Drying Out

• Pieces Falling Into Place
• A Week Since I Drank
• To Play More Hours Or Get A Job Still The Looming Choice
  

The maintenance guy came and unplugged the drain of my air conditioner in an operation using a "shop vac" which I could have done myself, 5 weeks ago. He gave me the tired old spiel about not turning off the valve that makes water course through the unit; and makes a lot of noise. Trying to blame the situation on someone else seems to be the knee-jerk reaction of an entire culture of people. I know that, if I turn the water flow off and then the unit tries to run, it could burn out the pump; and so I shut the entire unit off when I do so. Try explaining that to someone who's knowledge about the units is limited to "If you turn the valve off, you will burn the pump out. This is the same guy who at first told me that the puddle of water between the rug and the unit was "coming from the rug." How the rug was getting wet, was not explained. Now Harold doesn't have to leap a puddle then walk across an empty shelf of a bookcase and then jump from there to the bed to avoid getting his paws wet every time.

I had placed the keyboard in a spot where he had to walk over it every time, so as to make his trips back and forth from his food dish to the bed musical, at least.

What amazes me is how the staff here have been throwing "narratives" at me: "It's from the rain" "Um, it started during the drought..."

"It's from a leaking unit in the apartment above you"
"Um, that guy got evicted a month ago..."

"It's coming from your wet rug" (that one speaks for itself).
And then there was Jr. telling me I needed to cut a hole in a certain spot in the wall and pour bleach down a certain hose.

At one point the new assistant building manager, a masked up heavy-set woman of color, whom I have seen around lunch time, waddling from her car into the building, holding a large bag of take-out food, overheard me complaining about the situation to the person sitting at the front desk and claimed that the problem had already been fixed (and so, I was lying, basically?).
Were these people trying to avoid having to do any work by insisting that there was no problem, and that the water that was soaking my shoes as I walked around my apartment was not there because they said it wasn't? That is some kind of "critical thinking" taken to the extreme.

I've decided to write my own "narrative."

I could have resorted to contacting the Housing Authority and mentioned the magic word "mold" to them, whereupon the staff may have had to suspend their disbelief that there was an actual problem, then do something. But, I bend over backwards to not be a thorn in their sides. There are mentally ill residents that they have to deal with on almost a daily basis; who threaten to withhold their rent payments over every little issue. The convenience to them of having that as extra spending money might also be a factor in their grievances.

Keeping Fit

Every time you bend over to pick up a cigarette snipe, you are, in effect doing a calisthenic, equivalent to the canonical bending over and touching the toes.

I would argue that doing 20 or so of them each morning, say, would help keep a person more flexible and having slightly better blood flow, to the brain, perhaps.

Today was a day when I felt like if I had gotten hit by a car and banged my head on something, it wouldn't faze me much, and the shock would probably shake up my brain and dislodge a small tumor enough so that my, blood, oxygenated through practicing the Wim Hof breathing exercises, could transport the right cancer fighting agents to the site and dissolve the thing...

Maybe there were nano bots put in me, through the Covid 19 vaccine that in control of my immune system now and are doing a stellar job. That would be one magnificent benefit of the jabs, but one that poor Fauci wouldn't be able to advertise, due to potential public outcry over having tiny little robots injected into the bloodstream. Maybe it's for our own good that the nano bot component was kept under wraps and, in a few years, Fauci is going to go on everybody's phones (pausing automatically what they might have been doing) and make a speech, drawing people's attention to the fact that there had been no disease at all, since 2020; then produce statistics, maybe have doctors speak; and then lastly Biden will read to every U.S. citizen who has their phone on: "By now it has become undeniable that cancer and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and sickle cell anemia; and a host of other diseases; all diseases known to mankind, have been eradicated in almost 80% of the world's population!"

He would then go on to explain that, during such an emergency as the pandemic, he had to make a gutsy decision upon whether or not to divulge the presence of the nano bots to the public (and perhaps spook them away from getting the, profitable to the big drug companies but life-saving shot.

"What they don't know can't hurt them," I said...

Oh, wait...I never got the shots...

