Two Days Straight

Only, Not Two Days Sober

There is a Muddy Waters song, off of his "Hard Again" album, which just starts off with him singing : "Whoa!" a cappella, which is echoed by the same note, bend on a guitar string.

Then Muddy sings: "Everything is gonna be alright!" before the rest of the band comes in with a vamp very similar to the one in Mannish Boy. Then the song, which I can't remember the name of, continues.

The name of the song escapes me because, outside of hearing it a thousand times when I had the cassette as a 14 year old, I now only listen to the line: "Everything's gonna be alright!" and then stop it.

It's kind of like a Reader's Digest condensed version of a blues song. Enough to get the gist of it and have my mood elevated when pressed for time.

The album title "Hard Again" is, yes, a sexual innuendo that refers to a part of the male anatomy. 

I didn't catch that when I was a naive 14 year old Catholic school student.

I had bought the cassette because I wanted to broaden my horizons and add the Delta blues to my bag of guitar tricks. It also went over my head that there is a harmonica and piano in the recording. I just wasn't that aware of the separate instruments that go into an ensemble. The intro to "Love Me Do" by the Beatles, I just thought was "some sound" that the Beatles made; because they were that good.

I read somewhere that Muddy was very sexually promiscuous, had fathered something like 3 dozen illegitimate children, and that his music was littered with allusions to it. If something could be interpreted two ways, then it was certainly meant the dirty way of the two, in Muddy's repertoire. 

It's kind of clever to use the blues cliche that way, now that I think of it. Coupled with the image of him on the front cover, it's kind of classic. And, since it went over my head, I wasn't corrupted.

Disgusting!

Doing Things Ass Backwards

Reversing my schedule, so as to put getting on the computer first, has already brought to fruition two consecutive days of blog posts.

I can rebuild this blog; I can make it better, faster, stronger. I can litter it with double entendres...

And, of course, the weed guy called me as soon as I started typing; probably to say that he is right around the corner, with bags of weed in the convenient 5 dollar baggies that he trades in. But after swiping upward 3 times "to answer" on my new phone, I was unsuccessful. It just kept sliding back to where it started. I have missed several calls that way.

His call might have gone to my voice mail box message. I need to call myself sometime just to see what that message sounds like. I remember grabbing my guitar and hitting a chord as soon as I was instructed to "begin speaking after the tone," and singing some kind of greeting that popped into my head.

I think it is rude to not answer a call if I can; although it is a pain in the butt (disgusting, George Michaels) to have to tell the guy that I don't want a sack of weed.

I need to download that song "The Pusher" or pusher man, or whatever the title is and learn it. I think I could perform it with integrity if I dedicate it to the skinny black man who calls me regularly advertising his "fire from Colorado" or whatever his flavor of the day is...

The sun is about to go down. The Warren Easton High School drummers are banging away a block down the street. I need to bring my phone with me and record a few minutes of them and then use it in one of my songs; like how Fleetwood Mac incorporated the U.S.C. marching band into their "Tusk" song (speaking of double entendres in music).

I might just do that, on my way to the store to get a couple 24 ounce cans of beer, but no sake. No more sake. For my own sake, no more sake!

I'm Stuffed

 

I started this post on Thanksgiving night, which I guess was Thursday, as I think it is always the first Thursday after the second full moon in November or something...
I was stuffed.

I learned the lesson, once again that free food is often a Trojan Horse.

I won a Thanksgiving basket. They give them away every year. I think 30 people win them out of however many of the 119 people who live here sign up for the raffle.

I have been here 7 years now, and have won 3 times. Last year, Bobby in Building C won and wound up giving me his turkey.

Bobby was doing so much better last year. This year, the 300 dollar stimulus checks led to his demise, while fattening the wallet of at least one crack dealer.

The crack dealers have been emboldened by the circumstance of the police having better things to do than to try to arrest crack dealers.

As long as the crack dealers turn around and spend all their money, then the gears of the economy will be greased. Sure, they might spend it upon gold, but the money will eventually trickle down, being taxed at whatever percentage rate until it is all back in the hands of the government.

If the crack dealers ever decided to start stashing cash in mattresses, then a truly 1929 style depression would surely ensue. It is the drug trade that makes the world go around, in both its illicit and medical guises.

Depression

I woke up as depressed as I have been in a long time this morning. I had abused myself by drinking a whole bottle of sake the night before. There must be a ton of residual sugar in sake. That is why it tastes so sweet and is, hence, bad for you.

I had already gotten a flat tire on the bike the night before. The tire had a leak that was so slow that it took a couple weeks before the drag became enough of a hindrance that I would cough up the 4 quarters for the air machine at Brown Derby.

So, I had gone there and pumped the tire up until it was rock hard, then rode about a mile to the Family Dollar. When I came out of there, loaded down with bags full of juice, water and a 7 pound bag of cat litter among other things, it had started to pour down raining. I wished I had gotten 2 big cans of beer instead of one, to give me something to do while I waited to see if it would abate.

After I sipped down the one beer, the rain had indeed slowed considerably down, so I tied all the bags onto the handlebars, about 30 pounds worth, giving the bike a front heavy feel and got on it, I noticed that the back tire was just about flat, but still had enough air to ride on.

Oh, for heaven's sake!

I rode across the street to the Fresh Market and got another 24 ounce can of Dos Equis.

I then rode up Canal street at a speed which was barely better than walking.

A young black kid in a hoodie, who had been out in front of the dollar store when I came out was walking toward me, having apparently gone to skeeze at the Burger King while I was in Fresh Market getting the second beer.

"Ha ha ha," he laughed derisively, which made me think that he might have let the air out of my tire, probably because he knew I never give anything for free to bums at my expense.

But, now that I have discovered a tiny hole in the tube, I think he was laughing to mock me because he thinks Biden won the election. Obvious Trump supporter that I was to him (a white "boomer"). That makes the most sense to me for why he would have done that. What is the book theory on individuals such as him? Oh, yeah, his life is so sucky that he feels the need to try to make others feel bad, to make himself feel better. And, of course he was probably hoping I would have said: Shut the f*** up, ignorant colored boy!" because I would have kind of been a sitting duck with all the groceries on my bike and an almost flat back tire, should he have wanted to get nigger-ish and physically attack me. I am holding off on buying a .25 caliber (I think it was) pistol, at least until I have quit drinking entirely because I at the very least would have pointed it at his face and said "Keep moving, colored boy," should he have approached me.

