Too dumb to know you're beat.

 Here it is Monday night and, well, it's a Monday what more to say. I woke up earlier, around 1 in the afternoon and I need to keep "marching" my wake-up time back to a reasonable level because I really need to be able to show up at the DMV with a ton of papers and my passport and get my "Real ID" taken care of. The email I got months ago isn't very helpful except to give me an idea of what kind of papers they want; the passport takes care of proving I'm a citizen, and tons of stuff with my address with it will prove residency. 

Our Most Zionist President is proclaiming more victory over Iran, they're in their last gasp yadda yadda. I wonder if the Vietnam debacle was like that? I only remember all the stop signs on Portlock Road being spray painted with the word "WAR" so they said, in effect, "STOP WAR" and being a little kid, I just thought that (a) it was normal, and (b) we're at war somewhere and that's normal too. 

There was Army/military stuff around, our going to A.L. Kilgo's to look at all the neat military surplus stuff, and it was always a fun thing when Dad steered the station wagon to the part of town where there were Quonset huts, like the one Kilgo's was set up in. I love Quonset huts to this day. 

Later, when we were staying at the luxurious Schofield Sands, one morning we were awakened by tanks coming down the street, right out the window, at 7AM. If there's anything a kid loves, it's tanks coming right down the street, right out their window, at 7AM. My mother was less than thrilled. We waited eagerly to see if the tanks would come back by, but they didn't. 

So those are my real-world impressions of the Vietnam "war" and they're not much to build a thesis on. But of course we got our asses kicked out of there, and my point is, apparently we charged in there for real in around 1965, and were probably proclaiming all kinds of victory and "We've got 'em now!" from then on, and could not see that we'd get rousted out of there in 1975. 

We were not smart enough to see that we weren't going to win, and why would we think we would not win? We had all the planes and war materiel, all the high-tech, etc. We even had a little of what our enemy had, which was determination and guts. They just had much more - they were fighting for their homeland and against utter extermination. 

This is the situation we're in with this Iran thing. The Iranis are fighting an existential war. As the saying goes, Whenever you think you haven't accomplished much, remember the US in Afghanistan took 20 years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. Iran is Afghanistan squared. 

So here I am now as an adult, seeing a fiasco not as funny signs and neat machinery but as the possible end of the US as biggest bully on the block. 

I'd packed things last night, packed more things, and took them to the post office and Fedex. At least I have to pack more things. 

Oh and last night I got a practice in, hurray for me. Practice is going well. It seems that some of my troubles with higher notes are not just a lack of conditioning, perhaps, but also a lack of relaxation/coordination of all those little muscles and systems I don't have names for. 

 

 

RIP Abe Foxman

 Where RIP = Rest In Piss. Or maybe in a big vat of boiling excrement, as the small-hats insist Jesus is, for his horrible crimes of empathy, love, and universalism. 

Abe Foxman was one of the leaders of the small-hats' parasitism, insisting everything's "antiseptic" even the air, haha. As the saying goes, he left the world a better place, by leaving it. 

I slept in until about 3 in the afternoon. I packed one thing that the buyer wants ASAP, by UPS on their account, and those never go well especially on a Sunday. So I just sent it FedEx and they'll likely get it tomorrow because they're really close to here. 

 

Richard Wagner was right

 The small-hats destroy music. I woke up at a quarter to 3, turned on the radio, and they've got some interview, big puff piece, on a small-hat who somehow won the Pulitzer Prize for composing some opera about the little match girl or something. 

The guy's not musical. He can't sing, he's "not a good keyboard player" and the singing he did, as he admitted, is off key. He seems to be using computers to do a lot of the actual composing. His explanation of how he composes, I thought would be like I would do if I were a composer, you develop it in your head, hear it in your head, can zero in on what the flutes or the tuba would do, etc. He would be better at it than I am, being a composer and all, but no, his explanation is singing tunelessly and using computers for this and that. 

But he's a small-hat with small-hat money, whose parents sent him to Stanford to become a doctor because what better profession for blood-suckers than to be able to actually suck blood, literally as well as figuratively in the form of money. But I guess he sensed a better con. And he's working on an opera about the book "The Wealth Of Nations" because what subject is dearer to the small-hats than money? 

I will have to study, and listen to, Wagner more. A real, creative, composer who gave us the language of modern music. 

