A Snowball's Chance

 

It's a Friday morning; the sun is rising. I just let Harold in.

This is a little later than he is used to, as I have maintained the schedule of feeding him when I used to get back from busking, around 2 a.m.

I have a new Snowball microphone on the way, to go with the stuff that will hopefully amplify me at the Lilly Pad.

I then need to do a couple hour run through of a rehearsal with the stuff, and this is where I must add at least a half dozen new songs, to keep it interesting.

Other than that, it is Friday morning; pretty early. I might to a meditation to one of the self help dialogues that came with the "Awaken The Genius Within" type book that I got about 3 years ago.

It corroborates with a lot of what "The Secret" has to say, especially in the area of keeping a specific goal in sight; kind of like keeping your focus on the summit of the mountain you are climbing, even thought there will be times when you are hacking your way through thorny bushes and you might lose sight of it; maybe clouds are blocking it out; but it is still there, and you will naturally get there, by not even paying much attention to the thorny bushes. The "secret" is that, by complaining about them, you are making it so they are just going to become thicker as you hack and complain away.

 

You Can Always Get A New Phone

Living Life One Thought At A Time

So, I've finally ordered the parts to make my portable voice/harmonica microphone work with the Yamaha portable amp.

Having that new toy of an amplifier should give me just enough to get excited about in order to motivate me to busk.

On the vaccine thing, I am thinking about seeing if I can get vaccinated enough times to make the Guiness Book of World Records. I was imagining my refrigerator covered with the little certificates that they give you to prove that you are vaccinated.

I hope they don't mark your name off of some list so that the computer would flag you if you just went around to all the vaccinating places (ate the free hot dog, was entered in a lottery to win a million bucks, drank the free shot of liquor...).

Now that I think of it, they probably have some way of keeping track...

But, on the other hand, requiring ID to get vaccinated would make the vaccine as racist as Jim Eagle on steroids. That would throw a hurdle in front of the man of color who might not have a Kinko's in his little town; and might not even have broadband Internet; that would be murder; they would be suppressing the rights of minorities to avail themselves to the life-saving injection.

So, they therefore would have to use some independent database to keep track of people; frankly because they don't want to see the same guy showing up 5 times a day to get the shot, and get the shot (of whiskey). "Hey, buddy, you already got yours; this morning; remember?"

That would motivate me. Getting over a hundred doses of the thing. "Man holds record for most times vaccinated..." I guess if you just visualize yourself as being famous; the universe will align itself to that end; and something will come your way. I wonder if there's a guy somewhere who already has over a hundred; but isn't going public with his collection of proof cards yet; because that would make it hard for him to keep getting shots, having his face so known...

I went ahead and ordered a pre amp which is portable; it is made for boosting the volume of headphone, way up over what you would get by just plugging some into your phone. But, it should boost the weak signal of the 90 dollar headset microphone that I'm already invested in.

The Next Piece of Music

For the next piece of music, I am listening almost exclusively to "American Roots" music. This is not unlike Hank Williams singing "Hey Good Lookin' (What 'Cha Got Cookin'?) but it is also kind of where a lot of music sprang forth from.

For example, that famous old scratchy 78 RPM sounding recording of "Franky And Johnny" where I think the guy shoots his wife because she was "doing him wrong." After listening to that a few times along with the rest of the CD that was on repeat; I could hear how some of the melodic sense of that song was passed down through the next couple of decades; and how some entire songs were kind of just "Franky And Johnny" with different words and melody.

I guess record producers back then fell into the same pattern of trying the find "the next (name of hugely successful artist here). So some guy who spent his youth learning every Hank Williams song on the guitar and even tried to sing like him might get a chance to record in a studio because "he might be the next Hank Williams." type of thing.

I am focused upon learning every Hank Williams song note for note on the guitar myself right now, come to think of it...

By Rhonda Byrne

 One time the black guy named Victor at the labor pool in Jacksonville wrote out a chant on a small piece of paper and advised me to keep it in me head and just go about chanting it, so I did.

The very next day, after having things already noticeably going my way, I was sitting under my tarp which was shading me from the early afternoon Jacksonville sun, which fell upon the campsite of Larry and I directly from about 1:30 until about 3 o' clock. This was because a large tree had fallen about 15 yards from where I had a green tarp stretched over a pup tent and where Larry's larger tent sat about 10 yards further. The tree took out a big clump of whatever else in its way opening up a window to the sky and allowing us some direct sunlight each afternoon, and more importantly to me, the chance to read at night by moonlight alone throughout the period of about 6 days before full moon, coming and going; clouds allowing.

But, I sat under my tarp, thinking about the raccoon situation, and Larry sat in his tent, still giggling over, and almost in tacit support of, I thought, the raccoons after they had managed to get at our food in a novel way, as if their brains were mutating and they were becoming an even more conniving rodent, or whatever they are, without having to evolve over generations.

"You give them enough time, and they'll figure out the combination on a lock, if there's food in the box." laughed Larry.

"It's not funny, that was a 5 dollar Yule Log!" I had complained about that particularly delicious item that only appeared at Big Lots around Christmas and was like a log shaped bread thing that had the perfect blend of sweetness and melt in your mouth texture, but which was kind of heavy and had dried fruit in it, but not the gummy kind that has found much infamy as part of "fruitcakes" that wind up being thrown away, with one bite mark off one of the corners, right around the same day that the Christmas lights come down. In New England this was when the first warm day in January came and the job would often be done accompanied by the sounds of icicles dripping all around you.