Then, if he kept approaching and said something like "You ain't got the guts!" then what choice would I have. It would be my life against his, in that situation. Plus, I had all those groceries to get home. It is most likely at least a misdemeanor to "brandish" a weapon. The little punk would have become the victim in that scenario. Yeah, not until I have quit drinking for at least a couple weeks will I consider arming myself for the upcoming season after the election is reversed.

Even if it isn't reversed, I believe the 73 million Trump voters will begin to gather in secret societies and form militias.

But, right now, I am just hoping I can find the Wednesday Night Football game broadcast on one of the antenna TV stations that I get. I might even run to the store for some beer to drink while I watch it.

This morning was one of those occasions when I had decided enough was enough and I just couldn't drink any more. But, after just drinking prune juice and then apple juice all day and flushing my system out, I already feel great. Great enough to risk messing it all up again...

At least I have stopped smoking weed for the time being. Jay Leno was spot on when he called pot "ambition-be-gone." I have started so many pieces of music, inspired by a joint which didn't turn out to last long enough to see the project through, which are now sitting in separate files that I am afraid to listen to, for fear that they will be dopey sounding, that I don't want any more. Some of them might have the drum beat out of whack so that the downbeat is landing on the upbeat and I will be thinking: "I didn't notice that while I was doing it?!"

The picture at the top is of the French Quarter a couple blocks from where I play. Jacob had forwarded a message he got from another musician who lives right across the street from where I play. He was saying that the spot "looks really good," and that "people are tipping really well, for some reason." He saw one busker get two hundred dollar bills (if that was what he had meant by "two bills").

I had my reservations, so I logged on to the web cam. Maybe all the people except for the two seen in the photo were down by where I play. It's also possible that the guy, whose name is Will, is gay and has a crush on Jacob and is trying to get him to come out (in more ways than one) an play once again. I mean, he didn't text me with any encouragement, just Jacob.

OK, Ive checked off the two boxes: "racist" and "homophobic" with this post, what am I missing?

I guess losing all of your friends is a highly probable outcome of alcohol abuse, and right now I basically feel like I have no more friends. Even an old college friend whom I sent a message to the relatives of on Facebook, who sent a message back saying "I'm sure Hubert (as that is his name) would love to hear from you; he still occasionally mentions you in a funny story about the past" have suddenly gone silent after the last message of: "I'll see if I can get an email address from him." In my depressed state it seems likely that Hubert, upon thinking about it decided not to dredge me up.

I feel like a designated driver in life. When I drink, not only does my life fall apart, but seemingly unrelated things go wrong, too. It is probably like the proverb about the pebble dropped into the ocean eventually causing waves to wash up on all shores of the world.

It's not like how messed up the world is was brought about by my spiritual failings; but I had an equal hand in it. I think that was what Jesus' basic message was; all for one, one for all.

But, Jeez, I'm still steaming over that piece of crap little punk black boy that just had to go: "Ha ha ha ha" as I rode past. Forgive him? Really?

I mean, he was walking through the rain in his hoodie; what's he got to laugh about?

At Least Post Something

... to show that you are at least still alive.

Off Working On Song/Video

Hit me, Joe, I'm wide open!

I have come to the end of a day that started about 16 hours ago, after I was woken by a phone call from Bobby, whom I don't associate with much because he seems to be on an extended crack binge and seems to be aging at a rate of about one year every two weeks.

He wanted me to call a crack dealer for him using my phone because the dealer wasn't answering when he called on his. This was at about 4:30 a.m. and, after my call also went to voice mail I was able to assure Bobby that the guy wasn't avoiding him, but was probably busy cooking up more crack, or sleeping, I was unable to fall back to sleep.

The guy might have been avoiding Bobby, I thought, out of pity over seeing how he seems to be aging one year every two weeks. But, his not answering my phone either poked a hole in that theory. The dealer would probably love to get me hooked on the stuff, as my bank account hasn't been drained yet, whereas Bobby sits and smokes in a practically bare apartment, where there once was an electric guitar and a huge amplifier and peripheral effects, and where a large screen TV used to show satellite TV type shows, but now only seems to display old western movies on the "Grit" antenna TV station, the few times I have been over the past couple months.

He probably suspected that the dealer wasn't answering his calls because he thought Bobby was going to try to pay him with the large screen TV. It would be well worth a 50 dollar crack rock but would be cumbersome to load into the crack guy's Honda Accord.

And, after that, I wasn't going back to sleep, and so I drank a beer and put my own TV on and then got suckered into watching almost two hours of "crime" TV in a semi stupor, which intensified after I drank my second and last Rolling Rock. It was only seeing an aged Joe Namath come on and try to sell me health insurance that snapped me out of the trance, and I was able to snap the TV off and go back to life as normal.

This meant going to the computer, intending to work on the present piece of music that I am planning to make a video to go with, now that I have a smartphone that has more than the 20 minutes of battery life that the last one had.

And, as fate would have it, I never made it past spending about 3 hours on Facebook, and then another 5 or so on Youtube, and then signing up for Parler, the alternative to Facebook where hopefully the cancel culture will not follow. How uncool would it be for people who have never been on Parler to go there and start "reporting" people for not being blatant enough in their deranged irrational hatred of the president. Supposedly Parler still recognizes the 1st amendment as being there to protect hate speech (because why would any other speech need protecting) and doesn't censor. Unless you are texting "fire" in a crowded virtual theater, of course.

I got about 2 hours of guitar practice in, and then remembered this blog. Has it really been 8 days since I last posted? I guess I have really forsaken my readers. It's nothing you have done, although I might be subconsciously avoiding the verbal abuse which has been Alex in California in the past.

