....& the thing about bmsr is that it would be nice to hear them live up to some of the potential they're hinting at, but never do. all you ever get from them are these boring little pop songs. when will they take the next level of abstraction and do something interesting with the form they're playing with?

in a different circumstance, i may have gone to see the stargazer lillies and stayed for the headliners. but, i shouldn't be wasting cash, right now.

but, i mean it wasn't...

sometimes, i try to grapple with a trend and, in the end, walk away from it just concluding it's not for me - i give it a fair hearing and rule against it sort of thing. but i actually do listen to it before i trash it.

i never gave that garage rock movement that existed at the time a second listen; i had about as much interest in the strokes as i had in calypso music.

it was just completely out of my sphere of interest.

i actually don't think i've ever bothered listening to a strokes record all the way through.

i had friends into that scene, but i always thought it was stupid and avoided it pretty strenuously, from the start. there's really nothing that came out of it that i ever liked at all.

i may even go so far as to say that my reaction to it at the time was something along the lines of interpreting at as the final death blow to rock music as an art form - and, in hindsight, i may have been right.

there's just nothing going on but empty retro regurgitation - it's literally indiscernible from what it's copying. meaning it's the reduction of the form to a parody, a novel act.

and, i suppose that doesn't matter much to you if it's what you've always known, right? but it was actually really frustrating to see the media pushing this empty trash, after experiencing the high points of 90s art rock, which was actually relatively popular.

i spent the early 00s listening to post-rock.

ok.

so, i know how i'm doing this: i believe in the right to fresh air, and that second-hand smoke causes cancer, so the management is discriminating against me based on creed by not accommodating for those beliefs.

but, what i'm going to ask for in restitution (basically, every cent i've paid in rent) overlaps with the tenant application i've suspended - for now. if i go through with that, and i'm awarded rent (which i did ask for), i'll be awarded damages twice - which they don't allow, for good reason. what that means is that i can't really file this until july 1st at the earliest.

if this somehow works out and i sign a lease for august 1st before july 1st, i'll need to reopen the tenant board case and put the human rights case on hold. i'd expect the judge to reschedule the hearing, and that's ok. i just don't want to double-dip.

if i'm sitting here on july 1st without a lease for august 1st, i'll mail the application before i pay my rent.

that means i've got a few weeks of work ahead of me, hopefully.

i'm willing to argue in court that atheism, science & secular humanism all fit the definition of a creed, as laid out here.

http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/policy-preventing-discrimination-based-creed/4-creed

the ohrc does not appear to be legislated to determine analogous grounds - it needs to interpret existing law, not write new law. the landlord & tenant board has the same mandate.

i'm going to have to derive my own grounds from enumerated ones, then.

if i feel like i'm being discriminated against due to being a non-smoker, what is that? i guess, using the logic of the people doing the discriminating, the reason i'm being treated differently is that i don't belong to their club - for that is how they see it, they see pot smokers as belonging to a club, and non-smokers as being outside of it.

i consider this absurd, and always have - potheads are the losers that think they're cool, but everybody else knows are losers. the actual cool kids just walk by and shake their heads and snicker. and, i've always approached smoking marijuana as doing something that was very deeply uncool, to the point of being a celebration of being outcast. but, one of the points i'm going to have to make in these hearings is that smoking pot isn't binary - it's not like you smoke every day or you don't smoke at all. most people that smoke, smoke infrequently; it's this idea of daily use that is unusual, and frankly deeply uncool. but, the building is full of habitual smokers (including management, apparently), and i'm not in their club, so i don't get equal treatment.

so, this seems to be the basis of the differentiation in treatment - i don't smoke every day (or even every month), so i'm not in their club, so i'm not cool, so i don't deserve equal treatment.

i don't want to be in their club, either. and, that would be because i don't have the same beliefs that they do. they seem to believe that smoking pot makes you cool, and they seem to believe that habitual pot use is not detrimental to your health, either - both beliefs that are not shared by the club i'm in, which is the club of atheistic & scientific secular humanists.

in my club, we believe in human rights - such as the right to fresh air. we also believe in the science that tells us that smoking is harmful to our health - both in the short term and also in the long term. by not accommodating these beliefs, the management is consequently discriminating against my creed of atheistic & scientific secular humanism.