I was out sniping and wound up running into a Jamaican looking guy of probably about 19, who had dred locks and a blunt of weed going when he pulled up near where I had just picked up a snipe off the sidewalk.

He extended the blunt towards me. I wondered if he was giving me the rest of it (then going into the store we were at; perhaps not wanting it in his pocket smelling the whole store up like a blunt). In that case, I would have just feigned taking a hit, while he walked away, then put it out and saved it as a tuning up bud at the Lilly Pad, perhaps.

But, he was just offering one hit -it was kind of big and only about half smoked, after all.

He said that he could see (from me having picked up the snipe) that I was kind of struggling -I forget the exact phrase he used.

I then kind of defended myself by telling him that I took all the snipes home, unrolled them into a pile of tobacco on the coffee table, then rolled them back up "So I don't have to put my mouth on them..."

He lit up (excuse the pun) somewhat, and said that he used to do the same thing. I kind of felt a rapport with him in that moment; and started to daydream a bit, as the hit of the kind bud coursed through my veins and started finding the capillaries in my brain; about when I'm sitting on my couch at home and thinking about the same issues and how the only difference was that I was in front of the Goodwill Store and not on my couch; and there was a young Jamaican guy, who could probably whip me in a fight but not kill me; whom I had established a rapport with.

Then, I guess I further defended myself by adding that I planned it (my nicotine addiction) to be a transitory thing. "I just don't see me being an 80 year old guy, smoking a cigarette." I was using some of that New Age type of visualization whereby you envision a future then align yourself with it and bring it to pass.

The Jamaican kid, who had a lot of stuff like jewelry and things ties around him and hanging from his belt then said something was "like crack." It might have been the sugary cereal that I mentioned, when telling him that I hadn't gotten drunk or smoked crack for something like 2 weeks, and added, but I started eating the f*** out of sugary cereal.

"I think addicts have to have something to be addicted to, and if they stop one thing, they just pick up something else..." I said, putting those 9 credit hours of Psychology that I absorbed at Fitchburg State College, back in 1980, to use.

He then told me about a close relative to his who had been turned on by his uncle to crack at the age of 7. He said the guy finally managed to kick the addiction when he was in his 20's (By the way, I shudder to think of the uncle's motives for getting a 7 year old boy high, but that's perhaps for another blog post) but then, after only having quit for a few months, had some kind of mental braekdown, and started smoking it again.

I then told him about how my father had smoked a pack a day, but had quit after the birth of my younger brother, using that as a motivation to want to live longer, type of thing; but then had started back up again after the same brother was rushed to the hospital with about a 50% chance of surviving the spinal meningitis that he came down with, out of the blue*, and I think the doctors added; a 40% chance of surviving and being "perfectly normal." I think they had stopped short of making that "Not mentally retarded," as that was the primary danger of allowing the virus to go from the spine to the brain, type of thing (they were warned that the kid might have intense nightmares while still in a fevered state, while the antibiotics that they injected in his spine were at work.

But, it was sitting there in the waiting room, wondering if his son was going to live or die, that he wound up smoking a cigarette; then another.

The Jamaican kids said something about how "That's when it (addiction) gets you; when things are getting real (serious)." 

He had dropped his shoulders and his head and seemed to actually be dejected, or maybe dismayed, but then instantly brightened up from night to day when I added: "He quit again right after they said the kid came through and would be perfectly normal..."

So, that was my conversation with a young Jamaican man on a bike in front of the Goodwill Store.

Oh, I also had somewhere squeezed in the back story that, when my parents were leaving for the hospital with my dazed looking little brother over my dad's shoulder, my mom had asked me to water some raspberry plants that she had recently planted by our back fence; and then had begun to cry a bit.

"I was thinking that she was about to say something like: '...so they don't die," and had started crying because of that.

The Jamaican kid offered that she hadn't wanted "everything around her" to die; as if my little brother's death would have been bad enough; but the raspberry bushes, too, would be too much.

OK, so that was my conversation with the young guy on a bike who gave me a hit off his blunt...

