2022 ytd temp archive

march 24, 2022

this blog clearly does not exist in linear time, which doesn't necessarily mean that i'm a trafalmadorian, so much as it means i blog like one. i post to here like it's a memory archive, because in many ways it actually is. however i did something this evening, so we can post it in real time.

you'll note a new banner on the page, which has the unusual quality of being clickable - it will launch you to the item, as stored at google drive, and as zoomable to a large amount of detail. you are opening a detailed google maps bitmap, pieced together very carefully.

places circled are places that i went to some adventure on, some of which are written about here, and others which will be written about in the future. that map is currently comprehensive, as i've only exited this broad region on two occasions:

1) to go across canada, in 2003. we actually went to new brunswick first, then went to bc, and then went back. we spent some time in bc, and barely any time in the prairies or northern ontario.

2) i went to florida twice as a kid (which is what scranton is about, as i specifically remember stopping there. i also specifically remember jacksonville, florida.)

i have not been to chicago yet, but probably will go to chicago. cleveland and buffalo are likely eventual destinations, whereas boston is less likely. if i make it to new york or pittsburgh, i'll increase the size of the map.

this map will update as i go on more adventures to more places.

9:13

aug 30, 2022

the nature of the internet is changing.

i've recently spent a lot of time editing posts here, under the realization that the writing is being altered somewhere deep on the backend. there is no way for me to prove this and i am unable to prevent it from happening.

google is also changing how it functions. i've always known that all of these services exist to extract data for advertisers, who are the actual consumers. that no longer seems to be enough for google, which is slowly beginning to charge for services and place ads on everything, whether people like it or not. it's also moving to random deletion for people that haven't purchased storage, for files that it deems are not in use. this is potentially catastrophic. in the long run, it indicates that this isn't a safe place to leave your data, unless you want to buy cloud space, which isn't even possible after you're dead. my expectation that this site would stay here for centuries as a time capsule would be something google is taking active steps to prevent from happening. expect google to get more aggressive about enforcing paywalls. you will probably even see paywalls come up at gmail.

it's not a question of whether i can afford to buy space here or not. while i won't pay to remove ads from youtube videos that i'm watching, i would in theory pay to remove ads from youtube videos that i upload for others to watch. this is ideological - i want the internet to be permanent and i want the internet to be free.

i don't know what the answer is, but there is increasingly not a way forwards in this space. the company hosting the space is actively scrubbing it with the eventual intent of putting ads on it; this is what i've deduced is actually happening, as i search for a motive in the edits. i would not accept the imposition of those ads; i would take the site down immediately. we're likely at the same kind of impasse that we had in the late 90s, when domains like fortunecity and geocities just evaporated as their free tiers started getting lathered with ads. i'm realizing i'm too reliant on google and need to find some way to prevent my data from being destroyed by paywalls, or getting deleted in one click when i'm dead.

the real function of the online front-end of this site is the search function on the side. the layout is efficient, but i can emulate it or get around it. what i would find almost impossible to do at any other site is that tree archive. the end format that this writing will exist in is not this blog, and that has not been my intent for some time. the end format is a linearly ordered journal in pdf format that you can download as a file, if you want. while you could search a directory of pdf files, the tree layout then becomes both a liability and an asset, because it's all written entirely backwards. it's helpful to pinpoint, but only to the point of finding the day.

this is a hard problem and i need to think about it. i have some ideas, though.

moving to microsoft or facebook would actually be less useful, and it wouldn't solve the problem of insecure data storage. nor do i want to put up a paywall like a site like substack does. i don't write "newsletters", i scrawl out thoughts; this isn't a magazine to be paid for, it's notes to be thought about, and it's mostly stream of consciousness, at that. i'm not a journalist. at best, i'm an essayist. really, i'm just a nerd. i suspect that many of the people that thought they could make substack into a job are now regretting it, but, again, that's not actually the point. sites like this that are just hosting things to read should be available entirely for free.

you're not the audience here, anyways. i write for the future. my audience isn't born yet; they'll want the pdfs. if i can't maintain the integrity of the data here, i'll have to find somewhere else to store it.

