This story — about an NSA employee named Gene Carson — by Igor Vamos is so strange and affecting I would have thought it made up (like Truman Capote’s snakes story) except that almost every detail rings true.
I remember when you used to tell me that fruit from the supermarket is tasteless. I agree with you. If small markets work, why do we need the super markets? I miss you.
This is one of Carson’s diary entries. “You” is Imogene Campbell, whom Carson wiretapped daily but never met.
Given how little I can learn about Gene Carson and Imogene Campbell via Google, maybe it is fiction. If so, Igor Vamos is a genius.
Addendum: I guess it’s fiction.
Forgot the link, maybe?
)
https://www.e-felix.org/issue5/vamos.html
By the way, I love your blog, and SLD is the best since sliced bread. Works like a charm.
Igor Vamos went to Reed College, like you, I think.
He and I were there at the same time. One night in 1991, Igor and his crew changed all the street signs on a major street — I think it was SE Grand — to read “Malcolm X Boulevard”. (The city was talking about taking the name away from some other street). The fake signs were beautifully made; the artists even manufactured fake offramp signage. That stunt alone pretty much qualifies as genius.
Thanks, CP. Strange because I remember adding it.