ok, i finally got those noisetrade.com links updated to smashwords, lulu, bandcamp & drive links. that was time consuming, but it's done.

i need to really write that story next. it's coming.

i'm scatter-brained, and i'm having difficulty figuring out if i picked up a cold (it could be anything, there's no reason to assume it's covid-19, and i have no intention of quarantining myself over the common cold, so i'm not getting tested. there's nothing i can accomplish by presenting myself to the medical authorities. i'll just stay in for a few days, thanks.) or if i'm reacting to the smoker(s) upstairs, but the decrease in temperature outside is helping clear the air out in here a little and it's definitely waking me up a bit. i feel like i'm in a smoky room, and have a dry cough and a sore throat, but i can't smell it or identify the direction. but, if i stick my nose in something with a strong odour, i can smell it, clearly.

i'm also wondering if i'm having a glycemic reaction to my change in diet. i've been eating mostly pasta for years, now; i've now switched to a diet composed solely of omelettes and fruit. i also switched from rye to whole wheat bread. my sugar levels were fine, if bumping a little, when i tested them a few months ago, but that was before i switched. what i'm feeling is consistent with an onset of diabetes, which i have no evidence of in terms of sugar levels, but i'm consistently concerned about in the context of actual symptoms and what i think is a slow onset of ms, and which i know i can't do anything about. to be clear: my concern is i may be developing diabetes as a complication of a slow onset of ms, rather than as a result of diet, but that the switch in diet (to less glucose, actually.) may be messing with me. if i'm concerned about diabetes, and i slightly am, then the new diet is about as good as i can get. the fruit i eat - blueberries, strawberries, bananas, kiwis, raspberries - are all actually relatively low in glycemic index. it was my reliance on cheap pasta that was the more likely complicating factor, and switching to eggs is consequently actually a good idea, so long as i can manage to get used to it.

put another way, i may be sort of coming down from a pasta dependence and going through glucose withdrawals, which is potentially dangerous but probably good in the long run.

so, i'm feeling like i might be bedridden for a few days, but i'm not sure why, yet.

one story coming up...

...and, then i can get back to consolidating the four blogs from april 1 to present, and recalibrating myself and what i'm doing.

"before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”

it's a cliche, and one of the first memes i saw back in the day.

but, it's true.

and, i'm pretty sure my problem is the latter, not the former.

so, i don't need drugs; i need a safe place to exist, where i never have to deal with other people ever again...

i should post the record.

and, maybe it'll chill me out a little.

this is kind of a lost classic. somebody might correct me, but i believe this is the first thing that the singer from skinny puppy did after the band imploded c. 1995. there was a slew of key/goettel releases directly after goettel died....of a heroin overdose....but ogre was quiet for a while. he may have been on tour with ministry and/or pigface...kmfdm, even?

this was with martin atkins, mostly, although mark walk was also involved.

it's a concept record that is critical of ritalin use in children.

and, then, when you have kids that act like kids, they'll push crack on them, to turn them into zombies - until they can get hooked on heroin, too!

heroin for all!

we need to tell people to shut up and suffer, sometimes.

and, we need to get people conditioned to the necessity of suffering in existence, if anything to prove that we're real.

we live in a very, very, very sick world.

the doctors are all drug pushers and heroin dealers.

and, the political system wants to facilitate it.

i could have walked out of there with an rx for vicodin or oxycontin, virtually on demand.

they would have been happy to give it to me.

we should probably actually be making it harder for low-life doctors to prescribe this stuff, not easier to find it.

take a walk through downtown windsor some time and put 2 & 2 together.

it's easy to see why we have such a problem with opiates in this country: the doctors prescribe it like it's candy, even when people vehemently scream that they don't want it.

that wasn't the first time that er tried to give me opiates.

it wasn't even the second.

it was actually the third.

and, you'd have to tie me down and inject it, because that's one of the very few ways to generate violence in me; i'm a passive, non-violent person, but you put that shit near me, and you'd better be wearing head gear, cause i'm going to react like a hungry cougar and go for your eyes and your neck...

great health care system, huh?

even at the 50% dosage, i'd say there's a 75% chance i'm going to harm myself.

but, i have to do it before they'll react.

and they'll just give me heroin when they do.

i am not going to be a friendly person for the next little while, as i'm going to be dealing with hormonal changes that i don't want and don't expect i'll be able to process without fits of violence.

but, what the hospital is telling me is that i have to actually have a reaction before it will treat me, that it won't act preventatively.

...because they're a bunch of fucking idiots.

and, i hope every single one of them dies a horrible death. and soon.

the emergency supply of testosterone blockers was at half the dosage i've been taking since june. it's not going to be enough, and i'm going to need to act aggressively to get the surgery; in the meantime, i should expect severe levels of depression as a result of the rising t-levels that i've been trying to avoid.

and, i can only hope that it's enough to survive until i can chop them out and sacrifice them to demeter.

that ritual will happen, btw - i will get these horrible things in a jar, and take them to a field and burn them.

i don't want acceptance; i don't want to be let in.

i want an escape. i want a way out...

join the community. integrate. fit in.

no - it's your community that makes me want to hang myself.

again: i don't think i suffer from a physical form of depression.

but, people bum me out; i can't deal with the selfishness, the stupidity and the ignorance. it just makes me want to roll up in a ball and cry.

what i need is a way to avoid people, and all of the treatment options are built around trying to get me to interact with them.

i'm as happy as i can be when i don't have to deal with the consequences of other people's stupidity. so, if i could build an isolation chamber that was big enough to hold my things, and prevented me from interacting with everybody else in the world in any way, i'd be ecstatic, really.

it's not realistic, obviously.

all i can do is yell and scream and create conflict and piss people off enough that they do what i need; it's the only way to exist in a society like ours, where everybody's such a piece of shit.

i have a story to write...

so, i've got my head in too many places at once and trying to do everything and succeeding at nothing. i've been eating, typing and cleaning, without much of a clear plan; i do that when i'm in shock, or otherwise weirded out, and i think that's the right way to describe reality right now. i thought i had to get downtown to present myself for the ticket, but of course it's closed and operating over email instead, so i should be inside until i have to get more estrace mid-month.

i'll need to make some calls on monday regarding a number of things.

i want to do some major cleaning in here, but it's pointless if the pig is smoking. i'm not going to do laundry and scrub down the walls if it's just going to emit more pollution, what's the point? i'll be cleaning 20 hours a day, with no end. i'd might as well sit in my own filth, instead.

i at least got some fans set up in here, and it's making somewhat of a difference, but i'm going to need to wait until the temperature comes way, way down before i'm able to do a serious overturn. it was nice for a few weeks in the late spring but, as it is, opening the window in this neighbourhood just makes things worse.

so, i feel like i'm tied to my bedpost with no meaningful way out. it's deeply depressing.

i should try to get back to what i was doing and react to the pollution from upstairs as it presents itself. it may mean running the shower for long periods, but so be it.

once i've got that under control, i can make an analysis regarding what to do about cleaning in here, and whether i think it's a waste of time or not.

here's the new complaint against the police:

======

i attended the emergency room at the windsor hospital due to suicidal feelings on the afternoon of august 31st, and was removed violently from the premises around 20:30, and then placed in a holding cell. upon release, before 00:00, i was charged with trespassing, but i went right back because i required immediate care. i was arrested around 3:00, held until 8:30 and ticketed a second time, after that.

it is true that the doctor claimed i was not really suicidal, but merely a disgruntled welfare recipient looking to manipulate the system and insisted i be removed from the premise rather than treated. but, this is a position that has no basis in law, and there is a human rights complaint that will address that concern.

regarding the conduct of the officer, my position is that he had no authority to remove me from the hospital when i was there to seek treatment, and used a disproportionate amount of force to do so. this left me with a sprained leg, bruises and general soreness for several days. when an individual is experiencing a mental health episode, officers should transport them to the hospital for care, not remove them from the hospital kicking and screaming. the officer should have told the doctors that they did not have the authority to remove me from the premises when i was there to seek treatment, rather than act as hired guns to remove me on demand.

medical records & video of the incident will be available from the hospital as they are disclosed. there were also plenty of witnesses who can be identified from the video and asked to testify.

our hospitals cannot function as ongoing milgram's experiments, and cannot be run like detention centres. the rule of law must be asserted, here, and the people responsible for violent outbursts must be held accountable.

here's my new file number:
https://complaint.oiprd.on.ca/OIPRD.Estatus/check_en.aspx?number=E-202009041028022934

the problem with the system here isn't political; we largely have that part figured out.

but, the quality of the doctors themselves, it's absolutely rock bottom.

so, i just filed a human rights case.

i'll write a first person blog narrative tonight or in the morning.

