well, that was indeed a kafkaesque mess but i got my expedited border clearance. hey, all those years of avoiding a criminal record came in handy. i'm squeaky clean. i get to use the special line...

but, that doesn't mean this wasn't a pain in the ass. i've ranted about this here quite a bit over the last year. it's only fitting that the last section of it was off the wall ridiculous...

getting across the actual border was not a problem. i just showed them my letter, and he let me through. but, he chuckled and wished me luck. he knew what was coming...

the walk up fort street at around 7 am was purposefully brisk; i was admittedly a little uncomfortable. but, the more i walked, the more it just reminded me of montreal. yes: detroit is full of decaying bridges, falling apart buildings, abandoned industrial centres, smoldering sewers and people sleeping on the street. but, i didn't feel threatened so much as i felt a level of empathy. how'd it get that bad, anyways?

the other thing that made me relax a little was a friendly retriever that ran over across a field to say good morning. it's funny how goldens are basically the universal stress reliever.

it was about twenty minutes to the bridge, which is a short walk for me.

once i got there, though, i wasn't sure how to proceed. i tried going under the bridge first. this is the first point that the smog got to me: i nearly heaved, and had to sit down. first attempt at directions was a hotel that looked like something out of a stephen king movie...

"do you know if i can get in some kind of plaza around the bridge?"
"no."
"does that pay phone work?"
*laughs* "no."
"do you know if there's a phone around here?"
"there's no gas stations for a good ways in either direction."
"well, thanks, then."

so, i went back under the bridge again...

there was a side street running along the complex (and it was a complex. it looked like a prison.) that i decided to take a walk up, and it took me into a nicer street full of very old churches and quaint, if dilapidated houses. three houses in a row had angry, barking, unchained rottweilers that could have easily hopped their four foot tall enclosures should they have decided to. it's a problem in windsor, too. cheaper than a security system, i guess.

and apparently very necessary.

i bumped into a border cop on his way to work and flagged him down...

"how do i get in here?"
"do you have a car?"
"no."
"well, why do you want to get into here?"
"i have a nexus interview."
"why do you want a nexus card if you don't have a car?"
"so i can get across the border. i'm from canada..."
"you're from canada? how did you get across the border?"
"the tunnel."
"and how did you get here?"
"i walked."

*awkward pause*

"well, you can't get in here without a car. you're going to have to call a cab."

ok, so here's the thing: i can see the enrollment centre through the fence. it's a few hundred yards, at most. and, yet i need to call a cab to transport me those few hundred yards? yes, i do: this is what the cop is trying to tell me. but, i'm not about to call a cab, so i keep walking.

eventually, i get to a cross street with a big sign

MICHIGAN WELCOME CENTER* --->

*note yankee spelling.

well, that sounds like a good thing to try.

hours:
9 am - 4 pm

it's like 7:30...

so, i look up the road and notice it runs into customs. i'm thinking "maybe there's a phone in there". customer service is closed, and there's no barriers so i just keep walking, until a border cop yells at me:

"WOAH. WOAH. YOU CAN'T BE IN HERE. WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING?"

well, i'm looking for a phone. is there one in that building?

"PLEASE STEP TO THE SIDE AND EMPTY YOUR POCKETS."

ok.

so, i pull out some pieces of paper, keys, a few dollars...

"who do you want to phone?"
"i'm trying to get in contact with the nexus office."
"how did you get in here?"
"i just walked in. there's no barriers or anything."
"do you have a car?"
"no."
"why do you want a nexus card if you don't have a car?"
"well, i'm from canada and..."
"you're from canada? how did you get across the border without a car?"
"i took the tunnel."
"what? how did you get here?"
"i walked"

*awkward pause*

another officer walks over....

"this person just strolled in here, can you believe that."
"where are you going?"
"i'm looking for nexus."
"do you have a car?"
"no."
"why do you want a nexus card if you don't have a car?"

i laughed out loud at this point.

"because i'm from canada and..."
"wait. how did you get across the border?"
"i took the tunnel."
"and they let you in without documents?"
"well, i have this nexus document. i'm here for a defined purpose."
"pfft. anybody could print that off. do you have any drugs on you?"
"what? no..."
"yeah. right. step into the office, please"

so, i walk into the office...

he takes my id and starts running it through the system, asks me all kinds of absurd questions, accuses me repeatedly of living in collingwood and having a record of escaping the custody of an officer, visibly shatters a blood vessel in his forehead when i provide "jessica" as an alternate name and eventually gives up.

"go back to the michigan welcome center and call a cab from there."

again with the cab. they were really serious about this.

i did walk back to the welcome center, but i was planning on calling the enrollment centre, not the cab. it's now barely 8:00, so i have an hour to wait, and wait an hour i did.

the cop drives by about 8:30...

"listen, i knew this was going to be a problem, but i'm pretty sure the person i initially talked to said they'd give me a lift. the thing is i think they meant from canada, and i couldn't get a hold of anybody to provide instructions, so here i am."

he seems to have softened up a bit, after realizing i'm both harmless and frustrated. the absurdity of the situation actually seems to have become clear to him. but...

"i'd drive you down there myself, but then i have to pat you down, which means i need a female officer present and there aren't any."
"i can't waive that?"

(i don't care what gender my doctor is, and i don't care what gender the cop patting me down is)

"no. plus, i'd have to do all kinds of paperwork, and i just don't want to."

ah, yes. a lazy cop. gee, whudda thunk that possible, huh?

"but, i'll call you a cab if you want."

there's no irony in any of this.

i refuse the offer, and suggest i'll call the place when the welcome center opens.

this is where i got a break, and i have to say it's every bit as surreal as the rest of this. the place opens at 9:00, i use the bathroom, and then ask if there's a pay phone...

there isn't, but he offers the office phone, depending on who i'm calling.

i'm calling nexus, because i'm on foot and need to find out how i'm going to get in there.

apparently, this kind fellow has been working at the michigan welcome center for years and years, and given out instructions on how to get into the nexus office hundreds of times, but has never been in there himself. he's been wondering the whole time if his directions are even accurate, and he wants to know what it looks like inside the complex.

so, he offers to drive me in.

and i graciously accept.

he takes me back along the side street i came in at, past the entrance the first border cop went in, back under the bridge and around through a gated area. i am now finally at the nexus enrollment area. i thank the kind fellow and that is that.

but, the border guards are concerned about how i'm going to exit the complex.

"i guess i'll call a cab."

nobody else got the sarcasm. i was actually planning on asking somebody for a lift to the other side of the fence.

so, the interview goes well. the interviewer was a little older, and i seemed to convince him i'm a good kid. which is what i needed to do.

i got the marijuana question, i was honest, and he overlooked it. they can be very strict about that. but, the thing should get here in 7-10 days.

at the end of it, he asks me if i have a phone. i don't carry a phone. so, he picks up the phone and starts dialing the number for a cab for me...

"listen. if you call me a cab, i'm just going to ask that they drop me on the other side of the fence and walk back to the tunnel. so, why don't you just let me ask somebody for a lift out?"

and, finally, i got some fucking logic from somebody.

"no. we'll just escort you out."

a few minutes later, a truck pulls up with a border cop in it.

"are you here to escort me out?"
"yes."

so, i reach for the door....

"no. i'm not driving you. you're going to walk."

at first, he tries to lead me to the exit to the ambassador bridge.

"canada is that way, but where's your car?"
"i don't have a car."
"why do you want a nexus card if you don't have a car?"

i was on the brink of being a smartass, but managed to restrain myself.

"so i can get across under the tunnel. i just need to get to fort street."
"well, how are you going to get over the bridge?"
"no, i want to walk to the tunnel."
"walk...to...the....tunnel?"

at this point, i understand that every single one of the awkward pauses was shock that i'd walk that far. remarkable.

"yeah."
"well, follow the truck around the building and meet me at the crossing."

i did this, and we walked to the gate that first border cop went through. then i was out the side street and back up fort towards the tunnel...

without having to call a cab.

this is your tax dollars at work protecting you from terrorism.

so, i took a google tour up fort street, which is where i'm headed this morning.

it's pretty run down, but it's an industrial area so i'm not really walking through the 'hood. and there's only been one shooting in the vicinity this year.

there's been two on my block in windsor. yeah. well, it's perspective.

i'll be fine...

i'll point out i *am* wearing $5 shoes and a stained white tshirt.

it's less about wanting to keep the shoes and more about not projecting wealth.

not that i have any wealth, of course. but shit is relative.

llessa
Finally we see the face of nazism in all its glory on VICE. Just to note, this nazi scumbag Lyashko runs ukrainian Radical party which is currently leading the polls in Ukraine.

deviousdevil75
So Fucking what. One man, one vote.

Jacob Paprotskiy
were the fuck were you when the majority of ukrainians elected a moderate pro eu president?

llessa
actually only 9 million ukrainians voted for poroshenko, out of 45

deathtokoalas
i've never seen a poll that puts that guy higher than 10%, and public opinion has consistently been against military action to root out the "separatists". i'm from canada, i know how that word gets distorted. he may be a "right-wing populist" in the classification sense, and the murdoch empire may consequently be pushing for him on behalf of the state department, but he is not and never has been and never will be a serious political candidate.

KnowledgeDriven
uprated fr t.o. like so much these days - alciada, ISIL, chocoking over there are but a few - remove the USAID (subset also CIAFBI-AID) and the whole enterprise vanishes into thin air.

