i'm not a gay man.

gay men like to fuck other men - they like to bend them over and bang them as hard as they can.

conversely, i've never had the remotest urge to fuck anything or anyone at all; i'm entirely sub, and have only ever fantasized about receiving vaginal sex.

further, gay men are attracted to other men, so they wouldn't be interested in me.

it consequently doesn't make any sense to tell me to just go be gay - not on either side of the equation.

in theory, this is covered.

but, the medication isn't available due to a patent issue and the surgeons don't call you back.

i want this surgery. i've done everything available to me to get it.

but, if you're going to force me to be a guy in makeup and drag instead, then i'll shove it in your face and make you stare at it. 

as a consequence, i will continue to refer to myself as jessica and present myself in a female gender role, even if my estrogen falls to zero.

i do not want to turn back.

and, if i just end up looking gross, we can blame it on the government and the lack of acceptable health care options that are available to me.

i want to be clear - if i end up detransitioning, it will not be a decision i've made, it will be due to a lck of access to care. this is a decision that is being made for me by restricting access to surgery and to effective hormone therapy.

so, as mentioned, i spent yesterday morning cleaning. i finished essentially all of the kitchen before i stopped to eat around 8:00 and left for an appointment around 10:00. 

the appointment was initially set to talk about my estrogen levels, which have predictably come down a little due to switching to the generic. unfortunately, he didn't feel comfortable boosting me higher than 8 mg, and he had a reasonable argument - i'm already higher than the recommended dosage.

the reality is that i need my testicles to be removed, or i'm going to detransition, and that's not something anybody benefits from. i've been trying to do this for five years, now. i'm at a max for testosterone suppression and i'm at a max for generic estrogen; the brand name works far better, but i can't buy it. so, he sent the recs out again, but i don't expect to hear anything.

i'm going to need to send a fax to the endocrinologist again about overprescribing....

he unexpectedly prescribed me the doxycycline, but the 20 mg is now all of a sudden no longer covered, only the 100 mg is. i'm pretty sure it was covered last week. he's going to prescribe, though. so, i'll need to research that and figure it out. i'll either need to request a different tetracycline that is covered or ask to boost the dosage, but i don't think that's a great idea. it would be $200/month, otherwise and that's not feasible.

i don't know why they cover the 100 but not the 20, but that's the decision the government has made.

and, i got a second lab rec for the iron which i'll need to get done in the upcoming week. i know what my ferritin is at a minimum. what i need to do first is check to see what my ferritin is at a maximum, without altering anything. but, he put so much stuff on it that i'm going to ask them to do it in two parts spread two weeks apart. i was absolutely exhausted after the last one, and we can see why, now.

he's also going to send me to a gastric specialist about the potentiality of bleeding, but i'm wondering if i shouldn't also go to somebody regarding the potentials of blood clotting in the brain, or bleeding in the brain more generally.

i stopped and did a bunch of groceries when i got back, and then it was 16:00 and i found myself in need of a nap....

today's post is inro005

====

this is maybe a little hard to understand, if you weren't a teenager in a very specific period - about '91-'99, the 90s i guess, when the nu metal shift "corrected" things and tough guys went backing to being metalheads. 

that period overlaps with a period when punk fashion moved from subculture to dominant culture. as with any other failed social revolution, the period is more defined by certain subculture traits being co-opted than it was by any meaningful change in social attitudes, even if it did correspond with a move towards liberalizing social attitudes in the older members of gen x. 

i remember playing this for my aunt, who was a teenager in the 80s, and she was just confused by it. in her day, the skaters were the skinny punk kids that got picked on by the meathead jock metal heads. as mentioned, i think people that were teenagers in the 00s may more readily associate with this as well. 

but the 90s were weird in this sense. skater culture in the 90s was defined by a sort of thuggish machismo gang mentality that overlapped more into gangster rap than punk rock. what you had where i grew up was a lot of upper middle class white kids skating because it was advertised to them as the "cool thing to do" and in the process co-opting this sort of survivalist 'hood mentality into a tool of oppression that they used to bully and intimidate the kids that, a decade before, would have identified as skateboarders. those kids may have maintained an interest in punk rock, but weren't generally accepted into the skater clique - which was essentially the "in group". 

the culmination may seem a little surreal nowadays, if for no other reason than that it's been forgotten. but i remember sneaking through back alleys, evading skateboarding gangs made up of kids into slayer, while i had socal punk music blasting through my headphones. and i'm sure you'll get similar stories if you ask around - or maybe you were also that kid. 

on one hand, this track was constructed to be sort of precious, and i think that it is. it's a pretty catchy pop song, really. on the other hand, i think i was trying to be a bit tougher than i actually was. i wasn't one to back down from confrontation - i'm still not. while i think it's true that i could have taken most of these brats one-on-one, i probably would have mostly chosen not to. see, the fear was always more that they'd convert the boards into weapons and then jump you. in canada, guns aren't much of a concern, but knives are. 

...and the fear often came out of trivial reasons. talking with somebody's girlfriend. having a pair of headphones or a pair of shoes that might be worth something. basic thug shit. 

in hindsight, the analysis here is a little simplistic. suggesting that these kids are going to grow up into pimps is problematic on numerous levels, although i can state with blunt honesty that a number of the people the song was about have grown up to be petty criminals with lengthy criminal records. i have to own that lack of depth and how it comes out in sometimes less than ideal statements, but i'm going to once again blame that on my age. 

overall, i like this track on both a musical and thematic level. i just wish i had articulated myself a little bit better. 

-- 

there was a specific story that influenced the track. when i was in the ninth grade, one of these skater bro types took it upon himself to start body-checking me into lockers. it was well understood that this person was older, but that just gave him more clout in the school's skater clique; he knew the older kids that they looked up to. i was never certain if he was on his second or third try at grade 9. 

this wasn't the first time somebody had tried to get physical with me, but it was an escalation that i couldn't really tolerate. people flicking my ears was an annoyance, and especially so when it was a game, but it's the kind of thing one withstands. these were full on, run-at-me body checks that seemed to be designed with intent to harm. 

i actually tried a few different tactics before i reacted. i tried sitting behind in class until he left, but it was visibly starting to make the female teacher uncomfortable that i was just sitting around waiting after class - and perhaps not unreasonably so. as for bringing it up with the teacher? well, this guy went out of his way to look for a teacher watching before he took a run. i couldn't be followed around by a teacher all day. i had to react on my own. 

so, i tricked him into running at my open leg, which had him fall face first into the locker. he did not see the retribution in the act; he got up looking for a fight. as i was walking toward the exit, which was a staircase downwards, he took another run at me - which i dodged. that was an adrenaline filled movement, i tell you - he was full of stupid, hot rage and sidestepped like an angry bull. but, i still had to time it. there was no escape. he ended up falling down several flights of stairs and breaking his leg. consider what would have happened if i hadn't moved - even considering that i may have helped him lose his balance, a little. 

from that point onwards, i lived in fear of being swarmed. rumours were floating around that i'd better stay away from certain people - which was a broadcast to me to stay low. i got the message, and spent the next several years sneaking around back passageways in and out of the school. i learned where the cuts in the fences were, how to detour across floor levels to follow the crowd, how to time the bus (we had public transit passes - and that fact alone probably spared me broken bones) to come in to class during the national anthem and other various scheduling and transiting tactics to avoid being alone at critical junctures. and, then i started to enjoy living that way, too. 

i don't think that student came back the next year, so i'm not sure if he ever finished grade 9. but, part of the reason i'm telling you this story is that it helps paint a clearer demographic picture of the narrative that i'm presenting. if you remove the "skater" designation, this could be a story about gangs in schools that could be applied equally well across any other grouping. it just happened to be that the gangs at my school were populated by white skater kids, some from the welfare projects and others comfortably middle class. that might help to explain what some might see as a difficult reference point. 

