359th day sober. I listed 20 things on Ebay and then went right to packing 7 small/smallish things I could take with me to the downtown post office the next day.
I did some practice but I tried doing too much too fast, too much emphasis on high notes, and my headache started bugging me so I went to bed.
I woke up around 3, headache still bugging me, so I had coffee and aspirin and a niacin pill for breakfast and got going at 4.
I dropped off trash at one trash can, then dropped off the packages at the downtown post office, then went over to the bank and deposited my check.
All my drop-offs done, I went over to Whole Foods and locked the bike. There was a Stereo Bum-O-Rama going on, with some hokey "charity" with a table set up and a couple of people bothering shoppers, and another bum sitting on one of the bike rack posts with a sign, bugging people too. One of the booth people, a very outgoing, well-dressed Black lady, bantered with me back and forth. She was fun, but those fly-by-night charities are really just panhandlers with a little better image, and I never give money to them. A ragged guy outside a bodega asking for beer money? Wait a minute, let me see what I've got.
I walked down to the hardware store and bought a half-gallon of Simple Green, at the price a full gallon used to be, because c'est le guerre. There are new employees every week, and this week's was a very outgoing black guy who was really "on". Super helpful. This is what a lot of people don't understand, that if you've got a job that's Meh, you can make the day go by easier by "game-ifying" it by being super helpful.
I came back to Whole Foods and put the Simple Green in the bike bag and then went in for some shopping. I was not enthusiastic about eating there, so I just got some things and took off. I picked up some bubble mailers at the Amazon place, then headed for home.
I stopped at Nijiya where I got several things including some nice raw fish as I like to have a "special" meal on payday. The good old end times wind made the ride back a bit of a slog, but I eventually got back here and put things away and enjoyed some delicious raw fish.
I've discovered that on YouTube there are many people "documenting" what they jokingly call NPCs. In video games, NPCs are Non Player Characters. They're essentially characters generated by the game that have simple behaviors. The joke is, these YouTubers take videos of bums, crackheads, crazies, etc. and the joke is that they're NPCs. It makes sense, too, because NPCs tend to have simple, stereotyped behavior like a game might have an NPC that won't let you cross a bridge in the game unless you give that NPC a game token (kinda spitballing here; I'm not a gamer) or an NPC that always jumps out in front of your car etc. And these real-life NPCs are the same. As they say, ThatsTheJoke.htm You can count on certain real-life NPC to always ask you for a "siggurit" or shuffle along wrapped in an old blanket, flailing their arms in a certain way, etc.
NPC is a much better fit than "zombie". Zombies hunger for brains, or at least are attracted to noise and motion and in either case want to bite you to make you a zombie also. But the homeless/crackheads/bums are not at all like this. Most don't give a damn, a few will be intimidating or even violent to anyone foolish enough to get close, but mostly they just engage in their limited set of behaviors. Drug use, schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury, mental retardation, all narrow the sufferer's range of behaviors.
The resemblance to "extra" characters in a video game is striking to me now that I've thought about it and must be even more so to people who play games or even help create them.
My trumpet swabs came in today, so I have one to use and one to save in case something happens to the first one. Also, I went on the Austin Custom Brass site and tried ordering the "high speed" (a bit stiffer than stock) valve springs that are supposed to fit my King Master cornet and .... I guess they have them because the order went through. I just hope I can take the valves apart and replace the springs without buggering something up.
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