Should I Choose To Grab The Lower Benefit Amount And Run...

This reluctance to go out to busk -just to see what comes of it, because 9 dollars is better than nothing, plus, what else is there to do on a Tuesday evening?- is approaching the status of a crisis.

The voice of reason in my head is telling me to get a job somewhere if, for whatever reason, I keep finding excuses for not going out...

Today's excuse, besides waking up at 3 in the afternoon, still feeling tired because of all the food I ate before I went to sleep, was that I got a call from Dorothy at the front desk.

I almost didn't answer, thinking it was a drunken and stoned Jr. who was going to say "Let's jam, bring your six string up here; I've got vodka and weed, and I'm about to make some shrimp gumbo!" or something similar, and who was then going to try to shoot down every excuse I came up with, for not wanting to.

The reality is that, only after a few shots of vodka and a couple hits of weed, am I ever in the mood to jam with Jr. That is always the state of mind he is in when he is overcome with an urge to jam (on the 2 chords that he knows).

I almost see Jr. as a living, breathing warning to me of what I might become if I basically scrap all my higher goals in life and decide, in less than 2 years, to just start getting a $660 Social Security check each month, and divide the sum into 30 cheap fifths of vodka -one per day, and maybe a 40 dollar sack of weed, that I would have to stretch out, so as to be able to become sufficiently dopey every morning.

Jr. has apparently no long-term memory. Every time I have ever let him in my place, he has pretty much said the same thing, verbatim. He sees the Casio keyboard and then ejaculates: "Oh, you have a keyboard?!" He then tells me about the Yamaha keyboard that was given to him, and how it is in storage, and how it has a button on it that you can press and the thing will play itself, and how he is going to get it out of storage one day. The problem is that, he keeps living the same day over and over like that movie with Drew Barrymore (I think) where her character has some form of amnesia and the male lead (Adam Sandler?) has to meet her every morning "for the first time," ask her out, etc. and, by the end of the day, they are lovers; but she wakes up the next morning not remembering any of it.

I think the character starts to realize that if he says the same exact thing to her each morning, she will respond the same exact way; and so their days go according to a script. I'm not sure how the script writers dealt with contingencies like: what if there is a violent thunderstorm one morning and his usual "Let's go watch the sun rise..." line, or whatever becomes impractical, but...

Jr. is the same way. I could knock on his door and repeat certain lines, and would be invited in to drink vodka and smoke weed. One of which would be to ask him if he had a can of tuna, "because I'm out of cat food," to which he would tell me that he did have a few extra cans, and where he got them from (Carlos; "He doesn't like tuna, so I trade him that nasty cheese they give us...etc.") and then I would have to sit on his couch and grab one of his guitars, while he grabbed his other one, and we would jam away on the 2 chords, interrupted by him offering me a shot of vodka, to be followed by another one, 20 minutes or so later, for as long as I chose to keep him company. My escape route would be to bring up the fact that "My cat was meowing for food, I'd better go and give him that tuna."

Still, he might offer to come with me, so we could feed the cat together, then return to jam on A minor to E major 7 some more.

I wonder if some of the fallout, about which I've been warned by other residents, who have said that he is "trouble," and that things will just about fall out of the sky and hit you on the head just because you are around the guy, extends to the way, he will, as a last resort it seems, say that he is feeling lonely, and only in need of a friend; and how that can make me feel like a heel, for going off and doing my own thing. I had been racked with guilt a bit as the words "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that, you do unto me," of Jesus crossed my mind, after leaving Jr. to his loneliness.

I rationalize it by concluding that, it is the daily vodka consumption that is altering the biochemistry of his brain, leading to his feeling "lonely" a lot of the time...

But, it wasn't Jr. calling, it was Dorothy at the front desk telling me that Heather (who works for Sacred Heart in some capacity) had acquired a box full of cat food and that I was welcome to go to the lobby with a bag and take some of it for Harold. It was a box with about 100 cans of Fancy Feast, all in the Turkey and Giblets flavor in "pate" style.

I took about half of them, knowing that there is one other resident who has 4 cats. If she doesn't want the other cans after a few days have gone by, I will be able to take them. Harold isn't a big fan of "pate" style food, but at least it wasn't any of the "grilled" varieties of Fancy Feast, which he absolutely turns his whole body away from when presented with it.

Not having food for Harold would have had me headed for the Lilly Pad with the guitar on my back. But, now I have about 50 cans, and the freedom to do this instead. I have to consider that, on a night when I hardly make anything, I'm still putting wear on the strings of the guitar, and I don't want to be in the position where I'm going out on a busy Friday night and playing crappy sounding strings for a lot of people, knowing that the five dollar bills they throw might have been 20's if I had sounded just a bit better...

Plus, there is a lawlessness that is becoming more prevalent everywhere, stoked by whoever has control of the "mainstream" media; perhaps because turning the streets of the U.S. into a violent war zone is part of the agenda of bringing about The Great Reset. And, this adds to the number of gullible screen starers who are being fed whatever the propaganda is that is keeping them scrolling and clicking on more of it; and there is a palpable increase lately in the intensity of the hateful stares that the "white oppressor" in their minds, is getting, lately, just for being out there.

The Chinese, with their Tik Tok, and their strangle-hold on greedy corporations willing to push an anti-American narrative designed to corrupt the culture of our country, seem to be succeeding.

You had people like Alex Carter, talking about pushing people out of the cargo hatches of airliners, should they have been determined to be not vaccinated (before it became common knowledge that the jabs did practically nothing in the way of preventing anything -oops, sorry people pushed out of planes) and now talking about sending Trump supporters to a firing squad, based upon his hook, line and sinker swallowing of half of the double sided narrative, that was created with the purpose of dividing the citizenry into two warring factions, to distract from the fact that that is only about The Great Reset. 

He talks about "spotty" Internet out there in Silicon Valley, without it ever occurring to him that this is a glitch due to information is being throttled; and that he is only being shown the half of all traffic that the algorithm deems suitable to him; in order to keep his fervor for sending Trump supporting "Nazi's" to firing squads at a peak. He just wants to be popular and well liked, and to "fit in" and be appreciated; and, I guess will give a fist pump to The Current Thing for a pat on the back.

Too bad Youtube most likely won't send to his "feed" stuff like Jordan Peterson or John Anderson, and probably even throttles Ben Shapiro (who might talk too fast and use words too big for Alex, anyways). Who could deny that Tucker Carlson is a straight shooter, not bought off by the Murdoch's? Not to hard to "fact check" him, er, unless the Internet is that "spotty."

