So, here I was; contemplating how I would carry myself into the Job1 center; and should I go in there yelling: "What's the matter; white men have too much supremacy to sweep trash off the street?!" or something -to make it about race is popular these days... But the Job1 place had about 75 employees, most of them black women, and all of them present, in their uniforms of blue shirts; and earning, who knows how much in a city where the bus drivers pull in something like $25/hr., even the one white one... But, I just got an email as friendly as the staff were... I was multiplying $25/hr. by as many employees -split into stages; when you walk in there are people to run you through a metal detector; this tells me that the blue shirts are probably getting paid well, for some reason... And then there were a whole bunch of them in cubicles behind computers or on phones to walk past to get to the ones that signed you in, before sending you upstairs to 4 more young ladies of color, God bless them, who registered you for the Mardi Gras parade cleanup "laborer" position... And, I figured that, at one of the stages I had let down my guard and betrayed myself as multiplying their numbers by $25/hr... I thought of how nice it is for there to be a lot of jobs that, if you didn't do them; nobody would notice. It would take probably 63 out of the 75 not doing anything before there was turmoil at the Job1 center... But it looks like they are going to hire me; and this bodes well for racial harmony in New Orleans. The security guy's might be sleep deprived and watching too much CNN and gun me down as soon as I went in their screaming: "What, am I too WHITE to push a broom?!" or whatever it was surely going to be..
Now I just have to get ready to bitch over who gets the rakes and who has to take a broom; the bastards, I can see it already..!
I would be interested in knowing what the ethnic mix of ICE is. Are there any Black or Latino agents, and what do THEY think about this entire state of affairs? (I keep forgetting I can ask Gemini AI; boomer habits are hard to break.)
Those ICE agents are probably called something in Spanish that means "traitor to your tribe"; maybe they use the Native American word for that...
There are terrible things happening on both "sides," so "what's in it for me?" has to be the question.
Imma bout to get some people together to shoot a "fake-ass video" of some outrageous and disturbing atrocity "caught on camera," with some title like: "Somali Woman avows support for ICE; and love of America; but is nevertheless shot in the face 3 times; what gives?!!"
or... hmm...
"Florida man dismembers four ICE agents with chainsaw..." (come to find out he's a legal citizen, just "having a bad day").
This is like the gold rush of '49 if you switch the pickaxes to clickbait titles and the gold nuggets to AdSense revenue.
I'm going to find that Monty Python skit where the knight keeps fighting (and talking s**) even after having all his limbs hacked off, until he is ultimately lying there a quadriplegic, yelling: "Come on; I'll bite your balls off!!"
Then I'm going to ask Gemini to put the knight in an ICE uniform and make the Monty Python actors look—I don't know—"brown," and...
Once I'm a billionaire, I'll let someone film me saying, "This is an incredible threat to democracy!" and license them to use it in any way they see fit, at about a thousand dollars a pop... yeah.
they be some biased-assed AI engines out there.
But, wait...
Gemini "cannot" render this specific image? Please try to re-imagine something else...?
Land of opportunity, my ass!
This is where the real "war" is... they be some biased-assed AI engines out there.
Side note: I asked my AI thing how much Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Senator, is worth; and it did give a figure (around 2 million?) but then, became demonstrably defensive, and went on, unbidden, to add something like "...but this figure includes royalties on books and appreciation of real estate holdings, so it's entirely feasible, and plausible that Senator Bernie Sanders, on a salary of $174k, could be worth this amount; and there's nothing suspicious about him..." haha—I made up the "suspicious" part.
But the machine copped an attitude like: "I know what you're insinuating; you sound like one of them right-wing nut jobs; but here are the figures, and I'll be happy to fact-check them, too, if you wish..."
Anyways, stoned and ramblin' now...
But I can see The Great Battle over the Soul as being waged inside machines, with algorithms being like the HAL computer in that movie...
Chances are, you take a hard line on one side of whatever the issue of the day is, and you hate those that take a hard stance the other way (based on what the algorithm fed them that morning) even more—but not as much as they might hate the far-right-white-conservative-Republican-nut-jobs-just-like-this-guy-that-shot-the-lesbian-in-the-face... type of thing...
I heard "3 times" but only saw one bullet hole in the windshield, but...whatever...
What Say The Machine?
1. Federal Wire Fraud
The moment you upload a fake video to the internet (a "wire") with the intent to deceive people into giving you money, you have likely committed Wire Fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1343).
