Mike's not all there...

 After talking with Ken and sorting out the stuff he left and taking some stuff apart and all the things I did, I didn't list anything last night. And only did a few octave exercises. 

I woke up at about 2:30 and went to the bank to deposit my check, and things added up at least on the left side of the decimal point which is fine. 

Then since I'd gotten an early start I rode over to Willow Glen to check it out. It's kind of like Mountain View, a "main drag" (Lincoln) with a lot of shops and things. And I saw a guy sitting in front of a classic movie theater (that seems, from the sign, to feature more little farmer's markets than movies these days) with a guitar. So I went over to check him out, and we got talking. 

I also got coughing; one of those little bits of fluff from the trees got me again and it was looking like it'd be quite a coughing fit so I excused myself and went into the BevMo a few doors down and got a 3-pack of Underberg for a little over $6. It's a "bitters" and is mainly anise and a bunch of other stuff like gentian violet, in alcohol. It's weird, good, and strong. And I've learned alcohol fixes these coughing fits. 

I went back over to the guy, sipping my Underberg and offered him one too but he didn't want it. We talked about Gabriel the violinist. From the sound of it, ha ha, his using a boom box to accompany his violin and his being so thin-skinned and having a temper, got him kicked out of town. It was sort of a consensus that he was no longer welcome. I said I knew about his being thin-skinned and emotional, and had gotten to know him when he played in downtown San Jose. 

The guitar guy is fairly good, pretty quiet, and not quite all there. He said he's had a stroke. His name is Mike. He talked about confronting Gabriel and saying "this wood block" meaning the one he has there to put his foot on in good classical guitar style "will be toothpicks" after Gabriel had said to him, about the front of the theater, that "this is my spot". 

Whose spot it is, is a continual question in busking. Generally it's accepted that whoever's there first, has it. But if it's a really lucrative spot, and say another busker you're at least friendly with comes up, you might give it up to him. And some buskers become known for playing at a certain spot, like Red the flute player in front of the now-defunct theater on Paseo de San Antonio in downtown San Jose, or Leroy with his sax, playing in front of the now-long-gone Johnny Rockets. 

I was just dead chuffed to see a busker at all, and told old Mike how they'd become extinct everywhere else. He said he's out there partially for the tips and partially just to practice and socialize. It sounded like he doesn't need the money. There's a certain group of people in this area, who were working in electronics back in the 60s and 70s, when there was real money in it, even for a bench tech. They bought their $10k houses and settled in and stayed, and now they're sitting on a million or two. Mike's probably one of those. I was still going to drop a tip but he didn't have anything out to put one in. 

After talking with Mike, I went across the street where there was a guitarist and a violinist and got talking with them. The guitarist was also a saxophonist, and I talked about my trumpet playing, and explained that Adolphe Sax, in inventing the saxophone, had wanted something with the agility of a woodwind and the power of a brass instrument. He'd just told the violinist that, before I'd come up. 

So I've got a few friends down there now. Mike, although he's a bit "tetchy", and the violinist/guitarist pair. The violinist even mentioned "I ought to try the shakuhachi" and mentioned some riff he's heard someone do on one, and I said stuff like that is possible because the shakuhachi has a relatively large bore and there are some notes you can bend a whole note from. 

So as I say, Willow Glen is an interesting place to hang out, and I can get there on my bike, as opposed to going to Mountain View which pretty much requires the light rail, CalTrain, or the #22, preferably the #522, bus. 

I came back by way of Nijiya where I got a few things, and then got back here. I unloaded and then went to the bountiful dumpster where I found a few things, and since I'd gotten there at 7:30 instead of 8, was noticed by an Asian guy who was going in and out of there. He gave me a look but I get the impression he doesn't care as long as I don't make a mess. I made a point of picking out some pieces of packing foam while he was around.

Chummy with the bummy

 I woke up a little after 4, packed a few things for FedEx and headed out. I stopped for a yogurt drink on the way back - man that guy keeps them cold! It's like drinking delicious ice. 

I didn't find much for packing stuff on my usual round and stopped at the bountiful dumpster to see what was going on there. Just as I pulled up, a car pulled up and a scumbag right out of Central Casting go out. "Mind if I look for stuff too?" the bum said. "No problem!" he went on about finding the elusive "number two wire" and I nattered on about how it was mostly packing supplies I'm looking for as I work for a guy selling stuff on Ebay. This morphed into a story about why I wanted fiber optic cables and oddball stuff because my boss has a daughter who makes art out of odd techie looking stuff, how we cut up the fiber optic cables and make these light-up "fountain" things, yadda yadda. 

