The Japanese Art of Tidying Up

The hot tamale guy

 I'm in front of the rouses on Royal Street in the hot tamale guys out whom I recently saw on YouTube I think somebody made almost kind of a tick tock quality media presentation out of the guy yelling Hot tamales but I don't know I'm trying to get a picture

A New Earth

I think, as Jacob was dropping me off at Sacred Heart about three weeks ago, after the last time we busked, we shared an unarticulated feeling that it would be for the last time.

I then embarked upon a 12 day "water only" fast, during which I observed the steady diminishment of the cravings that had grown to define me.

On the third day or so I went and got some magic mushroom gummies.

Being that long removed from food had provided me with the prerequisite "empty stomach" that WIM Hof recommends for doing his deep breathing exercises, and I benefitted from the rush of self manufactured DMT in my brain after 5 rounds of them, going about 4 minutes without air during the pauses after the breaths, and before the inhalation which brought a disembodied euphoria, complete with floating out into space.

The bag of shroom gummies, on about the 4th day ushered me into a period where things were manifesting, left and right.

The ridiculousness of this reached it's peak on about the 10th day, when I went for a walk around the block and returned home with a knife, a gun and a heavy set of bolt cutters, all found laying on the ground at various places, or in the dumpster, in the case of the bolt cutters..

I've been contemplating cutting my way into the vacant church which abuts the Sacred Heart property, on order to record music on that cavernous space, where only a huge porcelain crucified Jesus hanging there remains from its days as a church, where Lois Armstrong married one of his wives in 1964, I believe it was.

I had been procrastinating on getting some bolt cutters to deal with one of the heavy heavy chains on the front doors.

Once inside, I'll rechain the door from the inside, for insurance against anyone walking in on the recording session.

The next day, I was on my way to the Goodwill store and to get a nicotine vape when I came upon the scene of an accident, where a small brown skinned guy in his 50s had been struck by a young lady in a small gray car, and was being loaded into an ambulance.

"I didn't even see him," she told me.

She was a white lady in her 20s standing by the car that had a small brown skinned guy shaped hole busted out of the passenger side of its windshield.

She didn't seem nervous about being charged with any crime, and the couple of cops standing around didn't seem to be harassing her.

I pointed out to her that she hadn't left any skid marks, that I could see, but couldn't decide if that was good or bad for her.

It reminded me of that riddle: "What's the difference between a dead n****r in the road, and a dead skunk on the road?"

(the skunk has skid marks in front of it).

Then, as I bent my steps towards the store that sells nicotine vapes, there in the road, about 40 feet past the ambulance, was an almost new nicotine vape. The guy was probably puffing on it, not watching the traffic..

Then, on the Goodwill I found 3 of the books that I had happened to watch video reviews of; as part of the top 20 greatest novels in English; Homer's "Odyssey," "Great Expectations" and "wuthering heights."

To go with the bolt cutters...

During the water only fast, I experienced the shrooms, the nicotine, some rum one day, kratom in the mornings and some weed.

With the last item proving to have very little teeth as far as being a vehicle for achieving any sort of elevated state, compared to not having eaten in 11 days and doing the WIM Hof breathing, along with guided meditations..

It only took a few sips of rum to get wasted, but it was more of the sloppy, disabling facet of that particular liquid, and not so much of the dancing in your underwear with a lampshade over your head variety of experience.

I felt like I had managed to increase my vibration, and go to a higher plane. My guitar playing became fluid, almost like playing in a dream, and I was playing along with Pat Metheny and actually "getting" his music (he said he doesn't eat the whole day before a gig, because hunger gave him energy and helped him focus). So there's that.

And, as far as attracting other people into my orb, who might be on the same plane, it didn't happen.

Nobody knocked on my door because they just happened to be walking past with their instrument, and heard this Pat Metheny style music.....

When you are in the present moment, you will attract certain people, and repel others.

I went up to Jr's to jam and I guess my motive of smoking some of his weed and drinking some of his vodka was exposed, with the concomitant punishment coming down hard on me.

All the peace of mind went out the window as soon as he started pushing buttons and triggering me. It was the full catalogue of his annoyances, on steroids.

