I Get Life

Life Cereal, The Lesser of Evils

The first day that my fast failed, it was a can of beef, yesterday it was a box of Life cereal that was the implement of demise.

They were all out of Urkel-O's

I will, once again, have to start all over.

I was craving something with sugar in it. After being up all night and into the morning, I was thinking of having strong coffee along with maybe a Dunking Stick, hoping to remain awake long enough to watch some college football on TV.

I rode the bike to the Family Dollar, where I settled upon what I consider the least of all the evil foods with sugar in them. It felt weird to be riding all the way down there on what amounted to a sugar run. I grabbed a couple cans of tuna for Harold in order to rationalize the trip to at least some degree.

Lack of sleep can weaken a person's resolve; and forgoing sleep is something that I consider a high risk behavior.

Life cereal is comprised of oat flour, corn flour, wheat flour -all the flours, in other words- and, of course, sugar. It no longer contains soy flour, according to the label, and the Quaker Oats website.

Enough to ruin the juice-only fast for the third day in a row. 

But, at least I didn't get anything with oil in it like Zebra Cakes, which have palm oil. Oils take a lot longer to wash out of the system, kind of like in the way hair conditioner doesn't wash out like shampoo does, but rather stays in for a few days...

It is about 10 p.m. Saturday night now. I fell asleep shortly after Michigan State defeated Michigan on my TV, then slept through the next game, the news and the first 5 innings of the World Series. I must have logged about 6 hours of "quality" sleep, if you can count sleep plagued by dreams, the content of which derive from whatever is leaking from a TV into the subconsciousness.

I wound up becoming a case study on the effects of sugar on mood and energy level.

I woke up thinking about how I had failed to stay on the juice fast and rued how much energy and focus I was not experiencing, due to the half box of Life cereal. It was worse than when I had eaten only a can of beef with mustard.

I thought about Jacob and the Halloween jam that he was planning at the house where he lives. He said that he already had a few other musicians lined up, so many that the jam is going to have to take place in the parlor of the house, due to space considerations.

Brief Sidenote

The translation of a comment received October 25th, underscoring my point about increased blog traffic not always being a good thing. The only sense I could make out of it stems from the fact that it was left on a post which was mostly about kratom, an Asian produced substance which "Big Pharma" is trying to make go away, due to it's being a natural alternative to pain medications...

I'm hoping I can make a complete 24 hour turn-around and be in fine fettle 8 hours from now. And I'm hoping Jacob doesn't have any mood swings and cancel the jam. Some of the other musicians invited are pot heads and so the organization of the event is subject to the whimsical nature of that drug, about which I blogged a bit yesterday.

I was awakened by the horrendous sounds coming from my TV. 

I missed whatever came on after the Michigan/Michigan State game, but now the World Series was on, and the game was in the top of the 5th inning.

All I can do is slug down some prune juice and try to put the half box of Life cereal that I had eaten, in the past. It was consumed, along with the coffee that I was using to stay up long enough to watch Michigan State come back from a 10 point deficit to win against their longtime rival.

Life, In General

Of course, during the coverage, the announcers provided some background on the two team's rivalry and mentioned that, way back when, Michigan State had had at least one improbably victory when they had "some quarterback named Tom," who went on to have a "not bad" career in professional football. Those announcers can be facetious.

The fact that Tom Brady had been drafted in the 12th round, out of Michigan State by Bill Belechek as something like the 278th player selected that year has always been part of the lore. 

The fact that "the pros" had deemed 278 available players to be better picks than the guy who would become the "greatest of all time" say's a lot about life in general, I think.

"If You're Really Unlucky, They'll Give You Life"

Back in 1991, I was doing time in a jail in Massachusetts.

This was actually around the time I was living in the house with the 3 gay men, blogged about yesterday.

Being that I was a white, college educated guy who was living in that middle class neighborhood, I was placed in the "protected custody" area of the jail.

This is a special area that, as the name implies, is used to house inmates whom they want to keep safe from the depredations of the general population.

Here you will find basically 2 groups of inmates. The first are those whom they want to keep safe from the other inmates. 

This includes, first off, the wealthy, whose lawyers, as part of earning their keep, will try to insure that not a hair on the head of their client is harmed. Maybe payoffs are involved; but the son of a billionaire, should he ever be arrested driving drunk in his Lamborghini, will wind up here.

He will have his own cell, probably with his own TV, and will have a newspaper delivered to him and maybe be given a special diet of food much better than what the general population would eat; would be able to shower in a private area where he wouldn't have to be careful not to drop the soap, etc. 

Also housed in "PC," as it is commonly referred to, would be the famous.

Fame is another ticket to PC. 

Even if a guy's last movie bombed at the box office, or his last concert tour lost money, and he is basically broke; he would still wind up there, due to the fact that celebrities often are targeted by "nobody's" who might think that they could gain fame by harming a celebrity, like the guy who killed John Lennon just because he knew he would become as famous as the ex-Beatle by doing so.

Then, you have the physically weak and vulnerable whom they feel would be too easy a prey for the general population. For instance, even if Michael Jackson were not rich nor famous, he would wind up in PC because if he were to be involved in a physical scuffle, he would be more prone to "break in half" if someone hit him with what would otherwise be a normal attack.

And then, there are the very crazy individuals. Someone arrested for killing all the cats in his neighborhood and then walking around the block wearing a fir coat that he fashioned out of their pelts would qualify. They wouldn't know if such a guy was a danger to himself or others, so they would err on the side of caution, and he would get a private room with his own TV.

Then, there were the high profile criminals. This would often be a case where any combination of the above determinants might apply. If his face was etched into the mind of anyone who watched the evening news because maybe he lured a 5 year old boy into an abandoned building where he sexually assaulted him, then bludgeoned him with a two by four, then he would be in danger. Putting him in with the general population would be like the jailers trying, convicting and sentencing him to death by beating.

I mention the last one because just such a guy was in PC when I was there.
There was also a guy in there for molesting his grand daughter who had been arrested rather quietly and was not recognized by anyone. He became known, rather, as a guy who would give away cigarettes. If you wanted a cigarette, you could just go to his cell during the time you were let out to take your private shower and knock on his bars, and he would come forward and hand you a cigarette, or two.

He was most likely motivated by guilt and/or was trying to win as many friends as he could, as a preemptive measure, knowing that his sins were eventually going to come to light. And, sure enough, the night before his trial was to begin, everyone who had their TV heard from the news anchor that "The trial begins tomorrow for a man accused of..." and there was cigarette man, looking guilty in a mug shot. That guy is a sick pervert, many probably thought; ...but he does give me cigarettes...

What had sealed the deal for me, though "possession of marijuana with intent to distribute" was my worst charge was something I had said during my intake process.