something i've been doing recently is combined posts where i put time stamps on the constituent posts that combine to build up the larger posts. these have been focused ideas, but if i were to generalize it, i'd get something like a digest. if i were then to write everything offline and only post a digest at the end of the day or the end of the week, instead of thousands of posts a month, i could maintain the basic functionality of the site while having a more reliable storage solution to maintain the integrity of the data from backend editing by governments, corporations or advertising executives. i tried to do this once before but i found it was actually more time consuming because i was constantly copying things back and forth. if i restrict the amount of posting to this blog to the digests, that should resolve that problem, and also allow me to actually post the journals as journals in other places in something closer to real time.

i am going to experiment with this approach a little and see how it goes. if i stick with it, the end result will be one post here at the end of each day. 

sept 1, 2022

i've changed the settings on the blog so that it only displays one post per page. for now, it will front post the "internet is changing" post, which will eventually be backposted to the aug 30th digest. the reason i'm doing this is to ensure that the page is more directly navigable. right now, it will seem "broken"; in the long run, once the new format works it's way in, the forward and backward buttons will create a more readable, linear blog that is organized in digests that are better navigable by day.

when this is working properly, suppose that the front page has the digest for sept 20th, 2022. if i hit "previous posts", which i suspect nobody does, it will go directly to the digest for sept 19th. if i hit previous posts again, it will strictly show sept 13th. this will undo the backwards posting problem that is endemic to social media, which has long bothered me (see my twitter page fore a satire of it).

2:08

i need to temporarily break my silence.

i do hope that gorbachev's funeral is open casket.

3:44

it turns out that the downside of the scotch bonnets is that my hands are left viciously burning for hours after handling them.

i don't want to waste large amounts of plastic repeatedly discarding gloves for the single use of handling hot peppers. i've just been going commando on them. we'll see what else i can think of. i suppose i always have a few plastic bags on their way to the recycle drying in the sink. i could just reuse the same one over and over and put it in the freezer. yeah, that sounds like an easy answer, actually.

like, i want to wash my face right now, and i can't. i can barely even type. yet, i'm not tired. so, what to do, exactly?

9:33

another frequent undesired edit that i'm seeing as i archive posts here for better data integrity in storage is the replacement of assyria with babylon. i am sure i wouldn't make that mistake, as i understand the words i'm using (and the editor obviously doesn't, but is rather being driven by fuzzy, racist ideas of semitic supremacy through the perverse filter of ethnic nationalism).

the semitic babylonians had a different culture and religion than the non-semitic (and apparently caucasian) sumerians, and they clearly had a different language and were clearly of a different race, but they largely built their society on top of the existing sumerian one. while there are definite destruction horizons in both the archaeological record and the historical record (as we can reconstuct it from ancient cuneiform tablets), babylonian culture was largely developed out of continuity from sumerian culture, so there is a definite process of succession. i'm very clear to point that out and speak of it in those terms, especially in regards to the astronomy, which is about the only thing i really care about in regards to sumeria or babylonia.

the assyrians were half-literate barbarians that took over some cities in the north by the force of violence and created a brutal, draconian dictatorship responsible for immense destruction and widespread genocide. while the babylonians existed in succession to sumeria, the assyrians destroyed what was left of sumerian culture and substituted a wide-ranging dark age in it's place. the destruction of babylon by assyria was probably worse, in terms of data loss, than the destruction of baghdad by the mongols and is the direct reason we know so little about ancient sumeria beyond what we can reconstruct through fragments of clay found in abandoned 3000 year old buildings.

while the assyrians and babylonians were both semitic peoples, and that may be all that matters to the editor, you really can't substitute one for the other. one was an advanced civilization built on top of the alpha cradle of civilization, while the other was a barbaric monstrosity that ultimately completely destroyed it. the compare and contrast essay needs to be about the contrast.

the editor uses the term "babylon" in a vague, colloquial sense that implies a strictly judaic religious context. this isn't somebody with much understanding of secular history or the science of archaeology, but somebody that gets their naive "understanding" of history entirely from religious mythology. all the editor understands about babylon is what is written about it by the cultural conservatives that wrote the hebrew bible.

