so, i don't know if my mail person was trying to do me a favour or trying to piss me off and i'm consequently torn as to how to react. the package got here, but through a difficult route - and unsigned, when i was supposed to sign. that works out to my benefit, but it's more future packages i'm concerned about.
right now, i'm almost afraid to open it.
i'm going to probably walk down to the post office and ask them if they can automatically hold items to this address. there's no way anybody can contact me down here without prior consent, which is on purpose and not going to change. i'd rather they hold items there to begin with, and just send me an email to get me to pick it up. it removes a set of hands from the chain.
so, here's the story...
first, the crux of this is that i've made myself difficult to contact on purpose for many years - as long as i've lived on my own, basically. people coming to my old apartment would complain i was unlisted and they had to use their cell, but this was no accident. what a lot of them didn't realize was that i wasn't just unlisted; the buzzer actually wasn't set up. there was literally no way for anybody to contact me from the intercom.
and who uses the intercom? jehovah's witnesses. rogers. vacuum cleaner salespeople. mary kay. politicians. kids with fundraisers. people i don't want to talk to...
there's no intercom here. yet, when i moved down here, i took the doorbell out. it's for the same reasons: i do not want random people to be able to bother me.
you can agree with me by emulating me. it might get rid of some of the door-to-door type if more people adopted this method.
pretty much the one casualty of this is the mail dude, who drops off packages from time to time. yet, it's generally far too infrequently for it to justify being annoyed by children and religious idiots. i'm perfectly happy with going down to the post office and getting it myself. as mentioned, that prevents the unnecessary risk stemming from the mail dude handling it.
however, i happened to encounter him on my front step a few weeks ago and he wasn't very happy with my attitude. he asked if there was another bell to ring, because mine didn't work - i had to tell him i don't want it to work. so, he asked me for a phone number. right, like i want to give a random stranger my phone number (and i actually don't have one, anyways). i told him i'd rather he just leave the slip in the box. he was both confused and upset...
see, the mail people in canada are coming up against some possible extreme layoffs. looking at the government's plan, it almost seems like a scheme to make the mailboxes smaller and force more expensive courier options; what they're doing isn't going to eliminate carriers, it's just going to make the process more expensive. private carriers win, everybody else loses. no surprises, here - it's been the trajectory of government for decades.
however, i happen to be the type of ("real") anarchist that is opposed to frivolous work, and i'm not sure how anybody could argue that delivering mail is less frivolous than working a cash register. it's a job i don't think should exist; it squanders resources i think could be better applied elsewhere. if i can walk to the post office, why can't everybody else? so, i wouldn't be particularly upset about layoffs, and am not particularly empathetic to this guy's snarky reaction to my request to leave it in the box.
the key question: did he pick up that i didn't care about his job?
i had a package arrive this morning that required a signature. strangely, it ended up down the street, left without a signature. i only know this because of the kindness of the neighbour who brought it to me, and was able to contact me by knocking on my landlord's door.
on first glance, it seems obvious that the mail dude is being an ass, here.
however, given that he knew i don't answer the door, he may have thought he was saving me a trip.
i actually don't appreciate that. but i'd rather talk it through than write him up. well, unless he's looking for severance, i guess. but i can't reasonably make any of these assumptions.
so, i think the best thing to do is determine if i can get the post office to hold items and email me for pickup when they come in.
the device is apparently undamaged. and, in truth, with the way it was packaged, it would have been hard to damage it.
oddly, the canada post tracking site continues to state that the item is "out for delivery". i'm going to let this run through the system and see what happens. if it works properly, i should get a refund. and maybe i deserve one. i'll give it a few days....
