NEUROCAM QUESTIONNAIRE ? NCI-1001/02

Completed: February, 2 2005

1. How did you hear about Neurocam?
- While researching the theory that AIDS is a man-made
virus, I linked to Neurocam through Totse.com?s Hot
Topics list.

2. What are your expectations of Neurocam?
- I refer you to my Theory of Expectation in which it
is explained why I do not hold Expectations? ?
?D=E-R?. Depression equals Expectation minus Reality.
The greater the rate of D, the greater the profundity
of one?s Depression.

3. What is your lucky number?
- Luck?

4. Do you instinctively turn left or right?
- Whether it is a matter of instinct or conditioning,
I typically turn right. (My head typically turns left
when I am thinking.)

5. Complete this sentence ? ?Neurocam is
?
- Neurocam is a mind virus.

4PM: While walking back from the store after acquiring
my daily dose of [Brand name sports drink], (It was
suggested to me by my Dr. that I drink more Sport
Drinks due to some mysterious blood test result which
suggested that I was running low on electrolytes and
needed to keep an eye on my hydration) I noticed a man
in a silver Honda of some sort, lap-drumming in what
appeared to be 4/4 time. Noting that his car was
parked directly outside of my 1st floor window, I made
a note to have a peek outside my bathroom window to
further analyze this chaps actions. My main goal was
to make attempts at determining what song he was
drumming to.

4:10: Back in my apt. I placed my two 32oz bottles of
Lemon-Lime [Sports Drink] on the ledge of my building
where it is sufficiently cold enough to refrigerate
all liquids. This is not only a convenience in that it
saves me the 15 foot trek to the kitchen (located just
outside of my room ? potentially more on that later
should I decide to rant about my roommate.) Rest
assured, my desire to use the natural elements as a
means of keeping my liquids, and on occasion, my
cheeses, properly refrigerated, I am taking advantage
of the freezing temperatures we are stricken with here
in NYC at the moment. I do this because it is more
convenient than making the trip to the kitchen (all of
15 feet away) but more to avoid any and all contact
with my roommate who has a HAARP like sensory system
that is triggered whenever I enter the kitchen. Almost
immediately, she appears, and it takes all skill and
dexterity to scramble back to my room, leaving no
signs of my presence in the kitchen thus confusing the
easily confused. I simply cannot converse with this
woman. When she seeks to engage one in a dialogue or
discussion, the only opportunity she gives one to
speak freely is to validate what it was she just said.
She could care less about my opinion unless it is in
conflict with her own. Should I contradict what she
has just stated, and, admittedly, such contradictions
usually serve to discredit what she has just
proclaimed as absolute, incontrovertible fact, she
does not approach our dialogues in a manner that would
encourage active discussion about a typical scenario,
but rather she becomes defensive and seemingly hurt,
as if a contradiction of what she just said was a blow
to her very self. It is as if I am not only
challenging the ideas she put forth, but challenging
the very structure upon which she has built her ?world
view?. In the face of even a cursory contradiction,
one can see her entire belief system call for a ?Code
Red? whereby all efforts are made to bail much in the
way a fighter pilot bails when he discovers that he no
longer has control of this highly sophisticated weapon
of ?defense?. Aside from all of this, she is simply
annoying. BAH! Enough of this irritant.

4: 30 Looked outside of my window to see if my
lap-drummer was still at it. Was he ever? Judging by
the way in which he was drumming, I came to this
conclusion. With his right hand, he was keeping time,
4/4 time as noted above, leading me to conclude that
the right hand was banging along with the bass drum
while his left, much more frenetic in its time keeping
suggested to me that this was the snare (perhaps Gene
Krupa, syncopated style?) There appeared to be no
movements to indicate a swipe taken at a crash symbol
or any other extemporaneous percussion. Just pure 4/4
time on the bass drum, and the excited snapping at the
snare. My line of sight was perfect. Suddenly, the
drumming stopped. There was a nervous stopping of it.
I knew from the quick-jerk accompanied by a quick
reevaluation of self that he had spotted someone he
knew and felt embarrassed by being so overtly himself.
(GOD FORBID!) From the driver?s side window, an
outstretched hand appeared; apparently an effort to
flag down or otherwise recognize an acquaintance he
had spotted. Indeed, a man in a black SUV, a Ford of
some sort, had pulled up along side and began speaking
to the man in Spanish, a Puerto Rican dialect if I had
to guess. Jovial discussion ensued. The man in the
silver car increased the volume of his audio,
revealing music of what appeared to be
Mexican/Mariachi origination. More pleasantries were
exchanged. When the man in the SUV pulled off, the
intrepid lap-drummer resumed his drumming, but with
fervor not exhibited previously. Trumpets wailed, Tito
Puente came to mind, but I do not think that it was
Mr. Puente?s music. Regardless, as the trumpets
sounded, Johnny Cash?s Ring f Fire came to mind, as it
so often does when I hear Mariachi music. The
inclusion of the trumpets in Ring of Fire is no doubt
why the song is as memorable as it is. For the rest of
the day, verses of Ring of Fire, and the omnipresent
trumpeting included therein, popped into my head on a
number of occasions. It?s the trumpeting in that song
that repeats itself continuously while the lyrics come
to mind sporadically.

