my actual opinion is that you should let them die.

i mean, there should be treatment centres. this is a health issue, not a legal issue. i support the clean injection sites because it reduces the cost of health care by giving addicts clean needles. if they get aids from sharing needles, it costs for more to treat them in the end, and they become that much more of a burden on the system.

but, this idea that we need to go out of our way to save drug addicts is, i think, wrong. let them overdose....

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/funding-opioid-substitution-1.4032400

"he was a stupid, disgusting, awful human being" - a friend and collaborator of lou reed's, describing him, post-mortem.

i'll show in numbers how truly stupid this is and why it's worth resisting.

suppose that this is the course marking breakdown:

final: 50%.
midterm: 20%
assignments: 10%
participation: 20%

if my marks are as follows:

final: 90%
midterm: 90%
assignments: 99% [for me, this is realistic]
participation: 0%

....then my grade is:

.5*.9 + .2*.9 + .1*.99 + .2*0=
.45 + .18 + .099 =
 0.729

so, you can get an A on the exam, an A on the midterm and ace the assignments....

...and end up with 73% in the class.

does that make sense to you?

it happened. over and over and over...

but, i'm still not going to participate. i'm just going to stand in the back and snicker at how stupid you all are.

a responsible professor would look at this outcome and change their grading strategy. they might think it's impossible, or something. when they see it in front of them, they should abandon it.

participation marks are often attacked as ways to inflate grades, but i don't think that's actually the intent. the intent is to punish students that are independent-minded. it's meant to push out those that are disagreeable more than it is to reward those that are malleable.

i'm introverted, sure. and i have been diagnosed with social anxiety, but modern psychiatry is just a lot of pseudo-science and bullshit - you can't define what it means, to begin with, and there's no objective test to determine it. it doesn't mean a fucking thing to say i have social anxiety. when different "doctors" will tell you different things based on their intuitive perception of you, you're not dealing with science. so, i'm not even going to say i don't have it - i'm going to deny that it's even a real thing (despite actually relying on the diagnosis for my income).

i wasn't afraid to speak in class. i just couldn't be bothered to go there and be forced to talk to the fucking idiots around me. there wasn't any psychological break that was preventing me from going to class and spending the whole time arguing with students - and with profs if they insisted. it just wasn't my idea of a good time. i preferred to avoid the conflict by just not bothering to show up.

and, i would have argued. vehemently. brutally. violently. i was hardly just going to sit there and nod in order to get along with everyone.

it wasn't a psychological difficulty in expressing myself, it was a refusal to sit there and suffer their idiocy. and, i got nailed for it - and i took it out of legitimate protest. you want to knock down a smart kid because she doesn't want to sit around and have tea with you and pretend she agrees with you? do it. i dare you.

they did it....

the system isn't designed to push along the mindless, so much as it's designed to knock people like me down a notch. it's designed to punish those that are disagreeable, that have independent thoughts, that will stand up against what the teacher is pushing.

i preferred to be confrontational in writing. my essays were always combative.

but, i'm not joking or exaggerating when i point out that my gpa was knocked down by at least a point by a conscious refusal to kowtow to the insistence on participation marks.

see, i've build my entire life around avoiding participating in markets. i maybe wasn't cognizant of it until my late 20s, but it was nonetheless the driving force from the start.

at school, i'd avoid participating, even to my own detriment. there were classes that i aced and yet ended up with Bs in because i blew off the 10% participation mark. and, i always felt it was a just protest, and the school could fuck off for trying to force me to participate against my will.

i've spent my whole life trying to avoid labour. i remember going to a job interview, once, where i told the hiring manager that i wasn't there to make friends, and she practically started crying, as though rejecting participation was some kind of crime against humanity. i've always chosen the path of least participation.

and, i've been single most of my life because it's just another game that i don't want to participate in.

so, if the tendency to uphold participation as paramount defines this generation, you really don't want to look to me as a representative. i'm the exact opposite of that. i'd sell my soul to never have to participate in society ever again.

it's really astounding how young people view relationships.

it's, like, the more relationships they have, the more successful they are.

so, the more often they fail, the higher up some stupid hierarchy, they climb.

....as though they think they should be validated on whether they participated in meaningless sex, rather than whether they actually succeeded in relationship-building.

to clarify context: i do not have kids. thank god. that should be clear.

but, the father of these kids (in everybody relevant's minds - don't delve - let it be) is about fifteen years older than her. they lived together for a long time and had two kids, a boy and a girl, without getting married. he may have had feelings for his ex.

she was young.

frankly, she needed somewhere to stay and that's partly my fault.

i'm just trying to put the right context in place; i had removed myself from the situation, and there is no direct comparison to be had.

if a comparison exists, it is to somebody that faded away years before the camera picked up.

they're reporting this over multiple sources like marijuana legalization is a divisive issue.

but, this is not a scientific poll. and, scientific polls put legalization closer to 80%, across age groups. consistently.

again: this reeks of policy reversal, and of the government trying to come up with excuses not to do it.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/half-of-canadians-polled-support-marijuana-legalization-1.4025081

i'm legitimately not sure if this is purposeful scare-mongering or just absolute cluelessness.

it's not up to the government to run your business. i mean, maybe we can talk about that, but i wasn't expecting you to volunteer it.

here's the complicated, earth-shattering reality: hr departments are going to have to learn not to hire potheads, just like they don't currently hire drunks.

but, i mean, i say that like they don't know, right?

if you've never dealt with this before, here's a hint: when an applicant walks into the interview with slightly messy hair, red eyes and a sort of skunkish smell? don't hire that one.

can we get on with it now, already?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/marijuana-legalization-employers-safety-testing-impairment-medical-1.4017539

bunch of fucking peasants, right?

what do i know, i'm just a dumb artist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njG7p6CSbCU

i think the question that you need to ask yourself is this: is the function that you fill within society something that would be carried out by a slave in a system that allowed for slavery?

you might not actually know the answer....

....but, the truth is that most people would have to actually answer 'yes' to that question.

if that is the case, then why do you deny that you're a slave?

is it because you really enjoy your job? really?

is it because you're free to buy your own food and pay your own bills and make your own meals? or is it because you get a day or maybe two off a week, if you're lucky?

is it because you have a one in a million chance of escaping your reality if you work really hard and get really lucky?

i'm not trying to marginalize the importance of any of these things. certainly, a system with slaves that are treated well is preferable to a system with slaves that are treated poorly. and, a miniscule chance out is better than no chance at all.

but, being real about the situation presents a stark truth: there isn't a lot of difference between market labour and slave labour when you're in the bottom 95% of society. and, denying this reality is either being out of touch or being obtuse.

this is right out of zinn.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/how-wealthy-americans-divided-and-conquered-the-poor-to-create-the-concept-of-race/2016/04/19/2cab6e38-0643-11e6-b283-e79d81c63c1b_story.html

again: the capitalists don't care what colour you are. they're just looking for an excuse to enslave you, at any opportunity that they can. race. language. religion. gender. they'd enslave you on the basis of your eye colour, or your opinion of abbey road, if they could get away with it.

a pretty good exploration of this is actually howard zinn's people's history of the united states. one of the central themes of the text is that the core narrative of the history of the united states is the elite's use of racism as a tool to divide the labouring classes against each other.

when you see the capitalist press deny the reality of historical white slavery, and use language that is designed to make black people angry, what you are witnessing is the elite using race to divide workers against each other.

and, you need to see this for what it is in order to truly conquer it. you need to call it out for what it is. and, you need to not just stop promoting it but actively debunk it.

we need the working class to unite, and we need to stop falling into these racialized narratives that are designed to divide us.

read the zinn text, and apply what you learn to what you see in the world around us.

but, listen: if you think i'm trying to win a popularity contest or something...

i know that the revolutionary potential in our society is approaching zero. i don't pretend otherwise. and, i'm hardly interested in swaying public opinion.

i mean, what do you think? that i want to sit in the bourgeois parliament, or something? give me a fucking break. have you read anything i've written?

