The Return of the Masomenis Corporation

Still no Being & Nothingness Cam Project . So I’ll take you back in recent history to the time in the early fall of 2008 when I started to take a little bit of a mind vacation and basically stopped doing much of anything except writing letters. I had set myself up with a little independent venture in my government job cubicle--a sort of walk-up business--of writing bogus recommendation letters for anyone who needed them. Darned good ones, too. Several people may have been hired with the help of my letters. If there’s a lag in the story up the road, I’ll tell you about that undertaking.

In late September of 2008, I finally got a letter from the Masomenis Corporation responding to my letter asking for more information about their home defibrillator. I had done some research since that July and found out that there were all sorts of companies producing home defibrillators. They’re scattered like leaves. Really expensive leaves. The defibrillators can talk you through using them at the critical moment. One guys’ testimonial said it kept him calm. It was happenstance that the Masomenis Corporation was the ad that caught my eye and the circuitous route that I had taken to contact them had been silly.

Their letter was hand-written, which was very creepy. When I did it, it was amusing and eccentric. When they did it, it was weird and un-business like. In the letter, one Raymond Horn offered to answer my questions about acquiring a defibrillator, but didn’t answer my actual questions (although he did volunteer that it should not be used on pets). I Googled them and to email a complaint about this useless letter—I had left behind any inhibition about direct communication with Masomenis—and didn’t find anything. Oooo—not on Google! Oooo--very mysterious and amazing! Well, hell. I was forced to look at page two of the search. Then another search engine, another. Yeah, ridiculous. But disconcerting. I was looking all over WebLand. I went to page seven, then ten. I tried all the variations, the snazzy wording you work out. I went down the equivalent of dark, dead-end search engine alleys. Pathetic. There’s a set of draft minutes from a meeting in 2001 about re-naming a local street where I spoke from the audience. That is on the internet and no Masomenis Corporation?

No site, no “Contact Us.” By this time, however, writing letters was becoming my profession, so even though I was never buying a home defibrillator—especially since it could not revive pets--I wrote to them and ask them to answer my questions.

Something Old, Something New

When the electrical workers were in the office 2 weeks ago they slid plywood sheets over the floor so that they would have an even surface to walk on and wouldn’t damage the wooden floor while they worked. The plywood is still there and I walked around on it after lunch, pushing on it, sort of hop-scotching, to see if it bent at certain points. I could use this as a lazy diagnosis of what else should be repaired--besides the jumbo monkey-entry-turned-Phaye death-trap hole— when I got a professional floor fix-it guy. Dirk had covered the hole with a square piece of wood that he siliconed around the edges and, when I stepped on the area, my weight lifted the plywood up at its edges. The plywood wasn’t nailed down and I was easily able to lift up the sheet and look under it. Hey, big surprise, the hole was open. No Dirk-made cover, no dry silicone left-overs, no smoothed edges that Dirk had cut when he started fixing it. It was a rough, oval hole that looked like it was broken through or chewed out.

On the monitor that we had tentatively named Being 3, was the above image. When I got close to the screen I saw that a color printout had been taped over it. I peeled back the corner of the printout and saw that the monitor, along with all the others, was still dead. I was by myself, so I concluded that this was man-made intervention. Brilliant, huh? Had the Being & Nothingness Cam Team members been here I feel confident that they could have worked up some sort of reasoned or non-reasoned lather about this, but, well, they’re not. Alternative pranksters to this being staff action may be paranormal activity, members of the ‘70’s band Supertramp, a cold snake or, of course, space monkeys.

I had only had three cups of coffee, so I thought, That’s a hell of a thing. I left it at that.

The Story So Far? Are You Kidding Me?

I was looking over the previous entries and my main conclusion is that planning ahead is a waste of time. I think that this may be the heart of happy human existence. Let's all give it a whirl and see what happens. You first. Please get back to me.

I’m gonna give a summary a shot.

The Being & Nothingness Cam Team--—students of philosophy Tom, Sia, and Phaye—are currently on semi-vacation due to the complete breakdown of all the technological elements that make the B&NC Project work. This was caused by incident-prone Phaye falling through the floor and pulling loose big bundles of...electrical stuff.

