as far as i can tell, the worst thing that could happen is that i may have to stay homeless until  a smoke-free space opens up in subsidized housing.

five years?

six years?

lots of books...

and, you can't smoke in the library.

of course, i don't expect it to take that long.

i would rather leave my items in storage and live in a shelter for the next five year than get a job.

that's a lot of time to read, if that's what i have to do to wait this out.

i've explained myself as well as i can.

i'm sorry if you still don't understand.

and, i'll explain by example if that's what you need - if you're more of a hands-on learner.

but, i thought we went through that already...

i don't want to climb ladders or get titles or raise kids or anything else attached to capitalist goals.

i just want a little quiet, healthy space to myself where i can think to myself.

and i'll happily spend the winter homeless if that's what i have to do to get to that end point.

the simple fact is that employment offers me no solutions, just a set of extra problems that i don't want.

even if i did have money, i still wouldn't want to own a house.

maintenance. upkeep. taxes. yuck.

there are lots of things i'd like to spend my time doing, and maintaining a property is simply not one of them.

i don't think that a smoke-free apartment ought to be a luxury, or a difficult to obtain commodity. the situation i'm in is really absurd. it shouldn't happen. ever.

this is actually a smart approach.

if we're running through a period of regression here, where backwards attitudes become dominant in terms of sheer numbers of adherents, we're going to need the court to set things straight.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/08/09/ontario-sex-ed-human-rights-challenge_a_23499205/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spotim_referrer=recirculation

so, if your building recently gave you a letter indicating that the building is now non-smoking, should you take that as a less than subtle hint that they want you to leave?

yeah.

probably...

can i even put out an open letter to smokers, not just in windsor, but ontario more generally?

the rules in ontario around smoking inside have recently changed quite a bit. landlords now have the ability to insist that new tenants sign leases that prohibit them from smoking, even if they can't enforce it with old tenants. while smokers may think of this as a headache, it is actually in everybody's best interests to self-segregate around the habit.

while i cannot speak for other municipalities, there is clearly no deficit of landlords willing to rent to smokers in windsor. if anything, it appears to be difficult to find landlords that want to rent to non-smokers. i've found a few families that don't want smokers, but none of the management companies appear to care much about the issue at all.

i know that moving is annoying. but, if your landlord has decided that your building is now non-smoking, please understand that there are non-smokers that are having difficulty finding a place to live that is non-smoking - and plenty of options where smoking appears to actually be preferred. you will solve a lot of problems by relocating yourself to somewhere where you're more welcome, and allowing the space to open up for somebody that wants to follow your building's new rules.

a little bit of voluntary co-operation is going to work in everybody's interests.

even biking home exposed the depth of the situation.

biking through a residential neighbourhood on a saturday afternoon, all you can smell from every direction, is smoke. every house has somebody out smoking.

it's unscientific, but it seems like the smoking rates in the downtown core of this city are approaching 80%.

you can't understand it until you've experienced it.

maybe it's just the simple fact that so many people have left, leaving the most hopeless people behind.

like i say: i came here expecting collapse. this just isn't the form i hoped it would take.

i saw three places today.

two of them were advertised as non-smoking, and both had smokers. i thought maybe the one that was advertised as not non-smoking would be smoke-free, but there was a huge butt can out front.

even the places i've put applications in on are compromises - smokers at the other end of the property, kind of thing.

there does not appear to be anywhere here for a non-smoker to live without jeopardizing their health.

it really seems like i'm going to have to leave this town because i can't find a healthy place to live.

as surreal as that seems.

01/15 is updated...

the only effect that drugs have on your brain is that they make you stupid.

maybe you'd rather be stupid.

i'll pass.

when i'm sitting at home in my apartment, i don't want to turn my brain off - i want to use it.

it's when i'm interacting with other people, out and about, that i want to turn my brain off.

again: it's one thing if i'm using it as a way to escape the stress of social interaction.

but, it's another if i'm unable to focus when i'm trying to read or write or think or create or record, by myself.

the best way i can describe this is asking you to try to imagine waking up unable to speak.

so, you try to do what you want to do, whatever it is - and all that comes out are jumbled words. you try and focus, and you can't. you might need to communicate with a fast food worker to get a coffee, and you can't get the order out. or, maybe you're trying to communicate with a co-worker and just getting confused glances.

this is what it's like trying to read or write or create when you're involuntarily under the influence of drugs - you want to do something, but it's just impossible, or it can only be done slowly, or at a reduced rate.

i'm operating at 60-70%, if that.

so, it's like stumbling around at work with a lobotomy.

so, i'm just sitting here trying to read, and i can't - i end up coughing. having difficulty staying awake, difficulty focusing...

if there was somebody to talk to, i might have a different perspective.

but, i don't want to talk to anybody, right now. i'm not out - i'm at home. alone. trying to work. i want to read. or write. or create. and i can't do that. and it's frustrating.

in my mind, it makes absolutely no sense to stay home and smoke drugs.

it's just a waste of time.

& a waste of drugs.

the smoke tonight is ridiculous. i've got my front door open to try and clear it out.

"it's a friday night."

but, i'm at home. i don't want to be stoned when i'm at home. pretty much ever.

when i go out somewhere, it's not to get drunk or stoned, it's to see a concert. you'll note that i don't go to parties, that i don't go to get togethers, that i don't have a group of friends, etc - that the only time i ever go anywhere is to see a concert. and, that is the purpose of going out - to experience the music.

but, i have a lot of difficulty socializing with people. i need the intoxiucation to deal with the people.

so, i go out to see the show - but i can't handle the social interactions unless i'm inebriated. the need for inebriation is consequently a function of the social interaction. so, if you take away the social interaction, i have absolutely no interest in the inebriation.

so, it's easy to ask "why don't you just stay home and get drunk?", but you're missing the point - the only reason i'm drunk is because i can't deal with the social interactions. if i were to stay home, ii wouldn't have to escape from the social interaction, and i'd rather be sober.

i hope i'm helping people understand this conflict a little bit better. it might not seem like it makes any sense for me to complain about marijuana smoke, if i'm stoned every time anybody sees me. but, the only reason i'm stoned is because i can't handle talking to you when i'm sober. do you get that? that when i go home, i want to be straight edge, and i'm only fucked up because i can't handle talking to you, otherwiise?

the efficient flow of traffic in a city does not rely on generous gestures, it relies on everybody understanding and obeying the concept of a right of way.

if you have the right of way, you should never slow down or stop or let somebody past. that is not doing something nice, it is slowing down traffic.

and, if you are going to slow down traffic, you deserve an angry response.

windsor is not a major city, but it is not a small town, either. this is the canadian side of detroit - a major, if scattered, metropolitan centre. if you had misplaced ideas about small town canadian life, and want to live in a small town with a midwestern mentality, i'd suggest moving to one of the outlying areas, or perhaps the northern part of the province, if not the prairies themselves.

in a city, people expect you to carry on and not disrupt the flow - because they don't appreciate waiting for you to stop and smile.

donald trump, like much of washington, including the clintons, is in the pocket of the saudi theocracy.

that is the basis of his hostility towards iran.

and, it is the basis of his hostility towards turkey, as well.

the russians are on the other side of this conflict, both trying to pull iran into it's sphere and take advantage of turkish-saudi tensions.

the russians and turks are on opposing sides of a long byzantine civil war, and a union, in the long run, is almost inevitable. america should be trying to keep them apart, not pushing them closer together.

the foreign policy narrative that the democrats are pushing is an outgrowth of the propaganda spewed by the clinton campaign and has no basis in reality whatsoever.

it is important that we have a principled foreign policy critique from the opposition, at this time; they need to just drop the bullshit altogether.

bend over, donald.

the prince is here.

america had moscow where it wanted it, but it fucked it up with it's own mismanagement.

of all of the stupid things trump does, actually siding with the saudis against the turks will likely be the dumbest.

i mean, it's one thing to stand back and let them destabilize each other, or even create the instability that does it.

but, to actively pick the side of the weakling saudis over the powerful turks is just simple stupidity. that is a war that is over before it starts.

"but, the saudis buy more weapons..."

right now, maybe, sure. in the long run? and over the last hundred years? and in the next hundred?

there's a powerful critique of capitalism in picking short term profit over long term geostrategic stability, isn't there?

the russians will clean up the mess, in the end.

and, this is potentially historic - because it is potentially stable. a turko-russian alliance has the potential of very deep integration.

so, is prince mohammad fucking you in the ass or what, donald?

how much did they pay you?

russian jets at incirlik? hrmmn.

they're setting up the discourse as demanding we make a choice between banning guns and hiring more cops.

i reject both approaches as equally stupid.

