Saturday, December 30, 2017

but, this isn't a winning strategy, though. what it is - and it is this, transparently - is a cynical ploy to try and pry values voters away from the republican party. it's evolved clintonism. and, it keeps failing horribly.

with franken, in particular, it's so transparent that he actually maintains a majority of female support in minnesota, right now. i'm sure the propaganda eats into this, eventually. but, if the intent of the democrats' strategy is to appeal to female voters, and voters concerned about women in general, then this strategy has actually immediately backfired, at least amongst the first voters that examined the situation with any seriousness. this is the predictable actual outcome of clintonism, almost everywhere it's been applied.

but, these are democrats - the conservative party in the system. it was always a strange animal, this liberal democrat - never did make a lot of sense.

liberals in america are going to have to find a way to enfranchise themselves. if organized effectively, they could become an effective third party, with broad influence - by preventing either major party from winning office, and instead sending the issue to a senate that they may have some influence over. it's just the geographic block: the northern part of the midwest has strangely become the country's electoral battleground, but the truth is that this is because the region is so terribly disenfranchised. there is no obvious answer in either party as to how to remedy this. the great lakes are going to need a localized political movement, and it's likely to surprise people just how left-leaning that's likely to end up. i think there's good potential for organizing a third party in the midwest right now, anyways - minnesota, wisconsin, michigan, illinois, ohio, iowa, missouri. even uniting a small block of these states in a third party could cause havoc, with the otherwise locked map.

what if minnesota, michigan and wisconsin voted in a block for the green party, instead of ending up in a virtual tie? that would have prevented trump from getting to 270 electoral votes, and forced the senate to declare a president from the top three candidates. in 2016, the candidates were less than optimal, and so that choice seems less meaningful. but, now, imagine a future where a liberal bloc from the midwest has some power in the congress. they could potentially bring in a vice-president.

but, do i think al franken should unresign? no; they'll just keep throwing more stories at him. you'll note the accusations have stopped. he was just dragged out by his ear for running his mouth off, he wasn't really presented with a real choice. there was no other outcome.

i might have liked to see him fight it a little harder, but i wasn't expecting him to, either.

the democrats have defined themselves clearly, moving forwards. it's up to the rest of the country to determine if it wants to follow their lead or not.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/19/al-franken-unresigning-could-kill-democrats-2018-chances-commentary.html

Thursday, December 28, 2017

but, it's about changing the definition of work, or really unchanging it - throughout the centuries, poets and musicians and gardeners have all considered themselves to have been doing work. when were these vocations deemed void, exactly?

we don't have to pull out the engels, here, and explain how the city became full of workers who had migrated in from the countryside, where their lives were far less ordered - about how the existence of the machines created the working class, which is now left abandoned with their withdraw. if you want to talk about morality, that is.

we just need to ask questions about what work is, about how it is defined, about how use is calculated and whatnot. this leads us to questions about markets, primarily. if a thing does not have a market value, is it void of value? so, is it only work if it produces market value, then? this has to be wrong. and, so, if we are going to organize our societies as markets, some counter-force needs to correct this obvious absurdity.

i like a guaranteed income because it's a blind arts grant. it comes with no obligations, no test of value and no requirements to check speech or content for alignment. it allows the artist to access a source of funds without any strings attached, and to then create at will - as much or as little as is felt appropriate.

but, let us have this debate about work. we need to get on the other side of this.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/dec/28/tory-mp-condemns-universal-basic-income-on-moral-grounds
and, so, we see the outcome of our religiously organized technocratic colonial outpost in the desert, our hopes for the modernization of the region through the proxy of western influence, here:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42507968

the jews are going to destroy themselves, anyways, just wait it out. they always do. this religion of theirs is absolutely toxic. it puts useful bounds around their ambitions, but they're never a moment's away from absolute collapse into brutal theocracy. when it comes, they will squander their advantages - the technology will rot, and the people will be at these crumbling walls, howling for it to stop. 

the turks don't still do this kind of thing, do they?

this saudi created mess in the middle east may end up with what the saudis really wanted, which was political maps redrawn to demonstrate actual influence. but, the map they imagined wasn't representative of actual influence. and, the map may be redrawn quite counter to their influences.

we're losing turkey at the worst time, right when the historic eastern mediterranean superstate is beginning to reconstruct itself. that was an alliance that the west should have tended closer to. but, i've written a few rants about the turks, and their rejection from europe really forces them to look to their southeast for cultural integration. europe is forcing turkey back into it's days of empire.

the existence of such an east mediterannean superstate is the historical norm. the phoenicians and greeks were initially very different people, but they were united under the control of the persian empire, and the eastern coast then hellenized rather willingly under the influence of alexander's descendants. from this point on, this region took on a fundamentally greek identity, including with the adoption of christianity, which is part of what allowed it to gain independence in the partition of the roman empire, as a greek state. this superstate was split into two by the advancing arab armies, not to be effectively reunited again until the turks recreated it in the form of the ottoman empire.

the saudis clearly had intended to dominate this region with religious warlords that were subservient to their commands, with no foresight as to the eventuality of revolt from such actors. but, they've been prevented from doing this by a coalition of russians and turks, operating in syria. they are going to get to redraw these maps, that do truly need to be redrawn.

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

the one thing that i want to add to this is that one of those upper level atmospheric effects that determines the location and duration of an outbreak of the polar vortex is how much sunlight is reaching the earth's surface. the current theory of ice ages, which is still young and will no doubt be much revised, argues that fluctuations in the earth's and sun's orbits can trigger the onset of ice ages. certainly, milder and hopefully less permanent fluctuations in the sun's strength are a dominant cause of the weather we experience in the populated regions of canada.

the weak solar cycle is almost certainly the dominant cause of the prolonged periods of exaggerated winter cold that we're receiving, even as the average temperatures keep climbing up.

here's an interesting idea: is there some force that would come and plunge us into an ice age, right when we're flooding the atmosphere with carbon? if you could imagine it: a higher consciousness in the universe, unleashing the cold almost as a means of self-defence. i admit i like the idea of planets as anthropomorphized objects; the ancients got that right. but, is the sun operating in conjunction with the other bodies, or is it a conspiracy of one? is this a universal force, or many forces in conflict? it's just a thought - imaginary. but, interesting, if you could conceptualize it. but, i want to think of it like running hot feet under cold water.

we can still have some hot summers here. maybe. but these cold winters seem like the norm, until the sun warms up.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/polar-vortex-demystified-bitter-cold-next-week-in-canada/75743/

Monday, December 25, 2017

but, isn't the lesson taught in christianity that if you try and live a good life and be a good person that you'll be betrayed by your friends and torn down in bloodlust by an angry lynch mob?

there's this story going around amongst jewish historians that maybe the entire history before the captivity was entirely fictional, and that the people that were moved into the levant were an entirely fabricated ethnicity - that the jewish race was a fabrication of the dying sumerian civilization under the direction of it's new iranian overlords, meant to colonize and replace an existing civilization with a colonial outpost. this would explain judaism's apparent connections to zoroastrianism.

and, what would that destroyed civilization be? it would have been phoenician. what happened, then, was that the persians came in, cleared the phoenicians out and brought in this imagined ethnicity, the jews - who were peoples indigenous to mesopotamia, following a newly invented ideology with a totally fabricated history.

but, some source would exist to describe this? well, perhaps some source did, perhaps many did. but, centuries later, the roman destruction of carthage was total - and such histories would have been destroyed in the process, if they existed. hey, that is true, isn't it?

it was the carthaginian connection that intrigued me as i was having a cigarette and wanted to get written down. i like it when disparate parts of history intersect like that, and it just made a connection in my head. hey, it's christmas.
i've actually long been swayed by the hypothesis that religion, as we understand it, is basically an elaborately distorted ufo cult. these stories of contacts with ancient beings in the sky may have an empirical basis, if you allow for contact with extra-terrestrial life. well, it's a naturalistic explanation, is it not? the sky is at the core of so much religion...

