Author: Ridley

I feel really fortunate to have an allergy P-Phenylenediamine. That might just be the giddy euphoria of finally having an indication as to what has been ailing me talking, but I feel genuinely lucky to have this particular diagnosis. Why? For starters, it could have been a great deal worse. I could be dealing with an autoimmune disease, or organ failure, or even a dangrous food allergy. An allergy to a clothing dye seems downright rosy in comparison. I’m particularly glad that this popped up in 2014 instead of 1984 or 1994. PPD allergies are rare enough that clothes are seldom marked to indicate the risk. Doing research on different materials, manufacturers, and environmental standards organizations is difficult now, but imagine trying to do it without an internet. My choices are expensive, but at least I have choices. I can’t imagine what I’d do without the ability to do this kind of research. I’d probably be restricted to ordering by mail from a single manufacturer. The cure for my particular ailment is, as you have probably guessed, “buy new clothes.” That’s essentially it. I mean, I’ll have to buy new sheets and towels and stuff, but even then, wow, to cure my problem, I have to go shopping. I can live with that.  My doctor has asked me to adhere to an “elimination diet” for the next few weeks. That boils down to “eating really healthy foods.” Again, there’s not a lot of downside there. I can’t eat most desserts, or drink sodas, or eat fast food. On the plus side, I feel about a zillion times better and my belly seems to be shrinking.  I’ve even taken this as an opportunity to start exercising a little.  The net of all of this is that I feel almost euphorically good. I’ll be honest with you: Nine months of itchy skins that easily becomes infected and no clue why had me in a serious funk. My energy level was so low it wasn’t measurable and I was in a dark mood. I could go to work and that was about it. The steroids they gave me to control the symptoms helped, but the side effect was that I gained a lot of weight. So, I really don’t think I’m rationalizing when I say that my diagnosis was a fortunate one. I’m thrilled at where I am now and I wish that everyone else with long-term illnesses were as lucky.  

I have been sick for quite some time now. This is my first encounter with chronic illness so I don’t really know if I’m “taking it well” or not.  After nine months of tests, with all of the poking, prodding, sawing, and other unpleasantries they entail, my physician believes that we’ve found a cause, if not necessarily the cause.  My skin has been in a poor way since last November. I’ve been itchy to the point of madness, and small wounds heal slowly or not at all, turning into larger and larger sores. The worst part, though, is the itchiness. It goes from merely annoying to literally maddening, depriving me of sleep and robbing me of the ability to concentrate on much of anything. My general practitioner assumed I had fallen victim to scabies and treated me thusly. When I didn’t respond and people around me failed to develop symptoms, I was referred to a dermatologist. I cannot fault the doctor for a lack of thoroughness. We’ve tested food allergies, kidney and liver failure, thyroid issues and autoimmune diseases and run all manner of rules over my blood. None of these turned up anything of note: Mild allergies to garlic, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pet dander. This came as no surprise as I was told from the beginning that discovering the cause of a skin ailment was often a needle in a haystack proposition.  As a final straw before sending me off to find another doctor,we tried a patch test to test for common contact allergies. This consisted of taping three panels to my back and waiting to see if anything happened. It did. The area of skin under patch #20 reacted in a violent manner, one that I would rather not describe here. The nature of the reaction was such that the doctor took pictures and brought in other doctors to see a most unusual area of skin.  My oppressor finally had a name: Paraphenylenediamine, AKA P-Phenylenediamine or just PPD. If that substance doesn’t sound familiar, don’t feel badly about it. I’d never heard of it and had to do a fair amount of Googling to get my head around what I was up against. Weirdly enough, it’s primarily used in hair dyes. The days of me sporting gloroius, blue-black hair are already well behind me, so that wasn’t the source of exposure. Unfortunately, it’s used in many blue and black dyes in clothing as well. I am, for all intents and purposes, allergic to black. Unfortunately, it can be used for dying clothes of other colors as well, so merely wearing Miami Vice-esque pastels is no guarantee of beautiful skin.* Finding clothesmakers who make PPD-free clothing is tricky business. You won’t find it listed on any labels and the Global Organic Textile Standard is silent on the subject. The best standards agency I’ve found to-date is a European outfit named Bluesign. Their site is a little tricky to navigate, but they have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to PPD. In theory, I should be safe wearing clothing from the manufacturers listed as partners. Itchiness knows nothing of theories, so I’m contacting manufacturers directly. I’ve sent out several dozen requests and made a similar number of phone calls. So far, this is what I have: Prana: PPD-free REI: 25% of REI branded items are PPD-free, with a commitment to achieve 100% by 2018. The Gap/Old Navy/Banana Republic: Have to contact custmer support on an item by item basis;no comprehensive list available. Nike: Despite being Bluesign-listed, Nike’s customer service informed me their compliance was on an item by item basis. Those are the only companies to have responded thus far. I expect Patagonia to wind up on the good list soon. I have a grave fear that my beloved Keen sandals are a no-no and I’ll be having to donate them.  My doctor has also put me on an anti-inflamatory diet. Fortunately, I have magnificent support at home and I anticipate being able to stick to it for the four-week period my doctor requested and maybe beyond. The fact that I may get a little healthier in the process is a nice carrot at the end of that stick. And I expect I shall be eating quite a lot of carrots in over the next four weeks. Anyway, this is a long way of saying that, with my wounds starting to heal and my skin starting to feel somewhat less sensitive, I expect I will be here more often. It is my hope that I won’t spend all of my time writing about illness, but it felt good to get this down on an increasingly vague approximation of paper.  Thank you, and take care, R. Kemp   EDIT: Just heard back from Patagonia and they have confirmed that their clothes are 100% PPD-free.   * In fairness, there is probably no product on this planet that would guarantee me beautiful skin. As a wise man once said, “Time makes fools of us all.”** ** Yes, I know someone else said it first. Not as well, though.

