i just like to go out and see concerts and go dancing. really.

if i'm looking for anything when i go out, it's actually a drummer. finding that would be far more satisfying to me than any kind of sex.

well, whatever it is, it's pretty stubborn.

where it's located on my bed is below my knee when i'm lying flat on my stomach, but i actually tend to sleep in the fetal position. so, even if it were physically possible, it still wouldn't make sense to suggest it was from a dream.

and the way i masturbate, when i do masturbate, infrequently as it is (like, a few times a year), is that i end up lying on my back and thinking about being penetrated. i haven't fantasized about sex with a woman in years and years. so, that wouldn't make sense either, even if it wasn't impossible.

so, are soy stains that stubborn?

i've lysoled it pretty thoroughly. it'll have to wait until i do laundry in a few days.

(excluding the night i think i was drugged, of course)

i haven't done a lab test. i guess i might have spilled some soy milk.

but, it sure looks and seems like a semen stain.

and, it really, truly could not have been me.

the simplest and most honest way for me to explain no sex in well over ten years is that i told myself years ago that i wouldn't have sex until after the operation and i've held to it.

i'm not sex starved, in that sense. i largely tend to avoid circumstances where it come up, but i've had several opportunities, and turned them all down because i just didn't feel comfortable in my body.

it's not the easiest thing to explain, but i think there's enough awareness out there that i don't really have to. even in a situation where i'd otherwise want to, i wouldn't, because i couldn't get into it.

as it is, i just want my testicles gone and done with.

i haven't had sex since...i think it was 2008. i'm not sure. i don't even remember.

it was a long time ago.

before i went back on hormones...

i can orgasm. and, while i haven't really masturbated much in a very long time, i do have the odd dream.

so, i'm not trying to tell you i haven't orgasmed in ten years. that would be false.

but, when the orgasm happens, the ejaculation doesn't follow because the testicles cannot produce the sperm due to the testosterone blockers.

now, i suspect if you sat there and milked me like a cow for six hours, you might get a little bit, after the tenth climax. but, i'm 100% sure that it couldn't have been me from a random dream...

i've been taking 100 mg/day of this stuff (which is the maximum recommended dose) for ten years.

i couldn't produce sperm for you if you begged me for it. if you offered me a million dollars. it doesn't matter - there's no way for me to do it.

and, i'm waiting for a call back from my doctor to get my testicles physically taken out.

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

i mean, if i catch him coming down here and jerking off, that's not a landlord/tenant board issue.

i'd be calling the police.

so, this story is getting grosser.

a few minutes ago, i noticed what appears to be some semen on my bed.

now, i need to be clear about this point - i haven't ejaculated since, like, 2011 or something. it's not a question of if i forgot doing it, or if i had a wet dream or something. i have undergone a process of chemical castration - i am incapable of producing semen. it's literally impossible that it was me.

i haven't had anybody else down here, and i'm sure of it.

the only potential suspect is the increasingly creepy loser upstairs.

it's not the first time i've suspected him coming down here when i'm not home, but it wasn't clear to me what the purpose of the visits were. as it is, the idea of him coming in here and jerking off is pretty gross.

i'm going to need to set up a web cam the next time i'm out, i think.

for now, all i can really do is lysol the fuck out of it.

she's right, in theory.

but, what is more likely is that the liberals will go into coalition with the conservatives.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/may-greens-won-t-support-any-minority-government-given-current-climate-plans-1.4576188

ok ok.

i've wasted far too much time.

i need to get back to getting through october, now.

overnights for the next 5-7 days are in the mid to low teens, so i'm probably in for the weekend, and i think it's for the best.

1,2,3.....go.

"i'm a lesbian cow right here, bitch! suck it!"

the link is dead, though.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x1628414

i guess gross subscription revenue at jstor must be down a little, because they appear to have opened up the database to indian bestiality porn.

when even jstor has resorted to porn....

....but, that is the internet, right?

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23348707?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

"that cow is going to hell."

i didn't actually watch this, and i'm not going to.

so i don't know if i'm getting trolled or not.

wait; if the cows get virgins, they're lesbians.

and, yes - i'm sure there are cow lesbians. i don't mean humans, i'm being literal. but, this is a contradiction.

maybe if they sent bulls, they'd get virgins.

or, maybe this is all bullshit.

moooove over child soldiers, there's a new cud on the block.

how many virgins do the cows get, though?

it just demonstrates two things. (1) you never could try and figure out motives from so-called suicide bombers, because it was never clear who was actually getting blown up via nintendo-radio and (2) it's just a matter of time before they start using robots, and then what?

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/a-weakened-isil-has-found-a-new-wave-of-bombers-cows-in-explosive-vests

good.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tmx-legal-challenges-1.5269605

these are the end times for the ndp in canada.

as we know them, anyways.

i feel ok.

obviously, this is seismic.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-greens-nb-1.5268498

and, it's about time for him to actually call the fucking election, too.

trudeau's decision to avoid the debates - because he's too chicken shit, obviously - is just the most recent harperism.

and, i don't want to see this happen again.

i would like to call on one of the smaller parties to run on passing a law mandating a set number of debates for the prime minister, specifically, to appear in. this is a question of accountability, a question of accessibility and, in the end, a question of democracy.

the prime minister should not be allowed to evade his critics. he should be forced to be there.

the current reality in canada is that, from the top to the bottom, across all the bureaus and all of the parties, in the media and in the institutions, the oil industry has almost unchallenged hegemony over policy.

there are very few other inputs going into these decisions, as they're being made.

we are a petro-state.

oil is everything.

the big difference in canada is that the banking elites don't actually give a fuck about manufacturing jobs, which is an unintended consequence of keeping our labour politics separate from our bourgeois left. as elsewhere, they're supposed to care about inflation, but, as it is elsewhere, that's a farce.

canada is a resource-exporting economy, which is another way to say that it's a colonial state, ultimately more comparable to brazil or nigeria than it is to japan or germany. so, we've never really belonged in these lists of "advanced economies" - we have a high standard of living, but our economy is, overall, not very advanced. we're still lumberjacks and kayakers; the bankers still make their money from exporting oil and chopping down trees, not from services or technology. that might not ever really change, either.

so, it's true that a lower dollar would help our manufacturing sector, as well as our farming sector, but nobody in power actually cares about them. they're happy to let the dollar come up and down with the price of oil, without paying much heed to the necessities of stimulating consumer demand. and, they're happy to focus on creating extraction-economy jobs.

so, if their inaction leads to an increase in the dollar, and that creates job losses, you're not going to get much action from them. they'll wait until they have an issue that affects investors and property owners, first.

that means that we need stimulus from the fed, too - and due to the open economy, that your stimulus helps our economy, as well.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-04/bank-of-canada-holds-rates-steady-even-amid-global-easing-trend

yeah.

we're probably still going to feel lingering negative effects of the tightening for a while, though.

this is tricky to predict, especially with the end point of stagnation.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-01/fed-move-ends-the-short-era-of-global-quantitative-tightening

so, i think they're ending the tightening, but not bringing back the easing.

that might stop the bleeding....

so, this is a silly article written by a silly conservative, but i may have missed the memo on this.

are they bringing back qe after all?

that would help them avoid a recession and potential market crash before the election, anyways. but, is it too late to avoid the pain from what they already did, though?