========

I feel it's necessary to produce some background information. That is, I'm going to tell you the whole story...

I am a male to female transgendered person that has been on hormones for most of the last twenty years and checks levels roughly once a year. I also have a diagnosed stress disorder; initially i was diagnosed with ptsd, which was later altered to social anxiety disorder, but the differences between these things are not entirely clear. what is clear is that i suffer from stress and anxiety in profound enough ways that i am considered to be unable to work, and currently live on odsp. Unfortunately, I have been noticing that my testosterone levels have been creeping up over the last several years due to the onset of tolerance to the testosterone-suppressing medication (cyproterone acetate), which has been decreasing the efficacy of the estrogen (the feminizing hormone) and having a general masculinizing effect that i've been taking steps to try to undo. In addressing this concern, i've run up against the problem of already being prescribed a high level of testosterone suppressors, and needing to take some other kind of approach to get testosterone levels down to full suppression.

It was decided at my 2017 appointment that, because i was already taking such a high dosage of cyproterone in the context of gender transition, it would be better to have my testicles removed than to try to increase the dosage; while the drug is considered clinically safe at relatively high dosages, and i still had a ways to go before concerns became relevant, if i were to continue to increase my dosage of this medication indefinitely, i'd eventually run up against the potential of damaging my organs, like my liver. it was just time to take the next step in transition, which is removing the source of bodily testosterone, allowing for a reduction of a drug that can have longterm consequences, rather than increase it at the potential of eventual harm, one day.

I saw a urologist in 2017, but he refused to remove my testicles as an elective surgery for what seemed to be religious reasons. While i considered launching a claim at that time, i was in a conflict with my landlord over second hand smoke (i had recently quit smoking) that preoccupied my time, and i ended up with little choice but to put the process off. it wasn't until my 2019 appointment that we made a more serious attempt to have the testicles removed, but when i returned for my 2020 appointment, i learned that the funding request got lost in the office (i had called several times to ask for the status, and was told in error that it was in process).

I also learned at the 2020 appointment, which was at the beginning of june of this year, that my testosterone levels had doubled over the last year, which was consistent with what i was feeling. Given the realities of elective surgery around the pandemic, and the fact that my funding request had been lost, i found myself in a crisis point and suggested that the dosage of cyproterone acetate be increased to prevent the onset of further remasculinization. My doctor instead suggested i try spironolactone if i was unhappy with the cyproterone, and i accepted a prescription, but when i got home and did research into it, i learned that (1) the spiro is less effective than the cyproterone (so switching didn't make sense) and (2) the spiro has more severe complications at lower dosages, indicating that it would make more sense to double my dosage of cyproterone, if what i was concerned about was primarily the safety of the drug. i also double checked that my new dosage was safe by checking the data sheet for it, and learned that i was moving from 33% to 66% of the maximum safe dosage. so, i cancelled the new prescription and sent a fax to my family doctor to double the rx of the initial prescription. as i was confident in my own research, i just merely assumed he would act upon my request, and went ahead and started doubling up, assuming that the new rx would be available for me on my next renewal.

however, when i went to renew, i found that the doctor had faxed back the initial rx for the dosage i was previously on, without explanation. i assumed this was an error. so, i asked the pharmacy to fax back a request for a doubling of the rx a second time, and continued with the increased dosage. i also received a letter in july, indicating that my funding request for testicular removal had been granted; by that time, however, i'd already increased the dosage and decided to stick with it until i could see the doctor next. this carried forwards until the end of august, when my rx ran out and i tried again - with the same result. i took my last cyproterone dosage at 00:00 on august 31st; i needed to find another dosage by noon.

on the evening of the 30th, my pharmacy informed me that, while my rx was still valid, i would no longer be able to bill my insurance company for it because i'd already used up the rx until mid october. i would either need to pay out of pocket (an impossibility, considering my disability status) or ask the doctor to double the rx, to conform to what i'd been taking since early june. worse, my appointment with my family doctor had been postponed at this point, apparently because he was out of the office until mid-september, so i would be unable to speak with him directly.


the pharmacy sent another request on the morning of the 31st, and received back exactly the same response, confirming the initial rx.

baffled by this, i went into the dr's office and spoke with a doctor that was covering for him, who told me that the reason they kept sending back the initial dosage was that there were treatment guidelines that would not allow for a dosage beyond what i was taking. that is, i was already maxxed out on the cyproterone. i explained the situation to him, but he told me his hands were tied - he was *unable* to increase the dosage without exposing himself to liability, and would not do so. while he agreed that the dosage i requested was technically safe in the short term, he insisted it should only be prescribed to prostate cancer patients, and was not moved by my insistence that it was short term, until i could have my testicles removed, as a cancer patient might. he told me i'd have to pay out of pocket, knowing i could not.

so, faced without options, and feeling suicidal, i took myself to the er to explain the scenario - after twenty years of being female-identifying, that is essentially my entire waking life, i was forced with the inevitability of imminent detransition, without there being anything i could do about it. while i did not want to kill myself, i was fully cognizant that the effects of remasculinization would be too much for me to bear, and that i needed immediate intervention to prevent myself from falling into a downward spiral of depression that would have no conceivable endpoint besides me taking my own life. this was a very stressful realization; as mentioned, i suffer from a stress disorder, so an episode of some sort was inevitable, and the er was the right place for me to be while it was happening.

while waiting in the emergency room at the ouelette campus of the windsor hospital, i found myself badly triggered by the temperature. i was wearing a tight-fitting pink tshirt and a pair of stretchy jeans; i would have needed a winter jacket and a toque to feel comfortable in the temperature in the waiting room. while my inability to climatize to even the slightest amount of air conditioning is a known condition for me, i was not able to prevent myself from becoming episodic, and found myself engaging in erratic behaviour to try to warm up - running back and forth across the er room, running on the spot, swaying side to side, and sort of bicycling in motion while sitting in the chair. this attracted the attention of security, who demanded i stop, and this is where the complaint begins.

while this behaviour may have been slightly annoying, it was not threatening to the people around me, and i felt that preventing myself from falling ill due to the cold - something that i know from experience was of serious concern - was of greater importance than stopping some of the other patients from feeling annoyed. i know that i've been in er rooms where patients were experiencing far more annoying symptoms, due to schizophrenia or even mental retardation, than i was; dealing with people having mental breakdowns in whatever capacity is a part of the experience of going to the er, and they'd just have to suffer the minor inconvenience, which is all that it was.

the security guard, however, took it upon himself to get very aggressive with me at this point. first, he asked triage to discharge me without being seen by a doctor, which was granted by the nurse - who i had told moments earlier i was suicidal and episodic. so, i need to get that point across: i told the nurse that i suffered from anxiety and was at the er because i was suicidal and episodic, and she discharged me for being episodic. so, i was asked to leave for displaying the behaviour that brought me to the er in the first place.

rather than leave on request, i cited the canada health act and insisted i had the right to see a doctor when suicidal under stress from anxiety. the security guard on duty, who i later learned was named ryan, denied the universality clause in the canada health act and called the police to remove me from the property instead.

initially, the police attempted to remove me by force, but when i resisted they realized that i was having a mental health episode and relented. after all, when the police are faced with an individual in a mental health crisis, what they do is bring them to the hospital, which is where i already was. after some discussion and debate that i only vaguely remember due to being episodic, but that i recall was at times very heated, the police left the premises. i was called into the hospital shortly after that, but what follows is a continuation of the initial point of conflict, as security clearly felt i should have been removed.