That content most likely never makes it to his "smart" phone. The algorithm of Google is hard at work. That's why we have a security guard up front at Sacred Heart who has resumed yelling: "Where's your mask?!" to whomever appears in the lobby without one. He sits there for 10 hours a day, staring at his phone. One time I asked him if he ever watches Tucker Carlson. The way he said "No!" spoke volumes. It was as if I asked him if he believed in unicorns.

At one time I would have thought someone like Carter would have the ability to step outside himself and look at the big picture. But, as a California version of our mask Nazi security guard, he turns out to be someone who desires to push people out of planes or shoot them; due to his having become intoxicated on the Kool Aid that the algorithm is feeding him, being blind to the theater that "politics" has become. 

If most of it isn't mere sensationalism, and click bait, and if most people don't know that, then why was there not even one attempt made on the life of the dreaded, hated, evil fascist orange man during his 4 years in office? It seems like all that pillow punching and TV kicking would have spilled out into the real world. Oh, but there were plenty of screens poked and "send" buttons targeted!

A Gavin Newsome vs. Ron Desantis (or Trump) contest will truly be a sanity check of the United States.

I'm not ruling out moving to Italy or somewhere, after the November '24 election; because I would be just getting my first Social Security check around that time, should I choose to grab the lower benefit amount and run...

  

Friday To Monday

I'm so fortunate to be in tonight with a gallon of grape juice and another of alkaline water, and to be listening to Tchaikovsky, blaring from the turntable in the other room.

The Captain wired in; he had water coming in...

The two days of fasting, which will have to be logged under the "intermittent" category; had improved my health to the point that, Friday night, after Jacob showed up and we had recorded a bit of us jamming; I had a kratom tea, and one to take with me to the Lilly Pad, where we played pretty well, but there is the lack of tourists out there that occurs every July and August each year, now that I think of it. I went to Baton Rouge to busk in August one year and to Mobile another summer. Those places aren't used to seeing buskers and so the tips can be very good because of the novelty of there being someone playing somewhere in their downtown areas.

In Baton Rouge, there seemed to be just enough LSU students, I guess taking summer courses, or whatever, to keep a pretty active 3 block stretch of clubs and bars and restaurants going.

After we got back early Saturday morning, I succumbed to some Wheat Bran cereal with peanut butter and cocoa and cinnamon mixed in, with alkaline water. It was the chocolate that I was craving; and I couldn't think of any better way of delivering that, since I only have unsweetened cocoa, and don't keep any sugar in the place, unless it is the sugar in Wheat Bran cereal...

But, after having eaten yesterday (Sunday) some ground beef, fried with mushrooms, with steamed greens, and then had followed that a few hours later with more cereal with peanut butter, today is a new day.

And the good ship and crew were in peril...

In the "looking a gift horse in the mouth," category, the water began as a small puddle that I noticed along a certain floorboard.

Over the course of the next couple weeks the puddle encroached upon almost the entire carpet in the bedroom.

I'm not one to complain about every little thing, because there are other residents that keep the maintenance people busy by doing so, but I informed Dorothy, up front of the situation on Friday.

I had my friend Jacob coming over for the weekend and the water meant that he would have to wear boots just to go to the bathroom..

This morning, I was up at about 3 in the afternoon and went up front to reiterate the complaint, because half the time, someone from maintenance never shows up.

My rent comes directly from somewhere to the Sacred Heart people, so I don't have that weapon in my arsenal -threatening to withhold rent until they remedy a situation. I've never gone as far as finding out where my rent comes from, exactly, in the 8 years that I've been here. I might do that.

The water that is gradually flooding the whole rug is not clean water. There were maggots wiggling around in one particular spot, and it appears that my carpet is going to be a fertile ground for mold to grow.

I just started squeegy-ing water off the thing, and put a fan blowing on it.

There was some overweight young black lady (who had a damned MASK on her face -that told me who she "is") who insisted that I had already spoken with the maintenance people, and that they were already working on the problem. She was telling this to Tim, the white security guard, and was apparently confusing me with another resident; perhaps one of the "mentally disabled" ones. Maybe she thought she could superimpose her truth on the matter.

She has gone around putting up notices that say things like "Do not enter unless you are wearing a mask," and sanitized her hands at least once while trying to tell Tim that maintenance was already aware of the problem that is causing water to come in my place.

But then she added that is was "because of the rain," and so I made up my mind that she is an ignorant young lady.

"Um, it started a couple of weeks ago, during the drought," I said.

"It's from the rain," the ignoramus repeated, as if saying so would make it true. We need to get rid of her. I'll work on getting her fired; let my subconscious mind solve the problem while I sleep.

I might have to threaten to sue the place over the dangerous mold that is perhaps already germinating in my carpet. A health violation. All her fault because of her insistence that "rain" is somehow getting to my apartment on the bottom floor of a 4 story building.

The notices that are all over the place state that, "although there is no city-wide mask mandate," there is still one governing the confines of Sacred Heart Apartments (as per whoever put them up). 

She must be crazy. Hasn't she figured out that "the virus" was just a plot by Big Pharma, in cahoots with the globalist elites, using it, along with climate change to get over on masses? Isn't it strange that the regular "yearly" flu just took a couple years off, to make way for this "novel" strain, apparently?

But, it's rain. It just gave itself a 2 week head start, and started seeping through the wall before the actual rain started falling outside. 

This masked up hand sanitizer is going to be a problem; reminds me of the Negros that they used to depict in the old Three Stooges episodes -the ones that were always seeing ghosts and having the whites of their eyes bulge out in fear. This girl needs to have her phone flushed down the toilet to get her away from the propaganda... 

The Fight Is On

24 hours into a juice only fast and I already feel better; though I might not have said the same just a few hours ago

One of the things keeping me from intermittent fasting over the past few months had been the plasma donation. It was hard to imagine going in there all light headed and seeing stars every time I stood up from a seated position; and having had nothing but alkaline water over the previous 3 days or so, and to donate the stuff. There is probably a pretty good reason they advise you to consume plenty of protein and drink a lot of water before showing up; not just to drink a lot of water.

So after they told me I couldn't donate for at least a week, I left there feeling kind of relieved. It had also led me to cut down on my busking hours; so there was no way for me to know if I would have made the same 45 bucks playing for a couple hours at night; as my plans to do both things and to get ahead 90 bucks on a given day fell by the wayside, as having the 45 bucks became an excuse to not go out and play. I would tell myself that the music I was recording at home was worth sacrificing the money for.

But I have just decided to wage war upon addictions; using the only tool that has ever worked; namely starvation. After the flu-like thing that I got last week, my lungs are just recovering enough so that I feel like I'm benefiting from the Wim Hof breathing exercises a little more, able to hold my breath for 3 minutes and 20 seconds on the 5th round, whereas, the past couple days, and especially the day after I tried the crystal methamphetamine, I was a full minute short of that.

