7:00 AM: You've got to find yourself some pants

Originally this was a somewhat frustrated post. I wrote it after getting off from a rather frustrating day of work and I needed to vent, but as is often the case I didn't really know what I needed to vent about. But I haven't written in here in so long, and I was ruminating on the reasons for that. Chasing my tail of angst at the world and general self-loathing.

I lost it -- the post -- because I was stupid and logged out of Blogger when I was in the midst of writing it. It rarely happens, and now it feels like this little bit of frustration I had released as snapped back into me. You wouldn't think that it'd matter. You'd think, you know, as long as you put your problems in a balloon and let it float away, it's all the same. I write the post, it doesn't get posted, same effect as if it did, right? Yet somehow, it's not enough for the post to vanish. I need it out there, I need it on the record. It's why I never felt I was accomplishing with say, a personal journal (read: diary) the level of therapy this blog provides. So any time I get self-conscious about the fact that whatever amount of my life is just out there for the whole damn internet to stumble upon (I doubt they will. Mostly random Asians, if the hit tracker is any indication) I just remember it's better than keeping that shit bottled up: whatever needs to stay private, stays private.

Pertinent parts of the lost post:

My brother's back in town, and it's stressful to constantly have someone around.

Last weekend we went to Palmerston for a family gathering (read: my birthday) and saw my cousin for the first time in a couple years. We picked up where we usually do with the same topics and jokes as always and before long we were talking about possible new stories, which might never come to fruition.

At this gathering, he brought his family, including his stepdaughters. The older one's getting to that awkward preteen/tween/early teen age where she's too young for most of the room and too old for the kids. She looked bored and annoyed the entire time. Which admittedly, is unfortunate, but at least she's mellowed out. Hopefully, like many teens, she manages to come out the other side and be sociable.

Obsessively wiping my nose.

A few nights ago, a dream about a girl. Not a particular girl, just a feeling of one. I felt close to her, but there was something keeping us apart. It was weirdly affecting, because in the dream, whatever it was, it worked.

Which is how I guess I know it's a dream.

(D'AWWWWWWWWWWWW) okay thanks for listening. Thanks for being here. Even if you're not really here. Wherever you are. Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

6:00 AM: Who put that there?

I've been exhausting myself for sport lately.

I wake up in the morning -- the alarm goes off at about 9:20 and I can't even be bothered to wrench my eyes open for another hour or so. Not suited for the mornings but not making the most of my evenings. I bought a notebook this afternoon before work and sat in the food court jotting down my thoughts on all the things I believe I should be working on during the evenings (like this evening for instance.) Why I don't is a matter of exhaustion and procrastination, back to procrastinating my procrastinations. There's nothing saying I HAVE to write my stories, but for a little while I had a good rhythm going, and now I've lost it long ago.

I wrote to myself in this notebook that Twitter is a likely culprit. I've gotten so good at compressing thoughts to 140-character statements that I haven't the energy for much else, which is sick. I can't even be bothered to read the comics I keep buying. I haven't finished listening to the Broken Social Scene album either. It was an impulse buy that I appreciate but am not devoted to in the way I am to the more conventional musics I've discovered lately, because more than spacey soundscapes, I love songcraft - verses, lyrics, vocals, refrains, chords, riffs, etc etc. Stuff that BSS really seems to be de-emphasizing. And that works for a lot of people, and it's not like I don't like it.

Sounds recur and disappear, to be enveloped by others.

At the family gathering this past weekend, Aunt Lori asked me what my favourite musical era was. Eric answered for me, "The 60's." I specified, "65-69, then the late 70's, and the early 90's." The Early 90's proclamation is a bit murky, but it allows for my current Nirvana fixation and my lifelong Aerosmith devotion, so in a way it works out. The late 70's had both the arena rock of Aerosmith, the post-glory years of Zeppelin and the Who, and of course, The Clash and the whole CBGB's early Punk scene. Patti Smith and Richard Hell. Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, Bowie's Berlin phase. In a way I like it even more than the late 60's, but what to compare to the second half of the Beatles' career, (Rubber Soul through Abbey Road!) the heyday of the Stones, Who, Zeppelin, Cream, Hendrix, Doors, etc etc.

