Back From The Dead

I was really just joking about Kamala Harris replacing George Washington on the one dollar bill a few posts back, but...this just in...

The White House Is Reinstating Plans to Replace Andrew Jackson With Harriet Tubman on $20 Bills

 

In April 2016, secretary of the treasury Jacob J. Lew unveiled plans to remove Andrew Jackson —who enslaved scores of Black Americans and forced thousands of Native Americans off their land during his presidential tenure—from the $20 bill. Jackson would be replaced with Harriet Tubman, hero of the Underground Railroad.

The conceptual design of the new bill was expected to be finished by 2020 to coincide with the centennial of the 19th Amendment. Though The New York Times revealed an image of it in June 2019 (three years after the design had reportedly been completed), 2020 came and went without any official announcement of the design change, and it became apparent that the project had been delayed. ["between the lines" -by a white supremacist administration]

Now, according to CNN, the White House is hoping to accelerate the process [though it won't take priority over jobs and security for legal American citizens, right?] and produce new $20 bills bearing Harriet Tubman’s likeness sometime soon. “It's important that our notes, our money … reflect the history and diversity of our country, and Harriet Tubman's image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that,”* White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday, January 25.

There’s no word yet on when exactly we’ll get to see the new design, or how soon we can expect the new money to enter circulation;⁑ a treasury department spokesperson told The New York Times that she had nothing to share about a possible timeline. 

Also as-yet-unanswered is what will be on the reverse side of the bill; Lew’s 2016 announcement said it would feature both the White House and an image of … Andrew Jackson. Since the new administration hasn’t announced any details, it’s still possible that could change.

When It Rains, It Pours

Friday, I got a letter out of the blue, from my mom. It was just to wish me well, and had 20 bucks in it. 

Then, I got a call Saturday morning from the front desk, informing me that a package had arrived. 

That package contained the calendar that the Lidgley's have been sending me annually. It always has a fresh 20 dollar bills taped to the picture for the month of October, when my birthday falls.

The first year they sent one, I didn't discover the money until one October day when I was flat broke, and sitting at home, worrying about where my next kratom and cigarette were to come from. Something kind of drew my eyes to the calendar. It was still showing September. I figured that I should at least flip it to the correct month; and then go back to worrying about where my next kratom and cigarette was going to come from. The rest is history. "No way!" I exclaimed after flipping September up to expose the bill. I then hopped on my bike and headed for the Uxi Duxi kratom bar, recalling the motto of Alfred E. Neuman from Mad Magazine: "What, me worry?"

This is what I picture

Alex in California to look like...

But, since then, I have flipped right to October and claimed my birthday money 10 months early each year.

Coming back to the apartment, calendar shaped parcel in hand, I stopped at my mailbox, to find one envelope in it, containing a check for 600 dollars; which I just slipped in between the pages of one of the books strewn on my bed.

Back From The Dead

So, early Sunday morning 1/24, I had woken up and resolved not to start the day off with the consumption of a beer, as that had been the first stop along the road to ruin the day before.

And, so, happy to see that the NFL playoff games were being broadcast over the free antenna stations that I get, I settled in to listen to the pre-game shows, knowing through experience, that a six pack of beer to go along with the game, although as American as apple pie, was not advisable. 

I hadn't slept since Thursday into whenever I woke up Friday, but the games were to start in a few hours and I would risk sleeping all the way through both of them were I to try to grab a few winks.

I had an energy drink spiked with kratom and listened to some of the pre-game hype coming over "sports radio" 990 AM, which is also where I go to hear Ben Shapiro, (sports and conservatism go hand in glove; we just wish those sons of bitches would stop kneeling down for the national anthem).

As I waited for the first game to start, my nicotine vape ran out, which meant a trip to the Shell was imminent.

I started walking that way. 

Somehow, as I walked, I reasoned that, if I were to drink, it should be a good bottle of red wine to go with the good meal of grouper with chips and salsa that I was planning to prepare. That is the healthy way to consume alcohol. Beer is not so bad, especially a dark beer, as long as you have some peanuts or other legume, to make a complete meal of it. Hard liquor on an empty stomach is stupidity...

