but, to be clear - am i picking nurture over nature? no. i'm redefining the debate, and not in the usual "it's a complicated mix" sort of cop-out way.

the debate is usually between whether you're born a certain way and can't change it, or whether you're subject to gramscian conditioning and can be completely defined by your masters.

i don't think either of those things are true. what i think is that the premise that you can control the laboratory conditions in this experiment is horribly naive! so, it's almost like a heisenbergian reanalysis of the basic question: how well can we control the environment, in the first place? how much of this is subject to randomness in ways that are not inherent, but that no amount of nurture can possibly overturn? are there paradoxical and ultraparadoxical phases linked to the nurture argument, and how much of this is triggered in ways that can't be controlled for, either?

so, i don't want a nature v nurture argument - i think this is deprecated. biological determinism is absurd. rather, what i want is a nurture v error argument, a controlled v uncontrolled debate, and then i'll argue that error is the evolution of nature in the equation.

and, then we can talk about how it's complicated.

so, what causes all of these things like asexuality and transexuality?

it's randomness. chance. error.

accepting that what our dna does is turn us into smart machines that can be more efficiently programmed by the environment essentially puts us at the whim of the universe, itself. as individuals, we're just the sum of our experiences.

so, there isn't a normal sexuality or a normal gender expression, relative to our dna. this arises solely and exclusively through the "machine learning" we go through as we actually exist. if heterosexuality is more common than homosexuality, it is only as a reflection of the dominant society. if we decided that homosexuality was normal, then we'd all be programmed that way by society, and we'd all grow up gay.

so, i'm essentially taking a tabula rasa position on this. 

and, what it means is that things like historical statistics are kind of meaningless, because the assumption should be variation rather than stasis.

humans are indeed basically computers. but, we're not like the simple computers that we created when we first started messing around with programs.

to begin with, we're quantum computers. second, we're capable of machine learning - we're a complicated ai, not a linear code, or a recursive functional program.

so, when i talk about pavlovian conditioning, that doesn't exactly bring in a concept of free choice. we're still being programmed, but we're being programmed by the universe as it exists, in real time, rather than sprouting from some detailed instructions.

dna codes for proteins, which means it determines how the mechanics of our biology operates. and, it fucks this up. all of the time. look at all the diabetics. and, what is evolution? it's a function of errors in transcription. if you're imagining dna as this perfect set of instructions, that's completely flawed - it's haphazard and error-prone.

and, it simply doesn't code for actual behaviour - it just produces the conditions to allow for the universe to actually program us, as a reaction to stimuli in real-time.

and, as we evolve, it will be to become more reactive, more adaptive, not less so.

my perspectives on this are not in the mainstream of science at the moment, although as more evidence debunks the genetic basis of sexual orientation there is going to be a need to look at different approaches, but the easy deduction from her life experiences is that she essentially wasn't taught to be sexual, whereas the other kids around her were.

reducing it to a choice - like what you're going to eat for breakfast - is a little overly simplistic. but, i think that if you were to look at her life experiences that much more carefully, you'd pull some things out. for example, i'd bet she watched less tv and was broadly less exposed to specific types of media than the kids around her. further, i'd suspect that her mother was less sexual than the mothers of some of these other kids. they probably never really had that old talk. if you want to reduce it to a single, specific factor, it could very well simply be that her role models were not sexual, so she grew up into a non-sexual identity. yes, there is some concept of choice here, but it's hopelessly intertwined with the inputs defining the choice, meaning you're looking more at a type of pavlovian conditioning.

the basic point that i think so many people get wrong here is that they assume that this is all programmed, all hard-wired. the evidence is slowly overturning this perception. but, the remnants of social norms are still kind of lingering around. 

my position is that all of these things that we assume are inherent have to be taught, and if you don't teach them then they just don't happen. i'm convinced, personally, that one of the reasons that i ended up identifying as female is that nobody ever really taught me how to be a male. it's not that simple. the mere absence of instruction is not enough to imply a specific outcome. i could have decided to pursue that path on my own, and sought different role models. but, being born xy doesn't necessarily imply you'll grow into a man - you have to be taught, somehow, one way or the other. it doesn't just happen. it's not innate, not automatic, not inherent.

likewise, sexual attraction is not something innate. it doesn't just appear out of our genome. mammals need to be taught almost everything by their parents, and sexuality is really no different. if you don't teach your kids about sex, they won't necessarily learn about it on their own - they might decide they'd rather do something else, or they might build up walls and barriers and stigmas. they may even take solace in their isolation, and elevate it to a part of their identity.

she could probably change her mind if she wanted to, but the older you are, the harder it gets. and, she can't get back the life experiences that she didn't have when she was younger.

is asexuality essentially just another way to say you're sexually immature, then? by definition, perhaps. but, accepting diversity and autonomy and agency means it's ok to be immature and ok to accept that immaturity as an identity - that there isn't a correct path to follow in life.

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a9088917/womankind-asexual-woman-sexual-attraction/

to make the point clear. i have to do this every little while.

...although it really should be obvious.....

...but i don't actually have sex, ever, with anybody, at all. i have had a single sexual partner in my life over 2002-2006, and what i learned is that it's not worth it. it took me a few years to realize it and make a conscious choice on the matter, but i've been consciously celibate by desire since roughly 2009. i have had essentially no interest in sex, at all, with anybody, in well over ten years.

i take a large amount of testosterone suppressors that make it physically impossible for me to get an erection. i couldn't fuck you if you begged me to. and, i wouldn't want to. i take these drugs because this is what i want. i find male sexuality, in pretty much any context, to be completely revolting.

i have never hit on or made sexual advances towards anybody of any gender, wanted or unwanted. there have been situations where i've realized that an advance has been wanted, and i've avoided making it. there have been situations where i've had to reject or avoid passive advances. there have also been situations where i've had to aggressively reject aggressive advances, and in fact from women more often than men. i even think i was raped once. but, i don't make sexual advances towards anybody, ever, at all, of any gender, under any circumstance, because i actually honestly seriously don't want to. anybody of any gender that is convinced i was hitting on them is just misinterpreting the situation....

so, i don't know what else to tell you.

i'm asexual; i don't seek sex, because i don't want it. and, you're just confused, if you're convinced otherwise.

so, i crashed around 7:00 and wasn't up until after 15:00. that was actually the longest that i've slept in a good while, though. 

that just means i slept off the wait. but, i got lazy last night and i need to make sure the laptop is, in fact, booting by the end of the night.

how was alessandro cortini, though?

he mostly did social network style stuff, which was predictable, but maybe not what i was expecting. he was on late and finished late. and, then, i was essentially stuck there listening to dubstep (which i can't stand) until the buses started running again.

when the works shut down, it seems to have opened up a void that is still kind of settling. but, it freed the scene up and gave rise to marble, which is a bar that has both a crowd and a stylistic focus that i greatly prefer over the works. like most of detroit, i actually hated the works - i hated the atmosphere, i hated the djs and i hated the scene. it was a gross, disgusting place full of gross, disgusting people - and very, very bad music. but, on some nights, it was the only party in town, and people seemed to not want to put on other parties because everybody was going there, anyways.

i've noticed recently that the dubstep kids are migrating to marble, and i'm hoping they don't settle in there. marble was great precisely because it wasn't full of the old works crowd of dubstep people. it was an older and less shallow audience, over all. it might be too late, though, and if they settle in, and the management embraces them, i might find myself needing to look somewhere else. for now, i've got plaid coming up at the start of the month and we'll see what happens next year...

personally, i think that the leland club is a better spot for the dubstep kids. those goth nights are always dead, and they've been upstaged by small's, anyways. they could save their bar by becoming the new works, and that would be fine with me, if it means protecting marble from the wubbz invasion, and everything that means. 

however the dust settles, i'm just hoping there's a consistent way to avoid dubstep on a weekly basis. for a while, there wasn't, and i ended up hanging out in a place that i didn't actually really want to be in - and, as it turns out, didn't really want me there, either.

i mean, what they told me was that i was "making people uncomfortable". not a specific person, but "people", in general.

i asked for them to be more specific, and they declined. i was not able to properly decode the statement, and i've never been able to build the full context.

my perception of myself is that the only people that i tend to make uncomfortable are homophobic men - and i know that's a real thing. so, when somebody comes up to me and says "you have to leave because you're making people feel uncomfortable", and then declines to elaborate, i can't draw any other real deduction - i must have been thrown out for upsetting the men in the bar.

and, the bar was almost entirely full of men at that point, as well, which is probably why i became the focus of attention - there were all these guys looking around for girls, and i was what was there. if there were more women in the bar, i probably would have escaped notice.

