Imaginary Employment

My father said, when one is unemployed, one should still rise and shine early, dress nattily, shower, brush one's teeth, etc., and act like one is still working -- actually, he said that looking for work was your job under such circumstances.

Last Thursday I decided to try -- really try -- to pull this off.  I rose about three hours before I've been getting up.  I showered, shaved, brushed my teeth, FLOSSED my teeth, got dressed, left my apartment, stopped for a doughnut and ice tea -- then I went back to my apartment to my fake job. Yes, as an experiment I decided to act as if I were at a job in my apartment. I got quite a bit done -- applied for a real job, typed 500 words on my novel, read that article on the F-22 fighter, paid my bills, cleaned up my work tables, took those books to the consignment store, got the dishes out of the sink, found those references on quantum gravity (but not on the Palace of Nestor in ancient Mycenaea -- not in the "Archeology" file and not in "Gryphons") . . . wanted to take off my shoes, but you don't get to take your shoes off at work -- it's -- WORK!

In my case it was an experiment to cure procrastination, and I think it succeeded. But a lot of these self-help ideas work on the first day. Could I keep it up tomorrow and the next day?

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Friday I followed the same schedule.  Up, dressed, out, got potato chips and chocolate bar, back to the apartment.  Applied for a job, looked for the Palace of Nestor Xeroxes again ("It flourished 1200 BC!  Where else would it be except the Archaeology file?").

Decided F22s are so expensive and tabs are kept on them so well, they couldn't just go off the map in my novel, so I read about the F15 instead.  Typed 500 words on my work-in-progress "Other Realms," finishing the bits on wormholes and Zero Point Energy.  Practiced Excel spreadsheets.  Washed laundry.  When's quitting time?  "Only two hours in?  This fake job is hard!"

On Saturday I could have declared it the weekend, but I didn't want to lose my momentum.  More job searching, more reading, more typing (both on my novel and my non-fiction book), cleaned out and cleaned up my new car to keep it snazzy.  I felt exhausted at some points, so I had to go "off the clock" to rest for a while in my armchair -- yet I ended up working an hour past "quitting time."  Maybe there's something to this fake work ethic!

The Phantom Photographer

An occasional curious event noted by forteans is the appearance of Phantom Photographers, unknown people who apparently take pictures of people and/or their houses during a UFO or monster flap.  John Keel wrote of them in The Mothman Prophecies.

I once worked with people in charge of foreclosures at the Bank of Oklahoma.  Their files were full of photographs of houses from which the unfortunate residents were to be evicted.  I noticed that all the pictures had been taken on the move, so to speak, from inside automobiles.  Maybe some of these phantom photographers come from financial institutions.

A number of reports describe, not an obvious camera, but a burst of light as from a flashgun.  Jim Keith, in his book on MIBs, mentions a secret government “light weapon” meant to temporarily blind the enemy.  I suspect this concept eventually became the memory-erasing “flashy-thingy” from Will Smith’s Men in Black movies.

Anyway, I used to think of myself as the guy fortean/paranormal events avoided at all costs, but maybe I once ran into a phantom photographer.

Decades ago a used book store opened at 10th St. and Boston in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  It was the largest book store I've ever seen -- almost the largest store, period.  Walking through its irregularly placed walls was like wandering through the Carlsbad Caverns -- but all its walls were covered with books, stretching up beyond human reach.

I only visited it a few times.  I think it was open only a year before it was gutted by fire.  I walked past it not long after the fire; the shell of the building remained, but the interior was all charred shelves, timbers, and ashes.

Strangely enough, the floor was strewn with books that looked untouched by the flames.  Bibliomaniac that I am, I actually considered climbing in through the shattered picture window and seeing what was there.  I argued with myself that even if they weren't burnt, the volumes had to be sodden by fire hoses; there could be sharp nasty things under the rubble; maybe I'd even fall through the floor.  So I didn't enter.

Before I could walk away, however, a figure came picking its way through the blackened rubble from the depths of the store.  It proved to be a skinny young man, maybe in his mid-20s, with scraggly black hair and a black mustache and beard.  He wore (to the best of my memory) a pale tan shirt or pullover and blue jeans.  He climbed out the broken front window to the sidewalk.  He carried a camera of some sort that he kept turning over and over in his hands.

"Hi!" he said.  "Can I interest you in a camera?"

And he gave me this long spiel about what kind of camera it was and how good it was and how it was almost new (don't ask me what sort of camera; I long ago forgot).  And he only wanted $20.00 for it.

At one point in his turning and rolling the camera (he held it about stomach level), he paused and pointed the lens right at my face and snapped the button.  He apparently took my picture, and he gave a funny grin like he knew I knew.  Anyway, $20.00 was a lot to college student me, and I declined his offer.  The bearded man didn't press the matter and sauntered off down the sidewalk.

The first thing I thought of was the Phantom Photographers chapter of Mothman Prophecies, but I didn't really assign any significance to the encounter.  I assumed he was just a hustler trying to make a quick buck with a probably-stolen camera.  But it was weird seeing him clamber into view from way back in the lightless depths of the burned-out store.  Any why did he take my picture?