so, that's what we're going to claim here: discrimination on grounds of disability regarding my bronchitis as well as discrimination against my belief in science & my belief in human rights.

i was diagnosed with chronic bronchitis from exposure to second-hand smoke when i was very young, and it has in fact acted as a trigger for many, many years.

i've periodically needed a puffer.

now, i haven't been triggered as badly as i could be, but it's because i've taken so many steps to deal with the issue - steps i've been demanded to stop, and eventually threatened with eviction over.

but, the actual grounds i'm being discriminated against is on not smoking. i am being treated differently, and the reason is that i don't smoke. rather than have my concerns addressed, i've been asked to leave. so, i really want to find an analogous ground argument...

afaik, all of the existing precedent for this is in british columbia, so this is going to be pushing new legal ground in ontario. call me the trailblazer, here - the pioneer.

i was hoping to get this done tonight, but spent hours dealing with a termite swarm. it's at least mostly stopped since i closed one of the six windows in this place, which they seemed to begetting in through - and w which there are now dozens of dead termites on.

i'd never seen this before, but apparently they fly into the lightbulbs, where they procreate, and their wings fall off. i've killed a handful of queens in here since i moved in, but i thought they were ants....they're termites....

*shrug*

i'll sleep on this and see if i can scheme something up in the morning. because i want to make the point clearer: they are discriminating against me because i don't smoke, and specifically because i don't smoke marijuana.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B79Yz_e6a6XNc3MyektfeGptWlE/edit

or london...

i'm a city person, ok?

i'd be horribly bored in the suburbs.

if i had the cash, i'd move to a really, really big city like los angeles or houston.

this is a picture taken from outside my window.

you'll note that the table is so close to my window that i need to remove the screen and lean out to take a picture of it; i cannot see this table by looking out my window. that's how close it is - a foot, at most. if you pull the closest chair out and lean back on it, it's literally touching the building.

would you accept a group of people sitting there and chain smoking, or would you fight it any way you could?

you'll also note the empty alcohol containers in the wrong recycle bin, which are likely the actual root of the problem, regarding why this woman is behaving so unreasonably.

i think a better idea is to:

1) prove she's lying.
2) present the hypothesis that the reason she's lying is to distract from the actual reason she wants to evict me, which is that i'm threatening legal action over negligence.
3) demand costs & compensation for wasting my time, as i follow through with the negligence case.

honesty is the best policy, kids.

we can even break this down using logic.

given that she received the court date for july 5, why would she attempt to evict me on a noise complaint, if i hadn't given her that letter?

i must have given her that letter at letter at some point after i wrote it, which is the day of the noise complaint.

given that i can prove that she's lying on the n7, i could probably even deny there even was a noise complaint at all.

i mean, she didn't call the cops like i asked her to...

in fact, the n7 is so obviously an attempt to evict me because i don't smoke that i can use it as evidence in the human rights case.

the n7 is also full of false information, and i can prove that it's false using the journal & the vlog. i could even get the whole thing thrown out by proving that they're liars, in court.

this is again just stupid on their behalf. they'd have had a much better case by just being honest.

she showed up at 10:20 to receive a letter; i was asleep at that time. she claims she showed up for a noise complaint, that's a lie. then, she dated the n7 to 4:20 - several hours before she actually showed up, and pretty daunting evidence of the actual motive.

again: i don't want to stay here. but, i'll be happy to use their stupidity against them.

hopefully, i get a judge that's willing to actually listen to the evidence. but, it's secondary to the point, because i'll appeal, anyways.

so, i got my eviction notice. it's not surprising.

i'm going to have to file a human rights complaint, in response. i don't deny the basis of the complaint, but i'm going to defend myself on freedom of expression grounds, and claim the landlord's negligence is the source of the problem. i think they have a tough case to win in front of them, but i'm preparing for divisional court, as well. and, when the time comes that i do move, i will re-open the case to recoup costs.

is moving an option? well, to begin with, i need to restrict my options. i'm currently paying $700/month + electricity, but the electricity is free (due to the rebates). it would be about $25-30/month if it wasn't free - most of it spent on "delivery charges". my actual electricity bill is less than $10/month. given that i'm saving about an extra $60/month on the estrogen being covered, and either the ndp or the liberals had actually budgeted for rate increases, i was actually considering looking for units in the $800-850 range, which would probably be necessary to avoid the smoke - which is the point of this exercise. i'm going to be in the same stupid scenario if i move somewhere else with smokers.