as mentioned - that's the only example i have, because i don't actually like to go to upper class type places, anyways.

but, i'm not going to put a shirt on. i'll go somewhere else, instead. sorry.

the reality is that i don't think it's ever actually come up, because i don't tend to be drawn to those kinds of places, anyways. i don't recall ever being turned away anywhere. but, i don't have any memories of actually going anywhere that would make it an issue or want to turn me away, either. 98% of the time that i'm in a bar, it's to see a concert and, for the other 2% of the time, i would naturally avoid a place like that out of reflex, and seek out the dive bar down the street, instead. i've never had a group of friends that would say "let's go to this bar with a dress code", either - i've always preferred social groups that consist of anarchists, punks and nerds that would rather hang out in dive bars, in the first place.

that night that i got thrown out of the works probably had a lot do with what i was wearing, but it was a gender expression thing. i never really got a straight answer, but i appear to have upset some guys at the bar via a combination of turning on their girlfriends and confusing them about what my gender was. i was there on that night to see allessandro cortini, and he seems to have attracted a lot of heteronormative meatheads to what is generally a sleazy dance bar. so, yes - they probably threw me out for what i was wearing, but it was more of a gender thing than a class thing, and all i can do is point out that it reflects exceedingly poorly on the bar owners and management. the bar has since closed.

i have no other examples.

and, my only request to the new detroit is that they tell me before hand so i can avoid anywhere that wants to put one down.

actually, my perspective on dress codes is to request that you publish them ahead of time so i know to avoid your party or establishment. obviously, nobody likes meeting a bouncer that is going to refuse you entry based on your clothing. it's a frustrating and embarrassing situation for everybody. but, i'm not the kind of person that is going to change my appearance to fit it, or want to spend time in a place that enforces rules on what you can or can't wear. further, i fully reject all kinds of hierarchy - i'm an anarchist. so, i'm not going to like the people there any more than they're going to like me. the disinterest is mutual. i do not want to be at a party with a dress code.

if you publish it ahead of time, you can save everybody the hassle - i'll go somewhere else. and, i can launch into an argument about property rights, but it's ultimately inconsequential, in context. the best outcome is that we avoid each other.

i'd just request that communication around the issue be upfront and clear, well ahead of time.

just to update the status on the drive.

it boots. it's not broken. i'm copying everything over.

it was probably the registry, and it's probably going to take a while to figure it out. i got distracted this morning...it's not going to be until tomorrow, now.

so, i got distracted and was slow to get going, but i'm reinstalling now.

(edit - this post seems truncated, but i have no recollection of anything else i might have put into it)

with a stalemate like this, and an inevitable outcome that most people don't want, i think the situation is ripe for a consensus candidate to appear out of nowhere and run on hope and unicorns. they wouldn't even need to have good policies, they'd just have to float above the fray. they'd just have to give people a way out of the trenches.

again: i'm not actually a voter in the united states, but what i want to see is somebody run on a positive socialist vision, without all the populist fear mongering and scapegoating. i want less blaming and more analysis. and, i want a zero tolerance policy on social conservatism.

this ought to be the status quo, but there is no candidate right now that is just a basic, textbook leftist - they all have some asterisk of some sort.

it shouldn't be hard to find a candidate that both supports universal health care and isn't opposed to technological determinism.

the deep democratic south is where northern white liberals go to die.

he should have just bought a house down there and retired.

so, i'm listening to minibeast (i'm not going, but i'm going to formulate a review) and waiting for the clock to get to 19:00. and, i'm going to post a polling analysis update.

as mentioned previously, i've withdrawn my support for bernie sanders under concerns that he's aligning with social conservatives around issues of religious identity and a general perception that he's basically a fraud. he's made it clear enough to me that he's just looking to demonize whomever it is that he thinks will help him, in the end - that he's essentially the worst kind of cynical politician, and that he fully intends to run a campaign of scapegoating and bigotry based on fear and identity politics. he wants to run on hate. so, he's really not that different from trump, and you should even expect him to use a lot of the same tactics. he's not running a meaningful socialist campaign, he's running a populist campaign that seeks to demonize a class of minorities that includes bankers, tech sector workers and queer people. frankly, i have more in common with tech sector workers and queer people than i do with mexicans or muslims, but the point i'm making is that he's using the same tactic, he's just changing the target. then, he calls other people bigots when they stand up against his own bigotry. it's a perverse farce.

so, he's a cynical reactionary, and i'm done with him. but, i'm not supporting another candidate in his place - i'm not sure what the best third party option is right now, but you can expect me to put my support behind the communist party or the green party. bernie's a fraud....

so, any sporadic polling analysis i do is going to be from a distance.

and, i have to remind everybody that there is still no real evidence that biden is fading. there is, however, some evidence that warren has peaked.

in poll after poll of state after state, there are only two people that end up on top - warren and biden. but, biden's support is stable. he has a base. warren's is wobbly and perhaps fleeting, and she's already seen her numbers start to come down quite a lot.

at this point in time, i don't see any reason to think that biden will not win the south, and i'm putting it in those terms on purpose. warren's spike has not registered south of the mason-dixon line, sanders is at best running a strong second and harris has completely caved. if he sweeps these states, he's got a clear path. we've learned this over the last several cycles.

warren and buttigieg's support are both spiking in the north, but the real story is that sanders does not appear to be winning anywhere at all. the fact that the numbers are floating around while avoiding him suggests that he's not even really a serious candidate in places like new hampshire - he has his 20% and that's it. if somebody emerges as a clear winner in the end, it won't be him. and, if the vote splits three or four ways, as it appears that it is going to, that hands biden the win.

as i mentioned months ago, the way to beat biden was to run strong in the north and overpower his southern strategy with sheer numbers. i know that people didn't like the racial implications of it, but it was the damned truth, and it is still the damned truth, today - all that sanders' attempt to outreach to blacks in the south has done is lose him support in the north, making a split more likely and a biden win more plausible. somebody still has to win the north by huge margins, and right now that seems to be impossible.

so, biden remains the clear favourite.

how can that change? the answer is that the north needs to pick a single candidate and run with it.

warren seems to have peaked, given the current field. it seems like she'll need somebody to drop to grow further. on the other hand, if she completely crashes, that will open up a space for somebody else, but the only serious alternative left is buttigieg, and that's not a rational swing. if i understand the situation correctly, those voters may prefer klobuchar, gabbard or harris over buttigieg, sanders or biden; i think what's coming out is that there is clearly a preferable female identity candidate. but, that means that her numbers may be stubborn. if she's neither likely to grow or fall, we could be in for a long and frustrating run.

buttigieg is basically running as a log cabin republican, so if his support crashes then about the only place it's going to go is to sanders, but he may have put his foot in his mouth on that point. i mentioned previously that his spike is probably a solidarity vote, but it's also potentially a frustration vote. these kinds of things are unpredictable. so, he can kill sanders by existing, but he can't win unless biden drops as that's his only source of serious new voters. i expect the numbers to scatter, eventually.

and, sanders is just flat, and is doing his best to keep himself that way, running like he's taking on the world, attacking potential allies, aligning with questionable groups, etc. the numbers are clear enough that he has little potential for growth. the question is how many people he can alienate with his bumbling incompetence, and where they end up going - which is also likely going to scatter. as mentioned, i'm likely to look outside the party altogether....

so, of the three candidates that are splitting the vote in the north, none of them seems to have potential for growth, and there's reasons to think two of them could completely collapse.

nor is there a potential consensus candidate sitting in the margins. o'rourke just dropped. yang isn't serious. etc.

so, it's hard to see what could happen that would prevent the split, short of candidates giving up and walking out. further, it's not clear that it is in the interests of a warren or a buttigieg to prevent the split - they might both be better off blocking sanders and running for vp.

so, despite all kinds of movement over the last few months, the basic picture remains the same - biden is going to sweep the south and then win on the split in the north.

i'm basically stuck for the day.

i didn't get the reinstall started last night, but it's ready to go after 19:00, which is not so far into the future, anymore. i fully expect to be booting back into the os by the morning.

for the afternoon, i'd like to be writing reviews, but i can't get into the machine, so i'm going to type a few things up here and move them over to the other blog later.

read some marx, neil.

or the history of the catholic church.

you present this as some kind of aberration. but, it's what christianity has been since the day that constantine saw jesus in the sky, and used it as inspiration to  slaughter his enemies with.

