Trump To Dole Out 10 Trillion In Stimulus Money In Mid October

So, Donald knows that if he hands the good citizens of the USA, copious amounts of cash money -in order that they be able to cope with the "horrible, terrible" virus without missing a beat (a beat in this case being a cigarette a beer a joint, plenty of Little Debbie cakes as well as other food, etc) that the 10 trillion dollars, or whatever, is going to be spent, in short order; and redirected, through taxation, right back to the coffers of the local state and federal reserves.

The family of the convicted violent felon who went and got himself shot...

Real American citizens, will be able to just sit back, "unemployed" and watch Youtube, drink and get high, and wait for the nice checks to appear in their mailboxes.
They will run out and spend it. They will have to, just for ordinary staples.

 

And with every transaction, the government will get a piece, until the money is all "gone" and back in the coffers of the government.
 

In due time, all the commoners will be broke again; but they will hopefully have lived high off the hog, and accumulated a lot of nice toys.

This will keep an economy going of people scrambling to meet the demands of this now "nigger rich" segment of the population (who might be quickly amending their opinions of the president) -who are now making more money by sitting on their ass, sheltering in place, and not leaving the house, type of thing.

But, they will all be broke. Which means that all the money would have been recouped by the state and federal entities and then, guess what?

Donald J. Trump can then give us all "another" 10 trillion dollars!!!

 

Right before the election, and most people won't realize that it is the very same 10 trillion that he had already given out, and then collected back through taxation.
 

The same huge ass sum of money can be given out over and over again. This is how a "rich nation" winds up actually looking like one.

The only caveat is that it might devolve into something like socialism. But wouldn't actually look like it, unless a majority of people become really lazy and quit their jobs, if they are "lucky" enough to be "essential" workers. If they would rather sit and collect unemployment, this could become a problem.

I mean the real purpose of the insurance is to protect people like myself. If I were to go out and play my harmonica in public just to support myself, I could become like the Typhoid Mary of New Orleans, and we just cannot abide that, here.

So, I have to relegate myself to collecting twice as much as I averaged busking for sitting at home, and working my other job.

This is one that I was "offered" through my dark web connections, and basically involves sitting at my computer and mailing in votes for Donald Trump in the guise of all the corona fatalities, who aren't available any more to do so themselves. Almost 7,000 dead people have already voted Red, and it makes me snicker to think of how the Democrats are so adamant about keeping the mail-in ballot thing operable. The post office is working fine, imo.

But that is a deep dark web secret that my having installed the Tor browser and a "virtual private network" has opened up to me, and given me a chance to become a true patriot. It is tedious, working as an envelope stuffer, but the whole "Bourne Identity" aspect of it fascinates me. It kind of sheds some light upon why Donald doesn't seem to be concerned with escalating numbers of "corona" deaths. They are all going to vote for him from beyond the grave -such a white collar, intelligent white man counter punch to the BLM, and antifa idiots, who only know how to raise their fists and drink the Kool Aid...

One of the biggest benefits of this "pandemic unemployment" arrangement is that only valid U.S. citizens will be benefiting from the nice sums added regularly to their debit cards. 

 

The illegal undocumented folks will be "out back" as they used to say in Jacksonville, Florida.

This means they will miss the boat, and will have to work (menial jobs probably) in order to survive, while their U.S. citizen contemporaries are watching Youtube sheltering in place, and making more money than they, who sweat in the hot sun as they tote 80 pound bundles of tar paper up ladders to rooves 45 feet above.

 

"GET OUT!!"

Maybe a lot of them will say: "Screw this, America just isn't the scam it once was," and will become citizens, so they can get a piece of the 11 trillion dollar pie." (yes, my fictitious amount just went up a trillion; I guess Trumpism is infectious).
And, so after dealing the illegals a blow, and having provided in a concrete way for the working man who will be out of work indefinitely -as long as Donald wants to keep the Covid19 based economy going- and with the stock markets hitting record highs, in order to satiate the billionaires of the country, Donald can relax a bit and maybe take up a leisurely hobby like creating a reality show called "Face Off With Donald," which could be on every night and wherein people of all walks of life, Never Trumper's and all, can sit in an oval office turned studio and grill the guy and see if they can best him in an argument, to the entertainment and delight of the nation every night, and on every major network.

 At those whose arguments are particularly anti-American; Donald can point his finger and say: "GET OUT!!" whereupon they would have to leave the oval office with their tails between their legs, escorted by armed security.

 

Donald can then stare into the camera and talk to us, scold us, threaten us, update us on the state of the union, whatever. The show would hopefully be his most pressing engagement in an otherwise peaceful and stable world.