the nurse i saw after triage was the one bright point of all of this and rather kind, as she realized i was shivering due to the air conditioning and brought me some warm blankets. the episode left me both physically and mentally exhausted, and i found myself falling asleep once i got under them - first it was two blankets, and then it was three more, and i could have used another ten to really warm up. this just demonstrates the extent of the situation, and how cold i really was.

i spoke very briefly with a dr. attan, who told me he could prescribe me a dangerous opiate (which i refused), but would not take my request for cyproterone seriously. he told me he'd take a look at my file, and did not return to speak with me. instead, i was asked by the nurse to provide blood & urine samples, and then eventually falsely accused of being under the influence of methamphetamines (something i've never taken before in my life!).

so, to recap: a patient who is diagnosed with a stress order (myself) entered the hospital in a suicidal state due to fear of detransitioning, and when she demonstrated symptoms of that stress disorder due to a real fear of an inevitable traumatic event, she was refused serious treatment, offered opiates as a treatment option instead and then told she must be on methamphetamines, instead of acknowledging the trauma she was experiencing.

if that was not outrageous enough, a psychiatrist (who's name i did not pick up) then appeared to try to talk me through the meth addiction. he asked me a number of questions, including whether i suffered from depression, and if i would take anti-depressants; i told him that i am diagnosed with anxiety, not depression, and would not take drugs for something i have no diagnosis for, and little suspicion i suffer from. further, i felt the best treatment for the anxiety was access to the testosterone suppressant, given the totality of the situation. what the psychiatrist essentially told me was that i should get used to detransitioning, and while he would prescribe me medication to deal with it (an opiate, or an ssri), he would not do anything to prevent it. when i told him that i did not want to detransition, he became agitated, accused me of manipulating the system for my benefit, told me i was lying when i claimed i was episodic and suicidal and then discharged me without further concern, insisting it was my choice if i killed myself over the effects of detransitioning.

at that point, this was all too much to take, and i decided i would starve to death, on the spot; the psychiatrist demanded that i immediately leave the premises, and called the police back in when i refused.

when the police arrived, i told them that i would not leave, and they could do with me what they will, as i no longer had any will to live. the police repeated the accusation that i was lying, as presented by the psychiatrist, and insisted that i was trespassing after having been discharged, and i could go die somewhere else if i insisted. at one point, i was told point blank by security, who was called into help remove me, that they didn't care if i killed myself or not.

some combination of security & the police (four large men, all and all) then handcuffed me and dragged me out of the er, yelling and screaming, and brought me to a holding cell in the windsor police station, where i was ticketed with trespassing on hospital property and released within a few hours. the ticket says 8:53 pm; i made it home a little after 00:00 on september 1st. the sergeant seemed pontius-like; he didn't think i did anything wrong, but felt the obligation to obey the requests of hospital staff.

as it was now after midnight, and i was still without access to the testosterone suppressors, and consequently still suicidal, i felt little choice but to make sure i had a sweater this time and go back to the hospital, to try again. what else was i going to do? what i hoped was that the staff had turned over, and i would be able to get a second opinion.

while the staff had indeed turned over - there was a new security guard, and new nurses at triage - i did not make it in to see a doctor the second time. instead, the police were called in to remove me from the waiting room before i was allowed to see a doctor. when i told the police i was suicidal, they seemed to take me more seriously than the doctors did, but they ultimately had to defer to the diagnosis that i was making it all up, and lying to manipulate them into prescribing, forcing me into making the choice to have to actually make an attempt to kill myself to prove the psychiatrist wrong, rather than have them react rationally to try to prevent me from actually doing that. i was arrested a second time at about 3:00 on the morning of the 1st and held in a cell until 8:30 am, when i was ticketed a second time and told i'd be charged criminally if i went back to the er, presumably leaving me to my own devices to die on the street.

while i intended to go back to the er, i did not doubt that they would arrest me a third time if walked right back in, so i decided to try a different approach; my family doctor was now open, as it was the morning of the next day, so i walked to his office and presented myself to reception, who told me he was not in the office. i told the receptionist that i would not leave as i had no other options surrounding existence, and asked her to make a decision to either call an ambulance to take me to the er (would they arrest me if i came in in an ambulance called by a physician's office?) or call the police to have me removed. the receptionist refused to make that choice, as she was not a doctor, and suggested i ask a walk-in clinic to make the choice instead. i decided that this was more likely to get me to the hospital in an ambulance, which was the choice i wanted made, and went to the closest clinic - which was closed, due to the pandemic. i tried a few more, and they were all closed as well. so, i decided to go home and make some calls to see what the best way to get into the hospital was, or maybe to try the other er campus (the met campus) in town. i first sent a fax to the windsor hospital when i got home, and then called my pharmacy to inquire as to the price of a very small supply - as i had now been off suppressors entirely for nearly 36 hours, and was starting to feel the effects. if i could buy a week's worth, it could prolong my life until i could convince somebody to prescribe...

thankfully, i got some empathy from the pharmacist, who fronted me a month, and that ended the crises for that time. it remains to be seen if i can either quickly have the surgery i need (which is now the priority) or find an appropriate doctor to overprescribe until i can.

while i take some responsibility for user error, as it is, the reaction by the security staff, the initial doctor and then the psychiatrist were outrageous, and there is little doubt in my mind that i would have been treated differently if i were a ciswoman seeking comparable treatment. neither the psychiatrist nor the doctor accepted my stress disorder as real or saw hormone replacement as an acceptable outcome - they both wanted to treat me as a drug addict, and ultimately prescribe me drugs for depression, instead (would they receive royalties for that?). this refusal to accept the premise of gender dysphoria as an existing condition at all, and clear insistence that i accept detransition instead, was a blatant demonstration of bias and an overt example of discrimination.

it could be many years before i'm able to approach the health care system in the same way again, if i ever can at all.

======

well, i was threatened with arrest three times and arrested twice for the crime of presenting myself to the health care system under extreme duress in the middle of a suicidal episode, and accused of lying about it by two doctors in order to manipulate the system, as a welfare recipient. i then spent roughly eight hours in a holding cell, instead of receiving medical care. this has severely shaken my faith in the health care system, and left me unclear as to how to react the next time that i suffer from my stress disorder, to the point that i have suicidal thoughts. will i be told i'm lying and arrested? put in jail? sent to county? i feel like i've been barred from receiving care, due to being transgendered. it's deeply traumatic, but they'll just tell me i'm lying if i push the point. while the past cannot be undone, and i will always live with the trauma of what happened, i feel that some kind of lesson needs to be learned, and some kind of changes need to be made. further, i feel that i should be compensated for what i went through.

=====

my head's coming back, and i'm not calming down.

i'm mad as hell.

let's go.

you can still find people in their 60s or older that deny that smoking causes cancer.

it's all propaganda, they say. nonsense. lies.

smoking is good for them - they saw it in the ads, it was in the papers, on the tv. what changed?

that's your future, potheads: denial. denial. denial...

medical tobacco was really, seriously a thing, you know.

they prescribed alcohol as a cure-all, as well.

and, we think marijuana is different because...?

because we don't learn. we're fucking idiots, collectively...

it should ultimately be the security guard's job to clear out the smokers, one would think.

it would help if he wasn't the worst offender of them all...

and, he seems to think his job is arresting queer people that might upset the elderly and religious in triage.

but, now...

...i've said too much...

nowadays, they give you marijuana or opiates instead.

windsor - where it's still 1955, all the time!

this is truly the place that time forgot.

i wonder which brand the doctors at the emergency room at the windsor hospital recommend?

this is a track i tend to find whenever i need to recover or regroup in some way. it's both general and specific enough that it works in pretty much any imaginable context, so long as you need to sit and rest for a while.

