Another day, another doom

 290th day sober. I slept in until 3:30 or so which is no wonder. I packed a bunch of large things last night, the main one being a big heavy test instrument I had to dig in pretty far to even get out. 

Then I listed 15 Ebay things, three of them being about $100 worth, out of the three parts, I'd taken off a furnace being thrown out up the street. Parts of those are really easy to take off, since only a screwdriver is required. 

I got some practice in, and feel I am already improving, but this is many years' journey not a few days' or even weeks' or months'. A plus is, even if I eventually go back to trumpet, the shakuhachi is great breath training. This is why even if I stop being "serious" about it, I'll still get an "enhanced" Shakuhachi Yuu from Monty Levinson and as he touts, have the best of both worlds - a nearly indestructable instrument, that's also on a par with a decent bamboo one. 

I've also gotten back to keeping up with Guy McPherson on YouTube. The guy's an actual scientist, and his lectures are good for listening to while I do Ebay listings. Somewhere along there, in the comments or somewhere, someone commented that the present situation is like people fighting for control of the wheel of a bus that's already gone off a cliff. That's cheerful! 

I packed "just one more thing" OK, two, and got out of here the usual time. Dropped things off and after checking out "Noodle Talk" which looks nice but nicer than I needed right then, went to 5 Guys and got a burger. 

I picked up the usual - packing stuff  - on the way home  and as I rode into the complex there were some guys working on a car, around the corner of the building so probably not the high-priced hot rod place or the house cleaning place next to me because they work on their cars .. next to me. 

I got the bike and stuff stashed away and went back over and gave them my cheapo flashlight which I'm bound to lose some time anyway, because working on a car at night always requires one. Daytime too. Then I went back in and gathered up some things that might be handy (some plastic trays for parts, shop towels to clean up with) or welcome (a can of chunk pineapple I'd planned to donate anyway with a set of plastic utensils) and took that stuff over there too. The guy whose car it was, is a delivery driver and his rear brakes had started acting up. It was his friend working on it for him. 

I got back in here, put things away, put stuff I'd listed on Ebay away, got out a few things that had sold and packed them to take with me tomorrow to the downtown post office, and such things. I had everything all neat and orderly, and waited for Ken, but he didn't show up at the usual time. 

I called him and "I'm in Vegas right now!" He's helping his daughter with the house she just bought in N. Vegas. His daughter, instead of moi, was smart. She avoided college, perhaps sensing what a scam it is where I didn't. She went to work for an airline, as I understand it starting out as a baggage handler, about the worst job they offer, and working up to stewardess. She stayed with that one company for years, hanging on with a death grip - as a person is supposed to in a normal, non-tech, field. She hung onto her 401k, which as it turns out can be used to make the downpayment on a house. 

The wisdom of buying in North Vegas is the only questionable part. Why not buy somewhere in Sacramento, where at least you're on a great river delta? People have always survived best on river deltas. North Vegas has quite the reputation for being a hellhole, but it sounds like she's in a not-hellhole-yet part of it, in a gated community favored by old folks. 

That might get interesting. Not only with the water drying up, but old people tend to have useless children and grand-children who move in, so now you end up with a normal-looking neighborhood where everyone's on crack. I've seen it. 

There are a lot of things I'd do before I'd buy a house in North Vegas, but it's all theoretical in my case. It all comes down to social class and while Ken and his wife have managed to stay middle-class, so that their kids have middle-class genes and will have middle-class life outcomes, my parents became poor and those wonderful middle-class genes became working-class, proletarian genes and this happened after we were actually born. Since I haven't "married well" as two of my sisters back in Hawaii have done, and I didn't get fixed up with a military contractor job after a stint in the Navy (and had the wisdom to hang onto that job until his knuckles were white) like my older brother, I am excluded from the middle-class. 

So Ken's over there for the next week or so helping her "set up" this house, and being that they're middle class and therefore not allowed to fail unless they do, I'm sure they'll be alright unless they're eventually not. It won't be my problem in two more years. 

"But Alex, what sense does it make, in the face of global warming, to move to Hawaii which is much closer to the equator?" If the past few years have shown me anything, it's that wild gyrations in temperature are happening closer to the poles, and not around the middle of this beautiful, blue, and doomed planet. This is completely contrary to all doomer common sense, which says to flee the heat, go North (or South if you're in the Southern hemisphere I guess). 

No One Expected(tm) to see 100+ degree days in the Pacific Northwest, boiling the sea creatures. So far it's been Faster Than Expected(tm) and a "winter" like this one, with a week of rain and then nothing, was not anything anyone expected this soon. But being closer to the equator, I've not had to deal with catastrophic heat waves, floods taking out major highways, hurricanes, vast fires etc., the "new normal" for those in the Northwest and Northeast. And meanwhile back in Hawaii, a YouTuber I follow is taking his kids out fishing and hiking on beautiful trails, and it's nice and boring. 

I even had a theory about "On The Beach" which is a book and two movies, all of them excellent. The plot has nuclear fallout banding the Earth, and the only momentarily safe place being the Southern tip of the planet. The fallout is moving South, and starting to affect Australia. A lone US nuclear sub comes to visit, its captain putting himself in service of what's left of the last of the Australian Navy and in the end they all die. 

My theory was that it could equally be about global warming, the presently warmest middle of the planet warming the most first and becoming uninhabitable, and the heat gradually spreading to the poles. In the end they're all cooked. 

But what I'm seeing, in real life, is the equatorial region being the most stable and perhaps the most livable. That it may be the last does not mean it will be for long, because once the polar ice is gone it's game over. The "final heat" could come in a matter of months. Carbon-14 data already tells us that the recent great increase of methane in the atmosphere is not coming from fossil-fuel sources but from the present-day biosphere so we may have a rollicking positive feedback loop going already.