Bluesfest: How to

According to Dame Agatha, the Bluesfest is "great". I say it's over-priced, over-crowded and they don't want a fellow to bring in his own refreshment, but if you're smart like me, you can get around the problems.

p.s. There's a new poem on Swabbin' th' Deck

Zizou, Bluesfest & Personal Training Update

It's been a busy week with the World Cup, the Bluesfest....and my personal training.

1) Zizou. I don't know what happened there. Apparently, he has an "anger management" problem. They say he got a red card for stomping a Saudi about a 5 years ago. One source reported that it was the Italian calling him a terrorist that led to the head-butting. That seems lame. I think the Italian was trashtalking Zizou's mama... This incident reminded me that you have to watch out for those 'cool' guys. They are pressure cookers ready to blow.

2) Bluesfest. Isn't it great? I fell in love with Peter Karp last night. Bought his CD and then stalked him. Sigh. Roxanne Potvin is lovely, but maybe too young to be singing the blues? Rickie Lee Jones. Messy. Looks like life has taken a toll on her liver.

3) Personal Training Update. I have not been walking, but am using my bicycle as my means of transportation. Things I have learned: a) don't leave anything on your bike that can be stolen, because it will get stolen. b) you can buy bike lights at the dollar store, and then you don't feel as bad when they get stolen (4th Dwarf taught me this one) c)a garbage bag can work well as a makeshift rain poncho.

Where is the IO?

Our Independent Observer seems to have gone missing. He has not blogged for over a week, and I'm concerned about him. I know he is "Independent". He has never engaged in any of the co-dependent behaviour of some ESIs. And I know that he likes to maintain an aura of mystery about his whereabouts. Here are some of my suspicions about what he might be doing:
1) He may be -- like me-- completely obsessed with the World Cup and has no time for blogging.
2) He may have decided to go back to the land of the Vikings for a spell.
3) He may have found his own muse, and doesn't want to share.
4) He may be working on one of his famous Don Cherry channelling postings (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read our ARCHIVES).
5) There is no fifth reason...

Views on a Muse

Life as an Irregular is not all mojitos n' cheesecake on sunny terraces, not by a long shot. We continue, behind the scenes, to search for a metablogworthy new muse.

I liked our old Muse for many reasons. As one of our "B"mused silent witnesses noted at one point, she was an exhibitionist, and we were rather a bunch of voyeurs -- it was a match made in metaheaven.

Then, possibly with our aid, she shed the dysfunctional relationship that drove her blog and ours, got into another one, got happy, got married and got disappeared. Aggie mourns this state of affairs to this day, and continues to cast about for our next subject.

What are we looking for? Somebody who's articulate and literate. Someone with a reasonably dysfunctional love life, or at least someone who wants a love life, who is searching for it in reasonably dysfunctional settings..... A fairly crisp balance of spunk, angst, humour and self-pity. Self-aware postings are good. Let's face it; metablogging a brain-dead muse holds no challenge or interest.

Our new metamuse needs to be someone who blogs frequently enough to create a sufficient body of quality work, so that we may do what we do best: riff on some seriously-bent-outta-shape mojo. Someone who shows the potential to move forward from mere inertial whining about the situation -- which stales damn fast -- and actually act. Right now, our patented brand of semi-respectful irreverence is all dressed up with no place to go. The Chair is dying to show off his new slipcover, and I'm pretty sure Aggie's bandaid is about due to fall off. The Independent Observer has been polishing his lenses for so long, they're beginning to wear out. Conch Shell, who has been MIA for much of the spring, finally seems to be floating within sight of us. And the Short Guy, is, well, the Short Guy. He's always got things to say. Often about completely innocent coyotes.

Perhaps we don't need to confine our search to traditional pairings -- it'd be very Canadian of us to consider placing gay relationships within our purview. At least until that gang of antediluvian trolls lurking on the current government's back benches have their way. Most relationships, gay or straight, hold many common issues. As Gertrude Stein (and I quote her advisedly) probably would've said, given half a chance, "A relationship is a relationship is a relationship."

And now that we've done the whole "spring-a-giant-blog-about-the-last-few-months-of-your-life" thing once, maybe it's time to retire that strategy, and become more open from the outset. Although I regret to say, having experienced it, that the Heisenberg Principle seems to work both ways, affecting us as much as it affected the Muse. But maybe that was the point. Really, it was all about us....

Now, a question: should we as a group perhaps be setting protocols for contact with any potential new muses? So that our myriad, anarchic agentes provocateurs know in advance what their constraints are, 'steada freelancing quite as much as they did last year? Not that I'm mentioning names. You know who you are...

(Image from doggieshades.com)

Minutes of ESI Healing and Reconciliation meeting

Location: The neutral place
Present: Coyote, Agatha, the Chair, Independent Observer (later), 4thDwarf(much later), Conchie (much much later)
Guests: Conchie’s [redacted]

The meeting opened immediately with finger-pointing and the “blame-game”

Chair moved that CS should be blamed; Coyote seconded; motion carried

The IO arrived and told those present that he saw 4D waiting for us at [redacted] when in fact he had specifically told us we should meet at [redacted]

The team noted that they were concerned about 4D’s memory and proceeded to add him to the blame list

4D arrives and we pretend that there was no concern

We get back to why none of us can seem to coordinate to meet at the same location

IO gets defensive and says one of the reasons he didn’t go to the original venue was some sort of premonition event he had in addition to some technical failure in his communication technology which he produced as exhibit 1 in his evidence file

The Chair asked if there were one or two ‘m’s in the word 'lam-o'

4D says there is one ‘m’ and that it is best spelt as 'lame-o'

At this point, a phone call is made to find CS who is notably absent; IO forgets to dial 10 digits and has to listen to both official languages of Bell Canada’s lecture about the new system; 4D laughs and says it’s the fault of all of you cell phone users as he points around the table

4D offers some lessons learned
One – we should reply to our emails more often
Two – we shouldn’t change venues within the last 24 hours

Agatha gets concerned about this becoming policy and doesn’t like committing so far in advance

The Chair orders his second mojito

Another call is placed to find CS followed by the requisite profanities in response to her absence;
Some discussion takes place about how CS will respond to our concerns about her commitment and it was decided that she will try to divert the conversation to avoid the issue at hand.
CS arrives with [redacted]

The finger pointing resumes with no resolution but instead further lame-o excuses and escalating levels of sarcasm

Points noted: Aggie was baby-sitting which made it impossible to pick up the phone; CS and 4D actively omit each other from various correspondences with the team

The meeting moves to the victim impact statements

4D is somehow a victim because CS isn’t blogging enough, which the Chair thinks is co-dependent behaviour and duly notes it in the minutes

Coyote feels marginalized and the IO admits he is in a shame-spiral

Aggie is struggling with the yin and yang of having both commitment and abandonment issues with the ESIs but is trying to work through it

The Chair feels victimized for having to take the meeting minutes and uses his usual passive-aggressive methods by filing them several days late

CS feels trivialized because some ESIs wouldn’t join her along with the other traitors

Conchie’s [redacted] had no issues and felt privileged -- the jammy blighter

By this point the mojitos had kicked in and the meeting either went ‘in-camera’ or the Chair blacked out