Cabs, Cabernets, Cabals and Caberets

Street Musician Daniel

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

So, fast-forward, pun  intended, and I am now zooming around at up to 40 miles per hour (✈), after a somewhat tense few moments prior to my discovering that you have to hold the start button down for like 3 seconds in order to start the electric bike..that probably has rare earth metals in its battery.

I don't want  to mention what I paid.

Kenny, who lives  here, might find this post and leverage that into the negotiations...

I had no  sooner returned to Sacred Heart, pushing the electric bike (I had a laptop, guitar, a lamp with a 5 foot stand, and now, an electric bike. It would have been a challenge to ride the thing for the first time- while trying to balance a lamp with a 5 foot long stand.

And, as soon  as I got back I ran into Kenny who lives here, and who greeted me basically with: "You want to sell that? How much you want? I want that bike, I really want it!"

Lord, I am  sorry for taking advantage of the gentleman who sold me the bike if it should perchance have been a case where he was jonesing for drugs, and at the point of doing something that he will regret later, in pursuit of immediate gratification.

The bike is  really at least a 700 dollar item -and that, coming from a boomer upon whom it really hasn't even sunken in yet that I was making 3 times my busking wages for sitting home during the pandemic, when a part of me was saying: "this is extra money you won't miss now, but will surely appreciate later; put $500 a week into any number of stocks from Apple to Phizer to Zelle!"

And, my 1999  self would have struck at that prospect. 

It was actually skepticism over the very system that was printing money to pay me to stay home that made me wary -a system that was penalizing me, by suppressing my contact with the outside world, beginning after I had told some truths about some things that were right in front of my face..

Like, after I  had walked right into an emergency room and had been seen right away, for whatever, but upon returning home, saw footage on the nightly news of the same facility with lines of "covid19 stricken people" -maybe 50 long- lined up outside, supposedly earlier that day (when I had been practically the only one there) and then I blogged about it.

The rioting in  the streets somehow did not inspire me to invest in stocks, as I had done in 1999.

I drove a  cab in Phoenix, then; lived in a cave in a foot hill of 'South Mountain.' in the Latino "side" of the city..

It was a  caveat from other drivers, to just not work the south side, especially at night.

I would see,  on my little 1999-era GPS equipped computer that someone was trying to get a cab down there at like 2 in the morning. After 30 minutes with no other drivers picking it up, I would start to feel sorry for whomever it was, and would go to the house, where a lot of times, a half dozen Latinos would thank me for having shown up, and would pay the fare up front for whomever was getting in.

In one instance,  they told me that ever since a certain drive by shooting-up of the house next door (with automatic weapons) it had become harder for them to get cabs to show up, especially at night.

I remember trying  to speak Spanish and them seeming to appreciate that. I have always found it easy to make friends with Latinos, going back to the 4th grade; what can I say?

I remember one  group, once in the back seat, telling me where we were going, then a couple of them showing me large pistols, and saying: "Ain't nothin' gonna happen to you bro; don't worry..you're gonna be fine!"

Ah, reminiscing...

They even had  passengers waiting, once we got there, to put in my back seat, going somewhere else, fares paid up front..

"Don't work the  south side at night," my ass -probably spoken by drivers who hated Latinos, who could smell that on them...

I remember sitting  there under the stars, driven outside by a baked potato the size of a Winnebago, watching jets approaching Sky Harbor Airport in single file, their lights like a string of pearls stretching all the way to the horizon, like ants following a trail of pheromones. 

That was a million dollar view. If I was getting a $3,500 dollar check every week, I might have succumbed to the temptation to ruin it all by getting an apartment and a vehicle. Where would that leave the squirrels and the snake?

It was costing  me about $23 a day, to live in the cave.

I would subtract  this amount from whatever I had made during a 12 hour shift behind the wheel, and then get a money order for the remainder then head straight to the TD Waterhouse place on Camelback Road, or Indian School Road..(I should remember, I was cab driver)..and I would deposit it with Carla, the young receptionist type lady, which would be for anywhere from $270 -I think was the highest- to as low as $27, maybe after a night when I sat outside an apartment complex chatting for 3 hours with an exotic dancer I might have just brought home from a club.

When you sleep  in a cave women can smell minerals on you, or something.

This one dancer  in particular would curl up in the back seat, and want to talk with the meter still running, and then would tip me $50. She was from Flint, Michigan and looked like Madonna.