i don't claim to be able to rigorously demonstrate this, but i think it's probably actually true, nonetheless. it's kind of unfalsifiable, right? but that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong - i'm post-godel, i'm sorry, it really doesn't. errr. bzzzztt. wrong.

it's certainly less convincing if it's unfalsifiable, i'll grant you that - it's not science. it's speculation. but, it might be science one day.

so, i don't find claims of entities in the sky to be particularly absurd or hard to believe - they've happened all throughout history, have they not?
ok, i'm going to put away my skeptic hat for a moment and put on my marxist cape. 

i just think the marxist article of clothing should be a cape. it just makes sense, some how. i dunno. but it's obvious.

religion is supposed to be this thing that governments use to control masses of people into compliance with. so, it strikes me as kind of weird to speak of it in terms of resistance. now, i need to rip off my marxist cape because my paranoid anarchist heart wants to look for evidence of alliance with power structures, as that is, in truth, occam's razor. yet, the possibility of a simple slick preacher also always exists - and these aren't mutually exclusive.

at the least, any activist on the left should be particularly weary of any kind of religious movement trying to involve itself with politics. there is a 100% chance that they are trying to take over your movement for one nefarious aim or the other.

the problem that marx (where's my cape?...) saw with christianity is that it promises salvation in an afterlife, thereby leaving workers in delusional states of fantasies about life and death. i'm supposed to point out that marx saw this as an obstacle to movement building and leave it at that, but think about the psychology in what he's suggesting. think about how that breaks a human's soul into two, having them turn an active desire for death into a virtue. to convince humans that they should believe that all of the misery and all of the struggle is worth it because it will be paid off in an afterlife, which certainly doesn't exist. this is a truly dangerous cult.

i don't feel that buddhism escapes this general description of a pacifying force, but rather in a way just transcribes it. buddhism also teaches that life is meaningless, and that there is some preferable place in the hierarchy in the next life. this is incompatible with a revolutionary politic.

this whole thing is such an absurd charade. and, maduro is starting to remind me of the bumblebee guy from the simpsons. 

it's one of those bewildering things you see from time to time in these places: the opposition stands down from the elections. and, you assign ulterior motives to such queer behaviour. yet, you miss the obvious: that the opposition stood down because it's backers didn't want it to win, or that the iraqi military stood down in iraq because they were ordered to allow isis to take up a position.

i've long been convinced that maduro is actually pretty buddy-buddy with the cia behind the scenes, he just needs america as an enemy to maintain control of the country. and, the americans seem eager to comply, as it gives them a bad guy of their own. if america wanted maduro gone, it would just cut off oil purchases for a week; he'd be gone. venezuela is, in truth, utterly economically reliant on the united states. that's going to come with a lot of clout in caracas, "domestic politics" whatever they may be.

the opposition was, in truth, no doubt ordered to stand down. but the reason underlying it is probably the most obvious one.

Sunday, December 24, 2017

this is consistent! sometimes, i wonder if this shadow government is actually a computer, because the surreality of the predictability defies common sense.

they take what is almost boolean logic past the point of human reason. is it game theory, then, perhaps?

if you want to understand what the shadow government is actually doing, it is easy - they leave a trail behind them. just look to where the establishment blames russia.

absolutely consistent; as though they want it documented, even. 

https://www.rt.com/usa/413745-franken-resignation-russiagate-conspiracy/
i have to admit that i was in favour of stricter guidelines for large dogs, but i can accept the criticism that any government's attempts to legislate this by targetting pit bulls, specifically, is likely to be ineffective. if what the new city council is suggesting is that they aim to broaden the restrictions not just to pit bulls but to all large dogs, then i would openly support that amendment.

my pushback was against the idea of abolishing measures taken to ensure that more safety precautions are taken around these animals, as i do think that they are needed. but, if the idea is to broaden them, i am in full agreement.

i guess what the previous city council did was kind of bureaucratic; it recognized that a problem with dogs exists, it looked at a list of statistics and it took specific action against the leading cause. that must have been meant as a first step, though, in order to ease in broader action - or reverse course in a public backlash.

it really seems as though the criticism, then, was that the law wasn't comprehensive enough, as it only focused on a specific breed. if so, that's a fair criticism - and the previous city council should probably recognize it as such.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-pit-bull-ban-1.4458038

Saturday, December 23, 2017

i don't know if what's happening in the united states right now is a targeted purge or a structural coup, but i don't get the feeling that this is short term, and i'm not convinced it's going to be reversible.

america is shutting itself down. scrawl a note over the american flag on the moon: out of business.

i'm trying to think about when the last great collapse of liberalism was. i suppose it depends on how you define the current age: did we start in the renaissance? is that wave form what is coming to a close?

i think there's an argument that part of what created the middle ages was the technological development not in weaponry but in agriculture. it seems crude by today's standards. but, life required a lot of hard work, so there wasn't a lot of time to study. after all, antiquity is full of civilizations being slaughtered, and it just kept on. something else stepped in after the romans fell, and created a much deeper shift in how societies were organized. it wasn't until the technology became efficient enough to allow leisure that it did, and liberal thoughts could be once again entertained.

that's a bad precedent, for us. that process took a long time. but, i told you i just read that asimov text, right? i'm thinking more about inri067, spoke - my eulogy for the civil rights era and secular liberalism as we understand it.

what i'm searching for is a successor, but we're really at the end of this. we can't hand it back to a decayed europe, which in fact merely precedes us in corruption. china and russia and saudi arabia are empires. and, africa remains in disarray.

if there is hope, it is in south america, but it is absurd to suggest they could challenge america at any time in the near future. perhaps the better hope is that the people of the americas can co-operatively work to take back the government in the united states before it collapses.

if we're in a similar technological moment that produced the dark ages, it's not going to be because our lives are too labour-intensive, but because they are not labour intensive enough. some of us are perhaps likely to forget how to do anything at all, but i must push back against the standard dystopic view, as i think a subset of humans would take advantage of such freedom to become scholars and general patrons of the arts. the dark ages produced an aristocracy of management. the new illiberalism will no doubt be an aristocracy of knowledge.

and, freedom means different things to different people. so, the battle will remain the same: fight hierarchy wherever you see it.

but, what if the networks come down? if this witchcraft is destroyed?
see, i don't doubt this at all. it was pretty obvious.

but, there's an added complication that she probably doesn't remember the worst of it.

i always found crystal castles frustrating, in that it demonstrated some potential for abstraction but never really explored it. it was clear that the intent was always profit above everything else; you can hear the disinterest in the 'art'.

but, you'll note that there is an accusation, here, followed by charges and an investigation. that's how these things need to operate.

i want to repeat a point that i made several years ago about syria.

it's less that assad has to go, as an individual. it's more that syria needs a change in actual leadership - in military leadership. and, it's up to the russians, now, to ensure that this happens.

the russians know better than anybody else what it is to experience a serious existential crisis; they are certainly best positioned, of all the major powers, to understand the psychology of the assad regime. on one of the days i spent waiting for the isp, i read one of the foundation texts that i skipped as a child. it was the one where seldon was wrong. so, i have this psychohistory on my brain, and the recognition of it as psychobabble. but, if you leave the assad regime - the regime, not the figurehead - in place, it will necessarily retaliate, which means launching a counter-attack on the saudis.

the saudi regime needs to fall, but not like this - not at the cost of a major proxy war that will draw in the turks and who knows else - israel, america and maybe even china.

the russians, unfortunately, are relying on this regime. when i made those comments, and i realized even at the time that this responsibility is putin's, i did not realize the remaining extent of the cold war connections between the kremlin and the assad regime, nor how easy it would be to reactivate them. the russians, however, are not foreign to purges, not even in foreign countries.

the assad regime does, in fact, have to go to ensure a peace. the americans are right for the wrong reasons. but, it's not likely to.
i would be far more cautious about letting my friendly retrievers near wild otters, like that. they seem to think it's a game. but, the otters would drag the dog down, if they got the chance.

scaredy cat.


it's gotta be thinking that the otters are some kind of sea creature - that this is one multiheaded monster, rather than a collection of individual animals. and, that's a smart tactic. them otters are smart.

then, at the end, it's just all like "i could've taken it. i wasn't scared.".
yeah, but now go find a video of a polar bear ripping the heart out of a seal's chest and tell me how you feel about it.

climate change is bad news and everything.

but, bears are monsters.

why can't we have solidarity with something other than apex carnivores? and, why does this, of all things, generate empathy.

fucking humans.

