Possession Is 9 Tenths Of the Law

Went out and only made 17 bucks Friday night; but I was feeling listless after about an hour and a half and had run out of energy.

I will have to pull the reigns in on the late afternoon doobie, as it has been making me groggy towards the busking end of the day....
Ben My Fren
A friend whom I haven't seen since 1993 is planning upon visiting NOLA in July; and I have told him that I can put him up at my apartment.
To the right is the only current photo I could find of him; one in which he kind of looks like the former Mayor Ray Flynn of Boston.

Nevertheless, his visit could liven up what is usually a slow period, marked only by the July 4th extravaganza which is more often than not a "dud" for buskers.

Phone Skeezer Wakes Me Up

I was woken up by a guy calling and asking me if I was "Danielle."
Before I could answer; and I had paused to consider correcting his pronunciation of my name; he apparently recognized my voice from my hello, because he jumped in with: "Yeah, this is Danielle; I talked to you yesterday about..."
He is a guy from the company that sells some kind of pill which is probably mostly creatine monohydrate, that promises to increase strength and stamina, etc.
I used to use creatine and can remember increasing my maximum bench pressing weight from 152 pounds to 172 pounds in about 20 days.
I can remember waking up in the morning and feeling like my muscles had grown in my sleep, as evidenced by my skin feeling like it was more tightly fitting.

This could be you, Danielle!

That Mark McGuire guy was using creatine monohydrate the year that he hit 77 (I think it was) home runs. He decided to get off the stuff the next year and just became frustrated with his diminishing strength (and plus, the super strong muscles put wear and tear on the bones that are supporting them in lifting more weight and running faster, etc.).
I don't think that creatine powders were ever on the list of prohibited performance enhancing substances, but perhaps McGuire didn't want his legacy tainted by even a legal P.E.S.
So, I had called about getting a "free sample," as advertised during a break in one of those late night AM radio talk shows that I now frequently listen to, since my laptop is on the blink.
All they wanted was about 7 bucks to cover "shipping."
First of all, there is no way that sending a less than half pound bottle of pills is going to cost 7 bucks to ship. They might have been more honest in adding "and handling" to that.
Second of all, the 7 bucks had to be paid for by credit card, the number of which the young lady who answered the phone and whom I at first thought was a robot, asked for.
The reason that I thought that she was a machine was the fact that she meticulously over-pronounced every word, as if reading off of phonetic symbols for the words. She would have pronounced every syllable of "meticulously," for example.
Here is what I think the scam is.
You give them your credit card number over the phone, they promise to rush you your free sample.
You get your free sample, along with some kind of message saying something like: "In order to keep receiving your monthly shipment, do need do absolutely nothing at all; that's right!
Every first of the month we will automatically ship your month's supply bottle out and only bill your credit card the unbelievably low price of $89.95.
And, of course, you can cancel any time; as long as you send the label off the bottle along with your reason for cancelling, written in red ink on a 5 X 7 file card; and please send the bottle back in the original box with the bar code undamaged by the opening of it.
And then, even if you cancel before the first box even arrives in the mail, they will be into the next "billing cycle" or something and all cancellations from that point on take effect for the next month.
So, it will be almost inevitable that they will get the $89.99 out of your account; they have your number after all, and "possession is 9 tenths of the law," someone once said.