White women in  Phoenix went after white guys like heat seeking missiles, I found.

One young blond  haired girl walked up to me outside the K-Mart in the south side, where white men are warned not to go, especially at night, and said: "You're beautiful! You're white!" as a conversation starter... She was probably about 16 years old. It's still the 'wild west' out there.

I used to  joke with Carla, who was always as well dressed and well mannered as befitted the 1999 version of a stock brokerage firm, albeit one operating in an Internet Cafe kind of atmosphere.

I would drop  off my $107, or whatever, money order, almost daily.

Then, I would  ask Carla, who was pretty and pleasant enough looking and white and probably trying to maintain some semblance of professionalism, on my way out, if she would please call me on the hour and, to make it brief, just make the noise of a rising theremin: Wheeeiii!!! or a falling one: Wheeeuuuwww! and then, she could just hang up. I would know what it signified -my portfolio having gone up or down that particular hour.

She said something  about being too busy -it got pretty hectic in there mid day.

I had about  $3,700 in that portfolio, having put in only about $2,900, one money order at a time, after about 3 months.

AI is, not yet, able to imagine the beauty

The whole investing  idea came from a passenger who told me I should go to TD Waterhouse and open an account with $600, and then throw a dart at the newspaper's stock ticker page. In his case he bought stock in some company that he'd never heard about before seeing it in the "gainers" area of The Wall Street Journal's "Money" section. His $600 had become worth $1,280, after just a week, he told me as I transported him somewhere.

If some new  stocks were to appear on that "outstanding performers" roll call, he said he would throw all his money there, "cause those are the ones that can quadruple in a week!" type of thing.

I decided to  heed his advice, and became a Wall Street caveman overnight.

I could stay  in the cave as many days as I wanted; my 12 hour shift began whenever I went and took a cab out.

I could do  watercolors, move rocks around, feed the squirrels and chipmunks, and I was an avid home-improver. 

I gradually expanded my foraging area, looking for certain rocks -like a better fitting one than the one I had been rolling over the entrance..one that blended in better, and looked more like Mother Nature deposited it there. 

I had created the cave by chipping out sandstone which had blown into the crevices between boulders, over the centuries, and hardened.
I followed the contours of the hard granite -dumping buckets full of once-again-sand-no-longer-stone by the thousands over the edge of a 50 foot drop. 

I reached  milestones like the day I was able to stand upright in there, to the eventual completion of a fireplace/cooking pit that the steady wind pulled the smoke from the chimney of and drew, in a semi-circle around and under the 'cap' of a mushroom shaped boulder (mushroom shaped from the same persistent wind stream having sanded away the softer rock underneath the harder granite top). 

"...you explained it, I guess..."

This made it so whatever smoke I emitted would leave the chimney, go around a corner, hugging the stem of the mushroom shaped boulder,  before rising into the air, on the other side of the hill, about 75 feet away from where I was..

I hope I explained that adequately... 
It was a natural decoy, courtesy of the Santa Anna winds or whatever they were...

If I found  a really good looking rock, no matter how far away or how heavy, I would get it back to the cave, even if I needed to use a fence post, or something I found, as a lever. Great exercise -carrying rocks up an incline...

Still, I hit  a gym for a little more exercise, protein drinks and a hot shower. After changing into clean clothes and putting on a tie, I became a professional cab driver looking type of guy...

I might have  appeared, to the guy who gave me investment advice, like I should be doing something better than driving a cab.

There were a  couple early 20's aged Java programmers, whom I picked up and was bringing to the "Pompei" nightclub in Tempe who said they were making something like $1,800 a week, and , after talking to me during the $21 ride to there, told me I should  go to Barnes & Noble and get some kind of "Learn Java In 30 Days" type book and 'just mess around with it' -play with it like it's a new Ham Radio or a new piece of audio gear. 

And then go from being a cab driver who lives in a cave to a guy raking in $1,800 a week and; I guess, sitting outside that same cave at midnight, after the heat that sank into a rock the size of a Winnebago from the sun hitting the other side, had radiated its way through, like a thermal wave, and was then turning the heat inside the cave to the upper 80's, and had driven me out, to sip wine and stare at the city.