...and equally right-wing, fwiw.

i mean, a proper authoritarian vision would ban guns and hire more cops. what we really get to pick is which one we want first, right?

what we need to do is open a dialogue on reversing the americanization of our culture. we need social programs aimed at young kids. we need poverty reduction mechanisms. expanding educational opportunities.

but, this is going to be the new normal for the next four years: i'm going to find myself continually rejecting both sides of the argument, as two different types of conservatism.

so, he's going to reroute money away from programs that work and spend them on stupid ideas that no expert in the field thinks will be effective.

why doesn't he just round them up and yell at them?

in a van?

down by the river?

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/08/09/doug-ford-toronto-handgun-ban_a_23499331/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spotim_referrer=recirculation

ok.

the rebuild is now complete, from the beginning of 2013 forwards.

i'll need to push through 2015 quickly, to double check. but i should be back to where i was shortly.

and, i guess i'll need to be studying the market out of town, soon.

at the least i can say i got this done...and there's not a lot else i could be doing right now....

if trudeau wins in 2019, and he might, it will be on the strength of the celebrity brand he's built, and not on the liberal party brand or historical liberal party principles.

it will be because people are voting for his hair, not his policies.

it might happen, too.

in order for me to vote for the liberals again, they're going to need to do more than get rid of trudeau, who we've learned is basically trying to govern out of the back of some new age spiritual text. this guy is neither into passion nor reason but obsessed with magical thinking.

it's like voting for deepak chopra or something.

but, he's always been a front.

i'm going to want to see most of the backbench gone, too.

the party has fundamentally shifted, ideologically, in a way that i can no longer interpret as an acceptable governing party.

and, i expect that i'm going to be voting for smaller parties - or not at all - for the foreseeable future.

what we've learned is that if you vote for the liberals, even when they have a very left-leaning platform, you just get the conservatives, anyways. that was never true, previously. now, they have a very deep hole to climb out of in winning back their core base of supporters...

so, either as an environmentalist or as an anarchist, if you can vote for a major party that you think can actually win then you help do that. and, the liberals had both a good track record at the local level (if a less good one at the federal level...) and a good platform. so, you do that. perhaps cynically, sure, but you take that gamble - you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

if the liberals had done anything in their platform, it would have been a worthwhile vote. and, neither the conservatives nor the ndp presented an acceptable environmentalist option....so it's not like there was some better outcome....

but, if you can't do that - which is now the case - then you vote for a protest party, or you don't vote at all.

i repeat that i think i made the right choice in 2015, even if they turned out to be dishonest, in the end - the evidence projected something else.

in 2019, i will be choosing between the smaller parties, if i bother voting at all.

voting with your heart is just stupid.

but, there's a place in anarchist theory for carefully, if cynically, voting with your brain.

in canada, you don't vote for the greens if you're serious about what you're doing. it's a protest vote.

there are usually two or three serious options in canada - and four in some ridings in quebec. elections generally reduce to which party is best positioned to defeat the conservatives this time around if you're not one; conservatives default to the conservative party. and, we often split the vote.

this might be changing, particularly in parts of bc and parts of ontario. but, this is a reaction to a rightward movement in the major parties.

up until now, the fact is that voting green has just helped the conservatives. this is just simple math. there is a strong argument that the greens cost stephane dion the election in 2008, although they were much less of a factor in 2011 - partly because of an ndp surge.

further, the liberals have generally presented enticing platforms to environmentalists, even when the ndp haven't. the ontario liberals made a lot of very good progress on converting the grid to sustainable energy. the bc liberals introduced a carbon tax. the quebec liberals have been relatively good on this, as well. the federal liberals basically ran on the green party platform in 2008. so, this hasn't just been empty promises - they've made concrete steps. people suggesting otherwise are being dishonest.

trudeau's platform was really not in any way inferior to the green party's platform, and you'd realize that if you actually read both of them. most interesting to me was the idea of a green infrastructure bank that, as a subsidiary of the bank of canada, would essentially print money and use it for transition. that is the way you actually transition - not through market schemes. what we need is massive direct government investment, and they were broadcasting it. i realized at the time that this seemed too good to be true, but the ndp were in the pocket of the oil industry and the conservatives were the conservatives, so it was a hobson's choice - you picked what seemed best.

based on the information available, the liberals were the right vote for environmentalists in 2015.

unfortunately, they've abandoned their platform - and demonstrated that all three major parties are beholden to the oil industry.

but, see, this ironically opens up the situation where voting green becomes necessary as an act of protest. it is only when all of the major parties are the same, when there is no possibility of using the ballot as a means of change, that you revert to voting as an act of protest....

anarchists prefer to broadcast lifestyle changes, and i agree with that. i don't drive. i don't create waste. my carbon footprint is truly negligible. but, insofar as we interact with the voting system, we need to make changes intended to maximize potential outcomes. all anarchists recognize that this is not a full solution, but the smart ones realize it is a tool for our use, too.

it is when we reduce voting to a meaningless statement of values or principles as an act of self-righteousness that we are giving in to the apathy of the voting system - and that is what we are doing when we vote for a party that we know has no chance of winning, when there is an acceptable option in front of us that does have a chance of winning.

it's true.

if you were to go back in a time machine and have an economic discussion with adam smith, he wouldn't know what the word 'capitalism' means - because it was invented by karl marx to describe the phenomenon of appropriation, many decades later.

adam smith would have just called himself a liberal, and his theory of free markets liberalism.

but, you have to remember that he also had that book on morality. he might have been naive, but he wasn't evil.

the word 'capitalism' arises out of the marxist critique of liberalism.

but, listen.

girls....

the fact is that you'd be bored of me in five minutes, once you've realized that i don't live in the same universe that you do. it's not even that i'm not going to have anything in common with you, it's that we're not going to know what the fuck the other one is even talking about.

i have more in common with your mom.

i'm 37 going on 67.

they're just little kids, to me....

if you send young girls at me, i'm going to be more concerned about calling their mom to get them home safe than i am going to be in hitting on them.

i didn't want to date, i just wanted to skip to being a retired couple.

i mean, that could have been a part of my total disinterest - i was mentally twenty years older than everybody around me, and kind of had to wait for them to catch up.

i am simply not attracted to "girls" at all, and never was.

i am single and like it.

but, i can't tell if you're 20 or 30 - and going to treat you as a child, either way.

i would only even be considering people that are 40+ - and dress and act like it.

hey, you're upset?

whaddaya gonna do?

put me in jail?

huh?

didn't wanna sheik yerbouti, mohammaamamamamamad?

c'mon. let's get him dressed up for an ironic response. i want a roll of quarters in his pants...

ok, so i can do a terse but serious analysis of the saudi thing.

clearly, if chrystia freeland had any intention of actually doing something concrete to release this blogger or her sister, she wouldn't have posted it on twitter. a lot of the media is suggesting this was unprofessional. but, that's kind of just the point - this was the government engaging in useless clicktivism, for the sole purposes of internal consumption. the fact that she posted it on twitter is a clear indicator that the government does not actually care about the situation at all.

generally, this kind of thing is intended as a distraction. the question is what they're distracting from. the refugee situation? our apparent removal from nafta? a pointless squabble with the saudis is an opportunity for better media...

...or so they no doubt thought.

it's hard to tell whether the saudis are reacting because they've been attacked as a part of a media ploy and are pissy about it, or because they see as much to gain from the reciprocity - if our government can benefit by using the saudis as a decoy, can the saudis do just as well by decoying us, too? or are they legitimately irked?

i frankly don't care much about what the saudis think at all. i've been calling for regime change in this country for years, under the understanding that they are the problem in the middle east. every stupid conflict happening there right now is entirely their fault, from libya to afghanistan. this regime must fall, if we want peace.

so, are they upset? really. awww. the wittle saudis are upset. awww.

but, there are benefits to kicking their students out, too - we need the housing, right now. and, we don't need more muslim doctors, either, as they don't follow the law here - they just whine about how it doesn't align with their religion.

i'm not going to get distracted about this. it strikes me as bullshit.

but, frankly?

i don't care if they are legitimately angry. good riddance.

so, when apple shares burst, will we get apple sauce or apple juice?

those stock prices are comedic.

i don't want to be rich.

what i want is to be free.

i'd stumble in late every day.

complain.

yell at people.

it's not the money. it's the wasted time.

if you did give me a job making $200,000, i'd invest all of it and retire off of the dividends within 6 months.

after all, i only need $1200/month to survive.

i would rather be desperately poor and totally free than filthy rich and hopelessly enslaved.

and, don't believe me?

just watch me.

if you're equally disinterested in both jobs, then it doesn't matter how much they pay you.

it could be $20,000/year or $200,000/year.

it's slavery if you don't want to be there, either way - and if you don't have a choice not to be.

and, i don't care if your company fails.

i don't care about your customers.

i don't care about your product.

