you know, the last time i checked, lying under oath was called perjury and came attached to some serious consequences.

i recognize that the concerns underlying the development of this product (and, let's be clear: this video is an advertisement. all the kids want the real doll! buy! buy!) are real. a lot of these comments are seeking to trivialize the issue. it's not a triviality. there's mountains of research into this.

however, you'll notice that several of these kids are deciding what the dolls' careers are based on their appearance. they may be being prodded a bit to sell the doll, sure. it's hard to know. but what they're saying is that the barbie doll must be a fashion model because of how she looks; the "realistic doll", on the other hand, can be an astronaut, if she wants, because of how she looks.

in other words, the kids are continuing to enforce the objectification of women. pretty much everything these kids are saying remains reflective of a heteropatriarchal order that categorizes women based on their ability to conform to male standards of sexuality.

again: there's a problem here. but it's not in the dolls, themselves, as physical objects. they're just molded plastic. it's in the way that the girls are taught to interpret the dolls.

and, if you want to get to the root of this, you need to change the messaging that girls get when they pick the toys up, not the toys themselves.

scandinavian women are going to continue to exist. and, in fact, the advanced social system in that area produces plenty of women that look like barbie dolls and work in law or medicine.

"i believe that people that are going to commit crimes shouldn't have guns" - george w. bush

this is a quote that was widely thrown around in the mid 00s as supposed evidence of mr. bush's lack of intelligence. i've never really seen the supposed stupidity in the statement. nobody doubts the truth of the statement. it may be a little obvious, but we're talking about an office that declares truths to be self-evident.

i've used it twice - in the unfinished curious george suite, and again in the sample version of the fourth symphony, because i wasn't planning on releasing the curious george suite (and now have). both of these uses preceded it's wide adoption by satirists.

i was taking a different perspective, though. it's one i've never seen anybody else use. i was actually focusing on the irony in the statement.

in fact, mr. bush was somebody that was clearly going to commit crimes. war crimes, as it turns out. therefore, by his own logic, he shouldn't have had guns.

of course, he did. which indirectly circles back around to it's more common satirical usage.

i still find the irony in it staggering. as an american, mr. bush probably didn't pick up on that...

"i believe that wars should not happen unless they are congressionally approved."

it seems like a rather different statement.

but it actually follows logically as a corollary.

that constitution down there is a bit wonky, though.

for all the talk of congressional approval, the reality is that the american form of government is designed to be a military dictatorship. i think that a large amount of the problems down there could be solved by merely grasping this simple point - the president is not meant to be in charge of civilian matters, but the commander in chief. that is, a military leader. and, while congress can act as a check on his power, he's constitutionally not far from being an elected military dictator.

the president can introduce legislation if he wants. and he can veto shit under limited circumstances. but it's not the primary function of the office. civilian things are actually supposed to be dealt with through congress. yet, millions of americans expect the president to set the domestic agenda. then, they get confused when it doesn't happen.

getting people to understand that the president is meant to be somebody that has guns and that they're supposed to deal with things like health care and decriminalization through various representative bodies would shift the focus back to where it needs to be to get things done.

the next step, then, ought to be to take away the president's guns.

but one thing at a time...

existence is a weird thing, in the sense that it becomes infinitely valuable when it doesn't have an end point, and more or less useless when it does. worse, it's value degrades as one ages.

somebody did the math on about 4 years per twelve years of smoking. i'm not convinced that adding an extra fifteen or twenty years to the end of my life sounds like a good idea. 85 or 65? i'm not really looking forward to the quality of life that accompanies most people in their 60s and 70s, whether they're smokers or not.

i'd rather suggest that the opposite message is more valuable. you don't have infinite seconds to waste being distracted by neon-flashing lights. you've got a few decades to accomplish something, then you become somebody's burden and finally end up recycled back into the biosphere.

if smoking a cigarette helps you focus a bit better on what you're doing, or keeps you awake a few hours longer while you're working on something important to you, it's worth the cost of a few less years in the old folks home.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgIhD2G1T_8

it's expensive, though. keep that in mind.

uploading completed mixes to inri058

trepanation nation disc 1...

1) this is the first version of the track, which was written as an arena rock anthem in the summer of 2001 for use in a gestating rock band project that never happened.

i rerecorded the track to capture it in it's initial state on aug 3, 2014. track dated to aug 15, 2001.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-original-mix


2) the successor project to the aborted rock project was rabit is wolf, which consisted of myself and the singer from that project. while it was initially constructed around a shared interest in post-punk, the project took a sharp turn towards folk in the first half of 2002. the track was consequently converted from an arena rock punk/industrial anthem into a folk punk tune. this is the initial folk punk incarnation, as recorded in february of 2002. dated to feb 19, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-saw-you-cry-demo


3) i first started to record this track in earnest in march of 2002 by reconstructing the drums to utilize a mixture of machines and live loops. in the process, i began to experiment with the structuring of the track. the track may have been initially written on a classical in the first place (i don't remember); it certainly integrates the perspective of the classical guitar, and for good reason - i was playing a lot of classical guitar music over the course of 2001. so, it transferred to a finger picking style very intuitively. the final versions all have multiple classical guitar overdubs.

it was on the classical guitar that the track was expanded into the scale it came to exist in. this is an early performance on classical guitar, dated to april 7, 2002.

the knocking in the background of the track is literally background noise of my father hammering something outside my room. it became the inspiration for the ring modulator adlib in the final versions of the track (i gave sean a mic, plugged it into a ring mod and told him to bash on it while twiddling the knobs).

this version is very rough and is only available for download on bandcamp due to space requirements on the physical media.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-classical-guitar-mix


4) by the beginning of may, the track had taken on a defined shape. at the same time, sean and i were discussing ways to present rabit is wolf to the public and had decided on a two-person guitar/voice duo. the track consequently needed to be reworked for live presentation, which is what this is.

i constructed the mix in november, 2014 out of a guitar part dated to may 5, 2002 and vocals dated to june 7, 2002. i'm dating this to may 5, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-saw-you-cry-live-version


5) the recording of this track over the spring of 2002 seems to have occurred in spurts, likely based around gaps in my school schedule. the drums in the first part of the track were sculpted together on the night/morning of march 7/8, which would have been a little after the track took it's initial folk punk form and centred on it existing in that way. the drums were sculpted from a mix of the initial drum machine part, real time ry30 square pushing, washes of digital noise and short, sculpted samples of greg playing in real time. the track seems to have been shaped into what it is during the week of april 15-22, a little after it was expanded by playing it as a classical piece, with the addition of multiple guitar and synth overdubs and all kinds of digital wave shaping through notch filters and time manipulation. i must have had that week off for exam related purposes; i probably had late exams that year. incomplete versions of the track exist that seem to have been burned around april 25, which are what the live version with sean would have been based upon.

the next spurt in recording was to add bass parts over the weekend of may 17-19. further drum and guitar parts were also added at this time.

i was growing very insular during the period this was recorded, which was partially out of a decision to force myself to go straight edge in preparation for transgendered hormone therapy, which i was set to begin at the start of may. the bulk of the track was recorded before i went on hormone therapy. it may in some way reflect a sense of resigned preparation for a difficult process. but, it really comes more out of the isolation i had forced upon myself.

my parents were coming out of a difficult financial situation due partly to their own mismanagement and partly to my father coming out of a period of unemployment. he was completing a course in management over the period, which put me in the weird position of having to do his statistics homework for him. i was a second year honours math student at the time, so his basic stats assignments were not very challenging for me; conversely, he wasn't interested in the topic. i should probably have a diploma in business stats from the university of manitoba along with my math degree from carleton. but, who's counting, really? my math degree never got me anywhere in life (i haven't aspired to use it for anything....), but his management course opened up doors for him that have aided me. so, it worked out....