When asked if I had any food allergies I had told the lady that that was a moot point, because I planned to fast the entire time that I was incarcerated. To meditate in solitude and work on my spirituality. The officer, a black lady of about 30 years of age, looked at me for a second and then said: "I'm going to put you in PC, I don't think you will do well in general population."

What does this have to do with cereal? Outside of the fact that I was being housed with "cereal" killers?

Well, the second group were the inmates who, while not being in physical danger themselves, were a threat to others. They were the ones who were suffering from "the biggest ape" syndrome, for lack of a better term. If they were put into the general population then they would begin to compete for supremacy, based upon some code that is beyond the scope of this post, but can be distilled into a theorem something like; If you put two 300 pound gorillas in the same pod, then they are going to fight to see which 300 pound gorilla is dominant.

So, they would remove one and place him where he would undoubtedly be the king of the jungle and would feel no challenge to prove it.

But, maybe due to a clerical error or overcrowding a scenario played out where we were all sitting in the area where our meals were served to us, and there were two mean looking inmates who took to staring each other down, each one trying to look more menacing than the other. We were otherwise always locked in our private cells, so mealtimes were the only opportunities for this king of the jungle game to be played.

"I'll kill you, man!"

The only problem was, we were served little boxes of cereal at breakfast, along with little cartons of milk and maybe a scoop of grits, a hard boiled egg and a piece of toast with a pad of margarine. 

True to the statement made to the intake lady, I ate none of it.

That turned into a 28 day fast, during which my weight went from 143 to 128. But I had a calm disposition and thoroughly enjoyed listening to AM radio all night (Deborah Norville had a show on one station from 1 AM until 4 AM; look how far she has come now) and I also became a keen observer of human behavior. It took the staff that many days to notice that I had never eaten, at which point I was put on a special diet of mostly oatmeal and vegetables, based upon me telling them what I was willing to eat..

The cereal boxes made for a bit of surreal comedy for me. There was this one mean looking son of a bitch, who had locked eyes with another mean looking son of a bitch, as if seeing which one would flinch first. And there was Tony the Tiger, with his goofy grin, staring right along with the first guy from the cereal box he had in front of him. Tony was just ruining the effect for the guy.

"Oh, I'm scared!"

The second guy wasn't getting any traction at all, from having Toucan Sam in his posse, and I was quietly amused by the whole spectacle.

Inmates had to just take whatever kind of cereal was handed to them. I remember thinking: "Dude, if you're trying to be intimidating, at least face Tony the Tiger in a different direction!"

Thinking about it more, though, I figured that in regards to intimidation, rather than them giving him a box of Frosted Flakes, it would have been better if they had given him Life. 

That cereal box might strike fear into the heart of a guy who is awaiting a murder trial...

Well, that's all I've got today; it's already almost 2:30 in the morning...

 

"So, There!"

 

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

A False Start

Well, after having gone all of Thursday drinking only apple juice and alkaline water alternately, I woke up Friday, just in time for Jeopardy and, while in the kitchen fetching a spoon full of kratom, saw the silver can on top of the refrigerator.

"Beef," it was simply labeled, with the ingredients being listed as: "beef, salt."

I felt really great, after having a bowel movement shortly after Thursday morning's prune juice. So, I convinced myself that eating the beef would give me an opportunity to experiment with a meat only "keto" style diet. So I grabbed my can opener and some mustard, and went to work on the can.

Now, I am simply resetting things. Back to day one of the juice fast...

I did get a text from Jacob informing me that he is planning a Halloween jam session. He is back at the house he got kicked out of, about 6 months ago.

At the time I read the text, I was feeling somewhat sluggish and lazy because of the can of beef, concluding that one is never going to feel like a million bucks subsisting upon meat and meat alone; even with mustard thrown in.

I had kind of known that already, but I had caved in to hunger.

I was back to feeling pretty good again by about an hour ago when I rode up to Winn Dixie to get more alkaline water, more apple juice, and a can of tuna fish for Harold.

Harold has been a trooper; not complaining too much about the absence of Fancy Feast, and has scarfed down the dry food that I have been putting out for him, along with the words that he seems to have learned the meaning of: "That's all there is, Harold..."

The weather has cooperated with his appetite. A cold front has blown in, with temperatures barely above 60 degrees. 

The change was so abrupt that he hasn't had time to grow a heavy fir coat, and I have found him waiting right outside the door the times I've gone out to empty trash. He has darted in through the door each time the past couple days, and has had a hearty appetite from having had to burn calories to stay warm out there.

So, Now I embark upon my 3rd day without alcohol, with weed being a distant memory from what feels like another phase of my life; and no nicotine for 2 days except for a little cheating off of "Covid" butts out of the ashtray at the bar nearby.

My sense of smell has heightened the way it always does a couple days into a fast. And this means house cleaning is going on. This involves emptying the trash can as soon as the empty cans of tuna start to offend, and tending to Harold's litter box, hitting the toilet with Comet, etc. You take a lot of baths when fasting; it opens the pores and lets more toxins out through them.

The cleaning has extended to the hard drive on my computer and the little USB sticks that I had been dumping recordings of my daily practice and little snippets of musical ideas onto.

I am already aware of a certain dopiness in the guitar playing and disjointedness in the lyrical concepts from going through all my files from the past year.
I remember a time in 1991 when I had a studio in the basement of where I was living in a house with 3 gay guys, one of whom was the manager at the Dominos Pizza place where I worked. 

That's a whole 'nother story. 

Ah, Why Not...

Bozo

The owner of the house was an ambitious gay guy who drove an 18 wheeler and was an enthusiastic "player" of the stock market. His name was Louis Bazzano (but I internally referred to him as "bozo).

I was given plenty of assurances by Scott, my manager, that I wasn't being invited to live there so that they could hit on me or try to "convert" me -and I don't mean to a different religion. Louis was thinking about the 65 bucks per week that I was paying for rent. It was a win-win situation; I got to live in a nice ranch style house in a middle class neighborhood. Just with 3 gay guys.

Louis had things arranged so that us 3 roommates combined to pay off the whole mortgage on his property, which allowed him to pump the entire 600 bucks or so that he made driving the truck (that was pretty good money in 1990 and the job had probably been a plumb, from one gay to another -you know how that goes; every group in society looks out for their own except the white straight males; with them, it's every guy for himself) into the stock market.

But, I had my own bedroom, and a full 4 track recording studio in the basement, where was also a pinball machine, a suit of armor and a workspace where Louis assembled stained glass windows, out of kits that he ordered from somewhere, which he sold at a considerable markup. Add that income to the rent he was collecting, and the guy was really getting ahead, and really giving head, too, type of thing...

How gay is stained glass window making? Or a suit of armor. Or a pinball machine?! (I'm not really sure if a pinball machine is gay, but...).