I think I'll quit to the valley
Regain my strength and start again

that's today.

back to the struggle, tomorrow.

so, i told you there's a story coming. what am i doing today?

first, i'm going to allow for some reflection before i react. when you go through something that is objectively baffling, it is often a good idea to stop to think before you act. so, i'm processing.

i will at least confess that i've done grocery shopping for the month, and i had put off eating for a bit leading up to late yesterday. so, i've got a few days to catch up on.

and, i told you i was sore...

so, i'm resting my aching body, for right now, catching up on eating and more or less waiting until i stop hurting before i decide what to do next.

i'll have something written up when i'm ready. it won't be more than a few days.

it was at least an absolutely beautiful day here yesterday, even if it ended in a ridiculous torrential downpour.

and, the story has a happy ending.

but you'll need to wait for it.

the kind of masculinity that comes out of these situations when you're forced to get what are at their core exceedingly macho guys, some of which are more comfortable with their sexuality than others, interact with 120 pound transwomen in tight or revealing clothing is often confusing and contradictory, because one minute they're grab-handing you like you're a dude, and the next minute they're telling you to make a sandwich.

everything else aside, the story of the night was a really stark experience of coming face-to-face with sheer patriarchy.

the story will come in time as my head is still blurry, but i was actually told by one of the better cops i was dealing with at about 3:00 am on tuesday morning to go home and make sandwiches.

and, i don't even think he realized what he said.

shhh.

  

i'm home, after what was one of if not the single longest, most stressful days of my life.

i'm sore everywhere, some of it from over-exertion and some of it from being manipulated by some thuggish cops. and, sleep is not optional in humans.

more later. but yikes....

zzzzzzz.

i am.

soon.

all i ever said was that this was never going to work. none of it.

so, you need to take responsibility for your self, instead of telling other people what to do.

in theory, if we were all nurses, right? but, we're not. and that was obvious.

so, they forced us to wear masks because standing six feet apart wasn't working.

now, the masks aren't working, either - which is probably as much about user error as anything else. you can't expect people to use masks correctly. you just can't...

so, what's next?

mandatory hazmat suits?

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/canada-s-active-covid-19-case-number-is-rising-shortly-before-most-schools-reopen-1.5085281

you need to adjust to reality, not pretend the government will keep you safe from nearly air-borne particles.

and, if that means swallowing a pill or adjusting your attitude, so be it.

it's the same basic mentality, though - when somebody tells you it's everybody else's responsibility to ensure they don't get sick, rather than their own, they are basically reflecting the lack of individual responsibility that is ruining the contemporary left.

and, you're just as likely to succeed in declaring a virus-free space as you are in declaring a safe one.

i'll let the internet run with this, and am sort of surprised that it doesn't seem like it has, up to now.

it would be extra sardonic if those kids were dressed like witch doctors, or orthodox priests, and were "cleaning" the air with sage (which is highly carcinogenic, actually) to ward the virus out of their safe space.

one of the few things i just can't do at all is draw. i've never been remotely good at it.

but, i'd like to see a cartoon with some activist kids holding up a sign that says

virus free safe space

...and some recognizable health experts looking at each other, baffled, with a bubble caption reading:

"why didn't we think of that?"

i've been saying this for months, and i'm not going to say it every day for the next two weeks.

if you put your faith in the system to protect you from the virus, and insist you have the right to be safe from it (why not just declare a safe space, a virus free area?) and everybody else needs to behave in a way to facilitate it, then somebody you love is going to die as a result of your actions and you'll have only your own stupidity to blame.

you should assume your kids will get sick, and treat them like they're diseased from day one.

responsibility for your health is your own, and if you don't accept it, you'l need to deal with the consequences.

so, stop worrying about whether there's a sink in your child's classroom or not. it doesn't matter. take the precautions you need to protect yourself, or suffer the consequences for it.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7306040/coronavirus-b-c-teachers-union-back-to-school-ad/

again: there's no science underlying the idea of closing the border. testing in canada has been lower than virtually anywhere else in the developed world, and the official case loads reflect it, and it appears to have been intentionally done to manipulate the data, but the mortality rate is not substantively lower, when adjusted to population levels. we're not doing much better, at all. if it's a little better, it probably has more to do with the fact that we have unfettered access to care, at least in theory.

but, everything's canceled in michigan anyways, and the summer's over, so it's too late to matter, now.

i'm not likely going to want to go to detroit until the spring, anyways.

i'm just hunkering down for a long winter....

lol.

we get the leaders we deserve, in the end.

maybe we shouldn't have done what we did, but we did...

and, now, everybody is going to be on welfare for the next ten years - even if they remove the laws tomorrow. the damage has already been done.

the government needs to realize this and shift it's role.

they might actually save money with a ubi.

this is an artificial recession caused by draconian laws that restrict people from spending money, and it will last as long as the laws do.

what i'm going to say is that economics as a psycho-social theory needs to be approached very carefully right now.

things that would normally work might not, and things that would normally fail just might work.

but, my basic position is that the government should be less concerned about getting people to spend and more concerned about making sure they don't get evicted. the economy remains largely closed, and stimulus should not be the focus until it's fully opened.

i mean, i'll take any checks you want to give me, sure. just don't be surprised if i put the money in the bank and wait until the mask laws are overturned.

and, if they never get overturned, i may never spend that money at all - because i don't want to hang out in a room full of people with masks on.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-recession-economists-1.5704628

if you told me this is permanent would i spend more money?

on what?

even if i were to buy some clothes, there'd be nowhere to wear them.

right now, there's not any gear i can think of on the list.

i'm a concert person, but it's not just the concerts. you can't see a play, can't see a movie. can you even go swimming? what can you actually do? where can you actually go?

you can go to a restaurant, if you wear a mask and don't talk to anybody, but who wants to do that?

so, if this is permanent, i'd expect a recession. i guess we might figure out different ways to spend money, eventually. but, right now, i couldn't figure out what to even do with free money if you threw it at me.

so, the weather today is making potential fan shopping impossible. i don't want to order it online and wait a week, i want it when i want it. i'll need to wait to go tomorrow.

i spent some time this morning cleaning in here and it helped a little.

the temperature is turning over outside, so the temperature in here is going to fall quite a bit, and that's ok. i might have to put some clothes on, but i can handle that, it's more the refrigeration technology with the air that gets into my bones and drives me nuts.

i'm going to try to do some catch up, but i'm feeling myself nodding off again, so who knows.

i would guess that most money handed out for stimulus right now will just end up paying down debt.

they should wait until things are running more smoothly.

if you give me a lot of money, i'm not likely to spend it, because there's nowhere to spend it.

so, i'd be focusing less on economic recovery right now and more on ensuring that people have basic needs to survive met - which i'm ok with, due to odsp being probably the most stable check in town.

i just want to point out that i have no apprehension about going out of the house and doing things.

it's just that anything i'd want to do has been cancelled, or restricted to the point that it's not any fun.

so, i smoked too much pot (about the only thing that didn't get canceled) and burned myself out, to the point that the sight or smell of the stuff is making me sick. and, now, i'm going to sit at home and wait it out, instead. i'm basically starting my yearly winter hibernation in mid-august, out of sheer boredom.

i don't know how representative i am, but i know that nothing much is going to change with me, personally, until you actually loosen the restrictions in the economy.

https://financialpost.com/executive/posthaste-canadas-economic-recovery-is-already-flagging-it-may-be-time-for-new-finance-ministers-freeconomics

so, i dunno what the next step is at all.

it's still true that the only non-smoking housing that exists is run by the city. but, i'm losing confidence in that being a way out.

i may find myself wanting to move to a small town, but i know that opens up a lot of other problems around my gender identity. i'm more likely to get into a fight with the church than care what they think, but christians are known to kill people they don't like, and i have my safety to concern myself with.

what it means is that if i thought there was no escape before...

it's ubiquitous.

it's just the normal outside air smell, now. all day, every day, everywhere, all the time.

you walk down any street in this city nowadays, and all you can smell is low quality drugs for miles around, and carbon monoxide from the cars.

it's a truly disgusting combination.

i was guilty (for a few weeks.), but i've stopped. and i can only hope that everybody else does soon, too.

the headache is getting a little better, but i'm still overwhelmingly drained, and unable to stay awake.

am i depressed? is that possible?

it's a depressing scenario all around. i think that tuesday was the only day i've bothered to brush my hair and look presentable all summer. there's just nothing to do, no reason to get out of bed.

if i could get those testicles cut out tomorrow, it would help. really.

and the smell of smoke is not pleasant. at all.

i need to make some calls today, but am not expecting to be productive for a while, still. that fan is paramount, and i just need to make the point about it - i'm basically useless without it

....and it's the city.