I bought a bottle of sangria which I started to sip as I walked back home, ignoring the fact that that was kind of throwing the "with a good meal" theory out the window. I was thinking about a good meal as I walked, though.

Then, maybe due to having been up almost 48 hours, and with the nagging thought that I had just gotten 600 bucks in the back of my mind, and after polishing off the bottle, I decided to visit my friend Bobby, even though (or maybe because) I knew he would most likely be doing cocaine, heroin, smoking weed, or who knows what.

Not to shift the responsibility to him, but he didn't disappoint. We each got high as kites off a hit of crack that he happened to have laying around, and watched the Kansas City Chiefs defeat the...what was the other team? I forget; things got a bit foggy. But, being the gracious host that he is, he gave me a wafer of methadone "to come down with" and a sleeping pill, to go down even further. 

I was out of cat food, so I took a walk to get 3 cans of it; and grabbed a bottle of New Belgium Trippel© beer while I was at it. That is one of my favorites, but this time it tasted kind of funny, perhaps because of the methadone; or maybe I have Covid19...

I didn't really like the feeling of the methadone, just as I hadn't the first time he ever gave me any (when it made me hiccup for something like 28 hours) and so I took the sleeping pill after I had gotten home and fed Harold; the perfect end to a perfect day.

Then, I believe I died in my sleep; it was Sunday evening when I went to sleep and Monday evening when I finally got up and tried to piece together things. I had no craving for anything. My nicotine vape was on the bed with me, but I just looked at it and didn't want any. My mind was very calm. Shouldn't I at least have a cup of coffee? I thought. Kratom?

I really felt like I was done with it all. Like I had been purged; maybe momentarily my heart stopped and I went down the long tunnel of light, but came back as a new person. 

How long am I going to go, being addicted to nicotine, caffeine, kratom, weed and alcohol? At some point in my life I am at least going to want to experiment with total abstinence; to wake up, drink alkaline water, meditate, go for a jog, then drink grapefruit juice and get to work on my projects, taking a mid afternoon break for an avocado or two, washed down with kale and carrot juice from the juicer. At least I have no addiction to sugar; I don't even buy it...

Maybe I shouldn't talk, or write, this way because just typing the preceding sentence was ratcheting up the urge to run down to the Shell station for a Heineken. I just ran out of kratom, and so I'll have to go there anyways...

"Look Out, That Thing Is About To Fall On Your Head!"

It's funny -the psychological underpinnings of addiction- I remember, back when I was married to the Russian mafia via my wife Nina; I had a 22 year old stepson named Michael.

Michael didn't want to work. Nina had a ton of money, and had ostensibly brought him to the U.S. with her, so she could keep an eye on him; mostly to keep him an ocean's breadth away from those who would corrupt him by selling him drugs and turning him into a raging addict; against his better nature. For, in Nina's eyes, Michael could do no wrong.

And, as part of her plan to gain citizenship through marrying an American (one who, in my case had more than one ID, and so, could marry her "on the side") she was to benefit from being able to send Michael to medical school, to become a dentist, as a domestic student, thereby saving something like 8 thousand bucks a semester on tuition, compared to what they would have had to pay if he were coming in as a foreign student. Plenty with which to pay me for my troubles.

Michael's education "to become a dentist" was just a red herring -one that swam across the Atlantic with him in its belly. 

It was based upon the fallacy that a 22 year old, who had never lasted more than 3 hours on any job in his life, was going to grind it out; study hard and (here's that word again) work for a degree.

One job was arranged for him, through a Russian guy who had ascended to the position of management in a nearby Albertson's grocery store, who was a friend of "the family."

Of course, Ivan was populating his staff with no one else but Russians, to the exclusion of all other qualified candidates -probably behind the argument that Russian was the predominant language spoken at the site, given the existing composition of the crew, and it would be problematic for an English speaker to try to work there. He wouldn't understand "Look out, that thing is about to fall on your head!" shouted in broken English, for example. 