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2019/05/29/the-feds-dangerous-new-normal-000902

and, if you're confused, i'll clarify: my position on the fed is the exact opposite of ron paul's.

ron paul wanted to end the fed. i disagree very strongly. what i want is for the left-keynesian perspective on the role of the fed to return to the status quo, which actually means giving them more power.

so long as we have this trickle up economy where all the wealth floats up to the top, i'm in favour of perpetual quantitative easing and willing to blame more or less everything that happens in the economy on weak demand as a result of inadequate government spending. now, you can make arguments about this or that, but at the end of the day it's the government that makes the money, and unless you want to stop that, as some people on the right do, you can't really get around the need to ensure that the state is creating enough paper wealth to go around. chances are that i'm going to argue that your position is rooted in a triviality, and that, even if i agree with you, it doesn't change the need to keep creating money at high rates.

so, the arguments presented by jordan weissman are mostly red herrings. the issue with quantitative easing is really about demand, and the shift in mindset that we all need to have is that the economy simply can't stand on it's own two feet by itself. trump may have been concerned about his own legacy mostly, but he's right on this, even if it's by accident.

nor does quantitative easing have any measurable effect on inflation. that's a relic of an outdated model; there's no evidence for it.

the main point, the main takeaway, is that we need to stop seeing quantitative easing as an emergency policy to bring in as a last resort and start seeing it as the new normal; the next time it's brought back, we should create legislation that keeps it permanently in place. if that requires jettisoning the independence of the fed then i'd support that, too - that's not something i ever really supported, anyways.

of course, you can expect the democrats to try and blame any upcoming recessions on trump, and while you can expect that i'll try to fact check them as best i can, you shouldn't expect them to resist that kind of framing, even if it's completely delusional, in truth.

the problem is actually at the fed, and trump has even come down on the right side of this.

https://slate.com/business/2019/04/trump-fed-quantitative-easing-quantitative-tightening.html

i'll reiterate my position on tariffs.

i'm not ideologically opposed to them. but i know that they're hard and would argue that they need to be used carefully, and only by very smart people, as they tend to create unintended consequences. trump's tariffs have targeted allies like canada and germany, rather than opponents and adversaries like mexico and china, which has not made much sense and may have been counterproductive.

so, yes: the united states should be using some tariffs, and they should be using some tariffs against china and mexico, but trump is the wrong guy to write the policies around their use, and the policies he's promoted have often been flat-out confused.

i'd like to see some actual data that causally ties any actual movement of manufacturing jobs to a set of tariffs that nobody expects to last very long. basic economics is that you're supposed to wait these kinds of things out, which is the actual flaw in trump's negotiating strategy: for all his bluster, he has no actual leverage, in even the medium term, when every other candidate is promising to reverse his strategy, and everybody knows it's a matter of time.

it's also too early to expect to see these kinds of results, even if they turn out to be real.

so, the idea that the decrease in manufacturing is being driven by tariffs is probably a political story more than an economic one. these tariffs are not really doing anything besides driving inflation, and giving people heart attacks.

a more likely explanation for the decrease in manufacturing is the end of quantitative easing, which the trump presidency brought in relatively early, but is probably more a consequence of the party's policies than of trump's. this isn't a trump thing but a republican thing; it's a reaganomics things. this leaves us with a frustrating possibility: that we might have an almost exact replay of the 2008 crisis in front of us, and it might get masked by the president's flair for controversial, if largely irrelevant, manufacturing policies.

that may mean, in the end, that we end up implementing more neo-liberalism as a "solution" to fix an illusory problem, rather than recognizing that the heart of the problem is neo-liberalism, itself.

in the current global order, the united states must print a lot of money, and, if it doesn't, you're going to see things like decreasing industrial output, as demand for goods falls in proportion to the amount of money being destroyed.

so, this recession is long overdue. and the only thing stopping it from happening has been "consumer confidence", which in context just means mass delusion.

https://www.salon.com/2019/06/05/manufacturing-falls-to-lowest-level-of-trump-presidency-tariffs-take-the-blame/

(edit: i thought this article was more recent than june, but it doesn't change my basic points.)

i've bounced around on this, and what makes the most sense.

i've often argued that immigrant religious groups are an unstable coalition for the bourgeois-left parties, that they will eventually grow tired of organizing with people they have little in common with and, in the end, bolt to the right. i don't want to make it an issue about their loyalty; they're just really on the wrong side of the spectrum. it just really doesn't make any sense...

but, if the bourgeois left holds to these groups for long enough, then they will become embedded within their identity and start changing it from the inside. so, you can imagine that, all of a sudden, the liberal nominating committee in whatever riding will start banning queer people from attending, because it's been taken over by muslims. in the end, that's how democracy works...

in a lot of ways, it may come down to whether or not the right can stop being racist. if the right can find a way to convince these groups that they're welcome in their spaces, they will eventually align with their own values. but, if they can't do that, or don't want to, you could see the opposite thing happening: an influx of more moderate voices into the right-wing parties could swing them into more acceptable positions on cultural issues. and, then the spectrum completes it's swap, with white liberals on one side and conservative, religious minorities on the other....

so, i will continue to argue that i'm defending myself from attack by what are increasingly belligerent religious groups that increasingly want to change the laws in canada to ban me from existing. this is what religion is - a system of domination and control.

so, for me, this is self-defense.

but, i'm not an island - i'm reflective of general trends that are unfolding, a microcosm in a broader development.

if you thought the culture wars of the 90s were over, you were wrong. they're just getting started. what's changed is that the lines have blurred, and in some sense the parties are re-aligning around them.

i'm about as hard left as you can define, in terms of 90s culture war alignment. but, your average self-identified hard leftist nowadays is a champion of religious rights, and doesn't really believe in free speech. they talk about muslims more or less the same way that the religious right talks about christians, leaving what was an understood cultural left as a sort of an outlier. it's two different strains of conservatism that are actually fighting it out on the ground.

for right now, the bourgeois left parties are still holding to the cultural left around things like queer rights and abortion, but what i'm drawing attention to is that how long that holds depends on how strongly it embraces religious rights. in the long run, you can't have religious muslims and rabid feminists under the same tent. the policies will clash. it's not sustainable.

if the movement on the bourgeois left is clearly towards the religious right, it's less clear that the bourgeois right is moving in the other direction on cultural issues; as much as trump went hard after union voters, he's been as bad or worse than any other recent republican on the cultural stuff. contrast that with the conservative party in canada, which avoids queer issues but isn't afraid to run pro-choice feminist candidates. if it's easy enough to imagine a republican party that swings left on cultural issues to attract white voters that are fed up with organizing with right-wing immigrants as a corollary rather than a contradiction, there's not any evidence on the ground of it happening - even as the liberal and ndp vote are both caving in canada, and their support for this kind of stuff isn't irrelevant in it happening. i'm not abstractly philosophizing; this is happening right in front of me.

so, it's not clear how this works out. but, it's clear enough that this is at the fulcrum of the future, and more so in canada, as we have larger groups of religious minorities - and a growing atheist youth population for them to clash with.

mass immigration into the country means that we are going to be having large scale, difficult political debates about what canada is, about what canada's future is and about what it means to be a canadian.

most of us don't want these debates, we don't want to mobilize along these lines and we don't want to have to fight battles that we think belong to our grandparents. but, reality is a shitty thing, sometimes.

so, this is a country with an unstable future. it might not survive these internal pressures, and, if it does, it might emerge as something that is not currently recognizable or even predictable. there will be deep conflicts that will tear at the fabric of the existing society and inevitably create new orders that many people living today may not like.

