I'm Going To Run To The Shell

•  More Dead In Sacred Heart

• I Find A Nice Bookshelf

• Pandemic Assistance In The Works

  • Lyric Theater, San Jose to record?
    

"Steve died," said Bobby.

"Steve who?"

"Steve the guy who lives upstairs, right near the top of the staircase..."

I couldn't place the name with a face, even given the additional knowledge that Steve was gay; was taking something like 20 gabapentin pills a day, and that he "pissed in a bag." That last thing I didn't ask more about..

Bobby is concerned because someone died a couple doors down from him about a month ago; and now a guy upstairs, almost right above him. It's as if death is circling and closing in on Bobby.

"I don't want to die in this hell hole!" he continued. 

I sort of agree with him. I don't want a bunch of nosy Sacred Heart residents gawking at my body covered in a white sheet and being wheeled out of the place. And then, what's to keep their filthy hands off my books and my guitars and music equipment?

I plan upon living til about the age of 91, and so that would give me something like 38 years to live off of social security and use that to move out of here.

My biggest complaint is that I am too shy about recording music like "I Want You (she's so heavy)" by John Lennon, and especially the scream, about 4 minutes in, or for that matter, any one of the other pieces where the "scream therapy" that John was undergoing bore fruit in the musical realm.

His song called "Mother" would have crazy people banging on the floors and walls with broom handles, should I ever try to scream the ending verses out in the middle of the night. I would much rather have a big house, it can be all on one level, not necessarily that big, but would at least have to have a parlor like the one that Dick Van Dyke had, or the Brady Bunch. Bob Newhart had a good sized parlor, where a lot of the scenes between he and Suzanne Pleshette (sp?) took place.

I just see (in my imagination, when chanting) a large ground level room with sliding glass doors opening to a fenced-in back yard that has bird houses and squirrel feeders; one of those large rooms where, if you moved the furniture out of the way, you would have a music area the size of a lot of stages in clubs.

The garage that the Partridge Family practiced in wouldn't be out of the question, but it is a matter of acoustics. The room where "I Love Lucy" mostly took place would have the sound dampening characteristics provided by the heavy drapes (over the sliding glass doors) and the wall to wall carpeting, and the furniture that had been moved out of the way.

I really don't know if it is low self esteem, or what, that prevents me (like right this second -it's 5:55 a.m.- for example) from doing the Lennon scream at the top of my lungs from the White Album song mentioned above...

It would send Harold the cat under the bed, but that would only be because he isn't used to me screaming. I'm even steering my own music more toward the style's of Radiohead, and The 1975 -bands whose lead singers are kind of low-key and in the case of the Radiohead guy, he kind of moans out the lyrics in a whiny, querulous tone.

But, living in a house, a Victorian style one with turrets and gables and those round things that a lot of castles had as like garrisons, oh yeah, turrets I think they are called, which is out on the Bayou, perhaps a quarter mile from the next house, and with a dock that you can fish off the end of; that kind of house would be very conducive to recording loud music.

Elvis Costello inserted a whispered voice into his song "I'm Not Angry," from his first album, because he had originally recorded it after he wrote it when he was 14 and had to do the vocals by going into a closet lined with pillows while other people were trying to sleep in the same house. His whispered voice is trying to simulate a person screaming loudly, and the resultant "horse" sounding voice that that would engender...odd how you can approximate the sound of a person screaming by using a whispered voice. I guess that's why people just make the "h" sound to sound like a stadium full of people going nuts...

Bobby and I have discussed parlaying our future social security money into such a house in the bayou; probably by taking a mortgage out on it so we could potentially take ownership of it, should we live past eighty. Once the deed is signed over, then the Lennon screaming will really take flight... 

Perhaps I should take Keishawn up on that offer, to go to San Jose, CA to work in the Lyric Theater on a video. Maybe I would run into Alex from California, LOL!

I went to get a pack of cigars; first thing after waking up around 7 at night.

I woke up to a young woman wearing a bikini and dancing freely to some music which was coming out of my phone at a surprisingly high volume.

It was an ad for the "Tick Tock" or whatever the hell it is, social media type platform, and the young ladies name appeared like a movie credit after she had danced for about 16 bars. I suppose I could follow her on Tic Talk or something.

I couldn't help but wonder at my having a young lady in a bikini greeting me first thing in the morning, when I just had grabbed the phone, waning to know the time and the temperature outside.

But, if I do want a young lady in a bikini greeting me in dance in addition to the time and temperature; then I think I could join tick tock and avail myself to such videos.

I'm not sure what the president said about them. I would have to Google that and make sure I'm not feeding into a Chinese disinformation machine by joining.

Before I even got the news about the people storming the Capital Building, I got the young woman in the bikini.

I wonder if it had anything to do with my having studied some of a free online course in Spanish the day before. My father used to say: "There's nothing free in this world," and I wouldn't be surprised if, in helping myself to the free online course in Spanish, I hadn't marked myself as probably a college aged student and thus ripe for an ad to join Tik Tok...

A stop at Bobby's in apartment C207 revealed him to be pretty livid over the news of the "riot" and accusing Trump of having been personally responsible for the death of whomever it was that the police shot.

I was trying to get him to flip the channel from ABC to Newsmax, because I really wanted an unbiased report on what had happened; but he wouldn't. The ABC correspondent was trying to make the point that he could see "this" coming, way back when the Charlottesville thing happened.

Bobby thinks that the president "put these people up" to storming the Capital Building.

He thinks that it is hatred of black people (because I got hit in the face by a paint ball shot by one of them about 4 years ago) that makes against the Black Lives Matter movement. I tried to explain to him that they have very little to do with enriching the lives of black people and that duping them into voting for Biden was about the extent of their concern about them.

