Wednesday, June 27th, the Pissed Off Black Man Driving Bus #114

I'm pretty sure he's the same one who slammed the door in my face and drove off on me about 3 years ago.

In unrelated news; when I was at the bus stop getting ready to go across the river, there was an African American kid of about 15 or so, who had a brass instrument that I couldn't identify. He took it out of a case and blew just a few tentative notes on it that sounded low and mournful; definitely in the bass clef. I wanted to walk over to him and say; "Oh, nice..." and be able to name the instrument; I probably could have asked: "What is that?" But now I know it was a euphonium; a small cousin to the tuba. He wound up on the same bus as me and at one point, seemed to recognize me and smiled and asked, or stated- it was somewhere in between- "You like that weed?" and made a weed toking motion with his hand. He must be one of the kids who sells weed on Canal Street when not playing his euphonium; probably with a large brass band on a corner of Frenchmen Street, doing music that doesn't require much from the euphoniums, past a few tentative notes. Of course, if he smokes "that weed," it probably becomes more like a "euphorium" to him...

 

That time, I had been sitting on the bench, an old black lady by my side, whom I had actually struck up a civil conversation with, as we sat there. In retrospect, she might have said: "No, he's OK." to the driver after he slammed the door shut, whereupon he could have opened it back up and let me on.

That was the same lady who had, since the sun was about to go down, said to me "You don't want to be out here at night..."

I thought I had recalled a story abut a carload of youngsters of color jumping out of their vehicle at that particular stop and beating a white person severely, who had happened to be waiting there late at night -waiting for a bus to take him to the relative safety of the other side of the river where the demographics were at least 30% white, and not 11% like in the area around the bus stop....

When the bus pulled up, the lady picked up a couple bags that she had and moved towards the bus, while I took an additional couple of seconds to fold up my laptop, put it in my own backpack and then start towards the bus.

The lady was already onboard, standing at the turnstile thing, most likely inserting her ride-for-a-discount card that seems to be a birthright for people of color (rarely have I ever heard the "clink" of actual change, after someone of color boarded the bus; the majority of the time it is "card not valid" that emanates from the speaker; although they invariably get waved through -not their fault their card is invalid, it's the system, trying to hold them back -keep them from making their appointments with their slip and fall attorneys, or whatever the case).

And so, the driver should have waited until the lady had seated herself, so the lurch forward of the vehicle; exaggerated by the anger fueled way that he had slammed the pedal down, wouldn't have potentially knocked the old lady off her feet.

But, it was easy for me to posit that the driver had been somehow provoked by the fact that I was sitting at the stop using a laptop computer; one of the symbols of white supremacy in a mind such as his; and that is why he had allowed me no leeway.

They All Look The Same To You Out Of The Corner Of Your Eye

I think it was the same driver yesterday, although to some degree the trope that "they all look the same to me" applies. 

That is probably because I'm conditioned not to look into the eyes of the people of color down here, wherein I might glimpse their individuality. 

That is a no-no, because people of color might think you are trying to put the make on them, as the perpetrator of some past crime they committed and this could turn them belligerent. Many a time I have heard "What 'chew lookin' at?!" when I had merely been trying to make eye contact. And so they wind up all looking the same when seen out of the corner of the eye, type of thing...

But, this time, the bus pulled up and I rolled my bike to the front of it to put it on the rack. He couldn't slam the door and ride off at this point, as he would have run over me.

Then, since I had been in the middle of drinking an energy drink, I paused for a couple seconds to chug down the rest of it before getting on the bus. He couldn't slam the door and ride off at this point either, or else he would have had to account for the bike on the front rack that I most likely would have reported "stolen" to the RTA NOLA headquarters; stolen by one of their drivers..

But, he instead yelled; "Man, come on, I ain't got all day!" or something to that effect.

Provoked a bit by his emotional outburst, I stopped a couple gulps short of draining the can and just flung it towards a trash can that it bounced off of and landed on the ground a foot or so away from.

"That's good; I'll just leave it on the ground like everyone else around here does," I said to the driver. If he had given me a couple more seconds I could have disposed of it properly.

"What are you trying to say?" asked the driver who had probably driven off on me a few years ago; leaving me vulnerable to the predatory natives.

It was clear what I was "trying to say," that black people are litterbugs.

"I usually dispose of things in the proper receptacle, in order to keep my neighborhood looking tidy; but around here it appears that there is trash laying everywhere and my little can isn't going to make a noticeable difference," I said, to which he remained silent.

He probably doesn't know what "dispose," "proper" or "receptacle" mean, and so thought I was speaking the language of an academic or at the very least, someone who could get him fired by using some of those big words in a lawsuit against him.

"Shut up and worry about turning right and left, stopping and starting, bro...maybe take a few GED courses to improve your lot," I didn't say.

I really think I might have flustered him and he might have had the wheels turning in his mind still about 10 minutes later when he actually went by the on-ramp to the highway going over the bridge (which is the only thing keeping me from riding my bike to Gretna whenever I go and saving the $2.50 on the round trip bus fare) and had to make an awkward 3-point turn and get on the ramp on the other side of the 4 lane road.

Maybe he was trying to come up with a way to articulate that there is a good reason why black people are litterbugs; one that I just wouldn't understand, because "it's a black thing."

Like, I Wouldn't Have A "Comeback?"

I would have said something like, not only do I think we should have sent all the slaves back to Africa after Lincoln freed them; we should have demanded our money back.

"You're out in a bountiful field for 10 hours and all you can pick is 60 pounds of cotton, maybe 70? That's pretty lazy, bro." If he thinks he can anger me with his words; then turnabout is fair play.

And if he is going to slam the door and drive off on me; let me give him a better reason, than me flaunting "my superiority" by using a laptop computer.

But, I'm going to need to ride his bus again perhaps; and so I won't kick the hornet's nest, I'll just let him spew his hatred; A comment like that would "go viral" amongst the all black driving staff, and I might wind up blacklisted from ever (yeah, excuse the pun) riding on any RTA NOLA buses.

The Art Of Decluttering

Blog Reaches Length Of 32 Moby Dicks!

Yes, that's right; the volume of text in this blog has reached the equivalent of 32 plain text copies of Moby Dick, based upon the length of an e-book version of the Melville classic that I recently downloaded. So, have a whale of a time reading it!

I think I will just have to make a list and make sure I get to each item every day if only for 5 minutes...

