see, this is more along the lines of what i want to hear - as opposed to these expensive money sinks to futilely treat drug addiction.

you will probably get cancer. and, you will probably die from it, too.

that's where the bulk of the money and research should be going.

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/04/30/take-home-cancer-drugs-will-be-covered-under-ohip-if-new-democrats-win-the-june-7-election-andrea-horwath.html

ok.

i'm at the exit point i wanted, which is when i finished my first record and then quit smoking.

i don't get back to the music again until june. there will no doubt be some posts made - to the alter-reality, reviews, show nights - but the music vlog is actually pretty much done. like, it's filled in the way i wanted it to be, from 2013--->2016.

that leaves me with roughly 1000 word doc pages left to rebuild the rest of 2016 with, most of it for the politics site, and i'm questioning whether i want to do this now or not. i have to at least sort through it. but i may be a little but picky about what i'm posting to the politics site, leaving the full rebuild for later.

i don't know what to expect this morning. i'm going to hand this woman a check and a letter, and tell her that the tenant below me is completely ignoring the new non-smoking policy, and continuing to chain smoke marijuana inside - as expected. i shouldn't expect her to do anything about this. but, then, why did she go around and hand out these notices?

the reason she did this was that the tenant below me was complaining that it wasn't fair that everybody else was allowed to smoke and she wasn't - again, just total grade school reasoning. but, they wanted to appear fair. so, they put this rule in place. and, now she's the only one not following it.

if i was the owner, that would really piss me off - you put a policy in place to accommodate her, and she just spits in your face. that would tell me that she has no interest in working with management.

but, it's not clear what they can substantively do about it, due to the absurd laws in this province that make it nearly impossible to throw her out.

it's a really surreal situation. this nihilistic drug addict has got us all held hostage, and the law is designed to facilitate it.

but, i'm starting to recognize that my time here may not include any actual recording. and, if that is the case, i may just go ahead and rebuild.

if i can get through the next section quickly, the next thing to do is to start writing for the alter-reality: 2017 & the first half, now, of 2018. this will permanently close my first 15 releases, or so.

it's really, really, really disgusting.

45 minutes later, the smoke is still pluming.

i'm not joking.

it's like she's running a fog machine.

i was hoping to finish up to my first record tonight and then spend the morning cleaning myself up.

we'll see how much longer i can stay awake for.

it's a really visceral, burning hate.

i've never hated somebody as much as i hate this person.

again: the problem is not the drug. the problem is the user.

this woman should be put through a fucking meat grinder and fed to the homeless.

what a fucking useless waste of oxygen.

i'm stoned.

i'm going to fall asleep.....

the smoke in here is so thick that i can see it.

it's not one joint.

it's joint after joint after joint.

on a monday fucking morning.

pathetic.

it's been pluming smoke for 25 minutes.

i'd like to go down there and beat the fucking shit out of her right now, i really fucking would.

if you have to get stoned on monday fucking morning, if you're that goddamned fucking pathetic, why can't you transport your fat piece of fucking shit ass outside to do it?

it's monday morning.

i'm trying to work...

i have an appointment in a few hours.

most people have to go to work in the morning.

the last thing i want to be right now is stoned.

:(

like, i'm left here wondering if this fucking disgusting piece of shit is trying to get me stoned, and, if so why?

that is simply not one person smoking one joint.

that is a group of people smoking many joints.

this is so remarkably frustrating.

it's absolutely brutal, tonight.

we're going to court....

concerns about my door are subsiding, at least for the night.

"so why don't you just be an effiminate dude?"

well, to a certain extent, i guess i am, right?

at the end of the day, i don't care whether you want to call me a trans-female or a total fag. these are just labels. boxes. and, i don't really see why you'd treat me any differently if you thought i was merely a complete fag, rather than a woman.

so, you can ask me: what's the difference?

well, i dunno. you're the one that's insisting on it, not me.

the thing is that there wasn't another option: all of the parties supported the pipelines.

so, if you were standing on the environmental left, you found yourself forced to choose between an ndp that wanted to ramp up production to tax the hell out of it (ala rachel notley, who isn't even actually taxing it...), and a liberal party that was making promises about converting infrastructure.

don't misunderstand anything i said: the liberals sounded awful. and, i told you that at the time. i told you we were going to have to fight these pipelines in court, and on the ground, if they won. and, i was right.

but, they are actually taking baby steps towards transition, as well - steps that there is really no evidence that thomas mulcair had any intent of taking. we'll see in a few months if they've made any concrete steps towards reducing emissions or not.

it's cynical, perhaps. but, the reality does remain that the atmosphere isn't picky about where reductions come from. so long as a market exists, it's naive to expect our political leaders to oppose extraction - that would be a hippie position that ignores the systemic realities of capitalism, and the inherent nature of canada as a colonial state. change of this nature will never come by swapping figureheads, it has to be more profound than that.

the best we could ever do was fight this in court, and hope the right hand loses track of what the left hand is really up to, in the zeal to push the shit through.

it's the nature of a lesser evil calculation. and, the bastards can do it, when there's not an actual good option.

https://ipolitics.ca/2018/04/28/881947/

there's a saying in computer science: garbage in, garbage out.

it's just a question of understanding your model well enough to be able to explain it's flaws. no model is magic; it's not an oracle.

and, let me tell you: if they survive the encounter, they won't be living here much longer. that's grounds for immediate eviction.

you can't quantify stupidity. and, we know these people are stupid...i'm just hoping they're not too drunk and/or tweaked out...

you don't want to be in a room alone with me when i'm feeling threatened, because i will lash out like an angry animal.

so, i'm half expecting these idiots to do something stupid tonight.

let it be written here that i might have overheard a threat to knock the door down.

see, the thing is that i'm not sure what i heard, and i didn't see anybody say it. if i had, i'd be contacting the police.

i have no patience for macho bullshit, and i don't suffer stupidity at all.

but, let it be known that i am not a bleeding heart, and that i am not afraid to seriously hurt anybody willing to enter my apartment using force. in fact, i'm likely to kill that person with my bare hands, rip out their heart with my teeth and shit on their remains.

you only think i'm exaggerating.

while i think that trump is probably right in deducing that promoting peace will make him more popular than beating the drums of war, i don't imagine that an american pullout from south korea is at all imminent.

see, here's the thing: when it was about war it was smoke & mirrors. and, when it's about peace, it will be smoke & mirrors, too.

i could be wrong; maybe, i missed something. but, the situation in korea is really pretty intractable. and, it would require a major shift in thinking from one or both sides to break through it.

that said, you don't need a peace agreement to increase trade, and that's what everybody should really be concerning itself with.

wynne wants to avoid saying "i will balance the budget".

but, she just as clearly wants to say very loudly that "doug ford will not balance the budget".

one of the things the liberals should be doing right now is trying to point out that doug ford isn't much of a conservative at all, with the hopes of promoting voter apathy.

we know he's going to run huge deficits. they should make sure everybody realizes this quite clearly.

and, see, there's a difference between being a liberal and pushing fiscal restraint, and being a liberal and pointing out that your opponent doesn't care about fiscal restraint.

liberals don't win elections by being conservatives. but, conservatives don't want to vote for fiscally irresponsible neo-liberals like doug ford, either - despite the fact that they keep getting tricked into it.

i mean, normally when we talk about the feds downloading services to the provinces, the provinces aren't volunteering for it.

when are you numbskulls going to ask for something costed?

and, we forget that what happened to mike harris is that he turned into stephen harper.

i guess this will help trudeau balance his budget?

it won't help ford balance his, that's for sure.

but, nobody really expects neo-liberals to balance budgets, do they? the federal conservatives have never balanced a budget.

c'mon, you dummies. you're being played. and bought off with your own cash, so this guy can sell off what's left of the commons to his banking buddies.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-pcs-announce-child-care-tax-rebate-for-low-income-families/

i really never saw myself as a smoker. i mean, i acknowledged i was. but, i never intended to start smoking habitually, and i was basically in the process of quitting from the time i realized i was.

i started smoking to stay awake because i was working and going to school at the same time. it was either nicotine or cocaine. i think i picked the better option.

and, it really does keep you awake and alert. it's the best stimulant there is. really.

so, how do you quit smoking when you have exams next week? you can't; you need to study, so you need to stay awake, so you need to smoke.

and, then how do you quit when you're working two jobs? or...

i would routinely quit for three-four weeks at a time, over and over again. so, it's really more accurate for me to say something like that i was a smoker around 70% of the time, between 2002-2016 - and a non-smoker about 30% of the time.

i never tried to rationalize it; i knew it was unhealthy, but i'd always quit next week. and, i was never happy about it, but i had to find some way to stay awake, whether i liked it or not.

whenever i had a down period, i'd get most of the way there. but, as soon as i had anything substantive to do, the smoking would start up again.

so, nobody should be surprised by how militant i'm being about this: even when i smoked, i was very anti-smoking, as weird as that sounds.

