Perfect Victim

After the shortest day of the year was in the books, the sun went down, promising to be up for a couple minutes longer the next day (today).

The latest finds

I woke about 3 different times; and went back to sleep.

Then, opposite of the proverbial "drowning man," who goes down the third time, never to come up, I got up the third time, never to go back down...

It had been a night of bizarre dreams, which I blame upon my having eaten a lot of sweetened peanut butter with added honey, the previous evening. My blood sugar levels contributed to dreams about my cat biting the nose off of some little Yorkshire Terrier that some unidentified person in my dream had on a leash.

This meant that the "juice fast" was broken upon the 4th day of it, though, it already had been broken by the consumption of one 22 ounce Heineken beer in the big green bottle.

That was, when I was going over to Jacob Scardino's to jam and record music. 

The house owner, Bob, was off playing dominoes with friends, making it more suitable for us to play loudly.

The beer was especially delicious and this was in part, I'm sure, because I hadn't gotten any carbohydrates over the course of the 4 days of juice, so I'm sure my brain was sending me signals of approval on the grain content of the Heineken, at least. I could have gotten this sense of fulfillment by drinking a non alcoholic beer, also, but I was in the mood to compromise between being too drunk to play well and being totally sober.

After I got up, I went up front, both to see if there was any donated food sitting there, and to see if any parcels arrived from London, addressed to me.

It was 12:45 p.m. and I was informed that the mail lady had already "run."

There were a couple of plastic containers of food sitting there; approaching room temperature; the attainment of which meant that they would be tossed into the 40 degree dumpster outside, to protect anyone from potential bacteria.

This is the kind of food that I need to have a few beers in me, in order to eat.

Slob Mentality

I have to be in that "slob" frame of mind, like when I used to be drunk enough after busking that, on my way to the wharf to sleep, I would stop by a certain five star steak house, to look for food.

Certainly no doggie bags ended up in their trash containers, their 80 dollar steaks being good enough for even a Yorkshire Terrier.

The containers were steam cleaned/pressure washed each morning. 

This was so that not a whiff of offensive odor could be discerned within the entire perimeter of the business. Somebody strolling up the sidewalk, approaching the place, and maybe still deciding upon where they would eat that night, isn't going to be swayed towards going in there if they are, just at that moment, affronted by the stench of "dead carcass."

Popeye's Chicken could learn from that business model. But, in Popeyes defense, they've got some pretty good advertising, involving their dumpsters, that relies upon the "14 rats and countless pigeons can't be wrong" philosophy.

But, I would open those heavy bags and find the entire spines of cattle in there, with most of the good meat hacked off, but done so by chefs who were trying to get the steaks on the table as quickly as possible, not letting pennies hold up dollars by having to carve off every last bit.

That's where my drunken self would come in. 

I would eat the meat right off the bone, and it would melt in my mouth. I am of the opinion that there was next to a zero chance that the meat was "diseased" in any way that would afflict me -and the animal had only been dead for 24 hours at the most.

That was one of the selling points of that business.

They slaughter their own grass fed, hormone free, cage-free cattle to order, on their own ranch; killing them in the late afternoon, dressing them out in a refrigerated room, and then transporting it maybe a couple hours to the restaurant in the back of a refrigerated truck, to be placed in the viewing room at the restaurant.

This is a room that has a lot of windows, both on the restaurant side and the side facing the street. Under jewelry store style lights, and almost identically styled glass cases the freshly slaughtered "still twitching" beef sits on tables or hangs on meat hooks.

At least they are meat hooks if those gangster movies that depict people being tortured by having such hooks shoved up their butts and then being hung in a meat cooler are accurate. 

That might just be "Hollywood," and the restaurateurs changed to similar hooks to align themselves to what the public's perception of what a meat hook is; I don't know. I don't know a lot about steak houses. I'm not a connoisseur of steaks over 20 dollars, just free ones.

It's even possible that their animals are treated cruelly, depending upon whether or not that would produce the best meat.

But, my point is that, after a few drinks, I am a little more adventurous in my eating. 

I have to disable the higher seat of reason, or the most frontal part of my brain, and just let mother nature do the rest.

A few times, well dressed couples walked past as I was tearing into the flesh, with, usually the lady evincing some sort of horror, maybe voiced as "Oh, my God!," or maybe just: "Is he....?!! (unable to finish the question)."

Five Stars!!

To these, I would usually just smack my lips and say "Five stars!!" just as loudly before taking my next bite.

I always thought it ironic how those people seemed to think that I was taking a bigger risk of getting sick, than they were by eating the fully prepared steak, with a mashed potato that is going to absorb the acid needed to break down the protein, so that it will pass, only partially digested, to their colon, to fester and eventually leak unhealthy bacterium into their blood stream and organs, and then polishing it all off with a decadent desert with a glass of sugar rich cream sherry.

The above is a lot to get out in between bites of flesh; so I wouldn't lecture, but would abbreviate it to: "Five stars!!"

What an amazing liberty it is, though, to have the option of going back for more sleep upon waking.

 I think the closest things to hell on earth have been the times in my life when I "had" to get up.

One such time that comes to mind was in 1996.

I had to go to court.

It was some kind of b.s. thing that would have been much worse had I not gone and gotten fined or been given 10 days of showing up at the jail to wash police cars, but being able to go home afterwards.

But, I had worked my pizza delivery job and gotten home at about 1 a.m, or about 7 hours before someone was going to bellow: "All rise!!" and I was to be there to rise with the rest.

But, old habits die hard and I just couldn't bring myself to go right to sleep. I smoked my joint and turned on my music equipment and probably improvised some song about the justice system..and probably dozed off at about 3:30 p.m, or about 4 and a half hours before the "All rise!' or 3 and a half hours, factoring in getting ready and driving over there.

People who might get jail time don't want to drive their cars to court because then they might wind up sitting in jail thinking about their vehicle having been towed and impounded at a 35 dollars per day "storage" fee.

Plus the cost of replacing the stereo and speakers that will somehow have been stolen out of it "before we even towed it..." type of thing.

The last time my car got impounded and my really nice stereo was missing out of it when I went to retrieve the car, there were little clippings of the wires that had been cut laying on the ground right outside the driver's side door. So, whomever stole the stereo out of the car before they ever towed it, must have sneaked into the impound yard and scattered those wire clippings around the car just to mess with me.

But, my alarm went off at 6:45 right when I had finally reached the R.E.M. stage of sleep and I remember sitting there with every bone in my body wanting to just lay back down, but I couldn't.

I had to see my dead-tired pale face in the mirror and try not to picture a judge looking at it, and to convince myself that he might just give me a break, if I put on my best shirt and show up on time, and smile.

I remember sitting there and saying out loud: "I hate this!"

And what I found incomprehensible was how human beings have instituted such things as men who can sit in judgment over others and cause them to be locked up in a cage for maybe a year; or they could say: "On second thought, make it two years," just because they think the defendant has an attitude they don't like.

I have had jobs before that I hated, that I had to set alarm clocks for, and would wake up in the dark, in the dead of winter, and have to prepare myself to go in to suffer through the next eight hours, just so I could keep a place to rest up for work in, and food to keep me nourished so I could work, and a car to get me to the job and back, and maybe a little TV to watch for a couple hours at night until it was bedtime. 5 a.m. comes quickly when you are resting up after a day of working in a factory...

And so, it is a great liberty to be able to wake up and decide that your body could use a couple more hours of sleep, and then to roll over and get it.

This was one of the greatest joys of living in a tent in the woods; to be able to let the chirping of the early birds gradually ease me out of deep slumber, as if the birds that started chirping while the sun was still an hour away from rising were there, not to wake me, but to give me the general sense that it was getting there..

And then, only when the sun was high enough and the sounds of rush hour traffic became a distant roar, would I get up and light the fire for coffee, and bathing, and starting a day that wasn't going to end until after midnight. I had all of the pressure to make at least 12 dollars the whole day, just to keep me in beer and a little weed. I used to sit around the camp and play the guitar just for my own amusement. What a long way from that morning when I sat there and said aloud: I absolutely hate this!"   

I have put another patch on the tire of the bike. Now I need to just push it down to the gas station and fill the tire again.

I am putting the puzzle together...