I don’t know why, but these seems to me like an idea that would suit OK Go remarkably well: Write and record a song, then hand all of the individual instrumental and vocal tracks to 12 different producers. Don’t give them any direction beyond “Do what that wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” Go ahead and work with them, re-record stuff if needs must, but make sure all the producers are working completely sepearately from each other. Then, voila, a new OK Go album made up of 12 versions of the same song produced by 12 different producers. Is it just me, or does that seem like an OK Go kind of thing?

The sense of horror one gets when witnessing from afar a tragedy unfolding but being unable to either avert the disaster or to even warn the soon-to-be-victiims of what the certain doom which approaches. From your office window, you see the train and the car stalled on the tracks. In cinematic slow motion, it dawns on you that the crash is inevitable and you have no time or means to alert the engineer nor to signal to the driver whose car straddles the rails. Even though it has yet to happen, it will, as certain as the rising of the sun.  Which is to say, my family, rabid supporters of the Three Lions, taped the England-Uruguay match and implored me to keep the result to myself. 

I’m not feeling well today, so please bear with me as I try to work through this. I’m hesitant to say too much about the Elliot Rodgers massacre because I know so little about it and I don’t want to be one of those people that sees a tragedy and immediately claims with certainty that the cause of the tragedy was whatever axe the writer has to grind. Obviously, I wasn’t Elliot Rodgers or anything like him. I will say, though,that there are aspects of the story that sound uncomfortably familiar to me. At Elliot’s age, I too was awkward, single, and miserable about being both of those. I felt I was “friend zoned” before that was a common expression, that women always went for guys who were jerks, and that there must have been something wrong with me because being “who I was” wasn’t working. It was a pretty lousy time, and I suspect it was a pretty lousy time to be the object of my affection as well. So, what I’d like to do is to try to lay out the advice I wish I’d been given (or, rather, wish I’d had the wisdom to hear). This may not paint me in the most flattering light; hindsight may be accurate, but it isn’t always fun. The first thing I’d say is to be honest about your intentions. If you’re romantically interested in a woman, don’t try to hide that from her. Back when I was your age (or, in this case, you), I’d get a crush on a woman and try to be so good to her that she’d just fall in love with me. That way, I didn’t have to put myself out there if she didn’t feel the same way. Of course, it also meant that she has no clue how I felt. I was building up this relationship up in my head, making it a huge thing that would break me in two when it didn’t work out.  It was a bullshit thing to do. While I was busy trying to be super nice, some other guy would actually ask her out and she would often go along with it. I felt so betrayed, as if she was rejecting me. In reality, I’d never even taken the first step of letting her know I was interested. So, seriously, that’s step one: Be honest. She deserves the opportunity to respond to your true intentions. The second one is tougher because it’s a lot easier to see in the rear view mirror: Rejection isn’t the end of the world. It only seemed like it because it the entire relationship was taking place in my head. It’s so much less painful if you’re up-front. I’ve managed to remain friends with plenty of women who weren’t interested in dating me because we started out from an place of honesty. Once they decided they weren’t interested, then I could choose to either be friends, or if I felt I couldn’t do that, then cut things off. The next one is related to that last: If she says she’s not interested, respect that. Don’t pretend to be a friend while harboring a secret crush. Either be a real friend or get out of Dodge. This one’s much, much harder than it sounds, and I’m not going to pretend like I’ve ever completely mastered it, but it will save everyone involved a lot of heartache.  