a day of wondering what the hell am i doing with my life. a day of asking, right out loud, what the hell am i doing with my life? WITH MY LIFE. no especial reason or instinct, just a sense of directionlessness, and asking myself an honest question to which i do not know the answer.
i dreamed i was being interviewed and interrogated by people interested in knowing what i know. i was a fascinating individual, a man of worldly wisdom and breadth of experience in important things.
asked about the most important issue facing new york city today i responded that there was a cement block lodged in a hollowed-out tree trunk on 37th Street in Astoria.
then i explained my new theory of efficiency. i call it the coffee cup theory. at present i use 12 ounce styrofoam cups, amassing stacks of these cups for my morning breakfast regimen. i would like to suggest that this routine could be made more efficient if i purcased a single, re-usable coffee cup. it could be glass, or plastic, or porcelain. it could even be metal. but i think that this will prevent both the wastefulness of discarding used styrofoam cups, and peraps even improve the coffee experience with decorative patterns and artwork on the coffee cup.
i explained my theory of the coffee cup to the interviewers and they were impressed, improved upon, and the younger ones were even awe struck.
i next sermoned on te matter of sandwices, cold cuts, and lunch meats. too many people, i explained, denied themselves the pleasure of a more flavorful eating experience because they chose not to use condiments on their sandwiches. a turkey sandwich, i explained, could be made more flavorful and appetizing if, for instance, a sprinkle of black pepper was placed on directly on the turkey. similar options could include mayonnaise, mustard, lettuce, tomatoes, even sliced pickles or any number of other toppings. te coice of wat to put on your sandwich is left only to your iamgination. people need to realize, i said, that a sandwich can be more of an enjoyable experience with condiments.
i made additional, extended comments on sartorial matters, matters of grooming and bathing, matters of personal hygiene, including the use of soap, shampoo, and hot water.
the dream was endless. the dream never ended. my areas of expertise were all of the most and only the most mundane, inconsequential matters of diurnal forgetableness. my wisdom was no wisdom at all, yet in this dream i held court like a Zen master, like i spoke wisdom for all the ages.
…..
i got myself an accout on PACER.gov, to try and get background on something of interest to me. i probably will only need a dozen or so transcripts of court procedings. PACER charges 8 cents a page, but they charge nothing if you download less than $10 worth of stuff. $10 minimum.
the funny thing about it is that i found that the commplete PACER.gov content throughh 2008 was available for download off a non-profit Open Data site. the content for the Southern District of New York was wadded up into a whoppingly huge 68GB file. i commenced downloading this uselessly gigormous archive and laughed when the status said that the estimated download time would be 2 days and 14 hours. this was like the old days of downloading movies off the Library of Congress site over dialup. a 2 minute film of a NYC subway in 1904 took 2 or 3 days to download at the then-sizzling speed of 14.4.