I don't want to believe that a bike can be jinxed, or of voodoo or demons and all that, but it is now 3 different tubes that have developed very slow leaks in them on that cruiser bike, which is Jacob's, and that I am only riding because I really messed up the derailleur on the GT "Windstream," which I have pretty much determined to be a 20 year old bike.

The Windstream is upside-down now, being used as a cymbal holder. The kickstand makes a nice peg for it.

I am putting together the puzzle which is the JonBeney Ramsey murder.

I had kind of determined, back in 1996, around the time of that court date, that it was her younger brother who had accidentally hit her in the head with a golf club, and then had strangled her to keep her quiet.

But, this doesn't jive with some other facts of the case that are coming to light in the book "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town" that I am reading.

I guess "Perfect Victim" is conspicuously left out of that book title.

Left: My window needs updating. Drawing being something that I haven't been keeping up on.

It's like everything; you go on Youtube looking for videos on charcoal drawing, and you wind up just giving up because there are so many better artists out there...

Connection Fixed

Site Seeing Woes

Something might be amiss with the connection I'm using and this might not even post...

Messenger vs. Messages 

It reminded me of when, in the late 1980's, I would get a call from a telemarketer trying to get me to switch to Sprint, and I would, just to help the lowly telemarketer make "a sale" or a switch or at least succeed.

Five minutes later, At&T's telemarketer would call and inform me that their records indicate that I had just left AT&T and they hoped that it wasn't because I wasn't satisfied with their service; and, if this had been a lapse of judgement for me, they can remedy it by switching me right back to AT&T.

It wouldn't be long before Sprint would call and I would switch right back...it's nice to be able to say "yes" to a telemarketer and make their day at such a low cost; a lot easier than refinancing my mortgage over the phone or putting insurance on the boat I don't own....

The Third theory is that there really is a globalist conspiracy and I am being banned from Youtube and Facebook and anything else Google owned or tied to...

I did post some pretty explosive political stuff; like saying "Only time and unbiased history will tell if Trump is the best or the worst ever, or somewhere in between..."

The above statement, my friends, is enough to get you unfriended by some and perhaps barred from two of the biggest websites on earth...shades of "the mark of the beast" thing from Revelations (of Saint John) toward the end of the holy bible.

I am going to investigate further before typing further and putting hundreds of words at risk of being deleted by Clint Zuckerburg...or whomever...

A Crappy Post

Hot Spot vs. Bluetooth

Technical Crap

 For some reason, my new phone's hot spot connection now shows up in the "select network" menu, on the laptop. It didn't when I first got the new phone.

I had been using Bluetooth to connect to the web using the free data that my phone gets every month. But I noticed that Bluetooth is slower.

But, I wonder if Bluetooth insulates my laptop from cyber attacks, better than a wifi connection.

Someone would have to hack into the phone and then hack into the tethered laptop. I don't run hardly any apps on the phone, but my bank account and all that is on the laptop.

I think it would take a sophisticated hacker to get into my phone and then use the bluetooth to get into the laptop. Someone who would be after bigger fish than my $432 US Bank card;

It is confusing; and I am going to try to find a forum for either Android or for wi-fi, or maybe look for a Reddit sub on the subject.

Crap Crap

And, on this 4th day of the fast and cleanse...

I woke up and actually had another bowel movement, after two full days of not eating anything. It must have been the last stubborn avocado I ate, finally making its exit.

It is possible to have solid waste on a juice fast, in the form of all the fiber that might be in whatever juice you are using for the fast. I usually use apple juice, but if it is the unfiltered, unpasteurized kind, there can be something coming out each morning.

After switching to the water only phase, the body enters a state of "ketosis" where it starts to live off it's own fat. That is the whole idea of fat, I guess, without getting too scientific.

A lot of interesting things happen when the body is starving.

You can feel stoned for a few days as the THC from any pot that you smoked, which is stored in your fat, hence the lore about it taking 20 to 30 days to get out of your system after you stop smoking.

One time, I only had 6 days notice of a drug test requirement for a job that I had been hired for, pending the outcome of that.

Over those 6 days, I drank about 24 ounces of straight vinegar, beginning in the morning and through however long it took me to get it down, one dixie cup sized gulp at a time. That had me going "Yuck!" about 24 times until the bottle was gone.

Then, on the morning of the test, I got off a bus and bought a half gallon of purple grape juice, which I drank as I walked about a mile to the testing location. I wanted to be able to "make some pee" for them, when I got there. But it was a hot day in Jacksonville, and I was sweating the purple juice out as fast as I was drinking it. However, I passed, after only 6 days off pot, and not the "28 days" that I had heard from a lot of different people, as being the length of time where pot would still "show up" on a drug test.

Cocaine is out of your system in 3 days, according to some of those same sources, some of whom I met while in jail, where they were being held on cocaine related charges. I got other data from the heroin addicts in there, right from "the horse's mouth" excuse the pun...

Get Out And Vote!

Political Crap

But, if you really want to get a headache, go to the reddit for the tor onion network anonymous browser.

That browser breaks your data into packets, encrypts them, and then sends them all off in different directions, part of your file might go from Houston to Sydney, Australia, then to Pakistan, before completing the trip though Chicago and then to your computer, while other parts take an entirely different route, perhaps through Iceland and Poland...

That makes it virtually impossible for anyone to trace dark web activity to your I.P. address, but "they" are constantly figuring out methods for doing so. 

I suspect that dead people, and people living outside the U.S., and people under the age of 18 etc., "voted" for Trump in the last election, but the democrats just did a better job, and were better funded by the likes of Zuckerberg and the Twitter billionaire et. al.

The crux of the problem, and why "all of this" isn't coming to light is probably because both parties would come out equally red handed. They might subpoena the voting machines, and learn that both candidates had dark web based help.

Then, the military will have to conduct a do-over election, second week of January, probably; get out and vote!

Alkaline Water For Harold And I

 With so much juice in my possession, I became possessed with the notion of extending the juice portion of the fast for another day or two, before switching to nothing but alkaline water.

The new derailleur; still waiting...

I keep finding darned food. There were some meals ready to eat, not M.R.E.'s but little plastic containers, with tops sealed in transparent plastic, so you could see that there was something like a meat pie, in a fried corn looking shell, on a bed of Shepherd's Pie, which might not need to be capitalized, but which surely looked tempting, as I walked past, returning from the Family Dollar, where I replenished Harold's supplies; 14 pounds of kitty litter, and 3 cans of wet food, while picking up my own dinner of 3 bottles of PH 9.5 water. Yum!

I had gotten up and crapped out what must have been the 3 avocados that I had eaten 2 days prior. I hadn't known that avocados would stay in a body that long, but it isn't surprising, given how heavy they are, in a way that bananas are heavy, in that it is really hard to eat a dozen bananas without risking some kind of abdominal pain and they ooze through you. Cheesecake is heavy, too. It would be hard to eat a cheesecake the size of a birthday cake. Maybe it would be hard to eat 2 jars of peanut butter all at once, too.

After drinking some apple juice and then heading for the dollar store on foot, I actually felt bloated and had to do a few bends at the waist. I think the prune juice and the apple juice were fermenting in my stomach, or otherwise expanding.

Then Jacob texted to say that he was five minutes away, and I went out to help him carry in a microphone stand, a 4 track cassette deck and other accessories for recording music.

He had brought his acoustic bass along and mentioned that he had, in case we decided to go out and busk.

"It is Friday, and it's Christmas time..."

I felt so physically week after 3 days of juicing, and I had only put on a light jacket to go out to meet him, and it was about 55 degrees, so my thoughts were mainly about getting back inside, rather than going in the opposite direction, into the cold.

A quick look at the webcam on Bourbon Street showed it to be pretty deserted. There is a disquieting sense that this may be the death knell for the French Quarter, as, perhaps by the time we are back to "normal" there will be no more businesses open on Bourbon Street.

Perhaps I am being premature because, what else are they going to do with the buildings, but open them back up as bars and clubs again? By then, they might be owned by the banks.

So, we stayed in and jammed on different music with no real inspiration coming to me as far as original improvised songs, but it was a good way to stay in practice...

Jacob brought some kratom and I did a shot. That, after not having eaten, had a more subtle effect on me. It may have helped me focus, but I am in the foggy minded phase of the detox, which confused things...