But, I digress.

I had tipped a shopping cart upside down on a flat piece of ground and had put the box containing the Yule Log upright under it, right in the middle of the cavity. Shopping carts are maybe about 50 pounds. I was confident that our gang of raccoons wouldn't be able to lift the thing.

Larry and I knew that particular clan well. I had even given some of them names, like "Little Racoon," "Pretty Racoon," and "Stupid Racoon."

Stupid Racoon was named that after it had gotten a peanut butter jar stuck on its head while trying to get the stuff that had stuck to the very bottom of the jar. It must have made some kind of neck muscle movement that it was unable to reverse, or maybe even put itself in a Chinese finger trap situation, where the very muscles it needed to flex to effectuate the removal of its head, were expanding and sealing it in.

At first I was concerned about it suffocating and watched it pretty carefully, traipsing around the woods like a raccoon astronaut on a mission, and after it remained active for about 15 minutes, I concluded that it could breath in there, and that it would probably lose enough weight after a few days so it could slip itself out, or, more in keeping with racoon ingenuity would find some natural structure such as a couple sapling trees just about a peanut butter jar's opening apart from each other, and would be able to use that as a remover.

It was kind of comical, though, when Stupid Racoon showed up with Pretty and Little and Big and maybe 3 or 4 stragglers, for the nightly throwing of scraps from Larry and I, which took place just about every night, as we sat around the cooking fire, maybe playing guitars, Their arrival always coincided with the last ray from the sun, right before it went down. There was a consistency with which the things showed up which reminded me of the kind of reliability that the street lights showed, back when I lived in a neighborhood where there were street lights.

They would appear earlier on an overcast evening, just as the street lights on San Jose Boulevard would also be lighting up. So, I believe it was based upon luminosity when the raccoons came out.

The shopping cart was upside down and protecting the box of food; too heavy for even Big Raccoon to lift off it. Plus, with the box inside being upright, there was an added level of security.  

Well, morning came and I walked over towards the cart, and I could already see a disturbing sight. There was a pile of loose dirt, with shredded scraps of Yule Log wrappings laying about it, and there was a U shaped tunnel going under one side of the cart, the box inside it was on its side, and the Yule Log was gone.

I had been doing the chant all that morning. At one point I envisioned the perfect food locker as being one of those iron barred dog kennels, and I told this to Larry. "One of those that are about 4 foot by 4 foot and have a door that opens on one side to let the dog in and out."

They came with a wooden floor board that sits inside the thing, but underneath that are bars.

I eventually got around to bagging up all the trash, including the scraps that had been dragged by the raccoons, off in all directions. They apparently had taken turns going through the tunnel; most likely according to their pecking order. 

I was chanting the chant: Nam Myoso Ryenge Keeyo, or something like that, as I walked to the dumpster that sat in a corner of an apartment complex's parking lot; right at the edge of the woods.

When I arrived at the dumpster, there, apparently being thrown out, was a dog kennel just like the one I had described to Larry. "Man, that didn't take long," he joked, after I walked up carrying the thing.

I remember deciding to stop doing the chant, after enough things like that had occurred; enough to make me believe that the chant worked, because I wanted to kind of keep it in my back pocket. I felt like I still had lessons to learn in life, and maybe some karma to work out; but I stopped doing the chant; because it felt like having things materialize out of nowhere was going to deprive me somehow. Maybe that was the belief that "there is nothing free in this world" that was instilled in me at an early age.

But, now that I am reading "The Secret," by Rhonda Byrne I am starting to question that axiom; and to consider that perhaps everything is free in this world. To those who understand the immutable laws of "attraction."

That's all I have to post. Nam Myoso Ryenghe Kio! 

The Secret

 I woke up naturally (no alarm) about 15 minutes before Jeopardy was to come on.

Another Harold colored book comes into my life in a manner congruent with the point of the book, which is that, after I read the thing and learn "the secret," I will become like a magnet, and my thoughts will attract things into my life, such as the book.

Other things/people will just disappear from my life. The idea is to not complain about them, or those thoughts will attract them, and more similar things more strongly.

Thinking "this situation sucks" will only send the message of "this situation" out into the universe, which will attract more of the same, type of thing.

To let positive thoughts be 1,000 times more powerful than negative ones.

Having not drank alcohol for 6 days has probably intensified the effect of the teachings in the book.

Too many coincidences and synchronicities to mention; like finding a beach cruiser tire sitting atop the pile of stuff in the dumpster when I was on my way to the bike shop to purchase a beach cruiser type tire; looking at racing bikes after going to the bike shop anyways (for a tube) and then coming home to flip on the TV to see the Tour de France bike race and the very same types of bikes that I had just looked at, on the screen.

It just occurred to me as I was walking across the parking lot and thought about something from my past that I felt ashamed to think about: There have been plenty of times since that happened (when I was 14) when I have felt very happy and on top of the world -I wasn't feeling shame over the event from the past. So, what was the point in revisiting the memory and feeling bad about it?

I'm only a third of the way through the book. I won't recognize my life by the time I am done with it, the book claims. I might be on a schooner, sailing for Thailand, and not wearing a mask, at that point.

I will probably have brought Harold the cat with me...

It is kind of working already.

