100503

 

Arcata, CA

Sunday October 5, 2003

     7:20am  I just woke up. I got a lot of sleep. Like almost twelve hours, I think. Well, I'm going to go do my morning routine. Man, I always have to take a shit in the morning. I hate that there's no bathroom at the barn. I always have to hold it in until the Cash Oil, or something. Anyway, I'm going to smoke.

     7:47am  Jonathan was the only other person who crashed here last night. I just went over close to him and said, "Wake up. Time to wake-n-bake. I'll smoke you out, bro. My treat." He didn't wake up, though. His loss.

     8:13am  I'm reading my Future Shock book. I'll just read this until Jonathan wakes up. Then, I can smoke him out. I haven't been quoting out of this book as much as I did the last. Mainly, because so much of this book is noteworthy. I was just going to recommend it to everyone and let them read it. But, there are some really good, relevant parts in here.

                   On page 112 it says,

                   "Thus, a recent study reveals that job turnover rates for scientists and engineers in the research and development industry in the United States are approximately twice as high as for the rest of American industry. The reason is easy to detect. This is precisely the speartip of technological change - the point at which the obsolescence of knowledge is most rapid. At Westinghouse, for example it is believed that the so-called "half-life" of a graduate engineer is only ten years - meaning that fully one half of what he has learned will be outdated within a decade."

                   See, people can't ever stop learning. Just because you got a top-notch degree at college does not mean you get to stop learning new stuff. Everything is always changing. Let me also include the section, "Twiggy and the K-Mesons," on page 155:

                   "Every person carries within his head a mental model of the world - a subjective representation of external reality. This model consists of tens upon tens of thousands of images. These may be as simple as a mental picture of clouds scudding across the sky. Or they may be abstract inferences about the way things are organized in society. We may think of this mental model as a fantastic internal warehouse, an image emporium in which we store out inner portraits of Twiggy, Charles De Gaulle or Cassius Clay(remember this book was written in 1970), along with such sweeping propositions as "Man is basically good" or "God is dead."
                   Any person's mental model will some images that approximate reality closely, along with others that are distorted or inaccurate. But for the person to function, even survive, the model must bear some overall resemblance to reality. As V. Gordon Childe has written in Society and Knowledge, "Every reproduction of the external world, constructed and used as a guide to action by an historical society, must in some degree correspond with reality. Otherwise, the society could not have maintained itself; its members; if acting in accordance with totally untrue propositions, would not have succeeded in making even the simplest tools and in securing therewith food and shelter from the external world."
                   No man's model of reality is a purely personal product. While some of his images are based on first-hand observation, an increasing proportion of them today are based on messages beamed to us by the mass media and the people around us. Thus, the degree of accuracy in his model to some extent reflects the general level of knowledge in society. And as experience and scientific research pump more refined and accurate knowledge into society, new concepts, new ways of thinking, supersede, contradict, and render obsolete older ideas and world views.
                   If society itself was standing still, there might be little pressure on the individual to update his own supply of images, to bring them in line with the latest knowledge available in the society. So long as the society in which hw ia embedded is stable or slowly changing, the images on which he bases his behavior can also change slowly. But to function in a fast-changing society, to cope with swift and complex change, the individual must turn over his own stock of images at a rate that in some way correlates with the pace of change. His model must be updated. To the degree that it lags, his responses to change become inappropriate; he becomes increasingly thwarted, ineffective. Thus there is intense pressure on the individual to keep up with the generalized pace.
                   Today change is so swift and relentless in the techno-societies that yesterday's truths suddenly become today's fictions, and the most highly skilled and intelligent members of society admit difficulty in keeping up with the deluge of new knowledge - even in extremely narrow fields.
                   "You can't possibly keep in touch with all you want to," complains Dr. Rudolph Stohler, a zoologist at the University of California at Berkeley. "I spend 25 percent to 50 percent of my working time trying to keep up with what's going on," says Dr. I. E. Wallen, chief of oceanography at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Dr. Emilio Segre, a Nobel prizewinner in physics, declares: "On K-mesons alone, to wade through all the papers is an impossibility." And another oceanographer, Dr. Arthur Stump, admits: "I don't really know the answer unless we declare a moratorium on publications for ten years."
                   New knowledge either extends or outmodes the old. In either case it compels those for whom it is relevant to reorganize their store of images. If forces them to relearn today what they thought they knew yesterday. Thus Lord James, vice-chancellor of the University of York, says, "I took my first degree in chemistry at Oxford in 1931." Looking at the questions asked in chemistry exams at Oxford today, he continues, "I realize that not only can I not do them, but that I never could have done them, since at least two-thirds of the questions involve knowledge that simply did not exist when I graduated." And Dr. Robert Hilliard, the top educational broadcasting specialist for the Federal Communications Commission, presses the point further: "At the rate at which knowledge is growing, by the time the child born today graduates from college, the amount of knowledge in the world will be four times as great. By the time that same child is fifty years old, it will be thirty- two times as great, and 97 percent of everything known in the world will have been learned since the time he was born.
                   Granting that definitions of "knowledge" are vague and that such statistics are necessarily hazardous, there still can be no question that the rising tide of new knowledge forces us into ever-narrower specialization and drives us to revise our inner images or reality at ever-faster rates. Nor does this refer merely to abstruse scientific information about physical particles or genetic structure. It applies with equal force to various categories of knowledge that closely affect the everyday life of millions."