The cave was  chiselled deep enough into the rock so that I only recorded a high temperature of 87℉ on a day when it had hit 115℉ elsewhere. But every night around 11:30 pm., my walls would start oozing heat, and I

would wind up sitting outside, enjoying the view of Phoenix from a perch about 350 feet above it; waiting for it to cool off inside; and tossing Doritos on the ground in front of a certain rock that a 4 foot long Diamondback rattler lived under -Doritos that the naked eye could barely make out in the darkness, but which would begin to move off in every direction, immediately after landing; carried by invisible mice.

The snake had  announced its presence with a half hearted rattle, one evening in June, as I passed within 4 feet or so of it. I was coming back after a shift that I had unwittingly started late that morning, not foreseeing having to get off work equally late in the evening, and having to sidestep Gila Monsters and Diamondbacks.

A flashlight was  just not an option. It will ruin a man's night vision, and give away his position. Besides, with almost no moisture in the atmosphere, one can read a book by a Phoenix moon that's any larger than a sliver, or find one's cave.

Walking to a  secret cave that even has a rock rolled over the entrance to camouflage it, using a flashlight?! Not happening. There was a reason it was only after having lost his (map, compass, knife, rifle...flashlight(?)) that the guy in "The Bear" saw the bear.

🐿

I had fed  the squirrels so many unsalted peanuts in the shell that they had created a soft rug of shreds along the floor of the tunnel that was just big enough to admit me on hands and knees and mat protected the latter against the hard granite.

The snake would  have come out right after sundown, to set up shop. I guess I had usually been in by then. It goes from light to dark in Phoenix in a matter of minutes after sundown. There's no moisture in the atmosphere to reflect any "twi" light back to earth.

I had gotten  a pretty good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, as was my habit, the night the snake rattled, and that had eventually warmed my heart to the thing and, already having found that a Dorito dropped on the ground in the darkness, anywhere around the cave, immediately "grew legs," and moved to underneath the nearest rock, I started to drop chips in front of the snake's rock, just after sundown.

And, sure enough,  they would start to migrate in all directions, visible only because of being bright yellow, but being toted by invisible mice.

Then out of  the darkness would soon come a surprised sounding shriek, that sounded a lot like a mouse having been stabbed by venomous fangs.

Having kept snakes  as pets, I knew that, taking only a minute or two to swallow a meal means it's not a totally satiating one, and so about 15 minutes later, I would launch another salvo of Doritos plain (corn, salt and lime juice) variety chips towards the rock. And I can say that the Diamondback never crawled into my tent in the middle of the night and struck me in the face with its fangs...so, there's that...

I do like  mice; but, so does almost every rodent or reptile, apparently...

I have an  animal feeding hierarchy. 

I'll feed mice to snakes. 

I also stood back and let a black caped night heron have at the rats that I lived with and fed, under the wharf the last time I was homeless. 

I think I might feed a snake to an owl..

But, I wouldn't  feed an owl to anything, not even humans. On Thanksgiving Day...so that's my hierarchy of animals (in a nutshell).

So, I guess  now I'm really trying to decide if I think the electric bike is an analogy of the flashlight mentioned above. Is it a lazy man's vehicle?

35 miles per  hour is fast enough to make you want to ride in the middle of a lot of roads, but, to a lot of motorists, you are just crawling along, and it was kind of unsettling, during the short ride I took earlier, to see cars behind me changing lanes to go around me -an accident waiting to happen comes to mind...

Kenny really wants  to buy the thing. Maybe if I jack the price up $100 over what I paid..

But, the time  saved in getting around eclipses even that which a good 10 speed bike would effectuate. I figure I will save about 35 hours a month, over walking everywhere, if I keep the electric bike.

And, it's harder  to mug a person who is going 30 miles per hour with money in his pocket, over someone who is ambling along at 4 miles per hour with his money in his pocket...

You have just read 2,686 words

Let There Be Bike

Street Musician Daniel

(where words I've never used before are green!)

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Here I sit  with the universe all around me and inside me, so that the thin membrane in between is all that I am..

If you had  a powerful enough microscope you would see the same thing as you do when you look out into space; the atoms in our bodies spaced as relatively far apart from each other as the stars out there, and us being mostly space, 99% nothing; yet held together by the energy which connects us..

I lost my  phone. I think I threw it away, when I was in the moment and not thinking. Just threw it, along with a pen which had run out of ink, into a trash can, which "of course' got emptied; just hours later...

