A New Dope Part 1 of 8

PROLOGUE

Episode IV: A NEW DOPE

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away…

It is a period of civil war. Rebels, championing pot legalization, striking with their space ships from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the stodgy conservative evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the GREAT BOWLING BALL IN THE SKY, an armoured space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet, and storage for more than six billion pairs of rental shoes.

Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Louise races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her homies and restore freedom to the pot smokers of the galaxy…

CHAPTER ONE

Once upon a time there was an orphan named Fluke Flyswatter who lived with his Auntie Jane and Uncle Billium on a water farm in the middle of a sandy desert on a sandy planet called Tooneyland.

One day Fluke and his uncle were sweating under the hot twin suns of their star system, planting ice cubes which would grow into water plants, completely unaware of specific goings on in the astral plains beyond the bright Tooneyland atmosphere.

“Uncle Billium,” said Fluke, “I was thinking that after this season’s crop is planted I will move on and get a gig saving the pot rebellion from the evil clutches of Lord Gaydar and his imperial cohorts; you know what I mean?”

“Give me a damn break, Fluke. Who do you think you are?”

“Um…. the son of a Jade Eye warrior? A famous one?”

“Get your head out of the stars, sand baby. Of course not.”

“But-”

“No butts.”

“But you told me yourself!”

“No I didn’t.”

“Um. Yeah you did!”

“Okay maybe I did.”

“Yeah so I want to go to Jade Eye School.”

“I need you here. Nice try.”

“I’ll find you some nice robots to take my place. You won’t miss me.”

“Well, we could use some good robots. But regardless you’re not going anywhere. EVER! Now pass me some ice cubes.”

MEANWHILE… up in the astral fields of the Tooneyland dual star system a little diplomatic entourage was flying by in their Mach One Seven Blade Aeroship called the Peekin’ Pecan. On board a princess by the name of Princess Louise reclined on her space divan nibbling from a bag of Digibles brand candied spleens, the very best candied spleens in the galaxy.

WHEN SUDDENLY… she ate another candied spleen.

THEN SUDDENLY… there came a knock on her space door.

“Enter,” she said commandingly.

A man in a funny hat entered as commanded and said to her, “Princess, I have bad news. The imperial patrol ship Rebel Destroyer has issued a final warning that we shall be boarded at once, whether willingly or against our will and they will probably shoot a few people in the process and-”

“No thanks.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t want any bad news. Thanks anyway.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want a candied spleen?”

“Uh - no thanks,” said the man in the funny hat. “I like my spleen the way it is.”

“Well take a hike then,” said the princess.

“Yes, Your Sweetness,” said the man, and he departed.

“Bozo,” muttered Louise. She popped another candy into her mouth as the explosion sounded down the hall and her space divan shuddered.

MEANWHILE DOWN THE HALL…

A hatch exploded inward and The Men in White poured in. The first imperial stormpooper through the hatch got blasted by a dozen rebel fighters and collapsed to the floor. “I hate being the first stormpooper through the wall. I always get blasted to death,” he muttered and promptly died. The next stormpoopers stomped all over his white hardshell poop suit shooting back at the rebels, some of whom died at once, their funny hats falling off and rolling around the hallway like spinning tops.

A few more stormpoopers were injured and more rebels died before surrendering. The men were stripped of their guns and handcuffed by the imperial invaders as a new presence appeared in the blown hatch. The man was tall and dark but not very handsome. He wore a black chihuahua mask, a black Nazi helmet, black gloves, black boots, a black cape and a black body suit with flashing chest-mounted control panel and a flashy pink belt with white fanny pack. Lord Gaydar breathed heavily through the dog mask as he approached a terrified handcuffed rebel. “Where… are… the stolen plans?” he asked huffingly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” gurgled the rebel as the dark man grabbed him by the neck.

“I will ask you one more time -” but the rebel’s body went limp as his life drained out of him. “Pussy,” said Lord Gaydar, flinging the corpse aside. He slowly turned and pondered the cosmos. “Take me to the netherquarters,” he huffed menacingly.

MEANWHILE BACK IN THE SHIP’S NETHERQUARTERS…

Princess Louise pulled the little banking robot RBC by it’s hose down the corridor to the dispatchery hatch #2 and bent down before it. She pushed the record button and spoke: “Opie Wan Can, you are my only hope. I have stuffed this little vacuum cleaner-slash-banking robot full of crack and the imperial Bowling Ball plans. I have fallen into the clutches of imperial authorities. You need to get this data to Admiral Fish Sticks so he can plan an attack. Please Mr. Can Can. You are our only hope. Did I say that already?”

