My Prairie Dog Theory

Not California?

I’ve been wondering about those prairie dogs that I found in my yard in January and for which I set up temporary digs in my home office. I was looking in the area where the hole had been in the floor through which they escaped, and there is no evidence that it ever existed.

I thought about the guy who claimed to be my neighbor, who gave me a photo of the prairie dogs to show that they were safe on the prairie near his house. I think that he was lying. I’ve walked to where he pointed, up to where my street dead ends into a grove of eucalyptus trees, and it isn’t very prairie-y. He said the picture was of his back yard, but I’ve looked several times and Nebraska simply isn’t nuzzled into the eucalyptus. Their aren’t even gopher holes in or near that grove, which is odd considering that they are so plentiful everywhere else that a local subspecies have gained the ability to chew through asphalt and line their underground nurseries with my socks and underwear.

I can accept that they did not wish to stick around in my stuffy little office, but migrating to Nebraska, or maybe the Dakotas, is way out of their league. It is possible that they moved the prairie from up the street to the Midwest somewhere. They can dig like the dickens, they’re social, cooperative, and co-dependent (but not in an alcoholic way), so they could have dug up a giant patch of land. If one prairie dog found a cell phone and another helped hold it, a third could have called information and had information dial the number for them, even though what they charge for that service is a complete rip-off. They could have found a trucking company and rented a flatbed with a driver to load it up and get their village to the Midwest. I don’t know what they’d use for money.

I think that that guy who showed me the picture was one of those people who help get prairie dogs across state lines. He probably isn’t even my neighbor.

A Roller Coaster to Heck

Bethann, the accountant/financial advisor, came by today for us to deal with that dreary stack of paper she had mailed to me so we could review solid, sordid everyday things like taxes. We carried a table and chairs out into the yard from the break room, because with the upgrade work continuing in the office it’s crowded and loud. As I’ve mentioned, Bethann is worried in about six different ways about the Being & Nothingness Cam Project’s laissez faire finances, and today she mentioned something about zoning. I didn’t know whether or not the Project was going to be a roller coaster to hell, but I didn’t expect a kiddie ride at the boardwalk.

To save me, Tom and Sia dropped by with some of Tom’s used patio furniture. They had gone by to visit Phaye (who’s living at her mom’s apartment), who they reported is okay, but still sort of “wonky.” How is it that she bounces right back from a monkey bite, but leg scrapes put her out of commission? I think Tom and Sia are bored, and since they’re salaried (there’s another sigh from Bethann) and the weather is so nice, they said they wanted to “spruce up” the back yard. They are non-somber and non-deathly white. This is bad. I have to get the office fixed up or everyone’s going to get cheerful and I’ll have to pull the plug.

They had four white retro metal lawn chairs and a little table and I was about to tell them they’d have to take the stuff away when they brought in some plastic sheeting and black spray paint and toned those puppies down. If you come out here at night you’re going to really hurt yourself. Perhaps I’ll get the extra raspberry berets and put them on top of the chairs for safety reasons.

Lord, Is This Boring

It’s quiet here at the Being & Nothingness Cam Project office, unless you count the gang from the Electric U making holes in the walls and Dirk and his computer dude/dudette friends hauling around computer equipment. Dirk’s gang took the SAALI unit into the yard and packed it up like it was an IED, since we’re unclear about what it is supposed to be doing. (Note to the "Self Aware and Lovin’ It (SAALI)" designers: the hardware, software, and function are shaky and obtuse. If you could get the Project grantors to take it back I’d be thrilled. Also, it smells funny and the name is stupid.)

I miss the other quiet of the Being & Nothingness Cam Team staring at monitors, making coffee, shouting out odd theories about the whats and wheres of the various cameras, and slingin’ around things like the truth being ultimately unknowable. I must get back that quiet quickly.

At around 11 this morning a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses stuck their heads in the door at the same time that I was talking with Aureliano Jose from the Central California Sartre Society to set up a meeting. I admire the perseverance of both groups, although the JW’s have inflexibility that is anathema to philosophers. Where’s the fun in having the answers and agreeing with each other, and why would you want to be so peppy and clean? Before they left I checked with them to make sure that they still don’t believe in either evolution or hell, and it looks like they’re sticking to their guns. I couldn’t say that philosophers would stick to evolution, hell, or guns.

I’m getting together with Aureliano Jose on Monday. I told him that there is no point in any of this, because I won't give up the title, concept, operation, theory, existence, thought of, or the endless lucrative possibilities of the Being & Nothingness Cam. If I don’t see him, though, he’ll be like the JW’s, sticking his head in the door uninvited. Dirk says I shouldn’t meet him alone because the guy’s only motive might be to get out of the Central Valley heat.

That Electrical Crakle

All of the electricity in the office is coming from one of those dubious-looking wires that construction guys patch into phone poles. I'm now having extensive electrical upgrading done and that thing looks homemade and crackles. Since the little wooden house that is our office has yet to catch fire I'm going to leave starting one to the 800 visiting electricians.