10 Days Into The Woods; 10 Days Out Of The Woods (Ten Days To Read This Post)

"When Life Gives You Lemons..."
I'm not sure the post title always applies because, what if the person treads slowly into the forest, watching where he is stepping, and maybe pausing whenever he hears a twig snap somewhere ahead of him, to make sure it isn't a bear, but then, more familiar with the terrain, and knowing his destination, is able to make much better time on his way out?

I mention this because, after just 3 days free of alcohol, I feel like I have reversed all the negativity that the past year or so of drinking had helped bring upon me.

I am already savoring life in general much more than I was, when stumbling around with scattered thoughts and energies in my brain.

Things were just piling up on me, and I might have gotten nothing more done in a given day than cleaning up the mess from the day before, while the to-do list sat there on my whiteboard, untouched.

Saturday, I started the juice/water fast.

I didn't feel any hunger pangs for at least the first 24 hours. This was probably because my body was still wringing nutrients out of the beef liver that I had fried up the night before and eaten with a side of rice.

The prune juice, first thing in the morning, made me feel like I was performing an exorcism on myself.

Then, empty of food, I was already setting my mind on the accomplishment of some of those tasks, hoping to erase at least one off the whiteboard.

I started walking towards Rouses Market, to get alkaline water and more apple juice.

Seeing that the bicycle shop was open, I stopped in and looked at tires for the beach cruiser bike.

That shop is notoriously expensive, as it is in no way positioned to compete with the Walmarts of the world, or the Amazons.

The first tire that a tall young brown skinned employee (black and Cuban, maybe) showed me was 33 dollars. It was of the type that I could get through e-bay for 26 bucks, I recognized.

Those extra 7 extra bucks I would be compensated for by being able to ride the bike right away, instead of walking around the 7 to 10 business days while waiting for the cheaper one to arrive in the mail, That would save about 7 to 10 hours of time.

Then he showed me a 60 dollar tire that had a special Kevlar material involved that would make it puncture resistant. What a beautiful tire it was -there is nothing like virgin rubber with a thick tread with no wear on it. I really wanted that one. I always like to get the best quality tires, for some reason. 

I remember when I had a car and a decent job, putting Pirelli low profile tires on it which cost about a quarter of what the Pinto was worth. You can feel the grip of them as soon as you start driving, and it makes you want to slalom back and forth a bit, and take corners a little faster.

A very high quality vinyl...

I always want the best quality speakers, too. Tires and speakers are the types of things that sting you once when you pay for them, but then over the course of time, you start thanking yourself for having paid twice as much for higher quality. "What was I thinking when I almost bought those lesser speakers?!" I might think, after cranking up some Steely Dan.

Marathon Cycles

That bike store has $2,500 bikes in it, and plenty of them. The cheapest new bike I saw in there was a one speed beach cruiser for $350. But, for $420 I could get one of those super fast bikes with the super thin tires that seem like they would be almost flat resistant because they are mostly thick rubber with just a thin bladder, like the lungs of a snake, to hold the 90 pounds of air pressure that you are supposed to put in them.

After leaving there, I went and got more apple juice and alkaline water, still not feeling weak from the fast as I walked the mile back home, carrying the stuff.

I got home and flipped on the TV to see the Tour de France bike race going on, and there were all those $2,500 bikes doing 50 miles an hour in a sprint to the finish line. Synchronicity like that seems to come with the territory of water fasts. It's easy to understand why fasting and praying are mentioned together so much.

So, on this third day of it (today) I left the house, still not feeling weak, and headed for the Fresh Market for what I had determined would be a large bag of lemons. I would do the lemon/cayenne version of the "cleanse," I decided.

I learned about this particular cleanse from another inmate in the Jacksonville jail when I was in there, probably in 2000, and was fasting.

Hector Berlioz; my latest obsession

I was getting a lot of criticism from some of the other inmates about the fasting. Most of them were young African Americans (in line with the statistics from almost any jail in the country) and some of them were telling me "man, you gotta eat, you're gonna starve to death!" with one guy adding that he was himself already ravenously hungry, 3 hours after the last tray had come, and couldn't wait until the next one.

I can imagine where such beliefs come from -the beef and dairy cartels; the same corporate interests that might pay off the media to quash dialogues about the virtues of a vegetarian diet, and buy the services of "experts" to advise the FDA to recommend that every American consume 70 grams of protein daily. There would be no solid scientific research to back this up, but, having billions of dollars invested in ranches and slaughterhouses and processing plants, etc. the lawyers were worth it; the health of the nation be damned.

One young black guy once told me "One day you're gonna be walking down the street and the bones in your legs are just gonna snap in half" after I told him that I didn't drink milk.

Yet, all through school, we lined up around noon in the cafeteria to get trays containing "the 4 food groups" with a carton of cold cow's milk occupying one corner. That some things are harmful to the individual but lucrative to the heads of corporations is something that I learned about in school.

There are even forces trying to ban kratom now because it is a good substitute for pain pills, and a replacement for the methadone that is trafficked to those recovering from narcotics addictions. It's getting in the way of big business, in other words. Another case of Big Pharma paying off "experts" to find something wrong with kratom, in this case, in order to propagate a narrative against the stuff...

I have even seen commercials about the dangers of vaping advising all to tell their kids about these dangers. Big Tobacco weighing in with their own brand of misinformation, I'm sure. 

Of course it is inadvisable that your kids start vaping, and maybe unethical to market that product to them, but it is probably a hell of a lot better than their kids smoking cigarettes. Instead of suggesting to parents that, if their kids have started smoking, maybe steer them towards vapes if they are finding it hard to quit that habit, the message is just that vapes aren't safe.