This guy, as I said, was right out of Central Casting. White, bad teeth, seemed to have a phobia against soap and water.... I complimented him on his (no doubt stolen) car, "Wow, a Mustang, you got yerself a 'Stang!" etc. He said he used to sell on Ebay .... this is puzzling as there's a lot more to be made selling on Ebay than scrounging around for bits of wire ... but then Ebay takes being somewhat legal in all sorts of ways and the metals place pays rightaway and the crack man delivers pretty quick too. 

I actually loaded up a good load of stuff and I'd had a really good "harvest" from the EMT training place too, so I took off, unloaded, and went right back out since Mr. Bum would be done. I went back and got another nice bit of things, so this was a pretty good day as far as finding things goes. I even picked up a printer that has a flat bed and thus should work as a scanner too, and I've got to scan my important documents as part of my preparations to leave. 

I took my 2nd load home and did the usual things, cleaning the bathroom and office, putting things away, etc. I also finished the load of laundry I'd started last night. Basically it's heat up hot water and use hot and cold to make warm in a tall "office" trash can, let soak overnight with, I've figured out, two Tide pods, then the next day whenever, plunge it a bunch of times with my laundry plunger thing, change water to clear and plunge a bunch again, then a third go with some fabric softener. I'm still using this "Eco" stuff I got during the shutdown because it was all I could get.  After this final rinsing/softening cycle, it's wrung out and hung up in the loft, where it drips a lot hence the drip tray.

Because I'm going to paint the loft, I didn't want to use my regular setup because it's where I'll be painting, so I took a 2nd curtain rod I got some somewhere and set it up between two boxes and put the drip pan underneath, and turned a fan on the clothes as they dripped away - they stopped dripping pretty quickly and will be all dry tomorrow when I get up. I was glad I had time until Ken came. I got my pay check and he also bought these two 1-oz Australian silver coins from me; we'd agreed on a price of $45. I was amazed he'd remembered so he must have been looking forward to getting them. 

Ken and I talked as usual, plus he'd brought a bunch of stuff to sell or take apart and sell the parts, plus he got a kick out of this green medical dye I'd gotten, so I stripped the dye out of these packs it was in, and will sell another part that's in there. I told him I don't know how long this gravy train will go on, but I'll keep riding it until it stops. Part of my leaving here will have to be to show my replacement, or Ken, where the goodies are to be found. 

I took a bunch of stuff apart and put a lot of junk out for the bums. Wait until I take this big optical thing apart - it's chunky and weighs more than I do and most of it is going right out there. 

Welcome to NATO

 I did so much extra stuff last night that after listing 10 things on Ebay, cooking dinner, doing all sorts of things I had nothing left for painting the loft. So I didn't do any actual painting. 

I woke up a bit past 3, and of course the radio is abuzz with wars and rumors of wars. Turkey has decided to approve Sweden and Finland joining NATO but in return, Sweden has to turn over some people Turkey says are "terrorists" including some journalists. This is where I'm really hoping the CIA can organize some completely deniable operation where the journalists end up kidnapped out of there and disappeared to somewhere safe, before they die after horrible and lengthy torture in some Turkish dungeon. 

But who am I fooling? I'm just a boomer who grew up with an image of the US as Superman and in reality we're barely Clark Kent in wimp mode. 

Sweden and Finland joining NATO is a big thing, though. I've been looking at a lot of stuff about WWII and the lead-up to it lately and it's kind of amazing, the allies didn't do much as Hitler took Austria, Belgium, Holland, etc and only started to get going he they took France. 

I finished off the 16 or 18 things I'd pre-packed, packed two more that had sold overnight, and got going my usual time. Everything went well at the post office and FedEx, but that 2nd cup of coffee I'd had was a mistake and I had to whiz really bad. 

I have the code for the downstairs storage unit memorized so I checked in there but it turned out the bathroom was locked. It's probably only open 9-5 when someone's there at the office. So I just held it and dashed back to the shop  along Rogers Avenue which was just crawling with zombies. In fact I had to dodge a couple zombies on bikes who looked like they were looking for people to harass or things to steal, by riding over to some dumpsters and getting very interested in a veggie box, and sort of hiding behind the dumpsters until they'd gone up Brokaw. 

