i almost never vomit, actually. but, i was feeling it all morning; it was inevitable, and probably not entirely caused by the vodka, but also contributed to by my diet and the travelling and even the coffee. it could have happened hours earlier, really. as it is, it was the tums that triggered it.

i often bring antacids with me when i'm drinking, because the things we drink alcohol with are so inherently acidic. how many of us assume that that stomach ache you get after your third drink is because you've had too much alcohol? in fact, it's probably acid reflux, because you've consumed a litre of carbonated pop or whatever else in the process. maybe you want to take it as a cue to quit drinking, or maybe you don't - maybe you just want to pop a few grams of calcium to balance it out, and keep going. i find the latter usually works just fine...

so, i didn't think much about it when i started to feel it in my gut - i just got some tums at the corner store, scarfed them down and went back to browsing in the coffee shop. it was a little before 18:00, when i had to run outside...

i didn't take it seriously, at first. i put a shot in my coffee on the way in, but it was a tall cup, tall enough that i could have put in two. further, it took me five hours to drink it. so, i was only on my third drink in 10 hours. sure, i just had a big cup of coffee; sure, i hadn't eaten since early in the morning. but, i wasn't going to puke on three drinks in 10 hours was i? that would be lame.

so, i just sat outside the shop for a minute and waited. it's not going to happen...

...but, yes. it is going to happen.

i made it just past the band's vans for the first iteration, which was unfortunately directly on the sidewalk. well, i wasn't taking the situation seriously. i was able to get across the street into an alleyway for round two, to the concerns of some onlookers that were smoking something in the back.

"i'm alright. just a little too much vodka. nothing serious. i'll be fine in a few minutes. sorry for freaking you out."

this was met with some visually cautious skepticism, but at least the concern faded to indifference.

but, was it really too much vodka? i've never had difficulty with such little vodka, before. while i'll acknowledge that i hadn't had any alcohol at all since last may, it still seems like an absurdly low tolerance level. so, i'm going to reject the claim that i drank too much, and rather assert quite sternly that i wasn't even drunk. rather, i suspect that the coffee and the extra strength tums may have created an acid-base reaction that actually stimulated vomiting as a pressure release; this was more like a volcanic eruption in a grade school science fair project than alcohol poisoning.

i needed a third round before i was done and able to walk off.

"i'm fine. really. i'm sorry."

that was apparently more convincing, as i got a laugh and a wave.

the reality is that i wasn't feeling drunk before i puked, and i wasn't feeling drunk after i puked, either; the nausea faded a little, if not totally, but it didn't really make much of a difference at all, in terms of how i was feeling.

i made a choice, however, to stand outside, just in case - and to put my coffee away. it was about an hour's wait until doors.

there were some kids lined up early, so i just got in line behind them and waited.

"my friend is convinced he's in a coma and everything is just a dream."
"that's so ridiculously stupid, really. obviously false."
"i agree, but, like, how do you prove to him that it's wrong?"
"actually, maybe you can't do that, can you?"

*ahem*

that's right, kids. what you'd say is that that's not even wrong, that you could never disprove it and that it is therefore worthless as a hypothesis.

"makes sense."

the fact is that i've been to lots of shows with knapsacks, and nobody has ever given me a hard time about it before, so i couldn't imagine anybody giving me a hard time about it here. i expected there would be some kind of mosh pit, but moshing (or really dancing at all) to la dispute is like dancing at a funeral - it's inappropriate, in context. they're technically a hardcore band still, but they've always leaned towards beatnik poetry, and they're coming up on a flip over the cusp, to the point that i do suspect that there will be a time in a few years when the shows are almost entirely abandoned by hardcore fans. i didn't expect that to be true of this show, but my intent was to stand a little further back, out of the pit, while sipping on a beer and listening to the lyrics.

this isn't a rejection of the pit, it's just that la dispute is not really body music, it's more of an intellectual kind of thing, something that might even be better experienced at a seated venue than a general admission punk show. if you're showing up to a la dispute concert looking to dance it up and have a good time, you're kind of missing the plot.

so, in my mind, it wouldn't be much of a problem if i brought my bag in, considering i was going to be standing in the back, anyways. but, i wasn't able to get the point across to security, who just insisted they were sold out. well, they couldn't be that sold out; surely, they're not being reasonable. but, i simply wasn't getting in with the bag, so i had to relent and leave it at coat check, along with everything in it. they insisted it was safe...

so, i get in and learn it's $9 for a beer at the opera house in toronto. it was at least a big beer, but i only got one...

the place was about half full for the first act, called slow mass, which didn't make much of an impression on me. what they sound like is a parody of mopey 90s alt rock, without even the minimal amounts of tension that you got out of a genre that was intended to town done. there were some unnecessary outbursts of noise by the drummer and guitarist, but it just kind of added to the buttoned up feel of the show by telling the audience that the band itself recognizes that they are actually boring, and are even bored with being boring. while the self-awareness is perhaps a positive step, i don't have much else to say about this, other than to point out that this is indiscernible from any of the other thousand bands that have sounded exactly like this over the last forty years.

i let them finish, downed my beer and then went to retrieve my marijuana from my bag, which i had absent-mindedly left in there when i was unexpectedly coat-checked. i wasn't sure if it would be a hassle or not...

"sorry, there's just too many bags."

and, there were, indeed, a lot of bags.

"listen, i could understand if there was a long line-up here and i was in your way, but it looks like the place has mostly filled up, and you're just kind of sitting around, so..."
"were you in recently or near the start?"
"i was one of the first people in."
"so, i'm going to have to sort through this to the bottom. there's no way."
"well, you're going to have to do this eventually, right?"
"what?"
"well, i'm going to eventually pick the bag up."
"but, that's only if you're here at the start of the line."
"i need to catch a bus out."
"so, i'll have to do it anyways. ugh. fine. i'm making you pay to recheck it, though: $4."

it was a good night for logic in toronto, at least.

i've rolled up a lot of marijuana in a lot of toilet stalls in a lot of cities, but this was the first time it was actually legal.....

a few minutes later, and i'm overhearing some lesbians talk to each other, as they're standing a few feet in front of me.

"my grandmother thinks we're all monsters. like, she seriously thinks we're evil. it's crazy. i love my grandmother and everything, but it kind of scares me. so, i'm just never telling her. ever. we're just not having this talk. she'll die thinking i'm straight."

i had to interject.

until she starts bothering you about having kids, then you're going to have to bring it up.

laughs from the crowd, as always.

"she already bugs me."

it's just going to get worse.

"well, it's not like i don't plan to have kids. i'll have kids, just not with a male."

you're still going to have to bring it up.

"well..."

listen, studies have been done on this. your grandmother is an individual, but homophobic people often find themselves with a change of opinion when they are confronted with queer family members, as it presents them with a reality rather than an abstraction. i mean, she's going to go to some church or something..

"mosque."

right. whatever. so, she's going to go to that mosque, and they're going to say all kinds of hateful, damaging things about queer people as though they're some distant other, as though they don't actually exist as human beings, but then she's going to go home and see somebody she loves, and she's going to have to make a choice to trust these words that are thrown at her abstractly by this stranger on a podium, or a person in front of her that she know and loves and trusts.

"i'm not telling her."

that bad, huh?

a passing homeless person then interrupted the conversation with a request for change, of which neither of us had any. but, the other lesbian was upset about it.

"i wish i had some change. i once gave somebody $20."

the male member of the group that included the two lesbians is upset about this.

"you gave him $20?"
"i'm a generous person."
"but, they're all drug addicts. it's really hard to be homeless in canada, you know."

ugh. not on my sidewalk.

poverty does exist, you know. i mean, it might be true that there's a high percentage of drug addicts in the homeless population, but you can't just jump to the conclusion that if you're homeless then you're a drug addict. that would just be wrong.