but, so long as i am alive, and so as long as my potential offspring via unaccounted for samples in shady sperm banks are alive, i'm going to do everything i can to make sure that the legal structures here remain rooted in enlightenment values intended to maximize freedom.

and, i will not mince words at those that want a less free and less scientific future, or restrict myself from any legal avenues in standing up for myself, when i'm inevitably attacked by them for it.

there's no time frames around the judicial review until i launch it, but i want to do everything at once. so, soon. soon....

again, the four cases are:

1) the ongoing human rights case against the discriminatory landlord (which i need to call for a status update on, soon).
2) the constitutional rights challenge against the police force for the illegal arrest.
3) the judicial review against the police oversight body's pathetic ruling.
4) i also need to challenge the rcmp on an access to information request, via the provincial fippa.

i'd rather make music.

but, we need some leadership.

so be it.

i'll lead the way towards a better future, free of ignorance and faith and superstition.

if you need that.

follow in my footsteps. together, we'll make the world a better place.

i'm not interested in living in an islamic theocracy.

i will fight back as hard as i can, and reassert the rules of liberal democracy - the rule of law, freedom of speech, the supremacy of science and the reliance on evidence and reason over belief and subjectivity.

i don't want this fight, but it's here, so let's have it - and, let's be more aggressive about doing it the right way, over the proper legal channels. let's beat religion down, and stand up for what's actually right.

ok, no.

i can finish october, first - it should be done already, it won't take long when i sit down and do it.

it's wednesday. i did groceries yesterday, and, if i stay in this weekend, can probably get to the legal stuff by monday.

i probably posted this.

let's review.

this was the document i filed with my review, minus a few screenshots.

===============

On the Question of The Arrest

So, let us begin with the basics, and I am not sorry for being matronizing, as none of this should have happened at all.

There are three types of offences in the Canadian Criminal Code:

1) Summary Offences

2) Hybrid Offences

3) Indictable Offences.

The nature of the charge in R v. Storrey, namely aggravated assault, is very important, as it is purely an indictable offence. The nature of the offence is, indeed, what the case is actually about. We can quote directly, just a little bit:

At trial it was contended that the arrest and detention of the appellant contravened the right guaranteed to him by s. 9 of the Charter.  That section provides that: "Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned".  The trial judge then conducted a voir dire to determine whether there had been a breach of s. 9 of the Charter.  Unfortunately, the reasons he gave at the conclusion of the proceeding indicate some confusion on his part.  The appellant was arrested without a warrant on a charge of aggravated assault.  Therefore, the basis for his arrest is to be found within s. 450(1) (now s. 495(1)) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1970, c. C-34.  That section provides that a peace officer may arrest without a warrant a person who has committed an indictable offence or who, on reasonable and probable grounds, he believes has committed or is about to commit an indictable offence.  Nevertheless, the trial judge stated that the arrest was unlawful because it did not comply with the requirements of s. 450(2) of the Criminal Code.  That section was inapplicable in this case.  It only applies to an offence which is either a summary conviction offence, a hybrid offence or an indictable offence listed in s. 483 (now s. 553) of the Code, which list does not include aggravated assault. 

Well, if we’re to make a simple deduction from this case, it would be that the Supreme Court would agree that the arrest would have been unlawful (and the accused would have had his s. 9 rights infringed upon) if the charge was a hybrid offence, like criminal harassment. Oops?

Let us revise the language so that it is applicable to the situation at hand:

On review it was concluded that the arrest and detention of the appellant did not contravene the right guaranteed to her by s. 9 of the Charter.  That section provides that: "Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned".  Unfortunately, the reasons he gave at the conclusion of the review indicate some confusion on his part.  The appellant was arrested without a warrant on a charge of criminal harassment.  Therefore, the basis for her arrest is to be found within s. 450(2) (now s. 495(2)) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1970, c. C-34.  That section provides that a peace officer may not arrest without a warrant a person who has committed a hybrid offence, in any case where he believes on reasonable grounds that the public interest, having regard to all the circumstances may be satisfied without so arresting the person, and he has no reasonable grounds to believe that, if he does not so arrest the person, the person will fail to attend court in order to be dealt with according to law. Nevertheless, the investigator stated that the arrest was lawful because it complied with the requirements of s. 450(1) of the Criminal Code.  That section was inapplicable in this case.  It only applies to an offence which is an indictable offence, which does not include criminal harassment. 

What does this actually mean, though? Well, this is the entirety of 495(2), which is clearly meant to restrict the arresting authority of police, and which has my emphasis added:

Limitation
(2) A peace officer shall not arrest a person without warrant for

(a) an indictable offence mentioned in section 553,

(b) an offence for which the person may be prosecuted by indictment or for which he is punishable on summary conviction, or

(c) an offence punishable on summary conviction,

in any case where

(d) he believes on reasonable grounds that the public interest, having regard to all the circumstances including the need to

(i) establish the identity of the person,

(ii) secure or preserve evidence of or relating to the offence, or

(iii) prevent the continuation or repetition of the offence or the commission of another offence,

may be satisfied without so arresting the person, and

(e) he has no reasonable grounds to believe that, if he does not so arrest the person, the person will fail to attend court in order to be dealt with according to law.

One will note the importance of the logic operator, and. I have some academic background in law, but my actual degree is in mathematics, so I can be pretty oppressive in my enforcement of logic. Any statement in the form (A and B) is true if and only if both A is true and B is true. What that means is that the statute reduces to the necessity of the officer to prove I was a flight risk, which means producing positive evidence to suggest as much, and which was never even contemplated - the discussion is merely of “reasonable grounds”, which is never coherently defined, but clearly assumed to be in the inapplicable context of an indictable offence.

If this discussion comes as a shock to you then I am sorry, but it simply demonstrates your incompetence - and perhaps demonstrates the lawlessness defining standard arrest procedures both in windsor and throughout the country. The reality is that this is what the law actually says about the matter, whatever day-to-day policing actually is.

What that means is that the officer had two lawful choices in how to approach the situation:

1) he could have issued a summons for me to appear in court or

2) if he insisted on arresting me on a hybrid offence, and could not demonstrate a flight risk, he’d need to get a warrant first.

Simply claiming “reasonable grounds” to make an arrest on a hybrid offence is in fact unlawful in this country, whether it happens frequently or not.

Now, I have attempted to find some actual relevant jurisprudence around s. 495(2) and have not found much at canlii; it seems to be that the issue doesn’t come up much, hopefully because Canada is a free society, so people don’t get arrested on bullshit charges or arbitrarily detained very often. My faith in the system is shaken, but not broken; I am going to hope that the lack of precedence around 495(2) is a positive signal that Canada is indeed still a free country, after all.

Nonetheless, I did find the following statement produced in passing within R. v. Boudreault 2018 SCC 58, in an entirely unrelated context, which upholds the logic operator; this emphasis is the court’s:

Assuming (without deciding) that warrantless arrest can properly be used as a means to compel attendance in these circumstances, I note that this can occur only if the peace officer has reasonable grounds to believe that it is in the public interest to arrest the person and that the person will fail to attend court (in accordance with s. 495(2)).  In determining whether arrest is in the public interest, the peace officer must consider whether arrest is necessary to establish the identity of the person, to secure or preserve evidence, or to prevent the continuation of the offence or the commission of future offences. 

There is simply absolutely no indication that anybody involved in the arrest had any understanding of any of this; all evidence suggests that they were relying on a completely inapplicable precedent intended for strictly indictable offences, and perhaps do so on a day-to-day basis. This is actually quite startling.

