it was indeed automatic.

it's in the mail...

the letter says "you may start using the program as soon as you receive and activate your new card".

that sort of suggests it's in the mail.

i really wish people would be more clear.

the border agent couldn't answer the question, though. she took my number and promised to call me back....

let's kind of think this through, though.

if a new virus shows up in china and starts killing chinese people, is it more likely that it was created by the chinese or by their enemies?

if the chinese were going to create viruses and let them loose, you'd expect them to let them loose here, right?

so, who is the most likely suspect, if we take the premise seriously? it would be the americans, of course.

which is making the infection rate in iran seem curious.

but, i still think this idea is dubious, because the virus is just too weak for that. it might save the chinese some money on public health care. it's hardly weapons-grade material...

so, did they create this thing in a lab?

they could have. if they did, they'd probably let it loose in iran first.

but, you'd think they'd be a little more efficient.

so, i'm going to classify that claim as highly doubtful. but, anybody trying to browbeat you with the idea that that's "debunked" or "wrong" should be treated as a propagandist - it's entirely plausible, in principle.

like, apparently the country with the second highest death toll is iran.

that's just kind of a curious fact.

the data they've given us says that chances are that you'll catch this thing and have it pass without even knowing you have it...

but, again - why is the who freaking out, then?

they don't have elections to worry about. they're not pandering to their base. they're supposed to be beyond all that shit.

we'll see what happens...

let me answer a question directly, though.

will this be a pandemic?

well, we have flu pandemics every year. that word is presented as this scary, terrible thing, when it really isn't.

so, yes - the experts are suggesting it's likely, but that doesn't actually mean anything, and the mere existence of a pandemic doesn't justify the kind of reactions we're seeing.

i don't understand what's going on with the coronavirus at this point in time, and i haven't presented a hypothesis.

i have pointed out that the reaction seems to be unjustified, given the weakness of the virus. this is really just as virulent as the flu.

or so they tell us, anyways. i can hypothesize about actors and motives, but i can't make up data. the data says this is not that scary. but, then, why are they doing this?

so, what i've drawn attention to is that contradiction - they tell us this thing has a 0.5% mortality rate, and then they treat it like it's ebola. they, here, is not the media, it's not "liberal" politicians, but it's rather the global authorities that you expect to operate outside of the alarmism, and actually adhere to the science.

so, when these agencies tell you that this disease is not very dangerous, and then act like it's a serious threat to global health, it makes you wonder what's actually happening.

are they hiding a deeper death toll in order to prevent mass panic? that would explain why they tell us one thing, and act as though another is true.

or, is there some kind of power grab going on behind the scenes?

i don't know....

i know there's a contradiction.

we'll have to see how this plays out, but it really has to be one or the other - either the death toll is far greater than is claimed, or this is going to be used as an excuse to take away people's rights.

again: i could shrug it off if it was a politician overreacting. but, these are the global health authorities, and something is not adding up.

so, apparently trump wants to take money away from fighting ebola in africa, a disease with an up to 90% mortality rate, and use it to fight the coronavirus, which has a roughly 0.5% mortality rate, which is on par with the seasonal flu, instead.

this is baffling.

and, it is reasonable to call it racist.

somebody needs to stop him from doing this.

ok.

all of the centres in the east are closed, and every number i've called in vancouver wants me to leave a message.

i'll have to try tomorrow.

but i'm almost certain that it's in the mail, and that's why there's no way to schedule. i just want somebody to tell me that, though,

i got a very thick package from the human rights commission in the mail, which is the next thing i'll need to check. i'm going to guess that it's either the respondent replying a little late or a rejection of my request for deferral. let's see...

NOTE: If this is a renewal application, you may not have to attend an interview. In that case, there will be a notice that you were Approved and the card will already be on its way!

let's hope that's the right answer.

i'm going to want to confirm that, somehow.

i would have liked to get a new picture, though :\.

argh.

so, i have been approved and i need to schedule an interview within 30 days.

i called the detroit nexus office and they told me i do that online. but, there's no way to do it online that i can see, and the website is telling me that i have no open applications - that the process is done.

detroit closes at 7:30. i'm going to see if i can find an office that's open a little later. voip over gmail is free long distance.

When the applicant receives a letter in their TTP account advising them of their conditional approval, he/she will have 30 days to schedule an interview at an enrollment center of their choice to finalize enrollment.

i like step-by-step instructions to minimize user error.

but, it's clear enough...

ok.

it's vague. but, i'm pretty sure that i need to go in to get a more recent picture taken. i may have to answer some questions, but i think i'm pre-approved.

they're telling me i'm approved until jan, 2025, anyways.

the cbp website uses pop-ups, in 2020.

so, chrome was blocking the popup - by default. i'm logged in as a guest, nothing's customized. it's just out of the box.

firefox let me decide to "allow pop-ups from this site".

but, that was why it didn't work....

i think that the cbp's website is not working on this chromebook, so i can't access the letter. it would be nice if they'd just email it....

let's try firefox.

that was a lot of sleep. that's ok, sometimes, and this was the circumstance where it is.

i got my nexus card approved until 2025. i'm just not sure if i need to get my card replaced or go to an enrollment centre or ...?

i did not get a chance to talk to anybody at villain's last night, so i'm still holding off on the reviews for a bit.

there are some legalish things that i need to do today before i get back to work. there will be some updates.

i otherwise believe that i am likely in for the next 10+ days.

you know why god sent the coronavirus, don't you?

the gays.

obviously.

great.

expect mandatory prayer services and public flagellations for sinners.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51654494

viruses mutate. so, i don't want to be too smug about this. but, the global response to this appears to be a dramatic overreaction, enough that it is making me wonder what's really going on.

i suppose there's some possibility that they're hiding the death toll.

but, what i'm actually concerned about is the possibility that western governments are going to use it as the most recent excuse to ram through another round of restrictions on our civil liberties. and, as i keep an eye on this in the upcoming days and weeks, it's going to be in keeping a critical eye on what they're doing, to try to point out unnecessary attacks on our rights.

the virus, itself, does not appear to be much of a serious threat and i will not be drawn into alarmist rhetoric about it.

ok, i'm alright.

let's watch this debate....