what this meant was that i found myself living in a split duplex around the beginning of 2002. for many years previously, i had lived in various basements and more or less had those basements to myself, merely having to tolerate the odd laundry run. the split duplex put me in the rather normal situation of having a bedroom upstairs, the privilege of having a studio downstairs and the inconvenience of having to follow scheduling rules. as i'd been so used to having total freedom in my scheduling for so long, i was unable to adjust to this.

if i were to come up and down the stairs in the middle of the night, i would wake my labrador retrievers up (who just wanted to come say hi) and that would wake up my parents. this was consequently forbidden. to get around this, i started sleeping in the afternoon, so i could go downstairs in the evening and not come back up until the morning. this left me without human contact for days or even weeks at a time. on long days, i would sleep on the carpeted floor of the studio. some days, i simply wouldn't sleep at all.

what you're hearing here is in many ways the culmination of this lack of human contact, complete abstinence from drugs and sleep deprivation - all in the context of the stress from simultaneously completing two university programs and preparing for a dramatic life shift. while the music was recorded in spurts, those spurts were emotional stress outlets. while parts of this may sound like my sanity was fragile while it was being created, the process of recording them is probably the only thing that allowed me to maintain it.

this version is dated to may 22, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-saw-you-cry-instrumental-version

6) sean's vocals were added at the beginning of june. i had to add some extra synth parts, as well, to fix some of the harmonization. i've successfully glossed over the problems, but this is the one recording where sean legitimately couldn't find notes that fit. it's hard to blame him, as the music is rather complex from a harmonic standpoint and there isn't an existing melody written out for him to follow. he didn't have the training required to interpret this. the vocal manipulations i used in the track caused some conflict, but the reality is that the vocal melody he had extrapolated out of the guitars for use in the acoustic version was simply not transferable to this mix and the mods were necessary to compensate. placing his naked vocals into the track would have created large amounts of dissonance where no dissonance was desired. when the track opens up a bit, there's more space, and the vocals are left unaltered.

looking back, i suppose i could have explained that to him and asked for a rewrite rather than just taking it into my own hands and slathering on the effects, but i was very keen on both maintaining his autonomy as a vocalist and maintaining my autonomy as a producer/composer. on top of that, i simply liked the end result. i suppose that, had i not been able to manipulate the vocals into what i wanted, i would have had to ask for a rewrite....

for the ring mod part, i wanted to emulate the knocking sound that existed atmospherically in the classical version. so, i gave sean a mic plugged into a ring modulator, locked him in the room and told him to smash it against the ground and play with the knobs for a while. i've kept this part in further instrumental versions.

that said, sean largely rejected the track in it's psychedelic form, so this is the last rabit is wolf version.

this is dated to june 15, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-saw-you-cry-3


trepanation nation disc 2...

7) once it had become clear that sean had rejected the track, i wasn't entirely sure what to do with it. i had some material i had put aside for a noise project (subsequently compiled as inri032: jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/give-em-hell-harry-strung-out ) that was meant to merge noise & politics, and i was maybe eager to get back to this idea of music as a political art form.

while there were not lyrics attached to the initial cynicide project, i did already have the idea of a conceptual piece connecting the existing condition of north american society to the idea of trepanning, or self-lobotomizing to get the precise point across. we were in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks (which seemed staged even at the point) and the political reaction to them. i felt the need to say something about this, but i didn't want to be too direct or judgmental about it so i compiled a list of samples that presented what i felt reflected the general condition of the world we were living in. the references are broad and vast; there's not really a succinct way to over-simplify it.

the overall context is the view that we were living through the end of the civil rights period. it could be argued that the focus on civil rights accidentally erupted as a reaction to world war two propaganda, hit a high point in the 1960s and began to irreversibly erode at the beginning of the 1980s. in this narrative, the collapse of the twin towers was the final death blow to something the elite never wanted in the first place and was happy to sweep into the trash heap of history.

but, i'm specifically focusing on how this is self-inflicted by our collective desire to be stupid - to drill these holes in our skulls, as though there's some kind of enlightenment in abolishing our ability to understand the world around us, and focus instead on our own short term gains. in that sense, it's an attack on the neo-liberal model and how it encourages us to destroy ourselves.

the spoken word section in the middle was a poem i created out of those word magnets you see on fridges. i was working as an overnight security guard at the time (summer of 2001) and just not sleeping at all. as i was doing my rounds, i stopped and made the poem. i got fired from that job for yelling at a coke machine...

i've considered doing a sample-by-sample breakdown of this but have decided it's neurotic. however, if you want to write an essay, and i like it, i'll link to it.

dated to july 4, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/trepanation-nation-sample-mix


8) in late 2013, i decided to complete unfinished tracks in a chronological ordering and it led me to the decision to complete the track in the form it was initially written in. completed on sept 24, 2014; dated to sept 16, 2001.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/10-to-spin-inside-dull-aberrations

everybody knows you don't really get high the first time. i sure didn't. and they don't seem very high to me.

now, get them to do this a second time and you'll have an interesting video.

also, to answer the dominant question on the thread: most marijuana users don't want to get high every day any more than the average person wants to get drunk every day. there's a time and a place for it. but, almost everybody (except extreme alcoholics) agrees that being drunk all the time is a crappy way to live, especially if you've got responsibilities. even if you don't have responsibilities, the intellectual component of existence demands sobriety at least a few days a week to accomplish. whether you make art or like to read or like sports or whatever, there are some things that are not fun to do under the influence. it's no different with pot. people that smoke every single day have an addiction and need to seek help. they no more represent the average pot user than the raging alcoholic represents the average alcohol user.

it's hard to fault the guy for the reaction. maybe dude was just looking for a couch. maybe not. he can't take liberties in guessing.

but, it is reasonable to ask questions about a society that allows the conditions which lead to something like this happening in the first place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG1Xq5wRWxo

publishing the imaginary tour demo ep (inri059)

ok, that finishes inri040, which i'm releasing as a download-only release.

these mixes are a little messy at points, but it's marketed as a demo, so i'm ok with that.

--

something like this would have been the demo brought along on an acoustic tour that never happened. tracks 1-4 would have represented a live set over the summer of 2002, while tracks five and six are otherwise stranded acoustic demos. the style could be broadly categorized as folk punk, but it also leans heavily towards the emo of the period.

written and recorded in late 2001 and the first half of 2002. mildly remixed in november, 2014 to make the tracks more presentable; nothing substantial was altered, and no new sound was recorded. final mixes were on november 19, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits
j - acoustic guitar, voice (3)
sean - vocals, lyrics

released august 1, 2002

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-imaginary-tour-ep



1) this is the original demo, that the main track was built over. it is completely unaltered from the 2002 file. feb 5, 2002.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/9-16-outside-the-magenta-box


2) this is a new mix of the original guitar and vocal parts. written and recorded in march, 2002. mix done on nov 19, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/psi-4


3) when the idea of performing as an acoustic duo was decided upon, it became clear that much of the recorded material was unsuitable for this purpose. the original version of this track would have been painfully boring to watch as a duo, with the music consisting of nothing more than a basic bass line. so, i rewrote the song for acoustic presentation. this is a (rough) live demo that i made for sean. no recording with sean was created.

it's a tricky guitar part, and trickier to do while singing (which wouldn't have been necessary in a live setting).

obviously, a live version would have included sean singing his vocals rather than me reciting them. it would have also included dual harmonies at the end.

some minor editing of this may 5, 2002 mix was done on nov 19. 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/me-myself-and-the-time-i-thought-this-was-a-good-idea-2


4) this is actually a transitional version of the song, halfway between the initial folk version (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-saw-you-cry-first-demo ) and the rabit is wolf version (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-saw-you-cry). the guitar part was recorded live in may, 2002 for the purposes of it being the performance version of the track, and just as a way to show it to sean over icq (or was it msn?). i've reconstructed the vocals from recordings of the studio version, which is in itself a substantial reworking because those vocals were heavily manipulated.

