The Bozo Bit

 Bill Gates is not exactly an exemplary human being, but back in the 90s I read a book about him and one thing that stuck with me was the idea of the "bozo bit". A bit being the most basic element of computation, a thing that it either a 1 or a 0, on or off. 

The idea was, Gates would interact with someone and if they turned out to be a bozo, IE unreliable, unintelligent, etc., in some way a waste of time, the "bozo bit" flipped and he gave up on that person. 

Ken didn't come by last night even though I'd called him in the afternoon and he'd said he'd come by. So he just plain forgot, or is juggling money such that he's had to pay something else and didn't have money left over for me (after all I'd told him if it comes to it, pay the electric company before he pays me because w/o electricity I can't get any work done) or something. 

I'm pretty sure the bozo bit idea didn't require one knowing why the other was a bozo, just determining that they're a bozo.

I was thinking the 3rd car (SUV) Ken and his wife bought might have made their finances suck. Being devout Suburbians, they have to have N+1 vehicles and there are two of them in their McMansion, so a 3rd vehicle is as necessary to them as fish on Friday is to a devout Catholic. And as per AAA figures, it costs a bit over a thousand a month to own and operate the average vehicle in the US. 

But, firstly, the SUV is his wife's and she may have bought it with her own money. She may have even paid cash. 

Secondly, when Ken, with my help, got out of the storage units here and into that one large one in Milpitas, he decreased his expenses by about a thousand a month. 

So, I don't know, Ken's just bad at managing money.  

And our numbers are really good lately. We're talking 9-10 thousand dollar months. And it's not like Ken's buying the stuff I'm selling; he's got so much stuff it's just been drawing down on the huge pile of stuff. 

But this happens, where a business will be doing really well but the expenses are too high or things are mismanaged and boom! They're out of business. 

Plus there's that August 31st "deadline" where a new lease must be signed. Whether the rent's raised or lowered depends on how good and reliable a tenant we are. 

I've said it ad nauseam  but I really want to hang in here and white-knuckle it until September of 2027. I'll be turning 65 and will have another year of savings. But if we're thrown out of here, or given notice, on 31 August this year, that gives me two weeks to mid-September, and I can gather up my stuff - just box it up! - and throw it into the storage across from Tom's and sleep at his place or in a hotel while I sell off everything I haven't sold off already, figure out what I'm going to use for luggage, etc. 

This is where Tom can be a real resource, because he flies to Alaska a lot, and I should pick his brain about luggage. I think I want something to carry on, and something big that can swallow up the cornet in its box, the cornet gig bag, clothes, etc.  

It's too bad in a way I'm not going to New Orleans, because then it's just hop on the Amtrak. But then I'd end up picking piss-soaked weed roaches off of the sidewalk, smoking crack, etc. No. Thanks. 

 

Whew

 Well, tax papers and big check (just a hair under $3300) sent off, back here blah blah. 

Ken had forgotten his check book (he switches between his truck and his Toyota Camry) so he's supposed to drop off my check today or tonight. 

After he left I got to work packing things until I pooped out around 4AM then it was beer and YouTube before bed. 

It's windy and blustery and supposed to rain on Sunday so no busking this weekend but hopefully some good practices. 

I watched a wonderful BBC documentary from 1968 about their national band championship and the band "Black Dyke" won. They had/have bands the way companies in the US had/have softball teams. Even at the company I was with for a while, we had a guy who was a total goof-off but he could do no wrong because he was a good softball player. Even fucked up his ankle sliding into a base and didn't get fired for it. 

The band musicians in the documentary were amazing, and playing amazing pieces. No doubt they could all read music like it's nothing. And it was all brass, from low tubas to the smallest Eb cornets; I didn't even see any drums. And apparently you couldn't just set up a band, the musicians had to be with some company or coal mine or something. 

Now I really wish I'd hung onto the DVD of "Brassed Off" that was given to me by an old friend who was originally from Sheffield in England and was a regular at the electronics swap meets. It's not on YouTube any more, only bits of it, then you can watch it if you pay. Not putting my financial information on the internet, thanks! But at least among the snippets that can be watched is the scene where the gal plays, as the conductor calls it, "Aranjuez, or as you guys know it, 'Orange Juice'". 