+ mmmm. nachos.

it was an enjoyable show.

but i'm borderline hypothermic...

they told me it was going to snow.

i didn't realize...

i want to get out of the house. i'm feeling couped up. this might get kind of messy...

i haven't turned the laptop back on yet. i've been dreading it. it should come up out of hibernation, but if it doesn't then i'll have to reimage.

let's hope that i can get the clean-up finished before i crash for a few hours this morning.

i am planning on hitting the grunge show tonight. the damage last night wasn't that bad, because i was able to use the balance on the debit card, and i just avoided buying beer. so, i didn't spend nearly what i said - it was $23 usd for the ticket, $10 usd at the 7/11 and $10 cdn for the bus. yes, it costs me $5 to cross the border and $5 to get back. and, yes, it adds up. it's still cheaper to live here, though.

essentially, my choice to avoid buying expensive beer at el club last night means i'm good to go for cheap beer at ufo tonight. yeah, i didn't set the fucking prices, don't look at me. if it was reasonable, i would have bought at least one..

i'm waiting until i can order last sunday before i do these february reviews all at once. but, there is still a lot of lingering concern regarding the fiasco at el club, with people worrying about crossing boycott lines. personally? i'm a free thinker, i'm not interested in being told what to do by the central committee on ethical consumption in late capitalism, and they can rule on the issue all they want, i don't give a fuck. but, i have to be honest - i didn't find the arguments i heard to be convincing.

and, you can browbeat me on it if you want, i don't really care. what i want is a convincing argument, not a demand that i follow your moral code, which i may or may not agree with.

but, i'll be equally clear that i wouldn't go to a place that i thought was actually horribly sexist or horribly racist. for a bastion of white supremacism, the bar seems to have a lot of black employees (they always did. it's detroit.) and seems to cater disproportionately to the black community. if there was a problem, they made a legitimate attempt to adjust to it.

that said, i don't go there on random nights, either, for the reason that they've largely exited my sphere of interest; this has largely not been much of an issue for me for the reason that the bar no longer caters to my tastes, anyways. so, i haven't been finding myself in this conflicted space, where i'm trying to figure out if i should go or not because i haven't had any interest in what they're booking, anyways.

the bar has a great sound system. it's not likely that random touring acts have any idea what happened, so i'm not going to tar them by association for something they don't know about, whatever the merits of it. so, if a band i like does play the space, i don't see any logical reason why i wouldn't go.

man or astroman formed in the early 90s and have been one of my favourite acts for a very long time. getting to see them was a kind of a bucket list thing. while the sound system at el club really is great, and the band does legitimately have substantive latin influences, i'll also acknowledge that it would have been a lot easier had they played the magic stick, or perhaps delux fluxx. but, for whatever reason, they didn't and i had to make a choice between missing out on a band i've been listening to for most of my life or an empty statement of solidarity with something that i'm not really convinced of the value of.

that's not a hard choice, for me.

i'm sorry if you find that upsetting, but i think you're wrong.

i think everybody wants the temperature to flip over early this year, as we've had crappy springs for a few years in a row. the solar signals are all on our side with that - it looks like we're in for an early spring and should expect to get overrun by tropical air pretty soon. we'll see. if it warms up, i might want to go out and play.

however, i've taken a quick run through the march listings, and i don't see anything obvious, outside of the control top show. what i do see are a lot of iffy shows, stuff i'm going to want to listen to before i make a choice.

that said, it's not a bad month in detroit if you're a fan of generic millennial indie rock. i'm not, though. i'm going to be leaning more towards the jazzier, punkier and more experimental options, as i sort through them. and, i may end up at the dso a few times, as well.

let's try to get this laptop back up and hope it works.

nobody updated the wiki page, so i actually didn't realize there's new songs.

my impression of the new material i heard at the show is that it is actually a little bit riffier in a grungey or no-wavey kind of way. it had more of a dirty, southwestern sort of sound, at the expense of the scifi or the surf. if they were always morricone-meets-dale-at-a-ramones-concert, the show seemed to stress the morricone and the ramones more than previous work.

but, man or astroman aren't known for evolving, and you do expect it to basically sound the same, and it does. 

i made it home alive tonight, thankfully.

the rain kind of sucked, but i worked it out.

i wanted to stop at villain's to talk, but i forgot that they're closed on mondays...

i'm tentatively planning for wednesday as well, weather dependent. i think it's probably going to be too cold on friday.

i'm going to hop in the shower and probably zonk out, and i'm going to leave the show review until after i can talk to somebody and clarify what happened.

to be clear: i'm not worried about anything, really. i was told they called the police to escort me home for my own safety, because they thought my clothing put me at a risk to get assaulted (which is victim blame-y and weird). the bartender ended up driving me home. i'm not getting any bad vibes, i don't think. i'm pretty sure i was just completely unable to move, and that's really the sum total of the concern. 

but, i don't know if i was out for thirty minutes or three hours, and i need to figure that out before i can order time for the night. and, whether i got drugged or something else, i need to apologize, nonetheless - even if i end up with a negative review for calling the cops during bar hours, if that happened.

they're telling me that i shouldn't expect a letter, after all.

i made a request for one anyways over the phone.

should i buy a ticket anyways? i'm so iffy about this. are the prices inflated due to the blockade? should i wait this out, anyways?

let me get some fruit and look it up.

i napped this morning and afternoon and didn't get as much done as i wanted. i'm at least rested and awake, so i'm either up and in or up and ready to get out.

and, no, that doesn't mean i want to breathe in your second-hand marijuana at home, either.

no smoking in the fucking house.

it's a simple rule. please respect it.

City Councilman James Tate's office says Detroit's extension will allow "additional opportunity to continue to develop a social equity program that ensures all eligible Detroiters have an opportunity" to participate in Michigan's new marijuana industry.

so, they're setting up some kind of affirmative action program or something, out of an apparent fear that white people are going to control the supply. in the mean time, the functional effect of the policy is to continue to arrest black people for selling it illegally, and to drive away people that want to come in to the city.

it's typical detroit...the place is just so badly run it's baffling.....

i haven't decided yet.

but, i'm leaning on staying in because:

1) i don't want to buy smokes, and i'll have to. it will be easier when i can buy a pre-roll, instead, and avoid that.
2) the door price isn't particularly bad, but it's an expensive night when you add it up. this bar has had some accusations of shady hiring practices, and stopped selling cheap beer a while back, when new management took over and, oddly, shifted to a more urban theme.
3) it's looking like it's going to be legit gross out.

if you flip this around on me so that i need to get out of the house to avoid the smoke, then i'm going to end up reading at the library, or something.

please just respect my wishes as they've been articulated. stop trying to make guesses, or think you can outsmart me by appealing to some useless psychobabble.

your psychoanalysis is pseudoscientific bullshit and not even worth deconstructing, and you're a fucking idiot for being dumb enough to take it seriously as an epistemology in the first place.

i will tell you what i want, and i will be very clear about it. please just fucking listen....

these people just can't understand that smoking is not binary.

they seem convinced that you smoke or you don't, and my lifestyle choice to smoke when i'm drinking (two or three times a month, max) means i'm condemned to breathe in second-hand smoke when i'm not.

it's what happens when you reduce complicated issues to simplistic moral questions.

