"The Situation"--02 July 2023
0745PDT: Incline Village Raley's-- a mess, the counters and tables always in need of even the least bit of attention.
0914PDT:
Called Spectrum regarding some alleged unreturned equipment from somewhere in the past; either related to the old Charter account, or two pieces that were swapped out recent for upgraded units. That led to nowhere and am currently waiting the FedEx arrival of the new units to check the serial numbers against the alleged missing pieces. If the units don't surface and billed for them, the new account may not be activated.
Blogs reactivated: Eyeless on Campus, Paleolinguist Bulletin, Kerouac Alley.
Facebook pages reactivated: Eyeless on Campus, Kerouac Alley, Hollywood Redline remained active.
Google domains: dot-coms.
eyelessoncampus.com, globalsouthnews.com, hill55.com, hollywoodredline.agency, reconpresseusa.com.
Two days off from TBC has allowed for some catchup on whatever. First and foremost, the anthro summer 23 class at UNR has been cancelled due to low enrollment. That means a complete revision again of the schedule. With no early class that day, the following is now projected:
The first performance date of the ad was listed in late June 1969, but I may have not been back from Connecticut before 04 July 1969. I had left Middletown just before that, stopped off in NYC when the throw-out bearing on the VW threw out and I nursed it all the way to McKeesport to Uncle Sonny's where Bobby Kohler, an A-1 mechanic installed a new one. There were no other problems in driving back out west and the car, with a couple payments behind, was left at Mom's on Akard Drive and I hitched back to southern California. The prospect of returning to duty at Camp Pendleton was once again deferred and Gomez bailed his car out of the yard and we drove to Oakland, then on the Reno. When we showed up for Mantor's gig at the Driftwood, it had to be in late Fall sometime, or at least after 04 July. His band played "The Weight" when we came in.
Market- French roll a la buerre-et une cafe,. Lake has settled down, the air is warming up. A day off from TBC and will clear sand from parking lot at Whitecaps.
Dropped the - geology class, Summer 2023, due to scheduling and will retain Paro Pain's class; like it or not, it's a required course for the minor. It's also web based, though obnoxious, with some logistics problems for later.
In addition, due to the fact that Eyeless on Campus blog has Google ads, it's been undeleted. The "archive" page, which does not load well due to the volume of content, was removed and replaced with "swimming to los angeles." As much as there is no urgent call for performers in the monologue, it will still serve as a digital record of this writing, daily, memoirs, out of order, non-chronological.
Spectrum is back with a vengeance. The megabytes at AT&T are being consumed at cannibal speed. The 10 extra Gigs at $15 a month are not worth it. There was no pre-warning when the new package and phones were put together that the mobile hotspot allowance would drop down to 3 gigabytes/month. And, the reliability of the service is unproven with a denial of access late last night.
The new Spectrum setup loses the $70-80 monthly TV charge and adds a Samsung Galaxy tablet along with some gigabyte allowance-total Spectrum charge about $150/month where it was before the hassle over the government sponsored reduction offer that triggered the expiration of the promotions linked to the account. The gear is being shipped so, following a long session with the business aspect of Spectrum that produced nothing, will arrive tomorrow. That will be a necessity to handle the ParoPain web based, spy-on-the-cops, required course.
Would rather do without, drop from UNR for the summer and fall and run away for a few days, to NYU for the set protocol class, that's $2000.
Last night, a DJ moment playing tunes that related to some of the past romances, and there were many. "One of these nights," for Nancy L., and "Rhiannon" for Rita. Others were only related recently, but it provided an opportunity to connect certain tunes to times, such as "smoke on the water" to 1972 and San Diego.
barista baby, talks, shows a great deal of interest, until the order is filled; then walks away, says nothing more-ref to Bluma Zeigarnik.
the unresolved v. the resolved-her connect with serving the drink was resolved, thus no more contact necessary.
the field operator when the antenna on the hill, in heavy rain, fell over-went up the hill and reset it, got lost on the way back down and found the creek where the camp was set up. Followed it back into the camp site-that was sometime in 1967, location totally unknown, date unknown, field operation totally unknown. It came into memory yesterday or today.
Market now open as at 0800 and today its cool, calm with a slight overcast that should burn off by noon.
The camera project, extending one from the office to the recreation room, is moving along according to whatever works. The wire leading to the camera that covers the pool area was removed and used for the first link consisting of one 60' and one 100' cable, a total of 160 feet. Another 60' and 100' were added; and one more 60' cable, a total of 380'-it wasn't supposed to work. As of last night, it was working. The rest is a matter of mounting and upgrading the other cameras in the setup.