i'm only here because the government insists i perform some kind of slave labour in order to pay the rentier class.

and, i'll let you know all about it at every opportunity, too.

i've been over this.

i'm an educated person.

i could probably get a government job. i haven't really tried very hard. it would probably be enough to buy a house, and pay off my loan.

but, if you're going to force me to work against my will, i'm not going to do that.

rather, i'm going to get a part-time job in a fast food restaurant.

why?

because i don't want to waste my brain at work.

a capitalist will compare these two jobs and conclude that the government job is preferable because it has higher pay. but, i'm not a capitalist. so, the important & quantifiable thing to measure is not money, but time. when i look at the government job, i see a heightened level of responsibility. i'd need to buy respectable clothes. i'd probably have to work on the weekend. i'd have to socialize with co-workers.

and, i don't want any of that. at all.

the fast food job, on the other hand, will offer me flexible hours. it will give me the option of working part time (and reducing my hours to the minimum necessary to pay rent). and, it will let me leave my job at work - so i can focus on what i actually care about when i get home.

is any of this getting through to anybody?

so, put them in jail, then?

well, i thought you were trying to save money?

these people live in a delusional market fantasy that projects the absurd belief that when you take away subsidies, people will adjust by teaching themselves marketable skills and competing freely on an open market.

no, lisa.

they're going to rob the fucking convenience store.

but, you have no job creation plan, lisa.

i've been clear over a long period that i don't share your views on labour, or on your religious outlook on work. we are philosophically diametrically opposed to each other, on this point. i do not believe that hard work sets anybody free, and will fight as hard as i possibly can to prevent you from enslaving me.

but, relative to your own skewed morality, or your fucked up logic of capital, shouldn't your first priority be to create jobs, and not to cut welfare? by your own belief system, shouldn't people choose to work, if the jobs were only available to them?

we're mere weeks into their mandate, and they've immediately announced plans to cut social assistance - without even musing about ways to improve the economy. so, it seems like they care more about cutting welfare than they do about creating jobs, and aren't really interested in the question of whether there are jobs available for people or not.

they presented absolutely no plans about cutting social assistance to the electorate, either.

the fact is that they just want to cut spending, at any cost. and, if the result of their policies is simply increased homelessness and higher crime rates, they'll just dump the responsibility off to the church - because they don't believe that government has a role to play in social cohesion, they just think it's a waste of money.

well, when the crime rate picks up, lisa, because you tossed all these people out on their ears, we'll see how well that money is really being spent, won't we?

it's just mind-boggling to me that these people need to make the same mistakes over and over again - that they're incapable of learning from history, or understanding the outcomes of science.

but, they just cancelled the ubi rather than wait for the results. they're not interested in data. they don't care about science....

as of today, my income is $1215 and my expenses are $970. so, i have $245/month spending money. that made it easy to get to detroit and have fun, and also made it easy to save money - that will be $750 saved by just staying in this summer. but, i never budgeted for discretionary income anywhere near that high. if i can somehow move laterally and actually find something acceptable for $700 in the next six weeks, i could find myself saving over $1000 this winter - which means i'm likely to have a fun spring, but is far more than i'd think is even reasonable, given that i'm on disability.

keep in mind that rents in toronto are far higher, so the answer isn't to slash odsp - it's just to realize that if i don't spend the money on rent, i'm not likely to spend it at all, or likely to spend it on beer and popcorn. i'd rather spend it on rent!

the market has opened up a lot in the last week. so, hopefully, i can find the kind of landlord i'm looking for, soon.

and, if i can find something for the $650 i signed up for initially? at $1230, i'd have $310 worth of spending money. a month.

if this works out, it will have been worth it...

in some ways, this is a kind of a shitty analysis. but, maybe it's more realistic, too.

the fact is that i didn't have the choice to stay where i was - all i could do was make it expensive to get me out.

and, i've wasted a year, but i've now got the settlement i should have gotten in the first place, too.

so, i've been looking at percentages and inflation and calculating that i'd need to find a two bedroom for $700/month - inclusive - to be in the same situation i was in when i moved here. if i can get to that end point, i've lost nothing, in the end, except time - meaningful, but there's no value in complaining about it.

but, if i look at total dollars instead, it's a different computation.

i was initially getting about $1075, total, when i moved here. my hst checks were a few hundred dollars, and came in in the summer; i wasn't getting these monthly deposits. so, my total income was $1075...

the rent was $650 all inclusive. so, that's 61%.

then, i started getting the hst checks in monthly instalments the next summer, which brought my monthly income up to more like $1130. i decided that the hst checks were the way the government paid for my estrogen. but, $650/1130 is now 58%, which is where i'm getting these $700 numbers from.

but, even that's an exaggeration, isn't it? i wasn't budgeting that money, initially. i was planning on using it to buy wood to build furniture.

to be fair, if i'm going to use the 61% then i should also apply it to the pre-hst income, which is $1151 - and scales to $700, as well.

but, in practice, the change from a lump sum hst that i used as found money to a monthly check that i'm budgeting is very much an actual rate increase. so, i should be applying it to the $1215, or the $1230 in a few months - and that's almost $750, inclusive. but i've got free hydro, now, too...

so, that's really the more realistic calculation, percentage wise - $750 + hydro, or $750 all inclusive.

but, what about actual dollars?

i had budgeted $150 for food, initially. internet was about the same price. estrogen was more expensive. laundry was $20.

$1075 - 650 - 150 - 30 - 50 - 20 = $175.

and, i had $100 budgeted for cigarettes.

it was $75, left over.

by the time i moved out of this place, i was getting $1190 monthly, and i had quit smoking. it was more like $180/month, put aside.

if my income is now $1230, how much can i spend on rent (including utilities) to have $75 left over?

and the answer is $885.

but, the place had better be totally smoke free, because i'd essentially be taking the money i saved from not smoking and giving it to the landlord.

so, i applied somewhere yesterday for $850 + hydro, assuming i wouldn't pay hydro for at least a few years. and, i can see that that's actually more reasonable than i thought....if i can control for the smoke in it as well as i'd like to...

so, what is less wasteful, in terms of utilizing time - going to work to pay for a nicer apartment, or backpacking around the province looking for somewhere to set back up again?

i mean, if i'm wasting all of my time looking for somewhere to stay anyways, why not just get a job?

the difference is that the backpacking is short term. i could very well waste far more of my time looking for an apartment in the short run than i would if i just got a job, but at least there's an end point to it. so, short-term homelessness provides a level of hope that long-term employment cannot provide for.

it is consequently preferable to be homeless in the short run than it is to be employed in the long run.

i would need a change of clean clothes & a laptop.

i'd just need to find something cheap with a functioning screen, as i'd be putting my existing hard drive into it.

do i think i could trust people in a rooming house more than people in a shelter?

no.

do i think i'd get along with people in a rooming house better than people in a shelter?

i think i'd actually get along better with people in a shelter than i would with people in a rooming house.

do i think i'm safer in a rooming house than a shelter?

no.

i'm not exaggerating about it making more sense to be homeless than to get a room.

let's say i get a room. i will then need to put my things in storage, until i can find somewhere to put them - a room would be transient, short term, by definition. even if you could find me a big enough room, i still couldn't leave all my gear in an unsafe location like that. so, getting a room means i'm paying for storage.

and, if i'm paying for storage and living in a strange place anyways, why bother paying for it? i mean, here's the fundamental question from my point of view: what is the difference between living in a rooming house and living in a shelter?

well?


it's basically the same thing, right?

and, if i have my things in storage, and am looking for an apartment, all paying for a room is doing is tying me to a location.

so, it makes more sense to be homeless than it does to pay for a room.

the way the managers at the so-called non-smoking buildings want to interpret the idea is not as a selling point, but as an annoying rule that has to be enforced.

so, they'll say things like "only new tenants are not allowed to smoke".

it's not seen as a welcome positive right to a healthy, smoke-free environment, but as an annoying rule to limit behaviour - one they ultimately don't want to enforce.

the attitude i want to hear is "existing tenants now have the right to a smoke-free environment", and not "only new tenants are prohibited from smoking.".

do you see the culture shock, here? the difference in values? the backwardsness inherent in the misunderstanding?

can i get disability to pay for storage under the understanding that i can't find acceptable housing?

if not, my check is going to come down by $489. if you consider that my expenses will come down by $730, that's a net increase of $241. can i find a storage space for <$241? i'm going to have a few thousand dollars sitting, so if i'm paying $350, i'll have something like two years to find something....

can i live on $200 food if i'm back-packing? well, i'll probably need to hit some food banks. soup kitchens. etc. i think so, though. i'll need to be careful about it.

i've got two months, still. this is premature. but i need to be thinking about it...

this city is hopeless.

the landlords don't think it's a real problem.

the management companies don't want to rent to non-smokers.