What seems clear though is I need to work smarter and further develop a system for producing music; using the tools I have. Nothing beats good old fashioned practicing with a metronome, although there are some video game type applications where you can plug your guitar in and play a sort of game where the correct notes, rather than being on sheet music, are represented by objects coming towards you in 3D, along six tracks, like railroad tracks, and when they arrive at a certain spot, you must play the corresponding note on the guitar, whereupon you receive instant feedback in the form of green light for a perfectly pitched note and a more reddish tone to correspond to how much "off" you were. The program keeps a tally of how accurate you were in your timing and your pitch.

The game I once played came with a huge library of songs at different levels, and it was really easy to learn something like a Tom Petty song in 20 minutes that would fly by because the game is so fun.

I played at a friend's house for about an hour, and when I went out to busk that same night, I noticed my timing was a bit tighter.

You just need some sort of USB interface to plug your guitar into your computer. It would be possible to learn a Joe Satriani piece in the quickest possible way, were you to become addicted to the game and start out at half speed; and then gradually increase it; keeping those green lights flashing as best you can...

Well, that is about all I have right now; time to sleep. The money came in on my card about 30 hours ago; hence the trip to the store to catch Harold up on his litter and food. The poor animal was about to use my houseplants as litter boxes, I think.

Turn This Stone Into Bread; If You Are God...

• 24 Hours Without A Drink
• 48 Hours Without Kratom
• 36 Hours Without Food, Unless You Count The Beer 24 Hours Ago As Food
  

 I guess putting "Biden's Cadaver" in yesterday's post title was what doubled the traffic to this blog. People must search some strange word combinations. 

Or maybe it was the feds again, having to investigate such a "visual."

Maybe it was just piss poor writing that precipitated the drop off in readership, starting the day after I posted about the election.

Left: Not 12 hours after committing to a cleansing fast, I went to throw my trash in the dumpster, and beheld about a half dozen boxes of food that had been thrown in there.

These residents are getting far too much PUA money every week to worry about the kind of food that gets donated to them.

Rice, beans, powdered potatoes, peanut butter, oatmeal, canned fruits, canned vegetables...JUICE...who needs that crap when you are getting 300 bucks a week in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance? Throw that crap in the dumpster!

It breaks my heart to think of whomever brings the food here ever finding out that it was thrown in the dumpster.

Half of the residents are here because they might hear dogs barking in their heads, but they aren't too crazy to fill out government forms. 

They are in a position to order fancy food, to be delivered hot to the building. 

Rice and beans is for people too stupid to work the system. I think they all sent copies of the same pay stub to the Louisiana Workforce Commission. They were all out of $2,000 a week jobs, due to Covid; and needed to collect unemployment commensurate with that. Then one taught the next what to do. "They don't check; they're way too busy now; they just rubber stamp it and start sending you the 600 bucks; wake up, buddy!" 

This is the second time this year I was able to actually start the fast, rather than perpetually blogging about starting it. And, like the first time, I immediately found exactly what I was looking for, just sitting there.

The first time, it was the apples. I had just bought a new juicer. 

Buy it, and the apples will come, I think is what they say about juicers.

Those apples came in the first wave of pandemic assistance, given along with the free meals that we could walk across the street and get.

Everyone else would leave the apples at the front desk; for me, as it would turn out.

I had started the apple juice cleanse right before the pandemic, but hadn't stuck to it.

My intuition told me that there would be hell to pay for that.

And, sure enough, God unleashed the Covid thing on the earth, just to keep me shut in, and supplied with apples. 

I apologize to anyone who may have been inconvenienced by the pandemic; but God doesn't take it lightly when I promise to fast for 40 days and then break it on the 7th day.

I'm going to stick to this one (that I'm already 2 days into). This one is to restore world peace. If I cave in to "lust of the palate" it could mean a Biden presidency; my sixth sense tells me that.

I am pretty weak, was a bit winded when carrying the boxes full of juice into the apartment, but my perception of time has nicely slowed down, so that I dearly look forward to the next few hours; and will a few hours from now also, I'm sure.

Right: I grabbed this stuff because otherwise it would go to waste; and because I decided to fill out my paperwork for PUA honestly, and am getting the minimum.

I originally filled it out so I would have been getting the 600 bucks a week (I'm the one that got the idea to download images of pay stubs then doctor them, after someone told me that they don't check.

But, I decided to err on the side of caution, because, just like the voter fraud will come to light, they might next go after the PUA frauds; and I will have Sacred Heart Apartments all to myself, although, no more food in the dumpster.

This food worries me, for on about day 7 of the fast, right before all appetite subsides and the faster can go the next 30, 40, 50? days without even thinking about food; this stuff is going to be like the bread that Jesus was tempted to turn rocks into.

Same here (left) couldn't stand to see it hauled off to the dump; but it can be a fast buster; and the world doesn't want to see that....
 

I Figure Out The Media  (or The Parable of the Two Fighters)

A light bulb has come on, hovering over my head as if I'm a cartoon.

Here is the analogy...

Somehow, through a series of events, you find yourself in the vicinity of a sports arena.

There is a huge, very agitated crowd all around the place.

There is to be a boxing match between two fighters who are very famous in the boxing world; but you have never really paid much attention to boxing; you might have heard the names of the fighters somewhere in passing, but you have no interest in paying 35 U.S. dollars to go in and watch the thing..

But then the crowd becomes more and more agitated. It looks like a riot might break out. You can see that there are two distinct groups that are yelling back and forth at one another, each one shouting the name of one of the fighters.

The police are just barely keeping a semblance of order.

Someone approaches you and asks you who you think is going to win. You don't know, you tell him.

He starts to inform you that one of the fighters is going to whip the other. Maybe he is smaller, but he is faster; he has fought more worthy opponents than the other guy.

Soon, there is someone on the other side of you, telling you not to listen to the first guy. The smaller fighter has a daughter who was just diagnosed with a serious disease and the other guy had reportedly said that he hoped the girl would die. This is going to inspire the bigger fighter and he is going to turn into a madman, once the bell rings.

There are huge wagers being made on the fight

The smaller fighter is a devout Christian, but the bigger one is a practitioner of Voodoo, and had performed a ritual to put a hex on the Christian guy, so that he will become confused and will lose, and then put a hex on his daughter so she would die.

Someone shows you a video of the bigger fighter spitting at a statue of Jesus, and further informs you that he has ties to a human trafficking organization.

You become appalled. You start to really dislike the bigger fighter.

You overhear more and more of what is being shouted back and forth. One half of the people are also appalled at, and hate the bigger fighter. With a passion.

But the other half claim that the voodoo and the trafficking and the death wish were all fabricated and that the bigger fighter is really a nice guy. And he has never lost when the moon was in Virgo, like it is that night, and now you begin to become intrigued, astrology buff that you are.

Soon the gates open and the unruly crowd begins to file in; and you find yourself trailing along right behind them. 

You pay the 35 bucks to go in, wondering about the voodoo, and all the other rumors. Perhaps just wanting to see the looks on the faces of the fans of the bigger fighter, who had been so cock-sure of their guy's victory, should the guy lose. Maybe you would get a vicarious thrill and a smug satisfaction from seeing that. 

But, whatever reason, you pay the money and watch the fight, from way in the back, maybe, but you are there.

The fight promoters are the media. All the drama had been scripted; all of the rumors disseminated by them, just to sell tickets. They are in the ticket selling business, after all.

And you are the person clicking around Youtube and subscribing to all the media outlets, intrigued by all the drama; becoming appalled by one of the presidential candidates, or maybe being led to believe that he is really a nice guy, but plunking down your subscription money, just to stay tuned in either case.

While the media outlets laugh all the way to the bank.

So it is that I see the media as having hoodwinked the gullible masses; tricking them into taking sides, and staying tuned.

Kamala Harris might have said it best when, after having said something preposterous during a debate, defended herself by saying: "It was a debate; you don't really mean what you say; you just say whatever you have to say to win the thing!"

The You Boob Tube

And so, maybe I have been a fool to have been glued to the tube, watching a drama unfold that is going to unfold without me. 

Trump will most likely be sworn in for a second term. It will be the whistle blowers among the Democrats that will spill the beans about the cheating that they participated in. Some of them will develop a conscious.