Friday, December 22, 2017

deathtokoalas
c'mon.

senator gillibrand wants to run for president, and saw an easy way to get rid of a prime competitor. the truth is as simple - and as cynical - as that.


Aaron N
Democrats are so unbelievably weak, Republicans get away with murder all of the time and Democrats throw all of their people under the bus and run away from any type of criticism.

deathtokoalas
see, here's the truth about this: the democrats operate on the principle of every man, woman and dog for itself, while the republicans have retained this lingering concept of solidarity from their whig days. the american system is really absolutely bizarre, in terms of the spectrum. these ideas of liberalism and conservatism have been chopped up and distributed in ways that most of the world has a hard time making sense of. but, this is really a lot deeper and a lot more philosophical than is immediately obvious.

the democrats don't seem to care about due process, but they do seem to care about careerism. and, this is how you would expect a conservative party to approach the ideals of liberal individualism, isn't it? not thoreauvian, but randian. it's selfishness as a virtue. no solidarity, just social darwinism. and, so long as there's a level playing field, these warped concepts of neo-liberalism actually think that's ok - normal, even. natural.

and, even after everything else has been swapped out of the republican party, after abolitionists have been replaced with klan members, they retain this collectivist urge. they're a nihilist party, no doubt. they're what a collection of post-truth liberals would imagine that uneducated conservatives would want a conservative party to be: a warped projection of liberal elitism. and, of course, their voters are clueless. they don't know what i'm talking about. but, this hive mentality persists.

i'm a hard leftist. i don't like either of these parties, but i'm used to looking at the democrats as a lesser evil. regardless, i can see the truth of things: a democrat would throw you under the bus to prevent their expensive shoes from getting wet, while a republican would throw himself in front of it in order to advance the party's interests.

for one used to gathering in public to chants of "solidarity!", the juxtaposition is increasingly alarming.
hi.

so, the internet was hooked up late on the afternoon of the 21st. i
trust that the proper pro-rations will apply. i think this ought to be
straight forward. and, i'm happy to be back online and have things
back to normal.

but, i can't help but feel that a great deal of my time was wasted.

listen: i'm a highly patient individual and i'm highly adaptive to
situations. i could have and would have waited patiently until the
21st with nary a second thought, if that was the required action. and,
i would have been happy to see the tech when he finally arrived. but,
that's not what happened.

i called in in november to move the services and was told that they
could schedule me on the 1st of december, but it's often busy so if
they don't show up then i should wait on the 4th. so, i waited all day
on the 1st and all day on the 4th - a total of 18 hours. it later came
to my attention that cogeco had already informed your agent that they
would not be coming, but nobody relayed that information to me. so,
this 18 hours of waiting was preventable, and could have been
prevented by contacting me.

and, i would have been eminently reasonable had i been contacted and
asked to wait, as well.

a second install date was eventually arranged on the 12th. i expressed
repeatedly that i needed a technician to come in and crimp the ends
(the final process took mere minutes) and was told on the day before
the install that a technician would be there to do this. i waited
another 9 hours and did not see a tech, and was later told that none
was scheduled - that what was scheduled was a 'no truck' install, and
that a technician had indeed come, fiddled with the box and then left.
this was again preventable.

i was then told that the agent responsible for these lost 27 hours was
let go. i hope she finds a job that better suits her talents.

i could say something about my time being worth a dollar amount, and
attempt to charge you at a reasonable wage - at $10/hr (after taxes),
that would amount to $270, which would be nearly ten months of
service. but, i can see that this is too much.

i think that a more reasonable suggestion is to look at the three days
that were lost as events requiring some form of compensation, and i do
hope that i am effectively projecting that i aim to be reasonable. had
the cogeco agents not shown up due to any unforeseen event, from a
family emergency to an act of god, i could cite the fact of a
stochastic universe and wave it away as bad luck. but, your agents
were sitting on the correct information all three times.

there was no reason for me to wait on any of these days, as your
agents should have told me that nobody was scheduled.

my proposal is therefore this: that if each day spent waiting is a
separate event to require compensation, and i only purchase one thing
from you, then it follows that i ought to get three of the things that
i bought from you, which would work out to three months credit.

i live in a building with twenty other tenants, and they all saw me
sitting there for four days in december. i'm an honest person. and,
your self-interest is ultimately in damage control.

j
well, you also have to keep in mind that the word has changed meaning, as well.

dukakis became clinton became obama, and the term 'liberal' ended up merged with the concept of 'neo-liberal', and pulled to the right of the spectrum.

i use the term pretty classically, as though it belongs to the period when liberals and anarchists were interchangeable. i then extrapolate broad concepts from it. i'd rather vote for a socialist party than a liberal party.

but, that doesn't change the reality that, to a lot of people, 'very liberal' means you read ayn rand, work for the koch brothers and follow alan greenspan on twitter.

it's kind of a contradiction that we live under constant surveillance, and yet fear unfounded accusations. hard drive space is cheap enough nowadays that you may want to think of just streaming your existence. you can call this the open-source  approach.

personally?

if i was in minnesota, i would probably vote green out of principle, at least for the special election. i couldn't reward this obvious purge. and, it would sour me on the party, moving forwards.

i mean, i'm not in minnesota, so i don't know how real it is. but, as an already disgruntled liberal, it would be a potential push factor right out of alignment with this party, altogether. it's the kind of thing that might lose me for good.
no, listen.

minnesota is, in fact, one of the most liberal states in the country.

but, what does that mean? it might not mean what you think it means.

it's true that a debate about due process isn't likely to get people to vote against their own health care. but, the republicans know they need to run a moderate. they can mix and match on this.

what the democrats are going to likely face is voter apathy - voters that realize what actually happened and stay home. yes, a lot of them will be white men. and, the republicans will take the seat due to low turnout. 

wait for it. 
so, what happened to me?

well, i moved on the 1st, and my isp couldn't or wouldn't connect me until the 21st. i spent four full days waiting in my lobby before it got resolved. i spent a lot of days accomplishing little besides yelling at people on the phone. and, all i've really done besides that is clean in here and set the place up.

i can at least report that i've done a lot of thinking about what's going to happen, next.

i have a few remaining things to finish for period 2. it should be in a few days, i hope. then, i have to catch up on the alter-reality, and i'm aiming for a jan 13th date on that - we'll see. right now, i'm not expecting to upload any vlogs until july 1st, and i'm expecting the stagger to be a year, but i'm purposefully prioritizing this as least important, because it actually is. i need to get caught up in everything else, first, then fix that laptop, then get the vlogs edited...

so, i'm kind of just picking up where i left off.

the one thing i was following was this franken bit...

i tried to make the point clear enough, but let me repeat it: what happened to al franken has nothing to do with....what are they calling it? "sexual misconduct"? it's basically an accusation of deviance, or subversion , or something. "corrupting the youth". but, that's not what happened to al franken. what happened to al franken is that he ran his mouth off in the senate, and the bastards took him down for speaking truth to power. al franken was purged. and, the democrats didn't even give him the disrespect of putting him through an unfair mock trial.