-- 

i've presented this track in chronological ordering because i wanted to tell the story of the track itself. looking through my releases, it may be difficult to tell what is an ep from what is a single, and what is an ep from what is a record. this is an ep, and not a single. it's an ep because it's a conceptual ordering of the tracks, rather than just an exploration of a single incarnation of a specific track. 

i don't deny that the lyrics are painful. and, wasn't i supposed to be getting rid of painful vocals? well, perhaps. but, note that no vocal takes of this track make it on to any of the abum-format presentations of it, excepting inricycled. the vocals are tied into the concept of the ep, which is a narration of the song as it developed. 

so, chronological ordering is the only rational way to present the tracks. further, a comprehensive exploration of the track's development actually becomes necessary, in order to narrate it's entire development. 

i'm not going to take this approach to every single. i just think that this track had to be preserved in this kind of way. 

-- 

initially written in 1997. recreated in jan, 1998. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013. reclaimed july 1, 2015. deconstructed dec 18, 2015. compiled on jan 4, 2016. finalized on july 6, 2016. lead track added and refinalized july 20, 2016. as always, please use headphones. 

the album version of this track appears on my first record, inri (inri015): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-3 

this recording is a part of the following collections: 

1) inriℵ0: jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/flac-dvd-disc-volume-1 

2) inriℵ1: jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-box-set 

3) inriℵ4: jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/mp3-dvd-disc-volume-1 

5) inriℵ6: jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1 

6) inriℵ17: jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/flac-bd-disc-volume-1 

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1997, 1998, 2013, 2015, 2016). 

released january 12, 1998 

j - guitars, effects, bass, drum programming, drum kit, sequencing, vocal noises, vocals, samples, digital wave editing, production

once again...

i've been on hormones in almost straight succession (i was convinced to pause for a few months when i first started) since early 2002. that's almost 20 years.

i have not had sex with anybody at all since 2006 and decided around that point that i would not have sex again until i got surgery. it simply hasn't happened yet. 

since then, i've turned down boys, girls and people in between. there is no chance of reversing that decision. it may render me celibate until the end of my life.

i did not date in high school. i have never been in a family-style relationship. i don't have children....i don't think. i was in the end rejected by the only person i've ever had sex with because i told her i didn't want to have sex with her anymore and was therefore no longer useful to her - and i was very upset by it, and still am.

there's a lot of bad information floating around about me from very untrustworthy, dishonest sources. you can believe what you want, but i'm only interested in your opinion if you take the time to read what i post here, first - and will continually point to the record here as factual, and the record elsewhere as incorrect.

my post today is inri004.

===

"wait - do you, like, fuck the dead, or something?" 

i wasn't the target; i was merely an observer. but, i kind of lived it, too. so, i had to suggest a proper response. 

see, i think the absurdity of the response follows from the absurdity of the question, and the proper way to react is to acknowledge the absurdity of the exchange by playing along. my proposal would be to take the topic to it's most absurd logical conclusion by engaging in a logical defense of the absurd accusation, and then annoying that person by bringing it up all of the time. if i saw him walking in the halls, i'd run up to him and loudly tell him that i've got a great argument for necrophilia if he wants to hear it.... 

now, i wasn't the person being taunted. so, i never got to act on those impulses. nor was the person that was being taunted nearly as indifferent to social conventions as i was. so, my suggestions were never interpreted seriously - despite their sincerity. i think i should acknowledge that i didn't properly understand what this person wanted. see, if it were me, my goal would be to have this person never ever look at me ever again. i would react by providing a set of disincentives to bother me. the more infamous, the more effective. but, i just wanted for them to leave me the fuck alone. this person wanted some kind of "acceptance", so those kinds of belligerent actions were counter-productive in seeking a final resolution. 

so, the song is imagining how i would react if i were to be taunted in such a way. 

i've created a new single release on my final administrative run through the material, and i want to defend the decision to do so. when i was creating the singles in january, this track didn't have any alternate cuts from the new session - i just had the remaster and a bunch of failed versions. there was no drum machine remix and no original demo. so, it wasn't fit for single treatment. 

but, material for this track generated as i explored the different ways to present the record. i recreated the middle section for the record. then, i brought in limited vocals for the on sexual confusion in adolescence mini-epic. so, now i do have a couple of alternate versions, and it does make sense to release a single. 

this is not the very first track that i recorded with my new four-track in 1998, but it's the first cut that made the record. something that got lost in the multiple transfers of the file was that the track was built up around a lot of guitar effects and was meant to have a swirling, shoegaze-y kind of feel. i then cut that recording up and inserted a short collage of computer generated sound, followed by a short jam of me playing guitar over a sample of the spiderman theme song - the original one, from 1967. the recorded track then clicks in and concludes itself in some more layered guitar harmonies. i draw attention to this because it is the juxtaposition of folk-y guitars with oppressive, synthesized percussion that forms the basis of interest in this, musically. it's structurally a blues guitar piece, it's just been ported substantially through technology. 

originally created in late 1997 and early 1998. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013. finally reconstructed in the summer of 2015 and extrapolated upon over the first half of 2016. released on july 4, 2016. finalized on july 5, 2016. as always, please use headphones. 

the album version of this track appears on my first record, inri (inri015): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-3 

this recording is a part of the following collections: 

1) inriℵ0: jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/flac-dvd-disc-volume-1 

2) inriℵ1: jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-box-set 

3) inriℵ4: jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/mp3-dvd-disc-volume-1 

5) inriℵ6: jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1 

6) inriℵ17: jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/flac-bd-disc-volume-1 

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1998, 2013, 2015, 2016). 

credits

released january 9, 1998 

j - guitars, effects, bass, drum programming, vocals, samples, digital wave manipulation, cool edit synthesis, production

you could think of it like this: i was a huge goth rock fan, despite the aesthetics, rather than because of it.

goth is meant to be camp, and it becomes self-parody when you take it too seriously.

so, you look at something like skinny puppy, for example. it's usually called 'industrial', but it's variously seen as punk (due to the politics) or goth (due to the aesthetics), as well. i certainly listened to a lot of stuff in this punk/goth/industrial/techno crossover space - and still do.

but, i was fundamentally a punk in ideology. if skinny puppy had shitty politics, i wouldn't have cared much for them - which is confirmed by my total non-interest in this swath of ebm bands that came out after them, drawing from frontline assembly. i don't listen to any of that stuff, because it's broadly a bunch of fascist garbage, and it has this dominant misogynist streak in it that has always left me cold.

the cure is another example of something that was massively crossover, but they were essentially a progressive rock band at their best. i wouldn't have had much interest in it, if it were just stripped to the makeup, even if that's all that most people take away from it nowadays.

