A nice Fall day.

 152nd day sober. I guess  I skipped posting yesterday. Not much happened; the night before I'd sorted and labeled the last of a big box of ICs and listed those, and last night I got some large things and a bunch of stuff out of this one box of small seals and bearings and stuff like that, listed. 

Ken didn't come by last night, and when I called "I forgot" he's had this tiredness for the last couple of days, he said. I asked about his drinking and it's not been enough to make that happen. I told him sometimes these things come and go, like the headache I had where I had to stay in bed. So he's coming over tonight. 

Practice last night went, I'd say, super well. A couple of days ago I watched a video by the Harrelson trumpet guy, Mr. Harrelson I guess, and he talked about how, for him, it was all a matter of aperture. Low note = bigger aperture, and higher note = a smaller one naturally. Aperture not pressure. I can see how this works - cramming the mouthpiece into one's lips might artificially make a smaller aperture, although as I know well, it really screws things up. 

So I practiced last night with these principles in mind, and I was ripping high C's and higher quite easily. It's a matter of training those muscles to make a small aperture without mouthpiece pressure as a "crutch", and that's where free buzzing (buzzing w/o the mouthpiece) would be a good exercise. 

I also worked out "What A Wonderful World" in-tune with the way Louis Armstrong actually sings it on the radio. The version I'd been playing for years is lower, and it's time I played the proper version. 

I got up around 2:30 today and had coffee, packed one more thing, etc and got going at about 4:30. I got to the downtown post office just in time to mail the things there, then went over to Lee's for some chicken on rice which I ate over at the college, then stopped by the Amazon place to pick up some printer toner and coffee filters. True to technology's progress, I had to sign in, or be signed in, 3X and to do that, had to be insistent that I indeed had a couple of packages to pick up. I did get them, though. 

After that I rode over to Whole Foods and after using the bathroom, set up to play. There's been a change though. They've piled pumpkins in the area I used to have my tip box next to, so in effect people going in and out have to walk past lots of pumpkins and I guess, get the idea of buying one. It makes it trickier for me, though. I have to set up on the corner of public space that's formed by the sidewalk next to the bike racks, up next to the driveway where cars go in and out. It probably looks like I'm hoping to get tips from people in their cars. 

Instead, I got tips from a few people, but mostly they just walked on by. Going fast in and out, so I don't know if I'm too early or too late. Maybe they were more relaxed an hour earlier (I'd started at 5 to 6) and maybe they'd be more relaxed an hour or two later. As it was, I felt kind of like an idiot out there and not only that but this weird thing happened where I try to make a high-ish note and the note just won't come out at all. I have to wonder, am I fated to just play the same handful of songs over and over, striving to get better but in reality not progressing? 

After almost an hour I got the idea I'd try over by the Old Spaghetti Factory. Maybe people were taking  their kids there and so on. So I took the $12 I'd made and took off, and rode over to San Pedro Square. It was really dead, and I didn't have the enthusiasm to set up and play regardless, perhaps catching a "late" crowd (8-9PM is "late" for San Jose). 

I just rode on home.  It was a warm evening so there were plenty of zombies around, too. So I had to dodge many of the undead as I made my way back here. Lots of zombie nests or whatever you'd call those clusters of shopping carts festooned with everything from tarps, pallets, tables, etc down to all kinds of small litter, not set up to sleep or live in, just ... there.

So the Old Spaghetti Factory is out, as a busking location. I could try hopping on the train and going up to Mountain View, or I could just put up with the pumpkin nonsense and maybe do alright after all, or I could play it cool for a month or two, through this period between the kids going back to school and the first of the Thanksgiving leftovers, and then play Christmas carols, by then backed up by a small forest of Christmas trees.

But wait, it gets better.

 150th day sober. I practiced last night and it went OK. However on the exercises in the Rubank, my "OK" now is what I used to call pretty good. 

I woke up today at 3:30 and made the mistake of turning on the radio. It seems the Republicans have the option of not extending the debt limit - and Republicans have been spending like crazy whenever they can because tax-and-spend is the Republican way - and if they do so, the US will default on its debts for the first time in its history and send the US into the Mother Of All Economic Crises. 

This is exactly the kind of thing the Republican Party, now the Trump Party, would want to do. To think I'm old enough to remember when they were considered a viable party. That ended with Bush II, and it went full retard when they got behind Low-Budget Orange Hitler. He has a perfect record of turning everything it touches to shit. 

So how it's the party of white nationalism (look at videos of the ruins of German cities after WWII to see how well that went the last time) and they want a civil war for the same reason Hitler's followers did: because they think they'll live happily ever after in some kind of inbred Paradise. They were not able to destroy the US with their January 6 coup, so here's another way they can try. We'll just have to see.

A parade for John Hinckley

 149th day sober. I practiced last night, doing octave stuff and have found that for some reason, I can figure out tunes a bit more easily than I thought. That's always good. 

I slept in until a bit past 3, packed things, and did the post office run. I went over to 99 Ranch for shopping, spending a good part of the $50 or so I had on hand, and stopped on my way back from there for a couple of pieces of "Krispy" chicken and ate back here. 

On the radio they're saying that the guy who shot Reagan, John Hinckley, is about to be let out of prison or out of his mom's basement since she just passed away or something. Time to hold a parade for that guy because it was Reagan. There's not a chance of him doing anything now because everyone will be watching him. Plus, he's both old and mentally ill, so he'll probably join his local Trumpist chapter, on the argument that he shot Reagan for being insufficiently right-wing. 

First cold day of the season

 148th day sober. Just as with yesterday, I woke up at about 3:30, had coffee etc., did some shopping on my way downtown and got something to eat, and was all set up to play at 5:40. 

It was already pretty cool, and once the sun went down it got closer to cold. And windy. And tips were really, really, slow. I got cold and started sounding (I thought) like shit after an hour, but I stuck it out the full 6 hours. At one point a gal came burbling up on a Yamaha Vino scooter, and what made me curious was, it had a 4-stroke engine. So I started talking with the rider, and she said she'd bought it at that Yamaha place on El Camino Real in Santa Clara, but it's closing and she doesn't know what she's going to do if she needs her scooter repaired. I told her about the scooter place on Hedding which she didn't know about so maybe I did her a good turn. I told her I'd been curious because Vinos used to have 2-stroke engines, but 4-stroke ones last a lot longer so to me it's a good development. 

People were going in and out of Whole Foods pretty quickly, because of the coolth and the wind, and interestingly, today was the day I got tons of tips from black people. And yesterday I got no coins but today I got lots of quarters and even a Kennedy dollar coin. 

At one point a rough looking guy came up and, for some reason, took out a $20 bill and said something about the US Marines Band and I asked him where he'd been stationed, mentioning a couple of Marine bases and ... not a lot of what the guy was saying made any sense. And as he talked, for some other unfathomable reason he folded up the $20 bill and finally walked off. I didn't even get a chance to tell him how much I liked the Marine Corps; it had been so much fun making sure one of theirs wasn't going to the Olympics in '96. What a sad life that guy must lead, though. He and his grimy $20 both smelled like the underside of a car and sweat, and I was glad when he left - probably over to CVS for a handle of some of the rot-gut liquor they sell there.  

Finally it was close to 7:40 and I was playing my "one more tip and I'm done" game, and a street-ish kid came up and put in a tip and thanked me for being out busking. It turns out his name is Jasper and he plays guitar, and I guess either busks or is considering doing so. I told him about all the buskers who used to be around town, and how in the end it seemed to be just Leroy with his saxophone and myself, and now even Leroy's gone. So there's lots of room for buskers in town, I said in summing it all up, and it feels weird being the only busker in this town. 

I was very happy to be done, and had made $27.35. As they say, "Not great, not terrible". I think busking may be a seasonal thing, although it could get interesting close to Christmas time when Christmas carols will be de rigueur. And I need to move my playing times even earlier, maybe aiming to start at 5 or 4:30. When I'd started at Whole Foods there I noticed the carts were all out, which meant a burst of customers had been through, maybe for the 4-5 hour right after getting off work.

I win this one

 147th day sober. Last night I listed Ebay stuff and was all set to practice but really early in the morning the pavement guys showed up and I thought they might paint the whole parking lot, because they were cleaning the whole thing. It turned out they were putting in new speed bumps, but since I'm not supposed to really be living in here, I decided not to practice because some of the guys were hanging out talking right outside the door here. So I read the first bit of Graham Greene's "Our Man In Havana" and went to sleep. 

I woke up at about 3:30. I had coffee and stuff and got out of here at 4:30. I stopped at Nijiya for some sushi and after eating, oiled the trumpet valves and picked my teeth and chewed gum on the ride over to Whole Foods so when I got there all I needed to do was use the bathroom and then I just set up to play. 

I started at 5:20 and played until 7:30. The zombie was not around, and there was a security guard working who was really serious about his job - he walked around and really watched things. I talked with him a bit, telling him about the zombie and about some of the hijinks I've seen around there and we had a good laugh. 

It was a nice, ordinary busking session. I played stuff, it felt slow but people did tip, after it got darkish some sketchy people went in and out of Whole Foods and at one point a few went in, with their neck tattoos and B.O. laden clothes, and one of them, a female well on her way to hag-dom, asked me what I was doing, "Making money?" and I said, "A little," and then on her way out, carrying a bunch of groceries in a double bag, she complained to me in a comradely way about how heavy it is. I said she should have gotten two bags and she said she did, and I tried to explain, Gotten two bags one for each hand so the load would be balanced but by then she was hurrying off down the sidewalk to whatever hoboville these types are coming from. 