I am planning on doing a "piece" on him, and have the idea already; it's just going to take about 8 hours to hash it out and do it the way I envision the "tribute" to come out.

But, now I am at the end of the day. I should do everything in reverse order tomorrow, starting with the blog and maybe never getting to the TV shows and Joe Namath. 

Maybe *I'm* The Partially Braindead One

 

 Loftier Goals

I'm trying to break free of some of the "thought constructs" (as Eckhart Tolle calls them) that have been holding me hostage; things that have become "beliefs" of mine and are hindering me in my pursuit of the "loftier" goals that I am presently sloshing my way towards, as if up to my waist in quicksand.

I think of other people who were able to graduate from places like Oxford at the top of their classes because they could do things like digest an entire novel in one evening, then type out a paper in time for the next day's class.

I have heard that it was strongly advised that Ivy League students do an hour of homework each night for every credit hour of courses taken; in the hope of not flunking out. Five hours in school; five hours of homework; no beer; no Frisbee.

Some books I have read had in the back of them "further reading" lists which would take me about a year to read all of. Yet, the author supposedly read them as part of her research, and then wrote a book that might  taken me three weeks to read through. By then, she has already started her next one...

One of the limiting beliefs that I have uncovered in myself was that "people who are physically remote from me are hard to get access to." 

It used to require a long distance phone call with the assistance of an operator (think Lilly Tomlin) or pumping quarters into a payphone. But now it is as simple as punching a number into my smartphone and waiting maybe 8 seconds for the voice of the person on the other side of the continent to come through in crystal clear quality. At no extra cost over the monthly service charge.

One ringy-dingy...

So, Saturday evening I phoned my mother just to say hi and to have a short conversation, in the hope that if I make it a habit to call every couple weeks or so, then it won't have to be to catch up after not having spoken for ages. It's hard to call and just say "Hi, how is everything? Good to hear you're doing fine, well, OK; bye.." after not having spoken in a year.

A cynical ex-girlfriend of mine, Angela Washington (who was as black as the name suggests) once said: "When people call whom you haven't heard from in a long time, it's usually because they want something."

Tonight, after I discovered that the Patriots were playing on Sunday Night Football, I was reminded of how Howard Westra and I used to have an unwritten rule that I would materialize at his place whenever the Patriots were playing on TV. We left it to the network executives to schedule our get-togethers.

Howard is someone who reads so fast that he starts to grip the page to the right in preparation of turning it as soon as he has turned the last one. I have seen him read two and a half books in one day. He obviously has mastered the speed reading technique of not saying the words in your head. You are supposed to look at a paragraph and let it register so that the meaning is grasped and the action unfolds in your imagination with no vocalization at all.

I could never learn to do that myself, and even as I sit here I am hearing my own voice saying "even as I sit here I am hearing my own voice saying" in my head.

I'm starting to actually question just how "smart" I am.

I was never able to be hypnotized. Despite having had a hypnotist attempt it, and having read many "self hypnosis" books promising to teach me how to plant suggestions in my own mind that would program me for "success."

With the hypnotist, I kept getting caught up on the words he was using, wondering how exactly they were supposed to lull me into a trance.

The hypnotist told me he would use auto-hypnosis, for example, before going to the dentist and would save himself the cost of Novocaine, by planting the suggestion in his mind that "I won't feel any pain."

Another one of my high school friends was able to listen to the same cassette that I had, which would walk the listener through certain relaxation exercises, tensing and relaxing muscles etc., and at one point the speaker would suggest that your arm was becoming lighter and lighter, until (in my friend's case, at least) it would rise up off your chest, of its own accord.

I think it would freak me out if that happened. Maybe I have loss of control issues. I mean, who wouldn't be afraid that the guy is going to have you thinking that you are a chicken as soon as he snaps his fingers; and you will be walking around the neighborhood clucking and flapping your "wings" until he breaks the spell, type of thing.

That same high school friend had a habit opened mouth breathing whenever he was focusing intently upon anything, like writing something down on a piece of paper or drawing a picture; and would breath loudly through that opened mouth, apparently oblivious to it. Soon after putting a pair of headphones on and listening to music the mouth would come open. 

I always interpreted this, perhaps a bit superciliously, as him being partially brain-dead, neanderthal, or at the very least, unaware of his surroundings and kind of "out of it." 

But, maybe Jeff (as that was his name) had a gift for concentration, and the ability to put himself into productive brainwave patterns, like alpha or beta or whatever the technical terms are. Maybe I'm the half brain-dead one. Although, at least I never had anyone have to tap me on the shoulder in the library when I had headphones on and say "Dude, we can hear you breathing all the way across the room...knock it off!".

So, I am changing the way I think about long distance phone calls. I called Howard's number as the game was kicking off and got one of his housemates (who answers his phone for him because he [Howard] is deaf).

I was notified that Howard now cannot walk, to go along with being deaf. He was starting to have problems with his legs the last time I saw him last fall when the Patriots were playing the Ravens on national TV, and I guess the situation deteriorated. His housemate did say that he had lost a lot of weight in response to my reaction to the news being: "He needs to lose about 80 pounds."

"Mission accomplished," said Ken, as that is the guy's name. "He's thin as a rail now.."

I am also addressing the issue of spreading myself thin. The sixty or so books that I have stacked up everywhere because I wanted to become well read, I am going to start to take with a grain of salt. If I start to read something and am not enjoying it, I'm not going to try to plod through it, merely because it's "a classic" or "a must read" or it won praise from Oprah Winfrey (I mean, so did Joe Biden. I rest my case).

The same goes for music.

Speaking of Howard again, he once said that the best concert he ever went to, back when he could hear, was a John Prine concert, back when he (Howard) was a student at the University of Colorado (and a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War).

John Prine on Soundstage (link)

This led me to seek the guy out, which I did, and gave him more than his due of a listen; while trying to figure out what Howard might have seen in the guy. 

I did initially really like a Youtube of him from the "Soundstage" show from 1981 -so much that I went back to it the next day. 

But after two listens; his songs wore thin. The guy was just too much of a simpleton, albeit a likable one, to hold my interest past those two viewings. 