I'm lame to ramble so. I knew I wasn't going to do any real writing tonight (I wrote down a lot of theoretical writing in the notebook) I just needed the mechanics of putting thoughts into words. Words as gears and cogs. The mind as an infernal machine. Scotto as a lousy simile.

Busy day. Beautiful day. Spent it walking all around Oakville. Comics. Lakeshore. Finally went and got my bike tires filled. Asshole at the gas station pulled the same bullshit he did last year. I'm too non-confrontational to go call him an asshole, because he's an old Indian guy and as pissed off as I was at this repeat behaviour, who has the energy to stay mad about such petty bullshit? (Answer: I do, but not to do anything about it.)

If your curious, the "same bullshit" was that the place has an air pump, and they offer "courtesy air" for bike tires, basketballs, and flotation devices (?) so I go into the On The Go and say "Hey, you have courtesy air, right?" and he says "Yes, you go out and wait, I come turn it on for you." So I go and wait, and twiddle my thumbs while he tends to business, except business never slows down because it's a Goddamn gas station, and I have to wonder, "Isn't there someone else who can help me? Is he the only one capable of turning this thing on AND taking peoples' money for gas? Why bother?" Why fucking bother. I didn't have a problem paying the fifty cent charge for air (yeesh) I just hated being told one thing, being made to wait, and THEN having to pay just to get away from there and stop feeling like a total assclown.

You know?

You know.

So now I have a bike again which means I won't have to leave for work so early anymore. It's only a 20-minute walk, but I like to go early and grab a coffee or just chill before my shift, because what the hell else do I have going on.

So it was work. Pretty chill night, just holding down the fort with Chantelle and Gus. I think we did pretty decent conversion, since not a lot of people came in, but most of them seemed to be buying stuff. At one point there was some drama with the status of Gus' keys, for which we'll be mocking him for a while.

Well hey, I haven't typed anything in a while, guess this entry has ended.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

5:00 AM: This is not even true

They say familiarity breeds contempt, and generally speaking there's nobody with whom I'm more familiar than myself.

It's hard trying to keep things in perspective and to occasionally reconstruct the universe as a place devoted to my own loneliness. I'm pretty self-obsessed, but I know the errors of self-obsession, which is where I get my rather overdeveloped (some would say) sense of self-deprecation/self-effacement. Don't want anyone to know I care about anything, feel bad about anything, think too hard about how lonely I am. Not that these things are necessarily secrets.

But as sad, as pathetically lonely as that paragraph sounds, you know I'm in a good mood because I'm actually talking about it. When I was feeling particularly bad early last week, I tried to put some shit down in words, but felt embarrassed by how raw of obvious the feelings felt. It's one thing to feel something, it's an entirely other one to put it down in words and have it not seem extremely silly.

We had a family gathering last night and my aunt recalled a story from her childhood where a neighbour lady had an affair with a young girl who must've been 16 or 17. It was shocking but nobody did anything, because in those days you didn't do things. You didn't call the cops or start a neighbourhood campaign or do an investigation or whatever, you did nothing. You found out about it and then you tried not to look the neighbour lady in the eye ever again, you said nothing. And she mused that it's funny how far things have come, yet become much more complicated and painful to deal with, now that we talk about things. Your mileage may vary on which is better.

Several shards of stories exist in my head and I don't know how to begin. Presumably with fingers tapping keys. Asdf.

I'm not in much of a state to be writing tonight anyhow, since my brain is pudding. It was to be a day off, but at 8:30 I got the sound of a buzzing cell phone, which indicated somebody wanted me to take a shift. That was Chantelle, who was feeling ill. So I did it, because if not me, then who? Nobody left but me. Luckily the hiring process has begun.

Basically, I don't know what I'm saying or why I even said it.

Keep on rockin
-Scotto

4:00 AM: This is Science

It's a double post tonight, so if you're just reading this, scroll down to 3:00 AM to get the first part of my ramblings tonight.