The Project office is in a small, spruced-up wooden house that I converted into a tech-savvy, gloomy, coffee-soaked place to make as welcoming as I could to philosophers. “I” means “Gina,” a character based on Gina, who is not, in fact, Gina. I’ve been hanging out in the office in case something actually happens. In the case of this Project “happens” could mean: nothing, all things, the computers, monitors, cameras, back-up tape and/or digital systems, and/or a combination thereof come to life (for lack of a better term) and we are able once again to see and monitor the incoming data from the Being & Nothingness Cams. Although we know that there are both Being and Nothingness cams we are not sure how many there are or where they are.

Sea sprites, ghosts, and extra-terrestrials are not, I believe, included in "anything," but hell, like I would know. I am very much hoping that "anything" also does not include talking animals, because that's stupid.

There was a nifty subplot involving prairie dogs, a monkey, and a lawsuit threat by the Central California Sartre Society, but if you weren’t here for that I can’t help you now. Wouldn't it have been great if the prairie dogs, monkey and Sartre Society guy were all in the office at the same time?

One big deal when the power and all technical equipment failed is that the SAaLI Unit, which is a cube thing that looks like really big computer housing, sealed itself shut: all seams, ports, outlets, even screw holes looked like they melted together. The SAaLI Unit is Project-related, but that’s all we know. It's now in Irvine, along with a lovely woman I know who moved there from Nashville. The latter has nothing to do with anything.

Other folks who have shown up in person are Dirk, the incredibly valuable IT guy and Bethann, the worried accountant. Gina has recently been corresponding with the touchy guys in Irvine who designed the SAaLI Unit.

Questions:

Why philosophers?

What is SAaLI?

What is the Project and where did it come from?

Isn't it a bad idea not to have someone monitoring the B&NC 24/7 like before?

What’s the deal with the Masomenis Corporation that Gina contacted in the summer of 2008?

Dose Gina have some big financial problems related to Project expenditures?

What do the B&N Cams consist of?

Did you hear that this is the last season of the drama "24"? If that show hadn't given us President Palmer and shown us how great it would be to have a black president what would have happened?

Is there going to be a thing with Dirk and Phaye?

Why is all Project correspondence in the form of handwritten letters?

Is someone ever going to fix the damned hole in the office floor?

With all that's happened will we be able to maintain the image necessary for philosophers to exist?

What’s up with the freezing cold back yard on a warm day?

Got monkeys?

My Letter to the SAaLI Guys

I sent a letter to the gentlemen in Irvine who designed/invented/oversaw the SAaLI unit/computer, and I realized that I should have asked them what they wanted me to call them (not who they are, because they seem like the hissy fit types), but how they would like me to refer to them. Since they know my last name it seems only fair. At this time I’m sticking with calling them the SAaLI guys and the Magic Box the SAaLI Unit.

I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and not address them as though they are self-important little pukes cocooned in experimental Hi-TechLand worried about loosing their funding. I addressed them, rather, as worried, isolated smart dudes working their way through a very critical moment in their careers--who are worried about loosing their funding.

They didn't deserve good stationary, so on the back of a E-ticket printout regarding Virgin America’s baggage policy I hand wrote:

Dear Gentlemen,

Responding to your letter dated March 26 I wish to emphasize that neither I nor my staff took any intentional action that caused the malfunction and failure of the SAaLI Unit. In our future correspondence please don’t address me like an irresponsible teenager. At your age you should know if you want people to be cooperative you don't insult them.

I can provide you with the following information:

1. The Unit was installed between 12/12/09 and 1/12/10 when I was not present;

2. On March 1, it stopped doing the weekly Project summaries;

3. On March 12, an employee accidentally pulled loose bundles of cabling and/or power lines;

4. At that time all electrical equipment in the office failed;

5. During or shortly after that failure we found that the Unit was sealed closed;

6. We determined that for safety reasons the Unit should be removed from the office;

7. The Unit was securely packaged and placed to the rear of the building.

Please contact me if you need further information.

Sincerely,

Etc.

Okay, so I omitted that Dirk had unscrewed the back and looked inside. It's not like he was struck blind. And I didn’t say anything about once using it for a footrest. And I didn’t mention that we put the Unit it outside since for all we knew it was going to start sucking small objects into it.