Tuesday, June 30, 2020

In The Interest Of Posting At Least Once A Day...

I ran out of steam in the middle of yesterday's rant about everything around me being wrong.
I had intended to wrap it up by re-framing it as everything being not quite perfect (yet).
The craziness of today's world has got me skittish about having my blog taken down for copy write infringement. I guess everyone is a bit jumpy these days...
Or, by referring to the proverbial "glass" as being half full. Though, not with wine, because that causes me to run out of steam before getting my work done.

A temporary solution to my woes is that I am changing the order of my to do list, by putting the more important things at the top.

No more starting my day with Facebook or Youtube which can be time bandits through which half of my energy is squandered.

Now it will be, to practice the guitar first thing...

Practice 100 Times


I am making a metronome track in which every ten beats, I will voice over the numbers "ten," "twenty" etc. up to 100 I think it will be.

This will be as easy as setting Audacity to generate a "click track" and then doing the voice over on a parallel track at the appropriate spots. Then, I can just set the playback speed to what is appropriate for what I am practicing; with the only drawback being that it will sound like one of the Chipmunks saying the numbers, should I be practicing at a very fast metronome rate; and if I have to slow something way down at first, it will be Barry White doing the count up.

And, I am going to do Mel Bay pieces over and over, at least a hundred times each, starting towards the end of Book 1 and progressing from there. I want to lay to rest any doubts about where I "am" in that series of instructional books.


I would like to make videos of myself playing each piece and post them on Youtube, where any student of the guitar who might Google them will be able to see how they are supposedly supposed to be played.

Played by the young student; not how Chet Atkins might play them.

That was what had been bogging me down; having the feeling that I wasn't ready to graduate from one book to the next until I could play stuff like "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" with the flair and style of a virtuoso. That would explain why I am still in Grade 2 at my age...

The Tipping Point

I think that people generally die shortly after their dream does, or maybe after the last one of them does.
It say's "I paid with my soul, and the change was this life"

Like people in long-time happy marriages who follow their spouse into the grave only weeks, or maybe days, behind them. Into the darkness...

I haven't started the fasting and purging and the spiritual quest yet, I have put it off for yet one day. One day closer to the abyss.

When I look around me, it is a panoramic view of everything that is wrong. In every direction there is something that I am remiss over.

I thought about taking a photo and then labeling things, using the letters of the alphabet and arrows and then indexing them.

The bed sheet with the cigarette burns in it, a reminder that I never did quit smoking; laden with books that I intended to read, subjects that I wanted to study, the Mel Bay books that I have been stuck somewhere in between book 2 and 3 since I was 15...

The TV that I had turned on and wasted hours of watching crime shows on, sitting atop a one quarter finished jigsaw puzzle.

The radio CD player that skips when I play CDs on it, which has something wrong with the FM antenna so I can barely pull in the stations that would have football game broadcasts on it, but probably won't because of a virus that might not even be real.

The dog shampoo that I bought for 2 dollars off a kid even though I don't have a dog -a kid who overdosed less than a week after that, leaving his girlfriend and their little girl behind. A girl who seemed to like me and would always strike up a conversation with me, who was pretty just like her mother, who was just crazy, who asked me to come into her apartment and look at her toaster oven that wasn't working, but who then freaked out and yelled at me to get out as soon as I had started to check it out...

The acoustic guitar with no strings on it because I haven't gotten around to ordering any for it; and probably won't until it comes down to either new strings or my next pack of nicotine vapes...

The sign that I made which reads "To see my ma," with the word "ma" being the MA over the shape of the state of Massachusetts, that I had planned upon using to hitchkike to that state, busking along the way; a trip that has been put off each of the past 8 years...

The keyboard that I don't practice for 3 hours a day, next to the jar of colored pencils that I hardly use to draw, and then the laptop in front of me that I haven't been blogging on, when I used to blog almost every day...

The rug that I haven't vacuumed...yet, upon which sits the weight that I haven't been using to work out with. The stack of CDs that I had planned upon listening to, in order to broaden my musical acumen....


The drawings hanging on the wall, which are pretty good and show a promise that was never realized...

The bottle of wine sitting next to me which will soon render me into something like a blubbering drooling imbecile in a bar somewhere....

And that is just this room.

The other room starts with the plants in the window that just won't grow. Stunted and yellowish, despite the plant light that will supposedly ruin my eyes if I stare into it and the Miracle Grow and the water, which comes from the tap which probably has heavy metal in it which is causing everyone here at Sacred Heart to slowly become demented.

The xylophone that I haven't used yet on a recording, the snare drum that hardly gets used, the basket that I used to use as a tip jar in another life, years ago in a place that is no longer the same.

Lilly has not texted me back in 6 months. She may have gotten cancer and passed away quickly, and her phone thrown away by her grieving daughters.
She was my protector, allowing me the privilege of busking on her front stoop in what would be the Park Place of the whole French Quarter, if it were a Monopoly board; that is probably gone now...

And then, there is the pile of methadone that I have been saving up; from each time that Bobby has felt sorry for me, and has given me a "wafer" of it, on each occasion that I told him I was feeling a little down; his way of offering me the only solace that he knows...

I'm going to sleep now...there is too much to cover, I haven't even gotten to the kitchen..never mind the world outside my three windows...and the wine is already starting to catch up to me.  I just didn't want to leave this blog the way it was.

I hope to get back on a regular routine of posting every day again, like I used to...

This blog will continue to automatically post, by the way. (using the "scheduled posts" feature) until the last one appears, in the year 8,262 (when I would have been 6,300 years old). Some of them will be pretty humorous I think, unless the sense of humor of human beings becomes warped along the lines that humanity seems to already be following; then future generations will just think this is stupid; if they think at all...

But I don't count on that. Google will probably stop allowing free blogs, at some point, after it is passed down into the hands of a generation even more selfish than the gen x one. All blogs not attended to will be deleted unless someone forks over bit coins or whatever. Why care?