Right now it seems that certain politicians are trying to gauge which group is least likely to riot. The Supreme Court judges have jobs for life, but they are still human beings who must harbor fears of their homes being stormed like the Bastille on January 7th.

God bless me, and my family and friends, and I guess America....

Covid Suicide Thoughts, And The Fate of Biden's Cadaver

I woke up, and it was 1:30 in the afternoon.

I used to wake up at this time regularly, without the aid of any alarm clock. I think this has something to do with the sun reaching its zenith here in New Orleans at about that time. 

Busking from around 10 p.m. until around 12:30 a.m. and then shopping for "the big meal of the day" out of the proceeds, then coming home, counting the tip money, preparing and eating the meal etc. usually had me drifting off right before sun up.

But, today, I had woken up from a dream in which I was dreaming that I was depressed. That's the only way to describe it. In my dream I was sitting on my bed feeling abject despair.

Maybe this is because I had been slamming coffee with aloe nectar and cinnamon and watching Youtube stuff until passing out just before sunrise, I was having blood sugar level issues, which, in my dream state I tried to rationalize with the dream about sitting on my bed wishing I had never been born.

I woke up and was, I guess, relieved that it was only a dream; but there was still some lingering residue from it. I was on a a roller coaster of emotional states, triggered by thoughts which alternated between good and bad.

The Lidgleys have sent a Christmas parcel from London, and may just have gotten it in the mail in time for it to beat the rush and make it here within the next 8 days...this was uplifting. 

But then I remembered that I was out of kratom and out of tobacco and this was kind of a concern, but, on the bright side, I had already gotten all the raw materials to embark on a juice fast for a few days with, in order to set my house in order that way.

I would be finding out just what kratom withdrawal is like, if that exists. If it does, it will have to duke it out with alcohol withdrawal, since my last drink (ever?) was Monday, when I had sunken to the level of a 24 ounce Milwaukee's Best Ice at $2.72 each, out the door. That had reduced to 41 cents the balance on a bank card that had peaked at a bit over $1,500 back in August.

I have a nice set of stereo speakers to show for that, and everywhere I look in my apartment there is some evidence of the money, but a lot of it is a blur, since about that time I started buying daily six packs in varieties of "micro" brews, which were mostly right around 10 bucks each, and which I usually wound up consuming all six of, rather than the two or three that I might have had, when I was running to the store for one at a time.

The nicotine vapes were about 12 bucks each, and lasted about a day and a half, making them about the same price as the best cigarettes; and the kratom was about 65 bucks, but lasted about 10 weeks.

I was hesitant to make big purchases like getting a bass guitar, which I would need a USB adapter/mixer for, in order to plug into the laptop. I could do the math and see that I would have been in the boat I am in now weeks ago, had I done that.

I sent for a new de-railiure (sp?) for the Windstream bike, which has been sitting upside down for about 12 weeks, waiting for me to get to it. It's going to require opening the chain, for which I might need a chain separator type tool. Then, I am going to have to bend the frame back into place where the torque, from it kinking up when I was pedaling pretty hard, bent it an inch or so towards the wheel. 

That would, it seems, be best done with something like a set of pliers with five foot handles (or to fit a long pipe over the handle of a regular set of vice grips). It's not the most daunting task in the world, but there is pressure on me to accomplish it, else I have wasted about 30 bucks on the new de-railiure, and the Windstream will remain upside down in my apartment, so I might as well make a clothes drying rack out of it.

Nicotine withdrawal, I have found is something where you wake up the next day and find yourself looking around for a cigarette, before remembering that you have quit. 

And the discomfort does subside -you can look forward to it being less the next morning; but not before you perhaps aggravate the situation with a cup of strong coffee, a shot of kratom, God forbid a few tokes off a joint, and, something like a decadent cheeseburger from Rally's; consume at your own risk.

I drank down about 16 ounces of prune juice, and was able to eliminate whatever I had eaten the previous day; one of those free meals that are always splayed out on the table in the front lobby. I can usually help myself to a half dozen of the vegetarian ones, which have like a meatless ravioli under a bed of green beans. The ones that have meat in them are usually snatched up by other people.

The exact time that the boxes of them arrive from somewhere is like a national secret, and it is the lobby lizards -those social animals that can't stand being alone in their rooms, and so hang out in the lobby, just to watch people come and go and, I'm guessing, to gossip about them as soon as they are out of earshot. There are about a half dozen of them; social animals, busy bodies, the most fitting term escapes me...

But, it is good that some group donates the food things. I found the company's website, that makes them, and asked them about the ingredients, since there are none on the packaging, but never heard back from them. I wonder if they were incredulous that I would be worried about partially hydrogenated soybean oil in a  free meal, or if the company has been out of business for a long time, and they are delivering the meals out of some huge warehouse/freezer that might have been installed after hurricane Katrina, as an emergency food supply.

But, the juice fast that I have been dying to go on has been bumped back a day at a time as I have been grabbing those things and microwaving them on half power for about 5 minutes. After a six pack of beer, I will eat almost anything..

Update: Continued...

I just got back from walking to Rouses Market. It is about 38 degrees out, with a strong wind. That's enough to drive most people here indoors. They put on their one heavy jacket and go outside briefly before thinking better of it. They don't realize that a couple shirts and a heavy sweatshirt under their one heavy jacket would be more suitable.

After walking the mile and a half to Rouses and shopping for about 10 minutes I was sweating as I stood at the register.

There was a heavyset black lady in front of me who was buying a few things with a couple bottles of hot sauce included.

"Will you buy my cat food, and I'll pay for your hot sauce?" I asked her.

She told me she would pay for my cat food and that I didn't have to pay for her hot sauce, adding that she thought that cat food could be bought using food stamps. 

"I think they stopped doing that to discourage senior citizens on fixed incomes from trying to live off it, so they can stretch their money for the whole month..."

This got a laugh and the lady handed me five dollars  -I can add "professional comedian" to my resume now, I guess.

Update 2; Continued Again...

12:51 a.m. -Just back from a brisk walk to the Shell, where I bought a 24 ounce Bud Ice, the beer which is priced for the everyday American alcoholic.

I remember once, I was hanging out with Leslie Thompson, back when we would busk together doing guitar and double harmonicas on songs like "Because" by the Beatles (the song's chords are so complex that both harmonicas were usually landing on at least one of the right notes) and others.

That gig hadn't lasted long. 

The first night, we made something like 38 bucks in a little over an hour. 

The second night, Leslie showed up falling down drunk, having neared the end of a gallon of whiskey, which he had cashed his half of the money from the previous night in on. 

We played a couple songs, with him wobbling like a weeble™, and then I finished the rest of the night while he lay prone on the sidewalk about 12 feet away from me, on the other side of Lilly's stoop. It was a scene that would have Norman Rockwell reaching for his canvas; the busker; the guy passed out, the gas lamp casting its feeble light on the spectacle...dogs walking by, upright, and carrying pool sticks...

But I had run into Leslie somewhere and he had asked me to "sport" him a beer.

"Can you sport me a beer?" he asked. I think he had once mis-heard someone asking someone else to "spot" him a beer, and I think nobody ever corrected him on that. Leslie is beyond correction, most probably figure.

But, I went into Brothers Market -it was- and bought a couple 25 ounce cans of Bud Ice, one for him, one for me.

"Yes!! The right choice!! The strongest!!" he had ejaculated upon seeing me emerge from the store holding them. I need to ditch this guy, I remember thinking.

So, fast forward to, I don't know, seven years later, and here I am making "the right choice" in spending the five bucks (minus two cans of Harold food) that the nice heavyset black lady had given me in Rouses Market.

I had a chance to think, as I walked home from there. 

I remembered someone telling me once that black ladies are the best tippers (and maybe the best marks for skeezers, too). And, I have found there to be some truth to this, especially when busking during times like Essence Fest or after The Bayou Classic (football game that pits two "black" college teams against each other) These are a couple of the times when the Lilly Pad becomes flooded in a sea of black faces -them not knowing that they had strayed down Bourbon, past the gay section, and were now at a piano bar. 

Somehow a piano bar is like a black person repellent, but before they realize this, they may surround me and facetiously request songs by rap artists, such as "Two Chains," "Yo, break me off some Two Chains!" but it is usually the heavyset black ladies who will tell them to leave me alone and then drop a nice tip in my basket. They hold enormous power as mother figures, I guess. 