I did get the notion that I could probably write a few songs in his style with little effort at all. But, then, how much interest could I hold from people by doing so?

Paring Down

So, I am going to make a push to pare down a bit. I'm going to donate a bunch of books that I might have read enough of to know that I don't enjoy reading (Do I really want to read the whole biography of Governor George Wallace? Maybe, but what about the one about Teddy Roosevelt? I can always go and re-claim them from the Sacred Heart sacred book vault, where I'm sure it will still be on that island surrounded by the sea of illiteracy that is Sacred Heart...should my interest in the bigoted former Governor of Alabama become rekindled...

And the same for the CD's. I know they don't take up much space, but they contribute to the clutter and sometimes one just has to choose between music of cultural significance like The Meters, and any one of the five Modest Mouse discs that I came into possession of through some "box by the side of the road" accident.

The focus will be on making a video now. I already have the smartphone and the basic tracks are done.

My idea is to use a metronome click track, set to the tempo of the piece. That way I can film myself in various places and keep my movements in time with the tempo so that they can be superimposed over the music using the OpenShot Video Editor.

That should keep me busy enough so that I will only have time for one book, one other music listening endeavor (old time blues, like Robert Johnson et. al.) and maybe one Youtube video a day; one half hour on Facebook, and pretty soon; busking again at the Lilly Pad for two and a half hours, three or four times a week.

Not In George Wallace' State!

All they have to do is charge you,

and you might as well leave town...

Maybe I can point tourists to my Youtube channel. After I pare, that down too, to just a few of the best videos and get rid of stuff like the Miley Cyrus "Virus Song" (which I think single-handedly drove away Craig Nelson, who used to visit this blog before I posted that hastily slapped together production).

A video has to be pretty bad to get someone to stop even reading the aritst's blog (unless he Googled my name looking for more music and was taken to the article about the "child pornography" charges that the Mobile, Alabama police trumped up against me, trying (successfully) to run me out of town, along with the rest of the homeless population there...

45 Dollars A Tooth"

 "Forty five dollars!; She barked at me and then stared me down.

The receptionist at the University Medical Center's "dental" department, that is; and older black lady with a frown etched into her face.

There was a resoluteness in the way she practically demanded the 45 bucks. It wasn't friendly, it was kind of like 45 bucks, or no dental care.

It made me think of how I had lanced the last abscess that I had about 5 years ago after it had become painful enough and which I could see in my bathroom mirror where the problem was. That time, I had taken an exacto knife and driven it in to the swollen area right above the tooth which was so painful at that point that a stab from such an instrument paled in comparison to the throbbing pain that I was feeling. 

That time, I was surprised by how much blood, but mostly puss, I wound up spitting in my sink. But I was pleasantly surprised when the toothache went away after that.

We need to realize that we are living in an age where so called doctors and medical people in general are practicing something akin to putting leaches on their patients to draw out the bad blood, and heal them.

Damn that bad blood.

The thing that bothered me was being in a situation where I had no choice.

It's like when somebody sues somebody else, and the second person has to drain his life savings to pay some lawyer, just so he can defeat the lawsuit and go back to "normal." Minus his life savings.

I just hate being in such a situation. The tooth extraction was supposedly necessary, according to the emergency room doctors. Or else I would, or might, die. They weren't clear on that except to strongly discourage the use of an exacto knife to perform the same procedure at home.

I paid the money and a female dentist pulled the teeth that had apparently caused the abscess, and she (as it was a female who looked a lot like Kamala Harris) even went so far as to recommend more of my ten teeth that are left be removed. Sure, that would be 45 bucks a pop. 

I could have left there light 135 bucks. It kind of pisses me off how people such as dentists will postulate to me "what's the problem, it's just 135 bucks?"

I hope she has to dig in a dumpster for her food after 4 years of a Biden administration.

I have my exacto knife and hydrogen peroxide and probably more skill that that female dentist who was talking more about Black Friday and whether or not she would have to work that day, and how that would just not be right, given the deals that she would be passing up.

At one point, when she was hacking away, trying to pull the tooth, -I am a pretty good reader of body language et. al. and I could tell that she was over her head and had probably never tried to extract a tooth such as mine. 

She eventually left, after exerting all her strength and causing me pain,  the likes of which had other people in the adjacent rooms yelling and moaning and asking for more numbing.. and enlisted the help of a more experienced dentist saying "I tired" to that particular person -her "tried" being just a mangling of the whole area around the tooth, with the instruments slipping, losing their grip on the tooth, and her causing other areas (that weren't "numbed") to become the casualties of her hacking away, 

All U.S. citizens have the right to some kind of medical treatment. Certainly, any human being laying in the street after having been struck by a car will be whisked to a hospital by an ambulance, regardless of anything else. Even if he is wearing a M.A.G.A. hat.

Off To The Dentist Today

 I developed a toothache Monday and had just started a juice/water fast that day, too.

The same contributors to the toothache, questionable diet, poor sleep, stress over the election, were what tilted me towards embarking upon the fast.

The question in my mind was to do with whether or not you starve a toothache, or feed it.

I would find out at the University Medical Center that, to do nothing was not an option after the thing became abscessed and the side of my face started swelling.

I didn't really know this, and thus I guess I only escaped death by having given up after 3 days of home remedies (warm salt water, clove oil, acupressure, deep breathing, yoga stretches, more acupressure around the head and back of neck) seemed to only be postponing the inevitable.

I never want to be a cry baby and the one time in my life when I called an ambulance because I was struggling to breath, back in 2013, I apologized profusely to the EMT's who came and picked me up along the side of Decatur, where I had went, after coming out from under the wharf.

It was probably the dander from the feathers of a black caped night heron that came to visit me that August under the wharf which became emboldened enough to hunt for its rats within a yard of where I was trying to sleep (since the same crumbs and stuff that fell off my cardboard attracted the very rats that the thing was trying to make a meal of).

I blogged about that extensively, probably in August or September, 2013.

That time, my blood pressure of 190 over something assured the technicians that I wasn't faking, like I guess a lot of people do.

So it was when I arrived at the emergency room with my face swollen on one side enough so that my cheek was in my field of vision.

