and, to be clear: under canadian law, she did not have an absolute right to smoke in the house.

she just didn't.

that's how it is...

maybe i should explain the law, here.

when a tenant makes a smoke complaint, the landlord has the obligation to make a good faith effort to resolve it. the landlord can't just tell the tenant "if you don't like it, leave". that would be against the landlord tenant act, and open up the landlord to serious litigation by the tenant. in very, very rare cases, it could even lead to charges of criminal negligence.

second-hand smoke kills people. it's not trivial. it's a serious complaint, and it's a big deal when a tenant makes it.

but, that's exactly what the landlord did. she verbatim told me "if you don't like the smoke, leave.". so, i sued her for a few thousand dollars - mostly to get the funds i needed to move, because i live on disability, and can't just up and move on a whim. and, i think it's pretty fucking obvious that if she wasn't going to make any attempt to address the second-hand smoke, then she had a moral and legal obligation to pay for my way out of the unit.

in order for me to win that case, i had to find a way to prove in court that she was actually smoking in the house. it should be obvious that i don't care if she smokes away from the house. she can even swallow a fucking tailpipe for all i care - my interest in her as a living entity was purely, absolutely nihil. and, i'm not a christian, so i don't care about being nice to my neighbours, especially when they won't respect my basic rights. to hell with her. she didn't give a fuck about my rights, so i showed her the same absolute level of disrespect that she showed me, and she deserved any fallout that she got from it for being a self-centered piece of shit. am i sounding more and more like a cop, here?

so, how could i prove that she was smoking inside? i could film her, which would be pretty invasive. i could get an air quality test, which would be expensive. i could subpoena her, which might not even work. the easiest, most fail-proof way to demonstrate my claim in court was to get a police report. so, that's what i did. and, fuck her.

you can accuse me of being anti-social if you want, and i won't disagree with you so much as i'll justify my actions as being proportionate and reasonable, in context. but, suggesting i acted like a cop is just specious.

and, i'll say it again: it's the cops that call other people cops. real people don't act like that.

and, i'll say this: if you're concerned about me retaliating, you're right to be. i'm easy-going, but i'm not a pacifist. i don't look for trouble - that's easy to see. but, if you fuck with me, i'll fuck with you, and i won't apologize for it.

so, don't fuck with me and we'll get along....

and, i need to be very clear and explicit about this point: claims that i'm a police officer are ridiculous, and easily debunked by anybody who's spent more than a few minutes with me.

but, that's not the point i'm making, here. the point i'm making is that you should in general be very suspicious about people that go around calling other people cops.

because those are the actual cops.

trust me: i've been around. i've been in activist circles. i've been in party scenes. the cops are the ones that call other people cops.

and, don't get meta, because i'm not pointing specific fingers, i'm laying down a general rule.

the call that i made was with the sole intent of generating documents for then upcoming litigation. i needed documents for the case i filed against the landlord, as i needed a way to prove in court that the neighbour was, in fact, smoking drugs in the house. in canada, you can't actually get arrested for smoking drugs, anwyays - and i never intended for them to drag her away, or something. the call was a domestic disturbance complaint around an individual that was refusing to respect my rights, as a tenant, to live in smoke-free housing. and, i won the case that i generated the documents around - i don't regret it, and i'd do it again. to attempt to draw some kind of connection between making a domestic disturbance complaint against a neighbour that was being legitimately disrespectful in the face of ridiculous negligence by the landlord and being some kind of a narc is entirely specious. well, unless you think that i don't have any rights, in which case you'd be legally and morally completely fucking wrong, as demonstrated by the fact that i won the case.

again: you might not think it from seeing me out and about, but i can peg a cop, because i've been around. and, i'll tell you flat out: if there's somebody on my case about this, that person is a cop, and you should get away from them. this is how they operate, through divide and conquer.

i'm a threat. they want to alienate me.

if you're reading this, you realize that.

to be clear: what's happening is that all of that nice humidity is coming up (partly from the hurricane, and partly just because it's at it's maximum extent; i get that), but...

at some point, at any time of the year, no matter what, the humidity is going to smash into the jet stream. both of these things are there all of the time. in the hottest days of the summer, you hope that happens somewhere up near hudson bay, because the jet stream has retreated. by november, that starts happening considerably south of here, over the ohio river, or further south.

i mean, i'm complaining about the possibility of rain. but, at least i'm almost getting the heat. if i was in sudbury or thunder bay, i'd be experiencing autumn.

for this week, detroit is right where the cold from the jet stream and the warmth from the oceans are smashing into each other, and that's actually pretty normal for....a little later, but around this time of year. it's often the event that transitions from summer to fall.

so, the forecast appears to have been a little eager about the warmth, and rather than get that last bit of humidity, we might wake up after the system passes in a few days in full blown autumn.

i'm not a clairvoyant, it's not about whether i predicted the weather weeks in advance, it's just a question of understanding what's going on. forecasting the weather always comes with a lot of uncertainty. but, what's happening isn't surprising, anyways - this aggressive jet stream has been dominating the weather here for months.

so, i've got this worked out pretty authoritatively, but it seems like the weather is going to keep me locked up. it's going to at least try to be warm, but i keep telling you that i'm right on that nasty jet stream, which is acting up, and the worst case scenario is that it rains non-stop for the next week, as what's left of the summer gets plowed over by the polar vortex.

so, i will probably only make it to one or two of these, unfortunately. 