i had no option but to time shift some of the tracks as some of this recording is in a different tempo, but these are otherwise naked vocals and this is otherwise what i would have wanted a live performance of the track to sound like, as the ending point of any live set.

this mix was done on nov 19, 2014, out of parts recorded in may and june of 2002, and is dated to june 10, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-saw-you-cry-2


5) this was a live demo (with sean on the left channel and myself on the right) that i think was probably recorded in july. i've mixed the channels down, but not altered it, otherwise. mixed on nov 19, 2014. dated to july 14, 2002.

this was a song that had a split personality from the beginning; it was being converted into a techno song for my own uses at the same time that it was being written with sean, and to be honest i had far more invested into the techno side of it. i did play it for sean, but he wasn't interested. no final mix was recorded with sean. i think this version is best left as it is.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/penny-shoeman


6) this was a live demo (with sean on the left channel and myself on the right) that i think was probably recorded in july. this was never finished as a rabit tune, and i never expanded it into one of my own tunes. i think it's better left as it is. this acoustic ep is actually a good home for it, as it was intended that way.

the little bit of production i did was in mixing the channels. the intent was just to mix the two sources together, but i felt that the mixdown took something away from sean's vocals that they previously had when they were separated in the mix - this is hard to articulate, it's just something about the empty space. so, that's the idea going on there.

i constructed this final mix (date: nov 19, 2014) out of two mixes - one that continued the stereo rotation for the whole track, and the initial channel-separated one. it's dated to july 28, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/jumped-up-and-down


note that this is also the last rabit is wolf release.

i'm going to put a box set up, but it's difficult to place the boundaries on it so i'm not sure yet. the rule will probably be "include's seans vocals". which will make the box set eight or nine discs.

publishing time (inri056)

sound raider isn't behaving...i probably wouldn't have uploaded it anyways....

so, inri037 is now complete.

--

time & psi were partially a rejection of the folk idea in favour of glossy, somewhat experimental pop. i realized that it was reasonable to move in a more commercial direction, but folk wasn't something i understood well, so it was a weird direction for me to be moving in. experimental or psychedelic pop, on the other hand, was something i had a solid grasp on...

time had been initially recorded in the fall and was remixed in late february to integrate a drum part. no original files exist. psi was recorded quickly in early march.

the track, as it existed in rabit, was a conscious pop compromise. i had ideas that weren't explored to keep it poppy and that have been expanded upon in the remixes.

the time machine is added here as a bonus track. it's based on an earlier classical guitar composition that was always meant to be reinterpreted as an idm tune and finally was in early 2014. the thematic overlap makes it relevant, but there is otherwise no connection between the two songs.

i started working on what would become my fourth symphony very shortly after the material on this ep was completed, and it really represents the point where i lost interest in rabit as a concept, under pressure to continue moving in a direction i didn't have any interest in. there are folk and psych versions of the track; sean never caught on to the psych version, and i never had my heart in the folk version. there were final folk demos recorded as late as the fall, but the disconnect was not solvable. the vocal version of the fourth symphony is in some way a corollary of but is ultimately too separate from these files to include here. psi & time, together, consequently comprise what is the fourth and final ("psychedelic pop") phase of rabit.

written in late 2001 and early 2002 and recorded in early 2002 and late 2014. the final mix was finished on nov 18, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - electric & acoustic guitars, bass, synthesizers, digital effects & treatments, drum manipulations, programming, digital wave editing, loops, sound design, production, composition.

sean - vocals, lyrics (3,4)
greg - drum performance sample source (1-3)

the rendered electronic orchestra on track 5 includes acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, brass, orchestra hit, drum machine, electronic drum kit, nylon guitar, electric guitar, synthesizer effects, music box, piano, bells and mellotron.

released march 10, 2002

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/time

running out of time (final mixes)

1) the track, as it existed in rabit, was a conscious pop compromise. i had ideas that weren't explored to keep it poppy and that have been expanded upon in the remixes. written in late 2001 and 2002 and recorded in early 2002 and late 2014. the final mix was finished on nov 18, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/running-out-of-time


2) this mix is a combination of tracks from the original song played at various speeds, with large amounts of processing on the individual tracks. there's actually no synths in this track. track released nov 18, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/time-running-out-mix


3) a remixed instrumental version of the original track. released nov 18, 2014.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/time-unstuck-mix-2

i feel that people are a little bit confused about this discussion of streaming media, and a lot of it has to do with not understanding the words that are being thrown around.

so, we live under the system we call capitalism. while there are many ways to categorize people in capitalism, the most widely adopted (and most successful, in terms of explanations) way to do this is to broadly split people into workers and capitalists. it's not a clean partition, and it's not exhaustive, but it's fine for the discussion.

simply stated, the workers in a capitalist system are the people that make the goods, whereas the capitalists are the people that own the systems of production and appropriate a profit from the worker's labour, while not producing anything themselves.

now, let us analyze a music distribution system, like spotify. clearly, the musicians are the workers in such a system. and, who are the capitalists? that would be the managers - spotify, google, apple....

and, we see the same thing in this system that we see in every other capitalist system - the capitalists make large profits by exploiting the labour of the workers, while the workers starve.

now, it's pretty blatantly obvious that capitalism is an exploitative system. so, one of the things that anti-capitalists (like socialists and anarchists) seek to do is to gain control of the means of production, so that they don't have to pay the capitalists. anti-capitalists would consequently seek to smash systems like spotify and replace them with artist-run spaces. that is, independent labels and independent artists. bandcamp is not exactly an artist run space, but it's far closer to a socialist model.

the confusion stems from this idea that any process of exchange is upholding capitalism, which is just a misunderstanding of capitalism. capitalism is not exchanging things. there are diverse types of market socialism. capitalism, specifically, is the appropriation of labour by a managerial class. and, the entrenchment of services that stream music for peanuts that are sent to a centralized corporate bureaucracy, while the workers get nothing at all, is one of the most blatantly capitalistic things we've seen happen in our lifetimes.

this confusion is upheld by social norms which seek to trivialize certain economic activities as outside the market. generally, it's "feminine things" that are trivialized in this way - child care, housework, social work and art, to name a few examples.

i hope i've clarified a few things.

time (running out mix)

so, this is going to come in in three parts on the time single, which will be merged into one track on the record.

it's looking like it'll be around 20 minutes, which may be a mild problem when it comes to sequence the disc. but i can't worry about that right now. right now, i've got tons of space on the single...

the third part may end up not on the record. we'll see.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/time-unstuck-mix


this is the first section, which will open up into a remix of the song for the second section. the third section is an idea that will be chaotic, let's see what it sounds like....

written & recorded in late 2001 and early 2002 and mixed in early 2002 and late 2014. the final mix was finished on nov 18, 2014.

well, i got my permanent record mailed to me, but it's not my permanent record. it's for somebody else with the same name born in july, 1981. i was born in january, 1981. so i need to figure out where my files are...

the one thing i did get back was standardized testing results from when i was in grade two. apparently, they identified me as being at a ninth grade level at that time. i passed a test to skip me past grade five, but the principal vetoed it because she thought i needed to stay the year for maturity reasons.

the truth is i was always almost a year older than everybody because i was born thirteen days past the cutoff. so, i was almost eight going into grade two. the skip probably would have helped more than hindered in terms of behavioural issues.

anyways, these were my grade two standardized test results. these are percentiles, not grades.

vocabulary - 99
reading - 95
language - 96
work-study - 99
mathematics - 93
total rank: 99th percentile (national)

i look back and don't wish i would have spent more time on school, i look back and wish i wouldn't have bothered at all. and, had i not been pressured into it, i probably wouldn't have.

i mean, i'd probably have more of this discography done at this point.

but i think i got to the right approach eventually.

speaking of which, i need to start the next remix....

no, that's the right response for wearing a shirt that was clearly unprofessional. he deserved that pat on the back, patronizing or not. this is progress. ignore the neanderthals - in the end, the genome will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOggVg2Ekko

this was an interfaith prayer service with the purpose of building bridges across muslim and christian communities.

