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?