I assured them that I know they are busy with the virus and I wouldn't have gone there if I hadn't exhausted all other possible cures. They assured me that it would not have gotten better on its own.

I know they have to make general statements calibrated for the average person, just like the speed limit on a roadway is lowered so that even the worse driver can make the bend without crashing, and I almost took it as a personal challenge to try to get over the toothache using all the new age alternative methods at my disposal.

I'm not saying I am at the level of Jesus or the Buddha; but that the hospital staff probably would have said the same thing to either of them had the gone there with an abscessed tooth like mine.

But, I had dug the hole for myself by staying up for days at a time, drinking about a six pack of beer each night, and then making ill advised eating decisions; including grabbing some of the free food that some organization donates to Sacred Heart.

The stuff is actually pretty delicious after being microwaved for a few minutes on a medium setting; stuff like pulled pork with rice and corn, barbecued chicken, type of stuff. Stuff that the "normal" people eat. The normal people that all the drug commercials are aimed at on TV.

I wound up spending the whole night at the hospital. Monday is their busiest day;they said, and there were 90 something people on their list that night, plus a "trauma" victim or two came in and I was bumped back to the waiting room to make room for a car crash victim and then someone who was in a wheelchair that he was handcuffed to, being pushed by a couple cops.

I think it was someone who had left the scene of an accident but then realized how badly injured he was and went to the hospital where cops were stationed, waiting to see if someone who looked like his head had gone through a windshield arrived seeking help.

It made for an interesting night.

But in an hour I have to go and have the tooth extracted which caused the problem. It has nothing to bite against, since the tooth opposite it in my jaw suffered the same fate about 5 years ago.

I never pursued any dental work, not being sure how much my "Healthy Blue" insurance covers, and hoping that I would either come into enough money to be able to pay about $35,000 to have my natural teeth fixed up, so I could retain them. Or for them to come out with dentures that are computer modeled after the patients natural teeth using dental x-rays and a 3D graphical computer aided laser type porcelain grinder.

That is another idea of mine which, I am told, someone else has had, and in the near future dentures will no longer be one size fits all; people will be able to for instance, retain a gap between their front teeth like Madonna and David Letterman and Elton John have and basically look like they did when they were in their twenties, at least their teeth, that is...

It's getting time to go. I think I will get a Modelo Negro beer or two before I go there. I would rather not, since they might smell it on my and tell me they can't give me novacaine (sp?) because of its interaction with alcohol.

They would probably tell that to anyone, even the Buddha, though....

I'll proof read this and polish it up later...    

OK, I Will Shut The F*** Up Now

 It's all fake; all phony.

All the crap in the media and on Facebook and Youtube, none of it can be trusted.

It turns out that the guy whom it was discovered, voted in Michigan when he was born in 1902, and would be 118 years old, was a younger guy with the same name who lived at the same address.

A coincidence that a computer algorithm processing a huge database was able to discover.

Instead of it being the tip of an iceberg of voter fraud, it wasn't even one instance of it.

I guess the masses turned out to be too gullible and the onslaught of anti-Trump stuff on 95 percent of the channels got to them.

I'm not going so far as to say that I hope this brings about a race war (even though that would vindicate Charles Manson, who thought that the Beatles White Album portended such a thing) just so I could say "I told you so," and that it serves people right for voting for socialism, yadda yadda..

I don't hope that. It wouldn't be worth seeing the country go the way of the Roman Empire just so I could be proven right.

I do hope that Biden will be ineffective and that the Republicans will logjam every single thing he tries to do.

And, after about a year, when he has his stroke, or whatever is in their script, and Kamala takes over. 

I hope she doesn't just stand behind the podium with that dopey grin on her face too much.

But, as for me, I am going to go back to not turning my TV or radio on for weeks on end.

No Comment

 Anonymous said:

"Daniel, you are not an intellectual nor a political analyst.

Seriously...shut the fuck up."

 

Wow, my last post drew about 4 times the traffic this blog usually gets.

People shared it despite how pedestrian my knowledge seems to be, to some, and how "erroneous" my (excuse me) opinion is.

Anonymous, let me replace your comment with: "I may not agree with what you say but I will defend, to the death, your right to say it."

That's what you really meant to put in the comment box, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt and revise it for you. One day you will, hopefully, thank me.

"Shut the fuck up" makes you sound un-American, at best.

I get that you are probably thinking: "I want to be un-American; I hate that country because [insert Black Lives Matter narrative here]."

You remind me of the woman "of color" who had stepped outside the Shell station for a cigarette when I was there a couple hours ago, who asked me if I knew who won the presidential election.

I told her I wasn't sure, but I had overheard someone saying "I guess we're getting a new president."

"Good, we need a new president," she said.

I'm not sure she even realized she had spoken. She was puffing on her cigarette and staring blankly off into space, as if hypnotized.

"Why?'

"'Cause, read the articles... everything on TV; and everything..."

I see. The articles. Everything on TV. 

Might as well add "stuff online."

Does she understand that her "identity" as a woman of color was bestowed upon her by a faction that want's to divide the planet into just two groups. The whites, and everyone else? How do you get all the diverse races of the world, from Asian to Black to Indian to Latino, to circle their wagons and unite against the common enemy, that manifests itself through white skin?

Divide the world into 2 groups; white people on one side; and anyone at all who is tainted by even the smallest dab of non-white blood, on the other side, as "people of color." A global push for the vanquishment of the white man. But Adolf Hitler was evil incarnate for trying to do it the other way around...

The designation of "Non white" is fraught with the implication that those people are lacking (niggardly, if you will) in some way; that they are "not" something. That smacks of being "less than," a stigma they have been saddled with since time immemorial.

Better to be "of" something, than to be a "non" anything, right?

Like "of" the people, by the people, and for the people, type of thing. Not to muddy the water (excuse the pun) with that analogy. To use a canine analogy; this would embody all permutations of mutt).  

And so, anonymous wants me to shut up. That leads me to believe that I was making some sense.

"Give me one instance of Donald Trump being a racist..."