I was hoping the lady that gave me the five bucks would make one last stop on her way home, at the neighborhood convenience store, where she would buy a scratch-off ticket and hit the $50,000 jackpot; and that she would relate it to having given me the five bucks (and would become a life-long generous heavyset black lady).

I'm always thinking about stuff like that.

But it did me well to have that happen. I had just been thinking "Why do I hate people so much, what's wrong with me?" after I had walked by the Holy Ground bar on the way to Rouses and had picked a half cigarette out of the ashtray, only to hear a female voice from inside the place yell: "Get outta there!!"

Really?

You are in there every night getting shitfaced, as your hopes and dreams and every great turn that you may have once envisioned your life taking, all fade like the setting sun; hating yourself at some core level because of what you have become; ruing an existence that surely has been compromised as the bottle takes its toll on you like drops of water falling on rock over the course of centuries, and knowing that you took the beautiful gift of life that God gave you and laid it to waste by turning yourself into nothing more than just one more blubbering drunk; and you are going to blubber: "Get outta there!" for the whole bar to hear, at the sight of me picking the ashtray?

Really?

How else am I going to prove that I don't take the virus seriously than to smoke out of a random ashtray. Get a life, bitch!

...why do I hate people so much; what's wrong with me?

So, I probably forgot to file for my weekly unemployment check; I don't know, because the past week is kind of a blur; the drinking (and some crack) got out of hand.

Hopefully it will come in tomorrow, and then I will have to willfully continue my fasting and abstinence, having gotten a glimpse into the spirit world of the alcoholic, but then, the divine grace of the mother figure...

Since Google wants to shunt the traffic to this blog because their algorithm shows me having watched one too many Newsmax video, while having not watched one CNN video all the way through (my vomit shorted out the keyboard or something) I might as well throw this in.

Political Insight

Picture a group of people who want to ransack and pillage a house.

They have to think of a way in, so they hatch the plan of boosting Joe Biden up, by cupping their hands together, and then lifting him up by a foot -the one that's not broken.

"Go Joe, go! You can do it, you're not too old; Come on!" they encourage him.

He reaches the window and crawls inside. 

Then, according to plan, he goes downstairs to the front door and opens it, letting them all in.

Once inside, they immediately pounce upon Joe, killing him. 

Then, they occupy the house, taking it completely over; ransacking and looting it, until it is just a gutted out shell.

"We never liked you, you white piece of shit, who disproportionately locked up blacks after calling them 'super predators' and has had ties to the KKK, you slimy swamp bastard! Trump was right about you!!" they say, as they toss his cadaver out the back door.

Addendum: On Hypocrisy

Those of you who might read this and think, what a hypocrite, he bashes the drunk inside the bar, and then in the very next paragraph talks about his drinking and smoking crack...
You just don't get it.

That's "my sense of humor"...the whole point of this blog...

Big Tech vs. Street Musician Daniel

 My blog traffic has been throttled since I posted the "political" commentary about 2 weeks ago that got an amazing amount of hits, and then...
About 12 people a day now come here; and when I search the exact phrases I use and what I blog about, like "Street music in New Orleans and Harold the Cat," I mean, come on! It's not in the search results any more.

I have been branded as "not one of us" by someone at Google or maybe Youtube or Facebook put a flag on my account.

Time to use another online identity, maybe switch the blog over to the new account...

But what a tangled web we weave (excuse the pun) because all the music I have linked to Soundcloud and Youtube is directly tied to the blog; it's almost like I would have to give up the URL of "daniels-new-blog."

I thought I would keep that because so many URL's have already been taken by now.

I remember back in the late 1980's, people were paying something like 12 bucks to register URL's named things like Coke.com or even JoeBiden.com and then would wait until that entity came up to speed with the web and wanted to start their own website; and the URL would be sold to them, for like $50,000 in the case of say, the NFL. Paid to the guy who had the foresight to buy the domain of "nfl.com"

So, I thought I was fortunate to get daniels-new-blog before anyone else. 

But now I seem to have been blacklisted by the search engines in this cancel culture that I shake my head over.

Yup, as soon as I posted a not over-the-top anti-Trump post the graph of my blog traffic flat-lined. Only the 12 people who include my mother are probably even able to come here, with it having been "disappeared" from the web.

I know this is typical "right wing" conspiracy type thinking, but the "audience" stats don't lie...

You Can't Just Sit There, Women And Children!

This Day In History

December 14, 2019 -Looking back one year sheds light upon the fact that, in some ways, it has been a bad year.

One year ago today, I was lamenting not having a laminated list of all the songs I have played at one time or other; to use as a reference. The drinking took its toll, and stuff that used to be in my regular set list when I was playing for the first can of Hurricane Malt Liquor, and then the second and third, and then stashing whatever money for cigarettes and a morning energy drink, is stuff that never seems to cross my mind when I am sitting at the Lilly Pad.

I remember that, back in 2008, I would use "The Ballad of Richard Corey," by Simon and Garfunkel, as a warm up song; because of its vocal range starting off in the baritone, and then stretching for a high note on the "I wish that I could be (Richard Corey)" part. I had about 12 songs in heavy rotation; but they are just about all different from the 12 that comprise the rut that I have been stuck in the past 3 or 4 years. It is just laziness. You can't smoke weed every night and be able to memorize new songs; so the solution was to quit memorizing new songs, type of thing...

So, it seems that at least a year has gone by with myself still not having made that list of songs. Not to mention compiling a list of "must know busking songs" which are findable online and comprise things like "Wonderwall," by Oasis, and "Wagon Wheel," by Bob Dylan (which I've heard is the least favorite Dylan song of all of diehard Bob fans).

The problem is systemic, in that, I need a higher purpose in going out to busk than procuring whatever money I wind up making, and receiving complements from drunken tourists, to whom everything might sound awesome and overwhelming. Someone who is struggling to remain upright might be blown away by anyone's ability to hold onto a pick and actually strike the strings of a guitar with a modicum of accuracy.

The higher purpose has to come by means of writing lyrics that convey my "message" to the world; whatever that might be, and therein lies the rub.

It's almost unfortunate that I am so fortunate as to have never been oppressed, like some other classes of people. One time a young brown skinned guy tipped me a couple bucks in order to play my guitar and then did so; raising his voice in angst and unleashing a torrent of complaints about being kept down, with all the accompanying pain which could be heard in his voice. He sang in a reggae style and within minutes a group of other young brown people had stopped and applauded the young man, throwing a few bucks in my hat, with one of them making the pronouncement of: "That's real shit, man. That's REAL!"

The kid didn't care about the tip money that had gone into my basket. It (the song) was something that had been cathartic for him; and a burden had been lifted off of his chest; and he was then ready to go and enjoy the rest of his evening.

"It sounds like he's in pain!"

Why was his song about an enslaved population in a strange land being oppressed by The Man more "real" than my song about (pick a topic)? I guess a lot has to do with the delivery.

"It sounds like he's in pain!" my father once complained when he walked into my room in the middle of a Led Zeppelin song emanating from my turntable, adding that "that" wasn't singing, but rather sounded like Robert Plant had gas, is I think how he described it.

It is a classic problem. Neil Young summarized it well with the line: "When you're out of the blue, and into the black," from his song: "Hey, Hey, My My" (or maybe the title is "Into the Black." It is about the dilemma that a blues artist might have after he has a hit song about his hardship and his poverty; a song that is "real" because he is feeling it, and the listener can feel it too. But then, he signs a multi-million dollar deal with a record company, with a contractual obligation to produce another such album of songs about hardship and poverty, and suddenly finds himself confronted with writer's block. He is out of the "blue" mood and into the "black" in a financial sense. That probably doesn't need explaining, but I have encountered a few people who don't seem to get a lot of such songs.

One young guy I met about ten years ago, when the song "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen was having a resurgence in popularity, due to it being in some blockbuster movie; who explained that that song was about A.I.D.S.

The line about Freddy Mercury's body "aching all the time," combined with the "I don't want to die." one sealed the deal for the guy.

He might possibly think that "Hey, Hey" is about an astronaut. He's going out into space; out of the blue (sky) into the black of space. Sure. An astronaut named Johnny Rotten...