So, now I have reached the 36 hour mark, give or take, of the juice only phase, and will transition to water only. As far as the deprivation of the the 45 bucks from selling my plasma, as soon as I was able to usher in an attitude of gratitude and happiness over "the big picture," I was informed that I can go and get 100 bucks tomorrow, just for taking some survey somewhere in town that I can reach by bike. I just have to be up before 8 in the morning and get with Carlos, who lives on my floor and knows where to go...

I am being tested by Jr., about whom I have entertained the notion that he is possessed by a demon who seeks to devour and destroy the good in anyone he encounters.

24 hours into the fast, he was knocking on my door, mentioning that he had just baked a whole chicken with stuffing and gravy etc. and that I was welcome to hang out with him. He was holding a box of foodstuff that came from one of the residents who are over 60 years old, and thus eligible to receive a box full of food every month, I guess at the end of the third week, because the lobby was strewn with a few of them, left there by people who get them but don't want them, or who only take out a few items and leave the rest.

The rest is very often the canned black beans, and vegetables.

Jr. had grabbed himself about a half dozen bags of powdered milk, which is probably the worst thing I could ever eat and, of course, was offering me one. He wanted me to get him a "quart" of mayonnaise at the Winn Dixie, after I told him I was going there -probably the second worse thing I could possibly eat, because of the soy oil; though he wasn't offering me any. It probably goes into a lot of his recipes that he is constantly inviting me to partake of, though.

He didn't have any vodka or weed, but did give me a cigarette, along with his ATM card that he said had $1.80 on it, then handed me some change that brought the total up to $3.06, which I guess he thought was enough for a bottle of some kind of liquor.

Then he told me to grab him "an 88 cent loaf of bread," and put it on his food stamp card along with the mayo. There was 5 bucks and change on that.

So, off I went to Winn Dixie, where I grabbed another bottle of grape juice and a gallon of alkaline water to continue my fasting. I could smell a lot of food in the store more acutely -one of the first signs that the fasting is starting to work. The little apple pies I had to just stare at and try to eat one in my mind.

There is no such thing as "an 88 cent loaf of bread," and it is not surprising that Jr., who seems to live in the past -repeating stories from events that happened in the 1970's as if he hasn't already told you them a dozen times- thinks that those loaves would still be 88 cents. They have gone up a buck, there wasn't enough on his card, and since the store was closing soon, and I was the cashier's last customer, her frustration grew with every complication that presented itself.

"Take the bread off, I guess."

"The mayonnaise is more than the bread," the young lady of color said.

"It's for my friend, he wanted the mayonnaise more than the bread," I said. She must have thought that removing the bread wouldn't have reduced the total enough for it to go through, even though the figures were right in front of her on the declined receipt.

I got out of there, and then instantly regretted having to go to the Shell station to present his card with "$1.80" on it, along with enough change to total $3.06. Was that amount another figment of his not yet adjusted for inflation memory? It sure was.

The vodka was now 30 cents more, and I had that amount of my own change on me, but decided not to cover the difference. I wasn't going to drink vodka because I'm fasting "and cleansing" with the goal of kicking all addictions. God knows that the next 50 dollar night I had busking would probably make me remember how cool it was to be productive and not sleepy at all for 2 days on the methamphetamine (and how effective an aphrodisiac is had been -a man could probably have sex a dozen times in one night on the stuff) and powerfully addictive substances call for equally strong curatives to nip them in the bud. It wasn't like the heroin that Bobby let me try, which I hated.

So, not throwing in my own money to get Jr. his vodka was kind of safeguarding myself against taking the gulp off it that he would surely have offered. Or the evil spirit inside him, whomever it would have been...

A gulp of vodka (especially after a day of grape juice only) would have made all that food in the lobby look better; the cereal (with forbidden sugar), the peanut butter (with the wrong oil base), the packets of "beef stew" that are really "beef and soy" stew, and the canned yams (more forbidden sugar) -basically everything that is donated to the residents here to combat hunger; would all become more tempting should I have weakened my resolve with cheap vodka.

But, Jr. either is incapable of empathizing, or has been successfully brainwashed by the food industry which is the purveyor of those hunger fighting "care" packages, that are probably subsidized by Big Pharma and the medical association. You make them chronically ill, we'll treat them and sell them chemicals, then bill their insurance companies, type of thing.

Alternatively, there is the evil spirit theory.

Pretty soon, I will start cleaning my place from top to bottom, and then probably getting into a hot tub with some Dead Sea salts. This week off from donating plasma turns into a blessing. 

 

It Must Begin With the Busk

Right after waking up...

No Youtube videos with titles like "Food Shortages Are Imminent!" but instead, I will either open the Mel Bay "Building Right Hand Technique" book and get lost in the hypnotic cadence of the metronome; or will go to a special folder that I have set aside for songs that I want to learn. There is a fork in the road, first encountered upon waking; with two entirely different days each way.

Last night I wasn't happy with the strings on the guitar.

Starting 55 Cents In The Hole

Saturday night; I left out of here at about 10:15, after having considered getting an earlier start than usual. 

That thought came at about 7 in the evening. The clock had been running slowly all day, in my perception. It might be that I just woke up earlier than I had thought, but; every time I looked at the clock it was "only" whatever the time was, and earlier than I thought it would be.

But then it was the nit picking details like taking an extra 5 minutes to trim a moustache that hadn't looked ragged until I was on my way out the door, and then looking around for a pick (one was on top of the refrigerator) etc. I need to think like a busker the whole day through and not switch modes so drastically; like pulling the shade down and making the outside world go away; until it's time again to flip the switch back on.

It felt kind of dangerous to be out there; I couldn't help but think about the mounting desperation of people who are being subject to rising prices and emptying shelves. I also thought about the agenda of the global oligarchs who are seeking to make the masses poor in order to bring about their "great reset" and it didn't seem out of the realm of possibility to have a small group of young black kids jump out from behind somewhere and try to beat me and take my guitar, my bike and my phone, plus whatever was in my pockets. Without going into theories about why the masses are becoming more angry in general, suffice it to say that I rode through the Latino neighborhoods on my way to the Lilly Pad. The hard working, family oriented, decent Latino neighborhoods.

I had just a small amount of change on me; 55 cents short of a shot of brandy and was planning upon seeing if the Ethiopian cashier at Unique Grocery would let me get one, to take the edge off (or whatever is the bullshit term alcoholics have invented). 

