Shuffling The Order Of Things

 I guess I will never give up.

World War III can wait...

"I have failed so many times; that's why I succeed," is a quote I read just yesterday.

Yesterday I had gone down to Whole Foods to see if they had any creatine monohydrate in the powdered form, which they didn't.

There also hadn't been any at the Walmart I had gone to Sunday, after having sold my plasma.

And, to top it off, the spell checker on this blog, provided by Google puts a red squiggly line under the words "creatine" and "monohydrate."

Google does the same thing to the word "kratom-" never heard of it, doesn't exist; isn't even a word; you must be in error, type of thing.

This is because, along with psilocybin mushrooms, kratom falls into the category of "things that have medicinal value that Big Pharma cannot make money off of, because they didn't invent and patent them."

So now the huge corporations that benefited immensely from the Covid lockdowns have removed creatine for whatever reason and have never sold kratom. One has to go to gas stations run by non English speaking people or order directly from companies that do business in certain states (I guess California is good for something) in order to buy kratom.

Kratom is a natural alternative to the opioids that are a cash cow to another industry that raked it in due to that virus that was used for political reasons and for exacting control over the population.

And, so, it had to go.

Just like any videos about the benefits of psilocybin mushrooms in treating depression, anxiety and PTSD "have to be" disappeared from Youtube.

This is so that the portion of the population under the thumb of the global elitists and techno autocrats will never learn about them.

How greedy must Big Pharma be, after companies like Pfizer profited something like $34 billion over just the first year of the pandemic, to want to further squelch anything that could potentially divert money away from them?

I'm starting to realize just how precious a counterculture were the "deadheads" who followed the Grateful Dead around the country; having left family and friends and hometowns behind, to follow them.

They were, in many cases, trading years of psychotherapy, at a cost of thousands of dollars in favor of being cured by one "religious experience" on magic mushrooms or LSD on one magical night spent at the altar of Jerry Garcia, bolstered by the unconditional love and support of his congregation of deadheads.

LSD was designated a "Class A" substance, I believe around 1980, with the prison sentences for possession of more than a little bit of it having been hiked up accordingly, so that in the eyes of the law it became "just as bad" as heroin.

Just a couple years ago, there was a petition at the kratom bar I used to go to asking for signatures from those against the banning of kratom by the FDA or something; spearheaded by Big Pharma, most likely.

Some kind of compromise was reached whereby the people selling kratom were, moving forward, not allowed to make any claims about any possible medical benefits from it. They were limited, in their spiel to newcomers, to saying that kratom is a plant that grows in Asia, which is a member of the coffee family, and that some people claim gives them energy or relaxation, depending upon the strain.

The place was frequented by people who had become addicted to opioids and were looking for a natural alternative to them. Some of them were doing a double shot of kratom every morning and realizing the same benefits of the opioids; but without the urge to do more and more until some point when they would have to go into rehab because of them.

But, you weren't allowed to point to that phenomenon if you worked at a kratom bar back in 2016; the place could be shut down by.....? Someone.

So, after finding that creatine monohydrate has been removed from the shelves of Whole Foods, I decided to just get a can of IPA ale, and the rest is history.

An unremarkable, un-blog-worthy day ensued, with me making additional trips to the store for Heineken and waking up this morning with the lights on and me having not gone out to busk.

Tuesday had begun with me abandoning the idea of looking for a different way to start each day, rather than the rut I had fallen into.

The rut I was in was, waking up, and then going straight to a cup of coffee and to Youtube, where I was inundated with videos, most of which were political in nature, with titles like: "Pelosi tries to lie to Ted Cruz and immediately regrets it!"

It was the story of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscar ceremony that morning which ushered me into the echo chamber that Google has placed me in. One where my ideas would reach no new ears; and where it seemed like nobody in the world held a differing opinion than the one that I and the purveyors of just about every video suggested to me, hold.

The day before, I had purposely gone in a different direction by ignoring my screen and typing in "Samantha Fish," into the search box. This had sent me on an entirely different trajectory; and I believe my whole day had been improved because of that.

Today I begin with this here. Doing a blog post first. Right now, World War III might be starting somewhere, but I'm more focused upon my morning routine and won't be sucked into watching the war unfold in "real" time.