"Shut up!"

"Wasn't it Biden who was photographed alongside KK Klansmen?"

"Shut up!"

"Wasn't the stock market hitting record highs right before the virus..."

"Shut up; seriously. We need a new president.

I think the whole concept of the Democrat "plantation mentality" is more real than "Will you just shut up" and pondering why those who apparently have almost total control of "the media are so hell bent on removing the president, a lot more intriguing than "Shut the f*** up" also.  

There is no "delete" button on the reader's end of this blog, so she couldn't just cancel me, like she probably has done to anyone who was a "friend" of hers on Facebook, after that person begged to differ on any matter, ("I guess only time will tell how good a president Trump is being" or something equally outrageous and blasphemous would do the job). Or maybe for not agreeing wholeheartedly enough; because silence is violence, type of thing. Come to think of it, if silence is violence then Anonymous is all confused. Is she inciting me in some way?

And so, reminiscent of the PBS anchorwoman whom I saw cut Trump off mid-sentence during the first debate, apparently as soon as she sensed that something he was in the middle of saying might potentially gain traction with an objective viewer...they certainly don't need to hear this...to do the all important "station identification" notice, from alongside her openly gay sidekick, Amy. Who wouldn't have already intuited that they were watching PBS at the sight of the all gay, all female crew?  

Amy wore a smirk that she borrowed from Kamala Harris throughout most of the night (one that said smugly: "We're just gonna cut you off at will; problem solved!" I guess it was just so titillating for her to have such power -over a man- that she couldn't keep a straight face (excuse the pun).

"How many hot dogs can you eat?"

"Anonymous" doesn't want anyone else exposed to my point of view.

She isn't a generation z special snowflake because one of them would have thrown in an insult about my personal appearance; like something I saw online today where a rather heavy set guy in Michigan had found someone on the voter's registry who was apparently 118 years old when he voted for Joe Biden Tuesday (but Trump is the nefarious one). 

He posting a video of himself exposing the scandal and the first person to comment about what he thought of it was a generation z BLM type who wrote: "How many hot dogs can you eat?" You see, the guy was kind of fat; and so...who is going to take his claim seriously? Plus, that deflected the subject away from election fraud because now everyone was laughing at his expense and giving the snowflake virtual high fives and had forgotten already what the video was about. Plus, the heavyset guy probably was dissuaded from pursuing the matter because his feelings were hurt and so that would mean; drop the matter; just click away from it and block the guy who made the hot dog comment, so he can never hurt you again, type of thing.

Or the snowflake would have made an ageist comment like: "Shut up, boomer, I didn't think the nurses allowed you to have your phone after 10 PM." lights out.

Anonymous is probably ol' Alex in California (the "put down" guy) unable to step outside himself long enough to see a sixty year old man with a brain pickled in vodka, who has taken on the attributes of the very "zombies" which he sees around every corner; while deeming himself superior to them based upon an intellect that makes him capable of delivering of himself, as a counterpoint to my 600 word editorial, such pearls of political analytical wisdom as: "Shut the f*** up" and name calling.

Isn't it Psychology 101 that the undisciplined mind is going to see one's own shortcomings in other people?

So the comment could have been from Alex who is afraid he is losing his intellect and his grip upon what is going on politically in liberal far left California; and is afraid he is turning into a zombie.

But, as my hit counter showed, some 75 people re-tweeted the post; which is practically "viral" for a blog that I have been slacking off on, in recent months. The days of getting 400-500 hits on a given day are gone. But I had to spend about 3 hours a day and post 25 times in a given month to see that kind of return.

Back to the topic, nobody has a right, in this great country, to tell another citizen to shut up.

Read the amendments to the U.S. constitution. It won't take you long to get to the one that deals with free speech. Then you can fact-check me. 

Just put "the first amendment to the U.S. constitution" into the Google search box on your phone, and you'll be off to the races.

You can learn a lot from your smartphone. it can be an educational tool.

In fact, I use the Internet to visit the pages of some of the most intellectual and politically savvy people in the world, like Ben Shapiro. That way, I can impress people at dinner parties by coming off sounding like I have a degree in political science. 

Duplicitous Career Politician Skeezer or The Dictator Skeezer?

I'm actually nervous about going to vote on Tuesday.

I give you, my wandering jew...

Joe Biden, "on the surface," is talking a good game. 

Of course he is. He is a politician; a class of humanity that has devolved into the lowest form of humanity. Right there with lawyers and drug pushers.

How soon we forget Lyndon Johnson sending 58,000 young Americans to their deaths, because he was a puppet for the military industrial complex (who might have had a hand in the assassination of President Kennedy) and then "I am not a crook!" Nixon...

The first Bush had us in an oil war to "liberate Kuwait" within months of coming down the escalator. Remember how the first thing U.S. troops did was to secure the oil refineries; after bombing the crap out of Baghdad?

He was the infamous "Read my lips; no new taxes!" president who broke that promise because more taxes were stolen from the populace to finance the war that he started. I know I promised, but these are extenuating circumstances we have here, type of thing.

The Clinton's were trafficking in drugs from Central America, may have had people murdered, and Hillary was/is the poster girl for politicians who will "get up there" and say whatever they have to, to ring up votes. She was caught in multiple lies by fact checkers.

The second Bush (for whom the election was stolen from Al Gore) might have put out a hit on the mostly rich Jews who were in the World Trade Center buildings on "9/11" Somebody did.

There are videos on Youtube that lay out all kinds of irrefutable evidence that military grade incendiaries were used to pull the buildings down; and of the ensuing cover-up (news footage of people claiming to have heard explosions in the basement were aired initially, but quickly deleted, and certain people muzzled, for just one example).

And then, another puppet in Barrack Obama came along; after the party guessed correctly that they could count on an extra 7 million black people to vote him in.

Amazing corruption in politics was prevalent. But what did "the American people" do? They learned of it; were outraged; agreed that something had to be done; and then went back to their six pack of beer and American Idol on TV.

Then Trump came along and beat them all at their own game.

Politicians had all been able to participate in the corruption, regardless of which party actually took the presidency. Lobbyists; Political Action Committees, etc. Something had to be done...