And that is the dilemma I think I find myself in. When I would come out from under the dock, where I slept on a heavy piece of cardboard, in a sleeping bag that the rats would crawl into if I didn't roll it up before leaving; there might have been an authenticity to my whole "act." Some things are hard to fake, and perhaps the tourists could smell the Mississippi River on me.

But, apartment living has taken me out of the blue, to a degree.

I don't have to keep one eye open when I sleep any more, wary of intruders. I'm no longer in tune with the circadian cycles of the sun an the moon. I used to be able to read at night by the light of a full moon, whereas I would need to light a candle to do so during anything less than a gibbous moon.

I was cognizant of things like humidity and had to monitor the level of the river which, after heavy rainfall up in Missouri might rise to within 12 feet of where I slept, but would recede to about 40 feet away during the dry season. That would indicate where the 5 foot alligator that patrolled the water in the area would be submerged, with only its eyeballs and the top of its head breaking the surface, looking like a rock that a bird might consider making its last ever perch upon.

How would the gator get its mouth on the bird, without spooking it into flight by moving its head? Simple. By pulling its head downward very quickly, in order to create a strong downward current which would envelope the bird and drag it under the water, where it's wings would become useless. Kind of like how the sinking Titanic was able to pull all the lifeboats within about a quarter mile of where it sank, and then drag them hundreds of feet down right behind it. Out of the blue, and into the black...

That's why, once you have abandoned a ship like that in a lifeboat, you aren't "out of the woods" yet. You have as long as it is going to take for the ship to go down to paddle at least a quarter mile away from the spot; you can't just sit there, women and children! Like certain Republicans away from Donald Trump right now, you must go...

December 14, 2018 -Wow, 2 years ago this day, I was going out to busk in the cold, I was wrapped up in several layers and going out because I was down to like 50 cents to my name. I had just recorded one of my first songs with Jacob Scardino. In going to the Soundcloud to play it because it didn't play through the blog, for some reason, which is also the reason I am studying computer science in my spare time; I was kind of surprised by how the music that I had posted, sounded. 

I have 24 tracks on there and I really was going through a "set it and forget it" period of musical creativity, working pretty hard, evidently on certain pieces and then just going on to the next one and forgetting about the last one. The digital audio tricks have something to do with that, because they aren't really songs that I could play live; unless I was able to distort time and shift pitches at will.

I am surprised at how broke I was, although I did mention like, one 58 dollar night that I had (the next night). I wasn't drinking; but was having a daily shot of kratom.

I'm tempted to say that I was a different person then, when I didn't drink, but did kratom; but it seemed like everyone else was a different person to, then.

I started drinking and everyone else in my life started becoming different people, so that, by the time the alcohol use was starting to become a problem for me, my friends were off down their own rabbit holes.

It is hummus spread and salsa mixed together for dinner right now. I bought some of the raw materials for doing a juice fast, namely apple juice and Alkaline 8.8 water at double the cost of garden variety spring water (as if the dubious quality of tap water drives all to consume bottled water; but the regular bottled water isn't good enough now, and so it is Alkaline PH 8.8 water at $3.49 a gallon).

I think a water fast on that stuff would oxygenate the whole body and cure anything that ails you. There is a radio segment that comes on Sonshine (sic) 800 AM radio here, right before Bob Caravajal's show where the guy, some doctor I think, extols some kind of "alkaline" water as being the panacea for mankind. I am sure that his water is very similar to the stuff at Rouses Market that is double the cost of spring water, and I wouldn't be surprised if his is not 4 times that; but I would bet that his is being marketed under the "all alkaline waters aren't the same" umbrella, and it is well worth the money to know that you are getting alkaline water from a trusted source, etc. This is my first bottle of it, and I would already be on a juice fast and cleanse had not the hummus dip and salsa been to irresistible to resist..

 

Black And White Go Together Just Right On My Zebra Cake

 It just rained pretty hard outside, with a lot of wind and it was probably a very small tropical depression that came through.

I managed to read about a quarter of "Oyster," by John Biguenet, so that is one book that will soon be transferred to the "finished" pile.

My goal is to clear the bed of reading materials by finishing them and then donating them to the multi-purpose room library.

Such high hopes the management once had for the multi-purpose room.

Foosball tournaments, ping-pong championships, a chess club, visiting volunteer instructors coming in to teach creative writing; another coming in to direct the Sacred Heart Chorale in a program of Christmas music, with the public invited. All pipe dreams.

There is a case full of puzzles and games. There is actually comfortable furniture that sits in a sun room that is all glass on the side that faces east.

When some group was shooting a movie here, or a made for TV show or something called "Black Box," they would use that room to have pizza and other stuff delivered there; it was kind of a cast and crew room; and whenever I looked in there, all of the twenty-somethings had their eyes glued to their phones; I guess they were homesick, or home screen sick, at least.

There was to be a gym and a computer room, with the latter just barely clinging to existence in the form of 2 out of 4 desktop computers that actually work, with the other two being frozen between porn sites.

I don't think I am using my time quite efficiently enough.

While I did read for a couple hours, and made progress on "Oyster," I still haven't been online except to check to see if this week's unemployment check was put into my account; and discovering an email from The Lidgley's.

I had opened my gmail and was about to send a message to them the very night before, after a gap of about 8 months in our communication. But, I decided to run to the store for beer and tobacco first, and then got sidetracked into upgrading my Linux system, and I totally forgot to send the email and was soon tired enough to lay down among the books on the bed and get a decent night's sleep.

Had I sent that email, it would have been in Alyne's inbox when she went to send me her message and it would have been quite a coincidence; the both of us contacting one another after 8 months of no contact...

There is a Christmas parcel on the way from London, was the gist of the message.

Bernie Sanders was on my TV at the same time; insisting that there will be another $1,200 stimulus check issued in time for Christmas, and so everything looks promising. I am being paid to not busk right now. Nothing spreads a virus like a harmonica, I imagine. The viruses must just shoot out of the thing and infect everyone within 12 feet.

I really make out like a bandit with those stimulus checks because all my bills are paid and I even get food stamps. The $1,200 is just spending money, like when I was a teenager living at home with my parents and could spend my whole paycheck from bagging groceries on CD's and clothing from The Gap.

It wasn't until I went out on my own that I understood that my parents had been trying to provide me with an education that would ensure that I could maintain at least that same standard of living.

A One Beer Night

Just one beer tonight, it was for me. I watched football for a couple hours; then was sure to snap the TV off before anything came on to draw me into watching longer. Some of the antenna stations run "marathons" of certain shows, and it is quite conceivable for someone shut in to watch every episode of The Partridge Family in one 36 hour sitting; as that was just run on the Decades station, I think it was.

Now they are airing every episode of M.A.S.H. 

I am sure I have probably seen about half of them, from when I was a high school aged kid and it was our routine to come home after school at about 3:15 pm, change out of our school uniforms and then run around outside, riding bikes around the neighborhood or whatever, until being "called" for supper.

I think M.A.S.H. came on at 4 pm. It was definitely after Speed Racer and Kimba the White Lion...

During the winter it was not so interesting outside in a barren snow covered world. Certainly not worth having to put on ski pants and a parka and boots along with gloves and a scarf just to walk around on crusty snow and ice. It got boring.

So, we would be inside, with the heat and the TV on.

And, now for something completely different: From "The Wood Database," I give you paulownia or "princess wood."

The other Balsa. Paulownia is used in applications where a lightweight (yet proportionately strong) wood is needed. It’s widely used in Japan for construction of the koto (a stringed musical instrument), as well as other household items, where the wood is referred to as Kiri. Paulownia is one of the fastest growing trees in the world, capable of growth rates of well over seven feet per year as a seedling! But while it’s highly appreciated and cultivated in Asia, Paulownia has come to be considered an invasive species in the United States.

Paulownia was named after Queen Anna Pavlovna of Russia (1795-1865), and is sometimes called Royal Paulownia or Princess Tree.

 

Every night before supper would come on shows like The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Three Stooges, and then we would be eating while Good Times played for nobody in the living room. I guess it was better than just the sound of us all chewing.

But then, we would be finished eating and would switch to the little black and white TV in the kitchen to catch All In The Family while we cleared the table and wiped and put away dishes.

The weird thing to me about Good Times was how the "live studio audience's" reacted to every line by clapping rather than, or much more so than laughing.