A couple of weeks ago I went through a great spurt of productivity, but for reasons probably related to exhaustion I haven't been nearly as active lately. I go to the comic store week after week and yet I haven't actually read a comic in over a month, feels like. Been over a week since I wrote anything significant, too.

I'm my own problem. I'll deal with me.

I had a good rhythm at one point, and I just got disrupted, distracted, whatever. Work, life, whatever gets in the way does. Life's not perfect.

If there's a lot to me, I think I hide it well. I'm a man of simple motivations and complex intentions.

I hung out with Vasa on Friday. It was one of the most deliberate efforts I've ever made to hang out with anybody, as we went all the way out to Toronto, since she was working that evening. We met up around 12:30 for coffee, talked a while, then started to shamble our way around the city, talking about geekdom, school and life. We never talk about anything serious, and she guides the conversation pretty well, which is nice and probably a clue to how we overcame the initial oddness of our friendship. She paid me the best compliment I think I've had as a person, which is that I was "hard to read."

The other best compliment I think I've had was regarding the emotional truth of Half-Past, as spoken by Robyn's dad.

Anyway. Friday was really chill. We wandered around the city a while, went to the Eaton Center, talked about Lost and Scott Pilgrim and music. She recounted a story about how she had to take her sister shopping at that mall and, having lost her patience for the typical female shopping instinct, just sat in the food court reading a book, like my dad would. I'm always interested in stories of people (mostly women) operating against stereotypes of their gender.

Eric was over for the weekend. Saturday was a busy day and I didn't even work. I didn't get much what you would call "peace and quiet" due to his presence, but whatever. Saturday morning, dad and Deb took us to an IMAX screening of Iron Man 2, which was good (very good sequel, although it largely mimics the plot of the original) and then Saturday evening we went out for Sushi with Uncle Alan and Aunt Pat. B. was not present for any of this, having stolen my gimmick of being unable to eat in public (I, meanwhile, seem to be getting better, having dealt with my own problems in trial and error over years.) The other 5 got Bento boxes, although Aunt Pat and Uncle Alan just didn't seem to dig the whole sushi gimmick, while I just got a spread of sushi and California rolls. I figured out chopsticks, kind of.

Dad and Deb then took us out to Hamilton, where we all attended a stag and doe. Jon, our old friend from the trailer, is getting married, and this was what Amanda would affectionately (or not) call a "cash grab." I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go, but I decided this was better than the alternative, which was nothing. Since Dad and Deb are good friends with Jon's parents, and I was always close with his younger sister Alison. So there was someone there for everybody.

So we got there, and in the first twenty or thirty minutes I had spent up all the allotted "what's going on?" conversation and had dug deep into the well of "back in the day" conversation. Talk about talking about old times (see the 3:00 post below.) For a brief stretch in the middle, Eric and I just stood around with absolutely nothing to occupy us, feeling as awkward as anyone ever did (and for us that's saying something.) There were a couple of games, little 2-dollar challenges and amusements.

So.

One of them was rolling a ping pong ball down a measuring tape into a cup several times, trying to get the best time. I did this a couple times, then when it became clear that my talent did not lie in ping pong ball rolling, I gave up, and just started to joke around with the girl running the game.

This was more or less a miraculous occurrence and let me explain why. I can't even remember what I said to begin with or how I found the wherewithal to say it, but somehow this developed into a really captivating conversation. I had found a girl at a freaking "CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR IMPENDING MARRIAGE HERE IS SOME MONEY" party I could joke around about the divorce rate and mock the institution of marriage with, make self-deprecating jokes about myself, and talk about, of all things, LOST. Every conceivable way this conversation could've gone well, it did, but alas, my lack of ambition caught up with me and I was not prepared when she had to leave early.

I mean, really, all I wanted was somebody to talk to, somebody to hang out with, to keep me from sulking in the corner for a significant portion of the evening. I got that. I was too mystified by what had actually happened to bother sulking over what could have been. That came later.

But hey, you know, that's life. My ticket won a door prize, and all I had to choose from was a lousy baseball cap, a too-big sweater, or other prizes I just didn't understand. I picked the hat. It didn't occur to me until too laten that a smooth play would've been to write info inside the hat and give it to her a "memento."