the result is that i grew up immersed in goth culture, but always had this distance from it. huge amounts of what i've listened to for my whole life are in some way goth rock, but it's always been as an overlap with something else and it's always been the something else i really cared about. i've never identified myself that way - i've always called myself a punk, not a goth.

so, yes - i'm taking the piss. and, the right cultural space, the right perspective to see it from, is from somebody like the aphex twin, who i have quite a bit in common with, overall.

i'm about to post inri004 and i want to post this, first.

punk & goth have always overlapped, but i was the kind of punk that thought goth was silly - despite listening to a lot of it. punks have always had this strange love/hate relationship with goth culture.

but, if you want to understand inri004, this is really where my head actually was.

i know it seems like i haven't been doing anything for....years. but, i have been, and i need to start putting this all together and making something concrete of it, again.

so, i got some rest.

i'm supposed to be doing alter-reality right now, but i'm obviously not going to. i at least finished the thought in getting the two sites set up, but it sidetracked me and i don't want to get stuck in these recursions - i want to enforce a stricter division of labour on my time. i need to start getting back to having completed tasks in front of me.

so, i'm going to finish the thought before i close some tabs and get back to it on monday.

i will spend most of the night and morning putting final touches on cleaning.

and, my post today is inri003:

---

i spent the summer and fall of 1997 programming drum tracks into an ry30, notating them into a tablature program and sequencing them using noteworthy composer. i did not know how i was going to record these tracks. i think i was expecting to use the computer, but that was probably naive; instead, i was gifted a 4-track recording machine. i then spent the next year and a half rearranging and rerecording the songs i programmed over that period. as these tracks were recorded into my pc, they are time stamped...so i have a much clearer understanding of when they were finished.

the jump to incorporating computers into the recording process is something i always wanted to do, it's just that it wasn't really previously feasible. first, there was a learning curve. i was a smart kid, though; the learning curve was just a time concern. the larger problem was simply access to a pc. i did have a pc at my disposal, but it did not have a modem and it was only equipped to run windows 3.1, which basically meant i could run civ 2 and wolfenstein and little else. the windows 95 computer had dial up but it was in a central location for family use.

when we moved across the city, my dad bought a new computer and i happily inherited his old one. this gave me internet access, which allowed me to download some freeware. it also gave me the time i needed to learn how to do certain things.

i'm separating out a handful of my first electronic sound experiments and collecting them together into an ep. what these blasts of noise have in common is that they were constructed on a windows 95 computer out of samples or generated sound and with very primitive software while i was waiting to get some kind of recording equipment. most of it was pasted together meticulously using the windows 95 sound recorder; the rest of it was constructed in cool edit, which i used as a sort of a synthesizer.

for the most part, these weren't really ever meant to be songs. i ended up using them as connectors, introductions, background. "continuity". yet, i find the idea of throwing them together here to be interesting from an autobiographical perspective.

created in mid 1997. sequenced and converted to stereo in november, 2013. released on nov 9, 2013. corrected in september, 2014. finalized on july 5, 2016. first liner note release added on dec 23, 2019. as always, please use headphones.

this recording is a part of the following collections:
1) inriℵ0: https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/flac-dvd-disc-volume-1 
2) inriℵ1: https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-box-set 
3) inriℵ2: https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriched-box-set
4) inriℵ4: https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/mp3-dvd-disc-volume-1
5) inriℵ6: https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1 
6) inriℵ17: https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/flac-bd-disc-volume-1

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1997, 2013, 2016). as of dec 23, 2019, the release includes an 8 page booklet in doc, pdf & html, with an html5 audio frontend, that includes journal entries from the remastering process over nov, 2013.

released dec 1, 1997

j - cool edit (wave synthesis, digital wave editing), windows 95 sound recorder (sampling, digital wave editing), yamaha ry30 drum machine (programming)

so, what am i up to?

i crashed yesterday afternoon and was up in the evening. i fell asleep while updating this page and it ended up taking me until the morning to finish it:

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/merch

i'm under cyberattack by some fascist muslims that want to launch a jihad against me for saying mean things about their idol. you know you're all going to hell for idolatry, right? so, i'm trying to reduce the number of cookies...

i actually don't think it's google, at this point. google always takes my side, and they've shown me what they do if they want to remove something. it's ordered and predictable; it's not this kind of primitive hack on my internet. this is some vigilantes that don't care about civilized law, and want to barbarically take things into their own hands. but, they're just fucking swimming in cash, remember. it's easy to get what you want when you're a millionaire...or a billionaire....

i don't know the extent of it, but i seem to have gotten the attention of some powerful zealots....

i was specifically doubling the prices of everything physical, and otherwise verifying that everything was correct with the new pricing. this is a relatively important update to do if i'm going to be uploading isos to the payhip site.

i understand that people don't really want to buy physical media anymore. i have to admit that i'd still be buying it if i wasn't broke, because i like it; i like the cd shelf. it's a mark of obscurity. and, if you have disposable income, you spend it on art...

so, what do i do, as an artist? it's not economical. i want the option available, but i understand that i'm selling torrents...

i mean, i'm not a pop star. i don't write jingles. i'm not a singer-songwriter. i'm not a sex idol pretending to be a musician. i'm kind of an old-fashioned thing at this point - i'm a musician with a large, album-oriented discography. so, it's easy to tell me to sign up for a streaming service, but it's really not the universe i live within. i mean, i'm a consumer too, and i wouldn't have the slightest interest in something like spotify - it's just a bunch of major label crap. if i'm anything, i'm an independent artist. but the technology is crowding me out because the fuckers have monopolized the means of production.

but, i'm more pissed off about the market. frankly, as hard as it is to sell things on the internet, it's even harder to sell them in real life. i'd be nowhere at all without a website. but, consumers expect everything to be free, nowadays, and i'm guilty of that, too.

so, i'm not selling singles to tweens. i'm not trying to go viral on youtube (although i was at one point, and think i did a few times - it didn't translate to much). and, i'd like to sell you a cd, but nobody's buying. that's not my universe, it's not my market, it's not the world i live and breathe in.

what people in my universe want is full discography torrents. they want to download twenty records at a time. and, i've done that - i did it with cardiacs in the 00s, i did it with swans in the 90s. these were artists before my time that i was happy to find and benefited dramatically from finding. and, that is my audience - people looking for music that exists beyond the image, that is real and interesting to listen to. it's a small potential audience, but if you click into it...

i've got the dvds for sale, but kids nowadays don't even have optical drives.

this is why i'm setting up the payhip site - i'm trying to give the people, my people, my audience, what they actually want.

in the process, i created a sequence of physical companions to the existing dvd sequence with the intent of building a one click option to purchase all cds:

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/purchase-of-complete-physical-discography

unfortunately, bandcamp wouldn't allow for a price that high. so, we got what exists, instead.

and, that was my night - not what i planned, but a little progress.

so, we're not done with this yet...not until the state is completely removed from the process and the right for the individual to freely decide strictly on their own terms is finally upheld....

unfortunately, though, it seems as though the law still has unnecessary restrictions on bodily autonomy, and those restrictions will need to be struck down, yet again.

the legislature seems to fundamentally not get it - it doesn't grasp that it's a rights issue, and it's been swayed by religious groups to implement rights restrictions. again.

but, it's a big step forwards, even if it's incomplete.

if you don't have the right to end your own life, you don't have any rights at all.

it's the most extreme way to affirm self-ownership, possible.

