ugh.

why does the headache come back when i wake up?

are there two different things going on?

the sore throat has mostly converted into a cough, meaning i'm probably mostly over it. so, what's with my head, then?

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

if it was just sandra pupatello v brian masse, void of any context, i would vote for sandra pupatello. she's a better candidate, hands down.

and, that might be the most responsible choice, at the end of the day.

i don't want to do it. but, the greens are simply not presenting an acceptable alternative, and i don't want jagmeet singh making decisions. at this point, it seems like i'm voting to keep the religious fundamentalist out of power.

local polling suggests that she could steal this riding.

i ruled this out. but, shit happens. i might have to.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

"i bet you said the same thing about obama."

that's right, i did.

and, look what happened - he was awful.

are you a slow learner, or what?

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

jagmeet singh is a 37 year-old religious extremist that's never passed a bill and never had a real job.

he should not have any meaningful say in parliament. at all.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

actually, if i have to choose between giving the ndp the balance of power and giving the liberals another majority, i'll give the liberals another majority.

the ndp are not going to do anything to stop these pipelines, and most of the things they're running on are actually provincial issues that are outside of their jurisdiction. the only positive outcome of a liberal minority is the hope that we can get back to the polls sooner than four years.

and, every time i soften up on the greens, elizabeth may opens up her mouth and says something awful. no, liz, i'm not going to support a neo-con foreign policy that looks like it was written by michael ignatieff. sorry. the responsibility to protect is just a bullshit excuse to advance an imperialist agenda. we need to get out of the middle east altogether, yesterday. i can't vote for somebody that talks like this...

so, it initially seemed like the best outcome of this was to knock the liberals down, but the left is so bad right now, so not left, that it doesn't seem worthwhile. the more pressing issue is to overturn and replenish the left....otherwise, we're not getting anywhere.

the best thing that ndp supporters can do right now is to push the ndp's numbers down as low as possible in order to force singh out and replace him with an atheist. and, the best thing we can do if we're environmentalists is wait out elizabeth may - this has to be her last election.

i'm not going to vote for the liberals, but i can't vote for these other parties, either.

next time, i hope they're more left-wing - and they should interpret my abstention as a vote for them to shift left.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

i care about facts.

i want people to know the truth.

this is impossible, to the power elite; if i don't uphold their lies, i must be a foreign agent.

that's the post-modern, nihilist world that our government agencies live in - honesty and the search for truth is considered too quaint to be actually possible.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

all hail putin!

i mean, umm, uh, nice night, huh?

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

so, i think i'm at about 70% maximum health, right now.

i think i can smell, and am going to get pissed if it smells bad tonight. right now, i think it's ok. we'll see.

head seems ok.

throat is jut a tad raw...

my computer is very slow because the cia is spying on me through facebook (mostly), and there's not really an answer but to shut down executables and restart them, which i can't do mid-review. so it took all day, yesterday, to do something that should have taken a few minutes. did the cops like the band?

they're very, very stupid people, these law enforcement officers.

for now, i have to finish the saturday review.

hopefully, i'm feeling well enough to do some work after that.

right now, i don't think it would be a good idea to go to see a show tomorrow night, i'm still too sick. we'll see how that evolves.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

it should surprise nobody that i didn't get out of the house until after 16:20 and missed the 16:30 bus by minutes, realizing the inevitability of it only once i got to the bank machine. so, i uncharacteristically bought smokes and headed down to the bus station to drink an untouched, non-alcoholic mountain dew (i decided i should save the little bit of vodka in my bottle until saturday, and that i'd just get an extra beer or two in or near the venue once i got there, early - intending to get there early).

the box office closed at 17:00, you'll recall, so catching the 17:00 bus over would have meant relying on the hope that there was somebody there between 17:00 and 19:00. otherwise, i was going to have to wait for the symphony to start and i was going to miss the prog show...

worse, i found myself in dire need of a bowel movement a few minutes before 17:00. maybe you've been in this situation, where you have to choose between squirming around on the bus and missing it altogether; i reasoned that it might even make sense to miss it at this point (because my chances of catching somebody at the box office were dependent on them being open for the friday night show), so i ran to the tim's, and did in fact miss the bus when i got out. at this point, i was no longer going to catch an early beer, so i ran around the corner to get a couple of shots of jager instead...