Truth in television, though, it really was just enough for me to really connect with someone through conversation. What it was, when it happened, and how it went, that's all I needed. The simple things.

Today was work, then a relatively chill family gathering (Cam wasn't around for much of it so I got a break from being a punching bag.) Which is good because after this week I didn't really feel like much of anything. I taught him a new curseword, which is also the name of my band, which is Plurg. Plurg: It's like Broken Social Scene, but with more members, less music, and more broken.

Sometimes I tack on unrelated musings or big life observations at the end of my posts, stalling before I reach the inevitable end. This time, I have some stuff to muse on, but not the energy, so I'll stow it, save it, put it away for a rainy day.

I just need a good rest. I just need to recharge. I'll be back up to full power yet.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

3:00 AM: You have to know how the song goes

I'll take advantage while you hang me out to dry, but I can't see you every night, free.

At this rate, I'll be lucky to make it to noon. Hmm hmm hm hmm.

I've been on kind of a Nirvana kick lately. It's important to me to have something I can talk with my co-workers about, and most of us like Nirvana. I got a copy of this book, Heavier Than Heaven, a biography of Kurt Cobain, which several of them have already read. Not surprisingly, it gets just a little depressing near the end. It paints a great portrait of someone who felt everything so seriously and so sincerely, had a hard time dealing with the world around him and his own body (he was plagued by mysterious stomach pains his entire life, which he sought to remedy with heroin) and was frankly unprepared for the level of fame and success he achieved, despite aspiring toward it his whole life. He was a giant clusterfuck of contradictions, and in that way, flawed and human. I used to think there was some uncertainty as to whether he had actually killed himself, now I can't really see it ending any other way. He's definitely a controversial figure. Far from a rolemodel. You don't have to love his music, or the trends it inspired, but I think if nothing else you have to pity the poor kid for the way things got out of hand (if you don't currently, you probably would after reading this book which shows his life after 1991 as pretty much a constantly escalating catastrophe, largely of his own doing.)

When I was in Grade 8, some of my classmates were really into Nirvana, although I really started to investigate them searching after the attention of a girl in Grade 10. I hear the lyrics to "About A Girl" as represented above and I think of those times when all I ever wanted was someone to listen to my shit.

It's been a busy, trying week. I've tried to write posts a number of times, but I get frustrated and lose interest. It began with a party. Last weekend, there was a get-together of many of us old WOSS kids. Cary related to us all the shocking details of how his parents had a brush with danger while on vacation in Myrtle Beach, and we all both recounted the old times and mused about what it meant for there to be old times. Conorton appeared, much to all our pleasant surprise. When I found myself unable to express anything worthwhile in the company of people I've known for years and years, I went and chatted up a girl Cary had introduced me earlier in the night.

I have this thing I do that is often incorrectly characterized as "hitting on." I couldn't hit on a girl if my life depended on it, but what I do at parties is to find some female I've never met and engage her in conversation (and yes, on very rare occasions it goes exceptionally well.) But maybe it's just I'm too reserved to really go for it the way the phrase "hit on" implies. So I say I "chat up."

Cary, for what it's worth, says "hit on."

The week was more than a little bit of a blur after the weekend and a visit with Robyn, who was back in town. The after-result of this meet-up was to be the subject of my first attempt at writing this post, but I lost patience with myself as I am wont to do. Shit that seemed really important and really serious doesn't feel so significant here and now, which means there's just not a way to recreate the situation I initially described... with words.

A big topic of discussion this week at work was performance review, which occasioned my manager to pretty much put into words how she felt about everyone in the store. Some fared better than others. I fared fine, although my inability to vacuum has become the HMV equivalent of a popular YouTube video. There are some personal issues that came up, which I won't summarize (and thus expose my bias) as this is a public forum and I really don't wanna air other peoples' shit. What it all amount to, though, is that the staff will be shaking up a lot more than expected, which means, holy fuck are we gonna need someone soon. Shee-it. Especially considering Andy's gone after... today.

