Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Doing It Somewhere Else

I tried to load the Audacity program again. This time, I was armed with a litte bit more knowledge, maybe from having held the Linux book in my hands at the Goodwill Store.
I hope whomever bought that book for a dollar, after having learned through their smart-phone that the book originally sold for 35 bucks, realizes the short shelf life of books about computer knowledge. It is common to hear computer people say things like: "Everything is C++ now," which is something that was said to me in 1998, when I was holding a book about programming in the C language (minus the plus plus) "What are you studying that for?," wondered the young Russian man, who had come to this country within the past 5 years, making him about 22, I would say.

And probably a college student, and, maybe one who considered, or had considered, computer science as his major. He probably would have been told by the guidance counsellor that everything is C++ now.

I hope the person who bought that 2003 book knows the shaky nature of the speculation upon which his one dollar was invested, and that, it would only be a person like myself who would pay, oh maybe 4 dollars for it, and that's only because I am alright with knowing that in the years since it came out, everything became something else and, now 15 years later, the Linux book would be teaching a lot of things that have been deprecated and/or replaced with other software.

I'm probably going to be able to look on E-bay and find a seller of that exact book (which is arguably rare because most of them have been thrown out by now) who happens to be in the immediate area and maybe call him to say: "Look, buddy, you bought a dud. That's one dollar that you'll be lucky to ever see again. I'll give you 2 dollars, and I'll leave you my phone number, so you can think about it. I know you got it at the Goodwill on Tulane Avenue on Monday, in fact, I know a lot about you, Leonard...but I deviate. Think about it, Leonard, 2 bucks *click*....).

Maybe I let the book go, at the subconscious level.

I knew I would have to ride to the Uxi Duxi with both my laptop and the 6 pound, slightly water damaged thing (It was printed a couple years before hurricane Katrina) in my backpack, and that can put a crack in the laptop's screen if not packed right. Or, I would have to separate the two and carry the book on my handlebars in a plastic bag, which would have upset the balance of the bike, since I probably wouldn't want to rip the book down the spine and carry half on each handlebar (although I've done stuff like that before).
But there was the matter of the dollar, also.
I was going to the Uxi Duxi with 10 dollars, I think. That would have made the decision of whether to get a double shot or just a single one hairier. After 2 shots, I would be left with 4 dollars.
This would give me a can of cat food, and 3 dollars with which to seed the hat with.
Last night, a couple of good natured men came along and listened for a while. I was able to interact with them. Sometimes people give signals to indicate that they would like to talk, ask a question, sometimes make a request, and in this case, ask me what song I would play "if you were just sitting by yourself at home, what song would you play, for your own enjoyment, not somebody else's?"
I hit an E major chord and began to sing "Dock Rock," one of my cult favorites, which goes: It's 4 o' clock I'm under the dock I just looked at some images and stroked my cock; it's 4 o' clock..." and then stopped and rationalized: "Hey, you said home by myself and for my own enjoyment, didn't you?"

And that kind of broke the ice. I had technically stopped because I could see that they weren't totally amused by the song; even though I mentioned the alligator and feeding the rats; tough audience.

But, they stayed for a while and threw a 5 dollar bill on top of the 3 ones that were the only thing in the basket, after 20 minutes of playing.

After we all had had a splendid time, the two gentlemen bid their adieus and retreated to a spot about 20 feet away, where they began a lively and hushed discussion, I believe in retrospect, about the fact that they had only seen 8 dollars in my basket, and: Is that all the poor guy is going to make tonight, and should we give him more?
My evidence behind this claim is that, when I stopped in between songs, I scooped up their 5 dollar bill and pocketed it, and heard the gentlemen immediately utter words to the effect of: "Ah, he puts the larger bills in his pocket...he's probably made more than 8 dollars..."
You see, people. If, while feeling their presence and sensing that they were debating upon tipping me more, I was more on the ball, I would have picked up the basket in between songs, looked into it with a forlorn expression, shook it as if trying to gauge how much change was on the bottom, and if it's silver or mostly pennies (which the busker can tell by the timbre of the rattle) and might have gotten them to come over and throw more. "Here, it looks like kind of a slow night out here..." type of thing. But, I guess I don't think enough like a skeezer.