                   Damnit, where are my dirty socks? I'm missing my dirty socks I had left in the barn.

     8:43am  Man, I lost my socks. I can't believe I lost my socks. Somebody stole my socks. They were two dirty pairs rolled up in a Ziploc bag.

                    I took a walk around the barn and someone had thrown my socks out in the grass. At least I got them back for when I do laundry.

     9:23am  Mike just came up to me in the plaza. He's all pissed off. What's going on, Mike? Mike: "This guy accused me of stealing one set of clothes from his place, when he's got over forty grand worth of property in his house. I ended up going through Cinnamon Creek at 1:35am and ended up tripping and accidentally falling in the water. I had to buy a suit of clothes with what cash I had, first thing in the morning so I was dry. I'm going to hurt this guy, but I'm alright. I guess peace prevails."

     9:33am  Jeffrey stopped and I asked him if he had any change. He said no. I offered him a hit of weed and he said, "Nah, I got some." He pointed at the, "No parking anytime," sign in the alley where I spange. There's a THC sticker on it and I said I was going to get a picture of it.

 

He said, "Oh wait, get a picture of me smoking a bowl underneath it." I told him Okay, to light it up.

     9:45am  Jeffrey and I are walking to the barn. He wants to see the barn.

     10:14am  We're all high at the barn. Ex-afro-Jonathan got his dick sucked two nights in a row, by two different girls. Wow, that's good man. You're a pimp. Oh yeah, we were smoking weed and taking hits and we're all high at the barn. Yeehaw.

                      Here's a picture of me by the library.  

                      Ha, I got a cigarette from Jonathan. Sucker! Hehe, just kidding. He said, "Here you go. You better put something good in your book. That's the only reason I'm giving it to you, punk."

     10:20am  I don't know exactly what happened, but I got all tangled up. My corn necklace, water bottle strap and binoculars got all tangled up with each other. I was even considering cutting the corn necklace, but I really didn't want to. I had a picture taken.  

     10:30am  After much struggle I got myself out of it.

     10:32am  When I got all my stuff off, I handed my binoculars to Jonathan. He looked across the field to the railroad tracks and saw some dude with a backpack on. Jonathan yelled at the top of his lungs and eventually, the guy grabbed his binoculars and started looking at us.

                      Jonathan wants to make an entry: "My name is Jonathan. It's 10:35am. My dick gets wet. I walk up to females and say shit like, "I got a big dick, wanna see?" and they say, "Well, sure." Then I show it to them and their eyes get real big and they suck on it. I ride them for a while, and that's the end of that story, ya know. Peace and love, mang."

                      Here's the back of the barn.  

                      Check out the front of the barn.  

     11:02am  I counted my change out in the barn. Jonathan was annoying the shit out of me, but I finally got it counted. Let's see how much I need for tomorrow.  