It's a great piece, and I might work on really getting it down. Of course being a dumb ear player, that, for me, will involve memorizing it then practicing to play the "recording" of it that's in my head. Just having the music in my head seems to work OK for a busking level musician like me, and it's not like I'm aspiring to play for the London Phil.

I can't play "Ave Maria" any more. I really put some work into that one. It was the first real piece I taught myself to play and I really worked on the thing, would go over it in my head as I rode my bike around the Gilroy countryside; a real Van Gogh landscape out there. I played it for the land owner when he got back from his vacation and he wasn't impressed - he's only impressed by things he's done, not anyone else. 

But it was "my" piece and I played it at least once every busking session and now I can't play it because The Least Christian Man In The World has adopted it as "his" song, even "dancing" to it with all the grace of a drunken walrus. So it's dead to me now. 

But "Orange Juice" is a dandy. I've played bits of it just from hearing it from memory, off the radio or something, I think bits of Miles Davis having used bits of it, and it's gone over well. 

Financially, things are ... scary. We're doing well on Ebay, 9 and 10 grand months. But I think Ken has an "N+1" problem. N+1 refers to the rule in the US that however many people, N, live in a residence, there must be N+1 cars. A while back, maybe a year ago? - Ken bought his wife a new SUV. It might have been bought with her money, since she has some, and she'd traded in a car her dear departed sister had left her, a car she referred to as a "tin can" and having ridden in it, that's what it felt like to be in. But that "tin can" probably only brought a few thou in trade-in, and there's no way she paid in cash for the rest for the new SUV. That's not the American Way. Nope she financed it, guaranteed. And it costs at least a thousand a month to own and operate the average car here in the US. 

So they're shelling out at least an extra thousand a month so Suzy can tootle to the antique store and the market, and their finances are stretched to the extent that I think that might have tipped things right to the edge. 

I say this because my older sister has a theory that what lost us our Portlock Road house in Hawaii was a real estate agent lady who buddied up to my father enough to learn about his finances, and urged him to buy a sports car, a Datsun 240Z, and that was just enough extra expense to tip our finances to the point where we had to sell the house and move to a much cheaper house up in Pupukea (don't worry we got foreclosed out of that one not many years later). Real estate agents in Hawaii are bloodthirsty.  

I had two big things to pack which exhausted my supply of actually large boxes and most of my bubble wrap etc. I also packed a number of small ones. I got going the usual time; Ken had not come by with my check. That's life in high tech. I wish I'd put all that energy and money into learning how to tap-dance or something actually useful. 

I dropped off the things, got some things in 99 Ranch and H Mart, and really looked for packing materials on the way back, coming back with a good load. I called Ken to tell him an air compressor he brought over last night works, and just incidentally ask if he's coming over tonight. He says he is. 

 

 

Tax Day

 I got my taxes done ... call it 1 hour to print out all the needed forms, 1 hour to do the actual filling in and a calculation or two (much of it was the same) and 1 hour to write out my copies to keep for myself (easier than taking everything to FedEx to photocopy the papers) and write out a check and fill out the form V for Voucher and put it all in an envelope etc. 

The big bugaboo is done, and I think I paid a couple-few hundred less than last year. I'd rather pay the couple-few hundred a year and have an actual government rather than the banana republic shit we have now.  

Once I had everything in the large envelope, it was 5:30 and I took off out of here, dropped it off at the post office and bought some more stamps from the machine because (a) the only reason I had stamps was I had some that someone had left out by the trash at 99 Ranch, and (b) I like the stamps the machine prints out, they look neat. 

Then I went up to Dai Thanh market and got things, bought some beer in the liquor store there which turns out to have pretty decent prices, then went to the Filipino market for an onion and checked out the 7-11 and the liquor store there, both duds. Then went to 99 Ranch for a tall can of Korean IPA they sell, then went home, stopping at the EMT school place where I picked up a big, "luggable" IBM laptop that might be good to put on Ebay because some of the old ones are "collectibles". 

