i was up within a few hours and finished my fruit and took some pills, but it didn't really take and i found myself back at sleep until just before 7:00, when i made some pasta and some coffee with the intent to go back to sleep. but, i couldn't get back to sleep after that.

instead, i sent an email to my mom and a fax to my doctor:

=====

i've attached a lab report. but the following picture is the part i'm curious about:

they've been testing me for hormones yearly since i've been on them, but they never tested me for iron. according to these results, i'm dangerously anemic.

now, i should point out that they tested me with normal male references. that number - 12 ug/L - is considered deficient for men, but is at the very lower end of normal female variability. i've been estrogen dominant for essentially my whole life, so it may make more sense to use female references. that said, it is low, regardless - and that shouldn't be dietary. my diet is low in meat, but i should be getting enough non-heme iron from plant sources. like, i did the research and did the math - if i can absorb it, i should be getting enough. if i was absorbing it properly, that number should be 10x that.

i remember a lot of concern about anemia when i was a kid, but i never got a clear explanation. iirc, dad seemed unconcerned that there was anything wrong with me in general, and he dropped the point altogether as i grew older, but one of the very few memories i have of his mother is her insistence that i get enough iron. she seemed to be trying to get across the idea that i may be at risk for a genetic iron deficiency. she moved out west to victoria when i was young and dad did not talk to her much after that; i have no real relationship with her and don't know how to contact her. she eased up over time, but the stepmother didn't get along with anybody in his family. at all. that side of the family just sort of disappeared around the time he married her and didn't reappear until the last months of his life, when i'd been mostly cast aside due to religiosity around my gender identity.

i can't remember the last time anybody tested me for iron, but those results are definitely suggesting something is wrong - either i'm not absorbing it, or i'm bleeding somewhere.

my cholesterol is outstanding, as usual. my white blood count seems high, and i'm going to assume it's allergies for now, but i want to keep an eye on that - it's an early warning sign for leukemia. but, it's also a symptom of ms, which i'm more concerned about and have been concerned about for a long time.

what do you recall about my iron status as a child?

j

=======

hi.

i got my blood test, and i'm going to to type a little after, but the reason i'm sending the fax is due to the covid screening. my eosinophil count seems high, and that took me by surprise. but, it would suggest i'm fighting something off.

at the end of februrary, i suggested i was dealing with an indigestion-like gastric discomfort and cancelled due to overcaution. while i haven't developed anything like covid symptoms since, and have no known cause of exposure to it, i've spent much of the last two weeks cleaning out a basement that has built up large amounts of what looks like soot and ash, but what at times might have also been mould and fungus. so, i've been exposed to large amounts of dust and potentially some more traditional airborne pathogens. while this is now really the most pressing component in the blood work (by far), and i honestly need medical guidance to correctly understand it, i've never had these levels tested before and realize i should relax before i start freaking out about cancer - although i'll remind you that i've been concerned about symptoms of ms for years, and this is potentially consistent with that.

i've been breathing in dust all week and have been coughing it up, and blowing and sneezing it out. i have a slightly raw throat from it. it makes sense.

that said, i'll leave it up to dr ===== and to the office as to how to react - as it could be consistent with an infection, as well - although i insist that i have no discernible symptoms, if true, and no known cause of exposure.

i saw a dentist on thursday.

regarding the estradiol results, i should point out that i've switched to taking 4 mg twice daily instead of 2 mg 4x daily. the logic is if that if absorption is lower with the generic then lets give it more to discard, and, while it still seems low, that seems to have worked well enough, even if it's at the very bottom of the reference range. i'd still be looking for supplemental sublingual application with the generics, if feasible.

regarding the iron, these results are surprising to me. i sent you detailed dietary information that indicates that my iron levels should be more than sufficient - if i'm low, it's not due to my diet. so, i'm now concerned about this. that being said, most of the numbers fall into the low end of the range for normal female references, even if they're low for male references, and i wonder what the right reference to use is.

nonetheless, if my iron is this low after taking this much, then supplements don't seem to be a useful approach - i'm either not absorbing it, or i'm suffering from internal bleeding. so, i either have a genetic condition or some kind of ulcer somewhere. i mean, it has to be one or the other.

my father is dead and i don't know how to contact my grandmother, but i've emailed my mother. there is actually good reason to suggest that i may have a genetic condition that prevents me from absorbing iron, and i knew that, but i didn't realize it was that bad.

that being said, if there's something that can be done to check for bleeding...

so, i'm good to come in on friday and i'll let the office decide.

===

...and, then i crashed again, but only for a few hours. i tried to get up, but i fell back asleep. 

===

i crashed this morning, but that wasn't unexpected. 

so, should i eat meat?

i don't have any good reason, at this point, to think it'll help much. i'd rather rule out bleeding and genetics first, and then resort to meat only in the end, if i absolutely have to.

---

i should get some heme supplements, for now.

---

i mean, i don't think it's going to work, but i need to try something until we can get a better idea of it.

======

when i woke back up early in the afternoon, i intended to get out to the metro to get soy on my bike in the warmer weather, and both found myself disappointed (it wasn't that warm) and missing out on the warmest part of the day. i did finally get out, but not until it was almost dark. my soy was no longer on sale there, but it was still the only place selling the light. but, i stopped at a different store to get chocolate and normal vanilla, for the coffee and pasta bowls.

i then found myself back at home in the dark, with the need to get out one more time to the shopper's to get bathroom supplies. again, i found myself with an overbearing manager following me around, telling me to hurry up - something they'll need to get used to doing. but, i got what i needed from the store and was up and out and home by about 21:00.

i wanted cheap heme in the supplement section just to try it, but instead found myself needing to buy something expensive over the counter, and refused it, hoping to get an rx, if necessary, instead.

i made some eggs and intended to catch up, but instead found myself bogged down with concerns about the blood test, and spent the night posting here & sending emails to family members, including to my uncle and my sister:

=====

i could be just eating too much wheat, too:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2820048/

i need to do some typing, but i'm exhausted. i'm still convinced that the second-hand smoke is the primary problem - i didn't develop an iron deficiency recently. whatever exists was always there. and, i was frequently cold before i started eating all this bran, too. - but it's certainly not helping.

---

i mean, look at the fruit bowl.

yes, it has a lot of wheat bran.

but, it has 100% of the iron (some of it fortified in the bran), 250% of the vitamin c + high fat, premium ice cream. that should be good enough.

obviously, it isn't - obviously, something is going wrong along the way. but, i don't think that removing the bran is the right argument.

---

hi.

i am distant with everybody and will continue to be but i legitimately hope you are well.

i recently got a routine blood test to check for estrogen levels (i've attached it) and they did an iron test on a hunch and i'm coming face to face with the fact that i am dangerously anemic. i remember hearing people talk about that when i was a kid, and being sent home with salami, but i was never diagnosed with anything and i largely haven't thought much about it...

i get tons of iron in my diet. but, on some reflection, i have been dealing with the symptoms of anemia for most of my life, and diet doesn't seem to be a factor.

my father was idiosyncratically cold all of the time, although i don't recall him ever saying "i'm anemic" to me in so many terms. he just complained it was cold and put layers on and yelled to turn up the heat - and the general understanding was that it was "poor circulation". i've long realized that i inherited this "poor circulation", but these iron levels are so low that they're going to kill me. like, i might need a blood infusion.

there are genes that lead to an inability to absorb iron by screwing with your hormones, but the science is relatively new. nonetheless, if that's what i have and what he had, it may very well also be something you have, and something your own father had.

one of the very few memories i have of your mother before she moved to victoria is her being concerned about me being anemic. like, she mentioned it every time i saw her.

so, i'm trying to get as much information to bring to a doctor as i can. is there anything you can clarify about any anemia that your father (or mine.) may have had? what kind of family history can you give me in terms of anemia?

j

---

wait.

i'm low in iron. i just got a blood test. now i'm tired. obviously?

----

i guess i can't spare much blood, huh?

what am i doing about this?

well, i went to the store looking for heme iron and the only option was an expensive supplement with a measly 11 mg/tab. if i do the math on my diet, i'm already getting more than that. so, that struck me as a waste of money - if i can't absorb it in my diet, what's the use of taking a pill?

i'm checking the formulary and, while heme is not covered, they have these, like, 200 mg tablets of elemental iron that are. well, that's at least worth a shot, i guess - it's at least a substantial increase from what i'm getting, even if i can only absorb 10% of it. that seems like a crapshoot, and i wonder what the side effects might be, but if i can't absorb it...

i sent an email to my mom and she's feigning ignorance. i sent one to my uncle, who may be more useful. i'm trying to avoid contacting my stepmother, if i even can. i'm going to send something to my sister.

what else can i do? 

well, i need to figure out if i'm bleeding, but the more i've processed this, the more obvious it is that this is a genetic concern. my dad never said to me "i'm anemic", but it's pretty obvious that he was. 

so, if i'm not bleeding, and i can't absorb it, it seems logical to look at injections. unfortunately, that seems like a really bad idea - we need iron to create blood, but introducing it into the blood directly seems to have a large amount of dangerous side effects. the preferred approach seems to be iv, but that doesn't seem to be less dangerous.

so, these high potency supplements might be a crapshoot, but it's probably the best choice i've got.

i just wish i could take 50 mg of heme instead of 200 mg of elemental.

---

does estrogen affect iron levels?

it seems to be unclear, with studies arguing both positions.

what i'm going to say is this: while it's certainly possible that estrogen may be exacerbating an underlying issue, i just got an email back from my uncle confirming that this issue with "poor circulation" is something that he has experienced, his mother has experienced, and two of his sisters have experienced.

so, everybody on that side of the family has this condition.

there's clearly an underlying mechanism, and it needs to be addressed, regardless.

