Endemicity

275th day sober. On the radio they're talking about "endemicity" which means covid becomes endemic, we just have it like the flu and maybe it kills a million a year but who cares as long as it's mostly the poor and nonwhite? This is the plan in the "West" not the plan in Asia. 

This reminds me of how in the "West", TB was normalized. It was even considered fashionable, as it tended to make one thin and pale like they'd stepped off of an Aubrey Beardsley drawing. Syphilis was treated the same way - just accepted. It was just about endemic in the early 20th century, and what probably put a stop to both of these diseases being as accepted as they were was WWII, when it was realized it's hard to fight a modern war with your troops ravaged by these diseases. 

I packed things and took off the usual time, and interestingly ran across a few zombies on the way to the post office. One had a zombike with a trailer and the required off-leash dog with the leash dragging so I was able to ride by with fair confidence it would not catch me, one was coming into the complex when I was going out, and yet a third was staggering around by the side of the road, no problem to get around. Traffic's back and it looks like a fair number of zombies are back too. 

After the post office I got things at H Mart, including a package of "crispy crab" that's small crabs fried whole, and pretty tasty. I ate that, then packed a bunch of things, then cut up and froze some beef I got, and then made ramen with beef using the last package of frozen beef I had on hand - hence the new stuff. I also took some things apart and put the metal scrap out for the bums. 

I did some more reading on Israel and I'm beginning to think I'd probably not like it there at all. There's a culture of not being a "freier" or sucker, that's off-the-chart. It's completely opposite to the Asian culture I grew up with or even to the culture here where I'm a solid practitioner of the "California sorry". That's when someone steps on *your* foot and the first thing out of your mouth is "Sorry!". Americans are considered to be freirs of the first order, and it doesn't matter how well you've learned Hebrew, an American accent will always give you away. 

I found a documentary on YouTube called something like "Shakuhachi One Note One Life" by a Chinese film maker that's pretty neat. It's got Chinese and Japanese players, Japanese makers, and is a bit low on technical things but makes up up for it lots of emotion and "feeling".  All in all it was pretty neat. 

If I'm going to be even somewhat acceptable on the shakuhachi by the time I'm ready to go back home I'll have to put some real work into it, but I think it might beat me up less than the trumpet does.