He was throwing flattery at me with thinly disguised insincerity "boy, you can really throw down, Daniel McKenna!" with his use of my full name coming across as mockery, as if he's implying that I must think I've really made a name for myself, and he was pushing that button, appealing to my ego...after I had spent all that time trying to transcend it, trying to unravel all that with calculated manipulations.

And, of course, twisting my arm to take a gulp of cheap vodka then delivering of himself a scowling laugh as I did so, in a tone that says, "go ahead, gulp it down, Daniel McKenna; I got you; you son of a bitch!"

But I learned to take better notice of the sound of his knock on my door. That time it had been a tattered, off rhythm, not smooth at all delivery with one of the knocks perhaps being his head thumping against the door after he lost his balance trying to aim his fist.

I should have known that no amount of weed would be worth enduring him at that level of drunkenness.

Those are the times he will sit right next to me and constantly nudge me with his elbow in between each word, as if he wants to make sure Daniel McKenna is paying attention to him...

Lilly called and asked me why I haven't played there in like 3 weeks.

I said that Jacob and I both just lost interest in busking at the same time; not by any arrangement, we just... stopped..

I said that I want to do something special, like go out with some great new songs, or with some "purpose," and that I wasn't sure what Jacob was up to..

Lion Diet, The

I gotta do a cleanse, I'm about 14 hours without eating right now except for coffee and kratom which isn't enough to kick you out of autophagy nor has enough carbs to violate the keto diet..

Maybe we all should do the Lion diet for like 10 days, as if we just killed a beast and ate off it until it was gone.

so towards the tail end of the diet (no pun) we would be eating the least tasty portions, which I guess would be the eyeballs, testicles and the tail? 

So we do the Lion diet for 10 days and then we switch to weird foods like maybe sushi for a few days, then it would be time for a 3 day water fast. So, there's 17 days of the month covered.

And, before the start of the lion diet you should exercise intensely to simulate the battle against the monstrous game.

It was probably this same primordial dance unfolding in the form of the fight that invariably breaks out in the Duval county jail, which I have witnessed first hand, whenever chicken is served for dinner.

As soon as some portal opened and the scent of chicken made it into the cellblock there would be at least two niggas fighting.

This might have been their subconscious minds preparing their bodies for optimum chicken digestion, by using the other inmate as a stand-in  saber toothed tiger; getting the adrenaline flowing and maybe even sustaining an injury, putting the body into healing and repair mode.

*note: I was able to eventually figure out that the fight was always a ploy. 

As the officers rush in to break up the fight, they are also barking: "Everyone in your cells!!"

So then everyone has to eat their chicken alone, or with just their cellmate.

This is because someone had lost their dinner tray playing Spades, or something.

The fight would be between two men, one of whom might be yelling something to the effect of: I didn't know it was going to be chicken, man, or I wouldn't have bet my tray!!"

But we should do intense exercise over a period prior to the lion diet, such as going out and say; playing "Going Down the Road" almost as fast as possible while making up different lyrics at the same time for a whole hour.

Then having eel and dragon fruit , seaweed, kimchee and buffalo testicles for a few days, then a 3 day water fast.

Rinse and repeat...

What A Time

What a great time to blog..

I just got home..

I was out purchasing tequila. 

I was singing/humming "Hey Nineteen" -the Steely Dan song- at the counter, thinking that the guy behind it would know the iconic line: "The Cuervo Gold; the fine 'Colombian;' make tonight a wonderful thing! (say it again...)."But the guys in that particular Shell station are "Hebrew" to me, because about 3 years ago I asked one of them what language they were speaking, and they said Hebrew...

When I first went there, they would be speaking ot to each other.

They might actually be the only people in Nola who could understand them, and so The odds are I wouldn't know what the heck they were saying.

Though, what I did was listen closely to them.

They typically would finish their conversation, which could take 20 to 30 seconds, if no one was behind me, (or if there was, but that person was white, too) before one of them would came to the register.

But this one time I was listening closely to them, having a full 30 seconds to do so. 

and was three times blessed in that, firstly, I think they were talking about a very heavy, or at least semi serious matter.

Secondly, when one of them came to the register, he seemed to want to drill some final point to the other guy, before having to deal with me.