(some applause on the street)

but, he didn't want a debate; he went inside, and i followed not far behind him.

the fiasco with the bag, and subsequent detour rolling and smoking, meant i actually missed most of the second band's set. the place also filled up to the brim in the time i was gone, forcing me to watch from the landing, which was actually the plan anyways, but perhaps not in the space i ended up in. gouge away are named after a pixies track, and sounded like it. the following audiotree set has some generic pixies-type tracks and some noisier hardcore; the bit of the set that i caught was in the generic pixies-type track style, and didn't appeal much to me. in fact, i decided to find somewhere to sit and take a rest...

i went directly back to the floor when the set was done, trying to measure the size of the crowd and how to set up and came to the conclusion that the place was packed as tight as possible; they weren't exaggerating about the place being sold out, and there really wasn't room to stand with a bag. that said, leaving my bag in coat check didn't all of a sudden make me want to go into the pit - i was still hoping to hang back a little and just watch. but there was barely even anywhere to stand. so, i decided i'd wait the pit out a little and then try and work my way in.

they started off with some less intense tracks, so i couldn't really get a feel on the size of the pit, or what was going to happen when they clicked in. if i could get some separation so that i could stand on the edge of the pit, it could work, but there just didn't look like there was much space. i was hoping to wait a little longer, wait for them to tire themselves out, so i could move up. but, the opposite happened: i saw the train of frat boys walk by me from the back a few songs in, and realized i was going to need to hang back.

if i had a chance to escape the back at that point, it closed pretty quickly, as this annoying teenage girl decided she was going to dance in front of me all night. i've been through this before; the girl wants to dance, but she doesn't want to get molested at the punk show, so she parks herself directly on top of the obvious fag, after testing it first to make sure it's safe. it's then my instant responsibility to make sure she's safe until she walks off, whether i asked for it or not and she inevitably gets pissy when i don't react, which is really quite the contradiction. if you check my reviews, you'll see me point to this happening repeatedly, and pretty much always at punk shows. in general, i can handle this - i can even enjoy dancing, and often do - but the lack of space on this floor, combined with the nature of the music, just made the scenario comical. even if there was space to dance, i would not have wanted to on this night - i wanted to watch the band. a lot of these lyrics are really quite morbid. and, this girl wanted to dance too - bumping into me repeatedly, flipping her hair around and just generally trying to get me grooving. nope...

in order to get by her, i would have had to shove her out of the way, and i wasn't going to do that. i didn't see any obvious space, anyway, as the pit seemed to take up most of the floor, and nothing was opening up. so, i spent most of the concert trying to dodge tassled hair flying into my face from this hyperactive kid that was hopping all over me, apparently desiring some kind of response.

if they had played for another hour, i would have moved up. alas...

and, what of these moshers? is it not somewhat perverse to mosh to la dispute? if anything, they ate it up. it was lines like "we buried our son today!" that got the pit in motion. i'm not going to pretend i understand that, but so be it. i'd rather be a little bit more sombre about such things and watch quietly from the side...

how was the show, though?

this is the third time i saw la dispute, but the second time was an acoustic set in detroit. the first time i saw them was with touche amore & balance & composure at maverick's in ottawa in 2011, and what i remember about the show is that the songs were unrecognizable when compared to the recordings. at the time, i decided that i hadn't listened to the material that much, and i was just not following it because i didn't know it. but, the same thing happened in toronto, on this night - i could sort of make out the songs, but not really. i mean, some of them were clear, but some of them seemed radically different and hard to follow.

i'm left to wonder if the band radically rearranges it's studio material for performance - or perhaps radically rearranges it's live material in studio - and if there's an entirely parallel discography that i'm not aware of. the other option is that the sound tech is terrible, but this seems unlikely, given that i experienced the same thing in two different bars, in two different cities and separated by 7.5 years.

a quick run through the setlist suggests that it may have mostly been tracks from rooms of the house that were rearranged, and i guess i can get my head around that, even if it threw me for a bit of a loop. there's some bands you go to see just expecting something new, and there's some that you go to see with the discography burned directly into your cortex, and la dispute are really in the latter category.

i don't want to play the show down; i enjoyed the components that i recognized, even as i was spitting the hair out of my mouth and craning my neck around to get a view. but, there were tracks i only half-recognized, and it left me wondering what was really going on.

i can't currently find a recent show on youtube and don't want to post an old one, so we'll leave this space open until one appears.

(insert youtube link)

i wasn't first in line, but i was near the front of the line, and the coat check had it ready for me.

"see, this is actually better, right? 'cause the line moves faster."
"oh, shut up."
"ok. have a good night.."

i had to step into the bathroom for a few minutes, again.

i was out before 11:30, so i just walked back to the greyhound. the subways were all closed, unfortunately, so no late night sub on the bus. it was a short wait, meaning i have a working model, even if this is not a frequent trip.

the migraine and the rain started almost immediately, and almost simultaneously, leaving me crunched up in pain and kind of freaked out, at the same time. i tried to sleep the migraine off, but it wouldn't come. the rain was so heavy that you could barely see the streetlamps, making it hard to tell where i actually was. yet, the driver of this express bus was not interested in slowing down, regardless of visibility, of the slippery roads or of the potholes that the bus was ripping through. but, it actually seemed like a short ride, somehow. and, i was in windsor and off the bus in no time - and home by around 6:30 in the morning.

so, would i do that again? yeah, for the right act. i just wish the weather was a little nicer.

it's now thursday afternoon, and i'm typing from home in windsor. i wanted to do some typing on the bus on the way home, but the migraine hit as soon as i sat down, and i was really just done for the ride; i wasn't able to sleep it off as i like to, but i nonetheless didn't want to do anything except roll up in a ball. as mentioned, i was nauseous on the way in as well, so i'm thinking it was partly to do with the air quality on the bus. the third hand smoke was noticeable - even after i'd smoked a few myself - but i'm wondering if it was more about a lack of circulation. it was also raining very hard through a lot of the ride, and i know i'm sensitive to the weather. whatever it was, it actually made the trip seem very short, as uncomfortable as it was.

i wanted to eat and shower first, but i was passed out within minutes of coming in on wednesday morning. i've tried to wake up a few times since yesterday afternoon, but it hasn't really succeeded; i've mostly been asleep since i got home. well, i'm up now, so i'm going to pick up where i left off...

16-04-2019: slow mass, gouge away & la dispute @ the opera house, toronto

their music:

review:

event listing:
https://www.facebook.com/events/954857924720602/

link:

so, i'm in toronto, at the opera house grill, a small coffee shop directly beside/below the venue in toronto.

i believe that i'm listening to the drum tech doing sound check upstairs, and it's pretty intense in it's monotony.

the ride in was fairly uneventful, if a little bit cramped and a tad long. but, i spent the ride evaluating the band's discography, and i think there's a chance that this is their most substantive record so far, which is not to say it's their best necessarily, but that it is their most mature and consistent one. there were very strong tracks on both of their first two records, but they had different levels of inconsistency - there are some plodding hardcore tracks on their first record, although the vocals are really next-level throughout; the second record is bloated by lyrical filler that probably should have been cut off as bsides, if done at all. the first record needs to stand as it is, regardless of any flaws; it's too unique as a cohesive whole to split up. but, the second record could have been cut in half.

i think that the third largely missed the mark on both fronts.

this new record is a movement in a different direction, musically, if not too radically so, as the pieces of it already existed. but, it is for the first time a record that doesn't have some cringey tracks on it. not only is this so, but the lyricist seems to have returned to the kind of flow that existed on the first record. it's really a huge step forward for the band, and i'm excited about hearing them develop what they're doing further.

something else i'm noticing is that la dispute is in some ways very similar to my own dead project, rabit is wolf. sean didn't have the chance to write anything profound as la dispute, and i don't know if he could, but he has a very similar voice to the singer for the band, whose name i am not entirely sure of. jordan something, i think. i'm not going to look it up. but, some of the more plaintive guitar & vocal work strikes me as a very plausible end goal for rabbit, should it have carried forwads. and, it's interesting to me that you can hear sean and i play around with the same ideas that la dispute do/did, but way back in 2002. the record is too musically different, but you could probably trick somebody into thinking that acoustic demo ep was a lost la dispute demo.

i actually felt a little sick for much of the bus ride. stale air combined with third hand smoke and little bit of vodka in my stomach combined to get me a little oozy. the person that sat down beside me then added to that by eating an oiniony sub and a bag of doritos, which just had me on the verging of vomiting. it wasn't one thing but all of them...but i made it through....

i got off the bus and walked in the wrong direction, then corrected myself after a block. i had the map memorized, but i had to properly orient myself first. first stop was the marijuana store.

am i feeling over the permabuzz enough to get back to moderate use again? well, i want to go to the show, and that's what i do at the show, so it's like i have to move on with life, regardless. i may run the risk of imagining a more coherent state of existence than is realistic; i don't have a control, in the question of measuring the coherence of consciousness. it shouldn't take this long to wear off. this is probably as good as it gets.

but, my habits are likely to change now that i'm not worried about getting it out of the house. i'll likely hang on to the small amount that i bought for quite a while, just bringing it out occasionally.

i was there at about 1:30 on a cloudy, grey tuesday afternoon, and they were lined up around the corner, and carding people at the door. patrons were allowed in slowly, and asked to meet with a "budtender" who was supposed to help you find what you wanted. i knew that i was in search of a high thc:cbd ratio at the lowest price on offer, and informed the "budtender" of this fact. he proceeded to bring me to the sativa area, and sell me on a 15:9 ratio hybrid. i asked him repeatedly if that he was the highest ratio he had, and he said it was. this seemed unlikely to me, but he insisted. he then sold me an 1/8th, told me to go to the counter to buy it and said "but, feel free to look around". i then walked into the indica section and found what i actually wanted.

i'm not sure what the purpose of the detour was, but it's of little concern in the end, other than to put out a warning to be careful about these so-called budtenders. if he works on commission, he may have been trying to squeeze out a sativa sale; if true, the misdirection would be management's fault. but, i should have looked at a menu coming in, and will next time.

i picked one of the cheapest options, and it was still at the highest end of an acceptable price. when you buy in bulk from your friend, it's $5-7/gram. when you make a business transaction with your dealer, the expected price is $10/gram. and, when you're forced to find a pusher on the street, you pay $12/g for something you're afraid to actually smoke.

the cheapest option in the store was $11.99. to me, that is a warning shot to what should now be called independent growers - the corporate growers aren't planning on competing with them over a free market. when the government charges you $12/gram, that broadcasts that they're planning on enforcing the laws.

fulton street blaring at me from next door.

the transaction took roughly an hour, in total, and it was then less than an hour's walk up queen street to the venue, which is where i am right now, having a coffee. i of course made a detour to try out the product.

i'm kind of fried right now, regardless. i had a restless weekend, with little solid sleep. i then caught yamantaka // sonic titan and the acid mothers temple at phog last night, after having barely slept all weekend. this experience was at least enough to stimulate some actual sleep in me early this morning, but i was up at 5:30 to catch the bus for 8:00, and then sat on the bus for almost six hours. but, i bought a high thc strain because i like an uplifting buzz rather than a draining stone, and because i like to smoke pinners, infrequently - a small amount should last a long time. i may have sampled slightly too much. i'll be fine soon enough.

i think doors are at 7:00, so i've got some time to waste...