So I got in here and realized I hadn't even taken my trash with me, I'd been so intent on getting that envelope with my tax papers (and check) to the post office, but there's a dumpster out there tonight so I put the trash in there, plus went into the other, closer to me, trash enclosure and took out a box I'd thrown in there some days ago, put a bag of stuff that fit into it in it, and also grabbed a very big cardboard tube, 7 feet long or so, I'm pretty sure I put in there ages ago, and put those into the dumpster also. I'm not going to clean up the pile of stuff others put in there because I've learned that when I do, more just shows up. But I can sure take care of things I'm responsible for. 

I cooked dinner and did odd things, and Ken came by. He'd forgotten his check book so he's coming by  tomorrow again to give me my check, and my 1099 too. I said I have so much packing and shipping to catch up on that if I'm doing things right, I'm not going to the bank until Friday anyway. 

Ken had brought by a very large Subway ham and cheese sandwich and gave me half. Granted I put in extra mustard and mayo, but it was surprisingly good.  

I asked Ken if he'd gotten caught up on things ... apparently he still owes the landlord the $500-odd for that "NNN" fee, which isn't going to help our relations with the landlord. And he says he's got enough for me but is worrying over "some other expenses". That's a bit worrying. 

At least he brought a letter saying I'm still on Medi-Cal which is great. And a voter registration thing and I'd been wanting one of those. I was hoping I'd take care of it when I went to get my "Real ID" but this is good, I can just mail this one in. 

Yes, getting my "Real ID" will be the next thing. 

I don't see much busking going on this weekend. I haven't been practicing, and the weather's been very blustery and cold. There's an inch of rain forecast for Monday. 

 

It's "The Holocaust Industry" by Norman Finkelstein Day

 So go out and buy the book or better yet pirate it somehow. 

Anyway .... 

No I didn't work on taxes last night, I packed stuff. And tried to get to bed early, which ended up a bit past 6AM anyway. It's a fight to move my schedule earlier. 

I got up at 2:30 or so, packed some more things ... and Ken's not updated his financial information on Ebay so his payments are on hold right now. 

There have been more financial troubles like this in the last month or two than in years before. Many years. I really need to get on the stick and be prepared to jump. As I've mentioned, our present lease here runs out on August 31st. 

I'm not going to re-iterate my plan to leave mid-September of 2027 to Ken; I'm going to just keep on keeping on here, keeping the numbers good. And they are good lately.  

The thing is, once I lose (or leave) this place, I'm going to start burning money. I'd rather burn said money back in Hawaii getting settled back in at home, and can't think of any good reason to stick it out here in the most expensive part of the country.  

New Orleans is, interestingly, one of the cheapest parts of the country; a place kind to veterans and trumpet players. But with an absolutely stupendous crime rate, hurricanes, and I'm afraid I'd end up smoking crack, picking marijuana butts off of the piss (horse, and everything else) covered sidewalks, and somehow alienating every other musician who plays anything from the French horn to the kazoo, because that's what happens, right? I'm thinking it's one of the few places that are actually worse than Pahoa, Hawaii. 

 

One fine morning in a concentration camp ...

 There are some Soviet and some Jewish prisoners. The commander tells the Soviets, "Take up those shovels and kill the Jews" and the Soviets say "No, we won't do that". So then he tells the Jews, "Take up those shovels and kill the Soviets" and the Jews pick up the shovels enthusiastically. The commander says, "See? This is why we hate them". 

                                                            - joke/proverb told in Russia in WWII. 

What makes it "funny" is, the Soviets, although officially being atheist, would have come from a Christian background, the story of the Good Samaritan and all that, and would have hesitated to kill fellow human beings. But to Jews, anyone not Jewish is an animal, and would think no more of it than killing fish or chickens etc. 

Anyway .... interestingly, last night the police came around to the illegal night club again, or at least one car, which sat there with lights flashing until it was far enough into the 2-5AM operating hours that it prevented a big night for them, or even just a small gathering. 

I don't know who closed and locked the gates across the parking lot, and me, I'm not going near the gate, the lock, etc. The thing is, those no-good-niks have cameras here and there, these days any car can be assumed to possibly be as festooned with cameras as a Tesla, they could have a sneaky Ring anywhere, etc. 