The power just went out, here at Sacred Heart. It's pretty windy outside and so a tree falling on a power line is a likely cause of that. I don't know how charged my laptop battery is, so I will post this now; then hop on my bike and hopefully find that the grocery stores and the GNC still have power.

GNC might still have creatine monohydrate for sale...

Why, Why, Why...?

A Minute To Wonder Why (click to watch)

What Else Would You Expect From Such A Diverse Bunch Of People?

The last time I set foot in a movie theater was in 1996.

At that time, I owned a little black and white TV that had, I think it was, a 5 inch screen. I would only turn that thing on once a day, at 11:30 p.m. to watch the Letterman Show, a ritual that included sparking up a joint as the opening theme music played.

I would snap the thing off immediately after Letterman, and before the news came on, By the time the musical guest came on to end the show, I was appropriately baked off the joint to get maximum enjoyment out of the guest, and that would prime me to go from TV watching to music recording in my home studio in the trailer where I lived.

Without watching TV, or reading newspapers, and by using my car's stereo only to play cassettes of the Grateful Dead, or my own stuff that I did in the studio and wanted to give the car stereo test to, I became literally one of those people who couldn't name the current president over the course of a couple decades. I knew about Bill Clinton, because he had gone on Letterman and played his saxophone.

Living in my car, and in dwellings that I built out in the woods, kept me pretty much insulated from whatever was the "culture" of the times.

I could sense the changes in that, and assumed it was being driven by movies and TV.

But, I guess my point is that I had very little idea who "Will Smith" was when I saw all the coverage of him slapping Chris Rock (whom I had never seen before) across the face during the Oscars show.

Chris Rock committed the cardinal sin of making fun of someone in the audience based on something they couldn't control.

I can't remember which comedian once said, probably on Letterman, that if there were any rules that should be followed in comedy, one basic one was that you should stick to making fun of things that people have control over, such as the clothes they are wearing, their hair style, their behavior, and even their obesity if that is the case; because that is something they brought upon themselves, and thus, could change if they wanted to. To keep comics from saying things like you are so fat that when you sit around the house, you really sit around the house, or that the city has given you your own zip code, etc...

So, Chris Rock might have made the mistake of thinking that Smith's wife had chosen to shave her head, the way Sinead O' Connor had once done, rather than it being due to a disease that she has no control over (or is ignorant of the relationship between the mainstream diet, pushed by the beef and dairy cartel in cahoots with Big Pharma).

So, his joke was truly hurtful and deserving of some rebuke.

But then seeing Smith go up on stage and slap him (what would he have done if it was Andrew Dice Clay or some other comedian more his size?) made me just shake my head.

The voice of Clawsen Smith (probably no relation) whom I used to work for and who was a member of the KKK, at least in spirit, spoke up in my head.

"N*****s can't control their emotions," Clawsen would say, and then would underscore his statement as Will Smith broke down into tears while trying to defend his action.

I just hope this is the swan song of Hollywood -one last desperate cry for attention, from the Oscars show, which has seen it viewership slip something like 75% over the past decade or so. That's a lot of little black and white TV's with 5 inch screens not being tuned in.

Ben Shapiro said on his podcast that none of the half dozen movies nominated for best picture this year were remarkable at all.

So the woke, virtue signalling event wound up as fodder for white supremacist talking points. What else would you expect from such a "diverse" bunch of people?

Time To Go

 

It's Thursday and I woke up at around 11:30 in the morning.

Harold was asleep beside me; there were lights on, and there was a song loaded into my editor that had been playing over and over since I had fallen asleep.

I couldn't remember much of the previous day and the empty brandy bottle in the trash was one of the first clues I found towards piecing the events of Wednesday together.

For my "3 things I am happy and grateful for" I immediately thought of the fine new tire that was waiting to go on the bike.

I had carried the flat one to Patrick's house, where that worthy got to work in immediately, fetching a couple candidates for the replacement tire from what looked like a bicycle junkyard in one of his rooms.

As I sipped brandy, Patrick put a new tire on my rim, and gave me the good news that his great niece was going to give him a thousand dollars to replace the electric motor powered tricycle that was stolen from in front of his house from the same spot where I had previously had a brand new beach cruiser type bike stolen.

