#it's not pre syncope levels of bad

[halogalopaghost]

I just found out that a tilt table test isn't like, getting tilted back and forth for a while, you lay there for thirty minutes and then they tilt you upright REAL QUICK, im gonna fail that test so hard lmao

[underneaththatblackblanket]

"The 200+ Symptoms of Fibromyalgia"

(Note: Some symptoms may overlap)

GENERAL

1. Activity level decreased to less than 50% of pre-illness activity level

2. Cold hands and feet (extremities)

3. Cough

4. Craving carbohydrates

5. Delayed reaction to physical activity or stressful events

6. Dryness of eyes and/or mouth

7. Edema (Oedema)

8. Family member(s) with Fibromyalgia

9. Fatigue, made worse by physical exertion or stress

10. Feeling cold often

11. Feeling hot often

12. Frequent sighing

13. Heart palpitations

14. Hoarseness

15. Hypoglycemia (blood sugar falls or low)

16. Increased thirst

17. Low blood pressure (below 110/70)

18. Low body temperature (below 97.6)

19. Low-grade fevers

20. Night sweats

21. Noisy joints – with or without pain

22. Poor circulation in hands/feet

23. Profuse sweating

24. Recurrent flu-like illness

25. Shortness of breath with little or no exertion

26. Severe nasal allergies (new or worsening allergies)

27. Sore throat

28. Subjective swelling of extremities – (feels swollen Bu can’t find anything)

29. Sweats

30. Symptoms worsened by air travel

31. Symptoms worsened by stress

32. Symptoms worsened by temperature changes

33. Tender or swollen lymph nodes, especially in neck and underarms

34. Tremor or trembling

35. Unexplained weight gain or loss

PAIN

36. Abdominal wall pain

37. Bad hip pain

38. Burning Nerve Pain

39. Chest pain

40. Collarbone pain

41. Diffuse swelling

42. Elbow pain

43. Exacerbated Plantar arch or heel pain

44. “Growing” pains that don’t go away once you are done growing

45. Headache – tension or migraine

46. Inflamed Rib Cartilage

47. Joint pain

48. Lumpy, tender breasts

49. Morning stiffness

50. Muscle pain - widespread

51. Muscle spasms

52. Muscle twitching

53. Muscle weakness

54. Pain that ranges from moderate to severe

55. Pain that moves around the body

56. Paralysis or severe weakness of an arm or leg

57. Restless Leg Syndrome

58. Rib Pain

59. Scalp Pain (like hair being pulled out)

60. Sciatica-like pain

61. Tender points or trigger points

62. TMJ syndrome

63. “Voodoo Doll” Poking Sensation in random places

NEUROLOGICAL

64. Blackouts

65. Brain fog

66. Carpal Tunnel

67. Feeling spaced out

68. Hallucinating smells

69. Inability to think clearly

70. Lightheadedness

71. Noise intolerance

72. Numbness or tingling sensations

73. Photophobia (sensitivity to light)

74. Seizures

75. Seizure-like episodes

76. Sensation that you might faint

77. Syncope (fainting)

78. Tinnitus (ringing in one or both ears)

79. Vertigo or dizziness

EQUILIBRIUM/PERCEPTION

80. Bumping into things

81. Clumsy Walking

82. Difficulty balancing

83. Difficulty judging distances (when driving, etc.)

84. Directional disorientation

85. Dropping things frequently

86. Feeling spatially disoriented

87. Frequent tripping or stumbling

88. Not seeing what you’re looking at

89. Poor balance and coordination

90. Staggering gait

SLEEP

91. Alertness/energy best late at night

92. Altered sleep/wake schedule

93. Awakening frequently

94. Difficulty falling asleep

95. Difficulty staying asleep

96. Excessive sleeping

97. Extreme alertness or energy levels late at night

98. Falling asleep at random and sometimes dangerous moments

99. Fatigue

100. Light or broken sleep pattern

101. Muscle spasms/twitches at night

102. Narcolepsy

103. Sleep disturbances

104. Sleep starts or falling sensations

105. Teeth grinding - "Bruxism"

106. Tossing and turning

107. Un-refreshing or non-restorative sleep

108. Vivid or disturbing dreams/nightmares

EYES/VISION

109. Blind spots in vision

110. Eye pain

111. Difficulty switching focus from one thing to another

112. Frequent changes in ability to see well

113. Night driving difficulty

114. Occasional Blurry vision

115. Poor night vision

116. Rapidly worsening vision

117. Vision changes

COGNITIVE

118. Becoming lost in familiar locations when driving

119. Confusion

120. Difficulty expressing ideas in words

121. Difficulty following conversation (especially if background noise present)

122. Difficulty following directions while driving

123. Difficulty following oral instructions

124. Difficulty following written instructions

125. Difficulty making decisions

126. Difficulty moving your mouth to speak

127. Difficulty paying attention

128. Difficulty putting ideas together to form a complete picture

129. Difficulty putting tasks or things in proper sequence

130. Difficulty recognizing faces

131. Difficulty speaking known words

132. Difficulty remembering names of objects

133. Difficulty remembering names of people

134. Difficulty understanding what you read

135. Difficulty with long-term memory

136. Difficulty with simple calculations

137. Difficulty with short-term memory

138. Easily distracted during a task

139. Dyslexia-type symptoms occasionally

140. Feeling too disoriented to drive

141. Forgetting how to do routine things

142. Impaired ability to concentrate

143. Inability to recognize familiar surroundings

144. Losing track in the middle of a task (remembering what to do next)

145. Losing your train of thought in the middle of a sentence

146. Loss of ability to distinguish some colors

147. Poor judgment

148. Short term memory impairment

149. Slowed speech

150. Staring into space trying to think

151. Stuttering; stammering

152. Switching left and right

153. Transposition (reversal) of numbers, words and/or letters when you speak

154. Transposition (reversal) of numbers, words and/or letters when you write

155. Trouble concentrating

156. Using the wrong word

157. Word-finding difficulty

EMOTIONAL

158. Abrupt and/or unpredictable mood swings

159. Anger outbursts

160. Anxiety or fear when there is no obvious cause

161. Attacks of uncontrollable rage

162. Decreased appetite

163. Depressed mood

164. Feeling helpless and/or hopeless

165. Fear of someone knocking on the door

166. Fear of telephone ringing

167. Feeling worthless

168. Frequent crying

169. Heightened awareness – of symptoms

170. Inability to enjoy previously enjoyed activities

171. Irrational fears

172. Irritability

173. Overreaction

174. Panic attacks

175. Personality changes –usually a worsening of pervious condition

176. Phobias

177. Suicide attempts

178. Suicidal thoughts

179. Tendency to cry easily

GASTROINTESTINAL

180. Abdominal cramps

181. Bloating

182. Decreased appetite

183. Food cravings

184. Frequent constipation

185. Frequent diarrhea

186. Gerd-like Symptoms

187. Heartburn

188. Increased appetite

189. Intestinal gas

190. Irritable bladder - "Angry Bladder Syndrome"

191. Irritable bowel syndrome - IBS-C, IBS-D

192. Nausea

193. Regurgitation

194. Stomachache

195. Vomiting

196. Weight gain - unexplained

197. Weight loss - unexplained

UROGENITAL

198. Decreased libido (sex drive)

199. Endometriosis

200. Frequent urination

201. Impotence

202. Menstrual problems

203. Painful urination or bladder pain - "Interstitial Cystitis"

204. Pelvic pain

205. Prostate pain

206. Worsening of (or severe) premenstrual syndrome (PMS or PMDD)

SENSITIVITIES

207. Alcohol intolerance

208. Allodynia (hypersensitive to touch)

209. Alteration of taste, smell, and/or hearing

210. Sensitivity to chemicals in cleaning products, perfumes, etc.

211. Sensitivities to foods

212. Sensitivity to light

213. Sensitivity to mold

214. Sensitivity to noise

215. Sensitivity to odors

216. Sensitivity to yeast (getting yeast infections frequently on skin, etc.)

217. Sensory overload

218. Sensitivity to pressure & humidity changes

219. Sensitivity to extreme temperature changes

220. Vulvodynia

SKIN

221. Able to “write” on skin with finger

222. Bruising easily

223. Bumps and lumps

224. Eczema or psoriasis

225. Hot/dry skin

226. Ingrown hairs

227. Itchy/Irritable skin

228. Mottled skin

229. Rashes or sores

230. Scarring easily

231. Sensitivity to the sun

232. Skin suddenly turns bright red

CARDIOVASCULAR (Heart)

233. “Click-murmur” sounds through stethoscope

234. Fluttery heartbeat

235. Heart palpitations

236. Irregular heartbeat

237. Loud pulse in ear

238. Pain that mimics heart attack - "Costochondritis"

239. Rapid heartbeat

HAIR/NAILS

240. Dull, listless hair

241. Heavy and splitting cuticles

242. Irritated nail beds

243. Nails that curve under

244. Pronounced nail ridges

245. Temporary hair loss

OTHER

246. Canker sores

247. Dental problems

248. Disk Degeneration

​249. Hemorrhoids

250. Nose bleeds

251. Periodontal (gum) disease

252. Need for early hysterectomy

[lolipopjewel]

a draculaura kinnie (me) explaining draculaura’s hemophobia (fear of blood/fainting) as somebody who also has the same phobia

So its kind of a joke in monster high that draculaura will faint if she sees blood or even meat due to her being a vegetarian, however there are some other canonical events that i believe play into her reaction to blood and i’ll also give you my two cents on what fainting from being exposed to blood is like for me!!

if you were unaware, draculaura is actually adopted! she was adopted by dracula after her human parents died due to the plague, and she also was born a human as well - dracula turned her into a vampire to save her from dying to the plague as well and adopted her and raised her as his own from then on. its not clear if draculaura had severe hemophobia as a young child or when she became vegetarian, but a popular theory is that due to her not being a natural born vampire, she is more sensitive to blood and the concept of feeding off of it. 

now, i am a person with severe sensitivity to all things blood, gore, and medical related and i have a fainting disorder. if im exposed to any of my triggers, high levels of pain, or extreme emotional distress my body will automatically produce a vasovagal response, and i will faint. i can’t remember anything that caused me to form this phobia and most of my fear is related to not wanting to pass out, being unconscious is terrifying! so i don’t believe draculaura would need any sort of traumatic explanation for her hemophobia or fainting, i think it could be something she was born with and/or developed when she was very young like i was. 

the way draculaura is shown to faint in the series is obviously very dramatic for the cartoonish effect and also for humor (which part of me hates as i was teased about fainting at the sight of blood all my life), but she seems to recover very quickly. just as quick as she is out, she can be fully awake and talking again as seen in episodes like “Fear Pressure” when she tells frankie to get her out of the situation only a few seconds to a minute after fainting. she even is able to walk out with minimal help from frankie, so she may not even have fully gone unconscious in some of these situations which is also known as “greying out.” 

look i know its just a cartoon, but for the sake of spreading awareness about vasovagal syncope and using my comfort media to cope, here’s my take on how draculaura would actually experience a fainting episode in a more realistic setting; 

