23 Minutes Til Jeopardy Comes On (updated)

 I'm listening to Barbra Streisand and weeping for all the Jews who were killed during the Holocaust. Her voice is sweet enough to make one weep, but it has to be that other undertone that makes the tears flow as soon as the red-labelled Columbia album spins on the turntable. 

Of course, today, the 10 a.m. songbird sang right on time, right on pitch, during "Songbird."

I am ashamed of the Aryan connections I might have in my bloodline. 

I'm ashamed of the rednecks down here, in the bible belt, and any connections to their bloodlines that I might have.

I'm thinking of doing one of the "23andMe" DNA tests, where I might have to send off $125 and some of my saliva, or however it works, so I can find out what my "roots" are.

I might finally get around to Googling "How to cure or avoid procrastination," or "what are the psychological causes of procrastination?"

Jeopardy starts in 9 minutes.

Yesterday, I tried to shuffle things up, by starting my day in an entirely different way. Instead of making a kratom tea and getting on this laptop, I was going to run up to the GNC and get a high potency energy drink, then go to Eyes on Canal, so they could take new measurements and send off for another set of bi-focal lenses.

I did so; making it there just about 20 minutes before they were to close; after having left the apartment with about 3 hours to spare.

I stopped at the Ideal gas station, where I had seen nicotine vapes for sale before, because it is kind of on the way to the eye place.

There I made the ill advised decision to get a large Guinness Stout. Those things are 5.8% alcohol, the bottle now states. The last time I drank that was 1985 and no bottles of beer had the alcohol content shown on the cans/bottles.

Then, I must have stared at the vapes in the glass case for about 20 minutes; which gave the stout enough time to warm up in my hands, as stout becomes most delicious at probably about 58 degrees.

Then, I started walking the mile to the eye place, becoming more cantankerous and sardonic with each sip of stout.

Jeopardy time....to be continued....

OK, this just in...it's Saturday and Jeopardy doesn't come on today. Not to worry, I can go on Youtube and watch countless re-runs, some of them even featuring Ken Jennings, who holds the record, I believe, of winning something like 45 games in a row. There is a "Ken finally loses" episode in the queue, which I may or may not have watched already.

So, yesterday, I walked the bike path and drank the stout, and took to cussing under my breath towards all the "Ignore-leans" whom I passed who, true to form, neither returned my head nod or wave, nor seemed to even notice me.

Then, I went into GNC to grab more than one energy drink, to put on my refrigerator to have in the mornings, without having to walk the mile every day for one. The days that I decide to go that route, instead of the alcohol route, that is..

Yesterday was a hybrid, as I drank the stout, and then wound up drinking one of the L.I.T. drinks "on top of it." This is probably a discouraged practice. I can remember about 10 years ago, the outlawing of drinks that combined vodka with high amounts of caffeine or other stimulants.

I remember buying them, thinking: I want to be wide awake when I fall on my face from the vodka.

I feel sorry for the GNC employees, as the world has been weaned off of physically going to stores, and now just checks the front porch for Amazon packages containing everything they need. The GNC guys are trying to get people to sign up for such a thing. Instead of paying $3.50 for one L.I.T. drink, I could have bought one case, and gotten one free, but then would be subscribed to receiving one case on my doorstep every month, to be automatically billed to my debit card.

I couldn't do that, because I don't trust such arrangements, after having been bitten once. I was getting some supplement delivered every month, after having gotten the first 30 days "free." Once that bottle ran out and the first one arrived, and I was billed something like $89, I said "Oh, hell no," and called to cancel, as I was informed I could do any time.

I could cancel, but the next 3 months worth had already been "processed" and moved from the warehouse and boxed up and labelled and were ready to ship, and there was no way they could be stopped at this point, or some equally lame b.s. argument.

I had been particularly disillusioned because I had a certain amount of trust for the host of the radio show that the supplements were incessantly advertised on. "I use it myself; give it a try; you won't be disappointed; you can cancel any time.." type of thing. I think it was Jim Rome the sports guy whom I assumed wouldn't tolerate his audience being scammed in any way.

The singing bird clock, I felt was going to help me to regulate my life. I felt like, if I had a compass in my apartment, it would randomly spin one way and then the other, and never settle anywhere. Waking up and not knowing if it was 6 in the morning, or 6 in the evening.

This, I used to settle by going to the door facing the parking lot and seeing if Harold was there, hungry and trying to come in to eat. That would make it 6 in the morning, type of thing. Of course I could always turn my phone on to find out what day it was.