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
the most important thing i learned from....decades....in school is the following:
if you're going to go to school with the purpose of doing something competitive with it (be that in employment or in academia), you have no option but to pick something you love to do. things may have been different in the past when the field was narrower, but nowadays living in north america means you're competing against two thirds of the planet for just about anything, and if you're not loving it then somebody else is going to mop the floor with you.
you might have a greater pure aptitude in the topic and in general. you might have higher test scores. you might be a harder worker, even. yet, if you're doing it for labour then the blunt reality is that you have no chance against the thousands of other people that do it for *fun*.
it's actually sort of an anarchist's ideal: the only kind of vocation any of us have any real chance in any more is what we'd love to be doing, anyways. the problem is that so few of us were raised with that mindset. we were told to do something we don't love because it is marketable (only to be outcompeted by somebody that loves it), or even to do something we loathe because it's profitable (only to run into the same problem). while that's happening, we're wasting developing skills doing things we enjoy, and getting behind those that figured this out.
if there are changes to immigration, or drastic improvements in living standard elsewhere, maybe it will once again make sense to tell your young, operatic nephew they'd be better off as a dentist. but, as it is, there's no deficit of kids that knew they wanted to be dentists when they were three years old and have spent their whole lives preparing, and the reality is that your nephew doesn't stand a fucking chance against them - he's really better off exploring his vocal chords.
i think that's a mass shift in social mindset that we need to have.
if you're going to go to school with the purpose of doing something competitive with it (be that in employment or in academia), you have no option but to pick something you love to do. things may have been different in the past when the field was narrower, but nowadays living in north america means you're competing against two thirds of the planet for just about anything, and if you're not loving it then somebody else is going to mop the floor with you.
you might have a greater pure aptitude in the topic and in general. you might have higher test scores. you might be a harder worker, even. yet, if you're doing it for labour then the blunt reality is that you have no chance against the thousands of other people that do it for *fun*.
it's actually sort of an anarchist's ideal: the only kind of vocation any of us have any real chance in any more is what we'd love to be doing, anyways. the problem is that so few of us were raised with that mindset. we were told to do something we don't love because it is marketable (only to be outcompeted by somebody that loves it), or even to do something we loathe because it's profitable (only to run into the same problem). while that's happening, we're wasting developing skills doing things we enjoy, and getting behind those that figured this out.
if there are changes to immigration, or drastic improvements in living standard elsewhere, maybe it will once again make sense to tell your young, operatic nephew they'd be better off as a dentist. but, as it is, there's no deficit of kids that knew they wanted to be dentists when they were three years old and have spent their whole lives preparing, and the reality is that your nephew doesn't stand a fucking chance against them - he's really better off exploring his vocal chords.
i think that's a mass shift in social mindset that we need to have.
obligatory "influential on song of the day" post.
out of the hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of records i've consumed in my life, very few are in the same category as this one. it's a song structuring influence on this particular track, especially in the instrumental second half of the track.
(relevant track: liquify, the day inri messed the world up, all symphonies, more)
out of the hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of records i've consumed in my life, very few are in the same category as this one. it's a song structuring influence on this particular track, especially in the instrumental second half of the track.
(relevant track: liquify, the day inri messed the world up, all symphonies, more)
deathtokoalas
obligatory "influential on song of the day" post.
you can hear it in the short section that features piano mashing and feeding back guitars.
(relevant track: liquify, first movement, others)
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
the song structuring is early queen, the atmosphere is david bowie (c. aladin sane) and the pick harmonics are all eddie van halen. also, the solo is vintage king crimson. you can maybe pull something post-punk out of the vocals....
like, honestly: if you like that layered guitar sound on mellon collie (which is what makes this track), go pick up the first three queen discs.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
the pumpkins were a punk band at their core, but this particular track is a fine piece of mid 70s glam metal, mixed with a bit of progressive rock.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
if forced to pick between grunge and punk, it's more like grunge than it is like punk, but there's a number of stylistic qualities associated with grunge that it doesn't have. the guitar tone is very bright, caused by rolling up the treble - grunge is generally associated with an exaggerated low end. nor do the vocals work well in a grunge context.
“alternative rock" has never been a real genre, and to the extent that it was it applied more to stuff like rem (which corgan certainly dabbled heavily in). the pumpkins fit well into "alternative culture" for a while, but they were generally not considered to fit into that aesthetic in the 90s. they were usually cut out into psychedelic pop or progressive rock, and viewed as more of a 60s/70s retro act.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
it's really not, though. you'd really never hear any grunge bands or personalities talk like that. politically, it was mostly a left-liberal movement with an undercurrent of christian morality (in the love your brother sense, not the kill the gays sense). corgan's always been somewhat of a hippie.