His great niece is going to get some kind of Mastercard and is going to take the thousand bucks off of it, whereupon Patrick will begin to pay down that balance. So she is going to be the middle man between Patrick and Mastercard. Since Patrick's money is guaranteed by the government, she has very little to worry about in terms of having her credit score ruined, unless Patrick dies, or something. Even in that case, she could probably sell whatever bike he gets, along with his 90 gallon aquarium, his acoustic guitar, etc.

I carried the new tire and tube on the rim back to my place, where I apparently ate a bunch of food and then started to work on the audio file that came from the photo at the top.

I have a few ideas. But, it is Thursday, and my plasma donation date, and I have a little less than 2 hours to get there.

Not to worry, though, because I have discovered that, no matter which bus I take across the river and wherever it drops me off, I can ride to the plasma place from there, and make it in time. I don't have to wait for the specific bus that drops me at the Wal-Mart right down the street from Octapharma. I can get off all the way over by Howard's former residence, after a 15 minute ride across the river and then ride 3 miles to the place, arriving there before the 115 even shows up on the Canal Street side of the river....

Well, as much as I would love to sit here and watch NewsMax a little longer (I love the MyPillow commercials) I had better start pedaling towards the  bus stop. It sucks that I can't stop and get drunk on a couple beers before proceeding to the plasma place. And then, after donating, the resulting dehydration makes it less fun to drink; with less less euphoria and the procession to the state of confusion and lack of control being accelerated.

Well, time to go...

Rain Extinguishes Plasma Plan

It's raining hard enough to hear it hitting the asphalt right outside my window; and so, I am not hopping on my bike to go sell plasma, for the second day in a row; despite having managed my sleep schedule so that I was up bright and early.

No bicycles allowed

I got a couple pieces of mail in my box, so I didn't have to worry about bringing the month old one that I had on me the day before. One never knows how recent a "recent piece of mail" has to be, in order to prove that you live indoors.

As a matter of fact, if I were to become unemployed and homeless, plasma donation would be one of the first things I would think of, in terms of getting quick cash. One of the good things about homelessness is how easy it is to stretch money. Money quadruples in value, at least.

Since you are outdoors, it is easy to kill time dumpster diving, or just discovering things left discarded in various places, as you walk around your environment.

I remember the time I found a paper shopping bag sitting atop a newspaper kiosk or something that had 4 wrapped submarine sandwiches in it, along with a 20 dollar bill. They were "five star" sandwiches from The Verti Mart.

The best sense I could make of that was that it had been placed there anonymously by someone for the next homeless person to come along -I think it was close to Christmas. 

I never would have found that, had I been indoors somewhere, flat broke and wishing I had something to eat, and 20 bucks to spend..

But, I guess my point is that I don't think the recent piece of mail addressed to a person is very reliable proof that they aren't homeless; because I would be at the plasma place shortly after becoming homeless, using the last piece of mail that I had gotten at my residence as "proof" that I wasn't homeless. Then I could donate plasma for however many years I could get away with it, after that went into my file.

But, it is a Friday and even though the heavy rain has stopped and it even looks like the sun might come out, there isn't enough time now for me to be sure I could make it there by 2 p.m. 

Plus, I don't have the bus fare on me for the trip back from the place, due to an ill-advised? trip to the store around midnight for a couple shots of Jim Beam. The whiskey made it easier to get to sleep shortly thereafter so I could wake up as early as I did; but put me in a situation where I would have to gamble that the plasma place would take me, and that I would be able to get at the funds as soon as I was done donating.

Plan B was to ride over to Howard's house, if I got stuck over there, without bus fare, to try to get a dollar off him. I haven't seen him in probably 2 years now.. I used to go over there to watch football with him, especially when the Patriots were being televised, but we have missed 2 seasons now; and frankly, I don't even know if he is still alive. I'm probably going to call his house and tell his housemates (he's too deaf to use the phone himself) that I found his number in an old phone that I found in the back of a drawer and decided to power up, just to see what was on it -make it sound like I haven't called in 2 years because I had lost his number, type of thing...