it follows that if you ever see me with a cigarette in my hand, you can be sure i'm either already drunk or on the way there.

if i end up going to court with this, all parties should expect an affidavit from me, declaring the following:

1) i finally definitively quit smoking cigarettes as a habit at the beginning of 2016, after smoking habitually from 2002-2016, with many attempts to quit over the period.
2) i have never been a habitual marijuana smoker.
3) i have never had a medical marijuana card.
4) as a rule, i have never smoked inside of any dwelling that i've inhabited; i've always smoked outside. i have not smoked anything - at all - inside of the apartment in question.
5) while i may have relapsed a couple of times due to overwhelming stress, including at the end of 2017, because quitting smoking is hard, those relapses have been short-lived and are not evidence of hidden habits. all relapses have been carried out exclusively outside of the dwelling in question.
6) i acknowledge that i may continue to smoke casually when i'm drinking, meaning when i'm at the bar. this is infrequent and likewise does not suggest habitual use - it is behaviour relegated strictly to bar patios and other places of alcohol consumption.

those are the facts.

you don't have to like them.

but please stop disputing them.

clearly, i crashed.

i need to get some work done today.

it's clear that she's still smoking inside, but less clear whether she's leaving or not. i woke up to an overhang of tobacco smoke, and have noticed some minor plumes. but, i continue to hear a lot of banging downstairs.

i guess if she's leaving then she'll want to be out by the first.

and, i'll wait until the first before i start making daily complaints. it's just going to be something like:

"yeah. she's still smoking. *click*."

again: you can't just order an addict to stop.

well, i'll acknowledge that this is a better approach than modelling for this election, as there is a potential for a large swing. but, i'll point out again that when you take a lot of crap and average it out, you're left with an average amount of crap.

i don't think the evidence that the pcs are polling over 40 right now is very strong.

what i want to point out, instead, is that this is the kind of headline the liberals would love to see replicated and picked up on. because the truth is that a lot of people are still voting against harris, rather than in favour of any specific liberal idea. these people are aging, though, too.

is there some value in the idea? i'm going to suggest that there is. harris was a brash neo-liberal that didn't give a fuck. ford is very much in the same mold.

the difference is that harris was still a tory, and was still able to hold a large amount of the old tory base. it took time for that to disintegrate, in revulsion at the shift towards markets (and just as a consequence of dying off). ford may do well amongst newer canadians, and that is a game changer, but he's going to have a harder time holding that red tory swing, which is still key in ontario for at least a little while longer. and, this is a cultural thing rather than a political thing - old tories are going to simply dislike him.

in the end, the election may depend on whether ford can hold his own party's traditional base or not, even as he makes large advances into traditional liberal voter territory. trump managed to do this. we'll see if ford can or not.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-ford-harris-1.4636845

unfortunately, when your apartment constantly smells like drugs and smoke, it's hard to see the value in things like laundry and showering because everything smells bad again in minutes, anyways.

i'm going to have to redo the last load i did.

but i'm coming up against my own stench, right now.

and i actually think that's a good sign - if i can smell myself over the background radiation.

i've been sitting here for hours, unsure if i'm going to fall asleep or not.

either i'll get to work or i'll fall asleep.

i think that when i do crash, i'll be happy to get something a little less broken.

the air is better tonight, but we'll see how long that lasts. i'm even considering showering...

all i've ever posted on the internet, when it comes to modern hardcore, is overly snotty reviews.

i actually don't have the slightest idea why anybody would think i've ever been a modern hardcore fan.

i don't, and never did, have any patience for that kind of thing.

i met some friends near the end of high school that knew i had a large cd collection. i didn't realize it for several years, but they thought i had hundreds of metal cds; in fact, i had hundreds of techno cds. well, industrial & techno.

warp records stuff. nettwerk records stuff. wax trax stuff. nin. thirlwell. coil. electronic pop, like bowie or oldfield. electronic post-rock, like tortoise. kraut/kosmische, like tangerine dream. keyboard-driven prog. goth. new wave.

the balance was mostly psychedelic music, itself often fairly electronic.

and, yeah, there were a few dozen punk discs from the 80s and 90s, as well.

i bought a late megadeath album on cassette once, but sold it within a few months. and, i flirted a little with korn, because they were weird.

but i never listened to, like, refused or anything like that. no "emo" (until the 2010s, when there was that brief moment of arty screamo). never liked that van halen, protest the hero kind of thing. was never my thing. i was listening to instrumental music at the time.

sorry.

exceptionally arrogant.

exceptionally greedy.

exceptionally isolated.

exceptionally doomed.

and, let me say this: any yankee who agrees with canada's position on pharmaceutical generic pricing should feel free to gather in their public squares, to voice their opinions in protests that are however violent they decide that they should be.

diversity of tactics.

we need a united front. the people need to stand united, across these borders, against corporate greed. when donald trump stands in collusion with the drug companies and attacks foreign countries for regulating their prices, everybody loses - on both sides of all borders. for, that is no doubt the true aim: to prevent americans from being able to afford the medications they need.

canada should wear it's inclusion on the yankee bullshit intellectual property watch list as a badge of honour.

the lyric sheet says otherwise, but i always heard "saigon!", and interpreted it as a prediction.

pulling out of syria is the right thing to do; i pointed it out here some time ago.

yes - russia is likely to gain the upper hand inside syria. but, that's inevitable. whatever objectives existed in 2011 are no longer meaningful.

the major objectives for america in the region need to be the following:

1) maintain and rebuild the turkish alliance.
2) minimizing iranian influence in the halls of power in turkey & iraq, rather than on the battlefield. you can't fight this war when every government in the region is against you. the way to contain iran right now is to rebuild bridges in iraq - and in turkey.
3) a reanalysis of russian capabilities, and an acceptance of the return of russian power.

at the end of the day, we might end up lucky that it isn't hillary clinton making these choices.

it's saigon all over again.

and, they can lose this war the easy way or the hard way.

ps: fuck "intellectual property".

all property is theft.

donald,

take your "american leadership" and shove it up your ass.

you are not a leader, you are a pirate.

and i'm not interested in your opinion.

regards,
the rest of the fucking world

this is outrageous.

the rest of the world should issue a joint statement denouncing america as a rogue state and telling it to fuck off and mind it's own business.

america has no right to deregulate drug prices outside it's borders; this is an absurd attack on our sovereignty, and should be met with the harshest response possible.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4172723/trump-administration-canada-intellectual-property/?utm_source=Article&utm_medium=Outbrain&utm_campaign=2015

i think that if i lived somewhere with an active abstract hip-hop scene, i'd take note of it.

it's not here. what's here is your prototypical sex, drugs & bad music.

i think i'd be more interested in the anticon stuff, and it's not outside the realm of plausibility that i may, one day, sit down and properly sort through it.

i've always had a distant admiration for public enemy.

but, i mean.

i'm a nice white kid from canada.

it's like listening to ethnic music from a different culture - which can be rewarding, but exists at arm's length.

so, i'm going to start listening to hip-hop eventually, right?

i need hip-hop to have a punk phase, first, is what i think.

see, i've said this repeatedly: if i was alive in the 60s, i would have hated rock music. i would have despised the rolling stones, looked down on the doors with utter contempt, pointed out that bob dylan wasn't actually a musician, argued the byrds and the velvets were boring...

i would have liked zappa, but he wasn't really a rock musician. and, i would have recognized the value in the the production team headed by george martin, rather than liked the actual beatles.

but, i would have actually been into jazz and classical music. where i reached into rock would have been through blues - so i would have appreciated hendrix as a blues guitarist. but, you'd have been more likely to find me at a john mclaughlin concert, or a philip glass opera or some early prog festival.

stated honestly and bluntly and tersely: i would have thought rock music was stupid, that rock musicians were depraved and that rock culture was nihilistic.

and, that's kind of what i think about hip-hop.

punk changed this narrative, by co-opting what was really a corporate brainwashing tool (they keep you doped on religion, and sex and tv - and rock 'n' roll, too) into a kind of agit-prop. and, that's what i can't find in hip-hop, and what i would need to get interested in it.

because i've also thought that jim morrison was a retard, and been far more interested in jello biafra.

maybe it's already happened and i missed it. but, i suspect that it's probably something that happens when hip-hop moves on, when the suits and dancers have gone on to the next thing, and all that's left are the nerds.

yeah, i got the regular estrace and paid the difference.

the physical is on monday.

the blood test will be some time next week.

and, we can talk about dosages and medication decisions when the results come back, in mid-may.

i could very well switch, in the end; this is just not the right time to play with this.

i'm apprehensive about this.

since i had my dosage increased a little over two years ago, i haven't felt as though my estrogen levels were low.

and, i feel that this should be measured empirically, rather than guessed at.

i will have a blood test this upcoming week; this is the wrong time for this experiment. it's just going to fuck up the test results.

so, i'm going to take the pills back and ask for the estrace, and then act as though i missed a dose.

wait.

this isn't a generic estrace, it's a hemihydrate.

the difference appears to be that the regular estrace needs to go through your liver, whereas the hemi-hydrate is just estrogen surrounded by water, and so absorbs on contact. but, if you take estrogen like this, you get a spike of estrogen and then a fall - which is likely to lead to mood swings. and, i kind of don't like the idea of taking estrogen like a drug. i want constant and stable levels, not to get high on hormones and then crash.

i know that i don't want to this through absorption - i want my liver to regulate it - but i don't know if it's going to be as effective, taken orally. logic kind of tells me that it's going to get ruined in my stomach, if it's just estrogen surrounded by water.

i have an appointment on monday...

but, let's see what i can learn about this in the short run.

hey, here's some good news - new ownership at the local shopper's has got my pills down in cost by ~25%.

they claim it's due to moving to generics.

here's the thing: i knew generics were less expensive the whole time, and i actually shopped around a few years ago, but everybody gave me the same price. the price went up a lot at one point at the beginning of 2016, and the answer i got had to do with the brand switching. i explicitly asked for generics, and they told me something about distributors. now, the pharmacist randomly switches me back to generics and is claiming he always had generics.