- First, a trigger is presented (blood from an injury, a meal with meat and blood in it, etc) and she is exposed to it - Internally, her blood pressure would spike due to the extreme fear and rapidly drop causing her circulation to be all out of wack which causes the vasovagal response (fainting).  - This can feel like extreme anxiety, tingling and numbness in her limbs, lightheadedness, weakness in her muscles, and her vision would darken until unconscious.  - Then, in order to help with a swift recovery, she should be laying flat with her legs propped up to allow for proper bloodflow to the brain, this will help her regain consciousness after no more than 2 minutes on average  - She may feel confused, have lingering numbness or tingling throughout her body, lightheadedness and other pre syncope symptoms, these could last until she has fully regulated her system again - It is unlikely she would be able to stand and walk on her own immediately after waking up, it would most likely take several minutes until she could do so without help, it could cause a SECOND vasovagal response if she attempted to stand up too quickly (iron deficiency gang where you at??) - Eating or drinking substances with high sugar can help with recovery as the sugar boost to the brain helps to basically kickstart it and get things moving again - After fully recovering from being unconscious, she may have no further problems throughout the day, or she may feel drained and tired after using so much energy in her body. it truly depends on how bad the episode was, how long the effects lasted after waking up, and the general stress of the situation involving her trigger

This is all explained by how i experience fainting and what i know about how vasovagal syncope effects the body, im by no means a medical professional. this is just for fun y’all. hopefully if you decide to include draculaura’s fainting and hemophobia in a writing, comic, creative project, etc. that this helped you understand a bit more! thanks for reading if you made it this far, it really makes me happy that anyone would be interested in learning about this condition and how difficult it can make life. 

[atelier-aria]

So here’s a Status Update I wanted to share: It’s in regards to my general health. I’m not very confident at writing posts like this but I thought I should let everyone know as this does directly impact what I do so - more under the cut if you’re interested ^^/

After 8yrs+ of investigation, I recently got a tentative diagnosis of Hypermobility Syndrome (it has a lot of names: HSD hypermobility spectrum disorder/ JHS joint hypermobility syndrome/ symptomatic hypermobility - the diagnostic criteria was updated in 2017 and there’s still ongoing research) and long story short it’s a connective tissue disorder/ligament laxity issue that makes my joints more unstable than usual, or makes my joints sit further outside the socket than normal.

It used to be commonly known as double-jointedness and yes - I can contort a lot of my joints in all sorts of overextensive twists that normal joints shouldn’t. I can twist my elbows outwards to where it looks broken (which was always a fun trick at school lol), and the consultant testing me turned my wrists nearly a full rotation - which was bizarre to watch, because I really felt nothing as he did it.

Unfortunately, party tricks aside, it means I’ve been struggling with chronic fatigue and chronic pain in nearly all my joints for over a decade. Without any significant injury or trauma I suffer frequent muscles aches, strains and sprains, flares of bursitis and tendonitis in various parts, and the joints in my hips and back leave me in constant states of discomfort and pain and unable to do things like standing, walking, or sitting for very long. It profoundly affects my mobility and energy levels and normal everyday tasks can be a trial sometimes.

There’s also a whole host of associated problems with symptomatic Hypermobility that often arise (digestive troubles, dental/visual problems, anxiety etc), as well as the dizziness and pre-syncope I get from standing or moving too fast. It’s been a lot to process but I suspect it’s been 90% responsible for most of my ailments and troubles throughout my life - which is...a lot to think about.

I suspect though for those who have been long term commissioners or known me a long time, this probably isn’t super surprising because my energy levels have always been a bit all over the place, or I’m often sharing status updates about some new injury. Either I’m turning a commission around in 3-5 business days, or it’s taking months and it’s pretty much down to the same issue that my energy levels aren’t consistent, and I often get very bad days/weeks/months where I can’t do a lot because of discomfort. x’D

Ultimately what I just want to say is...

Thank you to everyone now and in the past who’s been so patient and understanding with me. This isn’t something that can be ‘fixed’ and because it’s literally how my body is - down to a genetic level - I’m never going to ‘get better’. I’m still on a diagnostic journey as I’ll have to rule out underlying conditions in the connective tissue disorder spectrum (like hEDS) but now I have an understanding of my tentative diagnosis there are specialist ways I can get help to manage the syndrome for which I’ve already started the referral process (wish me luck!).

Until then I’ll try my best to practice fatigue management and pacing, and build an appropriate schedule where I can balance work and rest in a more consistent way. Being able to do commissions and work on art-related projects means a lot to me since I can set my own hours and work around my condition doing something I really enjoy. So, thank you everyone for being so patient and understanding (and for reading this far lol)! I’ll try my best to get stronger. ^^9

[thegaytwentysomething]

Smile - Katy Perry: Full Album Review

Track by Track:

1. Never Really Over - 9.5/10

2. Cry About It Later - 9/10

3. Teary Eyes - 9.5/10

4. Daisies - 8/10

5. Resilient - 7.5/10

6. Not the End of the World - 8.5/10

7. Smile - 6.5/10

8. Champagne Problems - 9/10

9. Tucked - 9.5/10

10. Harleys in Hawaii - 10/10

11. Only Love - 7/10

12. What Makes A Woman - 7/10

Katy Perry, the quintessential pop star of the 2010s, is no longer #1. After a disastrous Witness era marred by weak singles, poor promotion, and a lack of good PR, Katy’s gold star was left less shiny, very well-dented, and collecting some dust. The chapter of Katy’s career as the number one pop star in the world has closed. This is the scene for Smile: what to do once you’ve closed a chapter in your life. In a sonically mixed 12 tracks, Katy explores this topic head on, and though very much imperfect, she succeeds in embracing her flaws and creates a template for her years to come.

On the triumphant opening track “Never Really Over”, Katy starts a breathy vocal just a second after the initial synth note - a quick rebound from the past few years. Throughout the song, she bounces between airy syncopation, belted choruses, and rapid staccato over a glittery beat. Though not a career-defining track, the song never tries to be. Instead, Katy sounds beautifully vulnerable, carefree, and self-assured. We’re off to a good start.

After, Katy sinks into a cool, modern sound with “Cry About It Later”. This track is perhaps her most radio-ready in years, embracing the darker minimalist EDM of Ariana Grande and The Weeknd. With that said, it doesn’t sound like Katy is clawing for a hit. A guitar solo after the bridge breaks up an otherwise completely tailored-for-radio instrumental. Katy’s lyrical voice is clear with vivid idiosyncrasies about champagne, tattoos, devils, and angels. A team of songwriters hired to ensure a hit would have sanded off all of the character of the track. Luckily, Katy keeps her voice even under lots of filters on this radio-ready track with an ear worm chorus.

Katy then does a 180 back to 2012 with “Teary Eyes”, a gay club-ready EDM house banger. The trope of dancing through adversity and heartbreak is a gay tale as old as Judy Garland’s ruby reds, and Katy gives us the goods on this campy, melodramatic, and infectious gem. The chanting choir mimicking the chorus’s melody in a grooving “oh oh oh” is the cherry on top of a saccharine, yet satisfying tune. The song takes the infectiousness of Britney Spears’s “Till the World Ends” and euphoria of Kylie Minogue’s “Get Outta My Way” and fuses it with the anthemic drama of Perry’s “Rise”. Will it succeed on 2020 radio? Absolutely not. Is it a worthy addition to her discography? Absolutely.

The album shifts gears into adult contemporary with the slightly banal “Daisies”, which marches confidently towards mom pop empowerment in the spirit of Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger” and Pink’s “Try”. Slightly more acoustic than your typical Democratic National Convention styled anthem, “Daises” comes from a place of earnestness. While it fails as a serious smash comeback single or a real classic like “Roar”, the track does just fine on the album, and doesn’t seem to be trying to prove anything in particular. Like the comfy Volvo station wagon in which this song may be played on adult contemporary radio, the song lacks sex appeal, but gets the job done.

“Daisies” almost perfectly segues into “Resilient” which sounds exactly as you’d expect. Safe, expected, and trite. On the plus side, the song does showcase some nice belts and is reminiscent of Katy’s very early pre One of the Boys lyricism. In an album context, the song succeeds quietly in letting Katheryn Hudson just be herself without pretense. There is a charm in the simplicity, and for that I won’t write the song off completely.

In a fairly jarring transition, Katy goes back to the trap-lite sound of “Dark Horse” with the over-baked “Not the End of the World”. This song isn’t bad, and in many respects, it is actually a banger. However, between the oddly-placed “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” sample and an aggressive use of auto tune, the song never seems to neatly achieve the impact for which it aims. Perhaps it is because the instrumental lacks the punch of “Dark Horse”, or perhaps it is because the triumphant theme is slightly discordant with a darker trap-pop sound, but the song never seems to really land quite as strongly as intended. It lacks focus. With that said, Katy’s Kim Petras-esque sing-talk verses are sung with a real swagger she so often lacks, and the song is anything but a bore. This track is certain to be polarizing, and on some level I applaud its chaotic approach.

After dancing through adversity and halfway creating a sense of empowerment through the first half of the album, Katy finally reclaims her “Smile” in the titular track. I recently heard the instrumental of this funk-lite track playing in the background of a Target advertisement, and frankly that is about all you need to know about the song. While I’m thrilled Katy has found joy, I’m less thrilled to hear corny lyrics like “I got a smile like Lionel Richie” on the title track of an otherwise good album. Katy truly doesn’t seem like she gives a fuck what I think on this track though, and for that I have to give some praise. It is nice when an artist isn’t seeking the public’s approval, and sometimes embracing joy can be cheesy. Maybe on a level, I want what she’s having.

The album starts anew in the second half with the very Harry Styles sounding track “Champagne Problems”. Like “Legendary Lovers” and “Roulette” before it, this song is sure to be an instant fan favorite. Every second is sonically interesting, mature, and satisfying. Like a crisp glass of bubbly, Katy seems mature, yet flirty and fun. I’m here for it. It’s great to be at a point where all you have is champagne problems, and this song sells that idea effectively. While not her best song, it is a good song, which is sometimes all you need need. Cheers!

If “Champagne Problems” was for those who love PRISM, then “Tucked” is for those who love Teenage Dream. From the strumming pop guitar to the big singalong chorus, “Tucked” leans into Katy’s strengths and embraces flirty fun in a way that she’s been trying to run away from for years. In the scope of the album and her career, the song is a blast from the past. It is a simpler Katy, and one which many have claimed to miss. At the same time, the return to form isn’t a desperate attempt at a hit. Simple pop songs like “Birthday” and “Last Friday Night” don’t make chart toppers in 2020. In that sense, this song is actually a bold choice, and a very confident one. To me, it says “I can still do that Teenage Dream stuff you always want me to do”, and it embraces it fully as one aspect of Katy Perry. Your past is still part of you, and you can go back to fun even when you’ve grown - and this song proves that. I quite love this little pop banger, and the album is much better for it.