I got back here, had my pee, and ate some boiled peanuts I'd bought at Wal-Mart. "Peanut Patch" brand and ... not very good. The very best ones are the ones they cook in Hawaii, 2nd best the ones from Santo Market here but they don't do 'em any more, third the ones from Da Kao but they closed, and last place would be these. 

Pretty soon it was time to go (I figure the people at the business that has the bountiful dumpster knock off around 8) but I had to wait because a zombie came rattling along on a bike with a trailer stacked with stolen bike parts. For some reason, this zombie paused for quite a while to mess around with the front derailleur on his bike, a part almost no one messes with, ever. Or was the damned thing observing me, hoping I'd be foolish enough to ride out, where I could be attacked? I waited a good while then took off and never saw that zombie so it must have found other zombusiness... 

What the hell is it with all the zombies, though? Last night my nice time with the cool breezes coming in the open door was abruptly stopped by a clattering sound as a zombess I'd not seen before, pushing a cart heaped high with bags of junk, trundled by. So there are regulars but there are new ones too. 

So I took off again for some "fishing" in the bountiful dumpster and it paid off, and I got a red bell pepper from the veggie dumpster too. To make it look like I'm just looking for stuff like copper wire, I grabbed one of those little space heaters and a hair dryer, and I left those out for the bums when I got back here, and sure enough, Crazy Chrissie, with some male bum driving, came by and picked 'em up. 

A busy day with the bike trailer

Besides doing a ton of work on the loft last night, I did some octaves practice before going to bed. It's a nice, meditative thing to do, doesn't take a lot of thinking, which is good just before bed, and also the heart and soul of flute playing is embouchure, and I need to build up the muscles (however small) and the nerve pathways that control them. 

If you examined the brain of a pro golfer, you'd fine the parts of the brain, the brain's body-model, that have to do with controlling and getting feedback from the body in doing a golf swing, would actually be larger. An Olympic shooter can deal quite precisely with a trigger pull weight of less than a pound and never accidentally let off a shot, where I've seen an inexperienced person accidentally let off a shot when holding a BB gun with a horrible, heavy trigger pull that must have been close to 8 lbs. 

So in the same way, a high school flute player with a student flute, will just "blow and go" and can in fact get by fine for years with an "OK" embouchure, the main demand being to get all the notes and play along with the band and be able to play a few rather easy but showy pieces to show their parents that the extra activity fee for Band was justified. But I don't have several years. 

I'd noticed in my trumpet playing that starting with the start of last year's busking season, that my playing had a sort of "depth" or even "soul" to it that it had not before. It could be that I'd simply bashed away at trumpet long enough. But I think it may have had something to do with my discovering the shakuhachi and doing a lot of basic exercises on it, that require a lot of breath. That's what I want to get going on flute, ASAP. I don't want a thin, uninteresting, tone. 

I woke up with a start at about 4. I'd actually dreamed I was painting in the loft. I had two large things to ship, one some heavy manuals and the other a test instrument that wasn't super heavy but was pretty large, being 19 inches wide by 24 long. I had *one* box that would work, so the time I had to pack things was taken up with those two. 

For some reason the only shipping option was the US Postal Service. UPS and FedEx weren't even options. So it had to go Priority Mail. I left here the usual time and rode around the back to take these big boxes to the loading dock, but that's differently configured somehow now, and I went right around the block and to the front, where I had to wait (with several other people) for someone to attend to the door for large packages and to un-jam the chute. 

I went by FedEx just out of curiosity, and there's still no paper but there's that one remaining package of HP paper. 

I got a yogurt drink from the falafel place and noticed that Sizzling Lunch, I think it's called, is still a lot less busy than it was say a month ago. I even peered in and counted three empty tables. That place used to be mobbed. 

I picked up a big wheel box from the tire place, a roll of Honda bubble wrap from another place, and reconnoitered  the area around the bountiful dumpster - the place next door was tossing out two really large boxes, sometimes this size is called "Dish Pack" and they're a specialty of moving companies. I decided I wanted those and to do some "fishing" in the bountiful dumpster too. 