---

but, my position is actually as follows, and i'm going to double down on it - i think i'm poorly evolved for the canadian climate. which means what, exactly?

supposedly, something like 30% of the global population is unable to absorb "sufficient" levels of iron, and that is something that is strongly correlated with being brown. when 30% of the population has a disorder, that sounds more like variation than a disease - and that you'd only call it a disease if you're white.

while people have migrated around all over the place for thousands of years, and trying to build strong geographic correlations is no doubt futile, it seems like increased iron absorption is probably an adaptation to colder climates. i wouldn't even be surprised to find out it's neanderthal in origin. it follows that people with genetic backgrounds in warmer climates may just not need as much iron - until they move north, and find themselves up against a wall they can't scale.

the actual best solution is for me to move south, and i know that. if i get some source of wealth, right?

in the mean time, i'm stuck between figuring out a way to warm up and figuring out a way to adjust - and want to lean towards the former more than the latter.

---

this isn't exactly what i'm thinking, but it's in the right neighbourhood:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5066702/

---

i'm attaching some lab work.

i get yearly estrogen test results, which is what the point of the lab work was. and, you can admire my impeccable cholesterol levels if you'd like - something i've taken great care to get under control, given that i think dad had had two heart attacks by the time he turned 40, which i did a few months ago. they couldn't be better. and, it's just through diet and exercise.

but, they did a random ferritin count and rbc test and it turns out i'm dangerously anemic.

i need to present a tad of caution here - the numbers are using male references and they get a little less scary if you use female references, which is probably the right answer, scientifically. i've had essentially no testosterone production for almost my entire life. this is blurry, but when the numbers come in 1% below the male reference value and 10% above the female reference value, there's some reason to be moderate in my response.

but, the numbers are very low, regardless.

i don't want to jump to conclusions until i work out the different options, but it's clear enough that the issue is going to turn out to be genetic. i don't eat red meat anymore, but i get tons of non-heme iron in my diet and i should at least be able to get above the amount i'm at, even i was a little low. i don't have any reason to think i'm suffering from an ulcer, but i need to actually check to see if i am or not, and that's what i'll do over the next few weeks. so, what's left is the unavoidable conclusion that it sort of doesn't matter how much iron i consume in a diet, i just can't absorb it. and, the result is that i'm constantly cold - which should sound familiar. 

i remember his mother telling me i need to be especially concerned about anemia, but i was never diagnosed with it, and this is the first time in my memory that i've ever been tested for it. dad was always evasive about it, speaking about it in vague ways. he never said to me "i'm anemic". but, his whole side of the family is telling me they're suffering from the same thing, so it seems more or less obvious that he was - even if he didn't want to admit it.

the stepmother would know that. that's the information i'm looking for.

and, she would also have some information regarding his white blood counts. my white blood counts have just come in very high. the combination of low iron and high white blood is something that is very concerning, regarding the potential for blood related cancer. it should be obvious why i want the stepmother to look at this - and see if she can provide any information about dad that i can present to my doctor.

she can respond to this address or to koala.central.command@gmail.com. they should both forward to the latter.

fwiw, my perception of the situation is that that side of the family probably has southern genes that restrict iron production. now, we live in a white, northern european society, so we're going to approach this from a specific perspective - we're going to decide that the ability to absorb large amounts of iron is "normal", and that if you can't absorb iron then there's something wrong with you. but, this is actually a backwards approach. the fact is that we evolved in africa, where it's warm all of the time, and had to adjust to the climate as we moved north. it actually follows that we would have evolved to absorb more iron as we became lighter-skinned and not the other way around.

this study maps an allele that codes for excess iron production, which is not exactly what i'm saying, but follows the same sort of logic. it shows pretty clearly that the ability to absorb iron increases as you move north through europe:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5066702/

it would follow that if i can't absorb enough iron to stay warm in canada, then the correct conclusion is probably not that i have an iron deficiency but that i'm living in a climate that i'm not evolved to live in - and the right answer is to move back to sicily, not to bombard my stomach with excess iron.

but, you know.

at the least, i think it's ultimately a better idea to wear a sweater than to try to force my body to accept a mineral it doesn't seem to be programmed to accept.

my understanding is that this science is still developing and there isn't a clear deduction or treatment plan to follow. but, if she can help me understand the genetic background, it can help me understand how to react.

j

---

see, when i look at a study like this...

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0235141

what are they doing, here? they're defining the amount of iron that africans need by looking at the amount that europeans need, and then deciding that africans are anemic because they don't get the amount of iron that europeans do.

but, the reason that europeans need all of this iron is an adaptation to the colder climate! some of these african cultures live exclusively on meat. if they're not absorbing the iron, perhaps it's because they didn't evolve the need for it, because they aren't living in climates that required it.

so, if you follow this line of thinking, what is there to say about the need for "intervention strategies" in african populations to increase their iron levels? it would be racist, if it wasn't clueless.

so, i need to form a position on this. i've sent an email to my sister asking her to contact my stepmother, who is both an expert on bone marrow cancer and the person best positioned to provide information about my father's health. once i get that information, i'm going to need to make a choice:

1) am i actually iron deficient? if so, i guess the only thing i can do is bombard my stomach lining and try to force it to absorb more than it's designed to - to try to break my programming, so to speak.

2) or am i just evolved to thrive in a warmer climate, where all of this excess iron absorption is not just unnecessary but potentially even harmful? i mean, i don't want to give myself alzheimer's...which seems to be correlated with high iron absorption. if so, i should just accept that my ferritin is low due to genetic variation, and try to adjust my environment so it's warmer.

---

yeah.

the more i look into this, the less concerned i am about it. 

this is a different reference range:

The normal range for ferritin in your blood serum is:

20 to 250 ng/mL for adult males

10 to 120 ng/mL for adult females, 18 to 39 years

12 to 263 ng/mL for females, 40 years and older 

25 to 200 ng/mL for newborns

200 to 600 ng/mL at 1 month old

50 to 200 ng/mL at 2 to 5 months old

7 to 140 ng/mL for children 6 months to 15 years

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?contenttypeid=167&contentid=ferritin_blood

i'm at 12 ng/ml - or 12 ug/l, same thing. i don't menstruate, so the 12 is a more appropriate lower bound than the 10.

see - it's the very lower limit, regardless. but, i was fasting.

if my body doesn't know what to do with the iron, it doesn't know what to do with the iron - and i need more warmth, not supplements.

but, i need to make sure i'm not bleeding.

and, how much does your ferritin go up and down, on average?

Serum ferritin levels in normal individuals have been reported to vary by 15% in men and 27% in women on a day-to-day basis [54], with variations of up to 62% when measured over a longer term [55]. 

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcd/2018/9394060/

so, if 12 is the amount measured when i'm fasting at 10 hours, it would be the absolute minimum amount. right? before i accept any sort of iron bombardment, i'm going to request another blood test, but done without fasting. if that number comes up into the 50+ range, i think i have nothing to worry about - i'm just demonstrating variability, and need more warmth than other people that are better adapted for colder climates.

---

conversely, if i do another test with iron levels right after i eat and it's still exceedingly low, then i'm going to need to react differently.

what about testosterone suppression? could that affect iron levels?

again - i don't think that's the primary cause because there's so much evidence pointing to the genetics, but testosterone suppression should actually increase ferritin levels, from what i can see. the mechanism seems to be that taking the testosterone out of the process would limit the conversion of ferritin into red blood cells. that is, the ferritin is a precursor to the red blood cells, so what you end up with is more ferritin and less red blood cells. that's the opposite of what i'm seeing.

if anything, the fact that my rbc count was a little bit deficient and my ferritin count was extremely deficient seems to point to the idea that my ferritin got used up making red blood cells and what the test really suggests is that i was hungry. that might be over-simplifying, but i think it makes sense of it.

and, if that's the case, it would suggest that it was just a function of the distance between eating.

so, while fasting is good for testing glucose, it seems to be bad for testing ferritin - or, at least, bad for testing it once and drawing conclusions from it. i need a post-meal test...

=====

i then found myself feeling overwhelmed and decided to force myself to sleep in until the afternoon, without accomplishing anything overnight or even making my morning fruit bowl. but, i got a fax out to my doctor first, because i hadn't heard anything back from the one i sent the previous day:

====

hi.

i'm still planning on making the appointment at 10:00 tomorrow, unless i hear otherwise. please advise.

i am not experiencing covid symptoms at this time, nor do i have known contact with a covid patient, nor have i left the country. but, that high wbc count indicates i'm fighting something off - which i suspect is an allergic reaction to the second hand smoke seeping into my living space. but, i don't know what the right reaction to that is, as i'm just guessing and am not qualified to.

if you don't want me to come in due to the high white blood cell count, and want me to do another test in a week or two to see if it's come down, i'm going to request that a second rbc/ferritin test also be done *without* fasting.

what i'm thinking is this: i was fasting for ten hours, and then i bicycled to the lab. so, that was the bottom of the cycle - the absolute lowest amount of iron you could measure me at. 12 ug/l is listed as deficient by this lab, but others have it as the lowest point of normal female variability. but, i would expect to be measured at the lowest point, given the circumstances! all my other levels are minimal, so if my iron levels are sufficient but low (30-50 ug/L after eating), that's what you'd expect. that test tells us less than we think, i think.

i have contacted family members, and have confirmed that there is a family history of constantly being cold on my father's side of the family, and a strong suspicion of a genetic predisposition towards minimal iron absorption. but, i'm hesitant to use terms like "anemia" and "iron deficiency" until i can see what it looks like after i've eaten.

i'll remind you that my diet should be sufficient in iron, unless i'm bleeding to death or have a genetic condition that prevents absorption.

the thing is that my father's side of the family has known southern european (french, sicilian italian) as well as apparent middle eastern (jewish) and suspected african and potentially also south asian ancestry. my paternal grandfather was a shady character that was distant to his many children and his background is not well understood, but my father had a recessive south asian blood type that he was not able to trace properly through family history. my grandmother was adopted by an italian family (her parents were apparently killed in a mob hit in the '40s. seriously.), and appears to be of mixed italian/jewish heritage. so, there's a ton of unknowns, here.

i've been told my whole life that i look jewish, and have slowly accepted it, despite having no upbringing that way.