I’ve written much in the past about my eternal love for Katy’s best song since “Dark Horse”, but let it just be said that I adore “Harleys in Hawaii”. Every second of this song is engaging, sexy, and sonically fabulous. For those who love the unique vocal and lyrical stylings of Katy Perry, this is a real treat. For those who don’t, this is probably just another so-so song. If you know what you’re listening for though, wow, what a track. It takes you to a fantasy, and immerses you in island vibes. This gem earned its place on this track list no matter what anyone says, and Katy knows it.

Then comes “Only Love” which drags on with trite, yet cute melodies and lyrics. For those who like the back half of PRISM, this song may really resonate, but for those of us who like a more sultry Perry, this track is a chore to listen to.

Closing the album is the personal “What Makes A Woman”. While not even Perry’s best album closer, the song is a cute cut, and may have done best replacing “Smile” in the middle of the album as an acoustic break between two pop halves.

All in all, this album does a good job of getting rid of the bitter taste of Witness and showcasing a broad spectrum of Katy’s distinctive artistic identity. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Is it worthwhile? Absolutely. That seems to be the message here, both through the lyrics and through the meta messaging of the album’s direction in the context of Katy’s career. Cliche but true: you don’t have a thing to prove to anyone - just be you. Similarly, nobody can ever take away the gold star Katy earned during the first half of the 2010s. Her legacy is secure, the tragedies are behind her, and now she (and we) can enjoy the joy of the full spectrum of life without judgement or fear of failure.

Overall Grade: B+

[andrewrosswatson1987]

REVISIT: KILLSWITCH ENGAGE SCREAMED FOR THE END OF HEARTACHE THIS DAY IN 2004

Massachusetts metalcore band, Killswitch Engage, released their third album, The End Of Heartache, which first came out today (May 11) in 2004, released via label, Roadrunner. The band has been considered notable within the New Wave of American Heavy Metal, and have also been considered one of the earliest leading forces of the metalcore genre, too. The End Of Heartache is the first album to feature lead vocalist, Howard Jones, and drummer, Justin Foley.  Both of Blood Has Been Shed.  The former, of course, taking the reins from the original and now reinstated Killswitch Engage vocalist, Jesse Leach. 

The first song to feature Jones, “When Darkness Falls”, appeared on the soundtrack of the 2003 horror film, Freddy Vs. Jason.  “The End Of Heartache” also became the main single for 2004 movie, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and the following year the song was nominated for Best Metal Performance at the forty-seventh Grammy Awards. The End Of Heartache peaked at number 21 on the Billboard 200 with 38,000 sales in its first week.  The album went on to sell more than 500,000 copies in the States and was certified gold on December 7, 2007. Singles for this album were “Rose Of Sharyn”, “The End Of Heartache” and “A Bid Farewell”. You’re told “A Bid Farewell” to begin with.  This hammers in ominously; tribal drum, discordant guitar and rumbling bass before a bloodcurdling scream.  It stomps come the song proper, abrasive before the might of the pre-chorus kicks in and the majesty of the chorus itself follows.  “I will bid farewell to all lies/I will bid farewell, sever the ties”.  The middle section suggests intrigue, immediate at that.  “I will never be satisfied” line suiting the crushing brilliance. The closing moments shuddering and weighty. “Take This Oath”, featuring the aforementioned Jesse Leach, is breakdown slamming and brutal.  It then has the energy of thrash suggesting menace incoming at the speed of a missile.  “Open your eyes/And see the disguise” like an oath to see the truth.  The middle section swaggers murderous.  Two middle sections, technically.  Both as vital to your enjoyment, ramping up the melodrama. Then hammering breakdown, machine gun fire from every orifice. Good mixture of clean and growled vocal. “When Darkness Falls” doesn’t mess about.  Straight in, straight away.  “As you walk the path of least resistance, is it that simple as you claim it to be” setting a narrative of darkness.  “I stand firm in my solidarity; the path I walk, the path I walk; I walk in with my own resolve” cues the triumph of the secret loser.  Then hellish riffs take hold, again.    “A dream since the fall of man, we are reborn” before the bass high intensity, cuing a slab of heavy riffing. Syncopation precise in its cacophony, the perfect dawn to another chorus with fist held aloft. 

There’s then the seeming lasting tribute in “Rose Of Sharyn”.  The kickass riff like the excitement of thrashing rock.  The drums riding by the seat of the pants.  “You’ve never left me, the rising sun will always speak your name” you can imagine the crowd going bananas, live. “It won’t be long, we’ll meet again” a perfect middle section, reaching for that higher level.  “I mourn for those who never knew you” a softer side to proceedings.  Clean guitar in parts, too, set against the harder edged yet appealing melody played elsewhere. Instrumental, “Inhale”, drags despondently of strum, quite a departure from all previous.  Calm and nice, though hinting at a broken heart.  Does this album propose the end of heartache? Then “Breathe Life” snaps out of this melancholic reverie.  The artillery is unfurled for more automatic fire.  “We fight for our last breath” a battle to the death.  The chorus both of clarity and unease in heralding to be born, again. Crushing guitar and drum before a passionate solo, wild and free; ripping through the flying bullets.  “Breathe life for you are not alone/Breathe life inside your heart of stone” clarifying the song’s bent. 

“The End Of Heartache” kicks in with that ringing out; you immediately, instinctively, know something monumentally epic is about to unfold.  Bar the cymbal splashing in the verse, the guitar and vocal are both intermittent, the dynamic shift into chugging might a sizeable one.  “While falling, sleep brings release and the hope of a new day” both looking forward and acknowledging prior hurt.  “You know me, you know me all too well; my only desire, to bridge our division” like repairing burned bridges.  The late middle section sinister, darkness enveloping. Clean guitar suggests all prior to an epic battle, one last chorus symbolic of raging fires not yet extinguished. “Declaration” is a declaration of war, and it’s not the good guys winning the day in this one.  Both intense and wayward riffs suggest some sort of discombobulation.  Like riding a bucking bull, the rhythms hammered out like a master blacksmith on speed.  “Let this be the day of my declaration” like the final battle cry as the last living contingent rides upon horseback.  “Walk with me” an invitation to step, not gallop, into seeming sudden death with no to little hope. To hell with it in “World Ablaze”. Triggered by the relentless double bass drum, it’s propelled by seemingly perpetual breakdown, veering from one riff to a next.  Then the chorus lifts from the mire, victorious in some senses.  “The burden has been lifted,” indeed.  Things then slow impossibly, the screams really extended, almost to the point of breathless asphyxiation. Almost seamless into second instrumental, “And Embers Rise”.  Respite comes in the extended acoustic guitar instrumental, the battlefield a bloodied mess but falling totally silent. “Wasted Sacrifice” wastes hardly an iota, not one moment of the track punctuated by silence whether ringing out intermittently or notes populating with impossible regularity.  “To the masses, we mean nothing but it starts in the hearts of the few/Witness the birth of a people; unite, renew” a dedication, perhaps to those mown over during the pursuit of all conquering, imperialist superpowers.  A jarring, late middle section very much suits, “Let there be no more of this bloodshed”. The album closes perhaps more positively in “Hope Is…”, featuring Phil Labonte.  Best known as vocalist for fellow American metalcore band, All That Remains, and going on to fill in as vocalist for Killswitch in early 2010. Beginning and the action starts right away.  “Be the spark that ignites the flame” perhaps hope is…the flame.  “Weep no more, we will prevail” sung by Howard, and the rest as a gang vocal shout, really rallies the listener to stride forward into the future.  The bass thundering as if lightning jolts the rest of the instrumentation into life, and that’s what it does. All the tracks on The End Of Heartache worthy highlights are “A Bid Farewell”, “When Darkness Falls”, “Rose Of Sharyn”, “Breathe Life”, “The End Of Heartache” and “Hope Is…”.  This at least half of it special.  A good start, middle and ending, though only the closer validating the final third section of the album.  Perhaps these absolute, literal, smashes could’ve been distributed throughout better. Still excellent, though. Killswitch Engage, at this point, had arguably reached their commercial peak. It would prove hard to top this, this only going to prove the strength of the album even more so.  Six out of twelve isn’t too bad, these monumentally epic and shading the other six like excellent versus the very good.  Killswitch Engage’s The End Of Heartache can be bought on iTunes, here.

[panticwritten]

Jay on the Striders

Jay is one of my many para(me)s in my daydreams. The Striders are more paras pulled from Homestuck There are eight of them in the Cube. Two pre-scratch Daves. Two pre-scratch Dirks. Post-scratch Dave. Post-scratch Dirk. Davesprite. Hal, Dirk’s Auto Responder.

I think this is the first thing I’ve posted from Jay’s point of view, which is cool.

PSA: Jax is the certified Best, please be prepared for that.

So, I mostly wanted to write Jax and Dave interacting. Mostly Jax. And Jay accusing the (7/8 of the) Striders of being mother hens when uh. Yeah. Jay’s the oldest out of all us sibs, hahaha, so they’re kind of the ruler of mother hen land.

Word count: 3,838

TW:

Mentions of prior abuse

Fairly severe self-loathing

Loss of a family member

Casual references to character death

Abuse related anxiety

Humans will pack bond with anything.

Look at Roombas. They don’t even look like humans, not like an animal, no reason to think they might have feelings. They rove around, picking up crumbs. Round pieces of hardware, and still they—

We.

—have an urge to treat them as living things with feelings and emotions.

That said, my lab has always had its fair share of visitors when I let slip news of a new android, clone, or piece of machinery. Recently, a coarse scientist from another universe has been finding his way here. Connor comes to check in, now and then, looking through my new models. Sawyer and our other siblings sometimes come to see me.

Some days I wish they wouldn’t. Others, I wish they would visit more often.

Visitors come for help, occasionally. Sometimes, I’m the first stop, checking in before resorting to the magic so easily found in the Cube. Sometimes, I am the last resort. Most often, I’m called when they need discretion.

Mercenary clans asking for new equipment. I’ve had to keep a lock on that sort of work since Sawyer found out about the shackles. They were never meant to be used against us. I never intended that, but there were safeties in the design for that eventuality. The original human keeps a much closer eye on me now, likely flicking through the records in their Room as I work.

I smile at the thought, tightening a screw in Jax’s shoulder.

Sawyer likes to think they aren’t a busybody, that they don’t pry, but they watch people far more often than they let on. You can see my thoughts right now, can’t you, reading those journals?

But then, we’re a family and they mean well. I’m the last person in the Cube to critique anyone’s methods. Morally gray, the way Connor refers to it, is an understatement.

But, as I said, humans will pack bond with anything. Some more than others. There are a handful of people that will come just to talk to the various robotic projects I have.

Then there’s the Striders.

“So, I didn’t accidentally fuck them up or anything, right?” Dave asks. I’ve been around the block with this one enough to identify the anxiety under the soft chuckle he tacks onto the end of that. “Like, is their arm stuck like that forever? Wait, no, that’s dumb, I know, you can just replace the arm if it’s that bad, but—”

He cuts off when I glance over to see him turning a stray spring over in his hands. His face points toward Jax, though I can’t tell if he’s really looking at them through those sunglasses. I smile anyway, turning back to my patient.