the right way to see this is that it's a major victory for self-ownership and the autonomy of the individual.

i bitch about it, and it's dying, but we still have the remnants of an actual liberal party here. 

https://globalnews.ca/news/7703262/canada-senate-passes-bill-c-7/

another reboot.

again: somebody doesn't want me on the internet, and it has to do with my views on islam.

and i don't fucking care.

go fuck yourself.

so, i've set up a payhip site:

https://payhip.com/jessicamurray

that site will be digital downloads only - and will house isos for data cds, dvds and bds, which i can't upload to bandcamp, unfortunately. so, the payhip site will be comprehensive. but, the bandcamp site is still central.

i'm also doubling the price of all physical items at the bandcamp site.

nobody wants to buy a physical cd anymore - i get it. i don't want to, either. so, i'm making a cd here and there, and i've been losing money in the process. i don't want to eliminate the option, but the economics are what they are, and the cost of manufacturing cds on demand like this is pretty high, nowadays. it's just what it is.

the cost of the downloads will stay the same.

so, i'm going to upload one item to payhip every day, as i post it here, until it's filled up. i should have inri000, inri001 and inri002 up soon.

my table is in and installed.

these are cheap tables, but they'll work fine, and it means i should be able to get to reinstalling some things on that side of the room next week. 

the box is sufficient for the back of the bookcase but it seems to have been sitting in cigarette ash. the item itself doesn't smell, but there was literally grey soot all over the box. i've got it airing out, and i'll try to lysol it a few times, but i may have to toss it.

so, that's done with, and the last component for the furniture to construct in that space is bringing the wood to home depot, which i'll wait until april to do. although i can also maybe ask if the guy up there has a wood saw...

so, those unexpected reboots. i don't know what the idiots are trying to do, but it's often frustrating in terms of losing trains of thought. and, i'm going to construct that, now.

- i was going through from sept 24th, 2018 ----> now and rebuilding the four blogs, along with several side documents at one drive.

- but, i wanted to go through and understand what files may have been removed, if any. so, i rewound back to early 2018 and was reading through them, forwards.

- i decided i can probably build the dtk blog up as i do that. at least.

- but i needed to go back and reread the components i added to each of the vlogs to understand what should and shouldn't be added.

i was going through the travel blog when the machine rebooted. and, this is why i'm not using my normal pcs to connect to the internet.

my table should be here today, it seems. finally.

and, i'm setting up a payhip account for digital downloads. i'll post that soon.

today's post is inri002.

---

i've released a dozen different things with the title "inricycled", making it more of a concept than a release. it's not just the material i'm recycling, now, it's the idea of recycling material. 

i hope this is the final iteration. the difference, here, is that i'm trying to isolate segments of songs that people interested in my more recent compositions would find interesting. these fragments aren't entirely void of lyrics, but they're very minimal. they're also quite short. 

i've retitled most of the tracks to get a feel of what the music sounds like and/or what i was thinking as i was writing it. 

the material in this volume is taken from the following cassette demos, inri000 and inri001: 

jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-cassette-demo-1 (1996) 

jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-cassette-demo-2 (1997) 

this is the best possible absolute starting point for my musical material. 

written and recorded over 1996 and 1997. digitally remastered, sequenced and mildly modified in the fall of 2013. released dec 11, 2013. finalized as lp000 on july 3, 2016. first liner note release added on jan 26, 2020. i consider this my unofficial zeroth record. as always, please use headphones. 

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1997, 2013-2020). as of jan 26, 2020, the release includes a 106 page booklet in doc, pdf & html, with an html5 audio & video frontend, that includes journal entries from the remastering process over sept-dec, 2013, as well as the video for inertia, from dec, 2013 . 

released July 1, 1997 

j - guitars, effects, bass, drums, vocals, keyboards, tapes, found sounds, metronomes, digital wave editing, production.

i'm going to translate something in the article because you probably don't even know what they're talking about - but you're supposed to. i've picked this up before - the arab oil sheikhs seem to think we're all a bunch of dumb fundamentalist christians. they're entirely clueless. maybe they've read too much jordan peterson, or maybe they've listened to too much steve bannon, who both have the same position on this, but they're lost in the misunderstanding that europe is a fundamentally christian society, and that it's colonies are rooted in christian values.

we're all descended from the puritans. we're quakers. we're mennonites. 

it's hilarious.

the history of europe is in fact the history of an epic struggle against christianity, and that is one of the themes in these pages.

but, what they're referencing is this stupid story in the bible called "the judgement of solomon", where the mythical king solomon (this person never actually existed) is asked to choose which woman a child belongs to. he first suggests to cut the child in half, and one of the women shrugs and says fine, while the other insists they let it live and give it to the other woman. this fictional character called solomon then decides the child is really the offspring of the mother who said to let it live, and she gets the kid. this is then presented as an act of "wisdom".

now, you've probably never heard this story before because you were probably raised irreligiously in a multi-ethnic household and the closest thing to religion in your upbringing was probably disney movies, grimm, hans christian anderson and greek mythology. but, the fact that this diplomat is dropping it is a key hint that he's been bought off by arab blood money, because it's intended to be a part of the propaganda - you're supposed to draw the connection, and deduce that this woman is wise, like solomon. that's supposed to be obvious to you. and, that's supposed to make you like her more.

it would be hilarious if it wasn't so ominous.

but, it's not some accident of allusion - it's evidence that the thing is being guided.

i need to repeat: this article is an attempt by rich arabs, who have apparently bought access in the canadian media, to emotionally manipulate you into supporting the resettlement of islamist extremists in the country, for the purposes of colonizing the region.

and, it's not clear where the government actually stands on this.

these aren't victims - they're war criminals.

it's a trojan horse.

these are the kinds of tactics they use. repeatedly.

don't fall for it.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-us-diplomat-wants-children-freed-syria-detention-camps-1.5951716

these women are war criminals, and they deserve firing squads, not empathy.

do not fall for the propaganda - it's all it is.

again - i strongly doubt that this kid was born in canada, and the time frame where kids might have been born in canada and brought over there as infants has at this point pretty much closed. 

if there's a time window when you can undo this, it is very young, and largely passed. i don't want them here.

the only way i want to see any of these people in this country again is in cuffs, on their way to a life in prison on a sentence for crimes against humanity - without any chance of parole.

again - there's clearly a huge amount of arab blood money underlying what is a clear propaganda push to soften the image of a collection of war criminals that participated in the worst atrocities that we've seen on this planet since the second world war.

these people need to be wiped off the face of the planet.

and, that includes any children born there - which should not be considered canadian citizens. the kid is four years old and you're telling me they weren't born there? that's bullshit. that kid is going to grow up a jihadist, and this is just a backdoor for extremism, by co-opting the language of humanitarian do-gooding.

this is an expansionist culture rooted in concepts of imperialism and colonialism and it consistently does everything it can, and resorts to deplorable methods, to perpetuate itself.

somebody on the peninsula spent a lot of money to conquer syria and it failed. we rescued thousands of victims of their slaughter. and, now they're following those who escaped to canada - which is presenting itself as an easy target.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-us-diplomat-wants-children-freed-syria-detention-camps-1.5951716

so, my internet went down some time this evening and was off when i woke up.

i can't get the master document to load or convert anywhere in the cloud, so i don't remember how far i archived to. it was july or august or something like that. 