I then rode home, wondering if besides asteroids and other objects with mass that might impact the earth, which scientists are keeping a look out for, there are other things out there, like huge thought clouds that can actually blow through the earth; invisible to all of the measuring instruments we have developed so far, but real. Like little balls of energy that, if they hit you; you will have them; as far as people have thoughts...

A Turd's Eye View

I was up "at the crack of dawn," and heard right away, the sounds of some of my neighbors, still up, smoking crack, at dawn.

I immediately pressed "play" on my SMPlayer, to hear what I am considering weaving into the tapestry of my "morning routine," as a morning song; an "up and at 'em" kind of little ditty to get the blood flowing:

I will have to ask my friend, Jacob, to use an app he has which, for lack of knowing the name of, I will refer to as his "Siri, what song is this?" application. That might help satisfy my curiosity about what this song is and where it came from. From there, the reason it's in my music folder might unfold.
I am not ruling out that it landed there through some amazing coincidence whereby the universe had selected the perfect wake-up-song-to-start-the-day-with for me, and then had drawn my attention to it after I had aligned myself with the positive energy that provides such things to those who are on the right path in life...

Of course it would be ironically hilarious if the translation of the song's title, which sounds very French to my ears, turns out to be something like "Life Is Futile, Just Give Up." The melody could conceivably fit that sentiment, come to think of it. There is a wistfulness to it that suggests it was written during a time of war.

A Turd's Eye View

So, yesterday, my lighter died, and I didn't have any matches. Matches seem to be becoming a relic of the past. Maybe the effort of having to strike them each time you light up a cigarette is too much to ask of the GenZ-ers. Maybe the sulfur that goes into them has increased in price to a point prohibitive of them being given away, like used to be done in motels and bars. Maybe the Bic lighter people have lobbied Congress to regulate them on the grounds of them being "dangerous," (despite the "Close cover before striking!" warnings that used to be on every book of them). 

So, I didn't even bother to go into the corner bar, The Holy Ground, to ask them if they gave away free Holy Ground matches -I just went past there, along my "sniping" route on my bike, looking for half smoked cigarettes on the ground in certain key spots. I would just have to wait until getting home to light them off my stove (since I'm also out of candles; a dereliction of hurricane preparedness, to be sure).

I had only made it a little bit past The Holy Ground, which showed evidence of having had its grounds swept of all snipes (there used to work there a bartender who would come out brandishing a baseball bat and yelling: "Get out of there!" at the sight of anyone picking snipes out of the ashtrays in front of the place. Maybe he is working there again, and has swapped his bat for a broom...)

There is a whole essay I could write about the cultural conditions that shaped the psychology of that bartender [and the rest of his ilk] but that might be the subject of another blog post.

Except to say that: I think it stemmed from his having had to work long hours at the bar just make ends meet; and he probably deemed the American Spirits cigarettes ($9 a pack) that he was thus able to afford as being one of the consolations his miserable life provided. And to see "some homeless guy," [barely distinguishable from "some guy from Sacred Heart Apartments] just reaching into an ashtray to collect the same tobacco that he has to pour drinks and change TV channels for; ((and doing so right in front of him!)) was enough to spur him to come out of the place, swinging for the fences) but, again, that might be a whole other blog post...

Ester From Israel

Just 100 feet beyond The Holy Ground bar, where I hadn't even bothered to ask for a book of matches, I espied my friend Ester coming my way along the sidewalk.

Ester is from Israel. I met her in the Quarter, where she works at a cigar shop. 

She motioned me to stop, and in her broken English asked me if I knew of any good Social Security Disability attorneys. She has a "hard working" friend, who has recently become injured or ill, and he needs to speak to a disability lawyer. "It's emergency," she said.

She had correctly assumed that, living at Sacred Heart Apartments, I would know people who know the inside scoop on all things related to that specifically, and money-for-nothing, in general...

I told her that I indeed had had certain attorneys recommended to me by well meaning friends who were trying to help me negotiate the path to getting 800+ dollars every month -you know, because the water circulating through my air conditioning unit has started to articulate phrases in English to me, that are discernible above the gurgling and hissing; things like: "Hissss-strangle-gurgle-gurgle Jackie in A -hiss- 109 -gurgle-gurgle- do it, hiss hiss strangurgle-her-gle-gurgle-hiss...ring her neck, glug-glug...gurgle!!"