But, there I was getting lectured at the jail by young inmates who believed that it only takes 3 days without food to starve "to death."

I had a hunch that the completion of the puzzle would coincide with my having gotten my life "together." It has taken just about a year to get this far...

The prevailing wisdom at the jail was to eat all of the food that they gave you, and then to work out as much as possible, using certain features of the cell block as an improvised gym. Two heavy trash bags, filled with water and tied around each end of a mop handle would become the barbell that many would take turns lifting, in order to turn those 2,000 calories into muscle.

They were, of course, trying to stay in fighting shape, in case they would ever need to defend themselves. There was probably a fight about every 10 days in the pod where I was placed, and very often it broke out on the days when we were to be served chicken in the evening, right before the chicken arrived, when the smell had preceded it from whatever other part of the jail was being served dinner trays before us. 

It may not be that the fragrance of baked chicken incites violence in young African American men, but more likely stemmed from the fact that the evening dinner tray, whatever it was to be, was often gambled over in a card games.

But, when the smell of chicken wafted in, the loser often attempted to re-neg on the bet. "I didn't know it was gonna be chicken, otherwise I wouldn't have bet my dinner tray!" type of thing. "We never get chicken on Wednesday, It's usually Thursday. I'll give you tomorrow's tray!"

"No, man, a bet's a bet; you owe me your tray, nigga!"

And, then the fight breaks out. 

The guy who doesn't want to give up his chicken would throw the first punch. This would bring the guards rushing in with their Tazers and pepper spray to break it up, while ordering everyone else into their cells, so the danger of a chicken riot would be minimized. 

Dinner would then be served with everyone safely locked away in their cells instead of out in the common area. This is what the guy who threw the first punch intended. Then he would get his chicken slid through a thin slot in his cell door, and wouldn't have to worry about the guy who thinks it is owed to him, trying to grab it. He may have gotten the worst of the fight, before the guards arrived, but a shiner is a fair price to pay for a piece of baked chicken, in jail.

Conversely, I wasn't even eating for up to 15 days at a time.

You might think that I was making myself vulnerable in this way; letting myself become physically weaker, and more at the mercy of the other inmates, but it was actually the best form of security I've ever discovered while incarcerated. 

The Muslims in the population venerated me as someone on a spiritual quest, reminiscent of the Ramadan fast that is integral to their religion. 

A lemongrass and sage scented candle that I found right after buying the bag of lemons. Synchronicity is where you find it...

Others might have thought: why attack me, when I was going to be dead of starvation in less than 4 days, anyways? 

And, furthermore, after I got the chicken (and every other meal) that I wasn't going to eat, I would present it to the biggest, baddest, and meanest guy in the pod "Here, you want this I'm not going to eat it?" which would tend to turn him into my protector, and would give him some extra "chicken strength" to help him stay the biggest and baddest and meanest guy in the pod.

Then, when I did start to eat, it would be nothing but apples for another week or so; after trading all the other items off my tray to other inmates, at the cost of one apple. On a chicken night, I might come away with 12-16 Red Delicious ones, depending upon how the bidding went. "Ive got a piece of chicken for 4 apples; do I hear 5? Going once, going twice..." type of thing.

Other inmates would trade things off their trays -maybe even stuff off the next morning's breakfast tray- for apples, in order to meet my price.

But, it was during one debate that I was having with a few guys who were trying to tell me that I couldn't live off of apples that a Latino guy stepped in and defended me, saying that his girlfriend, a couple times a year, would embark upon a similar cleansing routine, whereby, for 10 days she would consume nothing but freshly squeezed lemon juice in spring water with a pinch of cayenne pepper. "There, you go guys. See, I'm not crazy, this Latino guy's girlfriend does something similar! (and you don't see as much obesity and high blood pressure in the Latino community, do you?).

And so, that is what I decided, as I walked towards the Fresh Market -a Latino run store. I would do the 10 day lemon and cayenne cleanse.

I got back to the apartment building and was greeted with the sight of a shopping cart laden with food of the kind that is often donated to people in the building -powdered potatoes, rice, peanut butter, cereal, canned beef. This didn't surprise me because, if fasting is indeed a spiritually rewarding endeavor, then I suppose the devil needs to make some kind of play. 

I'm finally starting to feel the hunger after this, the third, day. And, boy, wouldn't a box of Kix cereal in coconut milk, with maybe even some peanut butter stirred in be good right now, type of thing...

Start At The Beginning; Proceed Until You Reach The End; Then Stop

Midievel music has been filling the air of my apartment, recently. I'm listening to

some John Dunstable, right now.

I really want to to be able to write music that resonates more with The Timeless, rather than just being a reflection of this cultural aberration that we are all living through. 

The 1300's was a time when secular music overtook the "sacred" kind, before giving way to choral music.

I think there used to be a fear that crept up in the minds of the more virtuosic musicians back then, which was that their "gifts" would be construed as being from the devil and not sacred at all. Then, they might be burned at the stake, while Christians held crucifixes while they watched.

It would be cool to travel back through time to maybe around the year 1250 and to score the music for "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath, arranged for lute, zampogna, crumhorn and hurdy gurdy, or maybe the tune of "Purple Haze," by Jimi Hendrix, but with lyrics taken from the liturgy of a mass.