when i finally got on to the bus at 17:30, it was uncharacteristically packed, or at least had more people than i'm used to seeing, which meant a lengthy wait through customs that was even further complicated by a distressed transport trailer that didn't want to listen to the border cops in getting around the corner. so, i didn't get on my way until 18:00...

i got to the dso something close to 18:30, and did in fact get my beethoven tickets for sunday at 15:00. fait accompli. so, i'm off to this downtown bar i haven't been to before to see the psych show...

it's in a basement, it turns out, which i wasn't expecting. the floors are fluorescent and appear to glow in the dark; there's an arcade off to one side. beer is on tap and in plastic cups, which i don't like, but cheap, which i do like. the venue is broadly similar in layout to the shelter down the street. i looked around, but there was nobody outside to start, so i caught sacri monti without the aid of cannabis.

i can't be sure exactly, i'm new to the band, but i think they played their new record pretty much from start to finish in the roughly 40 minutes that they were allotted, which is roughly the length of the record. this is a five piece, with a moog/keyboard player and two guitarists in addition to the rhythm section. i mentioned that there's a dramatic mick ronson influence, but this is just the first thing that jumped out at me - it's, overall, a fairly good survey through early 70s british glam and prog, with multiple references to other seminal acts like hawkwind, pink floyd, king crimson and some genesis, too. this kind of thing seems to continue to go over well in california for some reason; there are contemporary california acts like mammatus and eye (well, ok. eye broke up.) that operate well in this space, while acts from pretty much any other place in the world seem to fall flat on it. maybe it's the angle of the sunlight hitting the ocean. i dunno.

this is probably an acquired taste, but if it is then i acquired it in the womb; i'm native to this, it just makes sense to me. i asked around and people were lukewarm about it, which is technically wrong, but not particularly surprising. every single person at the show should have been blown away by this set. if you get a chance to see this, don't miss it.

the next band up was called maggot heart, and i didn't spend a lot of time with them before i came in; i checked their bandcamp site long enough to conclude it was a lot poppier than the other two acts, and kind of left it at that. structure wise, they were essentially a corporate-style pop-punk band, and not particularly exciting, but, whether it was due to the bill or as a consequence of some other thing, they decided to extend the tracks a little bit, at least on this night. the result was a corporate-style pop-punk band with a jam band feel, which one could argue is sort of what the smashing pumpkins were, although the song structures were far more compressed than anything the pumpkins ever did. but, it ended up being some kind of alt. rock in that space, whether on purpose or not.

the songs were really not exciting, but the jamming saved the set. the drummer was especially useful in saving it...

the thing is that i don't know if what i saw was characteristic of them or not. i suspect it wasn't; i suspect that on most nights, you're going to see a more generic corporate pop-punk kind of set, something like nirvana, maybe. if they do the same kind of set they did on this night, though, they're at least worth not skipping. but, it didn't really speak to me, much - it's not a style of music i spend much time with anymore, at my age.

earthless headlined the show relatively early, and while i think the band is overrated, i was stoned enough to enjoy the set. i mean, listen - on some level you can't go wrong with this. you've got a drummer. you've got a bassist. you've got distortion on the guitar. you've got loud amps. so long as you don't try and sing, you can't fuck it up, right? well, if the audience is inebriated enough, anyways...

my technical nitpicking of the sound as less complicated than others might assume, and consequently sort of pretentious, is valid and everything, but it's secondary to the experience of actually listening to loud, instrumental music while baked.

and, yes, they made me laugh a few times with a series of absurd cliches. they just needed their little stonehenge, and it would have been spinal tap. but, that's fine, if you have fun...

i'm not going to see a band like earthless every night, but it's fun once in a while, if the bill has something more substantive on it. so, that's fine.

and, i had fun. i said that, right? maybe you'll have fun seeing them, too...

just don't actually take them seriously. they can do that enough for everyone else.