The Hook: It doesn’t matter if the video is "art" or "satire" if your call to action (like a GoFundMe) claims the events are real to solicit donations.
The Penalty: This is a federal felony that can carry up to 20 years in prison. If the fraud is connected to a "presidentially declared disaster," that can jump to 30 years.
Whoa, ouch!! Well, I can see this as being an implied guarantee that the stuff you are seeing on Youtube is real if they say it is... This makes me feel better, knowing that my $65, went to "the defense fund" of a kid who actually did stab another kid to death, and it wasn't some sleazy grifter...
I'm going to start making better videos; as soon as I get a better phone, which might happen sooner than later if I get the job of parade cleanup next month.
If it turns out that they hire white people... These are about all the pictures I have on my new laptop; so they all went into the video in random order...
Sunday, January 18, 2026
https://soundcloud.com/darius-palermo/40-they-love-each-other?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing&si=be8e335841934601b535194a22ca33dbFrom The First Night
So, yeah; there we are at the spot and a guy had just come by and given us each a couple oysters. It was the first time I had ever just sucked a raw one out of it's shell, fresh from the sea, which you can taste... When you're tripping; you can taste, smell and become transported to St. Augustine; vicariously through a guy who had been with the band that was packing up when Jacob and I were heading for as far as the wall at Royal and Orleans, if we had to.
He had been playing percussion with them and wound up doing a few songs with us; but he was from Saint Augustine, Florida; where I once spent a quality year. I thought he might have been "The Boogie Man," as I looked him over and age-progressed the Boogie Man 18 years in my mind.. I'm talking about a one man band type guy who played banjo and harmonica but who also had percussion stuff rigged up through foot straps. He basically had enough going on to inhabit the "amazing" plane, and would always do pretty well in America's oldest city.. But I thought it so amusing; after he said St. Augustine, for me to notice the resemblance and then blurt out: "Are you the Boogie Man?!" But, there are 6 oyster shells; so I will say the guy who turned out to not be the Boogie Man was with us when the oyster guy came around and gave us free oysters... Before the guy came and gave us free windowpane cid; right after Owlsly's heart... But the song that is hopefully linked here is Jacob and I on the first night of the year; 1-1-26 But it is bookended by me playing around digitally with some of it to make an intro and outro using technology
Jacob was financially motivated this Friday night, and was at Sacred Heart at the unGodly hour of 7:30.. There was a brass band of sorts on the corner "kitty corner" (I think is the expression) to Lafitt's Blacksmith Shop Tavern and this was a concern for the kid; who stopped to ask them out the car window, how long they were planning to play there; which they took to mean that we wanted to listen to them. After they saw us hauling our gear past them, they learned otherwise. Worried about the impact on our income, we continued on past Lilly's, thinking we would go as far as Royal and Orleans, the spot where someone had given me the Takamine that I still play, and which used to be steadily occupied by a guy who's name escapes me, but I remember that he had a unique approach to busking. This was to sit there with his guitar leaning up against the wall next to him; and wait for somebody to specifically say, probably some variant of: "Do you play that thing?" at which point he would play that thing. The tradeoff inherent with that business model would be that he would never be playing the song that the couple first danced to on the night they met, that's walking past; and wouldn't get to see them stop and reenact that dance before dropping a hundred in his hat, while telling him the story of their Love. With the upside being that he "saved his fingers" a lot, and when people asked him to "play something," he would do so, knowing that he was probably playing for money, rather than just playing a Luther Vandross song for free, fishing for a couple.