the reason i'm pointing this out is that the research i've done on iron absorption suggests that the reference frames being presented may be unrealistic for people that inherit genes for iron absorption from populations that live in warmer climates. that is, "normal" iron absorption is presented relative to levels that are expected in white, northern european populations. but, these populations have evolved higher levels of iron absorption as an adaptation to the colder climate. for that reason, european scientists have decided that african populations suffer from endemic levels of anemia, despite many of them eating fully carnivorous diets. is it not obvious that they just didn't evolve higher iron absorption to deal with ice age conditions in northern europe? while i understand that canada is a cold climate, i also have to understand that i may be evolved to live in a warmer one and that trying to force higher iron absorption on me may not acctually make any sense - my genes may just not know what to do with it. so, if it turns out that my iron absorption is a little on the low side and i'm constantly cold as a result of it, i'm willing to assign that to variability, and to a mismatch in the environment i exist in relative to the environment i evolved to live in, and focus more on warming myself up, instead. the correct answer would be to move to africa, not to bombard my intestines with iron, and just end up with alzheimer's from it.

there's a study here indicating a geographic cline in an allele for overabsorption, which is not exactly what i'm saying, but demonstrates the point:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5066702/

i'm also going to send this link while suggesting that the researchers missed the point:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0235141

you'll also note that the rbc counts are just a tad below normal reference ranges - which is consistent with the idea that i used all my ferritin up and was just flat out hungry and in need of a meal when i took the test.

so, seeing what my iron levels look like at a max would be a key piece of information to have, before i declare myself anemic and start taking pills.

again - i'll be in tomorrow unless you tell me otherwise. but, if you do tell me otherwise, i'd request another lab rec with both the rbc and wbc counts, as well the ferritin, with the intent of measuring levels when i'm not fasting. i will make that request tomorrow if you are to see me, still.

so, before i sat down to make the fruit bowl, i turned the computer back on to check my email and found that the blood results had come in, already. 

==

my estrogen levels seem to be ok. my cholesterol is absurdly low, as always. my glucose is in normal reference ranges, but i remain concerned that it keeps coming in at over 5 on fasting - it's at the high end of reference ranges, which is a little out of balance given that everything else is low. 

but, i'm apparently dangerously anemic - or that's what it looks like on first glance. but, while a number of 12 ug/ml may be dangerous for men, it's not that unusual, if definitely on the low end, for women. my rbc counts are pegged as low....for men. they're not that off, for women.

so, i'll need to have a talk at my appointment on friday, but i'm not sure what the right reaction is. how should i be measuring this, given that i've been estrogen dominant for my entire adult life?

i clearly get a large amount of iron in my diet - if it's too low, i'm just not absorbing it, which means what? internal bleeding? what?

while i get frequently annoyed by people smoking, i don't otherwise think i have the symptoms of anemia. but, both my father and his mother were always very concerned that i might develop some level of anemia, like they were concerned about something genetic. if it was ever explained to me, i've forgotten.

i'm surprised by this - my b12 levels are extremely high. i'm absorbing that. if i'm not absorbing iron, it's not anything i'm doing wrong, it's something broken in my instruction set. and, i guess we'll have to have a talk about this.

that said, these results can be finnicky as well, and i'm going to request a second test to confirm it before i react.

===

i then spent some time concerning myself with this and reading up on some things regarding it, before i crashed halfway through my fruit - an annoyance, but not an unexpected one. i needed to catch up on sleep, and the blood test seems to have tired me out.

=====

i also have high eosonophils, for some reason.

i don't actually know what that means, but i'm going to need to find out.

---

while jumping to conclusions on this is unjustified, i'm leaning back towards that old concern about ms, again. 

i'm going to wait before i freak out.

but, my initial reaction to understanding what this means is that it's just another piece of evidence towards ms.

---

proving you have ms is hard.

and, the unfortunate reality is that it doesn't help much, because there's no treatment options.

---

what i'm doing - bombarding myself with vitamins and trying as much as i can to avoid smoke - is about as much as can be done for ms.

but, like....am i bleeding? wtf.

---

i wonder if the high eosinophils response could be a reaction to cleaning down here.

a few days ago, i was blowing dust out of my nose.

i guess that's the simplest answer. but, i definitely want to keep an eye on it .

---

my counts are elevated - 1.0x10^9/L - but not high enough to bring up concerns like leukemia.

and, this is the first notice of it.

ever since i moved in here, i've been focusing on writing projects, and living mostly in my bed. when i decided to get up and out of bed and clean in here, i set up a computer system on the other side of the apartment, in front of the largest window in the space. i immediately noticed two things:

1) it was much colder over there

2) the stench of drugs, cigarette smoke and pollution (in that order, in the sense that they aren't the same thing) was much worse.

i set to cleaning up the space to try to isolate and neutralize these smells and quickly realized that the area had an inch layer thick coating of soot and ash that appeared to be settled second-hand smoke. so, i took everything away from the window, i scrubbed the floors and i set up a fan. it seemed to make everything a lot better.

but, then the heat in the space decreased with the shifts in the weather, and the smoke just became that much more apparent. soon, i found myself coughing from the smoke, which was so thick i could actually see it.

while the smoke appears to be coming from what i believe is an undercover police officer upstairs, the drafty windows seemed to be a problem in it seeping in. what i'm deducing is that the smoke is seeping out of the drafty windows upstairs and into the drafty windows, downstairs. so, i decided i needed to find a way to seal up the windows, and found myself at canadian tire looking for the kind of silicon you can apply without a gun.

i'm not wearing a mask when i'm out, in a conscious act of civil disobedience. the science is clear enough that medical masks of the sort being mandated are entirely useless in stopping the spread of any virus, and i consequently resent being forced to conform to a wardrobe decision that is intended to make other people feel safe. i don't care if you feel safe when i'm in your presence or not - if it bothers you, get up and walk away. i don't feel an obligation to adjust to your concerns, and you can essentially fuck off if that bothers you. i don't care. if there was some actually valid medical logic, i'd adhere to it - there isn't. it's theatre, and i'm having none of it.

so, i tell people i have asthma. 

most stores just shrug it off, but the canadian tire's reaction was hilarious. i actually had the manager escort me around the store in a full visor, which i'll acknowledge is at least potentially effective, even if i felt like making a cherryesque remark about it. if that's what they want to do, fine - but they should realize i'm going to force them to keep doing it, because i'm not going to wear a mask, at all, ever. 

so, the thing i was looking for was out of stock, and i had the store manager sit there and keep watch over me for ten minutes while they contacted the guy that works in the department, to make sure he didn't have any in the back. silicon is silicon, right? it just needs to plug the hole.

that's a lot of effort for a $10 purchase, but they can make the choices they wish to make. whatever. 

i stopped at the food basics afterwards, picked up some items and made it back home for the night.

it is now friday morning, and i've clearly been pre-occupied with my iron levels. but, how did i get here, and what else has happened?

it was tuesday morning that i crashed after eating some eggs and wasn't able to get to the blood lab until close to 18:00 due to the need to clean myself up to get out. i got one of the tables from walmart before i left, and the other is still on the way - which has prevented me from doing final cleaning in that part of the room. on the way out, i noticed some discarded bookcases on the side of the road and made a mental note to grab them on the way back.

it was not as warm as i hoped when i left, and the wind made the whole thing deceiving, although it was certainly nicer than it's been. so, i got to the lab at the very end of the day, had no wait time as a result of it and was the last person out of the place - the doors were locked. but, i made it, at least. 

the phlebotomist was about 5 foot 1 and i'm not entirely convinced she was of legal age; the first thing out of her mouth was a snide helloooooo that translated to something like "hi, sexy", she then verifies that i prefer to be called jessica before referring to me as jason, and she starts the process off by straddling her legs around mine and leaning into me like that's all she needed to get off just right then and there. and, as is generally the case in these situations, i'm just amused by it. if i wasn't overwhelmingly queer and entirely disinterested, right? but, she's done as soon as she grabs me and pulls herself closer to me... 

but, then she seems to miss the vein the first time, as though she was too distracted to focus. ouch, but ok. nobody's perfect, right? she eventually gets three vials before letting the elastic go and then -"ohmygod i'm so sorry, i forgot one.". really? what have i done to this poor girl? or is it just an excuse for a second embrace? 

so, she goes for the other arm, leans into my leg and across my body extra firmly - and misses. again. she then stops and wants my other arm back, again. 

at this point, i'm getting a little concerned and want some reassurance. are we sure this is the last vial?  are we sure we want the same arm? she assures me it's fine, and i'm not so sure, but what other choice do i have?

this arm is raw now from three pokes, but she gets it done and i'm outta there....

when i get outside, the temperature is actually noticeably falling and i realize that i should get home. but, i haven't eaten in ten hours, so i decide to go across to the timmy's to get a coffee, before heading to the closest grocery store, and getting home. i mostly got bathroom stuff - tp, soap, shampoo - but i grabbed some broccoli and some yogurt as well, and, i'm off to get it away.

the bookcases are indeed still there when i get back, in less than pristine shape, but certainly sufficient for what i might use them for. they're not going to maximize the space, but the price is great. these are both roughly 50"x30", so they're about the right width and about 20-25" too short. if i find something better in the long run, i can potentially move them to the back space. for now, it's incredibly useful to me to take them as they are. what i'm going to need to do is cut some shelves for them, which i can do for cheap at home depot. and, if my table can hurry up and get here, i can even reuse the wood from that old rickety thing i've got in there now.

it's a shame about that thing; i wish i had a better use for it, but it's not the kind of thing i'd really want. it was some kind of chest that was probably intended to store dress shirts - old, but cheap, and it just didn't make sense to me in the other basement. so, i initially tried to convert it into an entertainment unit by cutting out the back. i then tried to flip it over into a glorified headboard, and it would have been fine if i didn't have to move it twice. if i knew i was going to need to move it within a few months, i wouldn't have done that to it. i wish i kept that extra wood, but it's gone, now. i would have no more use for it as it initially was in here than i did before, but if i had that extra wood, i'd have enough for multiple extra shelves. as it is, i imagine i can get 10 shelves or so from it. but, one thing at a time - and i now have two moderately sized dirty bookcases in what was my pristinely clean floors. it'll be resolved soon...

so, i don't need any more furniture for the bedroom, or for the studio, for now. i should be able to get to organizing things as soon as i can. that's great...

so, that was excursion number one, but i was out again within a few minutes.

