of course, as soon as i claim i'm awake, i get sleepy.
i'm truly caught up and will be back to work tomorrow.
Saturday, June 25, 2016
new post at the alter-reality
june 25, 1996
the quake soundtrack is really, really, really awesome
my marks were pretty good. As in the important courses, Bs in the unimportant ones. i'm excited about not having to take phys ed anymore next year - it always drives my average down, every year. i get As in english and math and science and then this big, stupid ugly B in phys ed that takes me down a grade point. it's really unfair. who cares about phys ed? why should it kill my average like this? the other class i always get Bs in is french. i'd like to squirm out of it, but i know my dad won't let me. they say it's important to speak french in ottawa, but the truth is that i've never met anybody that speaks french here, ever. supposedly, you need to speak french to get a job in the government. well, that's easy: i won't work for the government, then. they made the rules, not me. i just find it really irrational to have to speak two languages and so i can't study for it because it's just a stupid idea. i'd rather be doing anything else at all. why can't we all just speak one language? i don't even care if it's english. i'd be happy to learn chinese starting tomorrow if it meant i only had to deal with one language. i'd even be happy to learn french tomorrow if i could forget about english altogether. what drives me crazy about learning multiple languages is the redundancy. it's inefficient. illogical. irrational...
i don't know what i'm going to do this summer. i usually spend the summer entirely by myself; i've never had any friends. i went to elementary school on an army base but i didn't live on the army base so there was never anybody around that i went to school with. so, i would just stay inside. last summer, i played a lot of guitar and read a lot of books. my stepmother wants me to get a job, but that sounds like a waste of time. what would i spend the money on? i'd rather not have money and have time than have money and not have time. i don't really understand why she's so insistent. dad says i'm still too young to work and i shouldn't worry about it, but he wants me to go get a social insurance number anyways, just in case. she gets really mad when he says that, and says i'll have to do chores, then, instead. she seems to honestly think that i have a responsibility to pay rent through manual labour in order to stay here. she calls it "room and board".
i hope that what happened last year doesn't happen again. i was having a nice summer until my step-mother took her yearly holidays and forced me to spend the day outside pulling weeds. she insisted i didn't tell my father. so, i was working six hours a day in the hot sun for a whole week. i assumed my allowance would go up as a result as i was doing more than my expected weekly chores, but when i inquired she told me that i was just paying the rent. this made perfect sense to her. it did not make any sense to me at all - so, i refused to pull weeds any longer unless she promised to pay up and she locked me out of the house. she said i was getting evicted. when my dad got home, i explained what had happened and a huge fight erupted. he told me that i was right and she was wrong and took me to the music store and let me pick out $100 worth of cassettes. he wanted me to understand that my labour was worth something and i should never work for free. he said she has a "chemical imbalance" and goes crazy sometimes and it's something we'll both have to live with forever. he said she understands that what she did was wrong. but, they fought about it for a long time afterwards. i don't know if i agree that she thought what she did was wrong.
i think at least a part of the summer is going to be spent in the basement building a sound proof room. dad used to play the drums when he was younger, and he wants a place where he can go back to playing them. my stepmother won't let him get a drum kit because it's too loud. so, he wants to get sound paneling and insulation for an isolated room in the basement. he says he'll need me to help him - and that i should bring some friends over to start a band once we're done. he'll even put a bass in there, too.
i listened to the new soundgarden record a lot this month and really like it, but it's been replaced in my walkman by the new nine inch nails record. my computer is too slow to run quake; i don't have enough ram for it. it can run wolfenstein, but i haven't played wolfenstein in a few years. i only play civ 2, now. but, my step uncle is a really big id games fan and he let me dub a copy of it. he thought the soundtrack was effective in the game, but that it was really funny that anybody might listen to it as music. he says he'd rather listen to the who.
i don't think it's as good as fixed, which is my favourite record of all time. it's different. it's kind of scary, almost. but, i've been listening to it nonstop since sunday and i just can't get out of it.
it's getting late, so i should pretend that i'm going to bed. i'm too old to have a bed time, but i know that people have to get up in the morning so i adjust to it in keeping quiet past a certain time. i can't say when my next update will be. maybe the room will be done?