The rough types seem to appreciate my music and it's good to have them on my side. They might even be why that zombie wasn't pestering me tonight. 

But it was pretty nice, no hassles, and I think I timed things well because by the time getting dark the tips slowed way down, and by the time I was actually playing my last few minutes and had told myself "one more tip and I'm outta here" it was really dead. I was playing "Strangers In The Night", one of Rabbit Trumpet Guy's tunes and not my favorite but it's not a bad tune at all. It's great for showing off the sound of the trumpet, goes around in an interesting way, and doesn't go high enough to be a strain. 

I also played the Schindler's List theme and "Edelweiss" so I am enlarging my repertoire. And played Ave Maria a couple of times for the practice, as I really want to get that one down pat. 

When I was done playing I'd made $63. so even after buying various things yesterday and today, I have $49 in my wallet for "walking around money", put $50 in cash savings, will make whatever I make tomorrow, and have hardly touched my pay check.

It comes down to war

 146th day sober.  I practiced last night and saw, on one YouTube video, one trumpet teacher say that to play high notes you have to practice them, a lot. He said you take your highest note, not the one you can squeak out but the one that's the highest you know you can always play, and you play that note 100X a day (it's OK to do this in a lot of different ways like in songs, lip slurs etc.) and gradually you'll find the highest note you "own" will be the next one, so you do that with the next one, etc. 

I woke up at 3:30 today and packed some things and was out the door at 6, taking the things to the post office and FedEx and then just got a couple of pieces of fried chicken at the chicken place and came back here and ate them. 

I've been thinking about the zombie problem up there at Whole Foods and I think playing earlier in the day is a good decision. That's why I didn't go out and play today. Currently my schedule calls for playing on Thursday because I have to be downtown anyway to go to the bank. Then on Friday just taking all the things I can to the post office and FedEx. Then playing on Saturday and Sunday. Getting my playing done before it gets fully dark means I'm done before things get really sketchy outdoors. 

Next, this particular zombie seems like it can be intimidated and I'm thinking I might get one of those air horn things for the purpose of blasting in the ears of zombies in general, to scare 'em off. I also wonder about taking a page from the cops' playbook and getting one of those flashlights that's so bright it's blinding. It would be something I don't use routinely except to test occasionally, but to repel zombies w/o leaving a mark on them like pepper spray or my billy club would. The air horn thing is obtainable over at the auto parts place I think, so that's easy. As for the flashlight, these days you have to be a cop to buy things in the cop store, but I can always buy one online. They're not cheap, and will go through batteries in about 10 minutes if used as a regular flashlight, but that's not what they're really for. 

After some thinking, I've realized that the crackheads/zombies want to kill everything good. They want to kill music, peace and safety, camaraderie (it's hard to hold a pleasant conversation outside if there are zombies hassling you), the ability to own a bike or a car, the ability to walk down the street, etc. The zombies just want everyone to become a zombie, staggering down the street in rags, half-living for their next hit of crack. 

So it is good and proper to fight against the very existence of zombies in any manner possible, in what is nothing more and nothing less than a holy war. When I am out playing, I am meeting, however fleetingly, people from all sorts of walks of life and mostly the better ones; educated, caring, people. And the zombies want to destroy all of this. This is why I am in favor of using some of the vast areas inland to set up camps where the zombies can be sent and they can just do zombie stuff against each other and leave decent people alone. 

So in the same way I was able to gradually apply pressure until the scumsuckers were eradicated from our parking lot here, and in the same way I kept up the pressure until the illegal "stone" cutting place next door was put out of business, I will keep up my busking schedule and make life miserable for zombies whenever they make trouble for a decent person like me. 

In other half-human news, the other day I saw the "Trump Stump" who parked her bike furthest from mine (I've got the habit of parking my bike at the rack on the sidewalk end, to keep other people from doing things like parking two big bulky rental bikes or 3 scooters there) so she parked hers at the other end of the rack. "I haven't seen you for a while" I said in a friendly way, and she said not a word. She was also - still - wearing here "HILLARY FOR PRISON" shirt; does she ever wash that thing? Apparently she was angry the recall election hadn't gone the way she wanted. It's too bad she didn't want to talk, because I could have told her how the Republicans could have won; by pushing that Faulkner guy who's actually got experience being mayor of San Diego. 

They could have realistically won by promoting Faulkner and I almost considered voting for him myself. I ended up voting for Paffrath out of party loyalty but if I hadn't had a pretty good feeling the recall was going to fail I'd have voted for Faulkner because naturally I want the best governor possible. I'm always happy to tell the other side how they could have done better. But the Trump Stump came back out eventually with her groceries, put them on her bike, and rode off, all without a word. 

Keeping the zombie at bay

 145th day sober. I got up at 2, and if in a real hurry would have been able to be out the door at 3, but I was out the door at 4 anyway. 

I'd practiced last night and it went kind of Meh. I'm not sure if I was tired or what. This Meh practice would have been called a good one a month or two ago, though. 

So I got out of here at 4, dropped a couple of things off at the post office downtown, and went over to Lee's to get what I could get for $5. That turned out to be a bargain bag of 3 pastries, two chicken wings, and a water. There was a guy sitting out front who'd just come there to sit down, and I asked him if he was hungry and he was, so I got out one of the pastries and gave it to him, which he thanked me for, but he didn't want the 2nd one I tried to give him.

I went to eat over at the shady benches at the college, and it was fun because the squirrels were out and I had fun beaning them on the nose with chunks of pastry, which they'd then grab and take away to eat. Those little guys are hilarious, and they sure love to wave their floofy tails around. 

I got over to Whole Foods, used the loo, and started in playing right away. The "Give Us Money Which We May Or May Not Give A Penny Of To A Poor Child" booth was there but they packed up. It was 5:25 when I set up so maybe they were going to leave at 5:30 anyway. 

My idea was, the mood changes once it's dark so I'd busk before it got dark and sketchy out there. But, I noticed that same disgusting zombie was around and said zombie even had the temerity to come by and say it liked the music. I think the reason why, last weekend, I made $80 on Friday but only barely $30 and $40 the next two days was, the zombie was going around hassling people. Hence two changes to how I'm going to do things: Playing earlier, before "zombie hours", and doing what I can to make the zombie unwelcome. 

So I played along, not making much, and at one point three roughneck types stopped by and tipped a dollar and said they liked the music, and I said I might not be out there much any more because of that damned zombie (and pointed it out) and said said it'd be a good thing if the zombie got "the beatdown". I'm pretty sure the zombie overheard this, and it kept its distance more, after that. 

And at one point the zombie ventured close enough for me to say to its face that he belongs 6 feet under and even deader than it already is, and I'd be happy to put it there. 

Another rough type tipped some coins, and complimented my playing and again I said I might not be out there much any more because of the zombie, who hassles people who want to tip me and hence I'm making half what I usually do etc. and the guy said, "Oh, that's (female name)" and said maybe I could try the other corner and I said I'd been here first and it wouldn't matter as the damned zombie follows me around. 

When the cop who does guard duty came around, at 7 I guess, I told him about the problem too, and he said, "Welcome to San Jose" and I laughed, but now he knows about the problem too and that the zombie was hassling people in their cars and may have been trying to get into any cars that were unlocked. 

So I made it very clear that the zombie is not welcome. And tonight, the zombie did a fairly good job of keeping its distance, for a zombie. Even rotten brains can calculate some kind of basic self-preservation moves. 

When 7:30 finally rolled around I was done, went into Whole Foods for a few things, and rode away from there. The zombie was up on the corner, having dragged a box of shit up to the corner for whatever reason, and was muttering to itself. The damned thing "lives" around there and has got that area to hassle people for crack money 24 hours a day, and I'm only there 2 hours a day, 3 days a week. So for those 2 hours a day out of 3 days of the week, if I can make "life" miserable for the zombie, I will. 

But mainly I think playing and getting out of there before it's fully dark was a help. It was slow going at first, but in the end things went OK and I made $63.56.

Trying to inch things earlier

 144th day sober. I fiddled around with Ebay stuff last night but didn't list things because this middle-of-the-night stuff is starting to bug me. I practiced, and I'd say doing long tones on high notes and doing octaves is really helping me. Simply playing every day isn't going to do it, it's *how* I practice/play. If just playing, period, made one a good player than Rabbit Trumpet Guy would have improved. 

I got going a bit earlier, took things to the post office and got two chicken thighs at Krispy Chicken, picked up a few boxes I can use, and got back here. The chicken was really good especially since they gave me some ranch dressing too - it's good to dip the crispy bits in. It only cost about $6.50 which is a bargain around here. 

In other news I've given up posting on Morris Berman's blog. First, I don't have what it takes to be a "New Monastic Individual" as it seems to involve being the kind of person who will get so offended/frightened by some offhand remark by a young punk riding by on a bike that they'll wait with a big rock in each hand, ready to right to the death, for an hour; a psychotic loonie menacing anyone on the bike trail, for an hour or two. That just sounds like too much angst and hard work, to me. 

And, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories are welcome there. Today Mr. Berman said flat-out that considering the vaccine a "Communist plot" was insane, and then went on to rattle out his own pseudo-scientific conspiracy theory ... so the real objection isn't that the trump-tards are wrong, it's just that they're not dressing things up in a way to appeal to college graduates. This is why the Nazis had the Brownshirts and Julius Streicher and their crude songs and cartoons for the non-grads, and slick types like Goebbels and Speer to appeal to the grad/postgrad crowd. Something for everyone! 

In fact, I think whether they are conscious of it or not, they're really survivalists. The survivalist religion involves one being "good" and "virtuous" and when the Great Collapse comes, you end up on top. To the more obvious survivalists, this means stocking up guns and ammo and canned beans, and having a list, kept in one's mind at least, of which neighbors to shoot right away and which to save for later. But the more suave survivalists might simply think in terms of being more "good" and "virtuous" by leaving the US (keeping in mind that however much they were an outsider in the US they'll be more of one outside of it) and reading lots of books and staying quiet and all the cruder types will kill each other off and then .... they'll end up on top. 

Somehow Berman doesn't mention any of the social and economic turmoil going on in Mexico City where he lives, or that he no doubt has some pretty hefty security in place. Sure, he probably passes as an upper-middle-class Mexican OK but that's no protection in a country where kidnapping happens to gringo and native alike. Mentioning how he really lives would spoil the picture. 

Survivalism has a lot in common in the most popular death cult, Christianity, where there will be a great downfall, and the good and the virtuous (basically defined as those who are willing to pray the "hardest" and kill the most for Christ) will be left and will be on top of things. And so in both cases, bring on that downfall ASAP! 

There are a few, a very few, saner minds on places like Reddit. They say that a downfall whatever brings it on will be awful and miserable and flat-out suck, and too many of the wrong people will die, and so on. Better to try for a gradual decline because maybe just maybe, new ways of living will be found or old ways rediscovered, and it may be possible, just, to bring things down without the planet becoming a dead radioactive lump. The chance is small but it is there. 

The 2020's are the first time people are really coming face to face with things like global warming and our system's response to pandemics and so on. It was easy to write off the dot-com bomb as just being a thing tech does, as tech undergoes an exaggerated version of the boom-and-crash cycle of the rapacious US economy. But 08, which hurt far more people and most of us permanently, was about houses and banks and everyone deals with houses and banks. And with the advent of covid, a thing arguably not even alive but smarter than most Americans, the capitalist constrictor coils tighten once more. 

In response people are not having kids, they're offing themselves (maybe not the best reaction but I'd say not the worst), they're walking off of stupid jobs, and they're buying less stuff. Less and less people can afford a car, that industry's in a slump and I say the microchip shortage is just a smokescreen. Needed chips used to be smuggled all over the planet in the 70s and 80s; I know people who used to do it. Come right out and say people aren't buying cars and that can send things into a panic. 

If we in the "first world" (quotation marks because most of the US isn't) can spread the wealth around, we can get the planetary birth rate down to less than replacement and learn to manage a shrinking, rather than growing, economy.

Going to get interesting next year?

 143rd day sober. I practiced last night and worked on octave stuff of course, but one thing I notice is, during the day I'll think of songs I should work on, but when practice time comes around and I'm tired from the day, I can't think of those things. And while I think I need to work on endurance and range, what's really going to help me as a busker is repertoire. So each day during the day I'm going to write on an index card, songs that come to mind. At practice time I can look at the card and I'll know the songs I want to work on. 

I'm also going to start each practice session with playing Taps or something like it. Because what might happen, with all the military people in Hawaii? I might be called on to play Taps a lot. A lot of people actually screw up playing it, because of nerves. So if I get used to playing it a lot, I should be able to rip it right out. 

As usual I started my day by reading some Reddit while having my coffee, and on r/collapse I read this: 

 https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/psqbhh/the_united_states_is_heading_for_a_constitutional/

I can't find any places where the poster is wrong, and while according to him the real problems are in late 2024, according to him The Troubles will start in 2022. That's only next year. 

It's really coming down to, How soon can I reasonably move back home?

I'm making progress.

142nd day sober.  After listing Ebay stuff last night, I did some practice but it seems like I was still in need of recovery from my busking session so I didn't practice that much. 

I can't deny that I am making progress. For instance, I remember barely being able to play "Edelweiss" at home here, and now I can play it when out busking without problems. I remember Ave Maria having me out of breath and now my biggest problem with it is the fingering and I'm very close to being over that problem. I remember "Autumn Leaves" being a song I could only play when I was fresh, and now it's an oldie for me. 

And, I think I'm finally getting a finger on the problem of opening or constricting the throat. I can control this consciously now, although when I get fatigued that's harder to do. It makes a big difference in tone. I think it really says something that these days I can really tell the difference between a 7C and a 3C mouthpiece and I remember a couple of years ago not being able to tell.

Safe as helicopters

 141st day sober. Last night I counted out a ton of nuts and machine screws and such things, to re-do some Ebay listings where I'd listed them as they came, in a bag of "probably" 500 so I'd been calling the bags 400+. But it makes no sense because most people don't need that many, and those who do would rather know exactly how many they're getting for their money. 

I also cleaned up some expensive cables but after all that was tired enough that I didn't do any actual listing, but did some practice and then went to bed. I did more octave stuff, naturally, and I note that I *am* making progress. I also worked on two more new things to play, "Edelweiss" and "Those Were The Days" not the version from the TV show "All In The Family" but the other one. 

I woke up at about 4. I got out of here at about 5:30 and my first stop was at "Smile Market" which is my connection for rubbing alcohol, where I got two bottles of the stuff. Then I went over to Lee's for some food, and ate over at the college. 

By the time I had eaten and got started playing, it was 6:40 just like yesterday. It was windy, but Whole Foods looked pretty busy and the carts were all out of the rack. And the weird beggar-banjo guy wasn't there. So I started in, and it went ... OK I guess. Because of the wind, and it got dark soon, people hurried in and out. 

Plus there was a zombie. Said zombie had once been a Black female, but now it was a zombie in a tattered black dress with a belt made of packing plastic, going around doing random zombie things. It hassled people but not really for money per se, just hassled them then staggered off. It dragged things around, pulled a cart into the parking lot entrance then abandoned it when the cart locked up, dragged a big cardboard box around etc. 

In the movies zombies are attracted by sound and this one seemed to act like a movie zombie. My trumpet playing being the sound. I had pepper spray ready to give it a face full if it got too close, but I made no secret of this and it kept its distance. Finally I was done playing and yes, had played Edelweiss a couple of times, the obligatory playing of Ave Maria and I *am* improving on that one, and worked quite a bit on "Those Were The Days" because it's a pretty neat tune. When my time was up I went into Whole Foods for some shopping, and I'd made $38.47. 

And once I emerged from Whole Foods, having bought things like eggs and celery and so on, I noticed the zombie was nowhere to be seen, as there was no longer the sound source, my trumpet playing, to attract it. 

I will have to start getting out there earlier, though, because it just gets too sketchy around there once it's dark. 

Today I listened to a somewhat annoying radio show called "Says You" but at least I learned what the term "four flusher" means. It comes from the game of poker, where you need 5 cards of a certain type to have a "flush" but sometimes dishonest people will show 4 cards and claim that they have a "flush" hoping in the excitement of the game to get away with it. 

Sayings are funny. If you've read the book Brave New World, you'll know the expression used in that strange world, "Safe as helicopters". In 1931 when the book was written, helicopters were barely a thing and certainly not safe. But now they're considered extra safe for some reason. Like if there's a rescue up in the mountains or something, once they're in the rescue helicopter they're considered completely safe; the danger's over. I'm waiting for that saying to come around. 

A new record for the worst day so far

 140th day sober.  I got Ebay stuff listed last night and about 6AM the paving guys came and re-paved the messed up asphalt from the new cement drainage channel having been put in. They brought in a lots of heavy machinery and made a hell of a racket. After getting the listings done I just went to bed, hoping I could sleep through all the noise and I could, as I was pretty tired. 

I woke up at 4, which was fine, and had coffee etc. and was out of here at 5. I got some things at Nijiya, went over to Lee's and got some spring rolls and gyozas for $5, and ate over at the college. The squirrels are in fine form, big bushy tails and lots of attitude. I'm going to have fun explaining squirrels to people back in Hawaii. 

I started playing at 6:40 and it was cool and windy enough that I'd worn my orange jacket with a light sweatshirt underneath and was glad I had. But wow was it slow. I ended up making $27.40 which is a record low. I think I need to start getting out there earlier so that the bulk of my playing is when it's light outside. This can be arranged, even when it's getting dark at 4 in the afternoon. I just need to get up earlier and get out there a lot earlier. If I'm playing on whatever day I go to the bank, whether it's Thursday or Friday, and then Saturday and Sunday, I can get out there at noon if that's what it takes. 

What's funny is, as I started playing, I noticed a guy sitting against the Whole Foods building in the sort of corner between it and the rack that holds the shopping carts. I guess there are narrow planters there so he had this narrow planter to sit on. He was holding some kind of a sign, I didn't read it because I didn't even notice the guy was there until I'd set up, and then I wasn't going to walk over and check. I acted like I didn't know he was there. He was actually placed where he could be fairly visible to some of the people coming from the parking lot, while being less visible to employees and security guards. 

It's kind of a stupid ploy, because many a bum has set up right where I do, with their sign, begging away, and as long as they're on the sidewalk they're on city property and Whole Foods can't do much, and if they're not obnoxious they're tolerated. 

