A Time To Stay In And Get Something Of Note Accomplished

• I Refuse To Harbor A Negative Attitude Over The World Crisis
• Regrets; I've Had A Few...

It would be so easy to cop an attitude over the COVID 19 virus thing.

This is truly a thing that hits the busker just about the hardest.

I have no verifiable job that I might receive unemployment compensation for, over the next few? months.

There are no people on the street by the Lilly Pad, because they have no reason for being there, with all the bars closed...

So, the "reality" is that, I guess it is mine to just starve to death, as that seems to be the fate that awaits a busker during a global pandemic.

I am in a better position than most to know how to handle such a situation, though.

Food
There is a list posted in the lobby at Sacred Heart, of places that are apparently giving away food, with Monday through Friday noted, and upon each day at least a dozen addresses given.

These are pretty far and wide, a cursory glance combined with my limited knowledge of the streets in the New Orleans area, showed me.

But, I think if I were to use Google Maps, I could mark out a route and then, donning my backpack tommorow morning, hop on my bke and maybe make a 10 mile loop, getting to the first food bank at around the 9 AM that they almost all seemed to "open" at, and then, depending upon how long the line and the wait is, make it to as many more of them that I can before the 12 PM that they almost all seemed to "close" at.

I could conceivably do this all 5 days this coming week, and maybe fill my pantry that way.

At that point, I will just have to tighten my belt and try to forego all of the non-food items that cash might have once been applied to.

Man really can live without tobacco, alcohol, pot, kratom and coffee...

Nix that last one, I just remembered that I have about 30 dollars left on the Starbucks gift card the The Lidgley's sent from Hertfordshire, this past Christmas. Thank you, Lidgley's; I will be awake and alert throughout the entire crisis!

Diving For Health

Last week, I was riding my bike at around 3 AM, when I decided, out of curiosity (and drunkeness -it was the last relapse, in that regard) to investigate the dumpster at the edge of the Fresh Market parking lot.

I found it to be business as usual in that, the food being thrown out which still had value (in order to perpetuate the image of it being a "fresh" market, the management [especially after they first opened and people were getting a "first impression" of the place] has an ambitious policy of refreshing the inventory, so that when you walk in, all you see are the hues of fresh food everywhere; no wilting on the lettuce, only the reddest of meat, and not a bruise on a mango.

This, I fathomed, would necessitate them throwing away a lot of food, as soon as it its past its peak.

This is where my flashlight and my backpack come in.

Business as usual is to throw the foods that still have value in the dumpster first, at the bottom and rear of it, and then to cover it with things like cardboard, to hide it, and then throw heavy things on top, so the cardboard can't be easily liftet in order to take a peek under it.

I didn't smell any bleach, bless their hearts.

That time, I only grabbed about 10 pounds of bananas from one of the heavier boxes that were on top of the cardboard -I guess they thought that brown spotted bananas had value only as a cardboard weight, or that, if someone like myself were hungry enough, they weren't going to begrudge me bananas (a 20 dollar fillet Mignon slab that is only starting to grey around the edges is a different story. I can understand an employee, who might only net $65 a day working there thinking it unfair that the homeless guy who sleeps behind the fence should enjoy lamb roasted over a fire, with maybe even a bottle of fine wine that has a scuffed or mangled label, or a crack in the glass around the cork not big enough to let any wine out, but still making it un-saleable, well, you get the picture...the employee is going to go home and eat Ramen Noodles with a bag of Doritos and salsa that night and, well, it might not seem fair to him or her. And, hence the practice of burying and weighing things down.

The person such as myself would have to get right inside of the thing, flashlight in hand, and probably have to temporarily remove some of the heavier items to get at the stuff below. I say "temporarily," because, leaving a mess of trash in my wake would be one of the surest ways to wind up smelling bleach upon my next visit.

So, it is Sunday afternoon, the sun is sinking low. I am charging up my usb flashlight and getting my backpack ready, and I hope to bring home some casabas or something shortly after the place closes at 10 PM. I would imagine some of the employees remain there an extra hour or two to wax the floor, etc.
I'm not so much worried about being "caught" going in there, as about gettting there to find someone else already attacking it. I'm sure they would share, to an extent; but it would be exasperating to see them having gathered a $400 pile of meat and wine: "All this stuff is mine!" and then handing me some bruised bananas: "You can have this..." type of thing. But, that would just be envy at work on my part. Geez, I haven't even gone down there yet, and I'm already envisioning fighting over casabas...

New Series: My Biggest Regrets In Life


#10: Not having answered wholesale, the entire poll of questions in the inventory of the lady judge in Ocala, Florida. This is not a major one, ranking tenth, but, I occasionally think about it.

2011, Ocala, Florida

On this particular morning, I had been probably about the last of the 20 or so called in front of the judge.

I had been locked up overnight for having opened a big can of beer in a little park right by the little convenience store where I had bought it.