Friday, June 26, 2020

The Land of Confusion

I feel like I am getting less done from being shut in like this, as might be evident from the (lack of) posts that I have been putting up here.

A Time For Spiritual Growth

The problem is that this is a golden opportunity for doing things like extended water fasts, which would distill my thoughts and bring into focus what is most important, as far as what to devote my energy to.
There are some things that are like master controllers over a lot of little details.
Rather than seek peace of mind through having a bunch of things organized and categorized and "caught up on," it is easier to just go to the top level, which is in the spiritual realm and is above thinking.
How this has become a problem is in the fact that, after having gotten the stimulus check, I was set up to do an extended juice fast, turning into a water-only one, which might have gone for at least a month.
I wouldn't even have had to spend a cent because, apples (my fruit of choice for fasting) started to flow into my life in such abundance that only through an extended juice fast could I have consumed them all; all 700 of them.
But, as I was tossing out a few that had finally began to rot as they sat in storage today, it seemed that they were a symbol of the wasted opportunity for spiritual growth, that could have turned this "time of crisis" into a blessing in disguise.
While the world (literally) outside my door was going crazy.
Many of the residents of Sacred Heart cashed in their stimulus checks for big piles of crack cocaine, and I could hear the screams and the cussing from those who were ripping each other off, left and right.

Not All It's Cracked Up To Be

The crack dealers seized the opportunity to pass off all kinds of chemicals, with maybe a little bit of cocaine, to those whom they knew wouldn't retaliate.
They would just shake their heads, then go to another dealer, because, it is easy come, easy go when you have a stack of 20 dollar bills.
While all this transpired, I could have been sitting on my own pile of money, juicing apples, meditating, doing yoga and disentangling myself from all my addictions, from caffeine to nicotine, alcohol, sugar and maybe even kratom.*
*yikes!!
I had been provided for, in that regard. The apples being symbolic.

But, I have been screwing up, to a degree.

I could certainly afford a lot of 4 dollar bottles of wine, and an 11 dollar packet of nicotine vapes would last me 3 or 4 days and give my lungs a break from tobacco smoke, so I wasn't bringing myself to financial ruin by indulging, but, it seems like if I don't make spiritual progress now, then how am I going to after the world opens up again and it is incumbent upon me to go back out and busk for money?

What a great gift for a friend who might one day busk again,
is this "Pop Rock" fake book that was given to me
by Bobby, along with a shot of 45% pure heroin.
Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the music of plenty
of other artists who died from heroin overdoses is in it.
God, and his sense of humor, I tell you...
I would see my friend, Bobby, who might be lamenting that he had gone through 200 dollars worth of crack the night before, and had gotten a 30 dollar bottle of whiskey, and he now felt horrible about himself. And I would have to counter with: "Yeah, I got a 4 dollar bottle of wine, got drunk, and wound up eating a whole 8 pack of Pop Tarts -they were on sale for $1.79 at Rouses- and now I feel horrible about myself. The degree doesn't matter.

But, the spiritual growth -putting on an Eckhart Tolle video and meditating upon it, and doing things like sleeping to the 430 hz "sleep music" played on Youtube, designed to do things like attract love, heal sickness, relax the mind and body (and maybe even put you to sleep, if you're lucky) all get put on hold, as soon as I take the first sip of wine. Maybe tomorrow, I will start a fast...

And, then I beat myself up over it, and start to sound like a broken record, with all of the "I need to do this, and start doing that" stuff. Somebody visiting this blog after a couple years away might shake their head and ruminate that "He was talking about doing all that 2 years ago!"

Alcohol

I have been through the phase (which I'm sure the AA people have a catch phrase or a term for) of trying to regulate my drinking, so that I could enjoy it and still remain functional.
I see that Alex in California, whose blog I still look at about once a week is going through the same thing. "I'm going to take a marker and put lines on the big bottle of vodka, marking off every 250 milliliters, and that's all I'm going to drink each day, just to the next line. Then I will put the cap back on the bottle, and that will be that..."
He even does what I used to do and calculate the savings that he will realize. "That way, a 23 dollar bottle will last me 5 days, and that will just 4 dollars and 60 cents a day...and that way I won't wake up parched in the middle of the night, so that will save me money on beverages, too..."

Keeping a big bottle of vodka and meting it out that way is like saying: "I'm just going to keep a half dozen cockroaches in my apartment, kill the rest, but keep these 6 as pets..."

Heroin

My right arm is still sore from where Bobby injected me with the heroin 2 nights ago. He is astounded that I am not knocking on his door asking for more. Maybe if I just get 35 milligrams a night, and never more...

But yet, if he was the only cigarette dealer in the building, I would be showing up at his door wanting to trade my Little Feat CD, or something, for a pack every night.

Bobby stopped by the next day in the late afternoon to check up on me. He had just come out of his nodding slumber. He was worried because he had discovered that the stuff he had was so pure (maybe a whole 45% of actual heroin) that he -a 30 year veteran junkie- had almost overdosed himself off of it. "I scared the shit out of myself," he said. Which makes me so glad that he gave me a "baby dose" fit for a first time user, er, ...adventurer.

But, you give a building full of addicts $1,200 each, and Bedlam ensues.

Even the strongest willed of them all (myself, I like to think) wound up biting into mixed berry flavored toaster pastries, like the world might end that night, so he might as well...

Kratom

So, now I have returned from Rouses with a quart of prune juice, and an energy drink to mix my kratom with, and a gallon of distilled water.
It will be a race against the ravages of spoilage to see if I can stay the course and live off nothing but apple juice for the next 11 days or so.

LSD

Jacob has gotten a hold of some acid, which he has been saving, intending to use it to jam with a couple of his friends, but he mentioned that he was thinking of sharing it with me. It was LSD which opened my mind to the reality that there is a lot more reality than everything we see, feel and hear in this world.
It is probably the reason that I couldn't, in good conscious, pursue any material goals in life.
Otherwise, I might have gotten certified as a Linux administrator and went after a 50 dollar per hour job, and would today be, all set? on Easy Street? happy and fulfilled? unaware of the Grateful Dead's music? dead?