For his part, the other guy evinced signs of taking whatever the guy said, seriously.

And thirdly, the final thing that he barked at the other guy, pointing his finger at him like a gun (hell, he was probably telling him in Hebrew something like; that's when you gotta have one hand on the gun; be ready!)

(above: the hardest 1,000 piece puzzle of my life)

And then I go ahead and reiterate it, not missing a beat...priceless...

That thing was easy to parrot back, no tricky consonants; as easy to repeat as the commands that that blonde queen gave to her dragons, in Game of Thrones, as she flew on their backs.

To get them to spit fire at, usually, Muslim looking men, but I digress..

It was easy to repeat back whatever the young lady said to her dragons, is my point; and I would do exactly that for fun, when I binge watched all 9 seasons during the lockdown..

And, whatever dire directive he had just shot towards his fellow Hebrew coworker became mere dragon language to me and I pointed my finger at the same guy, in jest, and repeated word for word what the guy now at the register had said, and, honest to God, both guys froze for a second, almost in panic, their brains obviously scrambling to process that I might know Hebrew and could have potentially a lot of dirt on them, from having overheard "things."

Or for whatever other reason that might have possessed them for the few priceless seconds it took them to figure that I had just  parroted back, in the same tone of voice and everything, haha 

"Hand on the gun, I ain't bullshittin'!" I repeated..

Anyways I don't think they drew the connection between me singing 'Hey Nineteen " whist laying the tequila on the counter.

They seem to have, maybe predictably, become much more friendly and respectful lately. Maybe the guy ain't so bad, he just blew the shit out of Iran... type of thing..

That would be my guess.

I'm 6 days into a water only fast and I have just made it a water and Jose Cuervo only fast, always the experimenter, I.

At Least We Are Afforded Life Lines

Gah,

if the universe isn't telling me to get a new phone, then, my universe interpreting skills have eroded.

I can't use my full sized keyboard for some reason and, as I peck away one character at a time I rotate the phone to at least make it closer to the size of a full sized keyboard, but it doesn't rotate.

And, to top it off, the battery takes forever to charge up and discharges even with the charger plugged in if I'm watching video...

And, for some reason, this free government phone really has a hard time playing any content outside the bought and paid for mainstream media stuff.

I can watch Russell Brand 3 seconds at a time with 5 second pauses in between, same for anything being hosted on the Tucker Carlson network.

I can't log in to a rumble account, and when I did want to check out Truth Social just to see what was on there, there was some problem, uh, logging in to leave a comment, or creating an account...

On the free "lifeline" phone (a name referring to the "basic human right" of citizens to have access to 911, along with having content that they shouldn't see, as determined by an algorithm implemented by some CIA carve-out).

Authoritarianism cloaked as a life raft...

Now I've already had my fill of pecking away and haven't even gotten to the inordinately f-ed up culture we live in...

At least we are all afforded life lines.....

Post Title Goes Here

I wonder what it was that made me not make a blog post, that one day...and then the following 100 days.

The blog lost its raison d' etre, which was originally, to document my ascendance from homeless street musicianship to superstardom...

It was the shadow banning, the mentioning of which had more than one person rolling their eyes over that conspiracy theory of mine.

My readership, which I had built up to around 600 views a day, with about 40 people who checked in "regularly" (or had feed aggregators doing it for them) suddenly plummeted to more like 16 views a day, beginning right after I had posted something negative about the Democrat candidate.

That was the day my "wokeness" rating was dropped to below the "cancel" threshold, the way a Google associate explained things to me.

But I was being paranoid, and a bit narcissistic to even think that Google would be mindful of my little blog, or concerned that my ideas could pose some kind of threat to anyone who might encounter them.

"That's nonsense; it's the Republicans that do that," said the party that has become notorious for accusing others of doing exactly what they, themselves, are doing.

They are the authoritarian fascists, shutting down free speech, cancelling those who won't play the game...

There are 2 sets of "news" that goes out, and they are just about perfect compliments of each other.

For example, after Trump got shot, my phone's screen greeted me the next day with like a slow motion GIF of Donald yelling "fight!" while that "proud to be an American" song played..