i'm just a few blocks from where the 401 hits the ambassador bridge. maybe the one thing that was nice about the shutdown was the decrease in air pollution; now that it's come back, it just stinks that much worse.

my headache and sleepiness is not going to go away until i'm able to find a new fan on the weekend, and i'll probably buy two. the 31st is a monday, so i don't know if it'll clear 24 or 48 hours from now. and, that will be the end of this somewhat awful month.

i'm going to make an omelette, but i don't really expect much between now and then.

i just can't function in stagnant air like this. it's not the temperature, it's the stillness. i need constant flow.

there was a "chinese supermarket" i was in when i was looking for raspberry tea that...

i think there was a language barrier, and that's why i haven't posted about it. i told him repeatedly that i have asthma (which is a half-truth.), and he honestly didn't seem to understand. he just kept saying in broken english that i needed to have a mask.

so, i just stopped and asked him, blankly: "do you want my business or not?"

and, he looked at me like he was going to cry and shook his head.

so, i walked out.

the adjustment i made was that i carry my puffer now, so that people with language barriers can understand why i'm not wearing a mask, and can make a choice as to whether upholding the fud overpowers their bottom line, or not.

again, if you find yourself in this situation, what you need to do is the following:

1) be assertive, but stay calm.
2) ask for the manager.
3) explain to the manager that you're leaving the store because of the laws. that way, they understand why they're losing business.
4) take your business elsewhere.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/mask-restaurant-brandon-manitoba-1.5699001

i had to do a lot of running around yesterday.

i was concerned about cops sitting on the street corners with baseball bats, but almost nobody was maskless, indicating that the fear, uncertainty and doubt seems to be working. there were again two cases yesterday...

people actually seem to have been taken aback by something they saw on me that they may not have seen on anybody in quite a while, namely lipstick.

i'd bet cosmetic companies are taking it hard right now in some places, because what's the point when you're wearing a mask? but, you could see it in the eyes of random females walking by.

i remember that. i miss that, just a little. not jealous.

i managed to find another month's worth of brand name estrace, right here in windsor. is there more out there? there might be, i don't know....

this month was been awfully unproductive. i keep trying to clean up posts back to early august, and keep getting stuck, either via distraction (posts this month are twice the average) or as a consequence of migraines or oversleeping. it snuck up on me this time by accident, but quitting smoking is not fun. but, i'm inside now for a bit, and am two weeks past it, so let's hope i can get a bit of work done before i have to do groceries for september.

so, it took me a few days longer than i'd have liked it to get groceries done; i picked up a few things late on thursday, a few more on friday and had to wait until saturday afternoon to get some raspberries & strawberries at the far store, as they were overpriced at the close ones. so, i'm a few days behind.

i've got my workstation set back up now and am ready to get back to work in rapidly finishing up the consistency check over 2014 and moving to rebuilding 2015 in one swoop.

guinea pigs. what have we done to them?

it was the other night, walking home with groceries, maskless, that i was thinking about the virus, and potential vaccination approaches. with all of this skepticism around basic science (people challenging the science around antibodies, for example) that i'm pushing back against, it's frustrating that we're not seeing a more healthy skepticism around vaccine use; the potential dangers of handing out an untested vaccine don't seem to be registering with the general population, who seem a little bit frighteningly naive about the safety of untested vaccines, as they've been conditioned to be by a media that understandably targets vaccine skeptics as a public health nuisance.

but, i need to stress that a tetanus shot has been widely tested for a long period of time. we know that adverse reactions are rare, and it's a relatively safe way to protect yourself from something that can legitimately kill you. it's going to be impossible to do proper testing with these covid-19 vaccines before releasing them; the safety trial is going to be the first deployment of the vaccine.

so, the people that get the vaccine first are going to be...guinea pigs. you want to argue you should give it the elderly first, but given that the first recipients are going to be guinea pigs, is it potentially better to give it to a more resilient population, like kids?

but, then do you support treating kids like....guinea pigs?

and, i stopped and decided that, no, i don't support treating kids like guinea pigs - it is the elderly at risk, and they must assume it.

but, then i stopped to realize that i don't even support treating guinea pigs like guinea pigs.

what have we done to these creatures? we have entirely co-opted their identity, fully stolen their existence from them. for when we think of guinea pigs, we no longer imagine vibrant, high-strung rodents flopping around the edges of the forest floor, but imagine animals in cages under human experimentation. they exist, in our language, solely for our own amusement.

there's a historical parallel in how we've used racial terms to refer to slaves in various languages, so that the word that we use to describe that racial group is the same word we used to describe the concept of a slave. in english, we've adopted the word slave from anglo-norman invaders, who brought it to the island with a germano-latin ruling class that enslaved the slavic-speaking speakers to the east of europe, largely to sell them to the arabic rulers in the middle east. so, in english, our word for slave is the same as our word for slav. in arabic, the concept of slavery is intrinsically tied into the physicality of blackness, which is something that partially developed in the united states, as well.

so, that's what i did yesterday. the map cuts off, but the town i ended up in was tilbury....for a few minutes, anyways - enough to buy the pills and smoke a joint in a farmer's field and get out.

while it's about the same distance to leamington as it is to tilbury (my route is about 5 km's shorter than google's in either direction), this was a slightly longer ride, because a large part of it was through a residential area, and there were a lot more lights. i left at about 13:00, i got to the store about 17:30, i left about 18:30 and i was home before 23:00. so, i got the space covered in around 4.5 hours in either direction. considering that i stopped for at least five smoke & mt dew breaks in both directions, 3-3.5 hours of actual biking is about right. hey, if you can do that without stopping, then sign up for the olympics; in reality, you actually take the car to the corner store to get milk, don't you? ugh.

i got home, took a shower and slept for quite a while. i haven't even eaten yet...

how big is windsor, really? it's a weird layout for a city, and i suspect it's the same thing all around the peninsula - i don't feel like i left fully urban civilization until i got out of saint joachim., but it's only because i took the lakeshore drive, and i got some pictures of lac st clair (something i hadn't seen before). it's probably the same thing around the detroit river into lake erie, but i haven't done the trek, yet.

i'm not exaggerating - it's just a string of houses up the road along the lake for miles, of varying composition. some of these houses i drove by were legit 30 room mansions, while there was one section of particularly old and dilapidated housing that seemed like it might have been a small indigenous reserve (i don't know if that's true). i'm sure that the wealth disparity has a lot to do with which areas are more flood prone, but for the purposes of biking, that's not all that important. i'm just pointing out the long string of housing up the coast of the lake that makes it seem like you're still in the city, after you've left it behind miles and miles ago. there's small communities on the main road, county road 2, but if i had taken that route, i'd have been taking an old highway with no shoulders through much of it, and often driving through fields, making it seem more like a ride through the country. indeed, you'll note that i ended up back on a road that runs directly from windsor  (where it is called cabana road) to tilbury (where it is called mill street) and that i may have saved some time by just staying on it, but the trade-off is that cabana switches to rural almost right off the 401, so almost the entire road would have been through farmland and old roads. they actually announced a project to uplift the road recently, and if i could put in a request to mayor dilbert to just extend the bike line all the way to tilbury...

i got 40 days worth, though!

how much further can i go than tilbury? i felt this ride, near the end, more than i felt the last one, even if the distance was about the same. so, i don't know. i know that if i have to go to chatham-kent, or to some other small town on the way to london and/or hamilton (and/or niagara) then i'm going to need to leave earlier.

keeping the windows closed overnight actually seems to have resolved the issue i was dealing with yesterday, but only because i've got some latent heat built up in the floors, now, i think. it's about time to open them for the day...

this was the elevation going from windsor to leamington yesterday, which is maybe why the wind felt so brisk.

and, that might explain why it felt faster on the way home, as well.

it seemed flat, but i guess there was a steady incline. i guessed as much moving home, on the other side of it.

how far did i bike today?

i went there and i went back. so, that's 54.5*2 = 109 km. that's about 68 miles.

google says three hours, and maybe that might be true if literally biking at a constant rate, but i stopped repeatedly for hydration, which is a real-life adjustment. it took me about four hours in either direction.