That was just one more straw in the back of the the working U.S.-born citizen's back. 

There was a Winn-Dixie nearby that was 90% Bosnian, becoming so in quick order after a Bosnian took over as manager. The U.S. born people who worked there (the 10%) that I spoke to, told me I wouldn't want to work there. It was a terrible place, where they were treated like dogs, even whistled for by the manager, when he needed them for something. 

The Bosnian employees there seemed relatively happy, though, except for a low-key contempt that they seemed to seethe with, just below their surfaces, that I picked up on whenever I shopped there, if ever I tried to make friendly conversation. I guessed that that was because I was born here. What would happen to me if I moved to Bosnia, opened a business and then started mistreating Bosnians, while hiring only American ex-patriots? What is the word in the Bosnian language for "boycott?"

It would take subtle forms, like, if a cashier had bagged one of my items and I were to reach my hand forward, to take it from her, she would drop it on the counter and withdraw her own hand, with a frown, as if not wanting to even complete the gesture of handing me the stuff that I had just supported her and her family with, by paying for. That kind of thing...

And, then there was the Starbucks right down the street that you had to be Albanian to work at, and...well, I digress...

And, so Nina had arranged for Michael to work on the overnight crew, stocking shelves at Albertson's, through her Russian ties and connections.

His first shift was to run from 10 PM until 6 AM. At about 1 AM, the manager called Nina to inform her that Michael had never returned from his first 15 minute break at around midnight.

But, Michael didn't return home either, until after six, probably because he wanted to take advantage of the fact that, for the occasion, he was given use of the car, and that, at midnight, the night was still young, and there was plenty of fun that he could "get." (Michael's lack of *total* fluency in English was evident when he said things like "We got a lot of fun last night!").

His version of fun would be showing up at some club, dressed to the nines (he owned nothing but dress clothing) and mingling with people, who would become intrigued by his accent, which would open the door for him to give his spiel about being from Russia, and how he was here in America, to go to medical school to become a dentist. 

They would look him over, taking in his clothing and his shoes (especially his shoes -the family made their fortune in the shoe industry) his manicured hands and his hair, which was edged every Saturday morning, with the barber taking off barely enough to see, and not even needing to sweep the floor after he was done; and someone would invariably tell him not to worry about having left his wallet at the restaurant with his money in it, or whatever b.s. he was going with that night, and would offer to buy him drinks, invite him to do a few lines of coke in the men's room (He was a coke seeking missile when it came to picking those types out of a crowd; probably by using the same metrics of clothing and shoes that they did) and over the course of the night, they would become happy to have befriended a future dentist, and a fine young man, and Michael would have gotten his fun.

But, that time, he had returned home to receive a tongue lashing from Nina, who later explained to me that the problem had been that the work was not suitable for Michael because he could have chipped a hundred dollar nail, just trying to make eight bucks an hour, arranging cans on a shelf. And also, he had started to sweat, and "what do you want me to do, ruin a $140 single stitch silk shirt; sweating like pig? Nina understood his point and relented. Maybe her connections could find him some job that didn't involve working.

Michael succumbed to drug addiction, having spiraled down pretty far by the time I left the scene a year after marrying Nina, and having been half of the reason I left, as Michael had persistently encroached upon me, one inch at a time, trying to be "the man of the house" which started with his taking control of the environment, blasting the heater in the winter on high, until a certain point where he would ejaculate "Man, is hot as f** in here!" and then would turn the unit off, and throw open the front door to let the winter air in to cool it back down (he had no understanding of the thermostat) and by commandeering the TV remote, not even thinking to ask "Oh, were you watching that?" One time he was out of cigarettes and I had one left, which I said I would share with him. He lit it and then went about daydreaming and smoking it, and, only after it was down to the filter, did he say: "Oh, shit man, I smoked whole of it; I'm sorry I forgot.." That type of stuff. I guess that's what happens when everything revolves around you, as the only son of a wealthy Russian lady.

