listen.

here's the hard truth.

when somebody tells you they oppose "cultural appropriation", what they actually mean is that they're opposed to racial mixing.

that's really what they're saying - that they think cultures should stay apart from each other, that we should segregate ourselves by race and religion. separate but equal? i wouldn't even give most of them the benefit of the doubt.

it's one of a multitude of examples of the neo-liberal orwellianism underlying the current backwards understanding of race on the contemporary fake left, where egalitarianism has been turned on it's head, and open, crude displays of racism prevail as the status quo, while it's proponents frame it in contrasting language.

i'm a post-culturalist, an alter-globalist, an anarcho-communist, an advocate of defining a new global culture based on universal secular values and leaving the old, conservative ones behind. atheism for all.

so, appropriation is a tool that the left should be taking greater advantage of, as a means of co-option. we shouldn't let the reactionaries continue to slow us down...

another way to look at it is that i could say that i'm in favour of co-opting religious iconography and redeploying it for use in a secular context, as a clear attempt to defang the religious ideology. taking things away from religion and assigning them to atheism instead is a good idea, not a bad one.

and, i don't understand why you'd think i'd stand with you as you stand up for the sanctity of the religion, in the face of expanding secularist co-option. that would essentially make you a reactionary, in my opinion.

i'm in favour of cultural appropriation, actually - i strongly support the idea of appropriating religious imagery into secular contexts, in order to strip of it of the religious meaning and reframe it without it. that is a powerful tool that atheists should utilize to purposeful effect.

if that upsets you, we're operating at clear cross purposes.

it has to be interesting to listen to, though. if it's just appropriated for the sake of appropriating it, it will probably be as boring as it would be in the initial context.

but, if you can take religious or ethnic music and update it in a way that separates it from the religious or ethnic context and presents it in an interesting, modern, technological and/or secular context instead then i actually think you're doing something positive, and progressive and forward-thinking and will stand in solidarity with you as you do it.

just try to avoid mocking the legacy cultural or religious ideas too deeply, as you upgrade them for the future. there are some things that deserve a good verbal drubbing, granted. but, there's a line you shouldn't cross that is both difficult to abstractly define and easy to identify when you see it.

i've been open and consistent on this point for years - this not only doesn't bother or offend me, i'm in support of it as a way to drag certain conservative worldviews into the present, and also as a way to break down tribalism and insularism.

the criticisms of appropriation have always been very conservative in scope, and have always belonged on the right of the spectrum.

gvt2.com.

that's where the fuckers trying to take control of my machine are at.

supposedly, the domain is owned by google.

but, they kind of give away their actual function, don't they?

i've been pointing out for years that the five eyes countries ought to be more concerned about the cia than they are about vladimir putin.

but, i've got a signal, now. i know who is doing this. there's no longer any hypothesis or guesswork.

i'm under cyberattack by the cia and/or nsa and/or some other yankee acronym, who is using google as an attack vector.

and, i'm going to beat the fuckers, in the end.

listen.

you don't have to like me. but, you do have to realize that i have upwards of 60 university credits (in canada, a three year degree is 15 credits), which makes me an unusually educated person.

so, suggestions that i'm an uneducated ignoramus should really reflect the speaker; when somebody with 60 credits writes you a well researched screed, and your response is "but you're stupid", it kind of asterisks your own ignorance, doesn't it?

as mentioned repeatedly, this isn't a new thing for me. we live in a society where the media creates reality out of nothing. i'd rather cite chomsky than use facile terms like "fake news", but you need to realize that this is merely a recent iteration of a longstanding realization that even precedes orwell, who is the actual bottleneck here. the media doesn't describe reality, it creates it, and very few people walking around out there seem to spend much energy trying to counter this, or much time thinking for themselves. i am going to blame them; i'm not going to let them argue that they don't have time, because they're too busy working. but, the amount of time that capitalism steals from us all doesn't help anybody learn how to think more clearly.

all i can do is what i've always done, which is try to correct the propaganda as best i can. in the end, you still have to decide what you believe and what you don't, and all i can do is ask you to be rigorous about it.

so, i ran a gmer scan and it didn't find anything, despite the obvious fact that there's something there.

i'm posting, now. and listening to stuff happening in town this week...

the moral superiority.

the smugness.

the hypocrisy.

it's all of the things i hated about conservatives for years....

my opposition to elizabeth warren is primarily rooted in the reality that she's a market fundamentalist, which is the branch of conservativism that i've spent my whole life most opposed to. i will frame my arguments in those terms.

but, she really is incredibly annoying, and i hope a few more people take her to task and embarrass her on stage before this is done with.

maybe liz thinks those massively popular edm parties are full of republicans.

...or maybe the truth is that the republican is actually elizabeth warren.

who was spinning at the wine cave, anyways?

maybe somebody should tell liz that expensive bottle service is what young people nowadays call a party.

meanwhile, there are reports that warren is having trouble raising money.

i do not like either of them, and would not vote for either of them, but there's something satisfying about warren's hypocrisy coming back to bite her.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pete-buttigieg-raised-247-million-q4-candidates-set/story?id=68000913

every year i say something about the weather, and you tell me i'm stupid and don't know what i'm talking about.

i may post some peer reviewed articles to back myself up from time to time, but that's no match for a badly produced report from msnbc or the guardian in the minds of you idiots.

then, every year, it turns out that i'm basically right - and that i usually beat the forecasts by a good amount.

it's the story of my life, actually. this is just one example...it won't be the last one....

so, i slept all day again.

i'm out of the shower and potentially ready to get started on something i'd rather be done by now, and i can see that something is already trying to update the system, despite doing everything i possibly can to completely disable the update process. it really demonstrates the point - you don't actually have admin control over your windows machine. you can disable it a dozen different ways on the running system, you can dismantle it in a group policy and you can even delete the service outright, along with all of the services you need to run the service itself, and even delete the local files on the machine, and it still tries to update - then locks you out when it can't. you just can't turn this off...

but, i have two promising signs.

the first is a log file that is telling me that my system has been tampered with, which is true - i tampered with it. the second is a database error file in the catroot directory that is telling me that it can't compile the update files (hooray!), and giving me a general "catastrophic error" message.

these errors are both good things - it means that whatever process is trying to update the system (which is clearly against my will. and, i am the owner of this computer. i make these choice, not the government and not microsoft.) is unable to do so.

the concern is that i'm going to get another lock screen, of course.

i was able to eliminate the lock screen at one point by deleting the rpcremote file, but it just killed my keyboard functionality. maybe there's a workaround to that.

for now, i'm going to try to avoid rebooting the machine for a while to avoid dealing with it and try to do two things tonight:

1) i need to do a show review lookahead for january. i don't expect much.
2) i need to start posting for december, 2013, which should be faster than before.

they're almost certainly trying to push down the update because the tracking software needs an update to dot net or something. why else would they be so persistent?

so, as frustrating as this is, it probably suggests that i'm winning.

if you think your mac or iphone doesn't have similar backdoors, you're being very naive.

the thing about linux is that the kernel is shared. that's what makes a linux distro a linux distro. so, it's harder to say, but it shouldn't be distribution specific.

if i can convince myself that i don't really have admin control over this, and that i'm dealing with some hard-headed cops that won't listen when i tell them that the updates break the machine by design, then i'm just going to have to get used to reinstalling over and over again.

so, i got distracted and still haven't started yet. i wanted to see if i could manage to actually delete all of these weird files from memory, and i did succeed by changing the acl on them to me and only me, but then i started noticing that the catroot was updating, that there were windows update logfiles, and i got my lock screen pretty quickly.

so, i formatted the drive again, did a clean reinstall and copied over it with my known good image. i hope the cops like pushing that boulder up the hill...

i've added a few more entries to the firewall and group policy, so hopefully it's that much harder to get through the defenses this time. all i can do is make progress....

but, i'm getting a better understanding of what's happening.

while i was sorting through the process, i noticed that the weird files are actually present immediately in a completely clean install, but they had slightly different names. so, i may have been approaching this a little bit wrong - rather than try to delete these files, i should have been trying to replace them. the files have been replaced with the ones from the clean install.

oddly, the files in the clean install do not have an owner and seem to run in stealth, attached to every process in the gui - explorer.exe, firefox, notepad, even the taskbar. it's anything that you can load in the gui. so, if i shut down explorer.exe, i can delete them, but they come back when i reload explorer.exe. so, fucking windows, right?