but, i do know i have multiple inbox snapshots and multiple xml downloads. if it's not in the master document, it's probably in one or the other...

this is not my prerogative right now. even if i found it, it would just to be acknowledge that i'm compromised, and then what? the fact is that the end product is the journals, not the blog. if this space is compromised, it's more important that i can back it up. and, i don't actually really understand what's going on - only that posts critical of islam seem to disappear from time to time.

i need to finish reading the blog forwards and understand the depth of the situation before i react further.

but, as the internet was down, i spent the evening cleaning. i got a ways into cleaning the kitchen, and it doesn't make sense to stop and start. so, i'm going to make some pasta and finish it up this morning.

i want a long day today so i'm going to push forward and try to get some work done in the afternoon.

so, i dunno. maybe these missing posts are there, and maybe they're not.

it doesn't matter right now. 

i'll have to wait until i get the 32-bit desktop up and running again.

i can't open the 200 mb archive file at the one drive site.

i'm going to try google docs, but it probably won't work, either.

i didn't have autoforwarding set up at the time....

i may have some of it archived. let me check the end date.

let me go back to earlier in 2018 and just read through it and get a handle of the damage.

so, how do i react to the destruction of evidence in this matter?

i don't want to make it up.

but, i want a record of my history back - and i'm absolutely distraught by the book burning.

this is what happens when the religious authorities take over a society - they destroy history, they burn books, they eliminate data.

there was one sequence where i pointed out that the most obvious thing in the world is that they'll go after the communist jew.

gone.

any reference to the idea that i may have been targeted by muslims because i'm ethnically jewish and openly queer has been removed - which is telling.

*sigh*.

i'm definitely missing posts.

specifically, somebody seems to have gone through and deleted any reference to the laws in canada being different than they are in iran. which, frighteningly, may no longer be substantively true, anyways. 

i need a way out of this increasingly fascist, increasingly dying country.

and, i'm not sure how to react next....

who deleted these posts?

i'm almost to the end of october, 2018 and need to get to march, 2019 by thursday. i also need to get some rest.

today's post is inri001.

---

my second demo, recorded over the second half of the tenth grade, is a considerably more polished recording. by this time, i had learned a lot about how to record things and had improved my drumming and keyboard playing. while the vocals remain highly erratic, ranging from precociously insightful to devastatingly stupid, the music here is actually not far from a professional recording. 

recorded in spring 1997, remastered in fall 2013. finalized on july 3, 2016. first liner note release added on dec 23, 2019 & updated to include the video for inertia on jan 26, 2020. as always, please use headphones. 

i consider this an archival release with little direct listening value. i've pointed out repeatedly that i was 16. however, various segments have been isolated and pulled out for a higher listenability value over here: 

jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inricycled-a 

this release also includes a printable j-card insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1997, 2013-2019). as of dec 23, 2019, the release includes a 35 page booklet in doc, pdf & html, with an html5 audio frontend, that includes journal entries from the remastering process over nov, 2013. as of jan 26, 2020, the html5 frontend has been augmented to include the video for inertia, which has been added to the download, and while the booklet is still 35 pages, it now encompasses sept-dec, 2013. 

released June 1, 1997 

j - guitars, effects, bass, drums, keyboards, tapes, vocals, found sounds, metronomes, production

so, i went back to the day of the arrest and am building a shadow karen document, although that document will need to be rewound to include the fight with the smokers in the previous space. it's just intended as a starting point.

i've done that because it lets me reconstruct the logic in restarting the alter-reality, which i'm hoping to do on thursday.

the thing is that i'd want to start around may to do the food thing.

i'm already in mid-march with the pandemic thing.

i'd might as well retrace my steps...

any further back than that, and i'm starting something new and want to wait.

this is a draft item dated to august 31, 2020. i will need to adhere to it and also to pick back up on it. this is evolving.

i have to go back to the start of the pandemic to make sense of this, but i'm only doing it three days of the week. so, yes - i'll be rebuilding the pandemic document after all.

---

so, what i've done is start at the beginning and, whenever i see a thread in one of the blogs, have noted it, with the hope of maintaining consistency and completeness, godel be damned. the blogs will each morph, now, to better fit these threads.

this should help everybody understand the differences between these blogs, which i'm only beginning to fully grasp, myself.

politics - general blog with a focus on current events:
- life narrative. feelings. events. reflections. dialogues. stories.
- essays. rants. comments. short stories, notes, reactions to quotes.
- philosophical reflections
- political activism
- lectures exclusive
- debates
- news reports exclusive (except sarcasm)
- mathematical & scientific analysis, of varying levels
- historical analysis
- cultural analysis
- economic analysis
- legal analysis
- thoughts on geopolitics & current events
- blogs of any sort, really
- any excerpts of existing texts
- anything published to the appspot site, including cd reviews, concert reviews & music web
- food blog
- all official music releases (including music videos)
- some extra discussions outside of the main narrative
- persies
- benchmark discs
- reviews of substantive influences in real time
- concerts
- headphones
- posts about isps & network topology
- installation files & scripts
- posts about non-musical celebrities, and about some newsworthy musical celebrities
- theory of art sequence
- other youtube videos posted and/or commentary around them should have some kind of relevance to one of these categories
- general commentary about web pages and their uses (with personal use commentary, too)

music journal - personal reflections on the process of writing and recording music, including full documentation when possible:
- life narrative. feeling, events. reflections. dialogues.
- studio narrative
- cover art
- all official music releases
- damaged cds are part of the narrative.
- computer troubleshooting is a part of the narrative
- cleaning the studio. scripting machines.
- benchmark discs / obligatory influentials / comment threads about influences
- reviews of new records by selected artists that are of specific historical influence
- rap news series
- some obituaries of direct or indirect influences
- no appspot reviews, but reviews of new music affecting me as i'm recording.
- concerts
- persies
- headphones
- installation files & files created when recording
- posts about isps & network topology (ends after getting isp access)
- posts about personal social media sites
- posts about music theory or music history or music as any other academic interest
- posts about music production, gear, equipment, etc
- posts about the guitar, the development of the guitar, guitar music history, specific guitarists, etc
- comments where i drop my own music
- comments where i present biographical information in a way that is relevant to understanding my influences and development as an artist
- theory of art sequence
- concepts that relate to topics explored in songs
- some excerpts of existing texts as they are relevant to art or my artistic development
- discussions with people inquiring about the music

dtk - general media commentary in it's fullest abstraction:
- any posts containing music videos of any sort
- any youtube videos or comments around videos except those that are considered official new sources
- tv show & film excerpts
- news source allowed for light content or content about music or media criticism
- interviews with musicians or authors, but not speeches or lectures, or news reports.
- posts with pictures or comments on pop culture or music, broadly, including pop culture authors (interpret broadly)