i don't feel that this is the limit of what i could do on a bike over a day. rather, i'm sure i could do more. but, i worry about the safety of the roads. much further than leamington, and i'm going to have to take a freeway, and i don't want to.

i'm also rather sun burnt, and won't know the extent of it until tomorrow.

i got enough for 25 days. let's just hope there's a better answer in 25 days....

how do i feel after that? i think it'll hit me tomorrow...

so, what's going on with me?

yesterday, i got a little bit upset about the border being closed for another month and went to get something to eat to kind of let me head settle before i started strategizing, and i decided that i couldn't waste the solstice sitting inside complaining. so, i went and bought a quarter of what so far seems to be better quality marijuana, at a reasonable price. it worked out to $65 for the quarter after taxes, which is in line with expected costs. we'll see how i feel as the solstice contains to carry on, but i'm feeling alright for just right now.

i didn't get a thing done last night at all, i just got lost reading articles, and made a comment or two on them. but, i was more just baked and wanting to passively read. it happens, sometimes.

this afternoon, i finally started calling around about the estrace and found 100 pills in an undisclosed location that is going to require some travelling to get to tomorrow. google wants to either send me up this gravel dirt path (which is going to be awful bicycling through) or down this abandoned rural, forested road, presumably because it's the shortest path. but, i'd like to travel mostly through civilization of some sort, even if that civilization is just farmland. i'm not keen about getting eaten while bicycling to get estrace. so, i've been charting my own path through the essex back roads, to try to maximize human contact while travelling. i'm realizing that this region is far more populated than i imagined it was. i think i can do this fairly reasonably.

so, i'm off for an adventure tomorrow.

the good news is that that's another 25 days, so if i can get all of the running around i need done, hopefully i can finish that thought process i started the other day relatively quickly. i never got around to cleaning up the overposting on the deathtokoalas blog, and should get to doing that tonight, maybe.

there's a dog across the street, and the first couple of times it saw me walk by, it modulated between incessant yelping and curious distance. but, as it has seen me walk by a few times, it's grown accustomed to me, and is now approaching me with wagging tail and sagging tongue.

see, i think it's figured out what i'm doing when i go out. i don't want to say the magic w-word, it might know and get excited, and think....but alas, no. i will walk...shit...right by every time.

central to this change in reaction, i think, is the recognition that i live across the street. the dog seems to have noticed that, specifically, and been able to abstract close living conditions with pack membership. i live in this dog's hood, so i'm therefore cool to walk with.

it remains to be seen how the dog reacts to repeated rejection, as i continue to saunter by and leave it behind. in it's dog's mind, it no doubt believes it has an equal opportunity to walking, and it damned well knows i'm going for a walk - without him. behavioural tests on dogs have shown that they understand preferential treatment, and have an intuitive concept of justice around sharing, up to the point that they are, of course, immensely competitive for resources. it's the same contradictions we have, just in a more primal and less restrained form. so, the dog is going to no doubt feel left out, at some point.

the real revolution, of course, will come when the dog takes the initiative to walk itself. only then can there be true opportunity for all to engage in equal walking; for the dog to gain the freedom of a human to walk at will, it must seize it for itself. but, there is such a high level of responsibility to self-walking, including the need to regulate defecation, to avoid biting and to just plum out not run away, that it seems questionable whether self-walking is a realistic goal for the dog population at this point. there would really need to be a social revolution in doggy behaviour, and it would no doubt need to be expressed genotypically before it could be established with any force or regularity.

but, i wonder if the friendly dog again turns vicious in the end, due to dejection.

'cause i'm goin' for a walk. that's right. a walk. see ya doggy....

i got a little bit distracted yesterday by this playlist embedding feature on youtube, which has tended to be broken more often than not. i just realized it works again. i'm almost caught back up...

i was feeling great yesterday in the high humidity - finally - but i woke up to chapped lips from the fucking air conditioner upstairs, and i've been groggy and unfocused since. we're going to get a mild spike, but it's nothing like yesterday and that contraption might ruin it :(. but i want to wait until the sun comes down before i shower.

i've given it a few tries, and the red peppers are an acceptable change in taste. it's a little sweeter, but, really, it's the tomato that overpowers, in the mixture. so, it's less like i'm introducing something sweet in and more like i'm losing the bitter green pepper - which i actually like, but i'm more concerned about nutrients just right now. so, i'm going to stick with them for a while and see what it does in the long run...

how about the meds? it's been a week since i doubled the t-blockers, and i haven't notice a whole lot yet. it's got me wondering, though. what if this doesn't work? what if i'm doomed to detransitioning?

i never really experimented with homosexuality. i had one girlfriend, and the way that worked was that she went after me, and i relented at a weak point; i would have normally resisted her. but, i was just starting hormones, as a virgin. she talked me into it as an experiment; it wasn't supposed to be a long term relationship. but, i got very emotionally attached in a way that seemed to confuse her...she never really grasped the whole concept of transsexuality. i would have probably otherwise gone through with this years ago.

as it is, i've turned down a lot of girls since then (i don't tend to show up properly on the gaydar of women) and have long realized that i'm just not into them and am probably never going to be. but, i've never made an actual attempt to be a gay male.

if i'm stuck with these stupid things whether i like it or not....

let's hope it works and i can get to a surgeon sooner or later, so this isn't an actual issue. but, if i end up detransitioning, maybe i can try the whole gay dude thing out for a bit, at least. maybe it's worth a try. i dunno.

that was some substantive hail that just ran through here.

i was worried about the windows, probably for the first time in my life.

it seems like today is the first truly gorgeous day of the year.

i wish there was something to go out and do.

i'm in an impossible situation with the smoke.

i'm pretty sure the smoke is coming from upstairs, mostly, but i've had mixed results with the windows open; sometimes, it seems like it's clearing the shit from upstairs out, and sometimes it seems like it's letting shit in.

but, if i close the window, it's going to get cold and dry in here, which is the worst.

it actually hasn't been that humid here recently. it's been hot, finally, but it's more of a dry heat. i prefer a humid heat to a dry one, myself. so, i'm not getting the turn over i really want, it's kind of just more like i've got the heat on to try to overpower the a/c.

but, my basic choice appears to be that i can close the window and suffer through the a/c or open the window and cough at the smokers on the street, which is as shitty an option as there could be. i think i hate smokers less than i hate air conditioning. which says something about how much i hate air conditioning....

i'm not sure if that's actually rigorous, though. i mean, i'm not going to swear on the directionality of my sense of smell. and, more often than not, it seems like the smoke is coming from upstairs, anyways.

i need to be clear: i've actually never seen anybody smoking anywhere near my window, in this unit. i'm pretty sure that the neighbours directly outside the window smoke, but i've never seen them outside smoking and i've seen at most two or three butts in what now amounts to almost two years. every time i've gone outside, i haven't smelled anything. i have no evidence that they're the cause of anything. in fact, they're exceedingly quiet, and i'm not sure if they're even home, or have been home for weeks.

the neighbours on the other side smoke rather heavily and the mom seems to be a "medicinal" marijuana addict. there's a family living there, at least part time, and she seems to have gotten the kids smoking at a young age. but, i'm also not sure if they're even home, and i've mostly avoided them by keeping the windows on that side of the house shut.

i suppose it's possible that what i think is coming from upstairs is actually coming from the other side, but i don't think that's actually true. while i might catch them out smoking sometimes, it's actually infrequent, and they tend to smoke in the back, on the far side. what i'm experiencing this weekend is relatively constant, and i don't think it's them.

there are heavy smokers across the street that are visible and noticeable, but they're up a hill and a ways away and it doesn't make sense to think it's seeping down in this direction. we don't get shit shinooks. the hill just isn't big enough.

so, if i could figure it out, right? if you could tell me who to yell at, i'd yell at them. but, the reality seems to be that it's somebody upstairs, and they just lie about it when confronted, so what's the point?

all i can do is clean more frequently, keep an eye out for slips i might capitalize on and otherwise wait for subsidized housing to call.

it may have been psychological....

but, i could have sworn i felt my eyes refocus as i was eating the first red pepper, as though my body was saying thank you for getting me the nutrients you've been denying me. i'm sorry, ocular system; i'm sorry, brain. i didn't realize it. really.