even the managers at the non-smoking buildings (a policy that is mostly being pushed down by corporate head offices out of town) don't want to rent to non-smokers. you call them up, and they tell you they don't enforce it.

the people that live here want to smoke, and want to tell the world to fuck off if they don't like it.

and, maybe the world should just get up and leave them to their lonely deaths - and take the jobs and wealth with us, when we do.

i came here hoping to build a new society in the wreckage of the old one, and found a population that is clinging to the society that has abandoned it. you can't rebuild unless people are willing to destroy what used to be, first.

they just want to sit back and chain smoke in the smouldering ruins...

maybe i'll come back when they're dead.

i dunno.

what i'll need to do, if it comes to it, is put my things in storage in the first week of october and hitchhike around until i can find somewhere acceptable to live where people don't smoke.

c'mon, windsor.

you're going to tell me i can't find a non-smoking apartment on disability income?

what a pathetic indictment of a disgusting place to live, that would be.

windsor: where you're always downwind of somebody chain-smoking, whether you like it or not.

we need regime change in saudi arabia.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/saudi-arabian-group-apologizes-for-posting-image-appearing-to-threaten-canada-with-9-11-style-attack-1.4775509

can we do that experiment?

so, how much does it cost, now, for doug ford to get so fucked up that he falls down the stairs?

an independent canadian policy on emissions standards should seek to predict more stringent future epa requirements, and get a head start on canadian productive capacities, so that firms can choose canadian production over american production in the long run.

further, american unions should see the folly in the epa rollback and seek to prevent management from what is bound to be a pointless regression, in the long run.

and, this logic is broadly applicable.

if you want investment language, canada should not be disturbed too much by short term fluctuations, and focus instead on long term predictions.

a usual, the business press has the interests of investors in mind, and not the interest of workers.

it is of course better for investors to ensure common standards, but, one way to guarantee that the auto companies have no choice but to keep jobs in canada is to create different standards here, that force them to do things differently here.

it follows - if you are interested in workers, rather than investors - that separating the standards is actually a good thing, as it will create jobs in this country.

canada is a lot smaller than the united states, but it's still a wealthy country with an important auto market. nobody is going to forfeit the canadian market.

and, the flip side is that, once the americans elect a non-idiot that returns to a sane perspective on emissions, canada will have the capacity to export.

if i was ford or chrysler, i would just go ahead with the obama-period plan, anyways - it's not going to be more than a few years before the next government brings back even tougher standards. and, that should be the thinking across the industry, in both the united states and canada.

donald trump can't actually reverse the flow of time.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-vehicle-emissions-1.4775503

she did this kind of bullshit as health minister, too.

the ndp needs to target this woman to get her thrown out of the house of commons.

this is absolutely disgusting.

the idea that there's not enough money for funding is bullshit. regardless, why not just tax the fuckers, instead of entering them in a lottery?

it's not clever. it's utter stupidity. and, it really reflects the absurdly low value that these people place on indigenous people - and poor people, in general.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-trudeau-government-trying-to-expand-indigenous-housing-options-through/

it's easy to state all of this from a distance, once i've had some time to process it.

but, at the time, i'm just sitting there trying to figure out why she won't talk to me, if it's something i can do, if it's permanent, etc.

as mentioned: as far as i can tell, she kind of 'gave up' on me after i told her i was back on hormones, which seems to mean something relatively romantic - she decided i wasn't going to be a father figure, or i wasn't going to be an income source, or i wasn't going to be some abstraction of a provider.

but, it was absurd for her to have thought that, because i had made it clear to her that i was never going to be that person, as early as 2002.

i guess i didn't really believe that she actually had those delusions, so it was just a kind of kneejerk reaction, and she'd get over it. and, that makes perfect sense from my perspective - we'd been friends a long time, we'd been through a lot, and she was just mad at me, and she'd get over it.

but, the only rational way to understand the situation is that she must have actually believed i was going to end up as a provider at some point, so that the realization that i never was going to must have eliminated some use value i had for her - otherwise, why would she have bothered to talk to me and invite me over for all those years, and why was she so upset about the final conclusion?

what i'm getting at is that she wasn't over me - otherwise, my gender identity wouldn't have mattered to her.

what she wanted was to put me aside for later. she wanted to be a slut, but she didn't want to break up. she wanted to go away on weekends, but she didn't want me to move out. and, when i got up and left, she couldn't compute what was happening.

she took me for granted.

and, i walked out on her.

...and then she came crawling back, and i told her 'no' - go be a slut if you want, but i don't want to be your partner if you insist on living that type of lifestyle.

but, this is absurdly silly, and outside of the scope of any meaningful discussion: we were still going on periodic catch-up dates more than five years later, and quite a while after we stopped being physical.

again: i'm still not fully certain what happened, but it's absolutely clear that it had nothing to do with the events around the initial break-up, because we were still friends for a very long time afterwards.

i was actually happier just being her friend. it was a lot less stressful to meet her once in a while and catch-up. and, yeah, there was some lingering sex, but it actually felt more healthy when it had a bit of a distance to it.

i was not leading her on, either. i made it crystal clear that we weren't going to get back together....

i told her two months ahead of time that i was moving out, and she simply couldn't accept that she was being dumped, so instead of planning for it, she ended up homeless.

but, was i supposed to continue living with a slut? is that a real option? in what fantasy reality?

but, i didn't want to completely throw her out of my life, i just didn't want to sleep with her any more.

she can say what she wants, but the fact is that i walked out on her for cheating on me.

she got dumped for being a slut. ok?

then, she showed up at my new apartment and begged me to let her move in.

i've been over this.

i don't know what i would do with the extra money.

i can't drive.

do you want to tell me to live in a room so i can go out to fancy restaurants to eat?

this is just stupid.

i have a stable income. i have money in the bank. we can budget the thing up together, if you want.

but, people are idiots...what do you say....

i need to be clear.

i will put my things in storage and accept homelessness before i move into a room.

well, i mean, i would have no choice but to put my things into storage anyways, so why would i pay for a room?

it's not in the list of possible options. and, there's no reason for it to be. i have up to $950 that i can spend on rent.

these landlords are just being stupid about it - and they will lose money for it in the end.

that listing i applied for is still available. i could have moved in august 1st. that's at least $700 lost.

there are some units that have been sitting empty for months, and the idiots are losing thousands on them.

and, the economy here is just going to get worse, as the jobs move into the suburbs.

it's really an absolutely ridiculous place to put a hospital - a ten minute bike ride from the nearest major intersection.

i would certainly hope they're planning bus service; as it is, it would be impossible for most people to get there without calling an ambulance, and it's going to increase the travel time for ambulances five, six, seven fold.

the only logic to attach to it is the idea that the staff wants to abandon the downtown core, which is more or less what's happening - this is essentially very expensive white flight.

if it brings housing costs down in the city core, i'm ok with it. it'd just be nice if they'd hurry it up...

so, i'm arguing with somebody that just bought a complex around the corner from the hospital that is being closed. he thinks he'll rent to hospital staff. my guess is he's from toronto.

these people are delusional, and they're just going to lose money.

but, it's shitty timing for me.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/it-s-done-hospital-ceo-says-about-site-of-windsor-s-mega-hospital-1.4433241

...& that does complete november, although i still have to format that mega post to november 30th.

you could publish that thing as a socratic dialogue. it's 50 pages on office paper, so you're looking at a 100-200 page paperback.

i'm going to nap a little this morning, though. the headache is gone, but i'm zombified. hopefully, i wake up a bit more fresh...

well, that got rid of it for a while, anyways - we'll see how persistent it is.

it could be anything, really.

i could be stressed out.

i'm not getting auras, at least.

so, sleeping the headache off appears to have been unsuccessful.

it's raining. she's smoking. but, i'm also congested, so i'm wondering if it's even allergies. this is another reason why this place is impossible: i do appear to have some kind of allergies, but i can't close the window. so, i get to choose between pollen and smoke. great.

i can't be immobile right now, so let me try some aspirin.

yeah, my head is just throbbing...i dunno....gonna eat...

so, how bad is it really?

it's gonna depend on a lot of things, obviously.

but, the 7/11 in my neighbourhood has actually had a problem with refugee kids stealing milk creamers, presumably because they couldn't afford to actually buy a carton of it.

well, you can't raise a family with ten kids on welfare. it's crazy.

as i've pointing out for a long time, what i'm interested in are the local consequences - the effects it's having on housing shortages, the increasing racist attitudes, the strains on food banks & etc.

i'm not sure that we needed to do this at all. the situation in the country is stabilizing. and, these people are probably better off back at home, in the long run.

but, if you're going to do it, you gotta fund it...

trump is a canadian liberal, and trudeau is an american democrat.

everything's fucking backwards.

it's just bizarre to me that the tory media in canada has this desire to push american value systems on to canadians.

if we're going to switch spots, can i get an american citizenship and move to california?

