Sunday, May 4, 2025

I don't remember much

 I remember planning to go to the Israel '77 thing at the Addison-Penzak JCC, remember that it was something like 4:30-7:30, and getting out of here early and probably dropping some things off at the post office downtown. 

Then I was in the "Good Sam" hospital. A night in the ER receiving sort of area, then I was moved up to a room of my own. 

It turns out I was wandering around in an altered state of mind at the JCC, they got my emergency contact which was Ken, called him, and he said to just call an ambulance. Which they did, and I was picked up around 9:20 Wednesday night. The JCC closes "hard" at 9:00PM so their wonderful security people must have stayed with me etc. 

At the hospital they were worried about my having had a stroke, and I got the full stroke protocol, including going in an MRI that played a lot of "techno music" and was frankly pretty cool. 

Then I was moved to my own room upstairs, and tons and tons of blood draws and checking BP and blood sugar and meds from aspirin to Librium, and tons of very nice medical personnel. That place is a regular United Nations and they were all nice to very nice, and I overheard tons and they all seemed to be happy and get along with each other. 

Finally it came out that I had a UTI and I got 3 injections over 3 days of an IV broad spectrum antibio. My doctor, a lovely Indian lady, said now we're waiting on the culture to see, while we know it's e. coli, if it's a drug-resistant strain or not. It would take time because the sample had to be sent to Los Angeles. But she called them today and it's non-resistant. 

The food was good and I got to order what I liked off of the menu, and I had a TV to watch, and it really wasn't bad. Since I was on "the cardiac floor" they were impressed with how "independent" I was, I guess a standout among older people who seemed to have a lot of strokes and UTIs. 

TV was fun. I got to see the main-line CNN views on the awful administration in charge, and I learned that competitive cornhole is a thing. It looks like a blast too. Next time I see the cornhole boards set up downtown I'm gonna play. The main sponsor was, you guessed it .... Corn Nuts. 

Once I was out of there I used my free cab ride to go back to the JCC (and tipped the driver $5) which the hospital was not very far from at all. I went in and no one had any info on my behavior Wednesday night, and my bike was there in the bike rack with nothing touched. 

So I unlocked it and hopped on and rode to the Winchester station and got on the light rail to Diridon and rode to Whole Foods and had a Siggi yogurt (which I'll try to do daily as long as I'm on the antibios at least) and tried taking the bus to the Walgreens down by 17th and Santa Clara but the buses weren't going down there because it was full-on Cinco de Mayo time. So I walked back and got on my bike and went down there, waving a cheering a bit for the cars that had the farm workers' eagle flags. 

The prescriptions were no problem, the lady had them all ready so it was just a quick pick-up.

I rode back to Whole Foods, locked the bike up, and got on the bus down to Sunnyvale to Dick's Sporting Goods because at the hospital a security guy had me hand in my pocket knife and I never got it back. I complained but really it's a small thing. But I feel naked without my handy Swiss Army Knife and I knew Dick's ought to have them. They did. So I got that and some pepitas from Sprouts next door, and bused it back to Whole Foods where I hopped on my bike and went to Nijiya and bought a bunch of things including some stuff for dinner so I'd not have to cook and got back here. 

Everything here was fine. 

 

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Elbows up, you beautiful Canucks

 Carney won the Canadian election and gave a great short speech. To think, decades ago, I had a chance to move to Canada, the French speaking part even, which means I'd probably have good French language skills by now. 

Every day I hear new horrors on the radio, though, and these days I feel Canada is still too close to the Reich, which is all but massing troops to pull off an Anschluss. 

I packed some things, mainly a big microscope head because that's the one biggish thing. I got those off to the post office and FedEx, somewhere in there got Korean fried chicken and a cheap Hawaiian beer (they were out of California cider) and drank half of it, put half in a tea bottle for later. 

I put in a good study session at the Baguette, so yay me. 

I also sent off a letter to Ken's wife Suzy telling her I'm expecting important papers from the State Dept. to come to the house, and what's funny is, just before starting out I checked my email and there was an email from the State dept. saying they've received my papers and how to track the process. Neat! 

 


Monday, April 28, 2025

A ray of light

 Yesterday's entry was bleak but life these days is bleak. 

I'm gambling that I can retire on: Social Security (no guarantee on this one, as the Reich wants to remove it from, probably everyone except Aryan party members) music skills, and whatever buying/selling/hustling skills I have. 