About a year after I left, I was arrested in Washington state, on a worthless check charge and flown back to Jacksonville. The real reason that happened was because they wanted me as a witness in a murder trial that I had knowledge of.

They figured they would set some bond amount that would be out of the reach of a guy found living in the woods in Federal Way, Washington who worked as a cashier at a gas station. That way, they would know where they could find me, once the trial came around.

To this day, I have no idea how Nina found out about this, after a year of me being away and having made no contact. Maybe the Russian mob had operatives at the jail.

But, I wasn't there for more than a few hours before this mysterious Russian lady showed up at the jail and posted my whole bond amount in crisp 100 dollar bills. Pretty impressive, considering the way I had gone off, and just about said "F you and your derelict son!" Knowing her, she probably hadn't satisfied any of their curiosity about who she was or why she was doing it. They are kind of obligated, at the clerk's office to warn people that, should the bonded person not show up for court, then they will have to forfeit the entire amount. I'm sure Nina cut that person off in mid sentence: "Is ok, here!" then shoved the money at them. "I know, is ok, here!"

She was waiting to bring me back home with her.

There I witnessed Michael, having lost all his muscle tone and looking 33 rather than 23 years old. He would kind of pace around randomly with his arms flopping at his sides like a rag doll, mumbling incoherently to himself.

This could very well have been from whatever drugs the psychiatrist, that Nina was undoubtedly paying a fortune to, was giving him, as much as from whatever ailed him.

"Michael's not well" she said, as I was making those observations. She told me that he had had some kind of breakdown and wound up in his room, terrified, and yelling to her that there were men outside with guns trying to kill him, but that it had all been in "golova" (pointing to her head). Was she still in denial of the fact that her prince had destroyed his mind with drugs, and that it wasn't some mental illness that he had come down with, like catching the flu?

That was, I guess, when she took him to see the mental health professional who put him on some medication which was worse than any guys with guns outside could ever be.

The whole story of the Russians is on my other hard drive at about 25,000 words, and is overlapped by and mixed with the story of Angela, the one black girlfriend I ever had, and the whole thing with the murder trial (the real reason I was flown back to Florida on a worthless check charge) and I will retrieve it and add it to the timeline of this blog as soon as I get around to booting up the laptop with the old drive in it and copying it off. I always hesitate to do that because it could be the last thing I do on the laptop, should it freeze up during the procedure. But, back to the point:

The psychological underpinnings of addiction...

One of the things that I noticed about Michael, before he fried his mind on perhaps crystal meth or a combination of that and ecstasy, the latter of which he had been up to swallowing 5 to 7 "beans" of (in order to get fun), was that whenever he got off the phone after talking to his sister, Illonya, who was in Moscow (our phone bill averaged between 600 and 800 bucks a month because of his 2+ hour talks with Ilonya) he would be absolutely fiend-ing to smoke a joint. He would come to me, half panting and almost out of breath: "Daniel have you got some weed? I really need to smoke right now!" It never failed. He had the insane urge to get high as soon as he hung up the phone.

It may have been partly because 2 hours of doing anything that kept him away from drugs put him into a state of withdrawal; but I always suspected that there were psychological catalysts, too. 

My guess at the time was that he had spent the whole time on the phone blowing smoke and painting a glorious picture of how well his life was going and how he couldn't wait to start college to become a dentist, and just how wonderful everything was and how rosy the future looked; and that, of course, he was staying away from heroin...and that that was such a big lie, or self deception, that he couldn't wait to get high just to help delude himself himself into believing that everything he had said to her just might come true. 

A line of coke would have done that. "I know I'm going to become a great dentist, I'm going to study hard!" he might utter after a good toot...

But, my point is, when I blog here about my resolve to abstain from everything and put all my addictions to rest, I can often feel an increased urge to run to the store for a beer as soon as I hit the "publish' button. Maybe the A.A. people have a term for that -a person whose proclamations about their sobriety always precede, and maybe help bring about, their downfall. Maybe it's something that you don't talk about, you just do it. It's almost as if you get your reward in the form of people saying: "Good for you, I'm glad to hear it. I'm happy for you. I know you can do it!" Then you've already gotten your praise; why bother earning it the hard way, to ultimately get up at a meeting and say: "I'll be one year sober tomorrow," when all you are going to get then is: "Good for you; I'm happy to hear it; I knew you could do it!" It's like getting the cup before you even run the race...

