I am crammed into a very uncomfotable corner at a very crowded, noisy bar. It is trivia night here. I am not playing but a friend happens to be here for that. I’ll see him tomorrow. Had a satisfying day on the Links. It went so well it was kind of scary. I got audio to come out of those things at a frighteningly loud level, and I watched as one individual seemed particularly interested in what was coming out of the device. It was a screed promising that prolonged exposure to links will sear your flesh and melt your teeth. I wish I could describe the earnestness of the man’s expression but it might have been that he was not stable. Links seem to be magnets for vagrancy and unstable people. Like me. Hah. I got a short video of him. He was standing facing the device and listening and then he was leaning up against it. I did not want to make my recording of his movements too obvious. No way did I want anyone on earth knowing I was behind this. But I cannot emphasize enough just how perfectly loud the audio was. I credit it to switching the voice. I had used a British male voice that I’ve used before. I love its world-weary character. But it was just too soft a sound to penetrate the streetscape. So I switched it to a hard German male voice that sounds vaguely Nazi, and I slowed it down in Adobe Audition, to improve intelligibility. I think it worked as close to perfectly as I could make it, which is not to say it was perfect. I felt like I was pulling something off here, but after the success of engaging that one listeneer I actually just got tired of doing it. The point of this is not that I now procede to bring up this audio on every Link in town. The goal now is to enlist the help of others to dial these numbers and absquatulate from the scene.
I have been in contact with a nice guy at the FCC, Tim, who called back to give more information about where I can access a particular FCC Docket that has not been published on the WWW. I might have to go to College Park, Maryland, if I cannot whine my way into getting them to scan the docket for me. “Scan the docket”… that’s the new verbal munchamunch. Dan the Scocket here to scan your docket.
I could probably make the trip to MD and back in a day, though staying overnight would not be a crime, just a boring dump of money.
I’ve had panic attacks the last few days. Bad ones. Lasting for an hour. One of them lasted most of the way through the therapist session. She was 5 minutes late, which exaggerated my feelings of vulnerability. She seemed to recognize this in my behavior. She was late one other time but she called. This time she did not or could not.
This place is really getting claustrophobic. What’s that Star Trek episode where they land on a planet where no one ever dies. That’s what this feels like. And I wanted to write more but I can’t.