your eyes are really a window into your brain, literally. it's like your brain burrowed out into the world through your skull and tried to eat the light...

i understand that it won't fix my broader vision problems, which are....this is a very sad story, actually....

i had surgery for a "lazy eye" when i was a kid, which was something my parents got into a heated argument about. basically, my mother decided that i should get the surgery because she had the surgery. that was the extent of her logic - she had it, so therefore i must have it. i don't know if this is a result of how alcoholics anonymous destroys your brain or if she was a genetic determinist to begin with, but she has little concept of the stochasticism and randomness that defines modern science, including modern genetics - she seems to think, essentially, that dna is some kind of god, and we have almost no ability to overturn it. in her estimation, we are entirely predetermined at birth, and that's all there is to it.

she had a lazy eye, therefore i have a lazy eye. qed.

as mentioned, i think the root cause of this weirdness is not some kind of calvinism, or at least not explicitly, but the 12-step program, which has brainwashed her into thinking that she has a genetic disease called alcoholism that she has no free will over. she has extrapolated that exceedingly widely, in absolutely absurd ways, and this is really just one example of it, however extreme it is.

my dad insisted on some kind of evidence and this is the crushingly sad part of it - he took me to doctor after doctor and they all actually told me that i don't have an eye condition. that's right - i saw roughly ten doctors, and they all told me my vision was great.

she finally found a doctor that would do it, and the result is that my eyesight has been relatively poor ever since.

i was too young to really put up much of a fight. and, the court gave my mom custody, despite her history of substance dependence and mental illness, because a child should be with their mother - my dad had no legal ability to stop it.

so, the vitmain a won't undo a surgery that should have never been done or fix my eyesight that was ruined at the end of a knife blade.

but, i swear that i felt it sharpen in focus. for a minute.

it was getting pretty bad for a bit. really. i can handle being near-sighted, but i'd like the distance before it clicks in to be more than a foot. if it helps even a little, that's welcome.

i just find this so horribly frustrating. it's enough to make me want to just go out into the woods and hack them off with a fucking machete, then call an ambulance and let them deal with the blood loss, and then send the bill to the "specialist" that refused to do it.

and, as it is, i lost a week looking for hormones that should really be available over the counter to try and fight off a hormonal imbalance that should have been corrected eons ago. ugh.

so, what's happened since tuesday morning?

as mentioned, i went to an appointment on tuesday. my vitals are great, but my testosterone is...it's not as wonderfully low as it was previously, and it's been creeping up, which i need to put a stop to, immediately. the doctor suggested i move to spiro and i tentatively agreed without really looking into it. i also picked up some generic estrogen on the way home, after realizing how hard it's going to be to get the brand name product, which i later learned is on back-order for the foreseeable future.

i also picked up some red peppers when i was out, as i mentioned i would, to try to get the A up. but, it otherwise wasn't a very exciting day.

i was hoping to get a start on the court stuff overnight, but i got lost in researching the different anti-androgens, instead, and ended up sending a lengthy fax to my doctor, requesting we go back to cyproterone and boost the dose to try to stop the testosterone from creeping up further and potentially detransitioning me (which would be a deep existential crisis that probably would make me suicidal). in the afternoon, i ended up calling every store in town and finding 30 estrace pills at the furthest possible store.

how far? this far:

it actually wasn't that long a ride, and i found myself disappointed by the fact that i didn't even break a sweat. i'm not exaggerating - my brow was bone dry, after biking in the heat for an hour in either direction. a big part of the problem was that there was a cool breeze running the whole way. so, i was hoping for a nice sweaty ride in 40 degree humidity - exercising in sauna-like conditions - and instead ended up in a situation that was more like biking in an air conditioned room, which is pointless. in fact, it was sort of depressing. i didn't start to feel the heat until late in the afternoon, when it went over 30, but by then i was about to come in....

the doctor did reverse the prescription for me, but he didn't immediately boost the dosage. so, i picked up a refill for thirty days that is only going to last me 15, and i asked the pharmacy to fax the doctor, asking him if he got the dosage right.

i was at least tired when i got in, but, if anything, it seemed like i'd gained a few points from the mountain dew i was drinking as a pick-me-up. and i'm sort of distraught about it, as i may hardly get any exercise at all this summer, if they don't let me out to do stuff. i don't want to go out and ride my bike around in circles like a fucking retard to get my heart rate up; i'd feel like i'm wasting my time. and, i'm not interested in protest politics that aren't fundamentally about class, which seems to be out of fashion right now (i'll wait.). but, if i can get out to go to concerts and stuff, i can get a lot of exercise just by using my bike as a means of transportation. that's what i've been relying on for years. yesterday was my chance to sweat it out, and i feel it was wasted by the cool weather.

i mean, i could have picked up the pace, and that would have potentially got me sweating a little, but at the expense of building muscle. i'm interested in cardio; i'm not interested in weight gain. so, i don't want to do exercises designed to build muscle, which is what biking hard in a cool wind is. that's actually why i've been avoiding the bike all year - it's been too cold, and biking in the cold leads to weight gain, not weight loss.

*shrug*

i slept until early in the morning, and i've been kind of doing loose ends kinds of things since - putting away fruit, doing dishes, eating, cleaning up the blog, etc.

i got the replacement noise trade site up last night when i got out of the shower, and before i crashed. still no word back from them. and, it's still up. for now. i dunno....i really want them to write me some kind of essay, so i understand.

what's next?

well, i wanted to get a handle on the court stuff this week, but i guess that's done, now. it looks more like that's going to be a weekend thing. and, i should probably give paste another few days to respond before i give up on them and set up shop elsewhere.

as of right now, i should be in for another 15-20 days, until i need to get out to find more estrogen. so, let's hope i can get these things done with in that space, and get a good start on the last batch of liner notes to close the first reconstruction phase.

i am a voluntary celibate.

and, i don't want to end up an involuntary jerk-off.

people aren't worth the fucking effort; i couldn't be bothered. i'd rather read a book.

i have not had sex since george w. bush was president, which is when i was in my early 20s.

and, i do not want to ever have sex ever again.

i just want to turn it off completely.

the 2010s are now over.

i had sex zero times.

my 30s are almost over.

i had sex zero times.

like, get the point. i don't want to.

ugh.

my doctor doesn't want to increase my dosage of cyproterone. so, i'm going to have to find a way to get around him.

i sent him this today, and we'll see what he tells me, but i'll order it from out of the country if he doesn't prescribe it, that's fine.

===

hi.

i feel it's my responsibility as a patient to let you know that i began doubling my dosage of cyproterone yesterday, and will be continuing to take 200 mg a day until my next bloodwork. i have enough supply to last me until the end of june and will find some other way to secure a sufficient amount of t-blockers if you won't prescribe it.

i was also able to find enough brand name estrogen to take me until the end of june, and was consequently only on the generics for 24 hours. we'll have to see if i can secure a larger supply of the brand name after that.

i do not want my testosterone to continue to increase, or to continue suffering any of the side effects that seem to be associated with the creeping testosterone levels. i will let you know at our next appointment if the increased dosage of cyproterone has ameliorated any of the side effects i was associating with it, and we'll have to see if it takes it back towards 0, where it was before.

i do not want a male sex drive.
i do not want penile function, in any way at all.
i am not interested in sex, in any context.
i do not want to masturbate. at all.
i do not want muscle mass.
i do not want body hair.

i do not want testosterone. at all.

i'm bitching about it, but i still probably have less testosterone than your mom does.

just so you know.

i just want to clarify a point.