And so the same powers that were able to silence the truth about 9/11 and to control the media in perpetuating the government's narrative about that mass murder, are still at work.

If you are a feeble minded sheep, and don't know any better, you might take the bait and vote for Joe Biden, the politician.

Anyone, but a politician should be the mantra of the American people.

The Powers have done a good job on "people of color" this cycle, as well as other lost children, brainwashed by the far left.

They've gotten plenty of people to hate Donald Trump, yet not really know why.

"I hate him; that's why!" Really good logic, person of color...or person who wants socialism because it isn't fair that other people are smarter, and more ambitious than them; and so they are rich and they (the typical B.L.M. protesters) are not.

This isn't fair to them, in an inherently unfair world. We need to take a bunch of money from those billionaires and pass it out to the people!

Isn't it those billionaires who desperately want Biden in office? Shouldn't that be some kind of red flag.

You don't think Biden would raise those taxes and then the money would NOT go to the American people, do you? Not a career politician like him, no, that would never happen. He would never say one thing and then do another; like, er, a career politician would, right?

At least with Donald, we know what we are getting.

It would take Joe 4 years to undo Trump, and then we would be right back to where Obama left off.  

Michelle Obama was actually instrumental in my getting my apartment, as a disabled veteran, or so I was told by my caseworker. She came and gave a speech to us veterans in 2014, when I shook her hand and joked about her arm wrestling Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, and we wound up talking for a couple minutes while the agents who would eventually track me down in the wilderness and give me the key to my apartment, looked on in admiration.

"You owe your apartment to the Democrats," my caseworker Tim told me. He wouldn't elaborate. But, the timing of that made me wonder if Michelle didn't whisper to someone: "Make sure he gets taken care of..."

I expect my pastor to have great moral rectitude and give me a hug. My president, not so much. We just might need an asshole in our corner these days...

Give 'em hell, Donny!

We could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.     

Does The Video Insert Feature Work?

I kind of want to test the "video" capabilities of Blogger.
Can one upload a video off of one's hard drive and put it on a blog?

Well, I guess if the above plays, then you can...

Immortality and Skipping The Beer

 ....that leads to your door...

I just got back from a run to the Whole Foods where I attempted to pick up another loaf of Dave's Bread...

They were plumb out of Dave's Bread, except for 3 loaves.

One of them I ruled out instantly as soon as I saw "70 calories" on the label.

I imagine that is per slice, which would make an egg sandwich about 230 calories, if my egg data memory serves me.

Of course a super large egg would probably push your egg sandwich up over 300 calories.

Scary number, 300....to borderline obese people. Because that is about the borderline; entering Obeseville.

But, "low calorie" bread -or "low calorie" anything, I have always felt to be a ripoff. 

You are getting less calories per your dollar. (period intended)

Why not pay the same money for the high calorie stuff and then just eat less of it. Have some left over. Save money...

"Light" cigarettes always got me that way, too. You choke up on them and suck the hell out of them bitches, just to get a satisfying amount of smoke on your puff, and then you realize that the cigarette is already half gone.

It's like removing the tar makes them burn faster, like hay that has been sitting in a barn during a drought.

The bread shelves were wiped out of mostly Dave's Bread. This is because hurricane Zeta is bearing down upon us, even as I write this.

There is a chance that this post is just going to end abruptly after my windows shatter inward under the crush of water which has breached the levy. There may be a corpse floating in my place, in the chest high water, and if so, and I can keep my phone dry, you readers will have a front row seat.

I am thinking of starting a DNA bank, as a business. So, everyone who passes away's DNA will be stored and labelled somewhere, in case science figures out how to bring people back to life, say 20,000 years from now, using cloning techniques and DNA.

Of course, maybe by then they will be able to source the DNA by farming the soil, and this might make cremation a less desirable "final arrangement" type of thing.

It might be centuries more before they (we) figure out how to clone people using DNA that has been destroyed in a fire...

It would be funny if we all are brought back to life again, 24,000 years from now, and it turns out that the scientist who pioneered the technology is named Jesus. What are the odds?!

"Yes, my mom named me after the 'messiah' that people used to believe in back in the flesh and blood days, she loves ancient history."

This will be an age when we will have achieved immortality, through being able to update ourselves through a subset of cloning, so that our physical bodies will be able to regrow themselves indefinitely.

Then, soon after the dawn of that era, Doctor (Jesus) Finley will come along and pioneer a way to resurrect the dead, by using the DNA that had been deposited in a bank just like mine.

The Population Reclamation Initiative will be set in motion, after barely passing a vote, with strong opposition from the people who thought that there were already enough earthling, plus those who argued that the people should be vetted before being cloned back into life. It will eventually be agreed upon that, since everyone was immortal, it would be selfish and immoral to deprive others of the same privilege.

And so, Jesus will resurrect us all, I guess is my point.

But

How can I be thinking of other things, like immortality, when I am about to ask Bernadette out on a date!

I have become so smitten by her honor, that, after having snooped around and checked out her website and such (I Wiki-ed her good) and learned that she is single, and looks to be very attractive and Latina (or whatever Sue the Colombian lady was) and about my age and so.

I am just going to walk up to her, hopefully seeing her milling about the polling location next Tuesday, and tell her that I have become a huge fan; and that I LOVE her opinions; and that her decisions turn me on and she's the fairest of them all; and ask her for a date!

I suppose I could add that I'm sorry about her husband, who was a neurologist, passing away about 10 years ago. But offer her hope of seeing him again (through Jesus).

Let's see, what else...oh, yeah

Paying $5.49 for a bag of Hyponex potting soil rather than getting the dollar store stuff has meant the difference between most things not even growing, and stuff growing like this 3 week old plant to the left.

I used to wonder if I had some kind of airborne mold that was killing any plants I tried to grow.

But, I now know that it was the dirt cheap dirt that was the problem.

It's Tuesday night, the World Series is on and I am skipping the beer this time.

Phone Home Now

 11 Beers Later...

I seem to have fallen into a pattern of going 3 days sober, eating well and sleeping well, and then wrecking it all on the 4th day.

