Good morning. Hello. How are you? #690
Jane and sleep, Maxim and bar carts, CPAP usage advice, the complicated legacy of SST and Greg Ginn.
Well hello, there. Good morning! How are you today? I am okay. I am really sick of waking up at 7AM. Been doing it for a few years now and it turns out I do not like it one bit! The act of doing this for this long has definitely had an impact on me, and I like waking up earlier that I used to —I definitely like getting up before noon now, which is weird. But honestly, this 7AM stuff is for the birds. I think 8 AM would be just great. Jane is having trouble falling asleep these days, or saying she is having trouble, anyway. And the fact remains that she is spending more and more time in bed without sleeping. We put her down at 8:30, she’s usually still up at 10. And she’s almost always up before I go get her out of bed at 9. She is probably only sleeping from, like, 10 to 8 these days. Getting her out of bed at 8 would be no problem since I’m already up anyway, but I don’t think it would especially solve the problem. She doesn’t mind hanging out in her bed in the morning after she wakes up — who does? What seems to be a thing we should do, maybe, is put her to bed a little later? But would it even work? Maybe she’s just the kind of person who takes an hour or more to go to sleep, and if we put her to bed later, she’d fall asleep later. And she definitely falls asleep faster on days where she gets a lot more physical exercise. Which is a veryhard thing to get a child to do when you’re working all day! It is a real dilemma and we don’t know what to do.
Programming note from yesterday. A friend wrote in about bar carts and said when they were nineteen or so they did an interview at Maxim magazine and during the interview they told her that one of the job requirements of the female interns was to push the bar cart around from office to office and make drinks “during happy hour.” They were very explicit that that was part of the job. Luckily she avoided this internship by another job coming through, but the incident stuck with her for 20 years. Yeah, Maxim magazine. As creepy as you thought it was. But did answer our bar cart question!
CPAP advice for a friend
So a friend’s boyfriend got a CPAP machine and I told them I had some thoughts and I would write up an email, but it occurs to me that there may be other people out there who could use my CPAP machine insights, so here they are:
Buy your CPAP machine. Do not let insurance pay for it. The methods with which insurance companies are now providing CPAP machines to patients are varied. Some still do a basic let-you-buy-it-and-they-reimburse you situation, but most of them now are some form of buy now pay later or rentals or some shit. This is bad enough, but…
…its worse because implicit in the insurance company paying for your CPAP machine is that they can monitor you for compliance. Which is creepy and shitty, and if you don’t use the machine enough to their liking, they can stop paying for it or take it back, which is a garbage thing to do to someone who is trying to adopt a new daily habit and it might not take immediately. Especially because…
…the very act of them buying the machine and not you makes it much harder to achieve daily compliance because when they own the machine, and are monitoring you, you cannot hack the machine. This is huge. When you own the machine, you can look up on Google the model number and find the special secret key command to change certain settings, and this can help you immensely in daily adoption.
Some machines you own outright you don’t even need to look it up on Google. I have a ResMed AirMini for travel, and all those settings are adjustable right in the IOS app.
When you get the machine through insurance, you get a prescription, and the seller of the machine hard codes every setting from the prescription into the machine and you cannot change it. This is fine (usually but not always) for the actual air strength, but can be a huge obstacle for other settings, like…
Yes CPAP machines are, like, $600 to $1,000. It is insanely expensive. If all you can do is get one through insurance, of course do it. Maybe if you discuss frankly the various issues below, they will be accomodating. But it will all take longer and be more bureaucratic. Daily adoption of CPAP is one of the best things you can do for your health, anything, anything that makes it easier to achieve daily adoption easily is one of the best things you can spend your money on. It will literally add years to your life.
RAMP RAMP RAMP. Ramp is so important. Ramp is the amount of time it takes for the machine to ramp up (get it?) to full power. In theory a long ramp means you can put the mask on, breathe normally, and slowly fall asleep like normal and then the machine magically gets more and more powerful and arrives at full power before you enter the deep REM sleep where your throat closes up and you really need the continuous air pressure. In theory. And hey. Maybe it works for some people. But for me, I fucking hate ramp, I cannot sleep with it. I have a bunch of congestion as soon as I lay down, and I need the full pressure of air to help me blow out the fluids so I can even go to sleep. I have ramp completely turned off, and it is so, so much better for me. The doctors take a guess on ramp, it does not seem to be the main thing they are shooting for, it seems to be more of a philosophical setting. It was a kind of okay guess back in the day when they did full hospital tests, but I get the strong sense that these days initial, prescribed ramp settings are essentially arbitrary. You want to be able to change it. You may well (probably won’t!) not be able to change the ramp setting on a machine for which insurance pays.
Pay attention to the recalls. Make a Google alert of your CPAP model number + the word “recall.”