Following all that, the best course of action is--unplugged. What about "we value your privacy<' that hoax, internet. The best way to protect privacy is unplug the computer and turn off the router. Keep activity to a bare minimum and never have an open channel when not in use. Thank you, the system, for being so concerned, even on a shallow level.
Memory comes back in bits and pieces, sometimes something that should have long ago been forgotten suddenly reappears, with or without a stimulus. When the adventure sub blew up the other day near the sunken Titanic, a day later the long-forgotten of two Atlantic flyers emerged from the vault.
"Nungasser and Coli" - finally resurfaced. They flew off into history and ditched just before Lindbergh and were never heard from again. It was one of those early efforts several years ago at newspaper headline scooping -- long before the internet cared in the least about one's privacy. Back then, there was no tried and true practice for hacking accounts and stealing identity.
Much the same way details in general reemerge from the past. What stands out and what doesn't. There are several ways to look at the past. Remembering it seems to be the starting point and the hoax of hypnotism to "think back," "try to remember" - needs a stimulus, intentional or otherwise. Different interpretations all spell out the same thing: recreate, reconstruct, relive-the past-all mean the same thing.
Two examples can best illustrate this: both related to the Vietnam war experience, the first was on night on Hill 55, the second was stacking sandbags around a radio van at Dong Ha. Both were one-off isolated events that seem to foreshadow all the other reminders of the past. Both represent an isolated event but were easy to recall and make for good historical context. Neither was that significant, any more than watching Swimming to Cambodia at Forest Lane was-only the timing. For the former, sometime in 1968, for the latter in 1987, not earlier as presumed. The video wasn't released until 1987, three years after the estimated final departure from Santa Cruz back to Reno in 1984. What's that haver to do with the historical research librarian?
The historical research librarian gives lectures in those English classes where the instructor is too lazy to put together presentations and relies on guest speakers to fill in the slots. Then they put the class into groups to do "five-minute free writes," yet another lecture dodge, those classes usually get dropped before the second week of the semester. However, the historical research librarian lectures are useful to examine what not to do when trying to patch together a narrative.
Usually they emphasize chronology, a linear accounting that's worthless. It wouldn't help one bit in trying to reveal what happened one week before stacking sandbags around the radio van in Dong Ha in 1968, nor help in the so-called "timeline" resulting in watching Spalding Gray's monologue on Forest Avenue in 1987. In fact, the analogy of "Swimming to Los Angeles" only arrived when the idea of driving to southern California on Highway 395 would afford access to lakes and rivers along the way, now full of water from last winter. The past several pages are a result of that reminder.
More changes, surprises and expectations in store not just for the weekend but life in general. Swimming to Cambodia was released in 1987, I saw it at Don Gomez' house on Forest Avenue in Santa Cruz. There may have been one other person present, with Don's wife in the kitchen, in and out as Spalding Gray was a disgusting monolinguist, and I even wanted to get up and walk out. The details of Gray's presentation are totally lost, the circumstances for being back in Santa Cruz also lost to history.
The excitement over Gray's monologue was because it was supposed to be unique, but it may have been done before by an actor portraying President Harry Truman. Either way, much of it is irrelevant other than it allows for the introduction of Don Gomez into the narrative. That will be addressed at a late time, since it's part of the Laguna Beach dislocated chapter.
Today, the lake should be overflowing with tourists. The state beach lot across the street lakeside is fast filling with cars in the parking lot. It was full of snow just two months ago.
So was the pool at the resort having been shut down and drained last October due to a broken drain at the base of the deep end. It's still empty, except for some upgrade gear and a lone tile man replacing the row along the edge under the coving. That's old news.
Yesterday, an email came into the UNR account announcing a new class in anthropology being taught in the Fall 2023 semester by Professor Erin Stiles. That entire department is loaded with some intriguing ladies, and unofficially, almost witch-like. The class fits into the already full schedule and since federal funding is now history, the class was added.
The schedule now shows Geology, Paleontology, and Anthropology for Summer-Fall 2023. That combination will include earthquakes, volcanoes, fossils, the lower species, extinction, disease and probably--witchcraft and medicine men.