Since the moment I acquired this space for my labs, it seems I’ve had at least one of them loitering at any given time. They latched onto the lab of an emotionally stunted clone, back when common talk was that I was torturing people back here. They certainly aren’t the only ones, but they’re the ones that feel the most like they belong. Like family.

Except one. The oldest one. The version of Dirk from the pre-scratch Earth within their universe clusters.

He used my servers, and I thought it was innocuous until I grew curious of what he was doing. I haven’t seen him in nearly a year, but that could be because I came so close to killing him the last time he was here. Even a prideful, abusive, antagonistic asshole knows when he’s not wanted in a home, it seems.

“What do you think, Jax?” I redirect his question as I delve deeper into their shoulder, probing for the broken connection. “Do you think you’ll live?”

“No, because I’m not alive, although I promise I know you’re being facetious,” they answer, the beginnings of what I know will be a long prattling loop. That should calm him down. They talk nearly as much as he does, and the flow of speech seems to help them both. “I will, however, be fine. I think it’s a few sections to the left, though. The broken line. I can almost feel it.”

A few weeks later, the others started hanging around. The first of the pleasant Striders to knock on my door was the post-scratch version of Dave.

I already knew D had to be a sweetheart underneath the layers he’d covered himself in, just based on my limited interaction with the other younger version of him outside of the lab. D’s slightly better adjusted than this one. Doesn’t try to cover it up when he shows emotion, vulnerability. Doesn’t jump at the gentle sighing of machinery in the labs.

Doesn’t break down if he topples a project or shatters a beaker. Though, that only happened once before he become comfortable enough in the lab to relax. He didn’t know how I would react, and I’m used to that.

Most of my siblings are the same way. Skittish, assuming that things will go badly because that’s how they were raised. I’d like to have more words with Dave’s ‘Bro,’ but I presume he knows I’m not a fan of his after I wiped all traces of his ‘work’ from the Cube.

I enjoy the three (four?) Daves’ presence more than I think I should. D asks about all of my projects when he stops by, lets me bounce things off of him when I hit a roadblock. Most of it is silence from him, or flat reminders of things I’ve already said, but it usually helps.

He’s the reason I managed to create the first real model of J355, named out of sentimentality and exhaustion. Well, him, the younger Dirk, and Hal. The earlier attempts were too buggy, overheated too much. We finally got the AI working, but I was so caught up in having a working AI I forgot what I needed the damn thing for.

“I still want to check the rest of your circuitry,” I murmur. “I don’t know what you get up to out there, but I’d rather take preventative measures than have you short out in the caves.”

“Shit, that could happen?” I don’t look at Dave, keeping as relaxed as possible. “How likely is that, do you think?”

“Don’t worry about it.” I tighten another screw, and Jax shifts uncomfortably. I think that one attaches to their neck, so it’ll likely be a little uncomfortable for a few days. “As long as we keep up with regular repairs they’ll be fine.”

“But if it does happen, just theoretically.” The nervous timbre to his voice has vanished, but the speed is faster, rhythm syncopated. Cover panic with cool affectations, it’s something we all do around here. “I just gotta ask how that would be handled. Like, middle of the caves. Dark, spooky, suddenly my source of light and my friend are both out of commission. Possibly in danger, doesn’t matter, I can handle it, but—”

1.2 couldn’t feel the way they did, not for the work we do. They had to either be capable of turning those feelings off or not having them at all. I was reminded of this when they first refused to complete a test on the clone group.

Not to mention the lingering glitches I couldn’t quite fix without tripping a hard reset. I nearly did, but D stopped me. I would have regretted it if I had gone through with it.

I had to start over.

I was as gentle as I could be when I told them that I couldn’t use them in the lab. They were still crushed. I still don’t know how many of their emotions are real versus simulation, the software was so buggy. At this point, it likely doesn’t matter.

“Dave?” He shuts up, and I hear him shift behind me. I tap a dented joint deep in Jax’s shoulder. I’ll worry about that when he isn’t here, when he can’t blame it on himself. It should keep until then. “You have the key to my lab, correct?”

“Wh—” I hear him shuffle behind me, then make an affirmative sound.

“So, even if that did happen it would be fine.” I withdraw and screw the panel shut, moving on to the next one while I scribble a note about the joint on a pad of paper. “You could bring them back here. No one would be mad at you. There’s nothing that could permanently destroy them, alright?”

“But…”

They befriended—surprise, surprise—another of the Striders, the sprite. They fell in with the lot of them, but those two are closer than I would have thought. J355 1.2 still visits me from time to time, and that makes me happier than I would ever admit to them.

Then D started working with the mercenaries, the Scouts. He doesn’t come by as often, though I’m not bothered. Everyone has responsibilities.

It was Hal, the young Dirk’s now-humanoid AI, that worked with me to create new algorithms for the next model. He never told me if he approved of the idea of creating a mid-level AI with a nearly suppressed emotional core, and I never asked. I just needed someone who would help me with the projects I would rather not share with the rest of the Cube.

Sawyer may be able to see them, and I may be willing to enact them, but I’m more than aware of how many of them look. Everyone knows I do questionable things, but I won’t parade it around. I know better than that.

I try a different tactic, stilling my hand in Jax’s back and leaning forward.

“Have you shown him your designs?” I ask them. I catch, this time, my voice rising into the cadence of a delighted parent. Connor, my siblings, and the other Striders would have a field day with that. Several field days.

Jax whirs, a whistling in the back of their throat that I’ve come to associate with excitement. “No, I haven’t! I should, though, shouldn’t I? That’s a friend thing, one of the ones I can do. Want to do.” They shift, slightly, but still again when their limp and exposed arm rattles against the table.

I place my instruments on the tray beside the table and tell them to wait a moment. Dave turns his head to track me as I walk away, but must look back because his words aren’t directed at me when he speaks.

“Designs?”

Jax simply whirs again, and I hear them bounce on their place on the table.

In the end, we created a lab hand that could follow instructions, but was intuitive enough to be more of an extension of myself than a tool. It was perfect. It had a low emotional bandwidth, low enough to do the work I needed done.

High enough to express that it felt like a part of the family. High enough to stop me from crossing the worst of the lines I dance around. I needed that, I think, something that knew everything and could still stand to be around me. Could keep me from making mistakes.

Then everything with Jordan happened. AA. The memories.

J-Negative.

I return to them with a thick stack of papers. Dave looks between the two of us, and I’m relieved to see intrigue overriding the Strider Mother Hen Instinct™ (I’m going to bar Sawyer from my lab the next time they manage to get me adopting their speech patterns) and his hero complex, exactly as planned.

“Which one’s the one you want next, the one on top? Or the bottom?”

They shake their head and beckon me closer. I oblige, dropping the stack on the table beside them.

“I could explain the organization system, but it would be boring and self-aggrandizing.” They shuffle through the papers with their working hand, and I can hear the smile in their gently undulating voice. “The latter would be an ego boost, the former would lower the coolness factor of this reveal.”

“By how much?” Dave chimes in, and I smile to myself, returning to my work. “Uncool enough that my B-”

My stomach turns over in the instant he pauses.

“That Dirk would shut it down?”

J-Negative got out of the cells. She was going to bring back Tchaikovsky. Or open another door. Any number of possibilities, really, most of which I’ve talked about with Hal.

It disguising itself as one of the more essential of the Sawyer siblings and hunting her down was one of the better outcomes. It making the choice, with Sawyer and I standing right there was a good outcome. If it had let go of her arm, she would have vanished. If it hadn’t pulled her into the short term memories, who knows what she could have done.

That’s what we tell ourselves, at least. Hal was almost as torn up about it as I was. Am.

Almost.

And the younger Dave’s started coming to the lab with Dirk more often. Maybe Hal told them to come, maybe the aforementioned mother hen instinct extended to me even back then. I don’t know.

We speculated what could have happened, how 2.16 could have made it. How it could have ended differently. None of it was good. None of it was acceptable. But it made it hurt a little less, knowing it really did make the right choice.

“Dave.” Jax says in a deadpan, distracting us both from his slip-of-the-tongue, but they evidently can’t suppress a rattle in their chest that nearly always comes as a precursor to laughter. Or, perhaps they do it on purpose. I can’t tell. “Dirk would be ecstatic to hear all about this radical shifting algorithm with which I rate my design priorities. You would be on a one way trip to a refreshing nap because your grasp on advanced mathematics and coding is tenuous at best.”

“Hang on just a—”

“Don’t even try to convince me of your hacking skills. There’s a reason Sollux programs our maps, not you.” They finally extract one of the more precisely detailed plans from the stack. “And this is, objectively, Fairly Advanced Shit compared to that.”

Dirk, on the other hand, deals with grief the same way I do and was more than willing to help me throw myself into my work. According to him, he wasn’t very close with 2.16, but he does live with Hal and Hal knew that I needed more healing than I had let on.

I tried uploading its programming to a new shell, but it wasn’t the same. It had all of 2.16’s memories leading up to that day, but it didn’t know exactly what happened other than that it had been destroyed.

But I knew. I knew.

So Dirk helped me change the algorithms. Sometimes Hal came, plugged himself into the server to look for inconsistencies and broken code. All three alpha Daves would come, the older one taking up his role as a sounding board for all of us, the younger ones making sure we didn’t run ourselves into the ground or take ourselves too seriously.

“Jax, be nice,” I chide. They pause to look back at me, brow raising into a smooth arc and clearly calling hypocrisy. “Nicer, at least.”

They disregard that, turning back to the still-waiting Strider. Both D and Dirk have made a point of telling me that they see more of his real smiles—smiles that he doesn’t try to hide when someone outside of his circle sees—since he started spending time with Jax. They seem good for each other.

“Alright, Dave, hold onto your shades or this might blow your mind.” They slowly unfold the paper, and Dave adjusts his sunglasses with a smirk. They pause before flipping the last fold, straightening up more. “Also, I think this will make you feel much better. About the possibility of me getting hurt, I mean. If me getting hurt was even remotely possible, considering I’m a literal robot. I’m not like Hal or V or (does AA count?) or, you know, any of the other sort of machines. I’m honest-to-god, homemade, artificial.”

They don’t sound like they’re going to stop any time soon, and Dave has gotten noticeably paler, so I flick the back of their neck. “Hey. Just show him.”

We did it, eventually, creating a hybrid of the two processors. At first, I thought 3.21 would be more like 2.16. They were cold in the beginning, in the new learning phase, until they met this Dave, the nervous one, and all of the best parts carried over from 1.2 started to come out.

They learned so fast. When I asked how they felt they were doing a month after they came online, they processed longer than I thought they would. They told me they felt loved, the same way you might tell someone it’s sunny outside, and returned to the 3DS I had given them not long before.

Which they had taken apart and put back together within an hour and were using it to make (what I found out later to be) a port to play the games faster, without taking up their hands.

Needless to say, I needed a few minutes to recover from that. The Striders agree that our being able to raise them to feel loved is not only mind-boggling but a massive relief. We all had dysfunctional childhoods, and that’s putting it mildly.