....and what the responses here demonstrate pretty clearly is that it's a hopeless aim. religion is inherently suspicious of the unknown; the xenophobia it preaches cannot be resolved without abolishing religious thinking altogether.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrDK8UWsRFg

deathtokoalas
the guy's at work. it's not appropriate. and that's not rocket science.

Alex
if i was responsible for landing on a comet, I'd wear whatever i wanted. Also why is it inappropriate?

deathtokoalas 
no. you don't get to behave differently as a result of your accomplishments. you remain required to uphold the same code of conduct as everybody else. you're not special. you're not above the law. you're not entitled to special treatment.

he understood what was wrong with the shirt, it doesn't matter if you do or not.

xX444Xx1
well you should consider that in many scientific workrooms there is no real dresscode. since they have no contact to 'customers' on a daily basis like in many modern occupations, they can nearly werar whatever they want as long as they are not naked :D

warioman91
I love the shirt, because IT IS TACKY and funny. Maybe it's something I get from my dad, but bad taste is timeless.  My dad has worked in the air force and now other government project stuff and he would wear bad taste pink dress shirts and other stuff occasionally. Whatever, I just love this guy's look. It says "cool" scientist/engineer!

So if you still think it's inappropriate, then that's your view but I love it because it's exactly what it is.

deathtokoalas
i come from a scientific background. while it's true that dress codes are not generally articulated, it's not with the idea that anything goes but because it's assumed that people will use the proper judgement without having to be micromanaged about it. i mean, nobody wants to tell somebody with a phd what to wear. the assumption is that somebody with a phd knows what to wear without having an hr manager on their ass about it.

the guy knew he was going to be on tv. it's the kind of bad judgement that it's just assumed is never going to be an issue.

tacky is one thing, but it's clear what the problem is and i'm not going to go over the 101 course notes on the topic. nobody would have said anything if the shirt had palm trees on it. but, things have changed over the last few generations and a shirt like that just isn't acceptable in a professional culture anymore.

publishing 9:46 outside of the magenta box (inri055)

inri036 is now complete.

there's two new instrumental mixes here, and three vocal mixes from 2002. overall, it's sort of a psychedelic folk release, which is a bit of an anomaly for me. it was never done, never felt right. until now...

i'm quite happy with the two instrumental mixes here, so do check them out.

--

my memory is a little fuzzy with this track, other than that it was constructed all at once in the middle of the night on a cold february morning in a basement that wasn't well heated.

i believe that sean initially brought in the a capella vocal that is heard in the acoustic demo under the request that it be developed in a folky style, and the track was built from there. we seem to have done the live version the next week, meaning i must have written it over the week.

there was some hard drive corruption as the demo was being recorded. i was in a glitchy mindset at the time and decided the skips ought to be interpreted musically. i'm not sure i'd make the same choice now, but i'm not willing to second guess myself, either. so, i skittered up the bass and organ parts to make the entire track sound glitchy to compensate for the skips. i also ran the vocal file through a musical algorithm that involved slowing it down and pasting it over itself to create a collage of voices somewhat similar to a robotic choir. as the track is otherwise rather pastoral, all of this glitch provides for an unusual juxtaposition.

as mentioned, the track was built up quickly, but it was always meant as a demo. that is to say that the vocal-driven 2002 version of the track was not complete, and was never completed.

i came around to completing it as an instrumental work in mid october, 2014. the removal of sean's vocals required some mild rethinks in terms of melodic content, but the real additions are threefold. first, it is substantially remixed to make it sound thicker. second, some sound design or soundscaping was constructed, mostly for the beginning of the track, but some guitar parts were also added throughout. third, drums were added. this converts the track out of folk (a genre i spend almost no time in) and back into psychedelic pop (my usual home) with hints of fusion, prog and idm. as it is, this can be viewed as the definitive (if non-comprehensive) third incarnation of rabit is wolf, which was being torn between freak folk and folk punk tendencies in it's general tumbling towards "folk".

written in early 2002 and recorded in early 2002 and late 2014. the final fuck boxes mixes were finished on nov 15, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, electric air reed organ, electronic drum kit, voice (1, 5), sampling, sound design, vocal manipulations, digital wave editing, production

sean - vocals/lyrics (2,3,4)

released february 20, 2002

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/9-46-outside-the-magenta-box

fuck boxes (overdub mix) and fuck boxes (final mix)

1) this mix removes the acoustic guitar(s) and integrates an electric guitar line into the end of the piece. it gives the track a very different, almost dubby, kind of glitch-hop sort of feel. written in early 2002 and recorded in early 2002 and late 2014. this mix was finished on nov 15, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/fuck-boxes-overdub-mix


2) this is the final instrumental mix of the track, encapsulating all instrumental parts written and recorded for the piece except for a guitar line that is unique to the overdub mix. written in early 2002 and recorded in early 2002 and late 2014. final mix completed on nov 15, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/fuck-boxes


3) the final mix is also on the j^2 record.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/fuck-boxes-2

uploading already completed tracks to inri056

1) this is the rabit is wolf version. written & recorded in late 2001 and early 2002 and mixed in early 2002. track released march 2, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/time-2


2) this is the rabit is wolf version. written & recorded in early 2002. track released march 8, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/psi-2


3) this is included for thematic purposes, and otherwise has nothing to do with rabit is wolf. written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. further constructed, warped and appended to over july, 2014. track released july 19, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-time-machine-4


three of what is currently four tracks slated for inri037. there's nothing new here, but this timeline will eventually be moved to my own site, so i'm documenting dates.

tentative writeup:

time remixes. inri037.

time & psi were partially a rejection of the folk idea in favour of glossy, somewhat experimental pop. i realized that it was reasonable to move in a more commercial direction, but folk wasn't something i understood well, so it was a weird direction for me to be moving in. experimental or psychedelic pop, on the other hand, was something i had a solid grasp on...

time had been initially recorded in the fall and was remixed in late february to integrate a drum part. no original files exist. psi was recorded quickly in early march.

the track, as it existed in rabit, was a conscious pop compromise. i had ideas that weren't explored to keep it poppy and that will be explored in the remix.

the time machine is added here as a bonus track. it's based on an earlier classical guitar composition that was always meant to be reinterpreted as an idm tune and finally was in early 2014. the thematic overlap makes it relevant, but there is otherwise no connection between the two songs.

i started working on what would become my fourth symphony very shortly after the material on this ep was completed, and it really represents the point where i lost interest in rabit as a concept, under pressure to continue moving in a direction i didn't have any interest in. there are folk and psych versions of the track; sean never caught on to the psych version, and i never had my heart in the folk version. there were final folk demos recorded as late as the fall, but the disconnect was not solvable. the vocal version of the fourth symphony is in some way a corollary of but is ultimately too separate from these files to include here. psi & time, together, consequently comprise what is the fourth and final ("psychedelic pop") phase of rabit.

written in late 2001 and 2002 and recorded in early 2002 and late 2014. the final mix was finished on nov , 2014. as always, please use headphones.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/time

i knew what i was walking into, but i'm still constantly amazed by what i'm seeing.

i actually wouldn't want to travel to this place on foot. i need to get a bicycle...it's clear....top priority in the spring...

it's amazing how much of detroit has this "old country road" feel, given that it's a substantial metropolitan center. areas in the center of the city look and feel like isolated, trapped-in-time towns in central ontario.

i haven't spent enough time yet to know if i'm walking into a village mentality.

i'm actually a big city person. i like the egalitarianism that comes with anonymity.