On the trumpet I'm no Sergei Nakariakov but I *can* play and trumpet is the national instrument of Israel in the same way that the shakuhachi is the national instrument of Japan. I've found, over the years, *one* video of someone busking with a trumpet in Israel, and the guy was ... not good. Maybe "Big City Dick" level. 

I can also make my little trinkets and hustle those, and teaching myself sign-painting could really help my Hebrew skills. I guess I'm a survivor; I've had to be. 

I packed 15 things and got them to the post office, did an hour or so study at the Baguette, came back and hung out with Tom for an hour or so, then got back here. Since bedtime is a hard 1:30AM, this didn't give me time to do much more than find things to ship out tomorrow.

Sunday, April 27, 2025

Karens and a Ken

 I woke up thinking about "The Plot Against America". Roth's books sure stay with me. If there's one overarching thing I can think of that's a theme, it's that the Jews in his books work together. They barely know any Hebrew and only go to shul for weddings and the High Holidays but that essential part of Judaism, the part where I like to think God is real and He gave it to the Jews, is the idea that they really are their brother's keeper and that "family" is not some vague concept but a real thing. 

The paterfamilias in the story takes in his deceased brother's son, and then the son of a couple of which the father had died of cancer and then the mother, displaced in the new fascist regime's plan to scatter Jews out of Jewish neighborhoods into goyische, rural areas, was killed in a pogrom. The Roth family, for that is the name of the family in this book, stretch themselves 'way out, in both cases, to rescue the boys, to take them when one some back from war missing a leg and nearly dead, the other something like 700 miles away and they drive down there to fetch him and he becomes a member of the Roth family. 

Uncles and aunts and half-brothers and so on are all through the story. They don't all get along, and sometimes they don't work for each other as much as is ideal, but when push comes to shove they are there for each other. 

Hawaiians are like this, and Japanese are like this, in fact pretty much everyone but the Iks and Americans are like this. The American ideal, the one I grew up with, is the family must be the "nuclear" family, of parents and kids. Relatives must be far away physically, ideally, but at least not interacted with. Everyone's on their own. 

And this is why Jews are hated in the US. Because they're going against Americanism. The ideal under Americanism is to become as rich as possible, and to be rich, and alone. 

After I'd put my parents being born on the correct years but the 4th of July of those years for lack of more information, I emailed my youngest sister, thinking she might have the actual birthdays, and told her how I'd put in the 4th of July thinking she'd get a laugh out of it. She emailed back, telling me the months so at least I know those now, and said, sourly, that "Lying isn't patriotic". I bet she's fun at parties. 

Haha who am I fooling though? She doesn't go to parties. She's Christian and they have hate-fests. A basic belief under Americanism is that, not only does God love you if you're rich and hate you if you're poor, but that if you are rich, then everyone else is a danger; they might take it from you. So the richer you are, the more fearful and suspicious you have to be. Hence my wealthy relatives, for whom paying for my college would have been like a bar tip, keeping us at a distance. Hence my nearly falling off my chair when I read, in a book about Einstein for a high school book report, that the Einsteins always invited a poor Jewish student to their Friday night dinner, the best dinner of the week. 

So: The youngest married a guy who's part Hawaiian and was working in a warehouse but because of his race, was able to become a cop and then because of his race, is now a police chief. Not only is the pay very high, but the police in Hawaii are even more corrupt than the ones in New Orleans, so let's just say the money's freely flowing. So it's natural that she's likely the most Karen of Karens. 

The next youngest served in the Army and later got in with a credit card company, nagging people on the phone to pay up. It's a good match for her personality, and I'm sure she's gone far. When I last interacted with her, she was in a rented apartment and just getting ready to buy a house. The vitriol with which she talked about "renters" was really something. And she knew I was a renter at the time too. All she's have to do is routinely max out her 401k and she's probably sitting on a fair pile of money now. So if I ever have the misfortune to meet her again, I can expect the Karen to be extra strong with that one. 

Then there's me. Poor as fuck. If I'd just chosen a solid profession like being a watercolorist or weaving baskets or doing mime, but no, I just had to choose electronics. I'm trying to make up for lost time, saving, and am doing well in that department. But to my family I'm that thing they fear the most: a non-wealthy person. 