- so comments about popular authors or philosophers, and my own views on well known philosophical concerns.
- media commentary & criticism
- cds, cd reviews, cd collections, etc
- anything posted to the appspot site as a review
- music web
- official original album releases
- spontaneous song lyrics
- minimal personal commentary (almost none).
- no persies, except profile updates.
- gaming exclusive
- posts about isps & network topology
- any paintings & cover art
- release dates
- animal vids
- general commentary about web pages and their uses (but not personal use commentary)
- headphones sequence
- border stuff because of concerts
- concerts
- not considered official news sources: vice news, fox news.
- posts about music theory or music history or music as any other academic interest
- comments on articles about music and art in any abstraction
- some excerpts of existing texts as they are relevant to art or culture, broadly
- some (usually ironic) self-referential comments about my posting habits

travel - any posts about leaving the house and things done when leaving the house
- posts made to facebook, blogger, etc from somewhere physically outside the house or about things that happened outside of the house
- travel blog needs to be more about action scenes, and less about documenting every time i leave the house. so, actually try to avoid posts that just mention going somewhere, and make it more about the narrative of actually going somewhere.
- should avoid planning posts
- should include reflections on travelling or moving
- reflections, interactions or thoughts made while walking
- reflective posts made about the weather in the context of being out
- thoughts about the weather happening outside
- some imaginary traveling, or projecting traveling ideas
- posts about isps & network topology
- persies for going out only
- border stuff because of concerts
- concerts
- posts about time zones
- posts about odsp renewal
- posts about dr's offices
- posts about groceries & diet. food blog. garbage posts.
- posts about buying & shipping items online
- initial headphones sequence, as a purchase
- climate change rants that are about the actual weather
- stomach ache posts
- air conditioning posts & posts about inside weather
- posts about neighbourhood cats and other local animal sightings or experiences, including insects and parasites in the house
- quitting smoking posts, marijuana posts, hormones posts, other drug posts [all personal use or reflections]
- reactions to mail
- space travel, electric vehicles & other forms of transportation
- bicycle posts

in celebration of almost getting back to work in finishing the discography, which picks back up in 2003, i'm going to post each release in chronological order, one per day.

we start with inri000.

===

these are the first demos i recorded, written 1994-1996 and recorded in the second half of 1996. this corresponds to the end of my 15th year and the beginning of my grade 10 school year. on the one hand, it's an intriguing document of a socially maladjusted teenage punk. on the other hand, it's a 15 year-old kid learning how to use a recording studio (and how to play the drums). influences are displayed on my sleeve just a little too loudly at times. 

i was attempting to create something that could be described by the words disturbing, schizophrenic, unique, bizarre, twisted. looking back, i think i succeeded more than i realized at the time. this is a difficult listen that would be appealing to fans of the obscurantist reaches of 80s punk and 90s grunge. i manage to maintain a strange sense of melody, though. in truth, my current adult self is somewhat impressed with my teenaged self at this current point. 

that being said, it should not be forgotten that i was fifteen. i am at times rather crude, and i display a childlike understanding of certain issues. most poetry written at the age of fifteen is not particularly insightful. again, though, i surprise myself at points. 

this is the first time i'm publishing these demos in any form. i've remained frighteningly self-conscious of them over the years. over the last seventeen years, the audience has been extremely limited. initial reactions suggested i take some time to perfect my performance skills, particularly my drumming skills. however, this indicated a lack of understanding of my intent in the overall sound. the playing is quite purposefully abstract with the aim of exploring mental illness. 

the demos were initially dub-mastered onto a 110 minute tape that would have flipped after the eighth track. that tape was at some point recorded into a soundblaster and compressed very heavily; this is the only source of the material that i still have. so, i had to decompress the files from those 128 (or worse) kbps mp3s and run them through some digital mastering equipment in an attempt to "undo" the compression. what that is is a half-effective trick to recover data that is in actuality forever lost. nonetheless, i should point out that while these files were recorded entirely in 1996, they were substantially digitally modified in late 2013. finalized on june 26, 2016. first liner note release added on sept 30, 2019 and updated on dec 22 & 23, 2019. as always, please use headphones. 

i consider this an archival release with little direct listening value. i've pointed out repeatedly that i was 15. however, various segments have been isolated and pulled out for a higher listenability value over here: 

jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inricycled-a 

this release also includes a printable j-card insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries in doc & pdf from all phases of production (1993-1996, 2013-2019). as of sept 30, 2019, the release includes a 47 page booklet that includes journal entries from the remastering process over sept-oct, 2013. as of dec 22, 2019, it also includes an html version of the same journal with an interactive html5 frontend. as of dec 23, 2019 the booklet is now 50 pages and encompasses sept-nov, 2013. some typos in the liner notes were corrected on jan 26, 2020. 

released December 25, 1996 

j - guitars, effects, bass, drums, vocals, keyboards, tapes, found sounds, percussion, production.

i got some rest, in two spurts. so, i'll be sitting and typing for a few hours, until i get through some coffee.

the main cop was gone all week but came back last night. at first, the smell cleared out - as it often does when he comes in. but, now, the marijuana smell has been replaced by the smell of cheap cigars. it's not the first time that's happened, and he's acknowledged he smokes them, although denies he smokes them inside. and, i suppose there's some chance he is smoking them outside. but, they're rank.

my table is stuck in kitchener due to a "missort", whatever that means. i'll have to get on the phone tomorrow, i guess.

in the mean time, i finished fixing the bookcase in the bedroom, after a few false starts. 

and, it's time to get back to it, after i do a little extra cleaning.

these are the following draft posts that will be finished simultaneously:

- a clean-up post for the fluoride, because i caught some arithmetic errors.

- a total amino acid post where i combine all of the existing amino acid posts and the still to be written ones into a major update in the chart, which more or less takes me to the end of this

- a complete fruit bowl post where i post everything

- the document at google drive, which is being compiled at the one drive site

there are four further unpublished posts that have to do with the 2013 rebuild.

so, the place is almost as clean as it was when i brought those shelves in last week. almost.

the 16-bit pc has been placed in the space on a bookend table, beside one of the speakers. the kvm is sitting on top of it, and i'll need to connect it the next time i turn it on. it's a shame it takes power, but whatever.

i've moved the 32-bit pc back where it was, which is close to but not in it's resting spot. i need to rebuild it, first - and i'm currently rebuilding it temporarily.

one of the two bookshelves had a back, but the nails were mostly missing. i ran around the back with some finishing nails. while you can see crumbly particleboard if you look, it's almost as good as new - i just need to screw the wobbly top piece back in place by rescrewing it beside the old broken screw. so, yeah - you'll be able to tell if you look at it. but, who cares? it's been scrubbed down, and it's otherwise ready to put some books and cds on it....as soon as it gets some shelves.

i finally took apart that old chest thing that i had converted into a headboard, and has since just flat out broken. by my account, i should get roughly 6 shelves out of it,  and could potentially get a few other things out of it. these walls are full of pre-existing holes. it'll make it easy to screw a couple of pieces of wood in as loose shelves, and i might need it.

the table is in kitchener, apparently. that's about a three hour drive. so, i'll need to set the two tables up when it gets here, and then have space to set things back up on that side of the apartment, as well.

for now, i'm going to eat....

and, then we're back to this, hopefully quickly - the last update was actually not february but back on january 30th:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vdvEPJ8NtNUbuPItFour9gJdFa4Yy0gE/view?usp=sharing

so, that was absolutely the right install disc - it picked up the drivers and even installed the old software i remembered. perfect. 

i was able to get the network card installed by pointing it to the e:\win98 directory when it asked - simple but not obvious.

there was a root usb hub that wouldn't install, and i think i just went over the max number of installable hubs. it hardly matters, because windows 98 can't pick up flash drives, pretty much at all.

but, the partition is essentially perfectly installed at this point - i just need recording software. and, what i'll be using is cool edit as the crux.

