Monday, April 29, 2019

i prefer to actually quarantine my smoking solely to bars.

i don't want it in the house.

i don't want it near the house.
i want to be clear about a point, if it wasn't: i don't smoke inside. ever. and, i never did.

in seven months, i have smoked precisely nothing inside of this basement. i smoked precisely nothing in the previous apartment. and, while i may have repurposed the back area into a smoking space in the last apartment, it was behind a door with heavy weatherproofing and very effectively isolated from the rest of the apartment. in the four and a half years i was there, i smoked precisely nothing inside of the apartment itself.

so, when i had my little binge last week, i took a walk whenever i had a smoke.

there's two reasons i do this.

1) i spend roughly 98% of my time sober. therefore, i don't want to be around drugs or cigarettes roughly 98% of the time. it follows that i wouldn't want to smoke in my apartment, for the reason that the residue it leaves behind is, in fact, absolutely fucking disgusting. by going outside to smoke - in fact taking a walk around the block - i'm able to keep all of the disgusting chemicals in marijuana and tobacco smoke outside of my living space, where i spend almost all of my time in a starkly sober state.
2) i'm asthmatic. second-hand smoke makes me hack like a cancer patient. it's unpleasant.

so, yes, i was smoking pot last week...

...outside.

and, in fact, down the street.
so, they converted.

it's not complicated.
let's be clear about this.

when the romans annexed (through a mix of conquest and other means) what was at the time the remnants of the conquests of alexander (a collection of loosely affiliated greek kingdoms), they set up two provinces around the dead sea, the first of which was named iudea after what they thought were the indigenous peoples of the region - a claim that we think today is probably false given that there is no archaeological evidence to support it, even if the ultimate origin of the israeli people remains somewhat unclear. i tend to lean towards a west asian hypothesis, which is actually their own origin myth in that they claim that abraham came from persia. they seem to essentially be a zoroastrian iranian nation that was absorbed by the local (west) semitic culture upon migration, but that refused to give up it's monotheism. judaism seems to be a syncretic mix of zoroastrianism and local canaanite lore. there does not even appear to be a kernel of truth in the exodus story - it appears to be entirely fabricated from whole cloth, a work of complete fiction, probably invented out of nothing at all, during the captivity. the romans also set up on arab province around the city of petra, on the red sea, but there would not have been arabs living on the coast of the mediterranean during this period, even if the province of arabia did briefly touch the sea west of gaza in modern day egypt. the arabs of this period were illiterate desert nomads that were frequently used as soldiers by the empires of the region, but lacked any centralized state of their own; this area would have been primarily greek-speaking and greek in culture, like the rest of the eastern part of the empire (including egypt and what we now call iraq). the province was really what is called a march, a concept that has created existing states like austria (literally translated to the eastern borderlands) and ukraine (also literally translated as border area). the romans had similar marches on the border areas with the germanic tribes. so, what the naming of the province really meant was "this is a buffer state between the empire of the civilized world and the desert barbarians outside of it".

so, during the roman period, the jews were inside the boundaries of the empire and the arabs were not; the jews had a province, and the arabs had a march.

as is widely known, the jews were a restive people that sought a nation state defined by their own laws and refused to submit to the roman emperor. their religion prophesied a warrior-king they called a messiah that would lead them to autonomy, so, with every potential rebel that appeared, the people saw some kind of divine revelation. so, the province of iudea was frequently in revolt. the romans found the jews to be a great annoyance, as they had little taxable wealth but were sitting on top of one of the most strategically important regions of land on the planet. as they could not grant autonomy in this region due to it's strategic importance, and the jews would not submit on account of their religious beliefs, it was eventually decided that they should just be destroyed altogether. in truth, the attempted genocide of the jews was one of many attempted genocides by the romans (the most famous being the carthaginian genocide), but also probably the least successful. the jews were said to be scattered (although it is understood today that many of them stayed) and the area was renamed from iudea to palestinia, after the historical tribe of philistines (who had long disappeared from history).

the philistines are mentioned in hebrew scripture as a race of giants, and actually explicitly referred to as originating from greece. while the bible is usually a questionable source, at best, we can actually corroborate this fairly well with the destruction horizon around 1200 bce. during this period, the entire eastern mediterranean, from greece all the way around to egypt, was invaded by a shady group of characters that we call sea peoples because they appear to have come from the sea. this invasion led to a widespread collapse of civilization and a lengthy dark age outside of egypt (which was transformed, but survived). when the dust settles, we have these people the egyptians called pelesets settled just outside of their borders, on the coast. it is widely accepted that these pelesets were a greek tribe that tried to invade egypt but were repelled, and that they are in fact the same people as the philistines, which is the etymological origin of the palestinians.