In 9 minutes there will be released a new set of Frank Zappa music on Youtube.

Apparently his estate, spearheaded by Dweezil Zappa is going through the vast vault of reel to reel tapes that are stacked to the ceiling and culling from them, musical gems, that they are putting out, so as to put food in their mouths. Funny how Frank, by making music that was ahead of its time, was providing for his children, now that time is starting to catch up. Kind of like giving them a savings bond with a 40 year maturation date...

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Summer Solstice Sunday

91.4 Degrees

It was even hotter when I woke up this morning; after having drifted back to sleep at 6:37 AM, until about 11 AM, when the above reading was noted on my AM/FM CD playing clock radio type thing.

I want to get a dedicated thermometer for the place because I think the one on the CD player is biased by the fact that the unit heats up when in use. If I listen to the AM radio for a couple of hours, I can feel heat coming from it.
Maybe it isn't quite 91.4, once you step away from the radio a yard or so...

When I woke up and saw that the time was 6:37, I was happy to look out the window and see the sun rising over the school across the street.
That would be impossible, if it were 6:37 in the evening, I thought.
It took me a second to rule out the possibility that, due to the Covid-19 virus, the sun might be rising in the evening, now.

But, it meant that I had slept for about 15 hours, after having stayed up for something like 48 hours.

More importantly, it meant that Harold the cat was only 4 hours late on his feeding schedule, rather than 16.

Sit Down And Give Me Your Arm


Friday night, Bobby shot me up with a syringe of heroin.
He had miraculously* come across some that was so pure that he marveled at it, and then held the 3 gram bag of it under his illuminated magnifying glass, so I could marvel, too.

It looked like someone might have taken some of the cat litter that I threw away, out of the dumpster and put it in the corner of a sandwich bag and then tied it off. A grey-ish brown color, it was, and looked like clay.

I am starting to question these "miracles."

*Somebody probably overdosed off their first sample of it; maybe having never had anything so pure in their lives. And then, the next person to come along might have been there to buy some off him, and wound up just taking the bag from his cold, dead fingers. You know, a miracle...

But, Bobby came knocking on my door Friday afternoon, saying: "Come on, I got something for you," then added: "You are going to be the first to benefit!"

I did kind of wonder what the "something" might be, I was pretty sure that it wasn't going to be a pipe full of crack, because Bobby wasn't acting like he was in "crack mode," but rather, more in line with the Bobby that had given me the electric guitar that I play every day, the plant light that I am now growing weed under...and the list goes on.
He truly seemed to have been compensating me for the dismal amounts of income that I have been making from busking the past couple years, with the gifts of things that he has bestowed upon me.
I can just look around my apartment and see things that Bobby has given me -the 60" TV that is staring at me that I hardly ever turn on, is an example.
But, Bobby was very excited, and after I went to his place and he showed me the almost pure heroin that he had come across -again, probably from someone who didn't know the strength of it and had overdosed (fuck that person, to the victors go the spoils)- and then he had me sit down in a chair, as if he was ready to give me a haircut, or something.

He went and did something with a spoon and a syringe and then came over to me and assured me that he knew what he was doing and would never give me a dose that anyone in history had ever overdosed upon.

Having figured out what the great surprise was that had him knocking at my door, and knowing that he was high as hell on the stuff and was truly trying to give me the greatest gift that a heroin addict could ever give to someone else, I allowed him to shoot me up.
I knew that I was pretty much immune to the stuff and would never become addicted to it, because it just wasn't in my constitution, I let him go ahead and shoot me up with a needle that was ridiculously thin -a mosquito could inflict more of a wound on somebody- trusting his 30 something years of experience as a heroin addict, that he wouldn't kill me with it.

I really just wanted to find out what the whole deal was, and why Miles Davis supposedly played some of the greatest jazz, immortalized through several waxings, while high on the stuff.
A musician is always a sucker to explore such avenues.

So, Bobby stuck the needle in one of my veins, showing much more skill than most of the plasma collecting technicians at the lab where I once went, and gave me what he considered a good dose, but not enough to ever kill anyone.

I was shaking me head right away, as I felt something familiar to me from the one time I was hospitalized with a broken leg sustained in a motorcycle crash, and more recently, from the times he has given me some of his methadone "wafers" that he had extra.

I am just not a downer person.

My aversion to such things as heroin is in step with how I can fast for 28 days on nothing but water, and love it, compared to how some of my contemporaries broke down by the end of the first evening and "just had to" eat something.
Because they were feeling weak, or whatever it was that resulted in me losing respect for them and seeing them as being weak, feckless and ineffectual human beings that I had no interest in associating with.

What a bunch of losers, I thought.

But then, I came to the realization that different people have different "demons" and it might just be that people are attracted to others who are pretty much immune to their own demons, maybe in the hope that those others might be able to teach them to think like themselves, and help them slay their demons.

Bobby has persistently lectured me on the dangers of tobacco, and about how he used to smoke x amount of cigarettes each day, and how, one day, after having suffered through an episode of waking up and hardly being able to breath, he quit the things.

He has similarly lectured me on the subject of those whom he knew who had killed themselves with alcohol.

"You need to just quit smoking those things and say goodbye to booze," he told me "as a friend, who cares about you."

And so, it has been interesting how, out of the times he has turned me on to methadone, and now heroin, and how I came back the next day and told him that I wasn't interested in any more, and how surprised he seemed to be about that, he could immediately jump upon me after I lit up a cigarette, shaking his head and saying something like: "Man, you're still a slave to that shit, why can't you just decide 'this is it' and just quit the things?!"

So, I went back to my apartment where I was able to work for about 12 hours, in a pretty mellow state of mind, in between running to the toilet to puke about 8 times.

"That's good," said Bobby about the puking.
I knew what he meant.

But, like the methadone, I felt like I was much above it, like it was at a level of physical numbness that I was not that impressed by.