So, without a  phone, I have been reaching for a vacant spot on the couch at times when I think of something and want more information.

Or, like last  night when I was in the mood to check out a live Peter Frampton performance, one which wasn't the one where he "comes alive", like a Frankenstein creation, back in 1977...and I went to grab nothing off the couch, yet again...

Tuesday, August 18th... 

I woke up  at 4, my rent is due tomorrow, and, on my way back from the Shell, where I mixed what I call a "tequila mockingbird," out of tequila and Monster Zero Energy, I found a lamp amongst other debris of eviction in front of a house. I grabbed it, in order to give it to a guy who sits in the lobby at Sacred Heart in a wheel chair type device.

The other night  I had found some light bulbs in the dumpster, one of which was still screwed into a lamp that had had damage inflicted upon it, obvious by the way it had been snapped in half and was laying at right angles to itself.

The guy who  always sits in the lobby saw the light bulbs and after I told him I had found them, he told me that he needed to have more light in his apartment, maybe the reason he hangs out in the lobby -to get out of a dark dungeon of an apartment- and I made a mental note to grab any lamp I encountered in the near future for him.

I did.

I was carrying  it from one pile of eviction to the next, where sat a guy named Joe, who was looking through the stuff.

"I hate to  see anyone get evicted," I said.

"To turn their  misfortune into an opportunity to grab free stuff..."

Matt was sitting  on an electric bike which he offered to sell to me for $175 (they go for about $1,000 new).

So, he is  running back to his house right now, to get the charger for it, along with a Moto G phone that might be part of the deal, depending upon what light a balance inquiry of my account sheds...

So, yeah, the  Law of Attraction -and the two things I should have already been feeling grateful for, and must have been, to a degree satisfactory to the Universe, as, they were already on the way. (but only because I had been thinking charitable thoughts about lugging a tall lamp, with a 5 foot stem on it, for about a quarter of a mile, just to give it to a large black man, who has already had one foot amputated, as he poo-pooed the 'sardine fast' that I had told him about a while back, but I diverge...).

In other news,  I am doing 'the morning pages' on this laptop (right now, I guess, sort of) instead of with pen and pad, as prescribed by Julia Cameron in "The Artist's Way."

I'm sure she  would say this is a less 'effective' strategy, and maybe point to the removal of oneself from screens and technology as being one of the main points of the exercise.

I always thought  it was to connect a persons hand to her brain. From stream of consciousness musings through the muscles of the hands and onto the page has its counterpart in musical improvisation...

But, am about  to go try to get 200 bucks out of the ATM so I can buy the electric bike (and if, later, I feel like pedaling is the way to go, I suppose I wouldn't have much trouble getting my 175 back through Facebook Marketplace).

You have just read 704 words

Green Word Thing Test

Street Musician Daniel

Before

(where words I've never used before are green!)

Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Posting from the  Irish pub up the street.

I lost my  phone; I think I threw it away subconsiously. I need to enter the 21st Century with some new phone, and had been procrastinating upon getting one.

Tonight it looks  like either hanging out with Jr and playing the guitar, drinking vodka perhaps...or staying in and watching a bunch of stuff I'm downloading off Youtube from the pub for later viewing...

You have just read 71 words

Append To Corpus, Thank You

Friday, August 07, 2026

This is Friday,  alright. The Python3 script has been patched to include a date header at the top of the post; a redundancy given the date already being displayed above it; but forward looking, in that if the post were ever to appear out of time, to someone whose search takes them to an individual post, but not the 'front page' or, most recent posting, then the date might put things into better perspective..."How can he be posting about such a mundane topic with our country under nuclear attack?! Oh, I see; he wrote it before September 26, 26..." type of thing...

The past 5  times that I have stepped outside it has begun to rain, this, over the course of 3 days..

Last night, I  walked to the Quarter with only my mostly empty backpack on me, containing a half dozen cans of the 'scallop flavor' variant of Friskies' wet cat food, which Harold would prefer fending for himself out of neighborhood cat's dishes, to eating..

I was going  to trade them with Elizabeth for other flavors, but this as only a stop-gap, as I intend to put the varmint on something a lot closer to 'real' food. This, after seeing a video done by an Asian guy in what I'm guessing was a veterinarian's scrub, or a very good Halloween costume at the least.