?

$20+/month over two years adds up to around $500. i should probably be kind of irked.

and, i know that the previous management didn't like the fact that she couldn't refuse me service, or set her own prices to get me out of the store. she seemed to be both religious + very pro-market. but, she bought a chain store in canada, inheriting two layers of strict rules. she really didn't have the right to discriminate against me, and nobody was going to let her do it - not even her employees.

i'm going to guess that they probably did run out of generics at some point two years ago, and they didn't switch me back when the generics came back in. the new management noticed the problem, and fixed it.

so, thanks. i guess.

i don't have an argument for a claim, because i received what i paid for. i don't think the store made anything from it - it was more about enforcing a value system than making a profit.

*shrug*.

let's just look forwards...

see, now it's after 2:00, so she's extra sure that mom & dad are asleep.

ugh.

like, she seems to have reacted to the situation this afternoon by turning the cure up really loud and going in her room and pouting.

as though she'd been grounded.

"it's not fair!" - with eyeliner picking up marijuana smoke, running amuck through kyoto song.

the thing is that she's like 45.

arrested development. entitlement. just a spoiled brat. call it what you will. but, it has to end soon, one way or another.

you're going to get arguments like "but it was after midnight" or "but it was after 4:00", like that matters - because, in her warped concept of logic, it actually does, because that's when her parents went to sleep and she could do what she wants.

this is what i'm dealing with, here.

there's no logic to it.

it's been mostly ok most of the night, but she seems to be smoking right now.

it's not exactly overwhelming. yet.

but, it demonstrates the problem, which is the addiction itself. she doesn't think she's doing anything wrong. so, she's going to push it and push it until we're back where we were. and, that's why i had to file to the board - she's just not interested in making the choice of complying.

she's like a 12 year old. really.

that said, i think i overheard her say she was moving in with her daughter.

that would be nice...

this is a positive step.

good.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/04/26/news/trudeau-government-says-canada-will-recover-billions-dollars-new-crackdown-oilpatch

how about this for an attack ad?

"with his support for free market reforms, and his insistence on keeping our children ignorant of their own sexuality, doug ford will turn ontario's economy into that of mexico's - and our schools into muslim madrassas.

want to live like muslims in mexico? then vote for doug ford."

everything we can be taught about humans through the medium of film is either written somewhere in shakespeare, or written in an ancient greek tragedy.

we just need to throw off these victorian shackles to see it.

because we can't forget about ann coulter - or ayn rand, for that matter.

but, this is actually missing the point. destroying the hero isn't and shouldn't be a gendered or racialized activity - we should destroy all heroes, and instead learn to live for ourselves, based on our own ideals and visions.

i'm sorry to be the old nerd, here. but, this is why shakespeare has such a central place in our culture: his heroes always have flaws, and those flaws always lead to tragedy in the end.

we live such sheltered existences, today. but, taking a step away from the disney stories and fairy tales is really about reclaiming our humanity. we don't need a radical revolution to do this: it's sitting in our curriculums. we just need to rekindle it.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/12/29/how-wonder-woman-and-the-last-jedi-could-make-our-politics-worse.html

so, to recap.

ford is not a vote for the past, but a vote for the new world order as jason kenney imagined it - a world of interfaith prayer services and religiously motivated government as an opiate for the masses, to allow the banking class to sell the province off. he's a walking imf restructuring program, and by the time he's done we'll end up like sri lanka. or maybe mexico. it's the next step in the race to the bottom...

wynne is a vote for the broken multicultural model, not as initially envisioned by pearson and trudeau but as broken by mulroney and harper. it's less that this is intentional; the point is that she's still imagining the ideals of a pearson, while attaching them to the policies of a harper, and can't see through these contradictions. she thinks you can just put an openly trans person in the same room as an imam and have them find some common cause, rather than dealing with the reality of them wanting to kill each other.

but, horwath is truly a vote for ontario's past - the publicly held resources, the strong union jobs, the dominant manufacturing sector. she may be substituting in government for lost benefits, and that's a step forward really, anyways. but, she alone has a vision to return the province to what it was, rather than to push it forward into some unknown. she's the actual conservative in the race.

i'm not going to vote on immigration policy. it's a federal responsibility. and, my preferred option is to see the feds return to policies that allow us to return to the vision of pearson, as well as some government policies to undermine the role of religious institutions in daily lives. i want these migrant groups to join the growing atheist consensus, and stop fighting it. but, if you do want to vote on immigration, these are the actual choices as they are.

and, it makes it clear why ford is not trump and why running against him as though he is will lead to certain defeat: the liberals don't need to find a way to hold wandering white voters, they need to find a way to stop their immigrant base from aligning with their actual values.

the exact problem is that they've come to embrace religious pluralism as a collection of trivial differences, and the exact reason they got to this point is that they're a lot of smug, upper class atheists that refuse to take the threat of religion seriously.

now, we have a developing problem with the return to a religious society, which is in a direct conflict path with the total collapse of religion in the native-born population.

and, this is going to be the political spectrum of the future: white atheists with liberal perspectives vs brown theists with conservative ones.

of course, i'm not suggesting mutual exclusion. but, that's going to be the basic division. and, it's going to be racial and cultural because the brown theists will insist that it must be, as the white atheists insist that it can't be.

the new political axis is science v faith.

and neither side wants to bridge that gap and get along.

what's actually happening to the liberals is that the muslims don't like them because theu're pro-gay, and the gays are uneasy about them being pro-muslim, and the jews don't like them being pro-muslim, and the muslims don't like them being pro-jewish and..

rather than have everybody working together, everybody is turning on them.

because you can't just imagine radical inclusion without undoing the ignorance that prevents it.

that's magical thinking - it's not reason.

you can't be pro-religion and pro-equality at the same time, and everybody knows that except the politicians in the liberal party.

that doesn't make wynne the maga candidate; wynne is really living in a fantasy reality, a projection of what was supposed to happen with increased immigration, but didn't. so, she ties together racism and "islamophobia" and homophobia as something to build a united front against, without realizing that the most homophobic members in society are racial minorities, the most anti-islamic groups are recent immigrants from asia and the most racist groups are religious fundamentalists. it's an incoherent worldview that belongs to the 1990s.

the "make ontario great again" candidate is neither doug ford nor kathleen wynne, ir's andrea horwath.

doug ford couldn't have won a city council seat in this country forty years ago.

do not blame this on his father.

the pearson system was a model, ideal.

the system began to decay with mulroney.

ford's chances this cycle are a direct consequence of the changes in demographics that occurred in this country under the previous conservative government.

and, that's why he's some kind of anti-trump, rather than some kind of mini-trump: what he really represents is the collapse of ontario into a third world society, where conservative social values run rampant through an ignorant population and thieves at the top make off like bandits.

and, the only demographic chance of beating him back is if white voters find a way to unite against him to uphold the secular values that we're in danger of losing.

but, it's the feds that need to learn this lesson to save the country from ruin.

and, if the federal liberals don't find a way to reverse kenney's policies, they're going to need to get used to be being by these interfaith coalitions that want to bring us back to the dark ages.

if ford wins this election, his first thank you call should be to jason kenney.

when exactly did the supreme court rule in favour of the government's right to pipeline expansion?

how do governments even have rights?

more incoherent nonsense from the tory media.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-trudeaus-student-grant-kerfuffle-is-the-latest-act-that-could/

kathleen wynne would be better off in a back room as a policy wonk.

she's an awful politician.

donald trump did quite well with indian-american immigrants, as well.

ford is actually exactly the kind of candidate that the indian community wants: staunchly pro-market, opposed to any kind of state regulation, clearly not gay and with a bit of a macho streak. and, he's male. that's key. these groups tend to retain attachments to traditional conservative value systems, are very pro-family and lean libertarian on economic policy.

and, they don't like muslims.

at all.

liberals need to come to turn with the reality that they're out of touch with immigrant communities in this country, who have absolutely no attachment to their insular white delusions of multiculturalism, and that it's going to cost them dearly at the ballot box.

what wynne represents is what out of touch white people think brown people want; she doesn't remotely represent what brown people actually want.

tanya granic allen's riding has a south indian plurality, and they are the most anti-muslim group out there. that said, she may have difficulty gaining traction in this riding, as her message would be most popular in a riding with a larger muslim majority.

it is, of course, the muslim groups that are most vocal in opposition to her sex-ed policies - and wynne should expect to lose muslims in this election, given that her policies are unpopular amongst them, and her opponent is popular amongst them.

this is another tactical mistake; she should have allowed an open nomination in this riding.

what i'm realizing this cycle, is that i agree with 90% of wynne's policies, but disagree with 90% of her tactics.