so, yes: what the democrats did to al franken is truly a disgrace, but i'm not remotely surprised, because the democrats have always been the conservative party. i'm not sure if i explicitly predicted it, but i got pretty close; i predicted the resignation, at least.

what gets me about it is that the democrats then have the audacity to stand up and promote their behaviour as upholding a system of values. it is a system of values, i suppose, but it's a system of puritanical, right-wing and conservative values; these are not my values. i am a liberal. my values are not the fire and brimstone of retributive justice, but due process of law and the presumption of innocence. again: i'm not surprised that the democrats are not upholding my values, but i am a little surprised to see them upheld by right-wing demagogues that i don't usually have anything in common with.

but, i've been over this in this space. the democrats are and always have been the conservative party in the american political system. the republicans used to be the liberal party, but have become some kind of post-truth nihilist catastrophe. this has left a small number of liberals scattered across either party, and american liberals in a hopeless state of utter disenfranchisement. and, despite telling me what i want to hear, i know that the likes of tucker carlson are ultimately just disingenuously pushing buttons.

but, we can have this discussion of values, if you want, sure. i look at what the democrats did to al franken, and i see a conservative party obsessed with retribution that does not at all represent my values. then, i looked at the roy moore situation, and i see a liberal republican party that is willing to hold to the presumption of innocence in even the most extreme scenarios. i think roy moore probably deserves to be punished, and al fanken certainly doesn't - granted. but, it is the republicans that better reflect my liberal values, here - and the democrats that do not.

and, while it is true that the democrats were always the conservative party, they may want to think this through a little more carefully.

i expect the republicans to take al franken's seat and hold it for at least a generation.

Thursday, December 21, 2017

not only is buddhism not true, it's not even wrong, either.


no, i'm not wasting twenty minutes watching this....

this is a paid advertisement, from what i can gather. how much does the book cost, anyways?
barbara kay is a national embarrassment.

but, as a long time fan, do mr. waters' trotskyist views kind of overlap into some uncomfortable imagery sometimes? they kinda do, actually, yeah. but, here's the thing: these positions aren't mutually exclusive.

he's made some blatant mistakes in imagery in the past, and i've never seen him acknowledge it.



Wednesday, November 29, 2017

publishing inri071

i've taken to splitting my discography into phases, and my hitch-hiking trip to british columbia is a very important separation point - both in terms of the nature of the material that came out afterwards and what is now a substantial body of work that came before it. that makes it a natural point to look backwards and build compilations of intersecting ideas.

a characteristic of my work is that it does not conform well to genre norms. this is not an accident; when compiling a record, i'm guided more by the late beatles' philosophy of vast diversity in a small space than i am by any kind of desire to collect together nice singles, or by some kind of compulsive organizing into categories or concepts. i write psychedelic music. that means something different in 2015 than it did in 1966, but the commonality is that it's necessarily challenging. i want all of my records to do everything at once, and accomplish everything by their end point. that makes compilations of this sort inherently difficult, because every song touches on every compilation idea at the same time. the jazz record would have the same tracklisting as the punk record, the classical record and the folk record - and none would really be what they're claimed to be.

the one exception to this conundrum is how i interacted with ambient music in this period. i very regularly utilized ideas from the genre, but i tended to interpret ambience as something that is necessarily obscure. in this period, ambient pieces are almost always outtakes or b sides. i tended to interpret covers and remixes as ambient pieces, probably because that was unexpected. when ambient ideas make it on to the record, they're almost always for effect: introductions, endings, connecting passages, that sort of thing.

when i began reconstructing my discography in early 2014, i came across a handful of songs i'd written out into midi format and put aside for later. a number of these ended up reworked into ambient pieces, and released as b sides. i also ended up converting some of the material i wrote in this period into ambient sound collages that are more in the style of music i created after 2003.

the end result is enough bsides and remixes to put together two full cds of ambient music. none of the tracks on volumes one or two are on any official record as they appear here; this is technically a collection of remixes and outtakes.

this package was initially released with a mix tape of fragments from 1996-1999, but it has since been moved into it's own release (inri035): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-works-vol-0

initially written and recorded between 2000-2003 and remixed between 2014-2015. sequenced over mid may, 2015. the final compilation date was initially may 20, 2015, but both discs were mildly updated with some more appropriate mixes of the same tracks on nov 29, 2017; disc subsequently finalized as lp020. as always, please use headphones.

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2014, 2015, 2017).
 

credits

released April 28, 2003

j - guitars (acoustic, electric, nylon), effects & treatments, bass, synthesizers, electric air reed organ, orchestral & other sequencing, drum & other programming, generative programming (sounder), "projectile synthesis" (audiomulch), granular synthesis (granulab), sound design, electronic and conventional drum kits, sampling, loops, films, voice, digital wave editing, composition, production.

sean - vocal ideas (tracks 4 & 7, disc 1), ring modulator (track 9, disc 1)
jon - background guitar performance (track 4, disc 1)
greg - drum performance sample source (track 5, disc 1)

the various rendered electronic orchestras include synth bass, electric bass, acoustic bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, nylon guitar, guitar effects, guitar noises (fret noises, pick scrapes, knocks), synthesizer, synth pads, mellotron, choir, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, string section, pizzicato strings, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, oboe, english horn, bassoon, clarinet, flute, piccolo, mallet, piano, woodblock, music box, xylophone, tubular bells, other bells, orchestra hit, electronic drum kit, melodic toms, drum machine and orchestral drum kit.

publishing inri072

an unexpected result of the project to complete my discography, undertaken in late 2013, has been the construction of a handful of orchestral pieces, mostly as remixes of original tracks from the jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj period. while these tracks were initially written out as scored pieces for expanded instrumentation, they were generally written around the guitar and the expanded instrumentation was largely meant simply for colour. the exception to this is the psilocybin symphony, which was written as a piano concerto from the start and previously completed in early 2006.

the ability to expand these pieces into orchestral works is the result of the advances in vst sampling technology that have occurred since 2003. while changes in instrumentation have been accompanied by extra writing (mostly on the guitar), tempo shifts and other general rearrangement choices, the existing technology makes it very easy to rearrange a rock song for an orchestra, by simply multiplying staves and changing the sound fonts.

the condition i've set for a piece to be "orchestral" is that it must utilize the entire orchestra: it must have percussion, piano, horns, woodwinds/reeds and strings. guitars are generally treated like "first violins", whereas violins are generally not considered to be more special than other similar string instruments. some of the tracks also have prominent choral sections. all of these pieces meet this condition, except the last one which does not have a woodwind/reed section.

my delve into scorewriting ended in 2003; the material in my third phase is more focused on live and manipulated guitars and synthesizers. i consequently feel that this is an interesting summary of my second period, taken from a specific angle that is otherwise largely relegated to single-only remixes.

initially written and recorded between 2001-2003 and remixed and recorded further over 2014-2015, except track 2 which was completed in early 2006 and track 5 which was completed in 2017. the initial final compilation date was may 23, 2015, but track five was then added on oct 14, 2017 and the disc was finalized as lp021 on nov 29, 2017. track 7 was added as a download-only bonus track on jan 14, 2018. as always, please use headphones.

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018).