I was looking on the ground all the way down Canal Street for change. Or for a dollar, or a five, flattened and stuck to the street car tracks, like I have found twice before. I guess when people drop money on windy days and it escapes them; one of the things that will stop it from tumbling further is a wheel from a street car. My theory is that when the car is in motion it creates a low air pressure under the thing which will suck the money under it, and that is how it gets run over and flattened on the track. Unless it is just a mere coincidence that I have found 2 separate 5 dollar bills stuck on different tracks.

I was trying to remain happy and grateful.

After having started to feel the symptoms of some kind of flu on Thursday, which kept me from going to the plasma place, because one degree over 98.6, and they will turn you away, I had woken up Friday morning feeling miserable enough that I went and spent the bus fare to the plasma place on some BC Powder aspirin, and returned home to do several rounds of Wim Hof breathing exercises (it had actually taken a few rounds to make me feel strong enough to ride to the store for the aspirin and back).

I also opened the Covid-19 testing kit that I had thrown on a shelf, in contempt of those same global oligarchs, after it had come in the mail, unbidden, about 6 months prior. The stupidity of the whole situation became apparent when, in the instructions for the thing there was the caveat that, just because the test might indicate negative, this didn't mean that you didn't have the Corona virus. So, a "negative" is meaningless. And, lo and behold, if the test indicates "positive," don't panic; this could be a false alarm. Anything to make a buck for whoever funneled U.S. tax dollars to the company in China that makes those "test" kits.

Mine was "clearly" negative.

But, I felt too sick and stuffed up to go out and play Friday night, and was reminded how important it is to always go out and busk when able to, and the weather permits it, and Bourbon Street isn't empty with all the businesses closed, because of lock downs, designed to drain working class people's bank accounts; put them out of business, and make them dependent upon the government; the "one world" global government, run by the oligarchs who hold their "Davos" meetings, yearly, in Switzerland -the group that has Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, and several other presidents of nations in their employ, along, of course with people like Mark Zuckerman, who uses his social networks to manipulate the populations of screen staring zombies, and do things like delivering 80 million votes for a puppet president that the Great Reset-ers wanted installed in the White House.

Figuring out if you've been brain washed is as easy as asking yourself if you hate Donal Trump, I mean really hate him without really knowing or caring why. That "why" would be "everything you hear and see; on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter" you would have to be blind and stupid to not hate Trump, and want to vote for Biden. Just look at everything on your phone!, type of thing.

But this society of screen staring zombies are an imposition upon me, for example as, whoever came up with the brilliant idea to single out the white people for attack by creating a brand new culture of "people of color," that includes everyone in the world, except of course, white people (with the possible exception of Asians) has divided the planet into an "us and them" dynamic where it is now the Caucasians on one side and everybody else on the planet on the other. Are you just a little brown? Well, come join our team; and fight the oppressors!, type of thing...

Mahogany For The Noggin

So, I brought a weapon with me for the first time ever, to go busk. 

This particular one is a carved wooden stick about as thick as the handle of a baseball bat, and made out of mahogany, I believe, or some other wood if there is one that is even heavier and harder than mahogany. It had been a gift to me from David the water jug (and sometimes guitar) player. I saw it as an act of love, for someone who lives on the street to bestow such a thing upon a friend. On occasions when people have done that for me, it always seemed to stem from their thinking that I was a "nice guy," and seeing that as a vulnerability.

I brought the thing home, where I would every once in a while pick it up and think "man, I'd hate to get hit in the head with this thing!" It has a square block at one end and is carved all along it with stuff that looks like the faces of spirits, maybe Inca art, or art from wherever mahogany grows wild.

I could feel the extra weight of the thing in my backpack with every turn of my pedals.

I got to the Unique Store, where the cashier allowed me to owe him 55 cents, and then headed for the Lilly Pad, while gulping down the shot of brandy.

I was trying to avoid the kind of negative thinking that was trying to crop up in my mind; telling me things like: You see how you have to fight the traffic and pedestrians on Royal Street because you had to stop and get some alcohol? If you didn't drink, you could have ridden Toulouse Street and been at the spot already...

And then there were thoughts about my having jinxed myself by taking on the debt of 55 cents. Watch me not even make 55 cents tonight...type of thing.

As I approached the playing spot, I could hear the sound of an out of tune brass band getting louder. 

And, there, in front of the bar about 50 feet from where I play, they were, about 8 or ten of them. I don't know under what purpose they had assembled because they were a very diverse group of black and white and of different ages; they certainly didn't have the uniformity of any professional outfit that might have been hired by a wedding party that might have paused at the bar to get drinks as part of a march through the Quarter, accompanied by their own brass band, type of thing.

A rather large young woman who was holding a trombone looked at me, and the guitar on my back and kind of smiled, as I was riding past, as if thinking that I was coming to join in the dissonance. I decided to just set up my stiff and wait them out for about 15 minutes and then move down to near the Quartermaster store if they were still playing past 11 o' clock.

One of the blessings of being able to play in a residential block is that other musicians who show up, and who are loud, know that they are on borrowed time. There is a guy who occasionally comes along beating on a bass drum and singing "Down in New Orleans" type of stuff; and his goal seems to be to try to wring 5 or 10 bucks out of people before a resident comes out to inform him that they are trying to sleep, or hear their TV, or hear their spouse trying to hold a conversation in their living room. 

One thing about the houses in that block; built in the late 1700's is that sound goes right through their walls. Sitting in the anterior rooms of Lilly's house, for example, you can hear what people walking past on the street are saying. A guy drunkenly banging on a bass drum and singing about being down in old New Orleans, is a short lived phenomenon.

"Man, Don't Be Coming Up On Me Like That!"

There was an old small skinny black man, sitting on Lilly's stoop, ripping the flaps off a cardboard box (and just throwing the fragments on the ground all around him) as I got there.

He became confrontational and started to berate me with: "Man, don't be coming up on me like that!" and said a few more things I couldn't make out. After his box was to his liking, he went over by the brass band, where it became evident that he was planning to circle them, inviting people to throw money in the box. The band stopped playing and walked off down the street just a few minutes after he started doing that. 

Maybe they were just playing for fun; knew that they kind of sucked, and became embarrassed over the guy actually asking for money from people, for what they were hearing. In any case, my odds of making at least 55 cents improved dramatically with their departure.

32 Bucks An Hour

Having only one shot of brandy in me, I was able to concentrate pretty well and, after shaking off same rust on the first song, was able to get 3 bucks thrown in the jar with the second one (my debt paid; and a can of food for Harold) and then, relieved and loosened up, I jammed as hard as I could on one particular Grateful Dead song called "The Music Never Stopped," and was deeply focused upon playing a harmonica solo, while keeping the riff going when I saw a female arm enter the halo of my spotlight and put a 20 dollar bill on top of a few more ones that I hadn't even noticed be put in there.