15-04-2019: yamantaka // sonic titan & acid mothers temple @ phog, windsor

their music:

review:

event listing:
https://www.facebook.com/events/907769916278336/

link:

and, here is the noise trade smashwords link for the july archive of this blog.

https://books.noisetrade.com/j/072013-music-journal-22
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026388

i first decided to remove myself from facebook some time around the end of 2013, not due to any kind of security concern but due to being fed up by the terrible interface and incredibly slow servers. a few years later, i found myself with a similar desire to extricate myself from the youtube comments section, as the interface changes made it almost impossible to actually use. but, old habits die hard, and it took several attempts before i could really pry myself off, not having any kind of permanent success until i designated the migration as a time-wasting tactic while i successfully kicked the tobacco addiction, in the first half of 2016. this left me with thousands of pages of writing that i was going to need to eventually repost to a more user-friendly platform, which ended up being the blogger interface on google. faced with the need to build liner notes for my very first recording at the end of 1996, it was at the beginning of 2017 that i first sat down with the intent to rebuild my music journal as a singular whole, with the eventual plan of cutting it up and appending it in installments within the discography.

my life hit a roadblock in the middle of 2017 as a consequence of a shift in ownership of the building i was living in, which led to multiple legal battles (still ongoing) and two separate moves. the situation eventually worked itself out for the better, but it slowed me down dramatically and left me with a very large back log in working through the loose ends around closing my first two period discs that i am only finally beginning to clear in the spring of 2019. this added period of reflection has allowed me to think this through over and over, and add increasing levels of detail to the journal, and subsequent pending liner notes. while not every month is going to be equally exciting, the level of detail in what was initially a journal is now more like a series of novellas. the first entry, which is only the second half of july, is 222 pages long.

i am not going to summarize the story, but it is available on the web over here: musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/07/.

this is a compilation of written correspondences that includes facebook posts, messenger chats and emails with friends and family members, in an attempt to build the context around my move from ottawa to windsor in early august, 2013. this was a pretty heavy two weeks, and the narrative consequently has an arc of it's own, but the story being told here is how i rebuilt my studio over the second half of 2013. the contents of this download are the dummy track, a word doc file and a pdf file, both written in a more readable, chronological ordering. i've also added the respective files for my other three blogs, for general interest.

the events documented in this journal occurred in july, 2013 and were compiled into a narrative in several stages over the years 2014-2019. journal completed on mar 31, 2019. released and finalized in doc and pdf format on april 14, 2019. doc0713. 

credits

released August 1, 2013

j - editing, participant

esa - participant
illuminous - participant
mom - participant
sister - participant
nana - participant
step-mother - participant
the youngest aunt - participant
jeff - participant
dad - participant

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/07-2013-music-journal-2-2

ok, so we're going to do this in two ways.

first, i've set up a noise trade account, where i can post all of the pdfs. i've done it like this rather consciously, as it allows me to accept donations without explicitly charging, and i think that this is important, in context.

however, i'm also going to set up downloads for the music journal entries in the bandcamp store, which means i have some exciting news: i will finally have a new product for sale within a few hours

here's the new link:
https://books.noisetrade.com/j

unfortunately, noise trade did not work out as a hosting solution, and i never got a clear answer as to why. but, i decided in the end that the site was full of ads and unworkable, anyways.

readable archives are now at the following sites:

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/deathtokoalas
https://www.lulu.com/search?contributor=jessica+murray
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NI_sEi1t9NxTeOB9Es3A2Ge8ji4iTXit?usp=sharing

yup.

on the side, too.

https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/

i decided that i couldn't avoid this any longer.

as i retrace through the rebuild, i'll be reconstructing the music review blog, as well, which is now here:

https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/

that makes the rebuild & alter-reality comprehensive, so i won't have to go back again later to retrace - this is final.

so, i've carefully filed this properly, backwards, to may, 2003, which is the point where things get messy, as everything for the two-three years previously dates to those burns from before i left. i will need to go through the may folder - which includes thousands of genealogical records - and pull out as much stuff from before it as possible.

i stopped to run a scandisk on the drive, just in case. it's a 2 tb drive; that's going to take the rest of the night.

i've also decided that i'm going to create that music blog after all. i think i really don't have another option at this point, as i'm going to need to cross-reference too much data, and it's the only remaining piece.

in terms of how to do this, i'm also going to move in terms of semesters, anchored by the alter-reality. if i try to do this day-by-day or even week-by-week, it will get impossible. so, i'll start with the second half of 2013, then go back and do the second half of 1993. that just extends the journal launch date that much more, but not by much - this is already done, i'm really just double-checking it. with the music blog - reviews, comments - it should become comprehensive. and, i know that's what people actually want...

my robot book should be here in the morning.

still 403s on the tripod site :(

and, i'm otherwise going to nap.

a man for all seasons / thomas more's utopia. grade 8. that's clear. but, it was handed out in loose leaf, i think. i also vaguely recall some kind of shakespeare for grade 8. i guess we did shakespeare every year almost - hamlet, macbeth, merchant of venice, romeo & juliet, henry viiii, a mid...yeah. that was eight. midsummer night's dream. i remember the plays relatively well, but i always took shakespeare as a chore, and it's not well-ordered in time in my mind. i think the merchant was 9, romeo & juliet was 10, macbeth was 11 and hamlet was 12, but that could be completely wrong. i have a vague recollection of something atwood as well. and some sherlock holmes, too....

well, that's something, anyways.

it's the old english, that was my issue with shakespeare. i know a lot of people like it for that reason, but, to me, shakespeare should be catalogued with chaucer - it's a mild degree of separation, and well past the point of incomprehension; it's far enough back in time, now, that a translator really ought to be deployed. it just struck me as needlessly frustrating. but, i was a kid that liked to read, so i think i would have enjoyed it much more had they just translated it for me. we'll see how i react to it the second time over...

grade seven is still a dead block, but my teacher got fired early in the year and the class kind of fell through the cracks. after five or six substitutes that were sequentially brought in as babysitters, they finally hired one. we lost at least half the year. but, i'm remembering a grade 7 "english textbook" that was all highlightered up from previous use, and a really boring story by a gordon something that was in the textbook. this was just painful to trudge through - enough to make a kid hate reading for life. this is the consequence of the "canadian content" requirements, and a teacher that didn't really give a fuck. so, i think what i need to find is the textbook. english class at that point no doubt had an actual language component, which was no doubt the focus of the textbook.

was there a grade eight "english textbook" with excerpts in it? i'm thinking that's the answer, and why my memories are so dismal around it. my grade eight teacher was a rather finicky old woman, and she may have photocopied the textbook out of fears we'd spill juice on it.

i wouldn't mind trying to track down the math & science textbooks from high school, while i'm at it.

that just randomly vomited up on me, which is how this often works. i've been offline for the last few days, because i've had difficulties staying awake. i'm still filing; it should be done, but i've been sleeping 20 hours a day. the air quality in here has just collapsed, but it's only in the one room, leading me to wonder if it's mostly the window, after all.

i'm going to get some more coal the next time i'm out and see if it helps a little.

the first asimov text is here from the uk, but dhl made a scan error and is trying to charge me customs on a purchase under $20. it should be here as soon as that is ironed out, so i could in theory get started this week.

but, not with the air quality like this, i won't. i'm going to have to get to the bottom of this - as of right now, i'm basically in the same problem i was in before.

i can't and don't want to live the life of a lethargic drug addict.

well, it cost me $212.79, which works out to $15.10/book, but it should all be here by monday, with the exception of the complete robot, which should be here within three weeks.

the complete robot was $36, and i got tricked - i had my default address set to the ups store in detroit, which would have been free shipping. i agreed to the transaction, then got dinged on shipping into canada, which ended up as $15. you'll note it would cost me $10 to get back and forth anyways, but i might have found a cheaper seller. this particular text appears to be scarce in canada, but i could have probably taken it down a little. $5-7 or something.

so, if you take that one out, the average is more like $13.65, which is reasonable, considering everything is shipping.

and, the way we'll do this is that i'll have just read through the asimov texts - that will be the starting point of the blog, a total review of the greater foundation series.

so, should i be buying physical books in 2019?

well, i still like to hold a book, and part of the point of this is to rebuild the shelf, after years of neglect. i'm not sure that this overpowers the unnecessary environmental effects of actually buying books at this stage in history, though.

i should probably look at this the same way that i look at clothes, and am increasingly looking at cds: i should be looking towards used books almost exclusively.

am i apprehensive about buying used books online? yeah. it's easy to lose a few pages. and, i should also be seeking to minimize transportation costs.

it's been a while since i've hit the used book stores in windsor.

it looks like it may be nice on sunday.

i only have three stephen king books left on my shelf.