so, i had to stop to do a first silicon run on the window in here because the stench was just vicious.

the last few days have been sporadic, but the write-up is finally coming, as i wait for the silicon to dry.

i want to be clear about what i said about testosterone and ferritin. my rbc counts are a little low - my ferritin counts are very low. so, i ought to be more concerned about low ferritin than low rbc.

what modulating testosterone does is increase or decrease the rate at which the ferritin converts to red blood cells. so, if you give your body more testosterone, it should create more red blood cells and leave less ferritin behind; if you reduce testosterone, it should slow the rate of red blood cell production, thereby incresing your iron stores.

it follows that my low ferritin count cannot be explained as a consequence of low testosterone - that i would rather expect the opposite from low testosterone, namely an excess of ferritin.

so, i've got some sleep and need to catchup, after i make some fruit.

conversely, if i do another test with iron levels right after i eat and it's still exceedingly low, then i'm going to need to react differently.

what about testosterone suppression? could that affect iron levels?

again - i don't think that's the primary cause because there's so much evidence pointing to the genetics, but testosterone suppression should actually increase ferritin levels, from what i can see. the mechanism seems to be that taking the testosterone out of the process would limit the conversion of ferritin into red blood cells. that is, the ferritin is a precursor to the red blood cells, so what you end up with is more ferritin and less red blood cells. that's the opposite of what i'm seeing.

if anything, the fact that my rbc count was a little bit deficient and my ferritin count was extremely deficient seems to point to the idea that my ferritin got used up making red blood cells and what the test really suggests is that i was hungry. that might be over-simplifying, but i think it makes sense of it.

and, if that's the case, it would suggest that it was just a function of the distance between eating.

so, while fasting is good for testing glucose, it seems to be bad for testing ferritin - or, at least, bad for testing it once and drawing conclusions from it. i need a post-meal test...

yeah.

the more i look into this, the less concerned i am about it. 

this is a different reference range:

The normal range for ferritin in your blood serum is:

20 to 250 ng/mL for adult males

10 to 120 ng/mL for adult females, 18 to 39 years

12 to 263 ng/mL for females, 40 years and older 

25 to 200 ng/mL for newborns

200 to 600 ng/mL at 1 month old

50 to 200 ng/mL at 2 to 5 months old

7 to 140 ng/mL for children 6 months to 15 years

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?contenttypeid=167&contentid=ferritin_blood

i'm at 12 ng/ml - or 12 ug/l, same thing. i don't menstruate, so the 12 is a more appropriate lower bound than the 10.

see - it's the very lower limit, regardless. but, i was fasting.

if my body doesn't know what to do with the iron, it doesn't know what to do with the iron - and i need more warmth, not supplements.

but, i need to make sure i'm not bleeding.

and, how much does your ferritin go up and down, on average?

Serum ferritin levels in normal individuals have been reported to vary by 15% in men and 27% in women on a day-to-day basis [54], with variations of up to 62% when measured over a longer term [55]. 

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcd/2018/9394060/

so, if 12 is the amount measured when i'm fasting at 10 hours, it would be the absolute minimum amount. right? before i accept any sort of iron bombardment, i'm going to request another blood test, but done without fasting. if that number comes up into the 50+ range, i think i have nothing to worry about - i'm just demonstrating variability, and need more warmth than other people that are better adapted for colder climates.

see, when i look at a study like this...

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0235141

what are they doing, here? they're defining the amount of iron that africans need by looking at the amount that europeans need, and then deciding that africans are anemic because they don't get the amount of iron that europeans do.

but, the reason that europeans need all of this iron is an adaptation to the colder climate! some of these african cultures live exclusively on meat. if they're not absorbing the iron, perhaps it's because they didn't evolve the need for it, because they aren't living in climates that required it.

so, if you follow this line of thinking, what is there to say about the need for "intervention strategies" in african populations to increase their iron levels? it would be racist, if it wasn't clueless.

so, i need to form a position on this. i've sent an email to my sister asking her to contact my stepmother, who is both an expert on bone marrow cancer and the person best positioned to provide information about my father's health. once i get that information, i'm going to need to make a choice:

1) am i actually iron deficient? if so, i guess the only thing i can do is bombard my stomach lining and try to force it to absorb more than it's designed to - to try to break my programming, so to speak.

2) or am i just evolved to thrive in a warmer climate, where all of this excess iron absorption is not just unnecessary but potentially even harmful? i mean, i don't want to give myself alzheimer's...which seems to be correlated with high iron absorption. if so, i should just accept that my ferritin is low due to genetic variation, and try to adjust my environment so it's warmer.

this isn't exactly what i'm thinking, but it's in the right neighbourhood:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5066702/

but, my position is actually as follows, and i'm going to double down on it - i think i'm poorly evolved for the canadian climate. which means what, exactly?

supposedly, something like 30% of the global population is unable to absorb "sufficient" levels of iron, and that is something that is strongly correlated with being brown. when 30% of the population has a disorder, that sounds more like variation than a disease - and that you'd only call it a disease if you're white.

while people have migrated around all over the place for thousands of years, and trying to build strong geographic correlations is no doubt futile, it seems like increased iron absorption is probably an adaptation to colder climates. i wouldn't even be surprised to find out it's neanderthal in origin. it follows that people with genetic backgrounds in warmer climates may just not need as much iron - until they move north, and find themselves up against a wall they can't scale.

the actual best solution is for me to move south, and i know that. if i get some source of wealth, right?

in the mean time, i'm stuck between figuring out a way to warm up and figuring out a way to adjust - and want to lean towards the former more than the latter.

does estrogen affect iron levels?

it seems to be unclear, with studies arguing both positions.

what i'm going to say is this: while it's certainly possible that estrogen may be exacerbating an underlying issue, i just got an email back from my uncle confirming that this issue with "poor circulation" is something that he has experienced, his mother has experienced, and two of his sisters have experienced.

so, everybody on that side of the family has this condition.

there's clearly an underlying mechanism, and it needs to be addressed, regardless.

i guess i can't spare much blood, huh?

what am i doing about this?

well, i went to the store looking for heme iron and the only option was an expensive supplement with a measly 11 mg/tab. if i do the math on my diet, i'm already getting more than that. so, that struck me as a waste of money - if i can't absorb it in my diet, what's the use of taking a pill?

i'm checking the formulary and, while heme is not covered, they have these, like, 200 mg tablets of elemental iron that are. well, that's at least worth a shot, i guess - it's at least a substantial increase from what i'm getting, even if i can only absorb 10% of it. that seems like a crapshoot, and i wonder what the side effects might be, but if i can't absorb it...

i sent an email to my mom and she's feigning ignorance. i sent one to my uncle, who may be more useful. i'm trying to avoid contacting my stepmother, if i even can. i'm going to send something to my sister.

what else can i do? 

well, i need to figure out if i'm bleeding, but the more i've processed this, the more obvious it is that this is a genetic concern. my dad never said to me "i'm anemic", but it's pretty obvious that he was. 

so, if i'm not bleeding, and i can't absorb it, it seems logical to look at injections. unfortunately, that seems like a really bad idea - we need iron to create blood, but introducing it into the blood directly seems to have a large amount of dangerous side effects. the preferred approach seems to be iv, but that doesn't seem to be less dangerous.

so, these high potency supplements might be a crapshoot, but it's probably the best choice i've got.

i just wish i could take 50 mg of heme instead of 200 mg of elemental.

wait.

i'm low in iron. i just got a blood test. now i'm tired. obviously?

i mean, look at the fruit bowl.

yes, it has a lot of wheat bran.

but, it has 100% of the iron (some of it fortified in the bran), 250% of the vitamin c + high fat, premium ice cream. that should be good enough.

obviously, it isn't - obviously, something is going wrong along the way. but, i don't think that removing the bran is the right argument.

i could be just eating too much wheat, too:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2820048/

i need to do some typing, but i'm exhausted. i'm still convinced that the second-hand smoke is the primary problem - i didn't develop an iron deficiency recently. whatever exists was always there. and, i was frequently cold before i started eating all this bran, too. - but it's certainly not helping.

i mean, i don't think it's going to work, but i need to try something until we can get a better idea of it.

i should get some heme supplements, for now.

i crashed this morning, but that wasn't unexpected. 

so, should i eat meat?

i don't have any good reason, at this point, to think it'll help much. i'd rather rule out bleeding and genetics first, and then resort to meat only in the end, if i absolutely have to.

my counts are elevated - 1.0x10^9/L - but not high enough to bring up concerns like leukemia.

and, this is the first notice of it.

i wonder if the high eosinophils response could be a reaction to cleaning down here.

a few days ago, i was blowing dust out of my nose.

i guess that's the simplest answer. but, i definitely want to keep an eye on it .

what i'm doing - bombarding myself with vitamins and trying as much as i can to avoid smoke - is about as much as can be done for ms.

but, like....am i bleeding? wtf.

proving you have ms is hard.

and, the unfortunate reality is that it doesn't help much, because there's no treatment options.

while jumping to conclusions on this is unjustified, i'm leaning back towards that old concern about ms, again. 

i'm going to wait before i freak out.

but, my initial reaction to understanding what this means is that it's just another piece of evidence towards ms.

i also have high eosonophils, for some reason.

i don't actually know what that means, but i'm going to need to find out.

so, i got some eggs this morning and crashed half way through eating them, took a nap, was up in the afternoon, spent a while cleaning myself and made it to the blood lab at the nick of time, at just before 18:00. i'll do a write-up soon, but my blood test results came in very fast.

my estrogen levels seem to be ok. my cholesterol is absurdly low, as always. my glucose is in normal reference ranges, but i remain concerned that it keeps coming in at over 5 on fasting - it's at the high end of reference ranges, which is a little out of balance given that everything else is low. 

but, i'm apparently dangerously anemic - or that's what it looks like on first glance. but, while a number of 12 ug/ml may be dangerous for men, it's not that unusual, if definitely on the low end, for women. my rbc counts are pegged as low....for men. they're not that off, for women.

so, i'll need to have a talk at my appointment on friday, but i'm not sure what the right reaction is. how should i be measuring this, given that i've been estrogen dominant for my entire adult life?