One of the abilities that I'm glad to be possessed of is being able to say "Thank you; God bless you," in between breaths on the harmonica without interrupting the flow of the music. I just cut one phrase short and then start the next one on the next beat.

But, then it was about midnight; I had 32 dollars; and thought I would go down to get at least one more drink of something alcoholic; and so I packed up my stuff and, as I was getting on my bike, what looked like the perfect group of tourists walked past. 

Of course one of them was singing a song that I know how to play, so if I were still sitting there, and not running to get more drunk, I would have been able to jump right in. And that might have turned into a sing-along and all 8 or 9 of them might have thrown something in my jar. That's how a 32 dollar night turns into a 58 dollar one in one fell swoop. 

Whereas the alternative was for it to turn into 32 bucks minus the 3 bucks I had to spend on a good beer -a 30 dollar swing, just based upon one decision. But, oh well, I was trying not to entertain negative thoughts.

I got to the store, which I think is called Freddie's Corner Store, and locked my cable through the back wheel of the bike. Someone could steal it, but they would have to pick it up and run away with it; and outrun the mahogany stick.

Penis Shaped Pipes And Serious S**t

As I was retrieving the last of the money from the basket, which I had just thrown in the pack (why sit there and take it out and organize it, folding and counting and becoming a skeezer magnet at the playing spot? There'll be time enough for counting, when the dealing's done, Kenny Rogers would say...) I found a little zip lock baggie of what I thought was powdered cocaine. Every once in a while, people will tip me with drugs, most often a bud or joint of weed in the basket, but sometimes coke. That has to do with the elation and gregariousness and desire to spread "the love" in people that have just partaken of some themselves.

One time a couple sat down on the stoop next to me as I played and I could hear snorting sounds coming from them. After I had played "Tears In Heaven," the Eric Clapton tune, the lady put a 100 dollar bill in my basket, as apparently the toots of coke had elevated the level of my playing that much. She wound up putting a couple more 20's in the basket, which made me wonder what kind of couple they were, where the lady had money, and the guy; who looked kind of macho with a thick handlebar moustache and wearing a leather jacket and was doused in cologne; apparently didn't.

That time, I learned a lesson about the transitory nature of a cocaine high when the same guy came back out of the bar that they had both gone into, alone, about a half hour later and started telling me that his "girlfriend" had been feeling really high earlier and had perhaps over-tipped me, in her exuberance, and I believe was on the verge of asking me for some of the 140 bucks back, when the lady emerged and said something to him in a scolding tone, as if wise to his motives; and he heeled like a dog and away they went. If he had indeed been using her for her money, I guess that meant she still had plenty left.

This time, it wasn't coke, but rather crystal meth that was in the little baggie. I found that out by showing it to someone knowledgeable I know, who told me that it was about 20 bucks worth.

Free Meth; Free Lighter; Satan Looking Out For Me

He even told me how it is smoked, by putting it at the bottom of a penis shaped glass pipe, in the head of the thing and then holding a flame on it for a considerable time until thick smoke rises out of the other end, which is open. "Go real easy on it, though, just test it a tiny bit if you've never done it, 'cause it's some serious s**t," he concluded.

That is one drug that I had never tried, mostly because of the cost of it. Johnny B. used to smoke some and then busk from say, 7 pm Friday night until about 4 the next morning. He averaged about $350 doing so, but had to take 65 bucks, I believe he said, out of that, so he could repeat the feat the next night.

But this was free, and, if Johnny B. was doing 3 times as much, money-wise, and it didn't kill him, I figured I would at least try the stuff. 

I didn't want to pay $3.99 for the penis shaped pipe that my friend had shown me in the store, after walking me in there and asking the guy behind the counter if we could look at one, and so I used a wine glass, and followed his instructions. While not finding any money on the ground on my way to the Lilly Pad, I had found a lighter, which turned out to be a new one, that had a nice high flame.

I inhaled enough of the thick white smoke that indeed began to rise like magic at a certain temperature point, to see what it tasted like.

It wasn't mind altering in any way. I didn't feel "high" at all. But, I started doing things and wasn't really feeling sleepy for at least the next 24 hours. I kept going through Sunday and into Monday, getting a lot done, and then slept normally Monday night, waking up this (Tuesday) morning at about 11.

Low Blood Protein?

I'm glad I still had some money left, because I went to the plasma place, since I was over that flu-like thing that wasn't Covid, according to an unreliable test, but I was still deferred because the sample of blood that they send to a lab every 4 months had come back showing that my protein level was slightly under the allowed level of "6." Mine was 5.7.

So, in that case, they offer to take a second blood sample and, I guess, send it to the same lab to see if the first one had been a fluke; or if the protein level has rebounded. If so, I could donate again; but it takes a week for the results to come back. 

Luckily I had money to get Harold some food, then take the bus back home. I'm not entertaining negative thoughts. 

They drew the first sample the day before I started feeling the flu-like thing, so I might have already had that "incubating" in me, and that could have skewed the reading. 

There must be some reason they offer to give you another shot; maybe their tests are as unreliable as the Covid-19 kits, made in China, by some company that probably gives kick-backs to the Bidens.

The irony is that I had been experimenting with Jordan Peterson's "carnivore" diet, and eating nothing but beef and water. Every body is different, perhaps, and maybe mine needs something to go with that, so the protein makes it into my bloodstream; maybe at least some lettuce, for amino acids...

I Always Picture Watching This Guy With My Father By My Side (He Could "Bring It" Like This)

I had to do something to warrant a lecture; but there were ample instances of that, growing up...

Illegal Immigrant Girl Demo 4.2

Here we go again; trying to see if a Soundcloud hosted music file can be embedded into a Blogger blog...

Street Musician Daniel · Illegal Immigrant Girl edit 5 (Louder Lead Please)

I imagine that if I paid for the Soundcloud "premium" account then the cloud would burst and my songs would rain down into all kinds of devices. I had a good mind (well, that's debatable) to just use the Google Drive cloud storage that comes free with Google (with the only strings attached being that Google can, at some point, hold the file hostage and demand the purchase of a "premium" account to release it) and that way I could share the song with Jacob Scardino, my friend who is a multi-instrumentalist, instead of letting this raw demo version out into public. 