I told Ester that, after I got home from the grocery store (my sniping) run, I would ask my friend the name of the attorney again and would call her. She said she was going to be working that evening at the Nawlin's Cigar and Coffee place.

"Call me any time after 5, this is emergency, please!" 

Then, reaching into her pocket book she said: "Here is number," and then pulled out a nice...wait for it... book of matches with the name of the business and the phone number on it (just no warning about closing the cover before striking).

That was a couple days ago, and I am proud to say that I followed through on that and placed a call to her around 7 p.m. "Oh, I thought you forgot," she said.

This morning, I acquired a lighter in a similar manner that would warrant another 500 word story to describe but which was equally serendipitous and also seemed to be a reward for being on the right path.

Maybe for having gotten up at the crack of dawn, listened to the morning wake up song, and with it still ringing in my head, gone for a walk.

It's been years since I have started a day like that; it reminded me of Army basic training, when the whole platoon was aroused at 4 a.m by a drill sergeant clanging two Wheeling Steel trash can lids together like the cymbalist in a marching band, yelling something like: "You've got 5 minutes to be out front in formation, maggots, and God help you if I can't see my pretty face looking up at me from the toes of your boots; now, move it, you pathetic worms!!" And the day would start with a quarter mile march to the mess hall, similar to the walk I took to where I found the lighter. 

New recruits might still receive that treatment today, except, instead of "Wheeling Steel," the trash can lids now probably say "made in China," and "God" would, of course been struck from her stricture. And she probably would have been born a biological male....and, instead of the enemy being painted as the Russian Army or, in my day, the North Vietnamese Army, the focus might be upon "the enemy within," with the invective given that "If you suspect that someone in this platoon might have voted for Trump, then bring your concerns to me in private, and the Army will handle it! -type of thing...

 Oh, yeah...

A Toilet's Eye View

Today is the day that they just might come and fix the leak that is coming from a stopped up drain behind my talking air conditioner.

Seen in the photo is the fan that appeared at my door about a week ago, delivered by the maintenance guy after I had fallen asleep while pondering where I might acquire a powerful fan to blow across my sopping wet rug.

The foreground shows how I have slid broom handles under the rug to prop it up so that air can get under it. There is no telling how much damage to the hardwood floor has occurred over the past month or so, since the water started coming out from under the wall by the air conditioner. There is a squishy sound with every footfall on the rug now.

There is the laptop, playing the morning wake up song, and the flash from my phone's camera seen in the mirror, obfuscating the image of me sitting on the toilet that was there before the flash went off. It was 6:06 a.m., Wednesday August 17th; and I have a feeling that today is the day that the Heating and Air guys will come in and probably just remove a hose and blow it out, then replace it and tell me; "It should drain now.."

Putting my life together, slowly, but surely...

After almost a month of sloshing through a small pond just to go to the bathroom. I wonder if I should talk to attorney Greenbaum about benefits available to "mold victims."

I've gotten to the blog post today -check- and now must move on, before succumbing to the temptation to ramble on about the jigsaw puzzle, or the music projects I now need to get to; after cleaning the kitchen and doing the Wim Hof breathing method...

The End Of Busking For Cat Food And Toilet Paper

 

Guillaume Dufay Day

So, I'm getting to the blog, for at least 15 minutes. The problem I was having, well, there were several; but the one I am trying to tackle is avoiding spending 15 hours doing one particular thing on a given day, at the expense of the rest of the 24 or so projects that I have going.
The trick, I am finding, is to not do something until becoming tired or it, both literally and figuratively -to stop an activity and switch to another while still engrossed in the former.
This could be, for example, marking my place in a book I'm reading, despite being dying to find out what happens next; and saving the book as something to look forward to the next day. The alternative would be to decide to devote the whole day to reading the whole book, while the kitchen goes uncleaned, the trash not taken out, no laundry done, etc.

I'm listening to medieval music, but resisting the urge to load 15 hours of it into my player and survey a few centuries of it "in one sitting."