1) the tommyknockers
2) the bachman books (rage, the long walk, roadwork, the running man)
3) the stand (complete & uncut)

but, i had a big list of them, which also included:

- carrie
- salem's lot
- the shining
- night shift (short stories) 
- the dead zone
- firestarter
- cujo
- danse macabre 
- different seasons (shawshank redemption, apt pupil, the body, the breathing method)
- pet semetary
- the talisman
- thinner 
- skeleton crew (short stories)
- it
- misery
- the dark half
- four past midnight (the langoliers, secret window secret garden, the library policeman, the sun dog) 
- needful things
- gerald's game
- dolores clairborne
- nightmares & dreamscapes

i never read christine, and regretted it. the only other thing that's missing here is the dark tower series, which i skipped on purpose. that is otherwise an almost entirely complete stephen king bibliography, up to the end of 1993.

i'm not exaggerating - i went through all of this stuff over the years 92-94. that's like 10,000 pages of stephen king, mostly in the middle of the night. the move from my mom's to my dad's was the summer of 1994, and while there were some perks attached to it, i initially had to give up my all night reading habit because he would actually storm downstairs and tell me go to fucking sleep, whereas my mom was herself usually up all night chain smoking and watching tv. i also became much more interested in the guitar after mid-94.

am i going to buy all of those books? yeah. and, i'm going to move through this sequentially.

i don't know how much these cost, nowadays. you used to be able to get them at the drug store for $5. let's see what i can get shipped to me. and, i'll have to hit the local used stores afterwards.

but, i'm going to start with asimov, because that's more primordial for me. even as i'm pointing out that i don't remember doing a single book report from grades 7-9, i know i did a book report on the foundation series in grade five. i was in a split 5/6 class, so i didn't have english class in grade six (and didn't have math class in grade five). in hindisght, it is baffling, but my mom freely sent me to that school solely because it had a large yard. yeah. the foundation series was recommended to me by the teacher, and i ended up reading a bunch of his other stuff. asimov died in 1992 with a massive bibliography, but i remember these specifically:

- the complete robot
- caves of steel
- naked sun
- robots of dawn
- robots and empire
- the stars, like dust
- currents of space
- pebble in the sky
- prelude to foundation
- forward the foundation <----did not read this one
- foundation
- foundation and empire
- second foundation
- foundations edge <----- that was the book report
- foundation and earth

so, i read through that over 1992-1993. i should collect it all, and review it all as a starting point. all i have right now is foundation and empire, and a book of short stories called the martian way.

what else did i mention?

arthur c. clarke.

i had:

- 2001: a space odyssey
- 2010: odyssey two
- 2061: odyssey three
- songs of distant earth 
- tales from planet earth

my grandmother bought me these books by accident, starting around 91. she was trying to buy me greek mythology, to have me understand my name sake. i don't think she ever read any homer herself, nor had my mother, but she was trying to give me a story about jason and the argonauts, by giving me what she thought was the odyssey. d'oh? well, i enjoyed them, nonetheless, so she kept buying them. i eventually read both some plato and homer in high school, as well as some aristophanes in first year. fuck aristotle.

the only one i have left is songs of distant earth, which helpfully is dated to the christmas of 1993. so, we can go through that one together for an early '94 post.

bradbury.

- the martian chronicles
- farenheit 451 <----- not actually, but if i'm going to do this... 
- a medicine for melancholy
- r is for rocket
- i sing the body electric 
- dinosaur tales

i remember the bradbury a lot less. i know i at least flipped through these ones.

i do remember some specific hg wells:

- time machine
- island of dr moreau
- war of the worlds

and also some jules verne:

- journey to the centre of the earth
- twenty thousand leagues under the sea

the wells & verne were probably the result of the influence of my aunt on my mother and grandmother, who was an english major at mcgill in this period.

i'm going to push the clancy, koontz & rand forward a few years, because my memory of it is specifically connected to my dad's house. there was some crichton, too.

there would have also been some twain read over this period, again thanks to nana:

- tom sawyer (daa-da da-daaaa) 
- prince & pauper
- huck finn

what else?

we'll skip the shell silverstein. that sidewalk has ended.

i was given a copy of james and the giant peach, but i...i want to say i was too old for it, but i actually probably wasn't. i felt too old for it. frankly, i thought it was a stupid thing to waste one's time with, and didn't bother with it very far. i remember reading through about half of it one night when held physically hostage by my grandmother due to a babysitting task due to not having anything else to do, and i just found myself ridiculing roald dahl at the age of, like, 9. i never found myself immersed in fantasy novels - never went for the tolkien or the lucas or really any of that stuff. as soon as you started bringing in, like, elves and shit, i lost interest.

the purpose of this post is to build a list, and we will probably leave a lot of this behind. i'm going to start with asimov, check prices, and move from there.

i've otherwise got the media i have organized, which is not a lot - a couple of king books, some arthur c. clarke and a few records from u2, rem, bryan adams, peter gabriel, gowan, genesis and the barenaked ladies.

i left a lot of books at my mom's place when i moved out, and sold a bunch more before i went to bc. as i've now sorted through everything, the only thing left is to hope i can get something from the carleton archives, or a fortunecity mirror or something. i know there was a list, i just don't have it.

if i'm going to rebuild the books, i'll need to go through the king, pick up a bunch of science fiction (a fair amount of asimov, a bunch of clarke, some bradbury), some tom clancy, some dean koontz, some mark twain and, yes, some ayn rand. my dead uncle is responsible for that. they told me they found him in the bathroom of a hostel in victoria, dead of an apparent aneurysm; i assumed it was drug related, but that was never confirmed, and i never asked. he was in his early 40s. selfishness as a virtue can bite you in the end, huh?

i'm sure i'll remember some more...

music wise, i'll need to get some michael jackson. what's the status on buying a michael jackson record in 2019? is it alright if it's just going to his...well, it's not even actually his kid, is it? i dunno. see, i got into mj through weird al, though. and, i lost interest after dangerous, for obvious reasons. but, my ten-year old self was really much more interested in black or white than nirvana. we grow quickly at that age, though.

i also had a bit of a bon jovi phase, which i'll defend on the basis that they weren't as bad as their peers. if the criticism is that bon jovi were hair metal, it's actually a bit off the mark - they weren't this pompous, ridiculous, materialistic, nihilistic marketing behemoth, but rather a kind of working class band from new jersey, with a contemporary sound. they were at least as punk rock as springsteen, anyways. and, they actually had a kind of synth pop center, too, which is where i really came from - tears for fears, gabriel, genesis.

i guess that's the missing part of it, stuff my dad or uncle dubbed me. i had a cassette with a day at the races on one side and a night at the opera on the other. i had beatles tapes, genesis tapes, and an out of place dub of animals that it took me years to get into, because it wasn't what i was looking for. i was very young - 8 or 9 - when somebody at chez decided to toss on one of these days for a lark, at like 2:00 am, while i was in the car on the way back from a road trip with my step-father. i was pretty instantly intrigued. the announcer mentioned it was floyd, but didn't elaborate - it was presumably not necessary. tony, to his immense discredit, couldn't identify the track, either. there was a copy of delicate sound of thunder around, but it was missing the second side. so, i asked around for years trying to figure out what the song was. the dead uncle decided i was describing the vocal effects in sheep and dubbed me a copy of animals, which i just found a little too meandering at that age - it hit me like a grateful dead record, just not enough movement for a young mind. my dad never had a copy of meddle, either. it wasn't for years that i found it in a torrent...