by switching to offline writing for data storage, i hope i can get around this unwanted editing to the point that i can actually prove it's happening. as stated repeatedly, all i can find is consistency in the emails, which are supposed to act as data redundancy, even when it comes to posts that i'm certain were edited. i've convinced myself this is happening by tricking the system, but it doesn't let me prove it (yet.), as it is self-correcting in my own editing to create a false, projected reality of manipulated stasis. worse, it's driving me bonkers trying to prove my writing is being altered, and being unable to do so. i'm either correct, or i've lost my mind; the fact that i'm lucid suggests the former.

i'm going to catch them soon, i'm sure of it. it will be easy enough to run the two sources through a diffchecker, but i can't do that when everything is online and nothing is certain, as a consequence of it; i can neither have confidence in the integrity of the emails, nor in the integrity of the blog posts, as accurate alpha sources. proving that corruption is happening requires having a source i can trust the integrity of.

for now, note yet another example of clear manipulation in the editor's confused use of assyria and babylonia as interchangeable terms, due to ignorance resulting from the racism that results from the supremacy inherent to ethnic nationalism.

10:21

glasnost.

 

11:38

11:51

i would support the existence of the climate police. that sounds like a great idea, if you ask me.

i mean, you're serious about this, or you're not. the reality is that pollution is a crime against humanity and that there should be an enforcement mechanism to enforce that reality. a climate police would be a proportionate, reasonable response to the challenge we face; conversely, tax cuts for the rich to try to influence their behaviour followed by slaps on the wrist for non-compliance in the name of "freedom" is not reasonable or proportionate, and is not taking the situation nearly seriously enough.

when somebody proposes a solution that might actually work, the government feels the need to debunk the idea. it's reflective of where we actually are as a society on this, and what the set of likely outcomes actually is.

if we're going to have police, this is exactly what they should be doing. instead, we send people out with guns to enforce property rights that allow people to pollute. we'll get what we deserve for it, in the end.

reference:
"environment canada says online reports of 'climate police' are false", cbc news, sept 1, 2022

19:29

an ye harm none, do what ye will

ok.

not only does pollution not harm none, but pollution harms all. it is not a lesser crime deserving of a lesser punishment, or merely a behavioural problem worthy of scolding, as one does a child; it is the worst type of crime that is deserving of the most severe penalties, and the most egregious form of anti-social behaviour, indicative of a severe deficit of basic decency and a depravity of character of the most irredeemable quality.

climate police are a wonderful idea. let's do it right away.

20:07

i don't think that it's likely that kiev will succeed in taking control of territory from the russians (at this point, nothing can be verified, as neither side is reliable. as was the case in syria, the most reliable source appears to be the british government, which is not very helpful.), but i think that it is likely that the destruction of infrastructure around the dnieper river (a massive river that splits ukraine in half) by kiev will have the outcome of partitioning the country in half. the media coverage is suggesting that this is a defensive act, intended to prevent russia from being able to move supplies from the eastern side of the river to the western side of the river, and this is a valid analysis. ukraine is half forest and half steppe, but it has several very substantive rivers flowing through it, and being able to control those rivers is key to controlling the country (something i pointed out months ago). the corollary of that, however, is that it also means that kiev would have no serious chance of moving supplies to the eastern side of the river, either, and consequently no chance of a successful counter-attack (if such an idea ought to be taken seriously, anyways). it's clear enough at this point that the destruction of infrastructure is an intentional tactic, indicating one of two possibilities:

(1) kiev is walking into the vacuum created by russian indecisiveness and unilaterally partitioning the country into east and west (this division is historical) or
(2) while kiev might succeed in preventing further russian advances for at least a little while by destroying the region's infrastructure, it will do so at the unintentional permanent loss of the eastern and southern half of the country, which it will now not have the infrastructure in place to retake (if such a thing was ever likely in the first place). this would be a short term pyrrhic victory at the long term loss of an unintentional partition of the country.