I came back here and unloaded the wheel box and the bubble wrap, and ran a few loads of the stuff I'd put out for people to take, out to Old Bayshore where far more people will see the stuff and hopefully take it away. Chuey next door was washing a car, and I gave him a new chamois that was in the stuff - a leftover from my failed attempt to make trumpet swabs. He was really happy about that. 

I went over and got the two big boxes and got them back here, then went out for my "fishing" which got me a few small shipping boxes and one neat thing to sell so it was worth it. It was a busy day with the ol' bike trailer today. 

We're not allowed to ...

 First, because this is important, I've been working on the octave exercise, trying to figure out what's been making it so hard. It seems to come down to, I have habits that were fine for trumpet, but not good for flute. Flute is all about making a small, controllable, aperture and when it was it right it's great. 

I was thinking about this last night. Trumpet requires the mouthpiece to be right on your mouth, with a fair amount of pressure so of course yukky stuff will go down inside. Clarinet or saxophone require the mouthpiece and reed to be IN the mouth and there's nasty "grot" that gets in there as a result - I'd swear it's worse than the trumpet. But flute merely requires the "mouthpiece" to be near the mouth, and the stream of air to be generated with no crutches like a mouthpiece that you mash against your mouth or a reed. 

Last night I cut out and rolled up the sections of the plastic plant pot I'd bought at Lowe's and put my "new" set of shelves together. It worked out great. This inspired a lot of re-arranging of boxes of my stuff and the realization that I have far, far too many boxes stored up there in the loft, and the piece of carpet I put up there when I moved in, really ought to go. I originally planned, and promised Ken, to paint the whole loft floor and the stairs with some durable paint, and still even have the cans of paint I bought, if it's still good. 

The thing is, I need to adapt to living with as few "things" as possible because when I'm back in Hawaii, I'm almost certain to start out living in a small rented room. Things will be right in line with my observation and prediction, that in 2000 I had a car, in 2010 I had a motorcycle, in 2020 I had a bike, and by 2030 I'll be doing well to have a pair of shoes. 

I woke up at almost 4 with a start. I had two large, not heavy but bulky things packed, and wanted to get them over to FedEx today. So I had coffee and so on, and got going a bit after 5. 

The drop-offs were fine, and then, in the store, I thought a bit. "I ought to buy some paper," I thought. I looked around and there did not seem to be any - not on the shelves, not in the usual "promotional" things near the checkouts. The guy there was one I've known a while and he's a nice guy, and I jokingly said, "Do you guys still sell paper?" He replied, "We're not allowed to" and explained that the supply chain has gotten so bad that they were told to keep what paper they had for themselves. He pointed out there there's "A little HP" over on the far end and there were indeed two packages of HP paper, and I paid a bit over $13 for one. It's premium, extra white paper so I guess we're going to have some really nice labels on our packages now. 

We talked a bit about ... things. The computer took forever to process my simple $13 and change sale, and the gal there said, "That usually means the system will go down". We discussed how everyone's using their air conditioning and it "sags" the grid, and he said we should expect rolling blackouts. Just another day doing errands, in the beginning of The Troubles. 

Around back, I checked this green dumpster H Mart has started always having out, that often has veggies. It was full of really nice, normally expensive, mushrooms. I went up to the back side of Baja Fresh and got a couple of veggie boxes and went back and collected about 5 lbs of these mushrooms. I want to try drying them. 

I stopped by Tom's on the way back and we hung out for a while. We laughed it up telling travel stories, airline and also, on my part, ship, train, and Cuban bus stories. I told him about my plans to re-do the loft here, right down to paint, and he mentioned how he's working on the loft in the back half of his building. I said if something happened here and I was not able to go back to Hawaii, I'd rent that loft from him but he says he's fixing it up for himself. But, he said, if the shit hits the fan, he'll always have a place for me. That's a good, solid, Alaskan way to be, for he is an Alaskan originally. He travels to Alaska a lot to visit his ailing father, and he told me about flying on the "red eye" flight up to Anchorage, and some passengers would get off the plane shitfaced drunk, so the cops would follow them around the airport until they had some reason to arrest them, then hold 'em down and grind their faces into the carpet. We both laughed hysterically over this. 

I rode back here along Rogers Avenue and there seem to be more car-dwellers along there, but not the old, drug-addled, chronic ones but some new ones who have acquired large solar panels somehow and thus there were four or five large panels leaned up against cars to catch the late afternoon sun. Really "gone" ghouls don't care about having a phone or anything more complicated than a crack pipe, but less "gone" people would care very much about keeping connected. 