"aha! there's that crazy bass part!"

anyways. i have my work for the next little while set aside. it's time to start doing it.

the first post is going to be in the "dear diary, so much has happened..." format. and, we'll go from there. i might be back into the stand by the end of the night.....

you know, i'm racking my brain for actual books that i read in grades 7 and 8 - and even 9 - and i'm not able to come up with anything. i remember being given photographed handouts and asked questions around an ability to prove very basic comprehension, or being asked to read short texts and then produce an opinion piece around it. but, i don't think anybody ever handed out books to us and told us to read them.

i went to both elementary school and high school under the rae/peterson curriculum (harris won when i was in high school, and didn't succeed in changing the curriculum until the year after i'd left), and i'm learning just now that it was kind of an experiment. i did not receive any actual marks until grade 10; my high school transcript, which i still have, simply states "completed" for grade 9. i have records of standardized testing where i scored in the 95th-99th percentile, but i don't have grades for these years.

what i remember about the report cards is that they had a long list of criteria, and you'd be evaluated on a points system, with 1 the highest and i think 6 the lowest. this was just the teacher's arbitrary, completely subjective opinion. i remember getting lots of 1s in english and math, 2s or 3s in phys ed and some pretty low marks in the "shows respect for authority" and "works well with others" categories. even my university profs would have scrawled "does not work well with others" on my report cards if given the chance, and i'm not particularly embarrassed about it - i don't work well with others, and i don't want to, either.

i'm not even sure i can pick out much of anything of shape in these years really at all. we were split into classes that taught core subjects, and then shipped into different rooms for specific topics. so, i remember having a science teacher, a french teacher, a geography teacher, a music teacher, a phys ed teacher, a home ec teacher, a history teacher and then a kind of general "grade 7 teacher" that was tasked with everything else, which i guess is math, religion and english. but, that really meant that the curriculum was focused on the peripheral subjects due to the more rigid scheduling, and that math & english were largely unstructured babysitting periods with a lot of pointless busy work. when we went to geography class, or phys ed, we were there for a short period with a defined curriculum; when we went back to the general class room, the teacher could organize it any way they wanted to, or not at all, which was often the actual reality.

so, the system put more of a priority on learning french or geography than it did on learning math or english. we did regular spelling bees in grade 8 english class. and, i don't really remember taking math in grade 7 at all. grade 9 was more structured, in the sense that there were separate math and english classes, but i still didn't get graded, and i still don't remember reading any actual books. i explicitly remember reading shakespeare, but we read it orally in the classroom. and, there's a text called the chrysalids that i can't otherwise place that i might drop into grade 9.

of course, there's some possibility that i don't remember any reading projects because i was so efficient with them. there's a few texts from later in high school that i remember putting off until the last minute and then reading through in an afternoon. there's certainly some possibility that i just devoured it so violently that it never really got digested. but, the thing is that i liked reading, so i don't know why that would have been true.

i think the truth is that i was mostly baby sat all the way to the end of grade 9, and consequently don't have a lot to report on.

if i remember something, i'll insert it, but i think the way we're going to do this is that i'll be doing independent reading over these years, instead.

so, here's the new link:

https://thejournalofj.blogspot.com/

which is also on the side...

and, we'll say that dad got a scanner for christmas.

so, i've finally reached a pivot point, and there's going to be a slight change of plans.

i have now copied every file that i can find - from laptops, external drives, usb keys, cds, dvds, etc - on to the new external drive, and organized everything by year. it's very rough, and there's a lot of overlap, but it is all in roughly the correct place. so, the next thing ought to be to restart on the rebuild, and quickly run through 2013-2016, with the intent to get back to where i was.

....except that i'm deciding that the process is incomplete, in the greater context, and want to rewind back to 1993. 1993!? yes - 1993. and, why 1993?

i started in mid-1996 for a couple of reasons. it was early 2016 when i decided to switch directions, my first demos were from the summer of 1996 and my earliest memories of internet access were from mid-1996. a lot of things added up with that. but, at the same time, i was picking up a story halfway, one that had undefined bounds. now that the bounds are better defined - the current story begins in mid-2013 when i moved to windsor, meaning the alter-reality ends in mid-2013, with an intended completion date of mid-2033 -  it makes sense to pull the alter-reality back to 1993, to allow for some symmetry in the process.

that would mean the alter-reality will run from the summer of 1993 to the summer of 2013, in the end.

there's some other reasons for this. the earliest files i have are dated to 1995, but i have pictures going back to the 80s, and i wanted to find some way to work some of these things in to the story. starting in 1993 lets me do that. i also wanted to do reviews of records and books from 1993-1996, which was actually the most formative years of my life - starting over again in mid 1993 means i'm starting in the summer between grade 6 and 7, which is of course right before i went to junior high school. if we're going to do a portrait of this artist, that's a better place to start.

but, if i didn't get online until 1996, at the earliest, how am i going to have a journal from 1993?

what i'm going to do is split it off into a separate blog that will run strictly from 1993-1996. i will be sorting through some papers over the christmas break of 1996 and find an old journal and decide it would be neat to put it online. so, the mechanism is that i'll be typing in a journal that i had already written up by hand. when it's done, it will exist in a standalone file.

what that means is that i'm going to be thrusting myself back into the alter-reality almost immediately; i just need to spend another day or two organizing all of these files, first, before i get to posting to the new journal, dated to july 15, 1993. i'll push forward with this as i push forward with the rebuild, until it connects back together in early 1996.

i'm going to try and be as honest as i can as i run through this. i have the benefit of a lot of hindsight, and i'm not going to pretend i can be a 12 year-old again, but people go through a lot at that age, and i'm going to try and get down as much as i can. some of these things will no doubt surprise you. it's been so long, that i may even end up surprising myself.

i am obviously a different person today than i was then, as we all are.

but, in a lot of surface ways, not much has changed - i spent most of the summer between grades six and seven awake at odd hours, in my room reading, specifically through the stephen king catalogue, iirc. i had no friends at all over this period, as i prepared to go to a new school that none of them were going to go to. i'll have to start off with a broad statement around that. i was living with my mother during this period, which is something i haven't talked much about. i played some guitar, but was not really into alternative rock music yet - i listened to a lot of what was called "college rock" during those years, as well as a lot of pop music. there was no computer around, but i had a big tv in my room that was either tuned to muchmusic or to conan. we'll have to go through the process of moving from mom to dad in mid '94. so, that was life and how to live it, and where we're starting over again with this...

i wouldn't be doing this if i didn't think it was going to be worthwhile.

so, i've now got all of those boxes properly organized and put away. there's one stack of cds and one box of books left out for easy access, which is very specifically books and cds from the period up to mid-1997, which is the next period i'll be working on in the alter-reality.

the last run through the main pc (i keep calling it that, but it is now merely the 32-bit box) is now done, as well. this included a final browse through the directory structure for loose files, as well as an attempt to undelete any files sitting on the drive.

and, in the process, i found something i thought i had lost - a file called archive.pst, dated to late 2011. it was hiding in the virtual machine, and had to be brought back using a file recovery utility. this might be my missing email. or, it might be corrupted beyond readability. i'll find out over the next few days.

i found a few other large psts as well, with dcxx file names, indicating they're likely unreadable. we'll find out...

that means i'm back to the email process this week.

there's two things left to do before i can get back to sitting on the laptop and organizing files for the rebuild. i want to run the same file recovery process on my old quantum fireball, in the hopes that i can find some old thunderbird boxes. i suspect they're there; the question is if they're readable. i'm also still running an undelete process on two relatively old hard drives that don't have vista/7 drivers and can only be read from inside xp, but that i can't get my 32-bit box to read, either (because i broke the plug and play on purpose). so, this is running on the 90s laptop - and is slow. it's getting there.

a day or two, tops. i think. 

i also took the opportunity to do some organizing and general cleaning. i can't remember how i described this basement apartment; i know there are neither pictures nor video up yet, which is quite conscious. but, it's organized in such a way that there are two bedroom-like enclaves (with sliding doors that are kept always open), but no dining room or eat-in kitchen (there is of course a kitchen, with the luxury of laundry in it, and a bathroom). the way i have it set up is that i'm using one of these enclaves as a bedroom and the other as a dining/living room, then using the main area as a studio. something you'll note is that the only thing i actually do in the "living" room is eat - i spend almost all of my time in my bedroom or in the studio. i guess this is a function of the fact that i neither watch tv nor have any friends. my "living room" is really the studio. i think i was over this a few times last year - the actual functions of the spaces i need are to sleep/type/read, to record and to eat. so, i need three rooms, organized in some capacity. the last basement had four rooms, with the fourth being a big eat-in kitchen, but i didn't actually use it for anything other than to store garbage; i ate in the living room. the smoky apartment had two rooms, and i consequently found it a little cramped, as i had to force everything into one space. three is a better number, here - even if the total floor space is technically somewhat smaller (it's a negligible difference).

for the last several months, i've just had everything piled into the other room, waiting for it to be cleaned - loose plastic recyclables, receipts, user manuals, books, cds, bills, documents, old school work, etc. i've finally got all of this cleaned up and organized, which has converted the area into an actual liveable space. the studio is still messy, but it is at least in order - although i need to caution that it could be a while before i get back into there. even keeping in mind that i will need to catch up in the alter-reality before i get back to working on the discography, the material from 2003-2004 is actually entirely completed (a rarity in my discography), meaning the next projects to reconstruct actually date to late 2004 and early 2005. the next major project i'm going to be actually working on is a matlab project, and is going to be about programming, rather than recording - i'm going to be writing an entire record using mathematics and physical modelling. i've got about 15 minutes to start with and a handful of loose ideas to base sounds around. expect this to be exceedingly abstract. i may even use it as an excuse to finally get into reaktor or whatever passes for it nowadays; the point is that i'm not going to be getting back to actual note-based music composition until i delve well more than a year back into the discography.