But, what of these “reasonable grounds”, anyways?

I am rather baffled by what appears in the report. The investigator made the argument that the arrest was based on reasonable grounds that I was communicating with the property owner - which is clear enough, and really not in dispute. The emails exist, and I’ve never denied sending them. So, there are clearly reasonable grounds to conclude that I sent a bunch of emails to the complainant. Ok.

However, that's a gross misinterpretation of the statute. Reasonable grounds, in context, if they were relevant, would not be related to the fact of communication, but to the question as to whether there was any basis for fear. So, the officer would need to demonstrate that he thought there was a convincing reason I might harm this woman, and there clearly was no such thing.

Again, let me point you to the statute:

264 (1) No person shall, without lawful authority and knowing that another person is harassed or recklessly as to whether the other person is harassed, engage in conduct referred to in subsection (2) that causes that other person reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety or the safety of anyone known to them.

So, the thing that's against the law is to scare somebody - not to communicate with them. As we live in a free society, there's no law in Canada against repeatedly communicating with people when they've asked you not to, nor is the request to ask you to stop in any way meaningful or relevant, if the communication does not reasonably invoke fear. That is essentially the definition of free speech.

Subsection (2) is a list of ways you can scare somebody, but these behaviours are not criminalized, themselves, outside of the context of being scary.

So, repeatedly communicating with somebody with the intent of scaring them is indeed harassment, under the law; repeatedly communicating with somebody with the intent to sue them, or the intent to annoy them, or the intent to rent property from them is not, and hopefully never will be.

Reasonable grounds consequently consists of evidence that i'm scary, not evidence of communication. It is blatantly clear that no such evidence existed; at no point did i communicate any sort of threat of harm, and i have no criminal record. It is rather clear that no such reasonable grounds existed at all. Worse, to suggest that the arrest was justified on reasonable grounds due solely to evidence of unwanted communication is both disingenuous and grossly incompetent; this is exactly why warrants exist, and exactly why the statute demands them before making an arrest of this nature.

So much for “reasonable grounds”. Pfft.

I must insist that the question of the legality of the arrest be revisited.

Are the Officer’s Words Credible?

When a witness makes a demonstrably false claim, their credibility is generally called into question. I have clearly demonstrated that the officer lied about the time of the call, positioning it at 6:08 PM, when the timestamp on the audio file is 3:56 AM. I was also able to pull out an incorrect address in the report on the neighbour. If the officer is going to lie about the time of the call, why would you believe anything else that he says? Further, if the department is going to uphold a lie in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, in an apparent attempt at a cover-up, why would you believe anything else that the department says?

I can resend the file, if it’s been lost. For now, here is a screenshot of the voicemail, indicating the time of reception.

Regarding the Question of Intimidation and Harassment By The Officer

I documented three occurrences of harassing behaviour by the officer, leading up to a series of legally incoherent threats and an eventual illegal arrest and arbitrary detention. However, the report did not make any attempt to put the situation into context. Given the clear illegality of the arrest, and apparent cluelessness of the department in general, I must insist that these accusations be properly investigated.

Regarding the Question of Transphobic Bias

A key part of my complaint was a feeling that the officer was behaving out of a transphobic bias. By referring to me using masculine pronouns, despite my clear indication that I have a female identity, the report perpetuates the bias that I requested be examined, leaving me more concerned about a bias than I was to begin with. While an explanation for this does appear in the report, it hardly seems credible; it is rather quite readily apparent that the insistence on masculine pronouns is intended to insult and degrade me. There is really no other way to explain it.

For the record, I have been on high potency hormones for nearly ten years. I am not at the start of a transition, but functionally through it. My appearance is unambiguously female, and the continued claims to the contrary are not grounded in empirical reasoning but simply in a continued insistence on prejudicial bias. I’m a girl, and it is clear to all who have eyes.

The report really just confirms my suspicion, so I must insist that this question be more thoroughly examined.

Regarding the Question of The Foot in The Door

My recollection of the situation is clearly rather different than the officer’s, but the officer nonetheless clearly acknowledges placing a foot in the door; rather than deny the encounter, he has made up an excuse to justify it, one that doesn’t even contradict the accusation. I will deny that I yelled through the door and rather insist upon my recollection of events, which was that I asked him to move his foot multiple times (reminding him that he did not have a warrant) and was unable to close the door until he left. Why, exactly, would I file a false complaint, in context? Given that the officer’s credibility is in question, his recollection of events should be taken with a grain of salt. I must insist that these claims have been substantiated by the officer’s own statements - that he acknowledges preventing me from closing the door, whatever his excuse, and should be held accountable for it.

Regarding the Question Of The Badge Number

The reasoning utilized in the report that I must have been provided with a badge number because I heard part of it is facile to say the least. Again - what would the purpose of filing a false report of this nature be? If I had the badge number, would I not have provided it? To suggest this is unsubstantiated is disingenuous; the fact that i got a few of the numbers correct actually substantiates the claim pretty strongly. I must insist this be rethought.

About The Phone

I initially responded to the voice message on the morning of Sept 12 (when i woke up), and received the following response at 9:48, and fairly quickly iirc. If the phone was a loaner, that would mean that it was returned to the office and lent back out again between the hours of 4:00 AM and 9:48 AM - a stretch, if you ask me. I must insist that this question be revisited.

and, you will note my clock is military - 09:48 is 9:48 am.

About The Officer’s Understanding Of The Law

My statements were clear - I asked the officer to define what harassment is, under a clear concern that he hadn’t the slightest actual clue, and he specifically referred to the idea of being “annoying”, which is simply objectively false. This was a few weeks after he tried to tell me that nuisance does not exist under the criminal code. While I understand that the officer is neither a lawyer nor an encyclopedia, one would expect that he would at least look up a law before he tries to make an arrest, or get a warrant if he’s not sure, and at least take it to heart when somebody tries to explain something to him, which I did rather clearly. The cliché is that there is a difference between ignorance and stupidity; we are all ignorant of many things, it is a natural condition of existence, but we are only stupid when we refuse to acknowledge our ignorance. This would not have happened had he simply listened to me, and made an attempt to understand me. The report attempts to frame the issue around the officer’s obligations to explain the law to a civilian, which is just a red herring - the issue at hand is not whether I understand the law, but whether the officer does; this is an officer that aggressively pursued a completely ridiculous interpretation of the statute, with no interest in the truth of the matter. Such an officer is a clear and present danger to civilians, as he operates on ideology rather than on evidence or reason. I think I explained this point clearly enough at the top of the page, and would insist that the issue be revisited - does this officer understand the law well enough to continue being an officer? Is he capable of learning it? This is the important question here, not whether he tried his best to explain a statute to somebody with a math degree and three years worth of law credits, and that understands it better than he does.

The Emails

I will attach the emails that I have in a separate file. Nobody ever asked me for them.

Conclusion

While the report is unreasonable, it is also incorrect and it is the correctness basis of review that I wish to draw a stricter attention to.

1) The main issue at hand, in hindsight, is the question of whether the arrest was legal, and this was not dealt with correctly.

2) There was no attempt to determine whether the officer’s behaviour constituted intimidation or harassment.

3) I believe that Count #1 remains unclear and requires further investigation, although the tone of the report further substantiates it.

4) I believe that the report substantiates count #2.

5) I believe that the report substantiates count #3.