I've put a few pieces in the jigsaw puzzle, resisting the temptation to spend the whole morning on that (I've gotten the thing about 75% done, and that is when the pieces become easier to fit, on kind of an exponential curve) and finish the thing by about noon.

But, then I wouldn't have washed a few shirts, washed up and shaved, cleaned the kitchen, taken the trash can out to empty it and give it a good scrubbing with Comet™ and a toilet brush, etc.

This is how things can pile up and become overwhelming, adding stress to life. It's funny how Jordan Peterson's #1 rule (out of 12) for life is to get up and make your bed every morning. He advises to only compare yourself to the way you were the day before, rather than the way someone else is. Make incremental improvements and solidify them into a routine.

That also brings to mind my old friend and traveling mate, Howard, whom I used to chide for being so set in his ways and even had a song about him that started:

Up at six o' clock he dons his socks and off he walks;

in a stupor

Coffee and the morning news, then off to the Jack-In-The-Box

to use the pooper.

Yeah, It's Howard's morning routine...Howards morning routine 

Well, I've gotten in an hour of medieval music...

I guess it's time to shut that off and leave myself hanging, as far as what came out in the next century...
I suppose I can say that I've gotten my hour of blogging in, too. And it's not even 10:30 a.m. Maybe I can become productive, yet.
Next comes 35 minutes of Wim Hof breathing exercises, then off to the Winn Dixie, where I might seek out their "hiring manager" to talk about this Great Labor Shortage that we are supposedly in, and see if I can get hired there. That wouldn't be the end of busking, but it might be the end of busking for cat food and toilet paper...

Close Enough For A Tour Guide At The Music Circus, I Guess...

 

The South Shore Music Circus

Cohasett, Massachusetts, was the latest tour stop for Lyle Lovett and his Large Band.

The backbone of Lyle's band are the members of what used to be referred to as The Section.

Leland Sklar, the bassist, has been posting videos that he has shot at each of the tour stops; mostly of him walking around the venue and surrounding area, and pointing out things.

Leland Bruce "Lee" Sklar is an American bassist and session musician. He was a member of the Los Angeles-based instrumental group The Section, who served as the de facto house band of Asylum Records and were one of the progenitors of the soft rock sound prevalent on top-40 radio in the 1970s and 1980s.Wikipedia 

Unless you lived under a rock, or are under the age of 20, you have heard Leland's bass lines. 

There have been songs that I have liked mostly because of the bass parts, ("Running On Empty," by Jackson Browne; "It Keeps You Running," by The Doobie Brothers, to name just two...) and, come to find out, those parts, and countless others, were played by Mr. Sklar. 

I guess just about all the hit records produced during my formative years were made the same way. 

An artist would be "discovered" through a demo tape or playing in a bar somewhere, and he would be spirited into a studio, after being signed to a contract; and then the same crew of musicians would do all of the playing, while the "star" would just sing over the tracks they laid down.

If you had a collection of albums by say, Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, Karla Bonhoff, Anne Murray, Olivia Newton John, The Association, Jackson Browne, Phil Collins, James Taylor, Diana Ross, Hall & Oates, Clint Black, Reba McIntyre, George Strait, Carol King, Lyle Lovett, or the band Toto, you might be listening to all 20 of your albums, but you would be hearing the same band on each...

It's no wonder that I always got the impression that bands typically sounded pretty lousy in concert, compared to "their" albums. It's the reason I didn't go see a lot of bands that I had the chance to, when they came to Boston. I associated live albums with sloppy playing. And, in a lot of cases, the reality was that the members of a typical band would have to try to learn, to the best of their abilities, to play the stuff that was released under their band's name, which became popular through radio play.

So, Leland Sklar and the rest of The Section are now touring with Lyle Lovett.

It must be surreal hearing the exact same players playing, for the most part, the exact same equipment that you might have heard hundreds of times before on different albums -seeing the drum kit that Linda Ronstadt stood just 12 feet away from, 30 years ago, as she belted out "Blue Bayou," or actually seeing and hearing the cowbell from "Poor, poor pitiful me." Imagine the view that that bass drum had!

The networking becomes even more intricate when, say, Linda Ronstadt would cover a Warren Zevon song -then you would be hearing the same musicians and the same gear on both songs, just different albums...