"normal" male t-levels are 10-25 nmol/L.
"normal" female t-levels are 0.5-2.5 nmol/L.

so, when i point out that my levels went from .1 to .2 to .4 to .8 this year, i'm still well in the female reference range.

but, i want it at 0.0.

i want it destroyed.

permanently.

we need much stronger legal protections for non-smokers in residential areas.

it's a deficit in the law, and it needs to be fixed.

if somebody is smoking a foot from your window and you ask them to stop and they refuse (because they're too shit-faced drink all of the time to form a cogent thought process), what do you do?

if you're going to tell me they have the right to smoke and i have the obligation to accept it, i'm going to disagree with you, and call you a moron.

i asked nicely, and they just swore at me and told me i use "big words". this woman was probably clinically retarded, from however many years of heavy alcoholism, and who knows what else. she could not be reasoned with. and i did try.

so, what do you do?

i'm an activist, and i resorted to direct action; what i did was what i could in that legal grey area between protest and technical illegality, and i was in the right to do it, and she was in the wrong to resist it.

i would have been happy to fight this in court, and i would have won.

i don't think i did anything wrong, and i'd do it again.

second-hand smoke in residential areas is a scourge on our society, and i'm happy to do what i can to fight to eradicate it; this is the right side of history, and if you disagree with me, you're just wrong, and will lose.

and, if you're curious, the "medical" marijuana user that i called the police on to get a report to take to the landlord & tenant board was very white. i'd guess she was polish, or otherwise of eastern european extraction.

she looked a lot like andrea horwath, during one of her between-elections fat phases:

the woman that called the police on me for "harassing" her when she ignored me when i asked her to smoke away from my window, however, was black. i was blaring loud music out my window whenever she sat outside (it was merzbow.) and otherwise making her smoking experience uncomfortable as a disincentive for her to smoke there, so she called me in for bothering her. i don't think i had an obligation to sit there and breathe in her filth, and am not sorry for making her life unpleasant, as she was polluting my living space and refused to adjust to requests not to.

when the cops arrived, i argued that my behaviour was justified by her insistence on smoking near my window and told them point blank that i was trying to chase her off, and i wasn't going to stop. i was willing to take the fight to court; if she didn't like what i was doing, she should smoke somewhere else. i also suggested that they file charges against her for causing a nuisance, which is defined in canadian law as follows:

Common nuisance

180 (1) Every person is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than two years or is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction who commits a common nuisance and by doing so

(a) endangers the lives, safety or health of the public, or

(b) causes physical injury to any person.

(2) For the purposes of this section, every one commits a common nuisance who does an unlawful act or fails to discharge a legal duty and thereby

(a) endangers the lives, safety, health, property or comfort of the public; or

(b) obstructs the public in the exercise or enjoyment of any right that is common to all the subjects of Her Majesty in Canada.

i don't know who, in 2020, can argue with a straight face that second-hand smoke is not endangering the health of the public. however, i was unable to convince any of the officers to file charges against her.

as she continued to smoke in a way that bothered me, i did threaten to take the issue directly to the justice of the peace if she didn't smoke somewhere else, but this was after she called the cops on me for trying to chase her off with the merzbow. in the end, my threats do seem to have been effective in coercing her to smoke elsewhere. for the last several weeks of my tenancy in the unit, she smoked in the front of the house, away from my window.

so, i did a lot of things to piss this woman off, and i also attempted to get bylaw involved under anti-smoking regulations, but i did not call the police to deal with the smoke complaint, as i realized they had no actionable cause without clear evidence of intentional harm. and, i had actually decided to bypass the cops (who are useless.) and go directly to the judge. but, i didn't have to, in the end - she realized what she was doing was wrong and modified her behaviour. eventually...

it should not have taken weeks of yelling and screaming to get her to react responsibly, but she did the right thing in the end.

however, if i thought they could have done something, if there was a law around second-hand smoke in residential areas that they could actually enforce, then i might have called them, sure.

my preference was direct action against the smoker, and that's what i did, and, in the end, it did work. she called them on me, not the other way around.

and, while the issue is not cited in the harassment charge against me that was eventually dropped (i was charged with repeatedly applying for housing. i kept applying because i claimed the property owner was discriminating against me. the property owner, who is rich and powerful and therefore a friend of the police, essentially argued that my claims of discrimination were harassment. because she was upper class, she got the cops to go for that very stupid argument, which was instantly laughed at by the court, and eventually retracted by the prosecutor. conversely, my much stronger legal argument for criminal nuisance around secondhand smoke was not accepted by the police, because i'm poor. do you see how class is important, here?), it is clear enough that it had a lot to do with the illegal arrest that eventually happened, as it was the same officers involved. and, i have in fact cited the officer's behaviour, in context, as reasoning for my request that he be charged with harassment, for repeatedly coming to my house and bothering me.

just in case that's unclear.

i haven't killed any cops yet. but, i've dealt with this twice, and i need to plead with people.

stop calling the fucking cops on people that you love. it's beyond fucking stupid.

when i first went back on hormones in 2009, i just bought a bunch of hormones from india. when my dad found out, he had a fit because he was concerned i might accidentally buy something like fentanyl (a concern tied into experiences with his own recreational drug use in the 70s). in a technical sense, he was sort of right - i wasn't testing the drugs. i didn't really know that the pills that said 'estrace' on them and that came in the estrace package were really estrace; they could have been heroin. but, i told him he was being paranoid.

he called the cops to try to convince me to go to a doctor. they treated it like a drug investigation, showed up at my front door, violently cuffed me and physically forced me to go to a hospital. when i got to a doctor, he was shocked. i told him that the cops had no right to do what they did, and he completely agreed with me. he did suggest i call a gp about the hormones. but, it was a thirty second doctor's appointment.

at the time, dr. barwin had a virtual monopoly on trans patients in ottawa. i did call him. i believe he's in jail now on a fraud conviction, due to mixing up sperm donations.

the second time, my mother called the cops on me for posting the following article to facebook:
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/julian-baggini-suicide-can-be-a-rational-choice-1912358.html

the article is an argument in favour of assisted suicide which, as it happens to be, is actually legal in canada, now, after a series of court rulings

my mother - who is a heroin addict and an alcoholic and was probably shit-faced drunk at the time - called the windsor coast unit because she was concerned i was suicidal due to posting that link. which is ridiculous...

when questioned, my mother denied making the call, but i knew it was her (because she was the only person in my friends list with my address), so i deleted her from facebook for it. it otherwise seemed rather benign at first - until it showed up in the disclosure for the illegal arrest that i'm currently fighting, as justification for holding me.

unless you are rich and powerful, the police are not your friends. the police are a relatively recent human invention that was created and continues to exist for the sole and precise purpose of controlling working people. they are there to protect the rich from the poor; that is what the police were invented to do, it's what they're trained to do and it's what they actually do.

don't send them after your loved ones, under the idea that they'll help. they won't; they're not supposed to, and you're wrong to think otherwise.

so, i don't know what happened here, but i know that when my parents (on separate occasions) called the police on me, it left me feeling violated and angry. the second time, i had marijuana on the premises, before it was legal. her reaction may have been foolish, but was perhaps not irrational - i may have liked to go after the ones that showed up at my door with a knife, too, even if i knew better, and didn't.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/edmundston-police-shooting-fatal-1.5597994

i'm still hoping this is temporary, as i don't understand what's happened to the existing site. it seems to continue to exist, but i can't log into it. so, is it frozen? disabled? i've received no communication from them at all...

did i get hacked?

in the mean time, i've set up a new site. this is a sort of a test. i suppose that if the site ends up frozen like the other one, i'll know that noise trade has frozen it. but, if it doesn't, i'm going to start to wonder if i got hacked.

there are fake deathtokoalas out there, and some of them seem to be unhealthily obsessed about it.

http://books.noisetrade.com/jj/072013-012014-travel-blog

my noise trade site has kind of evaporated, and i don't know what's going on with it. i've sent an email to the site requesting some further clarification as to why i can't log in and why the files are unavailable.

in the mean time, i've put the files up at a google drive share.

this is temporary, but i don't want the files to be unavailable while i figure out if i'm being censored, or if there's some kind of systems glitch.

i wasn't on noise trade very long before they got bought by paste, but i'm not a fan of paste, and don't particularly like the fact that they're hosting the files on amazon. so, it's not exactly my preferred hosting solution. the question is whether there's anything better out there or not.

i'm not going to whine and bitch and fight with the server mods, i'll just post somewhere else, and encourage people to follow me there. it's just that they haven't communicated with me in any way at all, so i don't actually know what's even going on.

for now, the files are here. enjoy.

and, buy something at bandcamp if you want to throw me some cash.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vEisI6NCO3jPMOwOVwEEauwkdERXmM-A?usp=sharing