So I just stayed in here after getting in from my ride downtown. And ... while I packed a lot of things, I also got involved in listening to some interesting podcasts on YouTube so I found a big test instrument to take apart so I'd at least be doing something useful, and fortunately the thing - a real treasure chest full of gold plated boards - didn't have super tight screws like many do, and I got that done in record time. 

Finally I was tired, fuggit. I drank more beer and went to bed. 

I woke up kind of early for me, about 1:30 in the afternoon. Hell, if this illegal night club isn't in my damn lap 3 days out of 7 of the week, I might be able to get away with going to bed earlier and being up early enough to try things like making and keeping appointments with the DMV and the SSA, even busking at lunch times and at farmer's markets. 

But today it was all about shipping, and I packed more things, and actually had everything dug out of the warehouse and packed, surprising myself. One big order I was sure I'd not have time to do, but decided I'd get started, and astonished myself by getting it done in half an hour. Among the things I had packed were two that probably should have gone out Friday and had for sure to go out today. So I was pretty happy. 

It's cold and blustery out there! I hit the usual stops, first FedEx to offload the larger boxes in the big load I had teetering on the bike trailer, then the post office for the small things, then did some shopping in 99 Ranch, then over to H Mart. 

Today's freebee: 2 bags of lychees I gave to Tom, because I know he likes them. They actually looked too good to toss out. 

I rode back here and got back to work, packing more things, because more things have to go out tomorrow.  

Orban is out, is the illegal night club next?

 Well, the Hungarian elections are over, Orban has conceded to .... what's his name. But this is really important because it's an election, rules were followed, people voted, and the wannabee dictator has stepped down. I hope we Americans can do things this well. 

Last night was interesting. The cleaning guys next door had their Mexican music playing loud-ish but not too loud, until past 2AM, Meanwhile the illegal night club started their "day" but there's a twist. 

Someone, I don't know who, had closed the gate dividing the parking lot between the two buildings. This had happened during the day, and there's been a truck loading, or unloading, or something, some boxes or something, at the illegal night club. 

So 2AM rolls around and the gate's closed, and pretty soon the pimps and ho's and johns show up, but ... the gate's closed and they're not up to park on this side and then sneak around the end of the fence. It's a narrow passage and dark and I think people pee there, and that's just not happening. So they'd just turn right around and drive out of this side. 

It was plenty busy on the other side, but because they weren't over here, it was nunna my bizniz, and thus no need to call the cops. This ... could work. 

But, at 4:30AM suddenly 4 or 5 cop cars swoop in, sirens and lights going. All I can think is that, well, all it takes is one shooting or stabbing and that'll bring 'em in like that. And it could even be a shooting, because however much people talk about having a "9 mil" there are a ton of "pimp guns" out there, little .25 and .32 ACP automatics, and this is just the crowd they'd be popular with. 

That whole building is hinky as hell. The unit on the end, officially a cosmetics supplier or who knows what, always seems to have scumbag types on bikes loitering around. So maybe it's the next place the cops are going to focus on. 

 I got up at 2:30 this afternoon and the gate is still closed. 

I had breakfast, looked for things, packed a thing  I finally found and gave up on the other one, and decided I wanted to go downtown. I packed up my trash and headed out, dropped trash & beer cans off, then went down to the Amazon place for bubble mailers and got 5, then a nice guy asked if I wanted his, but needed help opening them (one was textbook easy, the other got some quick Swiss Army Knife work) and thus I got two more. Nice guy! 

I decided that although I'm dressed really working-class, this would be a fine time to try out the sausage rolls at Trials Pub. But they were closed and so was Teskey's next door. Oh, well. I rode over to Nijiya and got veggies and some very thin Japanese spaghetti noodles, angel hair really. They had it in three sizes, like buying leads for a mechanical pencil. 1.4, 1.6, and 1.8mm. Hilarious. Also the package I got has this huge "3" on the front which led me to believe it's 3 servings, which at $7-odd is a bit steep, but once I got it home I realized it's 5 servings which isn't bad. 

My disappointment with "Tangle" oil and garlic flavor led me to buy this, since it's probably just as easy to make actual oil and garlic angel hair pasta as the imitation. I also got some overpriced Kraft "Parmesan" cheese because it's got good flavor and is perfect for things like this, and along with the other stuff was $17 and change. 