After relaxing a bit I got to work on the loft. I took out tons of stuff, a little bedside table thing and a little rolling cart and a fairly large folding table, tons of odds and ends, about 200lbs of really nice circuit board material, household stuff, you-name-it. Shortly after taking the last of the circuit board material out, I was putting something else in the collection and some guys in a van came up. "You got any diamond plate?" the guy asked. I replied that I didn't know what that is but this stuff here is copper. They took a bunch of things. 

I took some time off to eat, "shrimpshuka" which is shakshuka with some shrimp in it too, that came out great thanks to the fact that, when I was dropping books off at the little free library/pantry thing on 7th street, I took two cans of tomato sauce. So along with garlic and hot pepper and actual tomatoes, it had a half-can of processed tomato goodness. 

Presently Crazy Chrissie came up in her little zombie car with the flat-grey paint and the trunk held closed by an electrical cord, and she not only took a bunch of things but I'd even rolled up the carpet I had in the loft and put that out, and she took that too. That carpet was clean when I got it but it was not now. They don't call her Crazy Chrissie for nothing. 

The Ford Crown Vic with the busted-out rear window had been by too. I could not see the driver but riding shotgun was a female zombie, one of those who's probably 24 and looks about 54. Nervous system all messed up due to drugs, darting around nonsensically, picking up some shiny wires and waving them around then tossing them away, zombies are easily amused. 

I decided not to mess with trying to dry the mushrooms. My original plan was to wash them, let them dry a bit, then lay out on cardboard, in slices, and let that hot air up in the loft do its thing. But I'm also starting a major renovation of the place that involves my finally getting it painted, doing the painting in strips starting with the back wall. I just kept enough mushrooms for a nice meal and put the rest out there with the stuff. 

I kept going up into the loft to sort out more stuff and find things to put on the pile for people/bums to pick up. I even moved the bookshelf I've had up there, with maybe two shelves installed, I've just neglected the loft for the few years I've been living here and these are all things that should have been done right upon moving in. It actually took me a while to be able to afford the $150 or so for deck paint, and well, drinking kind of got in the way of everything. 

I don't know why I feel so inspired to do this now, but I picked the right time of the year, great for paint drying, and cleared out things I really don't think I'll need. After all, I'm gambling that things will hold together fairly well for the next few years. My assumption is that in 2024, vacations to Hawaii will still be a thing. There will still be fairly free travel between states; certainly between California and Hawaii, presumptive members of a Western Alliance. 

In order, my things are: 

(1) Things I'm taking with me when I go home to Hawaii. This is a very small set of things. 

(2) Things I'll need in the meantime. 

(4) Things I want to leave here for Ken and his family when I leave. 

(5) Things to sell on Craig's List. 

(6) Things to put out for the bums or put in the little free libraries. 

I'm done with the whole book thing, where I find good ones in the little free libraries, clean them up, and sell them to the used book store. The economy seems to be taking another dump... of the books I have, I figure I can keep maybe a banker's box or two of the things and that's it. The rest will go to the little free libraries, bit by bit.

Likewise all sorts of handy little things will go into the little free libraries. I'm already in the habit of having things to put into them in the bike saddlebags, now the saddlebags will be just a bit more full, as I round up stuff I'll just never use but is useful. 

I've thought about this quite a bit, that I could make a "side job" of selling off lots of my stuff on Craig's List, but I'm supposed to be making my side money by busking. Do I want to be a good busker, or good at buying and selling stuff to Craig's List weirdos? I'll use Craig's List to find homes for my trumpet and cornet, and the Shakuhachi Yuu also, but I just finished putting out the radios and chargers, the bike kid seat and rack, the 200lbs or so of circuit boards, an oxygen concentrator, etc. All things I picked up because I thought "I can sell this on Craig's List" but I need to concentrate on developing busking skills, not scrounging around and flipping things, as anyone can do this. 

I've got the loft cleared out enough to paint the first "stripe". I'll be painting as far as I can reach, while squatting down, so 24 inches at a time.

I know what they want to do.

 I know what they want to do because I know how they think, and I know *that* because essentially at one time I was one of them, or at least tried to be. 

