i was hoping to catch animals as leaders last night, but i ended up passing out. i'm not sure how exciting a live show it would have been. great guitarist, but it's headphone music.

i've got a new map up that organized things a little differently. as you can see, this is just loaded with guitar overdubs, a lot of them doubled or quintupled through separate effects paths. it seems like i'm hurtling towards 70 tracks. three more things to do there, down at the bottom.

...although i'm starting to wonder about maybe doubling a few more parts later in the song. we'll see how this goes....

that was a very long day, which required upwards of five hours of walking through some pretty nasty windchills and ran about 36 hours...

...but i got my prescription, in the end.

that's one of two medical issues i needed dealt with. now, i need to figure out how to get the odsp renewed for at least another year.

i have my doctor's appointment in london in a few hours and i'm incredibly nervous about it. the first time, i figured it was just a formality. this time, i'm really apprehensive...

of course, i've been thinking about it a lot. at the end of the day, regardless of the outcome, the decision i made is not reversible. denying me hormones isn't going to coerce me to change my name back. it's not going to make me more interested in living a male gender role. it's not going to change how i present myself, how i dress, how i identify or how i behave. it's just going to put me in the awkward position of needing to explain that the health system is denying me treatment when i show up to a job interview in a skirt.

so, i'm hoping it turns out well. but i've kind of put it aside. it's not the chemicals that define who i am, and not taking the chemicals isn't going to change who i am, either.

i do hope i can at least convince him to keep me on the androgen blockers. i hate masturbating, and i'm very happy that i haven't had to in well over a year. i don't want to go back to having to deal with that, it's such a waste of fucking time...

what i really aim for, i think, is total sexlessness. just the abolition of sexuality. i like the fact that the feminizing hormones make me a little prettier when i want to be, but it's really the testosterone blockers that are giving me what i really want.

i spent 25 some odd years realizing i'm not very good at being a dude, and don't have any interest in being one, either. that's not just going to change overnight…

and the reality is that i will eventually get access to hormones, even if it takes a few weeks to figure out how.

ok, it's the first few minutes that are pissing me off.

and i can probably reconstruct the first few minutes. it just means cross fading the end.

which is easy to do anyways.

i need to go to london (ontario) tomorrow, so i won't be working on this much longer tonight. but i think i've got a successful tactic, here.

i'm very sensitive to the weather...

i had set the condition on myself this morning that if i finish the song then i can go to the punk show tonight. i instead ended up falling asleep, and now i'm afraid to go outside. and i'm still sleepy.

it's only -10 with the windchill. but i'm actually getting the feeling that i may not leave the house at all until it's passed next week.

this is why i always have extra spaghetti.

the song is legitimately almost done. i want to add some extra guitar parts. it'll only take a few hours from the time i sit down to do it. but right now i'm still nodding off...

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

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

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

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

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

excerpt from catch-22

"You mean there's a catch?"

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

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

escaping the studio for a familiar blast of new york at trinosophes in detroit

looking at his biography, it's surprising that i'd never heard of virgil moorefield before yesterday. well, the name is vaguely familiar, but i couldn't have placed it to anything. however, the biography (along with a bit of youtube sleuthing) made it clear that i'd better show up, as that slice of the history of new york's music scene is really exactly precisely where my brain lives.

he was performing a new piece, and while i got the impression that the band might not be entirely into it yet, i have to point out that it was a little bit generic in terms of minimalist post-rock, broken only by the inclusion of a sax player. it swayed and rocked like you'd expect it would, but that's just it: very predictable. there wasn't really anything new to it. the melodic lines weren't anything much to react to, either. it's one thing to be predictable and be good, it's another to be predictable and sort of mediocre at it.

listen. it happens. there are beethoven pieces that flat out suck. i wasn't going to make too much of a judgment on the basis of one piece.

the second piece (apparently a reinstrumentation of "i wish i'd thought of it sooner") was a lot more creative. it definitely exists in the space i referenced, but it was noisy and erratic and just overall worked very well.

the third piece (the one posted) was somewhere in between, in that it went back to the predictability of the first piece while maintaining some of the excitement of the second. it was more along the lines of being predictable and good. but, there were also some jazzy curve balls in there.

overall? i didn't get the same kind of raw power i get out of swans, the atonal mess of zorn, the messy dynamics of branca or even the glacial harmonies of steve reich. what i heard tonight was kind of reaching into all these places and pulling a little out of all of them without really hitting any serious high points. i didn't hear anything to define virgil moorefield, so much as i heard a lot of bits of things i'm familiar with from elsewhere - none of it really put together in a way that really grabbed me. i'm sure there's far more to his work than i heard tonight...

....but i can't help but think it was a good explanation of how i could be so into so much of what came out of that scene without having ever heard of him.

that being said? it was worth the $10. i'm glad i went, and i'd make the same choice next time. maybe i'll check out some more of his work in the meantime hoping to find the best of it...

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2014/11/08.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

i'm not expecting this.

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

treatment

hi

i'm going to send a duplicate over facebook, as i hope to get a referral out by monday if i need to do it that way. however, i suspect it may be easier to simply book an appointment.

the purpose of contacting you is to get my hormone prescription renewed. i've already been through all of the mtf transgender diagnosis - and a very long time ago at that. i've been on hormones absolutely steadily since 2010.

i was previously dealing with a doctor in ottawa. about a year ago, i moved to windsor. last month, i had my prescription renewal denied due to the doctor no longer practicing. i've had *general* difficulties with the doctors in windsor - they won't take my odsp seriously, and they won't write me hormone prescriptions. i'm really at a loss of understanding.

i couldn't even contemplate how i'd react if i were to stop taking them. i've been on them five years! my entire life exists in a female identity. i simply don't understand why the doctor in windsor is refusing to prescribe, but it's forcing me to look outside the city.

i was able to get an emergency prescription to the end of december from the hospital ER room. that's an extreme step, but i had nowhere else to go to get the extension. what that means is i'm hoping to see somebody before the new year.

i'll have to take the bus down, which shouldn't be a problem so long as i have enough time to plan. again: my records are with the doctor in ottawa. would you be willing to see me?

jessica