• Clean the kitchen
• put a few pieces in the jigsaw puzzle
• do a few exercises out of the Python programming tutorial
• Practice out of the Mel Bay books
• Read Moby Dick; or whatever comes after it
• Do a blog post
• Mess with audio files in Audacity
• Mess with Musescore; and Cecelia (ear bending sonics)
• Mess with Bandlab; the mobile Android music studio
• Listen to all or some of a vinyl record
• Learn a new busking song every other day (inspired by classic rock FM)
  
• Watch Youtube less than an hour
• Do Wim Hof breathing for half hour
• Lift my weights for at least 3 reps
• Water the plants
• tidy up and throw stuff away
• Busk at least 5 days a week; at least 12 hours minimum
• Put at least 20 minutes into the making of a music video
• Draw at least one face
• Call Lilly once every 2 weeks
• Try to determine if I'm forgetting anything
• Check email and messenger once every 2 days for the former; every day the latter
• Play chess against the computer once a week
• Make a laminated list of the 600 songs that I know, or at one time did...
• Apply for one job per week
• Renew contact with Dave, Ted, Hubert, and the Lidgleys
  
• Re apply for unemployment as a non filing musician, out of work "because the bar that employed me went out of business during the plandemic."
• Send off for my pension money from a place I worked at in 1985; that I was notified about around 4 years ago and haven't bought an envelope for yet...
• Start doing the "stop procrastinating" meditation video thing I downloaded...
  

The Word Of The Day: Barrel

I sat there around 10 last night, the 2 crisp one dollar bills that had come in the Nielson survey envelope sitting next to me on the couch.

Anyone who might doubt that a guy who has lost a lot of weight and now smokes cigarettes didn't once kick ass on Royal Street singing opera, I rest my case with this video I found of him. Raymond is his name and he is no longer "The Opera Guy of New Orleans," but is crooning out songs from The Great American Songbook, now, not limited to country music songs...Just seeing him sing in this era before the plandemic, makes me nostalgic for that simpler time. I was busking something like 24 hours a week back then...

I packed up my stuff, careful to make sure I had one pick in the backpack, and one in my back pocket. It was about twenty minutes before 11 when I went out through the lobby. There weren't any milk crates under the awning of the building a block or so down the street, across from the elementary school.

I rode down to the Quarter, noticing the guy that raps on the corner of Baronne and Canal, doing so. He free-styles about the people walking past and seems to be getting incrementally better at it, since he started about 3 years ago. I guess we can start saying: "since before the pandemic," now, similar to how some residents brag about having been in New Orleans "since before Katrina."

I got to The Unique Grocery, where I was able to use turn the 2 crisp one dollar bills from the Nielson people into a couple shots of E&J brandy (this meant me owing them the change of 18 cents, which is basically the tax) and the "Jesus shadow" clock read: 11:15 as I went past it.

One thing I forgot to pack (when am I going to start using my checklist religiously and stop forgetting one little item each outing?) was the fake 5 dollar bill that I use to start the tip bucket out with.

I hadn't been playing more than 5 minutes when a young guy walked over with a 5 dollar bill and asked me if the empty jar in front of me was where he should place it. This is the reason a busker should start out with at least one of his own dollars in his tip jar.

"I could hear you all the way down at Lafitt's and you sounded good; especially the harmonica," he said.

I thanked him and added: "At least now, people will know that I accept tips!" to which he agreed.

So, I had to leave the real 5 dollar bill in the jar, to act as the fake 5 dollar bill; and just take my chances with a hoodlum running off with the jar..

But, not for long, as soon a group stopped to listen to "Nowhere Man," during which about 4 more single bills went into the jar, and the night kind of went that way, with the times I thought I was sounding good coinciding with a trickle of bills, some of which were 5's, going into the jar.

I took a break after 2 hours and about 26 bucks to go to the store to get a couple shots of the next step up from the bottom of the barrel Taaka vodka; and was able to give a tall skinny black guy who was lighting a large blunt outside the store, 2 dollars for a few tokes off his weed, which was potent, but had a home grown flavor to it. I think this is because people who grow weed at home, although they might follow strict procedures towards making the weed potent, are not always so vigilant when it comes to airborne spores and dust and motes and, well Covid virus, too I guess. So, just as hanging your clothes to dry inside a musky apartment might make them smell like mildew, weed that is growing there picks up some tell-tale flavors when grown by someone who doesn't want to go all out and buy a tiny greenhouse to house the plants. But, I got a righteous high off his homegrown bud for 2 dollars. 

That was the Nielson money, I guess; even though the shots of E&J had already been the Nielson money. It would wind up getting spent a few more times before the night was over...

On my way back to the Lilly Pad, with the homegrown creeping up on me, I noticed a guy who reminded me of "The Opera Guy," so much that I turned my bike around and went back. He was sitting across from The Quartermaster on the side street on a stoop, and turned out to be that very soul. 

He kind of dropped his head when telling me that he no longer sang opera, and I could read a little guilt in between the lines. He was actually crooning out a Frank Sinatra song, so I thought, as I arrived. 

I remembered him as being somewhat of an elitist and, at one point about 5 years ago when I was hanging out with him and a classical guitar playing guy named Dave, he was fervently trying to get Dave to "play your most classical piece," and he kind of wrinkled his nose a bit when, at one point I played something which might have been "Dear Prudence," by John Lennon, the classical composer.

So, him being a big barrel chested guy who even resembles "a famous tenor" in his facial features, it apparently took some humility in him to confess that he no longer sang opera.

I complemented his "Frank Sinatra," to which he thanked me but returned "that was actually Cole Porter," and then began to sing a George Jones song before being interrupted by the guy sitting with him changing the song coming out of their little boom box to something other than George Jones "Sing this instead," was his basic gist.

I went back to the Lilly Pad and enjoyed very much whatever I played and probably in an amount equal to the enjoyment of the few hits of homegrown, mildew reeking bud, and the 2 additional shots of the next thing up from the bottom of the barrel Taaka vodka.

On the way out, I stopped at The Unique Grocery for a can of Coor's Light, and when I gave an extra dollar to the guy, for him to take the 18 cents that I owed from earlier out, he gave me yet another bottle of E&J instead; tax free...