They would applaud a good joke. 

My younger brother and I used to mock that. We would sit, straight-faced, in front of the TV and clap right along with the studio audience, after J.J. Walker yelled "Dynomite!!" or whatever. If we actually laughed at all, it would be at ourselves clapping for the jokes.

That was a precursor to the type of "humor" that is prevalent today. It's not so much a knee slapping occasion, but more of a sardonic, derisive dig at, usually Donald Trump these past 4 years; meant to be scathing and insulting.

What I wasn't worldly enough to understand was that those "colored" shows were fraught with insinuations and coded jabs at "the system" and as such, are to be applauded as highly astute observations about of the plight of the person of color.

Under the guise of humor, they would be sort of funny, but would be things that you would imagine the black people ejaculating: "Ain't that the truth!!" over each punchline, -nothing really funny about temporary layoffs and easy-credit ripoffs, now, right?

Already could be seen the liberal, progressive left in its incubation period.

Just in the fact that the same station that drew us in with The Three Stooges would follow them with Good Times, when we had never seen a black person (in person) in our lives.*

With my first exposure to that culture being J.J. Walker, is it any surprise that I see a lot of "jive turkey" in blacks, to this very day?

My best friend David's oldest sister was about 16 and us, 11, when she found Soul Train on one of the UHF stations (that required manipulation of the loop antenna to pull in) one Saturday morning when I was over.

"Let's watch the jungle bunnies dance," she said, as if to rationalize her choice of programs.

15 Years ago; not much has changed since...

So, "All In The Family" came on each weekday night, while we were washing and wiping and putting away the dishes (where do the little yellow plastic ears of corn things, used to hold corn on the cob, go, anyways? Oh, yeah, in the draw with the turkey carving knife and the potato masher). Sooner or later the "Decades" station will run a marathon of those shows, and I will probably find that I have seen at least half of them..

But, in 1977 there was already a liberal agenda at work, as I'm sure the writers for All In The Family saw themselves as agents of social change, with the burlesque that was Archie Bunker being "wrong" every episode. Ain't that the truth, though...

Meathead and Gloria were "right" and compassionate, and kind of the mouthpieces for the writers, in lieu of soapboxes. I'm pretty sure the Reiner family had their fingerprints all over the show.

Already it is half past midnight, and I have to wrap this up because there are a million other things to do...

Like go to Youtube to see who commented on my comments; same for Facebook; and then I have to listen to a 30 minute musical thing I did on Audacity, to try to distill it down to about 7 minutes of good music.

To Sound It Out

The plan is to write a few songs while just trying to sound out "Free As A Bird," by The Beatles, featuring a posthumous part by John Lennon. 

I have had success doing that in the past -grabbing the guitar trying to sound out some song; totally guessing the chords. Plenty of happy accidents have produced some of my best songs.

John Mayer said something like; a person's singing style comes from failing to sound like someone you want to sound like. What you are left with is "your" voice. It's the same idea when trying to sound a song out of thin air.

I have settled on the drum pattern, though. I will record the song to what comes out of the Casio keyboard on whatever setting it is that most suits "Free" and then will go on a parallel track and superimpose .wav files of actual drums in place of the lower fidelity drums out of the Casio.

I have been discovering a lot of the "extra" percussion instruments like the bongos and djembas (sp?) and other things from around the world that are struck in some way to produce sound. Yesterday's song: "The Zebra Cake Song" really benefited from the addition of bongos.

That one just needs more lyrics than "Last night I went to my fridge to retrieve my Zebra Cake; it was cool. Black and White go together just right on my Zebra Cake..."

I can try to foster racial harmony through my art, too, I guess.

*The first black person I saw was Almetha Ford, who came to our Catholic high school when I was a Senior and she a sophomore.

She was on the girl's track team and threw the javelin, honest to God. Somewhere near the back of the yearbook there was a photo of her doing just that, with the caption of "Another good throw for Almetha!" I remember that. That was a racist thing to put in the yearbook; but she is the one who brought the whole javelin thing upon herself. She could have done the high hurdles and flown under the radar that way. Almetha Ford...I wonder where she is today. Facebook to the rescue?

Into The Legal Fray

 Yes, why should us in Louisiana suffer under the, under the chicanery and mis-deeds of a, of a Joe, a Joe, you know the guy, come on!! -when we voted 64% for The Donald, and when the election was defrauded in less savory places like Detroit, Michigan.

The mistake that "they" made was in padding the votes of Biden and bringing his total to an implausible 80 million. "They" would have been better of with a strategy of "losing" Trump votes, rather than stacking up votes for Joe until the required counties where tipped.

I've been working a lot on the keyboard. I was using it in a limited way, but since I have been playing bass lines on it, I decided to use a more classical approach to the thing and at least position my hands where the instructor would the hands of a 4 year old student.

I actually had a few piano lessons in my life; and I remember being taught to play scales in a way that the thumb would "cross over" and land on the 4th note of the scale.

I keep finding more books.

I have the Cambridge Companion to Dante, and "The Bible as History," and a "foods of the Bible" type book, which extols things like fig paste and mixing oats and raisins together to treat a horse with a swollen head or a sore nose.

Those books actually came off of the rack in the Sacred Heart Multipurpose Room Library.

Then, I came upon a box by a trash can in front of a house which had many computer type books, one of which is on Linux and is only 8 years old, and so three quarters of it will be useful.

It seemed like a person who lived in the house was at one time a student in Information Technology who for some reason decided to throw out all of her course materials.

There was a good book on programming, which used a very Perl-like language to illustrate concepts; and one on "Information Systems Security." That last one might have been the straw in the camel's back as far as that student giving up on ever being an I.T. person.

And today, I found a cool book on regular expressions.

I use regular expressions in my program to format these blog posts, which I shelved at least a couple years ago. I had it working fine; it would make the first three words of a paragraph a bit larger and in a different font; and then would change the color of each paragraph randomly. Then it would give a word count at the end.

I just love stuff like this...

I started to work on the program to add the function of creating a dictionary out of my vocabulary -running everything through, a word at a time; checking to see if each word is already in the dictionary, if so, skipping it; if not adding it.

Then, after I have fed the entire 30 gigabytes of text from this blog, going all the way back to 2009, through it; it would tell me how many words I have in my vocabulary.

I could then even have this list matched against an actual Webster's dictionary to find a word that I haven't ever used that is in there, and suggest it as a "word of the day," or something, to build vocabulary.

So, the program is torn apart in order to have that functionality added to it. I have the flowchart in my head; I just have to get back on the Perl manual and find the right commands and functions and, of course, dig into the regular expressions.

I will use the regular expressions, for example, to find every word that starts with a capital letter and emphasize (bold face) that word, as I already do manually. These are the people places and things that I highlight, so as to give, at a glance, what the post is about.

There will definitely be looting after the election goes to Trump.

I can remember us being led through the Inferno in high school.

I needed to live a live of almost 60 years in order to put Dante into context though.

I'm sure I averaged about 85% on the tests I took on Dante's Inferno. But that is just a testament to my ability to, for example, eliminate 2 out of the 4 possibilities of a multiple choice question (two of the answers often mean the same thing but cannot both be true; so neither is. That turned the question into, at worse, a 50-50 guess.

But, I certainly wasn't able to look at Dante against the backdrop of human experience; even though we had already been force-fed Gilgamesh, and The Iliad and The Odyssey.

As a matter of fact, we were assigned "summer" reading, in the form of 3 books which we were expected to have consumed over the 10 weeks of summer vacation.

Those 10 weeks shrunk in perspective with each passing school year.

The vacation between 2nd and 3rd grade seemed to last a year. By about sophomore year in high school, I had figured out that it is "really" just 10 weeks, and that by next Monday, it will be down to 9.

That was when we were hit with the summer reading. I calculated that I needed to average something like 75 pages per day in order to finish what were, for Freshman year; "Ivanhoe," by Sir Walter Scott, "Nine Coaches Waiting," by Mary Stuart, and "Billy Budd," by Herman Melville.

That might have been the time I learned that if you ignore things, it won't make them go away. With each day that I didn't get my 3 hours of reading in, the average climbed until I was up against the task of reading something like 760 pages the last week of vacation, in order to be ready for that "summer reading test" which was administered immediately after the start of the school year.