"The team argues that adopting a "moralizing religion" may be a mechanism to help cope with environments where there is little access to food and water."

this is completely backwards. nomadic societies have tended to adopt the opposite of "moralizing religions", precisely because the environment they live in does not allow for egalitarian social constructs. this is the root of the actual problem that we face in a hierarchical society.

moralizing religion, rather, is a product of settled societies that needed to find ways to distribute agriculture.

hence, you had the messianic religions in the settled areas of the middle east and what is essentially the nihilist concept of a "master morality" in the nomadic areas.

the error here is orthogenesis. the researcher wants humans to create fair societies to deal with limited resources. in fact, the evidence is clear that when we have limited resources we abandon morality and revert to might makes right.

what happened afterwards is an evolutionary mismatch that we've yet to work our way out of. communism is basically the way out of it. we've got these hierarchical systems that were created as an adaptation for nomadism enforced into settled societies - not because we adapted to the best solution possible but because, in evolution, shit happens the wrong way more often than not. it's going to drive us to extinction if we don't work it out, because we're *not* doing this right.

what's really frustrating with these idiots is that they'll openly argue that the evidence ought to be altered to fit a social narrative. which is religious thinking.

they don't see any kind of a problem with beginning with a desired social outcome, and then compiling evidence that "proves it".

they're often so blinded by their goals that they fail to see how easily deconstructed their propaganda is. you're not going to get anywhere when your nonsense is this transparent.

the idea that there's a "secular church" is absolutely accurate. it's an idea you often hear thrown around by theists. it's something they're right about, and careful thinking atheists need to be wary of it.

if we find ourselves up against difficult climate realities in the near future, we're going to see our concept of morals move out of a slave morality and into a master morality, because that's how humans react to dwindling resources...

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/study-climate-may-influence-religious-beliefs/39927

in fact, we're already bombing the world for it's oil.

it's not what people want to believe, but what people want to believe is irrelevant in the face of the data.

the point is this: if you have a limited amount of water it is NOT rational to share it, so that everybody is thirsty. it is rational to cull the herd - to kill the weak.

animals do this all the time.

humans are animals.

therefore....

sharing only makes sense when there's enough to go around.

again, the evidence is pretty clear on this.

people don't want to hear this, but that's too bad.

the idea i'm getting from this is that there are people that want to use religion as a way to lock us down to adjust to upcoming resource issues.

it's not going to work. it's just going to create a set of easy targets.

we're going to have to fight it out. people will die. that's how shit works.

excerpt from catch-22

"You mean there's a catch?"

"Sure there's a catch", Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

a little reminder that winter in canada starts in november...

apparently, this dip in the gulf stream is easily explained by a giant hurricane barreling through the bering strait. but that's actually the same mechanism i posted a few months back about the sun, just from a different angle.

the sun has come back a little. it might not be so bad. but there's a time lag involved, too.

but you have to understand that it's a really, really big hurricane and this shouldn't be taken as indicative of the weather for the rest of the winter.

it's reasonable to ask questions about factors producing such a strong hurricane. but it's not the same phenomenon that was responsible for the cold weather last year.

(well, it is the same mechanism, but not the same phenomenon)

again, this is the key graph. it's an exceedingly weak sunspot cycle. this doesn't disprove anthropogenic climate change (i'd argue both of these things are happening, and they're currently offsetting each other in the northern hemisphere), and i'm not arguing it's as simple as less sunspots equals lower temperatures, but the reality is there's research going back decades that ties these dips in the jetstream (*specifically*) to the oscillations in sun activity. it's actually well established. the media is ignoring this, and it's probably largely because nobody wants to go anywhere near the idea of presenting the sun as a cause of weather because they're afraid they'll be called quacks and "deniers". but, you don't need to argue against the greenhouse effect to understand that the sun is the dominant cause of weather on this planet. it's been set up as a binary choice, but it's a totally false binary.

there's no contradiction in suggesting that the hurricane strength may be caused by global warming, and arguing that the dips in the jet stream we've been seeing recently are caused by weak solar activity. effects can come from multiple causes.

the key plank in the argument is that this isn't a little bit of a weak cycle. it's not down a little, it's down a whole lot. it's one of the lowest we have on record.

i'm hoping the peak may help. but it's the peak. the truth is we could be in for some cold winters for a while.

i mean, insulating your house will help to keep the heat in.

but if you turn the heat down, the insulation is going to have less heat to trap.

it's kind of a worst case scenario, because it's not actually reversing any of the problems. it's just making it cold in the heart of the empire, and warping people's perceptions.

but, i mean, what's actually going on? are these jet stream dips due to melting ice? i think the science actually leans towards the sun, this time.

age aside, i don't understand what the target demographic for this is in the first place. i was a pretty messed up teenager, but i would have had no use for this, not even as a joke.

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

it might seem like she's moving backwards with this, but she's actually right. it's true that spotify is broadly what people want, and it's true that digital music is with us until at least the oil crash. but, people are expecting a free lunch.

the basic problem is that the price is a fraction of what it needs to be to compensate the artists. with the price that spotify pays out, you'd have to listen to a record every day for a year to get a dollar to the label on it, which is going to  be less than that to the artist.

the idea of access to a giant database of music is a good one, but in order for the revenue stream to get to where it needs to be some combination of the following things are necessary:

1) you need to cut the labels out. spotify is now the label. it's releasing, hosting and distributing. as it is, what spotify is doing is both decreasing the price and adding another middleman. that's economically impossible. in order for it to be sustainable, it needs to replace the existing middleman and work directly with artists.

2) there needs to be different pricing options, connected to how much is actually being listened to. $120/year is simply not enough. $120/month is more like it. plenty of people pay something close to that for cable. there's just as much content being delivered, and many more people that need to get paid. cable-like pricing options are required for this service to succeed.

3) one of the pricing options should be per-stream pricing, and at rate close to $0.10/stream. if you do the math, you'll see the dramatic disconnect between what it needs to be and what it is now.

there's a lot of rhetoric about how artists need to conform or get out, but that's not the way it's going to be. spotify needs content to work. if it doesn't increase it's price, artists are going to slowly start leaving. taylor's high profile and everything but she's not the first one out - and i'd expect people will follow her out. it may take another quarter or two, but this free lunch just isn't sustainable, and it's not going to happen.

the part of the catalogue that is safe is the old stuff that the labels own outright. the boomers don't have much time left, so this is about to explode - floyd, beatles, zeppelin, etc. jazz. classical. elvis. etc.

unless a tactic is developed for consumers to pay more into it, this is the future of spotify - an archive of recordings by dead people.

as it is, they basically did everything wrong. if this model does pick up, and it will if it's done right, it's almost certainly going to be through a different service.

after looking into it a bit more, i'd put my money on google driving spotify to bankruptcy.....

like most advanced mammals, lions need to be taught in order to know how to do things. that doesn't mean it's a good idea to have a pet lion - you're too easy of a meal if you're standing there naively patting it's head, with your gut pressed up against it's face. there's no skill required in munching you. but, young lions that are not taught to hunt will not know how to hunt until they are taught or they figure it out through trial and error.

taking an elephant down, in particular, is something that requires a lot of teamwork. that means it requires a lot of practice, which means it requires a lot of training. it's a task for seasoned, professional lions only.

that's a lot of lions in one place, and it's a little curious as to how they all got there. but it looks to me like the lions are also quite young - a year old, maybe two.

that's the explanation of what you're seeing - it's baby lions v baby elephant.

i'm glad you got the last one on film.

that's the variable that a lot of these "social experiments" completely miss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvq6pH5Rheg

deathtokoalas
you know, i don't want to listen to religious music any more than i want to listen to schmaltzy fake-soul quintets do pop covers, but the idea that your opinion on the band's religious views is in any way meaningful is exactly the reason religion won't die. the more you hack it down like this, the stronger it comes back. you really need to adopt an avoidance strategy, and learn to just ignore it.

besides. a couple of dorks singing lame songs in a cave is hardly the dark side of christianity.