this is all that christianity has ever been - you need to see yourself in the mirror here, neil, and come to terms with it, not look away in disgust.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-neil-macdonald-trump-white-evangelicals-1.5346659

it's not clear, in the end, if people are going to interpret her as a force that built a movement or as a force that slowed one down. her numbers in the most recent election were not that different than the ones in 2008.

she did, however, get into parliament. and, her party has elected two more representatives, since.

i may have been more likely to vote green in this election if it meant voting for a different leader. but, a vote for the greens in this riding wouldn't have helped anybody much, except the ndp, who won anyway.

this opens up a struggle for the future of the party, and it's one i may find myself rather interested in - my vote is that the party moves in a direction of secular liberalism/humanism and really stresses the importance of science as a policy making tool, thereby distancing itself from the "progressive", aka the religious, left.

if the greens are to set up a clear division between themselves and the ndp, that should be the point. yes, the greens are actually serious about the climate, and the ndp aren't. but, that stems from a fundamentally different epistemology. the ndp are a part of the religious left, with historical ties in the prairie gospel and a fundamentalist sikh at the helm, today - that is their identity, it is who they are. i want an actual socialist party that roots itself in the enlightenment and the revolutions in france and spain (both failed.), and belongs strictly to the secular left, and if i have a hand in building something, that's what i'll want to be building - not a party with "progressive" values that comes out of the traditions of the christian left.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/elizabeth-may-green-party-2019-election-1.5346737

so, the copying process appears to be done, and i've made a lot of process in scratching out potential november shows.

as mentioned, the weather makes it unlikely that i'm going much of anywhere, but we'll see how i feel as time unfolds.

the next thing to do is wipe the partition out and reinstall....

it's copying....it'll take a while....but i have lots of space on that machine....

yeah, it's just hung.

so, i'm going to log into xp (with the laptop hard drive as a secondary drive), copy every piece of data off of it, wipe the partition table, reinstall and then copy it all back folder by folder.

it should probably be bootable by the morning. we'll see.

so, again - if it's the partition table, what is this?

it's a virus. this has happened before.

and, the primary suspect is the police.

it's actually not hard to fix, but it's very annoying and takes time to get through. 

naw. it's going straight to a black screen - not even a cursor, can't even get a list of boot options. 

the chkdsk indicated that the partition table was corrupted.

so, i'm going to do a startup repair. but the fact is that i know that these things don't actually work. scanning the boot database, whatever it is called, doesn't work. you have to rebuild it, and the only way to rebuild it is to reinstall it.

so, that's that next step - to copy the data off, reinstall to the drive (to fix the partition table) and then copy everything back.

there may end up being lingering registry issues if i do that (that's my experience in the past), but if i can at least get it to tell me where it's hanging, i should be able to go in and find it and fix it.

with a blank screen like that, my options are really minimal.

facebook is really substantively faster on the chromebook.

the scandisk has successfully completed, so let's try to reboot right into it....

so, i've got my tickets purchased. i'm going to be a little coy about when i'm leaving and coming back, other than to point out what needs to be done that day in toronto.

i need to serve the cops before i go, and i know how to do that, now, although i'll drop a hard copy off while i'm at it. when i get to toronto, i'll need to serve both the attorney general and the board. and, then i'll need to file.

i'll also need to go to the special library in toronto to get a corporate report to give me the identity of the person that arrested me. this is all quite absurd, but so be it - because i'm going to be there anyways.

this will push two of the cases forward. i may decide at the last minute to appeal the access to information, but i'm putting the human rights case aside.

i will need to serve both the board and the respondent with the appeal, as well - and the judge may very well put thing on hold, afterwards.

i was able to mitigate the lost funds by choosing a cheaper concert option and a very cheap greyhound option. it's less that november is a weak month, and more that there's not anything happening there that isn't also happening here, or at least as far as i can tell, anyways. obviously, the best option would be to pick a toronto-only show, but nothing jumped out at me right away. so, i instead picked the cheapest ticket i could find, and paired it to a show at a dive bar (that is also happening in detroit the next night). the bus ticket was $45 (both ways. $20 to get to toronto is really not bad.), the lowest option possible, and the show will be around $10, just for tickets. so, that's $95 of the $100 card - it's gone. kaput. see, i was expected bus tickets to be pushing $60 (they were $70 last time, and i *did* buy early), the search to be around $10 and the show tickets to be $20-30, and at a respectable venue. it just didn't line up that way. so, what i lost with the business search (which i was willing to pay for when i thought it was evidence that the company isn't registered) i made up with the $15 less that i spent on the greyhound and the $10-$20 i made up on the show ticket. i still want the money back, dammit. but, if i wanted to get these three things accomplished with the $100 card then i'm pretty close, actually. i didn't spend more than intended, in the end - i'm just not able to enjoy the cheap tickets.

there are a few shows here that look interesting, but the long range here is terrible, and i could very well be in for the month. i'm hoping that the temperature swings back a little for the end of the month, and especially for the first week of december (i don't want to miss plaid in a blizzard). i'm comfortable launching facebook on this machine. so, i've got the scandisk running again, and i can focus on scratching out concert listings for the rest of the month. no reviews from this machine, though...

i will need to run through everything very carefully and do a big printing run before i leave. i want the day to be very carefully planned out so that i don't forget anything. but, given the weather, and given the laptop co-operates, if this is actually my only venture outside at all this month then i should get the boost of productivity i'm craving for.

let's hope tonight is a good night. and everything works itself out well.

i've got the fax out for the refund request. hey, that's $40.

so, what did i learn here?

1) that a corporation and a company and a business are three different things, in ontario. i would essentially use those words interchangeably as virtual synonyms, and wouldn't have a lot of patience for somebody trying to correct me. even as i'm typing this, i don't actually know what the difference in these words actually is, and i'm not going to stop using them interchangeably as synonyms.

2) that you consequently can't search for a corporation in the "enhanced business search" because it's not actually a business, it's only a corporation. ?. this is despite the corporation coming up in the federal business registry....indicating that the feds think it's a business, but the province thinks it's merely a corporation. the language is not just confusing, but it's not consistent.

3) that if you want to search for a corporation, you have to either pay some lawyers an unnecessary, exorbitant fee or go to toronto and do it yourself.

as we know, i intend to go to toronto soon.

so, that's the resolution on this - i'll need to get to toronto to figure this out and send the forms off when i get home. i have 30 days from the 29th, so i'd better get there by the end of the month.

and, i'll need to send an update to the tribunal.

so, i actually called them back and asked for a refund, and they're telling me to fax them something.

so be it.

ok, so they're telling me that the search shouldn't work because i would need the name of the company, and i'll need to send a check to toronto for $12 or hire a private company to do it.

i am ideologically opposed to hiring a private company to do something that government can do. so, it may make more sense to pick it up when i'm in toronto.

but, they told me to add two zeroes to the front of it so i'm going to do some extra searching.

i mean...

if i go to one site and it tells me that the company exists, and i go to another one and fork our $40 for a bunch of different searches, and they all tell me it doesn't, and it turns out it does, i have grounds to ask for that money back, right?

ok.

so...

when i go to the ontario website, it tells me there's nothing under the name.

when i go to the canada website, it tells me that the corporation is registered, and i need to go to the ontario site to find details - indicating that i'm either doing something wrong, or the corporation was recently deregistered.

that's not going to work. the judge was clear that the cops will need to fork it over.

but, i'm going to call the service ontario office and see what they say.

ok. 

in order for me to get the form typed back up again, i'll need to get into the virtual machine on the laptop.

i have to get this up and running. but, at least it's clear that the business name doesn't exist.

and, yes, i do think that i'm owed the $32 because it's an expense i wouldn't have had to incur had they just given me the information like i asked for in the first place.

there's no business registered under either the names provided to me. and, it cost me $32 to prove it.

the plot thickens...

i'm going to have to go back to the cops.

and, i want them to give me my $32 back, too.

and, for the record.

i don't have a phone. well, i do now, but i don't use it. actually, could i load instagram onto a chromebook?

the point i'm making in this post is that, because i don't use a phone, i have never used apps like snapchat or instagram, either.

everything that i actually use is on the side. really. and, if i don't link to it from this blog, be very skeptical of it.

but, regarding that kid in new york.

is it annoying? frustrating? yes, it's all of those things. i don't seem to have much in common with this person, and i don't know why they can't come up with their own handle. he doesn't seem like he wants to be associated with a communist from canada, so i'm not sure what his angle on it actually is.

but, i'm ultimately not invested enough in the issue to really be overly concerned about it.