First: What they want: They want white babies; all the white babies that can possibly be brought into the world. They don't care how destitute or disadvantaged, they just want tons of white babies. WHITE BABIES. 

They want these tons of white babies because they believe that whites are inherently less crime-prone, and inherently prone to "Aryan thought", in the same way a sparrow instinctively knows how to make a sparrow's nest. 

They feel, or hope, or to hell with it let's get those white babies brought into the world and we'll work it out later... but the idea among those of them who think that far ahead is that soon there will be whites-only foster homes and group homes and so on, like the Lebensborn system in Nazi Germany. 

They are not worried that abortion bans affect nonwhites more, as, in their practical view of the world, a nonwhite baby is easily removed from their nice white world with 1 bullet. So hordes of unwanted nonwhite babies worry them not a white. Bang bang bang. 

How I know this: Having grown up in Hawaii and living through my family falling into deep poverty and having read too many books and thus being burdened with higher than average intelligence, and Hawaii being, at least in my formative years, very "tribal" in terms of race, I was naturally attracted to the late-19th/early 20th century bastardizations of biology and sociology that the Nazis were swayed by. 

I tried to join the John Birch Society in Hawaii which was easy as the guy next door was a member. But I fished around to see if they were racist, as I thought they should be, but they are not. Crackpots, but not racist crackpots. When I moved to the mainland which I figured was my lucky break, I looked around the skinhead scene in Huntington Beach. They disappointed me as they were mainly concerned with fighting other skinheads who wore red Doc Marten books as opposed to black Doc Marten boots, when they weren't beating up the occasional swarthy Indian guy at the beach, who wasn't harming anyone. I heard of exactly zero of them helping a little old lady cross the street, or taking up collections for poor white children, as I thought they should. 

I subscribed to The National Review and then a magazine called Instauration, which is a big impressive word that just means to restore something. A magazine based on white supremacy and the supremacy of white culture. I also subscribed to the Ben Klassen's Church Of The Creator magazine, Racial Loyalty. "It's great to be white!" said the masthead. It was OK, I thought. I'd been treated as white in Hawaii so I thought of myself as white. Employment where I was, in Southern California, was pretty racially divided too, so I hung onto the job I had like a limpet, although I hated it. I was the most productive tech, the least paid, and the only white tech. 

Right here right now I'm going to say that employment in the US and employment in Hawaii especially, is very race-based. But I am about to retire and will not have to fight for a job so I get to sidestep that. Also, since employment is race-based, instead of bitching about it, either find plenty of people of your group to schmooze with to get work, or start your own business. And be a good worker in either case so they'll almost have to hire or employ you. 

I guess it was the NSDAP/AO which was the Nazis, American Office, through which I got in touch with the local liason, a guy up in Los Angeles. I hopped on my motorcycle and rode up there, and we spent an afternoon shooting his pellet gun in his backyard, and joking about his senile dad maybe eating the Snarol snail bait as breakfast cereal. I also learned the trick of, when answering mail correspondence, cutting the return address out and pasting it on as the address you send your reply to. 

The National Review introduced me to the idea that even conservatives can see the medical benefit of marijuana, with an article by one of their main writers about smuggling it in to his ailing father in the hospital. 

Instauration actually did something to shake me out of my wrong race beliefs. One writer pointed out that if you go to a black ghetto, you'll see people lazing around (no surprise where there's no work for generations and in hot weather especially, why not laze around and socialize?) and if you go to a white area you see people hurrying around busily (no surprise again, these people tended at least in the 80s to have jobs) but if you go to an Asian city, they hurry around even more and are busy into the night. (Again true, this would be a couple years before the Plaza Accords and Asia was red-hot, economically.) He pointed out that as "we" are to blacks, Asians are to us. That if the most superior people are the most industrious, well, "we" whites are only the middle of the pack and it's Asians who can claim superiority. 

I eventually let my subscriptions lapse and found other things to worry about. I got into a sport, and sports are fairly color-blind. Looking back, I was able to pal around with nonwhite athletes routinely, where this was not a thing among my team-mates who were white. And hell, I may have been treated as white in Hawaii growing up, but at most I'm "White enough for California, at least for now". 

