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The Snowball Song has busted out huge with at least 4 people having listened to, shared and in a couple cases "favorited" it.
Week of April 04, 2016 to April 11, 2016
 yipper

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Followers: 71

I woke up this wednesday at the "habitual" time of around 12:30 PM.


It has been almost a year and a half since I slept under the wharf where the Natchez steamboat would wake me up at 10 AM with its calliope, before steaming away at 11 AM, to return at some time around 1 PM, give (usually) or take a few minutes.
So, this had been the time that I had get up, pack up and run up to the CVS for my first energy drink of the day.&nbsp

I still wake up at around that time, even though now I often have only 3 or 4 hours of sleep in me then, and so resume sleeping until about 3 PM, which is another time that I seem to wake up at frequently, without the aid of an alarm clock.

Having found out that the problem with my laptop is not the AC adapter, I now am on a mission to get a small screwdriver, so that I can open the thing up. I have rationalized away my fear that, upon opening it, all the parts are going to explode out of the thing like those paper and spring snakes that fly from canisters, making a loud "boing!," and sending tiny computer parts to every corner of the room. That only happens with Swiss watches, right?
There is rain in the forecast, to include "heavy thunderstorms."
I went out last (Tuesday) night and played from 10 PM until just about 3 hours later, and made 16 dollars in the process.
I am back to using the C Major harmonica, that the Lidgleys of London had sent me, with its one missing reed, as it is a Marine Band "soloist," and  the remaining notes on it sound better than the remaining notes on the G Major Hohner (Ol' Standby) with its own missing reed, or the E Flat Major Marine Band with its 2 or 3 (I lost count) missing reeds.
Plus, being in the key of C Major, it opens up a whole world of "easy" songs that I know. I don't think I could have done yet another 20 minute "extended" version of "Scarlet Begonias/Fire On The Mountain," by The Grateful Dead; to fill that vacuum in my E-Flat repertoire.
Game Over?
The 16 Dollar night could have been "better," had I the lack of scruples to take advantage of a fairly inebriated lady named Heidi who, at first stood about 10 feet away, towards Lilly's other stoop, making me wonder, since I couldn't see her too well in the glare from the lamp post where I used to play, if she were related to the travelling kids who had made some inroads into encroaching upon the Lilly Pad; and had to be run off, in one case, by Lilly; and who had fallen asleep on the opposite stoop, in the other case.
Someone had apparently lit a small fire at the spot where I sit, as evidenced by a small pile of ashes and several unburned ends of stick matches, arranged in a teepee like configuration.
It looked to me, when I discovered it Monday night, after the French Quarter Festival had run its coarse, and the kids might have left to hop a train headed for the next big "walking around with your dogs and your signs asking everybody for something for free" event somewhere, that perhaps some kind of ritual had taken place. The conflagration may have been part of a dog skeezing, dirty, traveling, Rainbow kid ritual, with the objective being the placing of a hex upon the Lilly Pad.
I stopped playing at one point, when I was just playing familiar chords in the key of the harp and making up lyrics as I went along.
"You're doing good; keep going!," said the lady from the glare of light who would turn out to be Heidi.
She walked over and, saying: "I don't have any more money," bent down to put a dollar in the tiposaurus' jar, and then added: "Well, I do have more, but you stopped playing..." As she was saying this, a bill fell to the sidewalk behind her. A five, I noticed.
I pointed it out to her, though, rather than hoping that she walked away without noticing it.
She just shrugged her shoulders, as if disowning herself of it. I put it on my guitar case between myself and the stoop, where she sat down; giving her the option of taking it back or not.
A closer look revealed a lady who seemed pretty well dressed and well made over. The tattoos which had made me wonder at a distance if she were linked to the traveling kids, up close looked more like works of art, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had been done by a famous and expensive "ink"er somewhere.
Even her somewhat mystical "goddess of the night" appearance, seemed to have been carefully crafted and sculpted and pampered, and not an outcrop of her being known as "the witch of the trailer park" somewhere.
I wound up playing for her for about a half hour for the 6 bucks that she wound up leaving.

During that time she had reached a few times for a cigarette lighter which she kept in the pocket of a little purse that was bulging with something the color of the new large bills. I probably could have tried to skeeze her, because I think that she became so engrossed in the music and conversation that it never crossed her mind to leave me a big chunk of cash. I might have grabbed my tip jar, looked in it and then sighed: "Not a very good money night..." but just didn't.
Of course, a skeezer came along.
First off, the sight of anyone stopping for a busker is a heads up to them that the person at least probably has money, and not only that, has demonstrated a certain propensity to give to someone; anyone.
That may have been borne out of appreciation for the music, or it may be that the person is generous in a more general sense; which is where that skeezer would come in.
They almost can't resist. The thought that the woman may be inebriated enough to be unknowingly dropping money on the sidewalk, for example, is just too powerful in them.
The guy was a young black man, fairly large and dressed in kind of a college basketball style getup.
The first thing that he did was offer me his hand to shake.
Skeezers do this because there are certain nerve receptors in the brain that are triggered by the act of shaking hands; that have been conditioned through a lifetime of experiences of shaking hands with someone whom is respected, or whom one wants to show respect to.

He complimented my playing, verbally, not by throwing a tip. And, then, satisfied that he had dispatched with me, took his seat beside Heidi on the other side of me and began to skeeze.
I soon heard Heidi tell him that she didn't have any cash on her.
"Good for her," I thought.
Heidi must have been sophisticated and cosmopolitan enough to have known how to take away any hope in him of skeezing her, as, within less than a minute, he stood up and prepared to leave. But not before coming back to me and asking me for a cigarette. ...they just have to get something; anything, it seems, I thought.
I told him that I only had a couple left, to last the rest of the night "..'til I can get to a store..."
;">Of course, I said this to test him to see if he was sociopathic enough to take one of a guy's last two cigarettes; and so that I could say the word "store," to remind him of where cigarettes really come from -not the stork, and not whomever you see smoking in public.
"Come on, I know you have a cigarette," he persisted, with a half a glance towards my tip jar that had maybe 9 dollars in it, and the conspicuous absence of any half glance towards Heidi, (whom he by now, must have gleaned was a worldly, sophisticated lady able to see right through his skeeze) which was meant to say, without words, "I know she gonna break you off something."
But, I was offended by his questioning my integrity in relating to him that I only had a couple left; and I held my ground.
Another "subtle" glance at the tiposaurus jar.  ....yeah, I know you can snatch my jar with the 9 bucks in it and run down the street in your basketball shoes...
"Well, let me get the rest of that one..." he said of the one in my mouth.
Unbelievable; they just have to get something; anything; for free