Scrambling

 Anyone remember the Avitable Scramble? Well I do. And I say we're overdue. Someone hit the timer:

1. I have a rental CPAP machine now and I'm getting 5 hrs sleep per night; that's about double my previous output over the last two or three weeks.

2. I'm hungry but I don't like going upstairs where the kitchen is generally located because stairs make my little leg hurts and I am a little suckie baby.

3. Maybe I should have tried to get some more sleep instead of trying to write words this early in the morning.

4. There is no 4.

5. HA! I love that joke. I got it from Monty Python. I use it way too often and no one can stop me.

6. Speaking of too many Bruces. Our formerly favourite Bruce; the Boss; Mister everyman-lovin' Springsteen is charging $4000 at the high end of his concert ticket pricing. Hmm. Maybe he's become a libertarian fuck-wit of the sort he would have hated back when he still resembled a human being. Or... maybe he's just senile and doesn't know what's going on.

7. There is no 7. Ha ha ha ha. It gets funnier every time.

8. So I got sad about the Lemoncloud minecraft server. My friends all seemed to disappear and my goals seemed to be looking unrealistic as they are so long-term and player turnover seems too high in this world. So I never logged in for over a month and when I came back some of my claims had been expired leaving key properties unprotected. A fair amount of vandalism occurred and the top 80% of my resources are gone. The 80% at top value. Plenty of dirt and old rusty swords were left behind. However a little bird tells me that an acquaintance may have emptied my vault and may be storing my major valuables for me. That's the kind of thing I have done for friends in the past...

9. Did someone set a timer? No?

10. Speaking of Dynamic Pricing, sometimes; rarely, it is used benevolently: In Finland speeding tickets are calculated based on your income. This is a concept which should be stunningly obvious but which never occurred to me until I was seventeen; about seven years after I became smarter and more human than the life-size petrified dog turds that we call politicians in this deliriously fucked up country that looks so great on the surface if you have not the slightest idea what is going on around you.

11. I forgive you for not knowing what is going on around you. You probably have a job or a life or kids or something so what chance have you got at doing the 48 hours or research per day it would take to unearth enough truth from the mountains of bullshit we call society in order to have sufficient awareness to - to what? To live nobly? To make all the right moves? To find legitimate happiness? Just what IS the magic formula? It changes from time to time, doesn't it? Because the planet and our flawed societal schemes continue to degrade with time, and so the "right" answers become more and more compromised.

12. Well. I hope that cheered you up a little, imaginary readers!  

P.S. I've done a little nibblet of research and can't find any reason why this Canadian baby and her hard-working mom should be booted from Canada:

Petition · SIGN TO STOP THE DEPORTATION OF FATUMAH NAJJUMA AND HER DAUGHTER FROM CANADA. · Change.org

Avitable Scramble Aroma edition

Thirteen thoughts in thirteen minutes:

1, I’m at the Aroma cafe at Euclid and College in Toronto because I’m way too special to be subjected to Q.E.W. rush hour traffic and so I make this apparently-now-regular trip from 2 to 3 PM and then hang out at the cafe-du-jour until the 6:30 dinner appointment at the Eloquent Potter’s tower.

2. I’m trying not to think about Neo these days. He’s back to mostly ignoring me. I wonder sometimes if he came back into my life specifically to torture me. I wonder if he knows how his behaviour is perceived when he continuously ignores me between offers of “Hey, let’s get together… when are you free?” followed by an immediate blackout period until the threat of getting together has passed. I keep trying to remind myself that this must be the product of some form of suffering and that I should not take it personally but it's very difficult.

3. I’m thinking of a very thoughtful and touching amateur documentary that was put together by a father and which mostly concerned his son, then teen-aged. At one point he narrates something  

like this: “I’m sure that teenage boys do not realize that their own fathers would literally murder them if not for the memory of the loving child they used to be.” I’m confident he was sane and sincere about that. I’ll get back to you with the title when it comes to me..

4. I paid twenty dollars for a fairly decent shredded steak and egg sandwich and a nice coffee in a bignormous wide cup which spills into the voluminous saucer every time this hysterically warped-legged table rocks back and forth as if it’s the Titanic’s final moments. I wedged enough napkins to supply the nation of Malta for a decade under one of the offending table feet to very little improvement.

