damages.doc

(edit - after calculating actual losses, and weighing the time required to launch a lawsuit, this thought process was permanently put on hold in the fall of 2013. i realized that what was most important to me could not be replaced, and would be difficult to determine actual costs of. i decided that my self-interest was not to drag on the past through litigation in what limited time i had available to me but rather to maximize my time by focusing on my art, and to move on. 25/08/2019.)

I have attempted to carefully compile a list of missing and damaged items, as well as their replacement costs. These items are missing or damaged due to theft or negligence. I am sending this document jointly to the stepmother and the sister with the hope that they can, together, determine what the cause of each missing item is and who it is that is responsible for returning or replacing it. I am sincerely hoping that legal action is not required in recouping what it is that I am legally and morally entitled to. While this list is as complete as I’ve been able to make it, it is likely incomplete. Should legal action be required, further items may be added if their disappearance is realized between now and then. Should legal action not be required, this document should be considered final.

For the bulk of the items that are missing, the relevant question is the cost of replacement, rather than the initial cost. There are items, however, that cannot be replaced and they will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

In the interests of fairness, I have taken the value of the items that were given to me into consideration. Once again, the issue is the amount it would have cost me to purchase the item on my own terms, not the amount that the item actually cost. Legally, this is not truly a relevant consideration, so please note that I am being generous in taking these things into consideration.

Please take special note of the section that contains items I would like returned.

That some of these things are missing may come as a surprise, so I am going to attempt to provide a few deductions as to what may have happened to some of it. There has already been some discussion surrounding negligence, and an admission of responsibility. I am also making a clear accusation of theft regarding at least two items. In addition to this, I am also missing a great deal of boxes for electronic items that I have purchased over the years. The boxes, of course, have no actual value except for their use value. However, I most certainly had a box for a computer tower that included dozens of smaller boxes for various items like external drives, pc cards, keyboards, etc. While most of those boxes were empty, some of them were not. It seems, then, that much of the electronics that I’m missing (and specifically the keyboard, microphone and external drive) were discarded accidentally with those thought-to-be-empty boxes, which also included a lot of user manuals and other useful things of the sort. I also suspect that a lot of the books that are missing were taken deliberately under the misunderstanding that they had previously belonged to the father of the stepmother. The relevancy of this concern is more personal than legal (and I am a just and empathetic person), but the blunt truth is that only a few of the missing books were actually his, and most of the books that I did take from him (with permission) are actually not missing.

 
I’ve generally rounded up or down to the closest whole number.

Kitchen Items

Item	Cost	Source	Receipt?	Comments
Blender	+$10	Walmart	Yes	Sale Price.
Coffee Maker	+$10	Future Shop	Yes	Sale Price.
Toaster	+$20	Future Shop	Yes	Sale Price.
Kettle	+$10?	??	N/A	Not Yet Replaced
Pizza Cutter	+$1	Dollar Store	No
Dish Drainer	+$9	Walmart	Yes
Microwave	-$50	Donated	N/A	I would have bought a very cheap microwave.
Pans	-$0	??	N/A	I would not have purchased extra pans.
Total	+$10

Furniture & Bedroom

Item	Cost	Source	Receipt?	Comments
Couch & Chair	-$0	??	N/A.	I would have used items found on the curb.
Wood Chest	-$10	??	N/A.	I would have found something old on kijiji.
Computer Desk	-$20	??	N/A.	I would have found something old on kijiji.
Bed	-$200?	??	N/A	I would have purchased a new bed, but cheap.
Blanket	+$25	Walmart	Yes
Hangars	+$10	Walmart	Yes
Total	-$150

Electronics

Item	Cost	Source	Receipt?	Comments
Keyboard	+$21	Walmart	Yes	.
Monitor	+$	??
Battery Charger	+	??	N/A.
~10 D Batteries	+	??	N/A
External CD Drive	+
USB Camera	+
VCR	+
Shure Mic	+
Two mini-cassette tape recorders	+			I only need one.
Four-Port Router	+
Computer Mic	+
Total

Items I would prefer returned

Item	Cost	Comments
Winston Electric Mandolin	+$	The Winston Electric Mandolin I had was an antique item and is not exactly replaceable. I would prefer the exact item to be returned. If this is not possible, I would need for it to be replaced.
12-String Ovation (with guitar stand)	+$	The 12-String Ovation I had was an antique item and is not exactly replaceable. I would prefer the exact item to be returned. If this is not possible, I would need for it to be replaced.
Wood Chess Board With Pieces	+$0	I played dozens and dozens, probably hundreds, of games of chess with my father on this board. It was an absolutely central part of my childhood. I was first given this item by my father in 2004. It was in my possession for nearly 10 years. I have no interest in a replacement board.
Game Theory Textbook	+$	I believe this was lent out.
Sheet Music	+$100	Much of this sheet music was marked up by me and it is the markups that I cannot replace. However, I can repurchase more music and start again. I suspect this may be with a number of piano books that had ended up in my possession. I don’t care about the piano books, but please give me back what is mine.
Total