And, about the "prison towns" where all the leftist Democrats (who were rounded up and incarcerated the Christmas Eve after the election) are to be housed. They will be outposts where detainees are treated with the utmost human dignity and provided for with the finest food and medical services; even offered a chance to hold their own elections and have their own governments. They can work and farm and sell their products to the outside for U.S. currency, but, should they be too much anti capitalist to capitulate to such a manipulative and anti-spiritual treatment of a human being, can just get everything for free. Those places will be oasis's of Socialist Utopia within our borders. The only difference between living there, for the antifa and BLM inhabitants, and living in a full fledged Socialist nation would be the razor wire encircling the community. Just the razor wire.

The Same Experts Are Trying To Forecast The Weather 50 Years From Now

Hurricane Marco disintegrated, while veering away from us, and we only felt a couple drops of rain, as we waited behind our sandbags, stocked to the gills with batteries and water and peanut butter. 

How scientists can conclude that we are in state of "global warming" using the same toolbox is a real head scratch-er. 

Unless data is being used "politically" -the first thing one has to consider here in 2020. 

Things have been going pretty well here. It has been a trade off lately of drinking wine along with great food, but not so much that I am passing out and not getting some other things done. 

 Like Putting A New Tire On The Bike 

I put a brand new tire on the bike, one that was actually labeled "700C" which is the exact dimension that is etched into the wheels of my bike. I then found a tube which denoted: "Also fits 700C" I haven't had such a feeling of correctness in a long time. I inflated it to 55 pounds, as the instructions were to put it between 50 and 75 pounds, and the thing is solid as a rock with plenty of deep tread grooves and has been endowing my apartment with that nice rubber smell that we all love.

Should I Buy A Pistol?

I guess I have until the day after the next presidential election to decide that (although I'm going to want to take it out to the Bayou and practice shooting stuff with it).

I remember liking a .32 caliber one that a friend of mine had back in the 80's.

A Heterosexual Couple of Hurricanes, Marco and Laura Coming To Visit

Please Don't Blow Off My Head!

Send it all through the juicer; all of it!!

Now is the time to run to the store to stock up upon 72 hours worth of supplies while I can still do so without getting drenched, or worse, having my hat blow off my head.

72 hours worth, hmmm...So I guess 2 cases of beer and 3 cans of cat food.

Yesterday, I minimized the damage due to my having resumed alcohol consumption by getting a bottle of red wine.

I got home and threw some mushrooms in a skillet with some olive oil and put the heat on low-medium.

While these sizzled, I fed collard greens into my juicer.

After the thick green juice started sluggishly oozing out the spout of the thing, I sent some carrots through, which produce a lot more juice to help rinse the greens through the system, and then some apples, to balance the tart sourness of the collard greens and help the carrots to sweeten up the concoction.

Since I had shopped at the Fresh Market, I was able to add some cactus and some things that are supposedly radishes, but are oblong and yellowish-tan in color. Along with some conventional red radishes and a few other things that I had grabbed (with no idea if the whole thing should be eaten, or if the skin needs to be peeled off because it is poisonous) it all went into the juicer, until I had a 24 ounce cup of an incredibly tasting liquid.

Perfection was achieved after I scooped the fried mushrooms out of the skillet and just added them to the drink, which quickly cooled them down from scalding to just warm. The drink was warm and delicious, the perfect complement to chips and fresh, store made, "pico de gallo."

Washing it all down with the 4 dollar bottle of  Gallo Cabernet Sauvignon made for a taste experience which was out of this world; and made the wine taste like a 40 dollar bottle.

This healthy fare, along with the body building supplements and vitamins I have been taking made me feel the way I used to 20 years ago.

I like to go there just to see all the colorful people who shop there...

I used to drink red wine every night, but only the fixed amount of down to the bottom of the label on the front of the bottle. This would leave about a half a glass for the next night, in order to compare its taste to whichever other kind I would get. This helped me sort through the gamut of wines under 10 dollars a bottle in order to find the best values.

I have always considered Woodbridge (always around 7 bucks a bottle, and the standard "table wine" served at a lot of restaurants when people order a glass) to be the measuring stick of all other wines under ten bucks. For some reason, the Fresh Market has it for $4.99 a bottle. That store inexplicably has some items priced way higher than the competition ($2.29 for a can of pineapple that is $1.29 at the Family Dollar across the street, and $3.99 for a hand full of collard greens when an arm full is the same price at Rouses Market) and just as baffling are things like the Woodbridge Cabernet Sauvignon at half the price of everywhere else.

But, with the two hurricanes on the way, I guess I'd better close this out and go down there before we all feel the first drop of rain.

I Need To Do Better

I really haven't come up to speed with the world, yet, which has the people at the equator moving around 7 miles per second.

The Whip was good

But that is a relative speed; just ask Einstein. Since the earth is moving around the sun at a particular speed, the earth's rotation would not have them moving at a constant 7 miles per second. Twice daily that speed would be realized when the tangents line up, but for half of the day one would be traveling faster than that, offset by the other half of the day when you would be rotating counter to the solar orbit. Maybe this is really where "biological clocks" become set.