i clearly get a large amount of iron in my diet - if it's too low, i'm just not absorbing it, which means what? internal bleeding? what?

while i get frequently annoyed by people smoking, i don't otherwise think i have the symptoms of anemia. but, both my father and his mother were always very concerned that i might develop some level of anemia, like they were concerned about something genetic. if it was ever explained to me, i've forgotten.

i'm surprised by this - my b12 levels are extremely high. i'm absorbing that. if i'm not absorbing iron, it's not anything i'm doing wrong, it's something broken in my instruction set. and, i guess we'll have to have a talk about this.

that said, these results can be finnicky as well, and i'm going to request a second test to confirm it before i react.

i'm probably going to need to finish the diet saga up to what exists  - or at least produce a rough first draft of it - in order to finish the fruit bowl.

for now, i'm just going to post an update on what is actually in the pasta bowl, if you want to give it a try:

- 55 g of fortified al dente durum wheat pasta

- 1 beet (~120 g)

- 1 garlic clove ~(5 g)

- 1 lime, including the peel (~ 67 g)

- 1 red pepper (~150 g)

- 1 italian tomato (~100 g)

- 50 g of broccoli 

- 110 g of carrots

- several dashes of frank's red hot

- several dashes of ground black pepper

- 5 tsp of pasta water

- 1 tbsp hulled hemp seeds

- 1 tbsp rubbed oregano

- 1 tbsp paprika

- 1 large tsp of sunflower seeds

- 1 large tsp of nutritional yeast

- 1 medium tsp cayenne

- 1 small tsp mustard

- 200 ml of fortified vanilla soy milk

- 3 tbsp of fortified pro-biotic yogurt

- 70 g of cheddar cheese

again, i didn't find myself learning much from the aztec episode, but it was enjoyable and engaging to watch.

where did these people come from? we should be able to trace the archaeology, but it largely appears out of nowhere. the sources we have are beyond terrible, to the point that they come off more as myths designed to uphold the conquest than anything else. if ever there was a place where archaeology was important, it's central america. but, it really does just pop up - like it came from somewhere else.

and, a commonality in the civilizations of these regions is that they tend to disappear, too - something that is true as far north as st. louis. there are good theories about cities being built and abandoned to the rains, to the tornadoes, to hurricanes, to earthquakes, to fires - this continent is horribly unstable. so, if people tend to disappear then it provides some guidance as to why they tend to mysteriously appear, as well. but, this idea of parallel or convergent evolution has truly never sat very well with me.

it's for that reason that it would be nice to have some histories, but even the story of what happened to the history seems whitewashed, itself. we see this in the norse sagas, too - these christianized histories that are really designed to co-opt the culture and put the church at the centre of it. the video points this out, but it doesn't put the emphasis on it that it really needs to have on it. so, the story is that these people used to have histories until a few years ago, when they burnt it themselves, because the rulers didn't want the history leading the people astray. i see. "it's not my fault, it was like that when i got here.". 

what remains is essentially a story.

and, that story is probably almost entirely mythical.

archaeology in this region is difficult because the jungle reclaims everything very quickly. but, it's the correct approach, as difficult as it is. while the video is actually unusually interdisciplinary, and i actually respect that, it's a mythology more than it is a history - and a real history would be focused more on what the archaeology tells us and doesn't.

but, i mean, the details are lost, whoever or whatever is responsible for it. if you want a story, this is the best one we've got.

....until we invent time travel.

it is what it is, and it can be; it's not what it isn't and it cannot be.

i found myself pent up and frustrated and couped up last year and needed to get out.

that's not going to happen, this year. this year, i'm just looking to maximize productivity, as much as i can. and, if she wants to fight, we're going to fight.

it would be easier if the cops just got a new spy, because i can smell this one from 100 yards away.

that was more sleeping than i would have liked today, but at least it was during the actual day. i need to finish my coffee and make some pasta...

i am going to finish the fruit bowl write-up this week, and get the other two ready for further analysis. 

tonight, i'm going to focus on cleaning the other side of the apartment, as i prepare for total war with the disgusting pig upstairs, who just won't go the fuck away.

this is a later reflection, about 2008-2009, on obama and his relation to bombing campaigns in the middle east.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/first-movement

i just want to clarify where i stood regarding "the war on terrorism".

after the 2001 attacks, i was one of the first people pointing to the pnac documents. i opposed all of it, and i opposed all of it for years. i wrote songs about it:

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/bedroom-cassette-demoes

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/algebra

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-curious-george-suite

there's no question where i stood, and it was in strict opposition to all of it.

but, unlike some other people on the left, i've never developed a level of naivete around islam and, as time went on, it became clear that the reasons i opposed this war were drastically different than the reasons i was hearing around me, and a source of disconnect in media started to become apparent. 

the arguments i had heard against the war were mostly from academic secularists, of which hitchens was one of them but ended up aligned on the wrong side of the debate, who argued that this is just not how self-determination works - you can't just eradicate a despot and watch people rise up out of the desert like magnificent mushrooms. that premise is utter nonsense. there has to be a base to build on, some framework to erect the society on. otherwise, you will at best end up recreating the soviet union (which is something like what they already had). if you want a social democracy in iraq, it's necessary to build from below and not above. this may, in the end, result in supporting a bombing campaign once there is a movement on the ground to provide air support to, should it happen to align with those interests (and nobody cares what the imperialists think or why they do what they do, what's important is if they could be taken advantage of to push the goals of iraqi self-determination), but nothing of the sort seemed remotely likely to happen in the iraq of 2003. the iraqis were not ready for this kind of intervention. now, yes - it became rather apparent, rather fast that the bombing campaign was punitive in nature, but that has nothing to do with the initial logic in whether to support it or not. even a bombing campaign with punitive intent should have a positive outcome if there is a force on the ground to take advantage of it. it just doesn't matter why. but there just wasn't....

what i started to realize when i was talking to people around me was that these were not the arguments they were making. rather, they were making much more conservative arguments that the historical left would have largely rejected as utopian, backwards and naive. so, you'd hear them argue for the preservation of "iraqi culture" in the face of "american imperialism", and you just had to chuckle a little when you did, as though the culture in the region was anything worth supporting, as a leftist. you want to cut off peoples' hands? you're into corrective rape? really? but, it became apparent over time that they seemed less concerned about the nature of iraqi culture and how it may affect the lives of iraqis (that is, they weren't interested in consequences) and were more concerned about the sovereignty of iraqi citizens to make their own decisions, however terrible those decisions might be. so, they seemed perfectly happy to support the most right-wing islamic fundamentalists on the ground that they could find, if that was the opposition to "american imperialism" that actually existed. this was often kind of more about them than about the people in iraq - and they seemed to see any opposition at all as their enemy's enemy, and therefore their friend. call them useful idiots, but it's what was real.

(and, of course, most of these groups were actually created by american imperialism, and exist to carry out their goals. but, neither of us knew that then - and i suspect they mostly still don't know that, now.)

i had to grapple with this fact in front of me - the opposition to this war was widespread, and i was a part of it, but it was not a leftist opposition at all, but was rather a conservative, pacifist, non-interventionist opposition. and, if the spectrum was already confused, this is where it becomes incoherent, as the terms flipped meaning almost entirely. the quakers became the far left, and trotsky became the far right.

we can dispense of the terms. maybe you opposed the war because you thought it was wrong to intervene, in which case we have very different perspectives. i did not oppose the war out of "respect for traditional iraqi culture", but because it was clear that there was no revolutionary foundation to build upon. and, i claim my argument is left-wing and your argument is right-wing, and we might argue the point, but we can probably at least agree that the utility of these labels is not what it once was.

and, i continued to strictly oppose the war from what i claim was the left in every way up until something switched over, and that was the rise of isis. unless you are a non-interventionist pacifist that opposes all war on moral grounds (like a quaker), then you have lines where war becomes acceptable. isis is where that line crossed, for me. and, we can understand our differing reactions to isis by looking at the reasons we opposed the war to begin with.

my argument was that bombing iraq was counter-productive and would just make things worse, in the long run; your argument was that it was morally wrong to bomb other countries. so, when bombing iraq did make things worse in the long run, and created a force that actually needed to be contained, the bombing became a self-fulfilling prophesy, from my perspective - i was arguing that we shouldn't bomb iraq because something like isis would happen (whereas hitchens seemed to welcome the anarchy), and you were arguing we shouldn't bomb iraq because you thought something like isis was perfectly ok, if it was indigenous in character - i was arguing tactics, and you were pushing cultural relativism. so, when isis appeared, my argument flipped over - now we have to bomb them because we created a mess, and look what came out of it: utter barbarism that simply had to be destroyed. and, you're just still lost in the same relativistic argument you were in before, where you can't tell what's right and wrong to begin with, anyways. to me, the creation of isis proved i was right to oppose the initial invasion; to you, bombing is bombing, and there's no difference in supporting this or that campaign.

i'm a subtle, careful thinker; you're a zealot.

i was arguing for immediate withdrawal all through 2004, 2008 and into whenever it was - 2012? 2013? - that isis started appearing. but, i changed my position to bomb isis, specifically - now, we had to finish the job, first. i didn't like this change in position, i didn't want to stay in iraq, but i felt it was now the necessary position. we could cut and run when the society is in anarchy, but not when it's being taken over by fascism - you have to fight fascism, whether you like it or not.

and, yes, i was aware that isis was funded by the saudis under american influence and guidance - that we created this force to bomb it. it's a ploy. i understood that. it didn't matter - they had to be mercilessly annihilated and permanently destroyed, anyways. and, we could figure out what's next, after.

standing in 2021, i haven't rescinded my calls for the utter destruction of what is left of the caliphate, but i realize at this point that it doesn't matter. there's no group to align with on the point. the united states is in the process of recreating isis, and is using it to attack syria with. it will no doubt be used to threaten iraq and keep it in line, and it may be used to harass iran. and, we don't seem to need the fake narrative any longer - we're now just giving them direct air support, and arguing they're an indigenous uprising, which is ridiculous and directly from the fucking cia.

