33 Days: Day 9

DAY 9

More shit weather but quiet without all the fighting next door.  Dumpster dive a laundry rack to dry our clothes on and say hi to the stray cat I met several days earlier, he seems to live in the area.  We cajole Romu into taking us to a little beach on the southeast side of the island, nice though Angela cuts herself on some jagged rocks when she is swimming and gets pushed against them by an incoming wave, she comes out of the water with bloody knees looking shocked but relieved.  We walk for several kilometers on the way bay before being picked up by a tourist guy in a rental car who looks seriously absorbed in driving or whatever he's thinking about and says nothing to us during the drive back to town except "goodbye!" as we get out of the car.  

At the campground we meet our new coworkers, a Belgian couple who have just arrived from the mainland, they seem cool and the dude even lived in Oregon for a year, making him the first European I've met who could tell me where Idaho is.  Romu buys us a pizza for dinner, I guess after five days where we haven't even made enough money to eat he feels slightly guilty and wants to remedy this.  

I feel slightly better when I learn he doesn't even have a camp stove and has been eating cold for a week straight now, but then again, he's been doing this for seven summers straight now and should theoretically think to bring something to cook on...feeling restless afterward I take a walk in the night, I go to the port and stare at the lights of the mainland, which twinkle and make me want to get off the island, even though I'm not really sure where I would go once I was off.

Heavy Doses: Moyers with Asimov

Seven of his books grace my shelves. 

Seven out of how many? Possibly over 500. 

 The actual number may be impressive, but it's not the number. 

 Why him? Why now?

No special reason for the timing other than for the fact that what he has predicted is happening now. The architects, if that's what they are called, are ahead of the curve by something like seven years. I could be mistaken; like I said, I'm a little behind...

Okay...make your point. You've got to be quick and clear. What's this about?

A number of things. Asimov predicted what is happening with regard to the Internet and education, "Now, there's a possibility of a one-to-one relationship for the many. Everyone can have a teacher in the form of access to the gathered knowledge of the human species." Khan Academy is an example.

Within the first minute is pretty much where it's all at.

 I would recommend listening from 0:06 mark till 

whenever curiosity gives way to distraction: 

The Internet and Education.

 The clip is part 2 of a Bill Moyers interview in 1988. 

Ten minutes is probably 3-4 minutes past the max attention span 

of most people who are not already familiar with a topic.

It's just, when he says that "[the student] has got to look forward to the fun in life, which is following his own bent..." as a student, a learner, he's talking about me and countless others. More or less coming from a place where thinking and asking questions was not exactly encouraged, I now find myself in an identical social environment.

"You have everyone looking forward to no longer learning and you make them ashamed afterwords of going back to learning."

Living in a society where information is so tightly controlled and managed is both fascinating and frustrating. At this point, I still care. 


Whatever...






 

33 Days: Day 8

DAY 8

Bad weather that looks suspiciously like good weather to me in the afternoon -- meaning we don't work even though we think we should due to Romu's thoughts on the ice cream sales outlook for the day.  I don't get it.  

33 Days: Day 7

DAY 7

Bad weather hahaha, it's warm and I feel 3 raindrops in the course of the entire day and wonder what kind of weather is really necessary in order to sell ice cream.  I find a sailor's hat in the dumpster, unfortunately it's too small to fit comfortably on my big head.  

I meet another cat, this one's nice too though a bit mangy.  We hitchhike to a little town called Sauzon with another islander, the town is a lame tourist trap full of overpriced restaurants, on the way back we are startled by the fact that tourists in rental cars with 3 or 4 visibly empty seats have no inclination to pick us up.  

33 Days: Day 6

DAY 6

Still bad weather, I guess, though it doesn't seem so bad to me, we are told this is not ice cream weather.  I dumpster some semi-edible bread and gnaw on it as we take a walk to an ugly beach -- there are lots of unidentified wormy things in the sand and the water is a suspicious, bracky green.  Perhaps due to motor oil seeing as there are a quite a few boats docked a little ways out?  

Graffitti link

On the way back we take a route that follows the coast of the island and find an abandoned German bunker from World War II, lots of spooky graffiti,  a big open underground storage space for who knows what, I'm into it.  We meet a black cat as well a little farther down the road, it's real cute, lots of petting involved. In the evening Angela is tired ridiculously early (11 p.m., c'mon man) so I go for another walk, find myself on a little beach where I listen to the waves, a refreshingly clean sound after all the shitty reggae and hardcore techno the idiots around us in the camping are blasting at all hours of day and night.

33 Days: Day 5

DAY 5

 

Bad weather.  "Too much wind" says the boss.  We get a ride from Romu and go to a place called Le Point de Poulain, there is a lighthouse and dramatic cliffs, a little beach, all that good stuff.  

At the beach I watch a bunch of French people amuse themselves by throwing around a big dead crab and laughing as it shatters into pieces against the rocks.  We hitch a ride back with an islander who drives wickedly fast and has a bunch of what appear to be exposed fuses in his car dashboard...

33 Days: Day 4

DAY 4

Another sunny day, we go dumpster diving in the morning and find a bunch of celebrity trash magazines from 2004.  2 1/2 hours of work on the beach, no one there so I spend most of the time reading my book in Japanese (being in France is not an excuse to let myself go!).  Romu passes by halfway through this little work spree to tell me my cop sunglasses are too imposing and that I need to take them off when I'm touring around and look people in the eyes in order to motivate them to buy ice cream from me.  What a load of horseshit, if people want ice cream they'll buy it, so I wait until he leaves the beach and then put them back on.  

A group of people I know from the campground come and buy 30 euros worth of ice cream from me, cool though this doesn't translate into much money for me (20% of what I sell).  Back at the campground the domestic violence next door continues.  

They quiet down in the evening (don't know why, then again, I don't know why it started) and we all decide to go to the local dance club together, too bad we get there before midnight and find ourselves the only ones in a kitschy dance club on a small-ass island.  I dance anyway though I'm not drunk enough for it to be fun.  Angela participates a little bit as well, but Jacob and Julie just sit and try to look cool next to the dance floor with their cocktails, hard to do when there's no one to notice you looking cool.  We leave within an hour or two.  Back at the campground Jacob and Julie decide to have a loud fuckfest, we are serenaded by the sounds of their inflatable mattress making strange wheezing noises and an endless refrain of "oui bébé oui" coming alternately from Jacob, then Julie, then Jacob, then Julie.  I take a walk because I'm already starting to feel the horrible claustrophobia of living in a tent and this just socks it home. 

Upon returning Angela relates to me how the moment they finished fucking Jacob got a call on his cell phone and took it without any thought for post-coital cuddle time -- this of course rekindled the domestic abuse flame and they were having a nasty row in no time, at least it was only verbal this time, apparently.