'cause i kind of like being a canadian, and don't really want to be an american.

sorry.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/canada-border-1.4774704

you know, i haven't had any serious headaches since i moved here, i don't think.

but, we've had some rain today, and one came in pretty quickly when i closed the windows.

i don't seem to like the inside air very much.

you're looking at two major cause of crime:

1) property rights (sometimes stated as 'poverty'....but the reason we have poverty is because of property rights). you can usually fix these things.
2) stupidity. stated bluntly. i mean, we can state this in different ways: mental illness, mental retardation, developmental disability, etc - but the broad, over-simplified way to grasp the issue is to state tersely that there are a great deal of stupid people on the planet, and they can't be fixed.

so, we have to separate the stupid from the poor, basically.

we can help the poor.

we can't help the stupid...

what we call jails should essentially be mental hospitals, and the only people in them should be people that doctors have declared incapable of rehabilitating properly.

the purpose of a jail should be to protect society from people that can't be reformed, not to punish people for breaking the law.

so, should repeat gun offenders be jailed? well, if the system was working properly, it would catch these people before they're repeat offenders - because it would diagnose them properly, rather than waiting for them to misbehave.

it shouldn't be a question of how many times you've broken the law, but a question of whether you're able to understand what you're doing, or not.

so, you've got a couple of conservatives taking advantage of the situation to push for more dumb-on-crime rules that prioritize retribution over resolution.

if we consider repeat gun offenders - which none of these mass shooters ever are - we need to ask the question as to why it is that this person has picked up a gun not once but twice or however many times, and there's really no answer, in the case of repeat offenders, besides mental illness.

so, what we need to figure out with repeat offenders is:

1) do they understand what they're doing?
2) are they capable of understanding what they're doing?

it's not an issue that we can solve with laws and rules and cops and brute force - it's an issue that we need to deploy science and reason towards. we need to get to the psychology of it.

the science is clear: punishing people simply doesn't work. so, we have to figure out who can be rehabilitated, and who can't - and then keep the people that are incapable of understanding their behaviour off of the street, while rehabilitating those who are capable of being rehabilitated.

https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2018/08/06/tory-asks-trudeau-to-end-bail-for-repeat-gun-offenders.html

it was an arabic word.

i don't remember what it was...
 
...but it was a word used specifically to refer to white slaves, which were common throughout the period of islamic dominance.

slavery, as we understand it, was not invented by capitalism - it was invented by islam.

again: i'm sure plenty of them are great kids.

but, i know that a large percentage of them are people i'd rather were not allowed into this country in the first place.

racist arabs are a pretty real problem.

it's a culture built on a religion that prioritizes it's own tribalism., and teaches that the rest of the world exists for it's enslavement.

our entire concept of slavery in the west is arab & muslim in origin.

and, we know that the way these kids are being raised is outrageous...

i got that kid in a lot of trouble, actually.

well, he was dumb enough to not just call me a slave, but to post it in the school's message board system. so, the evidence was crystal clear.

he ended up on probation for it - as he should have.

it's a good thing he didn't know my gender identity, right?

i had a saudi exchange student call me a slave and tell me to shut up, once.

i know better than to generalize.

but, i'm sure his attitudes weren't unique to him.

....and, while i'm sure that plenty of these kids are good people, i know from experience that plenty of them aren't, too.

i would rather have 20,000 students than 20,000 refugees, sure.

but, right now, anything that decreases net immigration is a net positive.

well, that should open up 20,000 more rental spaces, which should ease some of the housing pressures we're dealing with.

woo!

yeah!

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-saudi-arabia-to-withdraw-all-saudi-students-studying-at-canadian/

i actually don't care much about the arms deal; the idea that cancelling it would hurt us more than them is correct - they have unlimited supplies of cash, and could buy from anywhere.

a more co-ordinated arms embargo is a far better idea.

but, can we get our wheat board back?

that's food security. that's key.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4372778/saudi-canada-ambassador-feud-armoured-vehicles-justin-trudeau/

https://www.thestar.com/edmonton/2018/04/25/hate-crimes-in-canada-based-on-sexual-orientation-rose-25-per-cent-in-a-single-year-with-most-incidents-involving-violence.html

you thought we were cool and progressive because we had such open borders, even though we actually never did, at all, until recently.

and, now, the actual truth is that we're turning the clocks back up here in canada because of those newly opened borders.

way back.

when your liberal prime minister goes to the gay festival and starts talking about god out of fear of electoral consequences, you are in a period of severe social regression.

i mean, the guy shows up at the queer festival in bc and gives a fucking sermon, because he's more concerned about what muslims in toronto think, and doesn't want a bad sound bite.

this country is fucked.

we're on a one-way ticket to the fucking dark ages.

trudeau is a religionist.

he doesn't care about queer people.

he's just flogging us for cash.

stop falling for it.

listen, i'm not about to be restricted by your bourgeois conceptions of floor design.

i'll put my bed in the fucking kitchen if i bloody well want to.

so, i did put an application in for something, today.

i'm a little apprehensive about it. it's at the back of the building, and i didn't see any butts back there; all of the butts were in the front of the building. there's empty lots around the building, too. so, i'd really only have to seriously control for the tenant below me, who doesn't seem to smoke.

it's a central air unit, which is actually illegal. you're not allowed to recycle air between units. i guess that, if the issue comes up, i can give them a nice ultimatum on that one, right? in theory, it should be easy enough to put a solo line in. and, they'd have no choice but to do it - or face a lawsuit i'm sure to win. there's no ambiguity on this point at all, in the law. you can't do that. but, maybe they've already fixed it and it's a non-issue...

it's also a little further from downtown than i'd like it to be.

the upside is that it's actually cheaper than where i am right now, by $25/month, and it's not measurably smaller in terms of usable space. the kitchen is a little bigger, and the bedroom is a little smaller, so it balances out; i can put the bookshelves in the kitchen, instead. the living room is a little smaller,  but there's some extra space in a personal hallway - which roughly balances out, given that where i am right now doesn't have an entrance, and i'm putting my shoes on in the living room.

the building is actually rather similar to the one i had to leave, but it's an upper level rather than a lower one. i'll admit that i could see myself getting on management to move me downstairs if it opens up.

as always, the biggest drawback is the smoke, but all i can do is keep learning and keep adjusting. i can't foresee the future, or predict things that aren't obvious. like, they could build a rooming house on the open side. then, i'm fucked.

so, it's not perfect, but it's good enough to try to get out in front of on. & we'll see how that goes.

i'm trying to keep the amount of things i'm purchasing to a minimum, because i'm essentially ready to pick up and move at any time. but, i do need to eat. so, i'm at the grocery store, picking up some fruits & veggies, some cheese, some eggs...

i come up to the cash register, and it's a tale of two refugees.

now, i didn't see what actually happened, but my proclamations in this space will neither convict or acquit this man, so let us assume, for the sake of the narrative, that the accusation from refugee #1 (the store manager) was true: that refugee #2 did in fact bring his kid into the store in order to steal something, perhaps a loaf of bread.

i don't think it's right to ask the question of whether it's a crime to steal a loaf of bread; i think it's right to ask the question of whether it's a crime to force people into choices such as these, especially if the premise was escape from a scenario where there was no bread at all. what is a greater crime: to lack the resources to distribute bread to all that need it, or to deny bread to those that need it when it is abundant? it seems like a silly question, when framed properly.

but, what other outcome could we expect?

refugee #1 speaks excellent english, and is probably underemployed, if clearly well fed. he could have probably emigrated here outside of the refugee system. and, perhaps he did.

it is not clear if refugee #2 understand enough english to comprehend the accusations against him, and he might very well just be doing what he's always done - and perhaps what his parents always did, too.

the manager was enraged, perhaps because he saw himself reflecting back at him. his enunciations focused strongly on the premise of the child being the guilty party, the implication being that teaching a child to steal is in some ways worse than stealing. but, who owns this property? and why is this theft?

i watched the manager, a big and well-nourished man, pick this scrawny, underfed fellow refugee up and throw him across the store, to the quiet amazement of onlookers, as though he was carrying out an application of sharia law on the spot. he then grabbed him by the nape of the neck, and dragged him out of the store.

i do not know what happened next.

but, i suspect what i witnessed has happened before in this country, and will happen again.

anti-racism activists need to understand that this process has been poorly managed, and that some serious changes in approach are immediately required to prevent some serious consequences.

i mean, to begin with, i wouldn't describe myself as this person's "ex-boyfriend"; while the relationship was complicated, "ex-partner" or even "ex-girlfriend" is a more accurate description.

