The Assemblagist

Accord­ing to the FluxNexus, Cecil Touchon’s Fluxus Institute’s

Grad­u­ate Stud­ies Pro­gram information

is now avail­able online. It seems appro­pri­ate that I enlist in such a pro­gram hav­ing not quite com­pleted my Mas­ters study at East Car­olina Uni­ver­sity due to lack of inter­est on my part. Got rather tired of writ­ing my the­sis which involved research­ing the post-​WWII GI Bill’s affect on the

Con­tain­ment Sys­tem Alpha G Beta Maxed

expan­sion of higher learn­ing insti­tu­tions in east­ern NC and gag me but that was one bor­ing topic. I did com­plete my honor’s the­sis (under­grad­u­ate) on fas­ci­nat­ing Mary Some­o­ne­orother who served in Red Cross dur­ing WWII. She of Tar­boro, NC served donuts and her hot self to GIs in the Phillip­ines. Amaz­ing story, I have pho­tos here somewhere.

I wrote my hon­ors the­sis so long ago, it was pre-​PC. Rather than type the damn thing on my IBM Selec­tric, I used an office com­puter (Wey­er­haeuser) and the pro­gram, the soft­ware? Word? Word­Per­fect? What what word proces­sor did you use, pray tell? I will tell you, stop pray­ing… I typed the damn thing, all 50+ pages with notes, line, bio, pho­tos and more, in LOTUS 1−2−3. No shit. That was all I had. So there is no copy of it. I handed it in to the his­tory hon­ors com­mit­tee at ECU and never saw it again. Prob­a­bly just as well, I doubt it was note­wor­thy. And what am I doing with that expired Phi Alpha Theta mem­ber­ship any­way? Granted, I still wear the sweat­shirt… gosh, I belonged to the Amer­i­can His­tor­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion at one time, sub­scribed to the Jour­nal of the His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety and … in gen­eral lived my days as a his­tory geek.

Then life got in the way of my pur­suit of hap­pi­ness. Then my lit­tle girl daugh­ters turned into High school daugh­ters and had real­time adven­tures. Then I dis­cov­ered ephemera. Then I quit grad­u­ate school and rest is his­tory. That’s a joke, I quit going for a PhD in his­tory, get it? The rest is history?

Lame.

I’m truly lame. Talk about crip­pled. I got tired of need­ing to use a wheel­chair to walk more than 100 ft, so I finally gave in and went to NC Spine Cen­ter a cou­ple decades ago. Part of today’s gimp-​ness is 20+ year old tita­nium and screws hold­ing up my spine. Try research­ing “lum­bar fusion after 20 years”. Not much to report, most peo­ple don’t have fusion of this type when they are 33. I fig­ure I’m a med­ical mir­a­cle because I still walk and can even touch my toes.

My final semes­ters at ECU were spent with me in a body cast. Lum­bar fusion. I would go to the pow­ers that were and beg for a hand­i­capped park­ing sticker. I couldn’t carry over 10 lbs, so my text­books needed to be acces­si­ble. It took a new let­ter EVERY WEEK from my sur­geon in Chapel Hill to get an approval for a sticker. I wore the cast for a year. Sto­ries of the gimped and infa­mous. Or something.

And just what is this whole blog post sup­posed to be about? I got lost in my own men­tal haze. Glad it wasn’t purple.

Oh yes, Grad­u­ate Stud­ies. Resum­ing them. Com­plet­ing my degree in an unac­cred­i­tated school with mul­ti­ple artis­tic infu­sions. I’m won­der­ing if the Fluxus Insti­tute would like a satel­lite branch — The Dead Mule School of South­ern Fluxus Literature?

Call me.

c