But, even when I ordered the singing bird clock, interacting with a robot, the robot initially informed me that there were 2 "upgrades" to the bird clock, one of which was the clock in a genuine walnut wood casing for "just an additional $12.95," and another one that I think was beautiful mahogany wood for 16 more dollars.

This was presented immediately after I had entered my credit card information, so I felt like I had to stay on the line to complete the transaction. At that point I was worried that they might have some kind of policy whereby, if the person hangs up on the robot, then they would assume they want the mahogany singing bird clock, and would charge the $43.95 and send it; knowing that the average person isn't going to go through the trouble of returning it for a refund, type of thing.

The robot had said "Please respond, press "one" for the walnut, or "two" for the mahogany" and then silence.

The only thing I could think of, intuitively, to do then was to press "zero" for "none of the above." 

Then the robot said: "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that; which upgrade would you like?" and repeated the choices again, but this time, appended "If you don't want to take advantage of this great offer to get a beautiful hardwood finish on your bird clock," press "zero." At least my intuition had been correct.

But, it wasn't over. Next, they had an outrageous deal on a bird feeder that you could stick to your window with a suction cup..."zero"

And a 64 page field guide to the birds of North America..."zero"

"OK," said the robot in a very disappointed sounding tone. "Thank you, (in a 'for nothing' tone) your singing bird clock will ship soon..." type of thing.

So, I didn't even want to open that can of worms at GNC and sign up to have all my favorite products automatically billed and shipped to me.

I told the guy about the time I was thrown in the East Baton Rouge "Parish" jail for 45 days, back in 2011, because I had been busking downtown right before the LSU homecoming game was scheduled, when alumni were arriving in town, whom the city didn't want to be bothered by skeezers, and thus ordered a sweeping of the streets of, which I had gotten caught up in. I blogged about that, August of 2011, if my memory serves me right...

But, I could just see something like that, maybe getting hit by a car and being hospitalized for a couple months, while the energy drinks pile up "on my front porch" for the benefit of "porch pirates" and then getting out of the hospital or jail to find my debit card had been drained, and the drinks nowhere to be found.

The guy, a young black kid, then sealed the deal by "assuring" me: "Aw, come on, that's not gonna happen!" I hate it when people act like they have a crystal ball and know what is or isn't going to happen, for their own convenience, of course. I thought that to be a duplicitous statement. "No, I'll pass on the subscription, just let me buy these few drinks and get out of here," type of thing.

The lens situation remedied, I went to Winn Dixie, where, among other things, I bought a 12 pack of Modelo Negro beer, because it was on sale at what amounts to about $1.50 a bottle. They are $2.79 each, out the door, at the Shell.

So, I started carrying a few heavy bags holding Alkaline water, a marrow bone beef shank, fresh salmon, food for Harold, the energy drinks, and the 12 pack, using the handy thick cardboard handle, which did break before I had walked a quarter mile. None of the bottles broke, but I was then faced with the daunting prospect of carrying it a different way, like cradling it in my arms, while managing the bags at the same time.

I usually walk the almost mile back home, no matter how much weight I'm carrying, just to save the $1.25 on the street car. I look at it as earning a buck and a quarter in exchange for the work of carrying it.

But I decided in this case to get change and wait for the car.

Since the 12 pack was torn open at the handle, I took one out and started drinking it. The street car immediately appeared.

Not only that, it looked like the driver sped up to make it through the green light, just so he could make me get rid of the beer before letting me on. There have always been incidents of the all-black crew of drivers going out of their way to throw obstacles in front of white passengers; even to the point of flat out riding right past a lone white guy waiting at the stop; who might throw his hands out in a WTF? gesture.

If the would be passenger complains, the driver will say that the guy wasn't standing right (exactly) at the boarding point. Even though every other indication, like him picking up his baggage at the approach of the thing, should have told the guy to stop.

So, he stopped. I had stuffed the opened beer back into the case of 12 and was holding that in a way to keep it upright. But, he had seen me do that.

He opened the door and started with "Step back; you need to have a mask!"

"Oh, yeah, my Biden mask..." I said.

Then he went on to say that I needed to take the opened bottle out of the case and get rid of it.

"I'll just wait for the next one, sir, thank you for your service..." I said, then added sarcastically: "Can I do that?!"

He closed the door and drove off. 

I wound up walking the mile back, carrying all the stuff, muttering something under my breath that I can't print here; even though I've been shadow banned as much as is possible. Anyone who wonders if there is a Street Musician Daniel blog and does a Google search for exactly that, may see this blog appear in the results, maybe on page 2, out of immediate sight....