second, when you've been friends with somebody for six, seven, eight years after a break-up, are you still that person's ex or are you just their friend? i'd argue for the latter, and to hear that i'm still being described as an "ex" is to introduce a dimension into the situation that i'd actually thought was long abolished.

but, in hindsight, this is somebody that didn't bother to close the door to urinate when we'd been broken up for five years. she was clearly hanging on to things that i'd long let go of.

i still don't know what's going on, exactly, and, at this point, i guess i'll have to accept that i never will.

but, the fact is that we got along well for over five years after we split up. we'd go for lunch periodically - often around her birthday. i remember when i took her to mexis when she got pregnant the first time, and convinced her to start eating meat - a year after we broke up. i remember going for a walk with her near dow's lake around the tulip festival, three years after we broke up.

she invited me for dinner in her apartment four years after we broke up, and asked me to bring flour. i brought flowers. get it?

it was around this time that i rejected a threesome with her. she got a little weird after that...

but, she didn't really get distant until i told her i was back on hormones, about 2010ish - 6 years after we broke up.

and, as far as i can tell, what's actually going on is that she's mad at me for being queer.

a year after the fact, two years after the fact, three years after the fact, i thought she'd get over it. at this point, it doesn't seem like she is going to get over it...

so, let's say you've got a friend, and that friend is important to you - and you think you're important to that friend, too.

and, yeah, maybe you've had sex with that friend in the past, but, since then, things have changed - maybe the friend has children to raise (and maybe you don't want to be a part of a family, or don't want to take on that responsibility), and maybe you've even gone through a gender transition, in the mean time, so that you and your friend actually identify as the same gender, and in fact always did, over the entire length of time you've been friends.

now, let's say that your friend gets the idea that you're trying to sleep with them, and have been trying to sleep with them for years, and the whole friendship was a ruse - despite the fact that you actually haven't demonstrated any sexual interest in your friend at all, or even any sexual interest in your friend's entire gender for years and years.

what the fuck do you do in this situation?

it's a catch-22.

you could try and call your friend and explain that you're not sexually interested in them at all - but, if your friend is convinced of this, repeated calls are just evidence of pestering for more sex.

you could try and show up at your friend's house and explain it, but if your friend is convinced of a sexual motive, however flimsily, and refuses to talk to you, then that is also just more evidence of a sexual advance.

further, you can't just ignore the situation - because unless you get your friend to get this crazy idea out of their head, they're going to spread rumours about it, and it's going to have a negative effect on you.

so, in order to get your friend to knock off the delusion, you have to keep trying to talk to the friend - which just proves, in your friend's mind, how obsessed you are with the imaginary sexual advance.

the surreal part of this is in the idea that your friend could be so daft. it's not such a crazy thing to imagine, excepting the clause that your friend couldn't really be that stupid, right?

well, maybe your friend really is that stupid.

but, the other possibility is that your friend could be reacting to the lack of interest. maybe your friend had more romantic interest in you than you had in them, and is angry at you for not reciprocating - and so is fabricating a scenario, for some kind of gain. maybe the friend is a little embarrassed about some aspect of the situation; and, falling for a queer person that just wants to be your friend (but really does want to be your friend) is kind of embarrassing on some level, sure. maybe the friend is mad about the lack of interest in raising the kids, or about the gender transition. maybe the friend is holding a grudge over the rejection of their own previous advances, and looking to get back at you.

i guess the lesson to learn is that this person isn't really your friend, at all, are they?

but, regardless, the necessity to get your "friend" to acknowledge that there never was an advance remains - and the catch-22 continues into perpetuity, until they admit it.

i think i've been clear that i'm somebody that prefers to spend time by myself.

but - and i know this is hard to understand - a lot of it is due to the fact that i have this giant workload ahead of me.

i could get a job.
i could find a partner.
i could try and find a group of friends.

but, i'd rather stay in and continue to work towards completing all of these projects i've set up. that's just the flat truth of it.

the one counter-example to this rule is that i like to go to concerts. the fact is that that's pretty much the only reason why i want to leave the house. further, when i'm at the concerts, i tend to need some inebriation to deal with the social anxiety.

and, what do you call somebody that would rather sit in and read than go out? we're called introverts. we're a minority, but we're not that uncommon

october is now done.

i would have hoped for more action on the market today,  but what can you do?

i want to catch up to where i was before i get to seriously looking for stuff out of town. two more months. and, about two hundred pages in the doc.

i do not know what crack smells like.

i do not know what meth smells like.

i do know what pot smells like...

i'm feeling alright. i think.

i have two showings on sunday.

i really honestly don't know what it is, but i know it's not pot.

i caught the neighbour - the same one i'm yelling at - walking around in circles muttering to herself, today. i'm not sure if she knew where she really was; she was obviously very dramatically fucked up. it seemed more meth-like. but, i don't really know.

i don't know what they've been smoking since the first of the month down there, when the checks came in, but it smells like burning plastic.

meth?

crack?

i already went through this.

i really haven't been dealing with that issue for months. i don't know what's brought it back, again. but, it's actually really suffocating. like, if you get a whiff of it, it feels like you inhaled some kind of poison, and you're choking.

i'm still totally straight edge, since the end of may.

and, if i end up moving away from here in mid september or early october, so that future concerts are in toronto, there's a good chance i've smoked my last cigarette. ever.

see, this is the right narrative: we don't have a refugee crisis, so much as we have a broader housing crisis. the 50,000 syrian refugees, plus the 80,000 (documented) border crossers, are just making that fact obvious.

and, again: that might not seem like a lot of people, but it is when you understand that they're competing with our most vulnerable citizens (like me) for already stretched resources.

i can articulate myself relatively well. the other people in my socio-economic category mostly can't. so, you don't hear from them. but, they're there, and they're struggling, and this is making things worse.

we need to get the right story out if we want the right actions taken.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2016/02/05/refugees-needs-expose-canadas-housing-crisis.html

refugees are expensive.

so, let's put the money down and do it properly, or get out of the refugee business.

so long as we've got a housing crisis, the liberals will have a pr problem.

so long as we've got homeless refugees everywhere, and low income canadians feeling the pressures from it, the government just comes off as incompetent - but the kind of people likely to get galvanized by this are conservatives, anyways. online polling is only ever able to be useful by coincidence, but if you're going to pull anything out of it, that's the message - this is red meat for the rural conservative base, which the conservatives needs to get beyond to win elections.

but, if the liberals can frame the issue as a choice between spending tax money helping people and sending them away - and then actually build the necessary housing - then they're going to win the argument.

we don't imagine that taking in refugees means putting them in dorm rooms and then letting them loose on the free market; if that's what we're doing, we're mismanaging something. we imagine that taking in refugees is a process overseen and planned by a centralized body, and that success means finding them good housing and giving them the resources they need to thrive.

so, the government needs to make a choice: close the borders, or pony up and do it right. canadians will support the expenditure, but we want to see better results.

people in canada would not generally consider immigration to be a ballot question.

but, the low vacancy rate could very well be a liability for the liberals.

personally? there is a 0% chance that i'm going to vote for the conservative party, nor would the conservatives be articulating policies designed to reduce the vacancy rate or create affordable housing and whatnot. they don't actually have an answer to the problem.

traditionally, urban canadians have looked to the ndp to address these concerns, but they aren't doing it.

if the liberals get some shovels in the ground and make a big deal of it, they could take away an issue that the ndp should be all over.

dear kijiji,

gatineau is not in ontario.

thanks,
dtk

i want to catch up on the rebuild by the end of the weekend, and focus on out of town options on monday, so i'm going to get to rebuilding heavily over the next few days.

this was supposed to be the thing that made our immigration system so much better: we didn't open the gates to poor people and tell them to work their way up, we insisted that if you want to come here, you'd have to already have wealth.

as a consequence of the more selective immigration process, we didn't develop slums or ghettoes, and we didn't have the accompanying increases in crime that come attached with widespread poverty.

we also had the resources required to effectively deal with our own poor.

there never was a "canadian dream" - we rejected that as naive, american utopianism.

but, we seem intent on repeating their errors. and, if we do, we will end up with the same consequences.

the actual error that the government is making, the root of the problem, is in thinking that class mobility is not just possible, but easy - and maybe even that some trivial tax adjustments will have some effect on it.

in fact, the actual empirical reality is that there is almost no class mobility at all in this society, and that what class mobility does exist is largely downwards.

what we need at this point in time is for the government to put a bigger emphasis on redistributive policies; increasing the number of poor people is not going to somehow lead to greater class mobility, but just exacerbate the problems around poverty that we already have.

ok.

let me focus on windsor until mid-month at least.

stuff keeps coming up. it's not great. but, it is of course a lot easier to stay than to move.

if the property manager in this building had adjusted her attitude properly, we could have solved this problem without going to court, and i wouldn't have to move at all.