Shadow Ban The Oligarchs

I wonder if there is much importance to the apparent lawsuit being filed by Trump and others against the same Google and Youtube and Facebook that has shadow banned me (under this phone number, at least). That just seems like such an immature millenial thing to do, to try to control the flow of human discourse, so that nobody ever sees or hears anything that goes counter to the world view held by a handful of people at the top of the Big Tech food chain.

By the time any change comes about, I should have reinvented myself as a brand new person with his first Google account.

It's pretty bad when somebody will "unfriend" you on Facebook because you texted them a message that included "no, I haven't taken the vaccine yet," and that person was afraid to even have that text in his inbox.

I guess that can happen to people who stare at their phones from the moment they wake up in the morning until they plug it back in to charge while they sleep again.

The truth is that, if you watch a video on Youtube that advances some conspiracy theory of some kind, then Youtube should suggest to you other videos that have been similarly "tagged."

People all over the globe, who might want to read about my busking experiences (if they ever resume) should be able to find my blog by searching for specific terms like "Street Musician Daniel" in New Orleans -that should whittle down the list of results to maybe myself and this other guy named Daniel who used to play acoustic blues with an electric guitar and a harmonica.

But, to make a statement like: "I haven't gotten (the thing) yet, I'm holding off.." in a blog post, only to see the visibility of the blog suddenly way down on the list of results the very next day after the same search. That's just a blot on human history. A thousand years from now, a high school history textbook will probably have a chapter entitled something like: "The Social Media Age," with subsections like "Digital Fascism; the rise and fall of Mark Zuckerberg et. al."

Not As Hard

 

Am listening to number 100 of this 9 plus hour program as described.

The piece, which was bested by 99 other classics, is the famous piece from Handel's "Water Music" I think it's called "The Hornpipe."

I don't recognize #99...

9 plus hours of classical music. Am I just postponing the inevitable going back out to busk "every" night?

My mind was always good at creating an interest in elaborate projects right as some undesirable task was looming; like going back to school after a summer vacation. One week before school was about to start would be when I really wished I had back a few weeks of the vacation, because I would really want to start building a huge model of a battleship, or an oil painting. I was sure that, if the summer vacation were somehow extended (a pandemic, maybe?) I would be assiduously at work on the oil painting, utilizing the time wisely and efficiently.

So, now, instead of getting to work on the list of songs that I will have copied and laminated and bring to the Lilly Pad with me each night, I am interested in hearing 9 hours of classical music.

The Takamine acoustic is playing better than ever, after I lowered the bone nut saddle -the one that Bobby had put on the thing about a year ago. It was giving me that sought after "bone" tone, I suppose. But Bobby didn't shave the height down enough, making the guitar hard to play in the open string position.

Now it is easier to play. And, I have a brand new Hohner "MS Big River" harmonica, one that has gotten a lot of honorable mentions in videos focused upon 50 dollar harmonicas. The Big River is a 30 dollar one, but I've heard a lot of "not bad"s about it in passing, in those "harmonica reviews" videos.

I might get around to ordering the in-line preamp to see if it will indeed boost the headset microphone's signal so I can plug it into the Yamaha portable amp. At that point, I will be ready to go out and busk for the first time in over a year...weird to think about that.

I know I stayed in better shape playing-wise when I was playing very hard for 180 minutes, or so, as opposed to from the maybe 4 hours a day I am now doing, but not with a group of people around me, and so not as hard.

To Keep The Fire Interesting

On The Non-Birth Of The Fire Channel

At one time, years ago now, I used to have "Flashback Friday" every Friday, where the post had to be something that happened well in the past. I thought about reviving that institution as perhaps "10 Years Ago, Today" and then regurgitate a ten year old timeline and maybe try to put it in some perspective, given the advantage of ten years of "experience."

I am bound to come upon a day, ten years in the past, where I was pondering the question of: "Where do I see myself; ten years from now?" or something similar. A lot of the self help type books that I collected and eventually read had worksheets and quizzes for the reader to do. Your score on the quiz would determine which type of person you were, or they would force whatever type of person you were to physically write down things such as beliefs or goals; and this has proven to have been the key to connecting the side of the brain that physically writes stuff down with the side that just daydreams about things, bringing the two hemispheres into harmony.

And so I scrawled out plenty of long term and short term goals; I imagined when I breathed in, I was breathing in omnipotence, and in that One-ness with The One, I could see my long term goal was to have an orchard, at the top of a cliff, overlooking an ocean, to the west (so we would get the spectacular sunsets, just no spectacular risings) with a windmill that may or may not also be a lighthouse. And there is to be a thick orchard with pears and apples, peaches, cherries, and kratom, plenty of kratom trees.

And that is the long term goal.

First I have to buy that burner phone,

Then I open a new Google Account.

Now, the algorithm doesn't know a thing about me; except my phone number, and, pretty soon by the gmail address I use the phone number to get.

Then, the first things I do, the first thing I search for -those baby steps that I take- will become the first iota of wisdom that the algorithm will have filed away under my account..

So, I think I will search for something like: "what is the range of the House Wren in North America?"

Then, I'll just let that sit, maybe I will click on one of the results which are labeled as being ads, and maybe even look at the products, and might even buy a bird feeder that attaches to windows by suction cups, as I am in the market for one. I would have to get some little step ladder thing to go out and replenish the thing, but I think it would also entertain Harold, when he is inside..

And so, that will be all the Google algorithm knows about me at that point.

Do I start to get spam in my newly opened gmail account, from the marketers of discount bird feeding supplies?

When I open my brand new Youtube channel, are there going to be bird videos featured in all the suggestion boxes?