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/04/26/premier-surprised-controversial-pc-candidate-tanya-granic-allen-is-running-for-any-party-in-2018.html

you can't just tell a drug addict to stop doing drugs.

that's not how this works.

i woke up to a bit of a curveball.

the property manager showed up a little after 11:00, and handed me a new set of building regulations.

- no smoking
- no drugs

hrmmn.

everybody in this building smokes pot. this was never my intent, but i guess the owner had to buckle.

if the other tenants are upset about the universal application of the rules, they should blame her, and not me. i only care about my own unit. she's the one that cried that it's not fair. it's her fault.

that said, these rules are not enforceable, and i don't have any faith in these tenants to obey them - or in management to enforce them. they're just going to spend a lot on legal costs, with no end point.

she's smoking right now.

so, i mailed the t2 & t6 this morning.

and, i have a letter for the property manager., as well.

Update on the Situation in Unit 15

A T2 and T6 were completed on the evening of April 25th, 2018, with intent to process them on April 26th.

On the morning of April 26th, before these documents were processed, Ina appeared at my door with a new list of rules, including a no-smoking rule and a no drugs policy.

I do not have faith in the tenant to abide by these rules, and I do not have faith in the management to enforce them. My last smoke complaint was met by a request for me to move, so I don’t expect anything different in the future. And, as I am typing this, I can smell marijuana wafting into the unit from downstairs.

So, the documents were processed on the afternoon of April 26th, despite the existence of the new rules. Should the situation improve, to my surprise, by the time of the court appearance, I will cancel the court date. I would actually prefer not to move, I just can’t stay in an unhealthy unit. Be advised that I can always reapply for an end to the tenancy, with proper compensation.

Despite Ina’s claims, there was no law passed in Ontario restricting smoking indoors. There was in fact a law passed in Ontario restricting the outdoor use of cannabis. I do not think that Ina was confused, I think she was being dishonest. My legal opinion is that an action against the tenant below me would be unsuccessful, given the current legal realities. The legal reality in Ontario is that it is the ownership’s responsibility to renovate the unit, or compensate me for moving costs and damages. I did not write these laws, and do not like them much, but they are as they are.

In the mean time, I am making the following requests for renovations in the unit. There will be further requests made as the tape is fully removed.

Bedroom

When I moved into this unit, the bedroom had cracks in the wall. This was presented to management in writing, and I took pictures, as well. I eventually noticed smoke seeping in the cracks. As I did not want to be a nuisance tenant, I hoped that covering the cracks with tape would keep the smoke out. This was actually partially successful. However, management has asked me to remove the tape. I believe it is reasonable to request that the holes be patched, in exchange for removing the tape.

I have left a tarp over the water closet in the short term, until a proper discussion can be had on how to fix the water closet.

I also acknowledge that the baseboards will need to be repainted, but, as a tenant, I don’t care much about this. I would, however, advise management to contemplate the wisdom in seeking legal action over $5 worth of paint, considering that they are unlikely to even win the case at all. It would be a better idea to just paint the baseboards.

I will at least apologize for the inconvenience, but would request that you in turn realize the desperation underlying it.

Door Frame

While the seal on the new doors is in fact quite impressive, the frame was never completed properly. In an attempt to be a quiet tenant, I simply taped around the frame. This was reasonably effective. As per the request of management, I have removed this tape, but feel it is reasonable to ask for the management to compensate by caulking the door frame. This is actually a simple request to finish a job that was never really finished.

Once these issues are dealt with, similar small requests will be made on the other side of the unit.

like, i've had women sit on my lap at parties while i'm in the middle of a conversation, and have had to carefully squeeze out of it to finish the conversation, to the confusion of everybody.

i'm going to want to talk to you until the sun comes up before we do any lap-sitting.

but, this seems to be considered old-fashioned or boring or something.

i think the reason i'd prefer an older woman is because it's going to be more of an intellectual thing than a physical thing.

and i think the reason i'd prefer a younger dude is because it's going to be more of a physical thing than an emotional one.

i mean, if i wanted to hang out and chum around with hot guys, i'd just be gay. i don't really enjoy the company of men at all. but i am physically attracted to them...

on the other hand, while i prefer the company of women, i don't get nearly as aroused by them.

i continue to get more attention from women than men, which is...

i can't pretend i understand, but what can i do about this?

i get chased around, from time to time, mostly by younger girls that don't fully realize how old i am and think they can convert me or something. they tend to have drastically inaccurate perceptions of me. i know better than to get caught up in something like this. and, they give up after a little while, when they realize i'm not into it. i get the impression that they tend to conclude that i'm some kind of idiot for not going for them, and maybe they're right, who knows? it doesn't seem to cross their mind that i'm more into guys.

and, i've got the eye of a few guys as well - mostly older for some reason. i get the impression that they tend to conclude i'm not much of a girl, after all - because i'd clearly melt for them if i was. if i can resist them, i must be a dude, right? right...

i'd be more likely to go for older women and younger guys.

but, the point is that i get plenty of opportunity. both ways.

i'm just not into it. and especially not casually.

i don't want to stand here at 37 and claim i'll never have sex again, but i'm going to have to get to know somebody for a while, first, and my lifestyle doesn't currently suggest that this is very likely to ever happen.

a one-night stand, for me, is something that is really out of the question.

if you're curious.

i masturbate like once a month, if that. like, when i have to, kind of thing.

and i don't ejaculate when i orgasm.

because i'm on testosterone suppressors that suppress the production of semen.

i repeat: i am biologically incapable of producing semen.

again: i'm not into some kind of self-hating ascetic.

i just find hedonism to be boring.

fwiw, i'm absolutely willingly celibate.

maybe it's the gender dysphoria, but i find that sex is boring as fuck.

thirteen years, and i don't feel like i'm missing out on a thing.

i'd rather get drunk than get laid.

sorry.

so, i have a t2 and a t6 filled out.

i am requesting:
$1000 - moving costs
$1000 - bed
$1000 - couch
$500 - dry cleaning & laundry
$200 - tape & tarps
$100 - cleaning supplies
============
$3800 + a tbd percentage of rent paid, which will be $5600.

at 25%, that will be over $5000.

they will also no doubt hire lawyers.

the law is an ass, here. but, hopefully the court will make renting to inside smokers quite expensive, and hopefully that will create some pressure to put some more reasonable laws in place.

nobody should be allowed to smoke inside, ever. ten feet from the house should be the law....

i'm going to repeat this: the liberals should be running on their record in government.

they've made a lot of accomplishments.

and, they've put things in motion that i'd like to see come to their conclusions.

conservatives can whine and moan about conservative things, but i don't care about any of these things, because i'm not a conservative.

i just want to be clear.

it's not going to be the thing that determines my vote.

but, i'm certainly not opposed to raising corporate tax rates to eliminate the deficit. it's better than cutting services to do it, anyways.

a provincial level of government is different than a federal level of government, because it can't print money. so, ontario will in fact have to pay it's debt off, eventually.

but, the thing is that the only actual consequence of running a large public debt is in investors ratings, and these are political, anyways. i guess, in that sense, it makes sense for the ndp to try and avoid giving moody's anything to play with...

but, i need to reiterate that i'm more likely to get skittish about the ndp if they make the debt the focus of their campaign than applaud them for "being responsible". despite the public misperception, the ndp has a history of cutting services to pay off the debt - they are the party with the most fiscally conservative track record. corporate tax rates don't raise very often. if horwath insists on broadcasting an obsession with lowering public debt, i'm going to interpret it as broadcasting an intent to cut services, regardless of the platform. at the end of the day, that's the most likely thing that happens.

we live in a reality where politicians campaign on one thing and do another. this is one of those scenarios where you need to look in between the lines. the ontario liberals have a good track record on this - and that's what i think they should be running on, their record. the ndp, less so. frankly.

those are the empirical facts.

so, horwath needs to be careful.

if we're going to elect new democrats and get conservatives anyways, i'd rather split the vote.

i'm still hurting, but i'm going to try to start.

is this even possible?

well, i know what it feels like to be high, and i know that the smoke is getting me high. i'm not guessing that maybe i'm this mysterious thing called "being high". i'm identifying something i know very well.

i think that the basic idea here is correct: it's hard for second-hand smoke to get you high.

what are the facts, here?