no, the fact that i smoke when i'm at the bar doesn't mean i should have to breathe in second-hand smoke when i'm at home, when i've explicitly made it clear that i don't want to. in fact, the incentives are working in the other direction - i'm feeling less inclined to go drinking because i'd rather avoid the inevitable pack.

you fucking dipshits.

it's also looking like it's going to be rainy and miserable out, tonight.

and, the fact that i basically have to buy smokes is such a disincentive.

so, i'm broadly leaning towards staying in. unless i need to get out of the house to get away from the cop smoking upstairs. ugh.

go.

smoke.

away.

from.

the.

house.

fuck....

on second thought, i'm ok on the quick reinstall.

listen...

i don't know who you are or what you want. i know you're reading this. i don't know know why. i suspect i've been drugged in public recently, as well.

all i want to do is log on to this machine to fix the typos from the last week of posts. i essentially will be doing nothing at all until this project is completed.

i appear to be powerless to stop you. that does not make me feel subservient to you, but rather makes me hate you, and makes me want to defy you even more. there is no logic in oppression - oppressed people never love their controllers, and i will never love you, i will merely hate you more and more and more and more.

so, you can sit there and knock me offline, apparently at will, if you want.

but, i'm just going to reinstall over and over and over and over again until i get done what i'm doing.

yeah, that lasted seconds before it shut off. they seem to have gone after my boot sector, again, meaning i'm going to need to do a full reinstall, this time.

i will need to get the chip out at the hardware level to really get this out and i don't know how to do that.

but, i need to clean this blog up from that machine, so we're going to do this over and over again until i'm done, which might get very frustrating, but is necessary. 

this chromebook is simply not intended for local use and never will be used for that reason.

there's another show on wednesday that i'd like to sneak in, too.

yeah, it's kind of bone-headed, but this is the kind of grunge i actually like.

https://gileadmedia.bandcamp.com/album/negative-sound

https://bummerkc.bandcamp.com/album/holy-terror

so, i just activated a machine with a disabled network card, no "network connections" service (or other services) running, no installed network adapters....

?

either this is operating at like a bios level, or i've tricked myself into thinking it's connecting, when it's actually rebuilding something locally.

it sort of doesn't matter just right now, but it's very weird. it's telling me that it's connecting remotely - either it's lying, or the connection is essentially impossible for me to get at, with the the broken backlit screen, and my subsequent inability to get into the bios. maybe that's why that happened...?

also, the weird remote access drivers have mysteriously disappeared.

i'm left with no greater faith in the sanctity of the situation, but i have to carry on, for now.

let's hope i can get this cleaned up in a few hours.

i'm going to call the court office in the morning.

i have a pre-paid mastercard that i bought for the bus ticket to toronto in june, but i haven't received a confirmation on it in the mail, yet. i don't want to buy the ticket until i'm sure.

if i can get a clear confirmation over the phone, or something sent over email, i'll feel better about budgeting for this.

this worth $80?

you tell me.

death.to.koalas@gmail.com.

do i want to give man or astroman $23 usd for a 40 minute set?

there's quite a few punk bands in this category - they have enough records to play a full show, but you just don't expect them to. you expect them to play the same set they played as an opening band on their first tour, twenty years ago.

but, the listing says doors at 8:00 and close at 11:00, and there's two opening bands.

one: 8:30-9:00

two: 9:15-9:45

man or astroman: 10:15-11:00

that's just a guess, but it's likely.

so, rip.....or astro-rip?

i may be used to paying $5-10 for a show, granted. but, i don't mind paying $20+ for an older act with a back catalog, if they play a substantive set, dammit.

the night is going to cost me:

$23 tickets
$20 beer (because they only sell them in tall cans for $8 each)
$7 cigarettes (unavoidable, at the bar)
$3 pre
that's $53 usd -----> $70 cdn
+ $10 tickets

for a 30-40 minute set. hrmmn.

let me see if i can find a recent setlist.

it seems like the coronavirus is reducing air travel, which means less emissions. score.

but, what's going on seems to be rather absurd; they're quarantining people for weeks over the flu.

it makes you wonder what's really going on.

but, what i wanted to point out before the machine crashed was that i'm not planning on doing a review for the debussy show just right now, as there's still some open thoughts revolving around what happened.

it's hard to write a review about something, when you're not entirely certain what happened. i think i'm feeling good enough to make it to man or astroman tomorrow.

so, excluding the short amount of time in between, that was more or less 15 more hours of heavy, can't-move kind of sleep.

it's enough to make me think about starting up a cocaine addiction.

or starting smoking cigarettes again.

i was initially hoping to do some testing, to see if i could narrow the issue down to some other thing. so, i've got this machine down to the minimum i can get it to - wired usb keyboard & mouse and one stick of ram and that's it. no battery, even.

but, the fact that i just connected to microsoft's servers on a computer with no working and connected network card is making me realize the pointlessness of this, if i didn't already know it.

i've convinced myself the drive is fine. there was an off chance there was an issue with ram or a short in the board. but, this backdoor is more consistent with all of the evidence...

i don't know what they want or why they're doing this but this machine has no long term future. sadly. 

i've said over and over again that i don't actually care if the cia hacks my machine, because i don't break any laws, anyways. it's not that i like that argument - obviously, i'd rather they didn't - so much as i'm cognizant of what the internet is and how it works and the reality you are signing yourself up for when you use it.

this has been run by the military from the start...the first person that showed me the internet was my retired step-grandfather, who worked as a signals interpreter in alert. and, he died skeptical that the internet would ever be used by civilians; he didn't think the military would really open it up. lol.

what was pissing me off was that the surveillance software was slowing the computer down. 

if you could write better software for older machines, i wouldn't care. but, when you take surveillance software that is designed for modern machines and install it on a 15 year old laptop, it makes the computer unusable.

and, i'm not buying a new computer so that the cia can spy on me more effectively.

so, on some level, i don't even fucking care, so long as it doesn't interfere with my work. but, once you hold that mirror up, it's also unsettling - it's one thing to say you don't care, and another to realize you really can't turn it off.

i may end up moving back to the pc relatively fast, but i need to do some things online with this image, and i don't want to connect to the internet from the pc, ever.

but, maybe if i write it out on my screen i'll believe it: there's a hidden wireless card in my computer that is connected to a surveillance network on the backend, and is not otherwise displayed by the operating system.

i promise you they didn't get a warrant, either.

if i go in there and just rip the wire out, i could short the board.

why don't i just do what i want to do to start and see how far i get. i have a lot of things to do before i even get to the point of opening up the master document.

the machine shows no network device. at all.

and, yet, i am connected to some kind of remote access wireless network that i can only detect indirectly. like, i know the connection is there. but, i appear to be completely blocked, somehow, from figuring out what it is.

obviously , i don't like this, and i don't like the idea of using this computer under this scenario. but what do i do, then?

am i suggesting that some kind of law enforcement came into my house and spliced a wireless chip into my laptop's system board in order to prevent me from uninstalling their surveillance software, because they insist on spying on me while i'm writing liner notes for 20 year old records?

i can only react to what i see in front of me, as baffling as it might be.

they really seem to think i'm some kind of russian spy. the fucking idiots...

i got the laptop back up, without the wireless keyboard, and two bizarre things showed up immediately:

1) there was a remote access server driver that i'd never seen before.

