Twain, Following the Equator, on hearing a story that gradually builds to a fever pitch of unbearable tension and then abruptly cuts off:

That was the end of the tale. The passenger who told it said that when he read the story twenty-five years ago in a train he was interrupted at that point — the train jumped off a bridge.

Two brainless invertebrates arrive this morning with a moving van and carry away the accursed sofa and chair on behalf of the Craigslist buyer. A better way to put this might be: They present us with about thirty square feet of beautiful vacant space.

Above: Aerial view of construction goons chucking out our parking garage’s smithereened asphalt.
Photographed this evening, looking down out of our patio window.

We have lost our garage. Apparently the Hotel Fantod’s underground parking garage is mere moments away from having one of its lower-level ramps buckle like a bad knee, due to cut-rate construction and unanticipated vehicular wear and tear. Apparently if we do not act quickly, ruination and rubble will ensue. Apparently this situation has been known for years, but the Hotel Fantod’s board of weasels recently wrapped up a protracted legal battle with the shiftless construction goons who so shoddily built the garage in the first place, and settled out of court for a certain sum, and so the fucked-up garage is 100% our problem now. Apparently this is good news.

The board has brought in a posse of new construction goons to do dramatic repairs, starting this week. As owners, we must foot the bill. The bill is a very, very large sum of money, divided among all owners in proportion to square footage. To sweeten the deal, the board has also kicked all cars out of the garage until the repairs are finished. We get to park in a derelict outdoor parking lot just up the street. The construction is slated to last from September until December — an estimate that all are implicitly invited to laugh at. I will bet every single one of you a Bony that we will still be parked out there in February. (Will it be another mild winter? I doubt it!)

Anyway, we are super-psyched to be coughing up a fistful of paychecks for the privilege of reverting to the good old apartment-renting days of shoveling our car out from under a thousand pounds of snow, and of lugging bags of groceries in through November’s bone-chilling downpours and January’s howling El Blizzardos. Complain! Complain! Today is the first day of fall. Fast forward to spring 2011 please.

The blue sofa and blue chair have been successfully sold. The deal has gone down. The payment has gone through. The buyer will be picking up the furniture this week or next week. The transaction was originally supposed to be in cash, but we work something out and the buyer pays up front by getting me an Amazon gift certificate. Thus the sofa and chair will very shortly be converted into:

Sense of accomplishment! I finally do some creative fiction writing today. The first fiction I have done in many years. It is a Craigslist ad. Putting my ancient matching blue sofa and easy chair up for sale. The fiction is that these tormented specimens of cotton-wrapped polystyrene are actually worth the $60 and $25 (or $75 if bought together) I am asking for them. I say blue but a better term might be formerly blue. They now lean a little bit grey. A little bit sun-blanched. A little bit dust-coated. In the ad I wax autobiographical and mention that I purchased the items at a furniture boutique in Charlottesville, Virginia back in 2000 — what was I doing there? And in a moment of brave confessional candor I add that my wife and I have never smoked, have never owned pets, and have no children — this is a delicate way of saying that the sofa and chair are not, in my estimation, stinky. Dusty, yes. Faded, yes. Splashed here and there with wine and sweet-and-sour sauce and mysterious moving-van bleachy spatterings, yes. But they are not the stuff of 90s Volkswagen commercials. They’ll be fine in someone’s basement. Or planted in someone’s hipster pad and rebooted as shabby chic. Or reupholstered to a fare-thee-well and then lounged upon relentlessly until they explode or collapse. Someone please just buy them and get them out of my house. To make more room for our terrible Toronto tables.

This week I face my phobia of paperwork and fill out my Canadian Permanent Resident card renewal application. Evidently I have to do this every five years. My current PR card expires in November. (I’ve been in Canada almost five years?! Yes.) This afternoon I get the photo done at one of those passport-photo dives at the mall, and this evening I drop the completed packet in the mail. The photo, shown above, is your typical unflattering government ID pic, but in this case it even seems to represent a strange alter ego. Bizarro Scott. Vampire Scott. Canuck Scott. In the eyes of Canadian Immigration, I will be a pasty white junkie-eyed redhead with a strawberry goatee, no glasses, a fondness for red eyeshadow, and an ill-fitting shirt.

William Gibson, Neuromancer, one character to another: “You’re a Mr. Who. You pay to stay one. Not a Mr. Name.”

Speaking of a thousand things: As of last week, it grieves me to say, our book collection has finally broken a thousand. The tally as of this writing is one thousand and three. Some are hers, some are mine, some are ours. Regarding the mine-and-ours: Don’t ask me how many of them I’ve read or will read or will even ever crack open and flip through in search of something, I beg you. Don’t ask me how well I remember or understand the ones I have read. Just don’t go there. The answers will reflect poorly on all involved. The shame of the high books-bought-to-books-read ratio is of course comfortingly widespread among us of the book-nerd persuasion. Let’s just round down and say I haven’t read any of them. I don’t want to read them. I just want them around. I require them in my home. And I must have more.

Antonio Porchia: He who has made a thousand things and he who has made none, both feel the same desire: to make something.