I'm not sure what I set out to write about here; but it had something to do with the fact that, when Leland walked into a room that's walls were lined with posters commemorating some of the notable acts that had played the South Shore Music Circus, the first poster was one of Johnny Mathis, and the second one, Liberace. Two gay guy's right off the bat. It seems like a sign of the times for there to be an implicit "push" for LGBTQ "awareness," or whatever the hell was the motivation of whoever decided to feature two queers right off the bat, as soon as you walk into the hall of fame...

Somebody Get Me A Doctor

But, the most fascinating part of Leland's video was when he went by the Tony Orlando & Dawn poster, and someone off camera noted that "That was the night his friend killed himself and he (Tony) broke down on stage."

Well, if whoever said that was a tour guide, then he wasn't the most informed one.

I had to Google "Tony Orlando breaks down on stage" and, at least tour guide guy had the right venue. First of all, as per the poster, he and Dawn played six shows, so he didn't really specify "the night" he broke down.

Google led me to July 22nd (the 5th out of 6 shows) as being the night he stopped in the middle of the performance and said "I'm just saying 'Help me,' I'm going to find a doctor," before walking away.

He had started to use cocaine heavily after his friend, Freddy Prinze Sr. committed suicide, but that self inflicted gunshot happened about three weeks before that. Close enough for a tour guide at the Music Circus, I guess...

What kind of surprised me was that Leland hadn't said: "Tony Orlando; I played with him," as he had at the Anne Murray poster, the George Gobel one, and a few others. I say this because Tony's early records were produced by Carol King, who was a frequent member of The Section. Leland must have been busy doing TV show music when Tony was singing his #1 hit song "Candida," over music supplied by the same group that is heard on James Taylor's first album...

For One To Have Shown Up At My Door

 

A 4-Pronged Mission

• The Benefit
• The Stamps
• The Blood
• The Rug
  

It was Tuesday, August 9th, and like the Manson Family, back in 1969, I decided it was time to get busy and knock a few things off my "to do" list, before the list became overwhelming and put me in a state of paralysis, from knowing that I couldn't get them all done in one day; then not being able to decide which was most important, and so tackling none of them.

First, I called the Department of Labor about a notice that I got back in 2017, which I had decided to end 5 years of procrastinating about; and just call the number listed on the back of the thing, to find out if I was eligible to get the $160 listed under "benefit amount" on the thing.

I had been procrastinating, I believe, because it was better to live under the impression that I might have 160 bucks sitting somewhere, as if in a bank; and that it might come in handy at some future time. I also always thought that the Department of Labor would be staffed by lazy people and everyone put on hold for long periods, while being asked to stay there, since their calls are important, type of thing.

Within about 20 seconds an English speaking female came on, and informed me that I should have already gotten that 160 bucks when I left whatever company that had established a 401K in my behalf. "If the amount is less than $3,000, they give it to you when you leave," she said. 

Fired For Cause

So that must have been part of my "severance pay" when I was fired from Langley-Ford, a company that manufactured equipment that measured parts-per-million of various things; probably municipal water supplies, which kind of ties in to the rest of this post...

The reason I was fired, was that I had hung a warning notice, I guess it was, in my work area, where other employees might have photos of their children or framed awards for "employee of the month," or whatever.

I was 2 weeks into reading Unlimited Power, by Tony Robbins and had been following the principles laid out in that particular book. This had led me to send a box of chocolates to a female employee named Melissa, on Valentine's Day. I'm not sure which principle that was congruent with, but it was probably within the first 4 chapters of Tony's book; maybe as part of "The Morning Question," that he suggests we all ask, upon waking up, which I paraphrase as: "How can I contribute, today?" and might have elaborated into: "How can I bring joy to someone else, today?" or something.

Earlier in that book, I had completed a worksheet which involved dreaming of the optimal life for yourself. Imagining that you had "unlimited power" and could dream anything into reality; what would your life look like? Where would you live, what would you wear, what kind of relationships would you have, etc. etc. The reader was asked to dream "big," as if everything would indeed come true, so spare no extravagance, type of thing.