2) i was again able to activate windows, in a machine that does not have a network card and now has no known bluetooth device.

i need to be clear.

i have removed the wireless card from this device, and have dismantled the bluetooth keyboard. the rj-45 is not plugged in. and, yet, i can still activate windows.

i could not activate the same image from the pc.

so, it's increasingly becoming clear that there's a very serious backdoor hardwired into the board, and that there might not be anything i can do about it besides throw the computer away. taking a look at the wireless compartment, it almost looks like they spliced something.

the level of effort put into this is just baffling. i'm just an artist. for fuck's sakes.

i don't know what to do next. if i start working on this machine, are they going to reboot it on me?

what does marijuana do to jessica?

marijuana makes jessica extremely tired, lethargic, unmotivated and sort of depressed. however, it can make her more talkative in public, as well. that's why jessica only really likes to smoke marijuana at bars, and explicitly seeks to avoid it at home, by herself. 

jessica has never smoked marijuana habitually and never will.

jessica prefers drugs that make her more alert, focused and upbeat - like caffeine or nicotine, although she quit smoking, as a habit, many years ago.

so, i was going to get started a little after 23:00, when the overwhelming stench of marijuana from upstairs started pouring in from what i think was the porch, and i had to stop, make some coffee and take a very long shower. and, it was so bad that i think it knocked me out. i slept for a little bit, regardless...

somebody seemed to come in midway through the night and shut it down. and, i wanted to wait until after 4:30 to post.

that smelled like a group of people smoking, which is something that i'm not going to be able to tolerate if it happens on any sort of regular basis. i've been crystal clear: i don't care what you do to your body, but i expect to have total dominion over mine. if people want to smoke out in the forest, or at the bar, where it doesn't bother anybody, then i have no argument against it - in fact, i'll do it myself from time to time. but, on the issue of cleaning smoke out of residential areas, i align strictly with the rights of non-smokers to fresh air and a healthy, smoke-free environment over the so-called "rights of smokers". and, i insist i'm the one taking a libertarian position on this, as the right to fresh air is a real thing that is enshrined in all kinds of human rights literature. there is no such thing as the right to smoke anything, and there is nothing libertarian about smoking a foot from somebody's window, and pissing them off - that is randian, it's selfish, it's nihilistic, but it's not libertarian or socialist or anarchistic.

the way we deal with issues like this is that we (1) write city bylaws and enforce fines on people that break them and (2) allow for civil litigation, so that people that are harmed by the behaviour of others can be compensated properly for it.

we don't say "mah property, fuck you.". that's barbaric, really.

so, the idea of somebody smoking outside my window on a regular basis is a non-starter. i signed a non-smoking lease, here. i will film them smoking on their own porch, take the video to court, and sue them for thousands of dollars over it - and insist i'm in the right to do it, because it's my rights to fresh air that are what is substantive and must be enforced above all others, here.

i don't want to move, but i can't handle that.

after taking a nap, i was able to get the local parts of inri023 finished up and decided against building seeds for the other files, because i know i'm just going to redo it all, anyways. there are ten releases dated to january, 2014, two of them "lps", so i will have a fair amount of work to do when that comes up.

but, that means i'm now jumping directly to building the master document for january.

...if i can stay awake. fuck.

like, i just passed out in public from a marijuana attack, which i haven't fully recovered from. it's clearly having a horrific effect on me. what the fuck are they doing?

i apologize for the source, but the other sites that google gave me were special-interest marijuana sites. in terms of useful information, i'll take a site like this over a site like leafly any day.

i'm just trying to get the point across that this is a known issue, even if you've never heard of it before: yes, marijuana can make people faint by triggering drops in blood pressure, and i'm pretty sure that's something that has happened to me several times, now.

but, it usually only lasts a few minutes. what made sunday weird is the amount of time that the reaction lasted, and that's what i need more information regarding.

https://drugprevent.org.uk/ppp/2008/11/marijuana-can-trigger-rapid-drop-in-blood-pressure/

i didn't expect the spanish inquisition....

that was a lot more sleep. i do require some sleep, i guess. but, i'm not used to feeling this tired.

it seems like my neck has finally loosened up.

a stiff neck like that is both a symptom of a stroke (which doesn't fit my medical profile) and a symptom of low blood pressure (which does). and, if i fell off that chair, i may have landed badly. i can't blame that on being drugged with any clarity, this could all, in theory, be the results of the worst green out in the history of humanity.

i haven't got a response from the bar yet. i'm thinking about going in on sunday, just to talk. i did that to the trumbullplex when i got knocked out by the edibles a few years ago, and i've been ok there ever since.

...even though i'm not likely to actually go back to a bar that called the police on me out of concerns for my own safety. that's like burning somebody at the stake to save their soul. it's wacked.

i got 75% of the way through the html file of inri023 before i crashed and should be done before sunset, when i will stop to eat and watch last night's debate.

Clinical trials prior to two years ago have shown little to no significant effects of cannabis in reducing seizures. These trials seem to be underpowered, with a sample size less than 15. In contrast, more recent studies that have included over 100 participants showed that CBD use resulted in a significant reduction in seizure frequency. Adverse effects of CBD overall appear to be benign, while more concerning adverse effects (e.g., elevated liver enzymes) improve with continued CBD use or dose reduction.

In most of the trials, CBD is used in adjunct with epilepsy medication, therefore it remains to be determined whether CBD is itself antiepileptic or a potentiator of traditional antiepileptic medications. Future trials may evaluate the efficacy of CBD in treating seizures due to specific etiologies (e.g., post-traumatic, post-stroke, idiopathic).