Then there's my older brother. He served in the Navy then worked for Grumman I guess for his whole career and I've narrowed him down to, I think he lives in a 55+ place in Oxnard. Back in the 90s he'd gotten into shooting and we were going to get together and shoot at a range near him. But then it got out that I was quite a bit better than him at this hobby, and the whole thing was called off. I just don't get it; he was always better than I was at skateboarding and that didn't make me hate him. He's probably saved up a fair pot of money and between that and my being better at something than he is, makes me eminently hate-able under the rules of Americanism. 

Then there's the oldest. The one whose whole personality is that she went to Punahou School. Kind of like Crossfit, there's no need to ask her if she went there, she'll tell you. There are a lot of really nice people who went there, who are not insufferable snobs, and I loved their carnival and the grounds are beautiful, but geeze, she's a one-person campaign to make ordinary people hate the place. She married "money" in the form of, naturally, a guy who also went to Punahou, who didn't have a lot of other prospects for partners due to his personality. Their marriage was kind of arranged with the stipulation that his family paid for her tuition at Punahou. They were friends so it wasn't as bad as it sounds, but money's what matters in Americanism and even when we were on speaking terms there seemed to be an undercurrent of feeling on her part that I had intentionally sabotaged my life by not marrying money. 

Like any good wealthy Fascist, she's very delicate and thin-skinned. Probably her husband also but I believe he's taken Dale Carnegie courses and such things, and he can at least sound and seem affable. My older sister and I had been close, I thought, but being around her was always tiring and when I was really poor, living on $350 a month, mopping floors at the Blue Cross Animal Hospital and taking night classes, she was nowhere in the picture. She only buddied up when it looked like I was going to get a degree in electrical engineering, a thing everyone just "knew" would amount to big money. 

In fact, for someone who was "close", her regard for me has tracked 1:1 with how well I was doing financially or at least perceived to be. This is someone who looked at a young Asian girl selling T-shirts on the sidewalk in Waikiki, and said the young lady should be clapped right into jail for doing such a thing. When she herself had sold puka shells the same way when she was young. 

She will remember and hold onto the slightest grudge. I was at her apartment and hungry, and asked if she had anything and she went through what she had, and mentioned she had some sardines, skinless and boneless, and at least a year before we'd discussed, on email, the book "Class" by Paul Fussell in which Fussell had said that skinless boneless sardines were a typical upper-class food and I'd said I like 'em with the skin and bones, and so in her apartment there she said I could not have them because I had called them "Fussellian" etc. (I did try them years later and they're actually not bad.) 

The thing is she's got to be the Karen-iest of Karens these days as her husband's money grows and he continues in his law practice and she plays the hausfrau, spending $20 a day on fresh cut flowers for her cats to mangle and saying in snippy tones that young Asian gals trying to make $20 to feed their families by selling T-shirts on the sidewalk ought to go to jail. 

This is why I want to get out of America; the Americanism.

I had these grandiose dreams of being back with family, the people I'd grown up with, but when you're kids money's not really in the picture. We were a lot more human then, little humans, being taught to "not be a spoil sport" and to "be nice and share" and so on. When we got an allowance it was something like 10c or 25c and food and clothing and so on were just kind of taken care of. For all the modern appurtenances, it was a life that resembled, more than American adult life, the lives of the Pygmies so lovingly written about by Colin Turnbull or the Bushmen written about by Laurens van der Post. 

Of course Americanism requires that human-ness be trained out of you. Thus, we had a cousin (daughter of my mother's sister) come to stay with us, who was in her teens. 15, maybe. She saw how poor we were and spend her "fun" money feeding us. She lived with us so she could keep her expenses way down, and she did the human thing: Fellow family humans are hungry and I have resources so I'll feed them. 

Her mother, my mother's sister, told me much later that if she had known how poor we were, she'd have yanked that girl out of there and had her on the next plane home. Feeding poor people! The nerve! Yes, my aunt had married money and lived/lives alone in a huge mansion in a wealthy part of Southern California. She also drinks like a fish, her daughter does not seem to like her very much, and when  I got in contact with her daughter in the late 90s, she wanted me to drop the business I had and everything, and come work for her for free. She sounded rather nasty and needless to say I told her I can't do that. She was no longer the nice teenage person but was fully Americanized. 

