Logical Pretzels

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Reels Rock and Absolute
Pretzel Logic

It is Friday, October 3rd, 2025. It feels like Autumn, it is quite cool out, and in the office they have the air conditioner on.

I got a bagel this morning instead of my usual Friday morning breakfast of a bacon and egg sandwich, since they gave me so much bacon last week, I thought I was going to die. And it wasn’t very good bacon it was overcooked.

I’ve been texting with Mike this morning his parole officer showed up when he said he was going to show up which is quite the change from when Mike and I were always trying to hang out and the parole officer could never show up and would leave Mike confined to his apartment all day long which was probably a lie on Mike’s part because I believe Mike might be a bit of a liar.
I could be wrong.

I did lie to him and told him I was hanging out with someone on Saturday, rather than hang out with him, which is fine since he had plans to hang out with somebody in lower Manhattan.

Mike has a plan to visit his beloved in California in December, yet he does not have his papers in order, basically the real ID, which Bill had tried to hook him up with in July, but of course, Mike dropped the ball and never finished the appointment.

And with someone who might owe almost $1,000, if not more, for his utilities, I don’t know where he’s going to get the money for a flight to California. I advised him to buy his tickets sooner rather than later because it would be less expensive, but he still owes $85 to his bank from an overdraft, and that’s been for weeks, and he has not paid it.

Why do I know so much about his life? Because he tells me so, though the utilities bit I had stumbled on by myself when opening up my email, which turned out to be his email. His info is on my browser. I did set him up for a $50 monthly plan with the utility company, which was last paid in July, and he has not done anything since.

Perhaps his beloved should come through since his beloved is expected next weekend, because this weekend, like last weekend, something has come up. I am relieved to be out of it. You can’t make someone love you if they don’t love you, and that is where we stand.

I fell in love, and I regret it now. I should have regretted it then. People that I know, people that I work with, they looked at me with the eyes of ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ I may be smart, at least that’s what people tell me, but I’m not the brightest apparently.

It’s still true that I am not at my best when I am alone. Intrusive thoughts do their thing, and they’re not good thoughts, and they usually defeat me or at least handicap me.
And that is how the first half of the day has been, me alone just despairing and thinking of mistakes that I have made and the consequences coming down the road.

Then Jimmy Chile arrives and brightens the room and my spirits. He wasn’t here for long, but he recognized the funk that I was in and did his best to get me out of it. And he did. It is his birthday weekend, so he won’t be in on Monday.

I intend to get him the Howard Zinn People’s History of the United States book as a gift next week and perhaps have a number with him. His spirit was so uplifting that perhaps it’ll get me until 5:00 p.m., when it’s time for me to leave this fruit stand, which is a good place to work, and I shouldn’t be feeling this way.

But I am, and I have to find my way out of it. I still feel sometimes that I’m just not good enough for this position, despite people telling me that I am doing a great job.

Right now, I am sitting at my desk dictating into my phone and listening to Ibrahim Ferre,r which is uplifting in itself.

Traveling

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Tom Verlaine Traveling was an earworm this morning. It’s a song that made its way onto various mixtapes that I made way back when, in 1984. I can think of at least three people who got mix tapes with that song on them. It is a good song, I like it, but in hindsight, perhaps I overplayed it myself. I remember my brother played the import album of Cover on his radio show on WFMU.

And I had mentioned to him that I couldn’t believe that Tom Verlaine still had an American record contract, and someone, I think it was Mike Mountain, phoned up Frank, my brother, to let him know that he shouldn’t say things like that because Tom Verlaine was probably listening and that he still had an American record contract. Which, in fact, he did.

This morning, the PATH train was not running from Hoboken to Manhattan due to track breakage, which meant I had to take the bus and then a subway, which was a hassle, but I still got to work a few minutes early.

Marcus had a lot to say this morning, which is odd since Marcus rarely speaks in the morning, but we had an interesting talk about online shopping and buyer’s remorse. Then it was an online meeting with my peers, and it was also announced that I would be working at NYC 14/11 Penn Plaza for a few days next week, which is what I did yesterday, and didn’t like i,t so my discomfort will be stretched out to a few days next week.

I, of course, have no say in the matter, and we’ll have to go no matter what. I took a photograph of myself and found that I looked so much like my late brother Frank, it was unnerving. I sent it to my sister, who responded with omg. Mike was supposed to have his beloved visit again this weekend he couldn’t make it last weekend, and so this weekend he’s not making it again.

And Mike seems okay with it. It does seem to be a bit much, but that’s what he wants and that’s what he’s getting, which is nothing. I suppose I could take photographs with him on Saturday if he’d like, if he asks, but he has not, and as the date approaches, the window of opportunity gets smaller and smaller.

Just had some words with a man wearing a Neil Young and Crazy Horse- Love Earth t-shirt. He had more teeth in his head than I do, but his crucial teeth in the front were missing. A former Roman Catholic, he claimed that he predicted the shutdown of the government was going to happen and heard it as it happened. I asked for $1, and I gave him two. He asked for five, and I said no.

I tried to drink coconut water at least once a week to prevent leg cramps. Sometimes that coconut whatever lasts two weeks, I believe I had one last week, a can of coconut water, only to be disturbed this morning while sleeping with a leg cramp, but it was severe enough to get my attention.