PhourQ
lol @ your emotional fear of theism. Face it, religion will never die and thank God for that...since it is our human experience to apprehend that God exists...no matter how much it scares you to believe it.

deathtokoalas
i sure hope that religion has a best before date, but i don't deny that i have an immense fear of what religion is capable of.

that's a circular argument, by the way. you're stating that god must exist because god created us to have a "human experience" to apprehend it. most atheists would toss your whole conception of "human experience" in the trash heap.

i don't think there's any reason we exist at all, except to carry the dna to the next level. i get that it's maybe a bit overwhelming to get your head around it, but i think it's a pre-requisite to building a truly free society.

it's a catch-22. religion is incompatible with freedom, and it consequently must be abolished on the cultural level in order to attain a free society. but, forcing people to drop it creates a backlash which merely stunts the process. don't get me wrong - i'd be in favour of rounding up all the theists and sending them on a one way trip to jupiter if i thought it would work. but, i know it just pushes it underground, where it forms the basis of the next inevitable revolt against state tyranny. it places a flavour on the revolutionary character that is difficult to transcend.

people have to figure this out on their own. a little bit of ridiculing is maybe a step in the right direction, but it needs to be done carefully. censorship or persecution is just out of the question - it's simply counterproductive.

PhourQ
I wasn't trying to argue for the existence of God in saying it is part of our human experience. I am making that statement with God's existence as a given. I am not concerned about atheists tossing my arguments anywhere. My beliefs will never be swayed by what someone else thinks of them. The fact that theists find meaning in life makes atheists uncomfortable, but atheists provide no rational basis for theists to chuck their beliefs. The problems atheists associate with religion completely disregard the fact that those problems arise when the theist is not in accord with his own beliefs...the problems voiced are rarely the teachings of religion themselves. Furthermore, to suggest that religion is incompatible with freedom may be your opinion, but again, disregards the freedom that the religion teaches itself. Mankind naturally will seek to control and destroy regardless...some corrupt theism to accomplish this, others use atheism. Completely removing beliefs in religious ethics or morals in exchange for varied and subjective morality will have obvious results. 

deathtokoalas
right. so obviously that statement about "human experience" isn't going to mean anything to me, then. you'd might as well have been speaking to the wall. it's about as useful to me as a discussion about pink unicorns. which is kind of a refutation, but why bother...

the idea that atheists ought to be convincing theists to modify their beliefs is again a circular presentation. atheism argues that we need to look at the world in terms of evidence-based reasoning. it wouldn't argue in favour or against any specific belief, so much as it would demand that evidence is gathered to argue in favour of the belief. it's nothing more complicated than backing up your argument, which is something we teach kids to do in grade school - and place a great emphasis on. for example, i have a belief that extra-terrestrials exist in the universe, and the bible is evidence of their contact with us in the past.  that's an evidence-based argument that is consistent with atheism, but it is still a belief. what we get upset about is not over the fact that you believe things but that you use faith-based reasoning to back it up. we then get frustrated over your refusal to accept the superiority of evidence-based reasoning over....magic, basically. let's be sure that this much is clear.

atheists tend to use the same process to deduce morality that the christian fathers did, which is rational discovery. atheism is not the elimination of morals, it is the elimination of magic. now, that necessarily eliminates any kind of authoritarian basis underlying legal systems, but that's the point. "infringing the rights of others is to be discouraged" is a much better statement than "thou shalt not kill" - an improvement, an advance, a step forwards - for the precise reason that it provides for more subtlety in analysis, and stops people from enforcing the rules with a blunt stick. few atheists are going to argue with the general content of religious morality (the few points of contention are largely going to be in the heteropatriarchal nature of the religious systems, but that these exist in religion is reflective of society's influence on religion, rather than the other way around); the point is more that it oversimplifies complex issues, often leading to undesirable outcomes. if the religious texts were thousands of pages long and full of carefully analyzed case notes, there'd be less contention. but, then nobody would read it. it's a tragic flaw in the outcome.

which is where the issues of freedom exist. a group of people that believe a book tells them what is right and wrong and belong to a culture that requires the enforcement of it's contents to reach immortality is....it's insane. whatever the cause, whatever social ill, it's organized madness. and, a free society simply cannot exist in these conditions of coercion and self-righteousness. the proselytism that enforces this self-righteousness into hierarchies and tyrannies is worked into the bulk of the major religions. the idea of free will may be inherent to most religions, but this idea that religion mostly preaches tolerance is absolutely false. every religion seeks to convert the entire world to it's path. this is simply not compatible with a free society.

he's clearly an actor...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeykDZnZa3M

this is an interesting discussion.

i think this makes a valid and accurate point. i've been trying to find a way to articulate myself with this and have been largely unsuccessful and consequently haven't. part of the reason might be that the simplicity of the pop form is not able to provide for the subtlety that is required in the discussion. it's one thing to talk of it setting off a discussion rather than getting a concrete message across, but i feel that the song is maybe so blurry in it's messaging that it's not able to even specify what the starting point is. so it's not easy to produce a defined reaction when it's not clear what it is that ought to be reacted to.

i think this is the crux of it: before you get into analyzing or criticizing the original video or the response to it, you have to understand that fat v. skinny is a false binary. it's one thing to point out that there's a lot of unrealistic messaging and it's a cause in continuing the problem of eating disorders (which are substantial). it's another to point out that "body positivity" is just as often used as an excuse for unhealthy people to stay unhealthy, promoting the continuing obesity epidemic (which is statistically a far greater public health issue). putting pressure on overweight people to be more healthy is not the same thing as enforcing an unrealistic beauty standard.

so, is the song a criticism of the enforcement of beauty norms (which would be a good thing), is it a "fat anthem" (which would be a bad thing) or is it in truth too simplistic and vague to be specific and is consequently being interpreted as both, creating confusion as to how to respond to it?

sometimes, when things are complicated it's because they're vague rather than because they're specific.

personally? i get more of a "fat anthem" feel out of it, and i'm not really comfortable with upholding that as a "positive message".

listen: i wouldn't put it past the advertising executives that work for monster to try to tap into this. some of this may really not be a coincidence; satan's been the hippest shit out there for well over two generations, now.

with dogs in the wild, it's probably as simple as not wasting protein.

for domestic dogs? that's probably the only real meal it'll ever have.

ever.

publishing rabit is wolf (inri057)

this is inri038. which is done. inri036 needs another week. inri037 needs some analysis before i make predictions about...time.

there's no new recordings here. it's not even remixed, it's just finally sequenced correctly.