That is kind of why I let him go ahead and shoot me up with a syringe of the stuff -he had already been the guinea pig for it, so I wasn't worried about it killing me- and I trusted his experience and believed him when he said that he knew people that had done ten times as much as he was giving me, and lived; mostly because I have always wanted to have as many varied experiences in life that I could -bring them on.
It was why I just had to go into the military, just to see if Basic Training would "break" me; humble me, so I just couldn't take it.
And, why I just had to manage to go to prison, just to see that facet of humanity.

And, I guess I had to shoot up heroin.
You hear about how people become pathetically addicted to it, and wind up a slave to it. Bring it on, I say.


Miles Davis was supposedly shooting up "every night" while producing timeless, classic jazz. Bring it on.

But, I found it just to be a cleansing experience.

I would gulp down a quart of spring water, in preparation for the next bout of puking, and wound up feeling very much purged afterwards.

The next day, I couldn't even conceive of the notion of drinking alcohol, and it had put me in a prime state for beginning a cleansing juice fast.

Bobby knocked on my door the next morning, very curious about what I had thought about it. I told him that I had hiccuped for hours and even had wondered if I would be able to get to sleep, or if the hiccuping would keep me awake.

I refused another shot of it. It's just not my thing. Just like cigarettes and alcohol are not Bobby's thing. I guess I would envy him; if I didn't see him selling his bike to get another 2 grams of the stuff that looks like litter out of Harold's box.

Now, it is Tuesday already, and this is my Sunday post...


"Shine On You Crazy Diamond" in Jerusalem (uncut)

Finally, anything that gets me stoked to ever busk again...

I'll say one thing; I was prepared to crack up laughing when they started to sing in Yiddish accents, or whatever the hell they speak in Jerusalem...
But, wow, how the world has become homogenized. I could busk in Israel, I know I could, and my case would be full of shekels, or whatever...

Saturday, June 20, 2020

89.6 Farenheit

That is what my indoor thermometer is reading now, as I am waking up on this Friday afternoon

My pillow was soaked with sweat, telling me that 89 degrees is a tad too warm to try to sleep in.

My air conditioner/heater unit has been broken for about a year now, and I have been too lazy* to walk to the front desk and put in a repair order for it.

*It is due to the, perhaps certifiable, "procrastination" which has haunted me for my entire life, in one guise or other.

This is something that I might be able to overcome through therapy,  

I went through the winter by turning the burners of my stove on, and finding the point (all 4 burners on 3 and a half) where it would within a quarter turn of each burner knob, keep the apartment in the comfort range.
I have always liked 81 degrees. But, I like to be shirtless in that environment. It is the reptile in me that likes to consume one huge meal per day and then eliminate it first thing in the morning. I used to like it when my pet kingsnake would crap out what you could still tell (by the de-calcified skeleton) was a mouse or a rat or (maybe on Christmas morning or on the snake's birthday) a bird.


And so, from turds, we turn to last night.

Peace And Brotherhood And Togetherness

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of seeing a bitter response to a Facebook "status" that I posted.

It was a bizarre circumstance. I mentioned that this person used to post a dozen times a day. And it was like she had access to this huge feed of Trump haters, and maybe thought it was her job to compile it into a one stop site for ignorance and hatred.

And, not to imply that I am superior to her, but, I will say that I am superior to even "myself" when I can manage to rise above the level of thought.

This term should be becoming more and more familiar to people.

I even just tuned into a video by Tony Robbins on Youtube.

At one point in my life his books really had an impact upon me (1989).
He is all about "success," though, and I became very sarcastic internally while watching it, because Tony (and his wife, who was there, sitting in a yoga like posture with a head so almost perfectly round that it looked like her pony tail was supernaturally tight that it was actually making her head round) along with this other guy named Michael A. Singer were immediately upon the subject of how "immaterial" money is, to the spiritually minded.

Tony's whole deal will be to tell you that, by applying certain principles, he has gone from living in a dingy apartment and washing dishes in the bathtub, to now living in the mansion of his dreams with the wife of his dreams, and I suppose collaborating with the Micheal A. Singer of his dreams, and how that kind of transformation is possible for any and everyone.

It's just that, is it possible for everyone to live the life of their dreams. Sure it is.
But what about tearing down all the small dingy houses and rebuilding mansions on combined lots; and then, how do you politely get rid of all the ugly girls and then distribute the beautiful girls of dreams evenly?

Mean Jean Broughey Dean


Well, I was unfriended by a facebook friend. And it had all the classic signs of being just because I disagreed with her.

And it is funny that there are people that way. Only because it has to be seen as being funny or it might bother you otherwise.

They are lost in an existence of what Eckhart Tolle calls "thought constructs."

And, it is easy to see them in other people but equally hard to see them in yourself.

But, then I went on my status to complain about it, and basically stopped short of mentioning that I think that (name withheld for security purposes) has, in her timeline on facebook, a platform for spewing hatred and ignorance.

And, it is comical because she will levy assertions like one that I saw in which she said something about the "hatred and ignorance" of certain Republicans.
And, she said it with clenched fists, through clenched teeth, as if she really wanted to kill these individuals whom she has never met and so, whose information about comes solely through third parties. Other people.

And for every one of her posts, you could find the exact opposite opinion espoused somewhere else. You would have to highlight her page and then click on "invert" in the webmaster toolbar, and bam! you would have a page absolutely chock full of posts (with another one coming within and hour or two) that accuse the Democrats of being hateful and ignorant, and expressing a desire to do harm to those people whom they have never met and whose only knowledge of comes through third parties. Other people, but ones that hate Jean's (as that is her first name, at least) knowledge sources enough to want to kill them.

So, to step back from this and be like: "Wow, I disagreed with her that the girl who shot the video of Floyd being abused by the cop in Minneapolis was "a hero," and she just unfriended me.

The girl made a subsequent video where she showed back up at the spot of the arrest and introduced herself, and said that she had made "a video" there that had gone viral. She paused there, as if allowing it to sink in.