* download only
 

credits

released May 1, 2003

j - controller inputs, drum & other programming, orchestral & other sequencing, live guitars, live bass, live synths, effects, sound design, digital wave editing, composition, production.

the various rendered electronic orchestras includes violin, viola, cello, contrabass, electric guitar, nylon guitar, guitar fret noise, bass guitar, synthesizer bass, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, english horn, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, saxophone, bamboo flute, flute, piccolo, synthesizers, mellotron, organ, piano, harp, koto, music box, clavinet, kalimba, xylophone, agogo, mallet, hammered percussion, woodblock, tubular bells, tinkle bells, glockenspiel, orchestra hit, melodic toms, electronic drum kit, timpani, orchestral drum kit and choir.

republishing inri074

around october, 2002 i met a friend. i was sort of in need of a friend, and i mean that in the friend sense. but, the mental condition i was in was the explanation of why i needed a friend, if you see what i mean; i was completely unstable in this period and did all kinds of absurd things, which isolated me - and i wasn't getting any better.

i dropped out of school under the realization that i was walking down a path that wasn't getting me anywhere close to what i wanted out of life. i ended up working three jobs to raise money for gender reassignment, and it crossed me paths with somebody that was also trying to think of ways to get out of the box in terms of ways to exist.

she was trying to save up money to go to british columbia. it was some kind of warped take on the grapes of wrath, where everything works out perfectly. but, the rent was eating into her savings, which was making the goal seem impossible. well, unless we stopped having fun.

so, i suggested she should just stay at my parents place. part of it was a hope that she would move her drum kit in, although that didn't happen. and, i might add that this was done with all of the reckless abandon that could be contemplated - we were moving stuff in without even asking, it was really remarkable.

and, it seemed to me that we were getting pretty close over that period.

so, when the time came that she had all that money put aside to go to bc, it was kind of a downer to let her go. and, she initially wanted to go with a friend who dropped out. so, i ended up going across the country with her.

now, i need to be clear: we weren't planning on coming back. we were going to pick fruit or something - we didn't know, exactly, we'd figure it out when we got there.

so, this was meant as a sort of farewell to certain people i hadn't talked to in months and didn't care if i was leaving, anyways. i think it let me work some things out on weird subconscious levels, but the truth is that these songs really aren't about anybody except me, and there's no use in pretending they are - i just liked the idea of a farewell disc.

this disc was initially passed around with a cut up version of the pretentious untitled mix at the end, but this was almost immediately ejected from future burns and is not present on this ep due to the poor quality of the mix. the remaining five tracks became combined into what i now call my eighth symphony.

written and recorded in late 2002 and early 2003. this was initially uploaded unmodified from a cd-r rip in may, 2015, but this was replaced with a version from source on nov 29, 2017 due to clipping due to an unrealized normalization on the burn. disc finalized as symph008 on nov 29, 2017. as always, please use headphones.

the hidden track is the final version and also appears on my ninth record, {e} (inri08x): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/e

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2003, 2015, 2017).
 

credits

released May 3, 2003

j - guitar, effects, bass, synth, voice, piano, drum programming, generative programming (sounder), granular synthesis, sound design, soundscaping, loops, bowls, claps, tables, ebow, orchestral sequencing, digital wave editing, sampling, production, composition

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

deathtokoalas
listen, i'm fairly sympathetic to palestinian sovereignty concerns - even if i think they're better off fighting for civil rights inside israel - but, they need to stop pretending they have any legitimate claim to jerusalem. when it was frankish knights trying to resurrect the roman empire, their arguments made sense. but, look at the name of the city. jew-rusalem. if there's anywhere in the region that should be under israeli occupation, it's this city that is the cradle of their civilization. even the muslim claims to the city are some kind of take on the jewish heritage. so,  muslims the world over need to bend on this.

i understand that there isn't really anything left, if they give up jerusalem. but, the truth is that the united nations made a terrible mistake in trying to set the city up as a joint territory, and the palestinians followed the wrong tactic for decades in holding to it. they should have tried to use it as leverage, and ultimately sought abandonment. but, now, it's really too late: all they can do is exploit the demographic problem to their benefit.


gur rah
Your ignorance is towering and is based on Zionist propaganda. It's  the Palestinians that has the ONLY legitimate claim to Jerusalem, which is recognized by international law and by the international community. Everyone knows that the land belong first and foremost to the people who live in it, cultivate it and have a history in it.Never in human history was a religion given the right to sovereignty. Jerusalem was named after the Jebusites, not Jews. Muslims aren't claiming Jerselum, Palestinians are, and only East Jerusalem which is universally recognized.

P. Thomas Garcia
Utter and complete nonsense. "Should be" and "under occupation" are two phrases, when met, that have no justification and amount to total nonsense, exceeded only in the attempt that one would use the name Jerusalem (misreading it and accentuating Jew) to authenticate Israeli or Jewish claim by heritage. Jerusalem predates ancient Israel and means the City of Shalim, named after a Canaanite god.

deathtokoalas
why do you idiots need to start every discussion with an ad hominem? it is your own ignorance that is staggering, and it is the idea that the jebusites and jews are different people that is zionist - and christian - propaganda. in order to accept that account of history, you have to believe that there was somebody named moses that led a tribe of escaped slaves across a desert to inhabit a land that was promised to them by god, and that is something that is utterly ridiculous on it's face. the reality is that there is no evidence that there was ever any migration into israel; the israelites are descended from the canaanites, and the jews are the jebusites.

moses never existed. joshua never existed. david never existed. and, there is no scientific evidence of any exodus from egypt, at all. all evidence suggests absolute continuity throughout the bronze and iron age, and the development of a purely local culture, from the very start. and, it follows that the most ancient inhabitants of jerusalem were the ancestors of today's jews - which are also the ancestors of today's colonized palestinians, who are in truth actually genetic hebrews.

however, there is staggering evidence - it is historical fact - that the city was conquered and colonized by arabs very early on in the muslim conquest. the arabs have no more of a legitimate claim to jerusalem than the english do to los angeles.

now, the point - which you missed entirely, in favour of kneejerking over some identity politics - i was making about jerusalem being partitioned is that the idea is unworkable. you can't split a city in half. if you want to throw around nonsensical allusions to biblical fabrications, consider the story of the judgement of solomon, where it was deduced that the rightful owner of a child is the one that would not cut it in half. it's a lot of nonsense, but i'll admit that i like this story a little better than the one where god trolls his dipshit slave into almost stabbing his son, and then glorifies the lack of critical thinking.

there is no solution in partition. there never was. there is only a recipe for conflict. and, you only support partition if what you actually want is conflict. if you want peace, you throw the idea in the trash heap of history, where it belongs.

also, i can think of lots of other examples where an area should be under occupation. and, if you'd stop to think for yourself for a moment, i'm sure you could, too.

(deleted response)

to be clear: it is not true that the city of jerusalem is named after jews, and that's not what i said. as jews are descended from canaanites, it could very well be true that it was named after a canaanite god by the canaanite ancestors of the modern jews, although that is really just another story and it probably isn't true. what i meant, and this is true, was that the religion of judaism was named after the city of jerusalem, even if it was mostly developed in exile from it.

---
 
fwiw, i just did some cursory research into the etymology of 'jerusalem', and my slightly better than amateur analysis, as cursory as it is, would suggest that the common root 'ur' in the oldest references to the city suggest it was probably sumerian/caucasian in ultimate origin. this is admittedly circumstantial. but, the sumerians and their descendants, urartians, tossed this 'ur' around all over the place. and, as sketchy as the bible is as a historical document, it aligns with the basic truth that if the jews came from anywhere besides the levant, it was from modern day iraq.
 
al-Haider
Jessica you are really for a better lack of better word stupid as hell. How do the Palestinians how have called Jerusalem home for mellinium until the Israeli occupation stop their claim to the city. If someone came and evicted you out of your home claiming that your house once belonged to them 2000 years ago , would you give up your house and space for that ridiculous and non existing claim. BTW it's Jerusalem not jewrusalem

deathtokoalas
jerusalem had a christian phase, but, unless you're referring to the crusades, it was neither white nor on this side of a thousand years ago.

and, the palestinians do not call the city jerusalem. like all colonizing entities, they changed the name; they call it al-quds. that name change alone demonstrates the point about who is colonizing what. i don't think they should expel the palestinians, i believe in full civil rights for them as citizens of israel, but it is the idea that there is any future in a divided city that is stupid, and the unfolding of the last 70 years of history makes that abundantly clear.

i repeat: if the palestinians want peace in the region, they need to drop the idea that they have any legitimate historical claim to jerusalem as a basic pre-condition. there will not be peace here until they drop their historical delusions around this point.

there are no holy cities. there is no holy land. there is simply the cradle of an ethnic identity, which has been destroyed, paved over and colonized.
deathtokoalas
the only solution is a massive, manhatten project style government-led initiative, and the state needs to print the money to do it.