Irreplaceable Personal Items

Item	Cost	Comments
Black and White Portrait of Me Drawn by an Ex-Partner	+$	This item was somehow destroyed. It can never be replaced. However, I have a scan of it and I would like to get it blown up. This is the replacement cost.
Nine Inch Nails Shirt	+$	Retired Shirt. I cannot repurchase the wear and memories, but I can wear it back down again.
John Lennon Shirt	+$	Retired Shirt. I cannot repurchase the wear and memories, but I can wear it back down again.
House of Guitars Shirt	+$	Retired Shirt. I cannot repurchase the wear and memories, but I can wear it back down again.
Genesis Tour Poster	+$10	I don’t know what happened to this. It can’t actually be replaced, but I can get a new poster.
Billy Corgan Guitar World Poster
Mogwai poster
Certificate of Provenance	+$	This was a signed artefact by the musicians in the band “coil”.
Total

Other Items

Item	Cost	Comments
School Bag	+$	I had an expensive hiking bag with a zipper problem.
Set of White JX-8P Keys	+$
Business Suit, with shirts	+$1000	This was purchased at Moore’s in 2007.
Total

Books

Item	Cost
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Communist Manifesto
IT
Brothers Karamazov
The Scarlett Letter
Heart of Darkness
Grapes of Wrath
The Republic
The Discourses (Machiavelli)
The Prince
Lady Oracle
Total

CDs

Item	Cost	Cost Estimate	Comments
Sold CDs re-purchased second hand	$120?	Partial Receipt	My father indicated repeatedly that he wanted me to have his CDs. What happened is entirely incomprehensible.
Cop shoot cop - release			Destroyed cover art
Cop Shoot Cop – White Noise			Out of print. Ebay Price. Destroyed cover art.
Einsturzende Neubauten – Silence Is Sexy			Destroyed packaging.
Einsturzende Neubauten – Tabula Rasa			Destroyed packaging.
Tool – A Thousand Days			Destroyed packaging.
The Art of Noise – The Ambient Collection			Disc not functioning.
The Smashing Pumpkins - Aeroplane Flies High Box Set			Box Disappeared.
Skinny Puppy – Rabies			Destroyed Cover Art.
Jello Biafra & The Melvins – Sieg Howdy			Destroyed Cover art.
Holst – the planets (rca classics, with Ralph Vaughn Williams piece)			Destroyed cover art.
The mars volta  - amputechture			Destroyed cover art
Einsturzende neubauten – perpetuum mobile			Destroyed packaging
The Electric Light Orchestra – No Answer			Destroyed Cover Art
Hater			Destroyed Cover Art
Django reinhardt  - swing 39
Alice In Chains – Tripod			Destroyed Cover Art
Alice In Chains – Nothing Safe			Destroyed Cover Art
Glenn branca – lesson no. 1			Destroyed cover art
The Cure – Disintegration			Destroyed cover art.
Total

demo #5: my very first impression

this is kind of stupid. or youthful exuberance. i think i was angry with the concept of business normality, albeit in a teacher-student high school context.

moving forwards into the end of my first month of recording, this noisy catastrophe presents itself as a sort of generic raw punk work through. but, there's a reason why being 15 and angry doesn't get old, i guess. my target of frustration was the idea of business normality as it applies to teenagers, and the shallowness of first impressions, specifically as they were coming from teachers. i was a "gifted student" and well aware of it, and really didn't like it when some glorified babysitter decided to look down his nose at me because he didn't like my haircut.

i like the instrumental section at 1:50, but i mostly interpret this nowadays with a careful chuckle, as an interesting time capsule. but, there will always be kids that get judged badly based on their appearance (because there will always be assholes that will judge them), and maybe one will find this and connect with it.

recorded in september, 1996. remastered on oct 1, 2013.

Jessica Amber Murray
613*******. i get internet tomorrow. something i'm going to want to do is figure out where the freaks around here are. no offense to those guys, but i'm not really convinced i have much in common with them. i do need to drop off that beer though...

Shelly Teagan
Lolol

....overheard walking down my street today.....