It would be like installing a bunch of small merry-go-rounds onto the hub of one huge merry-go-round, so that the persons experience of revolving and going up and down would be further enhanced by the whole merry-go-round she is on going around and up and down along a greater arc.

There was a ride called "The Scrambler" in the park where I went as a kid which achieved this motion, by having seats that spun around, attached by long arms to a hub, which itself rotated. (there was another ride in Whalom Park in Lunenburg, Ma. called "The Whip", which I am at a loss to remember the mechanics of, but I remember it being one of my favorites. Update: Oh, look, there it is above!).

The Scrambler, Twist, Twister, Cha Cha, Sizzler, or Merry Mixer, is an amusement ride in which suspended riders spinning in cars experience centrifugal force, while spinning along two separate axes. Riders are seated in small carriages clustered together and connected by beams at the top to a central point. The clustered vehicles are spun in one direction, while the ride as a whole spins in the opposite direction.^[1] There are a number of variations of the design.-Wikipedia

The spindle with the cars represents the earth's rotation, while the central hub simulates the orbit of it around the sun; hence the popularity of the ride; triggered at a primal subconscious level...I believe the one in our park also had each car on an axle, allowing them to rotate freely and introduce an additional wildcard motion...at least before the unfortunate fatalities occurred (but hey, all you can do is post a "Do not stand up while ride is in motion" warning, then people ore on their own. Maybe the whole idea of the ride was behind some sinister plot to reduce the illiterate's among us).

 

Einstein also said that, while there are objects hurling through space at half the speed of light, so that one might surmise that two of them hurling directly away from each other would make them appear to be moving away from each other at the speed of light; this could never be so. Impossible, although it appears to happen everywhere in space.

So, what happens is space becomes bent, or a fourth dimension comes into play...

No matter, not even a single atom, can move at the speed of light. It would take all of the energy present in the whole universe PLUS the energy in that one atom; to accelerate it to the speed of light.

So, when this point of velocity was reached, that atom would have had all its mass consumed as fuel in order to propel it, and therefore would no longer exist. Nothing would. There would be no more universe, just an atom that just disappeared as it gained the speed of light. Unless the atom slowed down, bogging it down into "existence".

In the beginning, God created light. -The Holy Bible

And, yet, even at this "great" speed of light, it takes 12 minutes for a beam of it to travel from Earth to Mars. That's almost as long as the song "Dark Star", by The Grateful Dead.

So, while people on earth are dissolving into molecules at the conclusion of that song, having been blown away, and transported out of this world by a version of it; people on Mars would just be hearing the song's first note sound (assuming they were getting a good broadband signal -not always a given on that hell-hole red planet).

People on Mars generally vote Republican, while Neptune is a "blue" planet, which is where those designations originated, by the way.

So, nothing, not even a single atom can move at the speed of light; only light can.

At least not in this universe. Wherever Jesus came from, is a different story. He brought light into this world. He existed in the realm of light, but slowed down in order to take on mass, in order to save others from being relegated to being nothing but mass, attracted by gravity and stuck here. Why do you think the Catholic service is called a "mass"?

This is a world of skeezers; standing in front of the Sacred Heart building, shamelessly asking anything that walks by on two legs for something for free, at other's expense.

"Forgive them, they know not that they skeeze." (John 16;14)

But, where was I?

Oh yeah, the shitty blog written by a washed up burned out wannabe hippie...

Last (Wednesday, 8/19/20) night, I had a couple beers while getting to a few things online.

But, I found that it was hard to get to feeling drunk. 

Because of the healthy diet of juiced vegetables, plus the supplements I have been taking, which are engineered to help body builders, and are i.e. steroids, I found that I was metabolizing the alcohol and not feeling a buzz at all.

After having stayed up all night, making two treks to the store a half mile away, getting two twenty four ounce beers each time, I was pretty darned sober come sunup.

So, I went to the Fresh Market, determined to put the matter to rest by getting a 12 pack of some really good Abita Lager.

And, sure enough, upon returning, I encountered a brown skinned man who asked me twice if he could have one of the beers.

I have always hated people who, only after seeing a large quantity of (anything) in the possession of another will assume the attitude that that person has so much that it is therefore incumbent upon him to "share" with them. "You've got all that, what's the problem with giving me some?"

"You've got 12 beers, all I'm asking for is one!"

People buy 12 packs because it lowers the average price of one bottle from $1.61 to more like 80 cents each. That is, unless that person starts handing them out to others who are hard-wired to try to get everything in life for free.

I was shaking my head over that as I returned to my apartment (that I will be able to live in for free for the rest of my life).

The guy approached me and asked me for one of my beers. I said: "No, I'm planning on drinking them. That's why I bought them.."

Then, after I remained out front and cracked one open, so I could enjoy being out of the apartment and in the sunlight and fresh air, he approached me again and actually tapped me on my shoulder, as if he thought that maybe he hadn't fully gotten my attention the first time, and then reiterated his request.