I suppose, if I were super intelligent, I would have postulated that, surely the park across the street from the beer store was so inviting, with its benches to sit on and drink a beer, its trees to sit under and do the same, that it most likely had become like a certain corner on a certain road which becomes used as a speed trap (after the cops notice that most people have a natural inclination to come down that certain slope at a rate of speed over whatever curiously low rate is posted on a sign, which probably only becomes completely visible to the driver after it is too late. She might see the sign and the cops holding radar guns at the same instant, as a matter of fact).

So, the idyllic little oasis across the street from the beer store had been patrolled by actual Ocala, Florida cops posing as citizens just out looking for tranquility in the same park.

It was from under a Hawaiian shirt, that the cop flashed me his badge.
But, I was the last of the 20 or so to be seen.

I am intelligent to know that this is usually the best of signs.

The few times in my life that I had basically been summarily cut loose from jail by a judge or prosecutor that might have felt sorry for me, or felt that the arresting officers had actually abused me, I had been adjudicated such as just about the last person still left in the courtroom.

It usually involved some kind of paperwork which the judge would sign which would abnegate and override any sentence that might be mandated by the statutes.

These were usually exhorbitant in the cases where I was found to have more than one ID on me, and was subsequently charged with some kind of fraud, which was the "tip of the iceberg" charge levied against someone in that situation, as a means of holding him in custody, while the ocean below was explored.

Given the rash of identity theivery and the public's outcry against it, there was often some kind of a minimum sentence put in place, as a deterent, of course..."Man gets 25 years for bilking elderly out of their life savings," type of thing.

So, on those couple occasions when, after a thorough investigation revealed that my other ID was not connected to any bank accounts, or wire transfers of huge sums of money to the Antilles Islands; and didn't appear on the radar of the FBI, state of local police, Secret Service, Militsiya, Federal Security Service, KGB, etc., and it had been decided by decent prosecutors and a compassionate judge (usually after my being allowed to speak about my purposes for having obtained an extra license under the name of a dearly departed friend of mine (so I could keep my pizza deliver job at Dominos) I was usually brought back to the courtroom at the end of the day (3 PM or so -it must be nice to work as a courtroom official) when I usually stood at the podium in an almost empty courtroom and it was agreed between all parties concerned that the judge would sign some kind of injunction and I would be set free that day, and not 36 months later as mandated by the statute.

This was done, I assume, to minimize the number of witnesses to this act, which might be spun by some as His Honor having been lenient, or maybe to have given only a slap on the wrist to a white man, depending upon the perspective.

But, as I went before the judge in Ocala, who was a middle aged, white woman, and despite the fact that there were still a gaggle of less fortunate orange jumpsuit clad others in the room, waiting for the transportation van to come and take them back to the jail, I was pretty sure that I was going to be cut loose, because; as Her Honor stated in the course of the proceedings; "This isn't exactly the crime of the century."

The most likely reason that I was the last one called in this case, was that some kind of check was being run upon me, in case the public drinking charge was just the tip of the iceberg, type of thing...

But, given Her Honor's light mood, and apparent sense of humor, I was, like a person at the end of a diving board, just about to launch into a solioquey, after her first question of "What is your name?"

I was going to say: "It's Daniel McKenna, your honor."

And, then, heading her off at the pass, I would append: "I'm 48 years old, I was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts. I went as far as an associate's degree in college. I can read, write and understand English ("despite what my English Comp professor might say") [waits for the tittering to subside from the gallery].

I am entering a plea of guilty on this charge of drinking in public. I understand that, by entering such a plea, I am giving up certain rights, such as the right to a jury trial, the right to face my accusers, and the right to appeal.

I am entering this plea willingly. I am not being coerced by anyone, and I am not currently under the influence of any drugs or alcohol."

After having heard her run through the list almost 20 times, one question at a time, for the people before me, and thinking This has got to be the part of her job she hates the most; I had been so close to doing that.

I imagined her smiling and then striking the gavel while ejaculating: "Case dismissed!" before sighing and perhaps saying: "If only every defendant were like this!," maybe telling me "Sir, you just made my day!"

But, what had stopped me was imagining her saying: "It sounds like you're no stranger to being a defendant in a courtroom," and then throwing the book at me, as would befit such an incorrigible.

But, I will never know, now.

That is, I am going to arbitrarily say, #10 on my Top 10 Regrets In Life list -not having done that. I found the judge attractive, also, and it would have pleased me to make her smile...and to show off my ability to memorize a list of questions after hearing them a few times.

The series: My Top 10 Regrets In Life will continue, with #9 coming shortly.

"Will somebody put the Lime Away away while I'm away?" -something I once said when I worked at Dominos, where we used the product called Lime Away.

Bobby from building C bought me an ounce of kratom this morning, out of the blue. This comes at a good time, as I am stuck in the house working on music, writing and art...

If you can call it art...