this is a review of the bummer/buildings show at ufo on feb 24, 2020.
what do you do when you plan around going to two concerts within a few days, under the expectation that the weather won't be so bad for either, and then come up against the fact that the weather is actually going to be absolutely awful for the second, at the last minute?
you made sacrifices for the first show, so you don't want to cut your losses if you can avoid it. maybe you skipped a beer. maybe you came home an hour early. whatever it was, you want to tough it out, if you can, so that the sacrifices you made were not in vain.
i woke up on this day to a blizzard warning, which is not much of a challenge for an ottawan, with the important caveat that finding a way home at the end of the night was truly essential, and the border was consequently somewhat of an unwanted and annoying barrier. canadians don't fear the cold, but we do respect it; we know when to push it, but we also are very conscious of when not to, because we've all been in those situations, where we're teetering on the brink of hypothermia; unless, of course, that we were foolish enough to die of exposure, in which case we don't have to worry about making that mistake again. the benefit of hindsight is 20/20, right? glib humour aside, i would not have wanted to wander too far from the tunnel on this night and risk being found in a snow bank and, thankfully, i didn't need to - the venue is walking distance from the tunnel, something i wish i could take advantage of more often, nowadays. detroit isn't detroit anymore, everything has been exported to the suburbs....
that said, i realized pretty quickly that the weather was about as brutal as i could tolerate in the attire i left the house in. it's not like i was really a big fan of either of these acts, i really just wanted to get out of the house for a few beers and a loud, boneheaded rock show in what i thought would be acceptable weather after being couped up since december, but the wisdom of the excursion was admittedly somewhat questionable; in hindsight, though, given that the rest of 2020 is more or less cancelled, i'm actually glad that i managed to get out. it could be a while before i get another chance.....if i even survive the boredom...
it's not that the temperature, itself, was even that bad; in truth, it actually really wasn't. the issue on this night was more about the wind, and the brutality of walking through it. standing in one spot for a while actually really wasn't that bad. it was moving through the -20 windchills and the blowing, blinding snow....
there were no pancake breakfasts on this night, though, once i succeeded in trudging my way through the snow to the venue.
i was expecting a late show, so i didn't miss anything by showing up late, thankfully.
the first band was from kansas (why is kansas in missouri, anyways?), and i'm more or less just going to post the video. while they have a more melodic component to them, they fundamentally exist in the same space as a goofy, boneheaded band like the melvins, meaning i can only really truly enjoy this from a bit of a distance, but sometimes that's good enough for the night. sometimes that's all you want, and all you need to enjoy a few hours of escape....
the second act was called buildings, and are a little more elaborate, a little more developed in their sound, and a little less boneheaded, over all. i had not heard of this act before, but, looking into it, learned that they're on their fourth record, after some lengthy down periods. they're still fundamentally a northwestern punk band, but, and i suppose this was always true of the best northwestern punk bands, they're pulling in influences from a collection of related genres - shoegaze, no wave, noise rock and a little bit of psychedelic rock, or doom metal, as well. i wouldn't quite say it sounds contemporary, but it could be mistaken for it, if that makes sense.
as mentioned, i was kind of keen to get out of the house; this was my third trip out this year, but my first at a show like this, which is also in a genre that is demonstrating increasing scarcity amidst an aging core audience. i'm not giving up on new music any time soon, especially new electronic music, but you do have to expect me to act my age sometimes, too. this is the kind of music i grew up with....
a local act called teener closed the show, as they frequently do whenever bands of this style come through town. i guess they're just kind of the go-to to fill out the bill, for right now. i've consequently seen them a couple of times. on this night, they played as a three-piece because their singer had strep-throat.
this is marble bar in detroit, which is more often a dance club; i was catching fly pan am in windsor, on this night.
i was out in plenty of time to catch the bus, and eventually got home to canada after what was a somewhat lengthy wait at the bus stop with some very cold kids coming back from an edm party at the magic stick that cost them each $50 to get in. they had just missed the previous bus, and were consequently seriously considering calling a cab, somewhat naive at the cost - i had to talk them out of it, although there was almost enough of them there to justify the $60 fee up-front, if they hadn't already bought tickets.
it actually didn't feel that bad at this point, as the wind had died down. or, so i thought, anyways.
i did try villain's a second time, but i didn't recognize the bartender. somebody outside recognized me, though. i bummed a smoke, but i didn't stay; i was starting to feel the cold, and knew i had to get in. that respect for the cold became a dominant concern, and when that happens it is sudden and it is absolute - you get home, and you don't fuck around...
i need to reiterate that, if you were to check the forecast, you wouldn't be led to believe it was a particularly cold night. further, i had a toque and gloves, in addition to a sweater, with my overcoat. i was actually dressed relatively well. but, the fact that i had at that point been outside for well over an hour in subfreezing high humidity, coupled with the wind, which had picked back up again, was the kind of thing that can shut you down for good, as the icicles start building up on your hair, and the frost begins to claim you as it's own.
as i was walking, i suddenly started to become cognizant of the reality that i was in a dangerous place, temperature wise. my face was experiencing mild frostbite. worse, i found myself fighting a sudden urge to sit down, which is very bad news, in that situation.
i went to an unusual elementary school on an army base that had a very small number of students and found myself in a split 5/6 class, twice - in grade 5 and then again in grade 6, and in fact with the same teacher both years. the instruction was often scattered, anachronistic or outright absent. as such, one thing that i found myself doing was watching a tv series called the voyage of the mimi, and doing what was essentially english-class style reading comprehension in place of actual science instruction.
in hindsight, i think some heavy criticism of the curriculum is well-warranted, but it did teach me valuable life lessons about hypothermia; you don't want to experience a sensation of warmth when you know you should be cold, and you don't want to sit down. so, i dragged myself, i pushed myself - i talked out loud, i counted, i did everything i could to make sure that i strenuously avoided any thoughts about stopping.
and, i did get home.
and, i warmed myself up in a warm blanket.
and, i ate some nachos.
and, i took a hot shower.
and, i watched the debates.
and i got some sleep...
this is a review of the man or astroman show at el club on feb 24, 2020.
this is another show that i instantly realized i had to get to, whether the weather was going to cooperate or not, and then almost missed, this time due to the need to sleep a little bit before the show.
i can't claim it was much of an exciting night outside of the show, though; there were no adventures to report, no conversations of particular interest. my attention was largely focused on trying to get to the venue before the rain started (which i failed at.), and then in getting myself home in the rain after the show. it was an early night, and i arrived late, missing both opening acts.
they did play some newer material, and i noted in a previous post that it's leaning towards a riffier, dirtier, almost grungier kind of sound that is maybe a little less campy and more evocative of the rougher edges of the american southwest. they also brought out a dot matrix printer and performed a reinterpreted piece from eeviac to give the guitarist time to change a string; it reminded me a little of autechre's gantz graf, but i doubt that meant much to the crowd. they were, overall, though, exactly what would be expected, and i think that's what most people wanted.
there was some talk about the venue in the smoking section, and i'm going to repost my initial analysis to that question. it's not that i'm unsympathetic to the concern, it's that i'm not sure how substantive it actually is.