They lay the design on the table, Dave sliding from the counter to come look (and assist, since maneuvering a large sheet of paper is difficult with one hand). He runs gentle fingers over the blueprint, quiet next to Jax’s continued whirring.

I nudge them again. “Which one is it? I can’t see.”

“I drew it on the sixth. This month. Finished it at…” A buzz, while they find the archived information. “Six fifteen in the morning.”

I almost tell them that I still don’t know which one that is, but they continue.

“With the rose gold bolts. Darker synthetics with crow designs—tattoos—copper nails, amber eyes. Um.” They hum, and I grin when the image of it appears in my mind’s eye. “Shorter hair, I left the color to your discretion.”

They still wanted to do their duties in the lab, but by then I had more than enough smaller helpers around the place. I didn’t need them as much as I needed 2.16. Unlike their predecessors, I made them out of desperation rather than a necessity.

I was terrified of letting them leave the lab, knowing that it isn’t safe out there. Hell, 2.16 was right next to The Lounge, the safest place in the entire Cube complex, and it was destroyed. D talked me down when them asking to run around with the Striders practically threw me into a panic.

He came up with the idea of the designs. Total transparency. Real time downloads of their memories. If something happens and their body is destroyed or their local data is corrupted, I can reupload them into a new body. One they designed and picked out.

That soothed my nerves enough, though I still wasn’t completely at ease. They started exploring the Cube with a handful of others, improving the mapping systems. The young Dave’s been working on that with a group of friends ever since the Cube expanded a few years ago. The progress has increased exponentially with an android on their team.

“Think of it like this, Dave.” I see him look up in my peripherals, but I can finally see the broken connection. I try to keep my voice soothing. “This is a lot like your history with your time abilities. Mistakes lead to dead Daves. Dead Daves are awful, it’s traumatic when dead Daves happen, but they are far from the end of the world so long as we plan accordingly.”

I tug on the shifted connection, and it slips back into place. Jax’s arm tenses, a soft hum emitting from their shoulder as everything comes back online. Now, I watch Dave while I smooth Jax’s synthetic skin back over the mechanics on their back.

A carefully neutral expression stares back at me, and I smile in response.

“I know you worry about your friends, that you want to protect them,” I say slowly, carefully, while Jax flexes their fixed arm. They can handle the synthetics there, so I push my rolling chair to face the both of them. It’ll keep them distracted, from derailing me. Dave needs to hear this. “This is not something you have to carry on your shoulders. That’s my job. You don’t need to worry about breaking them.”

Eventually, they asked about 2.16’s memories, why it wasn’t around anymore. They asked to download the data.

I couldn’t say no. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.

It was the first time I had the experience of hearing the grinding in their neck symbolizing tears they aren’t capable of shedding. A warped, crushing version of their excited whirring I had already become so used to.

They balance their time more evenly between home and friends now.

Dave looks back down at the blueprint. He traces more of it. He sniffs, his posture portraying indifference, but his profile allows me to see him blinking furiously behind his sunglasses.

Silence stands in the lab for awhile, Dave staring at the blueprint, Jax staring at Dave, me staring at both of them. I hold my breath, waiting. For Dave to say something. For Jax to break the silence. For either of them to move.

He looks back up at Jax, a brilliant grin lighting up his face.

“Can I see some more of these?” His voice breaks on the last word, but the flicker of disappointment I’m used to seeing from him doesn’t come. My heart swells at that, but neither of them are looking at me now.

Jax immediately jumps into action, sliding off of the table and rifling through the stack of prints. They pull another out and smooth it over the first. They lean over the table, explaining the design to Dave.

I take the opportunity to back out, letting them chatter on. They’ll be at it for bit, until Dave gets tired. Until Jax notices and makes him go back to the flat.

I don’t know when I started thinking of them as more of a child than a machine, or even a partner. Maybe it was when they first came home after trip into the In-Between had sheared a portion of their head off (this Dave wasn’t there, thank god, I can’t imagine how he would have reacted to that). It could have been when they came back from their first week in charge of the body on the outside with a they/them/theirs magnet fixed to their chest.

I know I was far, far gone by the time they sat me down and told me that their new name was Jax.

[nerdymedzebra]

Roundup of my mentions of EIAn

I'm seeing a new immunologist today, so I'm trying to prepare for the appointment. Especially since she seems to be one of the ones who barely "believes in" MCAS, and certainly not without high tryptase, which I've never tested above normal on before. But it seems like for some people she's still good at treating the symptoms, even if she calls it different things. So I'm trying to list out all my symptoms. But, naturally, my brain feels dead today, and it's hard to think of stuff. Therefore, I'm trying to gather things I've said about it online recently, and I figured I'd just do that here so that I wont lose it next time I need to reference this! Exercise Induced Anaphylaxis:

“ A year after my #MCAS diagnosis and a month after my long suspected Exercise Induced Anaphylaxis diagnosis, I finally got my first epi pens today. And about 7 years after I got my #VCD dx, I finally got a speech therapy referral! I spent most of this month in a terrible flare so I'll try whatever at this point. 😱 “

Facebook post in a Dysautonomia Group

(Oct 2019)

Does anyone know the WHY, biologically (not just "bc that's what dysautonomia does," but specifics!) that often when I stand up for too long, like today when shopping, instead of normal presyncope where the head symptoms predominate, I'll just start overheating, and then it feels like my post-eating reactions sometimes, where it'll feel like all my blood is rushing to my guts and they are liquifying most uncomfortably. When I sit down, it's significantly better.

I get the blood pooling in the legs, gravity and all, but why does it sometimes seem to pool in my guts just from being upright?!

This has happened ever since I can remember, in fact as a teen I associated it with libraries, as if go and stand around for ages looking at books, and would always get such angry guts. My lightheaded regular presyncope seems to have developed in my early 20s, but this one has been around a lot longer longer.

“ I got my free lifetime access pass to national parks system today! Such a great program! ❤️❤️I almost felt bad for it, as it's such a great deal, until a 3 minute walk on a path to a waterfall (that a 2 year old was walking himself), which has an accessible trail that was still in progress of being made, made my lungs burn to the point of almost throwing up. So, nm, I don't feel bad for getting a free pass to places I can really only enjoy via the car (which I can't even drive myself). But, I am very grateful for it! If you're an American who has a doctor sign off that you have a lifelong disability of any sort, you can get one of these! “

Exercise-Induced Anaphalaxis test.

(Mar 2019)

Ah, irony. Literally the first time IN MY LIFE I have done cardio and not reacted. ENTIRELY different from my cardiac exercise test last year where all the symptoms started up I started blacking out and it took 15 minutes to be able to leave the table  the tech dragged me onto when he had to pull me off the treadmill and not almost puke and over a half hour before I was able to leave the waiting room bc I was flat on the floor, legs up, trying to breath and not puke and get the rest of my body able to move again and perhaps be less tomato-red, sweaty, and scary looking.)

For the first time in my entire life, I did intense cardio (well, only for a minute or two), and didn't react (tho my lungs burned like a mfer and I was still coughing 15+ minutes later, which does always happen too, but none of the other things did, like tanking BP and skyrocketing HR, extreme gi upset, throat swelling, blacking out.. Not even Flushing which happens first and to an absurd degree (in gym classes my level of redness would always scare my gym teachers)

MCAS hates cleaning

(Feb 2019)

me: *cleans in a flurry of bodily movement* mast cells: ALERT! ALERT! IS THIS AN ALL OUT BODY INVASION THREATENING YOUR VERY LIFE??? ALL HANDS ON DECK!!! *releases like, all 200 mediators* me: um, no, it's okay, I'm just making the bed and tidying and taking out the trash???? This isn't even cardio!! I am literally barely doing more than just walking!! mast cells/body: *turns face tomato red and burns like i have a horrible fever* *circulatory system forgets how to push blood up against gravity* *heart flutters at full speed* *body overheats* *lungs burn, throat burns* *gets out of breath* *starts to sweat* *gets pre-pre-syncope-y* me: um okay fine. this is fine, sure. *has to sit every 3 minutes so it doesn't progress further (GI revolt & throat swelling would be up next)* *is unable to do all the things*😒😩

Exercise Induced Anaphalaxis during a super mild bike ride this morning. SIGH

(Dec 2018)

1.2 mile bike ride to the place where we've been dropping the mice we catch in our house reminded me that I'm still a total mess. By the time we got there I had just started coughing and feeling like my lungs were goopy (first step in my exercise-induced anaphalaxis when it's a slow-build)

We were there like 20 minutes, I thought I was mostly okay so we started on the .8mile ride to the coffee shop I'm currently at.... My eyes didn't register an incline in the street at all but my body sure AF did. Within 3 minutes my lungs were ON FIRE... I have a very visual brain and so I had this mental image of someone holding a lighter up to the cillia of my lungs and burning it all off. It hurt a lot. The coughing started again and my ..idk, neck area? got all tingly like it does before I throw up. Breathing was troublesome. I stopped and stood there and my face started feeling hot and sweaty.

I walked the bike slowly only a tiny distance to the top of the 'incline' and glided down, but then it got to a flat part again, and normally that would have been fine, but since my chemical soup hadn't settled down yet it just put me right back in it. We slowly cruised one block to the coffee shop and I was out of breath (it's not quite wheezing but it feels close, just without any wheezing sound) and it was all back with a vengeance.

Facebook Post

(Nov 2018)

Anyway, I'm tentatively excited about this. Because my #1 biggest problem with my MCAS is how severely my body reacts to even the smallest amount of cardio, as in it legit starts anaphalaxis RIGHT AWAY (I rode my bike on a not-even-noticable-unless-youre-me incline last weekend, I stopped several times (less than a mile distance!) and it still started!). The throat swelling in reaction to everyday triggers has mostly been controlled by my new MCAS med regiment (yay!) but it doesn't do anything for the exercise-induced anaphalaxis.

This weekend, though, I was actually reading up on what teeny tiny amount of research *has* been done on exercise-induced anaphalaxis so far, and the one and only treatment they've found that has worked (though not for everyone) has been cromolyn (and the other mcas med that starts with an O-- i forget the name). It is, interestingly, also a medicine that IS used for exercise-induced asthma as well, too (which is what i was diagnosed with starting in elementary school (and the inhalers were unsurprisingly useless) but then an asthma dr in my 20s said I didn't have it..).

But like, what if this works?? What if I can actually.. ride bikes? Go on an actual hike?? DANCE?? (I had to quit dance as a kid bc of health and that still makes me sad..) :-o :-o :-o

She said that a lot of her MCAS patients also have a huge reduction in brain fog with this, too. Not all, but many. Having consistently good brain days is even more unbelievable for me to even think about. But I sure as heck am crossing my fingers.

MCAS is also implicated in my dysautonomia (along with my neck/spine instability and squished spinal cord..), interstitial cystitis and other conditions (mast cells are all over and thus wreck havok all over) so.. who knows what all might get better!

