Time To Hire A Financial Planner

Temptation Comes Fast After Fast
Friday was a dud.
I left the library thinking that it was to be the night of the "art walk," it being the first Friday of the month, and all. I walked towards the store, intent upon getting a single beer to put me in an artsy frame of mind. It was raining lightly, to my dismay, but, making everything look like an impressionist painting...

The art walk may have been going on away from my notice, as, I was eschewing it for my favorite spot, opting for quietude over foot traffic.

I started drinking more beer, in between sporadic passers by. My playing was annoying myself; I couldn't think of the perfect song, and I wasn't concentrating enough. As the evening came, I was sinking further away from the mood for playing music.

A Mockery

I eventually moved to a spot in the doorway of an Asian restaurant, whose owner hates the homeless; hates them for begging, and hates them because they don't work, and rather beg. The food there is from somewhere similar to the photo on the left. I think The Buddha works there.

He (the owner, not The Buddha) stands in front of his business, wearing a hat which seems to be from out of the 1940's. It is a "top" hat, I would say, if I had to guess, but not as tall as The Cat In The Hat's. The rest of his attire complements the hat, also. I always see him in black and white, for this reason.

He pays attention to which homeless guys sally forth from the beer store next door to his Asian restaurant. If the hapless soul is carrying beer, then the guy who wears the hat has been known to call the police and provide a description of the perpetrator, and the location of the park bench upon which he is drinking; this being so that the officers can approach stealthily from the rear. More than one homeless guy has spent 4 days in jail, after being nabbed in this way, on a tip from the guy in the hat, who runs the Asian restaurant.

His story is that he was homeless himself once, for 18 months, and he would go to a truck stop and tell a trucker that if he (the trucker) would buy a can of some kind of polish, he (the restaurant owner, who wears the hat and used to be homeless) would polish the guy's truck. He would pitch the trucker something to the effect of: "If you like the job I do, then, all I ask is to be able to keep the rest of the [polishing agent stuff]"

As he tells the story, and BTW, he only speaks to me because he sees in me a homeless person who is trying to work for his keep, much like a truck polisher; as he tells the story, he did such a fine job, getting even the wheel spokes (if trucks have them) that the driver would not only let him keep the polishing agent, but one guy even threw him 100 dollars.

He would then work all night polishing other trucks and buying his own agent, netting himself hundreds of dollars, something that the bums in the park could do also, if they would stop buying beer at the beer store next door to his restaurant, and drinking it in the park katty corner to his restaurant.

I have also heard, as a rebuttal to his story, from someone else that it is the wife of the guy, who owns the restaurant, and who picked him up off the street, dusted him off, married him, put a hat on his head and ushered him into a lifestyle which affords him the opportunity to condescend to the homeless, saving him from a worse fate (if there is one.) He wears the hat, she wears the pants. So, there is the other side to that coin...

He has posted notices on his windows which caution persons NOT to give to any beggars, as the city provides everything that they (the homeless) need, and the proceeds of their mendicancy, would only tempt them down the path of destruction - that path which leads from the beer store to the park benches.

I got the word "mendicancy" from Mark Twain.

So, I played right in the doorway of his restaurant, unbeknown to that worthy. I say unbeknown st, because he surely would have run me off, had he beknew about it. I had a beer next to me, just for the heightening of the irony. Mark would appreciate that.

I got the word unbeknown from out of my ass.


I think I made about 12 or 14 bucks; the amount that some people walking about probably spent to park their car.
I slept again, on the entrance way to the Christ Church. So far, they haven't followed the example of Jesus and thrown me "out of the temple."
I was on top of the sleeping bag, which I found at the abandoned factory spot. (I forgot to blog about it, exciting as the discovery was...)
It was wrapped in a plastic bag when I found it. I let it sit there for 3 weeks, to ascertain its status to be "abandoned." It's one of those "army" ones. I hide it in an olive green colored bush on the side of the Christ Church, where it blends in so well that only God can see it.
I woke up with $9.03, up $1.60 from yesterday. Time to think about hiring a financial planner.