my solidarity is where it always was, which is with the secularist, leftist, socialist groups on the ground. i stand with the apostates and the queers looking to do away with islam and radically revolutionize the society on the ground. that's who i stood with then and who i stand with now. i have no patience for people supporting "nationalist insurgencies" or arguing that islamic rule is indigenous to the region - i support global socialist revolution, everywhere. i realize that global islam is an imperialist force in it's own right and a dominant threat to world peace that needs to be restrained and dismantled. the next world war will be fought to neutralize islam as a force of fascism, which is a historical narrative going back centuries, and not something william kristol thought up.

so, i will stand primarily with the russians and assad by proxy as the lesser evil, as they attempt to fight off an absolutely vicious saudi-american invasion force, and i will continue to cite reasons that i believe align with the internationalist left, and not with the isolationist right.

we may again find ourselves aligned in policy, even if we don't find ourselves aligned in intent or ideology. but, i've become wary of building temporary alliances with islamist sympathizers, as i no longer trust your intents, and am not likely to look the other way any longer.

it's a shame they're sinking into the ocean - this is where i belong and want to be, not this backwards frozen wasteland full of drug addicts and retards.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/after-751-days-straight-this-country-records-a-temperature-below-24-degrees

just to be clear on a point...

i tend to prefer to buy almost everything second hand; yes, i'm poor, and it's cheaper, but i'd still buy things second hand if i was rich, and there's reasons for it that are intended to jam up the economy.

so, with the exception of things like socks and underwear and shoes, i buy clothes second hand. always. and, this is a very conscious economic choice. the fact of the matter is that you cannot find clothes made new in this economy that are not created by children in third world countries - it's just not an option. every company at every store in every mall is selling clothes made with child slave labour. i want nothing to do with it, but i can't walk around naked. so, i go to value village - and i would still go to value village even if i was rich, for that reason, and that reason explicitly.

with furniture, i prefer, under normal circumstances,  to buy used in order to prevent the manufacture of new items. this seems backwards, you say - don't i want to support the economy? absolutely not, no - or at least not this economy, which is wasteful and doesn't recycle. yes, generally speaking, i can get usable furniture at kijiji for 1% of the cost you'd get it in a new bourgeois store, but that's really besides the point; i'm trying to reduce the amount of waste in society, and reusing perfectly good furniture is a far better idea than paying through my nose to support union wages to create more and more waste. these are where my priorities are.

and, we can go through item by item, but it's usually the same basic logic - i'm going for the second-hand options because i don't want to support the economy. sorry...

so, after looking at the options available to me, i decided that the cheapest option in front of me was actually to get a table shipped to me - for free - from walmart. i'd be paying almost exactly the same price for virtually anything on kijiji, but i'd have to find a way to drag it here. if shipping is free, i'd might as well take it.

so, i got a 40"x20" table to put the monitor and speakers on for $30 and a 20"x20" end table to put the receiver, cd player and laptop on for $15. there's $5 in tax. i'm not going to do better than that, and it comes straight to my door - and free of smoke.

so, where am i with the cleaning and reinstalling, then?

- i have completely cleaned my bedroom space from top to bottom. every nook and cranny. i've scrubbed the floors. it's spotless...

- i have reassembled my dresser and washed every article of clothing in it, as well. so, all my clothes are clean for the first time in over a year. the problem was that there was a hydrogen sulfide leak in the basement floor directly beside the dresser and i wanted to be 100% sure it was fixed before i set the dresser back up and washed all the clothes. it's all done.

- i need to get a table and a bookcase for this space with the carbon tax refund, which should be easy enough, if i can find it.  

- i'm using my old homemade makeup table as a shoe rack in the closet

- putting all these clothes away meant i could clear out the space intended for recording, finally. that has been done, and everything has been cleaned as much as is possible - including a thorough scrubbing of the floors. this space was absolutely filthy....but i want to keep it clean...

- i have a lot of gear to reinstall and/or fix as i set it up in here. i'm starting with 2 of the 3 pcs, which i'm using as 16-bit and 32-bit windows recording consoles, respectively. 

- i have purchased a large bookcase for $15 that has a broken top but is otherwise perfectly fine and now overlooks the studio space. it will probably hold recording related materials in some currently unclear way. some time ago, i also purchased an organizer for wires and cables. so, this space is actually considerably more organized than it was, previously. 

- i'm going to install racks for the two bicycles along the stairwell. that will clear up space and keep dirt off the floor.

- i still need to clean the kitchen & the bathroom before i get seriously back to work. from here on in, i intend to get back to the monthly cleaning schedule that i had before i got frustrated by the sulfur smell and second-hand smoke from upstairs.

- i have put all of the various items that need to slowly be reinstalled into the other room, which i have been using as a combo storage space + dining area. the process of reconstructing the studio and generally setting things up in here will be reduced to a process of cleaning up that space, bit by bit. when it is done, i will be be done what i'm doing.

so, i've been posting less because i've been vacuuming and lysoling and scrubbing things, but i'm over a bit of a hump with it.

let's check to see if there's anything new up on kijiji regarding tables and bookcases.

ok, so i can't do a brute force hack on the pasta bowl or the eggs and i don't want to do a final run for the fruit bowl. i've got too many loose threads open and i'm just totally unravelling. how do i reweave myself back into some semblance of coherence?

i was building liner notes, and i stopped to fix my diet - thinking it would take a few days to build. six months later, and i'm reaching a conclusion, but need to move on.

i realized my fluoride data totals were wrong, and went to backtrack to fix them. in the process, i decided i'd make a final fruit bowl post because i was almost done and set about compiling it. but, then i wanted to build a book documenting the entire saga. but, then i decided i wanted to build a book documenting my comments on the pandemic. and, i kept going further back, until i decided to go back to the start...

the idea was that, if i start at the beginning, in august 2013, i can spin off a series of different narratives, not just the food saga and the pandemic commentary. these would all be little books to read. in the process, i could spin off the liner notes, as well. i'd actually be multitasking.

but, then, i realized the need to get to the alter-reality, too.

as i was cleaning, i came to the decision that i need to create a schedule and more effectively multitask or i'll continually get lost in these complex recursions. so, i need to be doing three things at once:

1) moving through the alter-reality, starting in 1989

2) actually getting back to the discography, at period 3

3) starting in 2013 with the blogs and rebuilding them, moving forwards

if i do any one of these three things, strictly, then i'll never get any of the others finished. 

so, what if i get in the habit of spending:

sat/sun/mon building the blogs

tues/wed/thurs working on the discography (starting at period 3)

fri on the alter-reality.

eventually,  these things will crash into each other.

and, i need to finish cleaning and fixing machines in here, first.

i don't actually want to do it like this but i think i absolutely have to.

actually, somebody finally uploaded this.

this is the best version out there.

this is just to get the embed to avoid the ads.

the who is right - this is utter stupidity. but, it's what i've come to expect.

if i caught this thing and beat it last year, i don't want or need to get vaccinated - and i'm not going to. these vaccines will be useless in 24-36 months, anyways.

i want access to an antibody test, i don't want a vaccine.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tam-hajdu-canadas-covid-19-response-1.5940273

pasta bowl

so, to start with, this is what seems to be sufficient in the pasta bowl:

- vitamins: beta-carotene, b1, b2, b3, b4, b6, b9, b13, c, d, e, f2, k2

- minerals: na, mg, p, k, ca, mn, fe, co, cu, zn, se

this is what seems to be lacking, after adjusting to the 50% requirements, from the 33% ones:

- vitamins: retinol, b5, b7, b8, b12 (natural), b15, b16, b20, f1, f3, f4, k1, s

- minerals: f, cl, mo

and this is what has not been measured at all:

- minerals: b, si, s, cr, ni, i

- all amino acids

- luteiin

- lycopene

- chlorophyll

- flavonoids

so, this is far more complicated than i thought.

if i boost the cheese & yogurt by a tad each, it should get the a, b5 and b12 up. the broccoli should get the k1 up. i think i have enough s from the oregano. but, i need to actually do the work for the rest of it - i can't hack through this. like, i was considering replacing limes with peas, but it seems like i might need to add both.

i've spun myself around in so many circles that i can't tell which direction is which, and can't right myself. i'm doing way too many things at once. the story of my life.

ok.

i need to clean the floor. that's what i need to do.

the fruit bowl is almost entirely done; it doesn't make sense to mess with this further until i can do it right.

so, that's another day wasted sleeping.

:(.

i'm going to get some eggs and get to it. there's a pasta meal write-up coming up.

i've also been watching that han thing though, and i'm reflexively drawing parallels to rome, something the video actually does, as well. this is a crash course in a complicated topic by a westerner that is necessarily approaching it from a distance, but i'm not about to delve into it in too much detail, either - this is an appropriate narration for the audience, insofar as that audience includes myself. as it is, even somebody with only a rough outline of chinese history, such as myself, has delved into this more deeply, already; each of these emperors of course deserves their own feature-length film, and i've already watched a handful of them. so, i'm not learning that much. but, it's useful to have it pieced together, too.

one of the differences seems to be that the northern barbarians of the east seem to have been less primitive and consequently less appealing; the germans, for example, based much of their resistance to roman rule on the rejection of taxation, whereas the huns & mongols were largely just another extractivist force that levelled punitive taxes on their populations to fund their empire - including, in later years, on slavs and germans, themselves. if the purpose of identifying with the germans in their struggle against the romans was that they were defenders of anarchy, freedom & democracy in the face of imperialism and tyranny - even when the resistance necessarily turned vicious and violent in self-preservation  - then no such identification seems apparent with the barbarians of the east, who implemented all of the violence of imperialism without adopting the benefits of settled civilization, and consequently seem to embody the term "barbarian" with a much deeper level of accuracy. but, maybe i shouldn't be trying to understand the han by focusing on the huns - and maybe that's an error the source is making, in presenting it to me that way.

