Via Dutchie.

I’m trying very hard not to graffiti.

I’m trying very hard not to steal things.

I’m trying very hard not to hurt the people around me.

So yeah, I’m taking some time off to calm down. But one last thing: I’m starting to claim white male privilege.

Example:

“Do it this way.”

“Why?”

“White male privilege — because I said so.”

It’s good fun. I feel like I need a soccer-type card (coloured white) as a punctuating prop.

But yeah: I’m actually seeking professional help. More later. Also I might be dropping a music video soon, and TVO might want something I did a long time ago (I’m guessing that won’t happen — but we’ll see).

Anyway, trying to manage my karma. Out.

To that end, they’re getting me to help them revise their hiring process, towards which I am also ambivalent: I get to pick my own coworkers, but I have to do HR — traditionally the most useless development task of all.

How does one hire coders? Interesting question. More to follow (and much discussion, I imagine). Since I’m building HR policy from the ground-up, here’re my preliminary decrees:

HR policy #1: We will never hire anyone who has had anything to do with iTrade or Canada Post.

HR policy #2: We will never hire anyone on my shitlist.

HR policy #3: all my industry friends now have job offers (let me know if you want one).

Corrupt, I know. Fun, too!

Okay, whatever. No ads for you. I don’t want a truck or fucking Budweiser anyway. I guess that’s why they’re fucking me off. Anyway, Chomsky:

It’s a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority, and group cohesion behind leadership elements — in fact, it’s training in irrational jingoism.

George Martin “forgot about” the guitar solo. Sounds nice, and it’s cool to have the audio from the mixer synced to the video and see the other Beatle do it live.

via

System: “For service in English, press 1.”
me: 1
System: “For residential inquiries, press 1.”
me: 1
System: “Welcome to Canada Post Customer Service. Goodbye.”

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THIS AIN’T OVER

That’s me playing the nanoPAD2, which is a cheapo Korg pad controller*, and the X-Session Pro, which is an M-Audio DJ mixing board. I, or “we” maybe, was/were going to get an APC40, which is something similar and slathered in blinkenlights and much more costly, but the Akai factory was destroyed in the Thai tsunami and no one in Canada has been able to buy new Akai stuff since before XMas. Or so, at least, the kind hipster at Moog Audio informed me.

I used the pads to trigger all the instruments, and tweaked various parameters like snare snappiness and the frequencies of the noise floor during the drop with the mixer.

* like Araabmuzik uses

I’ve been stymied on a video project for a while and one of my friends agreed to help me finish it. I needed to send him 100 gigs of footage, so I cleared off one of my terabyte drives and packed it up. My studio is equidistant from a UPS store and a Canada Post outlet. I picked the wrong one.

I paid for insurance. I paid for guaranteed delivery. I was promised it would arrive last Thursday — and I double-checked this because I’m under time pressure. Today, Tuesday, it arrived… AT MY HOUSE IN TORONTO. They gave themselves a five day extension and then did it wrong anyway: CLUSTERFAIL.

This is a truly monstrous waste of taxpayer dollars. I would probably be even more upset if I paid taxes.

Naomi Klein claimed, in The Shock Doctrine, that the Right’s modus operandi is to wait for disasters and then use them as causi belli (forgive my probably-wrong Latin pluralization) to execute their agenda. Well, here’s a freebie: our economy is SHRINKING — there aren’t enough resources to go around — let’s stop delivering post in, say, the GTA. Just for a week.

I predict that people won’t notice, let alone care. If they do, either, just restart it.

But imagine: a whole week of not killing trees for paper-based spam, not having our identities and belongings stolen, and having packages delivered TO THEIR RECIPIENTS (I can’t stress this point enough — it’s really the whole key to “delivery”, as a concept, and I’m willing to pay extra for it)… Oh, what a magical land of joy our fair city might become.

And once that experiment is successful we could roll it out to the whole nation:

Seriously, though: I would rather Harper just keep the entire postal budget for himself. The money would do me just as much good, but he’d retire from politics. Maybe he could split it with Ford.

[UPDATE: THEY BILLED US EXTRA TO TAKE DELIVERY AT THE WRONG LOCATION.]

This is structured as the lead-up to a notional first drop. I don’t like the lead, but it’s mostly there to counterpoint the bass. Snares need work. The lead pans wide, so if you’re not on headphones it’s mud.

A 909, correctly compressed, with just a touch of EQ, is the business. — The Dance Music Manual