There was a guy lingering around who stood near me as I was searching for the Coor's Light who was, without looking directly at me; going through a litany of drugs that he "had," starting with "I got that purp" which referred to "purple haze," which was a strain that was around for a while before hydroponically grown stuff started coming out of boutiques with all kinds of names like "girl scout cookies," and "blueberry." 

But, to simplify things, and so the dealer guy standing by the cooler doesn't have to say things like: "I got that diesel fuel!" to a bewildered street musician, it can all just be purp now...

When I hadn't responded, he went up the ladder of addictive substances, "I got powder, I got hard, I got ice..." And, he had gotten all the way up to whatever they are calling heroin now," when I interjected with: "I just gave some guy 2 bucks for a few hits off a blunt," as a means of conveying that I was on a low budget. Some of those items he was throwing out there just in case I had like 80 bucks to spend on a wretched fix of crystal meth or something. I'm just too cheap to get addicted to anything that expensive.

So, I managed to get a 10 dollar gram or so of "the purp," and then I went to CVS to get the only kind of cat food they had on their shelves, a large bag of "Temptations," which I get the sense are meant only as a desert for cats and not for them to live off of. That would be kind of like us trying to live off of Little Debbie products exclusively. 

Speaking of people who live almost entirely on Little Debbie products, and soda, I saw the clappers doing their thing at the corner where Tanya Huang usually is. And Tanya wasn't at any other corner, so I know she hadn't been moved off the block by the clappers, mafioso style.

The clappers' daughter, who was about 7 years old the first time I saw her is about 16 now, and was all dressed up in a form fitting kind of tube dress and she sings now, and not too badly. So the clappers no longer just clap their hands as their only accompaniment and sing gospel music; now they have a sound system of pretty high wattage and their daughter singing the devil's music in a tube dress that flatters a body that is the product of being nurtured on mostly Little Debbie and soda.

I used to think them as being rather feeble minded, probably illiterate, and kind of like children who never grew up. 

I would see them coming out of Rouses Market, each of them -the mother, the father and the little girl- hugging bags that all had Debbie's face smiling at you from various angles. this maybe after having had a contentious discussion over whether or not to appease the little girl with a candy bar with the concession being that she not eat it first and spoil her appetite for the veggie chips, or something...

A cab would pull up and they would stuff themselves, along with their plunder, in and be whisked off, to clap no more for the night. The two parents were borderline obese, but the girl remained pretty much a beanstalk throughout her formative years. 

I really think they thought they were getting a variety of foods in their diet, because they would have chosen an assortment of L.D. items -strawberry filled Twinkies (to give them their berries) and creme filled chocolate cakes (to fulfill their "dairy requirements") and then a big bag of veggie flavored Doritos (because everyone knows that vegetables are good for you) and then, because the clappers weren't vegetarians, a few sticks of beef jerky...

But I was just going out to the Lilly Pad when I saw them.

The last thing of consequence that happened was I saw a bag sitting at one of the trolley stops that contained 4 Styrofoam containers of chicken wings and fries, with ranch dressing and even ketchup in them. You could tell that they hadn't been disturbed because, besides being still warm, when I opened them, the wings and fries were wrapped tightly in some kind of wax paper that conformed almost perfectly to the shape of the container. If anyone had eaten out of them, they wouldn't have been able to wrap them up like that; not unless they re-heated it and let the cheese melt to the shape of the Styrofoam again.

I rode a little further up Canal, in case someone came running up, having forgotten the food at the trolley stop and expecting it to still be there, with nobody eating it. I scarfed down one of them, eating only a little of the fries but demolishing the chicken. 

I stopped at Patrick's to see if he was still up at 2:30 in the morning and was hungry, but he wasn't home. So I ate another one of them; the one I was going to give to Patrick, I guess.

Then I thought the lady working the front security desk might want one; but she didn't, and so I wound up eating all of them.

I also slept until almost 3 in the afternoon and didn't even want to try to make it to the plasma place within the next 2 hours; and so it's now Sunday evening and I probably will end up back at the Lilly Pad, by maybe about 9:30...
I can have a jolly time just smoking some purp and playing the same way I would be doing if sitting on my couch...

Ain't No Time To Wonder Why

 

This is what my turf looks like, as I sit here on my couch.

I went all the way out to the plasma place to learn that they close earlier on Saturday's than Monday thru Friday...

Putting a positive spin on that, I figured it might be God's way of steering me back towards busking as a sole source of income.

The plasma donation is at odds with the cleansing and intermittent fasting that I feel is necessary to keep my mind from being polluted by stuff that can be found in foods.

I bought a bunch of vegetables at the Ideal Market and ran them through my juicer, but then discovered that the resulting delicious vegetable drinks were triggering eczema. That has got to be due to some pesticide or chemical fertilizer; a prime example of how some things ostensibly healthy can actually be just as bad as some other processed stuff. That has to be why a lot of health experts insist that people pay way more for "organic" vegetables.

But, I hesitate to donate 675 milliliters of my blood plasma after not having eaten in more than 3 days; which means that I'm eating a huge burger, fried in avocado oil with kale juice on the night before going to donate; when that might not necessarily be "what the doctor ordered."

It's 10:30 and I'm just going to go out and play the best I can.

As soon as I got home after spending my last dime on the bus fare to the plasma place and started to feel the pressure to go out and make at least that amount; I checked my mailbox and found a letter from the Nielson Ratings people, with 2 crisp one dollar bills in it....

So, I could roll the dice and buy 2 shots of brandy before starting to play. My odds of making at least the 2 bucks back will be increased by the looseness that the alcohol might provide. But, I had better get moving, regardless...

Sleeping With Jordan Peterson (auto-playing on Youtube)

"My insanity is an idiosyncrasy of my genius" -me

He is labelled a sys white man over 50 and a relic of the patriarchal era; when most of the army was made up of men, and most of the politicians -all of the presidents- were men,  and all of the presidents men, ditto.

But, Youtube's algorithm steers me towards his online lectures. If I just let it auto-play, it will always wind up on Gutfeld! through one path or other. It will never go to Rachael Maddow or CNN without me intervening.

This is part of some plan, cooked up by some global oligarch(s) with the aim of separating the population into 2 distinct belief systems that will be, hopefully to them, at odds with each other.

I find that Tucker Carlson makes a lot of sense, but deals with issues that will ultimately not matter much; extremes that will never come to fruition. He points out things that are signs of a dysfunctional society; but things that almost everyone will be outraged over, talk about for a while, and then become distracted from, due to the next "current thing."