And, since almost every gay guy I've ever met seems to have to have some quirky obsession, Louis was a huge fan of Lucille Ball. He had the entire series of "I Love Lucy on VHS cassettes, on a shelf in the living room that ran the length of a wall that was populated with probably every black and white photo ever taken of Lucille Ball.

He was a huge Beatles fan, and I curried favor by being overheard in the studio, playing Beatles songs frequently (in my underwear, one time lol).

His stained glass windows were just like what you would see in Catholic churches, with the jigsaw puzzle-like sections soldered together by Bozo, and the finished products being marked up something like 300% and peddled to, I assume, rich gay guys, maybe rich Catholic gay ones. 

Although, I have my doubts about that, because I've noticed that gay men are frequently atheists. 

This is probably because of the scriptures about homosexual "offenders" not being admissible to The Kingdom of Heaven. Easier to convince yourself that there is no God, and that Christians are a bunch of homophobic jerks.

Louis hated black people, though. One of the stipulations of my moving in was that I never brought "one of those 'things'" over to the house. He said that black men are always complaining. "That's all they do is complain," he complained once.

One of my take-away's from being there about 6 months; besides the fact that, promise as much as they might that they are never going to hit on you; you can't totally trust them in that regard, was that I was able to add "stained glass" to my list of gay dog-whistles (if I'm using that term right) along with suits of armor.

The Uxi Duxi kratom bar, which was a gay owned, gay (or progressive liberal female) run business, has prominently displayed right next to where you place your order; a suit of armor. That one is a replica, while Louis' was real and could actually be worn, but I digress...

Where Have I Seen This Before?

One time, about 20 years after this, I was picked up hitch-hiking in Jacksonville, Florida by a jovial, rolly-polly guy who offered to bring me to his house where, he told me, I could get a nice, hot shower.

But, the Lord spake to me through the great sign of a little stained glass ornament which my eyes beheld, hanging from his rear view mirror. Through that multicolored piece of glass the light of the sun shone, and my head became filled with light, and the interpretation of this wonder was given unto me and I was greatly moved, and when I spoke unto him, the words were not mine, but were of the Spirit, which proclaimed: "Ah, that's alright; I appreciate it, but I need to be (somewhere) by five o' clock," (for the time was nigh that hour) and it came to pass that the Lord thus delivered me out of his car and protected me from his iniquities.  

What a bozo, I remember thinking, for this was probably so...

But, back to the Bazanno residence...
One evening I was in the studio and had put my headphones on and snapped the power on which turned on the drum machine and the recorder and all the effects. I then smoked a joint and launched into creating a piece of music; getting so into it that I hadn't noticed that the "pause" button was still on on the 4 track deck.

40 minutes later, bathed in sweat and pretty excited about all the songs I was able to improvise out of thin air, I noticed it. What I take consolation in, even to this day is the fact that, had I been recording, I probably would have played it back the next day and found it to be a lot like what I am going through and cleaning off my hard drive now; dopey, disjointed, draggy and incoherent...

To The Present

I have reached the point today, at which I ate the can of beef (and salt) yesterday. I won't make that mistake again. I have come full circle to the same fork in the road, and am taking the other tine. It is 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning and my stomach is rumbling a bit.

A New Approach

When I got back from Winn Dixie, one of the guys, a diminutive black guy who goes around in a wheel chair type thing, but often gets out of to limp around a bit; asked me if I would lend him 2 dollars, promising to pay me back when he went to the bank tomorrow. He was noticeably drunk and probably coming down off a hit of crack and probably wanted the 2 bucks to get a soda out of the machine. His disability money would be "hitting" the bank at midnight, but he would have already borrowed against it, in order to become noticeably drunk and probably coming down off a hit of crack.

I almost had to turn my pockets inside out to convince him that I really had no cash at all on me. It is a common belief held by the African Americans down here -the ones over the age of 45 or so, at least, that every white guy has money. An older black lady once asked me for a cigarette down in the Quarter, after she stepped off the street car and encountered me.

"Oh, you couldn't get any with your money?!" was her response to me starting to tell her that I had just gotten off a street car myself and hadn't yet gone to the store, before she cut me off in mid-sentence. There was an angry, accusatory tone to her voice. The same tone that this guy was on the verge of.

For the first time, probably ever, I bent over backwards to explain to him, in the nicest way possible, that I really wished that I had a couple bucks to give him. "Man, I would, if I had it, I just..." but that I didn't. This actually seemed to placate him. He gathered that I wasn't just being an a-hole white guy, with a pocket full of money, but none for him...

Having no money had been by design. After enough consecutive nights of telling myself that I needed to quit everything that was holding me back, while loathing myself for having failed to do so; I had finally just spent one night running back and forth to the beer store, where I also bought what will be my last nicotine vape until further notice, until I had run out, leaving me no choice but to clean up, or to start shoplifting beer out of stores.

Between Rachael And Tucker

I am still balancing my Youtube watching of "political stuff" between Rachael Thurrow and Carlson Tucker.

Where Have I Heard This Before?

The latter is talking about the current governor's race in Virginia, while Rachael made absolutely no mention of the fact that the progressive in that race is trailing in the polls.

She focused instead upon a guy whom Donald Trump had pardoned before leaving office, who, despite that is having charges of inside trading being re-visited upon him.

There was (and usually is) a certain tone in Rachael's voice that I have finally put my finger on. It hearkens me back to the third grade.

We were out at recess, and I had strayed outside of the designated boundary of the recess yard to the side of a cinder block garage where the grounds keepers equipment was kept.

I had found pieces of charcoal strewn on the ground by one of the bare cinder block walls, which I discovered could be used to make what was probably the first charcoal drawing of my life. How cool it was that the charcoal made such bold, dark markings on the wall.

I had rendered a mountainous peak with a rising sun, birds flying in the sky, and was in the process of adding maybe an airplane in the sky when I turned to see that a particular, pudgy little blond haired classmate of mine had noticed me and walked over to see what I was up to.

She drew in her breath, upon seeing my artwork and gasped: "You're gonna get it!!" and then abruptly turned heel and trotted off as fast as her pudgy little legs could carry her, on a beeline for Sister Mary Theresa, one of the "crabbiest" nuns that ever donned a habit and served as a recess monitor.

This woman of God was by my side in short order.

I remember, for a second, half thinking that she might begin to praise my work, especially the way I had superimposed the airplane against the backdrop of clouds. 

I was just turning my face upward towards hers expectantly ...well, what do you think...? when, in a manner that any fly that has ever been caught by a frog would appreciate, she had me by the hair, and was dragging me towards the principal's office. 

The pudgy little blond haired girl had returned along with the nun and was positioned so as to take everything in. She stood with her lips pursed in smug satisfaction, seemingly as satisfied with her handiwork as I had been with my drawing.

In the principal's office, I got it, in the form of a few whacks upon the knuckles with a brass ruler, along with a lecture about the crime of vandalism -vandalism of sacred church-owned property nonetheless.