one of the more useful things i'm pulling out of it in regards to the han themselves is how chinese civilization has grappled with religion. i already knew that this wasn't a communist thing, that chinese culture has this conflict between an atheistic/confucianist ruling class that sees superstition as backwards and an ignorant, rural, superstitious peasantry baked into it - that mao was reacting to his own culture, and rather openly so. maoism couldn't make sense anywhere else, and isn't intended to; it was intended as an application of communism to china, rather than the other way around. and, it's a reminder that the ccp is a chinese empire first and a communist state second. so, the narrative presents confucianism first and then taoism later both as disasters that had to be undone. this perception of religion as this kind of dangerous force of ignorance perpetuated by the peasantry is really decidedly unmarxist, but it parallels the kind of thing you heard from the late pagans, like proclus - the difference is that the religionists won in the west, and the atheists seem to have won, in the east. china consequently doesn't go through the kind of internal destruction that rome goes through, or at least not until the mongol invasion, when the society is totally transformed.

i think that reading up on chinese history is probably a good idea right now, however it is that you want to do it.

there's about an hour left on this, and we'll see if i want to post another comment about it or not.

after getting hit with a minor headache (not a migraine.) in the morning and deciding to sleep it off, i slept all day, again. they're putting something in my coffee, i think, when i'm out, and it's just forcing me to sleep it off. wasting my time with their stupidity...i'll just have to wait for it to stop. 

with the weather getting a little warmer, it's a good excuse to get girled up a little when i go out, even if i don't have anywhere to go except get groceries. *shrug*. 

i was up around 14:00, got some fruit and then had to crash yet again. i was up around 19:00. annoying urges that i do not want and choose to suppress aside, i hope i'm awake for the night, now. i should get some pasta fairly soon.

but, i mentioned that i was going to post a temporary update to just plug some holes in. i don't claim that these additions are in any way conclusive, or even substantive, but i'm going to hold to them until i can work out a better approach.

fruit bowl 

so, this is my total fruit bowl for now. note that i do not have numbers for phenylalanine, tyrosine, threonine or trytophan. i need to derive my own numbers for the first two, and i haven't done the calculations yet for the last two. but, i think this is sufficient for all of them. the other amino acids do not have calculated rdis at this time, but they are not considered essential and can therefore wait.

fruit & vegetables 

- 100 g strawberry  (c,s...cr,se)

- 30 g guava  (b8,c,s)

- 70 g kiwi (b8,c,k1...b,cr)

- 150 g avocado  (b5,b8,b9,b16,b20,c,e,f1,k1,s...b,na,s,k,cr,zn,se....h,l,k,m,c)

- 120 g banana (b5,b16...cl,k,se....h)

- 45 g raspberry (c,s...b)

- pinch of cinnamon (s, mostly)*

- 1 tbsp of paprika (pseudo-a + lutein & zeaxanthin) (see below)

+

- cherries (from yogurt, ice cream)  (extra pseudo-a,c,e,s + flavonoids)

- 45 g of blueberry or blackberry or cranberry (or multiples of them)  (extra c,e,s + flavonoids)

this week, i have both blueberries and blackberries.

again: flavonoids are probably useless in vivo, but i haven't yet done the research to hone in on them and try to figure out which, if any, can be absorbed. in the mean time, if you're taking the chance on blueberries or cranberries for flavonoids then you should find pure juice, as trying to get much of anything at all from a handful of blueberries or blackberries is probably totally silly. i'm just adding berries for taste and enjoyment, primarily - if they're on sale, as blueberries were this week.

*i'm currently using a pinch of what i presume is cassia cinnamon and that i purchased more or less by accident. when that runs out - or perhaps sooner - i'll see if i can find some ceylon cinnamon, to avoid issues with coumarin. this is not in the chart at this time, and is the only thing i might expand this bowl with, that i can see, at this time. the primary purpose of adding cinnamon is for the aspirin. cinnamon, of course, also tastes pleasantly.

"dairy"

- 400 ml fortified soy milk (a, b5,b7,b8,b16,b20,d,f1...b,na,p,s,k,ca,fe,co,cu,zn,se,mo....h,i,l,k,m,c,v)

- 82.5 g of cherry ice cream (a,b5,b12,b13,b16,b20,k2...na,s,zn,se....i,l,k,m,v)

- 50 g cherry yogurt (a,b16,b20...na,s,co,zn,se....i,l,k,m,c,v)

the soy is heavily fortified, and these are major sources of protein, as can be seen. 

cereal

- 40 g of vector (a,b3,b5,b7,b9,b15,b20,e,f1...na,cl,fe,zn,se,i)*

- 45 g of all bran (b5,b8,b15,b16,b20,f1...na,mg, p,s,cl,k,mn,fe,zn,se....h,i,l,k,m,c,v)

- 14 g wheat bran (b8,b15...s,cl,zn,se....c)!

these cereals are both heavily fortified, and the all bran is a source of bran - meaning it is a source of betaine, inositol, selenium....and, yes, fibre. you will pass this meal, trust me.

* - while the vector cereal is presumably a substantive source of protein, the amino acid amounts are not listed on the packaging, and the manufactured nature of the product means it is difficult to ascertain from the nutrition facts. this is therefore left as uncalculated and extra.

! - note that i have doubled the amount of wheat bran, for now, to meet the selenium amounts by brute force and have otherwise not recalculated anything. se has been added to all of the other items based on existing amounts. the raw wheat bran is consequently probably going to end up as a source of more items, including as a major source of betaine. this is done at minimal cost, but in an inefficient manner. this will be made more efficient in time.)

seeds

- 8 g of raw, hulled sunflower seed (e,f1...s,se....c) 

- 12 g of ground flax seed  (b16,f1,f2...b,si,s,ni,zn,se....c)

while listed as sources of protein, both only appear to be useful in this meal, at these quantities, for cysteine. rather, the sunflower seeds are a source of omega-6 & vitamin e, while the flax seeds are a source of omega-3, primarily. 

fungi & protists

- 5 g of nutritional yeast (b1,b2,b3,b4,b6,b7,b9,b12,b16...s,cr,se....k,c)

- 5 ml of algal oil (b12,16,f3,f4)

the yeast is loaded with b vitamins and the algal oil is the only substantive source of epa & dha in my diet at this time.

while i haven't finished calculating amino acid levels, this minor tweak for the wheat bran means that i am confident that this bowl is otherwise complete, at this time.

some other considerations for future additions:

major minor carotenoids 

1) lutein + zeaxanthin - there was a major study done a few years ago:

https://www.allaboutvision.com/nutrition/lutein.htm

so, it seems like a rough rule of thumb is that i should be aiming for around 12 mg a day, total, with 4 mg per meal, minimal, on my current schedule, given that this is fat soluble. this is very rough. for this meal, i should get about .4 from avocados, .0612 from raspberries, .0854 from kiwi, and only .026 from strawberry. there's only .1416 in the total bran consumption, at most. i can add .07812 from flax. and, that's it.

.4 + .1416 + .0854 + .07812 + .0612 + .026 = 0.79232 mg.

so, that's a little low. and, it doesn't seem like fruit is a good source of this nutrient, in general - it seems like it's a vegetable thing.

the exception seems to be paprika, which is technically a fruit. paprika is an easy, cheap source that i have on hand. to get to 4 mg, i'd need to add:.

.79232 + 13.158x > 4 <---> x > (4 - .7932)/13.158 = 0.24371485028

so, that's about 25 g - probably two big tablespoons.

.7932 + .25*13.158 = 4.0827

what's that going to taste like?

if you really want lutein without a supplement, it seems like you're going to be forced to eat leafy greens. we'll see if i think i need to add this to the pasta bowl in the presence of a capsicum onslaught or not, but the addition of a bit of broccoli should help, too.

let me commit to adding one tablespoon, for now. this is fat soluble. so, if i'm getting lots in my other two meals, i can maybe cheat a little. or, maybe i can add more to the pasta bowl, instead...

how are my eyes? i had an unnecessary surgery performed on me as a child, on the insistence of my psychotic and clinically retarded mother. my father took me to see several specialists, who insisted there was nothing wrong with my eyes. but, my calvinist mother, who neurotically thinks everything is genetic and perfectly pre-determined, and doesn't believe in the slightest concept of free will or chance or randomness in the universe at all, decided that i must need the surgery because she needed it. i need to be clear on this - there was no evidence at all that i had any vision problems, but she insisted i must need the surgery, simply because she needed it - the genetic relationship left no space for chance in the matter (an absurd misunderstanding of genetics, to say the least) and i had no choice in the matter, nor did my distraught father, who had to watch his only son have his vision destroyed in some kind of perverse ritual sacrifice to the gods of genetic predisposition. my father fought her as hard as he could, but the court gave her custody because she has a vagina and he didn't and she found some hack that was willing to do it, in the end. my eyesight has been horrible ever since - i can barely see five feet in front of me.

so, i've had to learn to live with poor vision; i need more than lutein to fix my eyes. i doubt it's reversible, but i don't even know.

but, i have little to lose by following the above report as best i can.

there's a review here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6164534/

2) lycopene - the fact is that we don't yet have any positive data indicating that lycopene actually does anything, but we at least can absorb it, and that's pretty different than this list of flavonoids that we don't absorb at all. so, it works as an anti-oxidant in vitro and we can actually absorb it. so, it seems promising, but the studies just aren't extant, yet.

i've assumed that the lycopene data for guava applies strictly to pink guava rather than the green ones i'm eating (which are less domesticated and have more vitamins, overall), but is there a little in there? there's otherwise really no substantive source of lycopene in this meal, at all.

that said, based on this study, i think i should be aiming for about 5 mg/meal, to start, until i can get a better grasp of it:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3850026/#S3title

with the exception of 100 g of pink guava (3.33x more than i'm currently consuming), there is no source of fruit that gives me anything close to that. i'd have to drink a carton of grapefruit juice, or start adding in large amounts of watermelons - which are otherwise nutritionally void.

so, realistically, you'd really have to get it from tomatoes, and i have added a tomato to my pasta bowl for that reason. but, until i can get some more serious data on the actual efficacy of the chemical, i'm not going to worry much about it.

i'll do a more serious write-up when the time comes.

chlorophyll

without seriously looking into it at all, i'm going to baselessly assume that there's plenty of chlorophyll in the guava, kiwis & avocados, together. in fact, i think i can taste the chlorophyll in the guava & the kiwis - i think it's what gives it that piney taste.

