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Diary Index
Home 27 May 2003 I.R.S. R US The Matrix Institute emailed me an update on 17 May to say that Gordon-Michael Scallion foresees no geophysical cataclysm for the summer of 2003. This isn�t to say that things won�t happen. Yahoo news reports that an earthquake of �6.7 on the open-ended Richter scale� has killed over 800 people in Algeria today. Since that report the number has risen to 1,723. I have seen the summer 2003 edition of IntuitiveFlash, the newsletter that Matrix Institute publishes. I won�t post a copy of the newsletter, but I will paraphrase information that I think is most important. On 20 May, while cycling, I happened to notice an audiocassette lying in the grass by the roadside. I extracted the detritus and played it and discovered it contained several items of interest to me. Somebody filled it with songs recorded from the radio. The songs include one by the band Creed, a song I like (I think the title is �Higher�). Another is Sir Mix-A-Lot�s �Baby Got Back� for which I harbor a sneaking joy though I dislike most of the rap I have heard so far. Other songs on the tape are by The Offspring and Eminem. Not bad. I have found a number of albums on Laser Compact Discs as well, one by Creed, and that Now! Album, which is a collage of music from pop bands. I don�t know how they lose the albums, unless they are deliberately discarding them. I have found a small collection of tools, some in excellent condition, over the years in the same way. That I can understand: a vehicle with an open compartment runs over a bump in the road and the tools bounce out. On 18 May the electricity where I live failed at eleven in the evening and remained unavailable until eleven the next morning. It happened during a nasty lightning storm. Apparently the power outage was widespread. The library where I upload these journal entries closed for the nineteenth. According to Clay Electric Co-op (�North Florida's Power Supplier�), a tree fell onto a power line in a swampy area where standing water, fairly deep, required specialized equipment. On 24 May I placed my revised tax return into the mailbox. The woman who phoned me from Atlanta, Georgia said that I failed to sign it and left some lines blank. When I examined the form I couldn�t interpret the red ink, so I hope I did what was necessary. Actually, I couldn�t determine what lines I had neglected to write in, so I just signed it. At any rate, I watched the mail delivery vehicle arrive at and leave the cluster of mailboxes where the parcel awaited. I went to collect the mail and discovered the envelope was still there. It�s in God�s hands now. I started reading yet another novel on 24 May. It is Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It is the fourth installment in a series of seven novels. The first three were of reasonable length, each under 450 pages. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, however, extends to 752 pages, and I expect to be reading it for about two months. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is even longer at 896 pages. This material is a bit below my reading level, but to paraphrase Stephen King, you could do worse than read these; they�re pure story. Here is how it began. On the morning of 27 May my dad departed on one of his journeys to visit relatives in Okeechobee, Belle Glade, and South Bay. Belle Glade is the most familiar to me because I lived there for something like fifteen years before going away to college. It�s a small town on the edge of Lake Okeechobee. Once, just after Christmas, he returned from there with two paperbacks. They were the first two in the series of Harry Potter books. I dismissed them as too juvenile for my blood but eventually began reading the first. Impressed, soon I was reading the second, and before long I was reading the third. The third was a copy belonging to the local library. I read a little every day, placing it back onto the shelf afterwards because I would feel a little wonky about checking out a children�s book. Though now I am content to read one, provided it is by J. K. Rowling. Anyway, enough for now. |