Saturday, March 13, 2021

also, i'm not done cleaning in here, but i need to get to the spirit of the new time allotment, down.

so, once i get that 16-bit pc up, i'm going to spin directly into the food saga.

this will be life for a while:
sat/sun/mon building the blogs
tues/wed/thurs working on the discography (starting at period 3)
fri on the alter-reality.

what that will mean for right now is:

sat/sun/mon typing
tues/wed/thurs cleaning and rebuilding
fri on the alter-reality
after a few false starts, i got through this last night, and i don't have much of a comment regarding it, except to point out that even a three hour documentary is not enough to even begin a narrative on the sumerians, even given the nature of the sources. each of these city-states, themselves, requires a lengthy narrative. so, when you only touch the surface like this, you're not leaving open a lot of space for criticisms. some of these videos work well as narratives, regardless; i found that this one was too cursory, and i'd encourage the creator of these films to replace this single narrative on the sumerians with a series of narratives on each of the city-states, leading up to the collapse of the neo-sumerian empire, and it's replacement with the beginnings of semitic civilization.

i do have a bit of a comment on sumerian origins, though.

i've previously suggested that the sumerians were probably caucasian speakers that ultimately descended from somewhere around the black sea. the reason i've done this is that there are language isolates in the region to this day, and it's a sort of an easiest answer type theory. but, because they only really left us hieroglyph-type writing. it's essentially impossible to be really certain about it.

the video presents an interesting theory about sumerians ultimately resettling in the region due to a flood along the area that created the persian gulf. while the flood myth seems to be traced to rising ocean levels in the period, which may have also been partly due to climate change as a result of early agricultural adoption, there isn't any good reason to trace the movement out of the gulf, itself. the earliest agricultural adoption was actually to the north, in modern-day turkey (unless evidence of earlier agricultural adoption exists in the persian gulf). there would have been similar flood-type events in multiple areas, including in the black sea. indeed, the universality of the flood myth across multiple civilizations in disparate regions is a part of the logic in suggesting that it is based on an event that actually happened.

that said, these ideas aren't mutually exclusive. it's entirely plausible that populations moved into the region from both directions, and entirely plausible that there were caucasian speakers in the area that become flooded to produce the persian gulf. so, this is in some ways a minor detail. but, i think it's important to point it out - because i would argue that the evidence suggests that the sumerians came from the north, rather than the south.

besides that, this is what it is - a very cursory narrative, that is useful as a basic introduction, i suppose, but not much else. 





ok, so i'm caught up on the narrative and will stay caught up on it. going out several days in a row like that is pretty unusual for me...
last night was a wash - i slept all day, then spent all night eating. well, i tried to eat eggs & pasta together, and i got slowed down by the pasta...it took a long time....

and, then i slept all day again...

i had my desk pulled away from the window to silicon it and was able to get it back in place before i fell asleep. when i woke up, the smell was definitely reduced but still apparent. i guess those minor drafts that i couldn't really resolve with silicon & tape built up over night. this reduced the problem from a potential health concern to a minor annoyance, but i didn't go through this process to merely minimize it.

so, i've boarded up the window. it was the only option left.

well, it's not boarded, exactly. what i did was take the cardboard box from the end table and nail it it into the frame with some finishing nails. these windows obviously need to be replaced, anyways and i can't open the window on this side of the house without choking. even opening the door for a second to check my mail (i got a package of two bottles of hydroxyapatite in) is a challenge. so, this is cheaper and easier and, so long as it works, it's a better approach - the window has no use, it's just a problem.

so, i swapped out the lightbulbs in here. i was waiting for the ones in there to burn out, but those leds, huh? i've been waiting 2.5 years. the ones i bought to replace them with when i first moved in here are much, much brighter. so, that should compensate for the loss of light.

i was able to tape together some extra polyvinyl chloride i had into an under-desk rug for the power chords and guitar effects. and, i cry every time i realize how long this is taking. but, soon.

i can't do anything else for this window, and it seems to be working, so i'm hoping to have the 16-bit pc set up by the end of the night.

where was i in the narration?