?Love is a burning thing
and it makes a fiery ring
bound by wild desire
I fell in to a ring of fire...?

(Trumpets) Do-do-do-do-do doo-doo-doooo (Repeat)

4:50: I walked away from the window before witnessing
what was no doubt a rousing and involved solo,
distracted by a phone call from one ?Bill?. (I am
currently in the process of setting his voice message
to visuals and thought of a few images that I could
create that would express the tone of this man?s
message. (More on that in the future.) Some mental
storyboarding ensued, ideas archived, and onto other
things in order to allow the subconscious to mull over
the possibilities.

4:50:30 I walked from the window back into my room
where the dreaded five o?clock hour had struck. Five
PM to seven PM has always been a dreadful two hours,
my least favorite time of day if you will.

5:00: Had a look at my ?Mind-Bending Puzzles
Calendar.? Was presented with this Mind-Bender:

Fill in a man?s name to correctly complete the
sentence.
Sums are not set as a test on _______.
I solved it in about five minutes, disappointed that I
had not solved it 'spooner'.

5:15: Read a few pages of Weapons of Mass Deception:
The Uses of Propaganda in Bush?s War on Iraq. Big fan
of the propaganda. My shelf includes such gems as PR!
A Social History of Spin; The Father of Spin (A
biography of Edward L. Bernays, a man widely
considered to be the Father of Modern Day Public
Relations.), The Pentagon Propaganda Machine, Mental
Hygeine, etc. Considered taking on the hobby of
acquiring as many books with the word ?spin? in the
title, regardless of whether or not the book had
anything to do with propaganda. Thought this to be a
unique hobby and that one day, without doubt, some
academic would contact me claiming to do be doing
his/her Master?s Thesis on the Social Impact of Books
Which Include the word Spin in their Title. Quickly
dismissed this proposed hobby as the flight of fancy
that close friends warn me against. (I think I?ll
stick to the collection of 8mm/Super 8mm home movies
that has become a hobby of sorts for, say, four or
five years now. Beautiful, fascinating stuff.)

6:30 ? 7:30: Time stops as back-to-back Simpsons
episodes run daily, at these times, on our local FOX
affiliate.

?The metric system is the tool of the devil!? Made a
note to list "Other Tools of the Devil."

7:30: Dizziness sets in. I had felt it coming on
roughly 15-30 minutes ago, but know felt it to be
quite overwhelming. I was appreciating the Simpson?s
episode, but my mind was becoming more focused on this
sense of growing dizziness, and a slight disconnection
of my mind from my body. The thought came that I might
want to go to the hospital. I decided I would give
this more consideration if the dizziness intensified.
Surely it wouldn?t, but if it did, I?ll head down the
emergency room. Having dropped into some mysterious
seizure in October 2003, I was wary of such episodes
of dizziness and my awareness was definitely
heightened. Well did it ever get worse? And did I ever
come up with great rationalizations for why I should
not go to the emergency room? I was struggling to stay
conscious. My roommate knocked and began some inane
conversation about something that I could barely
follow. I kept taking deep breaths, and each time I
did, she thought I was preparing to say something. No.
I was trying to get some air into my lungs with hopes
that this would even things out. Dehydration is always
a possibility for me, given certain (non-threatening)
medical conditions that make me a bit more susceptible
to dehydration that your average bear. I continued to
monitor the situation all along as I had never
experienced this kind of thing. I was not dizzy with
"the spins," no-mine was more of a rocking to and fro
kind of dizziness. It felt like I was on the half-moon
ride that used to and show up during our yearly Block
Parties back on Hendrickson Street (Brooklyn, USA)

