Thursday, January 21, 2016

thank you for the birthday check, too

nana
I was beginning to worry you didn't receive it as I mailed it 10 days ago,so much for canada post fast delivery.I hope you are enjoying the good winter weather as we are.Hard to believe it is 6% today & even more crazy it was 16% on xmas day.I hope all is well with you,we miss you.luv nana. 

jessica
i quit smoking cold turkey on the 9th, and have actually only been outside once since (to get groceries). in fact, i've basically been bed-ridden for the last two and a half weeks. i'm very serious about it this time, so i'm just restricting myself to zero-stress activities like reading and typing. i think i should be able to get out of bed at about the month point. so, it may have sat in my mail box for a few days...

nana
 Good for you I am very glad to hear you are quitting,not only for your health but also it is such a waste of money.I have recently switched my services from rogers to bell,mostly because of the fees.I am saving $90.00 per month so not small change!I hope you are up & about again now.I had to buy a new printer & got a different brand'' Epson'', I really wished you were here to set it up for me,as you know how lame i can be around electronics.your mother came over to do the job & got everything running smoothly.When you get to be my age technology becomes a problem.Must run now, Leo is picking me up to go shopping.Bye Bye.

Sunday, January 17, 2016

it's interesting to look at the watch stats and build patterns. it gives you a little bit of data to compare to what you read about the world, regarding economic development.

for example, almost all of my hits from sub-saharan africa (not including south africa) are from nigeria or kenya. that's consistent with what you read in the papers.

something else that's interesting is that turkey clearly clusters with the eu: i have hundreds of hits from turkey, and almost none in arab countries (egypt is the highest). israel is somewhere in between europe and the arab countries.

i'm getting nothing from central america. and, the uk is kind of a special case because it's english speaking (i'm also getting a lot of hits from australia). but, broadly speaking, and especially if you take out the g7 countries, south america and europe are more or less interchangeable in terms of hit counts. and, the reality is that this is broadly true in terms of the strengths of their economies, as well.

i supposedly have zero hits from china and 41 hits from taiwan, although i know that's not actually true.

it's been a week, now, without smoking. i have a lot more work to do in breaking the page apart - although i think i may be over the hump by the time the sun comes up. this process may take another week. but, i'm ok with this.

Friday, January 15, 2016

14-01-2016: talking out loud about not smoking while doing laundry - and alter-reality re-approach

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

i'm feeling like i could probably get back to work - and i'm done smoking. that's five and a half days; a week, saturday afternoon. cold turkey. zero. and i have no urge to smoke. but, i want to really get over this this time...i am very serious about it, and that's a different scenario than previously, when i was forcing myself to quit for financial reasons without really seriously wanting to...

i'm also convinced i've got at least a few years left. i wasn't convinced of as much this time last year. it's ultimately that odsp extension that is going to put me in the right headspace to quit smoking.

so, i'm giving myself however long it's going to take to get all of my scattered writing into a single word document. this is going to require some scouring. and it may take a few weeks.

it puts other things on hold, and that's fine. they've been on hold forever, anyways. and, it's simply more important to me to make sure i'm getting over the smoking, for right now.

on top of that, i'm going to be integrating the unveiling of the web site with the alter-reality. my earliest ramblings were in early '98 - where the alter-reality is - although i don't know how much i'll be able to find until early '99. a true period disc would actually even integrate the relevant rantings, and i will try to work in as much as i can.

it will take some time to pull it all together, but it will operate the same way that the other alter-reality does. i'll set up an rss feed. it will literally update the site on a daily basis, relative to this date 18 years ago.

i think that's the best way to approach to this mountain of data. but, it means ordering it, first. i'm currently over 2,000 pages of scattered commentary, and the truth is i'm just getting started piecing it together.....

first up is actually closing down the facebook page. so, expect my facebook present to revert back to cv status relatively shortly.

Thursday, January 14, 2016

13-01-2016: further thoughts on the physical effects of not smoking

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

i waited a few days, and nobody's said it so i'll say it: this track strikes me as a sardonic reflection on end-of-life literature.

discuss.

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

i'm caught up. regularly nightly uploads one week behind will resume tomorrow at midnight.
so, i've got my 96+ hours of non-smoking in and, while i'm still sore, i think i could maybe get back to work tomorrow.

this has to be final. smokers have a tendency to claim they're quitting. but this really has to be the end of it.

i started editing the dec 19th vlog on the afternoon of the 11th. i'm rendering the jan 12th vlog right now. so, that's a good three days straight of editing for three and a half weeks. meaning i could maybe edit a week in a day? a lot of them were short. but, it means i'm caught up until next week, now....

i don't want to ever waste three days editing vlogs again. but, i think it actually helped keep my mind distracted.

i'm getting bursts of awakeness. i don't know. i may need another day or two. if i do, i'll take it. i'm willing to take my time with this right now and wait until i'm ready.