Exercise-Induced Anaphalaxis

(Sep 2018)

Even as a kid, whenever I'd do gym class or try to do anything cardio-y, I would get TOMATO RED, itchy, sweat buckets, struggle to breathe because my throat felt so constricted, have an upset stomach, feel like I was about to pass out, and feel like death in general. As a kid I was diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma. Inhalers never did anything though.

[ogxref]

ON THE STACK / Mckenzie Wark

Computation → a planetary-scale infrastructure that transforms what governance might mean

“The continuing emergence of planetary-scale computation as meta-infrastructure and of information as an historical agent of economic and geographic command together suggest that something fundamental has shifted off-center.”

The stack generates its own kind of geopolitics → one less about competing territorialities and more about competing totalities.

Perhaps the stack has a new kind of sovereignty, one that delaminates geography, governances and territory.

Bratton thinks infrastructure as a stack platform with six layers, treated in this order: earth, cloud, city, address, interface, user → I think of it more as the four middle layers, which produce the appearance of the user and the earth at either end...

USER Layer :

A user → a category of agent, a position within a system that gives it a role.

“We like to think we are in charge, but we might be more like the Apollo astronauts, i.e. “human hood ornaments.”

The User layer of The Stack is not where the rest of the layers are mastered by some sovereign consciousness; it is merely where their effects are coherently personified.

User is a position not only through which we see The Stack, but also through which The Stack sees us.

“… anthropocentric humanism is not a natural reality into which we must awake from the slumber of machinic alienation; rather it is itself a symptomatic structure powered by (among other things) a gnostic mistrust of matter, narcissistic self-dramatization, and indefensibly pre-Copernican programs for design...”

Debate about user ‘rights’ has been limited to the human, and limited to a view of the human merely as endowed with property and privacy rights. → Rather like Lefebvre’s right to the city, one needs a right to the stack that includes those without property. One could even question the need to think about information and its infrastructures in property terms at all… (GU)

Bratton is not keen on the discourse of oedipal fears about the bad stepfather spying on us, resulting in users wanting no part in the public, but to live a private life of self-mastery, paranoia and narcissism. “The real nightmare, worse than the one in which the Big Machine wants to kills you, is the one in which it sees you as irrelevant, or not even a discrete thing to know.”

INTERFACE Layer :

The interface layer → mediates between users and the technical layers below. Offers a kind of protocol, or generic threshold.

ADDRESS layer :

Address is a formal system, independent of what it addresses, that denotates singular things through bifurcators such as names or numbers, that can be resolved by a table for routing.

Addressing creates generic subjectivity, so why not then also generic citizenship?

If we are all users (humans and inhumans), then a right to the stack is also a right to address, as only that which has an address can be the subject of rights in the “virtual geographic order” of a stack geopolitics… → Therefore “address” is no longer just a matter of discrete locations in a topography.

Address vs. Deep Address:

Address designates a place for things and enables relations between things

Deep address designates also the relations, and then the relations among those relations.

Deep address is to address as a derivative is to a contract. Its endless metadata: about objects, then metadata about the metadata about those objects, and so on.

The financialization of addressability may also be a kind of fetishism, mistaking the metadata about a relation for a relation.

CITY layer :

In the city layer absorbed into the stack → mobilization is prior to settlement, and the city is a platform for sorting users in transit.

Cities are platforms for users rather than polities for citizens. (and as Keller Easterling might concur, their form is shaped more by McKinsey or Haliburton than by architects or planners)

Architecture becomes at best interface design, where cement meets computation.→ It is now a laminating discipline, creating means of stabilizing networks, managing access, styling interfaces, mixing envelopes. Cities are to be accessed via mobile phone, which afford parameters of access, improvisation, syncopation…

CLOUD layer :

It may also be a layer that gives rise to unique kinds of conflict: 

First Sino-Google War of 2009: where two stacks, built on different kinds of cloud with different logics of territory and different imagined communities of user collided. → That may be a signal moment in an emerging kind of geopolitics that happens when stacks turn the old topography into a topology

The cloud layer is a kind of terraforming project – here on earth. Clouds are built onto, or bypass, internet. They form a single big discontinuous computer. They take over functions of the state (cartography being just one example). There are many kinds of clouds, however, built into quite different models of the stack, each with their own protocols of interaction with other layers. Google, Apple and Amazon are stacks with distinctive cloud layers, but so too are WalMart, UPS and the Pentagon.

Some cloud types:

FACEBOOK, which runs on the captured user graph. It is a rentier of affective life offering a semi-random newspaper and cinema, strung together on unpaid non-labor, recognition and social debit…

Then there’s APPLE, who took over closed experience design from Disney, and offer brand as content. As a theology, Apple is an enclave aesthetic about self-realization in a centralized market. It’s a rentier of the last millimeter of interface to its walled garden…

On the other hand, AMAZON is an agora of objects rather than subjects, featuring supply chain compression, running on its own addressing system, with algorithmic pricing and micro-targeting…

But even Amazon lacks GOOGLE’s universal ambition and cosmopolitan mission, as if the company merely channeled an inevitable quant reason. It is a corporation founded on an algorithm, fed by universal information liquidity, which presents itself as neutral platform for humans and inhumans, offering ‘free’ cloud services in exchange for information.

“Google Großraum delaminates polity from territory and reglues it into various unblendable sublayers, weaving decentralized supercomputing through increasingly proprietary networks to hundreds of billions of device end-points.”

“The Cloud polis draws revenue from the cognitive capital of its Users, who trade attention and micro-economic compliance in exchange for global infrastructural services, and it in turn provides each of them with an active, discrete online identity and the license to use that infrastructure.” → Maybe this is “algorithmic capitalism”, or maybe (as I argue) it’s not capitalism any more, but something worse. (GU)

EARTH layer :

There is no Stack without a vast immolation and involution of the Earth’s mineral cavities → The Stack terraforms the host planet by drinking and vomiting its elemental juices and spitting up mobile phones…

The Stack is a landscaping machine → combs and twists settled areas into freshly churned ground, enumerating input and output points and re-rendering them as glassy planes of pure logistics.

Particularly where the earth is concerned, “Computation is training governance to see the world like it does and to be blind like it is.” But the stack lacks a bio-informational skin that might connect ecological observation to the questioning of resource management. Running the stack now puts more carbon into the atmosphere that the airline industry. If it as a state it would be the fifth largest energy suck on the planet. → “Even if all goes well, the emergent mega-infrastructure of The Stack is, as a whole, perhaps the hungriest thing in the world, and the consequences of its realization may destroy its own foundation.”

Hence the big question for Bratton: “Can The Stack be built fast enough to save us from the costs of building The Stack?” 

BEYOND the layers :

What provides the interesting angle of view in Bratton is thinking geopolitics as a design problem. → “We need a geopolitics of design that is comfortable not only with computation but also with vertical systems of designation and decision.”

“The more difficult assignment for design is to compose relations within a framework that exceeds both the conventional appearance of forms and the provisional human context at hand, and so pursuing instead less the materialization of abstract ideas into real things than the redirection of real relations through a new diagram.”(GU!)

It’s not a romantic vision of a return to an earth before the Stack. (“…the design of food platforms as less about preserving the experiential simulation of preindustrial farming and eating… and more like molecular gastronomy at landscape scale.”)

But it is not a naïve techno-utopianism either. While I don’t think it’s a good name, Bratton is well aware of what he calls cloud feudalism, which uses the stack to distribute power and vale upwards. And it is fully aware that the “militarized luxury urbanism” of today’s vectorialist class depends on super-exploitation of labor and resources. At least one novel observation here however is that the stack can have different governance forms at each level. The stack is not one infrastructure, but a laminating of relatively autonomous layers.

This might mean however an exit from a certain residual humanism → “the world may become an increasingly alien environment in which the privileged position of everyday human intelligence is shifted off-center.”

[phawareglobal]

Jane Price - phaware® interview 327

Jane Price's daughter, Connie was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension at age 3. At age 4, she was the 2nd child (the first girl) to ever have the Potts Shunt operation in the UK. In this episode, Jane shares Connie's 2 year post surgery story for everything to become more stable.