I don't believe any of the things I used to. Whites, or any certain race or coloration, are not inherently more or less industrious or crime-prone or intelligent or not so. It's all culture. And saying "white culture" is just a cop-out because again, not only had Asia had cultures that are more sophisticated and for thousands of years, but white culture or any culture, is a byproduct of physical conditions, climate, development of cities, trade routes, etc. So you can't "But, Calculus!" me, as it appears the Chinese even invented *that* first. 

But I know how the Right thinks, and I know they really don't care how many bodies they pile up to achieve it. I mean Soviet + German bodies on the Eastern front numbers here. More than that, if they need to. Nazis were and are "ecologists" and the right-wing underpinnings of the "health food" movement would startle a lot of old hippies if they knew about it. White supremacists don't mind a bit the idea of killing off the larger part of the Earth's population that's not white. They don't even see non-pure-Aryans as human.

Get talking to your average Nazi in a bar and they won't be able to tell you all of this so eloquently as I have clumsily written out here. They're unspoken core beliefs. Culture-deep. 

So on a day-to-day, nuts and bolts level, how are things likely to proceed and how best to deal with them? Roe v. Wade is just the beginning. The next step is laws against someone in an abortion-illegal state, escaping to a sanctuary state to get an abortion. Fugitive slave laws will be the framework here. Gay marriage will be next because the right-wing belief if that if white gay boys are just discouraged enough, they'll buckle down and father 10 white kids like they should. Needless to say interracial marriage will be banned, and then comes the question of whether existing interracial marriages will be annulled and any punishment meted out. The answers here are "yes". 

2024 may be our last election that's not just for show. In the way Hitler got himself voted in and then closed that door, we can expect a very "colorful" 2024 election. I think it most likely that if all the votes are counted, there will be a democratic landslide given that most people don't want to live in the country the Right envisions. Most Germans didn't want to live under the Nazis either, and we all know how well that worked out. 

The overarching answer to all of this is to get out of the US if possible. It's problematic because there are not likely very many places that want hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans. In reality only the super smart, wealthy, and well-connected will be able to get out. You will probably be wealthy or a super achiever or both. But there's still hope, say you're a stewardess on an American plane on the other side of the world and the US takes another one of its lurches toward extreme Fascism and the pilot and co-pilot decide that's enough, they're turning the plane and landing in a sanctuary country. So you're a fairly average person and you got out; lucky you. 

Most of us are stuck here in Leviathan. Best to not have kids, arm up, and move within the US while it's still possible. That's what I'm doing, moving home to Hawaii. But in case the door shuts faster than I can deal with, at least I'm here in the nation-state of California. 

So last night after finding, cleaning, sifting and sorting etc. of things, I decided not to list them but instead went through the box of books I had set aside to sell, and cleaned up stickers and erased penciled-in prices and so on, and today I took them, probably 30lbs of the things, over to the used book store. I got $3 cash. This was a set of really good books, and at least one of them had been bought from them, and they only bought two and those two for $3. 

I took the books they didn't buy, keeping one to read myself after all, and put them in the little free pantry box on 7th. Then I went over to Dai Thanh and got a few things for $8 and got $40 cash back. So I had $46 in cash which ought to cover any Wal-Mart shopping trip. 

I went to Wal-Mart and got all kinds of things, including some neat finds like they have large cans of boiled peanuts, and some Greek olive medley that might be good, and 2 six-packs of diet 7Up. For some reason it's cheaper to buy 3L of it at Wal's than a 2L from H Mart. When  I got to the check out it was $47 and change so I used my card.  That means I'm only saving a bit less than $50 in the bank this week. But I'll be able to save more next week. 

Among the Wal-Mart things was a little package of salami slices and a 1/2 liter bottle of Diet Pepsi. I'd only had coffee and a handful of nuts to start my day.  I sat and ate those at one of the tables across from where Cafe Stritch used to be, where at least it's a little bit cool. I got talking with a couple of guys about comedians and movies and the Blues Brothers and stuff so that was pretty cool. That used to be a thing; to hang out in that area and talk with people. 

I toodled on home, and got back without any problems and just put things away. Now I don't need to spend any money on anything until after I get paid next week. 

And, backing up what I just talked about, Trump gave a speech and Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois, a Trump endorsee, praised the Roe v. Wade decision as "A victory for white life" so this is out on national TV and on news sources all over the world. I wonder how many old Germans are cringing? 