I may have seen him before, but those times, he had probably just walked past me without making eye contact, not seeing any beer or cigarettes on me -or maybe he spat on the ground, because I'm white.

These encounters almost seem scripted.

I come around the side of the building and notice one or two of them sitting out front, on a slab of concrete that I call "beggars slab".

Their heads rotating left and right like periscopes, scanning the surroundings, looking for human beings, specifically, because they are trying to get something for themselves. "I'm out here trying to get myself a couple dollars for a beer, that's all, goddamn. What's wrong with these white people?!"

And I see the heads swivel in unison, like synchronized swimmers, and lock upon me, as I draw closer.

One one thousand, two one thousand, three...the staring persists for just a little too long, for anyone who is just casually taking in their surroundings and gazing idly about. Their eyes bore into me so I feel like a specimen on a microscopic slide. 

They are studying me to determine what I might have. What's in the bag, can we have some? Is that a pack of cigarettes in your front left pocket; can we each have one, er, or two if you don't mind?

Looking up again, I see that they have their game faces on, wearing expressions that say: "Look at me and pity me for what this unfair world has done to me -left me sitting here without a cigarette or a beer or a joint or any crack- aren't you going to do the right thing, to right the injustice? I'm begging you, I'm pleading you; help me, help me!"

Then, in unison, the heads turn away, as the recognition sets in that, here is a guy who "don't never give nothin' to no one for free!"

The "save me" type expressions morph into ones of contempt and utter hatred. 

One of them might mumble to the other: "Don't waste your breath," and one or both of them might spit on the ground as I near; their eyes still following the bag in my hand and alternately shooting towards the pocket where I might have a pack of cigarettes. As if they can't resist seeing what they might be missing out on -what I ain't never gonna give them for free, at my expense.

"Ain't that a damn shame; he gonna go to straight to hell when he die. There go one stingy motherf***er!"

 And Now It is Thursday, and I can't turn off the italics, WTF?

It is now Thursday morning, and I must go and try to get a tire for the bike. I am concerned because the rim is labelled "700C" which has to do with centimeters and I am not sure I will find such a tire size at the Wal Mart.

Running Out

Running out at one-thirty AM, to get a new vaporizer and to grab two cans of Coors Banquet Beer at the sale price of $3.50, I contemplated the repair of my bike tire(s) as I walked.

The "Windstream" bike that Jacob gave me about a year ago, has a layer of Kevlar  on it, which is a lavender color that becomes visible after the rubber over it wears off.

Theoretically, I could continue to ride on just the Kevlar part, which might take years to wear all the way through so that the tire doesn't hold air any more, but that might be pretty slick and probably dangerous to ride on.

I can't imagine the Kevlar getting much of a grip on asphalt.

But, the theme of the day seemed to be running out of things.

My allotted data through the "Obama" phone ran out earlier, and, while this was happening, my vaporizer's light began flashing, indicating that, it too, had run out.

The "fifteen minutes" that it might have taken for the data that I bought to appear in my account, I spent making the run to the store for the two unnecessary items.

I am starting to think that signing up for a plan trough Metro PC, using the smartphone that Bobby bought me about a year ago now, might be my smartest approach, since it seems like I am using just about a gigabyte a day of data, just to do my usual things.

 Last night, I wound up watching documentaries about gymnasts, to include grainy black and white images of Olga Korbet.

 

After the 1972 Games, she visited President Nixon in the White House. She then said, “He told me that my performance in Munich did more for reducing the political tension during the Cold War between our two countries than the embassies were able to do in five years.”

And, of course Nadia Comanechi, whom I had a crush on as a 12 year old; so much so that when the Time magazine pictured (I believe it came weekly) arrived in our mailbox and I unrolled it (both my parents were working at the time and us kids arrived home from school to find the mailbox stuffed) I remember blushing, as if it had been personally delivered to me by the Time people.

And then Kim Zmeskal who was the highlight of the summer of 1992, when I was in jail with a small black and white TV, that I rented from the commissary.

I had missed a lot of gymnastics in between then and now.

I hadn't heard about the ones that broke their necks and became paralyzed after their coaches had tried to accelerate their recoveries from broken bones, putting them on starvation diets to make them lose the weight that they had put on from sitting around in a cast, and then rushed them back out there in time for the competitions.

I ran out of data before anything about Doctor Larry Nassar came on.

 

I'm Back

 I fell down a rabbit hole of beer drinking and sloppy ineffective living for a few days there...

I got a flat tire on the bike, my lighter died, the laundry is still in a pile, and I haven't set up my music studio the way I envision in order to bring Feng Shui to my environment.

Fengshui compass, everyone should use one...

Monkey Off My Back

 

It's safe to go back in the water, if the French Quarter is a body of it...
I have known that the governor of Louisiana had mandated that everyone in the state wear masks and observe rules of social distancing (bring a 6 foot long tape measure with you everywhere you go, type of thing) and all that.

And that is fine for the regular citizens, the muggles, if you will.