i haven't turned the laptop back on yet. i've been dreading it. it should come up out of hibernation, but if it doesn't then i'll have to reimage. let's hope that i can get the clean-up finished before i crash for a few hours this morning. i am planning on hitting the grunge show tonight. the damage last night wasn't that bad, because i was able to use the balance on the debit card, and i just avoided buying beer. so, i didn't spend nearly what i said - it was $23 usd for the ticket, $10 usd at the 7/11 and $10 cdn for the bus. yes, it costs me $5 to cross the border and $5 to get back. and, yes, it adds up. it's still cheaper to live here, though. essentially, my choice to avoid buying expensive beer at el club last night means i'm good to go for cheap beer at ufo tonight. yeah, i didn't set the fucking prices, don't look at me. if it was reasonable, i would have bought at least one.. i'm waiting until i can order last sunday before i do these february reviews all at once. but, there is still a lot of lingering concern regarding the fiasco at el club, with people worrying about crossing boycott lines. personally? i'm a free thinker, i'm not interested in being told what to do by the central committee on ethical consumption in late capitalism, and they can rule on the issue all they want, i don't give a fuck. but, i have to be honest - i didn't find the arguments i heard to be convincing. and, you can browbeat me on it if you want, i don't really care. what i want is a convincing argument, not a demand that i follow your moral code, which i may or may not agree with. but, i'll be equally clear that i wouldn't go to a place that i thought was actually horribly sexist or horribly racist. for a bastion of white supremacism, the bar seems to have a lot of black employees (they always did. it's detroit.) and seems to cater disproportionately to the black community. if there was a problem, they made a legitimate attempt to adjust to it. that said, i don't go there on random nights, either, for the reason that they've largely exited my sphere of interest; this has largely not been much of an issue for me for the reason that the bar no longer caters to my tastes, anyways. so, i haven't been finding myself in this conflicted space, where i'm trying to figure out if i should go or not because i haven't had any interest in what they're booking, anyways. the bar has a great sound system. it's not likely that random touring acts have any idea what happened, so i'm not going to tar them by association for something they don't know about, whatever the merits of it. so, if a band i like does play the space, i don't see any logical reason why i wouldn't go. man or astroman formed in the early 90s and have been one of my favourite acts for a very long time. getting to see them was a kind of a bucket list thing. while the sound system at el club really is great, and the band does legitimately have substantive latin influences, i'll also acknowledge that it would have been a lot easier had they played the magic stick, or perhaps delux fluxx. but, for whatever reason, they didn't and i had to make a choice between missing out on a band i've been listening to for most of my life or an empty statement of solidarity with something that i'm not really convinced of the value of. that's not a hard choice, for me. i'm sorry if you find that upsetting, but i think you're wrong.
this is a more accurate representation of the set than the previous video i posted:
i walked right back to the tunnel after the show, took the bus back to canada and tried to stop to talk to somebody at villain's on the way home, but they were closed - as they always are on monday nights.
there were nachos, there was a shower & there was some sleep.
it's a good analogy.
deal with it.
flattening the curve, indeed.
Sunday, March 29, 2020
hot garbage has been through here several times over the last few years, and was actually a candidate act for planning my trip to the divisional court in toronto around, although it wasn't able to work out that way. there was one weekend in may, 2018 where i might have caught them on the sunday, if i didn't end up in a questionable circumstance on the saturday, after foolishly getting into a car with a stranger, and after catching the messthetics on the friday...i had to sleep....
that said, i've also found their first couple of bandcamp releases to be inconsistent to underwhelming; they were never a focus on any trip out, always something to work in as an afterthought, or an in-between show. the first ep demonstrated some potential, but it dragged badly at points, too.
the newest ep, which i'm just hearing now, is maybe the first realization of the potential they demonstrated, which is mostly about letting go of a tendency to drag things on in uninteresting ways.
the show tonight is livestreaming, but i'm too old to get excited about that; if i'm going to listen to something through headphones, i'd rather listen to a detailed studio recording. a live show in a small bar is about the energy, and you have to be there, or it's entirely pointless.
but, because the weirdo hip-hop/fusion thing was scheduled as a very early show, if i were to have headed out on this warmish march night, i would have probably caught this on the way back to the tunnel. alas...
listening to this record a few more times has produced a bit more order out of it, which has both made it more compelling and less compelling, but no less intriguing. there are points that just seem uglier and more obtuse every time i hear it, but there are points that have begun to make sense, as well.
i have to give him credit for being challenging, at least.
even if i'm still not sure how much fun the show would have been.
michigan has a population of roughly 10 million, and 110 deaths last i checked.
canada has a population approaching 40 million, more comparable to california (although less.), and roughly 60 deaths.
in fact, the number of cases in california and canada are roughly the same, but the death rate in california, which is much warmer than canada this time of year, is almost twice as high.
california has been under a state of emergency with strict lockdown rules for weeks. canada only recently introduced basic travel restrictions, in a fit of stupidity, to appease the scientifically ignorant, the evan solomons. no, he's the perfect example of somebody to not listen to.
how long will this go on for?
i have a feeling it's going to be a long time.
Monday, March 23, 2020
this is a review of the debussy/ravel concert at the dso on feb 16, 2020.
when i saw la mer come up, i knew i'd be prioritizing it fairly heavily, even amidst the cold detroit winter. as it is, this day almost didn't happen - and then turned into somewhat of a catastrophe, in the end.
the dso usually does three performances of each show over the course of a weekend, sometimes starting as early as thursday but usually ending on sunday. i was hoping to make a night out of it by catching the symphony early and hitting something afterwards. initially, it seemed as though the saturday presented the best opportunity, as i would have been able to hit a local act called paint thinner after the set. i've had lukewarm reviews of the disc, but i would still like to see them live to produce a final analysis. unfortunately, paint thinner was replaced at the last minute by something that was much less interesting to me, a local punk band that i think is more or less terrible, and i ended up deciding to take advantage of a turn in the weather to hit the show on a sunny sunday afternoon instead of on a blustery saturday night. you can check out paint thinner's bandcamp site, but i suspect they're probably better live: https://paint-thinner.com/
unfortunately, this meant i had no after show plans.
did i sleep before i went? well enough - i got a few hours, although i wonder how much i'd slept in the weeks leading up to it. i'd been complaining about strange odours from upstairs for weeks, and i'd been dealing with migraines over the previous few months, as well as complaining about feeling like i'd been drugged against my will. i was clearly dealing with some kind of environmental issue. i can, however, clarify that i was in bed after 3:00 and up around 10:00, a sufficient amount of sleep for most applications.
i made a decision to myself - i'd go to the show if i could finish the liner note package for inri022, which i got done at around 11:00. was that enough time to get to the show for 15:00? i decided i needed to get out of the house and i'd might as well try. i'd need to catch the 14:00 bus....
i was able to get out of the house just before 14:00. barely. could i catch the 14:30 bus and just make it?
moments before i left, i opened a fresh 710 ml bottle of mountain dew (for the caffeine content) and took a couple of shots of vodka, which is my normal predrink on the way out. i hit the bank machine, got some bus tickets, just caught the 14:30 bus and was in detroit around 14:45 - on track to make it worthwhile, but clearly going to miss the first set. so, i got a mike's and a pack of smokes (it's the latter i regret.) at the 7/11 and walked down to the dso to catch the performance of la mer.
i was there about 15:05, got a corona at the bar (hold the virus.) and had to catch the stravinsky set from outside, something that did not bother me much. stravinsky is something that influenced a number of artists that i deeply respect and enjoy, so i don't want to suggest that i don't realize his historical importance, even as i find a lot of the claims about the political significance of his work to be borderline comical. but, i find his work to be ugly, disjointed, obtuse, crass and broadly not very enjoyable to listen to. you're allowed to disagree with me, but i don't find this compelling. at all.
i didn't skip it on purpose, i was just late due to kind of wavering on going at all. but, i don't expect that i would have enjoyed it much. sorry.
the first piece i caught was by ravel, which seemed a little less aimless than normal. this is a lush piece, which makes it more up my alley than the wanton, aimless dissonance of stravinsky. there's a march that kicks in about halfway through that is particularly satisfying when it does. note that "ring around the roses", which is referenced shortly after the march, is actually about the plague. while i've previously criticized it for being a little bit indulgent near the end, it didn't feel that way on this day, for some reason. so, i enjoyed this, even if it wasn't the reason i showed up there on this day.