Humans are not evolved to deal with money. Humans are not evolved to deal with the rich/poor thing the way it's dealt with under Americanism. I note that in the old religions, the really old ones like Buddhism, the ideal is to note care about money so much. And to help the poor. Judaism is one of these. Christianity is not - I believe it's a thin layer of half-understood Judaism over the old European pagan religion, the "might makes right" and "rich good, poor bad" belief system of constantly warring savages. 

It's kind of dumb writing about this since no one reads this (thank goodness!) but  I guess I'm trying to figure things out for myself. For instance, we moved a lot. The longest we stayed in one place was about 7 years, on Portlock Road. After that we never stayed in a place longer than 3 years and often we moved sooner than that. My siblings and I were not able to keep many things, but the oldest got to keep everything. Her "cat collection", books and jewelry stuff, clothes, you name it. 

This, I think, explains why, although I was expected to become an artist, I got interested in music instead. Because moving as much as we did, and my mother selling any of my works she could (and keeping the money, in good American style) I was not able to have the things and the settled existence an artist needs. But music was perfect for me. I could store it in my head and no one knew I had it, so they couldn't take it away and couldn't anyway. 

Being a hated "haole" I could not "make noise" by actually playing music, but I could "play" it in my head, and once I was here on the mainland I didn't have to worry about being evicted for playing a musical instrument anyway. I'd also have gotten in deep shit for doing art back in Hawaii too, except for maybe - maybe - pencil drawings. 

But on the mainland I can get away with doing these things. And music wins because with a lot of instruments, most notably trumpet, it can be done even if I live in a pup tent. 

That's the bright spot for me - music. There's no other reason to stick around, really. 

I packed 2 things and took them to FedEx, then decided to go to Nijiya and check out the SoFa Street Fair, and make a Walmart run. That all went well, and I tried a new thing from their Kosher section, Tam Tams, which are basically kosher Ritz crackers. I'd had a beef bowl at Nijiya first off, so when  I got back my dinner was the rest of the kosher whitefish spread I'd gotten at Whole Foods for Friday-Saturday, and a sleeve of Tam Tams.

Saturday night

 I'm glad I stretched myself out to get all the things done on Thursday, so I could just stay in on Friday. It rained much of the day so it worked out perfectly. I took a big thing apart on Thursday night so I had tons of parts to list, and listed 30(!) things. 

Today I read "The Plot Against America" which is excellent.

Friday, April 25, 2025

Ow, my awss!

 Ow, my "awss" AKA my butt. I took a large thing apart yesterday / last night and in the end had to drag one big piece of it across the parking lot to leave out for the scavengers, and my gluteus muscles got a real workout. 

Back when I worked at the credit card terminal company, our "Palestinian" (no shit, a real grade-A asshole too) manager hired in another "Palestinian" guy named Imad. Well, this guy was the "Palestinian" Groucho Marx right down to the eyebrows, big moustache, and cigar. He kept us laughing so much our productivity went way down. At one point he said "Ow, my awss!" and I still laugh about it. Yeah, he was eventually let go because we were having so much fun and doing so much less work that it was just not workable. 


Thursday, April 24, 2025

The morning after

 Yes, I was technically up before noon. Whew! After I got back here and ate my fried chicken and beer, I got into a pile of stuff I had plans for and moved things around, these huge storage boxes that are big but light, and a power supply I'd stripped down to just the big 3-phase transformer bolted into the case, dragged my next victim out to where I can work on it, moved some things around to get them stored more efficiently, etc. Then I took the huge piece of cardboard I set down on the office floor before putting my futon down, into the space where it was a nearly perfect fit. 

The end result was the area is clear and roomy and beautiful. 

I dragged the 3-phase transformer in its case, noisily, across the parking lot when I saw Chuey, the guy I'd offended. I asked him if he wanted it, and he sure did. So we both dragged it over by his truck. I said I was sorry I was rude the other day, and he grinned and laughed and said it's OK, it's all good. (I'm sidestepping what he called me in Spanish the other day but not showing that I know what he said, but he's got to have a sharp tongue to manage all those guy he does.) 

The problem is, ol' Chuey wanted to just leave the thing in the parking lot overnight, next to this black truck his red one was parked next to. I even went back out and tried to convey to him that some metal scrapper will take it if it's out there. He thought it was all OK and drove off in his red truck. 

So I got some boxes from the dumpster and put them around it, so no metal was showing. 