Not all the classes are federally funded, the difference of which after payoff and before the addition of the new anthro class, would have amounted to a $350-400 refunded; not the usual $3500-4000. That would be an extra $450 payout for the Fall 2023 semester. For once it is acceptable. Neither in the summer are required for the degree, and the anthro in the fall also an "elective." But the Pell Grant may cover all the summer classes minus $450 and FAFSA all fall classes minus $450.
Wrap up the missing sub story on Twitter @jameslangelle and create some YouTube "shorts" using the Twitter posts. A method for producing those 1-minute low megabyte products has improved dramatically.
The aspect ratio, or the width related to height is 9 inches to 16 inches (technically) or- 9:16. At first, a converter was being used, but it can be done direct at PowerPoint. With a maximum of 10 slides at 5 seconds per slide, it comes in under 60 seconds. The content is related to a news story, or infographic style, thus keeping the MB low, about 2-5 megabytes at most. PowerPoint creates the video directly.
Swimming to Los Angeles comes from Swimming to Cambodia, a Spalding Gray monologue; watched it with Donaldo Gomez at Forest Avenue in Santa Cruz. The year-1987, which has a real interesting discovery about the past. That brings up the style for writing the former-non linear.
Memory doesn't work that way, autobiography, memoirs do. To be more lucent at writing, the necessity at remembering every little detail in one's life is impossible at worst.
Some memories are more clear than others; some others can make an impact even if all the details aren't recollected. An outline, in a chronological format might be more of a drawback than an aid, where struggling to fill in the gaps is an exercise too time consuming. A good example is when Swimming to Cambodia was watched in Santa Cruz. It should have been 1984, it wasn't.
Having lived at the barn in Soquel in '84 made it easy to associate the time, that was off by three years at least. Only by coming up with the play on the title, Swimming to Los Angeles, was the true date recollected, or discovered. How to go about, then, in writing about the past? The past few paragraphs are a good example; write and see what comes up. Do ten 9:16 aspect ratio PowerPoint pages, publish it to YouTube, move on.
22 June 2023--
Market-French roll, toasted and coffee--
Theme for StoLA, nothing in particular. Make it for whatever happens.
The Summer 2023 schedule at UNR was at best passable, at worst intolerable. Up until the first day of class for Planetary Astronomy, there was still no syllabus, or class outline, posted on web campus. That class, a Monday through Thursday morning affair, was dropped in favor of the forensic anthropology class featuring the teaching assistant from spring semester linguistic anthropology. Enrollment there is low.
Next, Professor Paromita Pain, an outstanding far eastern journalist instructor, offered a cybersecurity class. The hangup there was that crackpot who just won't go away wanting students to do police surveillance. The advantage, a web class; the disadvantage, the crackpot. That class was also dropped. Looking at the journalism minor requirements, the class would have filled one of the 400 level classes. However, Dr. Pain has another class in the Fall 2023 semester which will do the same.
Prologue--06/22/23/0000PDT
"Swimming to Los Angeles" has nothing to do with Los Angeles, even less to do with swimming- so what's it all about?
No clear cut has been established for when and why the new concept titled "Swimming to Los Angeles" was created. It is, however, a takeoff on Spalding Gray's "Swimming to Cambodia," which was released in 1987. That particular monologue was watched at the Gomez residence in Santa Cruz shortly after it's release, which gives an approximation of the time there, even though there was more time spent in the early 80s.
(20 June 2023) The routine today, any day, for instance, enroute to town today for a haircut, it was a dawning, a revelation, there is a Spectrum store across the street from Jessie's salon. Having been all over the phone that any returned equipment from cancelled service needed to be mailed via UPS, an opportunity arose to verify that story. The assistant at the North McCarran store, Reno, said any unused equipment can be brought to the store, which now means, all equipment, since the account can also be closed before the next due date. That means the opportunity exists to close out the account completely.
All of that began a few days ago when an offer for a discount for qualified personnel exists for $30 off the monthly rate. Having jumped a few hurdles and sending out an ID and inquiries, approval was granted. However, on checking, Spectrum expired a so-called "promotional discount" and the overall price, monthly-for TV, internet and phone- went to $190 from $150 before the government sponsored discount. A typical example of being shafted by the system. On calling Spectrum and conversing with some African-American juneteenth lover named Andre, he stated the equipment need to be taken to a UPS store.
(21-22 June 2023) All Spectrum equipment returned yesterday to the Reno N. McCarran store; receipt for the modem, router, TV modem, remote, wires, accepted. (This would not be the end of it.)