A Pretty Cuckoo Scene

A Job That Pays Cash?

"Go to Favila Chic, they pay their employees in cash..." -Erin, soon to be ex-barista at Uxi Duxi.

I have learned of at least one place that might pay me in cash in the parking lot at the end of a shift.

This should be great news to me, and I should consider it one more way that things might be falling into place.

I gave up on ever having a "job" job about ten years ago. That was right before Obama came into office to inherit the mess which manifested itself to me as my having spent a whole day, after having gotten cleaned up and not drank that day, putting in applications.

I put in 12 of them, was called back by 2 of them, interviewed by one, where I was informed, after talking to a guy for 20 minutes that, "the guy who does the hiring won't be here 'til Friday."

I got the impression that those businesses were all hiring their friends and family, but were putting up "Now Hiring" signs as a ruse, to deflect any suspicion that they might not be "equal opportunity" employers per se.

I remember walking into a Firehouse Subs place, and the employees behind the counter conspicuously ignoring me after they had seen me pluck one of the applications from the Come join our awesome team! or whatever, type of display that was set up on the counter, and then had seen me sit and fill it out.

I stood at the register with the completed application in my hand while the employees talked to each other about everything under the sun, not even glancing my way once, until about ten or fifteen minutes had elapsed and I noisily ripped the thing up and said: "I wouldn't work for you jerks if you paid me! and then walked out.

I was sort of surprised that none of them had said anything like: "Good, we don't want you!" which would have lent credence to my belief that they had been intentionally ignoring me. They might have actually been of this new generation of millenials that are so beset with attention deficit disorder that they could have forgotten that I was standing there shortly after they turned their heads in another direction, who knows.

I was seeing that as a blessing in disguise at the time, for it solidified my resolve to take care of my needs through busking and not be at the beck and call of any jerks. Standing there at the counter with the application for as long as they felt like taking to respond went against the grain of everything I had "fought" for. They were probably doing me a favor.

How much of what I have experienced in the past ten years, about a lot of which I might be able to write a book someday, would I have missed out on, had I been hired by Firehouse Subs and became a work-horse for them, putting in a lot of hours and waiting for an assistant managerial position to open up at some store, so I could become promoted to it?
Then, I supposed I would ultimately have an apartment with a large screen TV that I would vegetate in front of when I wasn't in uniform. There is something comforting in having a job and a uniform as an indication of having a place in society, but it is a recipe for a mediocre life. As opposed to being a busker where nobody can tell what you are, or what you are supposed to be, or even why you are and why you are supposed to be...

After having had a five dollar Friday night, I ran into a cauldron of generosity at the Uxi Duxi Saturday afternoon.

I didn't wind up spending any of the almost ten bucks in my pocket.
Erin, the barista who is working the last few days of her career at Uxi, had made a certain kratom concoction which she said that she had made wrong, putting in too much ginger, or something and she was going to throw it away...unless I wanted it.

Soon arrived another lady who was in the business of selling CBD dabs, and who had a sample case on her to advertise her wares. Soon she was putting dabs of CBD in a dabber and inviting one and all to try a free sample, which Jacob and I did.

Then arrived Jacob's high school English teacher whom Jacob was astounded to see "What are the odds of your high school English teacher walking into the Uxi?!?" who offered me a cigarette whenever he lit one up.

The ride home through 50 degree air into a stiff breeze at around 11 PM made me decide not to go out to play. I bought a can of cat food for Harold and a gallon of spring water to embark upon some kind of fast and cleanse with, and returned home. There I worked on the chorus of a song that I built around a sample from a Randy Newman song.

The song was "Mama Told Me Not To Come," and the sample came from the Three Dog Night hit recording of it. It was of the cuckoo clock that chimes during the interlude between verses, telling the listener that at the party described in the song, it was indeed getting late (one cuckoo) and that it was a pretty cuckoo scene.

My song is about an ex-girlfriend, the one whose house where we lived was actually haunted, (with stuff moving itself around and the requisite footsteps of a little girl in hard soled shoes traipsing across the hardwood floor). I used to hear that section of the song looping in my head when she was in the middle of one of her crazed rants. Funny, though, I hadn't drawn the cuckoo clock connection then, it was just music that played in my head when she was standing there going on about her suspicions that I was seeing another woman, one who was even living in the same house as us and doing a great job of staying out of my girlfriend's sight.
The other sound that looped in my mind at such times was from "Funky Cold Medina," by the artist Tone Loc, where among the motif sample of the guitar taken from "Hot Blooded," by Foreigner, is heard those little cowbell type instruments that, to me at least, sounded like they were saying "cu-cuckoo; cu-cuckoo."
"There's nothing wrong with my mind!" is the working title of my song, a phrase that recurred as the girl ranted about things like finding two wet towels in the bathroom. One hadn't dried me totally, so I had finished up with another one, one afternoon.
Of course that was clear evidence that I had had another woman over while she was at work and that we had taken a shower together. There was nothing wrong with her mind, mind you.

I posted a story about that time and placed it in the 2002 section of this blog. 

Red Meat And Toothaches

I decided to eat up the rest of a pot of boiled potatoes that was in my refrigerator, so they wouldn't go to waste, and also because of the phenomenon where 2 days of fasting can bring such a boon of health that the faster is tempted to make a compromise with oneself.

The feelings of lethargy and toxicity that are enough to bring me to the point of wanting to just eliminate it all and start fresh on spring water can vanish on the second or third day, and it is tempting to cancel the fast with the decision: "I'm going to eat, but only super healthy stuff" having been made.

The afternoon after I had eaten chunks of filet Mignon, mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables at Howard Westra's the night before, I woke up feeling like I just wanted to lay there until such a time as I felt a bowel movement coming on; then I would begin my "day..." That may have been because he made the mashed potatoes with soy-based margarine, if he did.
Howard acts as if he is bullet proof when it comes to his diet of Cheetoz and Pepsi and breakfast from McDonalds and fried chicken at noon from some other place, every day. His back is covered in what might be called liver spots or huge hideous freckles, and he is overweight. But he runs to doctors all the time to have tests done on him for whatever ails him. Some people just don't believe in things such as food allergies.

The toothache, which I had all but forgotten about, had begun to ache again, and it took another session of acupressure to send it back into remission.

"That's your liver, it's from eating red meat," a Buddhist lady had once told me about a toothache I had about 15 years ago.

It's cold again, in the low 50's, but I will probably bundle up and at least make the effort to ride to the Lilly Pad, where I will decide that I might as well play, once there.
There is absolutely no money coming in now, as I wait a week for a new plasma card, a new food card, and I even lost a Starbucks gift card that had money on it, something that, in a pinch, I could buy someone their coffee off of in exchange for cash...