She then went on to say that she had been criticized on social media for having stood by, shooting a video, instead of (jumping in, and pulling the cop off the guy?) doing something..

But, without going down that thought-road that I am fighting hard not to identify with, after having lived in a predominantly African American city, and even in close quarters with them.

I think that Jean had chosen the wrong word.

She might have fused the fact that the girl's video coming to light is going to save the lives of countless people down the road, through basically just coming to light, with the forth-coming police "reforms" et. al. with the assumption that the girl had put herself in harm's way and risked her life to save the others.

Unless they have changed the Webster's Dictionary entry for "hero" to reflect that you can in fact qualify as a hero by becoming famous, the girl was in the right place at the right time and, since she didn't actually make some kind of physical move to get the cop off the guy's neck and succeeded, while putting herself in peril, she was a bystander, not a hero.

This was, after all, what she had supposedly been negligent in.
There was the tone of a lottery winner in her voice.

She had a friend with her, and the spot was still crowded with people wanting to visit the sight and hold a vigil of sorts; along with the news media, following up upon their follow up stories.

But, it also seemed like she knew that a video about a viral video was likely to become infected.

But, the fallout was that, I compared another one of my Facebook friends with Jean; just because of the frequency with which they both post. A dozen a day.

So, then my old friend, Donna P. got mad at me just for having mentioned her in the "unfriending" story.
Because I had bashed the other characters in that post, she seemed to think she was being bashed, too.

Since I am just about recounting the whole thing anyways, here is the post.
From Facebook Re: Being Unfriended



Well, what's on my mind is that I have been "unfriended" for only the second time in my life.
I would like to think that the first time didn't count because the guy was deranged.

I remembered him as the guy who claims that his father was one of the infamous "3 hobos" from the whole Kennedy assassination thing.
He did bear a striking resemblance to one of the "hobos" in the old black and white stock photo, I must say.
One time, he told me the "story" of how J.F.K. was done in by a marksman who was hiding in the sewage system, and had fired upwards, from that angle.

But, I had encountered him in downtown Mobile, Alabama; standing at a street intersection, on a cold night, without a jacket and visibly shivering. 
He greeted me and basically communicated that everything was OK with him, except that he was freezing his ass off.
It was probably about 45 degrees that night...
He offered to smoke weed or buy us beer, I forget.
"Man, I'm freezing my ass off," he reiterated.

Well, I had an extra winter jacket; a really nice one; a kind of expensive one...
I couldn't wear 2 heavy coats at once, I supposed, so I offered to let him borrow my extra jacket, after making it clear that I wanted it back.
But, this was 2009 and I was homeless in Mobile, Alabama.
The only way for me to live off the money I was making doing music was to cut out things, like mainly the landlord, and so I had set up residence under a holly bush, near the railroad tracks.
That would be the spot where I would eventually hop on a freight train bound for New Orleans.
I was actually "caught" doing that, after some rail yard cop saw me. The train was stopped and I was accosted by a couple city cops, But after an order came over their radio to the effect of: "Mckenna, no, let him go! Let him go!" I was allowed to just stay on the train.
I liked to think that they felt that New Orleans was a better place for me, and were acting out of kindness....
Mobile was really was a Christian hotbed, with maybe one church for every 17.8 people, or something..
Anyways, Thomas was wearing the jacket a couple days later when I saw him, and I attempted to reclaim it. The weather had warmed up considerably.
He shrugged his shoulders and said: "Well, I've kind of moved into it. I mean, I've got all my stuff in the pockets..."
I had gotten pissed, and said somethin like:
"Well, you're being evicted, take your stuff, and get out. I want my jacket back!"
It might seem that I hadn't learned much from the scripture about giving your brother your shirt too, if he asks for your coat.
But, I had done that.
I saw that my brother was cold, and so, in christ, I gave him my damned jacket.
But, I had brought him down to the holly bush, under which I slept, pacified by the rumble of freight trains 10 yards away, and presented him with it.
Over the course of the next few days, some of my things began to come up missing.
Anyways, he was the first to unfriend me (although, he has since friended me again).
He was the first and only person, until now...
It took a couple weeks before it dawned upon me that I was no longer seeing posts by Jean Broughey Dean appearing in my feed.
And, that was odd, because she would post 8 or 9 times on a typical day.
But, then, they stopped.Her whole wall seems to be devoted to
And I am reminded of that protester that stood up at a Trump rally and started to shout something out of the litany of things that he might have shouted.
And, Trump's security guy's descended upon the guy and, in effect, clamped a hand over his mouth and dragged him bodily out of the assembly.
I remember observing the irony of Trump's campaign kicking off with the very first amendment coming under scrutiny, with the muzzling of the protester.
But, I wanted to hear what the guy had to say, and I had already heard the: "Idiot, Idiot!!" or whatever it was, from the protester, and had recorded the gist of it, and noted his opposition to the man; and I was prepared to respect his point of view, after weighing the validity of his arguments, etc. etc..
But, he was yelling right when another man was speaking, and that is just rude, the way I was raised.
You don't yell over a guy who's speaking, and who may even have leased the venue wherein he was doing so.
So, you tackle the guy, clamp a hand over his mouth, and drag him out, right? Right, Jean Broughey Dean?.
That way the video it isn't even marred by his being able to reiterate his point on the way out.
That is the Donald Trump way and, apparently the Jean Broughey Dean treatment, too.
Birds of a feather, I guess.
So, she unfriended me. I won't be seeing any of her messages in my feed.
Tackled me and gagged me and dragged me out, away from her wall. Censored me.
And I thought that was a cliche; people who shut you off if you don't agree with them. And people who can't step out of themselves long enough to see what a caricature that makes them.
Oh, wel, I still have 84 friends.....


The black people that I live with yelled things at their screen like: "That's it baby, make that money!!" at the point when the young lady was saying that she was just a child (old enough to have a few tattoos that you could see) and had been traumatized by the whole thing.