if you think that searching for somebody on google and finding a twitter account with a name that matches - however exotic the name - constitutes doing substantive research, then you're a sucker and you're going to fall for all kinds of nonsense, aren't you? i really can't be bothered to get myself worked up over the analysis of people with such a deficit of critical thinking skills. if that's the best you can do, i don't care what you think.

rather, i'd take the position that it is obvious that that account does not belong to me. as mentioned, i make it fairly clear that i'm from canada, so i'm obviously not from brooklyn. i identify pretty aggressively as gen x, so i'm obviously not in my late teens or early twenties. and, i've even run a vlog where i'm stumbling through the detroit/windsor area. if you think that twitter account belongs to me, you obviously haven't really read anything i've written, have you? so, why would i be concerned about your opinion of me?

again: it is annoying. there doesn't seem to be a point to it. and, i wish he'd just change his handle to something he can call his own.

but, i can't actually do anything about it.

and, nobody with basic critical thinking skills - or an opinion that matters - is going to get confused by it; it's obviously not me.

also - i can't edit posts from here, so i apologize for typos and misstatements.

obviously, the numbered company got me arrested. it didn't sue me. i'll have to wait until i'm able to log in to the laptop before i can fix that.

the whole point of using this machine is to avoid exposing my passwords, so i won't be logging into anything from here except for the dummy accounts i've set up to log into.

i guess that if i absolutely have to log in somewhere to send emails, i can use the 90s laptop.

so, the chkdsk froze twice last night. i turned it off this morning, and won't be back to it until tonight after 19:00, for reasons of electrical cost.

so, i wanted to update some liner notes last night, but my computer won't boot. what can i say? 

as mentioned, this chromebook is simply not useful as an actual office tool because the software is too primitive. it's use it's strictly as a "personal computer" for simple media-based internet applications. nor do i think the processor in it can handle splicing through documents of this size. it's really just a glorified phone. i'll have to wait.

i'm going to need to get the drive through a chkdsk at some point before i move forwards, but if it doesn't get through it tonight then that's all the time i'm giving it - i'll have to clone it, wipe it and copy it back.

i don't yet know what the exact problem is. the last time this happened, the registry was set to load a driver on startup that didn't exist, so i had to go in and turn that off.

is this a coincidence? i don't know. it could be microsoft shutting me down, it could be the cops thinking that they're going to slow me down (they're not. the document is already typed and stopping one laptop from booting isn't going to set me back much.) or it could just be legitimate corruption. we'll see what the actual problem turns out to be, and what it makes the most sense to assign it to.

for today, my laptop is inoperable; i'm on the chromebook, and i can't do any actual work on it. if this lingers on, i'll have to load up the music pc so i can launch word. but, i don't see any reason to think that is going to happen.

i need to put it aside for a few days anyway; i wanted to finish the liner notes last night, but i'd have had to stop for a few days if i only got half done, anyways. i need to prioritize the trip to toronto.

the first thing i need to do this morning is figure out how to run a corporate search on the numbered company that arrested me, to determine who owns it and what their address is.

ok, but let's think this through for a minute.

the difference is i*h-bar. h-bar is h/2*pi.

h is considered to be the smallest possible unit of measurement, and then you're dividing the smallest possible unit of measurement by 2*pi to make it that much smaller. you're then pulling this out in the direction of i.

so, the difference is

1) in the direction of the imaginary plane.

2) a factor of 2*pi smaller than the smallest thing that can be measured.

i'm not arguing with the  math as it exists, it's just that this is so small as to be indiscernible from error, which is what the physics really says - you're disturbing the system by measuring it.

and, i will hear an army of math-physics nerds yell at me "no. it's a proof. can't you see?"

a proof by a factor of h/2*pi in the imaginary plane. right. and, you call that "observable". what a farce! it would be a talented lab technician indeed that could reduce error to hbar in the imaginary direction. you'd give that technician a nobel prize....

rather, i need to ask the question - how fast is space expanding, anyways? surely fast enough that you could never get it right, to a plank length. and, what is the proper correction for the curvature of space, given that we're modeling everything in euclidean vector spaces and we know that is totally wrong?

that's something we can calculate, right?

we know that px - xp, if calculated in a euclidean vector space, should have a correction term, because the space that the particle is moving in is actually curved. that euclidean calculation should be wrong. so, what is the error term, there?

and, without bringing in string theory, what is this modulation in the i direction anyways? if space is expanding constantly in every direction, just how close can we get those measurements without having the rug pulled out from underneath us, as we're doing it? a plank length? probably not much more than it, anyways.

i know that somebody will tell me i'm grasping at straws, but we should at least have the good sense not to be building modern physics on euclidean space. we know that's a bad model. we know that's going to created warped results.

as far as i know and can tell, that kid in new york just stole my name because he thought i was cool. i'm probably his biggest hero. i have confronted him about it, but he's refused to change his handle.

i supported bernie sanders in the 2016 primary and very tentatively endorsed hillary clinton in the general, although i'm not sure, in hindsight, if that was the right choice.

i don't know anything about the imposter at all.

while i guess he's probably not in high school anymore, if he was in grade 11 in 2016 then he'd have been in grade 2 when i created the account. 

all social media accounts are on the side

ok, there are a few things that aren't there.

i have a reddit account, for example. but, i don't post there very often...

i'm not banksy. i want you to know who i am, i want you to buy my music, dammit.

specifically, i have this sneaking suspicion that people think i'm a gamer in high school from new york, despite being crystal clear that i'm a 40 year-old musician from canada.

1) i don't play video games. ever.

2) i've actually never been to new york.

3) i have only ever opened one twitter account, and it's the parody on the side panel. 

i have a reputation for typing long, rambling emails; it is easy enough to understand why i don't like twitter, and why i'd even consider the premise of it to be comical. it's something i have no use for and want nothing to do with. 

but, that doesn't stop people from getting confused.

i cannot actually vote in the united states - i do not live there, i do not have citizenship status there and i only ever go to detroit to party.

i'm from ottawa, which is where i lived from 1981-2013. death.to.koalas@gmail.com was initially created as a joke when i was working for microsoft in 2007 as a way to transfer dump files back and forth from work.

for right now, the music pc is running a chkdsk on the laptop's hard drive, and this chromebook is useless as anything besides a glorified phone.

so, i'm going to get something to eat, watch some stanford lectures and get back to it afterwards.

i wish i wasn't wide awake :\

i'm actually *not* going to be reinstalling on the drive any time soon. there's reasons for it.

i'll literally copy everything off, reformat it, and copy it back.

and, the chkdsk is picking some things up, but that's not a smoking gun.

so, seconds after i finished my last post to this blog, the computer shut off and the os wouldn't boot. what to say about that, exactly?

in the past, what's often happened is that the machine gets stuck at this stupid prompt that says "your machine didn't shut down properly last time". all you actually have to do is press enter, but i can't see that because i don't get any video until it's done booting. so, all i have to do is boot it into the music pc, shut it down properly and reboot the laptop. right now, it won't boot into the music pc, either. 

i'm running a chkdsk.....

i don't keep anything of value on the install partition, so i should be able to wipe it if i have to. and, i have several extra laptop hard drives kicking around. this won't set me back more than a few days, max.

but, it looks like i'm going to lose the night, and maybe a day or two. 

so, i'm posting from the stupid chromebook, that i actually hate because the software is terrible. i'm never going to want to use this shitty google freeware for anything. and, i don't even want to log into the thing, i'm just using it as a guest. it's better than a phone, at least.

if the chkdsk fixes the problem, i'll be back up in a few hours. if not, i'll have to launch it as an external from an xp install, clear the data off, format it and put it back on.

why is this happening, though?

well, the drive is indeed a little bit old.

but, i actually suspect that windows thinks i'm pirating the software - and i'm not. it might have shut itself off. i have a lot of corporate volume licenses of old software, and a lot of stuff i got for free from school, but i don't actually use pirated windows software.

i could switch to linux if you really want, though, bill - if you really want to get stupid about it. i mean, those are the choices. i'm not buying a vista key for a 15 year old laptop that was designed for vista and can barely even run 7 at all. if microsoft insists on shutting me down, i'm not buying a new key (i have a key!) and i'm not buying a new laptop, either. i'm going to linux.

that's not paranoid - they will actually shut you down. but, they're wrong, here. i just don't have the resources to run their "genuine checker" all of the time and turn it off when i'm not using it - because it's an old machine, and every cycle is worth saving. yet, every time they prompt me, i just turn the service on and that's that.

i don't know that that's actually the case, for sure. it might just be an old drive. and, it's a pretty old drive, too.

whatever. let's hope the chkdsk works and go from there...