Well, anyway, this guy got a tip from a lady, cool for him, then when I got a tip, and then another, he seemed to be irritated and picked up his stuff and left. He seemed to have a guitar bag or it really looked like a banjo bag, along with the other crap he was carrying. So why didn't he play the damned thing? Although bums are known to carry instrument bags with no instrument in them, or maybe half his strings were broken, or maybe the thing was stolen and he didn't want anyone to recognize it.  By the time he left it was fully dark.

It just seems the mood changes once it gets dark. It's not that I don't get tips, but it seems to be less of them. I think people are being more careful after sundown in the same way that, other than on busking days, I've been making sure I was back here before it got dark. 

Even though the pandemic seems to have thinned the zombies out by quite a bit, there are still zombies and they are still dangerous. In fact, on my way home tonight, going up that street that's always full of zombie cars and zombie RV's and little zombie "outdoor living rooms" set up under the trees, there were tons of cops and ambulances and some kind of heavy duty vehicle moving equipment, and as I rode by on the sidewalk I saw a cop putting some kind of foam on a spillage, maybe some zombie blood. Where there are zombies, there's always trouble. 

As I rode home I thought about the zombies in the movies. Somehow they're always really dumb but an unerringly tell if someone else is another zombie and leave them completely alone, or a non-zombie to be attacked right away. In reality, a rabid dog will attack anyone or any animal, even if that person or animal is rabid also. And a mentally ill zombie or druggie zombie doesn't care whether you're mentally ill or a druggie or not, if you're close by, you're a target. 

Also, in the movies, zombies are always attracted to sounds. So all the people would have to do is set up something like a rat trap, where a zombie is attracted to a noise source over a big pit with a trap door that resets to catch the next zombie. In the real world, movie-zombies would be really easy to deal with. 

So in the real world zombies are a thing, but you don't typically get great masses of them and they're easy to spot (staggering around, pushing a shopping cart loaded with useless shit, yelling at the air, etc.) and you learn to spot them from a good distance and avoid them. Like last night, where I was going to ride by the old Safeway location on 2nd, and heard some zombie going off, yelling angrily about some stupid shit, so I cut across a parking lot and went up 3rd instead of 2nd. 

Rather than how it is in the movies, real-world zombies are more likely to attack fellow zombies, because normal people avoid them but another zombie might not notice that a guy has his pants down below his knees, is wearing one pink fuzzy slipper, and is yelling about Communists from Neptune. Even if they notice, they're not human enough to react thinking, "That's not normal" and move away. 

Maybe movie zombies are so different from real-world zombies because it's not fun for people to watch a movie and think, "Hey, wait, that's how I move around my neighborhood to avoid 'pants down guy' and 'swing a machete guy' and 'screams at clouds girl'" People go to movies to see something different from real life even if it's just real life exaggerated to an impractical extent. 

No one wants to hear about never leaving the house without at least one weapon, taking different routes in/out to avoid being predictable and thus liable to ambush, sussing out all pedestrians as well as cars a block ahead if possible, knowing which streets are more or less safe and so on. That's just routine stuff. They want to watch a movie about some impossible situation where, in movie-land, something's different.

Happy birthday to me.

139th day sober. Since I didn't have anything much to ship, I didn't go anywhere. Ken came by at the usual time with a bunch of stuff in a rack with tons of cables so while Ken took the goodies out of the rack, I worked on rolling up the flat cables and packaging them up so they're easy to store and sell. 

I told Ken it was my birthday coming up, "One more year closer to being out of here" and as I rolled cables, said that I've become very conservative, financially, and am "scared to death" to make any major changes like moving home before I'm eligible for Social Security but once I am, I'm outta here. I really don't want Ken to be surprised when this indeed happens. 

I also talked about how I know moving back home might involve becoming homeless there and having to work my way up, but that I'm prepared for that and still consider it worth it. That my attempt to move back in 03 failed because I didn't know as much about begging and hustling and street performing as I do now, nor was I used to living without running water or internet, but that living in San Jose here got me used to living without those things. Plus taught me about begging etc. 

I read r/homeless on Reddit regularly and follow different people's stories, and one person on there is homeless in Brazil so their life is really precarious, but she has an ace up her sleeve: she has a guitar and can play it. Many a night, most in fact, she's paying for a hotel room for her and a friend or two with the proceeds from playing guitar in the park. She's doing better than she would in the US. 

Likewise, I'm really banking on trumpet playing. Anyone can beg, or collect cans, but only a few can play music at all, and very few indeed play the trumpet. I'm really hoping especially with the large military presence in Hawaii, that it makes me someone people want to have around. 

I practiced before bed, lots of octave stuff which I think is really helping me. 

I woke up at 3, perfectly in time to have coffee and vitamins etc., and get out of here at 4. My first stop was the post office where I mailed a bunch of packages. Including two, one to Russia and one to Bulgaria, each holding two little LCD displays I'd gone nuts trying to find and had just about given up when I finally found them an hour before Ken came over last night. Whew! It wasn't just refunding the $50 plus shipping to each customer, but it would have also meant two more hits against us on Ebay, burying us deeper in the "Below Average" category. 

Then the bank, ho-hum there and one always wants visits to the bank to be ho-hum. Them over to Dai Thanh for a few things, and Da Kao for a pork and veggies with fish sauce on rice noodles thing which was marked $5.50 but they only charged me $5. I think because I show up with cash and don't give them any trouble. I had to sort of work around a crazy guy who was practically bouncing off the walls there and being a handful while he, I'm sure eventually, completed some kind of a transaction for the food he'd picked out. 

I ate over at the college and dinner came with a show, that of skateboard kids doing their usual tricks, mostly involving falling down. And listening in on their adventurous tales, like how, in the park, there are guys who *drink*, from *bottles*, and not only that, but they actually *yell at passers-by*. 

I went by the Amazon place after eating and picked up a bunch of bubble mailers and the Yamaha "Bobby Shew Jazz" mouthpiece I'd finally caved in and ordered, as someone described it as "a 3C with a little extra kick". 

I rode over to Whole Foods and had a coffee and an elderberry syrup shot because my throat felt a bit scratchy, and started playing at 6:15. I played the usual stuff, and one big problem is, when I'm out there I start using too much mouthpiece pressure and run into real limits on high notes due to this. I finally got out the new mouthpiece and tried it, and I'd describe it as being halfway between a 3C and a 3D. I went back and forth between it and my 3C and I think I prefer the 3C because the tone is better. 

People, including me for a while there, often think a different mouthpiece will "give" them higher notes, but it really doesn't work that way. A shallower mouthpiece seems to make higher notes seem easier, but at the price of less full tone. I can't believe I used to go out there with a 7C... 

It seemed slow although there were a few bursts of the crowd getting "tippy" and I figured it would be pretty routine, earnings-wise, but when I counted up, I'd made $84.48. If that's going to be the new routine, I'll take it. I really don't hope to make this kind of money back home, but hope that I might make $10 or $20 or so, which is enough to get by on day to day. 

A productive Wednesday

 138th day sober. The best thing I did yesterday was a haircut. I'd not actually washed my hair for days, because it's a lot easier on the clippers if the hair's oily, but this turned out to be a bad idea - best is to do what I used to do when I went to a barbershop. I used to wash my hair with hot water only, scrubbing well, which got the dirt and junk out while leaving a certain amount of oil in. The cut came out fine, except I ended up with a weird "fringe" across the front I had to trim with scissors and a place on top that didn't get completely trimmed, that I had to touch up with my little trimmers. 

2nd best was a load of laundry. If I'll just do a load a week, I'll get all caught up and will be able to go through the clothes I have and decide what to keep and what not to keep. 

I got Ebay things listed but decided I'm going to list bulk screws and nuts and stuff differently. I'd been listing them as bulk, "there are at least 400 in here although the bag is marked 500" etc., well, most people don't need more than 50-100 at a time, and the uncertainty about quantities make people nervous, I think. It's hard to sell a big bag of 500 nuts for $29.95 but, I think fairly easy to sell 5 bags of 100 each for $10 each for a total of $50. 

We're already pretty deep into "below standard" right now due to having had to do some refunds, mostly things being lost or delayed in the mail going overseas. And if I can't find some little displays Ebay thinks we have, I'll have to add two more "failed transactions" to that - that takes a while to dig out from. Failed transactions have to be less than 2% and we're at 2.34%. 

Ebay's changing in this way, more tracking and tracing and stats-keeping, so if it was ever fun in the first place, it's a lot less fun now. That plus the internet itself is getting worse and worse. YouTube is barely usable, although for now if one doesn't mind tons of ads and a hard limit of 420p and often 360 or 240, one can still watch things. And even comment at the rate of 1 character per second when it's really cooking. And it's a good way to check out reviews of movies I'll have to buy on DVD, preferably used. 

I got some practice in, and did lots of my octave exercises, lots of long tones on higher notes. That's working out well and I think I'm on the right track. 

And the reason why I'm not out busking right now is, late last night Ken called me and said he was caught up at work and would not come by. I said he ought to come by anyway, as I'll be up and he said he would. Then hours later he said honestly he'd not be by, as he'd had to take his wife to the airport too and I said Yeah that's just too much, See you tomorrow night. I'm a great believer in regular schedules but there is a limit. 

So I'd done my haircut and bath, done laundry and had the bathroom all spic and span, even had my shoes polished, was really on top of things and ... change of schedule. So Ken comes by tonight, I'll have the few things I have to mail packed and will take them with me on my way to the bank tomorrow, and busk tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday. 