I'm thinking of following the lead of my friend Jacob Scardino; and just blocking out most of the political stuff -unsubscribing if that is effective, from Fox and NewsMax and Rachael Maddow (who looks like a lesbian, and so I discount her opinion); and might go so far as discontinuing Ben Shapiro. They point out problems, they suggest solutions, they superimpose what turns out to be a "right" or "left" slant on things, depending upon who they are; but ultimately they denigrate each other; and do it with heavy doses of sarcasm, or outright derision. Maddow comes across kind of like the Saturday Night Live character (played by Pauly Short?) called "the church lady." Rachael even uses a similar: Oh, isn't that special?! tone of voice as the church lady did; when she smears, mostly Donald Trump. The upshot is that it is done using a middle school type dynamic; trying to well emotions.

Russel Brand, Jordan Peterson, "Awaken With JP," and Joe Rogan, along with John Anderson, that Australian guy -from them I will get most of my information; they are my connections to common sense. 

I will save all the time I might otherwise have wasted on listening to political stuff (with the exception of catching Bob Caravajal on 800 AM radio, here in New Orleans. AM radio is beyond censorship, and it is amusing to hear overt anti-vaxxers and such opine over airwaves that are beyond the tentacles of the social media censors). 

I might keep Jimmy Dore on my list.

There are others that I should probably unsubscribe from, if only because I can't think of their complete names right now; how important to me can they be if I can't recall their names?

There are a lot of messed up narratives out there; but I don't need people like that Jesse Waters guy in my living room every morning, getting me all riled up when my focus should be upon becoming the best busker possible. There is where my fortune lies. If Alex in California can make any money at all busking; given that Wendell the flutist has described him as: "A really nice guy, but just awful sounding on that horn" then I suppose that is an indication that busking pays, period, and is where I should pour forth my efforts.

The "Tastes Like Music" site, I find to be very stimulating. They do things like rank the albums by different bands. I first discovered them after they had just done so for the band Yes. There are 4 guys who each submit lists based upon their opinions. All 4 of them ranked "The Ladder," towards the bottom of their lists; and that kind of burned me up, because I think that is my very favorite Yes album, and "Talk," is in my personal top 5, but all of their bottom 5's. And, so I became hooked on their website; good for them!

Vladimir, My Role Model

...he had appreciated all of her from tip to toe: the liveliness of her russet curls (recently trimmed); the radiance of her large slightly vacuous eyes, somehow suggesting translucent gooseberries; her merry, warm complexion; her pink mouth, slightly open so that two large front teeth barely rested on the protuberance of the lower lip; the summery tint of her bare arms with the sleek little foxlike hairs running along the forearms; the indistinct tenderness of her still narrow but already not quite flat chest; the way the folds of her skirt moved; their succinctness and soft concavities; the slenderness and glow of her uncaring legs; the course straps of the skates.

Excuse the above paragraph; I just wanted to type some Vladimir Nabokov; for the same reason I like to play little J.S. Bach pieces on my guitar; because they sound good.

I went and sold my plasma today, so I'm sitting on a pile of about 17 bucks in cash; after having gotten Harold a 3.15 pound bag that will last him about 10 days; a bag of kratom that will last me about half as long, and one hit of crack, that lasted about 45 minutes. I have the ability to get as high as you do when you do something akin to injecting Novocaine directly into the brain (instead of into the nerves of the teeth) and then to shake off the "coming down" aspect of the drug, by maybe doing a tablespoon of kratom and perhaps completing a few rounds of Wim Hof's breathing exercises.

There is always an almost unconscious drive to go out and get more, at that point; a drive that some succumb to, like my old friend Bobby, who would just keep going; all the way to the point of selling his property, to purchase more crack which will not get him nearly as high as he was, but rather will only stave off the downward spiral of mood; that is like the opposite of the high. I am able to alleviate this, and will stop after having spent 5 bucks; and be back to my normal life a few hours later.

When I hear people who have never tried the stuff denigrating the people who are addicted to it at the Bobby level by calling them "crackheads," I always see, behind their words, a sort of inferiority complex in them. The fear that they are no better, and perhaps worse than these "crackheads." For example Alex Carter, on his blog, talks about going through a certain alley with an assault rifle, perhaps, and executing all the drug addicts. I think this is driven by a void at the core of his being that he fears would be filled by the rush that would come if he ever were to try a hit of the stuff. He suspects that he would like it so much, and that it would give him the sense of having conquered his "daddy issues," or whatever it is in him that seems to drive him from one religion to the next; one musical instrument to the next; one job to the next, etc. that he would discover that, lo and behold, he is no better than those crackheads in the alley. 

It would make him like the mascot who discovers that once he is in the costume he becomes a totally different person. Maybe he would dance around in a way that felt liberating; talk to pretty women; maybe horse around with them, etc. imbued with confidence and, well, liberated in some way.

If someone like Alex had ever snorted a line of cocaine in their whole lives, and then had afterward concluded that they were above using that to make them feel brave and confident; and had instead decided to rely upon their own power, and be the bosses of their own lives, type of thing then I would respect them. 

But, those who have never tried a thing, but then denigrate a whole group of others, calling them names, rather than looking for the humanity in them; treating them as individuals, finding common ground with them, etc but thinking that it's easier to just "other" them, and objectify them and throw them in a basket along with "Trumpers," "anti-vaxxers," and "white's" and republicans, and just "zombies," in general; I disrespect.

I suppose I've been just as guilty; back when I was half obsessed with my undefined rage against panhandlers, whom I dubbed "skeezers." At least I realize that I demonized all beggars for the same reason; as a manifestation of a fear that, through something beyond my control, I will some day have to beg someone, somewhere, for something. I hated skeezers because they were like the ghosts of days future; there as harbingers of where I may have been heading. Circumstances would make it so I had to skeeze; and I would feel so ashamed that so, to perish the thought; I just "hated" skeezers.

Someone told me, when I was in my 20's to never try heroin, because in his estimation of me: "You would like it too much." as he saw me as an introverted, day-dreamer type, and I would fall in love with the drug and, I guess, become a hopeless addict in short order.