Later that day, I used Elizabeth's phone for something, and when I opened the YouTube app, there, sandwiched in between rescue animals shivering for the cameras and needing "just 72 cents a day" to save their, or one of their less photogenic contemporaries, lives were news articles which were basically the counter narrative to all the articles on my own phone.

The slow motion trump video had been revised for Elizabeth to one where someone was claiming that the shooting had been faked (to get votes?) as part of some elaborate conspiracy. Trumps hand went to his ear before the first shot was even heard....

"... the speed of sound being slower than the speed of light?"

"Shut up, Racist!!" ....

"He's so deceitful, he faked an assassination attempt!" Elizabeth was sure of that; she had been reading about it all day, even NPR and PBS concurred, so you know!

Type of thing.

It was an elaborate, er, scheme, to help him get votes, and to get Mark Zuckerberg on his side, they probably paid people in the crowd to fake being hit by stray bullets. Notice how someone just happened to have their camera out when Trump was pumping his fist, how convenient...they were all in on it!

And, don't listen to the MAGA people; all they do is trade in conspiracy theories...

This blog was hidden from search engines, so that even if someone Googled: "Post Title Goes Here," today, they wouldn't see this post referenced anywhere in the first half dozen pages of results.

What did I expect, I just questioned the integrity of NPR, for Christ's sake... people shouldn't see this! This is the same NPR that just had an all transgender lesbian band on their Tiny Desk concert series..who do I think I am?!

So, to beat the algorithm, I could buy a new phone, then start a new blog using the new phone number as a new identity, then use a VPN so my IP address won't give me away...

I'll know if I was successful if my phone doesn't seem to know WHAT to send me. I ain't got no 72 cents a day for no rescue cats, but I can click on all the P Diddy news stories to kind of give the algorithm somewhere to start on my profile...

Then, cut 15 years worth of blogging from here, and paste it into the new blog. And then maybe put in the energy required to build up to a following of 40 readers a day...

Well, 39, plus my mom...
 

Safe To Emerge

Keeping a blog might be easier if and when I get some fancy phone that will allow me to post stuff on the go, by speaking into it and including photos and videos...

And living a life interesting enough to blog about, of course...

But, For How Long?

Gah, I just googled "at what temperature should a whole hen be baked?" 

Then I came over to the couch and plugged my full sized keyboard into the phone using an, up to now handy adapter...

It's pecking away one finger tap at a time, for me.

The Lenovo Thinkpad that hung in there for like 9 years, the last 4 of which without ever being turned off, has finally crapped out with, I believe, a power supply issue being the straw that broke the back of an already burdened camel.

It fails before even loading the operating system, which rules out everything else but the power supply, in my opinion (forged through about 2 years of working as a "computer" technician).

It's kinda like if you were given the task of finding one thing that might be making a certain place uninhabitable.

Then you show up there, and flip the light switch on, ready to have a good look around; but the lights don't go on...

Problem diagnosed in milliseconds...

So my brainstorm is to buy a "brand new" refurbished Thinkpad, and just pop the hard drive out of the old one into it, turn it on and resume computing as if nothing happened....

Except, if I can find one with 16 gigs of ram (up from the 4 that I'm used to) and one that is reduced in price because it's missing a hard drive, well, that is what I give God thanks for -just for creating the possibility that such a machine might be found....

Music For Dwelling

I can speak

Above: As a sophomore...

stuff in here but I cannot type stuff in here. Plugging my full sized keyboard into the phone isn't working, but I can speak the blog post in. 

I've been practicing the guitar out of several method books, recently, having had a miniature eureka(!) moment, of sorts, after which I started to watch television and practice at the same time. There is an absolute benefit to being able to pay attention to an external stimuli, like a TV show about true crimes, and to be practicing the material simultaneously. It totally disengages the two orbs of the brain from each other; in my opinion; as much of a brain surgeon as I am.

It was Nuno Bettencourt, I think, who was talking about some extremely (excuse the pun) difficult riff that he said took him "3 movies" to learn because, yes; he would just mechanically repeat the phrase, taking it in different sized chunks, throughout the duration of, in this example, 5 hours of motion pictures...

Above: How much do I love the clock on my wall? Enough to have made replicate earrings, so I can take it everywhere I go!!