But, in the French Quarter, it is business as usual. The bars are open and are, at least, giving a nod to the whole situation by placing some of their tables out onto the sidewalks and having people consume their drinks while standing in the street, six feet away from the next guy, or whatever.

Like a turtle just crawling out of its sand tunnel in order to rush to the ocean to lay eggs, or something, that "something" possibly being female turtles, I am just now discovering things online that are kind of like communities, where like minded people with similar interests coagulate in support of each other. I am wondering, not if I can have a novel in Barnes and Noble, but if I can somehow maybe become a coach to some of the aspiring writers whom I could actually help, mostly because of the precipitous decline in English Usage standards that has afflicted the latest generation of thumb writers and screen starers...

But, New Orleans is where something like 77% of the state's "revenue" comes from and so, let us handle this pandemic, just stay out of our way, type of thing.

So, I will possibly go out and busk tonight, although it is storming outside now at 1:25 PM, when I am usually waking up.

I stayed up all night reading "Bicycle Diaries," by David Byrne, the Talking Heads guy. It is an OK book (the guy uses the word "implying" a lot, though).

It's hard for me to read it without hearing his whining voice singing, rather than narrating, the text with a typical Talking Heads style bass and drum thing going on behind it, the entire time.

 

Well, people, as I peck away now I haven't slept in almost 24 hours. I do that a lot. I am afraid that I won't wake up with the same zeal for whatever my "passion" at that moment late at night might be.

It feels like "now or never" when the creative bug strikes. But really only when it strikes immediately after smoking a joint. Then, you can be pretty certain that you aren't going to wake up after eight hours of sleep and all the THC having gotten out of your system, with the same piqued interest in knocking out that song about the dust mote (a metaphor for planet earth, or whatever the weed would have it) as you might have had while still wide awake and with the guitar tuned and the amps warmed up, etc.

 

There was an absolutely beautiful Yamaha keyboard at the Goodwill Store a couple days ago and it was marked $39.99 on it, and I didn't buy it.

 

Nothing good last forever, and the thing was gone the very next day. Of course it was. It sounded so good to me that I thought me perceptions were off; like maybe in contrast to the ugliness of the Goodwill Store, where a white man is commonly seen as someone who is trying to parlay his already considerable advantage over his darker brethren due in part and parcel to the whiteness of his skin, and was in competition with the downtrodden victims of white society that at least have the Goodwill, where a nigga ain't gotta pay like fifty dollars for a damned nice looking pair of kicks, know what I'm sayin?

It's a shame. And I am thinking that I might should never go back there. They are right. Why should I get a really nice silk shirt for 3 dollars plus tax and deprive someone who might only have 3 dollars to his name and just needs a decent shirt because he's starting a job the next day and.....
Whoa, sorry, I got off into fantasy land there.

But, I can as a matter of fact say that I have been the victim of non verbal hostility inflicted upon me by African Americans in the Goodwill Store.

There was a guy (whom I know I blogged about) who shook the book rack that I was staring at a few feet away because, I believe, I hadn't acknowledged him.

Not after he had made some verbal noises, which consisted of reading book titles aloud and then offering up commentary about what he surmised the book to be about, but they were disjointed things like: "'Fedora's Italy' now, why I want to go to Italy, what's in Italy?" which I am guessing proceeded from him having seen that particular publication which I had seen myself.

But, I was standing upon the principle that a man should be able to go to the store and look over books and not be bound by anything to turn his attention (especially when the store is closing in ten minutes and he is trying to quickly scan the whole fifty foot, four tiered rack) toward some guy who may or may not have been trying to interact and strike up a conversation through his ejaculations of book titles and then ensuing quips.

And he was black and he shook the rack. He actually grabbed the thing and rocked it to and fro so that even the book I was staring at suddenly looked like it was in San Francisco during the big one; maybe 7.2 on the Richter scale, so that the title was slightly blurry.

But, yikes, I sure did mess up not grabbing that keyboard because my unemployment money came the very next day and that thing had sounded great.

 

Well, readers, I have to go. I have just received an email (above) not from the president of the United States directly, but through his people. And, you know, since I became a top supporter, I got a nice stimulus amount added to the bank card that I was already getting what I thought was to be a paltry weekly amount.

Well, I had better go and take the poll and, yeah, contribute something. The cool thing about it is any donation at all kind of shows loyalty I guess. And then I get a nice bonus out of nowhere, in the form of a stimulus...hmmm.

Geez, Don, I was going to contribute 5 dollars; I like my stimulus checks appearing out of nowhere onto my unemployment card balance; I was just going to take a screen shot. That's why I moved my mouse pointer up to where the "take a screenshot" menu is.

I wasn't leaving. I wasn't becoming disloyal. Never a traitor, I say!

"I would like Daniel to keep this box checked; let him know that; or you're fired.

That is SO Florida that he is (less than presidential quality if you ask me) Photoshopped in front of.