these options aren't strictly mutually exclusive. i would suspect that they realize that what they're doing is going to partition the country, and potentially for a very long period, and that they don't like that outcome and will seek to undo it, but are doing it because they realize it's their last chance to prevent a full scale invasion of the whole country. it's also a scorched earth policy, in function and intent.

what can moscow do?

moscow has, for obvious reasons, been attempting to avoid inflicting the kind of damage in ukraine that kiev has been inflicting since they got those yankee rockets. moscow is not invading ukraine to topple a foe or control a small area of resources like the united states did in afghanistan or iraq; russia is intending on assimilating as much of the region back into russia as it can, and has rightfully been arguing that the area is historically russian, and consequently a kind of lost territory, an argument that only pertains to some abstraction of the country's east and south, although exact boundary lines are not entirely clear. however, if kiev decides to essentially resort to terrorism by destroying all of the infrastructure across the dnieper in an attempt to forcefully partition the state as a defensive manoeuvre (at least in the short run), russia is left with the need to reciprocate, or face troops and resources cut off on the other side of the dnieper. they could destroy the infrastructure over the bug, then, but how helpful that would be is not clear, and it may leave them with the same pyrrhic outcome.

looking at a map, kiev may very well succeed in defending itself by bombing out all of the bridges over the dnieper, and moscow would be left with no real alternative but to invade from a different direction.

if the ukrainians want to do this, then, perhaps the russians should help them and bomb out the bridges across the river all the way north to belarus. this would have the effect of making it impossible for ukraine to resupply it's own troops, leaving stranded divisions in territory contiguous to russia, and facilitate the russian advance to the dnieper across the northeast of the country. the situation would then need to be re-evaluated, once that is finished.

21:28

so, this is day one of the new digest format. i hope my intent is a little more clear. i have this stored in both doc and html format in a secret location, which will make it easier to print to pdf in a 5x8" format for journal publication, or viewed on a pc or laptop. throw your phone in the garbage.

what am i doing with the recent posts that i don't trust the integrity of?

first, i'm taking it all down. then, i'm copying it over to the secret location. after that, i'll need to inspect it, probably rewrite the bulk of it and eventually repost it. it will come up in a 5x8" printable format as i repost it.

this process won't be very fast, and the last few months of posts might consequently be offline for a long time.

it is worth noting, though, that i'll be updating the other blogs now as digests as well.

23:43

sept 2, 2022

so, that's now updated for the day.

today's digests include one 2-3 page post for the following blogs:

1) the dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja politics/general blog, which has recently been the only blog i've been posting to. almost everything gets posted to that blog, with the exception of very targeted posts to the music blogs. this is listed as "rants" in the list on the side of the page.
2) the deathtokoalas "music review" blog, as it is listed on the side. this is a general cultural commentary blog that also features some sporadic commentary on lighter news sources. i included the posts on climate change and the historical analysis for the reason that these topics frequently overlap with cultural discussions from well known authors (although the post in question does not), and that qualifies as cultural commentary. my decision tree on this is rather complicated and there's going to be a lot of ambiguity around it. the only post i removed from this digest was the analysis of the recent ukrainian tactic of destroying infrastructure around the dnieper as a scorched earth policy to attempt to slow the russian advance into the rest of ukraine. this blog would generally exclude specifically political commentary or analysis, like statistical analysis of polling results, which was the real basis of separating it out, as i wanted my political and cultural commentaries split into different streams. in better times, it was directed at actual music reviews. i don't really know how much of an interest i have in that, moving forwards, but i have always had a sort of a hitchensian gossip streak and this blog will at the least allow for that.