The Fire Channel

When I was living in the woods in an upper middle class part of Jacksonville, the nightly fire was, at some level, the highlight of the day for me.

I had taught Karrie how to recognize the best woods for cooking -hickory, pecan, and my favorite, red oak. And she typically could be heard, sometimes from several hundred yards away into the protected wetlands, just before sunup, snapping away. 

And those hardwoods burned with the slowness that you might expect from the wood of trees that produce fatty nuts. And they impart the best flavors through their smoke, to foods cooked over them, and makes the camp smell more like a fine steakhouse; less like a house on fire.

Part of the longevity that I was able to achieve living in that huge patch of forest, which is cut off by a pretty substantial creek from the rest of the upper middle class area; declared a "protected wetlands" on the "official" maps of Jacksonville; was by doing things like that. If we are building a fire for heat; why not make sure that any smoke that might drift across the substantial creek into the upper middle class subdivisions, smells the same as what they might catch a whiff of, from the nearby Ryan's Steakhouse when the wind is blowing the other way.

But, sometimes, sitting by the fire at night, I would envision The Fire Channel, where a camera is aimed at a fire somewhere, my fire, on this episode, and people can tune in from everywhere, once broadband becomes available, to watch the fire. From when the newspaper is lit under the kindling, all the way up until embers about 140 minutes later...

The fire would burn and a commentator would every so often, make observations such as: "Yeah, that top log that he laid across a minute ago; might have been a little green, it was throwing some smoke before it caught, but now you can see how well it's going! ...starting to get a good bed of embers, now..."

"I have a feeling that when we come back from our first commercial break, that red oak piece with the bark on it facing us, will have caught. Don't go anywhere!" type of thing.

Those incredibly aromatic woods....

The Puzzle Channel, I thought was a stupid enough idea to be funny; but then I got the idea that a competition between people live streaming themselves all putting copies of the same puzzle together, and having a worldwide race going on. It would be sunrise in Japan, as one lady is working on the cafe area in the puzzle picture, while, somewhere else, where it is midnight, another contestant is working on his own part of the puzzle.. That's not such a bad idea; and one that might put The Puzzle Channel on the map. 

And then it can rely on the format of the some grumpy guy working on a puzzle in real time, who is really slanted and opinionated in his political views, and so while he is working on the puzzle he's mumbling about anarchy, and revolution, etc.

But, The Fire Channel would need some really interesting commentators in order to keep the fire interesting, I would imagine.

A Good Little Explanation of Shadow Banning

One Of The Greats

One Good Day; One Bad Day; Repeat

I guess, to my credit, I bounce back pretty fast and go from feeling "I'm never going to do that again; I feel pretty rough.." to, in the space of 24 hours, to more of a "I feel rested, hydrated and well feed; I would metabolize red wine quite efficiently in this state" sentiment.

The puzzle is missing pieces; I can tell already, with probably 200 left to "place."

I catch my mind racing when I do puzzles and some of the material repeats itself. Feeling like I am doing the puzzle to impress Tanya Huang, is a recurrent thing.

But, for long stretches, I would envision a certain The Puzzle Channel, that would be streaming me live; with a studio audience of maybe 300, wearing shirts that have my face on them with a jigsaw puzzle piece-like border; and they would cheer every piece placed (they were always behind plexiglass like hockey spectators, in my reverie, I don't know why) and crazily jump to their feet en-mass, after I was able to perhaps connect one big section of assembled pieces to another, maybe one where the two chunks joined at several sockets. Maybe that was why I always had the plexiglass in my imagination; maybe they would try to throw a beach ball onto the puzzle table in their rabid celebratory enthusiasm.

But, it was the announcers I would hear in my head. The one painting in broad strokes talking about how we were all watching a master at work; and he would have a color commentator who would make observations upon things like: "He was working along the hedge pretty hard yesterday, but it seems like he's focusing more on the sky, tonight, Tony"

Tony: "Yeah, we could even see, when he was digging in the box, him pulling out mostly sky colored pieces; especially that purple kind of blue right above the horizon."

And then there would be the self deprecating remarks: "Just to see him pick a piece out of the box and know exactly where it goes in the puzzle, it's just remarkable. McKenna truly is one of the greats [here the camera goes in for a close shot of my face, just as I pick my nose and hold the booger out].

But, yeah, I used to be on Monday Night Jigsaw, in my mind; the fans in the studio groaning when I try a piece where it doesn't go "Oooh!" or ready to jump to their feet and give a fist pump or two when I "interlock" a piece.

Oh, but the self deprecating remarks would be like: "I know it would have taken me at least an hour to snap together that one patch of sky!"

"Yuck, yuck I'd still be working on it!"

But, I stopped doing that. I might have just gotten tired of the idea. But, it was also because I became aware that I was trying to come up with ideas for making a video just like that, with a fictitious Puzzle Channel, a bunch of extras in studio audience, and the persistent voice overs of the two correspondents, adding color and commentary.

Now, If I could somehow get a hold of about 150 Ravensburger puzzles all of the same picture, and distribute them to predesignated puzzle building competitors, and time was kept using Grenwich Mean time, or whatever, and each one of them had a good webcam and a good broadband connection...

Then, it could actually be a race to see who can put one of the identical puzzles together the fastest.

It would be something that Google can't help you out of. Like, how do you know the guy in Germany that you play chess against online doesn't have Chess Brain 2020 or some app in order to consult, when he is in doubt?