==================

but, it was "reasonable" because it "cited case law".

right.

he could have cited something from law and order, and they wouldn't have been able to sort it out.

it would have been "reasonable" because it "cited case law".

if i had been arrested on a strictly indictable offense, the arrest would have been legal.

but, i was arrested - without a previous record - on a hybrid offense and then held (without cause) before eventually being charged with a summary conviction. those charges were dropped within a few weeks, because there was not any actual evidence of any actual harassment.

in the report, the officer cites case law that is strictly applicable to strictly indictable offenses. the exact case cited by the officer, which is a frequently cited case, points out that the arrest in that case was legal because the charge was strictly indictable, and would not have been if it were a hybrid charge. and, the law itself is quite clear, in context.

the review then claims that the officer's report "cited case law", and this was reasonable. but, the citation was completely wrong, and used in a completely wrong way, in context.

well, they're a civilian review board, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about....they just think it's reasonable to "cite case law". it's a farce.

when an actual judge finally looks at it, she'll set things right.

the incompetence is truly, utterly staggering.

i'm not arguing that the initial report was unreasonable (or, not explicitly).

i'm arguing that the initial report was flat out wrong in it's application of the existing precedent.

and, the review didn't even address the concern - because it didn't even read my reply.

and, that took seven months.

it's baffling. and, if i was in charge, and i saw this, some heads would be rolling out the door.

i mean, the panel might come back at me and say something like "we don't have the authority to question the correctness of the officer's report on the legality of the arrest", to which i would agree with them - and ask why the statute forces me to wait for them to finish their toothless report, then.

in canada, the criminal law actually forbids an officer from arresting somebody on a minor offense. there is no concept of reasonable cause, in context; even if he has reasonable cause, he's still supposed to write me a summons. reasonable cause only refers to more serious offenses. now, i reject the premise that he had reasonable cause for the arrest, but the report was incorrect in using that argument in the first place - and the case law is completely explicit about it.

if this is strictly an issue for the courts, then why does the system try so hard to keep me out of them?

so, then they conduct the review on the reasonableness of the report, without actually doing anything substantive - it's just a two page letter, without any argument or analysis.

that's fine, we'll let a judge look at it...

if they pushed this out a day or two after i filed it, they may have some of excuse for not reading the responses i provided to them.

but, they had seven months. there's no excuse...

so, that's the technicality here in my presentation - i'm going to have to argue that they used the wrong standard of review, then bring the issue back to the correct one.

see, and, in fact, i can be pretty sure that they didn't read the response i provided to them.

i made it very, very clear that i was launching a review on the basis of correctness, which is clearly the proper basis of review, if i'm arguing that the arrest was illegal and the officer lied and the report didn't address either issue.

what the review did was nominally conduct a reasonableness review, but they don't back up their arguments. they just summarized the police's position.

they didn't even address my request for a review on the basis of correctness.

now, i'll acknowledge that i might be in somewhat of a grey area, in the sense that they might have rejected that they had any legal authority to analyze the correctness of the review. but, if that was the case, they should have explained it.

as it is, i'm just left with the conclusion that they didn't read my response at all. so, when i file to superior court on a correctness level, i'll have to point out that the panel used the wrong level of review.

i didn't expect much.

but, i did expect more than this.

further, no comment was made in the report about the false statements made by the officer, specifically regarding the time of the call that was made.

again: when i put the fact that i can prove that the officer was lying in front of a judge, she's going to have to react to it.

a judge can't just ignore evidence of a dishonest actor, like that.

i know i'm supposed to give up.

and, yes, i'm frustrated. it's a frustrating thing - and they're doing it on purpose. they're trying to frustrate me. i get that.

but, deep down, i'm actually glad that all of this bullshit about police reviews and citizen committees is done with so that we can get to the real legal process in a real court room with a real judge.

the closest thing that we've had to putting this case before a judge was when it was put in front of a justice on the release hearing, and she absolutely ripped the attorney to shreds.

"do you have any idea how..."

she stopped before she finished, but she was going to end with something between "how unlawful this detention is" and "how retarded this situation is"...

the police investigator probably has no meaningful legal training, and his decisions are not legal documents. the review panel is a "citizen committee" that shouldn't even exist at all.

it's a dumbing down and hollowing out of a system that should be directed at every point by seasoned professionals, not directed by fuzzy ideas from pop culture, or political expediency.

as stated: it's over. great. now, let's start the real legal process, in actual seriousness.

what that means is that i'll also be filing the constitutional challenge against the police within the next roughly 60 days.

this is the case that will be seeking major monetary damages as a consequence of the illegal arrest and detention, and subsequent trampling of my constitutional rights. i will be seeking millions of dollars for this...

what happened to me cannot happen in a free and democratic society, and somebody needs to pay for it.

so, the basis for review is correctness, as a consequence of institutional incompetence.

i need the right issue of law to be adjudicated on.

all i've been through at this point is an array of untrained, unqualified bureaucrats.

and, all they've done is demonstrate their biases and their ignorance.

the system should be making it easier to get in front of a judge, not harder to. because, at the end of the day, it's what the judge thinks that matters not the police chief, or the review panel, or the crown attorney, or anybody else.

and, if we need to take a series of shitty reports to the judge and make the authors look like idiots, we can do that.

but, why....?

why not just let me file immediately....?

the main issue at hand was and remains the legality of the officer's conduct, as i believe he engaged in a pattern of harassing behaviour and should ultimately be charged and arrested for it.

the report did not examine this issue. it didn't say he was not guilty - it just didn't examine it. so, i filed a review to ask for the oiprd to examine the correct issues at hand, and they just summarized the police report, without reading my actual review.

when i finally get the issue to a judge - which has not yet happened - that judge will correctly examine the evidence and deal with the relevant issues at hand.

and, all that the system has succeeded in doing is slowly down this inevitable process.

it's going to feel good when the judge completely savages them, but i shouldn't have to wait this long for justice. we need to reform this...

it's very likely that the reality of the situation is that what i'm dealing with is a rubber stamp process, where a bunch of fat overpaid women sit around and eat donuts for six out of eight hours of their shift, while they just summarize the reports that are written by the increasingly corrupt and increasingly classist and transphobic police. this isn't a real review process, it's an example of brutal bureaucratic waste.

again: i would have much rather gone straight to court.

but, the waste is written into the statutes.

it's over with. good. let's get these documents going.

so, i'll have to put october on hold while i finish writing these cases for superior court and figure out how and when i'm going to get to toronto to file them.

as far as i can tell, these people didn't even read the review at all.

after seven months...

for the amount of money that those people make, and the amount of time that i waited, i had every right to expect a thorough, detailed review. that's what they get paid for.

but, they essentially did nothing of value. it's not even that they're wrong, it's that they didn't do anything at all. it's a non-report.

i can deal with a bad report - i can rip it apart, i can put it in front of a judge. but, the kind of incompetence that this body has shown me over and over again really opens up questions as to why it exists at all.

it should make you mad to think that you're paying these people however many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to not even bother to do their jobs poorly.

so, we're going to superior court.

i could have told you that last year.

and, it would have been better for everybody if we could have just went straight to it.

i waited almost seven months for a two page piece of paper that essentially says nothing at all.

so, i got the review from the department, and, as expected, it's not worth the bytes required to store it.

it's not even a review per se. it's simply a two page letter that states that they uphold the decision. there's no legal component to the document whatsoever, and no attempt was made to react to my arguments. so, if my basis for review was that the chief did not look at the correct legal questions, there is no evidence that the review attempted to even address that.

if this is what this bureau does, it should really be abolished. the purpose of these panels is to attempt to keep cases of the sort out of the court system. but if they refuse to actually do their jobs - through lengthy and unnecessary delays - and everything just ends up in court anyways, then there's not any reason for them to exist. we should just go straight to court, which is where we're going to end up, anyways.

as mentioned previously,  i wasn't expecting anything better from this; i was aware that this proces is a waste of time. but, the statute requires that i go through the process. so, all that would have happened if i had filed immediately would have been that the judge would have sent the issue back to the panel.

i am essentially going to be arguing for absolute gross institutional incompetence on behalf of the oiprd, and asking the judge to adjudicate directly.