“Yes you did, princess,” came the deep menacing voice of the Dark Gaydar. She turned to see him standing at the end of the short hallway, feet askance, black gloved hands on his hips where his pink belt gleamed. Stormpoopers stood at his sides leveling blasters at the princess. “Now hand over the robots.”

“I’m sorry,” said Louise. They have urgent financial business to attend.” She punched the red Easy button on the wall and the dispatchery hatch flew open generating an immediate whirlwind. The machine RBC was instantly sucked out the hatch along with a gleaming gold robot named CIBC who muttered, “Oh my stars! I was expecting tea and biscuits, not getting dispatched into the void of space! Oh dear me!”

The hatched slammed shut again.

“Dammit,” wheezed Gaydar.


(To be continued tomorrow... if you can stand it...)

Hi. How are you?

Hi. How are you?

This has long been a strange question to hear. Not that I criticize. I use it myself all the time.

But how to possibly generalize? At every moment there is always so much good and so much bad.

How are you, according to whatever peculiar perspective you are currently inclined toward? ...is perhaps the long form of this question.

Lately, as I frequently hear this question, I have often found myself responding with some loose variation of the following: Well I’m alive, I’m human and living on a paradise called Earth. I’ve won three of the best lotteries in the known universe. Other then that there’s a lot of room for improvement. I heard myself tell one dear associate recently: But I haven’t won the lottery where I remain permanently enlightened at every waking moment.

Dog Whisperer gently consoled me, indicating that perhaps no one is, or few at least. That is well said but of no comfort.

The knowledge that I am logistically at rock bottom in my life - or at least my post-twenties life - is surprisingly of no alarm to me. It remains a curiosity. And curious it is that this disinterest may be a good sign; a form of selective mindfulness, or that conversely it may be some symptom of disaster perhaps! A function akin to depression? I haven’t been feeling depressed. Do depressed people know that they are such? I would think I would know.

There are good signs of late, in the last week; chiefly small improvements in personal relationships which overall have declined in 2018.

One good yard stick as to the state of my mind is the reaction to selfish drivers on the road: to observe that I am disinterested, or that I feel pity for them; for the freedom they are forbidding themselves, or that I am annoyed, or downright yelling in their direction. The clues have not been promising.

In my memory it seems like it was not that difficult to get to that gateway where I lingered a long time. Looking in; looking back. In and back… and back I eventually went.

The path to return to that gateway does not present itself eagerly. Why?

I won’t find it out of desire. It would not be the right path.

And I won’t find it out of egoistic pursuit. Again it would not be the right path.

I found it before out of new curiosities. Because for a time I had literally lost all interest in anything at all except truth.

Perhaps some other way will emerge, or perhaps the right brand of curiosity will re-emerge.

Perhaps rock-bottom’s rebound will provide that curiosity. We’ll see. Something is going to change. That I feel sure of. Still though, I am not inclined toward the driver’s seat.

I can smell the leaves

I left the house this cool grey wet afternoon and was promptly aroused by the seeming freshness of the air. I breathed deep, buoyed by it, and by the lingering afterglow of another (almost bi-weekly) fine dinner at the home of the Eloquent Potter. We ate well of course, and drank the passable wines I scrounged, and explored his very exciting 12-book series which tackles deep existential questions, and more importantly we bared ourselves; our most pertinent personal issues and were then of great comfort to one another, and through no perfunctory sympathy but through genuine sensitivity and honest logical insight. He was thrilled with the fresh flowers and I’m happy that he was, and happy for the inspiration he reliably imparts on me.

I breathed deep and wondered at this freshness as I trod over mats of wet tattered leaves; wondered at all this decay and the seeming incongruence between decay and freshness. But all impressions are relative I suppose, and I suppose that if decay were indeed a notable component of this invigorating aroma, that perhaps it is because it masks things of a worse nature... Whimsical thoughts these, but as I head out to the the write-in; a pre-NaNoWriMo prep-in to be more precise, I am okay with that.

Hello Blog. I’m sorry to have been such a stranger. I have better intentions but promises would be foolish. 

Dispatches from the Social Assistance Office

Mom:  Stop fighting. We love each other in this family.

First Kid:  No we don’t.

Mom:  Yes we do. We love each other.

Second Kid:  No we don’t.

------------------------------

Mature Woman:  I’m supposed to meet my grandson here but I don’t see him.

Me:  Can you describe him for me?

Mature Woman:  Yes. He’s young and thinks he knows everything.

acrogen [ak-ruh-juhn]

the lobed osmunda, a fern native to the Andes region, is prescribed by the indigenous peoples of Tawinguala as an effective laxative. Explains the chief of one tribe: "With fronds like this, who needs enemas?"

Wow. What a horrible way to unearth FWG versus the Dictionary after a 29-month lull! Oh well. 94  words down, 170,955 to go!