So, I wrote about being able to stay home in my apartment and work on music from sunup to sundown every day; and to get paid to do so.

The very next day after having placed the box of chocolates, along with a card on Melissa's desk, and then slunk off, I was called into the office of the head honcho.

Melissa, Melissa, Melissa...

He was a bit apologetic and told me that he was bound by rules that he didn't particularly agree with, to inform me that I had violated the company's policy on "sexual harassment," and then read to me from a clause in such that referred to the giving of "unwanted attention," to include "unwanted gifts," to someone else in the work place.

He told me that I wasn't in trouble or anything and seemed to indicate that the definition of "unwanted" was entirely at the discretion of the recipient of anything, and that, since Melissa was a Jehovah's Witness, and that they deemed Valentine's Day to be a pagan and unholy observance, that I had offended her, at a deeply spiritual level with the box of chocolates. "I'm required to notify you of this; that's the only reason we're having this discussion," he added, almost with a roll of his eyes.

He then handed me a neatly typed one page notice that outlined the company's "sexual harassment" policy, then went on to state that, upon February 14th, of that year, I had given one Melissa A_____ the gift of a box of chocolates and that Melissa A_____ had taken offense at this and that, in the future, I would give no more unwanted gifts to Melissa A____ etc.

Since I had recently written and recorded a song that had a chorus of "Melissa" in it, repeated 3 times; and since the warning letter I had gotten had mentioned her in 3 different places, kind of symmetrically; I wound up using a yellow highlighter to highlight the 3 instances of her name; and then hung the thing on the bulletin board area of my little work area. Ostensibly, this was to remind myself that Melissa, Melissa, Melissa was trouble, trouble, trouble. Warning! Danger, Will Robinson! type of thing...

But then, the very next day, the second biggest honcho, named Pete Lincoln, called me into his office and fired me, saying that my hanging the thing in my cubicle was "exactly" the type of unwanted attention that the thing self-referenced.

Well, the Labor Board, or whatever the unemployment benefit division was called in Massachusetts, disagreed with Mr. Lincoln's assertion that I had been fired "for cause," and awarded me unemployment benefits in the amount of half of what I had been averaging working at Langley-Ford; and since the company had been in a production squeeze and we were being forced to work at least 60 hours per week, this had been a pretty nice amount.

And so, about 2 weeks after having completed the worksheet in Tony's book, I was living the dream life I had described by penciling it into the space provided somewhere in chapter 2. I was staying home and working on music all day (the discipline of having worked 60+ hour weeks over the past year or so paying dividends in that regard) and I was getting paid for it.

Before I was done with "Unlimited Power," there would be at least one more relevant incident that I might as well add here.

After a while, the unemployment benefits expired and I was working at a Domino's Pizza place, back in my home town. Langley-Ford had been in the college town of Amherst, Mass., where I had been attending U-Mass, but had taken "a semester off," to work full time (+) in order to bankroll some money, so that, when I returned to school, I could do so in more luxury*

But, I was still slogging my way through "Unlimited Power," having stalled somewhere around Chapter 12, which covered the biochemistry of the brain and advised that, if a reader was currently using alcohol and/or drugs, she should pause her reading, then return to the book after having succeeded in removing such from her life.

Through a blessing out of the "Doctor Christopher's 3 Day Fast and Cleanse and Mucous-Free Diet" course that I had embarked upon, I had finally arrived at an alcohol and pot free life, by the time I was back in Gardner, Mass., which had been my community college town.

So, having been seen with my copy of "Unlimited Power," at the Domino's Pizza, one of my co-workers made the comment of "So, I guess pretty soon you'll be pulling up in a Rolls Royce, huh?" as, I guess, a cynical commentary on "self-help" books in general.

About a week later, I was in downtown Gardner, and along its one main street, not far from the music store was parked a genuine Rolls Royce. Had it not attracted a few gawkers, I might not have even recognized it as such. To me it was "luxurious" the same way the most plushly appointed coffins are in any undertakers show-room; but, there the thing was, with an "RR" ornament on its hood (or it's side, I forget).

Then, soon was approaching an elderly looking man with white hair and a pleasant smile on his face.

