listen.

i don't want to pretend i've ruled out future companionship altogether; that would neither be honest, nor particularly human.

but, i simply don't connect well with normal people. the kind of companionship i'd be seeking would be pretty much the nerdiest thing you could imagine - to a point where it's essentially incomprehensible.

capitalism just doesn't allow for people like me. and, i'm not interested in changing myself, either; a companion would need to help me accomplish my existing goals, not present me with an entirely different set of goals.

i understand that i'm hard to get your head around, but that's pretty broad. just think of it like this: when you've spent your whole life in your own head, the idea of carrying out the rest of your days there is relieving, and the idea of being pulled out is far from emancipatory, but actually kind of frightening.

it's an imperfect analogy, but go watch the shawshank redemption and pay attention to morgan freeman's character.

freedom is a strange thing.

it was none other than habermas that would refer to foucault as a "young conservative", as thinker after thinker then struggled to grapple with him in a left-wing context, while being aware that he didn't quite fit.

i've argued repeatedly that he's essentially a vulgar burkean, in the sense that he takes conservative assumptions at face value, and then attempts to co-opt them - in contrast to the vulgar marxists that defined high finance and industrial capital in the middle of the twentieth century, and sought to rule by taking marxist assumptions at face value, and co-opting them. and, so, as was once remarked, that makes him "some kind of leftist", but one that has a fundamentally right-wing worldview. if the fords & rockefellers knew that marx was right, and sought to undermine him for their self-interest, foucault likewise knows burke is right and seeks to find some away around it - which means that either foucault is wrong (and marx is right), or the fords & rockefellers are (and burke is right). of course, that's quite simplistic, but necessarily so.

leftists used to take the much simpler approach of simply arguing that marx was right and burke was wrong. that's not necessary, i suppose - i suppose you can believe burke was right, and yet wish he wasn't. i'm just not sure why you'd identify on the left, if that's the case. but, whatever the case may be, and whatever you may believe, i must insist that it's disingenuous to suggest that rejecting burke is somehow an obscure position on the left, even if we're in a point of backwardsness, as of today.

i'm going to avoid making calls today, on second thought.

i'll take a closer look monday morning.

on twenty-seventh thought...

this catastrophe of an apartment is going to be a space solely of typing and writing.

i will not record here.

and, the alter-reality has advanced into the internet era, now.

so, let me set up the politics blog for the alter-reality, too and move forward as one after i move.

i actually do not expect this to take nearly as long.

there will be a third blog for music reviews, but i'm not touching that at all right now.

traditionally, empires don't seek balanced trade relationships with their colonies; rather, they seek to extract as much wealth from them as possible, by advancing a one way model of trade.

rhetoric of america as an empire is not new.

but, trump's insistence on it actually acting like one certainly is.

if trump doesn't like our contribution to nato, we could always shut down norad in protest.

increases in nato spending are about the last thing i had in mind when i cast my vote. why don't we focus on greater integration with the coast guard? or on responses to climate change?

but, it's not like i don't get the actual point, here. trump is a spokesperson for the military-industrial complex, which sees canada as a customer. so, it wouldn't make sense to import metals from canada; canada is supposed to be an export market.

this is how a traditional, nineteenth century empire works: the homeland makes stuff, and the colonies buy it. trump's job is consequently to sell us his country's stuff. and, the big ticket items are military...

if that is how the americans really see us, then perhaps we should toss some of their tea into the ocean.

yeah.

on second thought, why don't i get that in order after i check the listings after lunch.

i'm also going to need to call the oesp tomorrow, and figure out what happens to these electrical credits.

if i have to use them before i move, i should get the other machine on compressing vlogs for the last year.

i wanted to to fix the other laptop and use it for a dedicated vlog machine, but, right now, that seems pretty distant, with all this chaos going on. i guess i could get these compressed and published for the first after all...even if it's just raw, for now....

i napped on friday evening and woke up friday night after she'd left to go where she goes and finished archiving the facebook page over night. that was planned; it's not acceptable, but it's pragmatic on my behalf to try to schedule work periods for when she's gone. she was smoking all day saturday, but the steam was actually effective in keeping the air clear, and i actually had what was a really long, nice day - not crashing until late on saturday night. i'm at least happy that i had a productive day...

the smell today is mostly of stale tobacco, from who knows where in the building or even outside. but, she is smoking down there...so i don't have the option to close the window....i'm just steaming out as much as i can....

the music vlog is now completely backed up in the master archive. so, the next thing to do should be to distribute the material in the master archive back out to the two vlogs, and also to the music master list. but, i am also going to need to use the master archive to build the journal for the court date, whenever it is. ideally, i'd be able to do that after i've weaved everything together...

i'm going to get something to eat, and then check listings. if i see some more leads for august, i'll wait for the rescheduling request; if not, i'll put that in on monday, after the showing in the morning (which i expect to be a bust, but need to try...). i'm going to get back to what i was doing for the night, and could conceivably get most of the way through the summer done. i'll know in a few days if i need to fast forward or not.

so, the next section to rebuild is from june 19th to dec 8th - and that is the last rebuild. it's all archiving after that.

lastly, i suppose that it would be prudent to run the master list through an error-checking process before i start using it to publish liner notes.

when? before i move. hopefully.