I am like a musician reborn, having been able, with considerable effort, throw a binary switch in my brain and practice like Nuno.

I might add to this post if I can solve the keyboard dilemma...

I think I've had this issue before and I have solved it by bringing up the blogger interface through the Chrome browser and not through the app which is the blogger app but which does not allow me to plug a huge keyboard into the phone through an adapter and type away but if I visit the site using Chrome...

Unpacking The Attack

There, on my “antenna” TV, after I’d pressed the red button on the remote Thursday night, appeared a telecast emanating from the St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Jackson Square.

It was a “multi-faith” memorial type service, in observation of the 14 people killed in the “terrorist attack,” on Bourbon Street the other night. 

OK, about 4 things to unpack here…🫠

Cynicism Rising In My Throat

 I found myself initially cynical, especially upon seeing acting president Joe Biden, and his wife, Doctor Jill, seated in the very first pew.

 I was praying that the event wasn’t going to be “politicized” more than could be helped by the parties involved.

I was prepared to cringe. 

It seems that "the narrative,” was to revolve around the “terrorist attack” aspect of it.

The mainstream media seemed to have ordered all their useful idiots to “make sure you drill down on the ‘terrorist attack’ thing."

I think this is because, in the near future, there will be a push for no more human piloted vehicles. For the protection of all, only self driven electric vehicles, please...

There will be an uptick in this kind of "terrorism" and the experts will designate cars as dangerous weapons, when driven by humans. They are unpredictable by nature.

There is no way to forsee, nor control, the actions of any one crazy individual behind a wheel.

We have seen what can, and will, happen if people are allowed to drive vehicles. 

Just as I suspect that the “pandemic” of a couple years ago (when the regular “winter flu” inexplicably took the year off) had, as one of its aims, the dealing of a financial blow to the oil and gas billionaires. 

Their puppet in Washington immediately shut down the Keystone pipeline...

The lock down had the effect of taking almost every car off the roads, world-wide. 

All kinds of money was funneled from the treasurie to the pharmacies....to reimburse the pharma companies for all the “free” vaccines that the ignorant masses were scared, or threatened into putting in their bodies. But I'm digressing...

“Domestic terrorist attack” was, I guess, the best spin they could come up with on such short notice. This seemed to be the act of one deranged individual who didn’t seem to be concerned about ramming his vehicle into people of color, or even fellow Muslims; he seemed to be just focusing upon the highest body count.

There perhaps, isn’t much political capital in a story about a member of an oppressed (i.e. non white) group flying an ISIS flag, attacking random people…

Like Popeye, Americans will reach the point where that’s all we can stand and we can’t stands no more; then some kind of war will "reluctantly" be declared; please remit 118 billion dollars, Mr. and Mrs. taxpayer, as the first installment...

To the Biden’s immediate right was the governor of Louisiana, and his blond haired wife, who looked very much to be posing for the cameras, and who kept a kind of half smile frozen on her face the whole time, as if that was a "future first wife" expression that she has practiced in a mirror.

She present herself as "the pretty, charming and loyal wife to a governor," (who happened to be on national and worldwide TV. 

But I couldn’t help thinking it a bit “tone-deaf” to be smiling at a funeral...

It was a chance to be seen by a huge audience, while Joe pointed out from the podium that, like New Orleans, America itself is going to rebound from this. 

When can we go to war with Iran? We can't stands no more!

Those seem to be the 2 talking points that the corporate owned media were drilling down on: it was a terrorist attack; and how much more can we stands? 

Gayle

I flipped through the channels to discover that it was on “all 3” channels. 

I kept reaching for a mouse; to back the video up a few seconds to see something again, like Gayle Benson, the billionaire who owns the city's two major sports teams, making her entrance. What a beautiful lady, still gorgeous at like 78 years old...

Then I thought about who the “target” audience was for this free, rabbit ear accessible television broadcast -with every advertisement being for some drug.

One for an eczema "cure" was aired. I think one of it’s possible side effects was “suicidal thoughts,” in some context. It’s like, if you are in such deep despair that you can’t even see any point, to even calling your doctor because everything has lost its meaning to you; be sure to call your doctor!..type of thing…

It is the crowd old enough to remember the first moon landing that is the target. 