i'll get back to it in a few days. for now, i want to clean a little in here before it gets to 7:00 and then shift to the diet writeup, as i left it off last month. that's my task this week - to get as much of that done as i can. and, it's an easier process.

that will let me finish the posts i left off with.

in order to restart in 2013 and move forwards, i need to get the recording pc running again. for now. what i need is some way to boot into a functional windows xp....the version on the 9x machine won't be it.

in order to do that, i had to setup the xp machine first.

and, i still have tons of cleaning to do, too. the table should be here today,....

i'm going to want to compile some extra exe files for specific sound applications that only run on this platform and in the end burn everything to a single dvd for backup, but once i get the video card installed i'm going to put this way until next friday because i'm serious about splitting my time up and sticking to it and i need to shift back to finishing up the food blog before i can get back to 2013.

put another way, i have a series of half-written posts and need to finish them before i move on.

so, i'm burning the ati iso to disc, and i think that the modem should install if i tell it to use a "generic ne2000" driver.

so, i think this is the file i want.

https://archive.org/details/ati-international-installation-cd-ver.-101

i can probably check it on xp first.

while i believe i had heard each of these stories on their own, this is also perhaps the first time i'd heard them all pieced together into a narrative, and this is useful in that sense, even if the narrative is scattered. i suppose that there's a civilizational complex underlying the various rulers, but this doesn't seem to have been a unified state or a national identity.

rather, i wonder if there isn't a struggle against the colonizing force of islam hidden in the narrative, as there is a struggle against christianity in so much of the history of northern europe. as he was going through this, i had that feeling of having heard this before - the outpost of the established religious empire, casting the various local rulers as cruel or wise depending on whether they upheld the religious authority or not. so, the ruler that tried to push back against the colonial entity in timbuktu is wicked and cruel, and the ruler that carried out a holy war against the heathens to the south is just and wise. you see the same types of histories in sweden and russia, and it's not merely bias, it's not merely the source...

the reality is that colonized people tend to react against the religion first when they push back, because it's the religion that's used as the tool of mental control. so, the religious histories will paint narratives of people willingly converting and casting away their barbarous and primitive ways; this is essentially always designed to cover up a real history of struggle against the religious authorities, which are essentially always acting out a cultural genocide against the colonized people. it's natural for the nationalized revolts to focus on the religious bodies, because it's the religious bodies that are the human face of the empire. 

so, was there in truth a struggle against the caliphate led by suni ali, and was that struggle ultimately defeated? it sort of sounds like it. but, the churches wrote all the histories in those days, so we remember what they want us to.

i'd also like to point out that the treatment of slavery here is refreshing, because you don't see it often nowadays. yes - slavery as we understand it was initially about religion and not race. it only became about race once abolitionists started converting africans to christianity and, even so, they took a biblical passage about the curse of ham to justify it. 

i'm going to have to download something.

while i'm at it, let's write down that i need drivers for a kingston etherrx kne20plug and play isa adapter.

no, it didn't take it.

i've got the card out in my hand and let's get the exact device name, here - ati rage theatre 213rt1zua32 / aiw128 agp 53401.

and, let's try again.

if not, i'll have to download something.

this thing has an ati all in wonder in it, which was a high end video card at the time. i can plug a cable line directly into it, and used to use it to watch tv sometimes. i hardly want to pay for cable in 2021, but i could conceivably do that if i really wanted to.

the 98 disc doesn't have the drivers, but the xp disc does.

let me try that, maybe it's that easy.

yeah - the exact thing i wanted to install has been installed, and it works great.

perfect.

now, i need to get the display driver updated....

yeah. the driver works. i just need to install it manually from the disc.

ok.

let's try to get the software running.

ok, wait. i think i might have got it.

i'm so used to windows doing everything for me that i forgot that you used to have to tell it where to look. remember that? maybe you really don't. but, there was a time when you had to tell windows that a sound card was a sound card, what company manufactured it, etc - and hope it installed the right thing.

it's rebooting, and it might work when it comes up.

the software bundle on the iso is something very much like what i remember from years ago, so i'm going to stick with it.

let's see if i can wipe the thing out of the registry entirely and try to just install the drivers, first.

yeah, i'm not getting the drivers to install at all. so, the software installs, but then it tells me it doesn't have a device to utilize. i need to get more specific 98 drivers, first.

let's get the chronology right.

this device was manufactured in 1998. i received it as a gift in late 1999 - around christmas of that year (my 19th birthday was the second week of 2000). the drivers are dated to may, 2000.

so, this is not the version of the drivers or software that came with the device, but would probably be the last version for a 9x architecture and possibly intended for windows 2000 sp1.

let's see what happens when i install from disc. but, i may be stuck:

1) it may be too new for 98

2) it may be too old for xp

so, can i find a different os? or can i find a different iso? i was lucky to find this one...

what i'm trying to avoid, i think, is the ntvdm. i've got these separated in my mind as "9x is 16-bit, nt is 32 bit" but that's not quite right, of course. it has to do with the underlying treatment of dos. this was a long time ago...

so, i want the last version of windows before that, which may have been 2000 sp 1?

let me try in 98 from the disc.

or was it windows 2000?

lol.

i don't remember...

i'm going to have a try a few, though. it's why i'm doing this.

if i can't get 98 to work, i'll need to try me,  somehow. i want a 16-bit os on here...

i neither have me nor nt 4.0 kicking around - i have 98, and i have xp. 

i think i was actually running me.

i got a nap in. it was inevitable.

the bluescreen i'm getting in xp is a driver_irql_not_less_or_equal which is consistent with the idea that the drivers don't work right in xp. but, when i try to install in 98, i'm getting a host of missing files errors. 

given that the disk is dated to may, 2000 it was almost certainly intended for a 9x application rather than an nt appliction. at the time, nt was still mostly used for servers. 9x was the consumer grade product. so, why isn't it installing correctly, then?

i'm going to actually burn a cd and try to install it from there. it's almost done. and, it's useful to have as backup.

i'm not tired, clearly.

thankfully.

finally.

i want to flip these dates over though because i have the electrical to worry about.

fri night--->mon morn: working on the discography (starting at period 3)

mon morn--->thurs night: moving forward through the blogs (starting in 2013)

thus night---> fri night: the alter-reality (starting in 1989)

i just copied the files over, but i may have to actually burn a cd.

so, it crashed with a blue screen error. is that what it did before? i don't remember. 

i want to reinstall to this drive to see if the script works after the permissions shift, regardless...

the files are dated to the year 2000 - this is before xp was released. there's two options:

ctrun_95.dll

ctrun_nt.dll

it's really, really old.

i'm going to launch it in 98 and see if it's more stable. and, i think that's really the better idea, even if i can get it to almost work in xp.

i'm better off buying a second front-end for the audigy and putting that in the newer machine, as it's intended for xp.

ok.

i got excited there, but i think it's a false start. let me do what i intended to do.

well...

it installed.

it loaded.

it crashed....

gah. if this loads, i want it in the other machine. surely.

i actually think this is a good time to take a nap.

my script didn't launch. i think it was a permissions issue, but i don't know, really.

the card in the machine when i built the last script was an audigy, but i've replaced it with the old live drive! and i'm running the install disc i downloaded, on xp. it seems to be working, oddly enough.