I tuned my roommate out just a slight bit more,
keeping her in tune just enough to know when to say,
?yes?, or ?no, oh goodness no!? or ?I?m not sure?, or,
?Um, yeah, I guess so?. I did this only briefly, just
long enough for me to think about the contradiction
that I had discovered; a contradiction that involved
both my dizziness and the half-moon ride.

As established, the dizziness felt like being on the
half-moon ride. Now, had I actually been on the
half-moon ride and was experiencing the dizziness I
was feeling now, I?d be having fun. I?d be welcoming
the dizziness. So why am I not having fun here, now,
as I am experiencing the same sensation? It was clear
that of the two similar sensations, one was once
welcomed, and one is not. On the half-moon ride I
expect to feel dizzy, and when I am dizzy, I know why.

But when dizziness strikes at random, it may feel like
a half-moon ride, but it made me feel like the dark
half of the moon. There, but not there. Control is the
issue I suppose. Since my dizziness was not
self-induced, I was a bit freaked by it, and the
sensation took on an entirely new meaning than that of
self-induced dizziness brought upon by with half-moon
rides, alcohol, or other such self-traveled paths to
dizziness.

When the dizziness was at its strongest, it was
accompanied by an ?out of body? feeling. An Out of
Body Experience?, though it wasn?t the
lurking-at-the-ceiling-looking-down at-myself -
experience so often described by those claiming
similar experiences. I wish it were, only because
that?s a lot easier to describe than what I actually
felt. I kept, I guess I?ll say, checking this
experience by scratching my beard. Doing this felt
like I was scratching my own beard, but not the me
sitting in that chair. I scratched, but another I did
the scratching from a parallel dimension, like of
those discussed by the String Theory crowd. The
transcended I was reaching back to this dimension to
scratch my beard while scratching his own at the same
time. This is perfectly within my character. This is
precisely the way in which I would fuck with myself
had I discovered a way to reach through dimensions and
make contact with myself in my current manifestation.
This would be the manner in which I would attempt to
enlighten myself. Fucking with my own mind.

It was perhaps the strangest feeling I had had that
was not induced by a natural or chemical substance.

I?m sure it was just dehydration, as this is the most
plausible theory. I was also very flush, despite the
viscous sub-zero temperatures, so you can throw in the
possibility of heat exhaustion ? only I was rapt in
more of a warm flush that a wretched heat and it was
clear that I was not exhausted.

In summary, I am not able to state the definitive
cause of my dizziness. It lasted approximately 30
minutes, had its disturbing moments, but did serve to
bring me to a realization about ?control issues?
..

And it burns, burns, burns
the ring of fire
the ring of fire.

7:30 Decided to take a walk to calm myself and
hopefully bring myself down from this bout of
dizziness. I decided to take a walk to the nearby
Central Park. Decided quickly after that that it was
far too cold to take on such an excursion, so I turned
toward home.

7:40 As I approached my building, I saw a woman
stopped near the front entrance. She was very pretty -
pretty in the strictest sense of the word. Her head
held an outrageous amount of fire-red hair. She was
holding an ebullient Mt. Vesuvius on her shoulders.
Natural color or not, this woman had my full
attention. She was holding a cup of tea or coffee. A
Grande of some sort no doubt. She lifted the top of
her cup to blow the steam from the surface. Although I
said she was very pretty, this is not why I was so
fixed on her.

When I saw this woman, it was as if I was supposed to
see her-no, more-to remember her. Her actions were
deliberate and exaggerated, and that hair was iconic.
Everything she did seemed to have been done to get
hold of and keep my attention. The feeling I had as I
walked up the stairs toward my apartment was that the
great forces of the universe had decided to foreshadow
my life by introducing her into it now; casually, but
heightened enough to make a lasting impression. They
decided to place this woman in front of me now so that
in ACT III, or maybe just at a less specific time in
my future, she is going to play a key role in
determining my fate. But why would I have to see her?
If she will play a major role in shaping my life, why
can't it be done when the moment is at hand? Why did I
need to see her?