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/06/the-quake-soundtrack-is-really-really.html
this day was one of loose ends and it took longer than i wanted it to, but i'm completely caught up now and awake and alert enough to keep it going.
i seem to be being carefully tugged back to google+ through redirects, the implication being to chill out and just leave my rants here.
the whole point of this is a reaction to separating google+ from youtube, which i'm still pissed off about. what i want is reintegration.
as it is, i don't want to rant over a social media network. if i was going to do that, i wouldn't use google+. nobody uses google+. i'd use facebook. you know - a social network that people actually read.
the whole point of this is that i need to convert my comments into videos for two reasons:
1) there is no longer any feed for youtube comments (that was the sole purpose of google+ - a feed for youtube).
2) youtube comments are now too volatile to be useful.
if your solution is "use google plus", that's basically equivalent to telling me to talk to the wall. i want to use youtube, for the precise reason that it is not a social network, meaning there are not privacy settings.
i'm trying to create a character for public consumption to sell music, not talk over the internet with friends in a way that the government can archive.
i don't see google+ as comparable to facebook, or in any way in competition to it. a better way to compute the way i'd interpret google+ is as comparable to disqus - it was a way that people can find the comments i've left in various spaces, and interact with the author of those comments.
that's actually a decent solution that will let the google+ douchebags maintain their snowflake status, while opening up youtube: just integrate with disqus. that's really what i'm looking for. not a social front end, exactly, just a home base.
i mean, don't misunderstand me too deeply. i've been transparent for years and years: this is marketing. that's my goal. i'm marketing my music, first and foremost. does that mean i'm being disingenuous? well, not at all. but, if you're actually listening to what i'm saying, you might guess that i'm a little bit less than optimistic about the possibilities for serious revolutionary change in my lifetime.
if there's any ambiguity, let me be clear: north america has precisely zero revolutionary potential. none. nada. zilch. and, i've stated this a few times, already: being an anarchist is a fucking lonely reality in a staunchly neo-liberal society. the social revolution comes first, sure, but we're not even at the point where we can talk about a social revolution. we're at the point where we have to teach people how to spell revolution, and then carefully explain what that means.
when we have social movements here - and elsewhere in the world - the way those social movements manifest themselves is as sitting in the public square and loudly chanting for government to solve our problems. we don't have a clue. and, it's not some accident, either. we're absolutely reliant on the state. even those who want to push back think that what revolution means is "force the government to fix things that are broken".
nobody is talking about seizing means of production or redistributing surplus value. the narrative is just foreign, and when you try and have the discussion all you get is confused stares. what people want is equal opportunity to compete over a free market, and welfare for those that fall through the cracks. go talk to them. have you? because i have. there's no imagination, no forward thinking. you'll walk away thinking that it really is the end of history.
even the ones that call themselves "anarchists" sound like calvinist fundamentalists when you push them on it. the kids drawing circled as think anarchism means social darwinism and the abolition of redistributive mechanisms, rather than the abolition of private property. they get their concept of anarchism out of the dictionary; they think council democracy is statist.
so, sure: i'd like to be a threat to the status quo. i'd love it. i can't do it by myself. and, i'm aware that there's not even the most basic beginnings of a social revolution anywhere at all. i don't know if there ever was, but i don't think we're anywhere close to it.
i think the best hope the left has is for mechanization to take over and force us into communes by necessity. i'm basically waiting for this. i give it thirty years, max. but i'll probably be dead by then.
so, what i have left to care about while i'm waiting for the economic determinism to determine itself is art. that's it.
if you think i'm some kind of threat to the status quo, you should pull your head out of your ass.
and, i'm just not keen on banging my head against the wall until i die of brain damage. fuck that. give me a guitar.
so, you know - take me seriously in the sense of believing that i believe what i'm saying. i do. usually. it's hard to tell when i'm trolling sometimes, sure, but not that hard. but, realize that i know my ideas have no possibility of traction.
maybe i'm ahead of my time. maybe i'm just fucked. who knows....
the whole point of this is a reaction to separating google+ from youtube, which i'm still pissed off about. what i want is reintegration.
as it is, i don't want to rant over a social media network. if i was going to do that, i wouldn't use google+. nobody uses google+. i'd use facebook. you know - a social network that people actually read.
the whole point of this is that i need to convert my comments into videos for two reasons:
1) there is no longer any feed for youtube comments (that was the sole purpose of google+ - a feed for youtube).