I then rode down to U-Save Liquors where I-Save. Their price for a 6-pack of Guinness bottles is pretty good, and they have Baken-Ets pork rinds which I've decided are my favorite, even beating out Da Heo brand. That was another $17 and change. 

Then I just rode back here. Avoiding zombies all along, of course. Lots of 'em out there staggering around. It wasn't exactly warm out, but the recent warm weather seemed to "liven" them up. 

It looks like the gates between the two buildings, which look the same but have different owners, are going to be closed for a while. I'm almost to the point where I'd say the other building is an "attractive nuisance" in that there's the illegal night club, the really sketchy unit on the end with the scumbags hanging around, and the car-repair place which might be OK or might be sketchy. I like to think it's just hot rod guys who like to work on their cars, plus their family/friends/coworkers getting routine car stuff done, but all it takes is one flake-O to decide it's a good base to sell drugs from or something, and there you go.  

Slept the day away I guess

 I woke up at 5 in the afternoon or so. Last night I'd photo'd 20 things and listed 10 of them, did various little time-consuming things around here, read too much Reddit as usual, and watched the antics of the illegal night club crowd and made my usual call to the cops to report the antics. 

I think the phone calls carry more weight than the reports to the police suspected prostitution and human trafficking web site, so I'll just keep with the calls. 

I need to widen the options though. I still need to call Zoning about this, and also call Vice/Special Investigations and see if there's an ongoing case, as I've been told. If so, I can ask them how I can be the best help. 

Those fuckers are noisy as hell. Loud convos in Spanish right on the other side of my door, idling cars same, loud music although that will typically only last a few minutes as they get tired of it too, etc. 

I mean, long in the past, I actually asked ol' Dr. Allison about renting an office upstairs at the Blue Cross Animal Hospital to live in, or I think I was asking about living there for free in exchange for some work, and he wanted to charge me rent which I didn't like the idea of at the time. I think it was $200. Laughably cheap, in other words. And it shows I was willing to put up with the noise of living directly above an animal hospital with kennels, that's right on Kapiolani Blvd. 

So I dunno, I'm not paying rent here. 

I'd sent an email last night to my pal on the Big Island, telling him to let me know when the Amazon gift card gets there. I got the reply today, he got it "weeks ago". In other words, the letter actually traveled through reverse time and got to him a week or two before I sent it. Neat trick. I replied that it may have felt like a few weeks due to the crazy weather there, but I'd only sent it a week or two ago. I'm glad he got it though, and he thanked me. 

The weather there *has* been crazy, with lots of flooding. So in my reply I regaled him with my account of The Flooding Of The Haleiwa River Basin During The 1970s Gas Crisis. Good times. 

The present flooding is worse, though, from the sound of it. And there's more beach erosion etc. Being back there is going to be wild. I"m going to want to go over that island with a fine-toothed comb. Having lived and worked all over the island, when I say I just about know every coconut tree there, it doesn't feel too far from the truth. 

I've investigated to death, I think, all the ways I might leave the US and there just isn't anything available to me other than perhaps a desperation "vacation" somewhere like Thailand or Viet Nam where I connive some way to never come back. And that's only if things get really bad here; I mean worse than they are now. Like, I'm going to be deported to a concentration camp for being insufficiently Zionist bad. 

I'm coming around to the theory that a lot of the stuff the Nazis did, the Nazis didn't actually do. What we "know" about Germany in WWII is largely a constructed world, a sort of lore that's agreed upon and this is vigorously enforced  by people who make a huge profit from it. 

Look at other constructed worlds. What witches do and how. The world of Star Trek or The Hobbit. Or King Arthur And The Table Round. Everyone knows the basic configuration and furniture of these worlds, and they're utterly unreal. 

I believe our knowledge of "The Holocaust" (you know, the thing where Germans are accused of doing what Jews are actually doing in the Middle East right now, with a higher daily kill rate) is largely composed of projections; of things the Jews actually do to their enemies or "inferiors" (and to them, all Gentiles are inferiors) or would if they got the chance. 