i went out for a few smokes after that, and ended up grabbing a heineken on the way back.
the first piece after the break was by poulenc, a composer i'm not familiar with, and it just kind of struck me as debussy-light. that's not to say it was awful. really, the thing about this piece is that i'm finding that i don't have much of any reaction to it at all, still. hey, i tried. it happens, sometimes.
i missed the introductory talk so i'm not going to post it here, but it is up at the dso's youtube site and the person they had come out to do it mentioned that poulenc is generally seen as being "lightweight". so, i'm perhaps not falling too far from orthodoxy in my lack of reaction to this piece, actually.
and, then there is la mer, which is one of the most widely analyzed and most important pieces in the history of western civilization, and i will reiterate that i'm not certain i have much to say about this that is important or hasn't been said; i could paraphrase some musicologist, but what's the point? you'd might as well just go to the source.
but, you should probably start by listening to it:
after the show, i had $4.00 left of the $40.00 that i brought with me and most of a pack of cigarettes, which i wanted to get rid of before i made my way home. so, i found myself walking vaguely towards the tunnel, looking for a spot to finish a beer at on my home back to canada. i think i was intending to get something at deluxx fluxx, but they weren't open yet, so i stopped at the skip instead and got a tall hamm's to sip on for a bit, as i worked through that pack of smokes that i wish i hadn't bought. i'm kind of looking around the bar for somewhere to sit...
wow man...you know, i really thought you were a girl, at first.
i decided to sit down and have a chat.
"you know, there's scenarios where gendering somebody isn't appropriate. i don't want to police your speech. but, i'd ask you to think about that in the future. you can see how i identify, clearly. so, was that necessary? what's the point? why do it?"
he seemed to react as though he'd been scolded by his mother, and it wasn't fair, because he really didn't do anything wrong. bro, listen, i actually really did think you were a girl. seriously.
"you're still gendering me masculinely, even as you acknowledge interpreting me femininely. why?"
(his girlfriend fidgets)
it's what you are, bro.
"listen, like i say, i'm not here to police your language. you're going to say what you're going to say. i can and will react with my feet. i'd just ask you to think about it before you do it, because your oppression here is unnecessary and could be ended with a little bit of self-reflection. if it's not necessary to gender somebody, maybe you should refrain from doing it."
whatever...bro.
"indeed. whatever..."
i moved to the other side of the bar and left a few minutes later to catch the bus.
when i got over the border, i found myself with too many cigarettes to want to go home and enough money left for two drinks, so i stopped up the strip in windsor that i stop at and noticed somebody smoking a joint outside villain's. it's 19:20, tops. he passes me his joint, and i got to ranting a little about the symphony, i'm really very chatty in general at this point due to the pot, before i found my way back in and ordered a james ready, which is the cheapest beer available at this bar.
i have about ten smokes left, and i'm really just passing the time until i get through most of them and am ready to get home. i figure i won't be there late.
i look around the bar, and it's pretty empty. there's the guy that smoked me, on the other side of the physical bar, and two dark skinned males sitting directly in front of me, speaking an african language. so, i found myself sitting quietly, sipping my beer, and i'm wondering - what language is that?
when one of the africans goes away from the bar, i got to chatting up the other one as to what language he's speaking. he vaguely states that it's east african, but i want something more specific than that. it's not semitic, not nilotic, and as i ask him more and more questions, trying to narrow down the area (so, it's a great lakes language?), he becomes more and more impressed with my knowledge of east african geography. i guess he doesn't meet a lot of white people that know that much about east africa, which is when i have to explain to him that i suspect i have african lineage, potentially from madagascar - but that i have a pretty good understanding of the correct geographic spread of the various indigenous african language groups from when i did a human origins project in the early-mid 00s, which had me sorting through all kinds of genetics, linguistics, biology...
he then decides he will buy me a beer, and motions to the bartender, who pauses. am i sure about that?
"well, i'm going to finish the one i've got, first. after."
and, the one i had had about 75% to go, still. she wasn't wrong to pause.
i went in and out for a few cigarettes, and when i did i left my beer on the side, but i'd say it was at least an hour before i asked for a second beer, which was indeed purchased by the person offering to purchase it. at the time, i thought nothing of this.
she asked me a second time if i was sure and i drew attention to how slowly i was drinking; she seemed to agree with my argument and handed me the second beer. if anything, i would have argued that i felt more sober when i bought the second beer than when i bought the first, because i was drinking so slowly....i would have described myself as sobering up, rather than getting more drunk.
i left my drink out several more times as i went out to finish a few more smokes, and found myself talking about such topics as exes having children with friends and how bruce lee died on set...and, then i found myself in the position i expected to eventually be in - done my second beer and without any more smokes. i did, however, have enough cash on me for a third drink and decided i'd might as well get another one before i left, although i was considering maybe seeing what was happening at phog, as i realized there may be a band there. i legitimately did not feel drunk at all at this point.
so, i went outside to see if i could bum a smoke before i ordered a third beer, and there's some kids smoking a joint around the corner. i pulled out my canned line for such situations -
"you know, i was going to ask to bum a smoke, but...."
....and, i was then handed a cigarette and the joint. i guess i'm cute or something, i don't know. trans privilege? it came with a warning though - it was strong.
and we got to talking, and they kept passing it to me. and, then they didn't want any more. so, i smoked a lot of this joint, of which i was warned was quite strong.
when i came back in after that second joint, i was no doubt quite visibly stoned, and i consequently didn't react negatively when i was denied access to a third drink. i decided instantly in my mind that, yes, i could wait to come down a little off the pot, or maybe i'd just leave and go home. so, we agreed i'd come back in a bit, although i was pretty much planning on leaving. what's next, then?
i intended to go to an empty spot of the bar and sit down and think it through, but looked up before i got there and noticed there was somebody setting up near the stage. was there somebody playing there? so i
walked toward the stage and asked her if there was a band playing.
"karaoke".
of course. and, i believe that would put the time close to 22:00.
i then sat down in that empty spot for a second to think it through. did i want to stay there for a few minutes? get some change from the machine to bum smokes? buy smokes? how much cash did i have in the bank? should i go to phog?
i'm told that the next thing that happened is that i fell off the stool, but i don't remember that happening. what i remember is sitting in a different seat not far from where i sat down temporarily, and being unable to move while a woman that i don't recognize (she wasn't the bartender) hovered over me, forcing me to drink orange juice, and telling me that i look lovely - i remember her making that trip several times, and essentially being unable to do anything. i'm not sure if the orange juice helped or hindered; i know that i could not move. at all. if you had helped me up, i would have fallen down. i also distinctly recall not responding to questions, although i'm not sure if i'd have been able to or not.
eventually the woman that i don't recognize came back one last time (this was maybe the fifth time) and told me that she was going to call the police because she was worried that i was going to get raped. i remember her telling me that, and under normal circumstances that would have cleared me out pretty quickly, but i couldn't move. i had to sit there and wait.
whether it was due to the imminent threat the police posed when they arrived or due to the effects of whatever had knocked me out easing up, i was able to get up when the cops got there, but they wouldn't let me walk home. i argued the point as strongly as i could, to what was really no avail. i had no cash for a cab, i insisted (technically false). i had nobody to call (that was true, at least). i insisted i'd be fine if i just walked, and i even tried to run off, but they were having none of it. one of the bartenders had to drive me home, instead, and they got me close enough that it was a short walk back.
she couldn't believe i was 39 years old.