I was up all night listing stuff on Ebay, and the illegal night club did its thing but wasn't enough of a bother to call the cops. 

I was up around 3 this afternoon, and packed a big capacitor for one customer, who then ordered another one so I packed that also. I took those to FedEx, stopped in at Sprouts for some Guinness in cans (there seems to be a situation where it's only possibly to buy it in those tall cans or in these weird bottles with the same nitrogen mechanism in them as in the cans) and followed my route finding packing stuff on the way back, which got me a lot of packing stuff. 

Dinner was Mama green curry ramen with hamburger and a whole bundle of cilantro. It seems like an inexpensive way to get a lot of greens for less than a dollar and I like it. 

H Mart where I picked up the bundle of cilantro,  was super busy and it made me wonder if I should try busking there. There's the "island" in the parking lot where the gypsy kid had been busking a while back, and lots of people going back and forth. The only problem being the wind, I'd need to put something pretty heavy into my tip box to keep it from blowing away. 

My friend Pat on the big island has been emailing back and forth with me for a bit, and he mentioned a Phil I think, who often has a room for rent around the Manoa area. I said that'd be perfect. I said I don't know how things will go here but I'll have at least 2 weeks' time before I hop on a plane. And that I don't mind landing in a hotel, it's just that hotels are expensive so it's not really sustainable long-term. 

This is promising though. Pat may be a doofus but he knows people.  

 

Friday payday woooo

 I spent most of last night getting things ready to list on Ebay, then hit the sack around the usual time, about 6 in the morning. 

I woke up around the usual time too, around 2:30 in the afternoon. I had 3 small things packed and in the bike bag and only had to have some breakfast and clean up a bit and got out of here a bit before 4. 

I dropped off the packages at the downtown post office, and deposited my check in the bank, and my math and their math were very, very close. Close enough for me! I think I pay a $3 or so charge for getting a mailed monthly statement if I have less than X in my account and if X is 4 grand, that could explain it, but I think X is actually only about $2500 and I think it's just slightly buggy math. Off by less than a dollar in 5000 dollars is a tiny bit. 

I went to Whole Foods and got some food and a beer and cash back, then when I was done with that I got some other things and cash back, so that I'd taken my "allowance" of half my pay check out. I ate upstairs and got curious about a fake rock they had there. I took a look and it's a mouse trap. Some utility worker guys were at a nearby table, talking about work stuff, and we got talking about the rock and rats and mice in general. 

The 2nd time I'd gone into Whole Foods to get things and cash back, a guy thought I worked there and was looking for something. I said I don't work there but what's he looking for because I know the store pretty well. He had "low vision" so finding things was hard for him. I said "Follow me" and we went over to the cracker section where I found his black sesame crackers right away. He thought they had some medicinal value, it seems. He has to get up to pee too much at night, he said. I said that sounds like (hedging my bet) pre-diabetes. He said he's got diabetes all right. Low vision, 35+ BMI, yeah... pretty easy diagnosis here. 

I went over to TAP Plastics for a plastic bottle and a squirt top, because I've found that "Lime Away" is a great product but not the bottle it comes in, which not only had a hard to use dispenser top, but leaks. 

Then I rode over to the Amazon place, only finding a couple of bubble mailers but Oh well it's two more than I started with. I also found Leroy busking in front of the old Johnny Rockets. 

Leroy's looking (and sounding) great these days. He's got a shirt with his name and a saxophone and music notes on it, and is playing his new Selmer which has a nicer sound than his old horn which was actually turning green in places. He's also using backing tracks which are a big help. His guitarist friend had gone back to New Orleans. We talked about this and that; he told me the Starbucks is gone now, and how, online, there's the legend of the Starbucks cup in the Johnny Rockets, sitting there for years now, like the whole place is trapped in time. 

I rode down to Walmart and got a bunch of things, stopped at Nijiya on the way back for garlic, and got back here. 

I feel like I haven't played or practiced for a month. It was warm, then it got cold again. I find it hard to practice unless I've got everything else done, but that's not working. The ideal time to practice would be,  I figured, after the daytime things are done, but before it gets too late. There are too many hinky characters around here now to risk being heard in the wee hours of the night. 