3) the peculiar adventures of j, or the travel blog, as it is listed on the side, which was supposed to be the blog i used to narrate events in real-time while i was out with my chromebook in order to quarantine my main account from insecure networks but has instead become a general geography blog since i had to move to the chromebook for general network access, which led to me merging the two accounts. the scope of the blog has had to increase to be self-contained, but the idea is that this blog recollects events that occur somewhere outside, in the real world, from a first-person perspective. it isn't always, but it's supposed to be a little more narrative based. all posts posted to the general blog today were also posted to the travel blog, which may seem weird, but it just happened to be that all of the posts on this day fit into one of the categories that this blog touches upon. on other days, posting to this blog may be quite light.

i will not normally describe the contents of digest updates in detail, but this is a good opportunity to repost what the purpose of the various blogs is. i'm in the process of finally reconstructing my typing station, so it is time to get back to normal posting schedules at all of the various blogs. this systems collapse has been lengthy and deep, but i am rectifying it, even as i'm convinced i'm still under extreme surveillance, despite not understanding why.

there are a number of blogs that were not updated today:

- the inri records blog is intended to mirror my music archive at bandcamp. this has been left stranded for a while now, but i should be back to it shortly.
- the current music blog is a music journal that is maintained in order to document my recording process for future generations and is consequently only active when i am actually recording. soon. i hope.
- j's journal is the blog written from my perspective when i was a young child as a vehicle to explain influences on my musical development, while growing up. i will need to aggressively get back to writing this very shortly. i have just realized that the formatting on it has annoyingly broken for a second time, so i'll need to fix that, first. the first time, i just needed to clear cookies, so maybe it's not so bad.
- the alter-reality is the journal written from my perspective as a teenager, which is when my recording career first began. i will need to finish the childhood journal before i get back to that.
- the music timeline was created in order to replace my facebook music page, because i actually liked the timeline feature which got buried and destroyed by successive facebook updates, and remains a work in progress. the only reason i didn't delete my facebook page in 2013 is that i liked the timeline, as a way to present data historically.

4) as of right now, i have added a new blog on the side called the "diet blog". today's digest only includes one post to this new blog, about scotch bonnet peppers. this blog will eventually be constructed to include all of the posts that have been posted to the general blog about my diet, starting at the end of 2020. i may or may not decide to backdate this blog, but the intent is that it starts in late 2020 and runs until i have attained dietary perfection.

i served a document this morning and will need to get to the court house today to swear an affidavit for it. i will otherwise be continuing the archiving process overnight.

3:03

i wanted to get out today, swear an affidavit and take the 50k ride, but i didn't get to sleep until late in the afternoon because it took longer to get the august posts archived than i thought it would and i had to reserve the document because court staff misunderstood the direction provided to it and i decided it was easier to just put the attorney general's address on the document rather than argue about originating processes. this was pointless, ultimately, and it meant i lost the key part of the day, which forced me to lose the rest of it.

i at least do have all august posts taken down, now, and can get to removing july posts for the night.

23:23

sept 23, 2022

while i'm annoyed by the unwanted editor's insistence on corrupting the content of my posts, they are mostly interested in politics. i am moving to offline writing, strictly, but i would at the least like to maintain a personal narrative in real time, and the more appropriate place to do that is in this space.

if the unwanted editor interferes, i'll have to take this down, too.

let's give it a try.

1:52

sept 27, 2022

no. i don't have confidence in posting here, either.

i've taken down the entire blog.

it will rise again.

22:56

so, where should i begin? the video component makes the situation a little different, as i kept a running narrative. there's often not much to add. but, i have a few blanks to fill in...

as is clear from the video, i tried to hitch from the mcdonalds at college & huron church starting around 3:00 am and quickly realized that it wasn't going to be as easy as i thought it was going to be. i generally get picked up very quickly, so i was surprised by this, but there are reasons for it. it's dark in the video, but there was construction at the intersection, and it would have been very difficult to stop there as a result of it (as the highway is reduced from four to two lanes). that said, i did get three stops, here - but they were all travelling locally. after a while, i started realizing that many of the truckers were uncomfortable with somebody hitching from the middle of the city like this, and that my chances would be better a little further out of town, where a truck could actually stop. i also noticed that the sun was starting to come up and that my time window to actually get to toronto in time for the surgery was becoming limited, as the traffic through this intersection was set to increase, making it even harder to stop in the reduced lanes.

