Disgusting dirtbags

I slept in until almost 4. I guess I needed the sleep. I'd planned to go to the Ace Hardware downtown and see if they had any ramset blanks but it was too late to get there in time.

I dithered about going anywhere, then checked my email and the pellets I'd ordered were in, plus I had a smelly bag of trash to get rid of, and I felt that after staying in yesterday I should go out today. So I started out and got as far as Queen's Lane then remembered I didn't have a mask with me, came back and got two masks, one for my shirt pocket and one to keep in the bike bag, and started out again.

First I dumped the smelly trash in the dumpster on the corner, then headed to Nijiya where I got a few things, $20 cash back, a Coke Zero, and a miso ramen bowl that now that I think about it may be intended to heat in a microwave and eat hot, but I ate it cold and it was great.

Downtown was dead, dead, dead. I even rode down 4th and around by Bike Express looking for stuff students left out but there was nothing. And hardly any people anywhere except for zombies, always a few more of them each time.

I went to the Amazon hub and picked up the pellets I'd ordered, and picked up some bubble mailers to use in packing. I got a couple of diet 7-Ups for Ken at the 7-11 across the street which has tons of different kinds of masks for sale by the checkout.

On the ride back, I came across "the dueling bodegas", Kelly Liquor and Smile Market. Kelley's seemed to be just about various drinks, but Smile was a real surprise. All kinds of stuff crammed in there, and I was able to get a half-gallon of bleach and two pints of rubbing alcohol, Swan brand, so not some of that funny off-brand stuff that's notorious for having methanol in it. I'd been looking for some, especially since the stuff I'd bought at San Jose Beauty Supply has a funny pine-y smell.

Then I remembered the neat looking castor bean bush I'd seen on Empire by 2nd, and went over there and cut off a couple of ripe seed clusters. I have visions of planting that along the fence by the CalTrans site where the blackberries are, and then putting blackberries in where they'll have the castor bean plants as partial shade since blackberries like that.

I got home and put things away. The various blessing boxes had yielded me a copy of "To Kill A Mockingbird", "The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul" by Douglas Adams, and an Audubon Society field guide to Western wildflowers so it was not a useless day.

I checked out the pellets - they're called "Red Flight" and the little red skirts on them can be pulled off, showing that the metal part that's the actual pellet has a little "tail" on it, which would make them fly in a more stable manner, which explains the pretty decent accuracy experimenters on YouTube have gotten out of them.

I'd noticed that the bums left a lot of trash and junk in scattered piles in the parking lot, and had rolls of "hazmat" translucent red garbage bags there too. I was going to do nothing, but then realized I have a couple pairs of rubber gloves that ought to be used up because they're kind of old, and put a pair on and went out and bagged up some of the stuff and made things a lot more neat, if you can call smelly clothes never washed, and possible bum piss and shit wound up in them, neat. The idea is to show the bums their activities are being watched, and to make it easy for anyone doing clean-up around here to pick up the bags and take them away.

I'd had to make a "run" anyway, taking some junk I don't need and a bunch of big pieces of Styrofoam Ken had brought over, to the dumping place by the bridge.

I'm all in favor of setting up camps, out in the boonies where land is cheap, and just putting the homeless in there. Not the normal people who may have to improvise a place to stay for a few months until they get back on their feet, but the hardened, criminal, drug-addled, zombie type homeless. Stick 'em out there where they have 3 hots and a cot, 24/7 TV, arts and crafts, hell let 'em have booze and weed, why not? Just keep them away from normal people where they're not crapping up the place and stabbing everyone within reach.

Another thing I did today was order some bay leaves on Amazon because I don't feel perfectly confident in storing the rice with boric acid sprinkled in. It turns out you can use bay leaves, so when I have those in I'll sift the rice so it's fairly boric acid free and put it back in the jugs with bay leaves instead. No regrets on buying the boric acid though, as it's very useful.