New York City Payphones According to Artificial Intelligence

The new Link5g, née LinkNYC, is going to be uglier than I could have imagined.

Find my LinkNYC cantankerousness at www.payphone-project.com/category/link-nyc

Cuban Sandwich!

It is strange to wake up from a dream containing oddly specific information. My mother often told the story of "Volusia." That mysterious word appeared, as clear as could be, in a dream sometime in the 1970s. The word hung in her mind for years, a blunt mystery looming as if with portent. She might have been able to research this word to at least find out what it means but I think she preferred to let it float. In another dream the name "Palmer Stiles" appeared, this name unknown to her and virtually impossible to research in the pre-Internet days. I took on my mother's fascination with that name. In high school I wrote stories including a character named Palmer Stiles, and I kept the name in mind as a possible pseudonym for myself should I ever need one. The reality of Palmer Stiles turns out to be ever more intriguing considering its origins. Palmer Stiles is a race car driver who has won races in, among other places, Volusia County (at Daytona Beach, to be exact). The significance of this is that decades later, after my parents separated, my father moved to Daytona Beach, in Volusia County. 23rd Avenue and 92nd Street. Now known as "Nochus". I was told of this location last night at a party. The party was in my dream, but it felt possible. A woman and I struck up conversation, mercurial and quirky, and she revealed that she was having trouble with her long distance relationship. As an expression of her anger toward all men we made out like hungry teenagers. The conversation was the best, though. We neglected our responsibilities at the party. She mentioned that she lived at 23rd Avenue and 92nd Street. I woke up thinking that was an oddly specific location. The day after waking from that dream I walked to that location in East Elmhurst. I shall visit it again. In another dream I happened to wander into the chambers of John Glover Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He saw me and, at first unsure if he should address me directly, chuckled a bit and said that he and the other justices greatly admired my use of the word "taphophilial". In the morning I looked up the word and found, to my surprise, that I appear to be the only person on the public Internet to have coined that word. Insignificant, but oddly specific material from the dreamscape. I don't know what it all means, but maybe my oddly specific dreams will come together, and I'll meet up with John Roberts at 23rd Avenue and 92nd Street in Elmhurst to talk about taphophilial things.

swine, 10/8/99, 8:50 AM

http://www.sorabji.com/w/wayd/1999/2922.html Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

Rooms

This is this this is, is this this?

Bad poetry, bad cold, snot pouring forth.

Song on the jukebox is "Year of the Cat" which is an old favorite from my late-night radio days in Tampa. Ah, here's that great saxophone solo.

I think this is the first song ever played on the new Magic 96 in Tampa. That first song might also have been Wildfire. Whatever the song I remember feeling proud or somehow on the leading edge of radio knowledge in Tampa the night 96 KIX FM switched to MAGIC 96. I think the format and playlists of the new station were very similar to the old but I felt like I was at the forefront of radio in Tampa for having been listening at the moment the station channged its format.

One thing about radio that seems to be unchanged since that 1980s Magic 96 midnight is that stations change format abruptly. The DJs rarely know they are soon to be fired and audiences are rudely surprised.

A story I tell often -- and which surprisingly receives a fair amount of disbelief -- is that my sister and I were watching TV at the exact moment MTV first came on the air. I guess "on the air" is a misnomore for a cable channel, but we were looking right at that channel the moment it changed from static to a test pattern to the Buggles singing "Video Killed the Radio Star".

I got things done today but I can't remember what. This, that, here, there. Tired and achey from this stupid cold. I don't get colds. Not now, not ever. Last night's sleep was crazy. Insane and crazy, to evoke a Paul Zindel line from one of his adolsecent novels I read as a teen. I had a long and rambling dream about moving in to a 3 bedroom apartment with as yet unknown roommates. I had first dibs and was choosing my room. None of the rooms had doors.

I have had nearly identical dreams in the near past. In one dream I am choosing from rooms in a palatial house in a rural area. In another dream I am choosing from rooms in a glamorous 5 room suite in an overpriced residential hotel. In all these dreams the rooms get bigger and bigger as I see each next one, and the dream ends with me deciding if I want the biggest room or a smaller one.

Most times I can tell what my dreams mean but with these I do not know.

MBT

Sitting at the Bel-Aire Diner, accepting complements for the fabulous foldable keyboard and waiting on a grilled cheese w/bacon sammich.

I am waddling around town in a new pair of MBT shoes. I say waddle because these shoes have a buoyancy that takes some getting used to. I stocked up on big bandages after wearing them and tearing up the back of my ankle -- whatever that region is called. I will not likely exchange these shoes partly because the fit feels perfect but also because I stepped in dog shit and might have trouble returning such soiled items. I just need to break them in.

The radio is on here but I can barely hear it over the general noise of people and activity. I keep hearing a voice, though, that sounds like Dan Tullis, who "just talked to Joel Clark" in what I think is a strangely contoured radio commercial for life insurance. The point of the commercial is to demonstrate how cheap life insurance can be from one company, but as Joel Clark's explanation reaches its climax his voice shrinks, and it seems to sink into a deep silo or a bucket. By the time he quotes the actual price it sounds to me like Joel Clark has drowned.

It was Dan Tullis' voice, not Joel Clark's, that I heard mixing in the air at Bel-Aire.