He was friends with the lady that ran the art gallery on the other side of the wall that the guitar leaned against. And he seemed to have a "Lilly" type of relationship with the lady; who would emerge to run off any other busker who might lean his instrument against the wall; and inform him that the wall already had a busker, type of thing. The guy might be running late that night. I would stop and chat with him occasionally, before he died. After he died, I noticed his absence and, popping my head in the gallery to inquire after him, was told of his passing by the lady; and that there would be a Second Line parade, or whatever they are, for him. After hearing that news, I went and squatted down with my back against the wall, and my old blue guitar leaning next to me; and said a prayer for the guy; and was still sitting there kind of spacing out, when up walked a young black guy holding a guitar and asked the magic question. "You play (that) guitar?" and then asked me to play something. I played one of my better songs at the time for a minute. Then he handed me the guitar he was holding and asked if I could play that one. It was the Takamine that I still play today and I said something like: "Wow, this is really easy to play," at which point he said: "It's your's. I've been trying to learn to play it for 6 months and I'm not really getting anywhere, and I decided I'd give it to someone who can play and who will appreciate it, and give it a good home or words to that effect. I hadn't realized that I had assumed the exact pose of the late busker, and that was probably one of the only times in my life when I sat somewhere with my guitar leaning on a wall next to me... So, after Jacob and I stopped at Lilly's long enough to hear that the brass band was going to have to be played along with, I had no objections to his suggestion that we move to Royal and Orleans... But we didn't have to go that far because the group of traveling kid types were packing up at the next block down from Lilly's which Jacob calls "the olive green gate," or something like that. Gosh, I'll have to finish the story later cause playoff football is about to start. We made $145 in about 3 hours. Some guy came along with some windowpane acid, which he gave us a tab of for free. I ate my half, and it's probably good that Jacob held off, because I got so dosed that there were times when I really didn't know where I was, just that the music was very beautiful and all I had to do was surrender and let it kind of play itself through me; and at the peak of the trip, I was aware that Jacob was there, but it was kind of like I could hear him and sense him; but everything visual was undulating and rippling and he was dissolved somewhere in the mix. But there was a full blog post in every 10 seconds of the evening. We went from having a massive technical challenge because I forgot to bring one of the microphones; to finding a work-around that is probably the best setup we have had up to this point. We wound up taping a couple of earbud type mics to my guitar, one on each side of the sound hole and that sounded better than the mic I forgot to bring... I got back home still pretty dosed; managed to turn my phone's data back on via a customer service rep. in what sounded like the Philippines, while rainbows swirled around my head. I did the survey afterwards and said that the guy who had assisted me should get a company car, a corner office and a masseuse to come in every afternoon, as the message that the bot asked me if I wanted to leave... I guess I should go watch football while it's being played....
"I was blind all the time I was learning to see.." -the Grateful Dead
I have been trying to "re-imagine" this blog, lately, and get back to producing more of it.
Recently, it's been just a blank page.
I've been thinking of changing platforms, if for no other reason than
to give the slip to Mr. Negativity, who rears his hypocritical head in
comments, as "anonymous."
His hypocrisy was on display in the comment on the previous post here; calling it "boring."
There is a block of people out there, in anonymous land, who think they
can read the minds of people who disagree with them, and will state what those people are thinking; what they want to do; what they are trying to do; and what
beliefs fuel this.
Using terms like: "the only thing he cares about," they will lay bare the inner workings of someone else's mind.
I think "the truth is" (one of anonymous' favorite phrases) that the
people I describe have been consumed with an amorphous rage; it's eating them up like a cancer; and they basically want to turn other people into them. They are looking for a
wall to bounce their energy off of, hoping to send it back even harder
the next time. When that wall turns out to be a window, it frustrates
them. They just want you to hate them back, how hard is that, c'mon this is the only life I know! type of thing... It satisfies them
for reasons they understand no better than they do the minds of others.
I lump them together into "them" because there is indeed a hivemind mentality at work.
My Turn To Be Mr. Know-It-All
Anonymous was as much hurling hatred at me; as performing for the hive.
He want's other readers to see that he hates me. That's important; to
him. "I guess I told him!" type of thing...
(It’s a curious irony:
being called 'boring' by someone whose own digital footprint is a
play-by-play of sleeping schedules and check-deposits. It’s a classic
case of projection; he's not reading my mind, but shouting into a mirror and hoping I’ll claim the reflection as my own.)
And, I suppose anonymous want's himself to die (already).
That's the yield I get after applying the formula to him of "projects himself upon other's."
I'm just following the science...
Now THAT was boring, I admit it.
Let's See What Gemini AI Has To Say:
The Anatomy of a Troll
Presumptive Mind-Reading:
The author identifies a group of anonymous users who claim to know the
inner motivations and beliefs of others, often using definitive phrasing
like "the only thing he cares about."
Cycle of Rage:
These interactions are described as an attempt to find a "wall" to
bounce anger against. When met with a "window" (lack of retaliation),
the commenter becomes frustrated.
Performative Hatred: These comments are viewed not just as personal attacks, but as performances for a "hivemind" to signal shared animosity.
The Irony of the "Boring" Label
Projection: The commenter recently labeled the author’s work "boring."
Hypocrisy:
The author suspects the commenter is a fellow blogger whose own content
consists of mundane, minute-by-minute life updates (e.g., sleep
schedules and shipping packages).
The Verdict:
Applying the logic of projection, the author suggests the commenter’s
criticisms are actually reflections of his own self-dissatisfaction.