He posed the  question: "So, what is better for keeping a cat healthy, wet food or dry food?"

That was the  thumbnail click-grabber. I probably saw it because I had tried to call Elizabeth whose profile, down at Alphabet Central, is "over the top, big time cat lady, with a capital C, type of thing. Knowing such a person, wouldn't I be interested in which one is better?

Sure, but I  knew the real answer is 'neither' and vet coat guy nailed that, within the first couple minutes, as per the recommendation to drop your "truth bomb" right up front in the Youtube video that AI is creating on your behalf, to hook the audience. Then throw in the annoying to me: "..but, be sure to watch until the end of the video, because the conclusion will change the way you think about your responsibility to a helpless defenseless animal you took stewardship over!"

Of course, this  is based upon a viewer whose "susceptible to being guilt-tripped" bit is set to 1 in her Alphabet profile.

It will be  nice when the AI engines can be integrated into the Youtube viewer so that everyone will get a custom message..

When I watch  the cat food video, at that spot, the narrator would say something like: "Watch until the end because we're going to show you what to do to put some weight back on Harold, and put a shine on his coat! You've been fucking him up, Daniel. Those pictures of him that you sent to Lilly show him to be underweight and with a dull coat. You need to buy one less $25 bottle of wine, like you did Tuesday, 8-3-26 at 9:38 pm. at The Red Zone beer and wine store on Canal Street, and sink a little money into Harold's well-being!"

A video like  that, with the Asian "veterinarian" speaking in a voice made from a composite of my 3 closest friends on social media's voices; is that too much to ask from my free Google account?!

The guy could  morph into Jordan Peterson and bark: "Look, buddy, you left Harold outside for 8 hours yesterday; the Flock cameras don't lie. You're not exactly the model cat owner!! I would highly recommend that you watch this whole video and watch good!"

But then he  can soften and gather himself for: "So, what are the options, here...Well...etc."

That way, I  could get some help from Jordan and cat food info in one go. Youtube gazing cut by 48 minutes...

Jordan could weave  a Life Lesson about the duties and responsibilities of a pet owner, from a moral and ethical perspective, while "Chinacat Sunflower, by The Grateful Dead plays, from the spot in the song where I paused a video of it recently -several videos in one, my Jordan Peterson fix satiated, my resolve to get Harold the kind of cat food that is like people food, or maybe just force him to join me in the sardine diet...

Alas, AI is  too far back in its dark ages, it can't even do this simple stuff on Youtube videos...smh (shaking my head, mom)

So, yeah, last  night I walked to the Quarter so I could use streetcar money on liquor, and it began to sprinkle lightly as soon as I'd arrived there.

And that was  one of the 5 times that it started raining after I went out. The other 4 were literally me looking through the glass of the exit door, and noticing that, though overcast in  gray, at least it wasn't raining. Then, within seconds of stepping outside, feeling the first few (big) drops start falling.

Well, let me  process this through the newly patched Python3 script and see if there are any unwanted side effects from me linking the script that decorates the blog text with the one that is compiling a dictionary of every word I have ever used in all the documents I can find, plus 20 years of  this Street Musician Daniel blog.

I have used  just shy of 43 thousand different words..

I have worked  alongside Meta AI, with which I have had discussions on the topic of words such as "skeezer," which somehow was used 847 times in  (all I could gather from my lifetime of) my writings.

3 or 4 New Words

...a day, these days...
The analysis, citing Heap's Law...  

Heap's Law (or Herdan's Law) is an empirical formula in computational linguistics that describes how the size of a vocabulary grows with the length of a text.

As a document or corpus gets longer, you encounter new words rapidly at first, but the rate of finding brand-new vocabulary slows down over time because common words repeat. Mathematically, it is expressed as $V = k N^{\beta}$, where $V$ is the number of unique words (vocabulary size), $N$ is the total number of words (token count), and $k$ and $\beta$ are parameters typically tuned to the language (with $\beta$ usually falling between $0.4$ and $0.6$).

A word is  not considered a typo if it is used in at least 5 other places. Given that typos often come from missing a letter but hitting one of its neighbors on the keypad, I argued that a more robust method of insuring that "teh" doesn't make it into the Dictionary of Daniel Coined Words, as I tend to turn "the" into that when typing fast. Good, I'm just about to teh end of this post! -type of thing...