Tadas Urbonas
I would rather see Hitler leading Ukraine than Putin. That communist son of a bitch can go straight back to hell, where he belongs. Russians have done FAR worse crimes than anything the ukrainians radicals can ever do. And it is sad to see that the same people who gave the orders are still the elite of Russian society, whether they are billionaire oligarchs or top government officials.

deathtokoalas
you realize that putin is a free market conservative that, if american, would be on the right-wing of the republican party, right?

yeah. this isn't very realistic.

the thing with coke is actually that you don't really get high from it. it's a five-ten minute buzz that you have to continue doing to maintain the effects of. this is the reason people get hooked on it.

unfortunately, these videos are never going to be effective. smart kids are going to do the research and figure out that it's a better idea to go to the 7-11 and get a slurpee, or bring a thermos of coffee to school and chug it at recess. dumb kids aren't going to be persuaded by anybody, and the more you try the more they react.

it's not even really the buzz that's the problem. kids are going to get high at school, and it's not really going to affect them too badly. with coke, it's what happens afterwards that's the problem, and something you only really learn from experience. i've sat at a friend's house all weekend to help him detox, only to find out he relapsed on monday (and stopped calling). it's something that tends to hit the guys that think they're invincible.

"i can handle it. i want to prove i can handle it."

well, you owned a car a few days ago, and now you don't. nice job handling it....

see, in order to get across the border, i need a nexus card. but, in order to get the nexus card, i need to get across the border. it would be a simple exercise if the enrolment centre was in an accessible location, but it's located directly underneath a bridge that i cannot cross. (that sounds poetic, but i can't cross because i don't have a vehicle, and they do not allow pedestrian crossing, and there's no public transportation, and it's almost impossible to find a taxi cab driver both willing and able to cross). so, the only option i can conceive of is to try and cross somewhere else, and hope they let me walk, or escort me to the centre and back. but i'm not really hopeful either is a possibility...

i will say that when i get to the border, i'm certain that i'll understand what my actual options are. i'm just a little fearful that none of them are going to be realistic.

but, logically, is there really much of a difference between letting me drive over a bridge to the center and letting me walk over? i'm clearing customs and being allowed to move from customs to the centre on my own either way, right? i may be freaking out over a perception of the location of the office to the bridge, rather than anything rational that the border guards can actually interpret, one way or the other.

if my plan *does* work, i'm basically going to be walking through detroit at 6:00 am. well, i'm going to end up doing that relatively frequently anyways. my experience with walking through unsafe neighbourhoods has mostly been that thugs go after thugs and so long as one does not project wealth (meaning, it's not a good idea to pull out a roll of hundred dollar bills....as though i have any, right...), there's really little risk in these supposed high risk neighbourhoods.

and, for me, in the end, i'm on their side. i've had my share of conversations with thugs that are probably thinking some nasty shit in the back of their mind, but i tend to convince 'em i'm cool - and not any better off than they are. despite being white and well spoken....

the only other thing i can think of is trying to hitch over the bridge. if that's my only option, that's my only option. i'll find out.

i don't want to come off some drug war narc, i'm really not, but i know that the big problem is not poverty but drugs.

and not any drugs. it's the nasty ones. coke. meth. there's no discussion there, no attempt to size me up - it's just a possible income source to exploit to get high.

i know to stay on the main roads.

and 6:00-7:00 am is not 3:00 am, either.

i'll be fine...

like, i've never seen or heard of a fight in any place in any city in any downtown that wasn't ultimately about cocaine. even when it's about sex, it's really about cocaine...

so...

hey, kids.

i'm not going to tell you not to do drugs. drugs can be fun, sometimes!

but cocaine is baaaaaaad.

baaaaaaaad.

baaaaa.

it IS though. don't do coke...

i think i'm just going to spend the night listening and analyzing. i've gotta leave early in the morning to go on what will no doubt be a surreal, kafkaesque journey of a nightmare to get a nexus card in detroit...

i can tell you right now what part of my new coffee machine will break.

they set the spring to a lever, so it opens up a hole. cheap plastic. another year, tops...

grargh. i still can't get a hold of anybody on the other side of the border. and it turns out booking a taxi is a process of trial and error - most taxi drivers can't or won't drive across the bridge. after all, that's what the tunnel bus is for. and it's going to cost like $40....

catch-22s. gotta love 'em.

i'm just going to show up at the tunnel really early and see what happens. i'm hoping that if they don't let me walk they'll escort me, and if they don't do that they'll let me call the center from detroit, where it's not long distance.

i tried calling two of those numbers from a pay phone.

one was a full mailbox, the other was an automated system. i can't be dropping $5 on dead ends over and over. that $10 is waste enough.

clearing my head at a math rock show in windsor

i needed to clear my head a little tonight, so i hit a show with a few different spins on what's currently called "math rock". i'm glad i did, as i'm feeling nicely relaxed at the moment.

first up was sly why, which was a valiant (and sometimes successful) attempt to cross hip-hop with chick corea. when it clicked, it was pretty groovy, but i was left with the overall impression that it was a proof of concept that requires quite a bit more work to get to where it needs to be.

the rhythm section was really outstanding in the synthesis. the bassist did a decent jaco, while the drummer effectively spliced breakbeats with fusion drumming. where it fell apart a little was with the vocalist/keyboardist.

it's not that he wasn't a good player - he was. but , the vocals seemed rather superfluous, in the sense that i didn't get much interesting out of it. further, he used the same electric piano sound on every single track, and it got a little monotonous after a while. i mean, chick had limited technology at his availability in the late 60s and early 70s. this guy could make his keyboard do whatever he wants it to by merely connecting it to his phone, y'know? why settle for a single, 40 year old tone?

i wanted to suggest he check out some squarepusher, but i instead just suggested he consider orchestrating the keys a little more. i suspect the thought has already crossed his mind, as he mostly agreed with me.

with that in mind, these kids have the potential to do something special, if the vocalist also decides to step back a little from the mundane topics explored in modern commercial hip-hop. i'd keep an eye on this space. i know i will.



toasted plastic, which i'm not repeating the silly chillwave anti-phonetic styling on, was up next and they presented a somewhat generic (but entirely competent) rendition of the emo/math thing that's been floating around since roughly 2000. if there's something worth noting here, it's that the drummer is quite talented. he was able to push through some otherwise predictably unpredictable (if you know math, you get that) songwriting and entirely generic singing.

on the other hand, sometimes you just want to stand in front of some amps and get blown over by them. it's kind of why i left the house tonight, actually.

it's nothing special, but it's loud and melodic and just a little bit complex and it's consequently worth cover if you're looking for it.

what i wanted tonight was just to sit back and have a beer and relax, and it was this act that i thought would be most conducive to that atmosphere. it was a lot of tapping on the ol' ibanez, with some relaxed drumming. again: not a lot to talk about, in terms of originality. but if you like the kind of passive jazz/post/math that's been floating around on bandcamp the last ten years or so, and you want a beer, it's worth the $5.

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2014/07/15.html

so, i've got my border pass interview on thursday and i have to admit i don't know how i'm going to get over that bridge to the enrollment centre. i've been sending out emails and calling people all month, and nobody has a good answer for me.

the thing is that the bridge is closed to pedestrian traffic. somehow, the bridge became privately owned, which makes the owner liable. there were some suicides in the 70s from jumpers, and the owner had to pay out, and it's been closed to pedestrians and bicyclists ever since. i'm going to avoid ranting about property rights, other than to note that none of the governments in the region at any of the levels have had anything but problems with the guy. i mean, he has a monopoly on cross-border traffic that can't fit through the tunnel, which is virtually all trucks amongst other things, and he hasn't really been responsible about it....

so, they're building a publicly owned bridge in reaction, but it won't be done until like 2020. i should be able to take my bike on that one, but it's also way out of the way. you'd have to think the operator will make some changes when he gets some competition. until then, i simply can't walk over the bridge.

the tunnel is also closed to pedestrians and cyclists because it doesn't have a sufficient walkway, which is a court case i'd probably win if i bothered, but it's a lot of effort i don't really have to expend. it does have tunnel bus service, which is what i'd have to use to get across the river when i want to. most of the places i'd want to get to are then within walking distance up woodward avenue, but i may want to go to pontiac from time to time and i'd have to take the bus for that. if i find myself doing that often, i'll probably get a worthless bicycle and lock it somewhere near the tunnel in detroit. i mean, they won't let bikes on the bus either, unless they're disassembled into a bag, which is really outrageous. i'd probably want to take one of the tires with me back and forth...

so, the problem is that i'm going to show up at the border crossing on thursday morning and not know how to get across. i'm HOPING the border guards will just drive me over, but i'd like to get some verification of that. if i can't, my plan is going to be as follows...

1) i'll show up to the earliest tunnel shuttle across and hope the border people either let me walk to the enrollment centre or escort me there. hopefully, that's worked out before 6:00 am.

2) if i get sent back, i'll have to walk to the bridge and ask them to get me over there somehow.

the instructions that the center provides just assume i'll have a car. in fact, the primary purpose of this exercise seems to be to get my plates on film.

Chris Maher
Good music should never be popular.

deathtokoalas
good music can't become popular. in order to become popular, it must reflect the status quo and cease to be good. now, there's a grey area where it can be quasi-good and manage to sell. and you can manage to sell quite a few records without becoming popular. but, it's ultimately a contradiction in terms.