That was good, well meaning advice from a friend and an addict, who said that he still got "heeby geebies" from just driving through the neighborhood where he used to score his dope. He said that when we were riding through that very neighborhood in Holyoke, Massachusetts. I was bringing him to the clinic where he got his methadone "treatments" every week, or whatever. The clinic was located right in the heart of where all the heroin was sold. Of course it was.

He had asked me if I would sit in his car, which he had to keep running because of a battery issue, and make sure nobody stole it while he was in getting his dose.

Well, I had to see what all the fuss was about; why a lot of my musical idols -Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Jim Carroll; had all been addicted to heroin. So I let my friend Bobby shoot me up one night, just like my heroes. I didn't like the stuff; I realized that I had been blessed with a state of mind that was not far from being high on heroin in my normal waking state. In fact the heroin was a distraction from my normal daydreaming state of mind. And so, that was the last time I ever "did" heroin, about 3 years ago now...

And I am less prone to crap on the heroin addicts and consider them less than human now; there are just people who have never experienced true joy in their lives and for whom the artificial chemical high that takes place in the brain off these drugs is there first encounter with being happy, at the chemical level, and so they become hooked.

That is what I think of when I read on Alex Carter's blog about how he wants to go through an alley with a machine gun and kill all the "crackheads." He wouldn't fare as well as myself, I surmise, should he ever do just one hit of crack out of curiosity -to see what the buzz was all about -he would wind up selling off stuff on e-bay, behind "Ken"s back, and his nightly crack smoking sessions would become his raison d'etre and it would bring to light how he has all along been just as, if not more, spiritually bankrupt than all those "zombies" that he can't escape feeling superior towards. I've seen it a million times...

But, enough about Alex in California....

I just ate a meal of nothing but meat and greens, with some garlic and avocado oil factored in; and I am feeling the universal specificity (meaning that he was just showing us what we all are) of Jesus Christ; after that last supper.

Advice for the Authoritarians - 9 Helpful Suggestions

A Minor Setback

 

So, yesterday i posted something that's title had religious overtones in it, namely "You can't skeeze the Lord" and so when I went to youtube today, I was kind of baffled by how every video suggested to me had to do with subjects related to burning in hell for an eternity, or like the one to the left (if my HTML skills are up to par; or it might be above or below...)

And so I have run afoul of the Youtube algorithm again, for sure because I am back to getting a couple dozen hits on my content, rather than the 200 or so I had started to get right after Elon Musk threatened to expose the algorithm's inner workings, and tip a lot of people like myself off as to why this is "so."

I went out to get apple juice and alkaline water to continue the fast and cleanse that I had purposed in my heart to accomplish, due to having eaten "the wrong thing."

For some reason my bike rode to the Shell station, where I guess I had no choice but to buy a couple shots of brandy; I wouldn't want to piss my bike off, right?

I then went up to the Winn Dixie where I saw about 10 police cars with their lights flashing and was informed at the door that I couldn't go inside because there might be a guy in there who had just shot someone and then had ran into there, ostensibly to hide.

"He's probably not hiding in there, he probably intended to go in there so that police might think he was in there, but was intending to escape out some back door then keep running," I said to the cops out front that weren't letting me in.

"You have to think like a criminal," I said.

"Oh, you think like a criminal, do you, what's your name?" asked one of the cops, the skinny one whom I actually recognized and who in turn should have recognized me as being a busker in the Quarter. Beside him stood a fat one.

He had been kind of joking, I figured.

"I'm a fiction writer, and that's the way I would have depicted the scene," I said.

We then had a discussion, during which I didn't probe them for the specifics of what had happened. It probably won't even be in the news if it doesn't support the far left narrative; i.e. if the shooter wasn't a white guy who shot a goddam nightwatchman (you know what I mean) but the upshot was that I couldn't go in there and get some more apple juice and alkaline water and a can of food for Harold.

I still don't understand what actually went on, but when I was leaving I rode past where there was a car that had apparently crashed into a curb, bending the axle of the front wheels it looked like (I'll bet that will be bugging the guy who got shot, if he lives) and there was a female standing there whom I said something to; thinking she might have been a civilian involved in the fray somehow; but then I noticed a gun and whatever else cops wear, on her belt.

"It must suck being shot," she said.

I told her about being shot in the face a few years ago and how the paintball had just glanced off it; and then I rode off to find cat food elsewhere.

So, I rode off to Walgreen's, where i got some food for Harold out of what I could find on the bare shelves there -I had a thought about just stuffing the thing in my pocket, using a motion like my phone had just rung, but I didn't; I paid 2 bucks for the thing instead; which left me just enough to get a 24 ounce beer and still have enough for bus fare to the plasma place Tuesday.

I don't know why I have soured so much on the idea of making my living busking, lately. I need to be really f*** up on acid or drunk and high on weed to even want to face the public these days. I guess I can blame Youtube; and Mark Zuckerberg for that...

You Can't Skeeze The Lord

Not even on behalf of my addictions, did I go out and play last night. 

As soon as I realized that I was going to "need" a couple shots of brandy and a bowl of weed in order to be in the right mood, I called the whole thing off...

"You're not going into the Quarter?" asked a skinny black lady, whom I passed on my  way to the grocery store, not the Quarter. "It's a beautiful night for it," she added after I had said "no."

It was indeed a good night for it; the weather felt more comfortable than it had inside my apartment, which I have been keeping at about 76 degrees, lately.

The memory of the previous night of heavy drinking and playing with maybe just a bit too much abandon (perhaps "tipping" tourists off too much as to what their tip money would be going towards, in doing so) was still fresh in my mind, and in my bones.

I wasn't even 24 hours removed from eating the whole tray of pecan shortbread cookies, along with the chocolate covered pretzels, and I was headed towards Winn Dixie to get alkaline water and apple juice, to go along with the prune juice I already had at home.

Jordan Peterson mentioned in the video that I posted 2 days ago that, if he ate the wrong thing, it would screw him up for a month.

Where I played before the Lilly Pad

I have had 2 nights, since the cookies, of strange dreams; dreams in which I am trying to do something but being frustrated every step of the way. 

In last night's dream, dreamed between 4 a.m. and noon, I was trying to get out of a building and spent the whole dream looking for staircases -which might wind up leading to a balcony from where I could look down and see where I wanted to go, but was too high up to jump down to- or elevators that someone else would push the up button on as soon as I got in. 