(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
i don't care about the debt.

Monday, November 27, 2017

publishing inri068

in the summer of 2013, two formative things happened at almost exactly the same time: my father died after a lengthy battle with brain cancer and i moved from ottawa, ontario to windsor, ontario. they were within a week from each other; my father died while i was camped out in a tim horton's on tecumseh, waiting to sign a lease and catch a bus back 'home'. but, dad was really the only remaining thing that made ottawa home, in the first place.

the reasons underlying my move were legitimate, if somewhat forced. my gear was stored in my father's garage, and i had been given notice that i would not be able to keep it there more than a moment past his death. my stepmother and i haven't spoken since. i legitimately couldn't find anything in ottawa, so finding the place in windsor was actually somewhat of a stroke of luck, given the urgency of the situation. i had hitched down there to meet friends, but in the end they couldn't sign a lease, so i went by myself.

the culmination of occurrences had me in the mindset of fresh beginnings. i finally had a stable income source on odsp, and a new apartment in a new city. so, i almost immediately set about completing all of the music that i had been putting aside for so long, in preparation for my own imminent demise, relative to the immense expanse that is time.

through whatever coincidence, i am permanently closing my second period during the week that i am being evicted from this same apartment, for the supposed reason of personal use. this apartment will consequently forever be associated with the completion of my second period.

yet, the bulk of the work done in this apartment - through immense difficulties with malfunctioning gear, questionable electrical outlets and a probable atmospheric magnetic field - has been in the realm of (re)mixing, orchestrating, programming and rearranging. it was just the nature of what needed to be done around an assortment of midi compositions and flat mixes from the early 00s. the really heavy lifting in completing my discography will come in finishing the third period, which i will not start until i move into a new apartment, around the corner from here.

with the exception of two vocal tracks (for inri020 and inri062), this disc is a comprehensive document of what was actually written as it was being recorded in the basement at 805 marion ave, in windsor, ontario, canada, in the form of a collection of overdub mixes that can be pasted on top of the existing demos in order to create the final products. it is mostly guitar and bass tracks, but also includes some orchestral and other sequencing and some electronic drum parts. everything else that was done in this basement was either created from existing sound or was constructed from existing midi instructions, however elaborately and however abstractly.

in hindsight, i can state with some force that this basement is not well suited for a recording studio. yet, these problems will be forever embedded within my own history, as well.

with those words, my tenure here ends. so long.

originally written, programmed and recorded in varying states of finality over 2001 and 2002, except the hidden track (which was programmed in 1997). the associated tracks were completed between february, 2014 and may, 2015; these mixes, however, were spun off as late as nov, 2017. this compilation is dated to nov 27, 2017; disc simultaneously created and finalized as lp017 on nov 27, 2017. as always, please use headphones.

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2001, 2002, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017).
 

credits

released April 24, 2003

j - electric guitars, digital & analog effects & treatments, bass, synthesizers, electric air reed organ, drum & other sampling, drum programming, drum manipulations, electronic drum kit, orchestral & other sequencing, sound design, soundscaping, loops, digital wave editing, voice, production, composition.

greg - drum performance sample source (2)

the rendered electronic orchestra includes at least one of each of the following: violin, viola, cello, contrabass, koto, french horn, trombone, trumpet, tuba, english horn, saxophone, flute, oboe, piccolo, clarinet, bassoon, agogo, tubular bells, glockenspiel, piano, melodic toms, timpani, orchestral hit, orchestral drum set and various full string sections. it also includes choir. 

Sunday, November 26, 2017

publishing inri067

the ftaa project, much like it's namesake, was never an idea that was carefully developed, which is very much an anomaly in this discography, where almost everything is developed at such a microscopic level of detail. the idea initially developed as a means to protest the government's response to the 9/11 attacks, from what most people would identify as a libertarian perspective. however, rabit is wolf ended up becoming my main focus in that period, instead, and by the time i got back to the idea, the initial impetus had largely stalled. all activism was necessarily diverted to stopping the war....

....but, i also found myself in a much different reality, starting in late 2002. for the first (and only) time in my life, i had a partner, and it took away most of the time that i would have otherwise spent on music production. on top of that, i found myself working long hours in order both to maintain a dating lifestyle and to deal with real world expenses that the relationship created, and i hadn't ever had to deal with before. i did create some music over 2003, but my head was almost entirely inside of this relationship.

the ftaa project initially completed in may of 2004 and was composed of some of the parts of this recording plus an anti-war song. it will re-release in that space as my 7th record, but as an instrumental recording like the rest of them, thereby jettisoning both these sample collages to their respective singles and the idea of a record of sample collages altogether.

i considered re-releasing the ftaa project as a double with the samples on the other side, but there's something asynchronous about this that i don't like. further, in hindsight, i ended up putting the deny everything recording through more or less the same process, so it makes more sense to combine the jettisoned tracks together into an outtakes disc, and release it at the end of the second period.

another way to look at this recording is to interpret it as a reaction to the presidency of george w. bush, and i've left the tracks in chronological order for that reason. the first two tracks were initially on deny everything (inri041) and have the thematic unity of being a warning regarding the bush presidency, even if the trudeau character sounds more like trump, in the year 2017. the next two tracks were an explicit reaction to the 9/11 attacks. the fifth track takes those ideas to their conclusion, in exploring the thesis that the attacks were the catalyst to end the period of liberal democracy in the united states, and potentially also in it's satellites, and usher in a period of totalitarian rule. as of 2017, that process appears to be nearing it's completion.

so, this is really the actualization of the intent behind the ftaa project, even if it isn't quite in the form that it was initially released in. as such, it should be viewed as almost an official record - despite the overlap and the historical revisionism.

written and recorded between dec, 1999 and july, 2002, except the hidden track (which was created in the summer of 1998). none of these tracks were remastered or otherwise modified after 2002. this compilation is dated to nov 26, 2017; disc simultaneously created and finalized as lp016 on nov 26, 2017. as always, please use headphones.

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2017).
 

credits

released April 23, 2003

j - guitars (electric, nylon, acoustic), mandolin, electric bass, digital & analog effects processing, synths, sampling, pythagorean sequencing (sounder), drum and other programming, drum manipulations, drum kit, voice, flute, sound design, sound raider, noise generators, cool edit sequencing, digital wave editing, composition, production

sean - ring modulator (5)
greg - drum performance sample source (5)

publishing inri066

when i sat down to complete my discography in 2013, one of the ideas that immediately jumped out was to try and reinterpret some of the inri tracks from the late 1990s as modern pieces. as i believed that my source tapes were unusable at the time (which i eventually realized was not the case - see inri024), the conditions for this being a workable project would need to be the existence of the original drum tracks, along with the existence of some midi files.

i was gifted my ry30 in the summer of 1997 to compensate for the loss of my drum kit and studio space, but i did not have any recording gear again until christmas. so, i spent the fall programming the drum machine and teaching myself the basics of sequencing and sound design, using the primitive tools i had available to me. by the time i got my four track, as well as my jx-8p, the ry30 was full, and re-recording my first songs was just a matter of transferring the completed material from the electronic equipment to tape. so, i initially considered making a companion ep to inrisampled that would document my time spent programming the ry30 along with my time sent learning how to manipulate sound. the difference between the drum tracks at this stage and the initial collage experiments, however, is that the drum tracks were not complete songs. so, this was abandoned due to the product being a little dry. but, i still wanted to make an ep around the ry30, perhaps by orchestrating the existing companion midi tracks.