But, the girl, like what percentage of "kids" these days (93 percent?) had her phone on her. And, from what I've seen of her generation, it is second nature to record anything worth looking at, I guess. How could she have stood there and not shot a video? What would she be doing with her hands?

This is the generation after the "Millenials" that I am talking about.

Here in New Orleans, it is very common to see a person of color shooting a video of cops interacting with people that they just pulled over. A bystander will just stand a respectable distance away and record it as if out of common courtesey.

We are being conditioned to be that way with every spectacular video that we see in which something amazing was captured by just someone with their phone. Maybe they were already recording something else when it happened.

OK, when the Orca whale shot up out of the water and took a ladies head off, over the railing of the sightseeing boat...


Pulling the camera out is far from an afterthought with "kids" these days, is what I am saying. And she wasn't really a hero, just in the right place at the right time.

And so Jean Broughey Dean unfriended me; apparently for saying that whatever her name was, was not technically a hero; and to think of her coming upon the scene and NOT shooting a video as being a preposterous notion.


So, when I woke up Friday, it was after my friend Jacob was already at a job site, watching a house that has a Terminix tent over it.

I was up around 1:30 PM and did a 5 gram serving of kratom in pineapple and then drank a little bit of prune juice and waited for the morning dump to arrive.

There is no point in letting food stay in the body for more than 24 hours, in my opinion, and I had really been irresponsible in eating a whole box of toaster pastries the night before. I was a bit more constipated; a bit more dehydrated, and a bit more depressed upon first waking up. I can't imagine what people who live off stuff like toaster pastries end up feeling like...

The thing I notice about the depression is that it shares some characteristics with a hunger pang. You can sit there feeling like you are starving, but can actually feel the pang fading away if you are just a little patient.
I try to locate just where in the body it is; and it seems to be somewhere around the stomach.

I had been messing up by drinking almost a bottle of wine almost every night the past week. It is usually a less than 5 dollar bottle of wine. But, to me it still represents the ultimate loss of freedom, for it is the freedom from needing to work that having money provides.

But, Jacob had texted me, about me bringing weed to where he was stuck sitting in a car for 12 hours.

He wanted to get a couple of "major" things done on his computer or something, while he was there. if he could buy a joint, because it brightened the prospect of being stuck in his car for 12 hours, making sure nobody goes inside the house full of deadly poison.

I really only had a bit of bud, and I had plans to sit on here and tell this story, or to record music, listen to it, or something that would make me want to consume it. I hadn't listened to the "self help dialogues" recordings in a while, nor soaked in the bath tub.

But, I said I would stop by where an older black guy has regularly had some very decent bud. It has the occasional seed in it, but that just tells you that it was probably grown outdoors, in the real sun; not under some light source that only pot in other galaxies has adapted for.

"The Strongest; Whew!!"
Some of the highest "grade" bud, is touted as being "medicinal" and never has any seeds, is analogous to grain alcohol, in my opinion.

One might conjecture that, to alcoholics whose motto is: "The strongest!," grain alcohol would represent the cleanest and purest drinking experience of all.

But, alas, it is just too nasty to be enjoyable; not even by the likes of Leslie Thompson. It is more gaseous than liquid, going down the throat, is all I can say to describe it. 

So, I rode around and didn't see the guy, and was thinking of calling Jacob and informing him of the weed situation and maybe even opting out of making the trip over there.
He was going to smoke and then get certain "major" things done.

I decided to get a half pint of brandy from Banks Meat Store; which I did, and then I was on my way back to the apartment when, lo and behold, the skinny older guy in the white truck was at his hang out spot near a little vacant lot where, a couple of chairs and a makeshift table had been assembled.

The guy is something like 7 years older than me.

People Getting Petty

We wound up talking about current events. I mentioned the defacing of Tom Petty's mural in Florida.

He sincerely thought that was a shame, and we agreed on a lot of things.
It was just refreshing to talk to the guy; he reminded me of other black guys who are about 10 years older than me; and how they at least seem to get the fact that us white kids that grew up in the 70's were just as clueless as anyone else, and we carried no inherent resentment towards them, and vice versa.
At least this was how it was in the 70's in Massachusetts.

And so, it was like meeting a brown skinned man from an entirely different tribe; one that you grew up with and had no problem with.

It wasn't until I came to the south that I saw things like a look of disbelief on the face of a black guy of about my age after I had drank off the same can of energy drink as him. We were on a job, working out of the labor pool in Jacksonville, Florida.

Now that I think of it, he must have thought that, as soon as I had passed him the can (so he could take a sip or two) then its entire contents were his.

He might have been in his late 20's and me 10 years older at the time. But, he looked mildly surprised when I held my hand out in a gesture of wanting the drink back. Then, he watched the can all the way to my mouth and then might have even watched to see if I was really drinking it.

That offers a clue as to the complexity of race relations here in the south.
But, it was almost a spiritual experience to get out of the house (the house of horrors if you are glued to Youtube videos about almost anything in the news) and to have a very friendly exchange with a black guy, and eventually his friend, too, after the latter might have gleaned that I was "alright," (as pretentious as that might sound).

And then, something kind of unusual happened. I started to relax in the company of these two older black guys, and through undergoing that process, became aware of just how nervous black people were currently making me in my present life. Kind of like when you don't realize you've had your fists clenched until at some point, they un-clench.

I had told my friend that I was looking to buy a dime of bud, and he had been in the process of producing it from somewhere as we talked.

Then, I tried to say something about living in the present moment -you know, lay some Eckhart Tolle shit on a nigga- and this was a result of my trying to focus on "being" and it dawned upon me that, until then, I think I might have assumed, through prejudice, that such matters might have been over the heads of those particular two older black men who hang out at that spot at one of theirs' truck.

So, I learned something about myself; and was able to let go of some of my fears and misconceptions about "the man of color," and, for some reason it seemed therapeutic at the least to become comfortable around these black people; because all the sitting at home and only catching glimpses of news, but then seeing things like the defacement of Tom Petty's mural in Florida...can allow fear and hatred to fester in you. Going out and basically hugging a couple black guys who thought it was ridiculous about the Petty statue also, and who listen to classic rock enough, to well, to at least not have been raised on nothing but rap.

