ok.

so, i went to call the court and got the completed motions sent to me via email, which is actually fairly useful. so, that's actually already done.

- they accepted the addendum.

- the oiprd has until january 31st to file the application review.

what i asked for was a hard deadline. that is a hard deadline. it's also a month grace, plus holidays, so it should be more than enough.

getting the judge to push the deadline down is actually a major step forward, even if it seems minor. now, if they miss it, they're missing a court order.

the machine seems better, but who knows. i'm taking a nap...

and, that plane.

well.

it sure seems like it got shot down...

how do you classify such a thing? while clearly accidental in specific scope, those missiles were intended to kill people, and in the end they did.

canada is a nato country with good relations with most of the p5+1, but i wouldn't expect anybody to bat an eyelash.

it wasn't a terrorist attack, either. it was a military accident.

it's a good reminder of what happens when you play with matches.

i live in the heart of the empire, and i'm willing to be a critical voice, but i understand how that benefits me.

and, i don't think the iranians are offering a very attractive alternative model.

guess trump's not much of a bully after all, is he?

america doesn't maintain it's place in the world by appeals to puppydogs and sunshine, or even by appeals to freedom and democracy.

america is a bully. it maintains control through the threat - and realization - of extreme violence.

it is obvious what will happen if you take that away.

i can criticize these past presidents for picking on these little countries, but what happened in iraq the other night is not a comparable scenario. this is not an accusation, not a fabrication, not an imagined threat.

the iranian government sent several ballistic missiles directly at american military bases.

if the bully doesn't throw a punch, their reign of terror is over.

and, no, i'm not a "hawk". i would prefer to avoid war whenever possible.

but, i don't think what happened the other day is a scenario where the hegemon should have stepped down - it was a scenario where the empire had to strike back, or risk losing it's status as the empire.

trump's a wimp.

and a sheep.

baaaaaaaaa.

what trump just proved is that he's not cut out for this job - the part of the job that is substantive, that only he can do, that actually matters.

and, the rest of the world should take advantage of it while they can.

it's not like i don't understand trump's reluctance.

but, the presidency is not an economic position. it's not a domestic role. the president doesn't cut taxes, or design health care systems.

the presidency is explicitly a military role; it's an elected dictatorship. he's commander in chief.

and, what i would tell him is that if he doesn't want to be the emperor, if he doesn't have this machiavellian streak, if he doesn't have the balls for it, then he should accept he's not cut out for it and step down.

i'm not fan of empire. i get it. but, this is a failure of american hegemony, and the actors involved will not stop at the precipice - they will interpret it as weakness (which it is) and pounce.

my attitude here, in context, is an asset. you have to approach this from a psychopathic kind of neo-pagan, almost stoic, kind of perspective.

trump's presidency has been far from spectacular, but it's only in the last week that it's failed.

i mean, have you noticed that, as critical as i am of the republicans, i don't actually agree with the democrats on much of anything, either?

what i said before was that i agreed with clinton and trump roughly equally often, it was just on different things. so, i might disagree with trump, like, 90% of the time - meaning i agree with him about 10% of the time. that's a very high level of disagreement, it's true, and i'd be unlikely to vote for him, certainly.

but, i disagreed with clinton about 90% of the time, too; the 10% was just in a different group of topics.

i don't like either of the parties, and i've been yelling it for years. we can disagree; we will, surely. but, don't act surprised.

and, no, drugs aren't freedom.

drugs are slavery.

smart people know that.

religion or freedom?

pick your side.

you're going to have to, soon.

are you on the side of religion and order and liberal-conservative values?

...or are you on the side of freedom and chaos and the abolition of normative thought?

...or i can walk through the front door of the mosque in a tank and bright lipstick.

these are your choices.

i won't respect your beliefs, and it's not up for debate.

listen.

i'd be a rather stupid atheist queer standing around waiting for the muslims to come to my rally for secular liberalism.

we're not on the same side of the struggle.

what side are you on?

i might have found the secret cache of update files in the winsxs folder.

the machinery is probably still in the registry, but the scripts should just error out, now.

my pc does not have a network card in it.

yet, the files in the "safe image" appear to have been appended to at some point. i've compared it to an earlier backup, and the most recent has all kinds of sysprep files and scripts and shit. somebody has altered this image....

that would suggest three possibilities:

1) somebody has physically entered the premises. and, if that's reality, i have no solutions. i can't know what they did. i can't undo a set of infinite possibilities. i can't protect against that.

i actually remember this topic coming up in the mscse training. the topic was networking security, and somebody kept asking "but what if they're there?". like, after every slide, as though it was a systematic analysis. over and over.

eventually, the trainer got fed up and actually called his boss in seattle (he was actually from redmond, and sent to ottawa to train us) to ask her what to do with this guy, and i'll never forget the response.

"i actually called my boss in seattle, and i'm going to give you an official response from microsoft - if the bad guys can actually touch your computer, you're officially fucked. that's officially not supported."

and, he stopped asking.

i have to go get groceries sometimes. i have to shower. and, i'm going to party, from time to time, too. i can't protect against people coming in here and installing things...

that should be against the law, but it seems like it's the police that are doing it. if this is reality, i'll just have to cope.

1b) somebody installed a wireless communication device somewhere, and i don't know where it is. they're then altering the image that way. again: i can't protect against a device i'm not aware of, even if i'm almost certain it's there. and, what would stop them from reinstalling it if i found it?

2) i'm schizophrenic and imagining this.

when i catch things, i'll delete them, but the premise that something is broken and i can fix it and it will be better after seems to be flawed. this appears to be perpetual. somebody is going to be bothering me forever.

the sewer stench just came back, too.

no other president in the history of the country would have let the iranians get away with that.

i am back up on the laptop. for now.

sorting through the files, i've decided that what i was doing was a fool's errand. i thought that if i could just get the thing in a specific state of being, i'd eventually be stable, and that would be that. i was trying to "fix" it.

but, i seem to have little control over these scripts, and little ability to maintain the sanctity of anything at all. i need to embrace the reality that i'm going to need to reimage every couple of days, every few reboots, and just be on with it. i should stop pretending that i can fix this.

every time i reboot in an attempt to secure the image, i just end up advancing the update scripts.

and, the flat reality is that i simply don't care. i just want to work on my art.

so, i'm going to stop trying to fix it, and just try to avoid rebooting as much as possible.

i've got days worth of loose ends to sort through before i can get back to what i was doing.

his choice may have been more popular than the alternative, perhaps.

but, i'm sure the christians were popular, too - as they rotted out the empire from the inside.

i want to be clear.

i think that - as per usual - trump made the wrong choice in standing down in iran. this is a tremendous loss of american prestige. it is the wrong choice, historically. it is the wrong choice, logically. it is the wrong choice, morally. it is the wrong choice all around.

but, what's new?

there is absolutely no previous historical precedent for a country to be able to bomb american forces with impunity. they've launched major wars over far less, and that's part of what makes america america, and what makes america feared across the world.

the zero tolerance dominance that has been in place since the spanish-american war is no longer in place.

the world can have it's way with america.

that is not wise. that is not tolerant. and, that is not smart. it will have longterm consequences that will accelerate the dismantling of american empire, and the onset of american decline.

my analysis was historical; trump has broken with history, and he's done so in a way that puts the country on a path towards collapse.