this idea then quickly merged with what would become thru (inri069) and eventually discarded itself within itself when it was realized that the existing midi files for the 90s material were too sparse to really utilize, especially in comparison to the midi files from the early 00s. thru was deleted and then resuscitated over the course of 2014 and 2015, eventually releasing in mid 2015 as a 2001-2003 project, leaving the 90s material in the dustbin of my own history.

it was in june, 2015 that i realized that the source tapes were usable after all, and cycled back around to the beginning of the reconstruction in order to complete the relevant tracks as instrumental pieces. this idea kind of recreated itself in the nature of the source tapes, as i had bounced all of the electronics together into the same channel as a mixing step, back in the 90s. so, i found myself with these ready-to-publish electronic tracks right off the tape that incorporated a combination of the ry30 tracks, jx-8p parts, soundblaster programs, zoom 1010 noises and cool edit experiments. all they really needed was a little attention on the mastering.

i flipped this over, in the end: what each of these tracks are is their final album mixes, with the guitar and bass parts deleted (unless the bass was done on a synthesizer). so, there was some post-production added over 2015 in the form of updated soundfonts, digital mastering and digital effects processing. but, these are really flourishes on the existing tracks.

it was at the end of dec, 2015 that further similar electronics-only ry30-centric remixes were creating for some later songs, as well, thereby filling out the disc and closing the project.

i sold my ry30 in may, 2003 to raise money to go to british columbia. my logic was that i'd really maximized what i was going to get out of it, and that i'd already discarded it, anyways: by that time, i'd been writing drum parts in the scorewriter for a few years already, and had barely touched the ry30 in a long time. but, i regret that decision, in hindsight. and, i expect to pick up another one, one day.

originally written, programmed and recorded from 1996-2002. reclaimed & remixed from june to december of 2015. initial completion date was december 31, 2015. disc finally released on physical media, closed and finalized on nov 26, 2017. as always, please use headphones.

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017).
 

credits

released April 26, 2003

j - drum & other programming, orchestral & other sequencing, guitar effects, digital effects processing, digital wave editing, synthesizers, loops, vocal noises & relics, sampling, sound design, production

the various rendered electronic orchestras include organ, sitar, bells, synthesizer effects, tuba, saxophone, flute, clarinet, orchestra hit, piano, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections. 

Friday, November 24, 2017

republishing inri064

this was constructed as a christmas present for my partner, while in a rather absurd state of entirely preposterous euphoria. only a musician can be so absurdly invested in something so thoroughly delusional - or manage to create something so entirely self-reflective out of a theme surrounding somebody else.

the first part of this was shelved before it was ever released. i was over-exaggerating a sense of self-consciousness, but it still strikes me as unworkable. however, i think it's conceptually important in the idea of this as a christmas present and has consequently been uploaded here without modification. the second part was actually presented to sarah as a present, albeit a little after christmas - hence the jan 1 release date. it eventually found it's way to the center of my eighth symphony, reflections.

these tracks were written and recorded over november and december of 2002 and uploaded, unmodified, in may of 2015. this was initially a download only release, but was expanded to a full release and finalized as such on nov 24, 2017. as always, please use headphones.

the second track appears as a component on my eighth record:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/e

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2002, 2003, 2015, 2017).

credits

released January 1, 2003

j - guitar, effects, bass, synth, piano, drum programming, light-sound synthesis (coagula), generative programming (sounder), granular synthesis, sound design, digital wave editing, production, composition


Sunday, November 19, 2017

republishing inri061

this is the second of two lengthy singles to come out of tracks that were begun in 2002 and not completed to my liking. the mixes in this single chart this song's rather elaborate development over fifteen years, with the first disc consisting of historical versions and the next two discs consisting of finished mixes.

it became clear through the course of july, 2002 that rabit is wolf wasn't really going anywhere and i was better off cutting my losses. we jammed a few times, but it wasn't really serious.

this track was initially written as a folk punk song, but i jumped to the scorewriter with it almost immediately. the expanded guitar demo was written in a scorewriter and then performed, rather than vice versa. it was initially less about explicitly creating a techno song and more about ordering the parts in a way that could be deconstructed more effectively. i wanted a more flexible approach to production that would allow me to take tracks in and out based on sean's input.

i may have gone over this in this space before, but my mixing process up to that point was considerably unconventional. i would record tracks in one by one using a wave editor and then paste them on top of each other. i worked this way because i just didn't have more advanced tools. while there are benefits to this approach (it's additive synthesis, which blurs the mix for soundscaping), it meant that each additional track was destructive. i could not remove tracks once they were added. this meant sean was unable to provide much input into demos i sent to him.

i also picked up a copy of cakewalk to help with this, but i quickly learned that my system couldn't really handle it. at around eight tracks, it just became unresponsive. with less than eight tracks, it didn't matter if the mix was destructive because it was easily reconstructed. so, i went back to the wave editor approach until 2007, when i upgraded to a modern pc.

the taiko drum part was initially just to keep time; it wasn't supposed to be a part of the song. but, as i built it up i began to realize how interesting it sounded as a techno tune and sort of ran with it. once i'd notated it, i had to convert the drums into a soundscape because the midi render just wasn't good enough. this was done using a mix of software drum machines, midi snippets and isolated jimmy chamberlain samples. i then performed the score i had notated, with the exception of a few synths which were sequenced back. unfortunately, the midi file for the synth build up at the beginning of the track has been lost.

the mix never came out well, partly due to ram issues with cakewalk and partly because i got a little pretentious with some of the parts. i was also extremely distracted over this period. despite this all being done to make sean's input more easily integrated into the material, he had no interest in the direction i took it and basically put his nose up at it again. i attempted a few different things over late 2002 and early 2003 to try and salvage it for my own purposes, but in the end i shelved it as unworkable.

when i first set up the bandcamp site around 2010, i realized i had a collection of tracks that fit a sort of techno-guitar description and compiled them together under the name "tetris". i uploaded an incomplete mix for that project, but it was never really done and i never really felt good about it.

it wasn't until late 2014 that i came back to the track, to authoritatively finish my discography. first, a mix was reconstructed from source to include all of the existing sound files. next, three separate sequencer mixes were sculpted out of the score - a jazz fusion mix, an overture mix and an ambient mix. pieces of these sequencer mixes were then isolated and mixed into the reconstructed original mix. finally, a series of extra lead guitar parts were recorded and mixed separately into a final mix and the orchestral mix, creating the end result and an accompanying guitar concerto. the recording process for this was very lengthy, which was ironically partly due to consistent distractions.

this release was revisited in november, 2017 as a part of the process of finalizing period 2 and was expanded from two to three discs through the addition of multiple supplementary mixes.

i've included the midi file of the original composition, if you'd like to mess with it on your own.

written over the summer of 2002 and initially recorded in the early fall of 2002. additional recording, production and mixing occurred from dec, 2014 to apr, 2015. initial final completion occurred on april 27, 2015. however, eight more supplementary remixes were added to the release over nov 17-nov 19, 2017 to expand it into a three disc set. disc finalized on nov 19, 2017. as always, please use headphones.

the album version of the track (track 7) also appears on my sixth record:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-2

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2002, 2014, 2015, 2017).
 

credits

released September 15, 2002

j - guitars, effects, bass, synthesizers, drum sampling, drum programming, sequencing, sound design, soundscaping, digital wave editing

the various rendered electronic orchestras include electric bass, synth bass, distorted electric guitar, clean electric guitar, acoustic guitar, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, harp, koto, french horn, trombone, trumpet, tuba, english horn, flute, oboe, piccolo, clarinet, bassoon, synthesizers, piano, glockenspiel, vibraphone, hammered percussion, music box, tubular bells, bells, agogo, wood blocks, marimba, melodic toms, timpani, taiko drum, backwards cymbals, synth drums, orchestral drum set and choir. 