5. Every time the saucer fills up with coffee I lift the cup and pour the saucered-coffee back into the cup. It’s a satisfactory system.    

6. Once you love a kid like your own son there is no going back, Ever. It’s just not possible. It’s a fucking life sentence. I mean - let’s face it: consciously I know that’s not really supposed to be true. Just like the spectre of rape, war or any traumatic event, it is fully possible to dismiss the past and experience no harm from it ever again. I know this with solid uncompromising clarity, The past does not exist. We subconsciously choose to hang on and we call this hanging on “scars.” But it takes oh god such a spectacular escape from the bullshit of our dedicated bullshit-only society to be so enlightened as to understand and conquer your own illusionary ego. No cell phone, no TV, no pal, parent, priest, politician or ubiquitous fucking corporation will ever let you get away with it if they can possibly help it. There is no sanity without firm and dedicated solitude. Except for - you know - hanging out with me!

7. I can’t imagine living in Toronto with a vehicle. Finding parking arrangements that are at all functional is like winning the lottery. Which is fine I guess. I used to park in my special little-known free parking place near the Islington station and take the subway in from there but I can’t do that any more because I am literally so decrepit I can’t carry my own briefcase more than a block and frankly I’m a little too attached to my laptop. It’s perhaps my own version of the dreaded cell phone at times.

8. This Aroma place must be a chain. It is exceptionally well-branded. Aroma notebooks $6.95. I don’t think you can get anything for less than $6.95. My sandwich is listed on the menu board for $6.95. but SURPRISE!! That’s actually the price for half the sandwich! If you want the whole sandwich you find out too late that it’s actually $13 and change. Hahahahahahahaha! Buyer beware! It’s utterly fucking amazing what a pathetic docile flock of dumbass sheep we are and what we let all our masters get away with. I’m sure we must be the most obedient morons on the Earth.

9. I think thirteen minutes expired a long time ago. I don’t care. It’s my blog. I make and/or ignore the rules on a whim. If corporations can do it so can I. Yay!!.

10. Speaking of some of the most evil and demonic maggots in the world… Monsanto believes they have the right to subpoena my personal information and communications along wiith thousands of other half-decent citizens for the world as part of a lawsuit against the entire Avaaz community for fucking with them and ruining many of their sickeningly corrupt cancerous schemes in which people and other innocent creatures die or are monstrously extorted for their immense profit. Personally I think that every Avaaz member should relinquish to this move but only after each and every one of us communicating conflicting plans around operations in which all Monsanto executives are to be kidnapped and have their leathery parasitic throats slit. Let them try to figure out which plan is the real one.

11. People often think I’m joking when I’m serious; and serious when I’m joking. Sometimes I appreciate the amusement in this.

12. The eloquent potter is a very interesting dude. He’s a very compelling writer and poet; a regular visitor to India and perhaps a seeker of enlightenment to some degree. His home is filled with his pottery and other art, bookshelves galore and… ready for this? A swarm of inflatable monstrosities. A giant inflatable donut. An inflatable Dalek. I don’t even know where he gets this shit. On my last visit the centrepiece on his dinner table was a slightly larger-than-life inflatable cooked turkey.

13. Tonight it’s just the two of us for the first time. I am very much looking forward to learning more about him.

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! 

Avitable Scramble Time

13 thoughts in thriteen minutes. No editing...! GO!!

1. Did I say no editing? I'm allowed to edit for spelling. So there. I haven't done an avitable scramble in what? Years? It's surely not good blogging but some of my friends are probably wanting to know what's going on PLUS -- I need an easy way to break the ice and get blogging again.

2. I was on vacation in the muskokas for two weeks hence the absence here. Mind you I got back a couple weeks ago. Same cottage. The Want-n-While. Gifty McBrainchild was my guest and his love for board games - or games of any sort - rubbed off on the rest of us. The annual retreat was a lot more social than usual with constant bouts of Catan, Hearts, Boggle, Speed and stack of other games. I didn't write a single poem or compose a single song.