==========

in other words, they weren't able to find any evidence of this claim until they started using cbd together with the epilepsy medication.

right.

great trials, guys. really convincing. good job with that.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6235654/

even with the kids, it's like...

does it really cure epilepsy in kids? or does it cure the idea of epilepsy in the minds of their parents?

the claim is the efficacy fell over time, but i wonder if the efficacy wasn't exaggerated in the first place.

i don't have my blocklist on the chromebook, so i'd have to sort through thousands of pop science sites and piles of hippie bullshit to get to some actual, decent research. i'm not going to do that.

but, i would not endorse the claim that cbd reduces seizures in anybody, regardless of their age. sorry.

https://www.contemporarypediatrics.com/pediatrics/cbd-oils-effect-may-wane-managing-seizures

i am overwhelmingly skeptical, myself.

but, i support recreational legalization, anyways - i'd just like to see some bylaws around residential use.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cbd-product-boom-science-research-hemp-marijuana

"The relation between marijuana use and epileptic seizures is still controversial. "

that's a polite way to put it. 

i don't think i have late onset epilepsy, and i don't think it's being cause by marijuana abuse, which i've never had an issue with.

but, could pot cause seizures? the answer is that it does actually make sense, unlike the opposite argument, which really doesn't.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4121386/

but, i mean, the place could have also been empty because everybody left because the manager called the fucking cops, too.

i keep saying i'm getting up to eat.

so, it's one thing to call the cops on a green out at 11:00, when you're there until close to 3:00, that would be unnecessary, probably, and another to call them at 2:30, when you're trying to close the bar and go home.

the place was empty when i was talking to the cops....

...but that would mean i got drugged....

data. i need data.

and i need linguine.

when i called the pot smoker below me in a couple of years ago, it wasn't being done with the intent to have her arrested, or with the intent to serve or protect anybody. i was very intentionally attempting to create an occurrence for the purpose of a court process, and i actually told them that when they got there.

if there was some other way i could have proven in court that the person below me was smoking inside, i would have walked down that path, instead. but, the legal precedent is getting a police report, so i did that in order to win the court case.

as i had asked her to smoke somewhere else repeatedly, and she didn't care about my lungs or my sobriety, i decided i didn't care much about what happened to her, either. but i wasn't calling the cops for the sake of calling the cops, i was just doing what was required to get out of the lease. there wasn't another answer - that's what the court wants as proof, in that scenario. that's the sitting precedent....

it's a different kind of argument, and one i can maybe draw a parallel to on the issue of "i just want to go home". and, i guess that's where the generational gap is likely to assert itself - i would actually find it less upsetting to have a call in a situation where she's trying to close the bar and go home than i would in an overbearing situation where she's trying to, like, mother me and make sure i'm safe. i thought i was home at like 11:00, but i'm questioning that, now. is that actually true? it's kind of important.

ok, i'm going to eat.

i'm an anarchist - i don't buy into this idea of the police existing to serve or protect, unless you own property. so, i'm going to kneejerk pretty brutally against anybody calling the police.

but, the bartender drove me home.

and, even if i don't agree with what happened, i can maybe make a better attempt to understand the generational or income gap underlying it, if they really did find themselves with somebody unable to move, at or close to closing time, especially considering that i would have had to have been drugged - if i picked up that deduction right, it was correct, and the same one i'm presenting.

i may remain a little uneasy about it, i may continue to be apprehensive about the safety of entering the space for a while, but i can sort of adjust a little to it. it's like the introduction of a difference of scale, a kind of hierarchy of "noooooo".

the fact is that this is very blurry.

- i finished my second beer
- i went out for a smoke

- somebody handed me a joint and said "this is strong. careful.", and i smoked it anyways. i even said i was done and changed my mind and took more. i take some responsibility here, i'm just insisting on clarifying the agent.

- i asked for another beer, and was told i looked a little rough and to come back in an hour or two. i didn't totally agree, but i shrugged this off. note that i actually would have left at this point if i hadn't been given a free beer, because i had budgeted for two; i wasn't planning on staying much longer. so, the refusal didn't really bug me. as the karaoke was starting, i was thinking about going to the jazz bar down the street instead, anyways. but, i decided to sit down for a few minutes and think about what the best thing to do actually was.
- and, the next thing i remember is sitting a few feet away with somebody hovering over me, giving me juice.

i initially assumed that there was just a few moments in between these two events - that i had a seizure, and then i had people hovering over me right after. this is because this is how this happened before.

but, with the exceeding amounts of tiredness that have followed, and the recollection that i was having such a hard time getting up, i'm increasingly wondering:

1) how much time occurred between when i sat down and when people were giving me juice?
2) just how long was i sitting there struggling to get up for?

it's the time dilation that is messing with me, and, because i didn't check the time when i got in, i don't have the frame of reference. i'm going to need somebody to answer that question for me.

if i was just passed out for a few seconds like i initially thought, it would seem as though i had a very, very bad reaction to the pot.

but, if this process was actually more drawn out than i initially thought it was, if i was struggling with awakeness for a long while, then i basically had to have been drugged.

so, i guess i was up at close to 17:00 and i haven't been sure how awake i actually am. i got some fruit, warmed back up and spent some time ranting, to make sure i was actually awake. and, i think that i am.

my neck is unusually stiff, and i had some kind of migraine on monday morning. no significant bruising has developed. i never developed any sort of nausea. i've just been oppressively, overwhelmingly tired.

i haven't had any kind of hallucinations, if you're wondering about the stiff neck.

so, i don't know. i actually posted at the bar's facebook page, and i'm hoping to get some information about some time frames. i didn't actually check a clock. and, the more i kind of feel it through in my head, the more i'm wondering how long i was passed out for. was the bar even closed when i left? i don't have any recollection of the karaoke.

so, what if i was passed out in the bar for like 4 hours? at that point i guess maybe you either need to call the cops, or an ambulance, if the person can't move - you want to go home. but, in context, i would think that would make a roofie almost certain. i just didn't drink that much...

so, i think that, to an extent, my initial reaction, in a continued slightly confused state, should be taken with a grain of salt. i'm realizing that i maybe don't have a clear enough understanding of what happened to be able to make a choice.

it wasn't the alcohol; i either had a pot-related seizure, or i got drugged. let's hope i can get enough information by the end of the night to figure that out. and, i might undo the nasty review, if i was actually passed out for hours. because what do you do? and, there was some realization of the possibility of a drugging - she did tell me she was calling the cops because she didn't want me to get raped.

maybe, with a little better reflection, with better data, with better clarity, i can put these pieces together differently.

right now, i'm awake enough that i'm going to stop to eat.

after passing out hard for another 10+ hours over what was supposed to be a twenty minute nap, and feeling like i'm going to sleep another 10 hours, i'm left with the need to ask the question i should have asked in the first place.

there's no way at all that the totality of this is alcohol related - i'd have had to have drank at least twice as much as i did. and, while i've had some bad reactions to marijuana recently, this is starting to feel like something more than that, as well.

was i drugged on sunday night? did somebody put something in my drink when i was having a smoke?

there weren't a lot of people in the bar from 7:30-10:00 on sunday night. they have a weekly karaoke feature, and it was starting to pick up when i fell asleep. there were maybe five or six people in the bar, pretty much all male, with the exception of a bartender and a small group of females tucked away on the very far side of the bar, which i didn't make it over to, as it would have been out of the way.