12-01-2016: estrogen increase, 35th birthday & total apartment cleaning

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

Monday, January 11, 2016

switching to skaters in the alter-reality

it's switching over to jan 12 in the alter-reality, meaning that the following release is happening along with the update to the front panel:

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/skaters
i've been almost two days without smoking, now. a confluence of things has led me to stopping...i'm late by the calendar date, but i'm early in my own mental flow chart.

there's a lot of things i should stop and do before i get back to work. catching up on the vlogs is one of them.

so, expect a bit more than two weeks of vlogs to come up over the next few days.

reacting to the last bowie record

so, we're in need of some clear thinking, here. that's my role.

this neither belongs in the list of bowie's masterpieces nor in the list of bowie's catastrophes. rather, it's comparable to one of his stronger but lesser known works - like station to station, or black tie white noise. that means it's enjoyable, especially for fans, but not groundbreaking or timeless. it is not likely to generate long-term interest outside of his fan base, but one must also note that his fan base is of many disparate ages.

it's a little dated, at points. there's some recycling; lazarus sounded better the first time, as i would be your slave. there's some mistakes - he probably should have dropped the second track altogether. but, all in all, it gets a decent and at times strong B. which, like i say, allows it to float in that ether that is just below his classics, without ever falling into the deep chasm of his worst catastrophes.

i hope to finish my discography in the next 24-36 months and get to my historical reviews. i've been thinking that i want to begin the process with dead artists - that is, artists with closed discographies. i may have a surplus to choose from.

rip david bowie

bowie's death is kind of a complicated thing.

up until a few days ago, i think it was reasonable to conclude that bowie - the artist, rather than the person - died roughly fifteen years ago. then he releases a decent - if not outstanding - record a few days before he actually dies, as an individual. so, it's a process of him coming back to life as much as it is a process of him dying. simultaneously.

i'm just sort of confused, i guess. blind-sided. i didn't get the undertones in the blackstar video - i thought he was just capitalizing on witch house. they're clear, in hindsight. i kind of knew it was probably going to be his last worthwhile recording, or at least the beginning of a last worthwhile phase. but, i didn't see anything as imminent.

bowie was one of the older boomers. he didn't make it quite to 70. but, let us realize that there are many people that are crossing over that milestone in the next few months, or have in the last few.

i've talked about this before: people are going to start dropping like flies over the next few years. call it a parade, even. the boomer death parade! the final last hurrah! they're talkin' 'bout their generation...

seriously, though. there's going to be prominent people that had wide footprints dying on a weekly basis, starting some time relatively soon. historical music fans are going to get hit over the head with it like a sack of black death. it's just going to be this brutal succession of death - mostly from cancer. and, we're going to wake up from it after however long it is - 12, 18, 24 months - in a drastically different musical reality.

the past will soon assert itself as the past.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

10-01-2016: finalizing the reconstruction of my first record & day one of not smoking

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-3

publishing inri (inri015)

my first record has been constructed without lyrics. yikes.

this is the new inri011.

up until this point, i always considered this record to exist within my "training wheels" phase. i was off the trike. and i was riding by myself in spurts. but i was falling down a whole lot.

it is now out of that pile and firmly in my "serious works" list. and that feels very good, after all these years.

i'm going to need to break for a few days to de-nic.

==

it took eighteen years and multiple attempts at a construction, but this record is finally permanently completed as an instrumental electronic work and i am finally proud to refer to it as my first record.

while most of these songs have defined concepts underlying them, i have ejected these concepts from the final recording and left them in a series of singles. i would prefer that this album be understood solely as the instrumental recording of electronic music that i am presenting it as.

written and demoed in multiple stages from 1994-1998. initially constructed in this form in june, 1998. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013. reconstructed and resequenced jan 6-10, 2016 from parts that were rebuilt over 2013-2016. re-released on jan 10, 2016. this is my first official record; as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, synthesizers, drum programming, orchestral & other sequencing, sampling, vocal relics, cool edit synthesis, windows 95 sound recorder, found sounds, strategies, soundraider, hammerhead, sound design, metronome, digital wave editing, production

the rendered electronic orchestra includes piano, organ, electric guitar, orchestra hit, pizzicato strings, synth pads, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, electric bass, sitar, tubular bells, tinkle bells, synthesizer effects and flute.

released june 20, 1998

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-3

about a squirrel (final album mix)

initially created in 1997. remastered from source and resequenced on jan 10, 2016.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/about-a-squirrel
i'm down to one more track, and i don't think it will be very much longer.

i had to stop early last night because the signal was strange, and what i've worked out was that the tinfoil managed to kill the field on the actual phones. i let it sit last night to "recharge". this actually worked.

i've just eaten, and wasted some time checking concert listings. i do think it's fine, now, and it shouldn't be much longer. we'll see.

i need a sufficiently strong low end for the track to segue, as it's between two very bass-heavy tracks. that doesn't seem to want to transfer to the laptop. but, i know the laptop has poor speaker reproduction on the low end. i need the phones to be functioning properly to finalize this.

i've decided i can't wait any longer to quit smoking, too. i've been pushing it back a few days for months. "when i'm done this project". but, i'm increasing my estrogen dosage on wednesday so i have to cut it off before then.

that means i might have to lose a few days. it's fine - i'm caught-up past the rewind, and it can't be too long before i de-nic. it's usually about three days. i'm already past the first one.

but, i think i may spend the next two or three days cleaning, instead.

swim (final album mix)

initially created in 1998. remastered from source and resequenced on jan 10, 2016.

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