Today has shaped up weirdly. I was up at 10 then slept ‘til 12, not intending the latter. A story I’m almost done with turned up a lot more surprises than I expected. It turns out access to 711, which is a phone service for handicapped individuals, is mandated by the FCC for all phone service providers — including VoIP. Links do not provide access to 711, and in fact neither do the old style payphones owned by Citybridge. It remains for me to see if phones owned by PTS and other companies  in New York allow access to 711, as well as 211, 511, 611, and 811. 211 is a counseling/suicide prevention service run by the United Way. 511 is the all-in-one traffic and transit information hotline. 611’s purpose varies from place to place but I think in New York it was being used to contact payphone repair. Today some cell phone companies use 611 as a customer service number. 811 is the “call before you dig” number. 311 and 411 are both accessible from payphones, but surprisingly you must deposit fifty cents to connect to 411, which is directory assistance. That call to 411 is free on the Links.

I’m going to try the 711 and other “One Ones” from one of John’s phones. I’m not near enough to any PTS phones to go out and try those.
The surprise in all this is that not even the old payphones allow access to 711, and neither do the Links. SHOCKING.

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I actually do not feel so well today. Took a panic pill, and it brought things back to some level of peaceable. But I’m still feeling tight inside. Might actually have drank too much last night, at least for having failed once again to eat properly during the day. I’m really destroying my life, it seems. I am, at heart, a very healthy person. I get the Good Wood, which I read up on once and for all. I always thought that waking up with a rock hard erection was a signal of good health. But my only source for that insight was a line from the movie Kiss of the Spider Woman. Today I found more credible sources, including a doctor whose last name was Wood. Yeah, that was really his name. Until today I had never encountered the popularly-believed myth that having a lot of pee in your bladder causes your cock to go hard. A lot of people seem to believe this but it’s not true. I never even thought that.

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If the “Word of the Year” can be two words then I think this year’s word will be “Fake News.” Last year I think the word of the year was “Selfie” and another year I think it was “subprime”. I like that annual declaration of the one word that characterizes an arbitrary span of time. It reminds me of a poet I used to read who thought that weeks should have names. Months, days, even years have names. But not the weeks. I think it’s a sweet idea.

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I don’t remember if I mentioned this already but I realized a couple of weeks back that the crowd of people inhabiting the Windmill space appear to be from the nearby homeless shelter. That would explain why so many of them conspicuously look like they have absolutely nothing to do. And it explains the appearances of them being under various influences, be it drugs or alcohol I cannot tell. The homeless shelter was originally a hotel — The Hotel Verve — but the city converted it and countless other hotels and motels around town to homeless shelters. It seems to be a controversial practice but I don’t know the details about what makes these conversions of hotels into shelters a matter for debate. THis shelter happens to be across the street from a school.

This weather sucks. It is not conducive to feeling good about anything. And I’m feeling nervous about my life again.