music is the best medicine for depression. it's almost magic, really.

i'm ok. no, really. i am. i've had a long time to think about this. i was just overwhelmed for a moment, there.

it's mostly a coincidence that i'm skipping town almost exactly as my dad has given up. he fought as hard as he could. the truth is he never really had a chance. almost nobody survives brain cancer.

he stopped taking his meds last week, by conscious choice. the treatment was just overwhelming. over the last few hours, the paralysis has spread from his left side (the tumour is on the right side of his brain) to both sides of his body. he's likely to lose control of his face muscles while i'm gone this week, rendering him unable to speak, and possibly slip into a coma or die.

there's nothing of value that can be accomplished by me staying here this week and watching him die. all that can do is fuck me up. i could speak of many things right now regarding the nature of death, but the reality is that i do not believe any of them, nor do i believe they are of any consequence to a dead person. there is nothing at all of any consequence to a dead person, not even the fact that they are dead. i may wish it to come as painlessly as possible, but i know better. it's not even physical, but mental. yet, his mental state over the next few days is a temporary reality that only he has any real understanding of, and will not matter at all to any existing conscious being once he has passed.

such a state is devastating to contemplate. it's such an awful, gruesome way to die. seizures, treatment, surgery; slow paralysis, loss of speech, coma. i can only imagine the kind of fear that sets in as you slowly lose control of your ability to control your own muscles, as death slowly consumes your body. it must be like being eaten alive.

in truth, i don't want to imagine this kind of fear, especially in the mind of such a loved one. i want to move forwards.

we say goodbye to each other all of the time. it's reflexive. routine. meaningless, really.

sometimes the word actually means something. i couldn't handle saying it. i waited. that pause felt much longer than it was.

he said it first; a reflexive response. but it set me right off...

i'm ok. no, really, i am. the crying helped. but i think the music helped more.

hazy afternoon. lying in bed. daydreaming. digging some feedback.

let's get something clear, here. the supreme court has ruled that EI is not general revenue, meaning that cutting people off EI should actually not decrease government expenditures. the government is supposed to merely manage the fund. 

there was a big scandal about ten years ago when it was revealed that paul martin had dipped into EI to 'balance the budget' (whatever that is supposed to mean). the liberals made the argument that EI was just another tax and they had every right to manage the funds as they pleased. the supreme court said no - that money is a communal insurance fund constructed by workers and funds can only leave it under the circumstance that they're going out to workers.

so, this isn't an issue of general taxation. if you're dumb enough to think reducing the size of government will reduce taxation, it's not relevant in context - cutting EI premiums cannot reduce your income taxes or your sales taxes or any other kind of taxes. it's just not the same revenue stream.

so, what exactly are they doing here, then? why the quotas?

it's the same basic backwards liberal/conservative ideology that we see everywhere nowadays and few really seem to have a solid grasp on. people are on ei because the market isn't creating good jobs (in some areas this is seasonal, and that's just how the economy works there). short of dynamiting the concept of market organization (and you know i had to get that idea in there again), the most reasonable response from the government is to invest in job growth - because the market is failing on the point. if the market was being successful in creating jobs, there wouldn't be so many people on ei. yet, the backwards conservative/liberal approach is to throw people off ei so they can create their own jobs. the expectation is they'll become entrepreneurs of some sort. start businesses. and interest rates are low to encourage that.

it's like the industrial revolution never happened. small producers were never destroyed by large ones. competition is perfect and free. marx never existed.

the people they're turfing from ei don't even understand that this is expected of them. if they did, market fantasies are not going to all of a sudden allow of them to compete in an already saturated market.

five burger joints on the same street?

they just don't get it...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2013/07/20/bc-ei-whistleblower-suspended.html