The whole building was like a maze, with hallways dead-ending into cubicles with chairs that would break and collapse if I tried to use them to boost myself up over the wall. At one point I could see an aerial view of the building I was in, on a TV somewhere in the building (I think the building was the subject of a manhunt for me, because I had shot someone earlier in the dream, using a long barrelled pistol that seemed to be made all of wood, rather than just the grip like on some real (non dream) guns.

I woke up from that around 2 p.m., realizing that I had slept 10 hours rather than my usual 8, for the second time in a row, since eating the wrong thing.

I decided to do the Wim Hof breathing exercises even before having coffee, so that I could look forward to a cup throughout the half hour that it takes me to do them.

My lungs were a little bit wheezy, which traditional wisdom would blame on whatever amount of tobacco I had smoked the day before; but that amount; which I have reduced to just a pinch in a pipe every so often, hadn't been making me wheeze before I consumed the whole tray of cookies that are "mucous producing" -a term I first encountered in the "3 Day Fast and Cleanse" book I read in 1987; the upshot of which being that, after the cleanse a person will be able to avoid those high sugar, high carbohydrate foods; from having gained a sense of how quickly they will destroy the feeling of well-being that had come through the hard earned cleansing.

I'm banking on the supposition that Jordan Peterson hadn't discovered his optimal diet at that time in his life when eating the wrong thing would screw him up "for a whole month;" and hoping I can right myself within 3 days, the 2nd of which is today, using the tools at my disposal.

I'm already feeling an intense, gnawing, hunger in my stomach after just a day on alkaline water and juice alone; and it is my body wanting another whole tray of pecan shortbread cookies; the same way that I was intensely craving another whole bacon and chicken ranch stuffed crust pizza a day or two after eating one a couple weeks ago; then swearing I would never do it again...

I blame eating the cookies on being so drunk that I woke up not even remembering having eaten them, but feeling so crappy that I was compelled to look in my trash can for clues, where I saw the empty package, and another piece of the puzzle fell into place.There was also an empty Coors Light can that I still can't explain.

I am very hungry right now, but only have alkaline water and apple juice that I'm allowing myself to touch; this is like "the wall" that marathon runners hit at about the 19 mile point; after the body has burned all of the glycogen, or whatever, that was stored in the liver, or wherever, and begins to switch to burning fat, then eventually, the very muscles that it is relying upon to make it to the finish line. 

They say it's a very painful phase of a marathon; a point that separates "the men from the boys" (if I can use that phrase without getting cancelled; sorry Leah Thompson) and the point when a lot of racers drop out, or drop way back. It's also right about where "heartbreak hill" is situated along the Boston Marathon route; a pretty steep incline of about 800 yards, at the top of which very often arrives a new front-runner.

Powering through the "wall" is said to be the only way to truly experience the "runner's high" which makes sense from the standpoint of pot smoking runners who start to metabolize fat that is laden with some THC from every joint they've smoked in the past month.

The same can be said of the faster who, like myself right now, is being screamed at by the stomach for food; and it's willing to compromise: the can of tuna that you bought for Harold; that would be fine, even without anything to mix it with!

Hopefully within the next few hours I can start burning fat and be high on THC later on...

The truth is that I could budget out my food stamps and never have to leave the apartment; except to get food for Harold; maybe not even that, if I can discover some kind of "people food" that I could get for him using stamps. The tuna can't be relied upon, because of its high sodium content.

I would bet that, if I found a church around here to start going to every week, and after I got to meeting and talking with people; and it became known that my biggest concern, and only real responsibility, is my cat; then cat food might start being provided "in mysterious ways."

I could also find myself giving guitar lessons for money, say, every Wednesday night at the church for a couple hours. I think it's my reluctance to "use" a church in that way which has kept me from going near one, since I moved here.

"You can't skeeze the Lord, son!"

Whaling On The Guitar

To all the children out there, who read this blog and dream of growing up to busk...

You're going to want to avoid drinking too much when you're out there.

I woke up feeling kind of crappy and did 5 rounds of Wim Hof breathing exercises, during which I was only able to hold my breath about 2 minutes each round, down from the 3 minutes and 20 seconds that I have my recording of Wim taking us through the process, edited to.

Only after finishing them and having a cup of coffee, did I remember that I had eaten a whole bag of chocolate covered pretzel and a whole thing of Pecan flavored cookies of some sort. I remembered letting them dissolve some in my mouth somewhat before starting to chew on them, while I rode my bike up Canal Street. I would put the cookie in and then count off 15 seconds, something I have have become adept at doing through the Wim Hof stuff.

After that, I was able to smash the cookie by squeezing it between my tongue and the roof of my mouth, causing it to impact all the right taste buds, where they are located in the mouth. In the case of the pecan cookie sensing ones, they seem to be between the cheek and gum -kind of where major league baseball players always used to put their chewing tobacco- so by smooshing the cookie after letting it dissolve for 15 seconds, it is easy to spread it around the mouth and delight in the flavor of pecan; and get a sugar rush, can't forget that part...

After being awake for an hour and starting to look around the room for evidence...Harold was not in the house; I remembered letting him out when I was on my way out to busk; I remembered him freaking out as I was packing my busking stuff; trying to attack the tiposaurus before it could escape into my backpack; then recoiling in fear from the guitar case, with it's gaping mouth, big enough to swallow any cat...

The neighbor from diagonally across from me, a black Russian kid who looks to be about 20 and owns a German Shepherd, appeared just as I was going out with, I believe, Harold at my feet (who immediately did an about-face at the sight of the owner of the German Shepherd and made it back through the door before it closed behind us) and held out a 5 dollar bill and asked me if I had a bar of soap "Dove: anything..."

I was eager to profit on the sale of any one of the bars of soap that normally accumulate on the bathroom shelves of people in my station in life; through countless visits by charitable groups who show up around holidays with soap seeming to be one of their preferred vehicles for showing unconditional love to us.

"It's so we won't have to smell the stench of any of your residents, when we encounter them while out and about in the neighborhood," they never say.

So, I rifled through my cabinet , kicking myself for not having grabbed all the soap I could have: I've already got about 4 bars of Dove... was my thinking as I walked by the table in the front lobby and saw that some group had come by and laden the table with soap and other things..

I was only able to produce 2 of the travel sized Dove bars; those full sized ones must have gone faster than I thought.

I grabbed one of the squeeze bottles of body wash that I have about a dozen of and offered it, along with the soap, but he didn't want anything that had been "opened," as he put it.