Mindcrack Diaries

I barely made it home to Castle Minerva with my tail between my legs, having depended on the compass and failing to mark a sufficient trail. At least on this return my two unforseen castle companions - I shall call them Thing One and Thing Two though they are undecipherable by sight alone - had not left the front door wide open on this occasion. I have resigned that the day will come they leave my doors open and some monster will wander in and kill them or turn them back into zombies or blow up a room or two. Oh well. All things can be replaced.

I regrouped, restocked and headed back out, with no potions or valuables, intending to track a proper trail between Castle Minerva and Fortress Mountain, but was too impatient. I travelled at night and wandered too far from established landmarks and got terribly lost again. Eventually I used the compass and marched all the way back home.

Zack and Noah

It was nearly four in the morning when young electrician’s apprentice ‘Zack’ barked at young security guard escort ‘Noah’, “Are you done yet!” Meaning in essence: Are you done conversing with the old fat guy so you can take me where I need to go! I need you now!

“Hey I won't be spoken to like that!” roared the skinny runt, practically swimming in his billowy blue uniform. He then went off with Zack at once on their errand but reaming him out all the while about respect and how he was going to immediately launch an official complaint.

A short time later Noah was still simmering and Zack was petulant and ‘Vanessa’ the Very Young Head Contractor Coordinator Lady was practically drooling at the opportunity to put her nascent management training to some facsimile of use: “Noah, do you want me to write him up! Do you!”

“Noah, slow down,” I said calmly. Someone needed to stay calm.

“You need to stay out of it,” gurgled the little boss girl at me.

I gave her worldly advice a more-than-warranted half-second of consideration and said, “Noah, don’t react out of emotion. Take some time to cool down before you make this decision.” We’d only just met that night but he was my co-worker officially; not theirs, and we’d just had a long discussion about his managing his new peers in his first year of University and the problems with their political clash. He seemed to have developed swift trust in me and in this moment he deflated.

As the end-of-shift clean-up neared completion Vanessa suddenly said, “Oh no! Are Zack and Noah alone together in the mechanical room? They are, aren’t they!”

Sometimes I have a good idea when my advice will not be heeded and so I refrain. I have  become good at that. I did not say aloud that this was exactly what we wanted.

They are young and full of ego and backing down from their stances is next to impossible in a crowd of witnesses. I think you know where I’m going with this: Once alone together they would of course become embarrassed and thus conciliatory.

No paperwork was done, and the boys were quickly friends again.

Demented

All but $150 of Grampa Munster’s monthly allowances (at least 90%) go directly to the group home to pay for his rent, food and the illusion of care.

I convinced him to print off all his chequing and savings bank statements for the year and I plugged them all into a spreadsheet. Regular Trillium Fund subsidies and tax refunds just cover his phone and cable bills. His clothes are charitably acquired. Of the $150 per month remaining, he has been spending… $270 - almost entirely, per my careful investigations, on Tims coffee, junk food and coke. As in Coca-Cola I mean. Oh, plus an extra $16 per month average on totally unnecessary ATM charges. His savings, once $3000, are now depleted.

We had a long talk. I am keeping a much closer eye on him now with regular phone calls between visits. I also convinced him to show me his Medic Alert bracelet which verifies my suspicions. He has dementia. I have some research to do now, and new strategies to develop, I imagine.

A new chapter for Long Time Companion, and for me.

His rare condition has now been confidently diagnosed following a biopsy which was expected to verify the presence of cancer and which did not! His actual disease which they have finally isolated is one that affects one in 35 million people. They don’t get a lot rarer than that.

Furthermore there is confidence in the treatment plan and he is expected to fully get his life back after well over a year of deeply-resented solitude, incontinence, extraordinary pain and many thousands of wasted dollars.

And it came perhaps in the nick of time. Expectations of checking out, deliberately or otherwise, seem to have aroused an interest in “proper” utilization of his sizeable pension; as in - having someone to share it with after he’s gone; as in a companion - at least on paper. Neither of us have taken a traditional interest in romantic relations since splitting up some eighteen years ago.

Personally I have no interest in out-living him but having gone far too long without seeing an optometrist or dentist and struggling at times to pay for my meds, I do covet his rather amazing medical benefits which I once shared - and will soon again.

For financial reasons; strictly financial, and with some due respect to an unbreakable bond, whether we wanted it or not… we shall soon be married.

And on that note, after eighteen years, we can each finally take the matter of updating our wills off of our to-do lists. Apparently procrastination sometimes pays off.

The Lonely Lumberjack is perhaps a little less lonely

I saw him wheeling past me; leaning into his walker, barely an arm’s length away, on the other side of the cafe window where I sipped a fine coffee and nibbled an outrageously large and delicious donut following the collapse of far more humble plans. I downed the last morsels and set out to catch up to him but the old man is deceivingly quick.