Oh, Andy. Man. How time flies. Whatever personal heat I had with him (which was inevitably completely on my side) he was a good employee and did his job faithfully. He never did learn to laugh at himself though, and by midway through the day, I was back to casually remarking on his racism and watching him desperately take my charges seriously and explain to me why he has a right to white pride and why "my politically correct viewpoint" is part of a larger societal problem (which is a hilarious misapprehension of the situation and the main proof of my point that he has no sense of humour about himself. He's goofy and likable, but can't take a joke, which is one of the things I just can't stand. He's just way too easy to get riled up.)

So I was hired back in January alongside him and Jamie, and then Jamie left, and Jamie's replacement Sarah left in April, and she wasn't replaced unless you count Chantelle who came back a few months ago, and now Andy's going and Alan (full-timer) will be transferring in a couple weeks, which means, uh, yeah, we'd better get somebody new in pronto.

Anyway. I've got more to say on this palindromic week but I'm going to halt this post and start a new one. So come back soon.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

2:00 AM: This is why you're you

A lot of my writing concerns the question of what it means to be who you are. Whether being stuck in our natural human physical forms means being stuck in a certain pattern of behaviour and identity, or whether such things are malleable.

I rambled a bit about this on my American Fiction exam essay. If I'd had time to collect my thoughts on the matter I might've said something worthwhile but as it was I pointed out a few examples, connected them in a threadbare, almost obligatory way, and summed it all up with characteristically specious generalizations. I have problems with myself, with the way my communication does not always match my intention.

Comedy is often, almost always in fact, a product of set behaviour. That's why randomness doesn't necessarily hold up, because "classic" comedy, in the vein of vaudeville and even Monty Python, is constructed around the bearing forth, and often subversion, of expected behaviour. This character acts a certain way. Once you start thinking about exceptions, you give the character nuance, which is a difficult trick to make work in comedy. Not impossible. Don't think I'd ever say something like that is impossible.

But I can't overthink it, and it's not my goal to philosophize on the nature of comedy. Not tonight anyhow (I've often found it fruitless to attempt to categorize comedy as this or that, because in all the rigidity of form there is also contradictions.)

The question was whether the body is the home of the truth: as various books in the class dealt with questions of racial and gender uncertainty. If I'd given it more thought (and by that I mean, like, two weeks' worth) I'd say that it is introduced as a source of important truth, but then subverted and devalued. Subverted in that while the truth is empirically true (Coleman Silk is black, Calliope Eugenides is physically a boy) in both cases it is proven more malleable than one would think, thus giving a level of untruth to the truth. In "The Things They Carried" (and in a more prosaic sense in "So Far From God") the very idea of a dead body is subverted, because what is death but an alteration of one's perception of a person's identity? I remember when I was at my Grandad's funeral last year and the pastor said that death didn't mean he was gone, only that our relationship to him had changed. This is pretty much the entire point of the last story in "The Things They Carried."

We're stuck as ourselves. This is what I keep coming back to. I write because of my desire to imagine lives that are not my own: that are similar, but with different opportunities and traits. Something external that can be controlled. Because I've always found the idea of living one's whole life only one way somewhat strange, in the way that you look at your fingers one day and think "I never realized how odd my knuckles are." Normal but odd.

Today was that uninteresting that that's what I've come to talk about. I worked all day. Conversed with my co-workers on the usual way, expressed the same frustrations as always. There's a lot of frustration but at the same time job satisfaction is a tricky thing. I can't imagine having a better work scenario, not at this point in my life and times. So whatever burden I'm carrying, I will. In four months, a lot of my co-workers will be gone, some of them very, very soon, or at least working fewer shifts. The idea of seeing the entire staff of the store turn over is a little scary. You get used to certain people's presence, certain routines, dynamics.

We'll see how things change.

Well, it's after 12:30. I shout probably get cooking if I'm going to do any writing tonight. Most nights lately, when I've written, I've gotten a new story out there. Tonight I feel like redrafting one, because I was have trouble with it, and then at work I was having one of my usual daydreaming sessions and a new element clicked into my head.

We'll see how it goes.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

1:00 AM: The Unsophisticated

I woke up this morning feeling queasy and unpleasant.