I wonder about why I lost interest in Howard. The only thing I can think of is the communication barrier that his deafness accounts for. It's hard to have a nuanced conversation about deep philosophical matters when everything has to be shouted to him. It kind of limits the vocabulary to words with less syllables, and maybe I felt I wasn't getting to know him at any deeper level as time went on.

We sure did have a lot of non verbal adventures when we were homeless together, trekking to Mobile and back to New Orleans, hopping trains and even spending some time in Baton Rouge, back in 2011.

Now the rain has stopped, too late to make it to Gretna, but perhaps clearing the way to go out and busk tonight. If it wasn't for that bridge over the Mississippi that bikes are forbidden to cross, the bus fare would be a moot point. I think the plasma place is just 6 miles from here as the crow flies, but the next closest bridge is about 35 miles up the river, and then another 35 miles back after crossing it; a grim prospect for someone who has just had all the proteins removed from his bloodstream...

I guess there is always tomorrow, as Octapharma is open 7 days a week. I think with all the breathing exercises I have done to boost my immunity (and the fact that I probably even have natural immunity to Covid (due to the fact that I wouldn't even buy a used car from Anthony Fauci, M.D.) I could bounce back rather quickly after donating; probably be able to busk the same night, but it was almost an omen, how it started pouring rain outside just as i was unlocking my door and pushing my bike out into the hallway.

We appear to finally have hot water again. It is probably no coincidence that it has come back on (after about 6 weeks) right before the building is to be inspected. I forgot what day they said the inspection is going to be, but the maintenance people always come around to do a pre-inspection about a week before. They notified us to leave our fire extinguishers outside our doors this morning. Mine was replaced with a newer one, as it is at least 7 years old...

They are going to discover that I have removed both of my smoke detectors, because they were chirping as if the batteries were low, even after I had put new ones in them. I either bought some dead batteries, or there is some way of resetting them that I'm not aware of, like holding some button down for x amount of seconds until a red light flashes, or something. That kind of knowledge is what the maintenance guys get paid "the big bucks" for having. 

Another issue is that my alarms are installed about 15 feet up the wall, way up near the 16 foot ceiling, and for me to get at them, I would have to sneak a ladder from out of the maintenance area, preferably at night, and then precariously balance myself on the very top step of it in order to plug the things back in. They are so sensitive that if you accidentally spill something on a heated burner they might go off. That triggers all the alarms in the building to follow suit. Then the fire department is required to show up to investigate, which turns into a fiasco.

Oftentimes the firemen will use their axes to bust a window or two out, ostensibly to allow the smoke to escape, or for fresh air to come in; but just as likely it is to force the management to spend money on new windows, perhaps so they will put pressure on the residents (write ups, evictions) so that they will be more careful around the stove. 99% of the time it is a resident who is so drunk that they pass out on the couch while they are in the middle of heating up some soup or something.

I guess I'll go up front to ask them exactly when the inspection is due, so I might have a chance to plug the smoke alarms back under the cloak of darkness, rather than have them be discovered unplugged. That might be some kind of crime; or a major violation of the terms of the lease at the very least. You know, the same people that were in your face because you wouldn't get the vaccination ("Your going to murder my grandmother!") would be up in arms if they knew you ripped your alarms off the walls because they were chirping right in the middle of you trying to record a guitar part or something ("Your gonna kill us all!") type of thing...

I Almost Get Stabbed

I called the Octapharma plasma donation center at around noon to ask them when the latest that a new donor could show up and expect to get in, any given day.

"Be here by two," said the lady on the other end; then reminded me to bring my ID and social security card and a piece of mail with my current address on it.

I had messed up my sleep schedule so much that I had the feeling of having been up all night.

Finding clean clothes that didn't smell too much like mildew, had been a challenge. The last time I washed a load in my bathtub, I had bitten off more than I could chew and didn't spend the needed amount of time wringing water out of everything and then hanging it all separately. The result was that my stuff got that smell that clothes that are damp too long get.

The day wound up being a dress rehearsal for the trip over to Gretna. After putting air in the front tire of the bike, which takes about a week to go soft, I decided to pop in on my friend Patrick, where I hung out until the point that 2 o' clock was too near, for me to want to take the chance of having to rush to get to the plasma place, racing against the clock.