1) this building has no "ventilation system". my windows are wide open when they can be, which is not always. hers are shut. it's certainly not a "hot box", but the smoke is only exiting one direction, and it is up. the winds tend to blow around the building rather than into it.
2) the floors basically aren't there. so, it's like i'm sitting in an open concept above her, directly in her exhale path. sometimes, it's like she's blowing it in my face.
3) i have a very, very low tolerance to marijuana. it appears to be unusually low. i also know this from experience.
4) she has a very high tolerance.
5) she smokes very potent marijuana. it appears to be very high cbd, very low thc. i actually think that the terpene stuff is bullshit. but, this is the kind of pot that knocks you out for days, without really getting you "high".
6) she smokes very big joints, and smokes them frequently.

all of these factors are going to play into this. and, all i can say is i know what i'm feeling, and it's pretty real. this is the experiment, and these are the results i'm reporting. somebody else may have different experiences, due to a higher tolerance....

....but i'm perfectly comfortable with stating that i'm getting knocked out by a high volume of high potency marijuana, even in a relatively open space, but i recognize that it depends on whether i get into contact with what i call a "plume" or not.

i'm not watching her from downstairs, but a "plume" probably happens when she takes a hard three or four hit toke on one of these huge joints. when that happens, i'm getting the smoke burned off the joint (which is substantial), the smoke missed in the toke and the exhaled smoke. what i'm getting at is that the way she smokes is very wasteful, and i'm actually getting a lot of uninhaled marijuana as a result of it.

the smell itself is not going to do it. i have to walk into one of these plumes. and, because she seems to be smoking near my bed [both before and after i moved my bed], that is exactly what is happening, repeatedly.

https://www.livescience.com/50880-secondhand-marijuana-smoke-effects-drug-test.html

"how's the pot in windsor?"

it's terrible.

my eyes are still burning, but i'm going to get a start on this. i'm not sure if i'll get it mailed today, but, if i don't i should get it mailed right away in the morning.

nope.

knocked out, again.

around 6:00.

this stuff is very, very powerful, but it's not any fun to get a headache and pass out. no euphoria. no buzz. no "high". just overwhelming lethargy, and a really nasty throb in the head.

i might actually recommend actual marijuana to get rid of this.

i can't write like this.

well, that gets me through dec of 2015, anyways.

i have a headache. again.

i'm going to get something to eat and hope it wakes me up a little and then get to writing that essay, with the full intent to mail it today. i've always tended to avoid doing school work when stoned (drugs and school don't go well together, kids), so i might have to wait for the influence to wear off a little, first.

i'm going to enter this journal into evidence, so i'll be posting detailed accounts of when the second hand smoke has an effect on me.

season 2 ends about a week into january, and the music blog is going to be updating sporadically afterwards. that should actually speed me up quite a bit.

"we spent the night playing video games and doing drugs, and then walking around talking about tv shows. 

you missed out."

thankfully, i have some coffee.

because that's the drug i like.

coffee.

i'm once again feeling tired and miserable in the wee hours of the morning.

the strangest thing is that they're just wasting their drugs.

throw a dart and you'll hit somebody that wants this.

why harass the one that doesn't?

i moved here hoping to meet people that wanted to start a new society in the ruins of the old one.

unfortunately, this place is full of people that perfectly represent that society's decay.

i don't like the junkies; it's the junkies that like me.

but, i really don't like them.

at all.

i don't want anything to do with these people that are showing up here every morning and doing drugs.

the only people i was able to build friendships with after high school were the anarchists at occupy.

those are literally the only friends i've met since i was 20.

why can't i have adults show up at my door and talk about revolutionizing the means of production, rather than children show up smoking drugs?

i'm actually looking forward to turning 40, so i can say it.

thirty-something isn't scary.

but, they leave you alone when you tell them you're 40.

so, i do - but i'm lying.

it'll be nice when it's actually true...

they see me as a peer, but my interest in twenty-somethings is non-existent. i see them as children.

there's this mother/daughter pair that lives in the building, in separate units. i guess the kid grew up here.

the kid keeps visibly checking me out.

i'm closer to her mother's age.

something like a smashing pumpkins reunion is....

if it's, like, the only thing to do that month, and i need to get out of the house, maybe.

but, it's probably going to cost too much, and it's probably going to be in a venue that is too big to get anything from, and i'd probably have a better night listening to the records at home.

i never saw the pumpkins live. i had an opportunity in....i think it was 2000....but i'd grown out of arena rock shows at that time, and just didn't think it would be a good night.

they apparently lost power that night, and people told me after the fact that i was right. but it's not the point.

i think rock music loses it's power when the venue gets over 2500 people. i'm just not into the festival thing. it just doesn't appeal to me, much.

there's the odd exception that i've made, mostly for acts that strike me as specifically arena rock bands, and i'm a bit more lenient about open air festivals, but i tend to hold to it.

i know i'm never going to get to see the pumpkins in a club, but i also know i wouldn't enjoy it in a bigger context.

she's in support of a constitutional amendment to restrict access to abortion, so the supreme court argument doesn't really hold up, either.

a little better, maybe.

not substantively... 

and i could go through this.

in fact, i will go through this as i rebuild 2016.

i mean, you'll recall that clinton argued that children crossing the border illegally should be deported "to send central america a message".

that's not substantively different than trump's position.

she was also heavily criticized during the primaries for openly racist statements in her past.

clinton was a terrible candidate.

and, every time you try and blame her loss on sexism, you just look stupid.

the dominant voting block that cost clinton the election was married white women.

in case there is some confusion, let me be clear.

i could not have voted in the last american election.

but, my heart was with jill stein, and my brain was with hillary clinton - as a lesser evil choice.

barely.

so, i made the argument that you should vote for clinton to beat trump. but, this was intellectual.

the truth is that i probably wouldn't have voted at all.

stein made the argument that it really wasn't clear that clinton was a lesser evil, and i think that she was right on that point. she may have been a lesser evil on the environment, which would have been my dominant voting concern. it is not clear that she was a lesser evil on the economy, and she was probably a greater evil on foreign policy.

i'm ultimately of the view that trump has not demonstrated much policy that is substantively different than clinton's - i'm not sure that clinton would have been much different.

we'll see, in the end, what kind of major policy initiatives come out of trump's presidency. as of now, he's really been a caretaker president.

this is such a weird map.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ontario_Provincial_Election_1990_-_Results_Map.svg

if doug ford gets ~38% - a number roughly in sync with donald trump's approval rating - do you think he should get the keys to the government?

i don't.

i'm in support of a coalition government, even if it only lasts long enough to prevent ford from taking power.

and, he's going to have to poll at roughly 45% to prevent that coalition from forming - which i think is very unlikely.

i need to reiterate: i have not seen any reliable polling that indicates that ford is beyond minority territory.

i am still expecting a coalition government as the most likely outcome.

but, key constituencies are starting to turn in irrational ways - indicating that this might be becoming one of those random expressions of mass stupidity that is inevitable in any democracy.

not only is doug ford unlikely to spend money on more infrastructure, he's very likely to sell a good percentage of it.

perhaps what the unions are really more interested in is a tax cut.

i've had these discussions; workers don't tend to understand economics very well, and tend to get their information from very bad sources. they're consequently easy to take advantage of with what are essentially appeals to ignorance.

they believe in trickle-down economics. no; stop. they really do.

i will not be surprised if unions vote for ford. but, i'll be disappointed in the stupidity of it.

unions + immigrants is a winning coalition. it's a familiar one, too, isn't it?

the left needs some serious reflection, from pseudo to literal.

i'm not sure why anybody would think that doug ford cares about infrastructure.

that sounds like fake news, to me.

leave it to alberta to be the only jurisdiction in the world that is dumb enough to buy into elon musk's bullshit.

i just took a walk downstairs to investigate the banging, and i caught her leaving in a waiting car, which is not conclusive.

she's obviously not going outside to smoke, because she's smoking inside - and she's already had a few.

so, i'm actually left with one of two conclusions: either she left for work a little late tonight or she's slowly moving things out.

if the smoke continues over night, and right now it seems like it's going to, i'm actually going to have to conclude that she's in the process of moving and question the property manager about it tomorrow before i mail the documents.

i don't know if having her move is good enough, any more. i know it's worth giving it another try, though. it's the easiest answer...

i could, of course, cancel the court process, as well.

unfortunately, she appears to be home tonight.

but, i'm wondering if she misread the n5.

i'm not getting an honest response from management; they're playing stupid about it. but, that's just it - they're just bluffing on everything. i can read. to the contrary, this woman is obviously not very bright.