That is a very important state. And one that still resonates with the Bush/Gore debacle back in 2004, I think it was.

Come on, retired wealthy Floridians; you don't see any colored people in your front yards, notice that?

Guest What?

A piece of paper fluttered to the floor in the hallway, after I opened my door to see about a noisy child just outside my door.

It was about 4 PM, on a Tuesday when I had woken up at almost exactly the time I wake up if left to my own devices.

These devices usually were the beginning of the consumption of alcohol just after sundown.

The setting sun makes me crave a drink.

This might be due to the 12 years or so that I was homeless and slept outside in various locations.

I made my living (or my alcohol, if you want to look at it that way) by busking, and so, with the setting sun, the world became that much more dangerous as the creatures that only come out at night did so.

And so to fight back, I would begin to steel my nerves with Steel Reserve, if I were pretty broke, or something much nicer like Torpedo IPA ale, by Sierra Nevada Brewery, I believe.

This would run the typical course of having me set up and jamming away at the spot near the Lilly Pad that I had to knock off playing at at 10 PM, as per an agreement between myself and the guy who slept in a room right behind where I played in front of a lamp post. It was an old fashioned "period" lamp post which had a gas light in it, and which was out of commission for more than a year at one point (after a drunken reveler had shimmied up the post and stolen the light, or some part of it to take as a souvenir) because the replacement had to be the same exact replica of a 1770's era light which the stolen one had been.

But, I would have to start playing around 8 PM under the replica, so that I could get a solid 2 hours of playing in before the guy went to bed behind me.

This would give me an average of about 30 bucks, as I was at the earning level of 15 bucks an hour, in that spot, at that time, using the harmonica skills that I had at the time (after I made a marked improvement in the harmonica playing, which also included buying more expensive ones than the glorified toys [Hohner Ol' Standby's] the average rose to $18 an hour; though that improvement also coincided with my moving over to the stoop of Lilly's where I played the different time slot of 9:30 PM until 12:23 AM).

The "12:23 AM" became just like the waking up at 1:30 PM without the aid of an alarm clock.

Night after night, after having followed the routine which was regulated only by the first alcoholic beverage being cracked open at the crack of dusk, and then further cemented in place by the ritual of smoking a bowl of weed while tuning the guitar at 9:30, there would come a time when, after playing hard for x amount of time, I would discover, upon having the first impulse to knock off for the night, that it was 12:23 PM, according to my phone.

This was the biological clock that was set with the consumption of alcohol, beginning at sundown, and then the bowl smoked at 9:30 combining to fuel 173 minutes of spirited busking.

There were times when there were still so many people out at 12:23 that I would "reset" myself by drinking a Bang Energy drink and smoking a second bowl. This had lead me to busk for up to an additional 2 hours on some of those nights, and to sometimes make 3 times as much in those last 2 hours as I had done in the first 173 minutes of playing.

None of the above would be of any interest to anyone other than a busker, I realize, but I guess it's in keeping with the theme of the blog.

The subtitle used to be "Can a guy remain sober enough in the French Quarter to make a living busking?" or something.

Before that, it was: "Documenting my ascendance from street musician to superstardom" or something.

Right now, it is "A journal blog that will hopefully shed light upon what it takes to make a living with just a guitar and a tip bucket" or something.

But, old habits die hard, and it was right after waking up at 1:30 PM almost to the second, without having had the aid of an alarm of any kind, again, that I heard the child fussing in the hall, and opened my door to see the piece of paper flutter to the floor and land not far from the nice Sonia, who was wheeling the source of the fussing towards the elevator. We exchanged pleasantries.

I see Sonia often at the Family Dollar, where I am not sure that she doesn't shoplift, using the same baby stroller and fussy baby as a means of exporting merchandise from the place. She may go in there with the stroller laden with artificially inflated "dummy" packages of diapers, and then swap them for real ones, once in the aisles.

There seems to be some sort of human right to not have your baby searched by store security people, or maybe it is in our DNA to not persecute i.e. prosecute the lowly single mothers of the world.

But, what is a human right if it can't be abused by the likes of the illegal immigrants, whose acumen is keen when it comes to treading upon the lives liberties and happiness of others by wielding their own such rights as a weapon.

There was a Puerto Rican lady that I knew from when I lived in "the projects" in Massachusetts, who would enter K Mart pushing a carriage that you would never know had a baby in it, unless you walked up to it and looked down into the bottom of its well (baby holding area).

But, after she had pushed the thing around the store for a while, she would leave the same way she came, but by then the baby would be propped up as if he were the infant king of some country.

He would be riding high, at least 3 feet higher than when he was pushed in, atop neatly arranged items of merchandise from the store.

If you needed something from Cathy, as that was her "name," all you had to do was place an order with her, and then give her half of whatever the price was that was marked on the thing.

And this went for just about anything in the store.

One time I actually told Cathy that I was in the market for a set of 6" x 9'' speakers. I had run into her in the store.