If I just barely missed a bus and had to wait for the next one, I would be cutting it close. Plus I thought about other things like traffic holding up the bus, or the driver parking near Burger King for ten minutes to eat; which is something that happened once.

Plus, other things that could go wrong like them having an influx of new donors come in so there might be a few ahead of me when I got there right before the cutoff time, prompting the nurse to tell me to come back the next day; or the nurse having left because of a family emergency, or whatever.

So, I instead made a run to the Fresh Market to get Patrick his whiskey and Coke, and a 24 ounce Budweiser for myself, and I soon annoyed him after we had smoked a bowl, by asking him questions about cockatiels, after he mentioned wanting to get one, to go with the one canary type bird he already has.

I was asking him if one could teach such a bird to recite the Gettysburg Address, or something.

He said that that would take a lot of time and seemed annoyed that I would even consider such a thing.

All this procrastinating has meant that I have missed what looked like a very good Thursday out on Bourbon Street with the temperature at 61 with no rain and a good amount of tourists out there. In hindsight, it would have been good if I had been able to get the 100 bucks during the day, and then made it out to play at night. But, then I wouldn't have been able to get the 6 hours or so of sleep that I just got.

But now I'm in the same boat of trying to stay up all night so as to be at Octapharma bright and early. It was the "bright" part that had been a problem this morning. I might have to try to force myself to sleep again so that when the sun comes up it won't be a harsh alien type of light and make me feel like I haven't slept at all.

I guess it had been a mistake to drop in on Patrick; I should have just kept going on to Gretna. It seems like I don't even have room enough for the error of having drank the 24 ounce Budweiser.

I need to act like I'm in boot camp these days; getting 8 hours of sleep, plenty of exercise, sunning myself for 45 minutes every morning, while doing a couple rounds of Wim Hof breathing; and then basically keep my energy levels high enough to do stuff like donate plasma for 100 bucks in the afternoon and then go out and busk for another 50 at night. A few rounds of that could right the ship and have Harold back to eating 2 cans a day and having a pristine litter box...

 

2 Days Free Of Depression

 It's down to the tap water or the nuts.

After having been blindsided by a depression a couple days ago; I did my best to fight my way out of it. The only thing I had done differently the previous day was using tap water in my coffee and kratom, and oatmeal.

Thankfully I was able to get through 4 rounds of Wim Hof's deep breathing exercises, although that was a struggle. I had to fight through thoughts of "this isn't helping," "I have too much food in my stomach," "my lungs are a bit congested, maybe I'm coming down with a cold, maybe I should stop; maybe I should instead sit here doing nothing but thinking the thoughts that are making me feel depressed," etc.

Then, after busking Saturday night, I picked up a few bags of assorted mixed nuts and wound up eating a lot of them after I had gotten home; I also got some alkaline water which I started using for everything.

The next morning, I woke up not only not depressed, but in an upbeat mood. This makes me wonder about the tap water. Maybe it is very clean, despite the 40 year old pipes that it runs through once it gets to our building, but maybe they put chlorine and fluoride and whatever in it.

I have generally used only bottled water since moving here, but there have been periods when I've run out of that and used the tap water. And there have been periods when I have felt pretty depressed, usually upon waking up. I've never been able to draw a direct correlation between that and the tap water, though.

It's also possible that, since my multivitamins ran out about a month ago, my body had become depleted of some mineral or micro nutrient found only in the skin of the Brazil nut, or the filbert...

  

David Bowie Is Already Fading Out Of My Head

Out of nowhere, I have become fatigued and foggy minded and woke up feeling a depression I haven't felt in a long time.

I was feeling so optimistic just a couple days ago, after having discovered that I can go make money selling plasma, and at the same time having gotten a flyer put in my groceries at Winn Dixie saying that they were hiring and making it sound like they are desperate to do so.

So, the depression can't be from despair, as in "What am I going to do? How am I going to feed Harold?" Add to those options the chance to go out and busk and there are opportunities everywhere.

But, it is just a physical type of thing that I can only speculate has to do with either running out of alkaline water and switching to tap water the past couple days, or the fact that I have been doing a lot of kratom while sitting behind the laptop.