Felicia Mumper
that's not true man. There's plenty great bands in the underground that are popular in their own ways. Sometimes we get so Into the whole idea of things staying under ground that we kinda in.a way never want them to get popular but through the years they do. Look at the Jesus lizard for example... a d they're still Indy...

Joshua Ramey
I think people are selfish and want these artists to themselves, and don't want them to be popular, because they want the power to say that's my secret artist that nobody knows about.

Felicia Mumper
you're exactly right on that one. 100% and they want to be able to say.. have you ever heard of so and so and they want the credit for turnin them on to it to... makes me laugh....

deathtokoalas
we're defining "popular" rather differently - you're talking about bulk album sales and picking some arbitrary number, while i'm talking about tapping into the public consciousness in a way that represents mainstream attitudes. the truth is that you can sell hundreds of thousands of records without ever tapping into the mainstream and becoming "popular".

a good example of that is ministry. they play stadiums. they're not popular.

Crystal Manning
good music ought to be popular. because if everyone were in to good music of all genres, we'd get far more exposure to that quality of content than we do in our lesser numbers. i believe in the right to ones personal view. opinion is freedom. but when you go left or right, id say crack a window. allow possibilities an opportunity to expand u. not to get so fucking deep, but we can all agree that existence is in infinite motion. "ever changing," 'cause if something moves, its not at its former place. consider a world where every person had the opinion that music is a standard, and speaks volumes about the individual. the latter is fact. or is it? manson enjoyed the beatles.. lol embrace the maybes', like i just did, mid sentence. we can all be wrong and right, depending on where we're positioned. original thought was simply: a world full of dope music would surround you with the shit. imagine an existence where every song you heard was impactful, so much so that it constantly opened you up. ah, such a place is a dream. thusly, in my "opinion" (just another assclown on this tele tube, to someone, hopefully!) i beg to differ with you, and those who can't see the possibilities. if all the good fucking music (there is INFINITY of it...) was POPULAR, we wouldn't form the jaded views you have. friend, you have validity. but you are disenchanted because popular music sucks lengthy, sturdy, pulsing-... i'll stop there. ~_~ <3 peace, bruhskee.

Chris Maher
If it's popular, it starts to suck. If it needs lengthy explanation, it starts to suck. Ya dig?

Joshua Ramey
so what are you implying that the general population has bad taste in music.

Chris Maher
No I'm stating my opinion. But yes the general population does have bad taste in music or Nickleback would not exist.

deathtokoalas
it's a statistical necessity. the exceptional cannot be the mainstream, or it ceases to be exceptional. it should follow a bell curve, with most people interested in stuff that's unoffensive and bland and minorities into the extremes of talent and garbage.

it doesn't really matter what metrics you're using. creativity cannot be the norm, or it ceases to be creative. technical proficiency cannot be the norm, or it ceases to be such. exceptional taste cannot be the norm, or it loses it's exceptional nature.

that's why critics have no choice but to rail against the fashions. otherwise, they wouldn't be critics.

Joshua Ramey
so the people the listen to it will continue to be labeled hipsters or edgy

deathtokoalas
but, by the same logic, that's driven by their conformity - and that upholds the status quo that rejects innovation.

attitudes change over time. that which was labeled as "hipster" becomes interpreted as "visionary". sometimes the artists are lucky enough to live long enough to see that shift and get acknowledgement; often, they're not.

we don't have to be silly and talk about beethoven. syd barrett was kicked out of pink floyd because they thought he was killing their marketability. examples are endless.

Leandro Aude
Im not a music expert or less, but, have you ever thought thats a very subjective matter? Whats supossed to be "good music" and "the message behind the music that lesser intuitive generations cant get"?

Chris Maher
I don't want to see lesser generations turn the music and bands I like and consider good, Into fashion statements. There is no message to get anymore! anytime music tries to make a point its lost in the fray of popularity. Popular music sucks because it's made for mass consumption. Designed to suite a wide variety of people but ends up only alienating the people who loved them for what they were to begin with. So fuck the lesser generation, If they cant find interest unless MTV tells them it's cool. Just fuck em!

Joshua Ramey
I'm into this type of music. And I'm from the 90s generation

deathtokoalas
activists tend to look at music through a marxist filter of propaganda of the deed and agitprop - this idea that music can play a role in pushing social awareness and changing the status quo. but, i think it's worth looking at what socrates had to say: he said that when you see musicians start to gather, you know a change has already happened. it reverses the causality. it suggests that art is not a driver of change, but a reaction to it.

what you're getting at is probably correct. man or astroman are aesthetically a punk band, but they're not a political one. but, when you do look at political music that has built a following in the post-war era, what you see is the following pattern:

1) a community begins to develop that expresses a certain kind of ideals. this was true of the beatniks, the hippies, the punks, the ravers, hip-hop, etc.

2) as that community grows, people with status quo ideas enter into it.

3) they slowly begin to ostracize the people that held the ideals, as they co-opt the aesthetic qualities of the music into the status quo.

4) business people take notice and market the aesthetic qualities of the music, completely stripped of the ideals that initially generated the community.

5) the idealists scatter, and have to rebuild.

it happens consistently. and, it's not a function of corporatism, or capitalism or any kind of financial motives - those only come in at the last stage. it's just a function of norms asserting themselves. it's an entirely social phenomenon.

as i stated: it's virtually an impossibility. it's so unusual, that the rare really good band that builds a mainstream audience becomes elevated to the status of icon, which in large part misses the point [kurt cobain would be disgusted at the cottage industry built up around him]. even when future generations look back on these movements, they tend to overlook the founding principles. the textbooks will remember vivienne westwood, not jello biafra or crass - that will be left to specialized scholarship.

Chris Maher
Gag!

bking87
Yes, because as we all know, the Beatles turn to absolute sh*t after they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show... NOTHING of cultural significance came from them after that. Pink Floyd was TERRIBLE after they released Saucerful of Secrets... I can't think of a single song that I've liked since. Rolling Stones has to be the worst bunch of sell-outs ever... except for maybe Led Zeppelin. Bob Marley bringing reggae to the attention of the world population is akin to audible genocide and all of his albums should be burned. Beethoven has gone down in history as the worst sell-out based on his popularity back in the day.

Good music speaks to the individual and the state of mind that they are in at the time they are listening to it. Should it grab the attention of more than a handful of people and gain exposure to the general populace, it doesn't suddenly lose authenticity. Rage Against the Machine is an example of this (although there are those who do take the whole "they don't live in a van down by the river, so they're sell-outs!" approach to them).

Popular music isn't always good (and I will admit has grown increasingly bad in recent years), and in many cases where they are studio-driven, it is indeed very bad, but flipping that statement around to "good music can't be popular" doesn't doesn't fit as a logical conclusion.

Personally, I take a song/singer/musician and say "if they looked more like Mama Cass or Jerry Garcia but still had the equal talent that they have right now, would they remain equally popular?" If the answer is "sure", then their music is judged on their talent, but if the answer is "no", then their popularity is based more on physical attractiveness and advertising and indeed, THAT music is sh*t.

deathtokoalas
that's all counter-culture, though. even late beatles. some of it might have sold, but none of it was popular.

bking87
and just for giggles, go ahead and do an internet search for "top selling bands of all time" and look at the various lists that you'll find. Sure, there will be some in there that will make you gag (for me Celine Dion comes to mind), but if you're going to say that these bands as a group don't make "good music", then you are just a hater, and haters don't hate others... haters hate themselves because they're jealous of the success of others.

deathtokoalas
even with a best-selling bands of all time list, you need to be careful. the beatles wouldn't be on that list if it wasn't for their early success; you can't start talking about them as an artistic force until revolver, and it's very unlikely that their later material would have sold nearly as well if it wasn't for the beatlemania that preceded it. it's hard to analyze them on that level. then you have a collection of mostly 70s stuff like queen, zeppelin, floyd, the who, the rolling stones, genesis - this was never really mainstream, it was just representative of a large counter-culture. you also have to factor in format conversion for everything released in the lp era - and the fact that these acts stand out and others don't speaks more to their ability to transcend short term fashion trends than it does for their popularity in their own periods (excepting the beatles, where the issue is beyond question). there's then a collection of 80s and 90s bands (u2, rem, chili peppers, nirvana) that were a different counter-culture - still not mainstream. and, there's not much left, after that.

we've never really exited a singles culture. if you take any of these bands that have sold a lot of records over multiple generations, few of them will have ever dominated any kind of singles charts for any length of time. what is popular tends to not persevere, though, because popularity is fashion.

one example is to compare the saturday night fever soundtrack to the dark side of the moon. at the time of it's release, the saturday night fever soundtrack quickly became the greatest selling record of all time. but, dark side has outsold it by more than a factor of 10 since 1980. it actually snuck back into the billboard 100 a few years ago, amazingly, almost forty years after it's release. it's now sold far, far more units. and, in fact, it's been outselling thriller as well for years, by a good margin, and could very well catch it in the upcoming years. but it's longevity doesn't imply it's popularity. it implies it's status as a counter-cultural milestone, and it's ability to appeal to generation after generation of people outside of the mainstream. if waters lives long enough, he could see this happen.

again: you can sell huge amounts of records without being popular because there's a giant space to exist within outside of the norm. and, as time goes on, what is less popular often catches up in terms of sales. nobody would argue that radiohead were more popular than britney spears. but, 50 years from now, they may very well have more units moved.

