200,000 hits

you know, for once, it'd be nice to see a parody of existentialism that doesn't miss the point altogether (and i'm not sure how he's characterizing the statement about artistic integrity as randian except by wording it in a bizarre way, although i'll admit i ran into a few people at occupy that tried to merge worker politics with support for ron paul - and were promptly made fun of).

see, it doesn't matter if he gets through college and gets a higher paying job or if he takes the job as an office temp (although reality is that he'll be lucky if his college diploma gets him a paying job in an office, that's where mom's social standing plays a role). whether he's making $50/hr or $10/hr, his life will still lack meaning. he'll still be forced into employment he has no interest in. the point is that the effort and the social standing that comes with it doesn't make a difference in an individual's happiness.

nor is the doctor's ferrari anything more than a temporary alleviation of the deep emptiness that defines his existence.

it would be easier if more people realized all of this, as building a movement to create a system that provides meaning would actually become possible. alas, we're instead persistently driven into the false promises of illusory happiness that consumer culture provides for us.

now, if you'll excuse me, i am going to ponderously play a single chord on an out of tune guitar for an hour as i meditate on the purposelessness of capitalism.

uploading nothing to say to youtube

so, the track switched on wednesday but i was too sick to say much about it. maybe it's sort of fitting.
this is the last track on cassette demo #2 and will be up until the end of january. the demo material will then cycle around for a bit, but i won't post that here. that means this is the last youtube update on this page until the beginning of may, when the feature switches out of my mid 90s punk phase and into my late 90s electronic phase.

hopefully, i'm out of my sophomore slump by then, too.

i actually expect to be a good ways into the discography by may - perhaps as far as 2006.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ37S6tpDJ4

i'm trying to get off facebook...

this page will be shutting down, accordingly. it's going to be a longer wait than the main profile, though.

i ended up catching the flu, which had this turn in to a longer break than expected.

back to work today or tomorrow.

obligatory influential on song of the month post...

i can't figure out what the hell was influencing me on this particular track, but i can hear a bit of deleo in the short guitar solo, and it's head-scratching enough that it fits. i'm reaching, though. it's not characteristic of my own work.

this record? i think it's aged well. i gotta lean towards the preceding record as the better crafted disc, but this is a perfectly worthy follow-up - and remains the only thing they've released that comes close to matching that universally acknowledged classic.

(relevant tracks: nothing to say, but deleo is a general guitar influence with that jazzy classic rock grunge fusion of his)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSuyEpcj_D0

"mom" seems to have snuck by 2,000 listens when i wasn't paying attention and is my first upload to do so. it's separated out from "boogeyman" by about 200 hits since october, meaning it remains my top track by a good margin.

this version of "mom" will not appear on the front page ever again, as the first demo is completed and it's not on the mix tape. as i mentioned before: it was sort of predictable, given the nature of the track. but i'd really rather something else was in top spot, because i don't expect it's popularity is a result of the track being understood properly. so, it's kind of fitting, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. "boogeyman" has 8 days left over the mix tape cycle (that's inri003), which will be enough to close the gap a little.

however, barring some unforeseen event, it seems like "mom" will retain the top spot until i get to inrisampled (inri004) which represents the segue between period 1.1 and period 1.2. this will be in the front slot for nearly four months and should consequently shoot rather far out ahead of everything else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oSadVCVav8

it's funny how the coughing itself can tire you out, even as you're just getting over it, making it seem like you got kicked back to the start of it. woke up feeling like somebody spent eight hours jumping on my chest....

it was the perfect storm to ignite my asthma/bronchitis. it's a result of living in a second-hand smoke environment when i was a kid, and comes up whenever i get a flu in the winter. it happened before i started smoking, smoking hasn't made it worse and quitting won't make it better (although i haven't been smoking a lot lately). the flu comes and goes in 24-72 hours, but the bronchitis it triggers can last for up to six weeks after it's gone.

i'm a pretty strong advocate of the idea that people between 17 and 60 should *not* be getting yearly flu vaccines - we're better off fighting it ourselves. unless we get a nasty strain.,..