I'm sure the pudgy girl had wanted to follow along as I was dragged -into the school and down the hallway, but had probably balked at the idea because us kids were not supposed to leave the recess yard proper; otherwise, I'm sure she would have been in the hall right outside the office door, lips still pursed...

But, that is a connection that I have finally made to the tone of voice Rachael Maddow was using when talking about the friend of Donald Trump's who had dumped a bunch of stock shortly after having learned about the potential severity of the Covid-19 virus; stocks which tanked less than a week later.

Had I known what I know now, when that curly blond headed, bright blue eyed, pinkish skinned girl (I think Joyce Johnson was her name) had exclaimed: "You're gonna get it!!" and before she had run off out of earshot, I would have yelled:

"Well, you're gonna grow up to be a left-wing progressive and a member of the cancel culture!" and maybe stuck my tongue out for emphasis...

"So, there!"

Don't Look Back, You Can Never Look Back

 Don't Get Mad, Get Even

As I embark, at last, upon a fast that will quell the riots in my head, I have to push away any thoughts that it will be too little, too late.

Standing in the juice aisle of Winn Dixie and not seeing any prune juice, I was reminded that part of living the enlightened life is knowing what you are going to want, before you want it.

I've never been good at stocking up on things that I had no desire for in the moment but that I knew were part of my overall consumption habits..

I was in the store to get prune juice and apple juice and alkaline water, plenty of alkaline water. At least I had remembered to throw my backpack on so I wouldn't have to balance 30 pounds of liquids on the handlebars of the bike.

As I looked along a 40 foot display of juices, there was an employee, a young black guy who seemed to be doing a combination of stocking shelves and talking over his phone, who I might have expected to ask me if he could help me. Especially after, not seeing any prune juice, I started to sift through the boxes that were sitting on the floor, to see if perhaps any prune juice had come in. I think the employees have to scan the bar codes on the products before putting them on the shelf, and so, were I to take something that hadn't been scanned it might appear like it had been stolen out of the back room and never made it to the shelf.

But, even factoring this in, the guy still didn't seem to even notice me searching for something. He apparently couldn't stock shelves and talk at the same time either, because he just stood there, having some kind of conversation and maybe cutting a box open every minute or so.

If I were to get a job there, I thought, I would probably piss off the existing employees by demonstrating to the management just how much work a single person could accomplish during an 8 hour shift. If I knocked out in less than 3 hours, what typically took them the whole night to do, I might find my bike's tires going flat at the bike rack, or maybe a group of them might encounter me and tell me that I needed to slow down because I was making them look bad; maybe even threatening me with physical violence, or calling me a racist who is trying to show that a white guy could do the work of 2 black men, or something...

Catching myself thinking this, I just determined that I had decided to do the cleansing fast not one minute too soon. Then I saw that they did have prune juice, only it was in six packs of small cans of it. This makes sense in a way, because not even I can drink more than 12 ounces of the stuff and expect to be out in public, unless I am wearing a diaper...

I was thankful that I had so much food stamp money (through the pandemic, an extra amount was being loaded each month) and that I actually had had my necessities provided for. All the cash that had gone for nicotine vapes, weed, beer, kratom and Zebra cakes (which I lump together with the preceding) was on me, and I had only myself to blame for running out of money.

I could have gone out to busk as soon as my balance started getting low, but I was just caught up in the high life, washing down my meals with fine wine and smoking a pipe as I sat in front of Youtube all night...

Already, my mental acuity has increased after a couple weeks without pot. This afternoon, while practicing out of one of my method books on "flat picking" I saw a black and white photo in it of a guy named "Furry Lewis" whom I have to believe is/was one of the flat picking greats. The fact that I remembered his name (and will be Googling his name soon) is a testament to the memory coming back. A couple weeks ago, I would have had to flip open the book and find the name again...

And, after just one day of juice only, my sense of smell has increased enough so that I am going to have to clean my kitchen, empty the trash can (which has some empty cat food cans in it somewhere which have now become offensive smelling) and will put my backpack in with the next load of laundry because it is a little musty smelling from the time a pipe burst and it wound up sitting in a puddle of water in the closet where it sat. It had been placed there after the last night it was used to haul my busking gear, sometime in early April of 2020. That is about a year and half ago, now...

This lapse is probably what is making me ponder getting a job at Winn Dixie and letting go of the busking "career." This might just be lack of confidence. I know when I was smoking weed and "the paranoia" set in, I would look out the window into the dark of night and think that there was no way I was going to go out there, ever again...

There was something about having the backpack on my back again -the one that I had on every single day from when I started busking in January 2007, and for the next 7 years, almost exactly.

I remember how, after I got my apartment, I sat on the couch in front of the coffee table and emptied it out, like a person on vacation unpacking his suitcase in a hotel room. Opening the drawers of the dresser in the bedroom to put the 3 changes of clothes I had in them; leaving 4 out of 6 of them empty. And how everything echoed in that mostly empty place with the 16 foot high ceilings and the bare hardwood floors. And the feeling that everyone else in the place could hear everything I was doing. How it put a damper on my guitar practicing as opposed to when I would go sit under a tree by the river, a hundred yards from the nearest person and work the kinks out of the songs...

But, having the backpack on as I rode the bike was stirring up something inside me and waking the slumbering giant of busking. As I rode by a cop who was sitting in his SUV, I saw his head turn my way for a second. It was one of the ones who has been working in this zone forever and who used to see me all the time with the guitar and backpack on, going to and from the Lilly Pad.

Just the visceral awakening of my ride to and from the store with the back pack on, has got me primed to practice the guitar purposefully -the way you practice a song backstage when you are going on "in 20 minutes" to perform it for an audience; an audience that includes a girl that you have a crush on...

All my senses seem to be heightened. I can hear my sink dripping in the kitchen.

I have figured out that I should file a lawsuit against Youtube for the way their algorithm steered me intentionally towards incendiary videos.

It was almost by accident that I heard an interview of someone who talked about the fracturing of society into two factions. "One group sits and watches Tucker Carlson all day, and the other watches stuff like Rachael Maddow," the interviewee said.

Rachael Maddow; never even heard of her, I thought.

So I put that name in the search box and was shown a video of a woman whom I can only describe as "the female Carlson Tucker."

She had a completely diametrically opposed to Carlson Tucker viewpoint and was covering totally different "news." When she did cover stories that were common between the two, her take was the complete opposite. But what was most glaring was the sarcasm; that sing-song type of high-brow putting down of the same people that the other would praise.  "Oh, of course, since so and so is such a genius and knows everything, he thinks we're all stupid enough to think xyz. Give me a break! And all his followers are just as stupid!" type of stuff.