Chris Maher
Everything your saying is nonsense. It sounds like your just regurgitating things you learned from Wikipedia. 5 year olds know every band you listed here because they all are or were at some time popular. Or just plain sucked like U2. Listen, My statement was that good bands should not be popular or they get watered down. I'm not saying good bands haven't been popular. But when a good band starts to draw a watered down crowd, I wash my hands of them. You can spout crap about the Beatles or Led Zeppelin until you pass out, There before my time and I have no opinion on them say that I don't like either of them. Underground music is what I'm about. While these bands your on about were considered counter culture, That doesn't make them good in my book.  I like metal, but I don't like Metallica. I like jazz and blues, But I don't like Pink Floyed. The bands and musicians I'm into don't fall under any of the categories you have laid out here, because they were against the norm from the get go and never changed. I'll give you one example, and only one. The Dickies are a great band that you would have trouble putting in a category because they are unique. They aren't trying to start a trend, and you'll be hard pressed to find to many people who listen to them. Not because they suck or because they don't play radio friendly music. But because they live and breath for the music. They don't have an agenda to make more money or to gain more popularity. They simply are. I hate going on like this.

deathtokoalas
i don't really care what you're saying. i care what i'm saying. i'm saying this is impossible - good music cannot be the mainstream, by definition.

and, go ahead and ask even a twenty-five year old nowadays what they know about pink floyd or led zeppelin or, yes, even the beatles. they might know a bit more about queen due to the special interest story around freddie mercury's sexuality. these people grew up in an entirely different reality, with an entirely different counter-culture. it's ancient history, to them. they know nothing of this.

let's focus on zeppelin - but it's as applicable to the rest of them (excluding the beatles, and to a lesser extent floyd). zeppelin never had a hit single. they had a large following of hippies and outcasts, and it often put their albums at the top of the charts at the time of their releases, but they were never mainstream, never popular. and, you can cut their album sales in at least half due to the fact that they sold everything two or three times to the same people. they also released several records over a long period. a moderately sized, dedicated counter-cultural audience can add up over twenty records (including compilations and live discs) when you sell it to them multiple times. ((140/20))/2 = 3.5. that's an average, so it's a little lower than a few and a little higher than a few others. but, in contemporary terms, that puts them on par with a successful alternative rock band. the white stripes. green day. or, of the aforementioned bands, only zeppelin could be compared to the foofighters. that's a long ways away from the kind of mainstream popularity that actual pop music enjoys - it is not popular, nor is it mainstream.

the reason that the pop of the 70s wasn't able to keep up in the format shifts is that nobody repurchased it. if that list was made in 1975, zeppelin would have been somewhere in the middle of the pack, in between things nobody remembers. the vinyl copies of saturday night fever, and even abba, were never upgraded - they were just left to rot. their listeners moved on. as happens with fashion.

i don't like zeppelin, either. but i realize it has greater value than the pop of the period. and that is the reason people bought those discs on cd.

but, looking at the list all these years later badly skews the reality of it.

Joshua Ramey
it can't because radio won't ever play it.

bking87
So what happens if The Dickies suddenly gain enough popularity that you hear one of their songs on a Kia commercial (and don't think that will never happen as I'm sure any Ramons fan from back in the day would say the same thing)... does their work, or that particular song that you love today magically and immediately become rubbish? And if any listing sounds like something from Wikipedia, it's because it's a list of good bands that 5 year olds have heard of because they are/were popular.

Sorry, but your original statement was "good music should never be popular", not "man, it sucks that some bands lose their vision and focus once they start gaining some monetary success. I'm happy that Man or Astro-Man? never became one of those bands." And then you double-downed with a statement about how poverty improves talent or something to that effect, which is completely insane. Will I suggest that success doesn't change people... of course not and there's a myriad of examples of this out there. But I also won't make a blanket statement that all musicians lose their creative vision once they are in a space of relative comfort.

The issue for me with folks that carry this feeling is that it creates a Catch-22 scenario for the artist because all musicians change over time. If they don't, if they produce the same thing, the same sound, over and over and over again, they are labelled as stale. If their music shifts, they are selling out. There is no winning. The fact of the matter is that, in order to support yourself as an artist, you must be able to make a living with your art. This doesn't necessarily mean selling out and indeed, if you purposely change your artistic focus to meet the needs of a record company, that's selling out. But if you ARE successful and you are producing music for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, well, as is the case with ALL artistic avenues out there, your sound, your voice, your direction will take on new directions. Picasso didn't have just one phase... do we call him a sell-out because he moved past his "blue stage"? The written word of Hunter S Thompson definitely took shifts from his earlier to later works, but I don't think many people question his integrity as a writer. So why can't a musician grow as their life experiences grow?

I realize it's another "before your time" reference, but 50 years ago, Bob Dylan walked onto stage and plugged in his guitar, practically inciting a riot amongst the counter-culture people of the day... there was a LOT of "sell out" chants and gnashing-of-teeth from the underground movement at the time, but it turned out to be one of the most important moments in rock-n-roll history. What you're basically saying is that you'd be on of those in the crowd demanding his head for "turning his back to the cause" and history would be looking back at you and just shaking it's head.

Is there a LOT of sh*t music out there that is corporate driven? You betcha. Are there people who sell their musical integrity in the name of fame and money? Happens all the time. Are there people who are able to reach a cord in the general public and become popular without sacrificing their artistic integrity... yup, and that's why I challenged the original statement.

And to deathtokoalas, indeed, your points are all valid and I'm not trying to suggest that any of the bands that I listed (other than the Beatles) were the top performer in their day... I'm sure any search for "Top Billboard" in any particular year back then will reveal a lot of "who the f*ck are THEY!?!" results. They might not have been the "most popular", but they were popular and selling out stadiums wherever they went and their sustained popularity all these decades later can demonstrate how quality isn't necessarily diminished by cultural acceptance.

Chris Maher
If the Dickies sell out, I stop listening to them, because I no longer identify with them. Maybe I should clarify. In my opinion, because there is no way I can speak for anyone but myself. Good music, What I consider good music should never be popular. I'm not saying they shouldn't make money or have fans. I'm not saying that good bands that started underground haven't become popular. When a band begins to get to big I, Me, Myself loose interest. And when they become a product of Hollywood like so many of the bands you have listed I loose interest completely. I don't like the underground because of its exclusivity or its ability to keep trendies out. I like it because that's often the purest message you'll get from the artist, Un tainted by to much fame or fan base. They're often still grounded. you don't get songs or ideas tailored for the vast majority. Like all the movies that have come out over the last 10 years. Made for everybody but satisfies only the most watered down. I wouldn't even say all popular bands are bad, I just wont call myself a fan of theirs. I don't want to see the music that inspired me to play, be turned into the next generations Hot Topic fashion trend. There are still some bands out there who are great and haven't become to big. Man or Astro-man is one of them, and for that I am thankful. 

deathtokoalas
you know that the dickies suck, right?

Chris Maher
I'm glad you think so.

deathtokoalas
utterly vapid. and, intentionally so.

seems like a very strange band to hold up as an example of holding their credibility. they're basically doing a clown routine.

Chris Maher
lol, ok kid. You must know allot about music. I guess I'll just go enjoy my vapid clown show. Way to look up a few vids on YouTube to prove nothing.

deathtokoalas
i'm a lot older than i look. i still get carded. the kid upstairs seems to think i'm his age; i don't have the heart to tell him i'm probably literally twice it. but, hey, you don't deny this. i just think it's somewhat comical.

"i consider the absolute high point of art music to be goatwhore."

Chris Maher
Manny, Moe and Jack
Pretty Please Me
Toxic Avenger
Caligula
Road Kill

All great songs. Most of which pre date you, I'm willing to bet. Unless your 40. I can't tell from your pic. 

Chris Maher
No, I believe your allot older then I think.

deathtokoalas
i'm not 40.

it's silly, fluffy pop music. i have no objection to you enjoying that. but i would expect a certain ironic distance, as in "i like this because it sucks!". it has to be in the guilty pleasure pile, or not listened to at all.

Chris Maher
I've seen Goatwhore open for Gwar maybe 3 times. There the band everyone stands real still for, right?

deathtokoalas
i really don't know much about goatwhore, their name is just particularly well suited for punchlines.

lucidloon
So what's your opinion on Motown? The Temptations and such. That was very much pop music, but I would argue it's damn good too.

deathtokoalas
to be frank, i have very little opinion of it. i haven't heard much of it. it's something that peaked 20 years before i was born and has little cultural connection or relevance to the things i'm interested in.

i have somewhat of an opinion on what you could call 60s girl groups, but it's from a feminist perspective and is broadly negative.

i've recently moved to the canadian side of detroit, so i might be expected to. but, i really don't.

and, i guess if i were to take a walk through dearborn and randomly ask around about opinions on stockhausen, i wouldn't get much of a response, either. that's understandable. it's just not culturally relevant.

most of the shows i've been to since i've been here are broadly categorized as punk shows, so the audience is broadly white. but, i mean, i'm white. a little native, a little jewish, a little italian, but white. that's not that weird, really.

i'd like to hit a good jazz show, but i haven't come across one yet. the billy cobham show a while back was a bit steep, price wise. i'd be more interested in the fusion of the period.

and, if i could trace motown forwards to something i could connect with, i'd have more interest in it. but, my understanding is that motown became disco, which became hip-hop. and it's just not a lineage i've delved into.

so, when i say i don't have an opinion, i really mean that: i'm approaching it largely from a point of ignorance, brought on by the fact that it really has no relevance to me, culturally.

but, regarding the girl groups, specifically?

i find most of it is coming from a very repressed place. the lyrics are broadly horrible. it's all upholding demure stereotypes of women. a lot of it was written by men, and most of the profits went to men. i find it really offsetting on that level, and don't see a lot of value in it.

i think that does tie in to what i'm saying, because it was upholding a concept of femininity that the counter-culture was railing against pretty hard at the time.

lucidloon
I was thinking more in terms of musicality than the social impact of lyrical content to be perfectly honest. I think that's two different conversations. 

deathtokoalas
see, i can't honestly have this discussion; i'm not well enough informed.

lucidloon
Fair enough! 

hi again

1) i was thinking you'd drop by to check on the job, but the guys wanted to ask me to tell you that the plaster needs a second or third job. i think it's just cosmetic.