see, here's the problem, bill - i don't know what the fuck is going on. these files show up on a clean install, but they aren't copyrighted to microsoft. they seem to look and act like a trojan. so, is my disc infected, then? is the rootkit able to survive a five-pass format? or is this some kind of microsoft spyware, perhaps in collusion with law enforcement?

it's really one or the other; this is obviously spyware. so, i'm either infected with a trojan, or i'm reverse engineering windows spyware. and, it really seems like the latter....

the files are present in a lot of peoples' computers, and a lot of people seem to have questions, but nobody seems to know what they actually do. sometimes, viruses use them, but we can see why, and that doesn't mean the files are infected, a priori. they seem to have something to do with the right-click context menu, or at least are using that as a sneaky way to launch. so, they have something to do with the file system, which is as consistent with a shell handler as it is with a root kit! so, the internet isn't helping - they may be utilized by a virus, but that doesn't mean they are one.

in fact, virustotal consistently says they're clean. if that's true, then that would suggest that microsoft is essentially dropping trojans.

it doesn't seem like i can stop them from regenerating, or at least if i can i don't know how to. sfc is completely dismantled on this machine. as mentioned, i've got the firewall turned up a little higher, in an attempt to block them from communicating with the internet via normal system processes. i deleted some legacy protocols, as well - things like netbios that appeared to be listening. but, all i can do is wait to see if it's better or not.

what's happening, then, seems to be that the files are coming in through firefox as a windows update package and replacing the default windows spyware. i am strongly leaning towards this being law enforcement essentially commandeering some built in windows spyware. and, the os seems to get very upset when you try to turn it off.

let's hope the firewall holds and that's enough.

for now, i'm going to take that shower, and we'll see if i can stay up much longer. baby steps....i think i'm making progress...

while i never thought i'd make it to 2020, i don't have anything particularly insightful or worthwhile to say about it, either.

i just want to get some work done tonight.

so, i should be done this by now, but i haven't started yet.

i essentially slept all day. i was up briefly in the afternoon, and the machine rebooted again, so i had to take a closer look at what was happening and found some funny clsids that weren't there before. i can't figure out exactly what these things are, but they're not registered to any major company and they're coming up on boot-up.

virustotal says they're fine, which essentially confirms it's a law enforcement thing. files that are not registered to anybody at all and that load on boot without your permission are never harmless. if the antivirus companies won't flag them, it's because it's the state that's put them there, and they've been asked not to.

i've been able to get rid of some of them, and have been having a harder time with others. but, i'm going to stop to get to a first run, before i hit the shower with the sunrise.

this is a smaller document. i should get most of it done.

1. laurier. clearly.
2. trudeau.
3. pearson.
4. mackenzie-king
5. saint-laurent
6. chretien
7. diefenbaker
8. mulroney
9. borden
10. bennett

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/poll-on-best-prime-ministers-of-the-20th-century-suggests-regional-divide-1.4748705

ok, nappy time after all.

so, what was it like to live in the year 1020?

in western europe, you had a dominant christian church that hoarded knowledge for itself and outlawed reading by the death penalty (unless you were in a few specific classes of people, like monks), which was opposed by periodic uprisings of indigenous pagan groups that saw christianity as a kind of absurd death cult. this history was largely suppressed, and hard to put together. most people lived in feudal relationships, and lived miserable lives. life wasn't too bad, or too backwards, for the rich, though - who had access to most of the same classical texts that existed in the greek world, and sometimes perhaps later than they did there, as they were destroyed there.

in eastern europe, you had byzantine hegemony, and the dying remnants of the last classical culture of european antiquity. they were so much more advanced than their neighbours on all sides, and than pretty much everybody except the chinese, that it's hard to contemplate. imagine the british building a city like canberra in australia; it was that disproportionate. so, they tried very hard to protect their scientific superiority by keeping it a secret. they would even encrypt their writings, that's how paranoid they were. the byzantines held on to something like a classical society, which is a primitive version of our own, but it was fraying and there was both slavery and feudalism. had the byzantines fallen sooner, it's an open question as to whether there would have been a renaissance at all.

and, in the former roman & persian regions of africa and asia you had this muslim empire that was hell bent on destroying any literature that contradicted their religion, while aggressively pushing their language as the status quo. they saw their religion and their culture as inherently superior, and thought they had manifest destiny to take over the world. in the end, we would all speak arabic, and all be muslims. while the society was in many ways still fundamentally classical, they also invented the african slave trade, and it was african slaves that performed that vast majority of the labour in the empire. this allowed for what we would today call a "middle class". we give them credit for saving certain texts, but don't understand the context, and so don't criticize them for all the books they destroyed.

which is better? i don't see a total ordering.

but, i'd rather live in 2020 than 1020.

no, listen.

i want you to understand the scope of what happened. this was a major project, and it took a long time.

the rulers of the islamic empire (they called themselves caliphs, but they were emperors, and truly quite roman) very quickly inherited a number of major literary centres: alexandria, jerusalem, ctesiphon. they didn't get all of the books, but they got a large proportion of them.

at the time, people mostly wrote things in greek. so, you had to learn greek to read them. the muslim emperors wanted to change that - they wanted people to read things in arabic.

so, they literally walked into these massive libraries and went through all of the books, one by one, and translated them into arabic. all of them. no exceptions. then, when they were done, they deleted the originals.

so, now you had to learn arabic instead of greek, thereby cementing arabic as the central cultural force in the region. this was very successful - it's still there.

but, they didn't convert these books blindly. they had religious clerics overseeing this process, to ensure that only the books that upheld the koran were saved. so, it wasn't just a process of replacing the greek with the arabic, it was also a process of ensuring that all extant writing was consistent with islam.

they really, actually did this - they went through all of the libraries, one by one, and made a choice, book-by-book - translate or destroy.

the vast majority was destroyed, not translated.

again: be careful with what they tell you.

i guess i skipped that nap, huh?

mmmm. coffee.

for example, one story you hear by the revisionists is the idea that medieval europe forgot how to read, and had to relearn everything from books in spain, which was under islamic rule.

it's a half-truth.

they forget to tell you about the byzantines, for example, which were both there the whole time and were by far the most advanced society on the planet. in the end, the byzantines were actually ultimately badly weakened by french crusaders, who were the ones that really destroyed them. they weren't able to recover from that, and in the end fell to the turks - after a very, very long siege.

the turks then benefited greatly from their usurpation of roman power by inheriting all of the advanced technology. they don't tell you that, either. they make it seem like it was invented by turkish scholars, which is actually somewhat of a contradiction in terms. the turks were not an advanced people, at the time.

and, they forget to tell you about the importance of byzantine back-migration into rome at the start of the renaissance.

nor do they talk about the reasons that western europe, particularly, was so stunted for what was a relatively short period of time, which had to do with the authoritarian powers pushed down by the church. it was illegal to read; they'd kill you for it. what kind of society would you expect to come out of a social, political, religious and legal system that literally bans reading?

so, of course they forgot how to read greek and latin. they were literally forbidden to do so, under penalty of death.

then, they tell you that the muslims saved all the books, which is worse than a half-truth - that's a lie. the muslims burned thousands of books! specifically, they burned the ones they didn't like. but, they also burned the ones they liked, after they translated them into arabic. the revisionists want you to think this was a curator process, that they saved the knowledge from certain destruction; you're only falling for that because you're so ignorant about the history. what the muslims did was launch a systemic analysis of all of the knowledge in alexandria (and elsewhere) and rigorously sort through all of it, find the parts that contradicted islam, destroy them, and save the parts they thought upheld or otherwise complemented the koran by converting them to arabic and destroying the greek. so, it's technically true that the reason we have some specific greek texts is because this process happened. but, the reason we only have these specific texts is also because this process happened! there's all kinds of things by classic authors that disappeared in this period because the muslims felt they were heretical.