when i made the second smoke complaint, it was after ten days. now, the n5 can be confusing, if you're already stupid to begin with, and this is what i meant when i pointed out that the property management was feigning incompetency.

the first n5 is just a warning. it says knock it off in the next ten days, or i'm going to try and evict you. now, it also comes with a date on it, but the date is really meant for the second n5, not the first one.

my n5 had the date of april 23rd on it, but it wasn't a meaningful date. it was either included out of incompetency, or out of an attempt to frighten me.

a stupid or ignorant person could get the notice and conclude that they have to move by the 23rd. and, if that is the case, i would expect that this woman would actually be moving out over the week.

that might explain why she's not working, and also why i'm hearing a lot of banging.

so, should i wait this out, or what?

when i called in on day 11, i got the (i think feigned) confused reaction from management, indicating they were holding to it. but, i know better.

does she?

hrmmn.

i'm awake.

i've eaten.

thankfully, we got some rain...

i'll be through 2015 pretty fast and on to writing this essay and mailing it tomorrow.

to be a little bit more clear.

it's not whether i'm cool or not that tends to get me upset. i don't care. i really don't. and i don't care if not caring is cool or not, either. or if...

it's the vacuous, empty and nihilistic definition of 'cool' that gets me wishing i lived on another planet.

i'm happy to hang out with the nerds.

it's the popular kids that make me depressed.

my head is just throbbing :(.

i'm actually hoping for a rainy, cold summer in order to keep this person off the porch, so i can get some air in here.

there's no protection from the rain, there. and, the humid air is the best antidote for the smoke from downstairs, too.

it looks like the rain we were supposed to get this week isn't going to show up :(

well, i think it's worn off, now.

but i'll never make it there by 4:30.

i wanted to be there this morning, but i was literally too stoned to move for the last seven hours, from the secondhand smoke. this is a measure of the depth of the problem. and i'm not exaggerating; i was up in the afternoon, yesterday, i should not have been tired this morning. that was a short day....

i want to put the term 'stoned' in quotes, because it's not exactly like that. it's more like a sedative - and i've pointed out before that i suspect she is smoking opiates, at least sometimes. the pot obviously doesn't do much for her, right? and, this happens sometimes - i get a whiff of something and just fall over, for hours.

but, this is also typical of government pot, in my experience. government pot doesn't get you high, it just knocks you out. and, with the way they're prescribing it as an anti-depressant or pain reliever (rather than as the psychedelic it's used as, recreationally), that kind of makes sense. i don't know if it's a sativa/indica thing or something else, but government pot is really more like valium than it is like pot. and, as you might expect, that's not any fun.

the shit the government is going to eventually export is not going to be bc bud. it's going to be this over the top, sedative-heavy government pot engineered to feel like i'd imagine an opiate does. it's going to make you tired and insular, rather than euphoric and extroverted. and i don't expect to have much interest in it.

i'll have to try again tomorrow.

*shrug*.

i'm actually going back to sleep for a bit.

no.

i...

i can't move.

i'll try again at noon.

i didn't get through 2015 before i was overwhelmed by the secondhand smoke around 7:00.

my eyes are burning.

my throat is burning.

my mood is foul.

i want to sleep. but i can't. i have to get up.

it's about ten posts short. i'll do it tonight.

i can barely move.

i feel like death.

:(.

i just want to sit here and cry for the next thirty years.

but i need to get something mailed today.

coffee...

in one of the strangest demonstrations of surveillance yet, i'm listening to one of the remixes i spun off at the end of 2015 (http://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.ca/2015/12/insp.html) and it starts actually interfering with the loopback at the low frequencies, due to the depth of the bass drum.

there are several mixes of this track that use the same drum pattern, so i check each of them, and they all do the same thing.

i was able to solve it on a reboot.

but, it seems like what i was hearing was the bass beating out of phase with itself as it was being captured by the monitoring software.

again: i actually don't care if i'm monitored. i'm boring as fuck.

but, i can't create music when the monitoring software is degrading my audio quality, like this...

but, it's just...

it's never been my thought process.

i've never been angry or sad or depressed and said "i need to get high". to the contrary, i've been angry or sad or depressed and decided to stay home and go to bed early, instead.

i need to be in a good mood to go out drinking & smoking, or i don't go out. i wouldn't want to get high if i wasn't feeling up to it.

& this is maybe why i don't really understand this. the premise of "medicinal marijuana" is combining two things - drugs & depression - that seem to be in contradiction with each other, to me.

when i'm depressed, i go to bed early; i only do drugs when i'm feeling great, and want to have a good time.

how did this get so confused?

it has to be capitalism that's at the root cause of this.

i would imagine that getting in the habit of smoking pot when i'm upset would just ruin marijuana for me.

like i say: i'm usually pretty happy, so long as i don't have to interact with people - or their externalities.

there's too many externalities in this place.

but, i don't associate drugs with depression.

being sad doesn't make me want to get high. getting high is something i do when i'm in a good mood, not something i do when i'm upset. i don't even know what being high and depressed is even like - i've never experienced this. i'd imagine it would just make me more upset. and, the stronger the smell of drugs is, the sadder i'm going to get.

it's not a comfort, or a crux, or something i do alone - it's a social activity that i always used to do with friends, and now do, at least, in public.

when i'm upset, i just want to go to sleep and wake up fresh - ie not hungover.

not tonight. tonight, i just need to deal with it. coffee...

it's not being around people that makes me upset. if anything, being around people makes me exceedingly angry.

it's the nature of humans that makes me upset.

people just smoke drugs, and don't care. they destroy the planet; they destroy themselves. they don't plan, they don't think ahead - all they care about is the present moment.

why can't people be more altruistic, and more interested in living healthy and productive lifestyles? why are so many humans these depraved, selfish utility monsters that destroy everything in their paths? why are we so easily controlled by media into believing such utter stupidity?

you try to live a healthy lifestyle, you try to give back, you try to do what you can to not contribute to all of these social and environmental problems, and all you get in return are these self-absorbed retards that can't even be bothered to get off of their obese assholes to go smoke a fucking joint, when somebody tells them it's making them sick.

i need to get out of here asap.

preferably to a planet with a different dominant species.

i'm broadly a pretty happy person if left alone.

it's humans that make me sad.

we're despicable creatures. it's the best argument i know against religion: no enlightened being would create a species this depraved.

i deserve the payout i'm asking for.

:(

of course, the library has inconvenient hours, for me.

i may find myself blowing most of the summer sitting outside and reading, just because i can't sit inside.

why is it always ugly fat women that smoke like chimneys?

to be clear: i've got the drug addict below me, and have had to open my window to deal with it.

now, there's a tenant next door that is sitting on her porch smoking, so opening the window is no solution.

i don't currently have a functioning laptop, but i'm considering spending my days at the library until i can get out.

if you're forcing me to choose, i would rather deal with second hand tobacco smoke.

it's gross. and unhealthy.

but, at least it doesn't make you tired....

there's a new problem: some ugly, fat wench is sitting in my fresh air intake and smoking 24/7, meaning i'm in the same impossible situation, once again.

what i'm experiencing is just a background general smoke: i can't tell what kind of smoke it is, and it may even be all mixed up. it's just burning my throat.

i want to finish 2015 before i get to the write-up to get out of here.

listen.

if you want to kill yourself, it's easy enough to find a bridge or some poison or something else.

you don't need to trigger the cops, who probably want to catch you alive if they can, anyways.

canada has experienced a few unfortunate outbursts of mental illness. but, this doesn't appear to be a terrorist attack - nor have any of the incidents here been accurately described that way.

it seems like this person was suicidal and wanted to go out in a bang.

outrageously, the response from the landlord was to suggest that if i can't deal with the smoke then i should move.

that's the literal definition of negligence, in context.

"if you don't like the mold on the ceiling, you can always move."
"if you don't like the asbestos in the living room, you can always move."

it's the same thing, legally.

you see this frequently with legal illiterates: i'm just getting some, like, nineteenth century contract theory bullshit. libertarianism seems to be the basic starting point of ignorance, in this culture.

so, i'm going to have to write the board an essay, and this won't get mailed until tomorrow. the basic argument is negligence under the health regulations, and liability for breach of the enjoyment covenant.

but, i got a mailing address, at least. that wasn't obvious.

the truth is that they're actually kind of walking into a trap; it's not like i set the trap, but , if i did, they'd have walked right into it. they've given me everything i need to make the argument for negligence...

and, i need to reiterate: i like tort law. i think more of the law should be organized around tort law principles. tort reform, to me, means expanding the principles of tort law to further destroy contract theory. it's the criminal law that i don't like, and it's classical liberalism that pisses me off...

i mean, the premise is that prostitution pays well, right?

but, that's only true because it's not regulated.

legalization will convert sex workers into fast food employees.