2) i noticed you put some paving stones out in the front. i was going to go get some at the beginning of august (i have a big home depot run planned), but i have to say that's a lot more than i was planning on. i won't touch the stones until you tell me what you want done with them. i was actually thinking that maybe the neighbour might want a little say in it, to be fair about the whole process of ripping down the garden. i *had* asked her not to cover the window, but she did anyways, which is why i just acted. my concern was/is just keeping the window clear; i have no meaningful opinion on the actual landscaping, subject to the practical request. if that's important to her, i have no objection to letting her take control of it - as long as the window stays clear.

3) i'm going to drop the request for the fire inspection because the fire separation to the basement seems to be re-established. just briefly, it seems like the philosophy in the fire code is about risk. there's almost no restrictions on single, detached units because the risk is only to the property owner, and increasing risks for larger and larger buildings because the risk is shared for more and more people. that is, the bigger the property is, the more people the landlord is making risks on behalf of, and the more stringent the requirements. i do feel there's some risk in having the furnace in the kitchen like that, but i don't feel there's any measurable risk down here anymore so i don't feel i have the moral or philosophical right to infringe on risks you decide on for you and your family - that would be characteristic of an overbearing tenant, which i'm trying not to be.

4) i am going to be building some large shelving units down here at the beginning of august (when i make that big home depot run) in the bedroom, living room and a few places in the hall around the kitchen. i want the shelving for books and cds and towels, but they could be used for anything. none of it will be attached to the wall or anything, it will all be free standing, but it's going to be measured and cut to fit the unit so it's going to more or less become a part of the unit. it will be easy enough to remove one day if you have to and/or you want to. but i would be unlikely to take these shelves with me (then again, i think i'm unlikely to move, too). regardless, if you want some influence on that, let me know. right now, i'm just thinking about very simple sealed and unpainted wood units...

5) lastly, i'm not sure if you're aware that the ontario energy board boosted gas prices by 40% on april 1 and that there's some expectation that this will happen a few more times in the next few years. gas is still waaaaaay cheaper than it was even five years ago, but you'd have to expect that's something the gas companies are out to equalize, and there might not be such a dramatic difference in price anymore four or five years from now. it's something to look into further before you switch the rest of the building over. it's a shame that solar is still so prohibitively expensive to install and upkeep, because it can actually generate electricity to *sell* and is the only way to really get off the grid.

j

i like this thought process, and have often brought it up in academic settings (with various results). some people realize the cold rationality underlying it. others knejeerk instinctively into some kind of post-modern anti-intellectual turtled posturing...

it reminds me of a sarcastic commentary i wrote for good old greek civ 101. you know the one, with the homers and the herodotuses and the...

it's not formal writing (the submission format was over personal email), and i was but a child. don't be silly in the criticism. but it's still fun to think about all these years later.

the solstice alignment through stonehenge is almost certainly not a coincidence, though.

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/thoughts/trolls/greekciv101.html

ouch.

my ceiling is now that of the hole-lacking variety.

yay!

yup. hole's getting patched. the logic i provided was entirely accepted.

very relieving. and he actually seems happy i pointed it out to save him headaches down the road.

i also received a verification that the unit is older than 1998, as it was here when he bought it in 1996.

that's useful to know.

Rules relating to rent

(2) Sections 104, 111, 112, 120, 121, 122, 126 to 133, 165 and 167 do not apply with respect to a rental unit if,

(a) it was not occupied for any purpose before June 17, 1998;

section 120 is rent control, reducing rent increases to cpi. units built after 1998 are NOT subject to this legal restriction.

that's a helluva fucking loophole in the law. supposedly, it's to provide "incentives" to build new units which "provides jobs".

this is politician-speak for class warfare.

but i'm safe. was worried, as he mentioned this unit was an add-on...

i had a little talk with him, and i'm not really the problem unit. i mean, i'm not running a/c and so long as the unit is insulated it should hold summer heat deep into the fall.

i didn't have to turn the heat on down here until the polar vortex hit. presuming the winter is nowhere near as cold as last year, i should be the least of his problems.

it's actually the unit on the other side that is costing him.

he admitted to not thinking it through.

we may actually get some better insulation in out of the ordeal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGHLTuDe1GA

yeah. i took the switch off and the connection had actually broken in half.

less than a year old.

i think they sell them at the dollar store across the street....

although i should point out it's made in china.

communist? yeah...

i need to relax, i'm really agitated.

the sound collage is coming along well, anyways.

it's supposed to sound like a time portal.

the conceptual basis of the piece was initially just some slowed down guitar chords, and it's turned into something more than it was meant to be, but, hey, do things to the most extreme possible...

it's not that my $10 coffee machine refusing to work is catastrophic, it's that i am entirely cognizant of the reality that it was designed to break. if i had more time, i'd sue out of principle.

it's this idea of forced obsolescence. they actually teach graduate courses about it. it's fancy language for designing things in order to break, so they'll be repurchased. and, it's a central aspect of our throwaway, consumerist culture.

there's no use in boycotting because everybody does it. it's an industry standard in industry after industry. graduate level courses are usually for general application; it's getting the idea of making things badly across, so it can be applied on a general basis.

there's nothing in a coffee machine to break, so they design the switch badly on purpose. and, the way they did it is really dangerous. the burner comes on, but the pump doesn't.

result: a useless pile of plastic and metal, and another $0.50 of profit from me after taxes and payouts. ugh.

if we were to sit down and purposefully design the dumbest society possible, we really couldn't do much better than what we've already got.

and, of course there should be a law against it, but you've probably forgotten that regulating corporations is COMMUNISM.

COMMUNIST!!!

i will say this, though: i'll be able to measure the real level of malice by any rent increases i get.

i know he can only raise rent by the cpi, which was very low last year, here. the max increase before january 1 is about $5, and that will lock him in for a year. the maximum increase for 2015 is about $10, but only a year after the previous one. that's of little use to him, and not going to affect me much.

the thing is i also know that he knows this, because i overheard it. so, we'll see about that.

he drew up the lease and set the price. i didn't haggle him. i didn't ask questions. again, i have little sympathy: if he's losing money, it's because he set the price too low. i can't afford to correct that error. if he signed a bad lease, it's something he'll have to deal with.

actually, no. the air outside is noticeably cooler right now, so it makes sense to keep them closed for at least a few hours. but, given that the air is going to be trying to push the temperature down here lower than 20, i suspect they'll be open by the end of the night.

or i could leave the windows closed and let the heat come on.

i mean, that's what would actually happen. lol....

not any real fear it's going to hit 10-15. the heat will come on. but that's preposterous.

it would be good for demonstration, though.

the heat is set to 19. if i get to worst case during this week's cold snap, that's where it'll be for demonstration purposes.

i guess that really shows the contradiction, though. in order for it to be 20 upstairs, it's going to need to be less than 19 down here. but that's where i (quite reasonably) have the heat turned DOWN to for the summer. meaning the desired temperature upstairs is quite literally impossible to achieve with that hole in the floor.

and, i'm not above setting it to 21 in august, either.

i mean, i'm legally entitled to it.

to be clear: we're really both entitled to set the temperature in our respective units. of course. i don't begrudge the guy. i wish he had better control, too.

what we're seeing is why holes in the floor are not permitted by law. that's the problem...

i mean, what's going to happen right now is he's going to overheat while i'm freezing. the heat goes up, the coolants go down: he's cooling me while i'm heating him. we both lose. i happen to have entropy on my side, but it's really not good for either of us.

i'm convinced the hole gets patched this week....

back to constructing this sound collage, now.

and they're now open again. it went down about a half a degree in an hour with them closed, which is too fast for my liking. it's already gone back up .2 in ten minutes since i've re-opened.

i was thinking 25 was a good back and forth, but now i'm thinking more like 22. and i have to keep humidity in mind.

note: i overheard some people talking about the temperature upstairs, but i didn't get a conclusion on the thought process. he seems to be noticing, already.

the air is set to 20 degrees upstairs, which is about what i thought, and which means if i don't maintain open windows down here the hole in the floor means i can expect an indoor temperature of 10-15 down here, which is not "liveable".

so, i've got massive leverage.

i mean, the hole in the floor isn't legal. i'll waive it on various conditions, which includes the open window. it's just not reasonable to push an open floor AND an air conditioner set that low. it's one or the other.

knowing what it's set to up there will also help me understand when it's time to close the window at night.

yeah, they're closed.

i'm hoping i let in enough heat upstairs that the air will spend all night processing it, and we can start again tomorrow. but i'll find out soon enough.