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

republishing inri059

something like this would have been the demo brought along on an acoustic tour that never happened. tracks 1-4 would have represented a live set over the summer of 2002, while tracks five and six are otherwise stranded acoustic demos (and may have been played as encores, where possible). the style could be broadly categorized as folk punk, but it also leans heavily towards the emo of the period.

written and recorded in late 2001 and the first half of 2002. mildly remixed in november, 2014 to make the tracks more presentable; nothing substantial was altered, and no new sound was recorded. final mixes were on november 19, 2014. disc released on physical media and finalized as inri059 on nov 14, 2017. as always, please use headphones.

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2002, 2014, 2017).

credits

released August 1, 2002

j - acoustic guitar, voice (3)
sean - vocals, lyrics 
 
 

Sunday, November 12, 2017

republishing inri058

there are a few ideas in my discography that i've explored from multiple angles, but nothing else at all like this track, which has been through multiple complete rethinks involving multiple people over the course of sixteen years. as the revisions are so diverse, i think that a comprehensive collection of interpretations is a proper entry within my discography.

in the end, this emerges as my seventh symphony.

the collection is to be arranged chronologically in four discs consisting of two 2xcd sets, with the first two discs consisting of mixes that were meant for inclusion in band projects and the third and fourth consisting of mixes that were created after the track was moved into my own various one-person projects. i've placed the third disc at the front of the sequence to stress the july, 2002 release date.

further discussions of the various incarnations of the tracks appear on the track pages, or are linked out from the track pages. please click through.

written over 2001 and rethought repeatedly over 2002, again in 2007, a third time in 2009 and one last time in late 2014. final mixes were completed over the last week of november and the first week of december, 2014. the concept was rethought on nov 3, 2017, which led to the inclusion of five more mixes and an expansion from two cds to four cds. as always, please use headphones.

the album version of the track (track 9), reconstructed in 2014, appears on my seventh record:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ftaa

the 2002 vocal mix appears on the rabit is wolf demo:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/rabit-is-wolf

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2014, 2017).
 

credits

released july 4, 2002

j - electric & acoustic & classical guitars, analog & digital effects & processing, electric bass guitar, synthesizers, drum programming, orchestral sequencing (12), drum manipulation, vocal manipulation, voice (9), digital wave editing, loops, equalizers, soundscaping, sampling, composition, production, cover art

sean - vocals/lyrics (2,5,7), ring modulator (7-9, 11, 13-14, 16)
greg - drum performance sample source (4, 6-9, 11, 13)
bob - hammering (3)

the rendered electronic orchestra on track 12 includes tuba, saxophone, flute, clarinet, orchestra hit, piano, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections.

numbers refer to the physical tracklisting, rather than the bandcamp ordering.

Friday, November 10, 2017

deathtokoalas
i don't tend to have a lot of empathy for soldiers. sorry.

they sold their soul to the devil, and they got burned.


(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
it's not hard to figure out that killing people is evil.

so, i don't really buy that defence.

that's basically "just following orders".

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
that is not what these trained killers do at all - what they do is protect and uphold american corporate interests at the expense of anything and everything else. the only thing they are servants of is capital.

and, there are certain sorts of criminals that should actually probably be sent to combat instead of to jail.

send the rapists to iraq to fight isis....

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
suggesting that criminals aren't a good fit for the military is a category error, a contradiction in terms, as one becomes a criminal as soon as they join the military.

we should neither have a standing army nor should we have conscription; we should rely on the ability to spontaneously come together in mass movements of popular solidarity, when we need to.

once in a while, the united states military will do something good - like help the soviets defeat the nazis, or not get too much in the way of the russians defeating isis. isis is the kind of thing that we ought to come together to fight. but, that doesn't change anything, or make the army's existence any less egregious.

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
what i actually said is that certain kinds of criminals should be forced (conscripted) to serve a military term as part of their sentence. "allowed" implies some kind of privilege; the idea is that this is a punishment.

rich stoner
We are trained to handle situations and be efficient in what we do. We don't go around just killing. We detain if we can but like any criminal trying to get away it's either fight or flight and I'm not going to stand there and get shot. Also the reasons so many Innocents died kids included Muslims/foreign fighters love making vehicles into bombs, setting out landmines and other explosives, mortar rounds, shooting wildly into crowds knowing we won't fire back with bystanders around and most importantly strapping bombs to their own kids. I didn't sell my soul to the devil. So when you are sick, dying, alone and scared I will have no empathy for you. Much love

deathtokoalas
your personal anecdotes deeply belie the evidence released by sources like wikileaks, which present modern warfare rather as something not much different than playing a video game, and with not much more concern for lost life than the average gamer would demonstrate.

rich stoner
hahahaha that's too funny

deathtokoalas
well, it's the truth. you've got what amounts to naive kids playing rpgs, in the military nowadays. the work on the ground is done by local forces, and their lives aren't particularly important, either.

rich stoner
I'm 32 and I'm laughing because you act like you've been there. I know you get all your facts from reading internet garbage and watching the news. So you obviously know they didn't have police over there. We trained and setup an entire police force so they could take care of their own city. We gave people food and water, played soccer with kids. Ate meals with families, pulled tower guard. It's not just guns blazing and killing everything. Its boring about half the time, just gathering Intel so we could figure out where the insurgents were hiding at. I think you watch too many movies little girl.

deathtokoalas
i think perhaps i don't watch enough of them, and if i did i might be more inclined to accept the sanitized, hollywood presentation you're presenting. but, i do know better. sorry.

ps - there were police in iraq before you arrested, tortured and/or executed them all.

Saturday, November 4, 2017

but, yeah.

the idea that there are people out there that think you can take a little piece of bread and then say a magic spell and have it turn into the literal flesh of somebody that supposedly died 2000 years ago, and that then ritually eating that flesh absolves you of something somehow...

that's scary shit. it's mortifying. a phobia of this is called reason.

and, not only is it the case that anybody that believes that should be forcibly barred from public office, it's arguably the case that they should be institutionalized.

it's absolute fucking insanity. 
so, what is it that you don't believe in, then?

is it nuclear reactions, or 12-space?
actually, i know that the pope is only supposed to be infallible on theological matters. so, he can be wrong about who played matlock, but he can't be wrong about transubstantiation - which kind of gives a new twist to the rumours that he had a chemistry degree.

"what? it's a nuclear reaction in 12-space. you've seen star trek, right?"

but, it was a good one liner.
yeah.

well, how about this frankie - why don't we continue this discussion when you tell me what school you got your biology degree from.

what's that? oh. the school of infallifuckingbility, huh? right. well, that's what i thought.
i mean, there's been all this talk for years: "should elizabeth may step down?".

i think the green party should throw her out.
you know, the greens seem to be picking up support in protest, but that's not an answer either - and i've been vocal about my opposition to elizabeth may, and why her position in the anglican church makes her a non-starter as a political option.

in order for the greens to be a viable political option, elizabeth may needs to go - and the party needs to distance itself from her religious views. 

the liberals have been terrible. the upcoming cycle should be about finding ways to get them out, and replace them with a more "progressive" (i don't like that word.) option. but, we have not one but two parties on the left that are under the control of religious fundamentalists. and, at the end of the day, i'd rather vote for a secular liberal party than a religious left party, even if i don't agree with them on economics. as the state has a monopoly on violence, it is of the utmost importance that religious zealots be kept out of office - at the behest of everything else.

but, right now, i'm not likely to vote at all. it's going to be a local decision....