"Well, this just squeezes out, you don't really touch the soap, you know..."

"No, it..." Then he motioned his head toward the entrance of his apartment, which told me that the soap wasn't for him; and was probably for the lady whom he lives with, along with the German Shepherd, whose name is "Smarty." and who has a baby. It might have been to wash the baby.

"Wait, I'm gonna go get 2 dollars," he said, which seemed like a fair price for the Dove. 

He is a kind of radical looking guy with dred-locked hair and who speaks Russian as his first language. That is how I first met him in a nearby park where he was throwing a ball or something and Smarty was retrieving it; while having commands barked to him in Russian by the guy.

I couldn't resist yelling what is probably loosely translated here as "Alright! Good Job!" to Smarty in Russian, which of course drew the attention of my neighbor, diagonally across, who asked me in Russian if I spoke Russian, to which I replied the tired cliche in any language "A little bit." 

Wannabe Spanish speakers will know this as "Pocito!" but having been asked at least a hundred times if I spoke Russian, mostly over the period of the year that I lived with a Russian lady, I was able to say "Nim Noshka."

There is something kind of guarded and suspicious in their demeanor with even the baby kind of fixing its eyes on mine and glaring up at me from the baby holding thing; the times I have passed them in the hallway with it. 

The guy had wanted to get back to throwing the ball to the dog after a brief conversation in Russian, where I got as far as telling him I lived with a Russian lady for about a year; and after that hasn't spoken much when I've seen him around the apartment.

"Yucky"

They own a car, or have had access to one, but it is only in the parking lot about half the time, meaning that one of them is out about that much. I don't blame them because their apartment seems to have just hardwood floors upon which sits a dog dish and water bowl and a small baby holding thing that can be rocked, next to which often sits the young lady rocking the baby in it. No TV or stereo sounds have ever come out of their place; nothing except the occasional loud bark or two; barks which echo as if in a cavernous empty space; without even a TV for any of the sound waves to bounce off of and become broken up some.

But, before getting to the apartment and packing to go busk, I was at Patrick's after having gotten bored and wanting to get out of the house as the sun was setting; and get two cans of Coors Light, the second of which I was just finishing as I got there.

He wanted me to run to the store, which means him handing me 20 dollars and a list  of stuff out of which only the fifth of whiskey will not go on my food stamp card, so I have the option of paying for the milk and bread or eggs and the 2 liter bottle of Coke to go with the whiskey, off my food card and then getting the change from the 20 as cash. It's basically getting cash for food that someone else eats.

Courage provided by Kentucky Dale whiskey...

But, once back at Patrick's, he poured me a glass of that hard to swallow "Kentucky Dale" whiskey, which is about the cheapest available, and gave me a small bud to use as kind of a consolation should the Lilly Pad be unfruitful in other ways, I would at least be able to be enjoying myself the same as I would be if at home, drinking and smoking bud.

I stopped for a can for Harold and grabbed another Coors Light (3 now, plus the glass of Patrick's whiskey) before going back to pack my stuff and sell some soap.

The busking was a lot of fun, but it was like one of those nights when you play for 30 minutes and only have a dollar or two in the tip jar. 

It's kind of like fishing, kids (to get to the point).

Very often those nights will see that one dollar sitting in the jar for an unnerving length of time; and it might even feel like there is, at hand, a test of the fortitude of the busker or to see how much he is playing for the enjoyment; like his devotion to music overshadows any pecuniary issues. Then, at some point, like a school of minnows there might come a group of tourists who throw several one's on top of the single one that has sat there for almost 40 minutes; and sometimes, within the folds of those ones there might be nestled a ten or a twenty (tourists often make sure the large bill isn't on display to any grab and dash minded n'er-do-wells who might come along).

That would be like (bear with me, I'm reading Moby Dick right now) finding a flounder in with a net full of sardines that you got through trolling; or even a red snapper.

The whale, of course, would be the millionaire who can afford to throw you 3 hundred dollar bills, and will, should he sit down and listen for a while and talk and hear stories and enjoy that. To him, it's like a 3 dollar tip. The rest of his life is spent tipping everyone hundred dollar bills -the guy who gets his private jet out of the hanger and taxi's it over to the terminal for him; maybe checks the tire pressure while waiting for the guy's luggage to be loaded on, type of thing. That's the whale.

However, last night, none of the above occurred and I left with just a hand full of one dollar bills; and have foggy memories of what happened after that; I scooped a cup of beer off the top of a trash receptacle in front of a hotel that told the story of someone having bought it at the bar to drink out front while waiting for an Uber to arrive, which did before even a few sips had been taken off it; then the person opted to just leave it sitting there rather than try not to spill it in a moving vehicle being driven by a foreigner. Who knows, maybe he/she was as drunk as I was getting.

Another shot of brandy at the Unique Store and I found myself craving something sweet. And that's what led to me riding the bike down Canal Street, letting pecan cookies dissolve in my mouth some before chewing them.

And most likely relates to why I could only hold my breath for a little over 2 minutes instead of 3 and a half, upon waking around 1:30 in the afternoon, today; Saturday.

Jordan's Diet

I actually spent about an hour extracting this sequence from a 2 hour plus video; mostly so I could send it to my friend Jacob through a private message; but I guess he can watch it here.

I have started to eat only meat and kale the past couple days; no great noticeable change in my overall health yet, but...

The diet I ate while homeless for about 12 years was fish done on the grill on tin foil with olive oil, half baked, half fried...and broccoli, so Jordan and I came to the same diet from different directions. I had almost perfect health the whole time. I added 3/4 bottle of red wine to the meal each night.

For years, I was waking up with an Amp energy drink, but stopped doing that about 5 years ago. It took about 6 months, but I noticed an improvement at an almost imperceptible level; I was eliminating high fructose corn syrup from my diet by doing that...

What It’s Like Living in California Now

LOL! Alex Carter rides by on his bike at 6:29 with some crap he found in a dumpster on the front rack of the thing. What are the odds of that happening?!

I Was WRONG About Abortion! - Why I Changed My Mind

Google will probably shadow ban this blog again because of this; "they" don't want the brainwashed lemmings that they have cordoned off into the "other" echo chamber to even have the chance to listen to this guy; but he has earned a spot on this blog. Most of his stuff is hilarious; though this is about as serious as I have ever seen him...