But, out of 70,000 songs a day that are "published" online, something like less than one percent actually get played, according to some stats that Jordan Peterson referenced, as a way to illustrate how the heirarchy of the music business plays out (pun intended)... The "Illegal Immigrant" song in this version represents maybe 16 hours of work; but would take only about 5 to "totally redo." And, I am at that juncture with it, as I have lost the original tracks to a glitch in Audacity where I explicitly told the app to "recover" projects that weren't saved properly when my Ubuntu linux system did a routine upgrade. I wasn't happy with the mix between the distorted rhythm guitar and the drum track, which were inseperable because I recorded them in an open air fashion by standing the Casio keyboard on end so that its speaker was facing the microophone and then placing the Yamaha amp next to it, and then just set the volumes of each, then played. The mix between the two became fixed; I couldn't bring up the drums without bringing up the rhythm guitar and vice versa. But, because the guitar through the amp had reverb and a bit of delay on it, I couldn't go back and add any of that to the drums without doubling its effect on the already effected guitar. That being said, as I go to record the next demo, I'm going to just record the drums on their own separate track. I was actually composing the thing that first time, so I was jamming along with the drum track, coming up with what is now the rhythm part. 

Now that I know what that is (and have it looping in my mind) I can do it on a separate track. 

So, I guess the point is that losing the original tracks and only having this mixed down demo is a blessing in disguise because it will only sound better, the next time; since I won't be hearing it for the first time, myself. 

Plus, there might come a scenario where Jacob could add a bass part to it -something that the above demo lacks. 

Plus, I have a whole page of lyrics in a notepad, hardly any of which occurred to me during that first run-through. 

So, "Walk right in, little immigrant girl!"

You Can Find Sanctuary Here

As I sit here on Monday night;

Before her 7th birthday, she had already seduced

the most powerful man in the world...

So, I suppose Trump would be a pedophile, right Joe?

You Have To Start Somewhere, Little Girl...
I have changed my schedule so that I practice the guitar first thing in the morning; and that means that I sometimes wind up messing around with music for the rest of the day, and don't get to this blog. 

I just remembered, I need to go and find some pictures to use as still shots for the next video that I plan to make (spoiler: right). 

If I do go to Youtube it will be to watch Russell Brand's daily video; and maybe J.P. Sears' one if he did one today (he posts about as much as I do here, as far as frequency) and then I might watch another one out of Jordan Peterson's "Biblical Series" series -of course those can be up to 2 and a half hours long...I still haven't done the Wim Hof breathing exercises and, d'oh! I just ate; and Wim recommends doing the thing on an empty stomach, for optimal results...
I've got Jr knocking on my door with his bottle of vodka and his weed, and offering me food; he's always offering me food and he is the type that I guess just doesn't believe in people having dietary issues; to wit, in my case, an issue with "hydrogenated soybean oil. 

And I shudder to think of what kind of oil goes into his culinary creations. He seems to value sharing food with other people almost as if he wouldn't really trust another person until he has shared food with them. But, if the vodka and the weed and the occasional crack that he offers is any indication of the wholesomeness of his offerings; I might as well assume that the food he eats is poison to some degree, in keeping with his general thrust, in life.

I remember about a week or so ago, when I had started to practice out of one of my Mel Bay books; fully rested and sober, with only coffee and kratom as a catalyst for sitting there being hypnotized by the metronome. It is very much like a meditation, and, as such, should be done sober.

On this particular day, I was about a half hour in when there when Jr knocked at my door. He had a bottle of vodka and some weed. I decided to let him in and drink and smoke with him.

I had to clear a spot on my couch for him to sit, and so I moved the lesson books I was practicing out of off of it, placing them on the floor right in front of it.

Jr sat down, and wound up with his feet on top of the Mel Bay books. This would have been harmless; except for the fact that he seemed to be trying to make himself comfortable by squirming around on the cushion and shuffling his feet around, so as to tear pages out of the lesson book, actually managing to rip the one I had just been practicing out of. It was as if he sensed that his feet weren't firmly planted on the carpet and started sliding them around like people do when they are on the beach and trying to dig their feet down into the cooler sand and kind of anchor themselves. I guess I was wrong in thinking that Jr could just sit with his feet on the lesson books, without him trying to do the Michael Jackson moonwalk on top of them.

Man Possessed By Evil Spirit

But, if I were to view things through a cosmic lens, I might hypothesize that Jr is possessed by a demon, and is hellbent upon ruining anything positive that I have going for myself. 

I had thought about telling him, that morning, that I didn't want to drink or smoke weed until I had all my practicing done; but I had figured "what the hell" -at least I wouldn't have to pay for the buzz. 

And so, I invite him in, and within 5 minutes he has torn the page I was studying out of the book, and ripped it almost in half.

The reason I am one of Jr's only options when it comes to finding someone whose companionship he can purchase with his booze and drugs, is that a lot of people in the building have deemed him to just be "trouble," in the sense that everything around him goes to shit; and if you happen to be around him, well...
Another good example is the time he let me use his discount bus pass, so I could ride to the plasma place for 80 cents, instead of a buck 25.

He was so adamant about me not loosing the thing -he spelled out everything he had had to go through to get the discount pass -he needed to get a note from his doctor saying that he is "disabled" and had to get the thing notarized and then bring it to the Regional Transit Authority building between the hours of 8 and 10 on a Wednesday morning, etc. etc. It had taken him something like 2 weeks to get the thing.

And so he made me cross my heart and promise that I would safeguard the thing with my life.

And to be quadruple sure that I wouldn't lose it, he took some kind of thick elastic hair band kind of thing and wrapped it three times around my little credit card holder wallet thing; I guess, so it wouldn't come open in my pocket and the card fly out?

I later figured that it was the added thickness of that elastic band that caused my little wallet thing to work its way out of my back pocket as I rode my bike towards the plasma place, after getting off the bus; after having ridden for only 80 cents and only had to flash Jr's card at the driver while putting the most retarded expression on my face that I could muster; trying to pass as Jr...

For 7 years my little credit card holder stayed in my back pocket as I rode hundreds of miles on my bike. But it had never been fattened up by having some thick hairband type thing wrapped three times around it. So, it wouldn't come open. So the card would be safe in there...

So, most people at Sacred Heart just avoid Jr because all kinds of bizarre occurrences surround him.

Another time, he went on some kind of errand, maybe to run to the DMV or something; an errand that should have taken maybe a few hours at the most. But he didn't come back until the next day, and with a blood stained shirt and a cast on one of his arms. He had gotten hit by a car (hence the broken arm) and then had gotten in a fist fight with the driver of the car (hence the bloody shirt and messed up face). Of course he did. The real shock would have come if he had just returned quietly in due time, having accomplished his errand...