i was out of the show not much later than 10:00 - this was an early night - so i hoped to get down to another place i'd never been to before, namely the pop off world arcade over top of the checkers, right around the corner from the tunnel, in order to catch a local synthesizer player do a free set. hey, it seemed worth a beer. he said he'd either start at 21:00 or 22:00; i guess he started closer to 21:00, because i only heard 5-10 minutes before he stopped, and it was just kind of generic vintage synth music. i hope this venue does more things along these lines, because a synth bar is kind of unheard of, but perhaps overdue. i just had the one beer, and i guess i was out of there by 22:30-23:00.

i made it back to phog fairly early, with the intent to catch the late show there, which i largely did....

the first band was called 'of the pack', which is a local band that i've seen on a lot of bills around town but haven't actually seen play. and, i could've sworn that they were a bro-ish hardcore act, but it turns out they weren't; they had a kind of reggae-ish feel, on top of a pop-punk crux. i asked, and they claimed they were never hardcore. what can i say? i was more caught off guard than anything else. they did a cover of 1979 that missed the slur, which is a good way to describe them; it wasn't terrible, but they wouldn't bring me back for more, either.

i wanted to see bike thiefs, which were actually a bit more hardcore than i expected. based on the sound samples, i was expecting something roughly sonic youth-ish, but it actually came off more like very, very early thermals, with the kind of ranted vocals over the noise punk song structures. i found myself nodding off a little near the end of the set, and it's less because i was drunk (i wasn't.) and more because the sound was kind of hypnotic; it's more that they got me in a bit of a trance. so, i don't want to say i was disappointed. that's not quite right. but, it wasn't quite what i expected, either. if i were to see them again, i'd get coffee instead of beer....

i spent the rest of the night at phog, right until last call, got trolled by the friday night bartender about the use value of alcohol vs the use value of soda, and we'll talk about that through tomorrow's review, and stumbled out with a smoke at the very last minute. where's the party? nothing at villain's, which i learned earlier in the night was having a dungeons and dragons night (no joke.), but there's a whole lot of people at the strip club across the way....

i think i've mentioned previously that i've never been in a strip club. i certainly am not very interested about going into one at this point; you'd probably have to pay me to sit through it. i'd probably start crying if somebody tried to give me a lap dance. the whole thing's just insane, to me - i can't understand how these things still exist, in this day and age. but, they're around and there's people at them....

i'm actually hoping to bum a smoke from somebody, actually, maybe chat a little. yeah, it's like 3:30 or something - that's not late, for me. so, there's this guy that's like arab or something, and he's talking about how he's a law student. there seems to be an undertone to the conversation that the way we talk about immigrants in this country is backwards - they're largely upper class, in canada, because we screen them to be. it's the white trash that's poor. he's kind of sick of the racist narrative, is what he's trying to get across, and i actually agree with the point. his father's a doctor, his mother's a nurse, and they didn't raise him to be religious. well, he's out at 3:30 smoking at a strip club, i guess not, right? but, he is rich, though - they raised him to be that.

and, i'm finishing my smoke and about to leave, when these angry guys come stumbling out, and they're giving this guy a hard time because of where he's from. they're not drunk - i'm drunk; they're coked out. and, i've seen this before, actually. they blame bar fights on alcohol, but it's often not alcohol that causes these fights. i've seen enough of them. these fights have two primary causes - girls and cocaine. i think we've probably got both, here.

listen - i'm not going to stand up for some bigoted muslim that wants to nail me to a fucking tree because of my clothing decisions if he gets into a fight with an equally bigoted white supremacist. let them slaughter each other - we're better off if they're both dead. but, i'm not going to let these white trash frat boys rip this atheists' balls off just because of his ethnicity, either. i know what side i'm on, and what side i'm willing to fight for, and it's the side of non-believers and atheists and secularists. and i don't fucking care where you're from, or where your parents are from. at all.

so, they're getting up in his face....

"if you really want to get with the red and white.."

really? i don't know exactly what that means, but it was pretty clearly confrontational. so, i stepped in between them and asked:

"hey hey hey. is that really necessary."

see, in a situation like that, i'm white. i'm not always white, and i'm not particularly white, but, in context, i'm white. and, so that worried them, and you could see it in their eyes.

but, they look away, and they keep running their mouths off.