In order to foment the culture war designed to distract the masses from any important issues pertaining to the agendas of global elitists; who might think they should be the ones running the planet; only about half the population will even be made aware of videos like this. Try searching for this guy if you voted for Biden, and see how you can't find it, type of thing. Google knows who you voted for, don't kid yourself, they probably made you vote that way, through the power of Big Tech...

Siamese Twins Caught Making Out With Self

 

his morning, I woke up around 7:30 with a stiff back, and having had a series of tumultuous dreams, in which I was trying to get somewhere but ran into obstacles every step of the way.

Posthumous chart-topper, Chris Cornell

I had eaten about a pound of chicken liver the day before, thinking that I was boosting my iron levels, all the while suspecting that the low "iron" level that the Octapharma place had purportedly measured had been fabricated by the girl who was doing my pre-donation screening.

I had shown up about 15 minutes before the place was to close; and was the only one in line, and the whole staff would have been able to go home in 15 minutes, if it wasn't for me.

"Your iron is low, we're going to have to defer you..." said the young African American who often wears a Tulane University shirt. It was most likely due to some degree from that school that she was qualified to work in the rewarding field of "plasmapheresis."

After I had asked: "Are you serious?" and then told her that I hadn't even brought enough money with me to take the bus back over the river, producing the 47 cents from my back pocket to illustrate the point, she went through the motions of re-measuring the iron level in my blood, before sheepishly telling me that I could "go back there" and donate my plasma.

It usually only takes about 25 minutes for me to fill the jar with plasma, but mostly due to the staff's attempt to speed up the process, it wound up taking me about an hour. Instead of letting the machine course through its cycles normally, the technician was manually tinkering with it. 

I think she was trying to override the process by which the blood is returned to the body, so that instead of taking a small amount, separating the platelets out, then returning the rest, she was trying to get it to take enough out of me so that the required amount of platelets could be extracted in one go, rather than having the machine pause, the way a washing machine sometimes does in between the washing and rinsing cycles; sometimes the machine will sit there a couple minutes after draining, before it starts to refill again, type of thing. The result was that something that has usually taken 25 minutes had the staff there almost an hour past closing time. There is a lesson to be learned there...

So, here I was, eating a lot of liver, probably behind the faulty assumption that my levels of iron had indeed been low, 5 days ago; and then enduring poor quality sleep, degraded by disturbing dreams; and waking up thinking of hanging myself.

I then wondered if there was a parallel between this and the hours of Chris Cornell songs that I had listened to the day before, while eating liver.

Cornell hung himself about an hour after playing a concert for thousands of adoring fans. I hardly knew who the guy was, before hearing the few songs that got played on FM radio in the 90's.

But I had heard his name mentioned enough over the years, to want to check out his Wiki page. That made me want to hear a bunch of his music. If someone's Wiki page doesn't make you curious enough to do so, then it is either not a very well composed Wiki page, or his stuff really isn't noteworthy. Hell, I even listened to some Sex Pistols songs after being blown by the random cyber-winds to the page devoted to Sid Vicious. It might have been because of an interview of Brian May of the band Queen, where Brian mentioned how much of a jerk Mr. Vicious had been the one time he (Sid) walked into the studio control room where the Queen members were mixing and sarcastically asked Freddie Mercury: "Have you managed to bring opera to the masses yet?" alluding to a published quote that Freddie had made to Rolling Stone magazine, or something.

The Chris Cornell music was more haunting than catchy in the Radiohead sense, and I woke up depressed and realizing that the Sacred Heart Apartments are all bereft of any convenient fixtures that could facilitate a resident hanging himself. I had even had to buy my own shower curtain rod after moving in.

Cornell had written songs in tribute to friends he had, who had hung themselves, and one of his better friends had hung himself after a couple months of mourning Cornell's own hanging. There was just a lot of hanging going on in that circle of acquaintances, I would say...
But, me waking up depressed after a day of listening to a lot of Sound Garden and Audioslave and solo Cornell work; made me wonder if there is a connection; if depression can be spread through music, type of thing....

Louisiana Mother Suffocates Infant Child After Learning it's Father Voted For Trump; Progressive D.A. Refuses To Prosecute

 

The 14 Dollar Chair

Sunday night was magical.

After failing to find a milk crate to sit on, and immediately upon deciding to maintain a happy and grateful outlook, despite the fact; I looked across the street from the Lilly Pad and espied the most magnificent turquoise colored upholstered chair that I have ever laid eyes upon.

The downside of using the chair was that I didn't do so well in tips; and I think that is because I gave the appearance of someone who might live in the house behind me and might have dragged the chair outside just to play for fun, or to get out of the house, type of thing.

Then, just as soon as I had decided to take a break and go get a shot of liquor, but then had changed my mind, a person came along and gave me an unopened 5th of Crown Royal "apple flavored" whiskey.

That was Saturday night, and Sunday was kind of a blur....

 

"Bad News"

I remember as a kid growing up, my father admonishing me not to hang around with certain kids in the neighborhood; attaching such labels as "trouble," or "bad news" to the kids.

In other news; I am back to getting a couple hundred hits per post; thank you, Elon Musk, for taking Big Tech to task over their shadow banning of bloggers like myself.

I remember feeling slightly offended at the idea that any kids out there could have any power over me that could be used to corrupt me. If I was hanging out with David Saunders, it was probably because I already wanted to shoplift a Playboy magazine from the drug store (by paying a few cents for a daily newspaper, with the magazine hidden between its pages) and then flip through its pages while sipping on some bourbon pilfered from one of Mr. Saunder's bottles of it. For a kid with those intentions, David Saunders was good news.

Fast forward to now, and I've got JR knocking at my door telling me that I can walk to the store with him and he will buy me liquor or cigarettes out of the money he just got 2 days ago in his disability check.

I can be bright and energetic and busking tonight, using only a glass of kratom for energy; or I can be sloppy drunk and slurring my words and my musical notes, depending upon whether or not I take him up on his offer. His typical plan would be to expect me to hang out and jam with him on the same 3 chords while he plies me with more alcohol and discourages me from going out the busk. He can buy me whatever I want; so why go out there into that chaotic scene? type of thing...

The result is that I want to avoid him; but I want to avoid him by hopping on my bike and going to buy my own liquor. It's as if his alcoholism is contagious.

I think JR might be bad news...