You have just read 1,011 words

Cryptical Envelopement

Wednesday, the 5th  -just like it probably say's just above; provided I hit the 'send' key within the next 8 and a half hours...

I had my  pen run out on me one paragraph or so into yesterday's 'morning pages' edition of 3 pages of stream of consciousness, long-hand (as opposed to short-hand) writing; to be done every single morning, first thing, for the rest of the life of the initiate into The Artist's Way...

For the rest  of your life, first thing upon waking up; when your only hope of recording a dream persist, but only if you grab a pen and notepad before even putting your feet on the floor..

Yesterday morning, I  woke up from The Second Sleep with the name of the song "Cryptical Envelopement" having come to me, and I believe, woken me up through its own volition.

I had been  trying to think of that name, which I could have retrieved within seconds on my phone, for about a week.

When Jacob and  I were busking at the Lilly Pad last weekend, I forget which day, we played "Chinacat Sunflower," and then I ran into difficulties in going from that song into the "I Know You, Rider" that the Grateful Dead (heretofore to be refrerred to by the nomenclature: "the Dead") always* went into after Chinacat Sunflower.

It is one  of the few times in the past year probably , when I have attempted to "think" my way through a musical passage. Trying, in this case, to reconcile the key of G mixolodian with the one of D mixolodian that it goes into.

Instead of a  'passing chord,' the Dead use a passing 9 minute jam. I know I should just put on, say, September 11th, 1981 (the Greek Theater show that cemented September 11th in the annuls of Music History, in my opinion -I think they may have sold their souls in exchange for a magical night of music out of them, and 20 years of nothing majorly bad occurring on US soil, for the people who weren't there...).

And I could  sit with my guitar and, in as long as it took to listen to the passage, come up with the gist of the passing jam; but I have been waiting for it to come to me out of the ether.

Just like the  song title "Cryptical Envelopement" did, and jarred me out of slumber.

After the clunky  transition having been the hands down worst mangling of music all night last weekend, I thought of "The Eleven," and started playing the chord changes to it, pointing out to Jacob that we were then, for better or worse, in 11/8 time.

I used to  play The Eleven, back in 1985, and even included the prelude to it, that the Dead always* used to do, as a transition to "The Eleven."

I never liked  the fact that it seems to have been a bone of contention, just where Cryptical Envelopement ends and The Eleven begins. I seem to recall on one of the live albums, a clear band existing, wide enough so you can find it with a needle -like the veins Jerry Garcia might have looked for on his toes, but I digress- but with no interruption in the music if going from one song to the next -as if the lone groove that usually carries the needle silently to the next song, actually has music on it..

I may be  wrong, else how could a DJ find any silence before "The Eleven" to afford her a chance to say: "I 50 is moving smoothly, we've got 54 degrees, and sunny skies over Nome, and now, here's The Grateful Dead with 'The Eleven..'"

They probably weighed  in the probability of any DJ ever playing a song in 11/8 over a public airway, even in Nome, Alaska, in the decision to separate the songs visually on the vinyl disc, while understanding that it would be a 'sin' 'to fade out then back in at any point between Cryptical Envelopement, and The Eleven."

But the title  had been eluding me and I was in no hurry to Google it; I think I wanted it to come to me randomly.

Jacob sent me  an article a few days afterwards which talked about how Chinacat Sunflower (the song we did) originally morphed into The Eleven (the some we attempted) back in the Primordial Dead days.

The day before  that, I had woken up out of a dream that Harold's tail had fallen off, leaving exposed meat at his rear end and him dying a dream death. It was similar to the entrails of a squirrel that my cat at the time had left in a pup tent that we shared in Saint Augustine in 2008. Like reusing a prop in a movie.

I woke up  and immediately confirmed that Harold had a tail, so realistic the dream had been.

I know this  is from me consuming a lot of honey, especially right before going to sleep. I was toasting bread (with only 4 ingredients) then slatereing the toast with butter sprinkling with honey and/or cocoa powder then drizzling with honey; aware of the link to bizarre dreams that this has been pretty well proven, by now. But it's hard to turn down cinnamon honey toast sometimes -such an about-face from the sardine fast that, I'm sure I'm playing games with my biology, hopefully not my longevity...

Although this blog  is scheduled to continue auto-posting sporadically for the next 8,000 years or so. I've had to move a few into the future when some of those dates have encroached upon the present.