...but i think i'm finally accepting that the bronchitis has put me in the "special" category, and i may finally crack next year.

i honestly think i just sort of got used to it.

that was another 15. one of the nice things about not having any responsibility is that when you get a 48 or 72 hour flu you can just sleep it off. everybody *should* have this right. but, most people don't.

i think i'm awake now...

yeah.

i'm groggy.

but i'm ok.

i feel a little bit better, but am still unlikely to be able to do anything besides copy & paste for the next 12-15 hours, if i don't fall asleep (like i did this morning).

definitely a virus....

i just woke up from about 21 hours of straight sleeping, which itself came after a short awake period of about two hours. i've basically been sleeping since about 5:00 monday afternoon. which means i need to eat.

deciding to sit down and clean this up over the next few days worked out fairly well, because i'm so sore right now that it's just about my only option regarding things to do.

i've been noticing a sort of stretching issue for a while, now. i guess i spend a lot of time with legs under a desk, or with legs curled up when i'm sleeping (i can't help it, i go full fetal over night no matter how i fall asleep), and i walk a lot on top of it, so slightly sore legs are not a strange thing for me. when you're sore, you should stretch....

what i've been noticing stretching for the last little bit (specifically the one where you push your legs out from your body while lying flat) is that there's a point where it almost seems like my limbs are pulling out of their sockets. it's only ever happened previously with one leg at a time, but it's this mix of pain and numbness that's sort of hard to describe in any other way than it feeling like the leg is about to pop right out...

i've ultimately concluded that, despite the displeasure, this is probably good for me - because it tends to work. however, i need to, once again, point out the ms-ness of such a circumstance. it's part of a number of things pushing that way, but, i mean, there's not much to do about it..

before i went to sleep yesterday evening, i got a little stretch in and it hit me in both legs for the first time, which actually collapsed me off the bed and down on to the floor (i'm ok, obviously). but did it ever hurt. if you were here, you would have seen me collapsed on my thighs and sort of gasping for air.

given that i woke up with a cough, i'm now not really sure if the reason i'm sore is due to sickness or due to falling the wrong way. but i *am* sure that i'm not likely to move far from this spot for two or three days.

which should be enough to get this cleaned up. unless i can't stay awake...

deathtokoalas
obligatory influential on the track of week post.

i'm struggling to find my guitar influence in this track. the general construction is very edge, and the feel is largely corgan. i've kept track of this repeatedly on multiple videos though so i'm not going to post it again. there's also an extra sort of jazzy sophistication to this, though. keep in mind i'm still 17 on this track, and maybe a little shy about doing things with the instrument, so it's a little bit stifled.

i think there's some gilmour in there in the lyricism of the playing, but i hadn't hit that heavy animals period yet. i think that what i'm hearing is more the kind of thing that fripp did in something like starless, but interpreted through my suspicious-of-prog punk rock filters. so, it's a little grungier sounding.

(relevant tracks: idiotic, untitled, evil is a human construction, liquify, book it, all of the symphonies, most stuff after 1999)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHvD6h3-C0

i think the bassline in the blues guitar solo near the end of the track is a good way to explore how some people misunderstand a small handful of prog acts - king crimson and genesis in particular, to be very specific. ironically, i think missing the point comes in overanalysis.

if you sit down and try and figure out what the fuck it is that you're listening to on a mathematical level, you're going to hear a confusing time signature and an agile scale run and it will appear boring and academic. it's only when you step away from that that you can hear the bassline as controlled collapse framing the mayhem around it. these increases in the complexity of the music actually begin to affect the feel of the piece, which is what the tools of course have been developed for in the first place.

i've pointed out repeatedly that the critics of prog were often right. but these two acts in particular really legitimately went over people's heads, and that needs to be corrected and reevaluated. i think this is slowly happening, and i'm actually reinforcing something that's already happening. but i think it can't be said enough until the narrative really changes.

holiosys atRandom
drummer here and I totally agree, the mid song bassline is like 13/8 and as a drummer I'm quite amazed, but yeah, take a step back and let it all unfold and you shall see.  tip, give reflection from tool a listen, beautiful.

deathtokoalas
i've been a tool fan for many years (although i found their last disc to be mediocre), but i consider them to be a grunge band with little influence from something like this. you could confuse a lot of people by telling them undertow is a soundgarden record.

tool's biggest influences were bands like melvins, black flag and swans.