I was shaken out of my sleep when I was 6 years old, at about 3:30 in the morning, on a July night, I believe it was, by my dad; and shuttled to the living room to watch what I thought were a couple scuba divers. I remember the moon landing.  I can’t Google that right now because my government phone has run out of data because the “Affordable Connectivity Plan (?) was cancelled.

Assurance Wireless blamed it on the U.S. Congress.

I was really hoping that, through ineptitude or corruption, the plan would continue to operate.

How much does it actually cost to give people unlimited data, rather than cutting them off at 4 gigabytes? They have to have a certain bit set to a one on their server, and not toggle it to zero once 4 gigabytes have been streamed to the account.

Unlimited data...

I would fall asleep watching something, and then 9 hours later wake up and it would have auto-played to a grainy black and white documentary on how they build nuclear submarines, or something.

Though, it would usually be pretty darned interesting.

The cynic in me wonders if the phones just became unnecessary as tools for “nudging” elections in one particular direction, as the probability of of a Trump victory loomed larger day by day.

The plan might have originally been to cheat and win the election, and then pull the plug on the unlimited data, to keep the population somewhat muzzled; as the program ended about a month before the elections. I know I was plumb out of data by then, and couldn’t have organized a Capitol riot even if I'd wanted to...

99% of probable voters had already fallen into one camp or the other. 

The nation had already been divided into two basic groups. There was probably a strong correlation between the amount of people who looked at political stuff on their phones, and the amount that actually got out and voted. 

With each group getting radically different “news” each day.

It was a “terrorist attack,” and It appeared to me that the governor’s wife was the “central casting” governor’s wife, sitting quietly by his side “in support” of the guy who was in the front pew right next to the president; unassuming; and just a sweet, charming lady about 20 years his junior, and with a pleasant half smile apparently as her natural expression.

It was hard not to wonder if she in fact couldn’t help smiling, from giddiness over being sandwiched between so much power. 

I was wondering things like that less than a minute into watching, and like, is that what attracted this pretty youngish woman to the governor; power? And then I noted that Biden’s wife was sitting to his right, putting Joe right on the aisle and physically as close to the front as one could be; he was at the front of the front pew. The same seat in the opposite aisle was vacant. I wondered if that was because anyone sitting there would be tied with Joe for the best possible seat in the house. 

Then, I saw Gayle Benson, perhaps the wealthiest person in Louisiana, slowly walking up the main aisle to apparently her spot in the church, where she took her place among a couple pews worth of what looked like professional athletes (probably not local folks who decided to wear their Saints and Pelicans shirts to the mass and were there early enough to find a seat 5 pews behind the president of the United States. 

I thought it ironic that the ushers would probably make me remove my hat if I went to that church, and would look askance at anyone showing up on a Sunday wearing a football or basketball shirt; but yet, here were a couple rows of people dressed such. I suppose it’s OK if you’re an actual player, and if the still gorgeous at the age of 78, billionaire owner of the team is there with you. Gayle’s the one who bought them their uniforms, after all… 

That seemed about right, the 5th row for professional sports, in the microcosm of New Orleans that the cathedral seemed to have become; with the one possible inaccuracy religious faith being the main event, with the bishop front and center. 

There were representatives from about 15 different “faiths” up on the altar. 

Then the black haired lady who sings at that cathedral sang; and it was so beautiful I had tears in my eyes and could almost believe that being in the view of millions of people world-wide and singing in the presence of the president (of the Saints and the Pelicans, Gayle Benson) and everyone else, mattered very little to that lady, whom I had seen a few times on Sunday mornings when I had turned the antenna TV on still too early for football. But she had never brought tears to my eyes. But, with the eyes of the world upon her, she was radiant with something that made the governor’s wife’s half smile appear even more pasted on. That went a long way to dispel my cynicism, at least on a certain level.

 I still had a morbid curiosity surrounding Biden’s ability to take the podium and not erase any doubt that his stepping out of power was premature.Was Joe going to get up there and mumble something unintelligible except for snippets, here and there that you could make out, praising “the brave troops who stormed these beaches” fifty years ago?