So, after having had an interesting and deep (yet not deep) discussion, the weed guy went to the drivers door of his truck, and uttering a mild oath, said that he couldn't find the weed that he thought he had.
But, he quickly dispatched his friend to ostensibly get more.
What I think happened was that there was some really good weed at one of their residences, but he acted like he couldn't find the other stuff because he wanted to "bless" me with the better kind. Maybe it was good for their soul to talk to a white guy who isn't all full of hatred from sitting in front of the wrong Youtube channels all day...

Ater I hung out and smoked with them, I enjoyed a combination of the air temperature being perfect, the bike's fully inflated tires, and all my pent up energy and I proceeded to get happily lost, just taking streets that looked fun and were in the general direction of where I was trying to get.


I hadn't felt that good in a while. It could have been due to some accidental chemical state that I had unwittingly put myself in, maybe I had gotten some trace element from one of the weird looking things from the Ideal Market, which are sold alongside the yucca roots.

The small amount of brandy plus the warm (but only 40% humidity) air, which seemed fresh, perhaps because of so many less cars in operation lately, became the perfect combination and I enjoyed every pedal crank of my ride.

I texted ahead to Jacob and may have layed too much emphasis on the weed being magical, when it could have been a rare and unique situtation for me (which I may never replicate) that was making me feel like I did 30 years ago.
I did get a bottle of "testosterone boosters" that were on sale at Walgreen's and they have been making me feel more youthful.

So, then I got to where Jacob was working. He was sitting in the dark in a quiet residential neighborhood, feeling very self conscious.

I actually rode right past him, within maybe 80 yards, at one point; which was a testiment to the accuracy of my "down this way some, over a few streets, now that way more" method of having thrown reason out the window (verifiable by the fact that I did so while riding a bike) and was just using, I guess the same facilities that a cat would use, were you to drop it off in California, and then it were to find its way to your doorstep in Kenner, Louisianna 5 weeks later.

But, I wasn't to glean just how well I had navigated because, at that point, all I heard was a whistle.

Whistling is something that a dopeman does to a customer when that dopeman has had to move to a place a short distance from where he can usually be found.
And it is anonymous because, how can you recognize someone's voice because of their whistle.

Who is going to hear a whistle coming from the dark in an unfamiliar neighborhood and walk towards the source of it to see what the person might want?


I finally came to my senses enough to start looking at the house numbers; and was able to find Jacob.
He no longer wanted to smoke weed.

We sat there, trying to get the data stick that I brought to play on his laptop, but it wasn't to be. The Linux Startup Disk that I had made on the USB stick would not work on his Apple. It was this disk that allowed me to access my old hard drive that has been frozen for I think it is 2 years now. It was where I found the song "I Am" from yesterday's post.

So, as we sat there, my vaporizer ran out, and I started to think about running to a nearby store so I could snipe some tobacco and maybe get some more brandy.

Jacob wanted to know what I thought about him sneaking into Sacred Heart and us jamming, after we smoked some of the magical weed, that I might have built up a bit too much.

I had visions of him, after he smoked, going into a manic state and beginning to play too loudly for the midnight hour that it was, and him feeling that any attempt to turn him down was and attempt to stifle his creativity. I thought about him grabbing the 5 gallon water jug that I have and slamming it down on the floor at some point, because he loves sudden loud and abrasive sounds (during some sessions he had even rewound the tape in order to replay a part where the microphone fell to the floor or something).

I had to consider what kind of action the management would take against me, were I to get caught sneaking somebody into a building that has been quarantined. I wasn't going to take a chance that that would be some kind of federal offense, or that I wouldn't be charged with reckless endangerment, or something.

Then, there was the distinct possibility that the weed wouldn't translate into a good jam at all; especially if we became paranoid about getting Jacob out of the building without him being seen. We would be trying to keep the volume at a minimum.

Plus there was the matter (which wasn't dawning upon me when we were considering the thing) that my apartment was probably about 90 degrees inside it. Jacob is used to air conditioning, and so would probably not be able to stand more than a half hour in there, especially with the exertion of playing music factored in.


But, it was soon approaching the time when Jacob's replacement was to come in; and I suddenly got to urge to ride some more on the bike. Rather than stuff it in the trunk of his car; I figured I could get a good head start, and be back at Sacred Heart at about the same time as he did; and that way he could talk to his replacement for 15 or 20 minutes, like he had done on other occasions.

I was very sensitive to feelings of being trapped, and I thought I would have been pacing back and forth, waiting for him to finish talking to the guy.
This has been annoying to me in the past, when they were talking about work and how many shifts they were getting in, and how much they were going to make sitting there doing nothing at 10 bucks per hour, when I might have been flat broke at the time and stressing out over whether I would ever get another job as long as I lived. I'm sure that wasn't their intention, but it put me in a worse mood.

I guess I owe Jacob an apology for the way I kind of just brushed past him in the parking lot after I got back later than I had planned, and then scooted inside.
It was just the momentum of my ride back; I felt like I was in a fluid motion, and didn't want to stop and sit anywhere. I wanted to get my vaporizor charged up, make coffee, then get back to work on something.

Part of that has to do with drinking the brandy, which can make me more impulsive.
As soon as I opened the door to my place, I was reminded of how hot it had been in there. I knew that a jam session would have been highly unlikely; no matter how good the weed was.


But, it was rude, and I apologize.
I guess I will have to sober up and hopefully return to my normal self.

I was going to send Jacob a text message, but figured I could type faster on this thing, and it has turned into this post. Unfortunately, by the time I got to the part about him, I was almost out of gas, having been at it for at least 12 hours.

Monday, June 15, 2020

Aria For Human Organ

When I think about it; I have never seen a porn movie in which the genetalia sing.