The online experience has become less and less satisfying the way other addictive substances will give "diminishing returns." If there is a war in Ukraine and I never hear about it, is that a bad thing? Is sitting and watching coverage of it for hours a bad thing?

So what if I think that the same kind of people that got us into the Vietnam "conflict" and all the wars after that are up to their old tricks. Is that going to have any effect upon my busking at the Lilly Pad, and the quality of life that I can eek out for myself?

I'm feeling better after having done 4 rounds of Wim Hof breathing. Even that was a struggle to get through. 

A look in the mirror offered a third possible cause for my malaise; the ton of jambalaya that I have eaten over the course of the past week. My skin had that off color tone and slight eczema that used to come before I learned to eliminate hydrogenated soybean oil from my diet. I think that I might have gotten away with eating the jambalaya because I was doing other stress reducing things like the Wim Hof stuff, meditation and having had a few nice, therapeutic busking sessions; the kind that leave me calm and relaxed and with a pile of money on my coffee table. 

There were points during the taking of 45 deep breaths when I wanted to stop; and instead just sit and dwell upon "what's bothering me;" something that I know will rarely solve any problems. How can I focus upon breathing in and out when I need to solve all these life's problems? I thought. The only solution is to overcome the problems by focusing on a greater goal and dancing through the obstacles; realizing that a "bad" thing about to happen to you is just a stepping stone towards something better than imaginable; especially if imagined by someone in the state of mind that I woke up in.

It's like waking up in a dark forest and being able to see faint glows of light off in certain directions; but instead of getting up and starting to hike towards it, deciding to just sit there longer trying to figure out in your mind, how you are going to get out of the forest. 

Then starting to think that if you started to walk towards the light, you might trip and fall and break a bone, or get bitten by a poisonous snake before you make it out.

I can see a path out of this; stemming from the "the 3 things I am happy about and grateful for now," list which I had done (forced myself to do) upon waking up.

That had been like at least standing up in the dark forest, so as to look around to see where the faint glows were coming from. Better than just sitting there.

I knew that it was important to not fall into the trap of wondering "what is bothering me?" with the answer being: I can't figure out what is bothering me; and that is what is bothering me, type of thing.

That could turn into making a list of the negative things, which would go totally counter to the Law of Attraction and attract more of the same.

Item #1 is that I had some salmon to give Harold.

I had been too lethargic (probably because of all the jambalaya I had eaten) and had found excuses not to go out and busk. They were like: so I could be well rested and make it to the plasma place to get the 100 dollars.

But then I found excuses to not go to the plasma place (I can go out to busk instead, so I'll have enough money in case the plasma thing doesn't work out for some reason).

This turned in to me doing neither, but instead hunkering down for hours of watching Youtube videos that I am starting to question the value of, as entertainment, or as a source of information.

Item #2 was that we now have hot water in the building and I am hoping that a hot shower will brighten my outlook.

I am basing that upon having hot water last night, though, and I still need to check it now. I think I will go and do that, and take a hot shower if it is indeed hot, and then come back here to continue this post...

Ok, I ran the shower for about 10 minutes and it is back to being lukewarm. So much for the revitalization of a hot shower. The 9 o' clock bird chirped while I was doing that.

I washed up a bit with a cold rag and shaved and now I am having my first kratom of the day, thinking that I could run up to Winn Dixie and get alkaline water and juices and other things like "detox" tea and come back here in time to go out and busk. The temperature outside is like room temperature; a perfect night for busking. I just wish I could look forward to it as something fun, rather than having this unnamed feeling of dread.

I keep having to go out with the attitude of I'm going to ride down there, and if I don't like the looks of things, I can be right back home in about 15 minutes; I don't have to play; nobody is forcing me; isn't that the best part about being your own boss?. 

That is what reduces the stress of riding down there and turning the corner onto Bourbon Street to glance towards the Lilly Pad with my heart in my throat (or whatever the expression is) hoping there is nobody already there. Nobody busking or occupying the stoop in order to run some kind of hustle on the tourists, and being unwilling to give up the spot, convinced that it is a great spot to run their hustle because they might have just made a couple quick scores (with their 'I know where you got your shoes' or whatever, thing).

That being said, another concern of mine is the time taken to write this blog; I'm starting to inventory it.