I told him that soon, we would no longer have the United States flag, as we know it. It will be done away with as part of some "global" movement because it will be seen as symbolizing a nation build upon racism, yadda yadda. The replacement flag will almost certainly have to have some black in it. Not just red white and blue...

That kind of got through to Bobby. He served in the military. "I fought for that flag!" he said, as his ire rose, thinking that what I was saying was part of the Republican mindset, getting me wrong, as is usual with him when it comes to anything that diverges from what CNN is putting out 24/7.

I told him that there were some people who were trying to take over the whole world and that the United States, and Trump specifically, were just a piece to the puzzle and only part of the larger project. There are statues being torn down and streets being renamed worldwide, I informed him. It's not just our dysfunctional American family acting up. There will be no more red white and blue flag in a matter of a few years, Bobby.

I told him I thought I could be just as happy under any flag, and wouldn't take it to heart if Old Glory was done away with. Give me my weed and a guitar and I'll call myself anything.

Our grandfathers had the Kaiser, was it? Our fathers, Hitler. 

We kind of had the North Vietnamese, and then the Iranians and were about the last breeds who will ever put their country before their own lives

This generation has nothing.

Except for, maybe, the "fight" for the right of an eighth grade boy (who identifies as a female) to use the girl's room at the public school and not be shamed over it.

I'm not saying we need to have war to keep things real; nor that there should be mandatory military service required of all able bodied Americans who reach the age of 18, and that the draft should be reinstated. But it must be hard for someone who has seen their buddy's ripped apart by a grenade to come back here and be around people who are just "so" stressed because their "phone keeps doing this."

I'll be "impressed" by this generation of special snowflakes as soon as I see the first all-gay platoon of airborne infantry, parachuting into a war zone. Or the first all-transgender squad, led for the first time by a woman of color perhaps; running headlong into enemy machine gun fire. In defense of freedom.

Then I would be taken aback and say: "Let them piss wherever they want!" 

After seeing heavy combat, I don't think they would be so offended by a Cleveland Indians hat

Louisiana Works Website Actually Like An Online University

I actually discovered a wealth of free information online, on the portal for the Louisiana Workforce Commission. 

I have been back and forth from that portal lately, trying to supply them with the correct documents so they can extend my pandemic unemployment assistance benefits, until the end of March, it looks like it will be, if I can manage that.

There was a short period of time when an "exhaustion" notice appeared in my messages on the same portal, telling me I had to open a new claim at the end of the year. But, this was changed two days later, after Trump signed some thing.

In a rare display of getting right to something, i.e. not procrastinating, I was right on top of the situation, and opened a new claim the day after Christmas.

The latest notice states that, if you had opened a new claim, as originally instructed, then just sit tight, you don't have to do anything; you will start getting money every week again. I wonder how much working people with "essential" jobs loath the masses who are getting paid to do nothing but shelter in place...

Sit Tight

But, today I got a request for photos of my social security card, my ID, and honest to God, a "selfie" of me, holding the two things. I'm almost surprised that I wasn't asked to also display a copy of today's newspaper headline, to prove that the photos are current...

I guess they have humans ready to look at the face and compare it to the one on the ID. Humans not fully replaced by robots yet, maybe next year after the facial recognition software becomes more reliable...

So, off I went for the cigar, using the last dollar that I have until something happens with the Louisiana Workforce Commission. They should get my photos tomorrow, and hopefully it won't be under a stack too high of them.

Nam myoho rengye kyo...

The website did say, the first time I sent in a picture of just my ID, that if the barcode couldn't be read off the photo then the thing would have to be manually looked at, which could "delay processing." 

I couldn't get a more clear picture, using my phone, and so, I guess this is the delay.

Nam Myoho Rengye Kyo

 I have been chanting the above mantra which comes from Buddhism, I believe.

The first time I chanted it, back in 2007, I was sitting in the woods with my camp mate, Larry, and in regards to the problem of the raccoons getting into our food despite our best efforts against them, I had told Larry that the thing we really needed was one of those dog kennels that are made of pretty heavy bars and are maybe about 4 feet cubed in dimension.

"We could put the food right in the middle of the thing, and their arms won't be long enough to reach it," I said to Larry as I was walking off to throw our bags of trash in a nearby dumpster that sat at the edge of the woods, where one of our paths emerged into the parking lot of an apartment complex.

So, I got to the dumpster and hoisted the bags up into it, and then looked to see, sitting next to it; a dog kennel type thing like the one I had described to Larry.

"That was fast," said that worthy, upon seeing me return with the thing.

I actually stopped chanting the mantra after having a series of such things materialize, things that were exactly how I had pictured them. Maybe I thought life was becoming too easy with the chant; and I would find it a little more challenging after ceasing to chant. I would always have it in my tool shed, though.

For times like the past couple days. I chanted a bit on my way to the store.

On the way back, it gave me a feeling reminiscent of the kennel, when I came upon a bookshelf, like the one I had been keeping an eye out for the past couple months, sitting atop someone's trash. 

Above: The Bookcase Type Thing

It's not a big one at all, but I plan upon using it to hold the top 40 books that I intend to read, having already "started" each one, in a way; by at least flipping to different spots and reading a few paragraphs, here and there -enough to get a sense of the tone of the writing.

My hope is that a really good book will suck me in and, after becoming intrigued by about a dozen pages, I would go back the the beginning and fill in up to wherever I had dove in. 

At least that alleviates the anxiety over having a ton of books and thinking that there are some that I just might never get to. Will I die before I get to that one? type of thing...

But, just flipping around in them and reading some here and there is good...