But, not to pile on Jr. I'm doing this blog post and not drinking and smoking with the guy; though I am bracing myself to hear his distinctive knock on my door (like the mockingbird, Jr. actually mimics other people's knocks; such as at one time when I wasn't answering his knocks; and he returned a bit later and knocked exactly like Ray, one of the caseworkers, knocks; fooling me into opening the door, because if it was Ray, it might have been semi-important; and so I fell for the trick; and came face to face with Jr's vodka bottle; at 9 o' clock in the morning.

Well, I must divide my time between about a dozen tasks, only one of which is doing a blog post. I'm thinking of skipping all the mundane stuff in this blog and only posting stories from my past; and then, only when I recall a good one.

There is nothing more boring than reading about someone else's minor incidences. I don't even think I would be interested in reading what some celebrity I admire had for breakfast, or what he bought at the local grocery store that morning. If this is indeed a knock against Alex Carter's "The Pie Is A Lie" blog that I look at about once a month, then; well, if the shoe fits, then wear it, I would say...  

Strings Attached

It's Tuesday morning, the day after the 4th of July and the explosions of fireworks have segued into the booms of thunder, as some kind of storm is coming through, with the FM "classic rock" station having their songs that you've heard a thousand times being interrupted by the emergency tones and warnings about possible flash floods.

Brought to you by high fructose corn syrup and caffeine!

There hasn't been much flooding here since they fired some maintenance guy from the DPW, who, it was discovered, had been embezzling funds that had been earmarked for the maintenance of certain pumps that are designed to pump water out of the neighborhoods and into the Mississippi River.

The pumps didn't work during one pretty heavy downpour about 3 years ago now, and it turned out that one in particular had malfunctioned because of a shopping cart being wedged into its mechanics.

That time there was about 3 feet of water surrounding Sacred Heart Apartments and only the seat and handlebars of my bike were visible after I had sallied forth from the place on a mission that a mere 3 feet of water couldn't deter me from; I was probably going out for beer and cigarettes, perhaps some food...

It was Essence Fest in the Quarter the whole weekend and, while I have done OK busking in previous years (mostly by staying with my usual repertoire of songs rather than trying to play "Motown," or other colored music. The people of color seem to have an acute sensitivity to when they are being pandered to. They have pretty good b.s. detectors in general; I have to give them credit for that. While other buskers were having lousy nights after having broken out songs that they were guessing that people of color would like; I stuck to the Tom Petty type of songs and got a lot of tips, often along with comments like: "Not my style of music; but I appreciate the effort," type of thing.

Jr had persuaded me to forego my trip to the music store, after which I planned to busk using the new strings I was going to buy, by giving me some new strings. However, this meant that I was obliged to hang out and keep him company for an amount of time equal to a new set of guitar strings. There were "strings attached," in other words.

I already posted about how he said he would give me 20 dollars in cash Saturday night if I would hang out with him and not go to the Lilly Pad to play for the Essence Fest crowd. But, to quote Frank Zappa: "Only, they wouldn't tell us when..." Sure he said that, if money was the primary reason I was going out to play, then not to worry about that, because of the promised 20 bucks; but I really should have asked him the practical question of: "How long do I have to be your friend in order to get the 20 bucks?" Because, like a bag of McDonald's burgers in a cabinet (see below) there were more strings attached.

But, the residents of Sacred Heart had gotten their monthly checks on Friday and I found myself being asked to run to stores for Jr and Carlos; each one offering me the chance to buy something for myself while there; and both of them telling me I could take a few swigs off the bottles of vodka that were included in their orders.

The first such run was to get Jr a liter of vodka, along with a pound of loose tobacco and 3 boxes of the "tubes" that he uses to roll cigarettes using his machine, and 3 bottles of Arizona Sweet Tea for him to mix with his vodka, He also wanted me to stop at Burger King I decided to stop at Patrick's house, which is right around the corner from the store that Jr was sending me to, to see if he wanted me to grab him anything while I was there. He didn't, as he already had his whiskey and his cigars; but he did pass me a bowl of weed.

It's kind of interesting how I had stopped at his house, thinking that it wasn't too much out of the way and wouldn't add any noticeable amount of time to the trip. I figured Jr could wait another 15 minutes for his stuff, and I wasn't sweating it. But, after smoking the bowl, I started having the distorted sense of time perception which is one of the side effects of weed, along with an increased susceptibility to paranoia; and I started to stress out a bit.

Suddenly, it seemed like my diversion to Patrick's was going to add an inordinate amount of time to the running of the errand; and I began to picture Jr pacing to and fro in his apartment; fearing that I had taken his debit card to Whole Foods and gotten the maximum amount of cash back off it; and was on my way to a nearby corner to purchase 500 dollars worth of crack, and that I was going to return to his place with some kind of far-fetched story about having been grabbed by a large black man and been forced, with a knife at my throat to withdraw 500 bucks out of a nearby ATM, or a similar tale..

Suddenly I became very self-moral (if that's a term) and was feeling kind of ashamed of myself for having made Jr wait extra long. It became hard to judge just how long I had been gone; and I still had to go to the Red Line store for the vodka and tobacco and stuff. It seemed like I was at the foot of an imposing mountain and had barely started the climb.

I went to the Red Line, all baked, and found that a beautiful young lady was behind the register, as the pudgy guy who looks like a foreigner of some kind -the kind that run liquor stores- was milling about, doing sundry little tasks.

I had trouble judging how I should deal with the young lady. Her beauty was being magnified through the lens of Patrick's weed.

I asked her for the liter of vodka, explaining that it was for a friend, and then tried to get the two of them to recall who Jr was, hoping that they would also remember just what kind of vodka and tobacco, and specifically what kind of sweet tea he got to mix it with. I wound up doing my best Jr imitation "I'm sure you've seen the guy in here..." I put as much gravel in my voice and then acted like Jr, complete with showing them "my" injured leg, and running through the spiel about: "I was mowing a lawn and the blade came off the mower and damned near took my whole leg off below the knee!"

"Oh, yeah, I know who you're talking about," said the pudgy foreign looking guy.

"Do you remember what kind of sweet tea he usually gets?"

"Arizona."

They were out of Arizona sweet tea. ...this is why I hesitate to make store runs for other people...It's like Murphey's Law takes effect...

So, I stood at the cooler trying to figure out a substitute sweet tea, for what seemed like a half hour in my addled state of mind.

I finally got out of there, after having had to divert my eyes from the beautiful lady, who might have had some of the same foreign blood in her; I was really self conscious and felt like everything I said was going to be taken for flirting. She did smile at my Jr impression, after all...

Then, as it seemed like the sun would be going down soon, it was time for the Burger King run for "2 doubles..er, 3; get yourself one."