and it was hot today, so it's a good test case.

yeah, i'm probably going to want to close the window, but we'll see what it feels like.

no. i'm going to wait until it starts falling and guess if it's heat escaping out or the air overpowering.

i want to stop it from escaping, but if the air is overpowering i want to keep the window open.

as stated, the consequence of the cooling system in an enclosed basement is a meat locker. the window must be open at least some of the time. i just want to see if i can get away with sucking the heat in during the day and then keeping it in overnight, then sucking more in during the day, etc - rather than just keeping it open all the time.

see, it's going to be pumping upstairs if i close the window, and outside if i don't.

so, it's a question of just how much energy i can pull in.

well, i'm going to try to close the window tonight and see what happens.

after a little thought, i've decided to keep them open overnight. it will flush the hot air out, yes, but it will hopefully also turn the a/c off. i don't mind if the temperature in here goes up and down with the outside temperature, it's that frigid refrigerated air that i won't tolerate. i'd rather the outside cools it down down here on it's own, and keeps the coolants upstairs.

this is going to dramatically affect the tenant upstairs, but they drilled a hole in the floor so what else am i supposed to do...

what was happening this morning was that the coolants were sinking, as would be expected. if i do nothing, that will get worse and worse until the entire basement is a few degrees cooler than the upstairs.

i can only guess that what's happening upstairs right now is that the hot, humid air from the windows is rising up through the duct. and, the strength of this will depend on the heat outside.

it's cooling down a little this week....

....but it'll be warm again next week. a full week of 30 degree weather with the windows wide open like this could plausibly render his machine useless.

but, it's really sort of one or the other: i freeze or he sweats. and, i have entropy on my side.

windows are open, and they will probably not close for the summer (unless the floor is fixed).

it's definitely weird to stand in front of the window like it's a heat source. it's actually blowing in a little. but, i need the windows open. otherwise, this place is going to be a meat locker. and keep in mind i like it closer to 30 than 20.

if you throw the liberal philosophy and rhetoric about property rights out the window (and this is especially necessary in canada, where property rights are only weakly recognized by common law, and have no standing whatsoever at a constitutional level, being explicitly rejected by parliament (perhaps for political reasons, but nonetheless) repeatedly), the way "buying" property works in reality is something that is basically still feudal in nature.

the proposed constitutional amendment (which the conservatives actually voted down, afraid it was going to create social rights) was itself more or less useless. it said something like "nobody should be deprived of property, unless we say so - in which case we agree to compensate them for it". it was never worded in a way that allowed for real property rights, it was more of a right of compensation for state infringement on property. and, in truth that's what already exists in case law. the proposed, and defeated, amendment was not really meaningful, except to legislate existing case law.

the legal owner of every inch of property in canada (including virtually all native land reserves and virtually everything we refer to as "private property") is the crown, which in canada since 1981 (at the latest possible interpretation date) is legally considered to mean the federal government, to the chagrin of certain groups, but legally so nonetheless. the crown has split this giant area of land up into a very large number of fiefs, which it retains ownership of but passes certain privileges off in the form of various titles. the most common type of fief in the former british empire is the fee simple. fee simple is a title that allows the owner of the title (not the owner of the land) to develop the land in certain ways in exchange for a yearly rental fee, which we refer to as a property tax. actual ownership of land in canada is called allodial title, which is unheard of - it only exists in theory, as an abstract possibility.

see, this is where the liberal literature about property gets really confusing, which reduces to an educational fail. i mean, it's what they teach us in schools, so it's what people think is accurate. there's this widespread misunderstanding that property owners (note the language, which is suggestive) ultimately allodially own a piece of property, and that taxes and regulations on that property are consequently some kind of invasion of freedom. but this interpretation is purely projective. it's what liberals WANT to be true, but it has essentially no legal or traditional basis of any kind whatsoever in canada. it is really just simply *wrong* to try and understand property like this. if it's what you want, then get a gun and start a militia, because it's the only way you're going to get it. personally, i'm not much of a fan of understanding property like this. i'd rather talk about social ownership than private ownership.

but, neither of these things exist in canada. in reality, the crown owns the land, and the taxes paid are a yearly type of rent to use it, subject to the conditions laid out in laws (which are the rental agreements, and dictated by the state).

the truth is that this is the general form of rights in canada, and it may actually be the smarter way to do it, despite appearing weaker.

our rights are all of the form:

"all canadians have this right, unless we take it away, in which case we agree to compensate for it."

rather than american rights which are just generally of the form:

"all americans have this right."

...which *actually means*

"all americans have this right, unless we decide otherwise, in which case you're fucked."

the rule of law is another liberal fantasy that comes off as particularly hilarious when you look at the actual historical record.

but this isn't yet another anarchist rant....

see, again: i'm not getting malice. he's legitimately interested in "getting it to code". and, the idea that recycling air between apartments is not a good one did make sense once i pointed it out: we're talking disease, smell, smoke, food, sound and anything and everything else going through the vents. he seemed to be most concerned about the value of the apartment given that change, and it alone might be enough to get him to patch the holes back up.

but, i'm still not sure he's getting the abstraction that this is an apartment and not a home. running through the fire code, it seemed to be that the regulations become increasingly strict depending on how many people are involved - which is itself just flat out stupid, but it reflects the (very stupid) dominant ideology in capitalism about risk and consequence.

if you own a detached house with one occupant (probably you), there are almost no rules about where to put the furnace. as a single occupant, you're allowed to take on as much risk as you'd want. risk to the neighbours doesn't seem to be factored in.

but, as the size of the apartment grows and the people that the landlord is taking risks *on behalf of* increases, the regulations increase. in other words, the legal reason he can't put a furnace in the kitchen is because he's not allowed to take that risk on my behalf (and the behalf of the other tenants).
but, i can't explain it like that because i'll be asked to waive the risk. it'll be viewed as negotiable. i don't own the risk, myself, it's collective in the building. i suppose the building could vote on it, but i'm more interested in what the fire code expert says about the nature of the risk.

he just kept going back to "normally, in a house..." and "the house code says..", despite repeatedly pointing out that these aren't the right codes.

but it's not malicious. he wants it done right, too.

it's all the same cultural themes as at the end of the clinton administration. techno. emo. ufos. these things actually have something in common. if you don't think the economy is planned, you're not paying attention. but note that the planners do not believe in democracy; the social engineering is being pushed down from above, and it's not a utopian vision. this future has a new religion in it, with new value systems, but it's designed to uphold the status quo rather than abolish it.

it's the type of thing people fear the republicans are scheming up. but, that's the democratic plan, which seems to have just been rebooted with obama without so much as a thought. it's absolute clinton redux. the republicans don't even care anymore, the democrats do everything the business class wants anyways, so they're just happy to hold the office every few years to cut their own taxes.

one of the more surreal conversations i've stumbled upon in relation to this was actually from peter gabriel, who very coyly suggested that the social and political messaging behind his art was to create a globalized culture, and there was some kind of structure underlying it. well, if the nwo sounds like passion, i must say that, i, for one, welcome our new kosmische overlords.

not to drag the nwo scare tactics out. we may end up ruled by computerized aliens, but no intelligent person is going to actually believe it's anything more than a front. these guys aren't marxists; they're not even on the left side of capitalism. it's fascists across the board, right now. and global bodies like the un remain the only way to stop them.

if you want to stop them. it's a hard road from a to b, but we may require a long period of horrific global governance to reach a state of communism.

i mean, things aren't working out so well at the moment.

substantial fire across the street. seems to be contained, but it just reinforces my point that fires happen and we have fire regulations that are designed by experts in order to minimize the risk of them happening. ideally, people would follow those regulations out of good sense. but, we're strange animals. we all think we're special, and that bad things can't happen to us. so, sometimes we need the community to help us in ensuring those risks are being properly minimized.

i don't know what caused that fire.

it would be unfair of me to suggest somebody fell asleep with a cigarette. but stats are stubborn things, it's a place where people drink early into the morning and it's something that sometimes happens when you decide not to go asleep on a friday night of heavy drinking (and whatever other type of consumption).

that's one of the reasons i always smoke outside.

deathtokoalas
cognitively speaking, elephants are very similar to young children. they're in this unique middle point of intelligence that makes torturing them amongst the most heinous crimes imaginable for the precise reason that most people would consider torturing a child to be worse than torturing an adult - full awareness, without full understanding.

this isn't a secondary issue. this shit just has to stop.

Fiona K
"Heinous," yes ...  Dude, have you looked at your online handle?  WTF.

deathtokoalas
elephants are intelligent creatures that we can look forward to cohabiting the universe with.

koalas are despicable in their revolting displays of cuteness, and must be abolished. 

