Even Gifts Are Not Coming to Me

Furthermore in the whine category, I have a rather important birthday coming up, and either the gift ideas are too expensive for my current financial state or I don't know how to go about finding out how much they cost or if they can be afforded.
I am usually able to come up with a bunch of gift ideas for this very special person without any work or help, but as of right now, less than a week to the birthday event, I have one idea that certainly isn't of first/lead gift ranking.

Freelance Reality

Well, well, well, the realities of being a writer, full-time professional or freelance writer, can certainly reach out and slap you in the face at times.
As of today, as far as I can tell, my last freelance venue has dried up, no new assignments have come in, the couple of assignments I finished don't appear to be planned to be published and it's a good thing I never actually figured out where any of that money would have gone.
The money is the last thing I figure out because I do have a full-time job and so on, but it was and really still is a major part of me. Among other things, tiredness and lack of inspiration have gotten the best of me and I shouldn't have let that happen, but damn, things look crappy, or at least empty, right now. My web site writing has fallen behind, too.

Thanks for the "Help"

I got a lovely postcard sent to me "or current resident" that vows to "END BALDNESS PERMANENTLY" on one side.
The local address is "Joseph B. Neiman M.D., F.A.A.D.," of the Neiman Center for Hair Transplantation on Youngs Road in Williamsville, with a web site and everything, apparently believing that I am suffering oh, so much mental anguish from my mainly bald head and require immediate treatment for this major medical emergency.
I have never solicited anything related to hair tramsplantation, toupees or any other hair loss remedy, and as anyone who reads this or knows me is aware, I enjoy being bald, shave what little hair on my head remains and have never been vain enough to seek such "treatment." If other people want to, fine, but please, to anyone soliciting me on this, go away.
Also, I find that my trust in such hair treatments grows to skyscraper levels when the return address is a street called "W. Airfield Drive," with a six-digit post office box, at the "D/FW Airport," obviously the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, in Texas.

Ice Cream Truck from Hell

Although the Buffalo ice cream bicycle guy makes his way to our Elmwood Village neighborhood at times, our Buffalo street also gets regularly visited by two ice cream trucks during the summer.
We get to frequently see and hear the Mr. Softee truck and its ringing song, but we also get to see and hear a white, green and orange former short school bus come by, constantly playing "The Entertainer," the Scott Joplin song used basically as a theme from the movie "The Sting."
The never-ending loop of "The Entertainer," a song that got so popular and overplayed in the 1970s that it was virtually used as a courtroom defense for assaults on ice cream truck divers, has never been a favorite of mine, but this ice cream truck drives so slow while non-stop playing this song that it turns a normally quiet guy like me into one searching for a golf club to bash in the speaker and player.
I got trapped taking Walker Evans around the neighborhood yesterday; the truck first passed up on Norwood Avenue, and we came back around and still caught up to it as it stopped at Norwood and Anderson, then parked. AAARRRGGGHHH.
For some reason, the Mr. Softee song, although I have been hearing it for almost 40 years, has not annoyed me anywhere near as much as the cringe-inducing "The Entertainer."

Does Sleep = Creativity or Ideas?

I dozed off/slept a couple of times last night, including while listening to music (Gurf Morlix, Joy Division, King Crimson, Memphis 59), and I got to bed at a pretty good hour, so I feel pretty decent rest and sleep wise.
But as you can see/read, sleep and rest do not always translate into good writing ideas. I always noticed that I did my best writing (newspaper, school work and so on) under pressure, deadline being the best and most common one, so maybe I should figure this one out, because I really don't want to go back to/continue the bad sleeping habits of recent times.
Of course, like more and more people, I could probably bore myself to sleep or, on the other hand, get insomnia, trying to figure out some of these Facebook friend requests.

You Know They Need Cleaning When ...

After a few weeks of knowing that they needed it, I finally threw three of my baseball caps/hats into the laundry this week.
They are: my traditional blue/old school Buffalo Sabres' logo hat, my red hat with the older third-jersey black crossed swords from the Buffalo/goat head era, and my white University of Wisconsin hat.
It also remains interesting to at least me that one of the, if not the, best way to wash these hats is in the laundry, although I have now received several hints/recommendations that dish washers also do the trick, as well as the fact that New Era and other hat businesses sell machines/contraptions that also wash and reshape hats. It sounds like it is becoming a nice little racket.
I have to say that two of my Buffalo Sabres hats needed the most laundering. First, the aforementioned blue hat, and my off-white "new" Sabres hat that features the sword through the large "B." No, none of that slug logo for Val or me. This hat would have joined the others in the laundry, but I left it somewhere and will have to wash it soon, because the off-white fabric hides absolutely no grime at all.

A Faraway Fems Fan

Checking the statistics for this blog earlier today, I stumbled across a visitor at 3:54 p.m. (our time) Saturday, July 11.
From Kosovo, Macedonia, someone reached BuffaloRoots through the search "Fems - go to a party 7" " and stayed around for a few minutes, reading that and at least one other entry. I remain curious as to who it was, because there were no real clues given through a lack of ISP address or provider.

Ebony and Ivory

It seems that I got unofficially profiled or stereotyped yesterday, and it was unusual.
Walker Evans and I were proceeding down Summer Street between Norwood and Ashland avenues Thursday; as usual, Walker stopped to sniff and mark something. I looked back and saw a man coming our way on the sidewalk at a pace that I knew he would pass us soon, and he did. Walker stopped again a few yards later and the man went up on the grass to give us a wide berth.
We caught up with him at the corner of Summer and Ashland as he waited for a car to clear the corner; the man was African American, age 40-50 with long dreadlocks and blue clothing with a logo on the shirt; nothing unusual for our neighborhood and I assumed he was either going to or coming from work. I describe him for a reason in a moment.
As Walker and I came up to the corner, he looked at us, got this look of fear in hie eyes and crossed Summer Street, heading in the same direction toward Elmwood Avenue. About half a block later, he crossed back just ahead of us.
As he came up off the street, he looked at me and said, "Oh, no, no, no. I bet you don't know why I crossed the street. You look like Rush Limbaugh, no, no, no." I shook my head, laughed and said that that assessment was as far from the truth as possible (for a liberal Democrat such as myself). He again said, "Oh, no, no, no, you do look like him" and walked away.
Regardless of political affiliation, at 6-foot-3, 205 pounds, shaved head and black glasses, I still can't figure out the similarity in appearance between myself and the uninformed, pill popping right-wing nut job radio show host, except for skin color. Hmm.