And, for three nights of the week, the illegal night club is operating and I don't want to be heard by the sketchy people associated with that place. So there's a time window of something like 9 or 10, until 1AM. Tonight after eating dinner I brushed and flossed and chewed sugar free gum and got some practice in. It went well too, considering the time I've taken off. I got a solid hour in, and now, for the rest of the night, I can do Ebay stuff which isn't noisy and not much of a tip-off that I'm in here.  

Registering to vote

 Ken came over last night, and I got my pay check which he says won't bounce. We talked about stuff, and it was pretty much just the usual. 

I woke up the usual time, around 2:30 in the afternoon, and packed things. I can't deposit my pay check until tomorrow so it was the usual route of post office, FedEx, stopped at Sprouts for beer, found packing stuff on the way home, and got back here. 

I'll deposit this latest check tomorrow, and my level of worry is down maybe by one notch. I'm still worried because Ken's not paid that $1000.95 he owes the landlord, and we still have our present lease running out on August 31st. 

So the plan is still to be able to step onto a plane September of this year instead of September of next year. Maybe Ken will be able to make things hold together and maybe he won't. 

The guy makes pretty exactly 10X what I do, $200k to my $20k. But being a devout Suburbian is expensive. You have to have a McMansion or at least as big a house as you can possibly afford. You have to have N+1 cars where N is the number of people in the house. You have to eat in restaurants a lot, take regular vacations whether you can afford them or not, and you have to have several credit cards that are at or near their limit.  It's a very distinct, and expensive, subculture. 

Another piece of mail that went out was my voter registration. I've been sent two forms with different serial numbers, so I filled out one (disposed of the other) and sent it in. Of course among other things the form asks for one's race. because race is everything in the US. 

I wrote in "White" because although I am certainly more than "one drop" Tatar that doesn't count the way being "one drop" Negro would. "One drop" Negro would have gotten me life on a red carpet, with free college plus extra pay for going to college, plum job offers, etc. 

Now ask yourself, would Japanese, over there in Japan, their nation, enact laws putting Japanese at a disadvantage and, say, Koreans or Filipinos at a huge advantage? Would Spaniards set up laws against themselves, and in favor of Ethiopians? When has any group that's doing fine, enact laws to sabotage themselves? 

The answer is plain and clear and can be expressed in a single word: Jews. The very group whose signature move is to infiltrate a host country, then open its gates to an attacking army because profit. This ranges in practice from physically opening a medieval fortress' gates to taking over the media of a country and brainwashing people, as is done in these modern times. 

In any case, growing up where being white is a disadvantage, and living in a time where it's the same (moving to California didn't get me away from anti-white discrimination because Da Jooz run the whole thing, not just the state of Hawaii) I've had to become canny. 

Going onto Ebay has been a lifesaver because Ebay has no mechanism to pay a seller more of less according to their race. Being self-employed is pretty much the key to getting around the ZOG rules. 

But in Hawaii there have been extra nuances. For instance, selling trinkets in Waikiki. You can't do that if you're white. If something physical changes hands, you're going to spend the night in jail, if you're white. If you're non-white, go ahead it's fine. But in playing music, nothing physical changes hands. Plus, being white and being a musician is actually kind of good because there's the "exotic factor". 

The most valued tourists in Hawaii are the Japanese tourists and Asian tourists in general. They spend money, they're polite, etc. And imagine growing up in Japan and seeing on TV etc all these musicians who are white, and then in Hawaii there's one in the flesh. 

I've been astonished seeing white guys playing guitar not only barely tolerated but considered as OK as anyone, on the strip in Waikiki, on YouTube but that appears to be the situation. I think there's always been less racism against whites in music in Hawaii for various reasons. Firstly, music is not considered a prime occupation, and also a lot of musicians that Hawaii musicians admire are .... white. Get any old local musician guy talking and he'll gush about white guys like Chet Atkins.  

So this is why busking and doing things like maybe playing in some bands to fatten up the sound, playing Taps, stuff like that factors so largely in my plans. 

There are tons of other things I can do but I'm not even counting on Ebay any more because although once back in Hawaii I'll be out from under the rigid non-compete situation I'm in now, it appears the small-hat that runs GameStop (running it into the ground apparently) is trying to buy Ebay for some reason. And given that the small-hats own and operate our financial system, this may actually happen. The problem is the particular parasite proposing this has no knowledge of the history of Ebay, and wants to try changes that have been tried and failed utterly. 