On one side, Biden is a doddering old fool who is personally responsible for "the debacle" of the Afghanistan withdrawal, but on the other side, there was a veteran giving a tearful interview thanking God and Biden for ending a nightmare that had kept him from seeing his family for 20 years, and praising him for having the courage to do what the former president just hadn't had the courage to do; talk about wanting to as he might have; actions speak louder than words, type of thing...

I would sue Youtube for all the anger that was fomented in me because its algorithm steered me hard in just one of those directions, after having sorted me, based upon my online activity.

It kind of all started with the "Joe" video that I posted.

By the time I did the "The Buzz Is Right/ White Flight" one, I had become cynical and sarcastic myself. Good job, Google; I hope you made a lot of ad revenue off me from my clicks...
I had been shadow banned, and the whole point of that video was in the vein of that "how do you like me now" attitude of; Oh, you don't like me? Well, let me give you something to cry about, type thing.

I was actually going to take genuine kiddie porn off the dark web and make a music video out of it, or Photoshop the sitting president's head into the Kennedy assassination footage, or....

Well, I need to go check out Furry Lewis now...put Youtube to some constructive use... 

A Boiled Down Life

...were there to ever be

a master race of humans...

The overarching problem seems to have been the pot that I had been smoking pretty regularly in the recent past and the deception that I fell under in thinking that I had perhaps built up a tolerance to it; or that, at the very least it wasn't effecting me the way it used to when I was younger.

After having not smoked any the past ten days or so, I am noticing a boost in areas such as self confidence and the ability to gauge the passing of time in a better perspective.

It seemed like it wasn't doing very much to me, and I would smoke out of boredom, or habit and at times such as right before donning my headphones in preparation of recording a musical part.

It took the absence of it in my system for an apparently requisite amount of time, something as I perceived as similar to a cloudy sky clearing to allow sunlight to shine through, for me to realize just how dopey and ill organized my whole life had become.

Just quitting the stuff was one small action that has had a global effect on my whole perception of existence.

Sun Worship Better Than None

Another small addition to my daily routine has been to go sit on the steps to the parking lot in the direct sun for 5 or 10 minutes upon waking up in the middle of the day.

I still wake up around 1:30 p.m. on a typical day, which is when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, but it never dawned upon me, excuse the pun, to go outside and absorb some of it; every day. There hasn't been a cloudy day since I started doing this, until today.

I return to the apartment feeling a certain glow. I am pretty sure this phenomenon contributed greatly to the boon of health and vibrancy that was a constant through my years of being homeless and waking each morning with sunlight hitting the fabric of whatever tent I slept in, or reflecting off the water of the river.

The clearing of a certain mental fogginess and the absorption of the rays of sunlight have gone hand in hand.

Take It From Pat

Another thing that has paid off is that I have learned to memorize the Mel Bay pieces that I am studying, so that I can look at the neck of the guitar, if anything, and not the sheet music that is in front of me, while I play.

This minor adjustment has drastically sped up the learning process.

I'm still practicing the law of attraction, and the ideas for this and several other details have seemed to have been right in front of me the whole time, yet hidden in plain sight.

It was an almost two hour interview of Pat Metheny on Rick Beato's Youtube channel that inspired this new way of approaching the Mel Bay pieces.

I am still planning to start a new channel aimed at novice guitar students. A "return to fundamentals" channel. Maybe if I give my originals titles like "Those Awful Fossil Fuels" then that channel will not be shadow banned.

I had always strongly suspected that the path to mastery of any piece of music was through the memorization of it, so as the cut out the extra step of translating from the notes on the page through the brain and to the fingers. Like circumventing the middle man.

Pat Metheny is arguably a very accomplished guitarist, even if you don't like jazz. He said that when he is practicing a piece he goes through it in all 12 keys. That is borderline obsessive compulsive, or whatever the term would be for someone who obsesses compulsively on every little detail.

Pat admitted that in the video; and he also went out of his way to point out that he has never drank, nor smoked pot his whole life. He said that he has been around plenty of people who do, and that he has watched them gradually run out of steam as the evening wore on. Not he.

But, seeing that made me look in the mirror and ask myself; have you ever played any piece of music in all 12 keys, or memorized the ones in the Mel Bay books so you could play them without looking at the sheet music? 

I know Tanya Huang the violinist can play anything that she can play in all 12 keys by transposing in her head.

So, right now, I begin my second day of sobriety; and have made sure that I ran out of money in order to keep myself in check.

I am going to give busking a fair chance but will be ready to grab a job at the Winn-Dixie, should I feel that I'm not on a mission from God as a busker.

There had always been a certain magic about the profession and things had fallen into place in the past; and that is because I had been practicing the law of attraction without realizing it. Always expecting good things to come my way, as if I were on the "right path" in life.

I won't be able to drink and expect to busk for reasons well documented in this blog. The busker needs any little edge he can acquire while out there; and being sober while playing for an audience of drunks has invariably tipped the scales in my favor. Many a cross-eyed person has dropped a big tip in my basket while slurring "You're awesome, man" in the past. A busker is like a designated driver with the same degree of responsibility if you want to look at it that way. The connection to the audience is not made by the hands of Man.

Even as it wasn't a conscious decision on my part to stop smoking weed, I just ran out of it and then kind of forgot about it. And when the student is ready the teacher (Pat Metheny) will appear.

I haven't slept in at least 24 hours; but probably wouldn't have, even if I had gone to bed and tried. The first few days of sobriety can bring about insomnia.

In Other News

David Lee Roth, formerly of the band Van Halen recently announced his retirement from performing. His last concert ever will be January 8th, 2022, I believe he said.

He espoused the belief that every time he went up on stage and gave it all he had, he was putting his life at risk, and/or shortening his life.

I disagree. I think people who live to be 100 are the ones who are still going strong well into their nineties. People who "retire" are sending the message to their brains and bodies that there is no longer work to be done and the state of atrophy sets in. There are only two states, that and entropy, with nothing in between. That's why doing just 20 minutes of vigorous exercise, or "aerobic" type is enough to keep most people in good shape.

Some nice Russians...

Other than that, I have been on a marathon of video watching, to include one featuring photos taken by a journalist who went along with the troops who invaded the beaches of Normandy, during "D-day."

He even threw in a couple good videos of the atomic bomb being tested in New Mexico for context, and added a very good narration to the montage around 1970.

The invasion was so secret that he said he didn't realize that he was accompanying the troops on anything more than a routine exercise until he noticed that they weren't turning around in the English Channel and heading back.

Really good stuff. with a lot of clips of civilians going about their happ-go-lucky business while the huge guns rocked the ground they were standing on. They still needed to tend their crops in the fields, type of thing. And the children were giggling and playing when not being dragged by the arm into bomb shelters by concerned mothers...

Obama calls Springsteen fans racist on his 'Shame on America Tour' | Gre...