...green kiwifruit has one of the highest concentrations of chlorophyll, after avocado (Ashton et al. 2006). 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00425-012-1723-x

flavonoids

as mentioned, i'm going to throw some extra berries in for fun, whenever they are on sale.

i'll put the pasta bowl in a new post because i'm stopping to eat.

i also found a much cheaper (read: free.) solution to the getting-the-bike-out-of-the-living-room conundrum: i've locked it to the railing in the stairs. in fact, i've lodged it in the wall by the handlebars, but it's locked for extra support. twice. so, i can avoid buying that nook, at least for now.

i still need a bookcase for my bedroom, and i'm looking to replace my destroyed cabinet/dresser thing (which i had little utility for) with a sturdy table. it's a shame about that thing, but it just couldn't handle the moves - it was really the movers that destroyed it. i won't call that guy back.

so, they deposited my $300. and, i double checked - the loan isn't cancelled. that would imply that my letter writing campaign did actually work.

so, if you're in student loan debt and you got your carbon credit this time and didn't get it before, then you're welcome.

as i said at the time: it was probably a stupid oversight, and they probably missed it because it didn't cross their mind. it makes no sense at all that they intended to withhold it - it counteracts the intent. they just needed somebody to point it out.

have you heard a word from the ndp about this? i haven't.

it's interesting to note just how strong the parallels are between the german-roman struggle for europe and the mongol-han struggle for china. the ambush spoken of here around 51:00 reminds me much of the successful defence of the rhine by arminius.

but, let us stop and be empirical for a moment.

fact: canada is relying on a fund designed for third world countries in order to vaccinate it's citizens. it will be unable to do so, without relying on this fund.

if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, what is it? a mechanical duck, perhaps - but a duck, nonetheless.

and, the cause is clear - this is the devastation wrought by years worth of free trade, which is exactly what the british did to india.

the scandal here is that we have to dip into a supply intended for third world countries because free trade has destroyed our manufacturing capacity, not that we're putting ourselves ahead of other countries, which is simply acting rationally, and which every other country in the world is doing.

the fact that this is even a debate is reflective of the reality that something like half of the country is foreign born and sees themselves as transplants, and canadians second. we shouldn't even be debating this, and it's a reflection of where the country is in terms of immigration that we are. it's completely absurd to suggest that we ought to be more concerned about vaccinating citizens in other countries than we are about vaccinating ourselves, but here we are.

i just watched that byzantine documentary and was reminded of the battle of manzikert, where the emperor was forced to rely on turkish soldiers for defence, who defected and handed him over to the barbarians. canada is not only oblivious to these lessons of history, but seems focused on intentionally repeating the mistakes.

but, historical comparison aside, the focus from the left should be on how unchecked globalism has led us to this disaster, not a further embrace of it and a deeper articulation of globalist perspectives. i'm not surprised by anamie paul's reaction, as she is a perfect representative of the fake left. but, i am a little taken aback by stephen lewis' lack of commentary on the economic factors that led us here, while realizing that the cbc may have decided to cut him off in his response, or may have framed their questions in an intent to produce a specific response.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covax-anand-vaccine-timetable-1.5939270

so, i spent the whole day sleeping and skipped everything, which i'll now have to put off until monday.

i left on thusrsday afternoon to go to the dentist with the hopes of securing a low dose doxycycline rx, and what he told me was that my mouth was unusually clean and the recession simply isn't being caused by bacteria. so, antibiotics wouldn't make any sense. when i pointed out that i was requesting doxycycline to inhibit collagenase production and not explicitly for it's antibiotic properties, he responded that he did not accept the idea that the recession may be being caused by a host response to the bacteria (which, if true, would model some gum disease as a kind of cancer, or even a kind of allergic reaction; it would suggest your body is losing gum tissue because it is attacking itself, in overproducing collagenase, rather than being attacked by bacteria. but, i have to acknowledge that this is not the accepted science at this point - it is an alternative theory, and i shouldn't be surprised if most dentists tell me it's wrong.), and retreated back to the idea that i simply didn't have any bacteria in my mouth, and that an rx would consequently not be appropriate. he told me my recession was simply the result of aging combined with overbrushing. what i'm going to say is that i understand his diagnosis and respect his reluctance, as he has rules he needs to follow, as a licensed dentist; what i need to do is find somebody who has experimented with this previously, and is willing to go beyond the accepted science. like, i can't say for sure that this is going to work, but i kind of don't even care why because the other option is letting my gums rot away and watching my teeth fall out. whatever the reason for the recession is, i have to do something....or else....

he also argued that he wouldn't recommend a gum graft in my mouth, because the success rates for gum grafting is very low. i've looked into this a little, and the best way i can make sense of that claim is that he's arguing that gum grafting doesn't undo the causes of recession, so i'll just end up re-receding any grafted tissue (again with the causes). well, that's maybe true, but i want to be more optimistic than that, and i want to approach the root causes the best i can. i already quit smoking a long time ago, so we can rule that out - as much as i can control it, which is less than i'd like. i'm hacking through the guy's habits upstairs, even right now. if i'm having issues with over-brushing, we can correct that. the one thing i probably can't actually fix at this point is crooked teeth (and air pollution), but i'd rather regraft over and over if i have to than watch my teeth fall out...

but, i mean, it's not covered unless the tooth is about to fall out. so, the only way i can pay for a gum graft is to wait for it to get so bad that my teeth are going to fall out if i don't do it. and, i'm thankfully not there yet, so it's not a feasible approach, anyways. i can point out that this is legitimately flat out stupid, and even the ford government seems to be slowly realizing how stupid it is, but i can't undo the stupidity of capitalism via convincing rhetorical devices, as though the bourgeoisie would just give up if it only understood. so, there's no path there - but it uncovered the dentist's attitude, which is more pessimistic than i want. i was happy to get the more conservative diagnosis, granted. but i need somebody that's a little less risk-averse. so, i've found his analysis invaluably useful, but i'll need to call around looking for somebody that has done this before - and i may need to travel for it. that's fine. it's a race against time.

so, i left the dentist without what i wanted, but with a better grasp of reality than i previously had. i'm asking for an experimental treatment and need to be cognizant of that fact in approaching licensed practitioners. that's a step forwards

on the way back, i stopped at the grocery store to pick up a number of items that i would normally pick up at that store and in fact bought too many things to get my bicycle home, including some extra additions to the pasta bowl, namely tomato and broccoli, which i'm adding blindly as a temporary stop-gap. a temporary update to the meal plan will follow shortly, as i add a few things to plug known holes, until i can get back to it. i should point out that the weather on this day was deceptively cold, with the temperature itself not being so bad but the windchill making it seem much colder than it really was, so my decision to bicycle was in truth in error. nonetheless, i found myself forced to walk with two extra jumbo boxes of vector and a plastic carton of grapefruit juice, in excess to what i could fit in my bag.

i initially tried to cart it but found myself blocked from further movement at the exit to the plaza, and on the way home found a wasteland of locked carts along that strip of tecumseh, discarded every couple of metres. i walked by about ten of them, and tried a few, but it was the same thing with all of them. this clearly indicates that there is a strong demand for carts in the neighbourhood, and that the grocery store is performing a disservice in the community by putting these radio sensors in them. further, we're banning plastic bags and bringing in a carbon tax, when one of the simplest things we can do to reduce unnecessary pollution is encourage people to walk to the store to do groceries! again: i can convince you this is stupid, but it doesn't fix it. and, one of the things you learn studying history is that nobody listens to the people arguing the society is destructive and stupid...not even after it's too late...

when i was nearly home, i scored a walmart cart just past crawford, and it's a good thing i did, too.

and, a curious thing happened as i was walking, too - a woman with a bag of red onions and a bag of potatoes sneaks up behind me and drops them into the cart. her english was very broken, but she was able to get across the point that she reasoned that if we were walking the same route then i should help carry the load, and i quite frankly had no debate with the premise - i'm an advocate of community cart use, as i've pointed out repeatedly. so, i got her onions and potatoes a good way up the road for her, but then i had to turn off. i wish i could have left her the cart, but i knew i needed it myself - to bring a bookcase home.

when i arranged for the transaction in the morning. i figured i could get the bookcase home by putting the shelves in a knapsack and carrying the case home myself. i did not initially intend to cart it. but, once i found myself in the possession of a cart, i immediately realized the utility of it and subsequently immediately formed the intent to further utilize it. this woman was definitely disappointed, but i insist my claim on further use was justified. and, it turns out that it was actually necessary - my initial intent was starkly naive. 

but, this woman should have had access to a cart. she should not have been forced to carry this load on her own. shame on these stores for forcing her to walk home with a heavy load like that.

so, i got my food away and then took a walk up campbell to get get what was advertised as a 70" tall bookcase - and turned out to be made of solid oak and closer to 72" than 70" - a key fact given that the space i wanted to put it in is 70.5" tall. gah. good thing i had the cart, right? the seller had told me to pick the unit up from her porch and leave the $15 in the mailbox, presumably to avoid contact, which i did do, after i broke the top off getting it into the cart. oops.

the reality is that it's well more than $15 worth of wood, and i'll take it based on that fact alone, even if i end up leaving it here, in the end. i was only able to get it in here by sliding it down the railing, which converted nicely into an inclined plane. and, i have to put it in a different space than initially intended, because it's about an 1/8" too tall to fit where i want. well, one thing at a time, right? i needed two and now i need one.

so, i got my book case in here and then had to go get my bicycle. i left the cart where i turned off, and hope somebody else can find a use for it, although it was still there when i came home.

i got my bicycle home with a bag of avocados, some toilet paper and some ice cream and set immediately to making myself pasta, with the intent to get everything in order here over night, but found myself slow to actually eat due to the need to clean in the kitchen and put food in tupperware, and then needing to sleep as soon as i finished eating. i intended to nap, but i didn't wake up until after 10:00.

given my reliance on off-peak electrical, i need to be nocturnal in my habits and plan to sleep during the day. i can't be waking up at 10:00 am like this. so, i made the conscious decision to force myself to sleep - and did, quite spectacularly, getting some high quality sleep in, and not waking up until almost 17:00.

so, here we are then.

i'm going to catch up on eating, first. then, i'm going to clean all night and all day. so, here we go...