At the ghetto coffee shop, listening in on the Links. If anyone think that spying through the Links has not begine they are wrong. I am doing it right now. I can hear what people are saying, though mostly it is just passing chatter. I catch a stray word here or there. But the scenario of direct audio surveillance of a targeted location is altogether possible. Just find a Link located where people gather. At the moment, with this nice weather, there is outdoor seating at a few places on Broadway in Astoria. I can hear what I think is a complete conversation, though I’ll be better able to determine later, when I listen to  THE RECORDING I AM MAKING OF ALL THIS.

The main saving grace of this scenario, which makes it eminently less useful to would-be audio voyeurs, is that call quality over Links is just so bad. Unless someone is yelling directly into the device’s microphone their words are barely intelligible to whoever they called. So these voices of reasonably distant people sitting within 15 or 20 feet of the Links are, for now at least, only occasionally coherent or understandable. But these happen not to be prime locations, nor is it a prime time of day. A Friday night crowd could be prime.

And people do yell around, if not directly at these things.

In fact I managed to capture a complete conversation back in February or March of last year, soon after the Links arrived. It was someone describing what Links were, and how they were “amazing.” As usual, the people most loudly singing the praises of these things are those who have never used them.

…

Anyway… enough of that. Links, from their substance down to their name, are boring as hell. But I’m having fun with it. And that’s what life is about, right?

…

I left the big fat tablet at home. I’m feeling a lot of neck pain, I think on account of carrying around more weight than usual in the Jack Spade bag (I always want to say “Sam Spade”), And I also think I’m sleeping at a wanky contortion these past few nights.

I did what you are not supposed to do after taking a panic pill. I drank, but it was more or less 24 hours after the half period… or rather 12 hours after the half life period, which is 12 hours. I feel no real pain on account of it, thought the neck pain is hard to distinguish from a headache. I ate like a fucking pig yesterday. The real trouble I get into with drinking is when I forget to eat. Forgetting to eat, or simply choosing not to, has been one of my character flaws since grade school.

So today I was up around 10 but then slept ‘til noon. I’m such a fucking loser. But hey, it’s a holiday weekend. And I made penance by scanning a full issue of the old music magazine. That’s a good thing to do while doing something else.

I remember how D. once commented that she looked up my star sign (Aquarius) and thought is spooky how accurate it was in one regard, if not others. It must have been more than just my star sign. A whole birth date and time profile, I guess. It said that I was inclined to have multiple activities going on all the time, background activites specifically. Seemed like a strangely specific thing but she thought it described my apartment at the time, where I would be batch scanning slides using an automated device, then maybe transcoding DVDs, then maybe talking on the phone or playing piano, and also … doing something else, I don’t remember what. But she said this continuum of activity was like nothing she’d seen, and it was quite strange to her how spot on the astrological profile got it.

Speaking of that — the slide scanning — those are another monotony of space I need to get rid of. Just get drunk and dump all of them into a trash bag (or two… or three) and be done with them. I scanned them all, as best I can determine. The value in keeping them has been in case I need to check against date stamps on the slides themselves, or for handwritten notes on the slide cases. But I don’t fucking care any more. I should do with these precious memories what their original owners did. Let them go. Burn them, if I could.

Last time I managed to unload a case of slides I followed through by dumping a bowl of black bean soup all over them. What was left of the soup, that is. I did this not to be some kind of twisted bitter but just because I don’t think anyone else should be allowed to have them, or to think they had found something unique.

It did feel like I was desecrating memory in some way, but in a ritualistic, albeit coarse, manner.

I’ve been sitting here a long time but doing other things. Sent a horrible snapchat picture of myself to someone who is an absolute ace at the stupid app. I never got snapchat until she started sending me stuff. it did not make me want to use the app but it did at least make me understand the appeal. You have to be kind of a goofball to do snapchat well, I think.

Going for a late sammich. Battery is almost done on this phone.