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.