I just wasn't ready to not be a kid during summer vacation and so I just made a stab at Ivanhoe, and perhaps got to about the 400th page; out of about 1,100 in that book; never mind the other two books.

I really wish I was more of a student back then; but I still can't see how I would have been worldly enough to put those books into any meaningful context.

I understand now that we were being taught a lot about the culture that most of us came from. A lot of the mores and norms of the society written about were exported to America; and I guess that's why we were assigned that book. I can't say for sure, I still haven't read it. I'll come across it for 50 cents at the Goodwill Store one of these days...

Digital Voodoo

What happened was, I changed the order of things, so that yesterday, which would have been the third in a series of consecutive days with a blog post here, was not that.

But, today, I am starting with the computer, and a glass of kratom, before going to do vocals on the "Calypso" morning song. It is very simple.
Just really simple, but wait until I do digital voodoo upon it; like what I did to the picture to the left.

 I changed the order of things, so that I started with music right away, after coming off of the bed at around noon.

I had fallen asleep with preset 100 looping on the Casio keyboard.

Preset 100 is "Calypso."

So, I sat up and turned the volume up on the thing, which I had just slept and dreamed to. I think Harry Belafonte was on my back and had me pinned down and was trying to drown me in these pristine cornflower blue waters that were so clear you could see all kinds of spectacularly vivid fish in their tie dyed colors and you could see coral reefs as intricate darker shadows against the back drop of the light brown sand; very beautiful; but Harry had my arms against my back and somehow we were in the pirogue from the first chapter of the novel named "Oyster," by John Biguenet -the pirogue that Therese took another character named "Horse" out in the bayou in; and killed him in very dramatic fashion, which involved her seducing him by skinny dipping out away from the boat, at around midnight as it was, and in alligator and crab infested waters to lure him to follow her, and then, after making it back to the boat first (because she was 30 years younger than horse) stabbing him as she was "helping" him back in the pirogue, which is like a canoe -then doing a quick three loops around his neck with the rope attached to the bucket full of concrete, sometimes referred to as a "redneck anchor" sending him downward into the depths by throwing said bucket over. Therese was a very resourceful 17 year old.

But I woke up with a start and off my back flew a startled Harold, who jumped to the table that the puzzle I am assembling is on and, landing there and perhaps realizing that he had gotten himself into even deeper trouble as he found himself riding on a sled of already assembled puzzle pieces, made the split second decision to abandon the table for the safety of under the bed, and in re-launching himself in that opposite direction, swept a good portion of the puzzle pieces onto the floor where they dissolved into chaos. There was a cat sized clearing on the table where there were no longer any puzzle pieces, nor much dust, for that matter.

Ironic that I don't seem to have time to work on the puzzle, yet I am locked in the house with ostensibly nothing but time on my hands.

 

I hadn't really touched the puzzle much in the last few months, since even before the lock-down. *note to self: Google "which word combinations should be hyphenated; which separated, and is "lockdown" even "a word?"

Ironic that I don't seem to have time to work on the puzzle, yet I am locked in the house with ostensibly nothing but time on my hands.

Are the elites who supposedly run the world using the virus to help people get used to working at home and to ultimately reduce the number of cars on the roads worldwide, as more people adapt, who will also realize that all they really need is a good bike with a good basket and they will be able to avail themselves to 99% of whatever they might ever leave the house to go get?

Is this a forced move to take on global warming, skirting public discourse over the matter and putting the planet first, over anyone's opinion?

I wonder if, at around the time this virus goes away, there will also materialize things like solar powered cars, that charge up enough while you are in Walmart so that you can drive home, or let the car drive you home.

Within 20 years, when I look out the window, I will see as many if not more driver-less things scooting up and down Canal street, many of them heavily armored and delivering food to the sally ports of people's houses; the ones with the double doors so that the vehicle can be let into the dwelling and the outer door closed behind it, so that the person can retrieve his groceries and deliveries from merchants worldwide in safety.

When we go out, we will surely wear a bullet proof helmet which will be able to display things to us in the visor which will be something that you can look at, or look through. But most people will be watching the monitor of what they could be seeing if they change their focus, because the picture will be better; it will be adjustable; you could make a grey day look more rosy, for example. It will have a function which will be able to show where all your friends are, perhaps putting you all in a virtual room, where you will be able to say "Hey, Fred" and Fred will hear you in his helmet, and will be able to tell how far away you are because the volume will be adjusted accordingly,

The thing will have night vision, of course. It will be bright as day© technology (BAD) and come preinstalled in all BAD products, as they will be the company that invents the whole Hell Met line of net gear. There will be a "bright sun" setting that will, in the dead of night, give you bright sunlit world, replete with shadows and glare off of nearby shiny objects; you will be able to see as much as you would see on a bright sunny day.

I Start The Day With Music

I turned up the "calypso" beat and was immediately inspired to put the recorder on and compose "It's A Calypso Morning (It's gonna be a calypso day)" using three chords.

In the past, I would have concluded that a 3 chord song was beneath me, and would have tried to work some kind of complex chord into the arrangement, to try to be more like Steely Dan, but I have since come to appreciate that all 8 million ways that those 3 chords can be used, have not been used yet; and to further realize that there is a 3 chord song functionality going on in every Steely Dan song. They are famous for taking two things which might be moronically simple by themselves and combining them so that something that might have only had 9 possible ways to go now has 81. This would be like a guitar playing simple triads on the top strings that would just be like the chords to Breezin' by George Benson, but then to offset the rhythm so that what you would expect to be the first chord (and the key to the piece) is now the third; and then to have the bass playing anything but the roots of those chords which would make it sound like the Breezin' progression, but now it isn't, because the bass might even be in a different key. The result is a very interesting progression in that other key. Whole books have been written on music theory, but that is my "music theory through the music of Steely Dan" course distilled into an outline....

I soon had a bass line and a melody, to which I only had "It's a calypso morning" as lyrics. But I was actually able to sing the melody

Then I decided to isolate the drums coming from the Casio, from the melody from it, which was another preset for "fretless bass 2."

Without going into all the session details I can cut to my point which was that, 18 hours later, I was still working on "Calypso Morning." The sun had long been down.

And, now I go back to work on it some more; as soon as computer stuff has been done.

Lilly On The Line

Lilly called me yesterday and seemed full of energy. She wanted to make sure she had my address, as she had lost it. Either that or the address thing was the excuse for calling to warn me not to ever watch Newsmax.

She said that they had "taken over for Fox" and that they are trying to reel in suckers, and that, if I wanted to be a fool and watch Newsmax, then that was up to me.

She then went on to paraphrase a lot from the book written by the niece of Donald Trump (Mary Trump, I believe is her name; I saw something about her on Newsmax, I think I recall).

She assured me that Donald wants to be like Putin, who "sits in a bunker while all his people are dying."

I had to argue that Donald isn't the bunker sitting type, because he seems to like to be on TV every day, because I felt like I had to argue, to keep her blood flowing.

She said she knows a lady who said she wished that Trump could stay the president "forever" and that, surprisingly, the lady is a very nice person, with a nice job and a nice family and nice clothes, and Lilly likes her and her family; but the poor soul just doesn't know...
And then she ran down the list of commonly known atrocities that the president has committed, going all the way back to when Lilly lived in Queens, New York in the early 1990's and ending up with the latest CNN headline and the truths behind it...

By the time we were off the phone, I felt like I had been separated from my children and put in a cage. But she sent her love, and reminded me of our times swimming together in her pool.

For the first one of these occasions, Lilly had put together a playlist, by enlisting the help of her millenial daughters, and it became apparent that she had put a lot of forethought into the pacing of our afternoon, as she had kind of started the music when we were having coffee, and then kind of insisted that we get into the pool at a certain point in the music program, and then it was swimming music that played, swimming music like "So Happy Together," by The Turtles, or Herman's Hermits, I forget.

But then ensued wiping off music and then maybe "The Warmth Of The Sun" by The Beach Boys for when we were out and sitting in the sun.

"Another Day," by Paul McCartney became Lilly's general lament as we sipped coffee.

I then understood why she had gotten so upset the one time that she had invited me to swim and I had shown up a bit late. "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" or "Sundown," by Gordon Lightfoot had been inserted into the playlist all for naught as it was already growing dark.