So, maybe I'll stop going public with my efforts to kick habits. Maybe blog readers will be able to figure out that I'm not seeing men outside with guns that want to kill me, just by the way I write. 

Well, right now my mind is saying: "Come on, let's get some fun!" I guess I'll go to Youtube to catch up on things.

Things

Imagine; people thinking that Trump had anything to do with the Capitol riots!

Please. 

If Trump had organized it, there would have been a van waiting out back, which Pelosi and McConnell would have been spirited to, at gunpoint. 

They would now be being held on the second floor of some defunct motel in Frederick, Maryland, from where they would be allowed, once a day, to text things like: "Please, hurry up with those signature verification's and get those Dominion machines audited; let him have Georgia, if you have to. Just get us out of here! There's mint chocolate chip and heavenly hash here, but it's just not home! And Mitch is starting to look like a turtle out of water; please, just hurry!"

*Don't rednecks, who have a portrait of John Wayne hanging in their living rooms, and a .357 Mangnum within reach in their pickup trucks that play the first measure of "Dixie" when they honk the horn, deserve a place in that history, in order to more comprehensively represent the diversity of this great nation?

Shouldn't things qualify to become history by...happening?

Or does Psake mean that the new bill will reflect the history and diversity that their administration has approved, and decided not to "cancel"?

Am I just going to have to dust off my college degree, and use it to apply for a job teaching history in grade school, so as to become a champion of what is unbiased and authentic?

Between Obama and Biden? Er, there was no president; they went without for a term... But, more importantly; why do you ask? Am I going to have to call your mother and your other mother to have a little talk?!

 

But, If they ask for a photo, along with the resumé, I could staple to it the mugshot I had taken when I was arrested for "possession of child pornography," in Mobile, Alabama. I come across as very "likeable," in that particular one, I must say. It's a pose that just say's "hire me!" Theirs was a state-of-the-art camera -a good use of tax payer dollars, for a change. Imagine the quality of the "special little pics" you could take with that thing, I remember thinking.   

You've gotta feel sorry for those rednecks, especially the ones who live in Jacksonville, Florida or Jacksonville, Texas or Jacksonville, North Carolina; because they're going to have to deal with more than just the new bills. They will have to change the address on their licenses and at the post office (so that their stimulus payments will continue arriving). 

But, hey, maybe the Tubstown Jaguars will make it to the Superbowl and give, at least the Floridians, something to cheer about...  

⁑ It may also have been delayed because they foresaw that the issue of "circulating" money was soon to become a moot one, as the move towards a cashless society is furthered. Why issue something new, and then turn around and try to phase it out of existence? The Corona virus was a godsend to that movement, because everybody knows that when people feel a sneeze coming on, they will usually pull their money out to sneeze into; and then go out and circulate the virus.

That's why my friend Bobby and I joked that the drug using culture was particularly at risk for Corona because the prime use for cash money these days is for buying drugs off some dealer on the street, who probably doesn't sanitize his hands between sales. And prostitutes who might have sex with 15 guys a night, have all of their germs to pass along by spending the cash that they are paid in; usually on drugs, from the guy on the corner who doesn't sanitize his hands. Then there is the matter of: what crackhead is going to refuse a hit of crack out of a pipe that is being passed around by junkies who are standing well within the six foot "radius of risk?"

So, Bobby and I joked about that. We are both having a bit of the sniffles, along with slight body chills, as a matter of fact, though..

Still, though, to take those Jackson bills out of circulation, if only for as long as paper money still winds up being used, will spare countless people of color from suffering the indignity of being slapped in the face every time they see 20 bucks, with Andrew there, telling them, from beyond the grave, that they ain't never gonna be nothin' but niggers ("in case you all forgot!").