"wait, that's a girl"
"nah, it's a guy."
"dude. that's a GIRL."
"it's a guy!"
"da fuck you looking at, man? GIRL."

it only occurred to me afterwards that i could have walked over and clarified. was just a little bit uncomfortable about being microscoped.

sometimes, entangled in your own dreams

shower again, and check

From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: the initial landlord

hi.

i have a check for you this month, but i'm wondering how you'd feel about setting up an automatic deposit thing? i could avoid paying the bank for checks that way. if you don't want to, i'll buy some checks, it's not that big a deal (i just don't really want to pay the bank...).

as for the shower. i finished sealing around everywhere i could see that would conceivably cause flooding, and it didn't make a difference. it really seems clear to me that the leaking is coming from the drain. so, i'm going to run through my perception of the thing again...

normally, when you have a tub of some sort, it fills up as the water falls because the drain can't handle all the water coming at once. i'm thinking the better mental comparison (and the mental comparison is for me - i'm not trained in this subject, i'm just trying to understand what's happening) is to a public shower stall at a swimming pool or something. in such a situation, you would expect the water to fill up in pools around the corner of the stall and drain slowly afterwards, if at all, due to things like bumps in the floor. it seems to me to be that this is roughly what's happening.

that leaves two possible solutions. either the drain could be sealed up to force the water to pool on top of the shower rather than underneath it or the base could be sealed so that when the water pools it's trapped underneath the base. but i don't think the water can be stopped from pooling in one or the other place.

both of those approaches have some problems. sealing around the platform is not something i'd be comfortable doing myself because i'd be afraid i'd end up sealing water in, which could blow up the platform on the other side. *so i won't do that myself*. sealing the drain would make it difficult to get in there to pull hair out.

i think there may be an easy answer, though. looking at the drain carefully suggests that it's actually missing a piece or something. there was clearly *something* ringing around the drain at one point. first, the plastic is rough. second, it seems like it isn't tight.

i suspect it may be possible to merely put a rubber stopper of some sort around the drain. hopefully, that would keep the water in the platform.

i don't know how to dismantle the drain though. i want to be careful not to break it, so i'm stopping myself from just taking a screwdriver to it. could you send me instructions as to how to take the drain out so i can experiment with some kind of stopper?

j

Jessica Amber Murray
hey, i'm glad you found what you were looking for without having to move away from your family and school. i think that's a better outcome. of course, who cares what i think... listen, i have to ask you a favour. it's going to sound insane. to an extent, i acknowledge it is literally insane, relative to the meaning of insane. what i mean to say is that i'm aware that i have hallucinations, auditory and otherwise, and that sometimes i get stuck in these paranoid fantasies that draw...the truth is that they draw very rational, formally deductive conclusions. the issue is really a struggle between interpreting the world through deductive or empirical reasoning. i think there's a very good reason that schizophrenia and mathematical abilities tend to go well together. i tend to get stuck in hallucinations and fantasies when i spend a lot of time alone, so, like, it's right on schedule sort of thing. i don't really want to medicate myself. i'd rather use it as an idea source for art projects. but i sort of do medicate, if you see what i mean. i need to find some soon. so, i'm walking down the street a few minutes ago and i hear sarah yell at me. see, i *know* i hallucinated this. but, what i'm less clear about is *why* i hallucinated this. it could just be my mind playing tricks on me, nothing to think about. it could be the result of some kind of entanglement that's beyond our current understanding of things. what i know is that i know how to rationalize through things and deal with them. but she sounded like she was in trouble. so, what if there *is* some kind of not understood entanglement thing going on? it would sort of make me feel better if you could just give her a quick call and ask her if she's ok. i have the number in my cell phone at home if you don't have it.

Shelly Teagan
Ill get as to do it. But yeah ill do it.

Also, you need to go and meet people. Im a bit worried.

Whats her number.

Also, i should have left to get rid of my parents. I found out that i had a very physically abusive childhoo, but have blocked out all these memories. So yeah, ive cut my parents out for trying to distort reality all these years and try to play me off as crazy.

I should be in windsor. But Jess!!!!!! Go hang out with the wobblies and play risk or something

Jessica Amber Murray
lols. no. crazy music on the way. this is what i do, erin....i push myself to the brink and then record myself freaking out...i'm safe, and people around me are safe, it's nothing to really be concerned about. abusive parents are such a...my mom and step-mom were both really bad, verbally. but it hasn't cut out a necessary reliance with my mom (my step-mom is OUT). it's such a fine line between codependency and reconciliation, you know? hard thing to walk between... i'll go home and get the number, i just have to finish writing an email to my landlord first.

Shelly Teagan
Go hang out peeps, jess. Go!!!!