Last Hand-to-Hand Haiku Event of 2013

On the evening of November 21st, we will be having our last Hand-to-Hand Haiku tournament of the calendar year at BON space on South Street in Charlottesville. This first year of public haiku events has been a lot of fun, and I'm packing all the surprises I can into this last one, to make it sort of a year end get-together for anyone who has attended any of them throughout the year. And if the turnout is as good as it was last month, I plan on having both an under-18 and adult tournament at this event.
In addition, I'll be talking my standard Raven Mack speaking-in-tongues gibberish. I'll have some poetry books there for the buying, and also stacks upon stacks of truth-free pamphlets for the having (donations kindly accepted to support the Rojonekku WFA cause). For anyone who's been to one of these in the past, you know already to expect whatever. There are a number of paths any one given event could take, and I try not to hold too tight to the reins. If we go in a different direction than anticipated, that's what we do. You can't control life, just ride that motherfucker out.
Sign-up starts at 7:00 pm, we'll start the jibber-jabber at 7:30, and as always, the event is free. Here is how Hand-to-Hand Haiku tournaments work. If you have any questions, just hit me up at ravenmack at gmail.com.

ORALE! Let me speak on this! at VCU November 15 (plus Hand-to-Hand Haiku tournament)

On Friday afternoon, November 15, at 3:00 pm in the Student Commons at Virginia Commonwealth University, I will be giving a presentation or some sort called New Writing: Maintaining Your Shadow in Light of Total Awareness. What will this presentation involve? All of the following:

• Keeping it shady even though authoritative overlords want you to be transparent as fuck so as to get a better digital read of how they can sell you shit/make you afraid of shit.
• Preventing your blood from being turned into money by lizard humanoids.
• Using curry in combination with lacto-fermented foods to loosen up stagnant energy in your gut – kinda like that bullshit lemonade master cleanse thing, but actually encouraging positive probiotic growth instead of just gut-bombing yourself like healthy bulimia.
• How to successfully navigate time travel to within five decades past, and four weeks forward. Beyond that either way, you’re on your own.
• The importance of writing strict form sonnets in the 21st Century, but not iambic pentameter because BORING.
• How our minds being completely fragmented by wireless digital energies what which we interact with openly is definitely a change occurring, but rather than get all Luddite scared, perhaps we should just learn to do better more soulful mosaics with our fragments.
• Increasing flow of positive chemicals in your brain like serotonin (sex juice), omega-3s (fish juice), beta-endorphins (exercise juice), and how to combat the depressing tall grasses that grow in your mind’s blind spots (aka sub-conscious).
• How to turn human misery into abstract wealth.
• The neo-pagan, post-industrial, subliminal earth consciousness of Balkan state football hooligan groups, specifically as it relates to setting fires in occupied spaces at away games.
• Bedazzling balaclavas, while still maintaining an Etsy- and Pinterest-free zone.
• Wearing digital sock puppets for increased comfort.
• How to psychologically justify to yourself that America is indeed still an exceptional meritocracy, and because of that, if you are smart enough and work hard enough, you will not be fucked.
• Using paint-sticks efficiently on rusty objects.
• How to treat the surface web and more covert deep web like a raised bed garden, using digital composting to bear life sustaining fruit not yet harvested by libertarians (aka The Alternate White Guys).
• Back yard screen-printing.
• Converting old government auction school buses to bio-diesel, and how to effectively bury recycled shipping containers for concealed lifestyles. (NOTE: This particular part will be specific to southern West Virginia.)
• Appearing in real life to actually exist, to other animals.
• Identifying future trends by communicating with forest spirits, who have basically been in hiding since 1672 on the North American continent, east of the Mississippi.
• How to securely change your password with Google products without having to ever use auto-save again.
• The art of burning bridges, enjoying the fire, fighting up stream, baptizing yourself in struggle, building new bridges, and then burning those too (and how to save fun metallic memento pieces from every bridge to weld your own Power Whirligig Nkisi).
• Composing post-narrative resumes for a career-less world.
• Increasing your personal brand’s worldwide presence through guerrilla means that are not necessarily cool or necessary, then feeling bad about it but being stuck with what you’ve done, and learning how to come to grips with what a piece of shit you were. And selling related t-shirts.
• Squatting on, developing, and sharing intellectual property wasting its true potential because people are assholes who think they own every fucking thing they ever thought of in their lives.
• Raising chickens, including proper hen-to-rooster ratios as it relates to egg productivity and quality of life, as well as further explications of gamecock vs. peacock cultural differences, and how the guinea hen sort of bridges those differences, which is why guinea hens are so goddamned annoying.
• Where to find the least toxic blunt wrappers in the hood.
• Living discreetly in interstate median strips, and how to get EBT benefits with no known address.
• Counting to 666 by 7s, using only whole numbers.
• Illegal emigration, and which South American rural area might be best for you.
• How “WHOO!”ing like “Nature Boy” Ric Flair can benefit you in your everyday life, and figuring your way out of four common locks on our psychic energies.
• Making your own stencil that says GENTRIFIED to spray all over everything every where.
• How impact font is the comic sans of pretend-seriousness.
• Creating effective memes and hashtags through the use of memes and hashtags.
• How to write better books that will get published and sell a bazillion copies to everybody on earth and then you’ll be rich as fuck and never have to hear another person tell you how to write better because it’ll totally finally be done, like magic, FTW.
• Culturing buttermilk at home, and using this as a basis to eat from-scratch buttermilk cornbread at least three mornings a week, thus increasing your ability to use a cast iron skillet which justifies the continued existence of cast iron skillets, which ultimately will become more important than smart phones, again. Also building cast iron skillet apps (aka recipes).
• Whether yarrow tincture is actually the tinfoil hat people always joke about, and whether tinfoil hats may actually increase the damage done to your neuronal composition.
• Monster catfish of the James River, and they symbolic relevance to our human struggle for equality worldwide, but specifically 85 miles in both directions off the river throughout Virginia.
• Turning personal demons of self-destruction into dragon slayers what which you unleash upon the unlounging aspects of this crooked world.
• How to successfully pretend you care about unimportant bullshit both online and in the post-modern workplace, so as to not call attention to what you’re really working on in life.
• Making yourself more upworthy, by speaking pure truth at 1:32 mark, but literally blowing people’s minds into a thousand shards of newfound awareness at 3:48.
• Plus assorted other recipes, anecdotes, and creation myths from my family’s 4.45 acre Bird Tribe Compound, currently co-spirited by the trickster nature of ravens and the healing nature of owls.
• None of the above. Always none of the above. Perhaps. Who knows?

After the “talk” there will be a short break I guess, where we talk at each other on a more personal level, then we’ll have a Rojonekku W.F.A. Hand-to-Hand Haiku Tournament for all who choose to take part. If you aim to compete, bring yourself 20-some haiku. If you aim to watch, aim away. I hope you hit the target.