I'm glad that however slowly, I am making progress on the trumpet. I keep getting discouraged and then just practicing anyway and working on whatever problem I'm having. I remember a year or two ago, the high parts in the Israeli national anthem or that thing Chuck Mangione is known for, being hard and often not being able to play them. Now I can do them. 

I've got three years to really work on this stuff then I'd better be able to go back home and win 'em over. I'm reminded of something I read in a book a while back, about how some political activist came up to the US from South America and after a while in the US, complained about the treatment of "brown people" in the US. His interviewer asked him, "But isn't this the case where you're from?" and he said, "You don't understand, where I'm from, I'm the white guy".  You can be "not quite white" on the mainland and in Hawaii still make the impression of being "white" by appearance even if you're kinda brown. 

So back home I'm just going to be, by first impression, just another white mainlander who's there to make noise on my trumpet just like all the white mainlanders who are there to make noise with their guitars. So I'd better be able to make some pretty good-sounding noise. 

Plus trumpet playing is the best survival skill I have right now. If I can get away with sleeping in a small office, I can make out just fine playing a circuit of a few different Whole Foods stores and never have to care about electronics stuff again. So if something happens to Ken I have a back-up. 

But if something happens to Ken, I think the best thing I can do is wind up my affairs here and get home to Hawaii as soon as I can. Because as long as I'm tied to Ken and his family I have my papers in order and have a reasonable chance of being able to fly home on an airplane, or take a cruise there and jump ship. 

There are so many things about home I miss. I never thought I'd miss them because I never thought there was a world where they were not things. But here we are. I miss: Nice beaches, pawn shops full of treasures, decent swap meets, good libraries, functional public transit, all kinds of greenery, medical care, a social network, everything you really need being in walking distance and everything else a bus or bike ride away, and a sense of rootedness in a place. 

Here, I can't join the musicians' union or the ACLU or pretty much anything, because I live in San Jose and my official address is in Fremont, in a different county. I joined the DSA for a while and that was kind of useless as I was unable to go to meetings close to me, due to being registered in a different county, and unable to go to the ones in "my" county due to distance. I'm unable to do a whole lot of shit because of things like this. 

I need to get my papers in order as soon as I can, but while the virus is stacking up bodies like cordwood it's not really possible to walk into the DMV and take care of it. And unless I plan to leave for home in the next week or so, I'll be on the no-fly list until I get my papers fully in order. 

Along with greatly accelerating every other trend, the virus has made distances much larger. I've mentioned telling a guy here in San Jose that I'd visited Mountain View, a mere 2-3 towns over, and he had no idea where that was. And that visit was before the mass shooting at the light rail facility so now even that long a journey is that much harder to do as it's no longer a walk to the light rail station and a ride there. Now it's a bike ride to Whole Foods, lock the bike up and then either take the bus or the train. Admittedly the train's pretty nice and it's almost as easy to ride that up to the distant land of Palo Alto. 

This whole situation is like being an ant, trying to determine the overall slope of a hill it's walking on. Will it go up? Will it go down? Will things normalize for at least a while, or in a year will I be kicking myself for not getting on a plane this weekend for a "vacation" back home halfway through which I hide out for a while and then appear, mysteriously, on the sidewalks of Honolulu and work on getting a local ID again? 

I don't even have any idea of how to take any money I've saved here on the mainland back with me. None of the banks are the same and smuggling large amounts of cash is not easy. I need to work out how to do that because if I can hold out for the next three years and the planes are still flying and the ships still sailing, I might have 10 or 20 grand saved up and it would be really useful to have that as opposed to having to start from scratch, from homelessness on up.

Octaves

137th day sober.  I listed Ebay stuff last night and practiced before bed. I'd watched a few things on YouTube about increasing range, and they all seem to involve "lip slurs" and so, last night, I did a lot of stuff like that and especially fooled around with doing octave slurs, starting from C below the staff and working up to G in the staff, in each case going an octave up. It went well. 

Right-wing loon Larry Elder got shown the door last night with a huge majority against the recall. Now, the Republicans might well have gotten somewhere if they'd pushed a fellow named Faulkner who's been mayor of San Diego and seems to be awfully competent and non-loony especially as Republicans go. I almost voted for him as Newsom's replacement, myself. But that's not what the Republican Party is about - it's the Trump Party and that's only because George Lincoln Rockwell isn't around any more to lead it. So of course they were behind the right-wing loon and at least now it's possible for the rational majority to throw said loon out on his ass. 

And where did I get this definitive news? The radio. The internet is just about useless for things like this. Things that happened a week ago, sure. But anything important, you're going to hear on the radio. That's another thing I miss about Hawaii is that they have really good public and college radio stations. 

I got out the door with only 4 packages, took them to the post office, then went to the new chicken place on my way back. As is standard in American business practice, the supposed "meal deal" that comes with a small side along with a biscuit and the chicken, isn't. The advertising looks like the small side is included in the price, but all it's set up to do, is fool you into ordering the small side at full price. And if you're in a hurry like the average lemming is, you don't have time to think, fork over the extra money and move on. That's the reason a "meal deal" at Carl's Junior is something like $15, and if you just order the sandwich it's about $5. 

I took the chicken right back here, riding along Rogers which was a mistake because a zombie hovering around one of the zombie/crackhead nests made of bushes, trash, and Mad Max cars, said Hi to me. Some zombies are sort of intelligent in that they try to say Hi in the hopes that the person they're saying Hi to, will stop and talk or some damn stupid thing. Then the zombie eats their brains. I suspect the only ones who fall for that are other zombies or crackheads - haha the zombie only gets zombie or crackhead brains, joke's on them. 

I actually had plenty of time to eat, do a haircut, and a thorough bath.

Would you scoff at Biscoff?

 136th day sober. I got some Ebay stuff ready, but felt too tired and didn't list it, but I did practice and it went better than the night before. I'm able to hold tones on the high notes longer and I think that's one of the most useful things I can do. 

I slept in until 5 again, which is OK as it's not like I had to go to the bank or anything today, and I had the packages all fully packed. So it was just a matter of have coffee and vitamins etc then take off. 

I took the post office things to the post office then went over to 99 Ranch for some shopping, then dropped off the FedEx ones on the way back. Good thing the light at Old Oakland Road was red, because if it had been green I'd have kept riding who knows how far back towards here before remembering I had two packages to drop off. 

I was going to stop and tell Tom about the ghost kitchen up the road here, which is, in effect, about 6 different take-out places, and is open until either midnight or 2AM depending on the night. There's a little iPad sort of thing for ordering right in there. The pictures of the food look good, whether the food it actually good remains to be seen, but having a place in walking distance is kind of nice. 

One of the things I got at 99 Ranch are some Biscoff (biscuit you have with coffee, geddit?) cookies so I can offer one to Ken to try. They're serving these on airplanes now instead of peanuts so in the US, people associate them with air travel, according to an article I recently read. I don't know why they don't just keep serving peanuts, with so many people with peanut allergies. A few people keel over, some die, they all get charged a million dollars for medical costs, lose their houses and jobs, etc. Isn't that the American Way? 

I'm waiting to hear election results here. The idea of the 5th or 6th largest economy in the world with a loon like Larry Elder in charge is horrifying. Sure, he'd get voted out in a year in the regular election, but he could do a lot of damage in a year. Including suspend elections or some shit.

Less Headache-y Monday

 135th day sober. I practiced last night and was not thrilled with how it went. I'd given myself an hour to practice and wanted to "get it over with" and go to bed. I'd watched episodes 1-2 of The Trap by Adam Curtis so I'd given myself episode 3 which is 55 minutes or something. But I think being in a hurry or tense harms me more than I've thought it could. Maybe trumpet is less of a brute-force thing than I've been thinking it is. 

I at least got Ebay things listed and put a bunch of stuff away too. But I slept in until 5. I needed the sleep, I guess, and managed to get everything I'd pre-packed all ready to go in the 45 minutes or so I had. 

I took the things to the post office and then did a big shopping trip at H Mart to the tune of a little over $60. I rode by Tom's on the way back to verify that there was packing foam sheet in the dumpster next door, called out to Tom, who was hanging out in his doorway, that I just needed to go get my bike trailer, and rode for here. 

I put things away and got the trailer out, and went back over to the dumpster first and loaded up a big 55-gallon bag with foam sheet then hung out with Tom for a bit. He wasn't making any lumber sales, and was only running into scammers on Craig's List. Among other things we talked about tiki bars and the tiki esthetic. and he told me of this really good tiki bar up in the city. I said if he wanted to go I'm up for it, I'll just have club soda or something. 

I asked Tom if he'd mailed in his ballot in the election, and he said he hadn't but that he'd have only voted for the recall anyway, because a recall might mean a shake-up at his work that might benefit him.

Headache-y Sunday

 134th day sober. I stayed up reading last night. First "Zoo Story" which I ultimately found too boring. Maybe if I wanted to work in a zoo, I'd be fascinated. Then "Parable Of The Sower" by Octavia Butler. That's a pretty good book, even if parts of it are unrealistic (come on, the protagonist just happens to pair up with a guy who turns out to be a doctor with 200 acres of land in an ideal, out-of-the-way place?) I think parts of it are more realistic than a lot of novelists want to touch on - like dogs becoming wild animals again that prey on humans. There's a reason in Biblical times in the Middle-East, dogs were cursed and "unclean", in a land where no one had spare food to feed dogs, and they were scavengers, cleaning up offal and garbage and ridding one of unwanted small children the way swimming pools are used for "oopsie" child disposal now. 