Masks matter. There are an infinite number of masks and mask styles. They don’t really go into this at the doctor’s office. Maybe they do for you if you have a great doctor, but mine did not. They just gave me one. It looked like a thing you put over the Winter Soldier when they stick him in hybernation — literally! It’s hilarious how often you see full-face CPAP machines in sci-fi. First off, this was garbage for me because my beard kept the full-face machine from making a tight seal. Secondly, having that humidity all over my skin was a nightmare for my complexion. And thirdly, I sleep on my side and the thing got in the way. After much trial and error, I now use very small nasal pillows, size medium (there are different nasal pillow sizes with which you also need to experiment). It sucks buying, like, five masks for $50 each and not ever using three or four of them again, but, again, anything you can do to achieve daily use is the most important thing here. Protip: Masks are basically cheapest on Amazon. Some are down to $15. If you are trying different styles “just to see,” and might go through a bunch before settling on a style, might be worth it to start there, then dial in to a specific mask once you find one you like, plus Amazon has liberal return policies (I know, ew, but this shit is expensive).
Filter. There is a shitty little filter inside your CPAP machine. It is not enough. Buy an in-line filter. Change it often. I use these.
To humdifiy or not humidify. I ended up hasting humidity in my mask. You may love it. It is totally not necessary to the medical efficacy of your CPAP, focus on whatever setting you like most. If you don’t need humidity, don’t use it (plus, less maintenance!) but it may be for you, especially in a dry climate. Again, it’s more money especially at the beginning, to buy a CPAP machine that is humidifier-compatible, and then you may not even like or need the humidity, and you’ll have wasted the money. But again, if it is something that makes you use the machine more often, it’s worth it. They do make these in-line humidity capture devices that are cheap and supposedly make the air more moist, ew, but I have never tried them. Might be a good solution to add humidity cheaply, if you find you have dry mouth and do not have a machine that can add on a humidifier.
This is so, so rich person BS but if you have the means, and you travel and/or sleep over at a partner’s house, consider buying a second machine. Taking the whole thing apart and then putting it together when you get to the other house is tedious AF, especially when you return home from a long trip. The temptaion is strong to deal with unpacking tomorrow. Unpacking tomorrow is totally fine if your home CPAP machine is already set up.
When you go on trips, hook up your CPAP machine the first thing you do when you get to the place you’re staying. There will never be an easier time, and when you’re sleepy or drunk at bedtime, it is so easy to just skip it. Be dilligent, do it right away.
I think that’s it! If you have any other tips, let me know!
Finished the SST book yesterday, Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records by Jim Ruland. Lots of fun little factoids — Nancy Pelosi’s daughter interned at SST. Philip K Dick and Urula K Le Guin were in the same high school graduating class and did not know each other. Ruland has a great knack for fun trivia.
Greg Ginn, enigmatic figure. A lot to respect, the heyday of Black Flag, the establishment of America’s premiere independent record label, the commitment to putting out so much music by so many bands, the pivotal role in developing a live touring circuit and community around america of bands, venues, labels, zines, radio shows and others all in a scene helping one another. But also… he was such a dick? Irrationally jealous, holder of absurd grudges — apparently he and his brother Raymond Pettibon haven’t spoken in decades? Screwed over more and more bands as the years went on. Bought albums in perpetuity and now those albums are not re-released, their not re-mastered. Almost every SST record on Spotify sounds like complete ass — including his own! Because SST hasn’t bothered to re-master anything for the digital age. The Meat Puppes and Sonic Youth and other SST bands with the legal means have gotten their albums back from Ginn and SST because the contracts were kind of shitty and unenforceable to begin with. Since the book was written, it seems like SST has done a nominal re-issue of a few of their more successful albums on vinyl, but just barely. The whole label is moribund, and it holds the rights to hundreds — hundreds — of seminal punk and indie albums that are basically impossible to get.
Then there is the misogyny that has run through Ginn and SST since the beginning. Yes, Black Flag had a woman bassist for years, but Ginn has said some crazy shit about women through the years. And then there are the accusations of child abuse from his ex wife, and confirmed by Black Flag member Ron Reyes who witnessed such things. He does not seem like a good person!
And once again you find yourself in the ethical abyss that is art and the artist and how bad that whole thing has gotten in the modern world. It’s a little mini version of the paradox Ted Danson lays out in The Good Place — even the act of buying some flowers is a morally devestating act in the modern world. Even the act of liking a band, a song, is a morally devestating act in the modern world. You just can’t win. I don’t really love Black Flag that much, and I kind of respect Ginn’s fucked up guitartechno albums, but I suppose I could leave all that behind. But the legacy of SST itself, all those amazing bands, giving their start to Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Opal…. that is not somthing I can give up.
But, like most things, SST was a product of more than just Greg Ginn. It had four partners when it started. Greg seems to have assholed them all out of the company through the years (man I have seen that before) but they are as responsible for its positive legacy as he is.
Okay Justa Mix today. New A-Ha! Album coming out this fall. Song soungs great I love it. Maybe they’ll tour that’d be swell. More than LA and NYC this time. New Mtric, Plastic Mermaids, Billie Eilish, Afghan Whigs. Classics from the Cult, Japandroids, Seaweed, Cocteau Twins, Wang Chung. A mix. It’s a good mix. Starts synthy ends rocky.