It was exactly one hour ago that I sat down to begin this post. I'm thinking that a Saturday night, with its busking possibilities, especially on such a perfect night weather-wise, is a poor choice of when to write a blog post.

The longer I type here, the greater the possibility that there will be someone already at the Lilly Pad. If I'm not there, it isn't going to sit there unoccupied all night. There have been times when I showed up pretty late and someone was there who said they thought I was taking the night off, and so they sat there.

Of course, that was when I used to play 6 nights a week, without fail...

Let's hope I can get back here by 10:30 with some healthy foods, drop them off and then be busking by 11 p.m. until whenever. But just as importantly that I will have something to play, and be able to shut off the music on repeat in my head. 

These are always songs by artists whom I have tried to learn from, perhaps emulate, and to aspire to the same level of "success" as. And, now they are either dead and forgotten, or still alive and forgotten; at the stage of life when they are ready to let it all go and prepare to leave this world the way they came in; with nothing; perhaps realizing that all their suffering and struggling for fortune and fame, doesn't matter in the end.

Maybe they are tormenting people like me from the after-world by making snippets of their songs become stuck in their heads, so that they aren't forgotten by the living, even if Spotify isn't playing their stuff.

Why else would I have to have David Bowie singing "Fame, what you get is no tomorrow!" over and over in my head with John Lennon's guitar putting in that Da da da da da duh! riff after it, over and over. When I'm trying to decide if I should spend my bus fare to the plasma place money on food for Harold on the faith that I will make it back at the Lilly Pad.

Or if I should spend it on a couple shots of liquor on the way to the Lilly Pad, on faith that I will make it back and have a nice glow while doing so.

Or if I should just keep it for the ride to the plasma place and not even go out to busk, so I can wash up really well, despite the cold water, and get an early start towards the place..

Right now I am leaning towards skipping the grocery run and heading for the Lilly Pad right away with my gear; I could be playing by 10:15 p.m. that way.

There is only one prime time Saturday night busking opportunity, while the grocery store can be run to any time. Even if that means sleeping until noon and being too late to go to the plasma place, if I make a good chunk of money that would be more of a moot point. 

And, wouldn't a Monday or Tuesday be a better day to donate plasma, when I won't be busking the same night?

I think that is what I'll do. The 10 o' clock bird just chirped, and David Bowie is already fading out of my head...

The carrot in front of my nose as I pedal the bike, though, will be the 2 shots of brandy waiting for me at the Unique Grocery; boy, I'm glad I set aside the bus fare to the plasma place money! ....fame, what you need you have to borrow...

I have just used 2 hours to write the above post, about what I'm not doing. I'm going to have to look into scheduling things, so maybe only certain days will be blogging days; that way I can distill them down to anything important and not blog about the avocado I ate for breakfast or whatever. It's 10:40 p.m. and I guess those 2 shots of brandy are starting to wonder where I am...

Now, I'm Grateful For The Sun And The Planet

It's about 4 in the morning, and Boccherini's Symphony #4 plays.

Somehow I think the whole Ukraine thing has been orchestrated with a prime aim being to have more refugees sent here, who will vote democrat. Putin can live out his expansionist fantasies, the military industrial complex will profit, and the democrat voters will begin arriving in U.S. cities in short order.

Why hasn't NATO started to bomb Moscow and turn the Kremlin into ruble, under which the shirtless body of Putin (the head of the snake) would be discovered? Because he is probably in St. Petersburg?

I'm sure the Russian generals would retreat if that were to happen.

I'm contemplating the trip to Gretna to sell my blood plasma in a few hours, having reduced my funds to the point where I would have to stop and see Howard and try to bum the bus fare home off him if, for some reason I don't get paid the hundred bucks promised to new donors.

I have a feeling that the plastic cards that they give people to put their money on, now have to be mailed to them, rather than handed out at the place. This might be to further insure that they actually have an address, to go with the recent piece of mail, addressed to them, that is part of their requirements.

I say this because their website has a message asking for people's patience in waiting for their cards to arrive in the mail.

This makes me think I might delay the trip yet another day and busk up some more money, so I would still be able to get cat food and then take the bus home, should I come out of the plasma place empty handed.