This is probably something that needs to be said to all teens and twenty-somethings, and they probably won’t really take it to heart, but here goes: You are not alone. There’s nothing unique about your awkwardness, your loneliness, your sense that something’s “wrong” with you. Maybe the existence of the internet alleviates this a little, maybe not. But no matter how utterly alone you feel, and you will feel that way sometimes, it isn’t just you who is struggling with these things.  Finally, and I’m embarrassed to have to bring this up, but there is no method, no trick, no magic to getting a woman interested. Manipulation is no way to start a relationship, and it’s a horrible, disrespectful way to treat someone. Even if it worked (and thank goodness it doesn’t), that’s not how you treat someone you want to have as your partner.  In short, she’s not with the other guy because he’s a jerk and she’s not rejecting you because you’re too “nice.” I get where that internal narrative comes from, but it’s a fantasy I created to try to make sense of a lot of frustration. I really do get it. But it’s not true, and a huge source of your disappointment is due to looking at it through this lens. She’s her own person, and if you don’t treat like one, you’re going to be miserable for a long time.  That’s about it. I wish someone had told me this stuff. Of course, maybe they did and I just didn’t listen. Knowing the twenty-something me, that sounds pretty likely.  

I’ve recently ported a stack of entries over from another blog. They fit here better, anyway.  Long story short, Blogger is not good and I’m not nearly as certain about Google.

This: http://www.lynn.edu/about-lynn/news-and-events/news/lynn-university2019s-new-library-director-sees-libraries-as-evolving-to-meet-the-needs-of-public I’m pleased to see a library that isn’t trying to make a last, futile stand against the future. Libraries are about making information public, and the internet should be an amazing tool for them. Sadly, they don’t all see it that way.

This is an ugly feeling. There was a coworker of mine who was recently let go. I suspect strongly that they feel that I was involved in, if not responsible for, the decision to let them go. I can understand why they would think that, but it isn’t accurate. I stuck my neck out for them for months and delayed the act as long as I was able given my limited influence.  But…there’s no way I’m going to throw my teammates and employers under the bus to explain what really happened. There’s no possible good outcome there. So, I’ll just impotently recount the events as vaguely as I can and let myself be seen as the bad guy.  I’ve done plenty of bad things, but this isn’t one of ’em.  I know this wasn’t especially interesting, but I just needed to say it.  I’ll try to get back to business tomorrow.

It’s been a bit of time since the last post and for that I apologize. I’ve been struggling with re-arranging my online pressence and wound up neglecting this space. I’ll aim to correct that, but no promises for the immediate future.  Two of the last three night, I’ve been plagued by dreams involving my sister and her being lost or abducted. In each case, it was my fault. I don’t know why, but in the dream, I felt guilty about it. Both mornings, I woke up feeling nauseated, unrested, and generally terrible.  I’m sure there’s a reason for it. I’ve no clue what it might be. I’m ready for this to stop.