(I can speak with some authority on this last point, because everyone who had a swimming pool when I was growing up either had a story of a child drowning or one or more near-drowning. And I was almost "disposed" of this way myself. The very first place we lived in Hawaii had a swimming pool and I was left out there to hopefully doze off in the hot sun and drown. Leave a kid out there with a shitty flotation ring that will always have a leak, let them doze off, and they will like as not slip off into the water without much of a struggle at all. Instead, the flotation ring I had just happened to be this official Mickey Mouse one and very well made. I was fished out after some time with a great deal of - feigned or not I'll never know - concern.)

After reading I slept until about 4 in the afternoon, and did not feel better enough to think about going out busking. In fact, the headache had largely gone away last night, then came back to some extent. So busking is out.

Another 9/11

 133rd day sober.  I mentioned not practicing night before last due to being "tired" but really it was largely because I had a headache that came on in my last few hours of being awake, and made me not want to practice because I felt practicing would make it worse. 

So I'd gone right to bed, and after a good sleep the headache was gone. So I was able to pack packages, hang out with Tom, etc. 

Well, last night the same headache came on but worse. And I thought, No problem, I'll just get to sleep and it'll be gone when I wake up. But this time I could not get to sleep. I lay in bed awake all night and through the day. In the afternoon I got a phone call from Ken, who was coming over to move some things around. "I have a debilitating headache," I told him. He said that's no problem and since I'll be in bed in the office he can just work in the warehouse and not bother me. 

And that's what he did. He came over, moved things around, I stayed in bed and I think I got a little actual sleep. Ken eventually was done, closed things up, and drove off. I'm out of bed now to check up on Ebay things and drink the can of diet Pepsi I have left over from yesterday. 

I don't know what's caused the headache. One possible culprit is the fried fish snacks I had, that I'd eaten a fair amount of (I like the container they come in for keeping coins in). So I tossed the rest of those out for the birds. Or the dark chocolate I got on sale at Whole Foods, which I'd eaten about half a (large) bar of. I have an unopened bar left, which I'll donate. 

Unless I find myself feeling really great tomorrow, this means Thursday was my one busking day this week. 

So this is my 9/11 this year. I might as well write down how that day went for me. I was living in Newport Beach, and was doing my usual Tuesday routine. I drove down to my bank to deposit the handful of checks (I didn't use paypal) from buyers of my Ebay items. The atmosphere in the bank was a little odd but I thought nothing of it. Bill Handel was on the radio, and he was talking about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. I figured it must have been someone in a Cessna or something, fucking up. I imagined a Cessna crashing into an office and hoped no one got hurt. 

As Bill talked about it though, I finally got the correct impression that it was ... an airliner. That doesn't happen just by accident. I was headed to the El Toro library which had their book sale room open on Tuesdays, to buy books to resell on Ebay and as I headed down there on the freeway I made a plan. I was actually a little bit early for when the book sale room would be open, and I knew there was a trailer park next door and a little sports bar. A sports bar would have TVs and the news on. 

I went into the sports bar and it was crammed with people, drinking drinks that were poured to the rim. I ordered a glass of milk and paid $5 for it too - I guess a drink was a drink that day. People were crying, some head-in-hands in despair. I watched the TV and the first building was burning and a 2nd plane come in and hit the 2nd building. Then the first building came down. 

I'd had enough and actually went into the book sale room at the library, didn't find much except a book on racing motorcycles (that the customer eventually never paid for) and went home. Then on the TV there were the scenes everyone has seen now, of people jumping off the sides and people running, the most memorable one to me being a cop, whose uniform is very dark, almost black, being a uniform pale tan. His uniform, his hat, his badge, him, all pale tan. Like he'd been painted. 

The couple of little Middle-Eastern stores I liked to go to closed, and some Middle-Eastern people in my apartment building left, and nothing flew for a week or two, and everyone knows the rest.

dot dot dot ...

 132nd day sober. I was so tired last night I didn't practice, except for some free buzzing of course. I slept in until 4 this afternoon. 

After packing a few things did my post office and FedEx run and mailed my ballot - the recall election will be the big news over the next few days. 

After collecting a few boxes for shipping I stopped by Tom's with some diet Pepsis and some little yam-filled cakes from the Filipino market and Tom and I talked a bit. After we were about talked out, I guided him over to where someone had put out some nice windows and screens over by Stanley Steemer. So now he has nice windows to install in his building if he likes. 

I got back here, cooked and ate a curry, fiddled around with some things, etc.

A new record

 131st day sober. I was up at a quarter to 3, washed hair and shaved, enough of my freshly washed clothes were dry to have a set to change into, polished shoes, etc. and was headed downtown at about 10 after 4. 

First stop was the bank, naturally, and this is one of those weeks where my balance matches my calculations exactly. Next I went to Dai Thanh for a few things and then Da Kao for a cup of chow mein that had pork and a bunch of goodies in it. I went over to the little park and the guys I'd talked with so much the time before were there, but besides saying Hi I didn't bother them and they were busy talking about stuff on their own. I just wanted a peaceful place to eat my noodles. 

I swung by the Amazon place and got a few bubble mailers and my Blessing 5C mouthpiece which is close as I think I'd want to come to a "cheater" to make high notes easier. I'd practiced last night and I think the feel of the free buzzing is helping me a lot because it seems I carry over a little of that feel to my playing. 

I rode over to Whole Foods and got a little bottle of coffee and drank that and read the Metro and got ready for my playing tonight. It was a quarter after 6 when I started in. "I'll play until a quarter after 8" I thought to myself. The playing went pretty well in that the higher notes gave me less trouble than they've been, and while I'm not sure how successful I was, I tried to sound as good as possible as I played. A skinny black guy tipped me $5 to watch his bike, which I did, and after he'd done his shopping and collected his bike and rode off there was another guy futzing around with his bike, and a drab-looking lady had dropped a tip, just dashed by, and I looked in the box expecting it to be another $1 but it was a $100. 

I took it out and wondered at it then put it in my wallet and the guy futzing with his bike and I got talking. He was homeless and living in the crash zone by Hedding and Spring Street, and since they want them to move out they've shut off their electricity and water. I said if he has any interesting in learning an instrument I have a few different ones and could give him one, but he said he's just not talented that way. But I think I gave him some ideas about starting up something detailing cars or something. And he said Safeway hires felons and he's got a friend who might get him in. (This does not surprise me about Safeway by the way.)

Besides the $100 I had made $30 or so, so I thought, I wonder how well the tips will go besides this one stray data point? So I played on and a guy came up and said he'd come over just to hear me and Sorry he didn't have anything to give; he'd just gotten out of the "joint" etc. and then he wanted me to play the riff from "Sunshine Of Your Love" by Cream, which I could do, then he said we'll play a duet of some sort, I guess he'd sing? He had my time all planned out. So I pulled out my flip phone and looked at the time and said, "Oh wow, it's my break time.. yeah I always take a break at the top of the hour...." and packed up, grabbed a cart, and went into Whole Foods and bought the vitamins and nuts I'd been planning to buy anyway, and even ended up in a super-slow line to pay, so by the time I got back out there he was long gone. 

So I played until 8:30, and as always it felt slow, but I was out there for the practice and to build my stamina etc. so I just kept on, and finally it was time to go, I played the "Goodnight" song and packed up. I had made $179.06. This is a new record for a session for me, although I'm not sure if I beat my 1-hour record of $132 or so, that I set the first time I played at Whole Foods. 

I rode through San Pedro Square on my way home and man, was it dead. Long ago, Paseo de San Antonio used to be one of "the" busking spots along with San Pedro Square. The Paseo's dead now with all the businesses closed and the theater all walled off, and now for some reason San Pedro Square has died. There were *some* people eating outdoors, in ribboned-off enclosures, but not the kind of foot traffic that makes busking possible.  Leroy's not even playing there any more. He might be going up to San Francisco because he's mentioned doing that before, and I've heard it's hopping up there. 

I think the reason "my" spot there at Whole Foods isn't being mobbed is that during the day there's almost always a booth there with some scam like Save The Children, plus it's actually a rather exposed place. There's sun and wind, and most buskers want to be sheltered from those. But I guess having grown up in Hawaii, I was always used to the trade winds so I don't find a little wind to be too bothersome, unless it's cold and then it's just a matter of dressing warmer. Plus it takes more than a little wind to "blow away" the sound of a trumpet. 

Free buzzing

 130th day sober. I practiced last night and .... it went super well. What's changed? I think a big change is my idea of doing long tones on the higher notes. That's changed day and night, where I could do one of the higher notes for a second or two and call it good, and can hold them for long tones now. And finding out little tunes to play that are fun, that use the high notes like playing Saints an octave up. 

Another thing is I feel I was letting my lips roll out a bit, which is not good. I watched a video on YouTube about a rolled-in position, and the guy mentioned "free buzzing" which is buzzing the lips without a mouthpiece, which is great for getting the right feel of having the lips rolled in enough, and making a thin stream of air. Long ago I was good at this because I'd do it when I was bored, driving around in my car - yep so long ago it was when I had a car. So I tried it again, was utter crap at it, and gradually got back to making a nice clean buzz. So that's an exercise I'll do daily as it's so easy to do. 