"It's 7,999, everyone.  Happy New Year!!! Let's party like it's 1999!" type of stuff.. "Thanks for your loyalty, Constant Reader..."

Anyways..I am really  tempted to replace the '3 pages of stream of consciousness long-hand writing' with doing the same thing as a blog post, only I have to consult Julia Cameron, the author of "The Artist's Way," with regards to whether or not this will be counterproductive, or not. I can imagine her saying that it's the brain's connection to the writing hand and the strengthening of the synapses between what is coming from the subconscious, to the manifestation of some form of art (or, as Metallica puts it: "All I've held, all I've known, never shined through in what I've shown..").

Julia would probably  say that it has to be pen and paper, and that using a keyboard will further hobble my aspirations...

But, maybe I'm  painting it black...

*anything pertaining to  the Dead can be safely asterisked -Dan's Law

You have just read 1,104 words

Boogie Man Shood Away

Here it is,  about 4 pm. and it's Thursday, the 30th of July.

I am walking  a lot better after consulting Meta AI (instead of going to a doctor) about the nerve damage to my left leg. I would say 'foot,' but I believe I pinched a nerve in my knee when I was kneeling on it awkwardly trying to sing into a microphone that my guitar cable was too short to reach all the way to. I wound up doing a half hour long track in this unbalanced attitude, and when I was done, and got up to walk, my left foot was totally numb, and stayed that way for most of the next day and for the next week I was walking around with my left foot flopping on the ground like a duck's foot.

Three weeks later,  now, and there is still pain.

But, having tried  an Ibuprofen or two out of what Jr. gave me, and also a couple of the gabapentin that he gave me a handful of, I can't really be sure if there is pain being muted, or very little pain.

I guess it's  not important enough for me to have the use of one of my legs; because I haven't mustered up the resolve to just do a 15 day water only fast, and slug down Omega-3 capsules throughout.

That is what  I would prescribe to myself. But, I have also drawn up an extensive 'good habits' regimen for myself, which starts with a good night's sleep and then, first thing in the morning....

But, let me  stop here, because the good night's sleep has eluded me for months now, it seems.

In fact, right  now I'm probably going to go home and watch 4 hours of Youtube, and if Jacob contacts me about going out to busk, I might make some excuse about the 94 degree heat, paired with this being the slowest month of the year.

Now that Jr.  is once again on friendly terms with me; there is always the option to go up to his place with my guitar and drink copious amounts of vodka and smoke weed with him...

I haven't been  so inclined...yet. But just having the possibility open shoos away the boogie man of wanting something just because you feel like you can' have it, type of thing.

Like, waking up  with no cigarettes makes you want one 5 times more than the supply of them you unconsciously smoked up, not because you were craving them, but more like on auto pilot.

You have just read 426 words

Salmon For Me, Mice For Thee

It's already 3  o' clock in the afternoon...Wednesday, July 29th, 2026...

Rodent infestation in front of my apartment?

I don't think so...

I was woken  up to be introduced to my new caseworker, Monique around 11 or so, I had been asleep 5 and a half hours, but before that I had gotten in a couple, after falling asleep during a chackra balancing meditation that I let play at the same time that I was listening back to stuff I had recorded on guitar, over a drum track...

The past few  days, salmon has materialized out of various places.

After deciding to  go back to being Jr's "friend" and forgive him for saying "good!" after I had banged my wrist, and was in pain, I went to his place for the first time in maybe 5 months, where he opened the cabinets above his stove and invited me to "Help yourself!" to whatever food was in there.

My knee jerk  reaction was to say: "That's alright," as I thought about Jr's diet, and about his 80 word or so vocabulary which he has on repeat.

But then I  noticed the cans of salmon, wrapped in the inviting 'wild caught' blue labels...

"You can have  all of this...for Harold," he said.

The day before,  the 'senior food boxes' had arrived bearing in each a can of the same kind of salmon. So, the 'sardine' fast has gone unterrupted, despite my having spent all of my money for the month...

I'm still not  used to everything I want just materializing persuant to the gratitude I'm able to conjure up, despite 'not having' any of it...

I've been keeping  up with the routine of writing the morning pages first thing in the morning, then bringing the laptop to the Holy Ground Pub, where hopefully the additional good habit of making a blog post will be inserted into the itinerary.

