Lights, Camera...Action!

I have spent the last couple days, since Friday night, hiding out, across the Mississippi River, in Algiers.
Being so close to the day of departure is almost something that Trouble smells out and does all it can to sabotage plans and frustrate dreams i.e. get you stuck in New Orleans with no money or posessions and even less than no hope of ever getting out; a guppy in an aquarium full of bottom feeders...
Phone Lost
I don't know if it was a freudean slip on my part, but, Saturday night into Sunday Morning, 12:36 was actually the time that I knocked off after a $60 night where I felt like my harp was putting out a magnetic field, hypnotising tourists and drawing them to my tip jar.
I went around the corner to eat some delicious food, out of a stryrofoam, which I didn't realise was leaking until I felt the olive oil running down my leg) and took out my phone.
So close to the eve of departure, I was thinking about the higher likelyhood of being searched by police when out on the road and looking unfamiliar, yet familiar (they are sick of seeing "traveling people"). Local police have already concocted ways to, and have, searched you; more than once, ran your ID across the country in their idle time behind their laptops, etc. -maybe even phoned jurisdictions that your petty misdemeanor record has placed you, and asked "What da ya know 'bout dis guy?"
"Oh, McKenna! Where do I start..."
I started to flip through my phones pictures, deleting all that could be deemed insensitive or inappropriate; which just left a few pictures of me and Sue and a handful of tastefully rendered Playboy centerfolds that I once found online...I was googling "Marylyn Monroe" or something :)
I remember having trouble with the touch screen because of the olive oil on my fingers. I remember deleting a bunch of pictures, preparing to travel "clean," but I don't really recall setting the phone down beside me on the marble steps in the darkness and then later, picking up my pack and my guitar and walking off, leaving it behind.
I woke up Sunday morning, Saint Patrick's Day, pretty paranoid.
One of the street sweepers found it... and turned it on and the first thing he saw were the Playboy pics that I chose not to delete (because any red blooded man likes to look at a little tastefull photographed ass, every once in a while; its very American and the Hefner estate is a celebration of the sucess of free enterprise in this great land.)
And, the first thing he does is one of two things; -he keeps the phone, tries to make it his and leaves the pictures on the phone, like they came with it; and only he and a few of his close street sweeping buddies ever see them -or, he turns the phone in to the police, to put in their "lost and found" box.
Can you see where this is going?
Maybe the police, upon seeing certain pictures on the phone, see a "red flag" flash before their eyes and automatically turn it over to sex crimes whose policy in cases like these is to detain the guy for "routine questioning" to ask him if he's a serial rapist, and if so, what's he doing in The French Quarter (that's what we really want to know...)
And search him...
As I layed under a holly bush Sunday, drinking Bush and listening to my little radio, while across the river the big Saint Patrick's Day parades were raging down almost every street and when I could actually smell a 100 dollar night wafting across the river every time the breeze blew a certain way, I thought:
I'm walking down the street and some scary dude, (scary because he is dressed in almost business attire, accessorised with a badge under his lapel), approaches me with a chishire grin and asks: "Excuse me sir, did you lose your phone?"
At this point, I need to say "I don't own a phone, I'm saving up for one as a matter of fact..."
Then, when he produces the phone and shows me "a picture of myself, taking a picture of myself with the very phone," I would have to say: "Those are my Facebook pictures! What's someone doing with my Facebook pictures of Sue and I?!? -Maybe she is being stalked or something, she's very paranoid!"
All this crap would be necessary, because I've learned a lot about the presence of a guy in a suit with a badge under his lapel.
Well, now he's just going to just walk off, or
"Ok, Mr. McKenna. Why don't you just put your hands on the back of the squad car -you're not under arrest; we're just making sure that you don't have anything on you that you could hurt us with, while we're talking to you. Is this your backpack? -you were carrying it...
Then, as I lean on the car with my legs spread, they find a joint or a bud of weed that some reveller on Bourbon Street threw in my backpack while I had my head bent over, wailing on the harmonica -might have even said "Here you go, buddy" but I didn't hear him...(it's happened more than once)...
Now, they have the whole 30 days that they will be holding me in jail (on a bond amount just out of my reach -just a little more than I was carrying on me when I was nabbed -darn the luck) -
They have 30 days during which they will have the luxury of sending my phone over to "forensics," where they will "undelete" not only the photos that I erased on the marble steps because I didn't want police to see them, they will see the photos which were deleted way back in Mobile, the one's that contained shots from a nudist beach, which took the authorities 70 days to determine were not child pornography.
I was never this paranoid in my life, maybe Sue has rubbed off on me, but...
I left Howard a note, telling him that I was going to err on the side of caution, because I lost my phone and "my whole life is on it..." or words to that effect, and that I would meet him near the truckstop this afternoon at 4 p.m., where we will go and do laundry and shower and eat and drink and wait around and talk to people that might be going west.
I will buy either a prepaid phone with a camera built into it and just use it as a camera, radio, stopwatch, alarmclock etc, and not shell out for the unlimited service until I determine that I can keep up this pace of making 30 to 50 bucks (or more) consistently. Except those phones only have 1.3 megapixels and I don't know if that quality is up to the standards of this blog.....