i'm still hesitant about planning around this basement, but my best option may be to wait for a spot in a subsidized building. the air quality comes up and down, but seems to be workable so long as the fan is on. i've done a few extra caulking layers and think i've reached the endpoint of what i can do with that. i still just can't figure out if there's a teenager upstairs smoking, or the air in the neighbourhood is just bad, all around...and, if i can figure out the answer to this, i'll be able to plan the future a little better.

i think i can get a few shelves, regardless - one for cds and one for books. the plan will be to fill these shelves as i work through the alter-reality. i don't need to commit to this basement long-term to spend $40-50 on some relevant general utility shelving. but, i'll need to wait until the spring before i start thinking about hauling shelves around; that's fine, it'll be a few weeks, at least, before i get there. i'm not building custom shelves like i wanted to in the other space, and am glad i didn't.

i think the primary concern once i get these files aligned is actually going to be fixing the broken laptop, one way or the other. i bought parts for it, only to have the processor finally fry. if i can't find a way to bring it back, i'm hoping i can find a cheap replacement and swap out the parts. this is an hp pavillion that was manufactured in the 2010-2012 period. you'd think i could find a replacement that can take similar parts for less than $200, and that's fine - i still have cash my grandmother gave me for that explicit purpose. the price has just come down since then. i'll be using such a laptop - with 8 gb of ram - as a video editing machine, kept offline, and connected to one of  the other machines via a local network. i'll have to transfer the files to the internet gateway via some kind of flash device.

so, that's my update for the last few days - i'm kind of turning a corner on some things, and getting closer to getting back to the rebuild. so long as things unfold as planned, this will be worth it in the long run.

now, regarding these court cases...

still no response from the cops. this was day 108 of the 120-day statutory period. they're running out of time. so, i sent them a note.

i'm still waiting for the privacy commissioner, but will give them until the end of the month.

the file destruction request, on the other hand, is something i'm getting impatient about - i should have heard a response by now and will need to get on the phone shortly.

i'm waiting for the report from the cops before i decide on what to do regarding the court audio. you have to understand that i could sue this woman and win, then never see the cash, so i'm better off suing the cops under a charter breach. but, the thing is that there's no time frame on a charter case, and about a year-long time frame regarding a human rights case. so, i can wait for the cops to drag the charter case out, but i can't wait for them to drag the human rights case out.

if it starts to look like the cops are just stalling - and it's getting close to that point - then i'm going to have to move forward on the human rights case. but, if i get a good report, i might skip it.

the point is that i'm waiting for the report before i make my next move, whatever it is.

if you're finding that the slow progress through what is now a considerable back log of work is frustrating, perhaps you should have thought about that before you decided to waste so much of my time.

i have been crystal fucking clear that what i need to be productive in my art is a stable, drug-free environment. i do all of my work in a completely sober state. i always have. the introduction of any kind of drugs, alcohol or nicotine into my workplace environment is going to have the effect of severely retarding my productivity levels.

as it is, i have a very large backlog and it is going to take a long time to work through it.

i will not be skipping over it.

i will not be moving on.

i was hoping to get through september by the end of the weekend, but i lost most of saturday to a systematic link update over the review site and i've spent most of the last 12 hours sleeping. i hadn't really slept since thursday afternoon, so i guess i was catching up.

i'm beginning to conclude that the remaining smoky smell in here is a combination of dry air and dust. i might change my mind, still. i mean, it's certainly making me cough and irritating my throat and nose, but, since i finished the laundry last week, the only thing i've been able to really tie it to is the heaters. the heat gradient (it's below freezing.) right now should be defining negative pressure, so i shouldn't really be getting pollution from outside, although it does seem to be a continuing annoyance.

i'm going to hope that the dust comes down as the place is put in order. it will probably never go away entirely, but hopefully it gets a lot better. and, i'm just going to have to get used to drinking a lot of water to offset the extreme aridity.

is there still some chance that somebody is smoking upstairs? i can't rule it out. but, if that's a part of the problem, it doesn't seem to be the totality of it. i'm more concerned about the pollution in the neighbourhood, right now, even if somebody is up there smoking. i'm going to have to find a way to seal the windows up.

the immediate solution is to drink more water - a lot more water.

i'm going to get through a bit more this morning, stopping before i get to the major vlog from the night that i may have been roofied, and woke up in some stranger's car. but, i need to put it aside for the day, at least - and i might not get back to it until thursday.

so, i finished the bureaucracy through august - that is done now - and i need to ask...should i just go to september?

well, i wanted to make some calls and get to cleaning in the other room - but it assumed i would have been done with this by monday or tuesday, and i'd be able to get back to september for the weekend. i can't make those calls, at this point. i'd might as well just push through september...

if i can get september done by monday morning, i can switch gears for the start of the week.

and, i did finish august, 2016 early this morning - i just kind of spun out right after.

i'll get to the bureaucracy after i eat.

then, it's back to the real world for a few days. and, as we can see, i'm getting anxious.

so, that gets me through season 9, which is most of the way through august, 2016. i need to have a big meal before i finish the rest of the month, and then get to real world stuff for tomorrow morning. i think the lights were seriously the last thing to build for the bathroom; the next step is to set up the dining/living room, which will also act as a side library. that should take me through the rest of the week, meaning i should be able to get started on season 10 by the weekend, hopefully.

i just need to keep working and get through it as quickly as i can.

so, i was distracted by the court thing - and that's going to be a constant for a bit.

& i had to sort of reconnect with myself over facebook, to remember how i was doing this.

...but, 07/2016 is now completely reconstructed.

july was very busy, which is what i intended at the time. august & september were messy, but i did get back to work in october, and both november and december were quite productive. so, the rebuild for the next two months is going to shift back to the politics side, which actually might mean it could come through a little quicker. we'll see.

it's at the end of december that i'll do the final close on inri000 - yeah. inri000. - and i'll have to figure out how to do it. i will need to date it to the current date, whenever it is in 2018 (hopefully not 2019). but, i'll have to figure out what i want to include over the last two years. i suppose i should leave a skeleton on the personal drama, meaning i could theoretically get through it quickly. i have no alter-reality posts at all for inri001, so i'll have to decide whether i want to layer them in as i go or leave them for last.

remember: the politics blog is going to flip over in november, so the remaining component to layer in will be the vlog posts. what that means is that i could just put the vlogs aside. and, i wouldn't be losing anything with it, because i now have the time stamps. hrmmn. yeah. that's maybe a good plan...

i'm going to eat, and then get ready to head out to do some shopping. i'll be spending the rest of the morning cleaning, with the aim of getting into the shower before i get into a clean set of sheets. i will then have a pile of clean clothes to sort through when i wake up. some of it needs minor sewing attention, some of it maybe doesn't fit as well as i'd like, and might not again in the future. i made the error of doing a lot of my new wardrobe shopping before fat redistribution.

speaking of which, i'm long overdue for some "new" clothes, too. that's maybe something to do this winter, as well.

i'll be back at august within 48 hours, i hope. i want these prints destroyed asap, but it makes the most sense to wait for a response, as the superior court process could take years.

& 07/2016 is now reconstructed, after a couple of days of work.

i need to fill in some gaps, still, but i should be on to august in a few hours.

so, the updates are at the politics site - i will be filling them in as i catch up. but, the short update is that i was able to move on october 2nd, and am now able to get back to work for a few days.

it's been a messy month, but i think things are beginning to stabilize.

unfortunately, i have multiple lawsuits to deal with and that will slow me down for a while. but, i'm no longer going to be in need of constantly searching for housing all day, every day.

Request For Further Disclosure

Hello.

I am requesting further disclosure on the case of Regina v. Parent, J. Case ID: 79487. 

This letter is being prepared for delivery to the Crown Attorney’s Office in Chatham, via the Windsor Office. It will also be presented to the Justice of the Peace and the Crown’s Representative in court room 6 on the morning of October 24th, with intent to schedule a follow-up court appearance on October 31st. I am willing to schedule a resolution meeting and subsequent pre-trial as soon as I am satisfied with the disclosure on the topic, but not before then, so long as the court allows for the reasonable delay.

With that said, I think that it is reasonable to review the situation, up to this point, to understand the nature of my requests for further disclosure. Something went very wrong here, and I want to get to the bottom of it.

I was arrested, without being shown a warrant, on the evening of September 24th (the details of which are best left for the trial process, but center around a “threat” i made to take the complainant, an upper class landowner, to the human rights commission for discrimination in housing, i think with cause - a threat the complainant decided was harassment) and held for approximately 20 hours before being released on a recognizance of $100 and an order not to communicate with the complainant, or be near any kind of weapons. I was fingerprinted. The crown initially had a lengthy list of demands on my release, included $4000 bail, but the justice rejected each of them as without evidentiary basis. An extremely oppressive impact statement - where I was accused of being “illegitimate” and “unwelcome here” - was bizarrely read into the record by the crown, ironic (and relevant) given the circumstances of being accused of harassment for “threatening” a discrimination suit. I was then formally charged with harassment and ordered to appear before the court in two weeks, under the assumption that the crown was moving forward by indictment, as I had been fingerprinted and arrested and held for nearly 24 hours.