so, what was the problem, really? was it that i lost the disc? did i find it now? i'm remembering all of these old programs...

we'll see if it works on xp or not. if it does, that's something i was never able to figure out before. but, it could be as simple as the source. i mean, if i just downloaded the 32-bit software bundle that i could never find before...

there are other 16-bit software programs that don't work in 32 bit. but, i wonder if i want to reverse the logic, if this actually works - do i want it connected to the faster machine?

it's finally manageable in here. sort of. i need to run the shower every few hours to push the smoke back out through the doors, or i'm going to be hacking and wheezing. it's truly utterly disgusting...

if he'd turn the fucking heat on, i wouldn't have to do that.

i have to hope this isn't permanent in terms of severity. but, it's at least not seeping in through the window. one thing at a time.

i'm almost done the install, but these old systems are finnicky and i had to try a few things. i thought i could just load windows 98 to a fat32 partition and let boot.ini deal with it, but it wouldn't do it. so, i had to copy the files on the drive off to a usb key in the win pe environment (from a vista disc), remove all the partitions, boot from a windows 98 floppy boot disk (which i somewhat amazingly actually still have), create a new partition with fdisk and install 98 to it. and, i got it up and running - only to realize i didn't have any drivers, and am hardly going to connect to the internet (with windows 98) looking for them.  so, i tried to plug a usb key in, but that's no good - i don't have a usb key small enough for windows 98 to read. short of burning cds, the only other solution is to create a "swap disk", install xp and drop the drivers in that way. which i was going to need to do anyways...

this old pIII 500 machine, in an asus p3bf board, was built for windows 98. at the time, i had 512 mb of ram, which was impressive. this is the machine i used to record everything up until about 2006 - all the inri stuff, all the rabit stuff, all the deny everything stuff, most of the trivial group stuff and even a bunch of stuff i haven't finished yet (which is why i'm rebuilding it in it's old state) - although it was almost all remastered and remixed on the new system from 2014-2017. i upgraded from 98 to xp in 2004 to install matlab for a course in wavelet design. the machine was never the same after that, and i bought a new machine altogether in 2006...

after that, the pIII became a glorified typewriter and i built an image for it in 2008 that was intended for that purpose. this image was full of word processors and freeware math software, much of it initially written for linux before being ported to xp. i spent a lot of time writing mathml reports on it. but, i also used it for email and internet debates. 

when i moved to windsor, that purpose was taken over by a laptop, and i converted it into a multimedia pc, intended to exist in the living room. i built a second image for that purpose, that was a little more focused on multimedia applications.

i want the new image to be a union of these two images and may end up building a new image for it in the long run, if frequent reinstalls become necessary. for now, i'm going to start with the image i built in 2014 and see if i can just tweak the scripts a little to get the new drivers in.

xp doesn't let you create partitions on the install screen, so i booted into gparted and created two ntfs partitions for the xp install (an os partition and a partition for the script) and a swap partition to get data back and forth. but, when i came up to the install, i noticed that it labeled the partition i want to install to "d:". i decided that this may screw the install up, but i could relabel the partitions when it was done and just do it again.

unfortunately, it wouldn't let me relabel the boot partition. well, i know i can fix it manually if i have to, but why bother? i then remembered that the trick is to set the 98 partition to hidden during the xp install, to make the xp install process only see the partitions it needs to see, namely the os partition and the script partition. this works because now xp and 98 both see themselves as "c:\". the trick, then, is building the boot menu, afterwards. 

so, i went back and did it again:

0. to do this you need a live rescue disc (win pe or gparted), a 98 cd, a 98 floppy and an xp cd.

1. delete all partitions in gparted (or win pe, if you need to copy files first)

2. make sure you have your 98 boot floppy along with your boot cd, and boot to the floppy

3. create the fat 32 partition in fdisk and reboot to the cd

4. finish installing 98 to the fat32 partition

5. boot into gparted and create the ntfs partition for xp, along with whatever other partitions you want. set the 98 partition to hidden and the xp partition to boot.

6. boot into the xp install and carry through with it, whatever that means to you. for me, i have an unattended dvd installation...

7. boot back into gparted and unhide the 98 partition.

there's two approaches from this point.

1. you could just set one or the other as bootable with gparted whenever you want to use it. when you boot into 98, it won't see the xp drive at all because it's ntfs. when you boot into xp, it will see the 98 drive as just files. that's the tactic i'm going to use for now.

2. if you want a boot menu, you need to install a non-windows os to a third partition. so, you could set up a dummy ubuntu install, for example. i'm not doing that right now.

you can't do this using boot.ini without getting stuck with a d:\windows, and i'd advise against that.

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

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

this will be life for a while:

sat/sun/mon building the blogs

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

fri on the alter-reality.

what that will mean for right now is:

sat/sun/mon typing

tues/wed/thurs cleaning and rebuilding

fri on the alter-reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

ok, so i'm caught up on the narrative and will stay caught up on it. going out several days in a row like that is pretty unusual for me...

last night was a wash - i slept all day, then spent all night eating. well, i tried to eat eggs & pasta together, and i got slowed down by the pasta...it took a long time....

and, then i slept all day again...

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

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

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

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

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

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

where was i in the narration?

i think maybe the silicon wasn't dry yet, this morning.

i just ate a meal without having to endure the stench of drugs and smoke for the first time in some time, and it's a big step forward in making this space livable.

somebody smoked a large joint and i crashed hard this morning and missed my appointment again. but that's 12 hours of sleep, so let's hope i'm nice and productive this weekend.

the table should be here on monday, so if i can thoroughly finish cleaning and sealing the place then i can potentially have everything in order by mid-week.

i missed my morning meal so i'm doubling up on pasta and eggs. i'll be back to what i was doing when that's done.

i pointed out that my headaches seem to have resolved after boosting my b vitamins, specifically b5, which i think i was severely deficient in.

if i had or have ms, how likely is it that a b5 deficiency caused it? i'd say that's pretty unlikely - and that smoke from car exhaust is more likely.

but, if the myelin degradation was caught early enough, i suspect that a bombardment of b vitamins (combined with quitting smoking) might have partially reversed it.

Interestingly, both MS and vitamin B deficiencies result in severe myelin degeneration, leading to loss in neuronal signal transmission.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28875857/

i've been concerned about my d for years, and have had a diet heavy in soy & eggs since the 00s. unless i can't absorb it (i haven't tested for it.), i was never d deficient. it's just not a likely problem.

but, what changed was that i got my b vitamins way up - and it wasn't even the reason why. i was trying to solve the tiredness, which worked at first but stopped when the winter kicked in. 

but, it seems to have worked in resolving the headaches, by accident.

so, i was awake again on thursday afternoon and intended to get everything in order and have a long and productive day:

===

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

---

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.

====

i was out briefly in the afternoon to do a compost run, and it was at least legitimately warm for the first time in months. i intended to finish cleaning on the other side of the house first and do the silicon on the windows later on, but, when i sat down to eat, i was overwhelmed by the smoke and i realized i needed to immediately fix the problem before doing anything else...

---

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 had an appointment scheduled for 10:00 am on friday morning and was intending to stay up all night and make it after cleaning myself up early in the morning. unfortunately, i wasn't able to make it over night and stopped to nap. but, when i woke up to shower, i'd already missed the appointment...

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.

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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.

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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...

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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:

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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.