"you don't look it."
but, i am...
when i got inside, i was so exhausted that i couldn't even make it to bed, at first; i passed out at the bottom of the stairs for hours, before eventually crawling into bed. so, i don't know what time i got into the car at and i don't know what time i got home at, either. i wasn't able to check the time until about 7:00 am - meaning that, excluding the time it took to get me out of the bar and home, i was passed out nearly cold for roughly nine hours.
so, what happened? did i pass out from the alcohol?
well, this is what i had to drink:
- two shots of vodka in my montain dew, 1:45-2:35.
- one tall mike's hard, 2:45-3:20
- one corona, 3:20-4:00
- one heineken, 4:00-5:00
- one tall hamm's, 6:00-7:00
- two james ready, 7:30-10-ish
on an average day, this would barely be enough to get me drunk. further, let's note the type of alcohol that i was drinking - beer since after 15:00.
i suppose it's not impossible that it was the alcohol, but i'd suggest that that doesn't add up - i'm not likely to pass out for nine hours after drinking a few beers on a sunday afternoon.
is it possible that it was the marijuana, rather than the alcohol?
those that have been following this blog, or have met me in detroit, are well aware of the fact that i can sometimes experience something akin to a panic attack as a result of marijuana. after smoking pot, i have had a handful of seizure-like events that have resulted in me needing to sit down for a few minutes, or even in me temporarily losing consciousness. i suspect that i'm experiencing sudden drops in blood pressure, but i don't actually understand this - i just know it happens.
these events, however, are brief - minutes or seconds long. further, i'm good to go for the rest of the night, afterwards. they don't leave me unable to move for extended periods of time like i was on this night.
as i have a history of panic attack type green-outs, and i had just smoked a lot of marijuana before i passed out, i initially put the pieces together. it must have been the pot, obviously; i've been through this before, i was fine. i consequently got rather frustrated by the turn of events, because i know i green out, and i know i'm fine after. upon some reflection, however, that actually doesn't add up very well, either - i wasn't immediately aware of how zonked out i actually was, but piecing it together as best i can indicates the low likelihood of marijuana being the culprit.
i've held off on writing this review because i wanted to get more information about time frames in order to be absolutely certain, and i haven't been able to receive any of it quite yet. i'm going ahead with this now because this bar is....depending on how long the covid-19 fiasco goes on for, this is a bar that may not reopen at all. i may never get the answer i want.
however, i've thought it through carefully enough to rule out both
alcohol and marijuana due to just how passed out i really was - nine
hours! no green out is nine hours, and i'd need to be chugging a 40 of
vodka to get that kind of reaction from alcohol.
regardless - how long was i out for? what time did the police show up at? what time did i get in the car at? when did i get home? these are the questions i need some help in understanding the answers to.
you have to understand that i was rather confused, and i wasn't really paying attention, but i do suspect that the bar was closed when the police showed up. i don't remember there being people around. i don't remember karoake being on. this would indicate the police probably arrived around or after 2:00 - and that, if i passed out around 22:00, that i was unable to move for around four hours.
having ruled out alcohol and marijuana, what would do that to a person?
(1) what exactly did i smoke? i was told it was "strong marijuana". i have no idea. i know i smoked a fair bit of it.
(2) you'll recall that somebody bought me a drink, and i left that drink out a few times, perhaps foolishly. the woman that was hovering over me told me she thought i was going to get raped - is that because she had concluded i'd been drugged?
(3) i have no history of diabetes, but that doesn't necessarily mean much. i get tested yearly. i'll be tested next in the first week of may.
(4) could i have had a stroke or heart attack? i have very low blood pressure. but, i'd just smoked a pack of cigarettes quite quickly, after having barely smoked at all for two months. some kind of attack due to low blood pressure is more likely than one due to high blood pressure, but something cardio-vascular related is not impossible.
i was able to get some nachos in the morning with the five dollar bill that never made it's way to a third drink.
Sunday, March 22, 2020
well, i can't say i've heard anything quite like this before, which appears to be a live drummer doing some kind of combination of hip-hop & jazz fusion. you're going to tell me about j dilla & flying lotus, but this isn't like that.
it doesn't really fall in either genre; this isn't a mashup. it's inherently zappaesque, and that is probably the dominant influence, but through some kind of obtuse reliance on his shaggs side. it often came out via george duke, but don't think this is like thundercat - this is weird and the reason it's weird is because it is fully embracing the tonality of hiphop, which is...atonal in a naive way. it's like jazz, in a sense, but in the most simplest way conceivable.
so, if you could take these really unmusical melodies you get in hiphop (often as programmed into a drum or bass machine), and kind of orchestrate them, which includes applying them to the vocal parts, and then layer them over a freeform drummer that's doing improvisational syncopation...
i've never heard anything like this, and i listen to a lot of music, as you can see. maybe some zappa/duke compositions, but it's post-zappa in the sense that the tonality he's pulling from is. if zappa/duke did a hip-hop record? of course zappa would have released some hip-hop records if he lived long enough.
is it compelling?
i'm not sure, yet. that might take a few years to figure out...
it would have been an early show on sunday the 29th but has of course been cancelled. i doubt i'd have gone. but, i am intrigued.
this would have been on the 28th, and i do like the style, but i wonder about the execution. i would probably need this to be an early show in detroit, or maybe at phog. there's just a lot of filler.
when this nonsense is done with, somebody should organize a local jazz fest and get everybody out to one big show.
the new record seems to have a new guitarist, who has really ramped the whole thing up.
the previous record, from 2018, is very similar
to touche amore, and actually has a bit of shoegaze feel. that kind of
took me off guard, a little. it's not awful, even if it suffers from the
kind of cookie-cutter issues that a lot of the music in the genre suffers
from nowadays, although it's not fatal, either. maybe the fairest
reaction is to point out that it sounds like a demo that is bursting a
little - you can hear potential, but it isn't realized.
the ep from 2017 is more in a pop-punk style and is much weaker.
sometimes, i listen to something like this a few times, and it just collapses into a stupid screamy fucking mess, and gets worse on each try, as the yelling consumes everything in it's path. sometimes, it reveals itself as little more than some jocks breaking shit and ends up being sort of comically stupid. other times, it kind of stabilizes, and more interesting passages open up out of the chaos.
i have to say that i could do without the growling. really.
but, this is a punk band. they're not trying to scare you, or prove how tough they are, they're just playing hard and loud. it's adrenaline, not testosterone.
it's a little outside of my sphere of interest, absolutely. and, i can't understand what they're saying and don't have time to look it up, or not yet, anyways. but, it's complex and intense enough that i can enjoy this, even if it's from somewhat of a distance.
that was the 27th in hamtramck, but it's cancelled.
i was born in 1981, which means i've had almost 40 years to work it out, and i'm rather comfortable in stating that i'd rather be the last gen xer than the first millennial.
i don't have anything in common with people my own age, and i never did.
when i call myself a punk, you have to keep in mind that i'm a gen xer and not a millennial, so my concept of punk is that it was thoroughly dead and buried by about 1985 or so. i don't tend to enjoy much of anything that calls itself punk and has been released after 1990 unless it's pretty dominantly retro, and would usually even reject the label - most people under 40 that call themselves punks are more like metalheads than punks relative to my own understanding of the term, and i tend not to get along with them very well. i would argue that punk culture mostly evolved into rave culture after 1985, and, nowadays, i have more in common with people that listen to techno.
but, i still like a good artsy punk band when i can find one....
this is a little bit too heavy for my tastes, overall. but it's abstract. if it was nice out, i may have wanted to go out sort of thing, but i would generally not listen to music that is this loud.
it's getting a lot of good reviews though, and i can see why. they remind me a little of a cross between fucked up and touche amore, who were among the more interesting acts in the previous wave of punk bands.