one of the things about not desiring power, and being interested solely in dismantling the propaganda of the state as a kind of historian for the revolutionaries of the future, is that i'm not remotely interested in what people think of me in the present tense. i mean, i know that i'm right - and i know that people will eventually know that i'm right. but, what that means is that i'm almost an acid test.

after all, you don't be a revolutionary by saying things that uphold the status quo. that's just not how this works. i'm necessarily going to piss people off. and, when you're finding yourself citing the new york times, you might want to take a step back and ask yourself who you're serving.

think of it like this: we'll know we're ready to take the next step when i'm not controversial. we'll know we've progressed when i don't make you upset. and, until that happens, i have an obligation to piss you off.

hey, guess what? i heard a nazi say, once, that the sun rises in the east.

therefore, anyone who says the sun rises in the east is a nazi.

and, that's not a common logical fallacy, either.

in fact, the reality is that there is a longstanding attempt to smear anybody that tries to draw the connection between wage labour and chattel slavery as a "white supremacist". it does not matter if these are the same people that have gone out of their way to abolish slavery. the ability to see through the propaganda must be attacked. this is a classic capitalist smear.

anarchists and socialists have been dealing with this kind of bullshit forever. and, here's the thing: if you fall for this, you're pretty far gone, to begin with. we can have these discussions if you insist. but, let's not miss the point, as they want us to, which is that slavery is about economics and not about race.

if you can't see through this tactic immediately, you're useless to the revolutionary left.

the capitalists don't care what colour you are. they're just always looking for any excuse they can to take away your bargaining power. race. religion. doesn't matter. they'll take whatever is available.

from the conspiracy theorists at jstor....hosting an article written by the unreliable charlatans at oxford, on behalf of the sketchy aha:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1833611?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

if you would like to learn more about irish slavery, you can do so by consulting the work of the white supremacists at the history department of the university of minnesota:

http://library.law.umn.edu/irishlaw/intro.html

anybody that questions the reality of irish slavery should begin by researching the law that repealed it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_emancipation

i heard that the potato famine was also a myth.

the irish were enslaved by the protestant british because they were catholic, and this is mainstream history. there were repeated attempted genocides, as well. the person that wrote this article is an ignorant imbecile and should be fired.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ireland-slaves-conspiracy-theory-debunked-st-patricks-day-1.4028855

this is a noble attempt at spin for a good cause, but the actual problem is that the government refuses to appoint judges. this has been a problem for a while, now.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/dana-larsen/canada-cannabis-raids_b_15292868.html

here is an article that explains the issue:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-appointments-judges-senators-1.3806035

the chief justice has even written articles about it, and i've posted them, but i'm not looking it up right now. it's not something that came out of nowhere: it's a serious problem, and people have been drawing attention to it for a long time.

so, the actual reason that these case are being dropped is very likely as a protest to the government's unwillingness to staff the country's benches. what they're saying is that if the government won't provide access to justice then this is what is going to happen - so it had better appoint some fucking judges, already. and, this is a real failure of government, too. so, what the fuck is going on?

i haven't seen any statements by the government. but, my honest best guess as to what's slowing things down is that it's not a priority because there isn't any payola in it. this government only seems to be focused on things it can profit from. it's not concerned with actually running the government...

it's a sad reflection on the reality of things. but, we need some articles going after trudeau to appoint some judges, already. they're not over-booked, they're understaffed. the chief justice has done all she can. and, should people stay in jail indefinitely without a trial? they should not. the media needs to take him to task for this, and the government needs to get to fucking work on it.

the following reviews now have pictures:

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2010/10/10.html  (hey rosetta, ottawa)
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2011/01/21.html (braids, ottawa)
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2011/05/10.html (nils frahm, ottawa)
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2011/07/10.html (a perfect circle / electronic picnic, ottawa)
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2011/10/05.html (valleys/suuns/ps i love you, ottawa)
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2011/11/05.html (sheezer, ottawa)

there will be more after 2012, as i kind of made it a habit to take shots before i went out, and still do.

i think that, on this file, we're better off just picking up the slack on funding and organizing. this is an accounting issue, it's offloading, he's not going to push back if we decide we want to pay for it. and, these programs should be run locally, anyways. i'd like to see the provinces and states get together and find the right way to step in and fill the void.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/03/17/donald-trumps-great-lakes_n_15430522.html

whatever the value of our intentions, the fact of the matter is that we're alienating ourselves.

the reality is that canada skipped the baby boomer generation. i know that sounds insane, but it's actually what happened.

the silent generation hung on in canada all through the 70s, 80s, 90s and into the mid 00s. chretien & martin were born in '34 and '38, respectively, and ran the country from 1993-2006.

stephen harper is on the x/boomer cusp (born: 1959), but few canadians would argue that he's a baby boomer. he's a dead-ringer for alex p. keaton from family ties, and there's probably a lot of truth in the observation.

canada did not ever have a prime minister born in the 40s and, excluding the '59er harper, did not have one born in the 50s, either.

the reality is that the world is currently run by baby boomers and people looking towards a generational turnover in the last election were jumping the gun. i told you that as it was happening - that the boomers would determine the election, not the millenials. the boomers picked these candidates in their respective primaries, and were going to dominate the vote in the end.

the canadian government needs a reality check: it's twenty, thirty, forty years younger than the governments in the rest of the world. and, these other governments are not going to look forward to the future when they see the canadian delegation. no. they're going to snicker that the canadians are up past their bed time. the canadians may not realize their own lack of experience, but the rest of the world will. and, we will not be taken seriously by these aging old men - aging old white men - that cannot relate to us or understand what we're prattling on about.

we need more old white men in government.

actually, i think that what trump is broadcasting is clear: he sees trudeau as a child who doesn't belong at the big kids table.

so, he's brushed him off on his kids, instead.

if the canadian government is serious in building a relationship with donald trump, they're going to have to send him somebody his own age (or older - he'll respect his elders) that has a history in business. donald trump and his cronies are simply never going to take a 40-something liberal seriously.

the obvious candidate is paul martin. 

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/03/16/daughter-diplomacy-trudeaus-unorthodox-play-for-donald-trumps-approval.html

actually, i'm going to be integrating pictures of show dates in, too, so there's going to be one more update for 2011, soon.

i'm sorting through old pictures. here's another shot from july, 2007, fwiw. i previously claimed i was "male identifying" in 2007, but i guess that wasn't even really true then, was it?

...although, i'm actually not even on hormones, here.

i'm 26.

but i'm coming to a kind of disturbing conclusion: i spent my 20s looking like a 12 year old boy, and i've spent my 30s looking like a 12 year old girl.

maybe i'll finally be able to spend my 40s looking like a woman :\.

puberty has to happen eventually, right?

i really want my testicles out asap.

i finally got up until the end of 2011 comprehensively finished before i slept, yesterday.

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/index.html

i can't remember when i last updated this here, but i've uploaded a lot of videos here:


...and i've updated this list quite a bit, too:


i'm hoping i can get most of 2012 done today. it should be a lit faster, after that.

i suspect she's being constrained by the publication in not being definitive at the end, but this is nonetheless a decent summary of the right way to think about things.

that is, the differences that exist are better explained by plasticity through gender roles than by biological determination. and, what this suggests is that decisions we make regarding how we choose to live are paramount in how our brains develop.

this is strange language, but i feel i need to use it to get the point across: if a boy chooses to socialize with girls and rejects the influence of boys and men around him, his brain will feminize as a consequence of that choice.

the true challenge that we face as a society is in accepting these decisions.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/girl-brain-boy-brain/

brain sex can sell lots of copies of cosmo, and create lots of clickbait on buzzfeed, as it upholds the conservative ideal of gender binaries. but, if you ask an actual scientist, that person will tell you that it's not actually really a thing.

our brains are not planned out by god, or by dna, or by aliens, or by any other mystical force. they are constantly changing organs. this ability of our brains to morph and change - rather than develop due to a set plan - is called plasticity.

what it means is that we are literally the products of our experiences. tabula rasa, baby! our brains can and will and must and do change depending on the environment that they exist within.

when you begin to understand the brain as this constantly shifting ball of plasma, rather than as this fixed identity given to you by god, the idea of a "brain sex" stops even being coherent. how can a brain have a sex if it's constantly shifting and adapting to the environment? what does that even mean?

the abstract suggests that there are sex differences, and we exist on a spectrum, but this is a poor use of language. what they should be talking about is how experiences cluster with gender roles, making it more clear that the overlaps are a consequence of experience, rather than of biology.

transgendered people do not have a genetic abnormality or a psychological disorder. we are merely a product of human variation. a truly liberal society would uphold our rights to make choices, not try and diagnose us with an illness and claim we don't have a choice and don't understand what we're doing.

but, we're coming up to the end of this fruitless search. the science on this is winding down. and, we're going to have to confront the reality that it hasn't found anything, and instead deal with the actual issue in front of us: that we are free to make these decisions and need legal structures to uphold our rights of free expression.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468.abstract

i don't know why people can't deal with the premise that humans are free to make a choice as to which gender they'd prefer to live as.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170117135943.htm

actually, i remember catching a lot of shit for this when i ran it by a friend of mine.