Just as I have recently taken a great liking to Bruce Springsteen's music, after having recently "discovered" him where he was hiding in plain sight...
I have never liked Obama, have never thought of him as black. He is some kind of mutt, I have always thought.
He seems to be one of those black men who wake up and their first thought is; "Here I am a black man, waking up. What's a black man gonna have for breakfast; let's see if a black man got any mail..." type of thing.

When you tell him a story, say: "I was at the store and I handed the cashier 5 bucks and my change was supposed to be like a dollar fifty and he hands it to me all in dimes and nickels..."

His response would be: "Black guy, or white guy?" as if that is integral to him wrapping his head around the story and picturing what was going on...

You've seen the type, right?

Blog Dug Up

An SMD Record

Above are the "stats" which show that the previous post almost matched the entire last month's level of viewership, setting a record if you were to throw out the one post that got over 4 thousand views, due to what I believe was a software glitch
That glitch had to do with the fact that, were you to search for an image back then, using a search term, Google would show you a screen full of images that had been "tagged" with that term. Then if you clicked on one of the images (to see it enlarged, or to download it) you would be redirected automatically to the website that it originated from.
These days, Google will enlarge the image for you and give you a chance to download it, but will have a separate "visit site" button, and you won't be automatically redirected. It will be your choice whether or not you want to see where the picture came from and, more importantly, in what context it was born in. At least that is my (constantly evolving) understanding of it.

Every Rose Has Its Thorn

This could be a double edged sword, in that, for every new constant reader that I might pick up; there might be some woke clown from the cancel culture who might push to have SMD cancelled, like it was in 2009.

. "SMD" stands for "street musician Daniel," btw...
with "btw" standing for "by the way," by the way...

The "irony" (and many people use that term incorrectly, btw) is that people on Youtube videos that have been sanctioned and approved by that "neutral" video hosting platform) aren't even "allowed" to use certain words, like pedophile, substituting "word we can't say" in place of them. 

It is ironic because, since this blog has been shadow banned by the Google algorithm, hidden from non subscribed users, I can now kind of say anything I want without my posts being taken down, because the algorithm probably figures: nobody is going to find this blog, so what harm can come? Let him say whatever he wants because we will hide it from search results He can further radicalize his readers; they are incorrigible.

Nobody except for his mother, and an small enclave of people who follow the blog will see the word.

These SMD readers are all over 50 and, like the proverbial dogs, will never be able to learn the new trick of being woke. Let them have at it. The way they think and feel will go to the grave with them in short order.

This recent spike in traffic, I believe, is a byproduct of comments that I have made on a few sites that garner millions of views per day; comments that prompted individuals to wonder "who is this guy?" and then learned about this blog, by clicking on the little avatar attached to the comments, and then were able to dig me up.

I have been actively going back to edit out stuff that I wrote during the heavy drinking periods of my life. This goes hand in hand with a "ten years ago today" feature that I am thinking of including as part of the program here. Sometimes I am surprised by the level of animosity and rage that is exhibited in these 10 year old posts. (gosh, I hope the words "10 year old" makes it through without causing a flag to pop up somewhere.

Speaking of which, or apropos to anything and everything that is written here, Bourbon Street is once again hopping, and I must, I must, I must increase my busk(ing).

If you are looking to have sex with a child, look for a girl just off that iconic street who has one of her shoes off with her naked foot extended forward a bit, like she is trying to thumb a ride with it. She will be standing with someone who is ostensibly her mother, notwithstanding her having zero physical resemblance to her, in a lot of cases. They would have just become homeless and would be just looking for a place where the girl can take a hot bath... But, I digress, and don't ask me how I know this. 

Listography

My latest obsession has been the listography site which is run by 3 guys who compile lists of things, like ranking a certain bands albums from best to worst. This is entirely opinion based and thus is a great trolling mechanism for them.

Who can refrain from putting in their 2 cents after seeing their favorite band's albums ranked in this way?

One of them thought the Beatles white album was inferior and ranked it below Rubber Soul, for example, while another of them put it at number one, ahead of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

Their website has made me want to listen to every album by bands like Yes, for example, and I am now in the process of listening to all of Bruce Springsteen's work, which is turning me into a huge fan of "the boss." 

In many cases I have found that I had been dissuaded from liking certain groups, because of the handful of songs that got played on FM radio.

But it has been comments that I have made -some of them being more like short stories than short comments- that have had people searching me out from where even Google can't hide me, and finding this blog. The one I left on "Aerosmith Albums Ranked From Best To Worst" was particularly popular with boomers like myself who were 10 years old when that band debuted, all the way down to the generation that was 10 years old when "Tell Me What It Takes (to let you go)" was climbing the charts.

 

Busking Back Better; In A Racist, Entitled Mood

I wasn't going to go back out to busk until I had updated my sound somehow; and I kind of blew it, as far as playing hard for 3 hours every night to stay in shape.

There is no substitute for having a live audience to hold one accountable for every miscue and make one play through the pain of blistered fingers because a group is singing along and pumping one up, so one forges ahead, at least until some tip money goes in the jar.

Mere Catharsis

I just returned from the store with a new vape which promises 3,500 puffs, and 3 cans of beer.

Upon entering the lobby, I encountered a kind of heavyset black man, whom I may or may not have seen before, but who resembles another guy that lives here, whom I have deemed to be one of the most selfish individuals I have ever met. He is the guy who, upon discovering me playing an acoustic guitar in one of the stairwells, using the acoustics to check out the sound of the guitar, which was new to me; plopped himself down a couple steps below me and said: "Give me some smooth jazz or something...you know any Al Green?"

"Give me, give me, give me..." I remember thinking at the time.

And, true to the stereotype that I immediately tagged this other one with, due to his resemblance to the "Give me some smooth jazz" guy, this guy astounded me by basically telling me that he was going to buy one of the 2 cans of beer that I had left in the bag. "Yeah, I think I'll just buy one of yours; that way I won't have to go to the store," he said, while reaching into his pocket.

Excuse me?

I couldn't think of what to say besides: "Yeah, that's why I just ran to the store, risking my life in the dark; so I could be an errand boy for some lazy n****r..." so I just mumbled something.

That is exactly what the guy whom he resembles had done, when he was sitting in the lobby with a half dozen other colored men around him; ask me for one of the 3 or 4 beers that I had just gone to the store to get.

I was sure that, if I were to have handed over to him a free beer at my expense, the the other ones would have stepped up, demanding "Where's mine?" as if I were just "the white guy handing out free stuff" of the moment. Everybody line up; one per beggar.

Because it would be rude and unfair to give one guy a free beer at my expense while snubbing the rest of them. It's all about fairness and equity; even if the result is, no beer left for myself. I should have thought about that 200 years ago, before I did what I did back then. But now I owe them, type of thing...