Hi, my name's Jane Price. I'm calling from England, Essex. My daughter, Connie, has pulmonary hypertension. She is six. She was diagnosed when she was three, so we've been in this world for about three years now. She is the middle child. At the time, we only had my older daughter and her, and she was quite late at doing the things that her sister had done in terms of walking, moving around, that kind of thing. I'm an educator, I'm an assistant head teacher, so I'm quite au fait with what children do and their steps and their processes. So, I wasn't overly worried, each child developing at their own pace, that kind of thing. But when she did start walking at around 15, 16 months, she just didn't want to do it. That's the only way I can describe it. We'd be on play dates with her sister and her friends and children that were Connie's age, and they would all be off and running around in the park and she would sit in her buggy and just watch. Or she might get up, do a little bit and then come and sit back down again. No amount of cajoling her to try and get on with it worked. Then, we'd notice other little things like you could hear her breathing a lot. She always seemed to have a cold, so we put it down to that. Her lips would go blue quite quickly. So if she was in a paddling pool in the summer, her lips would be blue. If she had walked, if we'd managed to get her to walk a distance, I remember being at Center Parks, which is a camping place over here and she'd walked no more than a hundred yards, and she just didn't want to do anymore. When you looked at her face, her face was completely pale except for these really dark blue lips. I kept saying to my husband, this isn't normal, but my oldest daughter, who's three years or two years older, she was born with brain damage unfortunately, and ended up with cerebral palsy, which is mild, thankfully. But at the time, every time I went back to the doctors for something to do with Connie, I felt like they thought I was an over-protective mum. I kept relating it back to maybe I'm projecting my worries and everything that happened with Lucy, my first daughter, on to Connie. This went on for a year or so. Then, we were at my daughter's fifth birthday party, my elder daughter's fifth birthday party. It was a very hot summer day. It was before the party had started and the children were all running around in the playground. Connie came into the hall where we were having the party. She was really whingeing and she came over to me and, as she reached me, she collapsed and fainted. She came round as quick as she went down and we gave her an orange juice to bring up her energy levels. The party was literally just about to start. It was Sunday, so of said, look, she's fine. She was fine. She was up and about again. I said, well, I'll take her to the doctor's tomorrow, which I did. I went with the list. I sat there that night, I remember it very clearly and I wrote a list of everything, blue lips, lack of energy, doesn't want to walk, won't join in, drinks like a fish, she's just trying to get water down her all the time. You couldn't give her enough water. The fact that her hands were always freezing, the breathiness, her heart, you could basically see pounding in her chest, and one of the veins in her neck, you could always see pulsing.   I went to the GP, the doctors over here. I put this list in front of them, and I just said, you need to put this kid together and work out what it is because it's something. So, they did blood tests, and back with nothing. They eventually agreed to do a heart scan that they classed it as non-urgent. This was September, and when I got the letter through for the appointment, it wasn't until the following April, so quite a way. In February, she started being really sick and her heart was going crackers and she was dehydrated. So, they admitted her to hospital. I remember speaking to the consultant at the time and said, she has a heart scan in a few weeks’ time, can we bring it forward? He said to me, if she had something serious, you'd know about it by now. With that, I thought, okay, I'm being paranoid. This is me projecting here. To the point that when the heart scan eventually came around in April, I told my husband not to come. I said, I'm going to get there. They're going to scan her and they're going to say she's fine. So, that's what we did. I went. Probably about 45 minutes into the scan, I realized that the scans don't tend to last this long unless they find something. He called the student over that was in the room and started pointing things out. So, I texted my husband and I said, I think they found something. They stopped the scan and said that, at the time, they thought it was something mechanical, but he wasn't an expert and wanted somebody from a hospital in London to come down and see her, which was the following week. So, we went back and my husband came with me this time. Again, he scanned her, and again, the scan went on. I remember the nurse took Connie out of the room and they sat us down and they said, it's either something mechanical, which is easily fixable. It's a cardiomyopathy of some description or it's PH. He said, we don't want it to be PH and don't Google it. Three days later, we were admit it to St Thomas' the Evelina, one of our children's hospitals here, and we were there for two days. She had another syncope at which point, she was diagnosed with PH and transferred straight to Great Ormond Street Hospital, and we were there for seven weeks while they tried to stabilize her. Unfortunately for Connie, the medication doesn't work very well for her. It never did. She was put on triple therapy. Over here, that consists of bosentan, sildenafil and the epoprostenol drug through the Hickman line 24/7. So, they put her on that straight away. Unfortunately, she didn't really respond to it. It stabilized her to an extent, but he said out of a hundred kids, she would be classed in the bottom 25. We would have hoped the drug therapy would have got her over the 50 line. She's still in the bottom 25. At that point, we began looking at transplant for her. Then, they came up with offering us the Pott shunt surgery, which is where they obviously connect the descending aorta and the pulmonary artery together to create a shunt, like a pop off valve, for the excess blood to go through so the heart doesn't have to work as hard to pump it through. At the time, we were told that there would be a 15% chance that she wouldn't pull through the surgery. And they put it to us in terms of if you have a quadruple heart bypass, which everyone considers to be a really severe and complicated surgery, you've got a 5% chance that you won't pull through. So to sit there and say that my, at the time, three year old daughter would have a 15% chance of not pulling through this surgery, it was utterly terrifying. Over here, at the time, only one child in the UK had had this surgery done. Even then, the surgeons from Paris had come over to do the surgery at Great Ormond Street. So nobody in the country had performed this surgery. As you can imagine, we were overwhelmed to start with, we'd only been in this world at the time for about four weeks, and terrified. So, we opted not to go forward with the Pott surgery, that we would look to go down the transplant list. We couldn't contemplate what that all meant at the time. It was just too big. And in a way, transplant for us is what you see in the movies. It's child gets new heart, lives long, healthy life, end of story. We didn't know any better. We found out very quickly that that's not the case, but we didn't know any better at the time. So, we then went into the world of transplant, and Connie had all of the procedures, the pre-procedures, like the vaccinations and all of those things. We had all the counseling sessions with the team at Great Ormond Street, and the explanations blew us away of what it actually entailed. But we were still thinking that's the route we'd go down. She got discharged at seven weeks to manage at home and it just seemed that every week that we were going back up, we were having weekly appointments, we were just getting more and more bad news. That she wasn't responding. That she was sick still, and a decision had to be made. I remember, quite clearly, I think it was late July, beginning of August of that year, her consultant sat us down and said, it's decision time, you need to decide. They put the Potts surgery back on the table at this point. They were saying to us that Pott surgery will buy her five years and then a transplant could buy her potentially 12 years. So you then, in your head, you're thinking you've got a stacking game that you're playing. You're trying to buy her years. At the time, my husband and I just kept thinking, but if we make the decision to put her on the transplant list now and she gets a transplant tomorrow, if she's that fortunate, have we just taken two years away from her because she could be okay for the next two years? It probably makes no sense to anybody, but in our world, at the time, it made sense. Alternatively, she could go on the list tomorrow and not get a transplant in time and then you should have done the Pott surgery. Everything was a gamble and it was a gamble that I just couldn't take. I had, with my eldest daughter, being given the decision that ultimately led to her having brain damage, and it just felt like I was being put in that position again. I remember sitting in the room with my husband and the consultant was talking to us about both procedures, and the transplant team had come in, and everybody was in the room, and I couldn't even lift my head up. I said, I can't make this decision. My husband turned around and said, she needs you to tell her what is Connie's best shot. And he basically said that transplant could take, on average, up to 18 months. Connie doesn't have that long. So for us, ultimately, there was no choice. We had to go with this completely unknown, if you like, procedure in the UK and take a chance that somebody somewhere knew what they were doing enough to get her through it. So initially we were going to go to Paris and have it done. And the surgeons there go on some kind of four weeks of sabbatical or four week holiday in August. This is the time it was. Nobody was coming back to us or they weren't being quick about coming back to us. And it just felt like they weren't going to take care of my child in the way the team at GOSH would. And I didn't feel safe. So, we asked them to move the surgery back to Great Ormond Street and that we would put our faith and our trust in the surgeon and particularly the anesthetist at GOSH. So, she was booked in to this surgery. It was the most terrifying day of my life. She sailed for it. She absolutely sailed through it and she came home after 10 days. Everybody was a little bit in shock at how well she responded to being in that position. But again, with Connie, she didn't respond well enough to the surgery. The initial thoughts along the Potts, based on the child that had had it done previously, was that within six months, she'd be able to come off her backpack and off her Hickman line and, all being well, would have a good four or five years prior to transplant. All indications from the other child that had this was that this little boy was now walking up mountains with this school and taking part in adventurous PE and physical education and things like that. So everything was really positive. It just took Connie a lot longer to get there. The two year anniversary just gone at Christmas of having her Pott surgery and she came off of her backpack about four weeks before that. So, coming up to two years was when her heart was responding well enough to come off that medication. So, currently, she's doing really well. Her heart numbers are normal for the first time in her little life. She's just about to switch to ambrisentan, because she's old enough for that drug now, which is a higher strength than the bosentan that she was on. So, that should continue to have improvements. The only downside that we found out after the Pott surgery, we were under the impression that, like I was saying before, in terms of the stacking game, when her shunt began to stop working, she will be eligible for transplant. But unfortunately, over here, there is not enough data to support that she would be a good candidate for transplant anymore. So, at the moment, although her consultants would certainly put her forward for transplant should the time come, at the moment, they don't feel confident that the transplant team over here would accept her onto the transplant list anymore. So, we are putting all our eggs in the hope that the Pott shunt buys her between five and 12 years. Evidence is now showing it's almost as long as you'd expect a lung transplant to be, which would be up to about 12 year average. So, there's evidence now to show that the Pott shunt should sustain life for that long as well. Within that time, we're hoping that there is enough evidence to convince the team at Great Ormond Street that transplant from Pott shunt can be done, and can be done successfully. Certainly, we know that that's the case for a couple of PH patients over in America that this has already happened to, all be it adults. So that's where we are at the moment. We have a support group on Facebook, but obviously being so rare, there is no one in our immediate vicinity that has this kind of understanding. At the moment, she understands that her lungs don't work the way they should and she understands that this does naughty things to her heart. The one thing that we were very conscious of when she came off of her backpack, off of the epoprostenol drug was that she didn't assume, and that her sister didn't assume, that that meant she was better, that she was cured because she's not. So, the language that we use at the moment with her is that her heart is doing better because of the surgery, but her lungs are still naughty. One of the things that myself and my husband really struggle with is the next bit, especially as my eldest is eight going on nine, not yet in the world of social media, not yet in the world of Google and phones in terms of being on them independently, but is soon obviously going to be. No amount of me trying to prevent her looking this up is going to help, because friends will get there. Her friends, rather, will get there. She'll find out. So, it's about, what do we tell them that doesn't terrify them? So, we have a counseling team, a psychology team at Great Ormond Street that are now working with us on how we talk about what it is in a way that doesn't scare them, and in a way that doesn't create anxiety for them. My eldest daughter didn't cope well being separated from us from the amount of time that she was when we were initially in hospital, despite my husband and I ensuring that one of us was always at home with her. Home for those seven weeks was at her grandparents' house and we would come back from the hospital and stay there with her while the other one stayed at the hospital with Connie, and this was every day. My husband and I saw each other for an hour a day so that one of us was always with the kids. She was so young herself at that point. She was five. So, consequently, now she has a lot of counseling herself just to try and deal with the hospital visits that still happen, the emergency services that turn up at our house because we've had to call 999, seeing her sister being blue lighted to hospital or having the community nursing team round checking her oxygen levels when we think that her chest might be infected, that kind of thing. It has a profound impact on a little person. She started obsessing with children dying and just couldn't cope with it. So, she's in counseling and she also attends the local hospice, has a sibling support group for children who are going through something with a family member or close friend that's either life limiting or terminal. So, she has got a group of friends that, although they don't understand PH, are in a similar position where they are either a young caregiver or are going through having a sibling or a parent who has an illness or who has died. So, we're hoping that that will give her a group of friends over the years that share that understanding with her. Connie seems to accept it all quite easily, but I don't think she remembers life… I know she won't remember life before being in hospital, whereas Lucy does. Then, we had our third daughter, Annabelle, at Christmas last year. So they're both a little bit obsessed with her at the moment. I think that's eclipsing everything else at the moment for them. My name is Jane Price, and I'm aware that my daughter is rare.

Learn more about pulmonary hypertension trials at www.phaware.global/clinicaltrials. Never miss an episode with the phaware® podcast app. Follow us @phaware on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube & Linkedin Engage for a cure: www.phaware.global/donate #phaware #ClinicalTrials

Listen and View more on the official phaware™ podcast site

[jessicakmatt]

From Kick to Cowbell: What Made the Roland TR-808 Great?

From Kick to Cowbell: What Made the Roland TR-808 Great?: via LANDR Blog

To celebrate the launch of Roland’s first ever Software TR-808, we revisit a few key moments in the legendary drum machine’s rich history… so far.

There are so many reasons to love the Roland TR-808. 

Producers, musicians and DJs know how much the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer has influenced music’s past, present and future. The quirky machine and its distinct sounds—from kick to cowbell—have changed music across genres and styles. 

But why? How has a simple studio companion released in 1980 become the backbeat to countless anthems? On the heels of Roland releasing the first ever Software TR-808 via Roland Cloud, we explore some of the sounds, history, and idiosyncrasies that make the storied machine an audio icon.

Programming History

 As told in the 2015 documentary 808 (You Know Films) the 808 had a big impact on hip-hop’s early years. Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force’s 1982 song “Planet Rock,” produced by Arthur Baker, used the 808 to unforgettable effect, marking a key moment in the 808’s eventual rise. 

  But the 808 wasn’t an overnight commercial success…

Created in Japan by the late Roland founder Ikutaro Kakehashi and his team, the 808 didn’t meet initial expectations. Ultimately, the machine was made for just three years until 1983 and only 12,000 808s were ever produced.