I appeared before the court on October 10th and explained that I had not yet received disclosure, despite making a formal request on October 1st (and an informal request on Sept 27th). It was decided that we should give the crown another week for disclosure, and I should come back again for October 17th.

On October 11th, I was told that there was a conflict of interest on the case, and the file would be moved to the Chatham office. I was not given any information regarding the nature of this conflict of interest, and still do not know why the file was moved. I am requesting this information as a part of the full disclosure. At my last appearance on October 17th, it was decided that the crown should be given another week, due to the circumstances around the conflict of interest.

On October 22nd, I received this disclosure and learned the following things:

1) I was indeed arrested without a warrant, before I was fingerprinted and held for 20 hours.
2) The charge summary states that I was held for those 20 hours for SHOW CAUSE - that is, I was literally held without cause. I suppose that somebody decided they could figure that out later, and then never did.
3) The crown will be proceeding summarily, on a conditional discharge around the recognizance conditions. No jail time. No indictment.

So, I was arrested without a warrant for “threatening” to file a discrimination suit, fingerprinted and held without cause for 20 hours before the justice finally dismissed the crown’s position as having no evidentiary basis. Then, after the crown declared a conflict of interest on the file, and you will note that the complainant is a powerful and wealthy landowner, it eventually elected to proceed summarily - after it had already held me for 20 hours and fingerprinted me. It almost seems as though I was being sent a message not to file. So, who is being harassed here? 

I will be following through with a charter challenge around s. 9, for arbitrary detention as a consequence of police harassment, to begin with, and am requesting detailed disclosure for that reason. 

Please provide the following:

1) A detailed explanation of why the case was moved from the Windsor to Chatham offices, on a conflict of interest. 
2) All audio/video and photographic material of the accused (myself) in custody, including the audio/video & transcript of the bail hearing. There is a conflict of interest on this file.
3) All fingerprint and mugshot reports, to prove they occurred, as they should not have occurred. 
4) A detailed history of any previous complaints that Caroline Chevalier or Ryan Myon have filed with the Windsor Police. There is a conflict of interest on this file.
5)  Any reports surrounding the mental health of the complainant, as her statements suggest she may be suffering from a schizo-affective disorder and/or paranoid delusions. I will be requesting a full psychological evaluation of the complainant.
6) Transcripts and audio of any and all communication between the complainant and police from July 1st, 2018 to the present. There is an acknowledged conflict of interest on the file.
7) The original statement from the complainant that was read at the bail hearing. This appears to have been modified in the disclosure package. There is a conflict of interest on the file, and it is relevant to better understand the complainant’s true motives in filing charges.
8) The discipline record of the officers, particularly officer montino. There is a conflict of interest on the file.
9) Any record of charges filed against the complainant, including charges of filing false reports or charges of criminal harassment.
10) Transcripts, email records and audio of any and all communication between the original prosecutor and the officer, and between the original prosecutor and the complainant, and between the original prosecutor and administrative and management staff in the attorney general’s office, and any other known recorded communication with anybody that works at 200 Chatham Street East regarding this case, or regarding the complainant. There is a conflict of interest on this file.
11) A complete record of all “emails” in full, not snippets taken out of context or enumerations of how many “emails” were sent on a specific date. This is not just relevant, it is the central aspect of the case. How can we determine if there is an objective ground to deduce that the communication caused the individual to feel threatened if it is not available to be examined in full? You’ve given me a mustard sandwich. Please arrange the “emails” in  absolute chronological order, and number them for the purposes of further reference, as detailed reference to them will be made in the course of the trial. There is no reason not to disclose the “emails” in full, and if you will not or cannot do so then you should end this absurdity and drop the case. This is the most vital evidence that there is, here.

I am also requesting that you remove the redaction on the following components of the initial disclosure:

1)  the confidential witness list. i claim this is relevant for the charter challenge, as we have an admitted conflict of interest and a potential bias in the officer’s conduct. this “confidential witness” may be the cause of the conflict, in which case it would be necessary to uncover the witness to carry through with the charter challenge. so, please provide an argument otherwise, or disclose on request.
2)  the mcneil list. i filed an opird report against officer montino on sept 14th, so this is more than relevant but necessary for the charter challenge. i suspect that this was redacted to protect the officer from potential charges and is withholding vital evidence. please provide an argument otherwise, or disclose upon request.
3) the cpic query on my name. why was this redacted? this is my own record. it may be useful for the charter challenge. and, i would like to see it simply because it was redacted - and frankly think that’s a good enough reason, too. so, please provide a reason you’ve redacted, or disclose.

I also have important documents to disclose to the crown and we can talk about that at the resolution meeting.

if i can figure out why a conflict of interest was declared, it should help me move forward on the s. 9.

so, i'm going to talk to duty counsel in the morning, and may decide to retain counsel, in the end.

i've decided that a charter challenge under section 9 - arbitrary detention - is the correct way for me to go after the cops, on this. i just need to figure out what the mechanism of doing so is.

Detention undertaken for improper motives may be held to be arbitrary. Anything in the circumstances of the detention or arrest which would make it suspect on any other ground, such as an arrest made because a police officer was biased towards a person of a different race or nationality, or where there was a personal enmity between a police officer directed towards the person arrested, if established, might have the effect of rendering invalid an otherwise lawful arrest (R. v. Storrey, [1990] 1 S.C.R. 241 at 251-252). “Individual liberty interests are fundamental to the Canadian constitutional order. Consequently, any intrusion upon them must not be taken lightly and, as a result, police officers do not have carte blanche to detain. The power to detain cannot be exercised on the basis of a hunch, nor can it become a de facto arrest” (Mann, supra at paragraph 35). 

the justification made by the officer is that i was "unpredictable", which is essentially a hunch - and a poor reflection of the facts, as my behaviour was incredibly predictable: i replied to the same ad (when it was reposted) the same way every day. absolutely predictable. and, i do believe i can demonstrate a bias & enmity, as well.

i believe that i need to launch the charter challenge at the pre-trial.

http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check/art9.html

you know, this is a hybrid offence.

they could have moved forward with an indictment.

i want a preliminary inquiry, so i'm going to ask for one. we'll see if they give me one or not.

"listen, here, nigger. if you call me a racist to my face one more time, i'm going to charge you with being uppity, and send you back to the assembly line where you belong. you got it, nigger?".

and, now that i've seen the disclosure, i think it's a better idea to wait to file the human rights complaint, because i can use the acquittal or dismissal in the claim.

it doesn't matter how much money or influence she has, she's only half at fault. but, it certainly demonstrates the point.

"how dare that nigger call me a racist? i'm going to lock her up for vagrancy. the nerve."

and, what i should do is state on the record what happened.

- i was arrested on sept 24th at 21:00. 
- the crown argued that i should be held indefinitely, without bail.
- i was fingerprinted on sept 25th at around 12:00. i dunno; i was in jail. 
- the justice rejected their claims and let me out with $100 recognizance, and an order to not touch guns or contact the complainant. i was released around 17:00.

this would suggest the crown was proceeding by indictment. right? fingerprints. no bail. 

- i requested disclosure informally on sept 27th, and formally on oct 1st. 
- i came in on oct 10th for my first appearance, to inform the court that i had not received disclosure.
- on oct 11th, i was told there was a conflict of interest on the file and it would be moved to the chathham office.
- on oct 17th, i appeared before the court to inform them that i had not received disclosure yet.
- on oct 22nd, i was told the crown would be proceeding summarily.

so, my fingerprints should be immediately destroyed, then. right?

i was in custody, i could hardly refuse.

if i get the right justice, she could even throw the case out right then and there.

still awake.

i really thought i had the right to elect to proceed via indictment if i wanted, but it seems like the difference comes down to appeal. and to an extent the indictment is just skipping to the higher court.

it seems like i get a pre-trial, which should give me the resolution meeting that i suspect will lead to dropped charges. that's good.

but, i'm not going to get a preliminary hearing. or, maybe, the trial is itself the preliminary hearing - and the appeal becomes the actual trial.

if i was proceeding by indictment as i thought, i would get the opportunity to put the case before a provincial court to determine if the evidence should go to trial in the superior court. there would be a hearing in provincial court, but no trial. if the provincial court decided there was enough evidence for a trial, it would just go right to superior court. but, because i'm proceeding summarily, i get a trial at the provincial court, instead. if i feel there's an error in law at the provincial court, i can then appeal to the superior court.

so, i think the difference is a little less than i initially thought, it's just a question of where the trial begins at. i was thinking that a preliminary hearing was an extra step that you introduce before you go to trial. but, it seems more like it's skipping a step, really, by eliminating the trial at the provincial court.

there's a part during the trial where i can move to dismiss the charges due to a lack of evidence - meaning i can treat the trial like a preliminary hearing, to an extent.

so, i'm still going in to set a meeting with the crown on wednesday, although i'm also going to ask for some more documents - all of the emails, and the complainant's impact statement. i will have documents to give the crown at the resolution meeting, including the opird report, the transcript of the bail hearing & my own written statements in this space.

