Return of the Avitable Scramble

Forgive me father for I have sinned. My last avitable scramble was back in September 2012.

1. I’m at a Portuguese restaurant for the first time ever. On College Street in The Big Smoke. It’s lovely. The waiter dressed all in black with shiny slick black hair is also lovely. He informs me that he has excellent skin because of the healthy Portuguese diet.

2. I ordered a meat sampler dish and found something on it rather distinctive and almost beef-like but with a decidedly avian bone structure. Weird.

3. I am here because the Ponderer suggested I travel early in order to miss the tres horrible rush hour mess that will decimate the Q.E.W. highway at the strike of three. Indeed my trip was a breeze and now I’m in town three hours early.

4. I’m invited to Doc Lock’s brother’s place - wait! Doc Lock’s brother has his own alias. He has appeared in this blog before. The Potter? The something-Potter? The Eloquent Potter? Damned if I remember. I will have to look it up.

5. It’s a game night tonight. We’re to play Takaido. I have done my homework by watching a Takaido-featured episode of Table Top - hosted by Wil Wheaton who once played…. Gordie?? Maybe?? in the Stand By Me film which is based solidly on the Stephen King novella The Body.

6. I have to finish the last couple chapters of The Dark Tower by Stephen King which is the final book of the wildly distinct and compelling series of the same name. I keep putting it off, not wanting the series to end. It will probably mark the end of my Stephen King experience. But I must move on if I am to get on to Soul of the Orcs which is a sequel to Lord of the Rings written by none other than my host tonight: the something-Potter. Or Sculptor. Not Potter? The something-Sculptor? And there I have gone full circle. Did you see that! Did you see what I did there?

7. My butt hurts from sitting here for nearly three hours.

8. I am assembling my first ever video compilation in order to support an upcoming blog piece. A very similar compilation almost certainly exists somewhere on youtube already but - I don’t know. I want to do my own. Maybe because it indulgently qualifies as a creative project which I can work on even when tired. Which is far too often.

9. I have no idea if Doc Lock will even be here tonight.

10. According to the excellent-skinned waiter I have eaten quail for the first time! Mystery solved. Damn. My only familiarity with quails up to now have been with cute live ones. [insert sad emoji]

11. My eyes have been continually drawn to the TV here which is blessedly silent but full of images and text of the CNN variety. I can’t describe how dog-vomiting stomach-turning this silent lunacy appears to me. HOW in the flying fuck do CNN watchers not go running screaming into traffic after ten minutes of this vacuous quasi-political horse shit? By god the human creature is a wonder.

12. That didn’t sound judgemental did it? Just a little bit?

13. How many items are in an Avitable Scramble? Thirteen? Wouldn’t twelve make more sense? After all, twelve is so preferable a number to thirteen that the ancient Babylonians assassinated an entire constellation just to bring the zodiac into groovy twelvacious compliance. Which is not precisely the reason that me and most of my “Capricorn” companions are actually mislabelled denizens of Sagittarius. That has more to do with the twenty-five thousand year wobble period in the Earth’s rotation. Regardless, there is just no way for the doubly-screwed astrology community to explain their way out of their mess.

I’m not sure that was a proper scramble. It seemed to be more of a narrative, didn’t it? I will try to be more random next time.

Fact check: Wheaton's character was indeed named Gordie Lachance. The potter has not received a consistent nickname but shall forthwith be favoured with the moniker: the Eloquent Potter!