this would have been last night if it wasn't canceled and is an interesting pastiche of some early post-rock and electronica with what i might label bowie's least interesting mid 70s period. an update on diamond dogs would be topical right now. but, i would have seen it as a combo show with that jazz act across the street.
it drags in some of the bowieesque moments, but it's interesting enough to keep an eye on.
this is something else i'm absolutely certain i've listened to before, and i thought i had written a review about, but none seems to exist for. were there really only 13 posts in june? that seems unusually low.
my firefox history suggests i was interested in shows by this act on june 4th, june 22nd and oct 10th.
i had a doctor's appointment on the 4th and went to bed early. i very nearly went to the show on the 22nd, but the bike ride from southwest to northern lights didn't make sense (i ended up at pj's for an electronic thing instead) as i was on my way to a late show to end what was a three-night party. and, i was sick on the 10th, although i may have preferred to hit the show at the loving touch on the 11th. it also may have been a little cold that night, iirc.
the mar 20th show has been cancelled for obvious reasons.
so, maybe the reason there isn't a review is that i had the intent of actually going and was waiting to do a live review instead. that happens, sometimes. but, as was the case with hide, i have vague recollections of writing about this. did i say something about wishing there was more guitar work? the tracks even sound familiar, as i'm listening to them, now.
in hindsight, the show at pj's was a little lacklustre, and i do sort of wish i made the trek out. but, this was after an early show at el club, too (earth / helms alee). distance aside, i might not have made it in time, and then i would have biked all the way out there and had to turn around, and missed the show at pj's, too.
i'm questioning my comment about the guitar work because it's something i say about all of the jazz bands. well, it's a constant - guitar-driven jazz had a high point from about 1965-1985 and the instrument kind of lost it's focal dominance after that, making way for synthesizers and horns and sometimes even drums. the guitar got kind of outsourced to post-rock and metal; worse, the entire jazz world went fully atonal.
this actually has some post-rocky tendencies, but the musicianship is firmly rooted in the world of jazz. it's melodic, though, without being too schmaltzy, making it a kind of good middle point between accessibility and technicality. i do like it, and i would enjoy it. and i hope i eventually get to see it...
https://soundcloud.com/minorelement
Thursday, March 19, 2020
i was probably not going to actually make it to tchaikovsky's fifth, as they scheduled it pretty deep out in the suburbs. that's a shame, as this is truly a pretty raucous piece.
according to wiki, this piece was literally playing during the start of the siege of leningrad and gave solace to the russians as they found themselves in a truly existential and increasingly dire crisis. the russians are in a perpetual existential crisis, really. maybe that's why they've given us the tolstoy's and the dostoevsky's. but, did tchaikovsky's fifth provide the russians with the inspiration required to regroup and defeat the nazis? it's probably more the thing of legend than the thing of fact, and maybe more of a twist on the 1812 overture, but if you're going to build a legend up around a piece of this nature, i couldn't imagine a better thing to build it up around. i'm sure there have been plenty of films made about the siege of leningrad, and this should be the soundtrack for at least one of them. perhaps that is even the source of the legend?
but, separating fact from fiction, and the music from any contrived notions about it, you get a piece that has enough energy to keep me engaged, even if it kind of drags a little in the down points. i keep wanting to criticize it for slowing down, but then it picks back up.
which isn't to deny the thing of it's dynamics - the last thing i saw at the dso was beethoven's fifth piano concerto, which is all about the dynamics, and which i enjoyed because of it. but, when this piece slows down, it loses focus. i think what i want to say is that i wish the slower sections were a little deeper, a little more intense, or a little more something, rather than just kind of being rather forgettable connecting passages to allow for the development of the faster moving parts. but, i might be missing the context of some inherently russian cultural thing; i might just not understand russian peasant music, or something. it's plausible. whatever the truth of it, i don't find these sections compelling, i just find myself waiting patiently for it to pick back up again.
when it does pick up, it picks up, though, and that's the draw of the piece, from my perspective.
it doesn't matter much. it's canceled. next time, maybe - if they schedule it somewhere downtown.
the last few weeks have been unfocused.
i'm about to hunker down and try to get myself back into a normal focus on rebuilding the blog in the face of weeks of canceled shows, so i guess i'll be reviewing things that i wish didn't get canceled.
i have one more month left...
i'm not happy about this, and strongly disagree with the authoritarian response. the closest thing to a science-literate response that i've seen up to now has been from the united kingdom, which got pummeled by the hysteria of it's own voters, and had to relent in the face of public ignorance.
but, there are mandatory event closures on both sides of the border, and the border itself is closed. i can complain, and i can offer rational critiques in the face of irrational policies, but i can't do anything about this but sit inside and cry about it.
so, get ready for some bittersweet reviews for what was left of march and probably for most of april.
april was stacked, too.
this legit sucks :(.
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
in the meantime, stopping events that are populated by young people is just reducing immunity. what we need to do is:
1) keep the old folks locked up.
2) let the young 'uns fuck each other on the street like it's saturnalia.
i know this contradicts your instincts towards the need to control.
but, you're wrong...
this study is backing up my point about the futility of mitigation. but, if mitigation is futile, surely suppression is even less likely.
i keep saying this, but you know what i actually get out of reading this? it's that capacity is way, way, way too low.
these studies are all about how to reduce the case load to align with existing resources. they started with "flattening the curve", which was obviously naive, and which this study debunks. but, then they go back to suppression - having apparently forgotten that the whole reasoning behind mitigation was that suppression was seen as unrealistic.
i guess you need to let them work it out, because the bean counters are vicious, they really are. but, i'm telling you right now that the only way to deal with this is to get that red line up by increasing the system's capacity, and they're just wasting time trying to fuck with the curve.
you know what i'm reminded of? chamberlin trying to argue with hitler. you know what flattening the curve is? it's giving hitler austria, hoping that's enough. but, this virus won't stop at the sudentenland, and it won't stop in poland - it wants lebensraum, and it will keep coming.
we need to ramp up spending. and we need to stop wasting time arguing about it.
like i say: if i owned a bar or restaurant, i would keep it open and take the government to trial over it.
if you want to stay home, that's your choice. you do't have to come in.
and, if you're in a vulnerable group, you probably should.
but, the majority shouldn't have to put their lives on hold to protect a minority of seniors and smokers.
all hail reverend ford!
hallelujah!
banning bars and leaving grocery stores open?
not coherent. not evidence-based.
you're far more likely to bump into a vulnerable person in line at costco than you are at an edm show.
rather, that's a right-wing government targeting scapegoats and blaming sinners for the spread of disease in old testament fire and brimstone fashion, whether it's conscious or not.
so, an old person catches the virus in a hospital as a consequence of a sick person coming into contact with them - a situation we know is a problem.
and, instead of announcing measures to segregate and isolate old people, we announced a ban on the sinful behaviour that occurs in bars and restaurants.
i got a lot of sleep this morning. maybe i did catch this thing, after all.
i don't feel sick enough to call anybody...
i want to be clear about what i'm saying about these border closures and bans on events.
these actions are not driven by the science. the science suggests that this disease is harmless for the vast majority of people, and any authoritarian action should be restricted to very specific groups. history also tells us that when you try to take broad actions like this to protect special interest groups like seniors and smokers, it always backfires.
so, we're not closing borders on the advice of science; the scientists would tell us to avoid doing that.