"j.

i didn't ask for flowers, i asked for flour. i need flour right away. get back out there and buy me some flour, and don't come back until you have some."

(i hadn't seen her in like three months)

but, then, i pulled the flour out of my bag...

some of it made it to it's intended use.

i did spend some time with sarah's daughter, whether she's mine or not. not a lot, mind you, but enough that she knew my name, and felt comfortable with me and could identify me as a safe adult that she knew - i.e. not a stranger - in a busy group of people that she didn't. sarah brought her over to my apartment on bronson on a few occasions; she liked to take the cds off the shelf and throw them on the ground, and thought it was exceedingly comical when they plopped open. i was invited over to sarah's (more than) a few times, too, and she was usually there, including on the night that she asked me to bring flour and i brought her flowers, and pretended that i misunderstood her.

"what? you asked for them, right? i got the right colours, it's ok."

(she pretended to be mad that i didn't bring flour, because she was cooking. but, i actually did bring flour, too, thereby robbing her of her faux outrage. those flowers apparently lasted over two years on the kitchen table, so she couldn't have been too upset.)

i've written a couple of songs about her daughter, even; they'll come up in the fourth phase, not the upcoming third.

i gave her a few presents. i grew up with where the sidewalk ends, and thought that made sense to pass on, but i'm not sure if sarah loved the book that much.

i'm pretty sure that the last time i saw her was in mid-2012 at a lingering occupy ottawa event in confederation park. i was there with a group of regular activists for some kind of sage bath. sarah was there with an ad-hoc singing group she was involved with, doing we shall overcome. her daughter (and also her son, who is a little younger) identified me while sarah was busy singing and ran over to say hi to me, before she could grab them. i made eye contact with sarah briefly when i saw them coming; she looked away, indicating that that was fine, she'd rather sing right then, and that's a safe choice. but, i was on my way back from a drinking and smoking session with these activists, and decided that didn't make as much sense as sarah was intuiting. so, i made eye contact with the daughter and pointed towards sarah, and they both skittered off in the right direction.

that wasn't the last time i saw sarah, but if i saw her daughter after that, i don't remember it.

i was going to buy tickets for a few things, but, on second thought, i'll wait.

i got a ticket for the big end of the summer 13-hr four year anniversary marble show, which i labelled "luke vibert" but is actually downright stacked. and, i'll be there until 9:00 am, too, i always am. but, that makes buying a ticket for man man a little earlier somewhat perilous, until i get a set time. 98% of the time, i don't care about missing the dj, but i don't want to miss vibert to catch man man - i'll catch man man again next time, and vibert may never come back. if it fits, it's a hell of a way to start a long ass party. if it doesn't, i'll just go to marble to start. we'll see in a bit...

there's no way i'm missing fly pan am, but i think i can wait until i get to the door. blanck mass is pretty certain, with a caveat around the weather (but a weak one - it would have to be brutal out).

if i get a strong pull for something before then, i'll go, absolutely. but, if it doesn't work out, and i think it might not, then i could have a ridiculous blow-out to end the year, in the same way i started it.

i didn't technically work out the last weekend in september. we'll see how it develops.

but, for right now, this actually turned out to be a bit of a heavier month. we'll see what the weather is like, and which shows make sense and which don't. most of this will get scratched, so i'm going to tentatively scratch out what i'm almost sure i'll scratch out in the end.

as organized, by weekend:

iffy. weather?:
05: silence in the snow (wolves in the throne room side project) @ sanctuary.
06: big business @ deluxx fluxx
07: haptikos + asklepius @ new dodge.
08: vermont + mover shaker @ phoenix (hazel park) v. snarky puppy @ hill (ann arbor) v. heavy temple  @ new dodge (hamtramck)

=====================

unlikely. weather? cost?:
12: strange beautiful music festival @ trinosophes v massive attack @ masonic temple v. hot snakes @ small's
13: strange beautiful music festival @ detroit instiute of arts v hide @small's
14: strange beautiful music festival @ dso
16: ride @ st andrew's v cursive @ blind pig
17: mega bog @ outer limits

========================

certain (in some combination):
20. dream syndicate @ third man  ---> severed heads @ leland
21: man man @ magic stick  -----> luke vibert (plug) @ marble
22: tunic  @ phog (windsor)
23: pig (raymond watts) @ small's
24: fly pan am  @ meteor (windsor)
25: north by north @ sanctuary v. king buffalo @ pj's
26: psychedelic porn crumpets @ loving touch
27: blanck mass @ ufo

i'll work out the end part of the last weekend of the month closer to it.

for now, i guess i need to get some groceries done and get back to the rebuild, as i listen through this stuff and make choices about it.

i'd actually never heard of louis ck before the scandal hit, have still never seen him perform and don't really have anything invested in defending him. like, i just don't know anything at all about him.

but. it didn't strike me as particularly terrible. he asked, right? but i don't really know.

this is actually not a hypothetical: she would effortlessly destroy me in an arm wrestling match. like, i didn't have a chance.

and, i bicycled back then, even more than i do now. i didn't lift; i never did. but, i wasn't the scrawniest kid on the block, either.

she was just legitimately a strong girl.

straight men will never cease to disappoint you, though, will they?

yuck.

you're all disgusting lowlifes.

at no point was i intending to write soft pornography, or construct a sex fantasy in anybody's mind, and i actually apologize if that is what i accidentally did.

i was relating my experiences in a journal format in the way i know how.

and, i'm not sorry if i ruined your hard-on.

and, just to clarify a point, for people that like imagining things. because i know you do.

sarah was not a high maintenance, prissy girl in any way. she came from a decidedly lower class family in a small town outside of ottawa, and was home schooled by christian parents up until grade 6 or grade 8. she then went to either junior high school or high school. hey, i can't actually remember that, because i wasn't there.

the stories she told me about her childhood included doing things like acting out lord of the rings in the forest. she told me stories about animals that she befriended as a child, when she had more of a farm. she had a strange, almost disney-esque kind of concept of wildlife, but she wasn't living in a princess delusion.

she would sometimes wear eyeliner in patterns on the side of her cheek, or otherwise play with makeup in unexpected ways, but she was actually morally opposed to things like cover-up and lipstick, and she'd give me shit for it if i put it on. she thought it was fake.

her hair is naturally light, but she often darkened it. she at times had extensions or dreadlocks.

she was staunchly pro-life when i met her; at the time, it wasn't very important to me, but i didn't particularly disagree with her, either. i didn't really have a defined opinion on abortion until years after we broke up. well, i never really had to think about it - to me, a part of supporting female autonomy meant i avoided taking a position on something i'd never have to deal with. i just respected the concept of complete agency, on this. but, it's also a different type of issue in canada, because it was never really up for serious debate. i guess my position was that if you don't want an abortion then you shouldn't have one, and if she said she didn't want one, i didn't push her on it.