of the guys in the bar, i actually think i've met most of them before and would consider essentially all of them to be exceedingly low risk. i would characterize this bar as a nerd hangout and pretty low risk, over all.

i did not purchase my second drink, though. it was bought for me after i had a conversation with somebody about the native african language they were speaking at the bar. they were impressed by my knowledge of the geography of eastern africa, and my usage of terms like "nilotic". and, i scored a drink out of it. i didn't think much of it.

now, though...

i shouldn't be experiencing this kind of overwhelming effect from a couple of drinks and a few tokes. this is an epic hangover, the kind of thing you get after a major bender. 

so, did somebody put something in my drink?

if not, what exactly was i handed?

i've been asleep since 3:00 this morning and i think i'm going back to it.

i can measure how much alcohol i'm consuming by reading labels and via experience. that's something i have control over, and that i'm actually pretty good at figuring out. i actually don't tend to find myself very drunk very often, although it happens to everybody sometimes.

however, when somebody hands you a joint, you have no idea how potent it is, or if it's even really marijuana in the first place. 

so, if somebody hands you a potent joint and it knocks you out flat on your ass, did you do something irresponsible? or did you just get unlucky?

you could have controlled the situation by not smoking at all, granted. but, you didn't have control of the pot that was given to you, you were at the whim of somebody else. is it actually your fault, really?

imagine if it was alcohol. if somebody gives you a cup worth of beer, it probably won't do much to you; on the other hand, if somebody gives you a cup worth of vodka, and you swig it, it could knock you out right on the spot. the difference between a cbd joint rolled with mostly tobacco and a pure marijuana cigarette at 30% thc is just as profound. 

if somebody gave you a glass of beer, you'd drink it, if you trust them. you would know better than to drink a glass of vodka, though. with marijuana, you don't have the opportunity to make that discretion, and, if you have low tolerance like i do, you can find yourself passed right out relatively quickly, if you take too long a haul on too powerful of a joint. if you had the ability to understand what you're smoking in the first place, you might not make those mistakes.

the potency of marijuana has apparently come up a lot over the last few decades, and i guess my reactions to the drug are reflective of that. 

again, i don't want to come off as unappreciative or entitled.

but, this was a part of the argument for legalization in the first place, and it would be nice if they could get a move on it. this was supposed to have been dealt with quite a while ago, already.

like, there's a difference between passing out and falling asleep.

i wasn't passed out. i was woken up every few minutes, and nobody had any difficulty getting me up. i was just overwhelmed by tiredness, knocked on my ass by strong pot, and had no option but to sleep it off.

there was one night where i was actually drunk, namely the night before beethoven's fifth, back in october.

the fact that i remember her fussing over me repeatedly is itself proof that i wasn't drunk - if i was drunk, i wouldn't remember struggling to wake up like that, it would just be ejected from memory altogether. greenouts will suck your life force out of you, turning you into a kind of vegetable until it passes. they're not pleasant; they suck. but, you don't wake up the next day and wonder what happened last night. that difference has been important in helping me understand what's been happening to me....

i mean, one of the reasons that i'm blaming this on marijuana instead of alcohol is that i didn't lose any time. there's no black out period.

ignoring the actual amount that i drank, and the obvious reality that it's not going to get anybody pass out drunk, being drunk means blacking out. if you don't black out, you're not that drunk...

there's no question that i was out of it for a small amount of time, i'm not denying that point - i was very, very stoned, so stoned i couldn't move. but, going instantly from full alertness and total recall to being unable to move is a marijuana thing, not an alcohol thing. so, if i had a seizure, or suffered a sudden drop in blood pressure, or whatever else, it didn't erase any of my actual memory - the time i lost is strictly reduced to the period that i was actually passed out. which isn't what happens with alcohol poisoning...

i did not vomit or feel sick, not even when i got home. i did have a headache, and woke up with a migraine.

even explaining it as a thc overdose, a greenout, is, i think, just putting off the point. the marijuana is triggering the events, and i hope it's dose-specific, but i suspect there's some underlying factor.

so, i have slept for most of the day, now. i just finally got out of the shower....

i'm less hungry than i should be. oddly.

i'm told that i fell off a chair, but i just remember sitting down in one place and being teleported to the other and a different bartender giving me juice; i'm going to guess there was no more than a few minutes of time in between. so, i'm guessing i just fell off the chair, maybe seized slightly on the ground, and either got up or was helped up in the closest chair. and, i then couldn't move for about 20-30 minutes until i got up and got in a car and was driven home.

as mentioned, this has happened to me before after smoking marijuana. the amount of alcohol i've drank doesn't seem to be a factor, it seems to be strictly about the pot. i'm guessing it's just too strong for me...

i don't remember falling over. so, i checked my body for bumps or scrapes. the last time i had a seizure like this was back in july, and i ended up with a couple of wounds. i did notice that my hair was a little bit matted, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but the closest thing i can find to signs of trauma is just a little bit of a bruise behind my ear. i can't see anything just quite right there without setting up a sequence of mirrors, which i don't really have in here. there's no other visible signs of trauma from falling...

i've got some final touches for inri022 to clean up, locally. and, i should hopefully have a rough draft of inri023 up by sunrise.

i will acknowledge that the length of the green-out was perhaps concerning, but, the effects of marijuana overconsumption being what they are, the consequence of it should have been realized, as well. this is just what happens when you smoke too much - you fall asleep for a few minutes.

the bar manager is not trained to tell the difference between a green out and a blackout, and just kept coming back to me like an overprotective mother, fussing over my clothing and how it affected my safety, and telling me how "lovely" and "gorgeous" i look, making me wonder who the tranny in the room actually was.

i was actually wearing a heavy red overcoat.

like i say - i don't want to get mad at her, but i feel micromanaged. things would have been fine. it wasn't necessary. really.

how much did i have to drink last night? i avoided answering that question and don't think i did.

- two shots of vodka in my mountain dew, 1:45-2:35.