"i said, is that necessary?"

it was enough of a break that the arab guy was able to slip away, and i followed not long after him.

so, i got home after 4:00, made some pasta and crashed at something like 7:00. day two coming up....

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

we started last week on friday night, and the primary intent was actually to go down early to get some beethoven tickets. everything else kind of developed out of this.

when i first looked at the weekend, i was mostly just turned off by the weather. sub ten degrees on friday night, and rain on saturday night? well, it's october - i might at least get out for a double matinee on sunday, though, with the 5th followed by the lpd. it also looked like i could maybe catch a late show at phog on friday night, if i could stand the weather.

i had a loose plan, though. there was a late party at marble on saturday, and a punk show at trumbullplex on the way there, so maybe i could essentially come down early and dance before the beethoven show, if i could convince myself that the punk show was worthwhile. it ended up working the other way around, when i realized the show at marble was a drum 'n' bass dj, which is rare in detroit; this then became the focus of the weekend.

so, i bought some tickets for the marble show on friday morning, only to initially find myself stonewalled by the dso. sold out? well, it's the fifth, i guess. after changing browsers (and operating systems), i did realize that there were still tickets, but i'd need a credit card to buy them online. i didn't want to wait until sunday morning, or even saturday night. could i get there on friday, then?

i had in fact been looking at a show on friday at a bar i hadn't been to before called delux fluxx, which is right downtown. for all the time i spend in detroit, i only ever really transit through the core. what was the last show i saw in the downtown core? not corktown, not midtown, not the eastern market, but right downtown? it might have been as far back as early 2017...crywolf at the shelter. i think. the only show i've seen at st. andrew's is swans, and the only other show i saw at the shelter is son lux. you might catch me dancing at a few after hours spots right in the core once in a while, but i otherwise am only downtown for as long as it takes to get out of it. there's just not much there for me, generally.

i had initially ruled the show out, because the headliner (earthless) didn't really grab me, on inspection. i'm generally looking for a level of abstraction that just wasn't really present in the sound, which was more of a cliched kind of throwback. neither the drumming nor the guitar playing seemed that impressive, and rumour had it they were starting to sing, too. ack. so, i had scratched that off, only to notice that the opening band was on teepee - and if somebody from teepee comes to your town, you should always at least check to see if they're any good or not. it turns out we've got a prog band here with a big early bowie or spiders/ronson feel to it. score.

still, i wasn't sure i was going to go until the ticket issue came up, at which point i decided i should go down early and do a few things in midtown. for example, maybe i could drop off some recycling at the depot, finally. it's piling up. but, oddly, the depot was closed on fridays, so i resolved to just go down early to get the tickets. according to google, the box closes at 17:00; if i catch the 15:00 bus, i should get there before 17:00 for sure....

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

when you find yourself on the same side as lindsey graham and marco rubio, giant red flags should go off as to what you're supporting and saying and doing.

those are people you should never, ever, ever agree with. ever.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

woah woah woah.

will pushing the kurds out of the north of syria open up a space for isis?

no.

because it wasn't actually the kurds that won the war, it was the russians.

it is true that the kurds faced heavy casualties in the process of defending themselves, but the core of isis territory was always south of the euphrates (and adjacent to saudi arabia, which is where isis mostly came from), rather than north of it, where the kurds are. iraq owes a great deal of gratitude to the kurds; syria less so.

should isis think that it can mount some kind of comeback, the russians should be able to deal with it relatively easily.

...because it's the russians. they're good at this shit.

and, so, what is the pentagon's argument really about? it's mostly about trying to maintain the division in the country, and preventing the russians from reorganizing it. but, this is futile. the saudis can't beat the russians, and they know it. all the americans can do is sit around and waste everybody's time.

some people are going to die, and that's always very sad, but the kurds are occupying land that does not belong to them and that's what happens when you do that, because eventually the rightful owners are going to organize and fight to take it back if you don't get out. i would advise the kurds to withdraw immediately if they want to avoid casualties, in order to make way for returning syrian refugees. the syrians have a right to return, here; the kurds need to make way.

only the russians can reunite the country and end this endless war.

trump is actually completely right to pull out. he's doing the right thing, and the democrats look awful aligning with the military-industrial complex in opposing it.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

if i were to go to a mosque for some reason, i'd make to sure to dress very slutty.