again: i thought this place was better, but then the downstairs tenant started chain smoking pot and the smoker moved in next door. it's worse. i can't make that same mistake; i'll just repeat the same bullshit over and over again and have to move over and over again.

but, now that i'm bracing for cuts to income, i'm looking for something in the range of $700 all inclusive. that's a maximum. i cannot consider anything more expensive than that. nor am i going to move somewhere that's too small for the gear...what's the point of that...

surprisingly, there is a potential spot, but i need to ask about smoking. i suspect there's probably smokers there...

i'm going to have to keep looking, and there's no reason i can't change my mind about the court date at the last minute, although we'll see what the judge has to say about that, i guess. but, as of now, i'm preparing to dig in.

frankly, this is a stupid move on their behalf. they're going to spend thousands of dollars trying to get me out of here, when i'm trying to get out as soon as i can, anyways. and, they're just emboldening me to continue the protest, if i'm going to court, anyways.

i've pointed this out a few times before, but i actually don't think i should have to do it.

i'm writing my own story, a story told from a first person perspective and that has one character in it. my story certainly intersects with other stories, but i'm not telling those other stories, and i don't intend to tell those stories.

we don't have to compete over the primacy of these stories; they're all equally valid, and should all exist. this is almost by definition; my story is not your story, but our stories are all intertwined, too. nor is there an official story of any circumstance or event.

i might be a character in your story, if you'd like - or i might not be. you're not going to be a character in my story, though. or, not unless i knew you many years ago, you won't...

so, tell your stories as you'd like them to be told, and i'll tell mine as i'd like it to be told, too. sometimes, they'll overlap, and sometimes they won't. neither is more important than any other. and, if there are historians collecting stories for some perverse reason or another, they will consult all of them and weigh them as they may...

i grew up in the 90s, which were a period where the gender imbalance in music started evening out, but which was still overwhelmingly skewed towards men. i don't want to apologize for listening to a skewed sample, given that the female musicians of the period were overwhelmingly commodified for their looks.

i'm not going to listen to bad music because it was made by girls, or ignore good music because it was made by boys. i'm a musician - i care about the sound art. i don't think my record collection needs an affirmative action program, or that gender parity within it is an ideal to strive for. so, yeah - my record collection in my formative years is overwhelmingly male.

not exclusively. there's lots of female voices in there. but, overwhelmingly - and that's a reflection of the culture, not of me.

if you wanted to be a girl in a band in the 80s and 90s, you had two paths: you could either date somebody in one of the bands (which is actually fairly common in underground music of the period) or you could market yourself with your body. it kind of didn't matter how talented you were or you weren't, that's just how it came out in the wash. the talent consequently existed largely on the fringes, and, even so, only managed success though sexuality. for example: tori amos is talented, but that's not why she sold records, unfortunately.

i guess it hit a breaking point in the mid-00s, and actually flipped over some time around 2010. nowadays, it's very difficult to find any interesting music made by men at all. entire genres are dominated by women. even guitar music is dominated by women. the only type of music that young men seem interested in making is bro-rock, and it's this like weird gym class culture that i've never wanted anything to do with. from psychedelic music through to industrial music, women really dominate the entire spectrum.

and, so, while my formative years were spent listening mostly to male voices (not exclusively. lots of girls in there, too.), nowadays i'd guess that women take up upwards of 75% of my listening time.

i think we all tend to default to certain periods in our lives, and that these periods tend to expand. contemporary music converts itself into memories over time, and my posts will even out in gender as that process unfolds itself.

i like having an appspot site, but deploying it is always something else.

i've always deployed over the gui. last time, i had to find a way to upgrade to python 2.7, because it would stop serving if i didn't. today, it was giving me ssl errors. as best as i can tell, my local ssl python libraries are out of date and i have to upgrade to a later bugfix, but the installer past 2.7.7 seems to require accessing the dot net framework in a manner that i consciously dismantled, making the install impossible.

i fixed it by using the command line.

so, i'm back to doing what i was doing, now, and should be able to push through the main facebook page before the next sleep. one of the things i'll be doing is replacing old events with links to the concert site. this is the first one...

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2013/10/24.html

but, i'm not a noise musician, though, and never was.

nor was i ever a fan of the stuff, either.