what the border closures are is a statement of nationalism, under the direction of donald trump, who sees the world with an us vs them mentality. we close the border to the asians and the europeans, because they're not like us; we keep them open to the americans and british because we're allies. this allows the president to blame the problem on foreigners, rather than on the inefficiencies of capitalism. our government is unfortunately towing the line on this, and what we've learned over the last few years is that this is what we should expect from the liberals, moving forward - they'll do everything right, until dipshit donald calls and ruins everything, at which point they will immediately fall in line and do what they're told. sadly, demands from the white house, no matter how stupid, seem to trump virtually everything.
likewise, the focus on bars is the kind of thing you'd expect from a fundamentalist government. it's the kind of logic you'd expect from somebody like mike pence. we're sick because of the sinners, and god is punishing us for it, so let's shut down all of this debauchery and go to church, instead. but, there's no actual evidence that bars or restaurants are spreading this at all - and quite a bit of reason to think that organized religion has already been a major problem, and will become an even bigger problem moving forward, due to it's tendency to coerce vulnerable populations in to giving away their money.
the science says we should be doing very specific, targeted things; we're not basing our reaction on the science, we're taking broad and often irrational steps, because we're basing it on concepts of ethnic nationalism and self-righteous religious retribution.
and, most of us seem to be too stupid to realize it.
if we continue to ignore the science and give in to kneejerk authoritarianism that deludes us into feeling safe, or makes us feel like we made correct "moral" decisions, this is going to run out of control very quickly.
and, we will have the hamfisted authoritarians, who tried to take control of the situation and merely made it worse by doing so, to blame.
people are going to die because of this.
this isn't trivial. it's not patting dipshit donald on the head. it's not smiling and nodding. this is bad fucking policy, and it's going to have some bad fucking consequences.
you know what probably happened?
you've probably got dipshit donald calling trudeau up in a dejected rage, unable to even get boris johnson on the phone, and falling back on the only country that cannot and will not reject him, looking for some kind of ally in his attempt to blame the problem on foreigners.
and, we caved.
because we had to.
because nafta.
i can imagine it. trump looking for some kind of reassurance, somebody, anybody that will align in policy - trying to create a fortress north america, to wall itself off.
and, it no doubt came with a threat. because that's how you treat your friends, when you're america - you threaten them. canada can find itself in or out.
so, we end up locked in the room with this contagious, dying patient that's running his mouth off and won't stop, because we know our finances depend on it....
how did we get ourselves into this?
and, canada?
how do we get ourselves out of it?
for canada to ban everybody except americans is basically equivalent to a healthy person locking themselves in a room full of sick people.
and, we no doubt had to do it to save the economy from a narcissistic idiot that destroys everything he goes near.
can we get a quadrupling of that spending on ventilators? if we're stuck with this...
i'm not calling for a ban on travel from the united states. i've been clear: i oppose travel restrictions as a means to slow the spread of viruses, because it's anti-science and it makes things worse. if you ban travel from america, they'll start sneaking in through the forests, instead. they'll drive to mexico and fly in. you laugh. but, if they need to get in, they will.
but, i'm fully cognizant of where the problem is right now, and it's inside of the united states, not outside of it.
you couldn't write a worse policy if you tried.
if we were going to ban anybody at all right now, about the only country it would make any sense to ban from entry would be citizens of the united states.
we may find out in the end that the countries that trump banned kind of fluked out. they're the lucky ones....
we have no sovereignty.
clearly.
should donald trump be charged with crimes against humanity for interfering in other countries' responses to this?
wait.
so, we're banning everybody except americans, where the spread of the virus is probably worse than anywhere else in the world?
now, i know why there's such a quick, irrational, anti-science, boneheaded u-turn.
our policies are no longer being written by one of the best science teams in the world, but are being written by one of the biggest idiots that's ever held public office.
if we see a spike in cases, we should blame it on donald trump.
what can we do in the face of this kind of unwanted foreign meddling? we'd better buy a lot of gear. we're going to need it....
Monday, March 16, 2020
it's the churches and mosques that are going to end up being the problem and that are going to need to get shut down by force, not the concerts and bars.
we're stupid.
it's that simple.
what they're doing is scapegoating young people, with irreligious lifestyles. it's bizarre.
it's like something they'd do in iran.
it's like public shaming.
i've got my hands full. i hope that a few bars around town stay open in protest, and i hope there are civil rights groups pushing back on the fines.
if i had a bar, i'd stay open, get fined and take the government to court over it.
if they were logical, the very first thing they would have done was put a total ban on all religious gatherings, period. that's where this is living.
but, they shut down the bars, full of healthy young people, instead.
because they're stupid.
'cause you know where all the lonely people (where do they all come from?) are going right now, don't you?
i shouldn't complain. good riddance to them. maybe this is the final nail in the coffin of the church, so to speak.
enjoy your diseased wafers; your magic water won't save you.
they should shut down every church, chapel, mosque, temple and synagogue in the country under the threat of heavy fines, until further notice.
listen, i can make you a promise.
i've got 90% of a 26er of vodka in my cupboard, and i won't touch until the bars open. i won't smoke, either.
you can be pretty sure i'll be pretty straight edge for as long as this goes on, because i hate being fucked up alone, and i only really enjoy marijuana in the presence of live music. if i get back to work soon, i'll be recording, and i am pristinely sober, then.
but, i really don't want to miss a 4/20 weekend that includes squarepusher and rachmaninov. that was fucking amazing.
again: if they wanted to cancel something, they should have canceled religious services. that's what happened in south korea, it was a church at the centre of the outbreak. that would have actually made sense...
but, we live in a supremely backwards culture that blames alcohol (a mild disinfectant) and provides exceptions for organized religion (the root of the problem).
we are, collectively, incredibly stupid.
and, we're about to pay for it....
yeah, i'm pissed off.
there's no logic underlying this, at all.
it's just panic-stricken, hysterical backwardsness.
welcome to the fucking third world, guys. it's here.
sorry. i meant to say...
let's just hope they fucking die fast so we can get on with this.
you have to have faith in something, right?
shutting down bars will have no effect.
let's just they fucking die fast so we can get on with this.
bernie sanders is often incoherent, as he will argue for an expansion of human rights and against "rugged individualism" in the same sentence, which makes absolutely no sense, and i've long deduced that he hasn't read much of this stuff, directly, but instead relies on colloquialisms and common sense fallacies to frame most of his arguments.
people tend to shrug it off because they haven't read any of it, either.
people that move too far towards collectivism, and reject the individual outright, are not anarchists (who seek a synthesis between individualism and collectivism via dialectical reasoning), but are rather called fascists - and include stalinists and nazis. they draw mostly from hobbes, ultimately. mussolini called himself a corporatist, and these words - corporatism, fascism, collectivism - are really all the same thing.
it's the exact thing you want to be very careful about, on the left; when you hear them start ranting against the individual, that's a red flag to step back and realize they aren't socialists, they're fascists. it's the exact thing you want to avoid; it's exactly when you know this is bad news.
the types of socialism that you want to associate with will not do that, but will insist on the concept of human rights, even as they reshape the discourse to include things like shelter and reject things like property. human rights are the pinnacle of liberal individualism.
marx followed bentham, a tory, in his rejection of human rights as "anarchistic". proudhon, bakunin and kropotkin did not. and, that is itself a key difference in their approaches to socialism.
marx was a liberal. that's how he self-identified. he was into rugged individualism as much as any other liberal. and, so was kropotkin.
but, these people didn't think in terms of contrasting individualism with collectivism, or in terms of opposites clashing against each other, at all. these people were hegelians, and they insisted on dialectics as the means of resolving contradictions in thought.
so, to talk of individualism as being in opposition to collectivism is language that would be very weird to any early socialist, including kropotkin. they would have all wanted to speak of a synthesis between individualism and collectivism, and find ways to resolve the contradictions through an application of dialectical thinking - following hegel, but stemming from aristotle.