so, i'm making a conscious attempt to refocus. i've been stuck in a rut and want to get back to work. so, i want to make a few notes on the condition of the various sites i have running, here, before i shift gears rather dramatically.

i think it's clear at this point that i can't do all of these things at once, that i need to do one or two at a time. attempts to do everything all at once have merely left me unable to finish anything at all. so, what am i going to be focusing on?

my focus for quite some time now has been rebuilding blogs. first, it was the politics blog and the music journal, which i had running recurrently. i spent a large amount of 2016-2017 pulling data down from the internet into a set of word documents, and almost all of 2018 rebuilding these two blogs from those word documents. these would grow to take in the vlog and other things that developed over the last few years, creating a narrative of my musical output from 2013-2017 (as well as some cursory and largely unimportant political rambling). then, i expanded these to include a review site and a travel blog, so that i was rebuilding four blogs instead of two. as an addendum to this, there were two alter-reality blogs put aside - one that would end in mid-1996 and one that would start in mid-1996. but, the actual focus - the actual thing i was doing - was building liner notes for the music site. all of the 6 blogs i have running are essentially intended as commentary for the music. they have no meaningful context, otherwise, and mean nothing to me when separated from it.

i wanted this all to converge into a period disc that i would release at the end of 2019 (on the 20 year anniversary of the end of inri, 1996-1999) and that would include final versions of my first 37 releases, the corresponding sections of each of the six blogs (but mostly the music journal + the two alter-reality blogs) and vlogs that were relevant to the construction, interspersed. this would be repeated for period 3 (the next 39 releases), to be released in mid-2023. this would be intended as a comprehensive historical document, in the form of an electronic journal. don't call it a memoir - i'm not important enough for that. but, remember - as an artist, i basically die at 30. everything since that age has been documentation. there has been and will be no new original recordings past the year 2011. so, don't call it a memoir....but call it one if you really want. i'm not upset about not having a meaningful existence past the age of 30, because i never wanted to live past 30, anyways; most people get exceedingly lame in their 30s, and downright awful in their 40s, so i'm happy enough to avoid becoming that.

unfortunately, a series of necessary legal issues around the security of my housing that have largely been outside of my control have slowed me down dramatically, and forced me to extend the release date of the period disc by an extra ten years. i do not currently have a clear resolution as to how to get over this and get back to a stable recording situation, but i'll have to get by with what i can. i really see little recourse but to try and extend the legal battles to my eventual advantage. this will allow me the space to build the alter-reality from 1989-1996 in real time, and then let me click back into what has already been written for mid-2027. so, the period one disc is now scheduled for release at the end of 2029, the period two disc is scheduled for release at the end of 2033, the period three disc will be scheduled for release sometime in mid 2037 and the period four disc will be scheduled for release around 2041. if i make it there, i'll be 60 years old. and, no - i don't plan on actually doing much concrete over the next twenty years, except finishing the documentation of the work (and the work itself...) that i created over the first thirty.

i want to publish two more journals - 12/2013 and 01/2014 - and am hoping to have this completed by dec 1, 2019 at the latest. this will bring me to the end of the "first reconstruction period", which will produce an eventual aleph (to be unnamed and unpublished until the material from 07/2003-07/2013 is fully completed).

at that point, i will be focusing on two primary projects:

1) the alter-reality, starting in late 1989. i will have to get a journal for christmas, it seems, for me to write in, and then spend the next six years typing out. this journal will include reflections of events that i experienced over the ages of 8-15, including book reports and music reviews. all attempts will be made to be as honest as i can. but, i obviously can't revert to that state (if i ever grew past it...), and i don't want to get neurotic about it. i'm going to get neurotic about it...but i have to finally start with this.

2) i'm going to get back to work on period 3, which is going to mostly involve republishing a lot of already existing records from 2003-2007. there will, however, also be some major projects worked on - a lost symphony from 2003, a matlab project from 2004, an imaginary straight-up rock record from 2005, a groundbreaking mix of electronic noise and jazz guitar from early 2006 and some foundational new demos for early 2007, to move into period 4. i do not want to plan past the completion of period 3, at this point, which is defined as the period of time between when i got back from bc in mid-2003 and when i moved into a new apartment on bronson ave in early 2007.

period 1 is from 05/96-12/99 (3.5 years), period 2 is from 01/00-05/03 (3.5 years) and period 3 is from 08/03-02/07 (3.5 years). period 4 will run until the middle of 2011, but it is not like the first three, as there were long spaces with no recording activity at all. i was 27 in january, 2008; to an extent, period 4 is a period of slow death, even if it has some major works in it. i will be approaching the narrative from this perspective, as it occurs. and, given that my maximum expected lifespan is around 60, i may be nearing my actual death, as i get there. there was no meaningful musical activity from the middle of 2011 until the middle of 2013; i was struggling badly with existing living arrangements, as i was trying to figure out how to rebuild my studio.

so, i have the rest of my life planned out, anyways. and, these are the two things i'll be focusing on - getting the alter-realty rolling and finishing period 3. if i get back to publishing the journals from 2014 forwards, it will be in spurts, and because i'm sick or some other such thing. well, until i get close in 2025-2026, anyways. i'm actually fully confident that i'll be done period 3 by then, at least.

i don't feel the time has been wasted. i've figured out a lot of things, and i've got a process in order. this needed to eventually be done, and i'll need to eventually get back to it. the time i've wasted has been wasted fighting court battles, and that's going to continue until i can find a safe, smoke-free living arrangement. this isn't it, either.

what about all these other sites?

1) as mentioned, the bandcamp site should see the most activity in the next little while; that is my primary site, and always has been.

2) the noise trade site will see decreasing levels of activity, and that activity will be mostly related to the alter-reality, for the next long while. expect journals from 1990-1996 to be the primary uploads for the next several years. i hope they allow me to reorganize the front page, soon.

3) the patreon site is still there. if you want me to stop wasting time in court and get more productive in my art, that's the way to do it. i have yet to receive a single donation over patreon.

4) the music journal will pick up with increased activity at the bandcamp site.

5) j's journal will be the primary journal site, and will start in late 1989.

6) the alter-reality will stay dormant until mid-2027, when i pick up where i left off.

7) i'm still vlogging. i haven't stopped. i have video to edit going back to mid-2017, and will need to get to it to buiild the aleph discs. but, the focus of the vlogs was to act as a set of ads for the bandcamp site, which i drew attention to through trolling, and that didn't work out (because they shadow-banned me for being an anti-american communist). i never had any interest in vlogging for the sake of vlogging, it was always meant as a gateway. my focus on the vlogs, moving forwards, is going to be for the aleph discs, rather than for youtube. yes, things will get uploaded eventually, but probably in large chunks, and it could be a very, very long time. i wouldn't expect anything to get uploaded here until i'm done period 3, at least - it could be after 2025.

8) the koala central command will continue to try to bring their fugitive to justice, but it's not clear exactly what that means. there will be music related uploads here, as they become meaningful.

9) i don't expect to spend a lot of time on music or book reviews in the near future, and may never get to it at all. my focus on reviews is mostly a 2011-2013 thing, when i had no studio to work in. so, this is at the bottom of the list, in terms of priorities. but, review information will come up in the alter-realty.

10) the travel blog was mostly a joke to start with, and it's utilization will depend on how often i'm actually posting from a distance. anything posted to this blog will end up somewhere else, in time.

11) i'm sure i'll continue to find reasons to rant.

12) my facebook pages will continue to be useful as update lists, but little else.

13) the appspot site is not dead, but it's sleeping.

14) the viability of the soundcloud site depends on whether i can get people to let me spin or not.

15) i don't and have never used twitter. i'm not going to start.

and, let's try to get the liner notes up by the end of the day.

i had to crash this morning, but i did get the facebook stuff synced properly. so, all i have left to do is the liner notes for 000, 001, 003, 016, 027, 028 and 030.

but, it hit me last night - what am i even doing?

i tend to get stuck in things and lose track of reality. where am i going with this? what are my actual goals, here?

i wanted to get this done by 2020 because the aleph disc was closing. but, now i've put the aleph disc off to 2030 - and the first demo until 2026. so, there's no longer any hurry at all...

so, what's the point of spending the winter rebuilding these blogs, if i'm not up against a deadline (that i'll never meet)?

i just feel like i'm wasting time. i feel like i'm running out of time. if it was faster, great, but it's just taking forever. i'm lost in my own world, and spinning in circles within it.

let me get through the first reconstruction phase, which is two more months. and, then i think i'm going to want to put this aside completely, for a good while. i've got the data put aside for later. there's no rush. let me get back to real work.

which means...