I finally tossed out the remainder of the gumbo, which had sat in the fridge for almost a week and was starting to taste less delicious. It's too easy a meal, and I had eaten that, rather than prepare something more in line with the healthy diet I had come up with for myself, on a few occasions.

I've got a flounder fillet slowly heating up in a skillet, bathed in balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and that should have all my levels in good standing at the plasma place. 

I still can't believe that they don't require proof of having cowed to an authoritarian government and gotten the experimental gene manipulating vaccine that Fauci and company are trying to become rich off of. 

Maybe because Octapharma is a Swedish company and the Swedes seemed to have exercised a lot of common sense, throughout the whole push by a few global elitists to take the money out of the hands of the middle class and funnel it, through syringes to themselves. They never closed their schools, for one thing...

But, I guess the stars are aligning a bit, as we have hot water in the building right now, so I will be able to take a hot shower, so as to be ready for the physical that the plasma place will administer.

Unless I decide to just busk for one more day, so as to eliminate the possibility of getting stuck in Gretna without the bus fare to get back across the river.

12 Pounds of Jambalaya

After Jacob and I played for maybe 3 hours Monday night and made 109 bucks, we returned to my place where there was still plenty of sausage and rice jambalaya in my refrigerator in a turkey roasting sized tin.

It had been like finding enough food to live off of for a week after having had a 49 dollar Friday night, when we returned to Sacred Heart to find the tin full of it, which I estimated to weight about 12 pounds.

It was all wrapped up in tin foil and still warm, and had rice and plenty of slices of sausage, and was a little salty and a little spicy.

Then, I went out myself Saturday night and, getting there at about midnight, played for about an hour and a half before it started getting a little chilly.

A young black couple, who had been doing brisk business selling weed off of Lilly's stoop opposite the one where I play, gave me about a 20 dollar bud after I had knocked off. They had apparently enjoyed listening to me while they sat there. They also seemed to have figured out that we can coexist just fine if they didn't mind moving down to the other stoop rather than try to contest the one where I sit, based upon them having gotten there first, or something.

The last guy who had done that wound up being handed some money by a group of tourists whom he promised he would be "right back" with their weed. That time, I just set up and started playing; I knew he wouldn't be back. 

After the tourists became restless about 20 minutes later and wandered off, with them each blaming each other for having been foolish enough to hand the guy their money, I went on to only make about 20 bucks, but was handed the bud, and had a ton of jambalaya waiting on me at home. 

I picked up a couple cans of food for Harold and we both pigged out and I took most of Sunday as a recovery day. I wish I could live off of food like that, especially when it's free, but alas, I'm sure it had some soy oil in it. I was reminded again how my particular diet has been keeping me healthy all these years. And keeping me free from the affliction of "jambalaya farts" that marked most of Sunday. Hard to believe some people eat stuff like that daily. I suppose it wouldn't be as bad if done in olive or coconut oil.

What is on the immediate horizon is the Octapharma plasma donation place, where, as a "new" donor, i.e. one who hasn't donated there in over 3 years, I would be able to make something like 900 bucks over the next month or so.

I had all but forgotten about that place, but Dom in A 206 reminded me about it, and told me about the incentive for new donors.

I could go and get my first 100 bucks today, but will probably go tomorrow, after I locate my social security card, to go with my ID, and a piece of mail addressed to me, to prove that I'm not homeless, I guess. I'll also have to show up with clean clothes and freshly showered, to be ready for the physical that all new donors have to undergo; which is mostly an inspection for evidence of I.V. drug use.

I'll want to be sure I have the bus fare to make it back home, should anything go wrong, like my blood protein levels being too low or any of a dozen other things. I don't want to have to try to activate the plastic card that they put people's money on just so I can get back home.

It might also be a chance for me to visit Howard, to see if he is still alive. Somehow, I just haven't been up to dropping in on him. At first this was because of Covid and the fact that Howard is pretty much overweight and lives off Cheetoz and Pepsi, a couple comorbidities if there ever were any.

I'm listening to Boccherini's Symphony #4 in D minor and preparing to get some sleep at some point. Going out to play tonight should insure that I will be ready to make the trip to Octapharma tomorrow. I just hope my blood-sausage levels aren't too high for them to take me.