"sex work is work".

ok.

well, then you'd be willing to do it for minimum wage, then - as an employee of a multinational corporation, run by men who take in six figure salaries.

right?

careful.

i think women are better served by the status quo, myself.

and that we should rather be focusing on ways to create better jobs.

i have to make the complaint before i file the documents. it's a formality.

i'm really curious as to how they'll respond....

yes: she's been smoking all night.

i'll have to call the landlord around 8:30.

if you like a glass of wine now and again does that mean you're an alcoholic?

that you want your bed to smell like spilled vodka, and stale puke?

that you want your kitchen to smell like gin, or your bathroom to smell like barley?

that you want your clothes to smell of elderberry?

that you drink so much that you fall over?

just because you like a glass of wine at christmas, or a beer at a show? really?

this is not binary. we don't have to choose between never smoking and smoking an ounce a day. there's a large spectrum...

she may even be getting social validation from "being an addict" that she can't get anywhere else.

i'm posting in the rebuild right now about how marijuana isn't addictive.

and, it really isn't.

this is the first pot addict i've ever met...

and, she's no doubt more addicted to the idea of the drug than the drug itself. she probably thinks it makes her cool, or something; it's probably some kind of fear of missing out.

"marijuana is not physically addictive" is a factual statement. that is science. but, they claim it's "psychologically addictive" - which means that heavy users can trick themselves into thinking they're addicted, when they really aren't.

it's more like they want to be addicted, because they think being addicted is cool, and they don't want to miss out.

twisted. truly.

but, as i am contradicting myself, let be me clear: i am well aware that marijuana is not an addictive substance, and when i'm ranting about this woman being a drug addict, i shouldn't be taken fully literally. she's a wannabe addict.

i mean, when i go out, i make sure i have a good time.

but, it's a few times a month, usually.

i'm not out all of the time...

"so, how does she go out to party all the time, then?"

i don't.

i went out once in november, once in december, zero times in january, february or march and twice in april.

i'm often able to save a few dollars over the winter, so that i can go out more frequently in the summer. i also get those gst checks in every three months. but, the budget gives me about $100/month to spend, most months - which is enough for one or two nights out

and, the truth is that i spend most of my time inside in front of the computer.

as you can see.

rent: $700
groceries: $200
estrogen: $90
internet: $30
laundry: $10

roughly.

do i really have to make this argument?

i have one source of income: odsp.

it's $1150/month.

my expenses are $1026/month [if i spend $200 on groceries, which is often an exaggeration].

where do you propose that i get all of this money to get stoned all of the time?

i don't have an alternate source of income. i don't have a marijuana card.

please just accept the fact that i don't smoke.

i get pleasure out of learning, not out of burning out.

there's lots of people on this planet that just don't like marijuana.

i'm not going to say that, exactly.

but i certainly don't enjoy perpetual inebriation.

i'd really rather be sober.

and, i honestly don't know why i have this reputation, otherwise - i am, in fact, usually sober.

it's not that i'm living some kind of ascetic lifestyle or something.

i don't have any kind of philosophical objection to being a stoner - it's just not my idea of a good time.

i simply prefer being sharp-witted, awake, alert. i don't enjoy the sore throat. i don't like being tired....

if i was going to get addicted to something, it would be cocaine, not marijuana. as it is, i'm usually fine with coffee.

i need to be clear: the problem here is not the drugs, it's the user. drugs don't smoke themselves.

if she were to go take a walk, she wouldn't be bothering anybody. she really wouldn't.

but, her insistence on smoking inside is very much bothering somebody: she's making me very sick, and dramatically negatively impacting on my quality of life.

my costing is as follows:

$1000 for moving costs
$300 for materials used to smoke-proof the apartment (which the landlord ordered me to take down)
$500 for laundry & dry-cleaning
$100 for cleaning supplies
$500 for a new bed [my mattress is ruined]
25% of rent paid is $1400, presuming the lease ends august 1st.
==========
$3800

i hope it makes people think twice about renting to drug addicts.

i repeat: the ndp plan around drugs is not going to win voters, it is going to be an albatross around their necks.

the liberals would be wise to avoid it and, in fact, to take advantage of their opponents' mistake.

i'm going to say this one more time.

- the liberals should support pharmacare.
- the liberals should kick the sex work thing down the road a little; it's maybe encouraging in some sense to hear younger people think we're ready for this, but the older generation really isn't and, as a gen xer, i continue to feel torn in between the need to rip down patriarchal rules and protect women from predatory men. if you do this tomorrow, you'll just be legalizing human trafficking at the expense of brown people and for the dubious benefit of rich white girls that won the genetic lottery and want an easy dime.
- the liberals should campaign against the ndp's plan to legalize all drugs, by presenting it as a crazy right-wing idea, which is what it actually is. this is friedman, it is not marx or even keynes. special attention should be drawn to pointing out that canada is not the united states, and does not treat drug users like the united states does; the policy is essentially based around the misunderstanding that we do, and the fact is that we don't. let this join the list of goofy ndp priorities, like abolishing the clarity act and getting rid of the senate, that voters don't actually want at all.

what we really need is for jerry cantrell, kim thayil & mike mcready to start an instrumental guitar band with a revolving cast of drummers & bassists.

given that she's obviously smoking this much because she can't get high any more, she's probably actually at risk of moving to something harder.

i've seen studies arguing both ways, and they're probably both right, depending on the context. i can understand how marijuana could help a heroin addict - although i might suggest methadone, instead. less harmful. on the other hand, when your tolerance to marijuana is as absurd as this woman's is, and the delivery method is giving you pneumonia, it's easy to understand the appeal of something stronger, too.

it probably depends on what stage the addict is in. an opiate addict that wants to get better but is physically addicted could use pot as a crutch, even if they relapse in the long run; a desperate pothead that just isn't getting high anymore might look at opiates as the only way to get what they're after. and, i might have thought that was obscure a few months ago, but i never thought i'd meet somebody that smokes as much as she does, either.

she's obviously just not getting high.

the way marijuana works is that the more you smoke, the less high you get. all drugs are like this: it's the law of diminishing returns.

so, if you wanted to emulate me, for whatever reason, the way to do this is to only smoke once in a while. that way, you get really high from just getting in on the odd round. when you smoke as little as i do, you only have to buy a $5 pre-roll to get stoned enough that you're still feeling it in the morning. those rastas don't even get a buzz off of that.

whatever media exists of me baked is in fact strong evidence that i don't get high very often, as i would be less obviously trashed if i did.

and, the key to accomplishing this level of inebriation on a regular basis is actually to buy into the culture of sobriety. my daily drug of choice is coffee, not marijuana. i've quit tobacco. but, i drink a pot of coffee a day, and only smoke up a couple of times a month - if that. some months, i don't get stoned at all.

you need that space to prevent yourself from developing tolerance; what my media footprint really is is a lack of tolerance, due to sporadic use.

if i smoked as much as people seem to think i do, i wouldn't get high in public at all - i'd just be your average "chill" stoner.

and, if i disappear from public view for a long period, as i tend to, it's safe to assume i'm completely sober during that period. and, i don't want to build up a tolerance - that would just make my infrequent binges less fun.

this should all be obvious, but it isn't, for some reason. people seem to think i somehow get completely ripped from a random toke at the bar, then go home and smoke mad amounts. but, that doesn't actually make any sense, and you should all know that it doesn't...my obviously low tolerance is evidence that i don't smoke much at all....

right now, i just have a sore throat and wish i was more awake.

she's still blazing. every twenty minutes. it's surreal.

if i was writing policy, that would be my primary focus: to get rid of this ridiculous idea that marijuana is some kind of medicine.

that is utterly ignorant.

that must be corrected.

marijuana is a recreational drug that is relatively safe, if consumed in moderation, and should be heavily taxed like alcohol and cigarettes.

it is not a medicine. and, like alcohol, it can be abused with disastrous consequences.

i don't normally sit in this room.

as far as i can tell, she lights a joint about every 20 minutes. and, i've seen these things - they're not joints, they're cigars, really.

she's been chain smoking since about 3:30, maybe a bit before. she seems to have overwhelmed my defenses around 3:30, anyways. let's say 3:40 to make the math easier.

that means she has smoked at least 10 cigar-sized joints in the last 3.5 hours. that's probably at least $50 worth of pot. in the last 3.5 hours. by herself.

that's more expensive than cocaine.

me? i take one three-toke pass between sets and i'm licked until the morning. and, then i don't touch it for three weeks - until the next show.

if she's smoking that much, the sad truth is that it must be because it doesn't actually get her high, anymore. and, so, what's the point of even smoking it?

it's easy to deduce that this woman goes to work all day in order to spend all her money on a drug that makes her really sick, pisses off her neighbours and doesn't even get her high.

doctor's orders?

what a sad joke.

this isn't a medicine, and it's not doing anything for her.

it's an addiction that is ruining her life.

in fact, i am a health nut and enviro-fascist.

i have an extremely healthy diet.

i don't smoke.

i get a lot of exercise.

i recycle in buildings that don't.

i compost.