(and, yes, the muslims were just doing the same thing the christians did. in fact, muslims and christians in that region would have looked roughly similar and spoke roughly the same language, too. quite a few contemporary historians labelled islam a christian heresy or a branch of judaism rather than a new religion. the lines were really kind of blurrily drawn, up until the crusades.)

so, they tell you about the good things the muslins did, but forget to tell you about the bad things. what does that remind you of?

then, they have the nerve to call this a "golden age" and assign it to islam. but, this "golden age" they speak of was a process of systematically destroying anything that contradicted islam, and then trying to make sense of the rest of it. worse, the actual thinkers involved were almost entirely persians and kurds. so, if this "golden age" is made up of iranians sorting through greek mathematical sources, what is islamic about it? if it's a golden age, what it is is a babylonian renaissance. again: if you actually read some good sources, you'll see how easy it is to debunk this revisionism. you just have to actually educate yourself about what actually happened...

and, don't get me started on slavery. y'all know muslims invented slavery, right?

i've been clear, repeatedly, that i don't think that islam is an eastern religion or an eastern culture. islam is basically the same thing as christianity - it's a synthesis of jewish religion and greek philosophy. and, the cultures actually developed with more similarities than differences. what that means is that islam is a western culture, and needs to be understood that way. i will reject orientalism on it's face; they're the same as us, so there's no basis in othering them.

but, what that means is that you should realize that islam is essentially going through the same period of backwardsness that christianity went through 1000 years ago. saying "but, we were kings", or "make arabia great again" and then gloating about the situation being reversed 1000 years ago (however half-true that actually is) isn't an intelligent approach to the situation. you should have the humility and smarts to see the parallels between saudi despotism and papal authoritarianism. and, that means you should be on the side of the enlightenment, and in favour of expanding it.

i know i'm arguing with an imaginary person, but i don't think this is a straw man, and i think that more specific discussions will double down on my positions rather than contradict them.

they key point is to do your own research, and be careful about believing things people tell you when you don't have the expertise or background to critically analyze it by yourself.

actually, i'm going to take a nap.

but, first...

there is some historical revisionism making the rounds right now that is broadly written around a series of half-truths and omissions. historical revisionists, including marxists (who have a theory of history called historical materialism), tend to operate from ideologically warped places, and are broadly not afraid to present dishonest arguments, because their real purpose is not historical but political.

it's usually less that they're bluntly wrong about what they do say and more that they didn't point out some other things that are needed to put the situation into context. and, like i say, it's not accidental.

if you know the facts, it's often easy to work through this kind of thing. if you don't, they can often trick you. this is the importance of independent verification and critical thinking; it's why it's so important that you don't believe everything you hear or read, and don't rely on fact check sites or other dubious internet sources to verify your biases. it's why it's so important to actually read books.

but, all of that aside, i gotta say it: 1000 years was a long time ago, and if your cultural identity is rooted in a perception that you were great 1000 years ago, you're basically making the same arguments that donald trump is. it's kind of pathetic, really.

history is important; unfortunately, the history you're consuming is deeply flawed. i'm being vague on purpose. but, if we're going to have stupid cultural pissing matches, can we be contemporary, please? thanks.

i mean, frankly, i'm not sure i'd even consider capetian france and post-napoleonic france to be the same culture. they barely even speak the same language....

so, i'm out of the shower and ready to go.

the dry air in here is really absolutely vicious on my hair. i can't let it get as bad as last year, though. i have to ensure i'm staying hydrated, in all of the senses of the term - drinking water, showering regularly (i can admittedly get a little rutty), etc otherwise, it's going to knot itself up and fall out.

and, i don't actually know what i'd do after that. i certainly would not detransition just because my hair fell out - that would be a strange idea of womanhood. it's certainly a very challenging prospect to imagine existing as a bald woman of any type, and it's just that much harder to imagine existing as a bald transwoman. but, like, the world would have to get used to it. because, that's not an argument for accepting testosterone all of a sudden. it just isn't. sorry.

and, i'd like to imagine that i wouldn't be so shallow as to kill myself, but it would certainly be overwhelmingly depressing, and it may force me into a clinical state, for really the first time. i'd like to hope i could get over it. it would be really, really, really hard.

would i wear wigs? well, i guess i'd probably have little other option.

i'd probably choose to stay in than go out in a wig, though.

if you think i'm a hermit now, take away my hair and see what happens. i'd probably order my food on amazon. i'd go agoraphobic.

i don't think i'm having actual difficulty with actual hair loss; it's not falling out, so much as it's getting damaged by environmental factors. i'm pretty convinced that the answer is undoing the effects of the chronic dry air (and pollution) via hydration...

but, it's probably, ultimately, another argument to get out of this city.

but, for now, i'm back to work for the night, and probably the week. i don't expect to go anywhere until around the 10th or so, when i'll need to go out and pick up some more estrogen.

i've been off my bike this year, but the reason i have a ski mask is actually for winter biking.

even at +5, biking through a winter wind can be brutal without one.

the cold north wind decided to blow over the city of windsor this evening, making the walk to the bank machine, and then to the library, and then home to staple the print-outs, and then back to the mall to mail the result, a frigid and difficult exercise. when the wind blows like that, it really is like walking uphill both ways.

and, if i'm going to walk uphill for an hour, i should bring an article of clothing designed for walking uphill in the cold, namely a ski mask. it's a good thing that i had my trusty ski mask on a night like tonight, otherwise i would have probably frozen my hair and ended up looking like medusa - and i have done that before. i have pictures.

ski masks are a normal part of a canadian's winter wardrobe, and can be purchased for $5-$30 at a wide variety of hardware, multipurpose and novelty shops. i believe that mine was purchased many years ago at a walmart in ottawa, but the cool kids tend to pick them up at skate, ski or bike shops.

but, i got my stuff mailed, and i got something to eat, and i did the dishes, and i'm just about ready to get back to it - i just need to let my stomach sit for a little, before i take a shower.

the ancients had us beat, logically, on that one.

if there's anything in our consciousness, imaginary or not, that it makes sense to call 'god', it's the sun.

again, this is not a debunked theory, but an active research topic.

i've posted several studies at peer-reviewed journals. these are far more convincing than some idiot's opinion on tv, some moron's rant on youtube or some nonsense at somebody's blog.

i would invite you to do the research yourself, rather than rely on the authority of people that deserve absolutely no deference on this topic at all. this is potentially an important lesson in critical thinking, if you look into this properly.

the reality is that the government is actually spending a lot of money right now in funding research to try to understand this better. that is the state of the current science: we don't understand this well and we're trying to figure it out.

but, there is enough evidence to suggest that there is something to this idea, and that, the more we study it, as we are doing currently, the more we'll understand it.

stated tersely: it is viciously rational to think this is the case. the history of this topic goes through some of the greatest minds in the history of science, most of whom intuited the obvious truth of the matter. if you reject this offhand, you're not thinking clearly.

obviously, you need to quantify the situation properly. there has to actually be enough mass involved to create an actual force. so, no - a butterfly flapping it's wings on pluto doesn't create a lot of energy. but, the sun is the cause of virtually everything around us, enough that it almost makes sense to worship it (almost), and it is certainly capable of creating enough gravitational force to rip us apart.

in fact, that will happen. literally. eventually.

the math is complicated. these are n-body problems. but, i'm in very good company when i suggest that it is in the realm of future science for us to better understand the role that planetary bodies play in earthquakes and volcanoes, enough that there could be predictive science underlying it.

but, we'll have to wait for all those tax dollars to do their work, first.

https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-position-moon-or-planets-affect-seismicity-are-there-more-earthquakes-morningin-eveningat-a?qt-news_science_products=0#qt-news_science_products

no response.

this is supposed to be an oversight body. that's their statutory basis. so, this is that much more absurd.

so, here i go - i'll need to get the documents together for two motions and mail them to the court.

the public library isn't open until noon, and i'll have to call the university to see if they're open at all, which i suspect they aren't. my memories of the old macodrum at carleton is that it tended to close after exams and open back up on the first day of classes. but, we'll see.

so, they've got some more time.

and, i'm actually going to take a short nap because i only slept about three hours yesterday afternoon.

alright, so the master document is built. at a mere 172 pages, before formatting, it is a much smaller document, and there is still some chance that it could get finished before the end of the year. we'll see.

no scripts & only 6 html files....

i'm going to stop for some more fruit and get to putting together the documents for the morning. i'm going to need to find somewhere to print them, which may be a bit of a concern. worst case, i'll need to wait. we'll see, soon enough.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2012/09/this-is-temporary.html

i need to ask the question, though.

if you could go back in time and kill jesus before he got famous, would you do it?

i'm going to get my ass kicked by a gang of angry bronies if i don't shut up, now.

it's worse than i feared.

it was a simpson's episode, making fun of twin peaks.

actually, i think that was twin peaks.

actually, i've had a lot of sugar and a lot of caffeine.

my silliness is proportional to my alertness.

this is why i must avoid cocaine.

i was looking for the video of henry the horse dancing the waltz. i've seen it. it exists.

but, instead, let us take a second to enjoy this absolute classic, before i move on:

but, then, if we can genetically engineer the unicorn, can we genetically engineer a god, too?

might we reverse and correct hume's fallacy, and derive is from ought?

or, are we just demonstrating the hard truth that so many of us don't want to come to terms with - that the concept of god is just a reflection of our innate desires and fears.

i've mused about this before, actually. why can't we create a bureaucracy that plays god and answers prayers? it would be dystopic in a sense, for sure. but, if i could write a letter to the ministry of wishful thinking and get a unicorn in return, i'd do it in a second.

could we genetically engineer a unicorn?

one that prances, in an idiosyncratically lovely, particularly unicorn-y way?

one that instinctively reacts to prokofiev, without the need to be taught?

well, step one would probably be to save the rhinos. we need the horns.

but, humans are known to grow horns from time to time, so there's nothing particularly implausible about splicing some rhino dna into a magnificent stallion, and calling that a unicorn.

justin, you better be looking out your window.

i'd half him expect him to show up to work on his first day with a basketball, though.