"you don't bring your ex flowers, j. ever."
"well i never bought her flowers when we were dating, it was just a pun i couldn't resist..."
"never. ever. never, ever bring your ex flowers."
"it was harmless. it was cute, dammit. she shouldn't have thought anything of it. i wasn't leading her on..."
"never. ever. never, never, ever, ever...."
"whatever. i mean, what's the use of being friends if you can't be fucking friends?"

see, she asked me to pick up some flour on the way there.

how was i going to avoid that?

this is another serious question: how long after a break-up is it considered acceptable to turn down sex on the basis of preferring friendship?

because we were around two and a half years since the breakup, and it had been something like a year since we'd last had sex (she was actually pregnant for the bulk of the second year). the last couple of times we hung out, it hadn't come up. in hindsight, i guess they were more normal types of dates - coffee meetings, walks by the water - but i didn't really feel that way, i just felt like i was hanging out with a friend and connecting. & there was the awkward dinner with her family like two years after we broke up, when her older sister actually seemed to think we were back together. maybe it was closer to happening in her mind than in mine.

it was just wrong, to me. i preferred her as a friend, at that point, and didn't want to muddy things. but, she was clearly shocked and things were never quite the same.

am i not right on this, though? isn't two and a half years enough time to acceptably refuse sex without it damaging a friendship?

this is a serious question, though: how long after you break up with somebody do you start closing the door when you use the bathroom? because that's not even casual sex. leaving the door open while defecating is strictly a relationship privilege.

six months didn't bother me much.

but, after three years, i was starting to wonder what her long term plans with me really were.

no. stop. listen....

when your previously live-in ex-girlfriend insists on showing up at your new apartment with her young daughter, almost four years after you've broken up, there is no level of naivete that masks the scouting intent behind the operation and no use in fooling yourself into thinking otherwise.

and, when you stop by her place a year later to inform her you're finally officially going back on drugstore hormones, it's hard to believe that she really has any true justification to get upset about it, after everything that's happened over the last five years. that's just base resentment.

no. i wasn't a "nice guy". that's not even close to the reality of things.

example: i insisted that we split the bill, at all times. that's not "nice guy" bullshit. it's actually strictly and brutally enforced egalitarianism.

in fact, i never bought her anything, and i would have been offended by the suggestion that i should have, as though i could have bought her affections or should have wanted to. fuck that...

in reality, i was actually female-identifying for the bulk of the relationship. i spent a lot of energy into trying to make a girl-on-girl dynamic functional. that's what i wanted out of the situation, and has a lot to do with why i was less reactive to her escapades with other men than i could have or should have been. in the long run, i wasn't going to be her boyfriend or her husband - i was going to be her girlfriend or her wife. if she was going to insist on being bisexual, i'd have to get used to that.

in fact, a lot of the guys she fucked around with - including my friends - were into the "nice guy" schtick far more than i ever was. they were the ones with steady jobs and cars and traditional concepts of things and stuff. i was usually unemployed. and, if you want to get into the freudian bullshit, you'll note that i was actually the badass tranny anarchist she went back to over and over again - until i ultimately rejected her. they were offering emotional support for all the conflicts we were constantly in - and we fought. hard.

the scenario was complicated, and i had my own prerogatives. it was a long time ago, and doesn't really matter (although this will eventually come out in the alter-reality, years from now). but, just, don't get it into your head that i was playing the nice guy and got fucked over by it - that's not even close to the reality of it, or even close to what happened when i walked away from it, in the end. we were explosive and dangerous and dysfunctional, and everything that happened was a corollary of that.

remember this point as it will reassert itself in the alter-reality repeatedly: a big part of the dynamics of things is that she had a very strong maternal drive (she ended up with two kids and a daycare job) and i wanted nothing to do with that. and, she told me she wanted kids, but i thought she meant after she graduated university and got a head start on a career, not, like tomorrow. we could talk about that later, right? but, she wanted to talk about it right the fuck now.

if i actually was playing the role of the nice guy, i'd have probably impregnated her like she wanted, and we'd probably have stayed together for years longer than we did. i may have even settled her down. i didn't want that...

....and years later, when all doubt had passed, when all rationalizations had ceased, she eventually resented me so much for not wanting that that she couldn't even talk to me anymore.

the actual role i was playing was the feisty egalitarian lesbian feminist femme punk, and i could be a fucking bitch about it when i got pissed off, too.

once again, let me say this: if trump wants to shut down the world bank, i'm not going to argue with him. might i suggest that he shut down the imf, while he's at it?

the music scene in ottawa seems to have really died after i left. wow.

see, i knew i had a window, and that it would then go back to what it was...

to be fair, the thing with ottawa is that it doesn't actually have it's own music scene, the nightlife there is just driven by what's happening outside of it. so, if we end up in a situation where the broader music scene hits a low point, which is where we're at right now, it just can't weather it - it falls apart. venues close. shows end up in basements. and, when shows end up in basements, you have to deal with a strange sort of democracy that refuses to acknowledge that beethoven is more interesting than a recording of your mom vomiting up your dad's sad attempt at making a meal, last night.

"it's ok....AAAAAARRRRRRFFFFF....you tried, hon-AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRFFFFF-ey....no, i'm ok...what i mean is AAAARRRRRRFFFFF to get the fuck away from me right now, before i accidentally ARRRRRRFFFFFF miss in purpose...."

it's a type of democracy where mediocrity wins every time, and the rare interesting show gets booked on a monday during exams, and nobody promotes it.

"what do you fucking mean that loma prieta played here last night? why didn't you tell me?"
"who cares? they're from out of town. i'm doing a guitar effects noise set tomorrow, you're in, right?"

no. ottawa needs people transiting around it in order to avoid being boring. and, then it needs somebody standing on the 401 near kingston, yelling at people that there's venues in that direction.

detroit was never my first choice. but, it seems like i got out at the right time.

in actuality, this sounds more like what clinton promised, especially the part about the judges; it really just sounds like a continuation of existing policy.

i would have expected trump to come in high and congress to gut it. but, he's not even putting 2 billion down for the wall, when he himself was lowballing it at 4-5 times that - and experts were suggesting 10-20 times it.

i told you to wait for the budget to see if he's serious. the budget is here, and he's not serious.

the extra money on enforcement will likely end up in private contracts, too - private contracts that can avoid serious oversight.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/politics/donald-trump-border-wall-budget.html?mabReward=ACTM3&recp=2&moduleDetail=recommendations-2&action=click&contentCollection=Theater&region=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&src=recg&pgtype=article

july, 2007. male-identifying. 26 years old.

i'm only doing this because it actually demonstrates that i haven't changed a lot.

