Last of the lightning

After the motorcycle guys were run off by the cops last night, the crackheads go into an hours-long yelling match, or more like, the female of the pair was bitching out the guy. I can never understand what the lowlifes are saying, too. It's a combination of not-great acoustics listening with my ear against the door, and the weird muttering way of talking they have, so I could only make out "fuck" and "shit".

By the time they drove off in their barely-running bum car, it was too late for me to feel like practicing. What if they came right back? It's so quiet at night now that sounds really carry.

I had to do an update on my computer that took at least an hour, and then finally got down to listing Ebay stuff, and again I drank too much. I ended up watching videos about kibbutzim in Israel, ulpans which are Hebrew language schools in Israel, and, well, kibbutz ulpans because that's also a thing. You live at the kibbutz and work there half the day and take Hebrew classes at least a couple hours a day. I hope they have those for old fuckers like me.

Pretty soon after getting up, I took the 6 bottles of white lightning I had left and 6 bottles of HEET pure methanol, and the 2 nice gallon jugs I'd found that originally held isopropyl alcohol, and make 2 almost-gallons of alcohol for cleaning, to take place of the rubbing alcohol I can't get these days, and emphatically not for drinking.

I feel pretty "meh" due to having drunk too much alcohol last night, plus a little sore throat and phlegm in my nose and throat. I decided to stay in today. My beloved student shakuhachi is all boxed up and ready to go to the post office to a guy with a Russian name in Israel, and it'll just have to sit here another day.

On the radio they're talking about, surprise-surprise, the economy taking a sudden dive. The panic buying is pretty much over. On r/preppers on Reddit they're talking about Covid coming back in a second wave and I think it's a legitimate concern, but once you have your "preps" you simply cycle through them which is why to prep what you eat and eat what you prep. Normally being a low-carb eater, I even have had a way to cycle through the spaghetti, giving some each day to the birds, broken up small, and gradually I'd cycle in newer stuff or some other grain. Some people even suggest buying bird seed, and that might be a good idea because it can be sprouted, and has more fiber and variety than pasta noodles, plus most people won't eat it unless they're really hungry. I think I might be onto something here.

But anyway, people have bought up the stuff they feel they need to feel more secure, and now their spending is way down. I spent maybe $80 yesterday, but $30 of it was beef, $10 was Brazil nuts, etc. The only "preps" in it were a couple more envelopes of coconut milk powder to use in coffee when I have to bunker up if I have to bunker up. I might use it to stretch the heavy whipping cream I use normally, because I do use a lot of it.

People aren't buying whole categories of things like shoes, beach wear, clothes, etc. I can't hop on the hippie bus to Santa Cruz and buy a new pair of Vans for warm weather, because the shoe stores are closed and the bus may not even be running. I'll end up buying some crappy shoes at Target I guess to get me through this summer. I'm really wishing I'd washed and cleaned up my old Vans and kept 'em.

I managed to get some practice in, which went kinda OK considering how much I've not been practicing. Just Irons exercises really.

And I cooked up a fish I'd bought for just $1-something at 99 Ranch, which was a bit fishy smelling so I soaked it in water with some lime juice in it, and it came out great. Didn't even make the office smell fishy. That's a trick I'll have to file away.  I should also look into learning how to make a good gefilte fish, AKA fish loaf or fish terrine. Carp is often quite cheap at the Asian markets, and there's no reason gefilte fish can't taste excellent.

I cut up the beef I'd gotten into portions, after trimming out the bones and gristle etc., and it came out to costing me $6 per 4oz. portion. C'est la fucking guerre again. I give up; I'll go back to buying my beef at Nijiya.

I was able to toss some sunflower seeds and walnut pieces to the crows, who were out scrounging by the ice cream place; I could tell they were pretty hungry. Then I got into my practice and all that, and after cutting up the beef, I had the fat etc from it as well as bones from the fish.

Since the scumsuckers often have dogs running around with them and I don't want the dogs getting into it, and since kindness to wild animals makes one "weird", I toss stuff for my bird friends on the top of the little overhang over that window and door here. I have a perfect view of my feathered friends eating, and it's up where no one but a bird can see it or get to it. At first I'd just toss the stuff up there, with very mixed results. I've finally refined my method to taking a piece of flat plastic cut from a vegetable bag (that stuff always wants to flatten out) and putting the treats on it and twisting it up into a little "bomb" I lob up there, so I only need to dart out and do my lob and go right back in. 50/50 change the crackhead out there didn't notice me.

On NPR they're discussing whether "Anti-Zionism" is the new anti-Semitism. It made for interesting listening, and I learned of the sort of "soft pogrom" in the late 60s in Poland where almost all of their Jews have left. After listening to all of their arguments, I have to conclude that I strongly believe that "anti-Zionism" is indeed anti-Semitism, because the people who argue against is are making a huge error: They assume the USA will always be safe for Jews. It's not perfectly safe now, and other places were considered safe, even for more hundreds of years than the USA has been a nation, and those places have ended up tragically unsafe. All of the major ones at least, places that were liberalizing and becoming more educated, cultured, and "scientific".

Jews in Europe in the 1930s probably thought they had a safe place to escape to: the United States. It makes sense, with the US's founders being unusually friendly to Jews, and so much of our popular culture, science, literature, etc. created by Jews. We had Einstein and the Gershwins, after all. But the USA slammed the door shut.

Smart people don't forget something like this. That's the whole point of Israel. If you are Jewish, you have a home there. No one pushes them around and they will never slam the door shut on their people.