You know that feeling when you are just about to fall asleep as you hover somewhere in between consciousness and that "middling" state before the subconscious slowly settles in ? You know, it's when you gradually feel yourself dropping into the calm softness of that wonderful place where everyone's stupidity except yours takes a temporary leave of absence ? Well, that is exactly where I was when I was yanked out of that zone at rude intervals. About 10 consecutive consciousness jerks were coming for me. This definitely rattles a man, not sure if I can accurately describe that feeling ? Let me try.

Fire, yes there is fire in my dreams and thoughts. And even on the generally calm seas of my night time brain as they continue to burn like a roman candle churning out thoughts, visions, ideas and even memories. It remains a busy life with a wickedly bent intention of staying alive and freakin' meaning it. Actively looking for quality, no matter what, pursuing it like some pinball machine factory in Chicago during the 1980's, so I will say "Yes" to dreams. I had visited my friend Alan a few nights ago in order to inspect the somewhat successful installation of the two aforementioned parts he bought from me a while back. He wanted to fix his hacked Williams "Fire" post assembly which was acting erratically between his flippers. Up and down without rhyme or reason. He wanted to instill logic to that behaviour by installing new parts.

Somewhere during the process he made a plunger spring disappear. So he diligently provided me with the part number for the now vanished part - 10-399 (all springs in the Williams part number structure start with 10-xxx, don't know if you noticed)

Of course, I ignored Alan's parts request when I heard the first two digits prior to hearing him utter the last three. I have lots of springs in my tool box, one of them will surely do, and Alan won't know the difference anyway. God bless him, - if there is one of the many that will take on that task.

So you see, this is what you get Alan, ignorance on my behalf concerning the specifics of part numbers while brushing off whatever superfluous digits you may well provide when you wake up a temporarily hibernating bear eleven times in a row in the name of your crazy poetry.

Here are the sordid details of this story :

That evening I drifted off around 9:30 PM and it was good, feeling fine. New pillows, fresh cooler air blowing in off the St. Laurent and lake St.Louis past the lush vegetation and through the windows filling up my place with a sense of summer solace. Feeling good feeling fine. Then - ping, but I was still drifting off - PING!, pause, PING !, unconsciousness was holding, PING, getting pulled from peace by pings, PING-PING-PING-PING in a row. Wakefulness takes hold and allows me to get up and look at the seemingly evil device now sitting quiet & idle on my old desk near a rotary phone. Not quite alert as I was, I look at what these pings were about and thought for a moment that Alan's kids must had gotten a hold of his phone and decided to text 11 words in 11 separate transmissions to the guy who fixes their pinball machines. Little rascals I thought, and then head back to bed, power OFF.

My first text to Alan's phone the next morning was -

"OK, you owe me an explanation."

Alan - " Just playing with auto correct, trying to make urban poetry."

Rab - "Why ? You were doing fine before this debacle of non-sense"

Alan - "So do you mean to say that you don't appreciate it ?"

Damn.

Here are Alan's SMS spewings -

Fluffy - Cbbvvv - Bach - Pizza - Jung - Weed - Ghost - Conch - Tugs - Vcfcxd - Chef

And just like Williams part number structures, we look for patterns, in hopes of identifying an order to things.

01-xxxx (stamped part) - 02-xxxx (turned part) - 03-xxxx (molded part) and 10-xxx (springs).

Yes, yes, yes, we all need a replacement spring at one point, especially since they are so easy to lose when they pounce out of your grip and vanish somewhere out of range, like your dreams.                     

Rab - Robert A. Baraké 

You know that feeling when you are just about to fall asleep as you hover somewhere in between consciousness and that "middling" state before the subconscious slowly settles in ? You know, it's when you gradually feel yourself dropping into the calm softness of that wonderful place where everyone's stupidity except yours takes a temporary leave of absence ? Well, that is exactly where I was when I was yanked out of that zone at rude intervals. About 10 consecutive consciousness jerks were coming for me. This definitely rattles a man, not sure if I can accurately describe that feeling ? Let me try.

Fire, yes there is fire in my dreams and thoughts. And even on the generally calm seas of my night time brain as they continue to burn like a roman candle churning out thoughts, visions, ideas and even memories. It remains a busy life with a wickedly bent intention of staying alive and freakin' meaning it. Actively looking for quality, no matter what, pursuing it like some pinball machine factory in Chicago during the 1980's, so I will say "Yes" to dreams. I had visited my friend Alan a few nights ago in order to inspect the somewhat successful installation of the two aforementioned parts he bought from me a while back. He wanted to fix his hacked Williams "Fire" post assembly which was acting erratically between his flippers. Up and down without rhyme or reason. He wanted to instill logic to that behaviour by installing new parts.

Somewhere during the process he made a plunger spring disappear. So he diligently provided me with the part number for the now vanished part - 10-399 (all springs in the Williams part number structure start with 10-xxx, don't know if you noticed)

Of course, I ignored Alan's parts request when I heard the first two digits prior to hearing him utter the last three. I have lots of springs in my tool box, one of them will surely do, and Alan won't know the difference anyway. God bless him, - if there is one of the many that will take on that task.

So you see, this is what you get Alan, ignorance on my behalf concerning the specifics of part numbers while brushing off whatever superfluous digits you may well provide when you wake up a temporarily hibernating bear eleven times in a row in the name of your crazy poetry.

Here are the sordid details of this story :

That evening I drifted off around 9:30 PM and it was good, feeling fine. New pillows, fresh cooler air blowing in off the St. Laurent and lake St.Louis past the lush vegetation and through the windows filling up my place with a sense of summer solace. Feeling good feeling fine. Then - ping, but I was still drifting off - PING!, pause, PING !, unconsciousness was holding, PING, getting pulled from peace by pings, PING-PING-PING-PING in a row. Wakefulness takes hold and allows me to get up and look at the seemingly evil device now sitting quiet & idle on my old desk near a rotary phone. Not quite alert as I was, I look at what these pings were about and thought for a moment that Alan's kids must had gotten a hold of his phone and decided to text 11 words in 11 separate transmissions to the guy who fixes their pinball machines. Little rascals I thought, and then head back to bed, power OFF.

My first text to Alan's phone the next morning was -

"OK, you owe me an explanation."

Alan - " Just playing with auto correct, trying to make urban poetry."

Rab - "Why ? You were doing fine before this debacle of non-sense"

Alan - "So do you mean to say that you don't appreciate it ?"

Damn.

Here are Alan's SMS spewings -

Fluffy - Cbbvvv - Bach - Pizza - Jung - Weed - Ghost - Conch - Tugs - Vcfcxd - Chef

And just like Williams part number structures, we look for patterns, in hopes of identifying an order to things.

01-xxxx (stamped part) - 02-xxxx (turned part) - 03-xxxx (molded part) and 10-xxx (springs).

Yes, yes, yes, we all need a replacement spring at one point, especially since they are so easy to lose when they pounce out of your grip and vanish somewhere out of range, like your dreams.                     

Rab - Robert A. Baraké