....and walk through the front door, whether they fucking like it or not.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

i don't think i've ever been in a mosque or synagogue.

when was the last time i was in a church?

i don't think i've been in one in windsor, and i don't think i've been in one in detroit, either. i'm just trying to think if i've seen a concert in one, and i don't think i have. i apologize if i'm skipping something.

i saw a silver mt zion in a church on elgin in ottawa in early 2012. that's firm. that's the last time, for sure.

i think the last church service i was at would have been around 2002, when sarah brought me home, one weekend. i only lasted a few minutes before i went out for a smoke.

i've seen a few shows in churches, and i guess i'm probably not going to get too pissy about it, but i would broadly prefer to avoid entering into them. and, they're not the right places for political anything....

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

see, if it was up to me, i would have boycotted the debate because it's in an inappropriate venue. you couldn't drag me into a mosque, church or synagogue...

there should not be all-candidate debates in religious venues. at all.

as it is, there's not much that the candidate can really do. a lawsuit would be pointless.

https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/mosque-shuts-out-ppc-from-debate-over-partys-stance-on-religion-hate-crimes

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

i've feeling better. the asprin is working, indicating i probably have a fever, and it's really gotta be strep.

we're going to finish this review, regardless.

friday may be a short night, and the only night this weekend, but it's firming up.

if i'm smelling what i think i'm smelling in here, i'm going to be fucking pissed in 24-48 hours when my nose is working again. if i didn't know better, i'd think he's chain smoking (cigarettes) right on top of me. that's the kind of thing that takes weeks to clear out.

i'm not a smoker. i should be able to smell it. but i'm sick.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

ok, it doesn't look like i'm doing anything constructive for right now, so why don't i get these reviews done. maybe i'll feel better in a few hours. or maybe i'll fall asleep.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

listen, my lungs are fine. i'm not even coughing. no congestion. it doesn't hurt to breathe. my breathing is not restricted.

no chest pain. no muscle pain. no neck pain.

the sore throat is at the very top of the throat, almost in the back of the mouth. there is some film on my tongue, but nothing on my tonsils. they don't even look inflamed.

i can deal with a little sore throat; it's not that bad.

rather, it's the headache that's awful.

i have no memory of head trauma on saturday, and no reason to suspect it. i was dancing from around 6:00-8:30, got into a car with somebody for a bit, went back to the bar, had a smoke out front, talked to the sound guys and made it the diner for after 10:00. i did nap there, and we'll get to that. i was not experiencing any sickness or headache at the time.

i'm pretty careful with my health. there's a hospital down the street, and i have a magic swipe card that'll get me anything i want. so, if i need to get there, i'll get there.

i've been there....if you follow this, you know that.

right now, i'm ok. it's just a little strep, and i probably picked it up from sharing a joint or bowl or vape.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

the headache's back, so i don't know how useful i'm going to be for the night.

i don't have a swab, but i'm 95% sure it's strep. given that i started feeling sick sunday night, i actually probably picked it up on friday. there's a few ways i could have done that...

and, it's screwing up my sense of smell. i haven't smelled any drugs tonight, but there's a background odour that i think is tobacco but can't, at the moment, smell enough to be sure of. it's like 40% tobacco, 30% burnt meat and 30% bacteria or fungi. so, it could be the mattress again, or i could just be smelling the strep (there is a "sick" smell, when you smell your any pathogens in your nose or mouth), or it could be smoke from upstairs, or something else entirely. i will need to wait for my sense of smell to come back, better, first. that means the pot might have been stronger than i thought...

the aspirin was working before i fell asleep; the headache actually didn't come back until i finished my pasta. i don't think it's the food.

*shrug*.

i guess i'll get some more aspirin and give it another go, but i'm not convinced i'm very useful right now, or am going to be able to do much of anything besides sleep.

i don't get sick very often. i really don't. but, strep can be brutal, regardless, and i seem to have hit it pretty hard.

again: if this had anything to do with my lungs, i'd be coughing.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this