Author David Irving has researched all of this and of course there's a kernel of truth, the way a Faberge' egg might have an actual eggshell in there somewhere. But the enbroidery upon this kernel of truth is fantastic. 

Hell this imaginary world even comes with its own invented language, "Modern Hebrew", kind of like Esperanto or Klingon, or the "pig Latin" my parents use to use from time to time. 

And now this parasitical group, which our Founding Fathers innocently allowed to live here and establish a foothold, then power, then more power ... now feels it's powerful enough to strike. Thus what's going on in Iran. Thus new laws against anyone even looking sideways at one of The Chosen, hence the ending of the educations of college students, the ending of professional careers. This is not The Klan or The John Birchers or the DAR doing this, this is the people who did a damned fine job of brainwashing most of us that they were cute and cuddly and studious and not at all violent or genocidal, no sir! 

I can't believe I was going to join this group. I was going to the things, singing the songs (which almost all were, I don't know how, "settler" sounding, to where I could see the covered wagons cross the prairie when I sang them) doing the studies. I aced the Reading Hebrew class and at the end of it knew more than the teacher. 

And I was doing what's necessary to make such a move, which is to basically stick my fingers in my ears and go "LA LA LA!" and only looks at the news and world events from inside a bubble that's exclusive to Jews and useful idiots like evangelical Christians. 

I'm surprised I went as far as I did, because I've survived, especially my rather dangerous childhood and young adulthood, by having a acute bullshit filter. Finally I could just not do it. I could not make myself believe that "All Palestinians are guilty even children and babies". I could not believe that Jews were chosen by anyone, or special except in the way Professor Kevin MacDonald has researched, which is as an evolved parasitical group. 

The idea of One God, the idea of a God, is only good for motivating your own group to go and kill another group, or Anyone Who Isn't You. 

The equations, as I put it, don't need a God. A parallel I see is how what we call Maxwell's Equations today, are more properly the Maxwell-Heaviside Equations. The original Maxwell's version had a bunch of extra variables and were much more complicated. Genius nutball Oliver Heaviside distilled them down to their essentials and a bunch of those variables were not needed at all. 

This is what Buddhism did with religion. Sure you have people who are more enlightened, bodhisattvas like the Buddha himself, or Jesus or Shinran Shonen.  The Buddhist world pretty much explains it all. You've got animals, and Hungry Ghosts, and people, devas, bodhisattvas, etc. And as Rinban Sakamoto said, this is all around us. This is here, right now. I hope he enjoys his retirement in San Pedro, and I look forward to being in his home town, Mo'ili'ili, again. 

So the Jewish god? The proper name is "Baal" and in Buddhist terms, it's a preta, which is a hungry ghost that has accumulated too much power. Read the Torah just read the damned thing, and it's all killing, killing, and more killing. Rivers of blood. The Talmud enlarges on this, in the most gruesome ways. 

The message of Jesus was that you don't have to follow those ways. That you can care for your fellow man even if they're of an enemy tribe, hence the story of The Good Samaritan. Jesus helped, how he could, the poor and the outcast. There is none of this in Judaism. There is no concept of "poor and noble" or passing up personal gain in favor of morality. Christianity is not Judaism + Jesus, it's the absolute opposite of Judaism. The Catholics understand this, while the Protestants seem to be wannabee Jews, esteeming money over morality, happy to cooperated with Jews in American slavery and the rapacious American financial everything-is-a-scam system. 

And that's what this country is ruled by. Because when the nation was founded, it didn't have immunity to the poison pill. It didn't have the ability to see that a poison people should not be let in. So now we're enthusiastically carpet-bombing brown children in the Middle East. 

So I'm reading r/cripplingalcoholism on Reddit, for the stories as always and one guy mentions a Kelley's bar and being in Hawaii so I looked it up. Wow! Looks better than any "Irish" bar here in Silicon Valley and I've been in a fair number. Plus the prices are about 1/3 cheaper. That would be in keeping with the cost of living back there being 1/3 less than it is here. 

This is in keeping with the theme here, of being indoctrinated in a thing and finding out reality is 180 degrees opposite. "Jews are poor, put-upon victims" and "Hawaii is expensive" and the lies are repeated and repeated, but that can't make them true.