"The only thing is, they have them all locked in a glass case," I lamented.

"That's OK, which kind do you want?"

Well, I wanted the very best ones they had, the Pioneer brand that was listed at $279 a pair.

So, Cathy (eventually, because it was K Mart) was able to get a red coat clad guy with a set of keys to come and unlock the case full of speakers.

He unlocked it, and then kind of lingered around, keeping an eye on her in a sense, but mostly just waiting for her to finish so he could re-lock the case and be on his way.

Cathy had pulled a few of the boxes out of the case, and then stalled by putting her phone to her ear and then having an imaginary conversation with someone to whom she started reading specifications off of the different boxes, placing a box of the Pioneer ones that I wanted very close to the baby carriage in the process.

After a few minutes of her saying things like "25 watts RMS, it say's..." or "These ones are round, they're not oval..." etc. the guy who had unlocked the case, within about a minute, had his attention momentarily drawn by another customer who had asked him a quick question, causing him to divert his gaze for a few seconds.

It had been the few seconds that Cathy needed because, using a side compartment that had been snapped open, she whisked the box into the compartment -the baby having already been propped up to accommodate this- and, in the same motion slid an identical box to the spot where it had been sitting.

The guy, who had only looked away for a few seconds, looked back to see "the same box" of $279 speakers, still sitting there, at the same angle and with the same side facing him. David Copperfield would have admired Cathy.

Then, apologizing to the red coat, and thanking him for his trouble; she told him that her husband was going to have to come to look at the speakers; that she was afraid of getting the wrong ones, or something, and off she went, pushing a baby that had a bird's eye view of his surroundings now.

Sheets and curtains and other "households" were popular with the Puerto Ricans, who all kept apartments that were decorated like rooms in a palace. Surroundings fit for the infant kings that lived there, I guess.

And, so I think Sonia, who used to live 3 doors down from me, but who has moved to a better apartment, is in the same racket.

I have seen her exchanging diapers for money at the door of other women residents who were raising welfare babies of their own.

But, the notice that had fluttered to the floor was to announce that, while the Sacred Heart management was striving to keep the apartments safe from the COVID19 thing, they also didn't want us to be isolated and lonely and so, with this in mind, they are going to start to allow us residents to have 1 guest per month.

At the end of the month, we can extend that guest or pick another one.

And then that person just needs to show up wearing a mask and be on the list.

They can't visit any other apartments, though, than the one they are listed for.

This is going to start soon -I must have tossed the notice out, maybe after having used it as a makeshift dustpan while sweeping up- but I will check.

Then, I just need to decide who my guest will be for the next month.

Maybe...

Or

Perhaps...

I don't think so...

Or

Monday, the 10th, the return of Jacob

Public Intellectual Activity

• Happy August
• Living High Off The Hog
• "The French Quarter Is Packed" -Sacred Heart security guy, "Tim," when I got back at around 12:30 AM, early Saturday morning
• Did I Mess Up By Blogging That The French Quarter Was Collectively Eschewing COVID19 "rules?"
  

Is it really less than 72 hours before the next food stamp amount is added to my card? Pinch me; I must be dreaming.

What has happened to me has been kind of a complete turnaround from what could have happened to me.

Had I not been able to get a stimulus check of any kind, I would have had to come up with some kind of "workaround," but it is pretty certain that I would have asked some of the friends I had in high school who are now millionaires and live in big houses on hills, from atop which one can see Boston, 30 miles away; if they would wire me some money, like Ted Broughey had done, unbidden.*

*I was in fact on the phone talking to my mom, who had just said something like: "So, you're out of money, huh?" as a prelude to offering to wire me money, with it stipulated that I would have to find some way of producing income for myself, and not rely upon her, when my phone chimed with the message of "$160 at Westen Union..." from Ted, just as my mom was telling me she would send some cash.

I failed to go on any kind of extended juice fast, never mind turning it into a water only fast after the 4th day or so; I never made it past my juicer.

There were a couple reasons for this.

First off; it was just the temptation from having cash in my pocket and having a food stamp card loaded up with 196 bucks, or whatever the exact amount is...

There have been other months when I ran out of stamp money and had to go the last few days of the month eating things like macaroni and cheese, or whatever I could lift from the dumpster outside The Fresh Market on Broad Avenue.

This free food might have mayonnaise (or partially hydrogenated soybean oil in some other guise) and might remind me that, if I had to live off of food like that, I would become miserable within the first week.

My glands would swell; especially the ones in the neck right near the ear, where the neck and jaw meet, and the ones in my upper thighs. I might develop a headache in the very back of my head, where the spine goes into the cranium.

The glands would be working overtime, making white blood cells to fight off the undigested proteins that my body sees as being enemy invaders.

This would give me a "pasty" complexion.

At some point, the itching would start.

It might start as a hypersensitivity of the skin, so that a slight breeze that blows strands of hair against my face would be a source of major irritation.