"i didn't show up to sit on the bench. you said you were putting me on the court."

language you'd be careful with if you overhead a judge say it:

i'm hitting the courts with a new set of rackets. wanna come? we'll meet in the ford lobby downstairs.

probably harmless.

and, yet.

i'm leaning towards tennis.

'cause, you know, the court system is really just a racket.

they should bring back merrick garland, instead.

or, is that his latest plan as a secret republican operative?

if he can get on the court, and declare a conflict of interest on everything, he'll effectively give the republicans an extra vote.

sneaky. as always....

it's daft. forget about it.

they're actually talking about putting obama on the supreme court.

if he declares a conflict of interest, does he get to go golfing?

or, do judges play tennis?

stated tersely: there's lots of things i think ought to be true.

but, none of those opinions have much of an effect on what actually is true.

so, yeah.

i'd fucking love to live in a world with unicorns in it.

but that's too fucking bad, isn't it?

actually, fuck parking the unicorn in the ceo's spot.

i'm going to ride my goddamned unicorn to ottawa, and we're going to storm the gates on parliament hill, and take the elevator up to the pmo's office, and we're going to have that unicorn take a shit in the exact chair that piere fucking elliot trudeau sat in when he wrote the goddamned constitution.

i will presume that unicorn shit is multicoloured, and consequently multicultural.

so, we can have the pastel worked into the upholstery.

and, we'll let margaret legitimately wonder whether she's having a flashback or not.

it's not a question of "wanting to live in a world without god".

frankly, it might be kind of useful if a god existed. maybe we could get her to fix the fucking infrastructure.

but, there isn't one. so, that's not in the list of options.

i mean, it's not like i have some hate-on against unicorns, either. i don't want to destroy the unicorns; i don't have a longing to live in a world without unicorns.

i'd love to ride a fucking unicorn to work, and park it in the ceo's spot.

but there aren't any unicorns. really. there just aren't.

it's all for the love of the flame.

so, yes, i do it for the sake of the troll.

but, i really do it for the kids. they need guidance.

do i sound like a conservative to you?

that's laughable.

but, i'm not a bourgeois liberal, either.

i'm a socialist - a communist, an anarchist. i'd argue i'm a real liberal. but, we can have that debate over beers.

that doesn't negate the reality that religion exists, and that a community may need to defend itself against it should it attempt to enforce itself on it; it's not an argument for pacifism, or a suggestion that we should look the other way.

what it is is a tactical consideration.

and a request to be proportionate and reasonable.

you have to bomb isis, because they're indistinguishable from nazis, and they'll kill you if you don't kill them first. you can't reason with a hungry lion, you have to defend yourself.

but, that's the exception, and, most of the time, the better approach is to try to convince them that their god doesn't exist and that their rules are stupid and not worth following.

i'm not apologetic about this.

it's a good question - can we just kill them all? would that actually work?

but, we need to learn from history. we've tried that. repeatedly. and, no - it doesn't work.

the lesson from history is that the best ways to get rid of religion are through education and wealth redistribution, not through violence and coercion.

and, that's a lesson any anarchist should see value in teaching.

if i thought it was possible to actually end religion with police state brutality, i might consider being pragmatic about it, much the same way that some people consider being pragmatic about stamping out certain political views they disagree with, while paying lip service to free speech. i'd be a hypocrite, and i'd accept it, but i might wonder if the outcome justifies it.

i know better.

it doesn't work.

i am aware of counter-examples where hateful religious groups have moved into neighbourhoods and targeted sexual minorities in such a way that warrants self-defense against the religious community, but, broadly speaking, attacks on religious people are not a productive way to move society away from conservative religious ideas and towards a post-religious secular liberalism.

i tend to have a hard time denouncing people that destroy religious property, under a "diversity of tactics" argument. i'm probably not going to criticize you too loudly for burning a church down, if that church is promoting an anti-queer ideology, which they essentially all do.

but, violence against people does nothing to advance the causes of anarchism or atheism. it's counter-productive. and, while i know that most of the violence occurring right now is intra-religious, it is something for those that oppose religion to always keep in mind and be clear about.

as a species, we've tried rooting out religion by force repeatedly, and, whatever you think of the approach, the fact is that it doesn't work. you have to convince them...

these periodic word errors. i wish i understood what the deal with them was.

i notice every once in a while that the size of the document has shrunk, and the reason is that the formatting has changed, and i don't know why that happens. but, i went through and tried to reconstruct it today, and the parts that came out of sync were the parts related to the conversations i had with the activists, like ESA, that i'm absolutely certain were cops.

i decided to try to rebuild the damaged file from scratch to see what would happen and i ended up getting a series of ram errors that shut the program down, which led me to reboot - which clears my ram. i still don't see any signs of infiltration.

but, what's going on?

is it just a hardware issue?

listen. i have everything backed up in several different places, and i take regular backups of these files. further, i have the document set to autosave every couple of minutes. so, all i had to do to undo the corruption, whatever it was, was find a recent backup and run a compare in notepad++ to a recent autosave. at the least, there's nothing missing. but, i'll have to verify that i didn't lose any additions, before i finish this up.

the level of data redundancy makes the premise of tampering with evidence in this manner highly improbable. 

i'm going to take the opportunity to stop to eat, but i should be done with the master document for december before i sleep, and would be done already if i didn't have to spend time making sure i didn't lose anything. i have everything updated except for some random html documents, which shouldn't be nearly as time consuming as before because there's only a few files.

as is broadly the case, this kind of bullshit is just a waste of time.

i can't keep you off my network, i know that. but, i assure you that you won't succeed in doing much that i can't undo, once you get in. so, we'll make this sisyphean, and hope you give up.

don't misunderstand me.

if there was a concert somewhere, i'd go, in spite of the date, rather than because of it.

but, i'm not going to get drunk because it's new years. that's fucking bourgeois.

actually, i hope you all get so fucked up tonight that you fall down the stairs and break your respective necks

happy new years.

just keep it out of my air supply, please. i've got shit to do.

as far as i'm concerned, it's just cold out.

i haven't gone to a new year's party since i lived in ottawa.

it's not something i really care much about.

"but, it's new years."

what is your argument, here?

that you're so pathetic that you want to sit at home by yourself and smoke drugs on new years? that you need the drugs to cope with your deep void of existential loneliness, as pushed down from the top by capitalist media? and that that's some kind of free pass?

it's not even the actual solstice.

it's just a calendar error.

i don't care what day it is. go for a fucking walk...

i stayed in tonight because i wanted to get some work done.

which means i want to be sober.

that's why i signed a non-smoking lease - i need to be able to get away from the party scene, sometimes, and clear my head and focus. it's very important to my mental health.

so, i really wish this guy would keep the drugs away from the house and go for a walk and smoke in the park.

i'm hoping i hear from the subsidized rent people, soon. those buildings are non-smoking, by way of bylaw. so, when i make a smoke complaint, the management will need to investigate it and enforce the rules.

so, that took hours longer than i wanted it to (what else is new?) but i got the seeds i wanted done done for inr002 [82 pages], inri015 [94 pages], inri021 [96 pages], inri022 [16 pages], inri023 [6 pages], inri031 [9 pages], inri032 [26 pages], inri033 [77 pages], inri034 [7 pages], inri036 [7 pages] & inri038 [4 pages].

there's a lot of overlap there, but it was still time consuming, even as i was doing album reviews as well.

i'm going to eat now, and we'll see if i stay awake much longer or not.

next up is the master document for december, 2013.

i actually had to update inri003, inri016 & inri027-inri029 because i forgot to timestamp them. oops. i'm back to doing what i was doing, now.

just a heads-up: the first bunch of these liner notes were kind of short, but let's remember that while the first two were lengthy demos, the rest of them have been eps and singles. only inri029 is more than 25 minutes. so, these releases didn't generate a lot of writing attached to them.

the releases for december and january contain the first official record releases, and will have longer liner notes attached to them as a result of it. generally speaking, i'm going to start in september, so i could be looking at 200 page booklets for some of them. we'll see how it develops.

so, i got my first reboot since the reformat moments after i turned the laptop back on this afternoon, but the situation is unlike it was before - there's no weird update files, no recent changes to the catroot, etc.

i see no evidence of anything out of the ordinary at all, actually.

the services and policies are all running.