- one tall mike's hard, 2:45-3:20

- one corona, 3:20-4:00

- one heineken, 4:00-5:00

- one tall hamm's, 6:00-7:00

- two james ready, 7:30-11:00

that is not an excessive amount of alcohol, and i was not particularly drunk.

i was, however, exceedingly stoned, as a consequence of smoking on a couple of joints outside the bar, so stoned that i fell asleep on the bar stool. i was actually warned of the strength of the pot as it was being passed to me, and i have a history of similar reactions to strong pot. so, it's not an unexpected reaction, but i would have been fine in a few minutes, once my body metabolized it.

so, it was the marijuana that passed me out, not the alcohol. and i've been through this before...

i enjoyed the show and ended up at villain's after. i smoked some pot outside and ended up needing to sit down for a few minutes. an overzealous bar manager was convinced i was going to get raped (i don't know whether to thank her or yell at her) and called the police to escort me home, which is, like, the worst thing to do, but that's not how she saw it. you can't convince them you can walk home after they show up....somebody at the bar had to volunteer to get me home.....

i passed out pretty hard when i got home and need to eat and shower.

i don't want to get angry. but, i don't think i'll go back there.

i was not drunk, i was stoned, and i would have been fine, and they should have avoided calling the police, who are not there to serve or protect but to control and dominate.

so, i crashed this morning during testing. i'm up now and have finished testing the windows box. it won't be long before i'm done here and i should have a post up soon.

i'm still planning on getting to the dso, but it depends on timeframes. i might miss it. it's streaming...

the landlord/main-cop is back and the stinky cop seems to be gone. can i make a request to the force, which i know is reading this, to keep that gross, smelly cop away from here? surely, you can find a cop to stake me out that i can't smell from a distance of 100 yards?

very soon, and then i'll get back to inri023 when i get back, if i go.

i've had maybe ten cigarettes in the past ten weeks.

and, i haven't bought a pack of smokes for casual, habitual use since the end of 2017.

fwiw, i have not bought a pack of smokes since i got back from toronto in mid december. i've bummed maybe 10 smokes in that period, while i'm out grocery shopping.

it's actually a subconscious factor in staying in tonight - i know that i'll buy a pack if i got out for the night and i don't really want to. i can probably avoid that if i just go to the show tomorrow afternoon, instead. i might bum a couple...

so, the fact that these cops are smoking upstairs is exceedingly frustrating to me. but i just have to focus on winning these court cases and getting out of here.

that means that i should get inri022 up by the end of the night.

i was badly distracted yesterday. we know that happens when i get cabin fever. and, it actually means i need to get out. tomorrow.

yeah, the wind chill tonight is still pretty bad, coming off the deep freeze yesterday morning. and, the change in the lineup at the psych show means the combination of the night falls apart.

i'm going to wait and go tomorrow afternoon, instead.

it seems like there might be a recurring spot at a place i've been to a few times right, right downtown, but it doesn't look like it's going to be very populated....

it's there if i get stuck. but it means i want to be sticking close to the core.

and, there's always the hotel, but they close so early :\.

so, i got an answer on where the backup spot is and it's nowhere near where i'm going, on foot, or near a bus. i'd need to get on a bicycle, and it's just too cold for that right now.

i'd better get to the bus station, then.

which means my choices are to either go to ufo or go straight home after the show.

obviously, i can't post locations or hints here. sorry.

no. no. that market recording seems pretty boring, on second thought. i want to get to the other show, if i can, if it's on the way somewhere else.

i don't know the address of the place i think i want to get to, though. judging by the promoters, it could be in a few different spots. detroit is like this, the spots shift every few months, you have to get out and ask, and it's been cold. i go through this every spring.

i think the dj named market and the psych act named mrkt are actually the same artist. 

i maybe wouldn't otherwise make this trip as it's maybe a little bit aimless, but it's a short detour from the orchestra, and i think i want to get out of the house for a few hours. i haven't gone anywhere since early december...

it's too bad the other show is in the other direction, and that the timeframes just don't add up...

https://mrktrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-outer-limits-11-5-19

ok.

i thought the other act on the bill was a dj named market. it turns out it's an experimental thing called mrkt.

there's nothing else happening on sunday.

and, it looks like i can find a different backup. maybe. 

i guess the nutsy option would be to start at the psych show, go to the supersecretsexywildgayparty and then hit the symphony in the afternoon.

....if i want to drop $100 in temperatures hovering around the freezing mark. it's too cold to bike in makeup. no...

it's looking like it's going to be a one and out trip, so do i want to go on saturday or sunday?

naw. i'm on foot tomorrow, and it's too far. i'd have to take the bus.

i kind of doubt i'm going to end up wanting to.

so, what are my choices?

- the symphony runs from 20:00-22:00. that's the main event. i'll want to get there a little early.
- i was going to go to the psych show after, which actually starts at 22:00. if i was out of there around 12:45, i could catch the bus back.
- now, i'm considering going to a different psych show, which i won't get to until 23:00 and is away from the tunnel rather than towards it. i could stay for an hour, max. and it might be done by the time i get there. no. that's pointless.
- so, i'd either need to go to the crappy punk show anyways (meh.) or just go home. or find something else. but it's looking slim.

so, do i want to go on sunday afternoon then? the weather may be a little better...

the supersecretsexygayparty is running tomorrow.

hrmmn.

i was hoping to catch a psych act at ufo after the symphony tomorrow, but they got replaced by this awful local punk band that....i don't understand why they get so many shows. they suck. 

there's a psych show down the street, but it makes the night a lot more complicated, and i'm considering waiting until sunday afternoon instead. i'd need a late night back up plan, and i'm not sure there is one.

i'm forced to live inside the system that is erected around me.

but, you would find the depth of my rejection of capitalism to be shocking, should i ever choose to get involved with politics in a serious manner. the groups i would support would be extremely radical, and i would not stand with groups in the centre, at all.

if you were to see me in action, you might begin to understand why i reject bourgeois politics so thoroughly.

but, my art is more important than my politics, and is where my energy will be focused for the near future.

and, why don't i go to shows in windsor?

because there aren't any. or, there aren't any worth going to, anyways. it would be far easier if there were, trust me. but, there aren't.

it's a small city. i'm a big city person...i need a large metropolitan area to be able to generate the kind of art i'm interested in. 

my focus, right now, is my art.

i'm not done yet.

i am a canadian citizen and live in windsor. i just go to detroit to party, because it's the closest major city. if there was a closer city on this side of the border, i would go there, instead.

i have no interest in detroit politics, and would even consider engaging myself within them to be an example of foreign interference. i may make comments or observations about things that are meaningful to me, but it's intentionally done from a great distance.

i would involve myself with issues on this side of the border, strictly, if i were to decide to make that choice. but, i am not likely to find myself interested in bourgeois politics any time soon. i would be more likely to involve myself with ngos and anarchist groups.

i don't know what they ultimately want or why they're doing what they're doing. it feels exceedingly childish to me. they don't seem to operate with warrants, or present any kind of legal justification for their behaviour. it's just some kind of a game that they're trying to win.

i guess that if i'm dealing with federal agents of some sort - and i don't know if they're american or canadian - then they may be trained to approach what they think of as cyberwarfare using these methods. that is, they may be trained to play cat and mouse like this. but, i'm not a hacker, i'm an artist, and i have no interest in this at all. i'm just annoyed at the amount of time i have to waste on this.