so i'm sending applications to non-smoking buildings, and they're telling me "actually, people smoke here, fuck off", which is the wrong answer - they should be telling me that they're eager to hear from me, and eager to throw the smokers out.

it's that attitude i'm looking for, first and foremost. a property manager can't control everything that happens on the property, but they can commit to standing on the right side of history.

otherwise, what's the point? it's just another smoking building. and, they're going to have a hard time converting a smoking building into a non-smoking building if they just tell the non-smokers that the place is full of smoke...

so, what does it mean to advertise a non-smoking building?

i understand that it may not necessarily mean that the building is completely smoke-free, at this exact time. but, what it should mean is that the landlord is broadcasting that it will aggressively seek to remove smoking tenants when they are disturbing non-smoking tenants.

the point of difficulty seems to be in getting property managers to deal with it. this is no doubt in some way a function of laziness, but it's no doubt a mental block, as well - even if these people don't smoke, because a lot of them are older, and this city is stuck in the past, they have astoundingly out-of-date attitudes towards smoking. they don't think it's a big deal, and they're going to look at the non-smokers as the troublemakers.

but, when you are advertising a non-smoking building, what you should be broadcasting is the opposite: that you will not take the side of smokers, and that you will act aggressively to stand up for the rights of non-smokers.

otherwise, it's just false advertising.

if it wasn't for the fact that i have so much work to do, getting a job might not even be so terrible.

i truly didn't mind working in a call centre, walking distance from my apartment, for a shift or two a week. it's been a long time. and, i haven't done it since for the simple reason that i haven't had to...

but, the question i've always asked is this: what is the actual value of telling me to sit on a phone for 10 hours a week? why is that important? who cares?

listen, i'm not in the category of people that sits around on the couch all day watching oprah and smoking drugs. i work 20 hour days at no profit. i'm mostly straight edge. i spend so much time working, that i don't have time for friends or family.....or a job, for that matter.

the fact is that i'm a workaholic.

so, the question isn't whether i work or not - i'm the hardest working person you'll ever meet.

the question is whether the work i do has a market for it, and it clearly doesn't. but i don't care.

so, the only hard work you're going to incentivize from me is trying to figure out how to avoid wasting my time generating a profit for somebody else - because i have no interest in doing this.

and, trust me - i will do everything i possibly can to avoid being sent to do a job i don't care about.

the content of nafta should have always been a bilateral deal between the us and mexico, from the start.

we're better off reverting to the fta - that's what we always wanted in the first place.

we know what the truth is, already.

lisa thinks that jobs will create themselves.

it's magic!

but, perhaps it is better to play along.

if lisa is so certain that social assistance does so much to prevent people from working, then surely she has a job creation strategy, too.

we're waiting, lisa. what are you going to do to create jobs?

"well, maybe they're still impoverished and ignorant, but if we take away their guns then they can't hurt anybody, right? and, what else are we going to do? redistribute wealth? ahahaha! i would rather they all kill each other off than toss them a dime of my own inheritance. just take away their guns, and let them throw temper tantrums in their own filth."

i suspect the rural caucus is not amused right now.

when i was a kid, back in the day, the ndp i grew up with would have argued that the way to approach gun violence is to get to the root causes of social inequality and alienation by funding social programs that educate people and help get them out of poverty, not pass an authoritarian law that is just going to create a black market.

it's quite a bourgeois position to think you can solve the consequences of poverty by taking away affected people's guns. truly.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/08/02/jagmeet-singh-trudeau-handguns_a_23494782/

maybe the tories should commit to fighting emissions by announcing a plan to have their cabinet wear ear plugs.

it's a start, right?

fucking idiots...

nah.

i spent a while mentally calculating space, and even if i use one of the tiny bedrooms as an eat-in kitchen, and the living room as a studio, it's still a pinch.

this goofy rental company is never even close on it's square footage. it said 600 square feet; i'd guess it's closer to 400. the bedrooms were like 6x10. i'd be happy with 10x10.

i'm not convinced the place was non-smoking, either.

i would have lowballed closer to $700 than $750, but didn't, in the end.

who ought to pay for all of this?

the pothead.

clearly.

so, what is this costing the landlords?

$1350 for me
$?? for the paralegal
$?? for filing costs
$?? lost rent, because this unit is unrentable
===========
$5000?

are they going to go after the pothead?

i hope they do. but, they seem to think they're standing up for her rights.

i wanted that two bedroom for $750.

maybe i can talk somebody down to $750, instead.

see, i'm actually in a fairly strong position for the next few days.

i'm going to see something tonight that is available immediately. like, i could move tomorrow. this unit has been evacuated, and the owner is losing money from it sitting.

i, on the other hand, did not pay rent this month - or, i did, but it was wiped out by the order.

so, i have the leverage.

and, i'm considering coming in a little low, if i like it.

so, what does that mean for me, budget wise?

well, as of this moment, i have ~$2850 in the bank. another $650 is $3500.

so, subtracting my $1000 buffer out, i have $2500 to spend on the move - including last, but not first, which will come to me at the beginning of the month. if i work in the next $1150, that's more like $3500+, for moving costs, first & last.

if i find something in another city close to here - niagara, hamilton - for $650-700, that leaves me with close to $2000 to move there with. i should come out ahead on that. do i want to?

on the other hand, if i subtract out $300 from the $3500, i'm left with $3200 to apply. that needs to include first and last, and i was thinking it would make sense to apply some kind of concept of inflation, but that doesn't really add up - any increase in rent is going to also inflate, at a higher level, so, no matter how i look at it, it's eventually going to run out. i mean, that is obvious, but actually doing the math pulls out a trivial rent increase - $25-50 - as worth looking at.

so, i can't really look at this like that. i'm still basically looking at the same price range - which is around $700 preferably, and $800 max. if the payout was more in the $5000 range, i could look at something more expensive; it isn't.

it does open up a more serious ability to move....

order came in today.

$1350.

on the low end, but that's ok.

so, they owe me $650.

i rant like this when i'm stressed out.

i hope that the order is available to access by tomorrow.

to put it another way: i don't really see a difference between christians and muslims, and tend to look down on them in much the same way.

i think that's unusual, still.

people that have no problem criticizing christianity tend to get strangely silent on islam; people that criticize islam don't tend to bother with christianity, or even go so far as to identify as christians.

but, they're the exact fucking same kind of stupid, as far as i'm concerned.

if you are curious....

....and i think i've said this before....

my parents were not religious. my father was technically a catholic, but i never saw him go to church, once. my stepmother found religion late in life; he and i usually went for brunch on sunday mornings when she was at church. he wasn't a bad person, but all he really cared about was sports.

my stepmother was the perfect example of the statement: "only immoral people need to go to church". that woman is/was wicked to the core - the worst human being i've ever met, by a good margin.

my mother would have been raised anglican. she's an addict, so she's been through the 12 steps, and i guess it's left her as some kind of unread deist. i mean, she's not going to go spouting deist philosophy or anything. if anything, i'd be more likely to label her a laveyan satanist.

with the exception of a few outings with a stepfather around the age of ten, i did not go to sunday school as a child. i was not raised with religious values. i don't have catholic guilt, or much of any internalized rejection or rebellion - the only meaningful religious instruction i ever received was at school, and i was kind of taught not to take it seriously. i always took it as an anthropology course, really.

i don't have latent christian values or traditions. i don't celebrate easter or christmas, and never really did. i don't have memories of christian family rituals. i don't have obscure memories of protestant work ethics or values.

i was very honestly raised an atheist. at eight, nine years old i was staying up all night on saturday reading stephen king or isaac asimov novels, falling asleep when the sun came up and just sleeping in on sunday. a little older, and i was in the basement studio all night.

i consequently understand religion exclusively through a leftist historical filter - i have a purely marxist conception of religion, as it came to me largely through secular literature. religion was always a retarding force in society. it was religion that acted as a stop on scientific inquiry, and kept us ignorant and backwards. i've pointed out before that it's more asimov than dawkins, but i would have sounded very much like a little dawkins at as young as eight years old.

so, when i attack christians, i'm not attacking myself. i never was one. it's not some proof i'm not a racist, although i'm not a racist; christianity is as much the other as any other religion is, to me. nor is christianity very white, really - the indigenous religions of europe are mostly lost, but would have been rather tribal and animalistic. christianity was invented in the middle east and brought to europe by brown people, in the world's first example of colonialism.

the point is that i'm not exaggerating when i tell you i'm as harsh on christianity, if not harsher on christianity, as i am on other religions. people don't seem to expect that, for some reason. i don't really know why.

i just try to be as factual as possible in assigning effects to causes. we elected a government with strong fundamentalist christian voices in it, but it is due mostly to the increasing presence of islam - church attendance rates continue to dwindle, while muslims are taking over entire neighbourhoods.

my goal is simply to be as accurate as possible.

but, yes: you should expect a lot of attacks on christianity, so long as we have christians in office, and their policies sound fundamentalist in nature or scope.

she'll be clinging to this when she's 84.

elizabeth may will not step down.

she must be destroyed.