so, palestine is not a term that is historically connected to an indigenous group of arabs in the levant, which in truth never existed, but rather a term that is historically connected to a group of europeans that settled in the region roughly 3200 years ago. about 1800 years ago, the romans renamed the region after the philistines in an explicit attempt to destroy the semitic history of the region and europeanize it in a colonial roman image. so, your palestinians are both european in historical origin and resurrected from long historical death by different europeans in order to colonize the area. some indigenous group.

but, if the indigenous people of the region were neither jews nor arabs, who are they? it's maybe impossible to be specific beyond pointing to a concept of (north)west semitic as a cultural grouping, a group that is referred to in the very ancient world as canaanite and after the destruction horizon of 1200 as phoenician. these were important people, in world history. but, they were neither arabs nor jews, even if the jews were eventually absorbed by them after they invaded the region.

while there would no doubt have been some arab migration into the region in the upcoming centuries, the empire's borders held fairly firm for quite some time, well past the conversion of the region to christianity. palestine, jewish or not, remained inside the now christian empire, while the arabs remained outside of it. conflict in the region mostly took the form of civil wars around theological aspects of christianity, and the continuing thousand year war with the persians. an arab in the levant in this period would have probably been a mercenary in a roman legion, and not a roman citizen or inhabitant inside the empire.

it was the thousand year war with the persians that led to the decline of both empires by around the year 600. neither of them saw an arab uprising coming, and it's unclear if either could have stopped it.

as it is, while the dates around the arab conquests are blurry, and the invasion of the levant was not a singular event, it was certainly the case that the roman provinces of palestine were under the control of arab forces by the year 700. it was only after this point that you have a process called arabization take place, where the peoples that were conquered by the arabs became arabs in culture and language. there was romanization, hellenization and even iranization before this, so there is actually some historical process at play. the region would later undergo a turkicization, as well. arabization was successful throughout northern africa (including egypt) and parts of the middle east, but it was rejected in iran and asia minor, who insisted on maintaining their own culture. turkicization eventually succeeded in asia minor, where arabization failed.

while it was initially thought by modern scholars that arabization was a migration process - that is, that large amounts of arabs moved into the region and displaced the local inhabitants - this hypothesis failed to live up to much scrutiny. the historical records might have led somebody to believe that, but it just didn't add up when faced with any kind of scrutiny. how can a small amount of arab nomads repopulate not one but two empires? that's absurd on it's face. however, it wasn't until the advent of dna testing that the issue became an empirical question. who were the palestinians? were they arabs that invaded after the 7th century? were they greeks from antiquity? phoenicians?

and, we now have the science to state it.

the palestinians are the descendants of the jews that lived in the region in antiquity.
i have no way to reconstruct how i decided that it was monday yesterday, or how i decided it was sunday the day before, and need to let it go.

there's a vlog entry very early on the 27th. in the entry, i know it's saturday. but, i woke up thinking it was sunday.

i really think i must have confused myself in trying to catch up on the eating. i have absolutely no other explanation.

i could have cleaned today, rather than forced myself to go to sleep and wait until 7:00.

moving on...
it's actually a little unsettling. what? i kind of want to understand this.

monday seems to be somewhat of a black hole in that there are no posts here. but, posts were a little light all week on account of being stoned (contrary to popular perception, the volume here is not a consequence of drug use, unless you include coffee. marijuana tends to have a distinctly negative effect on my ability to type, write, order thoughts or really do anything creative at all. i don't do other drugs. the dip in volume is a normal consequence of smoking through a few grams and something you can pull out a clear pattern around, given how much is now here...you might even be able to deduce a period of marijuana use is taking place by observing a decrease in posts....), of being more interested in show listings and of being focused on the rebuild. it's unusual for me to skip a day on this blog, which is creating some pause for me, but occam's razor is that i was focused on something else, and the narrative i have is at least consistent with that.

i didn't lose a day, i skipped one. was it monday? or thursday? or some other day?

i came back from toronto with $10 worth of loonies in my pocket. i didn't want to buy a pack of cigarettes on 4/20 because i wasn't planning on smoking through what i had, and i had all this change, so i just went out and tried to buy a few "loosies". it would be useful if i could buy packs of 5s or maybe 10s for rolling purposes. as it happened, i very quickly found two cigarettes for $2, and that was actually enough for the night. i also spent $4 in change on doritos, so that's $6, but i remember being strangely unhungry when i went to eat them. i was then out again for a nice walk around brunch time on sunday morning, and was given two - for free - by a random dude in a car outside the timmy's. i spent the day working before stopping to eat the reheated nachos on sunday night and then am pretty sure i napped for a few hours. i don't think i was planning on smoking any more of it when i fell asleep, but then convinced myself otherwise when i woke up. well, it's a long weekend...