(deleted post)

deathtokoalas
again: the only trace of crimson you're going to hear in tool is a bit of syncopation in the rhythm section. this is bruford/levin period crimson. but it's not dominant. tool is, first and foremost, a hardcore punk band...

fripp has stated he doesn't hear the similarity, either. and it's for good reason - there really isn't one.

i'll be a little more detailed.

the primary reason it's a bad comparison is that tool basically never plays in overlapping timings. they'll mix it up a little. but, again, i'm going to point to soundgarden or black flag (or led zeppelin) for that. the "crimson sound" is a sort of corollary to minimalist music theory - each instrument plays in a different time, in a way that unfolds metrically, but seems somewhat chaotic. fripp has claimed he developed this independently of steve reich, but i've always been skeptical of the claim.

the "tool sound", on the other hand, is very monolithic. when they play in off times, everybody is playing together. it's a full band attack. because it's punk rock...

now, yeah, you'll get this flashy bass part here and there, or this drum excursion jumping out from time to time. but they're fills.

so, when fripp claims he doesn't hear it, he's right. there's really no similarity on a compositional level. even if you can hear that touch of bruford & levin on the odd offbeat or in the odd figure...

removing tracks from youtube

i've deleted a few files. i just want it publicly acknowledged that this was not due to reaction (or lack thereof) but because i couldn't work the tracks into the cycle i've set up, which runs into the distant future. in fact, i picked some of the less popular versions. it's just not useful for me to have all these excess tracks up here, and i don't want to put my rabit reworkings off to 2033 to make room for the vocal versions. so it's been condensed to conform to the cycled feature track. hey, i just lost something like 500 hits, actually.

everything remains available to stream and purchase at the bandcamp archive, which is where youtube is supposed to herd you to in the first place.

so, it seems like the production of hair is something your body does to help remove harmful cholesterol. and i'm growing increasingly uncomfortable with modifying that excretion system, such as via electrolysis. testosterone is produced from cholesterol...

it's pretty wacky, looking into this sebaceous gland. it's constantly producing clones that it then smashes in order to expel the cell contents, which get converted into hair. that's almost how a virus works. now, supposedly the cholesterol is good for your skin, and that's fine. but, your body seems to see the need to expel it. generally, when your body expels liquid it's to get rid of something it doesn't want.

if i go in there and smash up all the glands, i'm going to end up with a build up of that cholesterol somewhere else. and, if you want research money to do a salacious research report on, i think it would be interesting to try and measure a relationship between heart disease and hair removal.

so, my listening day has convinced me that it's a good time to go back over the material after inri023 and double check it's all what i want it to be, which may include making a few new remixes. that means the untitled techno tune is on hold until i get there, which i think is what it needs right now, anyways.

i needed to do this soon, whether it's now or in two weeks is being driven by my concern that the track i'm working on needs space.

i mean, i was planning on doing it when i was done the disc. but i'm doing it now instead. so, that vst mix of the second symphony is probably up next.

ok. i wanted to do some listening this week, because it's the time of the year for listening aids, so it's going to be a day or two before i come back to this, which is probably for the best. i guess i still have four mixes to do on this single...

untitled (vst mix)

this takes the midi file as it was created in 2002 and updates the playback to utilize modern vst synthesizers and guitar modellers. render finalized on dec 26, 2014. 