I got going at the usual time with a load of stuff for the post office and FedEx, dropped those things off, and got a gyro at the gyro place and 2 yoghurt drinks. After eating the gyro filling I rolled up the bread and checked the usual places for packing stuff - nada - and stopped at Tom's and we drank yoghurt drinks and talked for a while. 

I had the beat-up 7C mouthpiece with me so I gave it to Tom. Of course he looked it over and found all kinds of things to nit pick about it, and I said, "Look, you don't have to take it, I just thought you'd want something nicer than what you have, and that won't leave a funny brass taste on your mouth". He agreed it was nicer, and of course he's not been over to Park Avenue Music to buy a 3C of his own. 

Mostly we talked about the various crazies and their antics around here. I told him about a curry place called "Curry Up" that seems to, according to Google, be right up the street in this really hinky looking business park. And he told me about a chicken place so new Google doesn't know a thing about it and said he paid almost $20 for a 12-piece so they're "not cheap" but I said that's a pretty good deal. I also told him how, the time his wife was over and we all had gyros, those were the last of the "good" gyros from the gyro place, as something's changed and they're not as tasty and juicy as they were. 

So we didn't get into any "deep" subjects but it's just nice to hang out with someone once a week around here. As I've observed, the way San Jose works is, you meet interesting people but you never see them again. At least in Hawaii there's a big emphasis on where you, and the person you meet, fit into the local network because you *will* meet again and will likely see each other with regularity. 

I got back here, started some laundry and cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed the office and put some things away and just the usual puttering around then Ken came by and didn't have much of anything to bring as the big/heavy pieces of test equipment he'd just bought, he wants to test at home first before we put them on Ebay. So we sat around and he had iced tea and I had coffee and we just talked about stuff. He showed me how in diagrams of a molecule, how some of the bonds are shown bold and tapered, and some like a dotted line, it's an attempt to show the shape of the molecule, with the bold lines going away from the viewer and the dotted lines coming toward the viewer. That's kind of cool to know I guess. 

Ken took off a bit past midnight and I made a curry and ate that and then listed Ebay things and finished the load of laundry and hung that up and between how hot it gets up in the loft and the fan I have blowing on it, it ought to be all dry when I get up.

Quite dystopic

 129th day sober.  I'd practiced last night while watching "Hypernormalisation", an Adam Curtis documentary, which I'd not watched for a year or two. I'd felt like watching it again but it was more of a heads-up as to how things are decaying than I thought it would be. 

The resolution was at 320p, now, "high resolution" for me on YouTube is 420p so it's only just a bit worse, and of course I'm old enough to have grown up watching things on CRT TV's, at times in living black-and-white, but still. And it was only barely "video", the frame rate being a few frames per second, when it was not just stills. The audio track only had a couple of glitches, though, and that's what made it still watchable. Ken Burns discovered this years ago: Have a great sound track, and you can get by fine with still pictures to accompany it. 

Honestly, I'm sitting here hoping things will hold together for another 3 years and it's times like these that make me wonder if they indeed will for that long. I got Ebay listings done but of course now the internet is really slow and the power cut out 2X and it takes several minutes each time to get back online each time. And that was during listing only 10 items, so really it was during only about a half-hour's work. 

I slept very deeply with weird dreams. Here's another thing that's bugging me: Trumpet playing, due to the sheer exertion of it, has really been tiring me out. It's really quite fatiguing. I know there are plenty of old trumpet players out there but in every case, they had a huge "base" of playing built up before they were out of high school. Would I attempt to learn to surf if I'd never done it before, at my age? I'm sure I'd fail to do anything more reliably than ride on my belly on small, tame, waves. 

I've run into this problem before, with archery doing which I actually injured myself and realized that I was not going to go anywhere with it since I wasn't doing it while I was growing, getting my bones and muscles and tendons used to it as they developed. 

It wouldn't feel so bad if I thought I was improving, but I'm not sure I am. 

I packed a few things I could take to the post office without having to use the bike trailer, and dropped them off at the post office. Of course the chute jammed, so I had to direct the person after me to put her package on the center desk in the post office, on top of a box someone else had left there because it was too big to fit in the chute. She was doubtful so I had to explain that the chute "breaks" all the time and this is what people do. 

I stopped at H Mart and did some shopping, spending a bit over $50 or, a bit over $40 after using the remaining gift card I had. I put that on my debit card as I had about $32 in cash on me which was not enough. 

I'll have to start cooking at home more and being more careful with my money if I'm going to take a bit of time away from the trumpet but at least now that I don't drink I *can* save quite a bit of my money. 

I listen to NPR pretty much exclusively here, and they run news from the BBC and also an interesting program where they talk about some artist or writer and it's something new and interesting each time even if by "new" is meant talking about the novel Crime And Punishment which has been out for quite a while. Tonight it was about a French lady who's apparently quite the novelist and has written a novel called "Man The Living" which they even stock copies of in the NHS library over there in England, but here in the US, the novel simply. does. not. exist. I tried quite a bit to search for it, but, well, the author not only isn't American, she's not even a native speaker of English, but rather is French. I might as well try to find the personal memoirs of the Devil in the Catholic store on one side of the big Catholic church downtown. 

You'd think a writer who's made a big enough splash on the world scene to be interviewed for an hour on the BBC would be one the US will admit exists. But nope. Too Un-American. Long ago I corresponded a tiny bit with Greg Palast, a writer who wrote quite a bit for the Guardian, a big paper in the UK. When he came back to the US no one had heard of it. He might as well have written for some small-town weekly tabloid. This is what empires in collapse do; they become a lot more insular. 

I really think that shallow 3D mouthpiece was a mistake, but I'd never have found out without getting one and playing it. It's just too shallow for me. The C-series are good, and as I write I have a good old inexpensive Blessing 5C waiting for me down at the Amazon place. I'm pretty glad this series is what I've decided on because 7C-5C-3C are the most common mouthpieces and thus really easy to obtain or replace. I lose too much tone on a 7C to be really happy with one, but I can play it. The 3C I play now, may actually be a bit "advanced" for me, and the 5C pretty much where I'm at now. 

Hypernormalisation

128th day sober. As the old Soviet poster puts it: Nyet!  

I practiced before bed but I don't feel it went that well. Trouble on the higher notes. Is it fatigue? The crappy air? (AQI hovering around 100). I hoped I could "get my body used to it" by forcing the higher notes, making them more like a screech - sometimes when I do this then relax, the higher notes then come out OK. But I just don't know what's going on. 

Hypernormalisation is a term film maker Adam Curtis came up with or adopted, to describe social conditions in the old USSR. People knew something was wrong, but could not quite put a finger on it. So in the absence of anything else to do, they kept going through the motions. They tried to keep things "normal" even if the outcomes of their actions were disjointed and weird. This is how things are in the US now, where going to college lowers your life earnings, altruism gets you punished, etc. But because we don't know what else to do, we all keep going along, doing what we think is "normal". 

I did my practice before getting onto the day's/evening's work and .... while yes I am creeping, ever so slowly, toward being able to play the higher notes more easily, and to facilitate this I am working on higher-note versions of songs that are kind of fun to play like the high-note "Red River Valley" and playing Saints an octave up from where I normally do, which if I can pull it off when out busking would really put some sizzle into my "Saints" game. 

It gets frustrating though. Too often the high notes just sound painful, and will I ever be able to play any better than any of several kids to be found at any halfway decent high school? The technical standards to be a busker are very, very low but still, I have to listen to myself.  It somewhat horrifies me to think that the public might think some of the sounds I put out, to me, are acceptable.

Busking because I'm bored.

 127th day sober. I got Ebay things ready to list but ended up not listing them - too tired. I practiced, and worked on high notes as always. I worked on "free buzzing" which is buzzing the lips without a mouthpiece, and playing while paying attention to the lips not rolling out. I worked out a high note version of "Red River Valley" which is good for practicing high notes and sounds nice. 

I was up at 2, packed the oscilloscope, and was out the door with it and two other packages at 5. Those went to FedEx and I picked up packing stuff on the way home. 

It made no sense as I'd put in my 3 evenings for this week, but I wanted to busk tonight because any other thing I could do seemed like it would be really boring. So I packed up the trumpet and headed for downtown at about 6. 

My first stop was Lee's where I got some sweet rice with pork and chicken on top, and for some reason like they're about to close, a croissant for free. So dinner was $3.50. 

I rode over to where the concert was being held - it was partway into Rhapsody In Blue - and picked out a place on the grass and sat down and ate while listening to the music. It was fun because I could listen for different instruments like the bass fiddles as it's easier to pick out each instrument than it is from a recording. There were some opera arias and then a great piece by Tchaikovsky and then they finished with Hungarian Dance No. 1 by Brahms. Those last two were just terrific. No mics, no amps, no mixing board, just a lot of people playing purely acoustic instruments and all in balance and sounding wonderful. 

After that was done I rode over to Whole Foods and got a can of coffee and one of those elderberry shots because that stuff seems to help me when I'm feeling a bit "off" and I kind of was. The air quality's been around 80-100 so that's no surprise. 