this is a picture of me from a period where i identified as male (it's from 2004 - so i'm 23 in the shot):

i've had at least shoulder length hair pretty much consistently since the mid 90s. i shaved it a few times, but there really aren't very many pictures of me with short hair in existence (because i've basically never had short hair). the few i've seen look like mug shots. i've never styled my hair in any kind of short-haired male fashion kind of choice: never used gel, or anything like that.

there certainly aren't any pictures of me without my shirt on. i wouldn't even take my shirt off to go swimming. and i never went swimming, anyways. over the course of my entire adult life, i'm pretty sure that there's only one person in the entire world that's seen me without a shirt on. the idea that i'd take a picture of myself without a shirt on, let alone upload it to the internet, is insanity.

but, i never developed any kind of muscle mass on the top end of my body (or anywhere else, for that matter). the fact that i smoked aside, i was always in very good shape due to the large amounts of bicycling (2-3 hours a day at points) and walking i did, but it always came out in terms of toned arms and legs and never in terms of muscle mass.

the point is just that there aren't really "guy pictures" of me because i wasn't ever really much of a guy. the reality is that i spent my entire teens and 20s looking like i never really went through puberty. i never weighed more than 120 pounds; i was always stick thin. i always had long hair, often died blonde or orange or red. i tended to wear really nerdy button-ups, or plain t-shirts (or band shirts, but not much after about 2002). if you ever saw me in an outfit that was more bourgeois than that, there was a struggle to get me in to it.

why? because i just didn't want to. i was an outcast by choice: a nerd, a loner, a loser. i both found the idea of expressing masculinity to be boring and to be a poor reflection of how i felt.

the fact that i wore a tie on that day is really, honestly about as manly as i ever got. and i'm sorry if that's disappointing, but it's the truth of it.

that new picture is very temporary. it was taken in early 2011, after i had just turned 30. it's just been a while. something new will come up with the new season...

it's a reminder that i'm finnish. i almost look icelandic, huh? it's pretty heavy-handed. those eyes can get humongous depending on a few things...

it's almost a reminder that, as young as i look today, i've aged a lot over the last five years. even i'm a little taken aback by this shot.

i'm thirty years old, here:

actually, as a general rule, i can't stand bands with male singers that wear make-up.

there's a few exceptions. and, it's not like it's a condition, or something. but, it's kind of a mark of a pretension. it usually signals that the band is about making fashion statements rather than about writing songs.

i mean, i'm not going to judge anybody on it or anything, but it's just not usually the kind of thing i'm going to get interested in...

and, fwiw, most of the female musicians i listen to don't wear much makeup, either.

my laptop is currently badly bogged down with editing concert footage, so the vlogs will have to wait until that gets done.

there will be vlogs for all the days, i just don't know when i'll get around to doing it. it could be a week or more.

when they're one, i'll upload them all at once.

i just only have so many cycles available to me, and catching up on these concert reviews is simply higher priority right now.

yeah.

these missile "defense" systems are in truth offensive weapons systems, and the target is beijing.

we're starting to see a more coherent policy develop, and it's every bit as stupid as you'd expect. these high testosterone man-apes are rejecting anything resembling softpower (ex: the tpp) as effeminate, and instead opting to use the biggest, baddest guns they can find to threaten the chinese to do what they want, or else.

or else, what.

see, that's the reason why them book lerners always wanted to use the soft power. nobody really thinks they'll actually do it.

if the chinese focus on soft power in reaction, while the americans completely abandon it, it will be a superior strategy. i mean, consider the vietnamese capitalist. the chinese are offering free trade, while the americans are offering no trade at all. under those conditions, the vietnamese capitalist is simply not going to want american protection. protection from what? trade? it is in their interests to align with chinese softpower - and the bigger the guns the americans bring in, the larger the incentives are to side with the chinese.

it would be one thing to bring the guns in and utilize softpower. but, they're clearly being driven by the retarded idea that softpower is for unmanly fags. and, this is what happens when you elect somebody that thinks with his cock.

the chinese are not stupid. and, if this tactic takes four years or longer to get reversed then they're going to clean up.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-usa-thaad-china-idUSKBN16709W

the chinese can't reasonably talk about dominating a trade agreement that includes canada and mexico. the americans can project that kind of power towards asia, but the chinese are a long ways away from projecting that kind of power towards america.

even talk of the chinese dominating japan is absurd. in a real sense, what the tpp did was reconstruct the japanese empire - sort of how like the eu has reconstructed a german-dominated europe. as the americans have delegated running europe to the germans, the tpp was meant to delegate control of asia to the japanese.

but, what the chinese can do is talk about essentially absorbing countries like vietnam into it's sphere of interest - at the expense of japanese ambitions. and, that's of course what the deal was intended to prevent and what is now free to happen, with it gone. and, where a strong tpp could have prevented a war between japan and china by the projection of american power, the withdrawal of america from the region could very well embolden the chinese to the point where conflict is now inevitable.

i've approached what trump is doing as irrational, but, even so, at the least, if trump was the master negotiator then he would have sought something like a deal to exchange american withdrawal from southeast asia for chinese withdrawal in south america, or perhaps even asia. i see no evidence of this: he just gave away the farm, for nothing. and, this could potentially be game over for american influence in the region.

sadly, the republicans will likely spin the situation as proof that they were right all along. it's really an absurd point of failure.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/14/china-south-korea-join-tpp-members-in-trade-talks.html

fwiw, if you're curious...

yes, i'm known to drink a fair amount, from time to time - and, yes, i'm as irish as i am anything else (on my mom's side), but i never go out on st. patrick's day.

it's the type of drunk that st. patrick's day attracts that i'll go well out of my way to avoid.

and, fwiw, it's the same reason i prefer to stay in inside on canada day, on new year's and, often, on hallowe'en, too.

how can you miss the incredibly dour and darkly facetious use of religious imagery in the track?

americans are just hopeless with sarcasm. they literally don't get it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Vfp48laS8

i want to clarify my point, because it's the same thing that just happened in the united states and i don't think it's being understood very well.

what the liberals are doing is attaching minority representation to establishment politics, so that when voters see a minority candidate they immediately assume that this person does not represent their interests, but is essentially a pawn of the party and by extension the banks. it's classic blowback, because it's rooted in the racist assumption that minorities don't care about politics, and just vote on identity.

what they thought that they could do is fly in all of these minorities and just use them as a cover to push through their right-wing agenda. the thinking is that they can get away with a lot more when it's being done by asian woman and black men than when it's being done by a bourgeois elite of white men. so, they selected the minorities that did exactly what they were told by the party and then promoted them as replacements for dissenting voices. at the end of the day, the corporatocracy gets it's pipelines and tax cuts, all while voters are patting themselves on the backs for increasing the diversity of parliament.

what they've done, instead, is install minorities as the face of the establishment, and create the perception that minority candidates do not represent the interests of voters, but instead are working for the political elite.

this is what actually happened in the united states during the obama administration (although it started happening during the clinton administration, and the bush administration actually used the same tactics). people started to notice that the government consistently sent minorities to do it's dirty work. so, it came to be that they started voting against minorities, in order to try and protect their own interests.

if the government continues to use minority groups as a way to gloss over it's right-wing agenda and push through unpopular measures, it's going to create the same backlash. we're already seeing this happen, internally, at the riding level. and, while it may be a necessary reaction to bone-headed government policy, it's not a can of worms you want to really open.

the government needs to change it's strategy before it creates a mess - and we need to be clear in assigning blame where it belongs, here, which is in the pmo.

more signs of internal revolt.

it's no secret that yolande james was pushed by the party because of her gender & ethnicity. i guess the riding members were less enthused by the prospect.

the liberals are making all of the same stupid mistakes that the democrats made, and are going to have to deal with all of the same consequences. you can't enforce diversity from the top down, and then go out and pretend it's more representative of the population, as though minority voters only care about identity. people won't tolerate that.

