The Likes Of Myself

• Second Fifty From Plasma Place
• I Take Essence Fest Off: "You Didn't Miss Anything"
• How To Invest?

I was told that I hadn't missed a thing by Larry, who is one of the bike deliverers for The Quartermaster, after he had said: "I noticed that you took the weekend off."

My first thought was that I must have become a fixture at the Lilly Pad in order that Larry noticed my not being there. He might have wanted someone to commiserate with about the swarms of African Americans that had invaded the city

I told him that I had a recollect of last year's festival as being the last time anyone grabbed my tip jar and ran off with it. "Don't do that. Don't take his money!" said a woman who may or may not have been accompanying the kid, who was about 14 years old. I couldn't help thinking that this was just said to put up a show of her being against his taking my money when, as soon as she caught up with him, she was going to ask: "Well, how much did we get?"

I also remembered another heavyset young black girl who posted up in front of my like a basketball player getting set to jump up for a "jump ball," and who stood there in this position feigning to be about to do something, like, perhaps grab my tip jar and run off.

I had started my basket off with a fake hundred dollar bill.
She had probably seen it, and hadn't gotten close enough to tell that it was fake, as it sat in the shadows of the basket.
She was acting as if she was just playing with me -just pretending like she was about to grab the basket- seeing if I could keep playing, nonplussed by her "fooling around."

But then, as if finally noticing that it was fake, she made a "tsk" kind of disgusted noise, and walked off as if she was truly disappointed, and as if I had in some way deceived her.

I blogged about that, back when it happened, but gave Larry the condensed version of the anecdote.

He nodded his head as if he could understand that kind of behavior out of an Essence Festival attendee.

A Portentous Porterhouse

I also told him that I had taken as kind of an omen the sight of the Winn-Dixie on Carrollton Street being in the disheveled state that I had seen it in.

There was a porterhouse steak, for example, thrown in with the paper towels on that particular aisle. I remembered thinking of what a waste of food it was going to be after they would have to throw it away because it had been "left out."

The whole store had become an exhibit of "things thrown where they don't belong."

"It's as is they want to prove that they are derelicts," I observed to Larry.
I said that this particular omen, along with the other recollections were what made me decide to forego playing during the festival, forsaking anything that I might have made, or had stolen. I guess I'll never know now.


Plasma Money; Harmonica Or Freelance Writer's Den?

Plus, Friday, I had sold another unit of my blood plasma for another fifty bucks.

That went kind of OK. I was light headed and fearing that it might get worse and I might faint and that they would send me away without the fifty dollars, but I stayed conscious.

But, wasn't until about 2 hours after I left the place before the money appeared on my Octapharma debit card, reminding me of the Murphey's laws that seem to govern the whole plasma donation realm.

I was all the way over to Howard Westra's house when it appeared.

I had finished donating by around 6:45 PM; and thus had a whole hour and fifteen minutes to make it across the river to the Uxi Duxi, where waited Jacob Scardino, who had texted me to inform me that he was there.

The trip can be done in under a half hour if the buses cooperate.

I had texted back that I would be there to meet him at 8 PM.

Then, I started to repeatedly get a message informing me that I had "negative one cent" on my card, as I roamed the aisles of Wal-Mart, waiting for the money to appear.


I had foolishly gone over there fifty cents short of bus fare, knowing that Murphy's Law of Plasma Donation was in effect. There were already plenty of skeezers around the parking lot, and so I didn't even consider asking anyone for fifty cents. I would just wait until the money appeared on the card, but in the meantime, would ride over to Howards and skeeze the bus fare off him.

Jacob offered, at one point to come and get me in his vehicle. He asked me if it was hard to get to where I was.

I would place the difficulty level of that particular trip at nine and a half on a scale of ten.

It involves getting on the bridge by negotiating a krazy straw of streets around the area of the Greyhound station, with some of them being one way ones that can send a driver off to another krazy straw of oblivion of streets somewhere else.

Then poor Jacob, who is a novice driver, would have to exit at a specific ramp on the other side of the river, and then get over a couple lanes quickly, in an attempt to "blend in with" the traffic -child's play for an ex cab driver and pizza deliveryman like myself, but nothing that I would want to put Jacob to the task of doing, since he has only been driving for a short period of time. He avoids the Interstate, he once told me.

"It's pretty hard to get to. You have to go across the bridge, and..."

That was as much as I had had to say.  Jacob doesn't do bridges, nor Interstate highways.

He seems to be pretty "green" in a lot of life's experiences, having been sort of adopted, or taken in as a foster kid, by a guy about my age named "Bob," who is apparently a devout Christian, and who even does a religious show on 800 AM (The Word, or The Light, or something) radio here in New Orleans.

Jacob seems to have grown up in a pretty sheltered environment, through Bob's agency. He has, along with just started driving, just tried kratom, and marijuana for the first time.
I guess he is now also branching out into interacting with buskers such as myself.

I Apply For A Job

I have applied for a job as a "writer" through CraigsList New Orleans. I sent a "sample" of my writing, as instructed, culled from this blog. It is a little essay about ammonia. Don't call us; we'll call you, seems to be their modus operandus.