11th: wizard rifle @ sanctuary--->marble--->park
12th: hot snakes @ small's ---->marble---> park

13th:
19:00-22:00 - strange beautiful music @ dia.
22:30-???? - hide @ small's
secret late night party #1

i will not be doing a full weekend, this week. in fact, saturday is shaping up to be a little cold, and i'll probably want to just stay in.

14th:
17:00 23:00 - strange beautiful music @ dso
secret late night party #2

15th:
no show

16th: cursive @ blind pig----> long bike ride home.

17th, 18th, 19th:
no show.

20th-22nd - potential three day party that would include human eye, severed heads, man man, luke vibert and tunic and that i'll work the details out for closer to the date.

realistically, i'm hoping to get out for the 11th and 12th and, if i do, i could very well stay in for the weekend. but, if i get rained out both days, and it seems nice, i could feel like i need to get out of the house, sort of thing. about the only way i go to the cursive show is if i get completely rained out.

i have not left the house since the 2nd, after all. i might get itchy, if i get stuck.

and, now, i need to get to work on the legal stuff. after a nap...

the cause of the housing collapse was that wages have not kept up with inflation.

it's inequality....

while i'm not going to support the privatization of "freddie mac" and "fannie mae", i think that this is a sector where the government has a valid role in, i don't really think that what happened in 2008 had much to do with them, or that predictions of collapse from spinning them off are particularly grounded.

which isn't to say that i don't think the economy is teetering on the brink. i actually do.

but, just to say that when it tips over, you should probably avoid blaming it on this policy.

yeah. there's nothing today.

and, i'm hoping i don't get rained out tomorrow, now, too.

*shrug*.

the other thing to point out is that it's foolish to compare the 2018 midterms to the 2020 presidential election because the electoral system is entirely incomparable.

if you follow the 2018 playbook, you should probably expect the 2016 results.

the most recent example of it actually working was the 2015 federal election in canada.

and, while it turned out that justin trudeau was a filthy, rotten liar, that's not the question at hand.

i want to interject a more important point: this is not a historical norm. turnout has been at historical lows for around 20 years or so. so, if you're looking deep into the past for examples of a recent phenomenon, you shouldn't be surprised not to find much.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/10/democrats-turnout-2020-election-228040

i'm starting to think i'm going to end up defending biden more often than i'd like to, because, in group discussion scenarios, he tends to be detail-oriented. this isn't idealism v pragmatism. it's not left v right; i don't really agree with him. but, he's wonkish where others aren't, and i appreciate that.

he came off better than all of the candidates that came before him. he's taking the issue seriously, at least.

but, he's visibly aging. he looks older every time i see him. and, at some point...

but, there's no evidence, yet. and, if he's not much older than the average primary voter, it might not at all.

oh - and inri000 should finally get a first draft of liner notes added to it, too.

so, i'm tentatively done with 10/2013, except the travel blog which i'll do last.

politics: 417 pages
music journal: 98 pages
deathtokoalas: 79 pages

as mentioned, the politics page had mirrors of old essays and web documents. that's done, but i did a lot of writing for the next few months, so the documents will remain heavy.

i will not be finalizing or publishing these documents until i get the legal documents done. so, this is to be put aside for a little while.

i'm going to stop to eat, convince myself that i'm staying in tonight and will then get to the legal writing by mid-afternoon.

i'm not jello biafra.

and, i'm sure we could get into a couple of nice arguments about a lot of things.

but, when a person's main artistic message is "think for yourself", he should expect the people he influences to form disagreements with him.

isn't this refreshing, though?

i've got a few more days left for the 10/13 rebuild, but i'm done with the html archiving...

it's a part of the site. i'll just have to get through it.

and, it's just a few more months before the music becomes the dominant focus in early 2014.

this is what i was looking for.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/06/j-reacts-to-political-spectrum-and.html

the secular left is badly disenfranchised, right now. the closest thing to a candidate that we have is sanders, but he's a weak representative, himself.

the politician of the future that is going to break through to us is going to sound like a kucinich or a nader, and we're not going to care what s/he looks like.

i can't find the post where i ran myself against the most recent democrats over the political compass. we weren't even in the same quadrant.

the fact is that i would agree with barely half of what clinton said and proposed.

the correct perspective is actually that atheists - a growing, powerful demographic - are completely disenfranchised.

we used to have the liberal party up in canada, but they're in the process of imploding and it's not clear if we can salvage it after we turf trudeau. in the united states, if we're going to organize, we'll probably need to do it in a third party.

if you want more atheists to vote for you, stop talking about god all the fucking time.

the tone of this article is horrific, and the author deserves a talking to about it.

but, the simple reality is that the spectrum sucks. i've pointed this out before. when there are acceptable candidates, we'll vote for them.

but don't run hillary clinton or al gore (or barack obama...or elizabeth warren....or michael ignatieff) for president and then get bitchy at atheists for refusing to vote for them. they're simply not representative of where we stand in the spectrum, and we're simply not going to vote for something that we don't believe in.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/09/08/prodding-irreligious-left-vote