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."