1) alter-reality, starting in late 1989 or early 1990. that's 30 years ago. that will be my writing project. and, i can get this journal process moving in that direction, instead.
2) period 3. let's get to it.

i have legal stuff to do this week, first. november was slow, when i wanted it to be fast, but let's hope i can pivot and get through the last two months for december 1st. these could both end up being ~50 page music archives.

what about the smell? it's better since i woke up, but i noticed it was bad on the other side of the apartment, last night. i'm starting to think that what capping the line has done is push the gas back up through the lines in the bathroom and kitchen, and i'm wondering if that's going to balance itself out. like, does it need to find a new equilibrium point, now?

is there an issue with the fixtures in the bathroom?

but, why is the gas pulling up in the first place? i think it's crystal clear that the lines need to be snaked. and, that's probably going to be what the court date ends up being about. we'll see if it betters itself or not....

right now, it seems like i'm waiting for the system to rebalance, and i'll have to go from there. no, i don't know - i'm trying to figure this out. but, that's my deduction based on what i've observed.

when can i get back to this rebuilding process, then?

why don't i get through period 3 and see. 2025, maybe?

or, maybe i'll chip away at it here and there.

but, i need to pivot out of this. i need to do something more constructive.

right now, i need to finish these liner notes and get to the legal stuff for a few more days. so, expect reposts for the 2013 releases up this afternoon.

so, the noise trade links are all up and the bandcamp site is updated, except for the liner notes.

i have to cross-reference with the music facebook timeline, which means scrolling back to the end of 2013. and, i want to get this all in at once...i want to get the data for december out, too.

i have to update some local files.

and, i'll be on to the liner notes, soon.

this last step shouldn't be lengthy. but, the scroll - which i have to do first - could take until sunrise or later. so, i'm going to stop to eat.

how about the smell? the cap has not worked, but it's increasingly clear that the actual problem is that the heater is off - i'm going to have to run the hot water.

so, here's the noise trade smashwords link for the readable version of the 11/2013 archive for this blog. it's 320 pages.

december should be a little shorter...

http://books.noisetrade.com/j/112013-dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026614

ok, so i'm done the part of this that i wanted to complete, but i found way more errors than normal, so i'm going to double check the other documents before i move on.

that should be a bit faster.....

noise trade updates are imminent.

apparently, crickets only stink when they're dead.

they're not a health risk, though.

so, i dunno.

i haven't seen a single roach. i'd be jumping to conclusions.

so, i'm going to wait this out for the night. but it doesn't look like the fan is coming off, yet.

well...

what do crickets smell like?

it took me a few tries but i might be awake. what about the smell?

the sewage smell is perhaps slowly dissipating; it's hard to be sure of anything, but if it is actually fading then it's clear enough that i'm going to need to wait it out, and do some cleaning in here to really get rid of it. it's too early to tell if putting the cap on is a serious long term solution or not, but it seems to be having somewhat of an effect.

what that's doing, though, is separating out a component from what may in the end turn out to be a complex smell; if i were to identify the remaining odour, now that the sewage has been pulled out or otherwise minimized, i would suspect that i'm smelling american or german cockroaches. it's the saltier smell of the browner roaches, rather than the deep sewage smell of the darker ones.

...which is a little surprising, because i haven't actually seen any down here. i've seen (and heard) a couple of crickets, i've seen centipedes, i've seen spiders, i saw that one maple bug and i've seen an unusually large number of ants. i think that's it. i've yet to see a single roach...

why does it smell like roaches down here, then?

grargh.

i spent the entire evening last night struggling to stay awake, and decided a little after midnight to just stop and let myself sleep.

so, i got a good 12 hours of sleep in.

i don't know why i'm so tired...

i turned the fan off for a little while last night, and what i'm going to say is that i actually can't tell if the air quality in here has improved or not because the temperature is too low. all i can smell is the cold air coming up through the floors, which is gross enough in itself, and which i need to keep the fan running to mitigate for. if i turn off the fan, it's going to smell like a garage in here, which is a pretty disgusting thought. yuck.

if he would just turn the heat on to a normal level, so i'm not dealing with all of these cold drafts from everywhere......but, again, the guy seems to break a sweat at 22 degrees. i tend to prefer a sweater at 22-23 degrees. it's just a question of body weight - he probably weights twice as much as i do, through a combination of muscle and fat.

i've actually cut my diet in half over the last few months to prevent myself from gaining weight. when i said i wanted to gain weight, what i meant was that i wanted to grow tits (real ones. not fake silicone ones, which are gross.), not that i wanted to get fat. in the circumstances i'm in, i'd rather avoid eating altogether, because my body is just going to focus on trying to prevent me from being cold, and fuck that. i'd rather be cold than be fat.

so, i think i'm falling asleep because the cold air is shutting my metabolism down, and i'm refusing to eat. but, if that's the reality, then i'm going to sleep a lot, because i'm not putting on fat, and i don't want to waste my time doing aerobics to burn it off. obviously, the last thing i want to do is convert it into muscle.

i think what i'm learning is that if i'm going to live in somebody's basement then i want a female living upstairs, not a male. that might be the biggest lesson here - i can't deal with the kind of temperature and sanitation that men consider normal. i need a female to set the rules. i need warmth and cleanliness, and no male will ever provide for that.

so, i'm cold and i'm hungry and i'm tired and i'm going to force myself to suffer through it because i don't want to put on fat to warm up - i want somebody to turn the heat up.

so, am i awake? i don't know. i might not be. if i'm not, i guess i'll go back to sleep. but, i'm going to try to stay awake, and start the process i was doing over again from the start.

i also noticed that i lost my window with all of the tabs put aside for music review. it was 1000+ tabs of bandcamp links, facebook events, etc. it's just disappeared. it should all be in memory, so i could in theory reconstruct it, and i actually tried, but the way that firefox measures history means that you have to actually launch the site to get it to register, so that won't actually work well. i don't know what happened, but i'll have to go back through the history and pull it all out one by one and it's going to take a long time before i get around to it. i will eventually get to it...i'm sure of that....

it was going to be quite a while, as it was.

again: i don't know what happened, but it shouldn't actually stop me, it should just slow me down.

so, let's try to start the day today through a miserable haze of cold and hunger and exhaustion.

i can't promise i'll stay awake.

is the reason it's taking so long to get into subsidized housing because i'm single and families take priority?

no.

i'm only eligible for a one bedroom apartment. now, the one bedroom apartments in the system are likely to be relatively large, and the buildings are supposed to be non-smoking (a key point.), but i'm eligible for what i'm eligible for, nonetheless.

families - wherever they're from - are going to be placed into row houses, and apartments with multiple bedrooms. they won't stick five people into a one bedroom apartment.

so, these are not the people i'm competing with for spaces in the system at all. the people i'm competing with are sometimes going to be seniors (although they have specific buildings for seniors, too), but are mostly actually other disabled people. i don't even think i'm behind a lot of single refugees, as most of the refugees that come into the country are either families or not eligible for subsidized housing at all. it would be a small percentage, anyways, i would guess.

there's actually really just not enough supply to meet demand, for single people, specifically.

now, i could argue that there aren't enough units being built that are intended specifically for single disabled people, and that that's a broad oversight of the system, generally. society has a responsibility to house the disabled, and most of us are not going to end up in long term relationships or have children, because we're disabled; so long as the social responsibility to house the disabled exists, you're going to need to build one bedroom apartments for them, and that's maybe not happening because it's not seen as a priority. i'd actually consider it ideal to move into a large building that strictly houses single disabled people, but that seems to be viewed distastefully by a lot of people nowadays because it's "exclusionary", which i think is silly. i'd actually be more likely to meet friends in a building like that; i wouldn't feel ostracized, at all. so, it might be true that the focus on housing poor families has meant less resources have been directed towards housing disabled single people, and that that is an oversight that needs to be addressed, but i'm not behind a bunch of families on the list - that's not how that works.

where refugees are going to put pressure on housing poor singles is more in the private sector, and the crux of my argument has actually been that you need to get people like me out of the market in order to try to get prices down a little. i shouldn't be forced to compete for housing, like that...

so, my rest was longer than i thought, and i was woken up by a city worker that wanted to check my unit for gas. i didn't ask them to do that...

it's been better the last few days, so he didn't pick anything up; i wouldn't have expected him to, and didn't call him for that reason. i wanted the lines cleared in the front, which he's claiming isn't necessary. if he's right, that would suggest that the lines on the property need snaking.

this brought the landlord into the basement, who appeared to be baffled and embarrassed by the situation, which is actually a positive development. i got him to admit negligence. the first step is admitting you have a problem.