"i know that she works for the bankers on bay street, but look - she's black. you're not going to vote for that white person just because she better represents your views are you? what are you, a race traitor?"

they honestly think that's going to work - because they're actually secretly brutal racists, just like the democrats are.

it wasn't always this way, and there are good people in the liberal party. the liberals don't have the history that the democrats do, and quite the opposite. but, this leadership team is horrific and needs to go.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/emmanuella-lambropoulos-saint-laurent-montreal-liberals-byelection-1.4016891

it's really far too easy to take lennon out of context, and completely misunderstand him.

yes - he sang "give peace a chance". but, he was also a substantial financial contributor to the black panthers, and had the american intelligence groups all over him because of it. the right-wing rhetoric about terrorism aside, the black panthers were not pacifists. what you're missing is context - he was specifically talking about pointless colonial wars, and the rhetoric should not be extrapolated from a specific to a universal.

he was interested in the traditions of other cultures - he was after all a white englishman performing black rock music in germany in the late 50s - but it was always with a concept of post-culturalism rather than one of multi-culturalism. he wanted a single world culture that was built on the syncretism of all of the others, and discarded religion as primitive backwardsness. he'd like the idea of jews and christians holding hands, but his messaging was around them renouncing their tribal creeds and joining together in a new culture that belonged to both of them, but was neither of one or of the other. remember: the broad struggle of the time was around abolishing segregation. as a product of his era, he would have seen the idea of multi-culturalism as regressive, and instead argued for deeper integration into a new global culture - but not one based on the neo-liberalism being exported by america, but rather one based on the abolition of scarcity. his preferred new world order was deeply marxist, fully egalitarian - and totally secular.

he sang that woman is the nigger of the world and invited you to confirm as much by observing your own, and he was absolutely fucking right in his analysis, but he did so with the intent of making you angry about it, not with the intent of making you smug about it.

and, this can go on for a while, but there's a kind of easy out.

do you know who actually sounds a whole lot like john lennon and has similar views? the answer is myself......because he's a dramatic and profound influence.

this song is explicitly marxist. it points to religion as the tool that capital uses to promote violence, nationalism and bigotry with and asks you to imagine a world in which religion - and by extension capitalism - does not exist.

it is set to the motif of a christian hymn in order to mock religion, and present an alternative to it. the idea is for you to sing this song instead of singing your hymns.

those who wish to co-opt the track to promote a vision of neo-liberalism, multiculturalism or globalism are either misunderstanding the track by accident or on purpose, and ultimately twisting the song to promote a vision that the artist would have vehemently rejected.

the song is blatantly anti-religious and blatantly marxist, and was written by an artist that was blatantly iconoclastic and blatantly anti-capitalist. deal with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRhq-yO1KN8

when you start a conversation by referring to standards, you're already conceding the debate to the right. the reason is that liberals don't believe in holding things up to a moral standard, or occupying a moral high ground, in the first place - they believe in analyzing situations on a case-by-case basis and ultimately conceding to evidence. it's the difference between being an ideologue and following the scientific method.

so, when somebody tells me that i have a "double standard" on something, i immediately agree with them - because i'm not an ideologue in the first place. i have triple and quadruple and quintuple standards. i don't look at a situation and try and force it to adhere to my moral worldview, i react to the evidence in front of me in the most pragmatic way possible.

this was actually the conclusion i came to from studying case law for a few years: we shouldn't have law because we shouldn't be trying to interpret the world through written rules, but rather reacting to it based on what's in front of us in terms of broad principles and subjective perceptions. that creates as many standards as there are situations. sure: sometimes killing somebody may actually be the right choice, and we should be flexible in analyzing that. there should not be a rule that forbids all killing, no matter what - that is absurd, when truly contemplated. that doesn't mean rejecting the need to uphold evidence, mind you - it means prioritizing evidence ahead of morals, which are ultimately subjective in the first place.

so, when you talk about violence, i don't perceive it in terms of a moral question, i interpret it in terms of pure pragmatism: will violence help us achieve our goals? and, that also means recognizing that sometimes violence is necessary to help us achieve our goals.

i grasp that our society is so overwhelmingly right-wing that you perhaps can't even get your head around a truly liberal worldview. but, let's approach the question as it ought to be. i'm not interested in having a debate about whether i have a double standard on things or interested in denying or defending against the accusation in any way; rather, i will willingly concede the point, and instead accuse you of being an ideologue and moral absolutist for raising it.

dude, listen.

i present myself as transgendered, and have for as long as you've known i exist. not only should you not be upset that i'm not as hardcore as you thought, you should have never thought i was as hardcore as you did in the the first place.

i own and have listened to cocteau twins records for years. but, i've never heard a metallica record from start to finish. and, i've done nothing but throw that in your face on every possible occasion. for years.

years.

this is not my fault.

you're just fucking delusional.

....and, i'd like to pretend that this piece of evidence will finally be what you need, but i know better. i know we'll back here in six months, and you'll be every bit as confused and upset when you ask me a question about black metal and all you get in return is an empty, blank stare - and a truly honest one, at that.

i'm sorry, but you didn't listen. and it's your fault, not mine.

geez. that must suck.

i wouldn't know, though. i get a steady pay check every month, have nothing but free time and live alone in a two bedroom, all-inclusive apartment.

oh - and i get dental, too.

but, don't hate me. don't be jealous. rather, realize that my benefits should be universal. and organize...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/millennial-jobs-education-1.4009295

actually, i'd hazard a guess that a big part of the reason that i always thought that the arcade fire were terrible is that they actually weren't from montreal - they were from texas.

i don't like explosions in the sky, either.

it's a notable gap. i had friends into them. but, i'm sorry: i thought they were awful from the start.

i went over this once before. i'm not infallible: i missed things. i will miss things, again. but, my net is pretty wide, and i'm not going to miss something like that.

if it's not in the list, and it has any profile at all, the chances are very high that i consciously skipped it. sorry.

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news1002/bookburning.html

SPECIAL EXCLUSIVE! CONTENT BANNED FROM ALEX JONES VIDEO COMMENT SECTION! SPECIAL EXPOSE ONLY AVAILABLE RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW:

well, i was born in 1981, myself - and the historical literature is clear that we've existed for as long as writing has. but, listen: i know that the truth is that most of the people that post here are paid to do it. and, i know that the money comes from shady sources. alex jones doesn't pick people like bill gates and george soros to criticize at random: these are the competitors of his own benefactors. he's getting paid a lot of money by very rich people to tear them down, and the reality is that you're too stupid to see through it.

more seriously, though.

https://www.nobeliefs.com/communion/communion.htm

Critics thought of Christianity as merely another version of Greek sorcery. In fact, the phrase Hoc est corpus meum (This is my body) was later adapted to "hocus pocus."

http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-57/defending-cannibals.html

yes, we do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duF_hIsXs3k

i'm not exaggerating. $5/day. that's what i spend on food...

my food budget is $200/month, but it includes stuff like soap and i inevitably waste some money on junk food, here and there.

i spend roughly $150/month on my actual diet. $150/30d = $5/day.

this buys me one of the following two meal plans:

1) one banana, one kiwi, 5 strawberries, 2 scoops of cherry ice cream, a very large glass of soy milk, a glass of orange juice, a tomato, a half a green pepper, a bowl of fettuccine, a quarter brick of cheese, eight slices of genoa salami & a large serving of salad dressing.

or

2) one banana, one kiwi, 5 strawberries, 2 scoops of cherry ice cream, a very large glass of soy milk, a glass of orange juice, a toasted and buttered bagel, four eggs (fried), eight slices of genoa salami & eight slices of cheese.

both of those meals cost around $5.00. i guess if you're old, it might make more sense to remove the cheese altogether, and use that savings to upgrade the salami to chicken.

so, how are these old folks getting stuck with frozen beans and packaged casserole at $8.00? the answer is corporate subsidies. the money goes from the government to the food manufacturers, and through the old folks home as a conduit.

the best thing to do would be to give the money to the seniors directly and have them make their own meals. but, of course, that's not always feasible.

i don't know exactly how you deal with this, but i know that it's possible to eat very well on a lot less than they're complaining about, and the problem is clearly in the corporate welfare in the contracts.

my budget is more like $5.00/day and is composed primarily of fresh fruit, eggs and pasta.

