Talibuddies

 122nd day sober. I did some practice last night, mainly working on tongue level stuff. The Schilke mouthpiece I got is indeed pretty much a 3C, which is fine. 

I got up at 3, coffee and vitamins and so on, and as usual am listening to the radio. Last night I learned on Reddit that we've supplied the Taliban with hundreds of thousands of rifles and thousands of machine guns, tanks, vehicles, planes, helicopters, etc. All you need as a nation-state which we seem to be considering them now. It makes sense, as the Protestant Christians who run the US have more in common with the Taliban than with modern humans. 

So they're our Talibuddies now. And now, not only is a US passport useless in most of the world (due to covid and the US being generally loathesome) but now in select parts of the world, say, new nation-states, having a US passport will get you killed. 

But why talk about far-off Afghanistan when there are things happening much closer? New Orleans is under water again, and that, if not the horrendous crime rate having done so already, would make me cross it off my list of "places to move to retire". 

There's a big fire called CONUS or CONOCO or something, that's busily burning out places like Placerville and the Lake Tahoe area. These places, like the ironically-named Paradise, will probably never be rebuilt. So much for moving inland, near some water, as a retirement plan. 

At one time I even thought of moving to Texas, someplace like Austin, or what's called the "hill country" which I believe is nearby, but now a person can be put into prison in Texas for being accused of *thinking* of encouraging someone to get an abortion. That's right up there with being thought of as being a witch, and I'm sure Texas prison makes one wish they were simply burned at the stake to get it over with. So flyover country, any and all of it, is absolutely out. 

To clarify: Abortion isn't something that normally pops up in my various conversations with various people. But if I were in Texas, and someone randomly decided to, they could accuse me of talking about it and off to prison I'd go. Maybe it would be because they want my house or land. Or because they just don't like my politics, or what I drive, or that I out shot them at the local shooting range, anything. 

So you can get slammed into prison there not for saying something, but because someone decides to accuse you of saying something, or - and it's written right into the law there - accusing you of *intending* to talk about something.

I took 18 packages with me as I headed out, dropped most of them off at the post office, went to the Filipino store for some garlic peanuts and a couple of diet Pepsi's, dropped the last packages off at FedEx and picked up a big piece of foamcore sign board with a big "40% Off!" sign on it and rode over to Tom's, with my bike trailer looking like anything in it is 40% off. 

Tom's redone his kitchen, so he says, but the place was such a horror last time I saw it I was very incurious and did not want to see. Tom was happy to get a Diet Pepsi, and we sat around and talked. I told him about my almost-$220 weekend and my finding those deals on mouthpieces. And we talked about a lot of other things too. I think he's picking up his trumpet once in a while, and wants a newer mouthpiece. He showed me his and it's really old and worn - it was probably taken out of his high school band's junk box and handed to him. 

When we were all talked out I came back here and cooked up a curry and ate it, and dug out the Yamaha 11B4 mouthpiece that came with my Yamaha trumpet. It's been dropped and dinged up a couple of times, but I soaked it in a Dawn dish soap solution and scrubbed it out. My reasoning being this: That if a 3D plays with more "edge" for me than a 3C, because a 3D is shallower, then maybe going back to the standard beginner mouthpiece, a 7C or the Yamaha equivalent, an 11B4, might work well for me. So I've scrubbed out this banged-up one and if I like it, I'll buy myself one that's not banged up and I can just give this one to Tom if he wants it. 

I also tried to convey to him that getting into something, in my case busking with a trumpet, wasn't a sudden thing that I took off with. There were *years* of diddling around, trying different instruments, going out busking for a month or two and then quitting for some reason or another, and so on. So he needn't feel bad if he doesn't take off with it right away. Just getting in the habit of regular practice, while watching a TV show or something, will help a lot. 

I'm learning about this too. When I was a kid I really kicked myself for not being as nuts over art as my parents wanted me to be, and for not working at it for hours a day.