--

this is the sum total of the completed rabit is wolf studio experiments, which wound through a number of paths on their way to the project's eventual collapse. while there would be further acoustic demos recorded with sean, i ultimately decided to abandon their folky underpinnings and finish all further tracks as electronic, instrumental recordings. there was some thought of completing an acoustic tour demo at the time; it will appear shortly as inri040 and contain those final demos.

the recording was initially sequenced as a demo in mid may, 2002 but i foolishly deleted the files (i was running low on hard drive space) only to find out that the burn was corrupt and that the result was skipping. i did eventually recompile an ep of material, but it was in a different order and made no attempt to mix the tracks together. in reconstructing the demo, i've decided to recreate the original sequencing. the only difference between this collection and the initial collection is that the last track now includes sean's vocals, whereas it was initially an (eventually rendered incomplete) instrumental recording.

i need to be clear that the decision in sequencing the material this way is unilateral on my behalf. during this period, sean had made it clear that he was not satisfied with the more experimental and electronic tendencies underlying some of the tracks; specifically, he wasn't happy with the first or last tracks on this disc, as he felt they did not represent his vision for the project. on the other hand, i was less interested in purely acoustic music and more interested in electronic music. i was envisioning the project as having a split personality between an acoustic live presentation and an electronic studio presentation. sean argued this would be disorienting; it's less that i disagreed with him and more that i thought that was a good idea. this divergence in vision is one of the factors leading to the project's dissolution.

while i feel this recording stands up on it's own, i've also taken the time over the second half of 2014 to reclaim some of the tracks as my own instrumental works. only tracks two and four exist uniquely as rabit is wolf collaborations; the other four tracks have been resequenced as completed instrumentals in my main recording sequence. please open the track pages for more information.

written and recorded in late 2001 and early 2002. resequenced to mimic the original sequencing on november 8, 2014. except to sequence the record, these files have not been altered since 2002. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitars (electric, acoustic, classical), effects, bass, synthesizers, digital piano, electric air reed organ, flute, drum programming, drum manipulations, vocal manipulations, loops, sequencing, sampling, digital wave editing, production, cover art.
sean - vocals, lyrics, harmonica (1), ring modulator (6).

greg - drum performance sample source (5,6)
jon - guitar performance (2)

released june 20, 2002

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/rabit-is-wolf

ok, i'm coming to terms with the fact that i'm probably not hearing back from the psychiatrist and i'm going to have to wait until the 12th to get somebody to fill out the forms.

i'm expecting that the forms will not be filled out. if so, i will immediately attempt suicide in the doctor's office. so, you can pencil in the first suicide attempt for jan 12, 2015. i expect that this attempt will be stopped, but it seems as though i'm going to have to actually go through with it.

i'm also going to have to sit down over the weekend and explore artist grant options. it's not what i want. what i want is long term odsp. but if i get the grants, and it lets me live an extra year or two to get the work i want done done, then it's a better option for future generations. so i'm obligated to do this.

i mean, if the point of this is to save money, they may want to recalculate that because it's going to cost money and resources to pump my stomach and put me through all this processing. if somebody ends up dying in the meantime, i'd argue the doctors should be held liable for it. there's no reason to play out this pointless drama.

but, you know. world. stage. actors. yeah.

i just wish people had more foresight and were able to make decisions more rationally.

i mean, i don't want to spend the weekend in the hospital any more than the system wants to expend the resources on me for it....if i can find even one doctor willing to dislodge head from ass and get a grip on the reality of the situation, i won't have to.

i'm not expecting this.

so, you can pencil in an acetaminophen overdose on jan 12th at the windsor branch of the canadian association of mental health.

i wouldn't expect obama to get in the way of a republican-controlled congress. rather, i'd expect it will mostly break the gridlock. it's what obama's really wanted the whole time.

he can't introduce the kind of legislation he wants because it'll expose him for who he is, and the republicans are so intent on their absurd framing that they'd have voted it down anyways.

but by simply refusing to veto the onslaught of right-wing legislation that is coming, under arguments about not abusing power (while he's drone striking people), obama can get what he wants done without the problems with the optics from either side.

it's going to open a coalition between the white house and the republican congress against the hopeless congressional opposition.

so, finally, here comes your hope and change....

....but i think you're going to be a bit disappointed by it.

hrmmmmn.

maybe harper's not so bad, after all. maybe i should give him another chance...

google+ really needs to have a way to disable tagging. i'd do it if i could, if the option existed...

ethical oil is a front group for the canadian oil industry, who came to power here by railing against our decision to legalize gay marriage. yes - canada legalized gay marriage roughly ten years ago, and it was the right choice, but it also cost the sitting government it's hold on power. if you give them your oil money, they will continue their anti-gay agenda. this is politicking of such a level of cynicism that it's hard to believe it's even possible.

it's like david duke doing an anti-racism infomercial.

the manufacturer isn't guilty of any sort of negligence here. it's understood that there is some risk. the guardians accept the risk when they make the vaccination choice. suing the vaccine company for this would be like suing the peanut butter manufacturer for setting off an unknown allergy. it's a freak accident. in legal terms, an "act of god". hey, nobody ever said god wasn't an asshole...

personally? i think the flu vaccine is a little overkill. they're useful for older people and very young people, but healthy people between five and 60 don't really need it - we can produce our own antibodies. i agree that the idea of vaccinating everybody yearly is being driven more by the economics underlying it than by public health concerns. more serious vaccinations? well, yeah, the risk is worth the benefits and we should all keep up.... 

deathtokoalas
this is beyond fucking creepy. turn the fucking camera off and enjoy the meal.

you guys are in a three-way relationship with your video camera.

i've been accused of being in love with my guitar, so i sort of get it. it's weird to be jealous of inanimate objects, but they get in the way. personally? i really do love my guitar more. it's taken me a long time to understand that.

the only thing that's really important to keep in mind about making choices is to be honest with yourself when you're making them. really honest.

honestly. he's sitting in a restaurant enjoying a meal with his girlfriend, and he pulls out a camera and motions for the world to eat with them. this is too ridiculous to be believable. it's the behaviour of a character in a jim carrey film.

there may be some kind of ocd or something setting in, granted, but in the end choosing between your partner and yourself is not always an obvious choice. sometimes, the right choice is yourself.

Jake
Or maybe 'Vlogging' is their job and how they make money, so they try to include as much of what they do as possible so it makes an interesting video for people to watch.

Nah that must be too much of a simple answer as to why they do it, huh? It's got to be an illness and he has to be choosing it over here (Even though they both film things). Yup that sounds right... Not.

deathtokoalas
it's pretty obvious from her body language that she's finding it invasive, and feeling like she's competing with the vlog for attention.

i mean, you could ask her, if she's willing to be that forthright in public, which she probably isn't - and then you'd know, rather than needing to read into it. but sometimes that kind of formality is kind of just that.

i pointed out the dinner section as something that's legitimately whacked. but watch when he takes a u-turn down the alley to talk to the camera. that's an "i thought we were walking" look.

if you take a step back from the "they vlog for a living" thing, like, realize that work getting in the way is a pretty common point of relationship failure, and it's usually something you have to accept rather than something that can be "fixed".

Jake 
But you're just guessing on all of this and you can't be sure as you're just seeing things that you think she 'means' with her body language. It's their job to film themselves, they choose to do it, she chooses to do it. If she isn't feeling it then she shouldn't keep doing it.. But when the cheques come in I bet she doesn't mind how 'invasive' it is.

deathtokoalas
well, sure, i'm guessing. that's kind of obvious. but what i'm getting across is that the tensions appear to be stemming from whether she wants to keep doing this or not. it's not such an easy choice to just walk off, either.

Jake 
Well no it is a pretty easy choice. She was a nurse before this (I believe, not too sure) so she won't have huge trouble getting another job. But if she isn't happy then she needs to walk away and if not, put in place things where they won't film in certain places. Otherwise she needs to get over it and if the relationship problem is to do with the camera, then it's down to them to decide to take a break or stop to keep the relationship healthy.

deathtokoalas
that is indeed the process that appears to be playing itself out. but what i meant was that walking away from a partner of many years is not reducible to an economic decision the way you're suggesting that it is.

Jake
I wasn't talking about walking away from her partner. I was talking about stopping Vlogging if it's getting in the way. And she can stop him vlogging at dinner by telling him that isn't something she wants. She also does vlogs of her own when they're apart and with friends, so it can't be in the way that much either.

deathtokoalas 
it sounds quite simple in the abstract, doesn't it? i do hope they work out what each of them want.

Jake
Could easily be put into place... But she's not asking for it as she doesn't want it or she wouldn't vlog when she's away from him. Simple.

deathtokoalas
i don't think your logic here is very sound. that's kind of like saying that if you really want family dinners then you won't eat lunch at work.