so, i walked all the way up huron church to what seemed like the on ramp to the actual 401, a stretch of highway that seems to have been redone since the last time that the google maps bots were in the region, and tried to catch somebody getting directly on the 401 from there. i was not there long, and got two stops, but the first wanted to take me to leamington (where local workers pick fruit) and the second seemed to think i was a prostitute. the highway has since been redone, so you can't see the tunnel that opens up at that space now, but i was actually unable to open the (obviously stoned) guy's door when he stopped because the space between the shoulder and the tunnel wall opening was too narrow, which made it clear enough that i wasn't getting anywhere, there. so, i had to make a choice - did i want to follow the on ramp down, hoping it opened up, or try to circle around? i decided on the latter, which was the right choice.

so, i crossed the road (past a meowing cat that i feared was a baby cougar, and note that cougars do meow...) and took a path along the highway to grand marais, before recalibrating and realizing i couldn't cross down to cabana on that side and would have to go around. as such, i decided to just walk directly to the dougall parkway and try from there...

google won't let me walk up the dougall parkway, although it's exactly what i did, so i have to redraw the route from here using a car (which i obviously wasn't in, yet):

i got my first pickup walking up the dougall parkway as the sun was beginning to shine brightly - the first of three heavy smokers that stopped, but i can't complain when i'm hitching, can i? he dropped me somewhere that he thought was a truck stop but was actually a truck inspection stop and that i'm glad i didn't go into, as i would have gotten arrested. i just looked over, saw it was empty, and kept going, as i was late.

in fact, i only stopped for a second before smoker #2 picked me up, and this was an odd individual. he introduced himself as jesus and explained that he was going the other way and turned around to get me because he felt i was in trouble. he lived through a civil war, you see (somewhere in the middle east, i might guess - lebanon?) and felt he had a good sense of when somebody was in particular need. he then pulled out five one hundred dollar bills and handed them to me, which certainly caught me off guard to say the least.

if i were to be a little cynical, i might conclude that he thought i was a prostitute and gave me the cash he was planning on paying out, without asking me to perform. but, i have no real basis for that. he introduced himself as a jesus freak looking to help, and i should take him at face value.

but, i decided not to prod, because as lucky as i was to have an extra $500 in my pocket, i realized i was actually in a very vulnerable position. that kind of generosity rarely comes without strings.

but, he dropped me at the travel j in tilbury and didn't ask me for a thing.

there's obviously some questions that arise when somebody picks you up hitchiking and introduces themselves as god incarnate, then hands you a fair amount of cash. if you've read this blog at all, you know i'm an atheist. i was once picked up by a cult leader in bc, which is probably closer to the reality of the situation. but, if the son of man saw it fit to give me a few dollars, what i'll say about that is that his hindsight was divine - it would turn out that i needed the cash, in the end. one way or another, i needed this to get home, in the end.

so, call it divine intervention, or call it good luck, but let us stop for a minute to give thanks to jesus, whatever that means to you; to me, it means i'm thanking a dude that helped me out in a way he may not have fully understood. i certainly didn't understand it. i had a ticket to get home with in my pocket, and every intent to catch the bus back. alas...

a truck stop was what i wanted; i was hoping to catch a truck heading to toronto, but, after asking around, it became clear that this particular stop was full of people going to the united states. foiled. so, i went up to the highway and gave it a run, then went back up to escape the rain. and, it did in fact rain, but then i headed back out to the road, feeling like i was running out of time...

at the very last minute, somebody going to toronto picked me up in a rather swank brand new mercedes. this was smoker #3, who was a small business owner heading to toronto to meet a client. as it would happen to be, he was also a race car driver in his spare time. so, this was a smooth and rather quick ride. that's some even steven for you - i'm late, and i catch a race car driver that gets me all the way there in a jiffy. his self-interest was that he got to take the car pool lane when he picked me up, which let him zoom through the traffic in mississauga. he got me to toronto by a few minutes after 1:00 (and in about half the time listed in the following picture).

i was not initially sure where i was, so i had to orient myself by the lake; i knew i had to walk away from the lake, and i knew i had to take a right to move in the direction of yonge st. i was planning on walking to the hospital, but i was late, so i walked up spadina, past the cn tower, turned on to front and hailed a cab - and then that $500 found it's first use.