It sounds stupid, at 23 years old, to feel some pleasure with having nearly drank myself into oblivion. I should prize being able to hold my liquor and be ashamed of my bodily functions. But last night at 2 AM, as I hunched over the toilet wheezing up the contents of my stomach (at this point, mostly gin and 7up) I felt a sweet euphoric sensation, a catharsis for the night. Literally getting it all out of my system.

It was Chris Ferg's goodbye party. He'll be spending the summer in Europe, one of many friends who simply will not be around over the next few months. I've gotten very used to going long periods of time without seeing certain people, and I've gotten very good at making up for it when I can.

The day was unremarkable. I worked early, which was a bummer, but it was a short 4-hour shift. I hauled a box of books home from the mall, $2 worth of kids' books and activities at 10 cents apiece donated to the Coles Love of Reading fund. It was my mistake to attempt this without any sort of transportation. Some problems you make yourself.

I arrived fashionably late for the Goodbye party, strolling in the door at 9 after getting a call from Pat wondering where I was. For parties where I don't need a ride over, I tend to delay leaving because I don't like just showing up early because I'm awkward like that.

The party was mainly just a large group of people, the usual Chris Ferg-related suspects, sitting in a circle in the living room. I started in on the Gin and 7up and started to make the rounds, talking plays and old times with Cary, (at one point reading aloud a text he sent me at 5 in the morning back in December when we went to Denny's) and going on various subjects with CB, Pat, Chris and Ryan. At one point, I was describing to Ryan an incident that happened at work some weeks ago with a female customer, and as I was using some self-consciously flowery adjectives to describe her (she had "honey in her voice,") the room went silent, which is always nice.

By the time I got around to Lauren, whom I so rarely see, I was absolutely soused. Cary once spoke to me of various levels of drunkenness; "Handsy drunk," "belligerent drunk," etc. By the time I got to Lauren, I was "Fake British Accent" drunk (a very sad level indeed) and heading toward "Expounding on the nature of creativity" drunk. Lauren and I actually spoke at length, moreso than I think we have in years, which is a shame since I can barely much of the content of the conversation, although we did talk about my childhood friendship with her brother. With some of the other various partygoers, I did routines about the finer points of gin, and of course there was a mandatory group conversation about LOST.

As it got later, the party dispersed. Half the crew wanted to go to Montclair (for what I don't know) but Lauren, Tyler and I skipped that and went to Sixth Line Pub. I was well past the waterline of drunkenness at this point. I was "barely vertical" drunk. I stupidly bought another drink, then smartly declined to drink it.

We talked on and on and on about writing and I'm not sure I said anything that made sense, but I didn't do a ton of the talking. Whenever I'm drunk I attempt to summarize my short story collection concept to anybody who will listen. That's not true, but it has happened more than once (at the Half-Past afterparty, where a nice girl made the mistake of pursuing that line of inquisition.) I also described the situation with my romantic life, but since I was so drunk you can't take what I was saying at face value because I have a habit of blurring the facts to be more a reflection of desire than of actuality. That isn't to say there's no truth in what I was saying, just that it's not a hard and fast truth. More of a subjective, possible one. I live in a Tim O'Brien book.

The conversation was rather engaging, especially since it mainly served as mental stimulation to keep me from vomiting until I could do so alone. I consider it a private matter. Everyone who drinks with me knows I'm prone to fits of stomach upheaval. It's not even a little bit of a secret. Sometimes it comes early in the night due to social awkwardness, and sometimes it comes late due to over-indulgence. The latter, which this was, has a preferable cause but a more crushing aftermath, since I then have to go to bed.

So I said my goodbyes and walked home, got in the door, started to drink water, popped a Tylenol, and promptly started retching in the washroom. Oh, the humanity -- but of a private nature.

Like I said, I acknowledge and even celebrate the fact that I do it. I can't help it, but I'm good about it, I always clean up, I never throw up anyplace that leaves damage. I'm responsible. But if someone were to be with me when I was doing it, I'd feel embarrassed, weak. It's one thing for me to be weak, but I'm not keen on others getting a look at just how weak I am.