3. The Big Empty Warehouse Sunday nighters have dried up; my choice recording location. Since moving into the home of the Liberal Theologian, I have relied on the warehouse as my guitar venue. I have very quiet instincts which I must resist if I am to get back into the composing habit. For the first three years of the music experience I would always feel on edge; a little out of sorts any time I went a couple days without picking up the guitar. That seems to have worn off. Not sure whether that's good or bad. Haven't thought about it really.

4. I've got Ye Olde Security Guard Company's brass with their knickers knotted and the manager of the corrections centre going to her regional director for consultation re this little old obscurity guard intending to qualify for Circle Of Support volunteer status so that I can work with some of those emerging from the criminal justice community more closely. That both roles - guard and volunteer - are entirely compatible in terms of interests in public safety and in successful reintegration efforts, is pretty obvious to me. God forbid any of these leaders actually climb down from their pedestals to talk to me personally so I can explain my position and intentions and put their precious minds at ease. I'm far from the first figure of supposed authority to work in such dual capacities. It really is mind blowing to contemplate the incredible volume of work that goes into blocking human kindness from penetrating this twisted knot of a society on the part of fear and lawyers and insurance companies. Look around people. Find a room where there is no grimmacing lawyer or insurance agent present and guess what? They're present alright.

5. I have a fish screensaver. Little animated fish. They all look the fucking same. Little Borg fish. That's right. I said fucking. There's nothing noble about swearing whatsoever. But then there's nothing wise, intelligent or sane about fearing "swear" words. They're just a stupid noise that comes out of humans' mouths along with a shitstorm of other stupidities. There are a thousand far more harmful and offensive things that people do and say without having a shred of awareness for the harm they do. So there. Fuck a duck. Quack quack.

6. I really should be doing laundry. First day back at the Princess Of Schools tomorrow and I've ought to wear.

7. What time did I begin this exercise? That would have been a fine thing to remember.

8. Eight rhymes with plate. Am I hungry? Discuss...

9. Nine rhymes with tine. Fork a duck.

10. I have a feeling I've been at this more than 13 minutes.

11. I've been giving Gifty McBrainchild a lift to the bus stop on certain mornings when I'm coming off night duty and he has early morning band practice. He and his super-excellent moms live just around the corner from Corrections Heaven. I love their company. They remind me that not quite everyone is addicted to, and enslaved by, the bullshit of instinctive mind and societal structure. I need the company of people like that; higher order people... World Citizen, Rennaisance Kid, JazzLion, Neo, Matman. These are the people who keep me going. I am nothing without them. They inspire me to do the good work. and yet - why do I not arrange to see them more often? 12. Gifty McBrainchild? What a terrible nickname. Hey, it was spur-of-the-moment. I'll think of something better. Promise.

12. My brother is now engaged to a wonderful human being of the female persuasion. They've been shacking up for quite a while. The big event is in two years. I'll be in the wedding party. I'm certainly not big on traditions but this will be pretty cool. I'll get to make a speech for one thing. I'll be expected to welcome the bride to the family. I'm sure I'll do something out of the ordinary though. Maybe I'll read passages from Dante.  

13. Yeah, I'm sure time was up a while back.

Third try's the charm

As discovered on the ever-raucous Avitable web site, the Avitable Scramble: You have thirteen minutes to blog thirteen items. Sounds easy, right? And it is. But twice I've run out of time because I suck. Here we go again:

1. I've been participating in the the National Novel Writing Month event again this November. That's one reason I haven't blogged much. The challenge is 50,000 words in 30 days. Some of the writing is done at 'write-ins' where I gather with a bunch of delightful writer pals from ages fifteen to sixty. We're the Hamilton team and last year we defeated both challengers; Calgary and Delaware, but this year we're getting our collective asses handed to us. I hope to reverse my share of the blame. I'm only at 11,000 words so far but hoping to get my shit together and go on a 3000-per-day pace now that I should have more free time.

2. That took two minutes just now. I'm behind already.

3. I'm officially unemployed and relishing the freedom. I hope to never again sell myself into slavery. I'm looking at various solutions that would allow me to write full time and to travel. And I don't mean from hotel to hotel. I'm more than ready for a materially simple existence. There are no joys that money can buy. I know this with pristine clarity. If it wasn't for the debt that won't be paid off until August I might already be going mobile. Well - there are matters of the heart that are also weighing me down to this location. That's a challenge of another sort altogether.