it was an airport cab driver that picked me up, somebody that first immigrated to windsor, before moving to toronto. he liked toronto better, and i don't blame him for it. but, he insisted that the hospital i was going to was the york street hospital and not the michael garron hospital - only to be baffled when we got there that i actually got the name of the place right. it was only a $30 ride, but i only had about $100 in the bank, so that first $100 bill came out here, and i was happy to slap it down on his surprised face - because i sure didn't look like i had a $100 bill in my pocket. 

so, i got to the hospital around 13:30 and learned that i was scheduled to go in at 10:45. oops. i knew from what the secretary told me that he's done at 15:00, so i just had to get in on time. and, had they got me in right away, there wouldn't be a second part of the story. but, the nurse in the er had previously clocked me in, which created a computer system error at admitting, and i had to wait over an hour in admitting before i could get up there. that would turn out to be decisive, in the end.

i finally made it up there a few minutes before three, got my clothes off and got sent into the er, where they stuck an iv in my hand and counted me down...

i actually got paranoid at the moment. what was going through my mind was the fuckers have got me, and they'll file it as a covid death, how could i be so dumb as to walk into it, but i was out before i could escape...

...and i woke up without testicles. 

they offered me morphine, and i had to very firmly reject it in favour of acetaminophen. i was pretty clear headed when i woke up, and remember taking the two white tylenol pills by chewing them, and following it with water.

you might imagine i'd be in excruciating pain, but i couldn't feel anything at all, a fact that i found surprising but that hasn't altered itself. i was sure that the drugs would wear off and i'd be left immobile, but it just never happened. i initially rejected my popsicle, but relented in due course.

i then looked up at the clock and realized it was 16:30. fuck. 

nurse!, i cried, you have to call my ride! my bus is at 17:00! 

it was point blank: not happening. uch-o...

my ride showed up at 17:30, and what exactly was i to do? i wasn't able to stay at the hospital, due to covid regulations. so, i took the lift to union, hoping to find a way out. what else could i do?

i realized i probably missed the bus, but could i take a train? via? go? anything? nope - last bus out of town was at 17:00, last train at 17:30. fucked.

insistent on getting out of toronto before dark, i caught the go bus to cambridge, which seemed to be the furthest trip that could be taken. i was hoping to catch a ride to london, and seeing if i could hitch from there, but i was really just trying to flee toronto as fast i could and figure it out from there. $20, from downtown toronto to the edge of town, and i was just happy to get out.

 

so, i'm in cambridge at 22:30. now, what? right?

well, i needed some meat. i don't eat much meat, but i needed the iron and the fat, out of surgery, and i knew it. they dropped me off at a walmart, so i got a bacon cheeseburger at the mcdonalds. that's another $10 out of my pocket.

now, i needed to find a tim horton's for wifi, and this is a persistent problem that first appears here - i found a tim horton's, but it was closed. what? at 19:00, even. i found this very disorienting, but it seems to be a new reality - tim hortons across the board seem to close early, nowadays. 

this was too much walking as it was, but what next? i asked around, and everything was closed. but, i'm face to face with a super 8 and i have $400 in my pocket, so maybe i can stay the night and get on the wifi there? nope - they need a credit card. fuck. i didn't realize that there were more expensive hotels up the street.

they at least agreed to let me use the wifi if i can find an outlet, so i'm stumbling around the block looking for one and finally find one at the petro across the street, which is only live because it's plugged into an ice machine. but, there's a trick - look for the outlets with the ice machines at the gas station.

the wifi at the tim horton's didn't work, and the super 8 said i was too far. but, thankfully, i was able to get into the wifi at the closed home depot in the mall behind me, which was enough to get the point across - the only bus comes through cambridge the next night. so, i can wait 18 hours for it (without a hotel room) or i could try to hitch out of town.

so, i called a cab to get me to the nearest truck stop, which was another flying j.

that's another $50, which was more than i intended, but i had to get somewhere other than where i was, given that i couldn't walk. i was a sitting duck in cambridge; there was simply nowhere to go. if i could get a quick ride out from the truck stop, i could be home before the sun came up. unfortunately, though, the truck stop was dead. fuck.