but, he denied my snake request; he did put a cap on the line, though, and all i can say is that he'd better hope that actually works. if we end up snaking in the end then that's going to be a costly mistake...

i got him to admit that he hasn't filed yet, and he thought he could just convince me to go, because property rights. lol. after conversing with him for a little, it really seems like he would be an easy litigation victim; he's clearly not well-informed about the legalities of the situation, and doesn't seem to be very interested in figuring it out. i am at least satisfied that he understands, now, that he has to file, but i'm not convinced that he will. i may have actually talked him out of it...he took the check.

i filed my counter-claim immediately, on the 25th.

i've mentioned repeatedly that i don't want to move right now - i'm fighting the cops, i've got a human rights case and i'm waiting on subsidized housing. if he misses the deadline to file, and the sewer issue actually gets fixed, for real, i could withdraw or otherwise halt. but, we won't know that for a good while, still.

i told him not to do that.

i took a shower when he left..

now, i think i'm alert enough to get back to work, and really want this done with soon.

where have i been? no posts in 24 hours, almost...

i spent yesterday afternoon processing what i learned from the plumber, yesterday. how am i getting sewer gas through a runoff line? is the sewer on the street combined? do the lines need to be cleared?

so i sent off an email to the engineering department, and i wrote up a letter for my landlord, asking for the lines to be snaked (and also for clarity on whether he's going to accept rent from me this month or not). i had to get to the library to print it, which stunk me up from being outside - but it also wasn't as cold as i feared.

so, i decided to get out and do groceries....and didn't get back until after 22:00. i got all of the things i need for most of the winter, meaning that remaining trips until the spring should mostly be restricted to getting perishables for immediate consumption. i got a prepaid debit for the upcoming trip to toronto, too. i made some spaghetti. i took a shower. and, i feel asleep around 2:00.

i was up a little after 8:00 and called the landlord and tenant board. they claim there's an up to three week lag between filing and processing the applications, which is a lot longer than previously. so, they don't expect to even have a date court date ready until mid november, and that date probably won't be until mid-january. that would suggest that i'll be here until march 1st at the very earliest, which gives me enough time to try and smooth the issue over - or to save some cash to get ready to move. but, i'll call again early in the week...

i got a response from the engineering department this morning, and they're claiming the lines are actually separate, which is surprising to me. most of windsor has combined lines. but, i found a schematic, and, sure enough, the lines are split.

how am i getting sewer gas out of a stormwater drain, then? something must be very wrong...

so, i've got a request into 311 to come snake the city's side of the line, in addition to the request for the landlord to snake the line from this side.

and, i haven't heard anything back from the landlord about the rent. if i don't hear anything by monday, i'll have to type him another letter indicating that i'm acknowledging his lack of reaction as refusing acceptance of the rent (and more evidence that he expects me out by the end of the year). i'll indicate that i'm willing to pay at any time, but that i won't pay interest, because he's refusing it. to be clear: what he's saying is that he'll pay me the one month's penalty by refusing november, and then give me last month's for december. but, he's not going to get a court date until january....

if i can save up a few months of rent, and then win money in a court case, it's easier than taking him to collections.

i need a short nap. but, i'm going to spend the afternoon finishing the november documents, and then get to doing the legal stuff for the weekend. the long range here is terrible, so i don't expect to be going to anything for a while unless i'm really, really keen on it. i should have the toronto trip planned by monday, hopefully...

When weeping tiles are connected to the municipal system through sanitary sewer laterals or storm sewer laterals, sewage can be forced back into the weeping tiles, resulting in possible structural damage to the home.

http://basementfloodreduction.com/theproblem

see, if it was installed properly, there should be a valve, right.

ugh.

what if what i'm smelling is the sewers on the brink of backing up? i thought it was a cleanout. it's just a hole in the floor. is there even a p-trap in there at all? when i dumped all that water down the drain, was i just thinning out the sewage?

it's starting to look like i want to get out of here, and ought to be looking for ways to maximize the payout on my way out.

so, the plumber came through this morning.

the source of the odour was coming from a line that goes to the weeping tiles rather than the cleanout, and i got conflicting statements as to whether this is connected to the sanitary. windsor is an old city, and what i learned in the last basement i was in is that most of the houses in the city have single lines rather than separate ones. i can call the city to ask if the issue becomes important, and it might be if we have to talk this out in court, but right now it's a secondary one.

so, the hole in the floor that i thought was a cleanout actually isn't a cleanout, but just a hole in the floor that goes to the drainage underneath the house, which goes to the sewer. the lines may or may not be unified on the way to the main. but, the water running through this drain comes from under the house, rather than from inside of it. the hole itself seems to exist solely to allow the heating system to drain.

if this is all actually true, which i'm not sure about, then that would seem to uphold my second hypothesis, which is that the gas is entering the unit via a heat pump in conjunction with a broken p-trap, rather than solely due to a dried p-trap or a broken stack. and, that was the hypothesis that i'd settled on for a while, now, due to the fact that the heating seems to be the dominant mitigating factor.

the plumber seemed more willing to think about the idea than the property owner, but neither of these people know anything at all about physics, and their opinion about whether i'm right or not is essentially worthless. they can scoff at me if they want, but that's just typical dumb jock anti-intellectualism. if you're a smart person, you know this feeling - when the dumb jock doesn't know how dumb he actually he is, and laughs at you when you say something intelligent. if they were more intelligent, they'd acknowledge their ignorance of thermodynamics, as i've been able to acknowledge my ignorance about plumbing systems. and, as a consequence of acknowledging my ignorance, i'm slowly learning about what i don't know as more evidence comes in, and they aren't, they're just scoffing, and languishing in their own backwardsness and stupidity.

the plumber seemed to argue that the cap just wasn't on tight enough, and to that end i would certainly not disagree with him. that hole clearly needs to be plugged, as a starting step, if not an ending one. i mentioned at the start of this that we might get to a point where we deduce there isn't an actual answer, and that's more or less what he said - his analysis was that if the line was installed correctly, then simply tightening up the line should solve the issue. meaning that if the line wasn't installed correctly then he'll need to tear the whole floor up...

i actually think that the truth is probably that the line wasn't installed correctly. but, you have to try to block the hole before you tear the floor up, even if you know it won't work.

so, i haven't heard a next step, yet. it's raining here today and all night, so i'm just going to sit and wait for a response. but, i'm expecting him to come in and plug up the hole, and i'm not expecting it to actually solve the problem.

now that i realize where the line is draining from, i also think there's likely some seepage. i've mentioned repeatedly that it seems like the smell is coming from directly under me, and that would make sense if the gas is coming up through the drainage system. i asked if a broken line under the floor could cause a smell and he said the water drains forwards, but that didn't answer the question about the gas. he just kept saying that what i'm describing shouldn't happen....if it's installed correctly.

i'm skeptical, but i have to let the process play out. and, we'll see if plugging the hole actually fixes the problem or not. don't get me wrong: i certainly hopes it does. i just don't think it will.

and, i recorded the entire thing, so he'd better actually do it.

so, i've got three of the four finalized and updated to the bandcamp site.

i'm going to stop to eat and get to finalizing the politics blog afterwards.. then, noise trade. then, liner notes - and i'll have to six to build, and may also want to update the first one.

the fifth entry in the music journal series, which is the month of november, 2013 and is 132 pages long. i am not going to summarize the story, but it is available on the web over here: musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/.

this is a compilation of written correspondences that occurred around me over november, 2013. it includes facebook posts, google+ posts and emails with acquaintances and family members, in an attempt to document the first reconstruction phase of rebuilding my discography, including remastering and (re)publishing inri001, inri003, inri016, inri027, ini028 and inri029. the contents of this download are the dummy track, a word doc file and a pdf file, both written in a more readable, chronological ordering. i've also added the respective files for my other three blogs, for general interest, as well as 70 separate txt documents (all html files) that are referenced in the journal. the liner notes for inri001, inri003, inri016, inri027, inri028 and inri029 are also included.

the events documented in this journal occurred in november, 2013 and were compiled into a narrative in several stages over the years 2014-2019. journal completed, released and finalized in doc and pdf format on oct 30, 2019. doc201311.

credits

released December 1, 2013

j - editing, participant

mom - participant
the initial landlord - participant
sennheiser technical support - participant

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/11-2013-music-journal

can bernie save his ass by doing a u-turn on the gays and going back to his old self?

it's true that, for me, this is personal. but, that's not really the point.