i mentioned that she had a basketball scholarship. she had a muscular, athletic physique with minimal curves and almost no breast growth. there was a time when we had the same hair cut and dye job, and were consequently frequently mistaken for sisters; but, she was also from time-to-time mistaken as my trans girlie bf, kind of thing. i could outgirl her without a lot of effort.

in short, sarah was a tomboy that was just coming into herself during the period we were together. she got what she wanted not via vavoom voluptuousness or piles of goopy make-up, but via sheer insolence and outright aggression - she would just grab people and start fucking them, in ways that were often borderline assault.

so, don't confuse yourself, here.

a part of the problem is that she was insecure with me, because she thought - perhaps correctly - that i was a more attractive female than she was.

and, a big part of our relationship was that role reversal. she dominated me. unapologetically.

i'm sure if somebody saw us duck out here or there, they'd be imagining certain things, because that's how guys are. but, you need to have the right mental image: i was an effeminate trans girl at the very start of my transition, and she was a pretty dominant bitch.

i'm sorry if that's not what you wanted to imagine.

but, you could always find somebody else to jerk off to.

i have enough data at this point to be pretty clear about it: this place only stinks when he's home.

yet again: he's gone all weekend, and the air in here is fine. he gets home this morning, and i'm coughing and wheezing within an hour.

he's obviously smoking upstairs - or somebody is, anyways. and, no, i can't knock down his door and take a picture.

but, what a fucking coward though. somebody tell the piece of shit to man up and be honest. he comes in and hides behind his curtains and pretends he's not smoking, because he's too chicken shit to deal with the consequences of it. what a loser.

i have nothing planned this week, and am probably staying in next week, too. there's actually a good chance i'll be in until the 21st. man man + luke vibert is pretty certain. before then, less so.

that means i won't be smoking this week, again. or next week, probably. and that means i don't want to smoke other people's second or third hand smoke, either.

i am, in fact, very predictable - i never smoke once i get home. and, three weeks between shows is more normal than what i did this summer, too. i needed it, but it's over.

there's an off chance i could hit the jazz fest this afternoon, but i think i'll probably want to focus more on grocery shopping. right now, i'm planning out the month and want to work it through pretty quickly. i obviously want to get back to rebuilding october so i can publish it. but, i'm also going to need to make some calls on tuesday.

if you want to understand how sin works, you'll get more out of orwell than you will out of freud.

there isn't a biological explanation for sin. it's just a system of control that the aristocracy implants into your mind, to ensure you're kept in check.

so, if we stop brainwashing our kids with this shit, we'll let it go very quickly, because there isn't a deeper component to it.

again: i didn't go through a religious upbringing.

i wasn't brainwashed.

so, i don't need to undo the programming.

and, you wish you were that free.

it's not a question of what's "right" and "wrong", even. i'd have trouble defining these things, but that's not why sin needs to be ejected from humanity, as a concept.

the problem with sin is that it creates guilt, and guilt is self-defeating and toxic and destructive. the reason that we need to get rid of sin is actually because we need to get rid of guilt; nobody should find themselves in these situations where they are trapped by their own self-righteousness, and unable to act logically due to a fear of upsetting some kind of unproven force. it just turns us into wrecks, and it needs to stop.

i never, ever want to experience somebody that is lost in guilt and uncertainty over an obvious triviality ever again. we have to conquer this, and leave it behind.

but, that doesn't mean that we can be utility monsters, either, as that will also destroy us. the idea is to place logic in the transcendent position; the same faculties of reason that can help us discard sin as childish can help us understand when we need to behave socially for the benefit both of our selves and of those around us.

and, that is kind of the actual point: learning to truly think for ourselves.

the espresso in my coffee at about 5:30 kept me up a little later, and i consequently slept in for much of the day saturday. i expected to get rained out, too. it wasn't until close to 19:00 that i convinced myself i could get out on time.

so, i took a heavier than usual pre-drink and made it to phog for about 22:00, hoping i wasn't going to miss the early band, which ended up playing late.

i did no research into the headliner, and wasn't even sure i'd stay to catch it; they came on, first, around 23:00. that's one thing about phog: they don't play early there. you won't miss the set, if you're a little late. they had a stand-up bassist and a drummer with a small kit, leading me to think it would be some kind of jazz, but they were fronted by a cowboy in jeans doing jangly country music on an acoustic. they may cringe at that, but so be it. again: my first thought was "yikes. this competent rhythm section should really find a sexy, black female vocalist to front itself. send this guy back to the farm. ouch.", but it started to make a little more sense after the first couple of songs. i overheard them talking outside, and they were name-dropping jeff tweedy (of wilco), silver jews and some other stuff that i'm vaguely aware of but just don't ever listen to. so, in the sense that it was completely wrong, it sort of made sense. i'm not convinced that it was compelling, exactly, but i'll give them some space for being bloody weird.

it didn't capture me, though, and i snuck out halfway through the set, to go over to the other bar to see if i could sneak in on a joint, which did happen. we had a nice little talk about death, where i managed to clearly boggle them, as i explained to them how the acceptance of death is healthy, how sin is a childish concept that should be abolished (and that i'm actually not at all interested in replacing a collectivist concept of sin with an individualistic concept of one - no, that's not enough, sin needs to be intellectually dismantled and discarded altogether in order to prevent it from stunting our potential and limiting our progress), how religion is only universal because it's the easiest and least challenging approach and some other equally heavy shit, before abruptly ducking out.

"i don't want to miss the band i came to see."

and, i didn't.

i was expecting a drummer, and a bit of a louder presentation. they presented themselves as a kind of a shoegaze act, and very much sound that way if you check out their bandcamp site. but, i didn't check the fine print - they were using a drum machine. so, you're looking at a guitar/bass two piece act, and it kind of fell apart in the process.

it's not like you can't be a two piece with a drum machine - it's possible to do compelling music that way. but, there are certain types of genres that sort of require a live drummer, and noisey-shoegaze is really one of them, because it's so fundamental to breaking through the feedback. when you rob this kind of band of a live drum sound, it tends to rather quickly get muddy and aimless, no matter how exciting the guitarist and/or bassist is. further, you have to take control of your instruments or vocals to compensate - something neither of them seemed interested in doing.

if you're going to bother trying to perform live as a two-piece with a drum machine, it's probably a better idea to try and do something a little more ambient, something that doesn't rely so much on the dynamics of the drum parts. that means delving into the sonic possibilities of your guitar, it means focusing more on interesting bass patterns, it means slowing the temp down a little and it means relying more on the voice as an instrument. they didn't exactly fail at this - they had moments where they clicked - but there were too many moments where the sound was clearly relying on a drum machine section that didn't cut through the mix.

it's not so easy as to tell them to find a drummer - i'd rather encourage them to open up their sound, and make use of what they have rather than pretend they're something they're not.

by the end of it, i'd had six beers in four hours (after a heavy pre-drink to start), and it was best for me to just get home and make some eggs and get to sleep.

how were the shows this weekend?

i missed the first set on friday night, and showed up right when unnatural ways were plugging in. i bumped into this show listing at the last minute, but if you go to their bandcamp site, it seems like a who's who of contemporary no new york - mixed by colin marston, produced by jason lafarge, signed to john zorn's label and featuring one of lydia lunch's bassists. where's the thurston moore guest spot? saajtak were also on the bill, so i had to take a run out to the beach for the first time, to enjoy the armageddon induced by the sound, if not by the venue.