There is a crapload of Linux stuff to study. I will put it all together, like a 2,500 piece jigsaw puzzle.
Then I will write an application that will take control of every other application in the world, breaching the entire web and siphoning all the money from all of the banks in the world into my account.
Then, once I own half of the world, I will list it on E-bay with the asking price of the other half. I know I can get that much because that is what half the world is worth.
Broke Wednesday

If walking around in the world is to be a "spiritual exercise" for me, then the lifting has been very heavy.
I connected to the wireless at Uxi Duxi, to check my balance before ordering a shot of kratom. I was 30 cents short. I had tipped Chloe 50 cents on the last shot that I bought there, according to the ledger, and that had left me 30 cents short.
Nobody, including Dom, who was working, and whom I have tipped 50 cents on my shot a couple times, having gotten in the habit of at least throwing something in their jar, came to my rescue with 30 cents.
Then, Dom informed me that, if I wasn't buying anything, I had to go.
There is no reason for the enlightened man to become angry, for rules are rules.
I had to push away the thought of "feeling like shit because you don't have any money, or being made to feel like shit because you don't have any money."
As I rode away, I felt that it was likely that I would find 30 cents laying on the ground before I got to Starbucks, where I had 23 bucks left on my gift card.
It crossed my mind to just start buying kratom by the ounce at The Herb Shop, and to just disappear from the Uxi Duxi; to use Starbucks' wireless instead.
I found myself thinking that heroin addicts take selfishness to a new level, recalling Johnny B, and equating him to the half dozen or so people who had been in the Uxi Duxi. A lot of people use kratom to help keep them off of opiates. I recalled the time that I ran into Johnny B. in the dollar store, who was in the process of buying some food. I asked him to let me pay for his food off my card, because I had almost no cash, and then he turned around and gave me half the value of the food in cash: "That's how it works," he said.
That's how it works when you sell your food stamps to total strangers when you're desperate for money, but, Johnny B., my "friend" had turned a profit on me.
Then, when I asked him where his apartment was, knowing that it was somewhere in the area, he replied: "I'm taking you there now, I'm gonna show you..." without regard for any other plans that I might have had.
There was just something wrong with the dynamic of being "taken" somewhere, by someone, but it was below the level of consciousness. I wound up going with him anyways, I think I was interested in buying the amplifier that he would wind up trading to me for a staying at my place for 10 days, and wanted to see it.
Once we were there, and he said it was OK to smoke, I had pulled a half cigarette out of my pocket, whereupon he produced a new pack of Marlboroughs from somewhere and lit one up, never offering me one.
Was he trying to feel superior to me by smoking a new cigarette while I had only a "snipe?" Perhaps.
Did he not even notice that I was smoking a snipe because all of his attention was on himself? Perhaps.
I attributed his behaviors to his being a recovering heroin addict, thinking that that particular drug winds up altering the brain chemistry of its victims so that they become egocentric.
This is why I approached Bobby in building C so cautiously. It was about the 3rd time that he invited me to his apartment to check out his guitar, promising to smoke a joint with me, and that he was not gay, that I actually went.
I had almost made it a personal rule to just not associate with any opiate addicts at all, giving them up as hopeless.
So, all of this, I was thinking, as I rode my bike away from the Uxi Duxi, and towards Starbucks, having been 30 cents short of a shot of kratom.
There is a reason that things worked out like that, maybe kratom has been building up in my system and I need a break from it, and it was a blessing.
If the people in the place thought that I had planned the whole thing as a way of manipulating them: "I'll get to the register and then, oh darn, I just happen to be 30 cents short," expecting someone to give it to me, then I can understand them all just sitting there as I packed up my stuff and left; and opiate addicts would be well versed on any kind of manipulative behavior.
It's just one of those situations where, though I wasn't thinking: I'll be alright, someone will have 30 cents, but then, as I was leaving it was hard not to recall that song: "Nobody Loves You When You're Down And Out," and not to think that Dom hadn't let me "owe him" the 30 cents because he would prefer that I not be there.
If I need a shot of kratom to make me happy, then that is a problem that eclipses anything that might have happened there.
And, if I felt like I was being treated like shit because I didn't have money, then I guess it's back to the drawing board with the Eckhart Tolle "Power of Now" program.
I had to acknowledge that I had these feelings, look at them objectively, and then shift my focus to the present moment. I was riding my bike towards Starbucks. The thing at the Uxi Duxi was in the past and was just an illusion. There is no point in trying to use the very same mind that is tormenting me to try to intellectualize.
Though, this is the second time that I have considered buying packaged kratom and then "doing it" somewhere else, if I am going to.