i don't actually think that bernie, as an individual, is anti-gay at all - i don't think he cares, either way. he's not the kind of person that would. what i think is that he's taken a lot of bad political advice and made a horrific miscalculation. see, but that's even worse because this isn't coming from any deep level of conviction - it's not a belief or an ideology, for him, it's a cold political calculation that demonstrates that he's entirely willing to throw what is unquestionably the most vulnerable minority on the planet under the bus.

he likes to talk about how he's willing to stand up for people.

but, when you won't stand up for the people that need to be stood up for the most, when you instead stand with those that want to hurt the people that can least defend themselves, the entire rhetorical device gets thrown away.

so, who does bernie stand with? it seems like he stands with those it is convenient to stand with.

and, then what's the point of hearing him backtrack, if you know it's just because he's realized he's losing support?

my disinterest may fade, over time. but, he can't win me back as a supporter, which, at the moment, would appear to be something he's proud of.

this is my official response.

i appear to have turned the auto-reply on last night by accident. i apologize for the first response, which was automatic.

i do understand the ruling; the court is essentially deferring to the mfippa, in an attempt to minimize it's own reach. it agrees that asking for an order is due diligence rather than an absence of it, and is willing in principle to overrule the mfippa to get the information, but not unless it feels it has to as a last resort. so, it is instructing that i do a search first and then come back and ask again if it doesn't provide the appropriate information.

i will remind the court that i did not perform this search out of fear of getting arrested for it. that fear is not unfounded, on my behalf: the allegation in the case is that i was arrested not much more than a year ago on the orders of the defendant with the purpose of intimidating me from filing a human rights case against the defendant. the veracity of this claim is what is to be determined in the case. i was in fact then charged with stalking this person, despite not knowing their real name or their address or even their actual gender, which my request for order has made abundantly clear. i was released in the context of an order not to further communicate with the individual, directly or indirectly, until the charges were dropped, and these charges were indeed quickly dropped. had i not been arrested, i wouldn't even know the name of the numbered company that had me arrested. as such, i felt my options for performing research were limited by threats of further criminal charges - something i explained to the tribunal, in writing, on three separate occasions. and, i need to be clear on the point: i have not done anything at all to determine who this person is, and will state as much under oath as many ways as you'd like me to. i have abided by the conditions of the release, well after the charges were dropped.

so, it should be clear that the reason i opted for this approach was to ensure i didn't get arrested a second time. while conducting a corporate search may not be grounds for arrest, not having valid grounds for arrest didn't (allegedly) stop them the first time. and, i'm not convinced the justice would let me out so quickly a second time, fairly or not.

the order, here, is clear enough: i have been granted authority by the tribunal to determine this person's identity by conducting the appropriate searches, and i should not fear extra-legal or otherwise  retributive action by the windsor police for doing so. as such, i do not expect to be contacted by the windsor police about it when i do so, and will have the information available for the tribunal (or a second request for order, if it is not available) by the middle of next week at the very latest.

j

...so, if they try to arrest me over this (again.), i've got the order to cover my ass, now.

it's not the easiest or most rational approach, but whatever. it's still a step forwards.

to put it another way.

what i said to the tribunal was "maybe i could do a search, but these guys might arrest me if i do, so let's just get the information directly from the cops, instead, so they can clearly see what i'm doing and don't twist it around into further charges."

...and what the tribunal has said is "you should not be fearful of extra-legal behaviour by the windsor police. do the search.".

so, i got my order in the mail, and what they're telling me is that i have to do a corporate search before i can ask the cops. they also said that if i can't find the information then i can put in a second order, and they'll grant it. so, it's a question of process.

they're essentially deferring to the mfippa, here. they don't have to do that - they could have ordered the cops to hand over the information, that is, they could have overruled the act. but, the position they're taking is that i have to look for the information elsewhere, first, before they do that. so, they're deferring to the act to try to minimize their own authority here. ok. that's a reasonable judicial position - they would, otherwise, be overruling a statute, and what they're saying is that they are prepared to do that but they'd rather not do that if they don't have to.

the thing is that i was charged with harassing this person. the reason i did this was that i was concerned that doing that kind of research could open me up to charges - the cops could argue that i was snooping around online to try to figure out who she was. if you think that is a stretch, i'll remind you that i spent a night in jail for far less than that.

so, i'm going to interpret the ruling as providing me with the positive right to find information about this person, which is in truth still a step forwards. if the cops get on my ass about it, i'll point to the order.

and, if i can't find the information, i'll present a second order, as is appropriate.

it's going to cost me something like $30 to run a search, which isn't fair, but nobody ever claimed that the system was fair...

so, buttigieg is getting a huge bump, apparently from sanders supporters. and, it's not hard to figure out why - sanders has taken some exceedingly backwards, bigoted positions on queer issues recently. he seems perfectly happy, all of a sudden, to align himself with groups and ideologies that simply don't believe in the idea of human rights, and he seems willing to do it under the misguided belief that it is politically expedient to do so.

.....because it's increasingly clear that bernie sanders, as an individual, is an idiot. he's a dumb person, and a dumb politician. he's taken a really stupid position here, one that is uncharacteristic of his past views but increasingly characteristic of his low intelligence level, and it's starting to hurt him.

predictably, actually.

so, this is less about being pro-buttigieg. don't confuse yourself - his soft-right positions are not all of a sudden popular in the base. this is a backlash against sanders. and, stop pretending it isn't.

it remains to see if it will last, because the reality is that buttigieg is a terrible candidate. he's barely old enough to run, and he's clearly to the right of obama. his healthcare plan is something margaret thatcher would have come up with; the conservative party in canada would consider it to be too right-wing. so, if you're jumping on the buttigieg bandwagon because you're pissed off at bernie for expressing bigoted opinions about queer folks, and aligning with bigots on the issue, i'm certainly in solidarity with your outrage (which is well placed) and your scorn (which is well deserved), but you might want to think twice about what you're doing with it.

i can't support sanders anymore, but, i don't support buttigieg, either.

the primary is a disaster. i'm not going to be paying close attention; i haven't even watched the last several debates. but, i'll chime in with stuff like this from time to time...

it's a sympathy bump. and, he maybe doesn't deserve it. but, the candidates should listen to what it's saying - in 2019, democratic voters have a lot of solidarity with the gays, and not much patience or tolerance for groups or ideologies that want to go after them.

and, if you're going to run a completely out-of-touch 80 year-old that wants to run like it's 1985, don't be surprised when he sounds and acts and behaves like exactly what he is.

i think the right thing for the international community to do in response to this is to place economic sanctions on the united states.

i repeat: i am calling for economic sanctions on the united states.

this can't be tolerated.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/russia-releases-damning-evidence-u-173000250.html

ok.

the first run is done.

time to eat and shower.

politics: 320 pages
music: 132 pages
dtk: 110 pages
travel: 3 pages

i'm going to cross-reference as a finishing step, and i may add a few things to it, but i mentioned that the travel blog won't pick up until mid-2014. the politics site will slow down quite a bit moving forward into the new year, while the dtk site will pick up quite a bit - there's a bit of a tease near the end of november, but it doesn't really start up until mid-2014 when i started trolling hard. and, i have two more months to get through before the end of the first reconstruction phase. there's also six liner notes to type up, and six releases to republish.

i want this all done by the end of the month...

you have to be careful remastering something like this, because it's such a product of the (now ancient) technology. it's cleaner, maybe, but the tape reverb is a part of the song.

i just hope the original masters are still kicking around.

i'm just about done. really. a few more dtk posts at the end of the month, that's it.

i just need to remind people just how much lennon i listened to as a kid, and just how much of an influence he was on me. i just listened to this for the first time in years, and laughed....
 
it absolutely reeks in here, but the plumber is going to be here tomorrow so i'm going to let it stink the place up.

hallowe'en was always my mom's favourite holiday, and i grew up with a lot of negative memories around it. i guess that's what happens when you grow up with abusive satanist parents rather than abusive christian parents - your negative childhood memories end up attached to secular holidays like hallowe'en rather than religious ones like easter.

"no, mom, i don't want to wear that".

so, i wouldn't care much for hallowe'en on a good year. and, i never go to costume or dress-up parties. ever. i'd rather kill myself.

i felt like i was too old for hallowe'en when i was about 10. if i thought holidays were dumb in general, i always thought this one was the dumbest holiday of all of them. i'm way too old, now.

as it is, it's cold this year, and i'm feeling gross and anti-social. i have absolutely no interest in this right now, at all, whatsoever.

i wanted to be done the rebuild yesterday afternoon, but i got circled around and had to back track. i finally stopped to eat this morning, and then had to nap. i've got a few dozen posts left, max...