and, my cholesterol is 66 mg/dl; i'm absurdly healthy.

honestly: if i were to increase my food budget to $9.00/day, i'd just be gaining weight and probably eating a lot of junk food. and, the meal in the picture is probably worth less than $2.00.

they don't need to spend more, they need to spend more intelligently. i know: my budget is tiny, but i eat spectacularly.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/03/10/ontario-nursing-homes-feed-seniors-on-833-a-day.html

people still think i'm just being silly when i say i don't want kids.

but, i told you that when i was 15, and i told you that when i was 20, and i told you that when i was 25 and i told you that when i was 30, and i told you that when i was 35, too...

still. supposedly, i'll "grow up" one day and recognize the value of enslaving myself to something i don't remotely care about for the rest of my fucking life. it will just suddenly make sense, this complete loss of autonomy, this embrace of a remaining existence of endless, thankless labour.

do you know what would have happened had i managed to fuck up badly enough to actually have kids? honestly? truly? i'd almost certainly be in jail right now, either for trying to duck out of paying child support or for flat out child abandonment. again: did you think i was just being ironic when i told you over and over and over again, or what? and, is it starting to sink in yet?

i mean, it's not like i told you when i was younger that i wanted kids one day. this is a decision that i made when i was like 12, and have never had a second thought about. there was never any time where i wavered on this.

so, no - i'm not going to bother freezing sperm before i get the orchiectomy, because i'm absolutely certain that i'm never going to want to raise them.

just about the only thing that's likely to ever change my mind about this is the abolition of mortality. if we could find a way to get real immortality - and i don't mean the retarded kind of thing that you hear idiot christians talk about, i mean actual, legit immortality - then wasting a couple of years raising kids wouldn't be throwing your life away to benefit your capitalist slavemasters.

until that point happens, i'm sorry - having kids is just about the dumbest, most irrational thing you could possibly subject yourself to.

this bill is actually largely symbolic, as very few canadians have or want private health insurance. and, i've scolded the ndp for standing up for a bill that only affects upper class canadians - not because i'm opposed to it, but because it's a wrong-headed priority and a waste of valuable house time. i know that it's easy to look in from outside the country and want to support a bill that reins in insurance companies, and it's easy to build the narrative that trudeau is acting in the interests of the insurance companies (and you'd even be right....), but you're missing the point that the only people that have private insurance plans in this country are high level executives of multinational corporations. again: my irritation was that the ndp were wasting their time on this. i didn't really offer a position, because it's not a relevant issue for 99% of us.

some of the provinces in canada even ban private health insurance as illegal.

what i'm more interested in is the caucus revolt. i've been talking about this as something that is necessary for a while: as much as the rest of the world is in love with justin trudeau, he has demonstrated himself as being on the right-wing neo-liberal fringe of a party with a history of leaning strongly towards democratic socialism, operating in the interests of questionable benefactors and with a clear tactical prerogative of trying to appeal to conservative voters.

will it expand further, or will it contain itself?

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/liberal-backbenchers-vote-against-trudeau-pass-law-banning-genetic-discrimination

"No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil and just leave it in the ground,"

that may have been true fifty years ago, but what this comment exposes is a type of backwards thinking that is very much in line with the views of stephen harper. as much as trudeau would like to pretend that he's looking forward, he's much very stuck in twentieth century style thinking.

there was a time when coal was widely used, but today we are actively phasing coal out permanently, despite there existing ample reserves for a long time. likewise, uranium has no future, despite the existence of centuries of reserves in the ground. oil - like uranium and coal - is a dirty product, and must be eliminated altogether.

canada has billions of dollars of remaining reserves of asbestos, which are now being left in the ground.

technology changes. the choice we have is to move with technology, or be overcome by it. one does not survive in the 21st century by using 20th century logic. and, we will face certain collapse if we insist on building an economy around a product that the world is cutting demand for.

reality check: that oil is going to have to stay in the ground, and canadians are going to have to force the prime minister to understand it, or remove him if he won't.

the country needs political leadership that looks forwards towards economic diversification, not backwards towards the dirty oil of the twentieth century.

he's not harper-lite. he's harper on steroids.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-houston-harper-pierre-ceraweek-1.4018746

“Demand will be generated by companies, not generated by individuals living in other countries,”

that is fundamental. that is key. and, that is supposed to be at the heart of the pearsonian system that the liberal party created.

now, if we could democratize the workplace, that would be even better. but, if we had a democratized workplace, it would nonetheless fall upon those co-operatives to request workers. so, let's not get tangled up: this is the way this ought to work, regardless.

it is the most obvious thing in the world to state that immigration levels and targets should be determined by canadians in a way that utilizes a concept of centralized planning, not left to some abstraction of a "market" to figure out.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/canada-to-make-skilled-worker-permits-easier-to-get-in-wake-of-us-delays/article34246962/

this is more along the lines of what one expects from the liberals on immigration. hopefully, they maintain this focus on bringing in skilled labour, and slow down on the refugees...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/canada-to-make-skilled-worker-permits-easier-to-get-in-wake-of-us-delays/article34246962/

“It’s a terrible idea for so many reasons . . . we’re using legal resources to try to shut down dispensaries when it’s going to be legal soon,”

yeah. that seems crazy, doesn't it?

unless.....

 https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/03/09/prince-and-princess-of-pot-reportedly-arrested-at-toronto-airport.html

and, fwiw, i'd be lying if i told you i haven't had an erection in years, but i'd be honest if i told you i haven't wanted to have an erection in years - and i'd be honest if i told you that the only erections i've had in years are nrbs.

they come and go when i'm like washing the dishes or reading the news or something, and my only reaction almost all of the time is to curse it as an annoyance and go pop another cyproterone.

and, what is cyproterone? well, there's a few different testosterone suppressors that i could be using, but i use the cyproterone because it's covered on the disability drug plan. the reason it's covered is that it's sometimes prescribed as a way to chemically castrate sex offenders.

that's right - i take a drug that is covered by public drug insurance to reduce the sex drive of pedophiles and rapists. and, i do it by choice.

it works, too - i am almost impossible to arouse on purpose. they really only come randomly, and only in terms of an annoyance.

that said, i do still have sex dreams from time to time and this is the only circumstance where i may actually orgasm. but, here's the thing: i'm chemically castrated. so, i'm not producing sperm. so, when i orgasm, i don't ejaculate.

that's right: i cannot cum. it is not physically possible for me to do so, when i am taking heavy-duty testosterone suppressors. that's what the suppressors actually do: they make it almost impossible to arouse me, and literally impossible for me to ejaculate.

so, what was that that you were saying?

so, let's try to think this through carefully.

i've been arguing at various levels of intensity, in various fora, that the left should not be acting as apologists for patriarchy through the cover of "religious freedom" - that is, it should not be throwing gays and women under the bus in a rush to stand up for ethnic diversity, and should rather take an idealistic stand against patriarchy, in all it's forms.

so, therefore i'm pro-trump? opposing religious refugees on the grounds of feminism means i'm in favour of christian extremism? right. sure. if you think you can explain that to me somewhere, go for it...

you're lost in a contradiction. and, yes: i'm shit-disturbing. but, you're going to need to work this through...

you can't be pro-religion and pro-queer and pro-woman at the same time. and, i'll continue to call you out on it for as long as you need to figure it out.

what is the truth here?

the truth is that some of the pseudo-left are, at their core, traditionalists: some of them are really in favour of upholding patriarchy deep down, and will in the end side with religion over feminism. getting them to admit this is a first step forward in throwing them out of the left - and that is something that needs to happen.

others are just hopelessly naive and need to have the truth of it held up to them in the most brutal terms possible, and these are the ones i'm more interested in targeting through agit-prop: they need to be shocked into seeing things as they really are, and in dropping their hegemonically enforced burkean delusions.