In Other News

Right: The whole world has fallen in love with Gabby Petito. Apparently the remains of her boyfriend have been found, along with his laptop.
All that "remains" is whether or not he had any nude photos of her on said laptop.
The whole world is praying...

Maybe there are indeed white people down here in the deep south whose "white guilt" prompts them to be charitable to these individuals, but I'm not buying in to it. Those white people need to be put out of their misery.

Don't get me wrong; I have a few black friends; not all of them are pieces of human shit; just about maybe 58%. I think that is a "fair" estimate. Your n****rs may vary; especially if you live in an upscale neighborhood, where they know how to behave..

That's all I have for you. Be sure to like and subscribe because I am still being shadow banned by the Google algorithm; hidden from non subscribers....

I want to write "White Oppressor" on a tee shirt to wear on the street. If challenged by a person "of color" I would say that I was taking ownership of my white privilege and try to spin it that way. Of course that might prompt them to say: "Give me a cigarette!" 

What the hell is wrong with these people? I'm so sick of returning from the store to see all eyes on the bags I'm carrying rather than making eye contact with me.

The reality of what is "wrong" is that I am drinking, and that is opening the door for such situations to occur. Just stop drinking, and you won't have to worry about people hounding you for free beer, Daniel...

The fact that a good portion of the residents of Sacred Heart gained their vouchers for free rent by having been deemed "chronically homeless" by the Unity organization which funds such things, and which is, ironically, a very "woke" institution

"You owe your living situation to the Democrats," once said Tim, my caseworker, before he was laid off a couple years ago, now.

This led to the transferal of my "case" to Ray, who is a veteran himself, and who used to call me at 10 in the morning on Tuesday's to invite me to meetings to discuss issues pertaining to us veterans.

This is ironic because I can't stand those same democrats with their socialist agenda.

This is like being being back in high school, where the healthy, strong, good looking, smart and talented kids would be required to fork over some of those properties to the losers, in order to make everyone more "equal."

Notice that it is generally the losers in life who are pushing for a socialist society. What do they have to lose?

So, there are inveterate beggars amongst us, who see other humans the way brown bears in Yellowstone Park see hikers with backpacks. There's food in them there bags, I can even smell it.

From Another Blogger In North Carolina

 This Is A Link To A Blog I Found After It's Author Commented On A Post I Made About 2 Years Ago which is about "Holistic Approaches To Pain Relief" but is a pretty comprehensive Overview of the topic...

From holistic pain relief to...betting on football?!

And, from the same blog comes the above post giving "tips" for betting on football.

My philosophy on the subject was inspired by Jim Rome, the AM radio sports talk guy, whom I used to listen to on a hand-held AM radio that played for almost 2 months off one pair of AA batteries..
He basically said that he has met tens of thousands of people in his life as a sports guy, but never one who has said anything like: "Gee, I was in financial ruins there, for a while -the bills were piling up, the wife was threatening to leave me...but then I discovered betting on football, and my life did a complete 180 degree turn...now, I'm financially independent!" Jim has never met that guy...

The biggest problem with betting on football is that you can't go through any betting "service," because they charge what is called a "rigorish" on all losing bets. That is how they (are virtually guaranteed to) make their money by running the service.

Simply put; if you win a 50 dollar bet on a football game, congratulations, you have won 50 bucks; now you have 100 dollars, care to bet some more? type of thing.

But, if you lose, you pay the service something like $57.50 which represents the money you lost, plus a 15% rigorish to the service.

So, betting with a friend or someone whom you would only be required to pay the amount bet ($50 in the above example) is a prerequisite to any success in betting on football.

Watching injury reports seems to be the main advice in HaroonBlogger's post. But, that information has been factored into the point spreads already, so people betting on the team with a hobbled quarterback are already getting a few points to compensate.

The only way I ever had success (and I did win about 58% of the time) required being at the game, in order to gather the required knowledge. 

There is no substitute for being able to watch the players who are off-camera as far as any TV audience is concerned.

The body language of the players who are not on the field is the metric.

Are they sitting on the bench and not even watching the game, or are they standing up and roaming back and forth on the sidelines as the action drifts back and forth in front of them? Are they watching every play and reacting emotionally, or pulling their jackets in front of them, covertly texting someone as they sit on the bench, not really paying attention to the game?

When I was an 11 year old kid who did pretty well betting his caddying money on Sunday's games, it was the teams that I had seen at Shaefer Stadium, coming in to play the Patriots (my dad had season tickets) that I would bet on, or against.

If the teams that huddled on the bench with their jackets wrapped around them, looking like they couldn't wait to get back indoors, were going into Minnesota that week to play the Vikings in 10 degree weather; well, against them is where my caddying money would go.

So, in order to bet on football, one must at least attend a game each Sunday. This is where any "bettors instinct" would come from. There is no substitute for being "present" in the stadium.

Still Locked Down In My Mind

 That is the working title of the song that I worked on, so late into the morning, so as to have overslept the airing of Jeopardy.

I woke up at 12:30 p.m,. and was in the kind of depressed state of mind, where part of my mind was daring me to just scrap the idea of thinking of 3 things to be happy and grateful about; and then to actually bring myself to feeling joy over it all.

That part of the brain was saying, "Why don't you think about how messed up everything is and imagine that your life is just going to get worse and worse..."

But, the 3 things were lame, like I had a new nicotine vape, Harold the cat's skin is getting better, and I can't remember the third thing.

The song will have a line about how they are hiring; and in the video I will be in front of some business with a "now hiring" sign.

The next line will be something like "They are firing..." and the camera will pan to the vaccine sign...

And then the chorus is "I'm still locked down, in my mind.." and then I don't know, the video will become pretty random at that point...

Curtailing YouBoob Watching

In other news, I have finally gathered that there are a lot of websites and organizations that are the online equivalents to the "tabloid" papers like The National Enquirer and The Weekly World News type of publications.

I had a roommate, back in 1989, who was a biology major, who had actually had some of his articles published in tabloid papers, who prefaced his ridiculous "news" with "according to our source," which absolved the publication from any liability, etc. The could basically publish anything by prefacing it with that...

So, if my roommate got some kind of aberration in a photograph he took, some kind of glow or shadow, then he might become the "Man Visited by Ghost Of Abraham Lincoln Nightly" that everyone would be reading about in The Globe, as he pocketed something like 90 dollars for his submission.

According to me, he really did that. Keep your eyes open for a potato that looks like the devil, people...there's money to be made that can then be bet on football...

One Year Older; One Day Sober

Tales Of Big Brother

I did that thing, where I admitted that I was "powerless" over alcoholism, and surrendered myself to a higher power, as I understood it.

That was yesterday (Wednesday) evening, as I was riding my bike back from the Shell, riding with one hand on the handlebars, a 24 ounce can of Heineken in the other...

