Sweet Emotion. That is not what I am feeling. It is the song on the speakers here at the bar.
I spent a few hours at the SASB today, not exactly doing research but sizing up what resources are available on-site only and what they are really good for. Still not certain but the NEWSBANK stuff seems worthwhile, and a certain periodicals index also looked interesting. But it makes one realize, not that I needed a reminder, that infinite quantities of content are not to be found in any digitized form. In terms of PRAY I guess it goes without saying that her legacy would be one of silence. I wrote to a Bellevue historian but as uncredentialed as I am I expect him to just delete and ignore my inquiry. The same goes for MIT PUblishing, the company that published the book that had the infamous bad citation to what was allegedly a New York Post story about PRAY. I rote to MIT to see if there is any way to contact that author but, again, the uncredentialed don’t get a place at the table of this kind of knowledge. This is just the way it works now. 15 years ago if I contacted an esteemed historian I could almost reasonably expect some kind of response. But it’s the new digital divide at work. We live in self-curated silos of context and influence. We all look at each other, we even talk to each other in oblique ways. But we never violate the code of engagement that says we keep our distances.
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Interesting encounter with the Norton/Symantec company. My credit card was stolen a couple of months ago. I changed the CC on file with companies that mattered the most but for the others I just waited for the message to come that my card on file didn’t work. One by one I decided if I really wanted to continue these subscriptions. I knew I wanted to fire Norton but did not get around to doing that, instead waiting for the notice from them that my card on file was declined. But guess what? For some reason Norton has the ability to claw into my credit card information and access the new card number that replaced the old one. They must have sold my bank on the idea that this is a convenience but I, for one, expected the usual back and forth … A little weird, I think, that any company could be granted that kind of access to accounts and numbers it should not know about.
Well, it appears I was able to reverse that charge, though it has not posted to my account yet. I had an impossible online chat with someone in India. I say impossible because it was obviously robotic. The chat window said he was “typing a message” for 5 or 6 seconds, and then 300+ words of text appeared, obviously boilerplate spit up from a keyboard shortcut or other macro. That’s another digital divide thing, maybe. I know I’m talking to a robot, but in this case a human-controlled robot who knows I know I am talking to a robot.
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I saw a woman on the subway today reading a book I read a long time ago, about the guy who submitted a bunch of words to the Oxford English Dictionary then cut off his penis. Title is [Something] and the Madman. I think his last name was Onions. When I saw the bookcover I looked at the face of the woman reading the book.She had a constant look of ghastly horror on her countenance. She was about ⅔ of the way through the book, but I don’t remember now where in the story the penis-chopping happened. Was she reacting to that part of the narrative or does she just have that look on her face at all times? I will never know. She exited the train within seconds of me seeing her.