Fiona K
Okay, DTK, you made me laugh. :)  I was pretty sure how you intended us to take your name, anyway.  I think, though, that elephants are not similar to young human children; they're far smarter. But even if they were only as smart as cats, or mice, most animal lovers would say exactly what you said.  Even one tortured elephant is too many.  Remember the story by Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"?  It's the perfect explanation and indictment of any society that allows the torture of one living being so that everyone else can live happily.  I grew up with friends from New Delhi, and I am shocked that their home country can produce elephants and also produce sadists who don't understand the simplest concepts of rights.  DTK, thanks for writing; you really did make me laugh.

i sent out an email, but i didn't make any of these accusations. i pointed out 6.2.3.9 above, but suggested i didn't care (in the end, i don't, really - it's not a big enough issue to get pissy about). i also requested a fire inspection...

i'm trying to be non-confrontational and make it about safety. and it is. those laws are there for a reason, and, i mean, his brother is in there....

and, i don't want to kill the guy financially, but i find it very hard to believe that nobody thought to think that putting a gas furnace a few feet from a stove might not be a good idea. i kind of have to think that it was ignored on purpose. and, to that i have no response but "you should have done it rationally, if not legally, to begin with. sorry.".

i'm actually in a building that is somewhat of a hole in the building code, although i'm assuming it's well over 400 m^2. well, a quick calculation took it way over...

there's all kinds of rules about where you are and aren't supposed to put a furnace. it's supposed to be in a fire-separated room - ruling a kitchen out. unless it has "vertical separation" (which i doubt), in which case you can use a sprinkler. it's supposed to be a good distance away from bedrooms and living rooms, meaning where it is is no good. there's supposed to be separation in the flooring (which was just eliminated by cutting the holes through the floor).

and, you know, i just took a look through the building code act, and it's actually not even legal to recycle air between apartments.

6.2.3.9. Interconnection of Systems

(1) In a residential occupancy, air from one suite shall not be circulated to any other suite or to a public corridor or public stairway

not to mention fire issues with putting a furnace in the kitchen, now that i think about it.

i think i should deal with this by getting a safety inspector in here and focusing on that part of it.

concerns regarding the furnace

hi.

i'm sorry to make this long, but i've been thinking about the furnace all day and i've got a number of fairly serious concerns. i wish i had brought these up to you before things got underway, but it wasn't clear to me exactly what was going on and i sort of assumed things would be done in a way that was up to certain regulations.

i want to state up front that i'm not going to go running to any kind of regulatory body. i mean, it's an option that exists, but i'm not one to bring the government in to deal with issues lightheartedly - that's an extreme step that i would consider an absolute last resort. i'd probably move out before i did that. i think that would ruin the tenant-landlord relationship, which i'd rather keep cordial and positive. but, there's a lot of things about this that aren't sitting right with me.

to begin with, i want to point out that the idea of running an air vent between units is prohibited by ontario law.

6.2.3.9. Interconnection of Systems

(1) In a residential occupancy, air from one suite shall not be circulated to any other suite or to a public corridor or public stairway.

that's pretty clear, and it's exactly what the return systems are doing.

now, i want to be clear that this does not bother me, personally, as a tenant. i think it may concern your brother due to noise and temperature issues, as i don't keep regular hours and i'm likely to keep the windows open if the air gets out of hand. but, as a practical matter, i don't really care.

further, i've pointed out repeatedly that i plan to inhabit this unit for many years moving forwards, conditions allowing.

but, flaunting the law on that point is going to make the unit unrentable in the future should something happen that will force me to move out. i think it's worth questioning the wisdom of carrying on that path, for that reason.

further, the aesthetic changes attached to running open ducts and condensation pipes through here are dramatic. this is really a very nice unit. is it really worth damaging it's aesthetic quality to such an extreme point to save costs on electricity? put another way, what's the use of reducing the costs in the unit if you make it unmarketable (or drastically reduce it's market value) in the process of doing so?

i suppose the pipes could be drywalled over. but, that return vent is a more serious issue.

as your existing tenant, something i'm more seriously concerned about is fire code issues. i don't know the specifics about what exists upstairs, so i don't want to jump to any conclusions, but i've reviewed the fire code and i'm EXTREMELY SKEPTICAL that what exists upstairs is permitted by law. i'm sure you expect your brother to inhabit the unit for many years as well, but that's another issue that i think requires some thought.

my one request is as follows: as a matter of practicality regarding my safety as a tenant, i would request that you have the situation inspected to ensure that all fire codes are met. i think that's well within my rights as a tenant, and i think it's a more than reasonable (and not at all confrontational) request.

j

actually, i should point out that i don't know where the thermostat is. i'm assuming it's measuring the temperature at the cold air return (you'd think modern furnaces are high tech about this, but i don't know); if the thermostat is away from there (like in his living room, for example) then it shouldn't have that kind of feedback problem.

given that the furnace is in his kitchen, though (yes, for real, there's a furnace in the kitchen - good luck renting that unit in the future, too), it seems likely to me that the thermostat is probably connected directly to it....

i mean, i wouldn't expect them to chop through the walls to place the thermostat five feet away in the other room. it's probably mounted right on it.

so, installing the furnace meant putting in a cold air return that is basically an open hole in the floor.

1) noise. i'm a respectable tenant, i don't blast music or make any more noise than would be considered reasonable, but i'm often awake off hours and there's not any chance i'm going to modify that. that's a big part of what i consider to be freedom. so, he's going to hear me watching youtube or making spaghetti at 4:00 am. *shrug*. there wasn't a problem until they drilled a hole in the floor...

2) air conditioning. i like to acclimatize myself. he seems to like the air on full blast. i'm not going to freeze down here, i'm going to open the window and let the heat in. and, the hot air is going to rise, meaning his air isn't going to work the way he wants it to. *shrug*.

3) i don't have any plans to move anywhere, but if they get pissy about the noise or the windows? good luck renting this to somebody else with a hole in the floor and pipes moving out every which way. i don't care, myself, i'm interested in the amount of space down here and not what it looks like, but what they're doing is irreversibly aesthetically damaging to the property. this was a nice unit, but we're talking about open furnace ducts on the ceilings (like you'd see in an unfinished basement) and a condensation pipe running open through the bathroom and drilled through the tiles into the concrete. it's actually a good thing for them that i don't care, that i've lived in half-finished basements most of my life, because just about anybody else would immediately move out. it makes it more like i'm renting somebody's basement than living in an apartment complex, which i think is how the landlord is more or less interpreting the arrangement.

again: i don't have any plans to move anywhere. i'm just going to make the adjustments i need, and the other tenants will have to deal with it. this simply isn't likely to work out well for the tenant upstairs, who happens to be the landlord's brother. and i'm not sure what their next step is, or if they even have one. i mean, they can't curfew me or tell me to close the windows...

i should point out that the furnace came in as plan b. the initial plan was to put a heat pump in.

but, over a very long email exchange, i was eventually able to explain to him that heat pumps don't work in canadian winters - that, in canada, a heat pump is functionally an air conditioner with an electric coil attached to it, and he'd just be wasting thousands of dollars. but, if i wasn't vigilant about it...

on the one hand, he's a good landlord. he's attentive. and he gives a fuck.

but i'm slowly concluding that he's just not that sharp.

and, you know, i wish i had done some research on this, or they had run their plans by me, because, looking at it, i'm more or less convinced that the way they've got it installed is basically just going to send the hot air back up through the return. when you add the cost of gas to the cost of electricity, it's going to cost him more than it would have if he didn't do anything at all. and, that's plus the cost of installing the thing....

again: there's no malice. and the idea of trying to reduce cost is reasonable.

but everything about the way it's being done is flat out stupid.

i mean, the first obviously dumb thing about this is that they put the furnace at ground level. who does that? the (unstated but obvious) reason is he wanted his brother to control the thermostat. but it doesn't make any sense to think you can heat a basement from the floor above it. the cold air returns on the furnace are going to pick the hot air up, which is likely going to affect the thermostat reading - because it's going to think it's warmer upstairs than it actually is, due to all the hot air coming up. meanwhile, i'm going to continue using electric heat (because the hot air won't distribute well down here from the ceiling), and that's *also* going to heat the cold air return, further reducing the efficiency.

my best guess is that he'll probably react by turning it up higher, correctly realizing it doesn't work but thinking the solution is to set the thermostat to 30. but, it's not going to make a difference, because the hotter it blows out through the ceiling down here, the hotter it comes in to the return. turning it up is going to actually turn it OFF.

i'd like to laugh, but it's more sad than funny.

i took physics beyond grade 13, but it was only required up to grade 10. the only thermodynamics they bothered with was the conservation laws. they didn't even introduce newton's laws until grade 12 - an elective course. i don't know how i remember that....

i guess this is what happens when your education system sucks.

you want to put the returns as low as possible, ideally on the floor of the basement. if you must put the furnace on the second floor, and want to heat the basement, the last thing you want to do is cut a hole in the floor for a return. you want that heat pumping downwards to have as difficult a time as is possible getting back up. it would consequently make more sense to INSULATE the floor...

i can't imagine the guys that installed it don't know that. well, maybe they don't....because who puts a furnace at ground level?

but, i'm sort of wondering if the installers are maybe stabbing him in the back for some reason.

again: i'm not the one that's going to suffer. i should just get some popcorn and relax...

re: those skips i was fighting with....

it does seem to be a directory issue after all, and i'm not sure why what i did fixed it anymore. i just tried to move the entire project to a different directory, and the skips came back. undoing the process (through the menu) fixed it, thankfully. i have a hunch just copying it back wouldn't have.

after going through all the checks i did, i have to conclude it's a problem with the cubase software. this is an old version - sx 3, from late 2005. i couldn't imagine it not getting fixed. but i don't really know what it's doing that would cause this.

i've learned the lesson, though - don't change the directory.

of course, that's not at all feasible to actually hold to. i have to copy to create alternate mixes. i'm also going to want to back these files up when i'm done. i'll have to experiment with this to see what happens and ways to fix it other than re-rendering the freeze tracks.

fuck this.