they were a sort of a strange set, in that i'm not sure how organic the sound actually is. i just dropped a lot of stuff, and you can hear bits and pieces of it in the sound, but i actually get the impression that what they'd rather be doing is some kind of demented blues that is strictly vocal driven, and they're kind of just throwing out some flashy stuff here and there to hook people like myself. so, i kind of came to see the production flourishes on the thing, rather than the thing itself, and i'm not sure i actually like the thing itself. so, what i'm initially thinking as i'm watching them is "they'd be better if they sang less and jammed more", but by the end of the set i'm realizing that they'd actually rather be singing more and jamming less. so, there's not any point in arguing for a reversal of their agency - it won't be compelling if it's fake, either. but, then, it's not really sustainable, is it? it's a decent racket while it's broadcasting, even if it's kind of scattered and disconnected and even if it doesn't last much longer.

saajtak tend to mix their sets up, which is nice for people that see them semi-regularly. hey, they're just often the best show in town. i've learned that they sound better in small rooms, and that if they want to play in larger rooms that they'll need to get bigger amps. it was otherwise a mix of new and old material, and while i can't claim that i know their tracks inside and out, i did recognize a few bits, and did enjoy the talent as it was coming out at me.

i spent the rest of friday night at the goth club; it was fairly empty, as it usually is, but the cover was cheap, and the other spots weren't going to be late enough. it was too cold for the park, if there was anybody there. and, those 3:00 closes at marble are iffy - especially when the cover ends up being $20 after midnight. i suspect people were sent home fairly early. i would have rather found a later party, but there wasn't one. rather, the parties this weekend seem to have been all set for saturday, and that just didn't make much sense for me. i was out of there a little before 5:00, which is actually a bit on the late side for goth club, and caught the 5:55 bus back over.

this article has some unfortunate nationalist undertones in it, which are anti-socialist in tendency. the antonym of socialism isn't really capitalism; socialists see capitalism as a primitive stage in a holistic development, and largely reject breaking these ideas apart. the real opposite of socialism is actually nationalism.

but, it takes the pakistanis to task, as it should. so, it's a decent history from a marxist perspective.

it's just the stuff about kashmiri "awakening" that should be expunged from the document.

http://www.socialismtoday.org/67/kashmir.html

or, try this:

by comparison.

so, the population density in most of canada is about the same as the deserts in nevada.

from the racist imperialists at statscan:

if they just want to dumb it down to gods and guns, i'll sit it out.

again: there's a lot of stupid people out there.

and, there's a lot of very, very bad sources of information.

and, no - the forests in canada aren't teeming with indigenous groups. they've largely been rounded up and settled into "nature reserves", and broadly treated like animals.

the west is more populated than the east, granted. but, broadly speaking, the forests are actually uninhabited.

look up the stats on population density.

this is more along the lines of what i'm thinking about the whole thing: let's find a way to unite workers in india, pakistan and kashmir together to overthrow the bourgeois class, and take control of their own production.

fuck religion.
fuck ethnicity.
fuck nationalism.

https://www.marxist.com/socialist-kashmir-conference.htm

so, i will support the socialists and the anarchists on the ground, not the fundamentalists that want to govern from the extreme right.

and, if there aren't any, or they are too fearful to organize, then i'll have to stand with an imaginary projection of them.

i will not support an ethnic, religious or nationalist struggle merely for the sake of it, or on those terms.

i mean, do i think that the militants represent the population?

do i think the jihadists have actual popular support?

not at all.

so, it's a false narrative all around.

what you have in kashmir - as you had in syria, and in iraq and almost everywhere else where there are these kinds of wars - is a group of well-funded violent extremists that are largely acting on behalf of foreign governments and care little for the people that live there, fighting against a state that is overreaching it's bounds. both sides claim to represent the average person, and both sides are completely wrong.

self-determination would necessitate free elections, which are impossible under the conditions that the militants would set up.

i told you the same thing about syria - that i had no interest in taking a side in a conflict between a failed state and a bunch of jihadists.

in the end, i felt compelled to support the bombing against isis, because it was a reflection of the actual popular will. but, it was an almost singular situation, where imperial might could step in and uphold what people actually wanted.

it's far less clear how that can happen in kashmir - but i know that supporting islamic militants isn't the right approach, never has been and never will be.

so, yes - it would be nice if the indian government could tone it down a bit. they don't need to kill as many people as they are killing.

but, if you're looking for support for violent nationalist insurgencies that want to set up fundamentalist governments, you're not going to get that from me.

my solidarity is going to lie with the people caught in between the struggle, the people that don't want to live in a muslim theocracy and that just want to find a way to get away from the violence and live their lives.

and, yes, i'm sure you can find me some questionable article about some atrocities by the indian military.

it would take me a few minutes to find you a comparable article about similar atrocities being committed by islamic militants.

so, yes: the truth is that both sides are terrible, and have been for years. but, moralizing about it and picking sides doesn't help anything, it's unproductive.

it's the problem with bernie: he has the best policies, by a wide shot, but it's increasingly clear that he's just not that bright.

there's nothing better out there.

don't expect me to endorse somebody else.

i'll just sit here and bitch about how flawed the only actual lesser evil in years is.

i mean, maybe somebody needs to remind bernie that he's running for commander-in-chief, because he seems to be pretty clueless when it comes to any kind of tactics.

i mean, i had no choice but to play it when i was learning as a kid. so, i list page as an influence. but, i never liked it.

if they could have ejected robert plant into outer space, or something, they would have been far better as an instrumental fusion band.

but, as it is, they're amongst the worst things that came out of the period.

also, i've always hated led zeppelin.

the issue in kashmir is, in fact, quite clearly internal, and up to the local actors to work out. that is not debatable.

everything else aside, i don't think it's very intelligent for sanders to come out and take a side on an issue like this, which has been going on for decades and requires careful diplomacy, if the united states is to involve itself at all. if the intent is to go for specific demographics, i'll remind you that the number of non-muslim indians in the united states is not exactly trivial, and that this isn't an issue where their "side" can be discounted or ignored. the indian government does, after all, control the region.

i want to hope that what bernie was trying to get across is that he recognizes that lingering instability in the region is not in the interests of the united states, due to concerns about migration (in the event of a serious conflict) and the deadly possibility of nuclear war. unfortunately, what he actually got across was that he's taking a specific side, which is neither likely to help his own poll numbers (he's increasingly coming off as a tool of muslim blood money) nor make him look very good, internationally. further, if he was going to take a side, he's on the wrong side of the greater geopolitical situation, as pakistan is more or less allied with the chinese at this point. the better tactical decision would be to come in on the side of the indians with the intent of containing the chinese; when you come in on the side of pakistan, here, you're just playing into the long term strategy by beijing.

the indians have long memories, and they don't take too kindly to this kind of thing. so, what he's accomplished by running his mouth off when he shouldn't have is having the most important power in the conflict interpret him as an unfair mediator, which is just going to further harm the people that he's nominally trying to protect. i would be equivalent to calling for an international presence in the west bank - something that's just going to get you seen as an adversary in tel aviv.

so, right or wrong - and this conflict is messy. there's no clear outcome. and, nationalist uprisings are passe. - what he did was pretty dumb, all around. it will probably cost him more votes than it gains him, and it restricts the ability of the united states to actually mediate, if he happens to win in the end.

he should have said something along the lines of that he regrets the loss of life and looks forward to working with both sides of the conflict to end the violence.