Jake
How is it like that? If she enjoys vlogging then she enjoys it. If she sometimes wants dinners without it then she needs to tell him and sort it out. Either way, it's her problem and lack of communication from HER that's causing it, not his fault.

deathtokoalas 
i'm not really trying to assign fault. it's not something where somebody has done something "wrong" and should be "blamed" for it.

but, communicating these sorts of things isn't always easy. sometimes people don't react well. and sometimes that's predictable.

Jake
'honestly. he's sitting in a restaurant enjoying a meal with his girlfriend, and he pulls out a camera and motions for the world to eat with them. this is too ridiculous to be believable. it's the behaviour of a character in a jim carrey film' A quote from your earlier reply to somebody. So you are assigning blame, to him. Like I said though, that's her lack of being able to communicate, if she can't speak to her bf and tell him something they shouldn't be together really if they can't talk.

deathtokoalas 
no, i'm not assigning any kind of blame. if that's who he is, it's up to her to accept it or move on. i think it would be invasive to try and change who he is for her benefit.

but, most women would find that exceedingly unattractive.

i'm not sure if it crossed anybody's mind that there may be religious or otherwise cultural reasons underlying her hesitancy to dance on camera.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzc3Ndk5x8w

deathtokoalas
i still use xp...

the only blue screens i've ever seen have been due to buggy drivers or broken hardware. it's the actual truth of it. apple's more integrated approach is maybe better in terms of minimizing points of failure, whereas linux driver support remains largely hopeless. but, you have to consider a trade-off in price and customization. the key thing is this, though: if you get compatible hardware from respectable vendors, the bluescreens really don't happen. when they do, it's because the hardware manufacturers didn't create drivers that work properly in the system, and you can't really blame microsoft for it. you just have to do that research.

Schwarzer
XP of gaming, Linux for working.

deathtokoalas 
it depends on your job, though. if you're working in science, that makes sense. if you're working in art, serious software and hardware support for linux is going to require a change in the economic system we live in. and, of course, windows remains the dominant operating system in networked work environments. i've stuck with windows because i don't have linux driver support for my audio hardware (which is my "job"). i could switch to a mac, but i'm not keen to pay 30-50% more for the privilege of losing control over the customization of the machine.

i acknowledge that linux is in some ways a superior system. but, in terms of day-to-day functionality, it's just not there - and will likely never be so long as we organize our technology sector in terms of corporations.

i've stuck with xp because i have a minimal winlite image connected to dozens of scripts. upgrading to seven would cost me several months of rebuilding the image and rewriting the scripts, and i'm not convinced a lot of it is even really possible. this is the same problem businesses are dealing with, but i don't have the resources of a business to deal with it. on top of that, i don't think i'd really gain anything besides higher ram usage. i mean, my final xp sp3 image is only about 100 mb. it's very fast, because i've completely ripped 85% of the os out. and, it's very safe because i've removed essentially all of the networking functionality - including most of the code libraries.

it's mostly stopped, now. i think the companies have reacted to the outcry, or moved to more sophisticated tracking methods (social media). but something that i'd see happen around 2010 was that i'd download software from a respected company (adobe, say) and then get error messages when the spyware kicked in. what was happening was that the spyware was going looking for dialer software in windows, and erroring out when it couldn't find the c libraries. that would tell me where the executable was and what i needed to remove - or if i needed to uninstall the entire program.

xp was created to exist in a safe, corporate networking environment behind a hardware firewall. it's very open and trusting, but it's by design because you're only supposed to be talking to other computers in close proximity that you have serious one-on-one trust with; security is supposed to be dealt with on the way in and out of the network. this is of course inherently meant for "work" use. it's not a home operating system, and trying to use it as one is never going to be safe - unless you set up behind a hardware firewall, recreating the same conditions.

what that means is that the best way to make xp safer is to take all that inherently trusting networking software right out of it.

kanekan
what people forget is that windows (at least started) is a software company and apple is a hardware company but people blame windows for a hardware problem anyway which is stupid but many also buy an apple computer and put windows on it

Schwarzer
That sounds really stupid. Apples and PCs are build from the same parts.

deathtokoalas 
most people don't really have the kind of modular understanding of a computer as a collection of parts that defined the early days of the industry, they take it as a single thing - like a car or a phone. this idea that they're dealing with something complicated that needs to work together is sort of beyond them. when the os crashes, they blame the os.

apple computers were really something entirely different until relatively recently. i think they moved to the x86 architecture around 2005. up until that point, they were really very different computers.

regardless, apple still produces it's products as single entities, which means everything is tested over the same hardware, drivers are built for specific purposes, etc. so, this idea of complicated things working together is very much minimized.

microsoft just doesn't deal with this. it throws the operating system down and tells the hardware companies to figure it out on their own - with varying results. i think they introduced a driver testing process around vista, but it's still a step down in terms of rigorous testing.

when you keep that in mind, you would have to expect that apples are going to be more stable with the hardware they ship with. and, this is generally true.

the trade-off is a loss of flexibility. if i want to swap the hard drives out on my pc, i'll do it myself and not expect the stability to move up or down. but if i want to break the warranty in swapping a mac's drive out (if it isn't soldered in), i have no assurances that i'm not going to destabilize the system.

i do agree that i couldn't see any reason to pay 40% more for an apple logo and then put windows on it, given that apples are mostly made in the dell factory nowadays. i experimented with hacking os x for a while around 2007, though. in the end, the software flexibility i thought i could get out of it never really materialized and i just formatted it...

Blue Dragon
In the last 2 years since I use Linux as my main desktop system,I haven't met a device without Linux drivers and I have had 1 kernel panic.

deathtokoalas
you must not be doing anything interesting with it, then.

don't get me wrong: if you work in science, linux is the way to go. and if you just want to browse the internet and other normal "computer stuff", it's as good as the next operating system.

but if you're using virtually any kind of specialized hardware, you're more or less at the whim of the company that's making it. and, if they don't feel like it's a worthwhile investment, you're probably shit out of luck.

well, unless you can write them yourself.

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
well, xp comes in 64-bit flavours....

...but, to be honest with you, i'm more concerned about running 16-bit software than running 64-bit software. and i'm not concerned about support or security for the reasons i outlined. it's a recording pc - it needs to launch a version of cubase from 2005, host vst plugins and connect to a few hardware consoles (neither of which have stable 64 bit drivers). now, i admit i've recently run into a few circumstances where i wish i could upgrade my ram past 3 gb. but it hasn't reached the breaking point and probably won't for at least a few more years.


i think the reality is that computing hit a kind of functional flatline around 2005 or so, where increasing specs don't really make any difference unless you're into really high end gaming or something.

i'm simply not going to gain anything of value by upgrading windows, increasing my processor speed or moving to 64 bit. i'm just going to lose an image i spent a lot of time with. what's going to finally break me is when i can't launch a sampler because it has minimum requirements of 8 gb of ram.

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
that's what i'm saying - i will probably stick with xp until i feel i need more ram. and that's probably years into the future. even so, i'll probably end up dual booting into 32-bit xp due to the hardware. i mean, even if i end up upgrading the hardware one day i'm not going to discard the old devices...

i built this thing myself in 2007; i dropped quite a bit of cash into it, because i expected it to last at least ten years. it's a 64-bit chip and the board can take 8 gb, but, like i say,  there's no 64-bit drivers and i like my image. people actually laughed at me. "you'll upgrade in two years.". but i haven't. and all i've lost in that period is one of the four hard drives.

like i say: it's going to be the ram, eventually. and it could be another ten years...

and...i'll still be running xp, even if i upgrade the music pc, because i've got it running on my old pc that just sends a youtube signal to my tv, which is from the 90s (those quantum fireballs don't die. there's a 20 gb hard drive in it. it still spins. it belongs in a museum.) and can't run anything newer than xp. if that drive goes one day, i have every intention to hit a pawn shop and find another one just so i can put xp back on it...