*shrug*.

it could have just overheated. i'm not going to react to a scenario in which there is no evidence. the other possibility is that they've evolved, i guess. we'll see what happens.

i thought about the situation with the oiprd this morning, and realized that if i mail the forms tonight, they won't go out until monday morning anyways, so i'm going to give them until the end of the day to react, and i'll send them updated files on monday morning before i mail it - bright and early. that means i'll be working on this on sunday.

for the next few days, i actually want to see if i can get the master document for december done.

i didn't get through the clean-up for november last night, so that will be my first task, before i stop to eat.

if i had kids, they'd be watching my girl, instead.

clearly the better film. hands down.

so, the canadian government removed trump from home alone, which i think is kind of absurd, and the president, i think rightfully, took some offense to it.

 this is especially frustrating to macaulay culkin, who has been asking to be removed from the film for years.

personally, i think it's long overdue for the icc to take a serious look at the situation in israel.

i wouldn't want to suggest a conclusion in the matter. however, i would certainly support an investigation, and would urge the israelis to co-operate with it.

just a reminder - when i get december up, i'll both be posting fall semester updates and year-end updates, and these are going to be huge documents. the year end document will be around 1700 pages - and that's only half the year.

but, that means the second half of the year will be done.

forever.

if i get back to doing this some time again soon, it's going to be in a down point, like if i'm sick or some gear breaks or something.

period three is coming, and we're going to get it done, too.

so, that means i'm almost done with november, 2013. finally.

this was a heavy month, we'll see, in the long run.

in fact, most of what i posted that month has really yet to be dealt with. there were premature releases for the first three records, plus inrimixed and inrijected, and the covers disc inrimake, that got lost in the wash and don't exist in the release cycle until december or january. i should actually deal with that before i move on by giving each of these releases a head start. that will be inri015, inrii021, inri022, inri023, inri031, inri032, inri033, inri034 & inri036. these releases, along with inri002, inri037-inri041 & inri045 will have liner note releases for the first reconstruction period, still. the second reconstruction period focuses on actual recording, and is both much heavier in terms of posts and much slower in terms of releases, but i'm going to be putting it aside indefinitely.

i really haven't eaten since i stuffed myself with that pizza on tuesday night, so i need to get some fruit and maybe some nachos.

it looks like we're pushing the alter-reality back a little. that's ok. i can still get to it by the first week of january if i get through the last two months quickly, which i think i can.

i'll need to do legal stuff after i sort through that final pile of november things before i move on to december.

first liner note release for inri029

this was my grade 12 final project in electronic music design. the assignment was something along the lines of creating a piece of music with a social message.

the message is part dystopian, but focuses more on the idea of identifying certain threats that would become a problem in the upcoming century. remember that this was the middle of 1999. how close was i?

1) intro
2) war
3) noise pollution, or pollution in general
4) conformity (or the collapse of individualism)*
5) chemical warfare
6) global warming
7) outro

* i was thinking in terms of personality/uniqueness, rather than something political. and i think the extreme conformity underlying gen y social attitudes have played this out frighteningly well, actually. it's a reaction to the radical mindset of anti-conformity that dominated gen x, but it's still a very real thing that will have very real ramifications in the upcoming decades. if you thought the 50s were creepy, wait until you see what these kids grow up into!

i should have included something about inequality. i also removed a vegan track, partly due to time restraints. besides that, i think i got all of the broad ideas right.

the piece is made to be played in an indefinitely repeated loop.

most of the tracks are slightly remixed/resequenced versions of tracks from inri or inriched. track 5 is brand new, and recorded on the school's synthesizer (part of the project requirements).

recorded over 1997-1999. constructed in this form in june, 1999. published on november 30, 2013. re-released (with new hidden track) and finalized as symph003 on sept 13, 2017. first liner note release added on dec 26, 2019. this is my third symphony; as always, please use headphones.

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1999, 2013-2019). as of dec 26, 2019, the release includes a 15 page booklet in doc, pdf & html, with an html5 audio frontend, that includes journal entries from the remastering process over nov, 2013. 

credits

released June 20, 1999

j - synthesizers, sequencers, effects, guitar, bass, piano, drum programming, noise generators, metronome, a broken tape deck, sampling, loops, cool edit synthesis, windows 95 sound recorder, sound design, digital wave editing, production

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

the updated files are here:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/11-2013-music-journal

and here:
https://books.noisetrade.com/j
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/deathtokoalas

now, on to the liner notes for inri029. it won't take long...

punk's a pretty awesome genre of music.

you should check it out sometime.

so, this is all i have to update:

1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/11/publishing-warning-inri029.html
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/this-was-my-grade-12-final-project-in.html
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2013/11/publishing-warning-inri029.html

it's minor in scope. but it means i now have to go through every relevant file on my computer and update it accordingly, and then upload it to the noise trade and bandcamp sites.

if you have something to say to me, say it to my face, or send me the link.

i mean, you can keep talking about me behind my back if you want.

but, i think that would make you kind of a piece of shit coward, myself.

so, let me order my thoughts a little. writing them down tends to help when i get a mess of data in front of me that i need to work out.

inri029 was created in mid-1999 out of loose ends, for a grade 12 art project. it was essentially a remix record of material from the first two demos. i still have the cd-r and liner notes from that period. but, i did not officially release it on inri records until nov, 2013, when i sat down to sort through everything and put everything in order. i re-released it in sept, 2017 to add an early version as a hidden track, and make it available on cd.

so, we have three release dates - (1) june, 1999, (2) nov, 2013 and (3) sept, 2017. in the end, i want the liner notes to have entries for each of these dates that were written contemporary to each of them. specifically, i don't want to post something i wrote in 2017 to 2013. there will be a fourth release date of dec, 2019.

1) i will want to post the initial write-ups to 1999, as cringey as they are, in conjunction with the alter-reality, sometime around 2029.

2) i'm certain that the track write-ups that appear on bandcamp as of right now were written in sept, 2017. what existed before they were updated was probably what i wrote out in 2013. so, they should be posted to 2017. i've updated the master document to reflect that.

3) all of the archived posts appear to have removed the initial write-ups, if they even existed. this was done before the initial aleph-0 writeup in mid-2015.

4) i know that i wrote out some of the original 1999 liner notes when i published it in 2013. i may have deleted them because....they weren't that insightful. really. i do specifically vaguely recall deleting the write-ups for this record some time between 2013 and 2015, probably when i made a first attempt to clean-up the facebook page.

5) the other possibility is that i may have included some overlap between the tracks on this ep and the tracks as they were initially written.

so what do i do? if there was any writing here to recover and post, it appears to be lost, and if it isn't lost, it's going to take a long time to find it. but, i don't expect it to be very worthwhile, even if i can find it.

i'm going to operate under the premise that i added excerpts of the 1999 release, and then deleted them, and there's nothing worthwhile to recover. ok. i said it.

but, for the purposes of the blog, i should have specific write-ups for each track on the upload date, even if it's just completion dates. that's how i approach this, always.

so, i'm going to have to go back and add a segment to all of the posts and update everything, and that could actually take a few hours. but it's necessary. this is an oversight i have to fix.

i'll be back to post the liner note release in a bit, but i'm also updating all of the 11/30 blogs in all of the places.

i have one more of these things left, but i had to stop to sleep when i realized i forgot to add the track-by-track to inri029.

i have two requests to make.

1) i am getting some hits to this blog, recently, as well as the other three. the music release & concert review posts seem to get the most hits. there also appears to be two people that are keeping a close eye on the site. i'd like to know who you are. reach out.