once again: i am not a pc-worshipping millenial progressive democrat that wants peace and love, and i'm certainly not a white supremacist christian republican that wants to run the world out of the back of the bible. what i am is an atheistic anarcho-communist gen x punk that wants to agitate and irritate and shit-disturb people into fighting against religion, against patriarchy and against capital. and, it's up to you to determine whether we have common cause or not.

dr's office is closed until the 20th....

i left a message. i'll try again on the 20th.

i haven't read the case, but the entire premise of a judge citing the criminal code in a ruling is pretty weird, to begin with. that's something they'd do in, like, france, or something. in the british common law system, a judge is supposed to consult previous judicial precedent. stare decisis.

about the only way a judge could have missed that a section has been struck down is if he never bothered to look up the precedent in the first place, and i don't even know what you do when a judge is refusing to consult precedent. it's probably without precedent. i mean, maybe there's an answer, i don't know. but, you'd think it's grounds for removal from the bench.

i mean, that is the job of a judge - to consult precedent and rule accordingly. if a judge is refusing to to do his job, he should be removed.

this is no doubt long overdue, as a clerical procedure. but, let us not believe that the problem here is that the code was not amended; the problem here is that the judge is not consulting precedent.

http://globalnews.ca/news/2945753/travis-vader-verdict-what-is-section-230-of-the-criminal-code/

no.

stop.

you're wrong.

shut up....

your only possible argument is your own ignorance.

no.

arabs can not say "nigger". ever. and, if you don't realize how uncontroversial my condemnation is, or how repulsive the premise is, you are simply ignorant of the history.

arabs ran a brutal african slave trade for roughly a thousand years. and, literal chattel slavery in the arabian peninsula was not abolished until the 1960s and 1970s - although everybody knows that it still continues.

if you ever see an arab utter the term, you should punch him in the fucking face.

i actually think that this is missing the point.

let's take a step back and understand that obamacare was exactly what the insurance company wanted, which is why they gave obama so much money. more people have health insurance than ever before. insurance premiums are going up. ka-ching!!

the mandate may be unpopular among some buyers, but the sellers couldn't ask for a better system. it's a law that forces you to buy their product...

so, trump's promise to drop the mandate is an immediate threat to the insurance industry because it threatens to take away customers - and in fact threatens to take away the most profitable ones, the healthy ones.

the penalty is merely designed to stop people from dropping the insurance, that is to prevent the insurance companies from losing customers. this is how government actually works: the parties collude with capital to fuck people over. so, the democrats are just passing the baton, here. obama signed them up, and now trump is locking them in.

http://www.vox.com/2017/3/7/14841682/republican-replacement-individual-mandate-cartoon

somebody has to do the actual procedure, though.

i'm going to call the office back in the morning, explain to the secretary that the doctor may have been operating on old information and set up a second appointment to give him an opportunity to correct himself. i'll bring in the relevant documents.

i'm not infallible, either.

ok. ok.

i'm probably not wrong.

but, the current funding/approval regime is only a year old, and the urologist could simply be working with out of date information in terms of understanding how this works. i should have done the research and brought that information with me, and should take a little bit of responsibility for being unprepared.

i still think it's gotta be up to the doctor to know this.

but the end result is that i don't think i need the specialist. i think i can just print the papers off and go from there.

actually, i'm not sure that i even need to see a urologist at all.

it doesn't specify it.

if i can get the gp and the psychologist i saw for disability to sign off on it, it's up to the ministry to determine funding...

yeah.

it would require some paperwork, but the doctor was a liar that was clearly just trying to avoid the topic. and, i don't have the time or interest to push back: i'm just going to ask to see another urologist. and then another. and another. until i find one that will do it...

orchidectomy is clearly listed in the approved procedures. gender dysphoria is signed off by three doctors on my disability papers (2015), but i could just as easily get my gp and the specialist to do it - that's not a substantial hurdle. i suppose the ministry could be stupid about it, but that's a different issue altogether.

so: the doctor was lying. he's probably actually just a no good fucking christian, and operating on a basic concept of religious patriarchy. and, you wonder why i'm constantly pushing back against the so-called left's permissiveness towards religious backwardsness?

it's clearly listed. he's clearly full of shit. i should go after him. i have better things to do...

this is still happening, it just might be a little slower. and, i'll be sure to print that page off for future reference.

http://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/pro/programs/srs/

yeah. i went for a walk today and while i didn't see any smashed cars, i did see a lot of shingles and a lot of branches.

it's weird because there's no rain. at all. it's just the cold wind coming in...

http://blackburnnews.com/windsor/windsor-news/2017/03/08/gallery-high-winds-causing-damage/

i was considering several shows this month, but none of them are particularly compelling and the turn towards colder weather is probably going to land me inside. i'm getting warm days when the schedule clears, and cold days when i want to do something...

maybe i'll end up buying some wood and building those shelves. or maybe the next few months will be that much more eventful.

my head is basically fixed, and i'm leaning strongly towards the aspirin thinning the blood out. just to follow up on that: i haven't taken any all week, and i'm not feeling any symptoms returning. but, i've passed a substantial amount of dried blood through my nose, which is upholding my narrative about what was happening. this isn't like dry air; it's thick, and clumpy. it's been a few days since that happened, now, even...

i saw the urologist today, and he told me that my request is rational and he'd even like to help me but he'd lose his license if he did it. i'm not convinced that this is true, and think it's just a pc cover, so i'm going to have to follow up on his statements on my own and go from there. i have a checkup in april, and will have to ask for a rec to a different urologist. but, i'm actually considering challenging the college. i should have autonomy here, and the college should be pushing back at him for denying me access, not punishing him for facilitating it. i mean, what's the value in forcing me to keep the testicles if i don't want them? that's irrational...

i should be tired, but i'm not and i feel like i'm up for the night. i had a two hour nap this morning and a two hour nap this afternoon, but am otherwise running on about a 36 hour day with no real end in sight. i have actually been making progress on the concert page, i just keep adding components, and should have an update soon.

this comes up every once in a while here, and is a good example of the kind of demagoguery we routinely receive from the conservative party.

what's happening is that the province is opening new schools and then shutting down old ones that are half empty or falling apart. the conservatives then grasp on to the number of schools that are closing and say "look! they're closing schools!". they make it seem like the students are being trucked off to the gulag, or something, rather than being bussed into newer facilities with broader options.

consider something like a music class. the province can't afford to put a music class in every school, and can't staff it, either. but, if you have less schools then you can focus resources more effectively, allowing for greater access to more specialized topics.

but, that's not even what i wanted to say. what i wanted to say is this: when are we going to talk about abolishing the catholic schools? i'm willing to make today all about that. and tomorrow. and the next day...

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2017/03/07/pc-leader-patrick-brown-calls-for-halt-to-school-closures.html

this is the debate you should be having, but won't have.

you could always scour it for points and tactically insert them in order to try and steer the debate towards the fundamental problem, which is that markets cannot deliver healthcare efficiently due to the nature of the product, itself. the rest of the world is aware of this....

i'm not going to get involved in a debate between trumpcare and obamacare. they both suck. and, i'm not going to lend rhetorical support to groups standing up for obamacare, either.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3210041/

at the end of the day, i don't expect that trump's healthcare plan will be much more than a glossy tweak over the existing one, because the existing one is basically what the republicans always wanted in the first place. the media narrative is going to seek to divide people along partisan lines, and exaggerate minor differences in order to do so. lots of people will fall for it. and, mainstream democrats will, in the end, push down the line that the party supports obamacare....

just get out. the party is actively attempting to manipulate you into supporting a policy you know is shit. you shouldn't fall for this. and you shouldn't settle for it...

if the democrats surprise me, so be it. but, if they keep pushing obamacare, then this ought to be where they meet their end.

the day without women thing is a little bit different than the day without immigrants thing because at least the issue can be openly discussed without fear of deportation.

regardless, one has to realize that a day of action is not a strike. strikes are not effective because they appeal to a sense of morality or uphold a concept of righteousness, they're valuable because they deny productivity to capital, or, better, because they shut down production altogether.

if this day of action were a prelude to a general strike, i'd heartily endorse it and actively organize for it. but, that is not going to be what happens.