Having gotten bored  with Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Russell Brand and their ilk, I've been able to salvage about 4 hours from each day. I've replaced those videos with positive affirmations and 430khz vibrational offerings.

All the helpful  videos worth their salt advise getting a good night's sleep, eating healthily, and avoiding drugs and alcohol. And, by the way, it's the 430khz vibration that's helping you; please like and subscribe, type of thing...'

You have just read 378 words

I'll Pass

Tuesday morning and  I was at the Holy Ground Pub an hour before they opened at 1 pm.

And, here I  am...

There's no time  to read any more of The Hobbit if I'm going to fit in some other task that I could get out of the way and not have to worry about on the busier busking days.

I have enough  salmon for a day; but my left ankle still has the tendonitis, which I didn't help by having some cereal with powdered milk and peanut butter stirred in, in a moment of weakness around midnight..

The gabapentin that  Doctor Dom (aka "Jr.") gave me a handful of, out of which I swallowed a couple before pausing to ask him what a 'normal' dose is supposed to be deadened the pain enough so that I might have thought it was getting better.

He also gave  me a handful of Ibuprofen, some little orange pills and, best of all a lot of Omega-3 fatty acid capsules. I was kind of amazed to see that he was prescribed them; since it might cost the pharma industry down the line if it keeps him from getting Parkinson's Disease, or Alzheimer's. Nothing against those two individuals, I'll just pass on their diseases...

You have just read 210 words

Where Did All The Tiny Dancers Go?

Sunday, at exactly  12 o' clock (commonly referrred to as "noon") I woke up.

I had less  anxiety than the day before, to a degree, because of the 14 dollars that I had split with Jacob after busking for maybe 2 hours with him the night before.

I had messed  up my finances and run out of money sooner than in any previous month since I started getting "retirement" benefits from Social Security.

There were too  many instances of me staying in to drink wine and stuff my face, rather than going out to busk, with at least a whole week of "90% chance" of rain hanging over us having factored into those decisions.

The tendonitis, which  I'm guessing it is, in my left ankle has been lingering, and I can just barely put all my weight on that foot.

I hesitate to  go to any emergency room, though I might do so just to get some kind of diagnosis through x-rays or whatever else they would use, and then eschew whatever chemicals might be prescribed to me, in favor of natural remedies; from websites that I'll have to find using Results Hunter, or Duck Duck Go, which will load very slowly, perhaps after a 'no internet connection' episode or two and play with glitches and a lot of buffering.

Before returning to  Google to undoubtedly find, at the top of my feed, some video entitled: "Why (beet juice extract) is a ripoff and (extra virgin olive oil) a scam and you should immediately see your doctor, who will talk some sense into you!"

It is incumbent  upon me to go see Elizabeth, clean her cat boxes, and accept some dry cat food and litter from her, for Harold, whose fault it is not that his owner spent money on wine and THC gummies that could have went towards those items...

It was the  breaking of a string, without my having a brand new replacement which curtailed the busking session, which otherwise might have gone on for another half hour and, I don't doubt, another 20 bucks for us to split. This being the global effect of my excesses over the past couple weeks. At least I got the rent paid, replenished my kratom supply, got a 35,000 puff nicotine vape (I'm counting them), and stuff for the house like toilet bowl sanitizers, and a couple new journal tablets and pens, as well as some 'disposable income' type purchases, like a couple vinyl albums, using money that, I knew at the time I would wind up wishing I had back...

I was able  to accomplish a goal that I have set for myself and ran through a new song about a dozen times, then wrote the lyrics out in the hours before going out to busk, so that a brand new, previously unheard at the Lilly Pad, piece was performed, with myself only missing (ad lib-ing) about half of those lyrics.

This gives me  a really good feeling; and drives away the imagined sense that people in Lilly's neighborhood are thinking: ...not this song again whenever I do one of the dozen or so from a set list that's growth became stunted after I fell into a slothfulness engendered by realizing that I could drink a few shots of brandy, smoke a bowl of weed, then just "auto-pilot it" through the same set of songs.

A busker should  avoid becoming sick of hearing the songs that she is playing, because the mood is contagious. Plus, it shuts down the connection between thought and emotion. This is inevitable, and why Elton John said he is able to feed off the enthusiasm of the audience for the material, but has long ago stopped envisioning tiny dancers in his head while up on stage...

You have just read 628 words