So Ebay may ... go away. Etsy will presumably still be around, and there are tons of other ways to sell stuff so I'm not that worried. But it will be interesting. The small hats are over-reaching and over-reaching and the anger is building, like a tsunami that is only inches high when it crosses the high seas and then when things start to pinch and the water gets shallower.... 

 

Visiting a sick friend

 That sick friend being my bank account. Amazingly, the pay check I got last week didn't bounce. 

 I rode downtown to the bank to check on that, because Ken typically can't find out from his phone or anything, so it's easier to just ride downtown. I figured I'd get bubble mailers too, but only got one from the Amazon place. 

And I stopped at Nijiya on the way back for $20 in sushi, a bottle of tea, and a little apple pie thing for dessert, to sort of celebrate. I was worried enough about things that I even had a weird dream about my money situation. 

So I figured I'd better go. Then after getting back here, I packed one thing that had to go out today so that was a ride up to the big post office and on the way back I looked for packing materials and neat stuff in general and found nothing. At least I spent my last bit of change for two packages of "Mama" brand green curry ramen, because I really like that flavor and I might not be up by 99 Ranch until Monday. 

 

 

It ruined me

 "Streaming ruined gaming for me for YEARS. It took me ages to find that part of myself again" 

- u/OhGodImHerpin on Reddit

I was considered destined to be an artist. The oldest was going to be a writer, I was going to be an artist, and the youngest, a natural entertainer because it's that or starve if you're the youngest/smallest/weakest, was going to be an entertainer. 

I was continually having drawing materials put into my hands, and I was probably known as the kid whose hands always had ink all over them (from pens) because that was pretty much the case. 

Both parents were frustrated artists, and I think the fact that I showed any interest in drawing as any kid would, plus my eyesight being so bad, the idea was I'd become this genius nearly-blind artist and save the family fortunes. 

As we became poorer and poorer, art-for-fun (I loved drawing my seashells) became art to make money, and I really tried my best but the internal motivation was not there. It had already become a job. 

I spent tons of time as a teen thinking there must be something wrong with me that I'm "talented" (I am not, but tons of successful artists are not) and thus I should love doing art, should do it instead of surfing, fishing, shell collecting, skateboarding, reading books, all the usual kid things. 

I really tried to push myself, thinking that would make me *want* to do it for hours a day, but that never worked. I could do it, but I was never actually all that interested. 

This same thing is why I think my mother was so miserable. Her mother was a tailor; took classes and could make a suit from scratch, really something. She probably loved it. She also gardened and had a number of plots of land in Pasadena that she gradually sold off as finances demanded. 

The thing is,  I think my mother showed some interest in the tailoring, and then was pushed to do it. My mother would become this great tailor and/or designer, and save the family fortunes... And my mother really tried. She could sew, all right, but I don't think her heart was in it. And she was miserable. Because here's this thing you know how to do, but you don't have any internal motivation to do it because it's become this thing you have to do, or are supposed to do. 

It seems simple as hell but it's taken me a long time to realize this. The first hint of this kind of thing is how Fielding Benson, noted surfer Becky Benson's younger brother, was being pushed to become this champion surfer (he was our neighbor) and instead liked to skateboard and do usual obnoxious kid things. The Bensons were a kind of surfing royalty, with their father, "Colonel" Benson financing and filming a lot of surfing movies, and here was the crown prince not doing his duty. 

The thing is, there's art I did love, I loved comics and once I was exposed to them, "underground" comics. But I knew that if artists don't make a living, underground cartoonists *really* don't make a living. Plus you can get in real trouble poking even the mildest fun at, well, anything or anyone, in visual art.  

I'd packed a bunch of things last night, packed a few more today, and took my big load to the post office and FedEx. 

Running on financial fumes because of my rule of putting my $400 weekly pay check into the bank and taking $200 out and that's it, that $200 is my allowance. But I got what I need. 

It's been cloudy and grey and not all that windy, but like a big lid has been put over the valley, made of cloud/fog. Kind of neat really. Not primo busking weather though. 

It's hard for me to concentrate on busking when I've got a million plans going through my mind about what to sell off, what to give away, and how to at least go through the motions here and keep the sales numbers good.