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-vst-mix

the reality is that canada benefits from warming in just about every way - longer growing seasons, better exploitation of resources and a more enjoyable climate. to any body governing canada, this is not a crisis but an opportunity. and i think that this fundamental calculus needs to be understood in approaching ways to deal with canada. canada will never respond to this as a crisis situation - because it is not a crisis situation to canada. it is just about the best environmental conditions that are even possible for canada. it is optimal.

but, see, that screws the rest of the planet over. so, as a canadian, i'm torn between recognizing what is good for my area of the planet and recognizing what is good for the planet in general. and, that's difficult because it means that this region is going to have to make sacrifices for the well being of other regions. which doesn't tend to happen. this region is actually notorious for that.

and, it's particularly problematic because we're actually even in control of the factors increasing the warming. it's not just us, it's russia as well. but we're a dominant factor due to our extraction techniques, and our permafrost.

the reality is that putting the frozen person in charge of the thermostat is going to lead to higher temperatures. that is a fundamental calculation that has to be recognized about how future canadian governments are going to react to this concern.

if we get a liberal government in, they may increase foreign aid to areas undergoing desertification out of a sense of legitimate guilt. canadian liberalism is really the last remaining branch of the original british liberal tradition, and by far it's most complete extrapolation of thought in the canadian constitution and charter of rights and freedoms. i think it's reasonable to project into the future this legitimate feeling for the necessity of reparation, and to have that feeling shared by a broad sense of the population. canadian liberalism can still produce this sense of legal fairness - i'd argue probably uniquely in the british tradition.

but none of that will stop canada from increasing emissions, it will just a set a self-imposed price on it's behaviour.

another strain that's going to develop is that canada is going to see itself increasingly isolated with russia. now, the current government is behaving rather stupidly in regards to this, so any kind of natural aligning is going to be stunted until they're removed from power. but, it's increasingly inevitable that we're going to see closer co-operation between canada and russia as their policies align internationally, if not domestically.

the reality is that the basis for canada as a non-aligned state is already well established from the trudeau and chretien years. the liberal party in the second half of the twentieth century didn't want nato to define it's international relations and often acted as a semi-neutral go between for american interests, while resisting nato operations in favour of united nations operations. it wanted an independent foreign policy, and had one up until the current prime minister took over. if a liberal government is able to re-establish an independent foreign policy, that kind of relationship might develop between canada, russia and the united states - the latter of two which are on the path to direct conflict. that kind of third power actually has a very important role to play right now and canada is kind of uniquely situated, between them in multiple ways, to play it.

given the american psyche, and we've seen this repeatedly in american history, it's more likely that americans will get up and leave the regions they've damaged than stay and try to fix it. and, the direction that californians and texans and others are going to move towards is north. the question is how far north.

the idea that canada has any real say in the matter is pretty tenuous. we're utterly dependent on the americans for security, and if they decide to move a few units into montreal or toronto we're not really going to have much to say about it. there have been concrete plans, even, to do this - some as a contingency plan for world war two in case the british fell and some as recently as the succession referendum in quebec, which would have ended with clinton declaring montreal the capital of the new state of quebec.

so, is the reality that canada has similar security issues to a country like poland? i think this discussion immediately requires an acknowledgement of the difference of scale. canada is lightly armed, but very large and there's a dramatically different (shorter) history there, despite much of it being unfriendly. yet, it's the same basic dynamic, where canada could conceivably be in need to seek protection from a force which has no future historical role but to dominate it. there's no need to work out the hypocrisy, because there's no need for consistency.

with russia, further, the situation is far less ominous - we really have nothing but commercial relations to look forward to, as russia couldn't possibly pose anything but a pyrrhic threat to canada, no matter how hard it tried to.

i think that sets up some historically strange dynamics that are going to need some foresight to navigate around.

one could even say that russia has met it's match with canada, in terms of natural defence barriers. i mean, they could maybe pull it off. for a week. then, they've doubled their size and are open to immediate dismantling. from all directions. it'd be a race with china for central asia.

which opens the country up as equals, which is my point. cross-polar trade could be the dominant economic relationship in canada within a few decades.