After the electrical/computer meltdown of the Being & Nothingness Cam Project last Thursday, I took Phaye to urgent care to get bandaged up and she's hanging out at her house. I called Tom and Sia and told them not to come into work until I called again, then I jumped into the car and drove down to Morro Bay to hide out at my sister Rose's house. This seemed like the best way to solve all of my problems. Then I realized I had 7 animals at home who couldn't open up their food by themselves (no opposable thumbs, the little rascals) so I turned around and came home.

The office was dark and depressing, which until then had been a good thing. I sat in the back yard and went through the mail--another urgent letter from the Central California Sartre Society's Aureliano Jose and a nasty-big envelope of papers from Bethann. I decided at that very moment that we needed a table and patio furniture in the yard. I'll send Sia to hunt for an outdoor espresso machine.

Dirk is beside himself about Phaye falling through the floor, and the subsequent failure of every electricity-dependent thing in the office. He nailed a board over the hole, smoothed and sealed the edges with some sort of silicone, and recommended getting a "floor repair guy." Dirk brought Phaye a huge bouquet of roses and freesia, saying he wanted to bring sweets to the sweet. The reference is from words said at a young maiden's funeral, but, hell, we all know what he means. I suspect that he would have liked to give her flowers before this, but now he has an excuse.

As far as the computers go, Dirk and the four consultants he brought in (he brought in) started hauling out a vast number of cables, wires, extension cords, what looked like vacuum cleaner hoses, amorphous melted stuff, and large mysterious lumps. The only thing that is intact is the HughesNet dish on the roof. He showed me why the UPS's didn't kick in and why Phaye and I didn't have time to safely shut down the B&NC system: the whole complex of plugs, adaptors, power strips and the accompanying UPS's had melted. He showed me this thing that looked like the aftermath of a Harlem Globetrotters multi-colored basketball bonfire--a heavy, hilly blob with bits of power cords poking out. He said he didn't know something like this could happen without a fire. He also showed me that SAALI, the computer that is supposed to be sentient and doing, I don't know, stuff, had become a sealed-shut putty-colored box. No seams, no way to access anything inside.

Getting up and functioning will be an adventure. We've reviewed the cascading mess that started when Phaye fell through the floor and Dirk and I decided that it was a super-prank. It was probably space monkeys.

There Go Another Five Days of the Only Life I Have

NOTE: It's taken me about 2 hours to write this entry, since I'm using Dirk's laptop and I don't know what I'm doing. Please excuse primative typing skills. I'll have to continue tomorrow. But two things: 1) While Phaye sat there crying she kept saying, "Bright!' like a toddler (since she was crying it was more like "Brr-rh-h-hiite-t-t!). She meant the image that she had seen; and 2) I may get to know every electrician and computer person in a twenty-mile radius, since they are all dealing with the office's ancient electrical set up and the various bits of blown-out equipment.

Five days ago employees, nutball amature philosophers and paperwork pulled me under. To solve these problems I left town, although I did not go to Reno and squander a slush fund I have stashed from B&NC Project grant at the roulette table. Damn. I love the idea--someone else's money, free drinks, big weirdo-smelling room with a red carpet; a timeless, disorienting, semi-reality. Trapped in hell except for the free drinks.

Last Thursday afternoon Phaye was alone on Being & Nothingness Cam watch. I originally hired her as a sort of intern/gofer, but I've rotated her into the watch schedule since she is an astute student of philosophy and may make brilliant connections between the Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable while she's sitting at that bank of monitors. Still, she's doesn't have the killer philosopher instincts and fast reaction time of Tom and Sia, and there was a sudden tick of an image on what we think is the Being Cam 3 monitor. She missed getting a real time image capture, and in her frantic diving around to check for the image on the camera recordings, she fell through the hole in the floor and ripped loose some sort of Serious Bundle of Cables that runs under the floor and everything went...thunk.

This is Phaye's sitcom-like world. I don't know how or what happened, except that Dirk had removed the panel that covered the hole in the floor and gone into the office crawl space and hammered a panel under the hole. Phaye didn't just trip on the edge of the hole, but stepped on the panel, broke it, and with her full weight on her left leg, fell a good two feet until she hit the foundation. I had been in the storage room looking for the source of the moths that have shown up in the office when I heard the crunchy-crash, Phaye yell, and all things electrical pop or wind down to a sad-sounding stop. There wasn't even a chorus of beeping that should have been coming from all the UPS's.

I felt my way through the real gloom office gloom, helped Phaye out of the hole, and sat on the floor crying right along with her. This was the first time I've cried at this job and it was about danged time. Phaye only had some scrapes down her shin and thigh. The office was silent and nothing was functioning.

As to watching the B&N Cams, I don't know. For the time being you may want to direct your attention to the duck cam and the guinea pig cam. I don't have their URL's, but they are some serious entertainment.