“Everything was ‘wrong’ with the 808,” the film’s producer Alex Noyer explains about the rhythm box’s release. “It was destined for failure. It didn’t sound right, it didn’t sound like a drum, two 808s didn’t sound alike. All the critics [called it] a complete UFO of studio equipment. It’s important that it became this iconic instrument. It’s a beautiful underdog story, which to me, is what the music industry is all about. Because no artist really starts as a superstar.“

Over the years the 808 went on to influence genres like house, techno, drum ‘n’ bass, electro, Miami Bass, as well as R&B, pop, rock, trap… the list goes on.

Everything was ‘wrong’ with the 808. It was destined for failure. It didn’t sound right, it didn’t sound like a drum, two 808s didn’t sound alike.

A Drum Discovered

The love people have for the 808, and the fact that so many still use its sounds today, stems from the curiosity and creativity that’s pushed music production forwards for decades. The 808 is a classic example of the gold that simply needs the right eye and ear to be discovered.

“If you think about early synthesizers from an engineering point of view, a lot of people were trying to sound as realistic as possible,” says Matthew Salaciak, co-founder of the Temple record label and avid synth enthusiast. “Mainly the goal was, ‘I’m going to make a synth that can make the sound of a clarinet, can make the sound of a sax, can make the sound of a trumpet; it was all about synthesizing a realistic sound…”

“[The 808] sounded synthesized, too much like a rhythm box. But in the end, those are the sounds that we love and associate with electronic music. It just sounded so beautiful and sat beautifully in mixes. That’s what attracted me to it. I feel like I’m playing not just a drum machine, I’m playing a synth.”

Sounds From Within

The 808’s analog sounds include cowbell, claves, clap, rim shot, toms, maraca, congas, cymbal, hi-hats, and of course the bass drum and snare drum…

“It’s like a giant sweet spot, it can’t sound bad,” says Salaciak about the 808’s kick drum. “You can make it sound super clicky or super bassy, and that’s so insane because you have very little control on what you can manipulate. Those two knobs; the tone and decay, shaped and created so many things in music.”

“The snare has this snappiness to it that sounds like someone’s ripping a piece of paper. It doesn’t sound much like a snare drum, but if you think of an electronic, synthesized idea of a snare drum, this sounds exactly like it… The hi-hat has this beautiful sizzly sound that’s so metallic. Again, it doesn’t really sound like a hi-hat but it fits perfectly.”

The Perfect Workflow

The 808 not only provides the backing beat for your tracks, it keeps them in time as well; A brain for your who studio… In pre-MIDI production the 808 still gave producers the flexibility to link several instruments.

“The most important thing with these electronic instruments was the ability to communicate with each other in a studio setting,” Salaciak explains. “What made the 808 so incredible in the time of pre-MIDI is that it gave whoever who was using it the flexibility of having three trigger outs to clock sequencers and gate synths… I find that was a big influence on synth pop, cold wave, dark wave, and minimal synth music. It allowed people to connect their drums to their synths and create amazing, syncopated basslines and sequences. Which led to lot of amazing music; Like Human League or Depeche Mode’s second album A Broken Frame…”

Programming an 808 on its own is enough to create a standalone symphony.

Pure 808

Of course the 808 doesn’t need accompaniment to shine. Programming an 808 on its own is enough to create a standalone symphony.

Also in Noyer’s film, Richie Hawtin discusses the 808’s intuitive workflow: “Probably my most beautiful moment with an 808 was going back at 8AM on a Sunday morning after listening to Derrick May play in Detroit, and turning on my 808, and making a whole song out of it… trying to make an intense, rhythmic piece out of one machine. In actual fact it became one of my biggest songs; it was Plastikman ‘Spastik,’ which was pure 808.”

808 hits

What tracks defined the 808 early on? It’s hard to say, but Noyer suggests: “From the [songs] we collected, so many are incredibly important, but if someone were to ask me to pick 3 that the 808 was about, OK: "Planet Rock.” It’s the birth of hip-hop and electronic music. “Sexual Healing” by Marvin Gaye, and “Paul Revere” by the Beastie Boys because it’s iconic, and how you can mess with the 808 to that level is incredible”

Tweaking Into Tomorrow

The 808’s pastiche of sounds were eventually twisted, delayed, phased and tweaked so hard, it’s taken on a cyberlife of its own.

“Even through all the reshaping of the ways we use instruments; computers, cloud platforms… people look for the 808 as an 808. It’s incredible that it’s not just, ‘I need a kick drum,’ but ‘I need an 808 kick drum,’” Noyer says. “People are so passionate about those specificities. The way the 808 lived on beyond its limited run was the use of samplers and all the digital technology that allowed it to live on in sound libraries,” he says. “But from the kick drum to the snare to the rim, all those sounds still sound as peculiar today as they did then. There’s libraries and libraries of those sounds, but those true 808 sounds cannot be beat. The emergence of trap was a testament to that, because there’s such a use of raw 808 and I found that very exciting.”

“It’s transgenre,” Salaciak says. “The basic sound set of the 808 is so perfect that it finds its way into many types of music. It’s fascinating how artists found another way to evolve the sounds so they’re still relevant today. ”For example, with samplers and computers, artists take the sounds of the 808 and manipulate them beyond what the original 808 machine can do, while still keeping the 808 identity. You can’t change the pitch of the snare or bass sound on an actual 808, but in a sampler or computer, you can.”

It’s like a giant sweet spot, it can’t sound bad.

More Than Machine

The loving relationship so many artists have with the 808 is special: “There were a few really gobsmacked moments when you’re talking to musical legends and they tell you about a machine as if it was a member of their family,” says Noyer about 808’s 57 interviews, including Pharrell WIlliams, Phil Collins, Questlove, Goldie, Rick Rubin, and countless more.

“Bear in mind its short run, a lot of artists never really had the experience of using the machine because by then it was integrated into so many other things. For anybody who’s not dependent on the machine, it’s very easy to capitalize on the sound without having to use the interface. With that in mind, we had real childlike reactions. These moments are special… I remember we handed my 808 to David Guetta, he kept it on his knee the whole interview. He was cuddling it. It was interesting, because it’s a rare thing to get your hands on one.”

Learn more about the 808 documentary produced by Alex Noyer of You Know Films, along with writer/director Alexander Dunn, co-executive producer Arthur Baker, and their team.

Get your hands on the first ever Software TR-808 from Roland Cloud

The post From Kick to Cowbell: What Made the Roland TR-808 Great? appeared first on LANDR Blog.

from LANDR Blog https://blog.landr.com/roland-tr-808/ via https://www.youtube.com/user/corporatethief/playlists from Steve Hart https://stevehartcom.tumblr.com/post/172906217419

[thegaruudeffekt-blog]

WE ARE THE THUNDER: Analysis of a song

Some of the songs on the "Who do YOU think YOU are?" EP reflect opinions, mindsets, states of being that I held once upon a time, but no longer identify with. Releasing them as they were written serves as a record of my thoughts and ideas as I go through life. So though I feel differently about some ideas expressed in my songs at present, I share them nonetheless.

I’ve spent much of my life exploring the nagging, inescapable feeling that I didn’t belong here. Where? In this time, this country, this state, this world. Anywhere. Our society has standards, criteria for happiness and success that we all unwittingly and unconsciously accept. We tend to have an unfavourable view of our selves as we gaze through the filter of societal norms. There was a stage of my continuous journey where I felt a bit like I and people like myself had been set up to fail, to suffer by not fitting in, in an apathetic world. I wondered if there was a place for me, an underachiever. I wondered if there was a place for all the people who felt like they could do better, but weren’t sure how to go about it, the meek, if you will.   There is a mindset whereby people will tend to cast blame on circumstances outside of themselves for the misfortune or dissatisfaction in their lives.   The verses and pre-choruses reflect that mindset.   In these verses I described how I saw the people that set superficial, societal standards. I went on a date a few years back and the girl in question, during the conversation that was supposed to be for the purpose of getting to know each other, essentially interrogated me. Her line of questioning seemed to be geared toward trying to figure out if I was at a professional and financial level sufficient for me to qualify to date her. I felt as though I was applying for a job or a loan. That first verse speaks to that. Interestingly, I don’t remember the girl, just the interrogation.

The pre-chorus illustrates the mindset of victimization and rancor that I made an unhealthy habit of indulging in for many years.   There was a kind of hopeless resignation to being subject to whims of others that I clung to for some time.

Despite the bad mental habits I engaged in for so long, there was always an inevitable upturn of hopefulness and optimism to follow. Some may call it the cycle of depression. I feel it was my true self, refusing to surrender. The Chorus illustrates what I saw (AND STILL DO!!!!:), as an evolution on the horizon, a seemingly inevitable shift in the priorities and understanding we have of our selves and our world. Lightning is scary due to the damage it can cause, but Thunder affects us on a more instinctive, primeval level.   We feel it in the very core of our being. It can’t be ignored. Strangely, I had the melody for the chorus for a long time, but I had no song, no lyrics, no theme. At the time all I had was the line, “ooh ooh, a little thunder”, a phrase of little significance to those outside of the science of meteorology.

I gave this song an 80’s Pop/Rock kind of feel, a little “Every Breath You Takish” sort of thing. I have a propensity toward groove driven, syncopated rhythms. I wanted at least one of the songs to be a “Straight Rocker”, if you will. Originally I had an entire bridge ending to the song where there was a whole new set of lyrics describing what I later deemed to be too reminiscent of the Rapture. There were also some chord changes that were a tremendous departure from the rest of the song, and in this instance it wasn’t appropriate. One day I was showering, as I do daily, and I got this melody in my head in a weird time signature. I bounced it around on guitar for a few days without thinking of using it for this song. Then one day it occurred to me that it might work for “Thunder”, which had lyrics and verses and such at this point. I tried it out and Booyah, it worked, at least that’s how I feel. There’s an other worldly, magical, comforting vibe to that part that I love. The vocal tracks build slowly to a harmony that is symbolic of the concert of consciousness taking place, in my estimation. Anyways, that’s the shinola on that tune.

WE ARE THE THUNDER

By Marti Christopher

Too many people in this world

Are concerned with what you are

Instead of who you are

A pretty face or a big account

Will sure get you very far

You can be a star

They’ll try to kick sand into your eye

Cut you just so they can hear you cry

Betray you without a reason why

Poison your dreams to watch them die

But hold on a little longer, longer

It feels like we’re getting stronger, stronger

Ain’t No shelter from the cloud we are under, under

The lightning may strike but

WE ARE the THUNDER

Too many People spend their time

Planning what they will do

If they get hold of you

As though a fascist machination of love

Could ever do

What they want it to

They’ll try to kick sand into your eye

Cut you just so they can hear you cry

Betray you without a reason why

Poison your dreams just to watch them die

But hold on a little longer, longer

It feels like we’re getting stronger, stronger

No shelter from the cloud we are under, under

The lightning may strike but

WE ARE the THUNDER

Download this song and the entire "Who do YOU think YOU are?" EP for a price of your choosing aqui:

http://www.nimbitmusic.com/thegaruudeffekt

:)