Alan's summer of ds106 at Camp Magic Macguffin
Today’s ds106radio call in show to talk about Camp Magic Macguffin was a debacle to me. False accusations came my way, Zazzy just hates and misttrusts everyone, Uncle Hector just giggled, Slide Guy mumbled vague poetry and innuendo about the joy of sliding, Mr E from CVI dropped and mumbled, but worse, worse was Joe Beets.
He falsely accuses me of being a hologram! Does a hologram bleed and bump into objects? He is the fake- He does not tweet, his blog has only a few posts and are full of promised of video and audio nevery published, and he has done nothing for ds106. There are no assignments done, no Daily Creates. He is the fake!
Joe Beets is using methods of mis-direction and propaganda right out fo the McCarthy era- to what end?
I appreciate greatly my colleague Martha’s firm support but something weird happened towards the end where she got all glib about what a great show it was and wonderful everyone was. How can anyone listening hear all the yelling and accusing think this was great?
Now everyone is saying camp is fake. We need you to stand up and affirm the reality of your Camp Magic Macguffin spirit. If you do not believe in McGuffy the mascot, he may die.
I tried to confront Joe Beets today and ask him what his goals are and he punched me!
Plus he stole my Camp Magic Macguffin flip flops.
FIND JOE BEETS but be careful, he is out of control, and dangerous.
Joe Beets has been sneaking around following me all over camp today; whenever I turn and look back, he darts behind a tree. I thought I lost him in the woods coming back from the lake, but he started pounding on the walls of Admin Building 9 when Martha and I were doing this morning’s video.
All I heard was heavy breathing, and low “I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE UP TO, YOU AND CVI”
I have no clue what he is wanting, but I was scared and ran up the ladder through the hatch tot he roof, maybe I can watch him to see what his motiver or plan is.
You see, I hate beets. The vegetable. At my first summer at Camp Glyndon, the diabetic camp I went to starting in 1970, they forced me to eat beets (“Its a good B vegetable”) and I barfed them up violently right outside the dining hall. I can still see and smell that purple vomit.
Since then, I hate beets. And now I hate you Joe Beets- get off of my back, willya?
I took a bike ride to sort out my concerns at camp; I am still getting nasty notes, and this Joe Beets character is ruffling my feathers.
The real question I need help with is finding out who is behind Camp Magicmacguffin and what is their ultimate plan? Is it Slude Guy?
Slide Guy is not happy, He does not want to be made fun of, he just wants to have fun. And he likes his socks. Man, he is pissed off. Listen to his own words.
Joe Beets has some intriguing ideas about who is behind Camp Magic Macguffin, plus he recommends wearing of foil hats for protection of your brain waves. Can it be a Masonic plot behind CVI and Camp? Joe has strange ideas, and alludes to soie damnin video.
My gamble to bring Martha into Shed #4 yesterday seems to have paid off; she seems to understand the situation now, and appears to be on board. Hopefully I do not have to worry about any more secret recordings. Mr E disagreed with my idea, but I decided to proceed anyhow, what can they do, fire me?
I’m on my way to meet her at the shed again.
Unscrambling Messages
Wow, what a week it has been at Camp. Everything is going okay, but this stress of keeping everything upbeat is taking its toll. The campers are all engrossed in their creative activities, and Martha and i seem to have gotten a few of the lagging students up to speed. We are seeing the beginnings of a lot of creative output, some starting simply. A number of them are not getting the stuff about embedding media and a few others could be writing more stories.
But everything is going to plan.
Yet I worry. I hear whispering in groups of people that go silent as I walk by, and the nasty anonymous notes appear under my door on a regular basis. I think they dont like me; and IO hate that cause I am giving my all to this camp, working 20 hours a day, commenting to everyone, spending a ton of time in the control room tweaking the pipes and feeds. Stuff no one sees. I’ve been also banging the pipes on the Assignments collection making some functional improvements (has anyone evne noticed the random generators we added? Do they know all the cleanup I am doing each week to prep the new assignments?)
Mostly I am getting worried because Martha appears so paranoid, and more and more she acts like she does not trust me. I have gone to every effort to calm the worries of the CVI staff; they do not know how things get tricky when they put me in a position of looking like I am being secretive.
And how can Martha think I am not even in camp? I wave at her all the time, yell out her name in the mess hall. I was sitting there right opposite her at the last campfire, she was looking my way, but her eyes kept unfocussing like she did not even see me. I’ve knocked on her door a few times the chat after the last rounds, but she never answers; I can only hear the low tones of that old Morrisey LP “Maladjusted”.
Why does she think I am keeping shed 4 a mystery? I know no more than her- I’ve not gone in, and now she is expcting me to show it to her tomorrow. She seems really creeped out by Marco, and I suggested he pick some flowers for her tomorrow.
I saw her this afternoon walking down to the lake, and I ran to catch her, but she ducked inside the library. I was going to follow her in, but found this curious sheet of paper that had slipped out of her backpack:
On the back it was scribbled “be #4life”. I did not know what to make of it until I saw that one of our students had done the blackout poetry assignment. With some guesswork, I laid the found paper over a print out of Martha’s recent camp post Embedding is #4life- on its surface, this was a very important message for our students, and Martha writes them so well.
But see why I am worried now? I get this message by combining what I found with her blog post:
I get:
I see ways I could share ways I want to link what I did there, a poopy way, I have to look at a prettier way to get to a bunch of other stuff
Its cryptic, but she seems stuck on the things that happened last year. What is a “prettier way” - is it being nice to me? And what is this other stuff she wants to get to?
I really do not want to alarm the home office, and honestly, it feeds into the paranoia I already feel, and the lack of trust. So I am sitting on this and looking for more clues. It might backfire to not report to CVI, but they just take my stuff in and never give me much feedback. They just give orders.
This week’s update from Camp Magic Macguffin. I’ve been supervising some work on the new orientation center, and it features a new outdoor activity area that can be used any time day or night, including a rock climbing wall that extends deep into the upper reach of Hairpin Canyon.
Today’s camp report, all is happy and rainbow-ish among the campers. The toll on keeping up the cheerfulness is high, and the headaches are still intense, even with the tylonel with codeine. Anyhow, I did my survey work on the new camp property, and filed my photos and reports to Mr E. The guy never says thanks or even lets me know if I am doing what they want.
I also took the mystery package to Marco, the facilities guy, who really does not seem to trust me. He kept asking me if I had looked at it, and he probably knows I am lying. He kept glancing over my shoulder as he walked off, like he was checking to see if I was following.
I went the other way, but his work boots and limp are so noticeable it did not take a freaking Apache Scout to find he had taken it to that locked up blue shed on the west side of Lake Macguffin. It’s closed up, and has no windows, but emits a steady hum.
And then people keep whispering and sliding my notes on the door wondering about Jim Groom. He’s right here, people see him and laugh at his jokes during arts and crafts, and he keeps giving the little kids in bunk 2 wedgies.
The whole pressure of keeping anything bad from happening at camp is tremendous. I need your help to make sure that the rainbow meter stays at 11.