It is taking me forever to finish the story I have been working on. It is only the glue between two other more major stories..
But, in the meantime; I have reclaimed a hard drive that I messed up almost a year ago when I tried to put Fedora Linux on it, to run alongside the Windows 10 that was on the laptop when I got it.
This song was on there, but was missing a bunch of audio files and so I only got half of it; and only one channel.
I might as well put something on the blog.
This was part of a musical porn movie that I got the idea to write.
It was shortly after I had seen Pink Flamingos, the movie by that Waters guy...

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Oh Yeah, My Blog!

A Puzzling Dilemma

Blog, what blog?
I swear the universe metaphysically conjured up the 5,000 piece
jigsaw puzzle, solely as a device for messing with me.

Being on "lock down," along with, I guess, everyone else, it might seem as though I would be posting left and right on this blog.

But, apart from the couple of weeks that I spent on a water fast, I have found my appetite for diversion to be greater than my ability to get everything done that I would like.

I just got back from the Goodwill Store, where I picked up 3 more books to take their place among the 40 or so that I am "in the middle of" reading.

I have given up on being able to start a book from page one and then proceed until I am finished with it.

For one thing, choosing which book to read is a dilemma. So, I jump around between the 40 or so (out of a library of 250 or so) and will even dive into the middle of a book somewhere, just to see if reading a few paragraphs, plants an interest within me to read more. This would really be because of the writer's style, and the fact that a couple random pages from the middle of a novel should be enough to pique my curiosity enough so that I might go back to the beginning.

I can divide my library into the categories of "entertainment" and "educational."

But, now that I think about it, I consider all the reading I do to be educational. With the Spanish II textbook, or the ones on the Perl programming language, the educational angle is more obvious. But, even if I read a John Grisham novel, expecting to be intrigued and entertained, I am always trying to learn something about writing, or to learn something about the justice system, etc.

I only read a fraction, when I smoke pot, of what I would when totally sober (as exemplified when I am on a water fast, and my appetite for any mind altering substance becomes negligible). I actually only record a fraction of the music, do a fraction of the drawings, and a fraction of the blog posts also, that I would do if not smoking weed.

Lately, if I drink, I can feel the energy escaping me like the air out of a balloon that has a pinhole in it. With each sip, whatever I am doing starts to grind down to a near halt, at which point I will lay back on the bed, often without turning the lights out first, and conclude that the laundry, the computer programming, and the guitar practice, can wait until "tomorrow."
I might stumble into the kitchen to chow down on food that is intended to last me at least a few days...

But, as I type this, I am about to hop on my bike and go get a bottle of $4.37 wine, which is kind of a "store brand" of Rouses Market (and is probably just the Glen Ellen, or the Roberto Mondavi with the store brand label on it, priced at half as much as them.

As the stimulus check money evaporates, and the news about a "second dose" of them is not too promising for the near future, I am already at the point of having to cut corners and choose one thing over another.

I had thought about getting a pet snake; a King Snake. They make great pets and are fun to feed with rodents and birds and lizards and even other snakes; not to mention eggs.

But, even though I can buy a Florida King Snake for about 50 bucks; their delivery requires next day service and is an additional 45 bucks.

Plus, I would want to go first class, with an aquarium equipped with an electric "hot rock," and I would want to be able to feed it very regularly, as well as take it out and handle it every day for as long as possible, so that it won't be stressed out over its environment and will feed well, as a result.

I used to have a King Snake when I lived in Florida, and I handled it so much that the snake must have thought that I was just a big, warm friendly rock that it could perch on. I used to take her for "walks" around the trailer park, and I could feel her tightening around my neck, as if hanging on for the ride.

When winter came and the trailer was colder in general, she would cling to my hand as I watched Letterman on my little black and white TV and, as her body temperature rose to match mine, it would feel like she was melting into my hand and I would sense her presence in my hand less and less, outside of a ripple of muscle movement, here and there. She would stare at the TV screen, as if entranced.

But, I also need at least one, but probably both, tires on my bike replaced. And, I want to go first class there, too, with kevlar tires and heavy duty tubes, perhaps the ones with Slime™ already in them, to seal punctures as they occur.

Then, there is the matter of a new harmonica.

If I am intending to resume busking, then....you guessed it, I want to go first class. I am very curious about the 80 dollar Suzuki "Promaster" harmonicas, but will probably settle for another Special 20, in the key of C.

It's not that $1,200 isn't a decent chunk of money, it's that the next installment of any kind, whether from busking, or from a second stimulus check is uncertain.

When buying an 80 dollar harmonica today, I might be spending August's cat food money. It's very hard to budget in uncertainty.

But, outside of another water fasting period, it is going to take effort on my part to resume a regular blogging schedule.

This post was supposed to have a song attached to it off of Soundcloud, but the time involved in selecting and preparing that song, along with uploading it, choosing some art work to display while it plays, or, optimally, making a video of some kind for it.

Which brings me to the next item of a digital camera of some kind. I am torn between trying to reclaim my LG smartphone from the boneyard, by either having it reset, or by paying for the service to be turned back on. The latter is unlikely, since I would want to use it as a hot spot, and that is a more expensive "plan."
I want to be able to shoot video on it, and then Bluetooth it from the phone to the laptop, so that I can once again make music videos.

I really wish I had spent a little more time on The Virus Song, from the last video. I had meant to edit out the word "tit" (from where the bat bit Miley Cyrus) because it threw the rhythm off. In my haste, it got left in there, and now I cringe at that part if I ever watch it.
Left: Can I even finish a 5,000 piece puzzle before giving up on it, or having Harold swallow a piece or two?

Only by water fasting would I be able to tame the scattered thoughts and energies in my mind, re-prioritize things and organize things in my mind in order to have a clear path and goal.

But, off I go to get wine. Hopefully I can get a song posted up here. I want to start to replace the songs in the sidebar with updated and better versions.
As soon as I am proud of this blog, I will start to use search engine optimization techniques, like it to my Facebook page, and do other things like printing up business cards with the URL on them, etc...