2) youtube comments are now too volatile to be useful.
if your solution is "use google plus", that's basically equivalent to telling me to talk to the wall. i want to use youtube, for the precise reason that it is not a social network, meaning there are not privacy settings.
i'm trying to create a character for public consumption to sell music, not talk over the internet with friends in a way that the government can archive.
i don't see google+ as comparable to facebook, or in any way in competition to it. a better way to compute the way i'd interpret google+ is as comparable to disqus - it was a way that people can find the comments i've left in various spaces, and interact with the author of those comments.
that's actually a decent solution that will let the google+ douchebags maintain their snowflake status, while opening up youtube: just integrate with disqus. that's really what i'm looking for. not a social front end, exactly, just a home base.
i mean, don't misunderstand me too deeply. i've been transparent for years and years: this is marketing. that's my goal. i'm marketing my music, first and foremost. does that mean i'm being disingenuous? well, not at all. but, if you're actually listening to what i'm saying, you might guess that i'm a little bit less than optimistic about the possibilities for serious revolutionary change in my lifetime.
if there's any ambiguity, let me be clear: north america has precisely zero revolutionary potential. none. nada. zilch. and, i've stated this a few times, already: being an anarchist is a fucking lonely reality in a staunchly neo-liberal society. the social revolution comes first, sure, but we're not even at the point where we can talk about a social revolution. we're at the point where we have to teach people how to spell revolution, and then carefully explain what that means.
when we have social movements here - and elsewhere in the world - the way those social movements manifest themselves is as sitting in the public square and loudly chanting for government to solve our problems. we don't have a clue. and, it's not some accident, either. we're absolutely reliant on the state. even those who want to push back think that what revolution means is "force the government to fix things that are broken".
nobody is talking about seizing means of production or redistributing surplus value. the narrative is just foreign, and when you try and have the discussion all you get is confused stares. what people want is equal opportunity to compete over a free market, and welfare for those that fall through the cracks. go talk to them. have you? because i have. there's no imagination, no forward thinking. you'll walk away thinking that it really is the end of history.
even the ones that call themselves "anarchists" sound like calvinist fundamentalists when you push them on it. the kids drawing circled as think anarchism means social darwinism and the abolition of redistributive mechanisms, rather than the abolition of private property. they get their concept of anarchism out of the dictionary; they think council democracy is statist.
so, sure: i'd like to be a threat to the status quo. i'd love it. i can't do it by myself. and, i'm aware that there's not even the most basic beginnings of a social revolution anywhere at all. i don't know if there ever was, but i don't think we're anywhere close to it.
i think the best hope the left has is for mechanization to take over and force us into communes by necessity. i'm basically waiting for this. i give it thirty years, max. but i'll probably be dead by then.
so, what i have left to care about while i'm waiting for the economic determinism to determine itself is art. that's it.
if you think i'm some kind of threat to the status quo, you should pull your head out of your ass.
and, i'm just not keen on banging my head against the wall until i die of brain damage. fuck that. give me a guitar.
so, you know - take me seriously in the sense of believing that i believe what i'm saying. i do. usually. it's hard to tell when i'm trolling sometimes, sure, but not that hard. but, realize that i know my ideas have no possibility of traction.
maybe i'm ahead of my time. maybe i'm just fucked. who knows....
well, i didn't turn the machine back on like i promised. instead, i spent the day narrating some old vlogs. i planned to hit a concert after an appointment on the 23rd, so it seemed silly to turn it back on - and that's partly why i decided to narrate on the 22nd. but, i crashed early instead. yesterday was just lost....partly due to brexit, although i kept my mouth shut.
but, i'm caught up with the vlogs, now. i don't see any serious bottlenecks for the near future, either. so, i've got a little bit more shit to do this morning but feel i can close the first demo by the end of the day, for sure.
but, i'm caught up with the vlogs, now. i don't see any serious bottlenecks for the near future, either. so, i've got a little bit more shit to do this morning but feel i can close the first demo by the end of the day, for sure.
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