51%.

you want to get very scared when you get close to it.

here's your fucking mirror ball, coastal america.

proceed with caution.

your kids can experience teen pregnancy, too!

move to ontario - where we just voted to abolish sex ed!

"canada's so cool."

yeah.

we're so cool that we just elected a climate-change-denying, gay-bashing, services-cutting christian redneck in our biggest province, because he tricked clueless recent immigrants into voting for him with empty, mindless rhetoric that anybody born here on a day before yesterday could have seen through in a second.

really fucking cool.

best fucking country in the world.

you may have better things to say about tolerance than i do; i'm not exactly a fan.

but, whatever you think of tolerance, you have to understand that you're only a liberal society when liberals can generate 51% of the vote.

when liberals lose their majority in california or new york due to heavy migration from conservative societies, the society in california and/or new york will shift to the right, too.

that's what happened in ontario.

the conservatives did it on purpose. if you didn't know better, you might think the liberals did, too.

you don't think those corporate dems wouldn't like less hippies and more muslims voting in the primaries?

be careful.

and observe your own future if you don't wise up to the facts...

we were naive, and we're going to learn the hard way.

learn from us.

don't make the same mistakes.

and why?

because we let our standards down on immigration.

we've gone full retard.

legit.

again...

california.

new york.

illinois.

are you taking notes?

we're fucked. for years.

it could take a generation to undo what these idiots are going to do.

the new maps will have to be amended to include ontario as a part of jesusland.

it's not our fault...

we got flooded with refugees and religious immigrants, and they fucked it all up.

but, yeah.

my landlord is a lying scoundrel.

we'll work this out in my favour, eventually.

for now, don't listen to her....

yeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw!

HANG ON TO YOUR BIBLES, FOLKS. WE'RE TALKING A STEEP TURN TO THE PAST.

welcome to ontario: alabama north!

fuck.

but, jesus provides, right lisa?

the ndp elected a clown, and it has left them as an unserious option.

that's not even true; the ndp got co-opted by a clown, who is unlikely to even win a seat.

he could always shave his beard, you know...

until then, the liberals are going to have no serious pressure on their left, and slowly align with the conservatives, as they always do without leftward pressure.

the country is in a serious political crisis that we're not going to find a way out of until we can organize properly on the left, again. the right vehicle is probably the greens, but we have to find a way to forcefully destroy elizabeth may, first.

no, let's understand this properly.

what we're learning is that trudeau was as dumb as doug ford, all along.

hey, i've got a message for you, lisa:

automation is going to lead to mass structural unemployment.

were you planning on starving us off, instead?

“I think that when you’re encouraging people to accept money without strings attached, it really doesn’t send the message that I think our ministry and our government wants to send.”

because you're a dipshit calvinist lunatic that gets her understanding of the world from the back of a dark age mythological text?

again: this is simply embarassing.

more pollution! more profit!

fucking idiots...

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/08/01/trudeau-carbon-tax_a_23493952/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spotim_referrer=recirculation

i'm not fucking around.

i'd no doubt have a hard time getting the state to pursue it, but, if i was the prosecutor, i'm sure i'd win that argument.

sorry, if you didn't get that - note that assault is considered a type of trespass, namely trespass into bodily autonomy.

if drifting smoke is trespassing on property, and it is well established that it is, then why isn't involuntary exposure to second-hand smoke trespassing on bodily autonomy, and therefore assault?

logically, it ought to be - with little ambiguity.

hrmnn.

if these were houses side-by-side, and we were both property owners, what i'd be suing her over is trespass. that is established, settled law.

if smoke entering my property would be trespassing, then why isn't smoke entering my lungs assault, in addition to nuisance?

on that note, could i just go ahead and have her charged with assault?

you might not see it that way, but the judge will, trust me.

and, where did you get your law degree from, anyways?

if this goes full kafka, note this fact: the court tends to usually accept some concept of self-defence as a valid defence.

so, a woman can defend herself against getting raped - and a non-smoker can take some action to prevent smoke from entering their space.

the reality is that charging me with harassment for yelling at a smoker blowing smoke into my apartment, the existence of a reasonable invocation of fear or not, would be legally equivalent to charging a rape victim with assault for defending herself. it's a waste of everybody's time, and almost certain to get the cop fired.

the fact is that she's creating trouble, and needs to be charged with one thing or another.

i'm half expecting a knock on the door.

if that happens, and i don't get charges filed against this woman, i'm going to be writing up reports on the officers.

i mean, in the abstract sense, at least, she's the one coming over here and smoking on me - i'm just yelling at her to fuck off. she's the aggressor, beyond any semblance of doubt; i'm just trying to defend myself, as best i can.

so, the neighbours are trying to charge me with harassment for yelling at them to not smoke beside my window.

in canada, the legal test for harassment revolves around the question of fear; they're simply wrong in their understanding of the law.

but, it's got me wondering if i might have a case against them for harassment. i've been focusing on nuisance. but, let's think this through.

this person has repeatedly come to my dwelling place and emitted noxious, carcinogenic chemicals into my living space. is it not the case that my reaction is rooted in fear - fear of annoying levels of sickness in the short term, and more dangerous ones in the long run?

see, and the difference is this: i'm in my dwelling place. i can't go live somewhere else (at least not yet). but, she could go smoke somewhere else. so, i am not going to her dwelling place, but she is in a very real way coming to mine.

well, if i file charges for nuisance, i'd might as well file them for harassment as well, right?

i mean, they can say what they want, but the bottom line is that i'm going to show up in court and prove that they actually owe me money.

nobody should ever have to pay a dime of rent if their unit has so much as a whiff of second hand smoke in it.

at least i'm not missing any showings, today.

they're now claiming i'm two months behind, which is false.

july's rent was paid with my last month's deposit. this was required due to the nature of the existing market and the fact that they would have stolen the deposit had i not taken it. i simply needed the deposit back in order to produce a deposit elsewhere, but i likewise did not want to forfeit it, and fully understand that i would have.

i admittedly currently owe them a total of $700 for august's rent. but, i expect the ruling to be closer to $7000 than $700. once i see the ruling, we can deduct $700 from the total owing - and they will actually owe me money. quite a bit of it....

if the ruling is somehow for less than $700, i will pay the balance immediately.

if i'm the tenant from hell, it's because i do know my rights.

and, they're the landlords from hell, because they don't have the slightest understanding of their obligations.

so, i've called them twice this morning.

the first agent claimed that there was no order, despite me being able to read that there is one, on my screen. the second agent suggested that the adjudicator may have indicated in the software that a order was issued, without actually ordering one.

this is all completely absurd. do i think the adjudicator opened the record in the database, but didn't upload the file? not really, no. i trust the tool more than i trust the agents. but, three people have refused to read the information to me over the phone, so i'm just going to have to sit tight until i get a response.

i sent an email to the landlord's paralegal last night indicating that i will be withholding rent until i see the order, but intend to pay the balance in full. this is under the expectation that they owe me well over $700, and that paying rent would be pointless - but also indicates that i do intend to pay it, if i'm wrong.

so, i mean, they can file what they'd like to file, but the reality is that they're the ones that owe me money, and quite a bit of it.

it would be very useful if i could get a copy of the order in the next hour, but it's not going to change how i act.

there is a court date set for the 6th of september, and there's little question that i'm going to demonstrate that they owe me money, rather than the other way around.

my goal in life is not to get out of poverty. i don't care.

whether i am above or below the poverty line is of no concern to me.

i don't want a house.

i don't want a car.

i don't want a family.

what i have is art to complete. that is my goal. that is all i care about. and, the more frustrated the situation is around it, the longer it takes to finish it - with no other consequence or corollary.

it's about quality of life.

i have things i want to do.

working is not one of them.

and, i'm going to fight as hard as i can to do the things i want, and not do the things i don't want.

i'm not hopeless.

i have very clearly defined goals and aspirations in life.

but, working isn't only not one of them, it makes accomplishing them nearly impossible.

and, here's the thing: i think you're hopeless for getting up and going to work every day.

workfare just sounds like a great excuse to get drunk, if you ask me.

the last provincial conservative government wanted to bring in a concept of workfare, but basically gave up on it when they realized that disabled people and welfare recipients actually aren't very good workers after all.

whodda thunk it. huh?

that's no doubt what they're getting at, and what we can expect.

they didn't campaign on this, or even mention it. fuck, who wanted to give them ideas, right? but, it's no doubt what they're going to do.

and, i'll tell you - i will piss on each and every cash register you put me in front of. yessir!