4. Biodad is doing very well at this time. I'm back in Streetsville and visiting him twice a week.

5. I have an awful lot of possessions to disperse. It'll be a chore. The books! Gads! The books! How pure is my will to decline possessions? I guess this'll be the test.

6. I'm pretty certain I'll be approaching the bookseller with the book barn that needs a lot of work. A six-month project there might be just the right component to build a transitional plan around. There are so many options. So many components. It's all good. All the possibilities are joyful!

7. I've been eating my vegetables and walking and going to the gym. The frog is moving in the desirable direction again. Yay! The I.S. laid down the law; read me the riot act. There is no more fucking around. This extra weight is history.

8. I have a new laptop. It has a built-in web cam. I guess they all do now. Had to give the old lap top back to Ye Olde Information Company. It was kind of hard to go around saying goodbye to so many friends there. They have no idea how much I love them.

9. Shopping for a cap for the pick-up truck. It may become my primary residence when I go travelling.

10. I realized something awesome while at the gym today. If I get a premium membership at a gym that features locations all over the country - I'll always have somewhere to shower/shave/brush etc while I'm on the road. How sweet is that?

11. I'm immensely tempted to take a little vacation to Florida for a while. I have very dear friends living there. I could make it a sort of practice run to see how it goes, living primarily out of the truck. Of course this is really just a poor excuse to get the fuck out of the cold weather for a while! I'm no saint obviously.

12, I've been touched by the noodly appendage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster! Okay, that was a total lie. Sometimes I tell lies on this blog but at least I always confess!

13. I hereby promise to post more often.

I did it. thirteen things in thirteen minutes. I'm freaking awesome.

[Editor's note: And easily impressed with himself.]

Avitable Scramble - a second try

Tried this a couple weeks ago and missed the mark. Only got twelve items. Hoping to score perfect this time around. The Avitable Scramble is this:

You start with a blank mind - so to speak, and then try to belch out 13 separate thoughts in 13 minutes. It's blogging by the seat of your pants.

Here we go:

1. Sitting in the throne room this morning I picked up a magazine – not from my half of the rack but from Steve-o’s, for a change. It fell open to a page with a drawing of a deer lying on its back. A man knelt before it spreading its legs. The dear was naked but the man was dressed, thank god. In hunting clothes. The headline said something like: FIELD DRESSING BASICS. Steps 2 and 3 concerned removal of the genitals and anus. I shall never open Steve-o’s magazines again. Ever. EVER.

2. Dammit I’m behind the pace already! Did you know there’s a species of lizards that are all female? They reproduce by cloning – which is inferior to sexual reproduction in most circumstances but occasionally beneficial.

3. Scientists say that the mutualistic symbiosis of leaf-cutter ants and tree-root fungus has gone on for about 50 million years! What the--? How do they know that? Hm. Spellchecker nixed ‘mutualistic’ but that’s what the scientist wrote. Personally I would have objected based on redundancy, not spelling.

4. They also suggested that 40% of mothering songbirds cheat on their husbands. I don’t have time to explain further. Moving on…!

5. I had a dream about a goose and a short-brown-haired baby hippopotamus napping together, slightly entwined, on a couch. What does that mean, you dream people? Does it mean I’m secretly some kind of pervert white-supremacist or something? If I am, I don’t know it yet.

6. Chances are - the first woman or man who will set foot on Mars is currently alive and preparing to enter high-school in a few weeks.

7. I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when Steve-o’s suction-cup shelf – bearing a treasure trove of health products - which any legitimate metro-sexual would covet – gave way and came crashing down making the ungodliest of booming noises behind the closed shower curtain. Not knowing that it was raining male beauty products as opposed to a many-tentacled beast springing out of the bath tub at me, I bruised my hand in my instantaneous flight through the bathroom door! God, what a ninny I can be.

8. Friends recently invited me out to see the Journey to the Center of the Earth movie. Dear lord, what a waste of time and money. I had no idea it was going to be a kids movie. Do not go see it. Unless you’re a kid. Or have some of your own and are bringing them with you. The part where the heroes fall down a hole and land safely – all the way down at the centre of the earth – they should send in ushers to beat the viewers about the head during that part so they can miss that part and then assume later that there is some legitimate reason for the heroes being in this comfy place with beaches and clouds and comfy 70-degree temperatures.

