative advantage on a good-for-good basis. you'd have to construct global wage requirements, which maybe aren't a bad idea, but the result of that is going to be a return to local production - rather than create a system of widespread mutually advantageous trade, we'd have a system of minimal trade where the advantage is actually mutual based on accesses to resources.

...which isn't really market-based at all. it's a perversion of the concept of comparative advantage, which is in fact partially based on labour costs!

i'm not the first person to point this out. the idea of large scale free trade agreements is entirely incoherent. it's just a reduction of liberal economics to a tool of propaganda in which to spread mercantilism with.

the key point i'm trying to get across is that any analysis of the situation has to begin with the understanding that there are three billion people in asia competing for a relatively small number of jobs, that labour costs in those countries are a reflection of that reality more so than they are of any statist policy and that strategies for increasing wages in the long term in these areas while maintaining such a high population density (something that is necessary to reconstruct economies in the 'developed world', so long as open borders are maintained) are extremely difficult to grapple with.

can fordism operate in such high population densities?

not that there’s anything wrong with that (original album mix)

this is that faux-homophobe song again, and i'm going to call myself out for it this time on two levels. i'm kind of uncomfortable uploading it not once but twice, but i promised myself i'd upload everything, so here it is.

i've been uncomfortable with this since i wrote it, basically. i really hesitated for a while in releasing this. it was one of the first things i recorded with my new 4-track (the timestamp is jan 17, 1998), but it didn't make it to the first demo. it only made it to the second demo in feb, 1999. with a lot of caution. i ended up releasing it because i liked the fact that it sounded like ministry.

in my defense, i should point out that these kinds of songs exist in the punk rock tradition going back to the glam days. ministry wrote a number of songs like this, ridiculing exaggerated masculinity. this is what i was going for the second time around. further, in the sense that the song is about me being picked on, i feel i sort of retain the right to express myself about it.

where it falls into trouble is it's level of ambiguity. it's meant to be satire, but how is anybody supposed to know that? the answer is the seinfeld line - and this was consciously inserted for that very reason. yet, the signal that sends isn't "this song is sarcastic" so much as it is "homophobes aren't the brightest people". that's really what the song is about - i was getting picked on by people i didn't think were very smart, and i was reacting by ridiculing their intelligence through merely repeating what they were saying. this is meant to shock, and that's where the track gets it's "edge".

we would refer to such a thing nowadays as "hipster homophobia", and this is where i'm calling myself out, here. my argument is essentially "it's ok to be hateful if you're being ironic". but, that's not an argument i would currently make - it's an argument that i'd argue rather strenuously against.

again: i feel i had the right to express myself here, and the song is anti-oppressive in it's intent. yet, i didn't articulate that well, and sort of fell into a trap. i can convincingly argue that i was a teenager and didn't really know any better, but that argument necessitates that i correct myself.

the original version and write-up are over here:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/not-that-theres-anything-wrong-with-that

recorded in jan, 1998.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/06-not-that-theres-anything-wrong-with-that

cat’s apocalypse (original discarded outtake)

this is a remix of the track 'war' (http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/11-war) that i had no intention of releasing. i was trying to irritate a cat lover (i can't recall who). epic troll, really.

i'd trigger it for cat owners, but it's really too absurd and disingenuous to be offensive.

recorded in jan, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/cats-apocalypse-1998-archive-2

slaves (original discarded outtake)

this was inspired by an snl skit. pure silliness.

recorded in jan, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/slaves

permission (original discarded outtake)

this is the remake of permission, which is really funky and neat, but i ended up rejecting it because the guitar solo directly lifts the ending melody from "the perfect drug". i don't really remember the logic behind how it got there in the first place (did i realize after or was it purposefully meant as a 'sample'?), but i do specifically recall saying "i can't use this". i think maybe i also thought the lyrics were sort of dumb, after all.

of course, a lot of the songs on those cassette demos recycle ideas from nine inch nails, and i've cringed a few times in uploading these songs, but in the context of the tracks mostly being experiments in learning how to record music it's less of a problem for me, in hindsight, then it could be. those were things that affected me, at that age. they're there for a reason. the cassette demos were never meant to be brilliant works of original art, or even for sale at all (and they never have been). it was just something i did as a sort of a release.

these cd demos, though, were meant to be more professional. there are a few awkward samples interspersed throughout them in ways that were meaningful to me and seem questionable now looking back, but part of the reason i redid these songs in the first place was to reclaim them from myself as entirely original pieces.

my sister's backing vocals have been replaced with myself, digitally altered. there's also a lot of electronic soundscaping: this is a substantially different piece of music than the cassette demo, which is here:
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/permission

actually, i think i'm remembering that i put the 'sample' in on purpose because the vocals were so derivative, then kibboshed the whole thing.

yeah. i was playing the melody as i was testing levels, and i decided that it actually sounded really good - but that I couldn't use it, or i would be sealing the track as an outtake. i then decided that it should be an outtake anyways and went with it.

recorded in january, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/permission-2

nails (original album mix)

homer, indeed. i think that might be the ry30 with the drums, recording directly into the back of the pc.

created in the fall of 1997.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/nails

war (original album mix)

the beginning is from a disney film or something, i can't recall which one. it's all wiped away by a wash of war drums and civ2 samples. it's more misanthropic than anti-war, really.

created in the fall of 1997.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/war