I said something to him along the lines of how "I had to laugh" when I saw his car; and then told him about the Tony Robbin's book and what the other employee at Domino's had said.

"I'm a huge admirer of Tony Robbin's," said the affable old guy, then added that he had been to some of his seminars etc.

"I'll tell you what," he said, holding his set of keys out to me. "I get the sense I can trust you; how would you like to pull up in front of the place in a Rolls Royce, and give them something to think about?!"

I was able to park directly in front of Domino's, then hop out and kind of skip into the convenience store adjacent to it, buy some sundry item, then give the gaped mouthed crew a little wave before riding off. The old guy was sitting in front of a cafe by the music store, reading a newspaper, when I returned his keys to him. The parking spot I had left out of was had still been unoccupied.

So, Langley-Ford must have already given me the $160 bucks when they fired me. Well, that's better than thinking I might have it waiting for me somewhere; now I can let go and move on.

Eliminating Bacon

The second order of business was to call the plasma place, which I did, and was informed that the second blood sample I had given had also been under the limit of "6" and had even been down from the 5.7 that had gotten me bounced, to 5.6. 

I had a feeling that might happen. I was feeling pretty depleted when I gave the second sample. I should have waited. I felt the way I usually do after donating before I had even done so. It was like whatever proteins I was eating weren't "sticking to my ribs" around that time. I feel much fuller now, which might have to do with adding bone broth to my diet and eliminating bacon...

Then it was off to the food stamp place, rather than trying to sleep first. I had forgotten to call them, or go online, before the date specified on a letter that had sat in my mailbox until it was almost too late.

Oddly, rather than my account having been closed, as per the dire warning in the letter, it was open, and for then next 2 years, rather than the 1 that is normal. They couldn't understand how it could be open all the way to 2024. The agent I was dealing with soon had all of them looking over her shoulder at her screen in bemusement.

One explanation I can come up with, with regard to that, was that I had called the FEMA people after the hurricane last year, and wound up talking to a young lady, with whom I seemed to strike up a friendship. We wound up laughing and joking about this and that for almost an hour. 

I could hear her poking at a keyboard as she really seemed to be trying hard to find some benefits for me. Alas, she had to sadly inform me that I had already gotten the maximum hurricane relief funds, for sitting in a dark, 99 degree apartment for what amounted to an 11 day power outage, a year ago.

After our friendly conversation, though, I started getting $347 a month on my food stamp card, instead of $247. And now it apparently has been green lighted for 2 years. The power of human engineering cannot be underestimated. I might just be pulling up in a Rolls Royce in a couple weeks...

"A Fan Would Help"

And then, the 4th and last matter of the water seeping into my apartment, I was able to talk to the heating and air guy, who just happened to be taking a break in his truck when I returned from the food stamp place, about. He said that my apartment was "on the list" that he is working on; and the problem of the air conditioner draining onto my floor, rather than down some hose, should be solved soon.

In the meantime, he suggested that I get a fan and direct it at the wet rug.

I went inside, and was thinking "a fan, huh?" when I fell asleep on the couch while some ground beef was heating up on the stove in some flax seed oil. I woke up in a place so full of smoke that the cliche of it being hard to see your hand in front of your face, applied. Enough smoke had gotten out into the hall to set the alarm in the elevator off, which I could hear. The ones in the hallway were silent, though.

Then there was a knock at my door, which turned out to be the maintenance guy, holding the nice fan, seen in the picture above. He positioned it, so as to draw smoke out of my place, and then put another large one at the end of the hallway to push smoke out through the door to the parking lot. 

I suspect that there has been a tacit agreement made between a fire department sick of showing up in full gear every time a resident leaves something on the stove, and a maintenance crew willing to shut the alarms off as soon as they start yapping.

They used to be required by law to show up every time an alarm went off. I think there is now some common sense, and some cooperation, going on between the two parties now. I wasn't berated at all for having fallen asleep and smoked the place up.

And, it had only taken me a few minutes of sleeping on the problem of how to get a fan for one to have showed up at my door...

*that was in 1989, and I have yet to resume my education at UMass.

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!"