     11:06am  I just got down from taking a picture of the money I set out. I'm going to count it now.

                     I got $25 in quarters and bills. Let's count the dimes, nickels and pennies.

                     Eighty cents in nickels.

                     $2.60 in dimes.

                     Seventy six pennies.

                     I'll add that up later on when I type it up.

                     Wait, I had another dollar bill underneath, so it's one more.

                     I just added it up. I have $30.15. I need five bucks.

     11:40am  I'm walking away from the barn now. I am detaching from Annoying-Jonathan. He gets on my nerves. Oh yeah, I found the Book of Mormon in the barn. Another peace book. Maybe I should read that, but I don't want to. I've got better things to read right now.

     11:56am  Brian just gave me a whole dollar. I appreciate it, brother.

     12:15am  My good friend Randi came along and told me, "I'm hungry." I just gave her a dollar and some change. She went to go get both of us a donut. Man, I've already had like two today.

     12:35am  I just bought me some mushrooms, damnit. A whole eighth for fifteen bucks. I am considering splitting it with Randi. I think I shall.

     12:38am  I just ingested a half an eighth of mushrooms. A ¼. Let's see how much fun I have. I should've taken the whole thing, but Randi was there. Just kidding, Randi, hehe.

     1:10pm  Nick just hooked me up with some change. I appreciate it, brother.

                    Bill hooked me up with a cigarette. I appreciate it, Bill.

     1:31pm  Angie just hooked me up with some change. I appreciate it, Angie.

                    I just had a badass conversation with that Angie lady. She just drove off in a brand-new yellow Mustang. She was all, "Right-on Victor. I'm with you one hundred percent." She listened to everything. ANGIEINARCATA@hotmail.com

     2:22pm  Man, I just had an awesome discussion with this big group of bible-thumpers. Mormons and stuff. I showed them the little pamphlet I always keep in my wallet(which someone utilized to give me some weed back in San Antonio). They listened to me a lot, but just cut it off right now. Later.

                    See, even if I'm not getting money for my busfare, I still have a purpose here.

     2:25pm  Andrea and Dan just hooked me up with some change. I appreciate it, guys.

                   Cool, they gave me ninety cents.

                    I deserve another donut, because I had that big talk with all those Mormons, too.

     2:28pm  Oh yeah, the last person who stopped and gave me some money, before the bible-thumpers, she gave me a pressed penny from San Francisco. She was all, "I was waiting to give it to somebody and you're the one." I'm going to go buy me a donut.

     2:48pm  Elisa is hooking me up with some change. I appreciate it, sister.

                   Damnit, I forgot the lady's name since I'm tripping on mushrooms. She gave me a dollar and seven cents. How awesome. Well, she knows who she is.

                   There I go thinking about sex again. This cute little blonde girl walked by. It's cool, because I don't have my glasses and lot of the girls look really hot.

     3:05pm  I bought me an apple fritter. I'm hungry.

     3:43pm  This sucks! I spent my money. I'm getting sucked into Arcata. Damn vortex it is. I really should be on my way showing everyone else how cool life can be, but I'm all tripping on mushrooms. That's why.

     3:52pm  I have hereby given up spanging for my bus trip.

     4:13pm  I'm walking to the school to check my email.

     5:06pm  I just realized that I can download and get on IRC at the computers at the school. How long it took me to find that out. That's awesome.

     8:57pm  I am just now getting off the computer and going home. I'm all tripping on mushrooms.

                   I found out I could download IRC and get on that. I went in the San Antonio channel and nobody else was talking. I took that as an opportunity to unleash my scripts. When I first started, I thought I would be kicked. But luckily Roli gave me ops, so I just started typing out all my stuff. People were actually listening to me. Man, I'm tired now. I'm not tripping anymore. I feel like it was a big waste because I should have saved that money for bus fare. But, I can do that next week. I got a whole week.

     10:06pm  I walked Mark out to the barn. I was telling him about how I felt like a big failure. How I got all the way to thirty bucks today and ended up blowing it.

Next day..