on target and we're flying blind

[the_siobhan]

Currently listening to the Goths Against Fascism raid train. They're raising money for the ACLU and appear to be just short of their goal.

Current DJ is playing fantastic music but will not fucking shut up talking over it.

[EDIT] Very Talky DJ just raided to a new channel and it's somebody I knew back in the day. Heh.

[2nd EDIT] And now new DJ is playing a bunch of Spanish-language punk and goth and ska and it's fucking amazing.

***

Very productive weekend was had where I managed to cross a bunch of things off my to-do list. Lord Brock got his blood taken but I completely failed to get a urine sample because I have to collect it and then get it to the vet within a fairly narrow time frame and he refused to cooperate while they were actually open. I'll try again in the morning.

Which means having a conversation with my boss, "Hey if my cat pees I have to run out the door right away."

I've been thinking anyway, I need to sit down and have a talk with her about medical accommodations. My vertigo has been hell with all the rain storms sweeping through and that's going to be an issue every spring so it would be good if they're prepared for me to be around less when that happens. Unless they want to send me a driver or something.

***

Did another long walk on Friday. Stretching and being good in between. So far foot is still holding up well.

And I was thinking about this as I was out looking around at the various storefronts, Toronto has SO MANY cannabis shops. SO MANY. Some sections of particularly popular shopping streets has a half-dozen per block.

The vast majority of them are not licensed. Ironically our former drug-dealer premier could not figure out how to get legal weed shops sorted when they first became legal so people just went ahead and opened their own. Occasionally cops will go around and close a bunch but they're really the only ones who give a shit.

So anyway one of the things you see frequently here - no idea if this is true in other locations - is weed shops that say in big letters on the front that the owners are from a specific indigenous tribe operating on unceded land as per their treaty rights. I've always wondered if that actually got the cops to stop bothering them.

And then recently a friend pointed out there are also weed shops that say Sovereign people without the tribal mention, and those are run by Freeman and now that I know I see them everywhere.

(For those who don't want to click on the link, Freeman are a group in Canada who have decided that they if they don't "consent" to be citizens they can't be forced to do things like pay taxes or follow laws. I knew somebody who fell for their nonsense and I am absolutely fascinated to know how that's the kind of self-deception that outlasts the first speeding ticket.)

***

Current media consumption: I am binging Slow Horses with the gf and I am loving it. I'm not really one for spy stories, but I am really digging the personalities and the plot twists and the internal conflicts. Also the character Gary Oldman plays is amazing.

Mostly what I'm reading is terribly-written romantasy series which are entirely cookie-cutter and disposable so I can just tear them off the role and then forget about them. Kinda where I'm at for the moment. I will challenge my brain via reading material when it has less going on in the rest of life.

Comments

[greylock]

Did you say punk?
I just discovered this six-month-old banger:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8jdzfHvCI8

If you enjoy Slow Horses (I've not seen it) you may enjoy Black Doves (I have seen it).
I'm not one for spy shows either, but they both got recommended to me.

knew somebody who fell for their nonsense and I am absolutely fascinated to know how that's the kind of self-deception that outlasts the first speeding ticket.

There is an entire genre of court/police videos, especially from the COVID era that has be wondering that question.

[the_siobhan]

Oh that's awesome.

They filmed that entire video as an excuse to jump around in tights.

[armiphlage]

Some of the weed and mushroom shops also don't follow the Employment Standards Act with respect to minimum wage or age of employees, or the Human Rights Code. I keep reporting ads where they want to pay minors less than the child minimum wage to deliver weed during school hours, or where they say they don't hire certain ethnic groups.

[the_siobhan]

Now I'm wondering if there is an overlap between the "Sovereign" owners and the ones you are reporting. If they already think laws don't apply to them, there's nothing stopping them also disregarding the Human Rights Code.

[elusis]

Does your vet not keep cats for the day to do the urine sample collection? That's what I've always done. (unclear how to get urine from clumping litter anyhoo...)

Slow Horses was WAY more compelling than I would have predicted. It had been on my list for a while but it was only when F and I were uncertain what to watch next and I said "well there's this Gary Oldman cop show..." and the next thing we knew we'd watched all 5 seasons.

[the_siobhan]

I imagine they could, but that would cost a million dollars a day.

They give me a kit with a nonabsorbent litter and a syringe and sample container. The tech told me they need the first sample of the day, but we're running into the problem where he gets up a lot earlier than I do so I failed again this morning.

Tomorrow I think will get up an hour early to set up the litter and then go back to bed. Fortunately I have an extra base, so I just swap them and it takes less than a minute.

[gatheringrivers]

For those who don't want to click on the link, Freeman are a group in Canada who have decided that they if they don't "consent" to be citizens they can't be forced to do things...

Oh, lordie, is that what the "sovereign citizen" brigade renamed themselves to up there? You have my sympathy...

[the_siobhan]

A friend of mind calls them "legal woo". They are just so genuinely ridiculous.

[galadhir]

Weed is still illegal in the UK, alas! I have often wished there was a source of medicinal weed available, but I think you have to be either terminally ill or rich enough to pay a private clinic hundreds of pounds a month to get hold of it.

[the_siobhan]

It's still a bit of a legal quagmire to sell here because it's supposed to be licensed, but the licensed stuff is so shitty nobody buys it. So there are a ton of illegal places gambling that they can make enough money to just pay the fines when they get raided and keep going. It does mean consumers don't get hassled by the cops any more though, which is a good thing.

Mushrooms are now in the legal spot weed was in for a long time. A year or so ago there were mushroom shops all over town (Every visitor to Toronto I met up with said to me, "I didn't know mushrooms were legal now". They aren't! But it was profitable enough to operate anyway.) But then there got to be so many of them it stopped being profitable and a bunch of them closed down. Now we're back to just having a handful spread out over town; they get raided every few months, pay their fines, and reopen the next day.

It's wild. Probably the next thing to be legalized.