And the deliberate blowing of the coffee-

We passed just as I got to the front of my building,
and there was a lingering smell of perfume in the air.
It did not suit her. I was far too strong and wreaked
more of desperation than mere self-accentuation. It
bellowed, SMELL ME! Or rather, DON?T SMELL ME, SMELL
THIS INSTEAD!

Maybe the cup was the foreshadowed item since she made
such deliberate gestures just to get the top off
combined with the exaggerated blowing of the surface
of the cup. She raised the cup high so that it was
delightfully close to her lips, bringing my attention
away from the cup and more to her lips ? more - her
action. Her elbows stuck out making her looked winged.
An angel? Once the top was off, her hypnotically red
lips pursed, her hair swung from side to side, she
moved closer to the cup, all very deliberate it
seemed, and blew for an unusually long time. It seemed
like a commercial for coffee. One designed to add a
sense of heavenly bliss experienced by the mere
possession of the product.

I had never seen somebody go to those lengths and be
that deliberate just to blow a degree or two off of
the top of their coffee. So now I'm back to her. I was
talking about the coffee, but only to describe her
actions. So no, it is not the coffee that is the
significant thing here. She is the foreshadow. But I
kept coming back to the same question: Why did I have
to see her now? It's not as if I'm going to see her
later in life, approach her and say, "Hey, I know you.
You're that woman who was standing outside my
apartment building blowing on your coffee one day."
The only life changing event that that would lead to
would be that she would then think I was some weird
creep with far too strong a memory-if I was even
telling the truth. No. If I ever did see her, I just
have to hang back and wait for her to make contact.
Maybe I'd get a wink and a nod. Or one of those
inexplicable smiles that I get on those rare days when
I happen to be walking down the street with my head
up. I get smiled at fairly often, and have for a
couple of years now, but I still haven?t come up with
a cool response. It usually catches me so off guard
that the confusion that runs through my head get
expressed on my face before I have time to stifle it.
So when a woman smiles at me as we pass on the street,
she usually sees, "What the hell was that for?" as my
response. I usually just think that they're stoned.

Here's how it works, as if I need to spell it out. She
smiles at me because she thinks I'm cute, and I am
supposed to smile back to let her know that I think
she's cute. Maybe even offer a mouthed 'hi' if you're
close enough to one another. It's just an opportunity
for a little flirty tickle to brighten up the day.
Nothing more than a bit of validation from a stranger
with no immediate motive and hopefully no further
consequences.

That's not the only explanation for the smile (which I
will remind you, has not, at this point, taken place.
I?m merely exploring a possible next step in this
increasingly profound and confusing altercation)

So in time, I decided that I might as well be prepared
for it, the smile, and smile back, even if I have no
idea why we're smiling at each other. And while I have
no idea why this airy redhead was presented to me in
this way by the unseen forces of the universe, I do
know that my head will turn whiplash-fast every time I
see red hair out of the corner of my eye. I may not
know why this happened, but that's fine. Knowing she's
out there means that I have a future. I'll live at
least that long.

(Who says that she will change your life for the
good?) Fulfill your destiny instead of steer you from
it? Maybe the unseen forces of the universe, of which
there are many, were showing me the face of the person
who will be responsible for my early death (which does
not mean that my destiny would not have been
fulfilled). What if she triggers an aneurysm? She
might even kill me. Seduce me, tie me up, hack me to
death, and swipe my kidneys. If I accept the positive
side as being plausible, then I must accept the
negative side as well. Since it's purely speculation,
each is possible, as are possibilities I cannot at
this time comprehend..

The glass is not half empty, nor is it half full. It
is both.

I went down, down, down
and the flames went higher.

8:00: The television insisted: ?When five cheerleaders
witnessed a murder, he moved into protect them.? From
a trailer for an upcoming Tommy Lee Jones movie.

8:20: Phone call from old friend discussing possible
plans for the week. We decided to take in the new
Richard Foreman play, try to get over to the Film
Forum to take in Los Olividados, directed by Luis
Bunuel.

8:45: Checked out various Neurocam related blogs and
decided to not be as actively involved until I
complete this assignment and decide what kind of role
I would like to take throughout this process of
unveiling.

9:00: Fin.

This is how it happened, as far as I can tell.