The doors to the dining area were locked, so I didn't have the chance to go inside a Burger King for probably the 2nd time in my life. 

I went around to the drive through thing and asked through the speaker if I could order food on a bike. I had to speak up first, as nobody inside had greeted me in any way. 

The young lady of color actually took the order, but kept pausing for long gaps of time in between barking through the speaker. It wasn't until I had baked under the sun until a car had pulled up behind me: "There's a car behind me; I'm holding them up; I'll just go to the window" that the young overweight girl of color said "You have to have a car," apparently relishing in the pleasure of denying a white guy something.

I didn't even bother to say: "You could have told me that 15 minutes ago..." She would have been whipped regularly and put in that coffin sized box (from the movie Django) countless times, had she been my slave, back in the day...
So, I went to the all black staffed McDonald's next door, and was able to enter.

I explained that I had been trying to get "doubles" from next door and asked the petite girl of color if McDonald's had anything equivalent to the "double" that is sold next door.

"A double burger?" she asked; apparently having been able to connect the dots.

"Yes, just 3 of them, nothing else," I said; trying to underscore the simplicity of the order and encourage them; thinking that they might even have had some already made, since it is probably a commonly ordered item. They gave me a tag with #194 on it. I sat there, amusing myself with the math, while I waited...let's see; they've been open for about 8 hours, and are up to their 194th order; the average order is probably somewhere around 8 bucks; so they've taken in about $1,100 so far; minus the wages of the crew of about a half dozen that are milling about; minus the shrinkage from the boxes of meat patties that the same crew indubitably steal from the cooler and bring home with them ("You can't live off what they paying us; you gotta steal just to survive") and in probably about 10 minutes the 3 doubles were ready, and number 194 was called.

Jr answered his door with an expression on his face like he might have forgotten all about ever sending me to the store. He put the bag of burgers in one of his cabinets and closed it. He was up to his usual trick of making me hang out and keep him company before letting me eat my double, is what I figured. He did manage to divert my attention to his cigarette rolling machine that he went to work on, using his newly acquired pound of loose tobacco. I forgot about the double hamburger as he rolled me a few cigarettes "for going to the store," and then kept me in his company by meting out shots of vodka, one every 15 minutes or so; with the twixt spent regaling me with stories that I've heard a dozen times already; at least he didn't recount his lawn mower blade tragedy...
Then, I suppose after he had gotten his money's worth of company out of me, he produced the bag of hamburgers and, I must say that, even at almost room temperature mine was delicious; almost so much so as to make me suspicious that the thing was loaded with trans fat or something. ...so, if you eat these every day, you will soon need to have a doctor and a pharmacist, and be such an invalid that you will need to send someone else to McDonald's to get them for you...yup...I think so...

Then, it was Carlos who sent me to the store for a liter of vodka and 200 dollars cash back out of the ATM. He was planning upon having a little crack cocaine party that night, and the fact that I declined his offer to join in, goes hand in glove with the whole reason he trusted me with his 200 bucks. If I started smoking crack with him, it would start to undermine his confidence in placing his debit card in my hands and telling me the PIN number. As long as I'm the only guy in Sacred Heart that will actually turn down an offer to get high, I will garner all of the store running business. Now if I can just change my method of payment from a few gulps of vodka and a McDonald's burger; to stuff like toilet paper and kitty litter, I might be on to something....

 

After going out to play on Sunday night and finding myself in what once was the common predicament of being too drunk to play at my best level, or to maintain a positive attitude, I stayed in during the 4th of July night, having fallen prey to Jr, who had been knocking at my door, offering me money to play guitar with him, rather than to go out and busk.

I had overlooked the fact that Jr hadn't mentioned exactly how long I was expected to hang out with him with a 20 dollar bill hanging in front of my nose like a carrot; and in less than an hour I decided that getting away from Jr was worth more than the money.

He is just one of those older drunks whose brain is hard wired and who basically repeats the same day over and over.

Friday, when I had been on my way to the music store to get a string for the guitar, which I planned to put on at the Lilly Pad and then commence to playing there; I happened to mention my plans to Jr, who had knocked at my door, basically offering to purchase my company in the form of liquor and weed and even the cash that I needed in order to be able to take the bus to the plasma place and sell my "life-saving" plasma for 45 bucks. 

Since I needed at least a new string on the guitar and was planning upon using the new string to conjure up the money for taking a potential trip to the plasma place, Jr solved both problems by offering to give me cash, along with the usual vodka and weed, for basically to be his friend for an unspecified amount of time. 

Once I sat down and could feel boredom encroaching upon me instantly; I began to fidget and was thinking about all the time I still had available for playing at the Lilly Pad and making my own money that I wouldn't have to wait an unspecified amount of time to enjoy. I realized that I had made an error by thinking that my prime concern of having enough for bus fare to the plasma place to get 45 bucks, had been addressed by Jr's promise to to give me money, for basically hanging out with him; and that it was a done deal. But then the gravity of my error became apparent as I realized that Jr was going to give me money; but only on my way out the door. He wasn't exactly paying me in advance; and so I felt the crushing weight of being bound to stay there for as long as Jr deemed worth 20 bucks; and I soon found an excuse to leave.

That was that there was still time for me to go out and play and most likely make at least the dollar I needed for the plasma bus, should I decide to do that the next day.

My whole weekend had started with Carlos, my immediate neighbor, asking me to run to the store for him to get a bottle of vodka, along with a substantial amount of cash back. And amount that had "crack smoking" written all over it.

If I were a skeezer, I would intuit this and switch from being Jr's "friend" for the night in exchange of 20 dollars, to being Carlos' friend and having him periodically say "Here you go.." while holding a glass pipe with a hit of crack in it, to me.

None the less, even though I hadn't wanted to hang around for the crack fest (which invariably would have attracted women of color to be hanging around ostensibly trading upon their sexuality, as they might quantify that, like moths to a flame; if the flame is lighting up some crack, that is...)

I wound up getting some new strings on the guitar, but left well before I had stayed for 20 bucks worth, and just figured I might still go out the the Lilly Pad and make the same money without having to jam with Jr. Or, I could go the the Winn Dixie right before midnight and try to trade at least a dollar off my food card with someone in there.

The whole weekend went by without me having busked much at all but with me having gotten drunk a bit and high on weed a bit, and that sheds light on something of a challenge going forward, which is that, every month when a majority of the residents get their checks, there will be a business opportunity for me, in running to stores, and back. I guess I am rare in that they can send me to the store to get 200 dollars cash out of an ATM and I will come back with it. Instead of coming back high on crack and frantically telling a story of having been jumped and having had the 200 dollars stolen, type of thing.

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...