Feed That Kitty

Somehow I think falling asleep with Jordan Peterson lecturing on "the psychological significance of biblical stories (?)" or whatever his series is called, is a good thing.

I woke up and shut the browser down; as Youtube had finally paused Jordan after about 5 hours, in order to ask me if I still wanted to continue watching; and that screen hung there. I get unlimited data through my government phone, with the only trade off being that I am being mined for all kinds of data and, somewhere, I am most likely on several watch lists; as the algorithms aren't sophisticated enough to delineate sarcasm, and comments I have made, such as "The best thing to come out of World War II was that the U.S. got the atomic bomb; so now we can feel safe..."

I got up at 4 in the afternoon and muttered a mild oath against my slothfulness in having stayed up watching videos, culminating in the Jordan Peterson biblical one that I eventually fell asleep to; probably right around daybreak.

But, I decided not to do what I have fallen into the habit of, which would be to begin my day by checking the "news" on Youtube.

I bagged up my acoustic guitar and started walking towards the Winn Dixie, while the sun was still pretty high in the sky.

A stop at my mailbox produced a one dollar bill inside another Nielson Ratings envelope, with a note thanking me for participating in the "radio" study that I'm a part of now. I guess finding someone with an actual radio is like a needle in a haystack, unless new cars still come with them installed in the dash. I have my doubts about that; I would imagine that they come with "web enabled" units through which you could listen to the local radio stations, getting the signal through some other way than through AM or FM signals -gigabyte frequencies that don't fade when you go through tunnels or fade out if you stray more than 50 miles from town, type of thing.

So, the Nielson people have been peppering me with correspondences, all of which having either one or two crisp one dollar bills right in the envelope along with the survey; and sometimes a crisp 5 dollar bill for having completed and mailed back the thing.

So, I grabbed the one dollar bill, and continued on my way, thinking that I wouldn't have to steal a can of food for Harold, should I not be able to find someone who would pay for one in exchange of me getting them a food item off my EBT card.

I got to the lobby, where a lady in a wheelchair who lives here named Janice promptly asked me if I had a dollar "for a cold drink out of the machine.."

I see her all the time, sitting in her chair with a liter bottle of vodka in her lap, smiling in her vodka haze but never offering me a gulp of the magic elixir.

I didn't give her the only dollar I had on me; though the Lords of Karma were telling me that if I gave her all of my money -her a pathetic whatever she is- I would be rewarded ten times over.

I walked all the way to the Winn Dixie instead.

There I saw a lady when I was in the produce section who had a list on her that looked like it had been printed out that had the heading "Things We Are Out Of," on it.

I just gave a cursory glance to her and her list.

But then I saw her in the cat food aisle grabbing a 24 pack of food, and after I ran into her a third time in another aisle, I asked her if I could buy her something off my food card in exchange for a can of cat food, and she gave me 2 bucks.

Then, when I was back in the cat food aisle, trying to decide if I wanted to treat Harold to a single delicious can or get him a couple of the regular ones, the lady appeared again and handed me a 5 dollar bill, saying "Feed that kitty."

It still hadn't dawned upon me that the 5 dollars to "feed that kitty" should have been telling me to use it for a street car ride into the Quarter, so I could start making enough money to feed Harold, until I went outside the store and found a quarter on the ground, which made me think of that street car. I was then glad that I hadn't spent the whole amount on a few cans of food when I now had an easy ride to the Lilly Pad where I can make ample money to feed the critter.

It kind of went on and on, but I don't feel like writing it all out here. I went and got some alcohol, then ran into the same people at the Holy Ground whom I had been with the night that I thought my phone had been stolen

I told them the embarrassing detail that I had had my phone on me the whole time, but it had been in a pocket of my guitar case where a cassette tape had been earlier, and so, when I had patted it down looking for the phone, I had assumed that I was feeling the same cassette instead of my phone. And when someone else had dialed my number, the phone hadn't rung because I had just used the guitar tuner app, which disables incoming calls (so I guess if you are on stage tuning your instrument a phone call won't come in over your amplifier).

It turned out that they, once again requested that I play a Creedence Clearwater Revival song, which I did a little better this time, and I listened to a couple of them complaining about their houses having been invaded by government agents, the one because he had bought a couple silencers for his guns; and the other because he had bought 2 guns within a one week span of time...

"I love Donald J. Trump," I told them, pursuant to their concerns about the fascist Biden regime.

Then I went back home with enough money on me to take the trolley into the Quarter and play, in order to feed Harold, and basically to get back into the routine of it. What would the world be like without me? It would be a lot like it has been the past month, I would have to say.