It had probably been two years since I last spent any moment alone with him one on one. I’d left his apartment moments after a pair of snarling bigoted tirades aimed at two different minorities. Well, maybe not tirades. Let’s say… tiradettes.

For two years we’ve politely nodded, waved or smiled at group functions, and sometimes even briefly chatted. but given I was probably his second-closest male friend, and officially the executor of his will, there was always the elephant in the gymnasium. He does not make friends easily and maintains perhaps a trio at best. Often, in my more wakeful moments I have told myself I should at least explain the reasons for my aloofness and try to give him one more chance. I don’t need him to change his mind necessarily, but only to keep out of my face the product of his albeit-honest misperceptions which he gleaned in prison; viewing the worst possible behaviour from certain associations while succumbing to tribal illusions. I understand his view, and why it is natural and why certain logic escapes him. In ways he is very wise and in other ways very unwise, but I want no part of his prejudice. It is offensive to people I love more than he, and I don’t wish to feel unfaithful.

So I lingered in the neighbourhood, sitting on a bench, writing on an adorable onion-skin air-mail writing pad surely manufactured a half-century ago which I found in a dusty variety store across the street. Sure enough he eventually came rolling back and I called out to him.

He brought me up to his apartment. I was in financial decrepitude at the time and eagerly accepted a hearty pasta meal with plenty of meat in the sauce. I declined seconds but while washing up in the bathroom he slipped another bowl out undetected and I much enjoyed it again.

“Watch out for that [Theatre Guy],” he suddenly warned me. He’d no doubt seen us sitting together. “Never trust that ___ hole.”

So here it comes again. ‘Well, I’m on his circle.” I said. Well we’re already good friends, is what I wanted to say. Better friends than you and I. And furthermore, Theatre Guy is straight. And you’re a dumbass. Sometimes.

I don’t know why Mr. Lumberjack respects me so much. No man alive meets the rigid standards by which he judges men. Me especially I would think. Women meanwhile are sacred.

We met up again recently without incident and soon I will take him shopping for clothes again.

I don’t know if he understands why I cooled off with him. I’d previously warned him a couple times about bigoted conversation but he assumes I’m simply naive about it, and too generous in my appraisals. I wasn’t bothered by his words at the surprise pasta dinner; only disappointed. Perhaps we’ll be able to maintain an understanding going forward and remain friends.

Escape

I remember when there was no issue at cottages around the presence of cell phones. If there was an issue surrounding the wisdom of group solitude and its protection, the issue was whether to allow newspapers or not. How far we haven’t come.

I remember cottage vacations where sitting around telling stories all day and sitting around telling stories all evening by camp fire was the gold standard and the norm. Yes, cottage vacations were an escape but we couldn’t help but escape to something special. Because not much followed us .

For years now I have not glimpsed this magic. Cottage vacations, for most people it seems,, are almost entirely escape; from employment mostly. And so the wonders of technology allow them to escape from only what they choose and as long as they keep their noses close to their cell phones nothing precious will be missed out on.

For me there is nothing to escape. There is only opportunity: for sustained conversation. The kind that burrows deep and forges stronger connections between us and stirs up insights and revelation; the kind in which anecdotes lead to questions and answers which boil down to one thing: how do we live our lives better?

Still, I enjoy spending time with loved ones even if we don’t do it my way.

I shot a bit of video; too little to do much with it really, but Pen Pal really wanted to see it so I threw this together. I need much practicing at video and audio editing so that I can put some proper music videos out at some point. I need to give my songs some kind of life before I entirely forget how to play them. If I haven’t already. Here’s the latest effort:

Mindcrack Diaries

Recreating the necessary equipmemt here at Fortress Mountain is too daunting. I have not enough obsidian to build a portal to the Nether; the Hell dimension to fetch the necessary blazing substance. Fetching the brewing stand and supplies for transport here would put the potentially-unique brewing stand at too much risk. I'm faced with the third option: return to Castle Minerva and prepare the potions and golden fruit there, and deliver them all here. That too runs huge risks. It is a valuable cargo to cart through the wilderness, but not as hard to replace as the brewing stand, and so this is what I must do. 

And so I depart soon, intending to follow the compass and mark the route with landmarks to such degree I can, and building hideaways and bunkies to revisit for nightly refuge during my return. And I must play it safe and  stay out of the dark and travel only by day. As for my newest treasures: Are these artifacts safer left here in the village or off shore in the Sea Hut?

Or on my person for the trek home? I've fenced the village off and lit it well. Logically they should be left here I think, though I have already packed them to go.