i was out again very early on monday - like 2:00 am-ish. i have a receipt from a circle k (still listed as a mac's by the bank) for mountain dew, and i would have gone to get mountain dew anyways because my throat hurt, but i was really out looking to bum a few smokes to roll with. i thought the circle k would be live enough, but learned it wasn't, so i took a walk down to the 24/7 mcdonald's instead and carried through with the transaction, for two more. that's $8. i took another nap in the afternoon, and then was back out for another walk in the afternoon, under the argument that the long weekend is still carrying on. i have a receipt for doritos from the afternoon, and think i bummed a smoke from a guy at a bus stop. he wouldn't take the change. i then tried to bum one from a guy outside the food basics, and he wouldn't take the change either.

there are a few posts to the music blog on monday night, but the next post to this blog is tuesday morning, and i have to assume i was just too hard at work to post, although i do think i started writing some posts and ended up deleting them. i also think it was on monday night that i took a quick walk to the store around the corner, and bought one from the guy that works there, on his way home. so, that's $9.

i gave out the last loonie - along with four quarters - for two more on tuesday morning. as it was now the fourth day of a long weekend, and there was only around a gram left, i decided to carry through until i either ran out of change or ran out of pot, and was at this point down to four quarters, so assumed it would be pretty quick. i went out a second time on tuesday afternoon, and while i managed to pick up a few cigarettes, i couldn't get anybody to take my change.

i'm sure i went for a walk to get my meds on the afternoon of wed the 24th - this is what my memory says, and i have receipts to prove it. i came back with three cigarettes; nobody took the quarters. this was enough to finish off the pot on wednesday night and thursday morning.

so, given that i started on saturday night and finished on thursday morning, that's around 4.5 days. 3.5/4.5 ~ 0.75, and i smoke quarter gram pinners because i have no tolerance, so i'm looking at three small joints a day over what amounted to five calendar days. i wasn't actually counting, but if you told me i got 15 joints out of that little container, i'd say that sounds right. sometimes, i would roll with half a cigarette and smoke the other half; other times, i'd roll both halves. i understand that this is very minimal consumption, but it's usually more than enough for me.

i had been eating doritos all week, and was consequently behind on my smoothies. so, i do distinctly recall waking up on thursday afternoon and deciding to catch up. further, i distinctly recall knowing it was thursday, because i counted back from the previous date. rather than have six smoothies, which would be absurd, and cost a lot of electricity, i put the equivalent of six smoothies in some tupperware containers and ate it with a spoon. this would be six bananas, six kiwis, 120 blueberries, 30 strawberries, six scoops of ice cream and roughly a box of vanilla soy milk. i then ended up very cold from the six scoops of ice cream and passed out...

the reason i'm sure that i knew it was thursday is that six smoothies would catch me up to wednesday, and i wanted to wait for the meal to carry on with thursday. and, i'm starting to understand this, i think - i got confused by my eating schedule.

and, i actually do have a recording from thursday afternoon that states it is thursday afternoon. i initially thought this recording was on friday by analyzing the dates on it, that i was stating it was thursday despite it actually being friday, but this appears to be a bad deduction - the recording was clearly actually on thursday. and the date on the device doesn't really appear to be reliable. ok. so, i'm pretty sure i haven't lost track of time yet, by thursday.

when i woke up on thursday night, i remember deciding to wait until i was caught up on the rebuild before i approached a meal. that didn't happen - i fell asleep at about 9:00 am on friday morning, without finishing the rebuild and without eating.

i woke up late in the afternoon, and sent an email to the oiprd, fully aware that it was friday afternoon. i did not stop to eat until late on friday night (eggs), but i still wasn't done the rebuild, yet. the next vlog entry states it is early on saturday morning, and  i do now think this was actually true. i would have then fallen asleep early on saturday morning, and woken up again on saturday afternoon. i had eggs a second time on sunday morning, after i finished the rebuild - but by this time i thought it was monday morning.

so, i seem to have mentally skipped forwards to sunday at some point on saturday afternoon, and didn't catch it until sunday night around 22:00. i still don't understand this, but i can at least localize it. let me check the footage again...