Yesterday (Saturday) on my way out to go to Rouses Market, I was informed by the security lady that I had gotten a package. It was a phone sized box, that I would retrieve, and sign for, after I had gotten back from there, where I bought a 12 pack of New Belgium beer, a "hoppy pack."

I came back and found that the package contained a Unimax 693CL phone, which I immediately charged and activated and switched my "lifeline" service over to.

I haven't really put it through its paces yet, but have taken a few pictures with it.

Everything kind of got put on hold as I watched baseball and football on TV and polished off the 11 beers.

I guess the good thing is that I am taking a night off from drinking tonight.

I feel kind of isolated and lonely and might just go out to the lobby to chat with the security guy for a while.

Friendship Haitus

What about my friend, Jacob?

I guess he has gone the way of my friend, Alex in California.

It's been a couple of weeks since Jacob and I went to the Lilly Pad and tried to make some money playing music.

Because we started too early, and I wound up drinking an unnecessary 9% alcohol IPA that started to effect my playing by the time the "normal" starting time of around 9:45 rolled around, we wound up only making 3 bucks.

There was some rustiness, from not having busked in 3 months on my part, even though I'm sure I have averaged about 3 hours per day of playing at home. I guess playing at home is not at the same level of intensity as it is playing for a live audience; even if that audience is basically ignoring you.

Lafitt's Blacksmith Shop Tavern had moved their speakers out onto the sidewalk for the benefit of patrons who were socially distancing themselves in the fresh air outside the place, and that had a drowning out effect on our acoustic instruments.

My fingertips started to sting by about 9:30, when we knocked off.

At one point, Lilly arrived with one of her daughter's. I'm not even sure which one, but I believe it was Angelique, the younger of the two, who would be probably a year younger than Jacob. I really do have some sort of facial recognition problems, since I have known Angelique and Chantilly for something like 8 years now. But, put a mask on them and I recognized Lilly's voice, which I would know anywhere, Long Island accent and all, but I'm not sure which of her daughters it was.

I used to think that life was just heading in a positive direction, and things are just going to get better and better, and would even envision things like fixing Jacob up with one of Lilly's daughters. I would also envision myself playing with Tanya Huang, in place of her long term partner Dorise Blackmon, with whom she would split something like 100 bucks per hour.

That was a carrot in front of my nose, as far as trying to improve as a musician. But I also knew it would entail playing drug and alcohol free because Tanya and Dorise would play 10 to 12 hours, Thursday through Sunday each week.

Twelve hours is long after any joint smoked before starting would have worn off, and Thursday through Sunday, with such regularity, would leave no room for waking up hung over on any of those mornings. Running to the restroom every 45 minutes to piss out beer would be about as bad as the playing of the person doing so would get, well before quitting time arrived.

So, that particular aspiration would go hand in hand with the type of clean living that I dream about. Another carrot in front of the nose.

Playing with Jacob seemed to be a move in the opposite direction. Maybe it is my penance for being a "pot" musician, rather than a "pure" musician. Because after we smoked a tuning up bowl I was immediately reminded that I had forgotten about 10 times as many songs as the ones that I had regularly played.

I can remember when, after learning a new song, I couldn't wait to play it that night. It would infuse the whole evening with a sense of change, and growth and variety and adventure.

I learned "Tears In Heaven," the Eric Clapton song by playing it over and over one night in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.

It was during Spring Break and I was sitting along a sidewalk that had an unbroken stream of college kids walking past me; each group only hearing me for maybe 20 seconds, and none of them thinking: Is that the only song he knows?

But, the feeling of stagnation was there that night ...I should have taken some time to write down a list of all the songs that I could think of that I had ever played...type of thing.

Then Jacob started to curse every single person who was out that night who hadn't rewarded our efforts (everyone except the one person who threw the dollar and the other who threw the two dollars) even insisting that we walk back to the trolley whichever way would avoid the most people. "Because I hate every single person on earth right now!"

So, the next morning I texted him something about him having acted like a spoiled child, and he texted back a long list of grievances about me that made me realize that the guy really doesn't like me, and maybe never really did.

How was I to know that almost everything I had done or said in the past he was resenting, yet not mentioning it.

But, this blog is not supposed to be a platform for criticizing other people. Unless they are skeezers; or in the case of Alex in California, if they call me a racist, hypocritical douchbag.

I guess the "hypocrisy" results from the fact that I am so outspoken in detesting skeezers who look to get everything for free at everyone else's expense; and yet I accepted the charity offered to me as the homeless veteran that I was; rather than having rejected it. "I ain't no skeezer, you can keep your apartment!" type of thing. "I'll continue to live under the wharf and sleep on a thick piece of cardboard because that's what I have garnered in life and what I deserve!"

But I am trying to focus upon self criticism in this blog, since that involves what I am responsible for and what I can control. It is like when a teacher gives a test and half of her class flunks. Are half of her kids pretty stupid; or is she a teacher who herself failed to teach half of the kids?

I look at my plants each morning and see the intricacies of the leaves and see how much they grew while I was asleep. I didn't have to do anything. I didn't have to exert mental energy to try to will them to grow. There is an intelligence at work; something that was already inside the seed, which is coming to fruition.

That's how I look at the fact that I am in my apartment, with the electricity paid for each month. 

The whole situation is just like one of the leaves on one of the plants. 

There was an intelligence behind it all which is beyond the comprehension of Man. Nobody had to do anything or exert any mental energy. I could just simply say that God provided. Consider the lilies of the field, they don't labor nor weave.

So, I guess I'm not going to try to be friends with anyone; just like I'm not going to approach Tanya and ask her if she wants to pair up musically, until such a time that it becomes apparent that that is in the blueprint, and I have grown into the situation. I guess maybe never...

Right now, it is early Monday morning; maybe about 65 degrees outside.

Who knows what today might bring.
 

  

I have become quite the political campaigner these days, having endorsed Bernadette D'Souza (#83) for Family Court judge. Let's see how long before I find an egg splattered on my door...

Thrown by a never D'Souza-er...