2) i get the impression sometimes that there are discussions about me that are happening without my knowledge, which means i cannot correct any misinformation or generally defend myself. i think it should be clear that i don't go to any specific fora, at this point. if you have any information about this sort of thing, please direct me to it so that i may have the opportunity to defend myself and correct any false information that may be floating around about me.

i'm not sure exactly what i'm doing with inri029, yet. i need to add something, but i want to find the closest representation to what actually existed in 2013. i'm going to get something to eat after that, and decide if i want to go on to december right away or stop for some legal stuff.

first liner note release for inri028

i can't date this exactly. i know it was the first half of the second semester of grade 12, which was spring of 1999. further, i'm taking it forward to about midway because the first part of the course was about voice-leading and i spent it orchestrating the beatles' something. i don't have any files.

i was lucky: i went to a high school with a big music department. not an arts school, mind you. just a school that had enough funding to run a wide array of course options that are outside the basic core topics. there were three main assignments in the course, and while i don't remember the exact assignment questions, i do have two pieces to show for it.

this, here, is a conceptual piece about pop music. all of the sounds are created from pop cans. yes, puns are fun. the samples run from pouring water out of pop cans into the sink, to crushing and smashing pop cans, to opening them, to exploding them, etc.

i used the tab of a pop can as a pick as i played the ambient guitar parts. it's all thrown together, processed, warped and perfected in a wave editor.

constructed over a few days in april, 1999. ripped back to wav format from cd-r in late 2013. released as a one track single on nov 21, 2013. release finalized on sept 12, 2017. first liner note release added on dec 26, 2019. as always, please use headphones.

this track appears unmodified on my third record, inridiculous (inri033): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inridiculous

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1999, 2013-2019). as of dec 26, 2019, the release includes a 5 page booklet in doc, pdf & html, with an html5 audio frontend, that includes journal entries from the remastering process over nov, 2013. 

credits

released April 15, 1999

j - guitars, effects, samples, loops, digital wave editing

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/pop-music-a-tribute-to-carbon-dioxide

first liner note release for inri027

somebody asked me to do this for them for a school project in the second half of grade 12, which was early 1999. we're both italian. silly joke, no offense intended.

i never saw the final version, but the guy described it to me. it was an anti drinking and driving ad (think madd) for a marketing class. they sequenced it up with shots of one of them stumbling towards a car, getting in and driving off. very clownish, apparently.

i didn't spend a lot of time on this, so i didn't charge them for it or anything. i think i was more hoping that it would float around a little, but if it did i'm not aware of it.

streamed to disk in one take on the afternoon of march 9, 1999. ripped back to wav format from cd-r in late 2013. released as a one track single on nov 21, 2013. release finalized on sept 12, 2017. first liner note released added on dec 25, 2019. as always, please use headphones.

this track appears in slightly modified form on my third record, inridiculous (inri033): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inridiculous

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1999, 2013-2019). as of dec 25, 2019, the release includes a 4 page booklet in doc, pdf & html, with an html5 audio frontend, that includes journal entries from the remastering process over nov, 2013. 

credits

released March 9, 1999

j - hammerhead (909 emulator), digital wave editing

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/gene-os-a-soundtrack-for-an-italian-breakfast-cereal

first liner note release for inri016

this is something i did between inri demos. i needed a break from structured writing. just wanted to make some noise...

i suppose this is the biggest sample collage of them all, but it's best not to take it too seriously. the idea here eventually morphed into a project called "fuel true anarchy in the americas" (inri068), a play on the ftaa trade agreement, which itself got toned down in scope.

there's everything from science docs to hitler in here. it's meant to be a passive trip through real and imaginary time that is experienced with the aid of psychedelic drugs, rather than any kind of political statement. it's quite consciously absurd, often juxtaposing ironic statements with their contradictions.

the core of the ambience was produced by a program called sound raider. i then took the sound it created and shaped it by adding in vocal samples, looping certain parts, running things through effects, sequencing the noise into a more melodic shape, etc. it's consequently a sort of a collaboration between myself and the machine, rather than the work of the machine itself.

no sane person could really listen to this passively. you basically *need* drugs to get anything out of this at all.

...and i think i'm probably the only person that ever experienced it properly. hey, it's never too late...

created in the summer of 1998. released as a standalone ep on nov 16, 2013. audio permanently closed on oct 12, 2016. release finalized on oct 27, 2016. first liner not release added on dec 25, 2019. as always, please use headphones.

this track also appears on my third record, inridiculous (inri033): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inridiculous

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1998, 2013, 2016). as of dec 25, 2019, the release includes a 5 page booklet in doc, pdf & html, with an html5 audio frontend, that includes journal entries from the remastering process over nov, 2013. 

credits

released July 1, 1998

j - sound raider, sampling, cool edit synthesis/sequencing, digital effects processing, digital wave editing, flute
gauntk9 - anti-social quip

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/eat-my-fuck

ironically, another way to increase california's influence would be to partition it so it's a group of more homogeneous regions rather than this mess of diversity.

so, who really benefits from california moving up, then?

the answer is the people selling the advertising space.

all of the major candidates are going to be forced to spend millions and millions and millions of dollars campaigning and advertising in california.

and, if one of them is lucky, they might get to 30%.

i needed more sleep; i guess i ate too much pizza, and it knocked me out.

i'm going to try to have a long, productive day today. let's hope it works out.

no. they're missing the point.

california will not decide anything - it's too big, and too diverse. the rich, white people will vote one way, and the less wealthy latino population will vote another; the hippies will vote one way, and the tech industry will vote another; the atheists will vote one way while the religious cults vote another; etc, etc, etc.

the only way that anybody is going to sweep californiia is if they've already united the factions in the party, that is, if they've already won. it is otherwise necessarily going to split. that was the big takeaway i learned from studying this in 2016.

statements like "what california wants" are meaningless - california is too diverse to have a singular, unified opinion. what "california wants" is going to be roughly the same thing as what national polls want.

pushing the state up in the primaries consequently leaves the candidates with a frustrating problem. they can't afford to get blown out in california, and it is at least true that the smaller candidates will likely find themselves mathematically eliminated after super tuesday after they watch all those delegates slip away. but, none of them have any possibility of improving their position by doing well in the state, either, due to the diversity of the demographics. california won't help them win, but they will all need to spend lavishly to avoid losing as a consequence of doing poorly in it.

so, it doesn't really matter if california is first or last, the fact that it's certain to split in any kind of competitive race due to it's size and diversity means that it's not going to change the game. however, it is going to bankrupt basically everybody just in an attempt to keep up.

they should resign themselves to the reality of their diversity and move the primary to july.

but, do demographic trends suggest a more unitary voice for california is likely in the future? if the latino population takes over the state, it could become a force to be reckoned with, that much is true. yet, they're competing with a lot of asian immigration that is actually ideologically pretty different than it. and, california isn't likely to cease being a general magnet for all kinds of different groups.

i somehow doubt that california actually wants to become this homogeneous voice of latin-speaking political uniformity. but, short of becoming that, it's not going to exert much of a decisive influence, regardless of where you put it. it's just not possible to build the kind of coalition you need, unless you've already won, anyways.

californians need to kind of wake up to this and stop pretending otherwise.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/24/politics/california-primary-influence-2020-democrats/index.html

so, for tonight...

i think my stomach has settled a little.

i will now need to put those berries into tupperware, do some dishes, take a shower and finish the last four liner notes for november.

it's really biden v buttigieg, though.

if biden can hold on, he wins.

if he slips, buttigieg will take his place.

it's very unfortunate what's happened to bernie. really. it is.

but, he's started running with a bad crowd, and you have to react to what's in front of you.

it's not that sanders isn't the best option.

sanders is clearly the best option. but, i just can't do it. vote eco-socialist, instead.

even when they asked him the transgender question, he seemed weirded out and awkard about it, even while stating the right answer. see, and this is what i'm saying: i don't think that bernie has any problem with the queers. he's actually, historically, been a pretty good ally. it's more like somebody took him aside and told him "this queer thing. you gotta distance yourself.", and he's been fighting with it since. he thinks the queers are unpopular and are costing him votes....

but, the people that told him that were wrong, and the people he should be distancing himself from are them.

he might figure that out, in the end, and course correct. but, the damage is done, and it's going to take a long time before i can get over that, if i ever can.

come back here, and i'll insult you a second time!

i got my pizza and watched the debates.

i had too much pizza....need to sit down....

i may not have another full meal until january.

the debates were not exactly what i expected. bernie has, in fact, toned it down a little, and that's a good thing. rather, it was mostly warren that got into the tiff with buttigieg, and actually...

i think he handed her a death blow. she's done. and, in fact, i think she knows it. she seemed on the brink of tears for the rest of the debate; i think she knows she missed her chance. i'd expect her to withdraw relatively soon.