I started playing at 7:45 which meant I "had" to play until 9:45. I decided the rule for tonight would be I can't play anything I've played there before. One piece that went over well was "Blowin' In The Wind" which I decided I really kind of liked. I now have a low version and a high version, the low version sounding more "noble" and the high one more "sweet". I've decided it's a significant song because if things really go to shit, one thing we're going to see is significant changes in the atmosphere, its present composition only being maintained by the "pumping" action of a living and healthy biosphere. If that sickens, the answer will truly be blowing in the wind. I also worked out "Tiny Bubbles" with a little valve thing to make it sound funny but ... that's still not bubbly enough so I need to figure out how to make it sound bubblier or drunker or something.

At the end of the 2 hours I'd made $34.35, not bad for playing stuff I was mostly fumbling around with and it being such a dead night. It was *really* dead on the ride home.

A mosquito

 126th day sober. I got Ebay things listed last night and packed one large thing and a medium thing that have to go by FedEx, but aside from listing the Ebay things I pretty much had no energy and could not get motivated to pack this one oscilloscope that should go to FedEx with the other things. 

I woke up at 1:30, but still felt tired and left here a little after 4. I stopped at Nijiya and as usual their bento section was wiped out, so I ended up getting a piece of seared (raw inside) tuna and some crab croquettes and a near-beer. I ate over at the Issei Building and listened to the music being played at some event going on at The Arsenel, an art supply/studio/gallery sort of place that's pretty cool. 

I got over to Whole Foods and started playing at a quarter to 6. Things went OK, and it never got cold enough for me to have to put my jacket on. It felt a bit slow, but doesn't it always? People were nice, and since I was playing before it got actually dark, there really weren't any weirdos. One scuzzy looking guy rode through on a crummy bike and that was it. 

The most notable "customer" was a mosquito that checked out my trumpet for a bit.  I'm guessing it was a male mosquito, who only eats nectar and was attracted by the shininess of the trumpet.

What's interesting is, lately I've not seen the "Trump Stump", the very short, stout, lady who wears a "Hillary For Prison" T-shirt. On Reddit a short while ago someone posted a photo of a hand-written sign someone had put in their window, all about "Reecall Gabin Newson"  and a bunch of other crazy right-wing shit scrawled on there, so maybe she's been busy making crazy signs. 

Tonight's earnings were $62.20 making it $163.55 for the weekend.

Back on the old 3C

125th day sober. Last night I got some practice in, and concentrated on using the regular old 3C mouthpiece. But I switched back and forth between it and the 7C and really listened to the tone, and there's actually quite a difference. I can play higher, easier, on the 7C but the tone's a lot bigger on the 3C. The 5C I have on order will fill out the line-up nicely. 

I woke up at 3.  I packed a few more things making 21 total, and by the time I had everything that goes by US Mail packed, it was almost 6 anyway so I left at about the normal time but I didn't stop anywhere for packing materials so it was a quick out and back to the post office and FedEx. 

I'd been considering not playing tonight and playing Saturday and Sunday but I really wanted to get out there so I started out for downtown at a quarter to 7. 

By the time I had gotten over to Whole Foods and eaten some beef and beans and had a can of coffee and then picked my teeth and chewed gum and was ready to go, it was 7:40. 

The Save The Children (or whatever it is) scammers were still out with their little booth, bugging people as they went by. Now, on this night everyone was getting ready for their big Labor Day weekend so people were practically speed-walking in and out of Whole Foods. But the scammers bugging them made them even more hesitant to tarry. 

So I played and played, fascinated, because I didn't get a single tip until the scammers finally packed up their little booth and buggered off. Then I actually started getting tips and thank-yous. It actually started going rather well. At one point, a young guy in a UCSD shirt came up and said how he liked my playing, how he lives in the apartments across the street, how he finds my playing restful etc. and I kept waiting for the "BUT......!" and even said, apologetically, that I was playing later than I usually do. But it seemed all he wanted to say was just that. That he liked my playing. 

Also apparently I need to set up a Venmo because this is the 3rd person who's asked if I have one. I should look into that, probably, and I guess Venmo would just send me a 1099 before tax time so it needn't complicate tax matters. 

Since I'd started at 7:40 I "had" to play until 9:40 which I did. But all of my tips were actually made from 9:00 to 9:30, and they amounted to $56.50. By the end of the night my lips were really tired and I'm afraid I sounded like a kazoo. 

It's almost like, by playing on something other than my good old 3C mouthpiece, I thought I was doing OK but I'd lost some endurance. 

I bought some smoked salmon for dinner and left Whole Foods as they were closing, so I got a look at what San Jose is like at 10:00 PM on a Friday night and as usual, it was pretty boring. No buskers at The Old Spaghetti Factory, with instead a beggar set up near the "danger dog" stand; the same location Leroy plays if he's there, or where I'd play if I were playing there tonight (and I'd sure been tempted to). 

Just basically dead, dead, dead. There was a "superspreader" event being held at the SAP Center because that virus isn't gonna spread itself, but the concert or whatever it was hadn't let out yet, probably scheduled for 8-11PM to give people a good 3 hours to huff each others' germs. It's good value for the money, really, because if even 1 in 1000 has active covid, hundreds more can catch it.

Long Tones On Note

 124th day sober. I practiced last night and wow .... doing long tones on the high notes I'd been having trouble with is magic. I'd been just sort of "pipping" the high notes, telling myself "OK I went there" but had little strength to hold the note. Holding the note, AKA a long tone, works magic for getting the muscles used to being comfortable on that note. 

I'd say this applies to low notes also. Sometimes you sound like crap on the low notes while the high ones are OK. Do long tones on whatever note is giving you trouble.  

I got up at 3, was able to get cleaned up and get going and rode downtown. First stop was the post office, where I dropped off a few packages. Then the bank, where I did my bank deposit and my balance came out to exactly what it should be. Then I went to the Amazon place and got some bubble mailers and next I went to Dai Thanh for a few things then Da Kao for some little shrimp gyoza things and a pork stick. 

I ate over at the college and it looks like the students are back. I guess I was near some dorms and they're all clustering around, getting a good dose of each other's germs. 

I went over to Whole Foods next and the guy who has the "Save The Children" or whatever the scam is, booth, out front was packing up. There was a 12-pack of watermelon flavor fizzy water there, which I didn't think about as I went in to get my coffee, read the Metro, chew gum, etc. 

When I went back out to play, the package of fizzy water was still there. I contemplated keeping it but I didn't really want to bother with it. So I set it over by a sign there in front and eventually a Whole Foods worker came out and asked if it was mine and I said someone had apparently left it, and he said I could have it but I said I didn't really want it, so the guy took it back inside. 

The playing went ... weirdly. I thought I had things pretty well handled last night, with the high notes going so well, but I think there's a large difference between playing here in the office and playing outdoors trying to cover a fairly large parking lot. The long and short of it is, playing the 3D mouthpiece, which is shallower than a 3C and thus has more "edge" to the tone, didn't sound as good to me. And an even worse thing happened: As I got tired or maybe it was just getting warmed up, on high notes my lips would just shut closed. It was very annoying. 

I remembered that I had the beat-up Yamaha 11B4 mouthpiece in the bike bag as I'd not gotten a chance to give it to Tom, so I put the 3D away and got it out and continued my playing, and things sounded a lot better and I stopped muffing the high notes. I did have a very "blatty" tone which I'm not sure is me or is the fact that the Yamaha is kind of messed up where it plugs into the trumpet, which I've not tried to fix because I think any attempt to fix it will only make it worse. But I was able to get through my night. 

So I'd played from 6-8 and I made $44.85, when I count in a gift card for $12 I got from a guy I talked with for a bit, a violinist whom, once I'd asked and determined that the instrument case I saw peeking up behind his head held not a guitar but a violin, I extolled the virtues of busking to. 

I had the whole ride home to ponder my mouthpiece questions. I think the shallower type, like the D type, is not so good for busking for me right now. But I think a little smaller diameter, like a 7C or 5C, might be a good choice for me right now because I feel almost like the 3C is too wide and I get "split" or "spread" high notes. So when I got back I looked around on Amazon and ordered a Blessing 5C. I'll still give the beat-up Yamaha one to Tom, or maybe I'll keep it around for stupid experiments like putting a trumpet mouthpiece on a long piece of bamboo or something.

More mouthpiece trials

 123rd day sober. Besides listing Ebay stuff, I got some practice in before bed and tried out my beat-up but now cleaned up Yamaha 11B4 mouthpiece which is their equivalent to a Bach 7C. 

It turns out they all work fine, 3C, 3D, and the 7C, and for some reason the high notes were easy for me. I'm going to stick to the 3D for busking for now, and I'm going to give the beat-up Yamaha to Tom. 

I packed about 5 large things  and took them to the post office and FedEx,  rode past Tom's place but he had his homeless buddy who lives in a van there, so I'll give him the mouthpiece some time later. 

Ken came by at the usual time, and brought by these huge backplanes with all kinds of heavy stuff like big transformers and inductors on them, so we worked on taking stuff off of them outside, and once I had the one I was working on light enough to drag it inside I did, and then Ken and I had our coffee and tea and so on and talked a while. And I got my check of course. 

Once Ken had left, I got back to work taking that stupid backplane thing apart, which took a while. That pretty much wiped me out for the evening. 

I am really glad I'm doing a steady busking schedule because anything that depends on the internet or even on having to have electricity, is turning into utter shit. The internet is down to half-speed for some reason; this started a few days ago. I can still do my Ebay work and I guess that's what matters, and obviously still post on here, but there's a reason I don't have pictures etc. on here. Just posting plain text is hard enough, and I have to wait for the computer to "catch up" just like in the old 300-baud modem days.