5 comments:

  1. Maybe ... bartenders at any kind of bar, don't like being tipped 50c? In fact, they tend to not like coins at all. Back when I was a panhandler, I'd get lots of change, and I'd often stop and have a beer or three at this one bar, and get rid of the several dollars I had in quarters there. I was finally told, "no quarters".

    It sounds like your kratom shots are $3, well, locally, there are two bars that have $3 beers; Hamm's during happy hour at Caffe Frascati, and #3 PBR's at Cafe Stritch all the time. I always tip a buck. In fact a buck a drink tip is my standard policy, until it gets up closer to $10 or so drinks like an expensive craft beer or the Stritch's Old Fashioned which pretty much condenses an evening's drinking into one convenient glass, then I tip $2 or maybe even $3.

    I mean, it's the bar tender's living, those tips, and they've got to deal with us cheap-ass types who are buying one, maybe two, $3 PBR's in an evening.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It felt to me that by lingering after telling Dom that my card only had $2.62 on it, was uncool, so I half expected that...but for him to have texted Nathaniel to ask him about it made it seem like he was looking for an excuse to show me the door...
    Nathaniel said: "I would have just taken 30 cents out of my tip jar," but then added "I'm the only one allowed to make exceptions like that, though, everyone else has to follow the policy.."

    ReplyDelete
  3. You could say: "It's called being a decent human being," but I've heard that Dom had a horribly abusive childhood so; que sera sera

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yeah, I've been a bit short for a $3 beer at Caffe Frascati a time or two, and had the barista kick in some, so there's that. But they're sure not obligated to.

    There's also another factor ... a lot of "hip" places like a kava/kratom bar, will want to appear hip but not scruffy or skeezy. So, an older guy who needs a bath and a hair cut and carries a big bum-bag around plus a guitar that's missing a string or two, and hangs out for hours on end ... may spoil the atmosphere.

    To not put too fine a point on it, it's not good business practice to attract poor people. If you're using the internet in there, it means you don't have it at home.If you're hanging out at all hours, you don't have a regular job. And so on.

    ReplyDelete
  5. We would never hire you because, to us, you're just this unemployed guy who picks ashtrays...speaking of catch 22's...
    It was not even a year ago that Satori (who was fired because he smelled) was worried about his future there. "We haven't even made enough to pay me today," he said, saying that I (and the whopping 6 dollars I might spend) was the only customer who had been in there in the past couple hours. So, naturally, that would strike fear into the heart of the ownership, and Satori might have become a scapegoat of sorts when he got the ax. And I might have been seen as some kind of portent of going out of business, losing everything, and winding up wandering the earth with a backpack and guitar missing a string; not the direction Nathaniel wanted to go in...hard to make the gay scene in that getup LOL
    But, actually, I have attracted about a half dozen new customers to the place; people who were walking by while I was out front having a cigarette, with "what the hell is this place?" looks on their faces, whom I struck up conversations with and explained what I could about kratom et. al. Nathaniel could see us from behind the counter, going on for almost a half hour in some cases, talking and joking around. And then after those people showed up again and became regular customers, well...that's got to be worth at least 30 cents...
    Plus, I'm washing and conditioning my hair regularly now (Lilly even remarked to Chantilly: "Look how shiny his hair is!") and not with Mississippi River water, which makes a difference, believe it or not...

    ReplyDelete

Only rude and disrespectful comments will be replied to rudely and disrespectfully. Personal attacks will be replied to in kind, with the goal of providing satisfaction to the attacker.