So the next morning I still felt ill, and it was hours before I was back to 100%. I wouldn't describe it as a hangover, since a hangover is usually defined by a headache of some kind and I don't tend to get those.

I had to mow the lawn today, which sucked because a spring of neglect had left it rather wild out there and it took me about half the job (and several blown fuses from overtasking the mower) to realize the problem could be remedied by raising the height of the blade. So I ended up with an uneven, but complete job.

Still no weedwhacker though.

Despite my fits of productivity, I still have a lot of work to do. But I managed to get a lot out there in a short period of time, so I'm not stressing about it. I wrote enough that my dreams became less vivid scenarios and more vague feelings. I wake up in the morning knowing I dreamed, but not having come up with anything worth remembering, which means my creative energies are sufficiently being used.

I still have a big webcomic in mind, but my artist suggested we try something smaller, which I agree is an important test. If we work well on it, we can go on to the big epic project. Better than committing to something that won't work out in the long run.

As I was telling people, you know, I have no complaints right now, which is rare. Not everything's perfect, in fact, nothing's perfect and I wouldn't want it to be. Everything is ideally imperfect in my world. All the imperfections are right. Nothing is tragic. Everything is real.

How long can I keep this up?

Let's just keep no rockin'
-Scott

Midnight: Run for it!

Think about the events that led to the greatest moments of your life. How many of them are random coincidences? You were in the right place at the right time, you happened to know the right person, the right thought came into your head.

I'm interested in the idea of meaningful coincidences. I don't happen to believe in fate per se... I believe that the influence of different elements is too difficult to truly divine the exact outcome of anything too far in advance. Butterfly effect and all that shit. Things seem pre-ordained in hindsight when they turn out well (or spectacularly shitty.) But things always have to keep happening no matter what, so of course it's going to seem that way. you say the right thing to the right stranger on Omegle and suddenly you have a new friend. You fail to say the right thing to a girl you know in real life, and for years afterward you regret it while she dates someone else.

So much ink has been spilled on the place of human agency in predestination, much of which I don't remember properly from First Year Philosophy.

One of the nicest episodes of How I Met Your Mother, from season two, goes on this theme. It's called "Lucky Penny," and peels back a series of events to their causes, none of which could've been known at the time. It is, in the broad sense, a statement on the method of the show. Of course, nearing the end of the 5th seasons and starting to get a bit too broad with its already-comically exaggerated characters, should start thinking about its endgame.

Anyway. There's no real way to explain the causation that led me to applying to Sheridan's Print Journalism program when I was in high school, but it has been the root of much of the life I have lived since. That application was "the nail" of my life. It was because I was there that I applied to HMV for the first time four years ago, which led to my being there today and on an ongoing basis (for whatever influence that has on my life.) It was because of Sheridan that I became friends with Amanda, who influences my life regularly, and whose life I influence (I have expressed doubt that she would be working at Cole's right now without my friendship, but she disputes this.)

Hell, if I had not been at Sheridan when the teachers were on strike in March 2006 -- if I'd gone to U of T or some other school -- I would never have made friends with Robyn. And that would be different.

Of course, what I'm talking about is on a much smaller scale. In the cosmic sense, it is a totally insignificant moment in time, but it was such an odd series of events that I felt it was worth noting.

I went out to Mississauga to see Joe play last night at a Starbucks. I got my dad to give me a lift up there, and when I told him the address, he said "Oh, I know where that is," and, after glancing at the GPS on his blackberry, we began our trip. A short while later we arrived at the supposed location, only for him to double-check and find that he had gotten the wrong location altogether, taken the 403 when he should've taken the QEW. Hurm. So being in one of my rare Zen moods, I just rolled my eyes, shrugged my shoulders, and said "Nobody's perfect." The actual location was only a ways down Hurontario, but we were getting late for what I thought was he start time.

We ended up at what I was sure was the location, but Joe and Viki were noticeably not there, and it looked a bit small for a performance, although every Starbucks seems that way. I was beginning to feel somewhat stressed, trying to get a hold of Joe for confirmation when they appeared in the parking lot. After significant shuffling of the furniture, they began to play.