there was a strain of that kind of misanthropist thinking in some of the alternative culture of the early 90s, but it came more out of goth and industrial subculture. it's something you'd hear from trent reznor or nivek ogre, not kurt cobain or mark arm.
it's maybe a bit emo, though, which is another thing the pumpkins dabbled in.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
the pumpkins fit into a lot of overlapping genres, but there was never anything "independent" about them. this is big budget stadium rock in any era.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
people are assholes. it'd be nice if we could just set them all on fire, but there's laws and stuff.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
it's not because you hurt my feelings, it's because your views deserve to be incinerated along with everybody who shares them.
beyond there being laws against setting assholes on fire, the historical record is also clear: oppressing assholes just makes them come back stronger. look at russia. they tried to ban the christians, and a hundred years later the country is teetering on the edge of a fundamentalist state.
so, we have to argue with assholes, somehow. educate them? maybe their kids, but not too harshly, or they'll kneejerk.
really, i think it's better to just resign ourselves to the reality that assholes will always exist and there's nothing to be done about it.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
there's a little button on the thread that says "disable replies".
obligatory "influential on song of the day" post.
you can hear it in the short section that features piano mashing and feeding back guitars.
(relevant track: liquify, first movement, others)
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
the song structuring is early queen, the atmosphere is david bowie (c. aladin sane) and the pick harmonics are all eddie van halen. also, the solo is vintage king crimson. you can maybe pull something post-punk out of the vocals....
like, honestly: if you like that layered guitar sound on mellon collie (which is what makes this track), go pick up the first three queen discs.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
the pumpkins were a punk band at their core, but this particular track is a fine piece of mid 70s glam metal, mixed with a bit of progressive rock.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
if forced to pick between grunge and punk, it's more like grunge than it is like punk, but there's a number of stylistic qualities associated with grunge that it doesn't have. the guitar tone is very bright, caused by rolling up the treble - grunge is generally associated with an exaggerated low end. nor do the vocals work well in a grunge context.
“alternative rock" has never been a real genre, and to the extent that it was it applied more to stuff like rem (which corgan certainly dabbled heavily in). the pumpkins fit well into "alternative culture" for a while, but they were generally not considered to fit into that aesthetic in the 90s. they were usually cut out into psychedelic pop or progressive rock, and viewed as more of a 60s/70s retro act.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
it's really not, though. you'd really never hear any grunge bands or personalities talk like that. politically, it was mostly a left-liberal movement with an undercurrent of christian morality (in the love your brother sense, not the kill the gays sense). corgan's always been somewhat of a hippie.
there was a strain of that kind of misanthropist thinking in some of the alternative culture of the early 90s, but it came more out of goth and industrial subculture. it's something you'd hear from trent reznor or nivek ogre, not kurt cobain or mark arm.
it's maybe a bit emo, though, which is another thing the pumpkins dabbled in.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
the pumpkins fit into a lot of overlapping genres, but there was never anything "independent" about them. this is big budget stadium rock in any era.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
people are assholes. it'd be nice if we could just set them all on fire, but there's laws and stuff.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
it's not because you hurt my feelings, it's because your views deserve to be incinerated along with everybody who shares them.
beyond there being laws against setting assholes on fire, the historical record is also clear: oppressing assholes just makes them come back stronger. look at russia. they tried to ban the christians, and a hundred years later the country is teetering on the edge of a fundamentalist state.
so, we have to argue with assholes, somehow. educate them? maybe their kids, but not too harshly, or they'll kneejerk.
really, i think it's better to just resign ourselves to the reality that assholes will always exist and there's nothing to be done about it.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
there's a little button on the thread that says "disable replies".
obligatory "influential on song of the day" post.
there's a more in depth explanation at my bandcamp site. but, over that summer, i was sorting through some old guitar magazines and came across a version of most of this worked out in tab. i had very fast fingers back then; i picked it up pretty quickly. so, it worked it's way into the track for that reason...
(relevant track: liquify, first movement, others)
there's a more in depth explanation at my bandcamp site. but, over that summer, i was sorting through some old guitar magazines and came across a version of most of this worked out in tab. i had very fast fingers back then; i picked it up pretty quickly. so, it worked it's way into the track for that reason...
(relevant track: liquify, first movement, others)
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