tell the extreme minority of anti-pot puritans to vote conservative. trudeau is only running out in front due to the incompetence and unpopularity of both of his opponents.

if he was smart, he'd jump all over this. marijuana legalization is probably the only populist issue available for any candidate to run on at this point.

http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/marc-emery-the-prince-of-pot-may-be-a-liability-for-the-liberals

the polls are overwhelmingly in favour of full legalization.

it's not just some fringe of anarchists. fiscal conservatives understand it's a waste of money all the way through. civil libertarians, who traditionally vote liberal in canada, have a lot of arguments. progressives want the tax revenue.

it's across the spectrum, there's really no opposition outside of the christian right.

comparing emery to a snowden or a morgantaler is a hefty exaggeration, but he will eventually be pardoned and get a state apology.

i think this is worth watching, although i haven't seen the alperovitz section yet.

specifically, richard wolff lays out the reality of the situation fairly well. that's the part i think is worth watching.

unfortunately, i think he's still a little too tied to historical materialism. the technology is moving too fast for workplace communes to be an answer for the future; what he's describing was an answer for the 70s or 80s, before it became so abundantly clear that the future is in automation. in fact, some of the production is moving back here, but it's being tied to almost workerless factories. how do we talk about workplace democracy in the future, when the factories of the future don't have workers in them?

it brings us back to the macro, in a way that skips that socialist stage. if we're to have automated factories, they should neither be owned by capitalists nor by phantom workers but by society itself.

what that means is talking about operating at cost, and taking the surplus out of the equation altogether.

so, it's worth watching. but, i'm still awaiting the answer to the question i posed several years ago. nobody else seems to be thinking like this.

if markets were the way to maximize individual freedom in an agrarian economy, and socialism was the way to maximize individual freedom in an industrial economy, what is the way to maximize individual freedom in a post-industrial, automated, computerized economy?

the best answer i have is full communism. but i don't know how to get there, either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl2Yx6ciFUc

well, somebody's studied it.

i don't currently have the time or interest to review the literature, but this is quick survey.

http://www.demneuropsy.com.br/imageBank/PDF/v4n4a05.pdf

it's funny how, the more a piece is practiced, time begins to slow down. i wonder if anybody's really studied this...

it's just perception, of course. but time is weird. relativity theory suggests (and suggests is the right word. the experiments that supposedly uphold this part of it are kind of weak. for example, they sent a plane around the earth a few times and noticed the clocks came back differently, in a way that sort of verified einstein's predictions. but, in fact, it was in the margin of error. i don't doubt einstein was on to something, and it's not like i found an error in the math or anything, but i'm a little iffy on some of the assumptions. relativity theory is an axiomatic system, built at the precise moment that axiomatic systems were being abandoned as unreliable. so, this is a perilous way to build a theory up. any future corrections to the axioms, and they're perpetually inevitable, may drastically alter the conclusions.) that time is not as constant as we perceive it as, but we're not accelerating to fractions of the speed of light very often, either, so it's not really wrong to think of it as a constant in day-to-day non-experimental life. i mean, playing my guitar isn't anything like synchronizing satellites.

but, there's no question that an ant or a fly must perceive of time as faster than we do. i mean, flies wouldn't be so hard to catch, otherwise. i guess it's just simple physics if you think about it: shorter paths for the electricity to follow. and it's true that insects are roughly comparable to primitive robots in terms of consciousness, it's just action/reaction, so that's not a totally useful comparison. but, if we could somehow be the proverbial fly on the wall, we would probably have difficulty understanding what was being said, because the waveforms would come in to us as slowed down, elongated messes. i don't even know if flies can "hear" or not...well, i guess they get vibrations of some sort but i don't know if that's actually sound or just noise.

something like that seems to happen when getting locked into the groove of an instrument. after a while, playing at 360 seems like playing at 250. it's not just a question of getting the mechanics right, it's the entire computation process. at first, the notes are blurry and it's difficult to think and play at the same time, but eventually the separation of the notes is as clear as it is at slower tempos and the ability to process the whole thing - finger movements, next notes, etc - slows down as well.

and i'm wondering if it might have something to do with higher aptitude to do various mental tasks amongst musicians. i mean, i'm not actually modifying time. my guitar is not a frame of reference. i'm not increasing my velocity. it must be that i'm thinking faster, getting my brain to work at a faster speed. physically, that would have to be synapses being built - that's what it *means* to think faster, right? to have more synapses, shorter paths, faster electrical responses. maybe the brain reuses those for math problems...

i'm rambling, just thinking out loud. but it really is remarkable how we're able to lock in and change that perception of time, whether it's the result of increasing transmission speed or something else.

there's this unfortunate tendency recently to think of intelligence as something genetic, but the brain is a highly plastic organ that is constantly changing with experience.

your current brain is not the brain you were born with. it's a highly individualized culture of cells that was built solely for you as a reaction to the experiences you've had in your life.

and it will continue changing for as long as you live.

a very odd structure has appeared on my front lawn.

it appears to be an electronic, flashing traffic sign asking drivers to slow down because it's a residential area. but, i've never seen anybody speeding through there. in fact, i'd say i see a car drive up marion and through that intersection about once a week. the cross street at cataraqui gets much more traffic, but there's basically nowhere to go down marion unless you live there, and there's actually only one house facing that way (marion is just full of a lot of large backyards that are parallel to it) so nobody even lives there. it's like placing a stop sign in a dead-end.

i suspect it's a camera. but, i'm not sure why they're being so low tech about it.

maybe they're frustrated by my rejection of mobile devices.

the reality is that they're not going to pick up anything interesting.

i seem to have cut my finger without noticing, and now there's blood everywhere. i don't think i've ever done that before. like, i spent five minutes trying to figure out where the blood was coming from, and it just kept coming. i thought it was my nose. i thought i was going crazy, or having some kind of stigmata event or something.

i must have cut it when i was making lunch. i washed some strawberries and let them dry in the sink. then i made a smoothie and a tomato sandwich, and went and watched the beginning of greenwald v. dershowitz while i was eating. i then put the dishes in the other side of the sink and picked up the paper towels from the top of the fridge to rip two sheets off to dry the strawberries. i find they keep best if you get the excess moisture off of them and then transfer them to tupperware, so i lightly dry them in the paper towel. i then did the dishes, and went back to get another paper towel sheet to wipe a sneeze off the floor and noticed the roll was full of blood. it looked downright grizzly, soaked in through a few sheets. i thought it must be something other than blood, but hadn't yet decided on if it was most likely to be tomato juice or hot sauce or strawberry juice...i mean, i *knew* it was blood, but it didn't make sense that it was blood, so it must have been something else, and it would be determined in time.

so, i went into the bathroom to get some toilet paper to blow my nose and there's blood on the toilet paper roll, too. now, i'm freaking out. checked my nose. no. was there somebody in here? is it just spontaneously appearing? did i get bit by something? am i seriously hurt, but in shock and can't tell? getting paranoid...

....but then i realized it was my finger, after checking over my hand several times.

i couldn't feel it at all. bizarre.

BUT

that also means my guitar calluses are back where they belong. which is good news.

i don't think it was deep. it only took a minute to clot with pressure applied, and there isn't even a scab. but, that was an unsettling experience, to say the least.

i must have been bleeding for a good ten-twenty minutes, but i can't find a trail, either, oddly.

so, the landlord is putting a furnace in here. apparently, the electric coils are expensive, and he's concerned electricity is going to go through the roof. which it no doubt will. we made a huge error in privatizing the grid to market rates, and it's leading to this sort of backwardsness.

i mean, i guess natural gas isn't as bad as oil, but a smart green policy would be encouraging people to move away from fossil fuels, not towards them as a less expensive option. from an environmental standpoint, hydro powered coils ought to be what's being strived for. and, there's not any good reason for these electricity spikes other than greed resulting from private ownership. hydro isn't expensive to operate, it just runs. it should be way cheaper than gas.

so, this is a step backwards, and is the direct result of state policy. whether we're talking of renationalizing the grid, or putting caps on prices, or whatever else, the guy *at the least* shouldn't be being pushed in the wrong direction due to costs. the state *should* be incentivizing him towards the greener choice, but at the least shouldn't be pushing him towards the less green option.

see, i can't and won't argue with the guy. i know the price difference. he's not running this for profit, he's just trying to take care of his family. he's doing what he's got to do. i blame the state for forcing him to do it to break even.

it's almost like the market has set itself up to provide cleaner, hydro energy as a higher end option. if you want to be responsible and reduce emissions, you'll have to pay for it! they've turned it into a fucking product; it's a price pyramid, instead of a social policy. but how could we expect different? and how can we expect a different future without addressing the economic screw-up?

it's just absolutely backwards.

directions for pedestrians wishing to cross the ambassador bridge

To: contact@cbsa.gc.ca

hi.

i have a nexus interview scheduled on july 17, and i've been having a hard time contacting somebody to ask for pedestrian directions over the ambassador bridge. i have never crossed the bridge before, but i'm aware that they do not allow people to cross by foot. the only information available in the directions is by car, so i don't know how i'm going to get across to the enrolment centre.

i do not own a vehicle, or even have a driver's license.

is there a place on the canadian side i can meet somebody at? if so, where? will i be allowed to cross under the tunnel (which is where i would normally cross, via shuttle) and walk along the river to the enrollment centre?

will i be forced to take a taxi? will i even be allowed to take a taxi?

j