this is consequently at best a waste of time.

but the reality is that there are going to be ununionized women that are going to get fired, and they will have few legal options at their disposal, if they can afford them. you have to weigh a complex of things together, including long term pr issues and even the views of the employers. but, if anything, employers are going to have less incentives to not fire women that walk out because they don't have to worry about getting busted hiring illegals.

people that want to talk about free speech don't understand what free speech is.

co-ordinated strike action is necessary. but, that isn't what this is, and it's absurd to think it is.

my suspicion is that this is another government sponsored sting operation, and that it's being organized as an opportunity for capital to fire women that walk out. if you walk out and get fired, you've fallen into a trap that was set for you.

but, hey, weigh your own risks and come to your own conclusions.

feminism is about abolishing the hetero-patriarchy and replacing it with a system that does not implement a systemic bias. but, you wouldn't expect a yoga teacher to promote abolishing patriarchy...you would expect a yoga teacher to uphold outdated concepts of the traditional family. this co-option of liberalism by forces that want a return to traditionalism (i.e. conservatives) has been sneaking up on us for years, you've just been in denial about it because you want liberals to be the anti-thesis of conservatives. yet, liberals have been looking you in the eye for years and telling you that they want bipartisan consensus with conservatives.

that said, it's often useful to take a step back and question motives. this post was probably meant as a divide and conquer tactic - it's probably meant to pit leftists against liberals, and then let the liberals come out as the champions of family values, in order to create a greater appeal to the right. this is consistent with everything else that the liberals are doing right now to try and take over the right by pushing the conservatives out of the spectrum by adopting conservative positions.

i would actually like to see this debate happen, but only on realistic terms - and the reality is that the liberals are trying to dump feminism on to the ndp in order to claim the mantle of family values from the conservatives, in line with their demographic strategy to shift the country to the right by bringing in more religious people. and, we need to collectively clue into this and reject it in the strongest possible terms.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/03/07/sophie-gregoire-trudeau-men-international-womens-day_n_15213718.html

the narrative is losing the reality that the presidency has been stating false claims for years, without releasing evidence.

consider the dossier tying al qaeda to 9/11: it was never released. there remains no real evidence that bin laden orchestrated 9/11. we just believe what they say. and about those weapons of mass destruction....

the error here is thinking that this is unprecedented; it isn't. it's absolutely normal, standard operating procedure for the white house to release false statements without evidence, and expect the press to run with them.

 what you need is a little levity, here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0Pt5oGVR50

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

and, should the americans in turn decide our immigration and border policies?

what a buffoon.

i get that he's trying to score cheap political points, but this is not described in any other terms: this is sheer idiocy.

http://globalnews.ca/video/3290983/mulcair-calls-on-trudeau-to-stand-up-for-canadians-being-turned-away-from-u-s/?utm_source=Article&utm_medium=MostPopularVideo&utm_campaign=2017

don't do it, it's a trick!

https://www.liberal.ca/marijuana-out-of-our-kids-hands/

these people aren't communists, they're brainwashed automatons of the bourgeois status quo, and have been triggered by the language installed within them, as gramsci described.

if marx were alive, he'd be explaining how the bourgeois parliament - with the help of the conservative press - has brilliantly constructed a plan to divide workers by discussing the empty irrelevance of a motion on "islamophobia", without even defining what it even means, and that these idiots are falling all over themselves over it to fight each other in a pointless intra-class struggle. he'd further explain that workers needs to put aside these petty differences and unite against their common enemy, which is the bourgeoisie, in seizing the means of production.

while a less dramatic observer may be correct to point out that marx would essentially be constructing a conspiracy theory, and that the parliament is truly not so brilliant, marx would nonetheless be correct in his basic observation: this is divide and conquer, and these people are idiots, all around.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/far-right-groups-opponents-clash-at-montreal-protest-against-federal-islamophobia-motion-1.4010179

i tried to do this during the last election, but i'd actually like to see the ndp pick up on this point - and if they won't, i guess the conservatives doing so would at least introduce it into the discourse.

forget about scarves. you'll never get anywhere in canada by demanding that the state introduce a fashion police - all you're ever going to get is a combination of ridicule and scorn. and, i'll be the first person to point out that the premise of a state-sanctioned fashion police is truly idiotic.

but, there are legitimate integration concerns that need to be addressed and that the liberals are going to be unwilling to address, through a combination of pressure from below, a fear of being seen as anti-immigrant and just flat out denial.

so, instead of focusing on what muslims wear, why don't you focus on actual concerns in the community that need to be addressed, such as:

1) female circumcision. i've seen reports. this is a thing that is actually happening in canada, and needs to be stopped.
2) honour killings. this is something that also happens and needs special attention to prevent.
3) arranged marriages. this is not something that we should turn a blind eye to, either. the autonomy of the individual forbids this as tyrannical. liberals should be particularly aghast at the premise of one's parents determining who they marry.
4) domestic abuse. this is a broader, wider problem that extends beyond the immigrant community.
5) acceptance of non-standard sexualities. this is again a broader problem, but it is primarily an issue in communities that lack education, and turn to religion to fill a void.

it's the old cliche: not all conservatives are uneducated, but most uneducated people are conservatives. and, while it may be fitting for the conservatives to go after their own, i'd really hope that it's actually the left that stands up and puts together the necessary task forces and integration programs.

this is presented as though i'm confused when i buy soy milk instead of cow's milk, rather than making a conscious decision to avoid cow's milk for various health reasons.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/03/03/fake-milk-dairy-industry-calling-for-a-crackdown-on-almond-soy-and-rice-milks.html

i did a bunch of research into this a few years ago, as i was writing an essay on the indian act for a course in indigenous law.

there are two groups indigenous to the island of newfoundland: the inuit and the beothuk. the beothuk were indeed eliminated from the island by a process of genocide that is largely unrecognized, so any claims that the island was free of indigenous groups is based on the premise that this genocide was "successful". and, you will not find any trace of the beothuk, no matter how hard you look. inuit groups remain, but they are transient over the pack ice. the mik'maq are indigenous to the atlantic mainland; any mik'maq claiming status in newfoundland have migrated there since contact, and making such a claim for indigenous status in an area migrated to post-contact essentially doesn't make sense under the judicial precedent, which requires groups to demonstrate a connection to the land that precedes contact, whenever it was (and this area, being the closest to western europe, had the earliest contact....).

but, all you need to do is look at the pictures to come to the obvious truth: these people are europeans, and that is blatantly obvious.

in fact, much testing has been done on this point. the harsh, difficult truth is that most of the indigenous groups in the eastern coast have r1* in the y-dna in proportions approaching or exceeding 50%, and there are even a few groups that are over 80% r1* in the y-dna. what this indicates is that not just many but most of these indigenous groups are actually of primarily european patrilineal ancestry, and that their indigenous component is strictly matrilineal. and, this is in fact a very common consequence of colonialism: the colonizing group takes the women from the colonized group, either through consent or more often by force, and then prioritizes the interests of it's own offspring over those of the purely indigenous pairings, which eventually asserts the colonizing dna as dominant, even when the indigenous culture prevails.

this creates a real problem for the state, which is now in the awkward position of handing out special rights to what are essentially european groups. they rarely speak the language, and the truth is that the only connection they have to their matrilineal ancestry is in the preservation of survivalist tactics. that is, the only remnants of the indigenous culture that have survived are those that were necessary for the colonizers to adopt in order to adapt.

that said, it really demonstrates that culture is a social construct and not a biological one. we don't pass down culture through genes, we teach it in social relationships. these people may not be genetically indigenous, but if they are carrying on the indigenous culture then who is to tell them they are not?

in terms of tangible realities, i'd argue that we should have a universal drug benefit to begin with, and that the truth is that few of these people are going to end up paying taxes, anyways. but, the reality on the ground is trickier than the article is letting on: the reality is that the overwhelming majority of status indians are totally white.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/03/04/families-divided-after-ottawa-tells-thousands-theyre-not-indigenous.html