I then finished the load of laundry I had soaking and hung that up, and once that was taken care of and the office and bathroom all cleaned up, it was only another 15 minutes or so until Ken showed up. He had a hamburger and fries for me which was nice. And my pay check. And we talked the requisite hour and a half and then he was off. 

I had a 2nd huge piece of cardboard and considering I got at least a few years, maybe 4, out of the first one I'm set for the time I anticipate being here. I'd been trying to think of a good way to use the old one, and it was neat that it fit in its new role so well. There has to be cardboard there because that's where there's a lot of efflorescence that comes up when it rains. 

I went to bed just before two, and I guess with all the stuff  I did it's no surprise I slept in until almost noon. 

So, whew, I guess I had a very productive day. 

I even showed up my Getzen 900DLX cornet to Ken, just because I'd been thinking I need to take it out of its box and make sure the slides are all movable fine, especially the 2nd valve one which is the most likely to freeze on any horn. It was fine. If there's ONE horn I'm taking with me to Israel, it's that one. 

Giving Chuey the transformer was a great move. I got to apologize to him up close and personal, and I've saved the money I'd have spent on beer, as per my previous plan of giving a case or two of the stuff to them at their usual Friday night cookout. 

Two nice things: California is now the 4th largest economy in the world, and Ken is now anti-Trump. Somehow he's gone from voting for the guy (I believe) 3 times, he's talking about hos stupid he and his followers are. Stupid is as stupid does, but hey I'll take it. 

I guess Ken's stupidity is helpful,  because he's too financially stupid to realize that this business is almost certainly operating at a loss. And he's talked about, when he's done with it, just handing everything over to an auction company and having them sell everything off. 

The landlord can't kick us out of here until the lease is up, I'm just not sure how much time is left on it. I hate Ebay with the fire of 10,000 suns, and feel that begging on the street is a much more respectable way to make a living. I'm spending hours to find a $5 item, and it takes up so much of my time that I don't have time to busk, or even practice. 

I packed 3 things that had to go out, and left here around 2:30. I also had a bag of books I'd grabbed to trade in at the used book store. They were books I'd wanted to read but decided I probably won't get around to reading or are not *that* interested. Like, I was happy to find the latest version of "IBM And The Holocaust" but could not get interested in reading the thing. So I had a Walmart bag of books like that. 

I stopped at Nijiya first because I was hungry and got some salmon sushi and green tea, and went over to the old hospital building to sit on the steps and eat. In a few minutes Japanese Karen showed up and said they're having a meeting and could I please ... eat somewhere else? I said I'd gotten this stuff because I could eat it quickly and I'll be done and gone before the 15 minutes she gave me would be over. And I was. 

Next stop was the post office where I mailed the things. Then the bank where I deposited my pay check, and talked a bit with the gal from Israel. She's staying with friends here who are also Israeli (of course) and are having a hard time, financially. We talked a bit about "street culture" in Israel and I mentioned how, in videos by Relaxing Walker and others, I see people out walking around and talking, sitting at outdoor tables etc. She said, "People here don't know how to talk with each other" haha. 

Next was the used book store. I got $22 trade credit for my books and the guy took all but one. I got the used copy of Maus II they had, "My Life As A Man" by Philip Roth, and mentioned to the guy how I really hoped to find "The Plot Against America" as I'd started reading it in the library yesterday. The guy actually looked in the shelf of new arrivals and pulled out a used copy! So I got that too. I told him I'm on a kind of Art Spiegelman and Philip Roth jag right now, and he said those are two really good ones to be enthusiastic about. 

I went to Whole Foods and got something to eat and a beer, then, having gotten cash back, walked back to the book store and bought one of the new copies of Maus I they had. So I really had a good day, in terms of books. 

I got groceries at Whole Foods, loaded up the bike, and picked up bubble mailers at the Amazon place, and then headed for home. I had to whiz really bad though so I stopped at Nijiya, again. The "price" of that stop was I got another bottle of beer and a gyudon so that's dinner. 

All through the day is was grey and a bit cold. But I don't care because I got everything done and it can rain and pour tomorrow and I'll be snug in here, working. The service this week is on YouTube so I don't even have to go out for that. 


I don't remember much

 I remember planning to go to the Israel '77 thing at the Addison-Penzak JCC, remember that it was something like 4:30-7:30, and getting...