i don't own a car; i walk, i bike.

i had a struggle with cigarettes that i've won. but, my entire life is centered around minimizing my carbon output and living as healthily and as safely as possible. and, living in other people's smoke is consequently an impossibility - a contradiction, an unacceptable premise.

i'm very sorry if you thought that i was some kind of advocate for heavy drug use, but i've been very clear that i am not.

most marijuana users are not drug addicts, as most alcohol users are not alcoholics. but, the ones that are addicts need help, not normalization.

all i care about is my lungs, which i have gone to great lengths to keep healthy by quitting smoking over two years ago and cannot allow to be damaged due to the selfish negligence of asshole neighbours.

i do not care what happens to her.

she's created her own problems.

i do hope they evict her, but i ultimately don't care.

i care about my own health.

when somebody repeatedly asks you to stop doing something because it's bothering somebody, and you keep doing it, you're an asshole.

no, she's back to smoking again in her usual spots.

the t2 will be mailed on monday.

that's the end of this.

and, don't let anybody tell you that "medicinal marijuana users" aren't drug addicts. there's no other way to understand this: this person is an addict, and she's not going to stop.

she didn't stop when i asked.
she didn't stop when the cops asked.
she didn't stop when the landlord asked.
and, she didn't stop when the owner asked.

that is drug addiction.

period.

t2 is coming.

i need to get out of this hellhole...

the smell in here tonight is tobacco, but i can't get a handle on the source.

it's absolutely revolting.

but, the thing is that a part of it might be the actual floor, and the smell might be the building adjusting to the spring. and, if i'm not careful, i could be blaming people for something that is actually nobody's fault.

also, given that the source is unclear, i could be mistaking the smell of tobacco for the smell of mold.

it's annoying that this happened on the first night after moving my bed out, but it's also a saturday, and i need to deal with one thing at a time.

if or when i move out of here, i'm going to need to be more careful in analyzing the tenants. again: i like the building. it's that i don't like the other people living in it.

i actually don't think this is ford's election to lose. the numbers suggest a coalition government, not a tory victory.

this has been wynne's mandate to blow. and she's blown it. badly.

and, it's frustrating, because i support most of the policies and actually don't want a change in government. but, every time she opens her mouth, something bad happens.

again: maybe kathleen wynne might want to take a look at the results of the last american election, before she paints her opponent as the victor of it.

?

the criticism of the liberals, for years, has been that they live in a bubble. *sigh*.

this is going to be a difficult couple of weeks.

she should have stepped down.

so, what's happening in the saga of the second-hand smoke, now well into it's second year?

as far as i can tell, the woman directly below me is still not smoking in the unit. so, i'm still holding off on that t2. i'm not holding my breath, though.

last night, however, around 1:00, i got a nasty whiff coming from what i think is the tenant diagonally below me. but, i think i can fix that.

it's not that i want to pick on the tenant directly below me, it's just that there's no solution due to the geometry of the unit, and, frankly, the amount of smoke involved. the guy directly across me smokes a little bit - like, a pinner on friday nights, right; minimal. i had fixed that by taping up the door frame. i took the tape down, so i'll have to put in a request to caulk around the frame, instead. problem solved. if the person on the diagonal smokes a little, on weekends or something, i think we can solve that by building up the baseboards - or maybe by asking the person to smoke on the other side of the unit. the point is that there's a solution. unfortunately, it doesn't matter where the woman below me smokes, and i've learned that i can't keep it out - either one of us has to leave, or she's gotta stop smoking. there's no compromise - it has to be absolute.

see, and she's going to cry that it's not fair that she has to stop while everybody else gets to smoke, and maybe that's true. sometimes, life isn't fair. but, all i care about is keeping the smoke out. i'm not pretending that this isn't a difficult situation, i'm just being crystal clear that all i care about is my own well-being. so, i'm not interested in the application of fair laws across the building; this is simply not my prerogative. she happened to be unlucky enough to have a vocal non-smoker move in above her, and the property owner happens to not be sticking up for her. that's how this cookie has crumbled.

i still expect to be the one that moves, in the end, but we're not there, yet.

i flipped out a little last night, because the smoke triggered the bronchitis. i've moved everything out of the bedroom and will need to put in a work order on monday or tuesday. right now, the space is airing out, and i'm going to need to clean the remaining glue out before i put the order in.

what does it look like?

well, it looks a tad worse. i lost a little bit of paint; it's nothing structural, and all of the problems that exist already existed. but, i'll acknowledge some aesthetic issues with the existing damage. which is...

ok: imagine there's a crack in the wall, and imagine that there is smoke seeping in through the crack. so, i put duct tape over the crack as a simple solution - and it mostly works, at least in the short term. then, when i take the tape down, on request of the owner, i peel a little paint off from around the crack, making the crack look a little worse.

you could make the naive argument that i ought to be liable for the damage, but this is really absurd - there was already a crack in the wall and it already needed to be fixed. rather, i'm going to make the following argument:

1) there was a crack in the wall.
2) smoke was coming in through the crack.
3) therefore, i blocked off the crack with duct tape.
4) the property owner has requested that i remove the duct tape.
5) therefore, i am going to request that the crack be fixed to prevent further seepage.

and, i mean, they could sue me if they really want. they'll probably lose. and, even if they win, they'll never get anything out of me.

they should just fix the cracks.

and, that's where i am right now: i have everything back in the living room, i'm caustically waiting for the woman downstairs to light a blunt, which will trigger the final exit, and i'm going to give the property manager a letter in the next few days asking that the cracks in the bedroom be fixed,.

regarding the paint...

yeah. i lost a little paint.

they employ a full time painter.

and they'd have to paint, aytways.

again: they'll spend thousands trying to extract a few dollars out of me, they'll probably lose and if they win they'll never see it. it's going to cost them $10 worth of paint to just fix it.

but, you can't quantify stupidity.

right now, i'm going to eat and try to spend the night rebuilding.

The U.S. and Britain have accused the Syrian government and Russia of delaying the investigation in Douma to stage a cover up.

is this the same mainstream media that consistently accuses social media of peddling conspiracy theories based on flimsy evidence?

the situation is a surreal joke: the most flimsy conspiracy theories consistently come from the united states state department.

i welcome the investigators, but they are not god, either, and need to be subject to a critical analysis, themselves.

maybe we could even take a step back and ask the more fundamental question: why is drug use even a problem in the first place?

why not just shrug the issue away? their lives belong to them. they can do what they want.

a christian might find that appalling. but, you see, i don't actually disagree at all - in theory, that is actually my perspective on the thing: people ought to be able to do what they want to their own bodies. sure. so, then, legalize it, right?

the problem arises when people do what they want to their own bodies, and then show up at a hospital asking for help. at that point, it's no longer about what they're doing to their own bodies, it's about what they're costing society. and, for me, that is what the problem with drug use actually is: the wasted resources that it costs society. and, with opiates particularly, there's not a way to use them that doesn't end up with the user in the hospital, wasting society's resources. we don't have to do this experiment over and over again. we know what the result is - and should consequently ban the use of the substances.

you'll notice that things like the sanctity of life, or the soul of the individual do not enter my reasoning at any step. i don't even reject them, in my reasoning. i just don't even consider them.

do you see how the difference really is religion?

i'll state this again, maybe a little more clearly this time.

as a social anarchist, my focus when it comes to drugs is about managing resources. i don't particularly care much about saving the lives of drug addicts, as i don't consider those lives to be very valuable. what i care about is minimizing the resources that society wastes on drug addicts, with the aim of redirecting those resources towards more valuable uses. while this may appear to be somewhat similar to the desires of a fiscal conservative on the surface, and i will admit to some common cause with fiscal conservatives at a very shallow policy level, it's really a drastically different perspective when analyzed in any level of detail. so, i will support the supervised injection sites (because it minimizes resources wasted treating drug addicts for hepatitis, and aids) while opposing any grand scheme to sink billions into a national prevention program. targeted schemes to save money (and therefore resources..), though, are a good idea - and i will likely support most of them, as they are articulated.

this is very different than a religious perspective, which has somehow ended up on the pseudo-left in this country, but really belongs to the right, which would be focused on saving the lives of each and every drug addict, in order to save their souls or something. i suspect that most people couldn't really explain why they want to save the lives of drug addicts; it's more of a feeling than a thought. but, if you are to attach it to any kind of thought, it would be a religious one. these people want to redirect large amounts of public resources into saving the lives of drug addicts, with little thought about the resource accounting that such a thing would necessitate, and little interest in whether these kinds of things are effective. they're frankly not likely to understand that saving drug addicts means losing cancer patients; they'll argue that this is a false choice, because they're imagining infinite resources, without really thinking about it.

anarchists are legitimately quite different than even marxists, who are nowadays actually pretty utopian. we seem like we don't fit in on the left. but, we're really what the actual left is. and, the difference is that we've moved past religion.

it really is religion that is the difference, here.