9. I can never remember my 6-digit license plate number but I can always remember my 14-digit library card number any time. 29079817018758. So there.

10. I had green eggs for breakfast the other day but not with ham. I used red onion in the omelet and wherever there was a piece of red onion, the egg in that vicinity (otherwise yellow and white), turned green. And I don’t mean yellowish green or greenish yellow. I mean Christmas tree green – which freaked me out so I didn’t touch the green parts and then got turned off half way through and tossed half the damn thing in the garbage. Does that mean the eggs were bad or the onion?

11. I’M RUNNING OUT OF TIME DAMMIT. OH DAMMIT HELL!

12. I’M A LUMBERJACK AND I’M OKAY. That’s a Monty Python song.


Time’s up. Hell’s bells. I can’t believe I only got to 12 again! Boogers. Time management has never been my thing.

The Avitable Scramble

Okay - here's the deal. You start with a blank mind - so to speak, and then try to belch out 13 separate thoughts in 13 minutes. It's blogging by the seat of your pants. You pretty much have to spit out anything that comes to mind no matter how stupid because you won't have time to wait for 13 gems!

I'm calling it the Avitable Scramble because I discovered it on the Avitable site. I have no idea who deserves proper attribution. I presume Mister Avitable will give me proper heck if he so wishes and if he even finds out about it!

My strategy is to keep an even pace. If the clock marks the next minute prior to completion of the thought, the thought dies where it stands. If I finish a thought early I get to start the next one early.

I will permit myself to go back at the end and fix spelling (but not grammar) and perhaps add any formatting, links or images if inclined. But the first-draft words shall be preserved.

Here goes:

1. I love watching clouds at night. Moonlight can create amazing effects with clouds when the positioning is right.

2. I probably shouldn't stare at the moon so much when going for walks. Especially when it’s a full moon and I’ve just had a really big meal because the way I stagger sort of slowly like that - I'm lucky I haven't been mistaken for some kind of monster and had a stake driven through my heart or something.

3. Saw the coolest spider web on my last night-walk. Hung under hydro wires with one massive thick strand stretching right down to the middle of the street! Crazy. Must not have lasted long after I saw it. Quiet street but one car is all it would take...

4. Mind is blank. The blankness of mind. Argle Bargle. Burdle nurdle. Shelob was the giant spider queen from LOTR.

5. Pan’s dog, Zee is fortunate to be alive, lucky that humans were willing to spend thousands to keep him so. He spent much of his puppyhood in doggie intensive care, on IV, getting plasma transfusions and what not.

6. Zee’s latest adventure: He knocked the screen out of an upstairs bedroom window. Pan arrived home to find a crowd on the sidewalk and the pooch looking down at him, standing on a section of roof. Pan just looked up at him and said, ‘You’re an idiot.’

7. My new pal Matman is pulling out of the media business to concentrate on his music. I'm absolutely delighted. Loss of income opportunity for me but I don't give a shit about that. Musicians have a lot better chance of saving their soul than corporation executives according to my calculations.

8. Everyone at work thinks I love cars because my cubicle is filled with Mattel Hot Wheels posters. But that's only because they're free from our client and they cover up the god-awful pea-green-grey military prison theme decor. I hate cars. Loved them as a kid but then I grew up.

9. Cadbury has had a couple recalls in the last year or so - one because they accidentally used waste-water as an ingredient (I think that was in U.K. - not here) and the other was because plastic material got into the chocolate. I could probably get fired for saying so. Which would be excellent.

10. My coffee tastes a little bit like paint remover but not as much as it sometimes does. Yikes, I'm falling behind.

11. I hate voice mail. I can't tell you how much I hate voice mail. For the love of god let us allow voice mail in no heavenly or earthly place but only in hell where it so perfectly belongs.

12. I have a decorative stone on my desk that was surely a gift from a travelling coworker but for the life of me I can’t remember who or where it came from.

13.

Crap! Ran out of time.

Okay. This was a failure but I think I shall try again some time. I challenge all of you, my weird little blog friends to give it a try.