one of the issues at trial is going to be a debate over what happened the week previously.

and, there is no mention of the 4 am phone call, at all - which i have the recording of.

kijiji only keeps responses for a month or so, so the direct responses are all deleted.

so, i can't provide those responses.

that might seem backwards, but the point is that i'm only sending my phone number. and, the ad was reposted daily, so the response schedule was in fact reasonable.

what i'm concerned about is that "x responses were sent on this day" leaves too much to the imagination. this goes back to the error in law made by the officer - the idea that harassment is the same thing as annoyance. if i'm being charged with annoying a rich woman, i'll plead guilty. but, harassment is something more precise than that. so, i actually want the full response entered into the evidence list, to demonstrate that there was nothing threatening in it.

afaik, all of the missing responses are one line of text - my voip box #. and, that is a reasonable response to an ad.

i'm otherwise willing to stand up for my responses and essentially provide a commentary for them in court.

and, right now i am sleepy. the truth is that i've had a long day.

kijiji only keeps responses for a month or so, so the direct responses are all deleted.

so, the ad response record is incomplete and misleading - not quite enough to claim the information is false, if close, but enough to request actual copies of the responses. you can't say something like "x emails were sent on this day". that's not admissible evidence. you have to actually present the actual responses.  

i'm also apparently missing the impact statement that was read to me at the bail hearing, and which was what i really wanted.

so, i guess that the next step is to request further disclosure.

but, i wanted disclosure to review the information, to check for inaccuracies and misleading statements, and to gather information for the complaint. and, while i think i can represent myself well. what i need to understand is the process.

i understand that they should not have fingerprinted me, but they did. now, getting those prints destroyed is my actual primary concern. a lawyer would know how to react to that. it's one thing to read the rules and point out an error, it's another to know how to hold people accountable for it.

i suspect, to begin with, that i should have a strong argument to get those prints destroyed. who do i make that argument to? the justice?

a commonality throughout the documents is not that i've committed a crime, but broadly suspecting that i might commit one, maybe.

....meaning i was arrested on suspicion that i might commit a crime, rather than on a claim i actually committed one.

and, that's not how things work in a country like canada.

i'm going to be seeking a payout from the cops on this. horrifically egregious...

ok, we've got the responses in the file, and i can see what she's trying to claim.

there are some technically false statements in the report, and they may have played a role in how things unfolded, but, overall, it seems like a schizophrenic fantasy built on an exaggeration, rather than a completely false attribution.

it seemed completely invented at first, but an unreasonable misinterpretation of the responses could have led to the statements, as filed.

there's also some files in here from 2014/2015 that are...

well, i thought it was my mom that sent the cops here on a suicide call. she denied it, though. i haven't really spoken to her much since. there's a confirmation, though. hrmmn. mom lied to me. sucks. but, what do you do when you confirm a five year old lie that you saw right through in the first place?

i can't get into the details of it, but these reports - by an organization called COAST - are so far removed from reality as to be comical. the way i'd describe it is if you could imagine a child having a detailed discussion with einstein about relativity, and then trying to write a summary of that discussion. on top of that, the agents working for COAST appear to have made things up entirely out of nowhere.

i have never requested medication from anybody, with the exception of the hormones. in fact, i am broadly opposed to the idea of medication in mental health - and have written widely about it over the course of many years. any suggestions that i was ever suicidal as a reaction to an inability to gain access to any medications are completely invented out of whole cloth. in fact, it is exceedingly unlikely that i would fill any medication that was given to me, as i would not want it to affect my individuality or my ability to create art. again: i've written about this extensively over a long time period. my contemplation of suicide during this period of time was a purely rational reaction to my disinterest in labour, and my preference for death over labour.

i do not know why a support worker would write a false report of this nature.

i would like these documents to be destroyed, frankly - not because they say anything about me specifically, but because they have absolute inventions and poor interpretations in them. i mean, what do you do when you get your file and realize the people writing into it are literally making shit up? honestly?

the notes from that period are actually up here, so i'd advise anybody interested in the question to consult my own perception of this rather than that of the COAST workers.

this is legitimately a completely false report.

i have to be careful about what i'm publishing here because i can't share the information in the report, but there's three possibilities:

1) she misattributed some of the responses. that is, she assigned responses that were not mine to me. if this woman suffers from a psychological condition - as i believe it is clear that she does - then this may have been an error brought on by psychosis.
2) or, it might be done on purpose.
3) or, she just made it up.

if 2 or 3, the purpose would be to prevent the human rights complaint. 

i haven't made it through the document yet, but, right now, it seems like the thing i'm going to be requesting on wednesday is the responses to the ads themselves - which are being referenced, but might not actually be in the document.

and, is it time to legally change my name to jessica, just to be safe on the border check?

hey.

if you want to bring a social activist in on false charges, you should expect a lengthy process out of it.

wait.

ok.

so, i was arrested on an indictable offence - and fingerprinted - but then charged with a summary conviction, in the end.

hrmmn.

like, they tried to hold me on bail, and then they charged me with a summary offence? if you're going to hold me on bail, indict me, you fuckers.

i'm going to look into this further tonight, but i think it's time to call a lawyer. that might be the best way to get what i want. it seems like they fucked up enough that the charges should probably be withdrawn or dropped, immediately. but, i want to do this in a way that makes sure that the file is destroyed - as it should have never been created - and the cop and the woman are both held legally accountable.

again: i'm not looking for an easy way out. i'm looking for justice.

i got my disclosure; it's on a dvd, and we'll see what it says.

but, the information sheet made a few things clear.

they're not seeking jail time, which undermines the entire premise of the charges. i'm supposedly a threat to the public. if that is true, why aren't they seeking jail time?

and, they want to proceed summarily.

so, they want this to be done quickly - they want me to plead guilty to a minor offence, take it on the chin and be on with it. why spends months fighting a minor offence?

i'm not going to do that. i'm going to request an indictment. i'm going to fight the charges with everything i can. there's going to be a witness evaluation. a pre-trial. i'm going to subpoena the cop. i'm going to make a huge deal out of this, and drag it on for months or years.

why?

because the logic is backwards - i don't gain anything by getting this done with quickly. i lose border access, and possibly run into problems with my income. but, if i drag it out, i gain the possibility of compensation, increase the chances of the officer facing discipline, get to the point of charging the woman with filing a false report and get to my end point - which is not even acquittal, but file destruction.

i had a tremendous injustice done to me by a thug that should be in jail and a woman that belongs in an institution. i'm not going to forget about it. i'm going to fight until every single person responsible for this gets what they deserve.

and, they will get what they deserve.

trust me.

first, i'm going to review these files. but, i should be ready to file the human rights complaint in the morning.

no.

listen.

i'm perfectly happy - and in fact somewhat eager - to be the punk in the court room. we've swung far too far to the right recently, and this patriarchal faux feminism masquerading as progressivism is a prime example of how we've taken massive steps backwards over the last several years.

my defense is going to be to appeal to liberal rights theory and libertarian values, in opposition to this fake feminism, which is just a front for authoritarian capitalism.

but, it's not just that my defense requires this - the society requires this.

i've been as clear as i can that i'm on the other side of this argument, and i'm both eager and able to make these arguments in a court of law.

yeah?

well, fuck you and the tipper gore you rode in on.

so, i'm back to stable access and could potentially get back to work over the next few days. i still don't have those shelves i've been putting off getting for years, but everything else seems to have fallen in line over the last few days, so now i just need for the court to disclose so i can take this psychotic, decrepit, senile old dyke to the human rights commission and teach her a fucking lesson in public law. seven figures. i'll let the crown pull me along as long as they'd like, but this is ultimately not in the public interest or a worthwhile use of public tax money or public resources at the court house, and i consequently have enough faith in the court system that somebody along the way is eventually going to say "this is retarded" and pull the plug on it.

the woman at the counter said tonight or tomorrow. i'll need to take a run down this afternoon to see. and, it's going to be interesting to see what they give me.

there's an off chance that they might try to arrest me for filing the complaint, as it's "indirect contact" but if they try that then it will just expose the fraud underlying the charges. you could imagine that bail hearing, right.

"you arrested her for filing a human rights complaint?"
"well, it was a breach of the recognizance."
"and, why was she arrested in the first place?"
"for pointing out that she was being discriminated against, and threatening to file a human rights complaint."
"you charged her with harassment for 'threatening' to file a human rights complaint?"

i mean, i kind of have to do it, to make sense of my defense - which is that when a thug shows up at your door, in a blue uniform or not, and threatens to put you in jail for exercising your rights, you are obligated to exercise those rights. and, if that thug arrests you for standing up for yourself, that thug will need to face the consequences of his criminality, in the end.

one thing at a time.

i need disclosure, first. and, if they give me something redacted or something half-assed, i'll go back to the court and demand they do better. i'm not willing to move to the next step until i'm happy with disclosure, unless the justice enforces it. and, if she does, the pre-trial is going to be a messy affair.