In the puzzle races of the near future you won't be able to Google" "where does this piece go in the puzzle."

But, it would turn into a marathon where people would stay up how ever many hours it will take them to put the 1,500 pieces together. The winner would probably come in around 38 hours; at which point all the other contestants could just get some shut-eye and come back to the puzzle the next day.

I really think I could organize 120 or so puzzle enthusiasts (who own decent podcasting equipment) to enter into such a puzzle building race. It might be wise to start the competitions using maybe 750 piece puzzles, so that the contestants wouldn't last for days, thus cruelly subjecting prize seekers to sleep deprivation.

The puzzle of the cosmos that I am doing seems to be on a timetable of it own, toward its completion date. It might be that I get my act together, figuratively speaking, just as I am snapping the last piece into place.

I usually work on it for almost a half hour after Jeopardy has ended at 6:30 in the evening, and after Wheel of Fortune has started. 

Funny how Jeopardy can be enjoyed without having to see the picture (minus the advantage of being able to read ahead of Alex), while with Wheel of Fortune, you kind of want to be staring at the puzzle along with the contestants. But, I have taken to working on the puzzle during that half hour -there is just nothing else on free antenna TV worth watching- before switching over to the computer for any one of about 6 things.

I think I just need to get the cheapest $19 Tracfone and use its number to open a brand new Google account. It's possible that I might have to buy some minutes in order to do the setup on the phone. There has to be a way that Google knows if your phone number is already in use.

And what happens when a person gets a Boost Mobile phone and then defaults on the payments after a certain amount of time. Does that phone number get put back into a pool of available numbers? What if that person opened a Google account using that phone number, and then they assign it to another phone?

That has to be the way the globalists plan on keeping track of every person in the world; eventually they will all have cellphones of some type. Then, just count the phones that have made a call within the past month, type of thing.

So, this brand new account is created on Google. I will have to build a profile from scratch. I wonder what kind of videos will be recommended to someone that Google's algorithm knows nothing about. "Hey, shop at WalMart?!"

It's going to want to connect to the device I used the phone number of to create the account. Then they are going to want to allow the phone to report my location, who I call the most, etc. And a really smart algorithm would be able to detect that the guy who apparently just moved into the same apartment as another guy, who just closed his account, lives. He shops at all the same online retailers and watches the same news channels...

It should be fun to see how high I can climb as a new account. I'll have to resist the temptation to become a 25 year old man of color when filling out my new profile.

At 1,500 pieces this would my lifetime record for puzzle size. The next puzzle I have after this is 5,000 piece, six month project, one, made by the same company of Ravensburger.

I already know I'm going to be missing at least a couple pieces; the risk you take buying a used puzzle. I can already see that I'm out of border pieces; yet there is one missing...

I have distilled things down to a few basic problems, such as running the headset microphone into the Yamaha amp (shown).

There is a little device that runs off a 9 volt battery, like my transistor radio did, back in '75, that is designed to allow one to plug a guitar into a smartphone.

I assume that there are smartphone apps that can take advantage of this and maybe record the guitar part, or whatever.

But, instead of running it into a smartphone, I believe the device will boost the signal so I could run it into the Yamaha.

Then it will be up to how much of the acoustic guitar the microphone picks up, as to whether I get an electronic pickup to go in it. Those things come in handy around the studio, so it is usually not a total loss if I buy something that I can't use at the Lilly Pad. 

 and how I need to position it to pick up the harmonica

If You Cancel God, You Have To Cancel The Devil To Maintain Balance

 

I feel sick to my stomach when I see this shot of Bourbon Street at 2 in the morning.

I am in no shape to busk right now. Maybe just because I believe that.

It's just that it takes so little to mess me up.

I'm not like the crackheads that live here, who are like the rats of the famous experiment once conducted.

In that experiment, lab technicians attached intravenous needle to the rats and then set up an environment where, every time the rats poked a certain button with their nose, a certain dose of cocaine would be injected into them.

To make a long story short, all the rats died of overdoses, with their bodies, which hadn't had any food for days (though it was available, but they were more interested in the button) laying next to the button, where they twitched, as they tried to hit the button repeatedly, because the doses were providing diminishing returns, so to speak.

I don't know if I hold myself to a higher standard than the other residents here, but I feel I am messing up by going to the store for a bottle of tequila, perhaps, and then, getting drunk enough to buy, maybe just a little hit of that poison, which is enough to really make me feel like crap, after I come down, and I think about what I hadn't accomplished that night.

Second Day Sober

It is Monday the day after the 4th of July. I didn't go to see the fireworks, I didn't busk at the Lilly Pad, but I also didn't drink, nor eat too much crappy food, having limited myself to 2 packs of chocolate chip cookies out of the machine up front.

I have been practicing out of the "Charlie Byrd's Melodic Method For Guitar" book which is one of the 11 books that I wound up getting for free, as e-bay refunded the 31 dollars to me that I had paid, after the books hadn't arrived after 3 weeks. Then, on the 4th week, after they arrived unexpectedly (by then) and after I sent ebay an email informing them that I had gotten the books and that I wanted the seller to get paid, they went ahead and paid the guy off, so I kept the books and he got paid and ebay picked up the tab.

This goes along with the trend that started back in 2008, when I started busking and started to receive "blessings" left and right while engaged in that endeavor.

Right away, back then, I remember going into a Subway with the newly acquired Yamaha acoustic guitar slung over my shoulder and a backpack on my back.