klobuchar didn't come off nearly as badly in her scuffle with buttigieg, but i do still think that he got the best of her. if anything, bernie seemed to know better.

most of what i saw and heard just reinforced that i'm substantively further to the left than this party is. i didn't like much of what i heard from any of them.

yang had some good opportunities, but he just reinforced the perception that he isn't actually serious. and, steyer is a billionaire running against billionaires? let's hope that's the last we hear from both of them.

biden's hawkish response on the china question was flat out frightening, but it seems to be in the mainstream of bourgeois left thought to be "tough on china" nowadays. the reality is that china has a sphere of influence in the region, and america is going to need to make a choice: pull back a little (ok, a lot.) or fight a war. the chinese are crystal clear that they don't want american weapons in their backyard, and i think they have every right to take that position. the yankee american imperialists need to go home.

in my mind, the field has narrowed to biden, sanders, buttigieg and klobuchar. don't be surprised if you start seeing klobuchar beating warren in some polls...

so, i got a bowl of fruit and actually passed out until almost noon. i guess the smell in here got to me.

he tends not to smoke when his kids are around, anyways.

as mentioned, i spent the morning (it was actually the afternoon) figuring out how to react to the oiprd's continual demands for more time, and i've decided to make an issue out of it by sending them two notices:

1) if they don't consent to let me add the file between now and friday morning, i'll need to file a motion without notice to add the file to the case.
2) if they don't get the application record in between now and friday morning, i'll have to file a motion without notice to the court to declare them late.

they talked about "early in the new year". based on past behavior, that suggests february or march.

the process of filing the motion will take some time as well, but i'm making a point - i'm sick of the delays and making a stink about it.

what i sent them will be slightly different than what i'm going to file, and i'll consequently have to re-serve them on friday. i won't actually send out anything until later in the day on friday. and, i'm going to need to call the post office and figure out what their hours are, actually.

for right now, i'm going to need to take a quick run down to get some berries, as that was the thing that i couldn't find when i went on friday. they were just expensive. i had a few day's worth still, though; now i'm done and need more. if i have to, i'll get frozen berries. and, i'm going to get a pizza on the way back. then i'm going to shower. and, i'll actually be in bed tonight.

my machine has not rebooted yet, which is a good sign. let's hope it survives my walk to get fruit.

i don't want to be stoned right now :(

read this if you want to understand what pete buttigieg is.

https://archive.org/stream/carrollquigley_angloamericanestablishment/Carroll%20Quigley%20-%20The%20Anglo-American%20Establishment_djvu.txt

yeah, here comes the drugs.

go for a walk, man. have some respect for your tenant. gross.

so, buttigieg is holding on in those early states, huh? he's consistently beating both sanders and warren in new hampshire, which neighbours both vermont and massachusetts. in a way, that's impressive.

and, you can see why everybody's going after him.

i didn't watch the debate, and i'm not going to, but if it was the moralistas ganging up on the gay guy like i imagine it was, and him basically calling them out on their hypocrisy for it like it looks like it was, they may have shot themselves in the foot and given him a boost. i don't know why bernie thinks his angry zealot routine is a winner; it's part of the reason he's losing.

the democratic party has entered a weird twilight zone where so many of it's talking heads grew up as republicans, and have a fundamentally different way to understand the world than most of their voters do. most people that lean democratic are basically nihilists, in practice if not in theory. this shit is just going to be weird to them. it's the kind of thing that you pull out after you win, and you need to go after swing voters, or disgruntled republicans that actually care about morals and don't see them in the existing right-wing paradigm. democrats are more prone to want to have a beer, smoke a bong, and tell you to fucking relax and stop judging people. harris at least realized that, even if the execution was so botched as to be comical. if the debate was angry bernie v chill & cool pete, i can tell you who won with actual democratic voters, regardless of what the polls say just right now.

again: this is why everybody's going after him. he has a cultural appeal in the actual party base that the other candidates just don't; he's the guy that the people that pay party dues and carry their membership card around with them are most likely to go for. and, like it or not, he's probably the future of the party.

he's still basically a log cabin republican from the all souls clique, working for a secret cabal of globalists connected to the legacy of cecil rhodes. he's not a good candidate for leftist voters. don't misunderstand me, here - i'm not endorsing this guy.

and he still has a hill to climb to beat biden, clearly.

but, the longer he sticks around, the scarier he gets.

i mean, i'm asking the court to pull the file due to unreasonable delay and gross incompetence.

and, they missed the deadline and asked for an extension. great. default, then, guys. perfect.

so, i'm going to grab some fruit and soften the air in here a bit.

i've been at this for the better part of the last 18 hours, and i got two liner notes done from scratch and updated the first one, as well. the first one was lengthier due to typesetting, whereas the second was shorter because there wasn't much to add. there are four more left that should all be more like the second, so i should conceivably be able to get them done by the time i get my christmas eve pizza. but i should get the forms in order for the request first, because i'm not going to wait long before i request an order. if i can file the order tomorrow i will.

they have now sent me two requests for an extension, and i have rejected both. i don't celebrate christmas, and am not going to give them a break for the holidays. if anything, i'll take advantage of it to force them to default. if i could just cease to have to deal with them ever again, that would be incredible.

but, i'm happy i'm making some progress.

i still need to get through december/13 & january/14, both of which are shorter months, before i can start making entries in the alter-reality and start refocusing on period 3.

it was actually quite pleasant today when he was at work.

but, as soon as he got home, the smoke started.

i guess i'm not entirely certain that he's actually smoking. i dunno. maybe he's lighting really brutal candles. maybe it has something to do with the heating. maybe he's farting. maybe it's the dog.

but, the smoke, whatever it's source, is clearly correlated with his presence. it's obviously something he's doing. and it's making me cough and wheeze and hack and giving me a sore throat.

i'm updating a few files to finish inri003, and then i'm going to stop to eat and take a shower. the only thing that seems to work to counteract whatever he's doing is to increase the humidity down here.

first liner note release for inri003

i spent the summer and fall of 1997 programming drum tracks into an ry30, notating them into a tablature program and sequencing them using noteworthy composer. i did not know how i was going to record these tracks. i think i was expecting to use the computer, but that was probably naive; instead, i was gifted a 4-track recording machine. i then spent the next year and a half rearranging and rerecording the songs i programmed over that period. as these tracks were recorded into my pc, they are time stamped...so i have a much clearer understanding of when they were finished.

the jump to incorporating computers into the recording process is something i always wanted to do, it's just that it wasn't really previously feasible. first, there was a learning curve. i was a smart kid, though; the learning curve was just a time concern. the larger problem was simply access to a pc. i did have a pc at my disposal, but it did not have a modem and it was only equipped to run windows 3.1, which basically meant i could run civ 2 and wolfenstein and little else. the windows 95 computer had dial up but it was in a central location for family use.

when we moved across the city, my dad bought a new computer and i happily inherited his old one. this gave me internet access, which allowed me to download some freeware. it also gave me the time i needed to learn how to do certain things.

i'm separating out a handful of my first electronic sound experiments and collecting them together into an ep. what these blasts of noise have in common is that they were constructed on a windows 95 computer out of samples or generated sound and with very primitive software while i was waiting to get some kind of recording equipment. most of it was pasted together meticulously using the windows 95 sound recorder; the rest of it was constructed in cool edit, which i used as a sort of a synthesizer.

for the most part, these weren't really ever meant to be songs. i ended up using them as connectors, introductions, background. "continuity". yet, i find the idea of throwing them together here to be interesting from an autobiographical perspective.

created in mid 1997. sequenced and converted to stereo in november, 2013. released on nov 9, 2013. corrected in september, 2014. finalized on july 5, 2016. first liner note released added on dec 23, 2019. as always, please use headphones.

