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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 257
The neighbour upstairs, her boyfriend disappeared last week. A mental health episode, Friday, he slipped in the Soup Kitchen, told the people downstairs in the thrift shop, didn't get the required commiseration. He was telling me, his girlfriend, and somehow for some reason some little switch in him flipped and he hopped into his car and disappeared.
He was - to all appearances, the chillest guy.
Not been heard from for a week, missed his birthday, not responded to any of the hundreds of "Urgent" texts sent to him by his girlfriend, other neighbors.
This is worrisome.
***
And the other neighbour, the one on my floor, "Kramer", she's in a tizzy, set up a new "business", trying to get her commission from it, apparently she needs to maintain a minimum balance in her account and so she's hitting me up for $400 so she can raise her bank balance and withdraw the commission. "It's only for 10 minutes" she promises me. I'm pretty skeptical, for good reason, her "business" seems to be mostly scrolling her phone, and she's trying to explain to me she's selling stuff for Crypto and there's American conversions and all sorts of other nonsense that I can't be bothered to understand. Send her the E-Transfer.
Things go predictably, but not for her...
The next day she's apologizing profusely, she needs another $200, and so I just send it. This is followed by profuse thanks and gratitude, but she's doubling down on the hole she's dug for herself...
She's beginning to suspect that maybe there aren't jobs that pay you for scrolling your phone...
Now, I suspect she's fucked. She's trying to set up terms of repayment, what was 10 minutes, now becomes a day, now becomes a week, and she's trying to figure out the scam but clearly she doesn't have the intellectual resources, if it wasn't this it would be her trying to help a Nigerian Prince get his money out of the country, I've seen these things before, they take in otherwise bright people (not a description I'd apply in this instance), and I'm going to be the one paying the price...
Well, with that I'm away and I'm pretty sure she'll keep up on watering the chilis...
I should have told her she was being scammed but - well, some people, like in the long-ago restaurant with the luxury cars, once people pin their hopes it takes a lot to dissuade them, only time and the harshest of reality checks...
Carolina Reapers
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 248
And the pepper plants - 10 seeds ordered, 8 arrived, 3 germinated, and the 4th was a late start, Thai red chilis.
So 4 chilli plants on the go and I've begun to see some of them fruiting. Lots of flowers, so far only a few with fruit, 1 of the Carolina Reapers, the Thai chilis, but I don't care a toss about the Thai red chilis because even if they all fruit it's maybe $5.00 worth of peppers, it's the Carolina's I'm worried about.
Checking on them twice a day, reading to them, playing my flute to them...
The weather, the nights are chill and the days are - at best - warm, and there's only a few hours of sunlight, a couple of weeks until they will have to be harvested whether they're ready-or-not, and one week of that I'm away and have to leave a rather unreliable neighbour in charge of the watering...
House - Season 4
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 241
Even by the standards set up in the premise and beginning, by the end of Season 4 I was done. Just a little too out there, the producers must have been thinking that because they got away with the first 3 seasons of this nonsense the audience wouldn't mind another.
Pure escapism, and never to anyplace pleasant.
But the cliffhanger, well, that just might see me downloading Season 5, although I should watch a few other things to cleanse my intellectual palate...
Satori in Paris - Jack Kerouac
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 177
Written in 1966, a madcap description of his week or so in Paris and France.
Definitely not his best, although I was pleased to see references to "Lolita" and Celine.
At this point in his life he's drunk all the time, sun-up to sundown, he's only a few years left and it shows. But a trifling read so I won't hold that against him.
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