"Oh, you play music?" asked the thin young black girl behind the counter.

I told her that I did, and that I was a street musician, and talked a little bit about that.

When my sub was ready and I started to reach for money, she had told me something like "No, you're good," and added that she wanted to support musicians or something.

And the trend continued. It seemed like the cards were stacked in my favor throughout those years of being a busker.

And so, through the agency of the slow postal service, the 11 books, which are virtually all I will ever need in the way of guitar instruction books (how could the Chet Atkin's guitar method book only be a stepping stone to any more important lesson book? type of thing) arrived in a very neat package, with the extra touch of "handle with care" having been scrawled in magic marker, and ebay wound up doing the Subway girl thing of "No, you're good," and me getting them for free.

I might be believing in something magical through thinking this way, but, If I were to try to negate any possible "blessing" that the occurrence might represent, then I would have to go on the other side of the equation and remove any references to "curses" that the concurrent trend of doing things like sitting down on my bike seat, right as a thunderbolt flashes above the church at one end of the parking lot, and hearing the thunderous sound right as my butt touches the seat, when I am on my way to get a bottle of wine and then swing by Bobby's to get some weed.

If You Cancel God, You Have To Cancel The Devil To Maintain Balance

I'm at the end of a second day without drinking.

There is the exception of one 355 millimeter can of a tequila based wine cooler type thing that I drank last evening, but I think I've decided to only call a drink that leads to one's falling off the deep end "drinking." 

Because the problem is technically not drinking per se, but drinking too much. And that I often feel pretty confident in my mind that I would feel a little better after "slugging one down" but then after that first one, I begin to change my mind and might have a thought such as "Yeah, I feel a little better...five times as much better would be pretty awesome!" and that it would lead to too much drinking.

I know the 2nd night is usually rough, and that the 3rd is probably the worst.

I think that is because by the 3rd night, you feel completely recovered from the months of drinking every night. You have gotten 3 nights rest, although the first one might have been affected by insomnia, the explanation for which might be that, for months, your sleep period always began at the point when alcohol had made you feel very very drowsy, as the proverbial hypnotist might state it. So, you would plop yourself down somewhere, often without even moving books and cellphones and pens out of the way, and there you would fall into slumber, probably with all the lights in the house on.

But, one less than perfect night's sleep notwithstanding, I can recall thinking that I had "gotten it all out of my system," type of thing, by the 3rd night, and so that can cause me to let my guard down.

The overlying thing is that I am going to at least have to do the "Dr. Christopher's 3 Day Fast And Cleanse And Mucous Free Diet" thing, if not a lengthier fast, until such a time when I can sit peacefully, having forgotten whatever might have been bothering me; and not wanting to bother to try to remember what it was; what was making me punch my pillow, perhaps...and that will be that.

I will be perfectly clear and sober in that moment, and I would have to make a conscious effort to go back on one of my addictions, and this would have to be triggered by some thought that I would also have to had consciously dug up, conjured maybe. And so that will have to be the way it will be.

Then, what kind of music would a busker who is not a slave to caffeine, sugar, nicotine, kratom, pot, alcohol, or other drug play?

Since none of the triggering thoughts would have arisen in his mind to trigger the substance use, those thoughts wouldn't be available to express in lyrics.

This is the ironic "fear of sobriety" that I have experienced. Composing songs about what is not bothering me can be a scary proposition. I might be just fear of success in a related form.

I have made some headway in hooking the microphone up to the portable amp; I might have to get a nine volt battery powered pre amp.

Gosh, Yesterday's Post Was Sarcastic, Yikes; No More Stout...

 

2 Days Sober, But Now I'm Drinking Stout

 “The far left doesn’t want to have discussions, they don’t want to have debates, what they want to do is define the terms and then demonize everyone who disagrees with them. And that, quite frankly, is the real danger in this country today.”

I keep hearing about the supposed influx of drugs like heroin coming across the southern border, unchecked by law enforcement; but I haven't seen any drop in the price of these commodities, what shakes? 

These cartels need to meet us halfway; don't they know what side their bread is buttered on. We might has well finish building that border wall and reinstate Trump's policies, if we are still going to have to pay over $50 for a gram of crystal meth.

Our government has bent over backwards to make sure we have an ample supply of quality drugs, and even catered to the pedophiles among us by making sure that plenty of good looking minors are available; a little brown skinned but a lot of men like that. They have even been distributed to almost every state, even ones as divers as Minnesota and Idaho. 

Had you tried to get a 13 year old Central American sex slave during the Trump years, you would have had to pay a fortune. And you would have had to work for the money at some job.

But now, in these boom years, the supply and demand principle should be all encompassing.  The savings on sex slaves are being offset by the prohibitive cost of just getting high to enjoy the experience more. Guys don't mind being locked down and cooped up with a little migrant cutie (when they speak Spanish, it is such a turn on, many say) when not protesting, but I wish the administration would address this drug problem more realistically.

I hope that Kamala or whomever can get the message through to the cartels and remind them again, what side their bread is buttered on, and maybe even threaten  that "the root causes of immigration" can be curtailed or taken entirely away from them, just as fast as they have been provided by this new administration, if they aren't going to help make life for Americans better.

You wouldn't know that tons of heroin are coming into this country if you look at what the guy on the corner has to charge for a gram of the stuff.

I'm not giving up on the Biden administration yet, hell, I'll go and loot a white owned business tonight; I haven't abandoned the fight for equity but, Come on, Joe!