This is why I could have gotten a "profile" and gotten out of the military at the age of 19 (and probably could have started a life of sucking off of the veteran's "disability" fund) because "eczema" is one of the dis-qualifiers on the list of them.

I can totally see getting my whole platoon shot up because I couldn't hold still in a rice paddy with water up to just below my nose and my forehead itching like there is a mosquito the size of a baseball perched on it.

I can only wonder what path my life would have taken me along had I told the medical officer: "Yes, I would like to be relieved of my military duties and collect a disability check for $505 every month until eternity."

But there have been other months when I had purposed in my heart that: As soon as I get my food stamp money, I'm going to buy prune juice and 4 gallons of unfiltered, cold pressed apple juice and 4 gallons of spring water, and I'm going to fast; maybe until the 15th of the month; maybe the 21st....

And on those months, I had caved in and negotiated a compromise with myself under the terms of: "I won't start a fast, but I will buy fresh fruits and vegetables and will just do maybe 3 days of nothing but healthy freshly juiced juice!"

And that is about the point that I am circling in a holding pattern.

Right now, I am about to go to Rouses Market, where I will use unemployment money to buy an armload of greens, along with carrots, beets, maybe radishes, and I will also pick up 2 cans of beer.

Eczema, Continued...

If I were to scratch this skin, something that I have found to be impossible not to do, it would become inflamed, and the redness would meld with the higher white blood cell content to create a pastel kind of pinkish red, that just doesn't look right, is the best way to describe it.

The skin would die and become dry and flaky, like dandruff of the face, to go with the pastel, pasty, waxy presentation.

This had been a terrible affliction when I was in high school and had to take my place next to the radiant fresh smiling faces of my classmates, some of whose complexions glowed.

But, alas, I didn't discover, until about the age of 16 that I had allergies to dairy and soy.

And this came about through the first time I ever did the "Dr. Christopher's 3 Day Fast and Cleanse and Mucous Free Diet" thing.

The eczema was 100% caused by dietary issues, and after 100% of the antibodies were out of me, I felt 100% better, and; unless something truly amazing happens to me in the future, that would have to go down as the most life changing experience I ever had.

And, what a relief it is to know that, no matter how miserable I might be feeling physically at any given point, a bottle of prune juice in the morning (preceded perhaps by a whole bag of chips with a whole jar of hot salsa -a quick scraping of the digestive track, that feels like) followed by a whole day of nothing but apple juice on the half hour and spring water on the other; can have me feeling pretty vibrant pretty quickly. It's good to know that that resource is in my back pocket.

But it is really hard to fast after having discovered the combination of collard greens, carrots and apples, sent through a juicer to become an elixir, and something that has quelled the depressed feelings upon awakening that I had been more prone to in recent months.

I have developed a ravenous appetite for the stuff; especially after having a couple beers...

Adding a different ingredient to the mix, one day radishes, maybe parsnip the next, seemed to give me the same sense of variety and adventure, that having spaghetti and meatballs one evening, but then maybe baked potatoes with cabbage the next, would give to the more normal food consumer.

That was a very cool find, about halfway through last month.

Being able to walk out of Rouses Market with literally and armload of collard greens, after paying 3 bucks for the bunch; priceless!

Cool Finds

This guy seems to be a man after my own heart

Speaking of cool finds, I have come across another blogger, whose site might just be the one I have been looking for; one where "intellectual" activity goes on, and people seem to be striving for the same "consciousness" that I have been pursuing.

If nothing else, it is a veritable directory of links to a lot of fascinating stuff...

This guy started his blog probably the same day I started this one, in 2006.

He is getting 90,000 visitors a month, though, compared https://morrisberman.blogspot.com/ to my 1,800...

This is because of a lot of things, but mainly because he could be my role model for becoming a better writer.

And then, being able to link to a bunch of stuff so that everything can be fact-checked; and to have a "personality."

"Street Musician Daniel" is an OK persona. Morris goes by Supreme Deity of the Know Universe, or something like that.

Every Silver Lining Has The Ability To Damage Your Sight

This has been a wild and whacky Friday.

I went to my mailbox yesterday and discovered that the debit card from the unemployment "pandemic" relief organization had arrived.

I was in the middle of creating an account with the bank that handles those particular cards when Jacob, and his two friends arrived, and began to wait for me to emerge with my guitar and strap and harmonica.

So, I just pocketed the card, and was able to use it to make the purchase of a beer, and then It was hunky dorey, and we jammed the three of us.

It became apparent that Jacob's two buddies were all about marijuana, and would never have musical instruments in their hands, perhaps, had they not smoked some before picking them up....

But, then I got back home and I managed to create that account, which I logged on to in order to discover that I am getting the 107 dollar minimum amount, based upon whatever data I had given them. I had decided not to send them photoshopped paystubs with my name inserted, and all that, in order to have gotten almost 8,000 bucks; but I err on the side of caution....

I will at least be able to keep pursuing a musical ambition, or whatever the word is...