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1997, 2013, 2016). as of dec 23, 2019, the release includes an 8 page booklet in doc, pdf & html, with an html5 audio frontend, that includes journal entries from the remastering process over nov, 2013. 

credits

released December 1, 1997

j - cool edit (wave synthesis, digital wave editing), windows 95 sound recorder (sampling, digital wave editing), yamaha ry30 drum machine (programming)

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

first liner note release for inri001

my second demo, recorded over the second half of the tenth grade, is a considerably more polished recording. by this time, i had learned a lot about how to record things and had improved my drumming and keyboard playing. while the vocals remain highly erratic, ranging from precociously insightful to devastatingly stupid, the music here is actually not far from a professional recording.

recorded in spring 1997, remastered in fall 2013. finalized on july 3, 2016. first liner note release added on dec 23, 2019. as always, please use headphones.

i consider this an archival release with little direct listening value. i've pointed out repeatedly that i was 16. however, various segments have been isolated and pulled out for a higher listenability value over here:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inricycled-a

this release also includes a printable j-card insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1997, 2013-2019). as of dec 23, 2019, the release includes a 35 page booklet in doc, pdf & html, with an html5 audio frontend, that includes journal entries from the remastering process over nov, 2013.

credits

released June 1, 1997

j - guitars, effects, bass, drums, keyboards, tapes, vocals, found sounds, metronomes, production

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-cassette-demo-2

so, there has been some communication between the oiprd and the court, which is also open tomorrow.

i need to ask the parties for consent to file the addendum to the factum, and i may not get it until after christmas. if they don't give me consent, i'll have to ask the judge to file a motion.

i'll look at this tomorrow or friday.

inri001 is basically done, but i have to test it first.

no response regarding the court case, yet.

i'm going to call the divisional court next, to see if they're open. if i can, i basically want to just push forward without them.

so, i've now updated inri000 to include some posts from nov, 2013.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-cassette-demo-1

i'm running into some chronological contradictions.

one of the last things i did before i stopped for legal stuff was add the inri000 liner notes to the october music journal download. i've now added some posts from nov, 2013 to that liner note package, which also has notes from sept, 2013 and will eventually have notes from various periods between 1996-2026. so, what do i do now?

i was initially considering leaving half finished versions strewn across the downloads, but that doesn't make sense and will end up messy - that's a bad idea. the other approach would be to update everything as it comes up, so that this liner note package would appear everywhere it intersects with, but that strikes me as overkill and difficult to maintain.

rather. i think i've demonstrated to myself that these are different ideas. the music journal is just that; the liner notes are a subset of the broader journal, and need to exist in their proper context.

therefore,

1) i am going to remove the inri000 liner notes from the october, 2013 music journal download, and i will not be uploading the liner notes to further journal entries.
2) i will need to update the liner notes for each relevant release at the end of each subsequent month, which could be messy, but is necessary.

so, i'll need to update the language for october first, and then for november, and then reupload the new notes for inri000, before i get to inri001.

listen.

i'm an introvert, and an atheist. i never had time for christmas; i always thought it was kind of stupid. even when i lived with family, it would generally be difficult to try to convince me to come out and sit with people - i genuinely disliked the premise.

and, while it is true that, on some years, i may prefer to spend the solstice slowly eating into a quarter, i am actually eager for sobriety, right now. i don't really believe in resolutions. but, i've been pointing out for a while that i'm getting older and starting to feel it. i can't promise you that i'll spend future solstices sober, but i think i'm leaning more in that direction. we'll see how i feel.

what i'm getting at is that i'm actually enthusiastic about spending my time this week typing in a basement by myself. this is where i'm in my element, it's where i'm happiest.

i'm just hoping the guy upstairs takes off somewhere so i don't have to deal with him smoking.

speaking of which, i'm still not really at full strength, although i'm fairly close.

now that i have the template finished, i'm hoping to publish several liner notes today. i will need to stop briefly mid-afternoon to give the divisional court a call, but i don't expect them to actually be open.

ok.

i got a start on inri001, but i'm fading.

i need a nap.

let's try again later.

i finally have the template for the html5 frontend done, and have uploaded it to the bandcamp site. this is not a formal rerelease, but an addition to the previous rerelease. the formal rereleases moving forward will include the html5 frontends by default.

there is an instructions file, but you basically just unzip and load the index into your browser.

this is overdue, but there should be some more releases up over the next few days.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-cassette-demo-1

yeah. i'm done testing.

i made a minor update to the autoplay to reset when it's done:

Player.onended = function(){
    if(++elm < nextsrc.length){  
         Player.src = nextsrc[elm]; Player.play();
         txtOutput.value = titles[elm];   
         }
         else if(elm == nextsrc.length){
             Player.src=nextsrc[0];
             txtOutput.value=titles[0];
             elm=0;
         }
}

and, that's that.

you may use my html5 player freely, as much as you'd like. just mention my bandcamp page somewhere (jasonparent.bandcamp.com), if you feel like it.

the player is of course intended for use with bandcamp downloads, so the next post will be....it won't be a final update for inri000, but it will be the last one for quite a while.

you have to test things. programming is empirical.

there is one scenario where this breaks, and it's because i just let the user push the counter in any direction they want, for as long as they want. it really didn't matter, before, it was just a counter going up and down. but, now i have a listener on the play error, so pushing the counter out of bounds breaks the player.

specifically, if i let the player push forward or backward past the bounds of the playlist, it generates the same error that i'd get if i didn't have the right array. this was creating a lot of confusion.

so, now the button doesn't work when you get past the bounds, it just stops, leaving the error for the situation where i don't have the right array.

clearly, this would suggest that any other situation that generates a play error is going to wreak similar havoc. the thing is that i can't think of any other situation that would do that. the assumption is that the html file is in the same directory as the mp3 files; if they aren't there, you'd get an error, but you're not getting very far without them, anyways. i'm not done testing yet, let's see if i can find something else.

i also dropped the boolean around the script as a troubleshooting step and didn't put it back. it can just pause on massive error. you'll have to refresh to restore functionality, but that should only happen when the files aren't there, anyways.

for now, here's the new and hopefully final script:

<p align="center">

//the display box
<input disabled type = "text"  style="width:300px;background-color:#000000;border-width:0px;" id = "txtOutput"/>
<br>

//the onclick now calls a function. i need a conditional. it was getting messy.
<button type="button"  style="font-size:50px;" onclick="backClick()">&lt;</button>

//the html5 audio control is the same/
<audio autoplay controls  style="width:500px;height:50px"  id="Player">
   <source id=flac src="path to first flac file" type='audio/flac; codecs="flac"'>
   <source id=mp3 src="path to first mp3 file" type='audio/mpeg; codecs="mp3"'>
   <source id=aac   src="path to first m4a file" type='audio/mp4'>
   <source id=wav src="path to first wav file" type='audio/wav'>
   <source id=ogg src="path to first ogg file" type='audio/ogg; codecs="vorbis"'>
</audio>

//there's now a function here, too
<button type="button"  style="font-size:50px;" onclick="forwardClick()">&gt;</button>

//this is the two row table
<table>
<tr><td width=200 onclick="Player.src = nextsrc[0]; Player.play(); elm=0; txtOutput.value = this.innerHTML">track 1 </td><td onclick="Player.src = nextsrc[8]; Player.play(); elm=8; txtOutput.value = this.innerHTML">track 9</td></tr>
.
.
.
</table>


<script>
var elm = 0;  //counter
var Player = document.getElementById('Player');  //player

var titles =[array of song titles];

txtOutput.value = titles[0]; //autoload track 1

var nextsrc = ["array of paths to mp3 files"];  //default


Player.onerror=function(){   //if the file can't play
     nextsrc = ["array of paths to flac files"]; //try flac
     Player.src=nextsrc[elm];  //set current path
     Player.play();  /play
     Player.onerror=function(){    //if the player throws another error  
          nextsrc = ["array of paths to ogg files"]; /try oggs
          Player.src=nextsrc[elm]; 
          Player.play();
          Player.onerror=function(){
               nextsrc = ["array of paths to m4a files"];  //try mp4
               Player.src=nextsrc[elm];
               Player.play();
               Player.onerror=function(){
                    nextsrc = ["array of paths to wav files"]; //try wav
                    Player.src=nextsrc[elm];
                    Player.play();
                    Player.onerror=function(){Player.pause();}  //give up
                    } 
              }
          }
     }

function backClick(){  //here's the onclick script moved to a function
    if(elm>=1){   //the index has to be in bounds.
        Player.src = nextsrc[--elm];
        Player.play();
        txtOutput.value = titles[elm];
    }
    else{
    elm=0;  //or set it to 0
    }
}

function forwardClick(){    //here's the other button script
    if(elm<=(nextsrc.length-2)){ //the index must be in bounds
        Player.src = nextsrc[++elm];
        Player.play();
        txtOutput.value = titles[elm];
    }
    else{
    elm=nextsrc.length-1;  //or set to the end
    }}


Player.onended = function(){    //autoplay
    if(++elm < nextsrc.length){  
         Player.src = nextsrc[elm]; Player.play();
         txtOutput.value = titles[elm];   
         }
}
</script>
</p>