i was headhunted by csis in the mid-00s at one point, and basically told them to fuck off. i just didn't want to work for a security agency. but, these people are trained to interpret the world through the filter of conspiracy theories. in their mind, telling them that i don't want to work for them may be equivalent to admitting i'm working for somebody else.

the last few days have been full of unexpectedly long sleeps, distractions over the primaries and eating far too much. i just wanted to get back to work today...

i've been periodically concerned about illegal entry into my living spaces since about mid-2017. that's when this appears to have started, i think because my analysis of the last american cycle got a little too close to being right for the comfort of whomever is keeping an eye on me.

but, i've been under surveillance for decades, now. 

and, i know they don't think i'm some kind of a spy, for that reason - my file goes back to the 90s. i'm just concerned they're going to use that as an argument.

i don't know how much the arrest in 2018 had to do with this.

just an update on what i think is going on:

1) it seems like my landlord is working for some kind of police agency. he's told me he's a former firefighter, and the front is that he's an auto-mechanic. but, he only seems to actually go to work every once in a while, and he's often gone for weeks at a time - indicating that he gets an awfully large number of holidays, for an auto-mechanic. i don't know if he's working for a local agency or a national one.

2) so, whatever agency it is that's monitoring me just comes down here at will when i'm gone. i have to go out from time to time, meaning i have little to no means of protecting myself, when they have the keys to my front door.

3) they appear to have been previously hacking into my laptop via the bluetooth chip on my wireless keyboard. so, i disabled that, and the system was stable for weeks, until they got down here yesterday when i was gone. i now have to waste my time trying to figure out what they did.

i don't think that moving is going to help much. do i call the cops and go into a witness protection program to protect me from the cops? but, a person can only handle so much invasion of privacy.

i'm going to have to find some way to prove that they're coming in here and work it out from there, once i have.

for now, i want to finish what i'm doing. this is such a fucking waste of my time...

the reason my posts are full of typos since mid-january is that i'm posting from a gmail account that i set up for travelling with, and i can't get into the blogspot interface to correct them from here.

i keep that machine off the internet because i've learned that i have to.

and i simply don't know what they did when i was gone, but i guess if they didn't install some kind of wireless chip then they must have introduced some kind of timer.

and, i knew there was somebody in here the moment i got back because i set my recycle bin up in front of the door as a trip wire, and it was tripped. i was kind of expecting something like this.

all i can do is look for chips, wipe it down and hope it's not persistent.

what i've been doing over the last few weeks is booting into my laptop's hard drive via the production pc, specifically because i can't connect to the internet on that machine (or i couldn't up until they apparently installed some kind of backdoor yesterday when i was out). i would then do the word processing i've been doing on that internetless machine, and upload the files to the internet through the chromebook by copying them over with a usb key.

i was forced to do this because some kind of intelligence agency keeps taking out the boot sector in my windows 7 machine in an apparent attempt to prevent me from posting to the internet, which is beyond retarded. that's never going to work...

then, they went and reinstalled the backdoor on the computer that i'm not using to post with, apparently because they got confused as to how i was continuing to post here even after they installed these back doors.

ugh.

the more they try and shut me down, the louder i'm going to yell. i'm like that. i won't be silenced.

so, what happened?

well, i guess they must have installed some kind of wireless chip in my pc. i have to buy groceries, and i can't bring my tower with me...

but, now what?

i don't see anything in there.

i'm clearing the cmos and i'm going to let the capacitors drain and i'm going to take a very close look over the system board. what do i do if i can't find the chip? i don't know.

but, the idiots installed the chip on my production machine, and i'm posting from my chromebook. the machine they installed the chip on is permanently quarantined from the internet, and has no networking capability by design. i have no intention to ever use it to connect to the internet with - it's just for making music with.

and, again - they have not succeeded in preventing me from posting here, they've just slowed down my documentation process. idiots...

there's a pattern here, though. - my machine consistently crashes whenever i post something insightful here.

you should take that as evidence that i'm on to something.

and, bizarrely, my hard drive just finally crashed, right when i was about to get back to work.

i went out for a few hours yesterday...

i'll have to put this back together, now.

this is a classic piece, in the upper echelons in terms of importance in the western music tradition, perhaps one of the ten most important pieces of music in the history of western civilization, and i'm not sure i can add much of a worthwhile analysis to the history texts. i have not seen it live and am looking forward to it.

if you have never heard this, you should hear it.

just a few brief updates on some things i've been listening to...

i've listened to this at least 20 times, now, and it hasn't really generated a reaction in me at all, which is very bad. it's just hitting me as a sort of second-rate debussy piece - not bad enough to react negatively to, but not exciting enough to get excited about, either. i don't actually really have much else to say about it.

it's the fourth piece in the stravinsky/ravel/poulenc/debussy program that i will very likely attend next weekend.

half of the point of going out is getting girled up.

if i have to wear a sweater, it's a lot less fun.

this is pleasant but generic and not particularly exciting. it might have been exciting 25 years ago. as it is, it's just kind of predictable.

if there was a rock show or a classical concert worth going to earlier in the night, i could see myself dropping by here later. but, it doesn't seem worth it in and of itself. especially given that it's going to be a little cold....

i know. i'm not that hardcore. or at least i'm not in the winter. i don't like the cold, and i don't like wearing clothes. i'd be better off in a very hot and humid climate where i can walk around naked at the winter solstice.

https://end-user.bandcamp.com/album/fold-ep

re: quarantine and the coronavirus

i am not opposed to quarantine, in principle, and think anybody arguing that it's racist to quarantine people are making specious arguments. if a white person comes back from china, is it racist to quarantine them, too? 

but, if you're going to quarantine somebody in 2020, you'd better make sure you're backed up by the science, and, with this virus, the science just doesn't support that. they're getting hit in china, but china is still a very poor place, overall, and it's broadly treatable, in the context of first world science.

i would support a quarantine if the science warranted it; i think that would be an acceptable rights restriction. but, the science to make that call isn't there, and appeals to avoid taking chances are not warranted.

where'd i go?

i guess i shut down around 7:00 yesterday morning, and i took a few grocery trips in the morning. i got my usb keyboard, and some replacements for some plates i broke (they may be too flimsy. we'll see.) as well. i stopped in the afternoon, got something to eat and passed out in the afternoon. i was up around 11:00 and finished eating...

i went past my eating schedule because i made too much pasta last week and then had eggs this week instead. i have to eat the pasta up. that means i'm going to be eating a lot of fruit for the next few weeks.

i didn't finish cleaning and need to get to that before i start reassembling the laptop, piece by piece.

is it really the wireless? is it just the system board? well, there's a lot of coincidences, aren't there? let's do some testing and find out.