Tuesday, October 4, 2016

The Game

10 Days Before Elvis Appearance


On this Tuesday night, I sit here and realize that I am less than 4 hours from having 194 bucks put on my food card.

This is good, in one sense, and bad in the sense that time is "flying" by and I will be 54 years old a mere 8 days from now.

Last night, I was full of energy for busking, after having drank a cup of strong coffee with raw cane sugar added to it.

The tingling sensation in one of my ears, I strongly suspect is due to drinking a lot of coffee, but I haven't been able to isolate the cause by stemming the coffee flow.

I decided not to go out and play, but rather to catch up on some reading and coffee drinking and watch a couple of movies.

I watched the movie called "The Game," with Michael Douglas.

It was my second time watching it.

I had seen it about 20 years ago, and after that viewing, had deemed it my "all time favorite movie," even though I was having paranoid delusions that "the game" depicted in the movie was being played upon me in real life.

This was due to a combination of some very strong weed, combined with the fact that I was watching the thing at the house of my, new at the time, Russian friends, having just become well enough acquainted with them to have been invited over to their expensive house.

They were very cautious people and I had worked for almost a year with Alex, before the invitation came.

They had a large screen TV, something that was a novelty at the time, and a lot of other trappings of wealth, like the best weed. Alex had a beautiful wife and 2 beautiful kids, who spoke fluent English.

The seed of paranoia started to sprout as the weed kicked in, and as it was revealed in the movie that the main character's birthday was the same as mine, October 12th, and it was right around that date that we were watching it. In the movie "the game" was a birthday gift to the main character, that involved a bunch of actors setting up "real life" situations to mess with the main character.

A Story For Another Blog Post

My Russian friends indeed had designs upon me -single man that I was at the time- their befriending of me, and invitations into their home, was preparatory to them proposing that I marry a relative of theirs, so that she could skirt certain immigration laws, send her son to medical school as a US, rather than foreign citizen, saving something like 25 thousand dollars in the process, etc. I would eventually acquiesce to the deal and live like an aristocrat for a year, but that is something for another blog post.
The point here, is that their choice of "The Game" as a movie that we could gather and watch was ironic, given that the whole family had plans for me that they weren't divulging yet; as I was kind of being "auditioned" for the role of husband of their cousin, Nina.

It was strange enough being stoned and sitting with a Russian family who spoke their native tongue in between conversing with me; having, of course grown up being taught that "The Reds" were the enemy (and that my new friends were probably spies) and having the added dynamic that they were actually up to something.

It crossed my mind that "the game" was being enacted on me (as my own birthday present) and that they were all actors in it; and that the movie being about the same game was the epitome of irony.

Seeing the movie again last night was a slight letdown, as I had thought the story line more plausible when I saw it 20 years ago. Last night, not so much (...what if one little detail went wrong, like a car wouldn't start that was supposed to drive by as part of the ruse...?)

You Get What You Ask For

I have been cleaning my apartment, in vague anticipation of renting a place on my couch to someone.
The first two people who had inquired about renting it, I suspect had reneged for the same reason that they had been directed to my couch: they had Googled "the absolute cheapest place to crash in New Orleans." Being "financially challenged" thus, they are probably out there somewhere, unable to even come up with the 20 bucks a night that I asked for.

One of my concerns about asking such a low amount is that it will attract bargain hunters, who might try to push the issue and squeeze "just one more night" out of me, or ask me if $72.89 is OK (instead of $80) etc.

I don't want to have to go against the grain of my nature and be an asshole landlord type to ward off skeezers, but maybe having had Louise the tarot card reader stay here was a small blessing in that I learned by the experience, a few of the things to look out for.
Telling Louise that I basically had a "free ride" here, through my status as a disabled veteran was my biggest mistake, as it wormed its way into her brain, and her ghetto mentality interpreted that to mean that I would get over it, should she give me practically nothing as far as rent.

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