the idea that you can line these ideas up in contrast with each other is really uniquely american, and comes right out of the cold war. it's vulgar. really.
actual leftists do not talk like this - they don't line up collectivism v individualism or socialism v capitalism or masculine v feminism or anything else like this but rather try to find ways to unite the ideas into holistic concepts that eliminate the conflict within them.
that insistence on dialectical thought is really the foundational point of socialism as a philosophical system - as mentioned, coming directly from hegel.
the closest thing to mutualism in the context presented is actually a labour contract. it's crude, because you're ramming the square peg of mutualism into the round hole of capitalism and coming up with a busted mess, but it's true.
it's broadly difficult to speak about mutual aid in the context of a capitalist society because it really provides very few opportunities for it. when people are in the position for a reciprocal exchange, it's almost always framed in the context of a market interaction; when people require aid, it's almost always charity.
as is so often the case, the difficulty is really rooted in the existence of property. mutual aid is usually spoken of in the context of societies that existed before property was invented (where everything was shared, collectively), or in the context of a future system where property no longer exists.
trying to just do mutual aid in the middle of all of these capitalist relations around us is rarely going to make any sense, for these reasons - you're going to end up doing charity work and/or are just going to end up taken advantage of.
the issue with service workers sharing wages in an economic slowdown works precisely because it breaks the market relation. all of a sudden, there's no labour and, for the proletariat, that means that the rules of capitalism are temporarily lifted.
but, helping wealthy old people walk their dogs or delivering them food for free doesn't fall into that paradigm. it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. but, you should avoid abusing the language, please.
the idea being expressed in that article is closer to the idea that young people should honour their elders by paying tribute to them than it is to a concept of mutual aid, which is historically closer to a type of conservative value system.
mutual aid is an anarchist term developed by kropotkin.
the scientific term, in english, is reciprocal altruism and came about a bit later, but does have origins in kropotkin's work.
i'm being lazy in sourcing from wiki, but this is fine for an easy concept like this:
In evolutionary biology, reciprocal altruism is a behaviour whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism's fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time. The concept was initially developed by Robert Trivers to explain the evolution of cooperation as instances of mutually altruistic acts. The concept is close to the strategy of "tit for tat" used in game theory.
the reciprocity is key. if there is no expectation of altruism in return, it is not mutual aid, it is christian do-gooding.
and, what is the expectation that these people will receive something in return? there is not one. they're donating their time, in a market economy - and one in which labour is scarce. this is an affront against the working class!
if people are going to do these kinds of behaviours for strangers in a market system, they should expect a pay check for it. it is labour.
examples of mutual aid would include service workers pooling resources (money. shelter. labour.) to help each other get through the lack of work, or recovered patients donating resources back into the system to help the next wave of sick people.
and, there's a concept of mutualism attached to helping your parents or grandparents or other relatives, who raised you and fed you as children.
but, "random acts of kindness" are not mutual aid and should not be confused for it. that's an abuse of the language that needs to be corrected immediately. anarchism will collapse under any kind of kantian system of ethics; it's not sustainable. and, i'd argue it isn't desirable, either.
this is one of the differences between christianity and socialism.
this isn't actually mutual aid, it's more like charity work. mutual aid is a type of reciprocity, and the people being helped here don't really have anything to offer.
as with any kind of charity, it also runs the risk of developing dependence. are you going to keep walking the dog when this is over?
anarchists should actually argue that many of these activities should really be treated as labour and associated with some kind of compensation, especially in a scenario where work is likely to be scarce for a while. mutual aid is not equivalent to free labour for the bourgeoisie.
so, don't confuse misguided christian do-gooding with socialism or anarchism. this is a co-option of the language that does not align with the theory and should be opposed.
do i have to find somebody with this and fuck them?
is that it?
do i have to reverse my no-sex policy to get infected with this?
i was totally reckless, too.
some things i did on thursday:
- smoked a pack of cigarettes
- bummed or purchased cigarettes from multiple people
- passed two joints, with two different groups of strangers.
- took drinks from bar staff at two separate bars
- used several public washrooms
- close-talked with several different groups, without a passing thought to social distancing, including with several off-duty bar staff (who were concerned about their finances)
- ate a blt at a diner
- took the bus into detroit and then took it back out
what the fuck else can i do to catch this thing?
i got some sleep.
i've been tired recently anyways. i didn't get that hot shower yesterday, though. i think that's a good idea....after i eat my daily bowl of fruit.
i had a little bit of a sore throat this morning. it seems to have cleared up. something else though: the dry cough has loosened up.
a test would be necessary to figure this out for certain, of course. but my understanding of the disease is that a loosening cough suggests that i probably just caught a cold.
so, it seems like i'm going to have to risk exposure for a while longer, still. drats. foiled....
well, i don't want to go drinking if i feel sick.
i might have just picked up a head cold, i don't even know. i know i don't feel sick enough to go to a clinic, whether it's the new virus or not. but, i hope it is. i want the antibodies...
i'm not going to go cough all over the retirement home. and, if i see an older person, i'll keep my distance - that's a fair request. but, if i need to go shopping, i'm going to go, as i would if i had a minor head cold.
i'm just making the point that i don't feel i have the burden, here. i'm not disrupting my life over something that has almost no chance of even making me noticeably sick.
Saturday, March 14, 2020
ok, yeah - i've picked up a dry cough. good. let's hope it's covid-19 and i get the thing beat nice and quickly over what was a down period in the scheduling so i'm immune for the rest of the summer.
i'm going to need to go to the store this week, but i tend to spend these periods between shows inside anyways, and i actually wanted to get some work done. i can promise to avoid old folks, at least.
to be clear: i don't know whether it's coronavirus or not. but i'm not worried about it enough to get treatment. i'm hoping i just beat it easily and move on.
"it is better to burn out than to fade away"
this, i would propose, is a better way to understand the debate between herd immunity and "flattening the curve".
i hope that ends up big enough.
this isn't a prediction, it's a model. please realize that.
but, the argument is supposed to be that the same number of people will get the virus anyways, so you'd might as well slow it down. one of the key points i'm trying to get across here is that if you slow the virus down then you reduce the speed of immunity, thereby increasing transmission - and you actually get twice as many cases because it takes twice as long to get to herd immunity. that sounds like it doesn't make sense, but there's a difference between developing antibodies and getting sick.
you can tweak this. maybe it takes 1.5x as long. it's a model, it's not a prediction.
the other thing i'm doing here is arguing that you can't really flatten the curve, exactly, but can rather shift it. and, maybe that shift is valuable if it buys time for a vaccine. but, it's going to come with a slow increase in cases over time until immunity is reached.
don't get lost in this in nitpicking the numbers - it's a model, it's a conceptual thing, it's an idea. and, it's a valid critique.
i think boris johnson was (accidentally.) correct. you want to protect the old and weak, yes. but you want to let this thing run it's course quickly and burn out, rather than draw it out and pick people off over months.
so, i made a choice to wait until i got back from the concert on thursday night before i reimaged the machine, because i figured i'd have to do it again anyways.
i have eaten well since i got back, in case i picked anything up. i'm mildly hungover, and have produced some watery bowel movements, but i'm willing to blame it on the alcohol; i don't feel sick.
i did communicate with the divisional court, and they've informed me that the motion has moved to an administrative judge due to my complaint. they didn't send me anything regarding this. but i was instructed to call back on monday.
i don't expect to leave the house at all for the next 6 or 7 days, so let's hope i can get some work done this week.
and, let's get started on the reimage.
my bios looks clean, at least.
i've said this before: if there's anything in this universe worth worshiping, if there's any approximation to a deity, it's the fucking sun.
i don't expect it to react to any sympathetic magic, mind you.
