THERE EES-A SMELL, EET-A SMELLS LIKE...

Sheet!

I haven't seen the "Borat" movie yet, but I certainly want to. Sascha Baron Cohen (spelling?) is one funny dude.

***

I wonder, sometimes, about the way events unfold, unfurl, undulate. I wonder about whether there is a Plan out there for all of us--is there Fate?--or if everything is just total chaos--Step up to the bar and spin the Wheel. Do things happen for a reason? Is there a Creator up/down/around/over/under/betwixt...there? Is He or She or It *actually* watching us human ants as we scurry from here to there--in our metal beetles--as we worry about mortgages and lost loves and found loves and celebrate baby ants and mourn an ant's passing? Does the Creator--if there is One--actually give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut?

I believe this: The Universe was created with a "Big Bang." The matter that "banged" was placed/created/jerry-rigged by The Creator.

But I'm also a HUGE advocate of the so-called "chaos-theory." Any small event can trigger a bigger event, which in turn, will trigger a bigger event, and so on and so on, exponentially, until...the last domino falls.

(So...maybe The Creator...created the bangable material and then went to sleep? Naw. I don't believe that.)

A hypothetical scenario follows. And this, to me, is why I even bother to question the Fate versus Chaos conumdrum: Hypothetically, say a man spent a minute longer in the bathroom, in the morning, than he usually did. His teeth, even after a good brushing, still felt like a caterpillar had taken a dump on said chiclets. So he brushed again...Ah! Smooth ivory! On his way to work, he witnessed an 18-wheeler, brakes gone bad, pulverize a Mazda Miata, thus pulverizing the couple inside. Assuming, besides the secondary tooth-brushing, all of the man's early-morning rituals had gone business-as-usual, the pulverized, the "jacked-up," would have been the man in the Ford instead of the couple in the Mazda.

My question to you, faithful crickets who chirp, is...is that Fate or is that just blind luck, Chaos?

Or are Fate and Chaos like the two-faced Roman God, Janus? Are they one and the same? Spinning like a top?

[crickets chirp]
[crickets ask, what's a top? isn't that, like, some kind of 1940s black-and-white toy? we have ps3, now]
[crickets resume their chirp]

***

My dog shit in the apartment. Again. Again! Second day in a row, and more days in the last three weeks than I care to fucking count.

I am so very tempted to bring the cage out of retirement/storage [it leans, folded, against a bedroom wall] and train his cute and dumb and brindled ass all over again. Where there is shit, there is piss. Shit is much easier to find, but it smells far worse. Piss is transparent, after time, and it soaks into the parquet floor of the apartment, and you only find it when your sliding sock comes up short, throwing you off balance, throwing you to the floor, not that I'd know.

I think "security deposit," and I say: Lou-dog? Meet your prison...er, I mean...er, meet your holding cell...er, I mean...uh, meet your *lovely* oasis in which you will spend nine *hap-whee!* hours whilst I am at work! Whee! Whee. If you don't clean up your fucking act, you fucking...lovely little puppy.

See? I'm conflicted.

(On the other hand--head--to get all Janus-like--I'm a sloppy son-of-a-bitch, too. I haven't shit (yet) on the floor, but I have left my cigarettes burning, unsupervised, far too many times. Carpet, wood floor, bathroom sink-counter. So, yeah, like father like son. To a certain--a *very* certain--degree.)

Anyhoo.

***

Back to Fate, for a brief moment. I live in Michigan. For a long time, Bo was the football coach at the University of Michigan. After he gave way to the next generation of coaches, he stayed in the public eye, working for the Tigers for a spell and always...just being Bo.

Bo died today, of a heart attack. I don't know his age, exactly, but he had to have been in his mid- to upper-70s.

He died on the eve of the biggest college football game in a while. Ohio State and Michigan have long-been heated rivals--tomorrow (today, Saturday) they'll meet, both undefeated, to determine which program is on the fast track to this year's "National Championship."

Here is my Fate question/comment, vice versa: The timing is eerie, no? Also--and I know this as sure as I know that my skin is white and freckled--if Michigan wins tomorrow, some announcer will say something like, "And we all know that Bo is looking down on this and smiling." I'm not good with odds--I don't gamble; I just drink and smoke--but I would put the odds at 5-4 (what does that even *mean*?) and the percentage (this I can figure out easily enough) at 98.9%.

"Somewhere, Bo is looking down on this Michigan victory and he's smiling."

Conversely, I'd shell ten dollars out of my own stinking wallet to hear an announcer say, if Michigan loses, "Bo is wherever he is right now, snarling at the players, saying, 'I friggin' *died* and this is the best you can do?! Haven't you numbnuts ever heard of "Win one for the Gipper?!"' Rest in peace, Bo, there's always next year."

Sure, the guy would lose his job and have to deliver pizzas to sustain his OxyContin habit, but it would be...something else.

***

Something else about the "Chaos Theory" that bugs me: There was a movie made that kind of alluded to said theory: "The Butterfly Effect." And it starred...Demi Moore's husband. Now, listen, listen: He's a lovable boob--he was funny on "3rd Rock" or whatever sitcom ("That '70s Show") that he was on--but he just doesn't do it for me, as an actor. DeNiro and Pacino and Walken are up HERE and little Ashton Cut-up is...is...((downhere. ))

[He *does* have, though, an older-generation MILF for a wife. Kudos for *that* land-grab!]

***

So. So. So....

In conclusion:

There is always Chaotic Fate spinning us ants through maelstromic vortexes and the God, the Creator, the He or the She, who lives in the Blue and in a shoe and inside of You, capers with glee and ignores and is bored as we, the she, the he, the thee, flock to "Borat" movies and pick up a lesser-animal's droppings, all the while wondering, "What in the name of God is Demi doing being married to that tool?!"

"Must've been a "Big, Bigger, Biggest Bang," chirped the cricket, shouldering the Raven the Hell out of the way.

***

My door is locked; it is at Sunnybrooke. My door's number is 313. You'll have to sign in...to visit.