Land Of Stuff Sitting There

• The Day Following The Day After Christmas
• 5th Consecutive Nights Off Due To Weather Imminent
• Swine Swiping Sortie

It is actually cold enough here in New Orleans to preclude any busking.

I might go to the Quarter with my guitar on my back to basically walk around looking for free stuff laying around. The guitar, I would bring in case I ran into the guy who offers 10 or 20 dollars to hear "some Dylan," or something. I could certainly knock out a quick song before my fingers started to become numb.

And, I am almost out of food and have very little money. It will be 8 days and a few hours before my food stamp money comes. I guess I could take one of those days to visit the food stamp office for the second time to remind them that I don't make so much money that I can't use the 60 bucks or so every month that they cut out of my food money after I was mistaken to have told them that I did.

And I have to get cat food. And toilet paper.

I got to the Uxi Duxi right at 4 PM, and just as Dom, the guy who is working today, was going out on his one hour lunch break.

Dom is yet another gay person who works at the Uxi Duxi. The money can't be that bad; as I have seen what looked like at least 40 bucks in the tip jar that sits by the register on several occasions; and anybody using plastic is asked if they would like to add a tip, so the jar doesn't even show all the tips.

So, 40 bucks on top of the, say 64, bucks that they would make as their wage for 8 hours, plus whatever tip amounts people give off their plastic cards, and that would be not bad money.

Of course, Dom might spend a lot of the money on stuff like a robe for his boyfriend, whom he lives with. His boyfriend is probably gainfully employed working for another gay boss somewhere.

Of course they probably wouldn't be caught dead not living in some trendy, kind of upscale apartment, furnished with expensive things like 90 gallon aquariums replete with $120 little fish; and an expensive 4 post bed, etc. because they like to watch the little fishies swim around before having gay sex.

But, Dom is  just about due to return from his lunch break, and I will be able to bring this laptop inside where hopefully my fingers will thaw out a bit and I can finish this.

But, yeah, the Uxi Duxi didn't hire me; and all of the people they have hired are gay. I'm just stating that as a matter of fact...

I suppose being broke and out of work tonight, and sitting out in the cold while pretty boy runs his laundry errand or whatever, before returning to his well paying job that he holds only because he holds another mans balls, and knowing that he is probably going to return late, just because he knows that I am waiting to get back inside where it is warm; to punish me because I'm not gay, is what is bugging me right now...

Ok, I'm back inside the place now...

This kind of sucks; as I realize that I have not really planned ahead for a day like this. It would have been bad enough if the weather were nice.

The double whammy would be that, the increase in my discomfort that the lower temperature would produce would come with a proportional decrease in my earnings.

45 feels like 43

But, looking at it scientifically, it is 45 degrees outside now, right at the cutoff temperature for busking. After an hour spent typing on this laptop outside, I was just beginning to struggle with fine control over my fingers. So...

What Matters

Well, the good thing is that I'm playing well lately, and can have one of the new sets of strings that the Lidgleys sent on my guitar and it tuned up in about 15 minutes.

Howard gave me a circular from Sweetwater Music on Christmas. He had bought something through that company, probably something to amplify his TV, because he is pretty deaf, and the circular had arrived along with it. He had set it aside, thinking of me.

A Man's Studio Is His Castle

The theme of this particular month's circular, aside from gifts, gifts, gifts, was the recording of acoustic guitars!

There were a few interviews of recording engineers, who all discussed their techniques for recording acoustic guitars. Of course it seemed geared towards pushing certain Sweetwater Music products, such as the absolute best microphones for the job, and one particular compressor that is designed especially for recording acoustic guitars, but there was enough between the lines to have gotten me excited about recording my guitar. Such things as aiming the microphone at the 12th fret of the fingerboard, at a 45 degree angle to it from a foot away; is something that I just had to try for myself. I look forward to listening back to the 7 minute recording I made of myself playing Foxy Lady, by Jimi Hendrix on the Takamine, using that particular microphone positioning, just before coming here to the Uxi Duxi.

I really have to be patient and to consider the mistake free recording of one acoustic guitar part to be a successful outcome of spending an hour or so in the studio. A song doesn't have to be completely polished off in one evening, with drums, bass, backing vocals, harmonica and special effects all there.
That is where I have run into problems in the past and have had to dump more than one song and then start from scratch again. The recording of the acoustic guitar is scratch.

There is a certain immediacy that comes with playing and singing and doing the harmonica all in one go. This, I used to prioritize at the expense of sound quality, for it is better to capture an average recording of an inspired performance than to have excellent sound quality which only allows you to hear that the song isn't that good.

It reminds me of how Peter Frampton recorded one of his albums, one of the ones before his now classic live album, in a certain castle, because he wanted to capture the acoustics that 5 foot thick stone walls lend themselves towards producing.

That album sounded pretty good, I recall, but didn't succeed nearly as well as the ensuing live album, recorded in the acoustic hell of an arena.*

*I read another interview in Guitar Player where Peter said that the 25 foot high wall of Marshall speaker cabinets on the stage facing the audience were all fake, and that the sound everyone was really hearing came from a little hand-held studio amplifier backstage with a microphone propped in front of it, and another mic placed about 12 feet behind that one; to give it a few milliseconds of delay.

So, the compromise is that, I will still be able to capture my sound when I feel inspired to play, and by using a few microphone placing tricks can get a serviceable guitar sound that doesn't have to have been done in a sterile environment, on a quiet Sunday morning, with the beats having been measured out and set to a metronome that would have to be followed; further restricting the free flow of unbridled passion.

You Swine!

I'm seriously thinking about shoplifting some piece of meat or something out of the market. I think if I got caught with the cheapest kind of meat under my jacket, like a pork steak that is only priced at a few dollars, and wasn't trying to get a tenderloin steak,  then they might not make a big deal of it, if I were to get caught.

But, the fact that I have been going there the past couple years and have never stolen anything, probably means that they have given up on watching me every second that I'm in there.
That also means that I would have built up a trust that I would be betraying...

Funny how 2 days after Christmas I'm having this particular thought.

Now that I think of it; it is only pork that I am contemplating stealing. For every other food, I can wait until we have a warmer day and I can make some money to buy. I have the urge to steal pork...
I have to go there for cat food anyways.

At Howard's house on Christmas day, one of the centerpieces of the feast was indeed a huge ham. It had been cooked very well, and I had eaten more of it than anything else.

And then, I had unwittingly gotten probably a half shot of booze through the spiked fruit salad and the spiked chocolate cake and; who knows how much alcohol was in that ham?

So, maybe the devil indeed get into me, through a combination of the above.

I think if I spend my whole 2 dollars and change on food for Harold, then it will form a spiritual shield around me, as Harold is the incarnation of Krishna, come to live with me. Then it would be unlikely that I would be stopped once outside the store and interrogated about the pork steak under my jacket.

I'll probably change my mind by the time I make it to the store. Who knows, maybe there will be a pork steak sitting atop one of the trash cans, as if some Muslim bought it and then, racked with guilt, left it there. This is New Orleans, land of stuff sitting there.