Heh. Periodically I make paper lists or MS Outlook task lists in order to put my life on track. When I go back to them I have one of two responses.

WTF?

What was I thinking?

A walkthrough for a game of some sort?

I think it must be something like this, ninazer0 - some kind of game or puzzle. Especially because of the "shop(ping)". If it was something that was supposed to mean something specific to me, I would have known whether I meant "shop" or "shopping". I hope.

Heh, maybe it was a game we started here, and you were coming up with things..I know I have all kinds of jottings regarding topics on MetaChat. I'm not as quick as most of you here, so I always kept a notebook nearby!

What's kind of interesting about this list (and something that does make me doubt a bit whether it was for a game) is that it's very bold and absolute... all the handwriting is exactly the same, as though I wrote each item very quickly one after the other, with no hesitation. There's no wavering, no change of handwriting or size of script at all... unlike, say, a list that I add to as I figure things out. The writing is fairly large, and very loose, and I tend to write smaller and more carefully when I'm more unsure. All the end letters that can be somewhat swooped, are - which indicates to me that I was in a "continuous" mode, swiftly going from word to the next. The only bit of evident hesitation is the "shop(ping)" - and even that was written in a very confident, pretty offhand, way. Also interesting that for whatever reason I felt the need to make it a vertical list, instead of a horizontal series with semi-colons, or possibly slashes. Horizontal would be more stream-of-consciousness type thing, while vertical is definitely a pragmatic itemized "useful" thing.

Also interesting is my apparent desire to indulge in handwriting forensics on my own ephemeralia, because my brain is too weak to actually just, like, remember. (is there a word like "marginalia" for stuff like shopping lists, to-do lists, etc.?)

It looks to me like you were writing down, quickly, a list of things that you could see from a seat in your kitchen. Perhaps you wrote them as a horizontal list so that you could count them later? I don't know why you would need to do that but that's the impression I get.

but at least one of these is a verb ('walk'? plus possibly 'drink'... 'balancing'? weeeeird)... and I haven't been able to see a bus from my window, ever, I think.

Vocabulary list for learning a language? That could be the result from a stream of consciousness, "I need to write down everything in my life so I can know the words," sort of thing.

A related story: In college, my friend put together a shopping list, set it down, and came back to it later in the day. On the list:

Milk
Bread
Popcorn
Filth
Eggs
Veggies.

She still has no idea what she meant by "filth."

taz: you should convert each item into a number (a=1, b=2, and so forth, then sum each number). Then get back to us with the results and we'll see if there's a pattern.

If not, then instead of summing up each item, you'll have to multiple.

Hope you don't mind if I try to make a poem out of it . . . this would really fun to perform in a dramatic way.

gate-drain coaster
food fork

skytrash curtain newsbike
chimney sign

crate-bus, foot
walk, chair
car, market

bird, vegetable, copper
screen

lamp-lock
window balancing plant

drinkshop

(ping)

It's like Syd Barrett's Word Song (youtube; lyrics there are inaccurate).

taz, it looks to me like you had consulted with a neurologist, and you were supposed to make this list and then come back to it after a period of time to see if you understood why you had made it.

I'm sorry.

Kidding, of course. My dad just failed for the first time to remember, after an interruption of about two minutes, a standard series of three words ("ball, flag, tree") given during an intake examination at his neuro. Last time he remembered it with difficulty. This time he didn't even remember being asked to remember the list.

Are you sure these aren't the lyrics to Waters of March?

uh oh. Brain has gone shop(ping).