At one early point before the performance started, I was making small talk with Viki's mom. It's always nice that they know me, ask how I'm doing, when I could just be some kid who's friends with their daughter's boyfriend and is constantly begging everyone around for a ride.

Yes, I pulled my usual game of getting out there with no real plan to get home. It usually works out okay for me, and worst comes to worse I'm not above Taxi fare. But more on this later. The show itself was a lengthy one consisting mostly of originals, the favourites to begin with, with the few early convers including a Glee-inspired Lionel Richie cover (not a fan, but I'm not here to pass judgment on all Earth.)

After the show, the initial plan was to get me to the train station as quickly as possible and then they'd go off and do whatever, but when we got to the train station we were about 10 minutes late, so we figured that with the last train coming two hours later, I might as well join them for food/good times.

Earlier that day, I'd had a bizarre moment with Amanda where we'd gone to visit her Cole's co-workers, and they all, four of them, began talking about work and stuff while I just stood there like a goober. At one point Manda made fun of me for not joining in the conversation more and I explained, with a hint of desperation, that with too many other people around I tend to get lost in the conversational shuffle.

The magic number is three. If it's me and two other people, I can usually participate, Because an effort is made. With four people, it's inevitable that someone will get left out, and that someone usually winds up being me, just because that's how I am. Five is pretty awful unless I can break into a separate conversation with one other person. Six develops into two distinct conversations altogether sometimes, but by the time you get to seven, you're back around to the original problem.

We ended up going to Turtle Jack's. The total number of castmembers for this evening was eight: Joe, Viki, me, three old friends of Joe's, and two classmates from his current program. At this point it's entirely possible there will be two or even three whole consecutive conversations that will cut me out, because of how close everyone else is and there were indeed times I felt like a 2-time odd-man out. But there were also times when I was just doing shtick for everyone around the table, and it seemed to go well. It helped that I was drinking.

The conversation lasted just long enough. By the time we headed back to the Clarkson GO, there was a mysterious Oakville bus in the terminal. It being about ten minutes before the train would arrive, I raced over to it and asked whether it was going to the Oakville station. The driver said, "Sure, but don't expect this to ever happen again." Fair enough, I thought: I'm never in Mississauga anyhow. I go through my change and find that I'm actually lacking a bit of change, but he tells me just to give "whatever I've got." He takes me on a night ride and I try to memorize the Bus number in case he kidnaps me and I escape.

I got to the station before the train would even have left Clarkson. It was a nice night, so I walked home, getting in the door probably later than if I'd taken the train then ridden the Zone bus. Then I proceeded to stay up late so that I'd be good and miserable the next day at school.

It's not much of a story, but it felt improbable at the time. Why was that bus there? How did I manage to get there in time to catch it? Etc etc.

Today was exhausting. Work nice and early at 10, followed by a family gathering immediately after, and of course desperate pleas from Cameron to wrestle, and desperate pleas from Ali that I don't have to wrestle if I don't want to. I was so conflicted that I desperately found them other things to do. It was a nice day, though.

Tomorrow morning, working an early shift again. I should bring this entry in for a landing.

I counted them all up. I'm planning 16 stories for my collection. About a month ago I had 3 drafted up (mainly ones that are old and that I'm looking to re-do.) Since then I've increased that number to ten, including a couple I hadn't thought of at the time of my initial count, which was a 13-story total. If I'm going to pursue this project (and the amount of effort I've put into it, along with the amount of time I've spent with it suggests I am) I definitely need a lot of revisions, but at the same time, it feels exhilarating to get this far into it. There have been times when I've written versions of these stories that felt like such absolute crap that I didn't even count them, and now it's becoming clearer.

I'm aiming for about 35,000 words total: a short work, all things considered, it's well below the "NaNo" number of 50,000, but at the same time, it is what it is. These stories do not beg to be longer than they already are. One of them is a mere 250 words (the one I'm most proud of, matter of fact.)

Well, enough rambling. I'm stalling. I've got to sleep.

Keep on rockin
-Scotto