the logic asserted itself pretty clearly - as i could not walk, i had no choice but to sit there and wait until the traffic picked up in the morning. it actually wouldn't make sense to move at all until the next afternoon, as the bus to cambridge didn't come until the following evening. in the worst case, i'd have to cab back to cambridge to catch the bus, but i wouldn't have to make that choice until the following afternoon, and surely i'd find something going to windsor well before then.  

so, i sat and waited. and waited. i bought a lot of coffee, took some extra strength tylenol, chatted with some locals and waited for somebody to pick me up and drive me out.

right when the sun started coming up, that is right when my chances started to improve, the travel j called me in to have me escorted off the property. see, and this is frustrating to me because i explained to them why i was there. but, they seemed to think i was soliciting funds, which was false.

when the cops showed up, i explained to them that i missed the bus out of surgery and did not have another option to get home until the following evening besides hitching, nor could i walk off the property, nor was i about to try to hitch off the 401 in the dark with mobility issues, so they would have to arrest me if the travel j wanted me off the property, which was an unreasonable request. i'm sure i could have caught something within minutes once the sun cane up. the cops did not initially accept any of these claims, and rather tried to coerce me into getting up and walking, which was met with point blank resistance. i would have gladly caught a transit option out of town, but none existed, and the situation before us was the consequence of a lack of transit options: i really had no way out besides hitching, and there was really nowhere for the cops to drop me off, not even a bus station. after some back and forth, one of the cops suggested dropping me off at a hospital, as i could at least wait there for a few hours until the bus came. so, they actually drove me into cambridge and dropped me off at the hospital and then threatened to throw me in jail if they saw me hitching again, thereby adding an extra day to the journey home.

assholes.

there would of course be no basis for such an arrest - it would be police harassment. but, once i found myself at the hospital in cambridge, it no longer mattered - the logic flipped over,, and it was then easier to take the bus home.

dropping me off at the hospital was really just an excuse to sleep somewhere - something that should not have been denied to me in toronto - so i was able to get a few hours of sleep at the emergency room before getting released around noon. i then had roughly seven hours to find a bus ticket, find a way to print it, get to the bus stop and get on the bus. 

first, i had to get into kitchener, so i took the bus in to the sportsworld plaza, which is where the bus to windsor leaves from.

then, i had to buy a prepaid card at the petro to get another ticket, which was another $80. it's a good thing i had the extra cash, right? thanks, jesus.

i then caught the bus to the library to buy the ticket and print it:

i stopped to buy some toothpaste & a toothbrush at the layover, because it had been too long....

i didn't get much of a tour of the downtown kitchener public library, but i did happen to notice that they had a gibson acoustic signed by jim cuddy in the library, which is a piece of canadiana that you don't see every day. free printing, too - hey. score. so, i was in and out pretty quick, and i'll thank the library for the experience. they probably had no idea.

i brushed my teeth on the side of weber (incorrectly pronounced weeber by the locals) and caught the 8 back to the mall, then the 206 back to the sportsworld complex:

at this point, it was around 16:00. the bus was coming at 18:50. so, i got a chicken caesar pita (no caesar) at the pita pit, got an extra large coffee at the timmy's and waited it out....

the bus finally arrived at 18:50, and i was fast asleep within seconds, although i do definitely remember stopping in london and watching the entire bus get off to take a smoke, and then having to deal with the consequence of twenty smokers walking back in to the bus, many of them with nicotine-soaked masks on top of everything else. i had a sweater to hide in, thankfully...

but, then i was home.

finally.

there is a federal election right now in canada, and let me just state the obvious - once a day service in off hours is not sufficient for the 401 corridor. i understand that ridership is low, but the same can be said of most city buses, and they run at a loss because it's a public service. this is a market failure, and that's all you're going to get out of it if you leave it up the market. so, i'm going to call on the federal parties to propose a properly integrated public transit network that ensures that this doesn't happen to anybody else.

so, step one was to upload the vlog for the day:

have i switched vlog channels or what? naw.

these videos will all end up in vlogs, in the end, and i will have to do a huge catchup, one day.

it's really just a temp site..,

the story is coming. soon.

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.