but, the ancients were right on that point, at least.
one of the previous links points out that one of the things that "st patrick" is known for, apocryphally or not, is putting the sun in the celtic cross.
if st patrick's day is essentially a glossed over spring equinox festival, it makes sense that they would have retained the symbolism of the sun.
what they would have been celebrating is the return of the sun for another year - the moment the days get longer again.
we might not have the narrative, it may have been burned - unless it's hiding deep in one of those hibernian monasteries, waiting to be refound. or maybe buried somewhere deep in an icelandic glacier, waiting to be uncovered as the climate changes. it may even be in some underground tunnel under the vatican, hidden underground to be never found again.
but, i think we can figure this out, can't we?
it's the sun. it's back! hooray!
and, don't tell me that christianity is my history or i should embrace the identity of an irish catholic. that's a bunch of colonial bullshit.
it's not my history, and i will do no such thing.
and, you're an ignorant, colonized fool if you insist upon it - you don't know your own history, it's been stolen from you.
our history has been erased.
i was hoping to find some documentation of the obvious solstice festival that st. patrick's replaced. i'm not going to do the math or look up how close march 17th would have been to the solstice, through whatever gregorian/julian conversions, in the third or fourth century of the common era. it hardly seems worth the effort; the deduction is obvious.
the closest thing i could find was an association with a kind of fertility cult that comes off as something out of a gimbutas text. that kind of makes sense, at least, but if it's true then we've lost the narrative - all we have is some sculptures.
so, it appears that we don't even know what festival st. patrick's day replaced. that's how brutally colonized we are.
so, what's more offensive?
st patrick's day or thanksgiving?
and, do you see the parallel i'm trying to draw, why there's a natural historical alliance between northern europeans and indigenous americans?
i'm going to start a petition to cancel 3/17 in favour of 3/14.
i suspect that most pi day events will attract at least 3 people.
but, due to the coronavirus, i'd expect there to be much less than 4, on average.
meaning you're looking at roughly 3.1415 people per event.
no, i'm not sorry. but, you're welcome.
and, i don't care about st. patrick's day. at all.
Friday, March 13, 2020
yeah. i know.
the only thing to fear, is fear itself.
you guys ever read the stand?
that was a perplexing night in detroit.
the show was good. but, people are...confused. and don't want to listen.
Thursday, March 12, 2020
ok. i think i've got something worked out.
let's get ready...
i went to check for travel issues and learned that the tunnel is closing tonight. ugh.
do i want to go anyways?
i've cleared out the rest of the month, and it's down to a few iffy shows over the last weekend. so, i can afford to blow the night. that said, the cad/usd has also gone up, meaning it's going to cost me almost $60 to buy $40 cdn.
there's no travel warnings at the border.
there's nothing obvious to do after the show and the bus out isn't until 6:00. it's at least not forecast to be cold. so, if i just stay at the venue until 2:00, i could get a coffee for 2:30 and be out for 5:15ish. i'd still rather find something else.
but, i suspect places are actually going to be wanting to close early tonight, as the hysteria keeps people at home.
hrmmn.
let me shower and see.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
or, don't cancel church?
no. you know what i always say about religious folks, but i'm just being an ass. you cancel church....
they're cancelling concerts here. it's hysteria.
if you're going to cancel events, they should be events with lots of old people, not events where essentially everybody is under 35. so, church services should definitely be cancelled. i'd probably accept them cancelling events at the dso without much pushback.
but, i'd rather see venues put out warnings that tell concert-goers to enter at their own risk.
i'm willing to avoid old folks for a while, but i'd rather catch this thing and beat it than try and hide from it. i'm not afraid of this...
musically, this is not bad, if a little boxy.
however, the macho, lad culturish singer is a very strong disincentive.
i liked this kind of music better when the singers had purple hair and wore eyeliner; this shift to looking like soccer players or, worse, business people, is deeply unsatisfying. and, there's a substantive, lyrical shift along with it that i'm just not interested in...
it's something that's happened across the rock music spectrum, so it was really just a matter of time before the bros ruined post-punk, too.
i self-identify as a nerd. i'm proud of it.
but, i didn't sit at the nerd table. well, i'd drop by to say hi sometimes, but i found the nerds boring. they just wanted to play cards. they were so quiet, and well-behaved.
i was an outcast, a punk, more than a nerd, and i actually ate outside of the caf, in the stairs, with a small group of other outcasts. we'd then go around and vandalize the school at recess.
there were months-long stretches where i refused to set foot in the caf at all....
so, when i found myself back at work, i would repeatedly either skip lunch, or eat it off site. i'd walk down to the tim's and get some coffee, or go to the gas station to get smokes.
biden isn't winning because his policies are popular, and sanders is not going to turn this around with middle-aged whites by appealing to policies. most of them won't watch the debate. he has to change the cultural messaging.
and, gramsci would tell you that that's really hard to do at all, let alone in six days.
the media is not afraid to be racist; the media thrives on racism. it divides people, as it manufactures consent for the ruling elite. that, as gramsci understood, is it's fundamental purpose in a capitalist oligarchy.
it is because the media is racist that it is trying very hard to obscure the data that's coming out of this primary, and it's happening with a lot of signals from the party itself. this is an old divide that we've really seen the media clampdown on this cycle.
they want there to be a black party and a white party, and they want voting decisions to be based on tribal allegiances instead of policy differences. this is the ideal world for the neo-liberal establishment that runs both parties; you float democratic candidates that are virtually identical to republican candidates, then you herd people into fighting with each other over race, instead of aligning based on class.
in fact, it's the oldest trick in the book in the united states. there's neither anything new about this, nor is there anything liberal about it. it's the same trick that got white servants and black slaves fighting against each other, instead of working together to overthrow their common enemy. it really goes all the way back to the roman policy of bread and circuses; there it was greens and blues, here it is blacks and whites.
but there were populists back then, too.
in order to understand the trends coming out of the cycle, you have to all but ignore what the media has said.
so, what are the actual trends?
fishiness in the data aside, this is what it says, whether you think it's trustworthy or not:
1) bernie is winning huge majorities of young people, but youth vote is way down. bernie has failed to excite young people enough to win.
2) biden is winning huge majorities of black people, but the black vote is way down, too. if your argument was that clinton didn't get enough blacks out, and that's why trump won, biden is getting less blacks out than clinton did. so, he hasn't been winning using that tactic, and he won't win the general with that tactic.
3) however, turnout is up. a lot.
so, if youth turnout is down, and black turnout is down, who is driving turnout up?
the answer is older white voters, who are showing up in unexpectedly huge numbers across the country and voting for biden.
that is the movement that's underway, here - middle aged white people flocking to the democrats. stampeding, even. like a herd of obese elephants looking to consume. more. more...
why is this happening, exactly?
i'd have to assume that not many watched the debates, as they wouldn't, that they couldn't, vote for biden if they did. a lot of these people are quite educated. what is going on here?
if you believe it, if you take it at face value, it must be cultural. it's rachel maddow. it's saturday night live. it's a broad idea that it's not socially acceptable to be a republican, right now - that the cool middle aged kids vote for the democrats.
i remember leaving university and going to work and feeling like i'd gone back to high school, in terms of how people interacted with each other. i felt like i'd grown down, that i'd reverted to life as a teenager, not like i'd grown up and become an adult.
if that's true, bernie has roughly 6 days to destroy biden's popularity amongst middle-aged voters.
and, he just wants to be a nerd and talk about policies.
so, your average boomer appears to essentially be thinking something like this: biden's cool, like me; bernie's a nerd, like my kid, who has to use their phone to google how to brush their teeth every morning and can't be trusted to bring back the groceries without fucking it up.