I wound up being awake all night, and into the morning, and then deciding to stay up longer, to watch Jeopardy, hosted by Ken Jennings. And then "25 Words or Less," a show that I used to turn off when it came on after Jeopardy, but which I wound up seeing just enough of, in small doses, when I was too lazy to fetch the TV remote to shut it off; to eventually become hooked on it.

Orwell From Goodwill

And, in the meantime, my attention was drawn to the Orwell book that was on my shelf, which means I probably bought it for $1 at the Goodwill, and then had selective amnesia (because I wasn't "ready" to read it) until a couple days ago, when I was pondering some deep question and my eyes just drifted over to the shelves and I noticed it.

It is brand new, published in 2003 (which fittingly was about the time the whole Patriot Act thing was being instituted) and I believe I am the first person to ever read this particular copy of it. It's very easy reading and I seem to be getting a lot more "out of it" than I did when I was 15 years old, reading it as part of the requirements of the "college prep" high school I attended.

The next day after I started reading the thing was my birthday. I got a few well wishes on that day on Facebook, but only a few, out of my 89 or so friends on that platform.

I determined that, because of the shadow banning of the Google algorithm, only my friends who are over the age of 50 were even notified that it was my birthday, and only the ones who identify as "Christian" in their profiles.

My childhood friend, David Veautour, said he only was reminded that it was my birthday when he had noticed that another of my friends, who is my age within a year, had sent me a birthday well-wish.

This prompted me to return a message to David, out of which the last sentence was removed, by the time it got to him. It was a joke about the hot topic that begins with the letter "v" that only about 60% of the nation has gotten at this pooint. That joke just disappeared from my message to Dave...wow...am I reading a couple appropriate works of fiction now, or what?

David worked an entire career for IBM as a software developer and, after I personal messaged him about how my last sentence disappeared he sent back a message of his own.

It was something like: "A quick Big Brother story."

He said that he knew a guy who worked at like an old folks home. One of the patients was complaining about having lost something, or had it stolen.

The guy had sarcastically said something like: "OK, I'm going to call 911 and see if we can locate your stapler, (or something)."

10 minutes later, the cops showed up..

Then, David was sitting at some bar with a friend, when they found out that a lady a couple stools down had the name of Ethel.

David had his phone on the bar, attached to headphones that had a built in microphone. "Don't look, Ethel!" he joked to the lady, referring to the song "The Streak," which cam out around 1973.

A couple days later he, who always listened to classic rock, but never "novelty" songs, had "The Streak," coming out his car speakers, through whatever streaming service he used.

Dave is also the guy who warned me about e-mail and all the "gateways" that can allow spying on messages, back in 1998, when I was in Utah, on the run, ostensibly for murder. "Don't send another word about this through e-mail!" he had warned, before giving me his personal phone number as an alternative method of communication.

So, it is kind of funny that I found the copy of "1984" a day before Big Brother was to cancel a part of a message I was sending to the guy who told me about Big Brother all these years ago.

I'm really dragging my feet on getting a burner phone, so I can be born again and once again interact with the world at large. It is going to mean opening new accounts with everyone from Musician's Friend, to Youtube, but it will allow me to skirt the shadow-banning which has squelched even the mention of my birthday from going out onto the web...

Get Laid Right Around The Corner, Daniel

Oh, people do ask.

They just don't ask other people, because, what might the group of people in their immediate vicinity's knowledge amount to, compared to Google's?

But, it was eye-opening to learn that the hostel called India House, which is a stones throw away from where I sit right now, comes in at number one one the "Where can I get laid in New Orleans?" list.

In between me and that hostel sits the vacant Sacred Heart church, where, of course, you would be expected to marry whomever you met at the India House, before any such shenanigans were to take place...at least if you're Catholic, or any other flavor of Christianity.

And the bar that I play 50 feet from comes in at a modest 7th on the list.

Rebuttal

I have to stage a rebuttal to whomever this 5 star reviewer for tripadvisor is, who has managed to get his opinion placed at the top of the search results.

In "simple terms," the French Quarter is one of the safest places in the U.S.A., outside of places like Des Moines, Iowa, where the citizens become shocked by crime, because "nothing like that ever happens here." They also voted something like 64% for Donald John Trump, in that state. Just sayin'

...another PBR, or am I attractive enough already...?

I remember an evening about 3 years ago, when I was standing on the corner of Bourbon and St. Phillips, where were also a couple of middle aged black men. One of them said: "You would never see that, in Detroit or Chicago, or even San Franciso," referring to 2 late teens girls, dressed to kill and looking like models, walking by themselves toward Royal Street. You wouldn't see "that" in any Democrat run city, not just the ones that apparently well traveled guy mentioned...

And it is true.

There was the time when a woman's purse was snatched, seemingly emphasizing the point of the guy who said that the Quarter is no Disneyland, in terms of safety.

The woman reported the theft to the nearest officer she could find, who was not hard to find. He got on his radio, and a guy down at the Central Station, began to rewind through one of the bank of 36 screens he had in front of him, until he was able to observe the actual purse snatching, and then he tracked the guy from camera to camera (the French Quarter, as "small" as it is, is as close to being 100 percent "on camera," and the guy down at central quickly got back to real time, where the guy who had snatched the purse was in a little alley, going through the contents of said purse when officers pounced on him.

My friend Lilly, who has chaperoned her daughters everywhere they have gone in the Quarter, since they were born, had established a route between Brennan's restaurant, where both of her girls worked as greeters, or something, back to her house, in front of which I play.

...I'm at the India House, where my phone told me to go...now what do I do?

The entire route was within the purview of armed security personnel, with few gaps in between and they were tracked by cameras the entire way.

There is always going to be the potential for random actions by people who are allowed to drink in public, such as in the Quarter -I have often seen people puking because they had taken the occasion of a trip down here to overdo it, alcohol-wise; there are wedding parties here wherein often a minor or two are getting smashed for the first time in their lives. These types might be easy prey for the predators that lurk here, but their means wouldn't be to attack the person physically, but maybe try to con them out of money with, perhaps, the "I can tell you where you got your shoes" game.

The police have done a good job of weeding the violent drunks out from the happy drunks, as far as the permanent skeezer residents go, selectively enforcing certain laws, based upon whether or not the person is being a jerk towards tourists, or not. Yeah, you could go to jail for having a joint on you, a few years ago, but that wouldn't happen to a nice person, type of thing...

You just have to hope the person will have been weeded out before you encounter them.

As far as the shooting go, it is only through poor aim by the culprits that any innocent bystanders might be hit, but these are usually one group of usually people of color, shooting at each other, over whatever people of color shoot each other over, like in Chicago, where there might be 24 people shot any given weekend, and probably for the same reasons.

So, now that I've said my piece, let me wrap this up now. I'm kind of itching to go hang around the India House hostel for a little while; see what happens, type of thing...