The rollback begins

 Well, they overturned Roe v. Wade. This is just the start for the fascists, who will not be appeased but will be emboldened. I know the voting rights act of 1965 is one of the next things on their menu, and soon to come will be rollbacks on immigration policies to pre-1965 where it's severely restricted for non-whites, and even the Dred Scott decision which has to do with blacks having any rights at all, and also has to do with the old fugitive slave law, which has implications for people going out of their state to another one for medical care like an abortion. 

After entertaining Ken last night and listing 15 things I was really tired so I just did some octave exercises, trying to figure out why it's become harder for me. I think the answer is, I've not been making a small enough hole between my lips, which may be a lazy habit from trumpet. On trumpet, after all, you just cram the mouthpiece on there and blow and consciously making a small aperture is supposed to be bad. 

I woke up at about 3, had coffee and cleaned up a bit and headed downtown. Dropped off bags of over-the-counter pills and some other things at the little free libraries but didn't find any books I wanted. Did my banking and at least the numbers came out close. There's a monthly service free for getting a physical statement each month and that fee is waived if I have X amount in my account, and I forget if it's more than $3k or more like more than $5k. It's probably that fee. 

I went over to Whole Foods and had meatballs and broccoli and a club soda because for some reason there wasn't any near-beer in the usual sort of basket by one of the beer coolers. And I'm not about to drink a beer! 

After eating I walked up to TAP Plastics and looked around, and ended up getting two little bottles with syringe-needle tips but not sharp. They were $4 each but will be super handy, the one with the larger needle for Break-Free to lube my bike, and the one with the smaller needle for Yamaha trumpet valve oil which I'm going to use for key oil at least on my student flute. I don't know when FluteWorld is going to send my key oil, eventually I guess, but I don't want to do anything on my intermediate flute since I've got a free adjustment coming and I don't want to tinker with it at all as long as it's under warranty. 

I got a few things at Whole Foods, then went to the Amazon place to pick up some little bags I ordered and a lot of bubble mailers. Then swung by Nijiya for some things too. 

I got back here, put things away, and realized I was an hour early to check the bountiful dumpster. It looks like the business there is in operation until 8 in the evening, so I wanted to check after 8, and it was only 7. So I rode up to H Mart and bought some things there, found a bunch of LED light fixtures at the lighting place, and got back here to unload this 2nd load of stuff, then hitched up the trailer and went over to see what today's goodies would be. The trip was worth it. 

So here I am back, did a fair amount of shopping and have $40 left that I can allow myself to spend. Plus I went to take books to the used book store tomorrow and will take cash for those - it might only be $10 but it all adds up. 

Needless to say there were lots of zombies downtown, and I rode past two suitably disgusting beggars by the entrance to San Pedro Square. But no buskers. That occupation is pretty much extinct here in the center of "Silicon Valley". 

The zombies, though ... last night at 3AM a zombie came walking through, no bike just walking, carrying a black plastic trash bag, the American Tourister of the undead. It went into the dumpster and had a good ol' time rummaging around, then when the trash truck came around, made a big show of opening the gates of the dumpster enclosure, and when the truck was done closing them again, then for some reason, methamphetamine only knows, *ran* after the truck for a distance.  I think the ploy may have been on to make the driver think something of personal value had accidentally scooped up and stop the truck and get out. But the driver was too smart for that and kept driving. The zombie ran back and went back to futzing around in the dumpster enclosure and then wandered off. Then at 4AM two zombies, one of which I believe to be "Brenda", a troublesome zombie who was here when we moved in, rode through on bikes. Scouting for stuff to steal, no doubt. And just now as I write, this same pair of zombies rode through again, scouting. 

Besides cashing in books, I want to go back to TAP to get a piece of plastic rod or tube that's just the right size to push the cork out of a concert flute headjoint so I can replace the cork on my student flute. 

Welcome to the fucking OK Corral (or at least M-Squad)

 I can't even get a night's sleep without this country pulling some crazy shit while I'm not awake. Of course it pulls crazy shit while I'm awake too. 

I wake up, turn on the radio, and the Supreme Court, stacked with fascists as it is, has decided that everyone's got the right to carry a concealed weapon all the time, everywhere. 

Even in the Old West towns, full of ex-Civil War hardcases as they were, generally had rules that when you came into town you checked your guns in with the sheriff. At least your pistols, and generally everything because who wants to lug a rifle or shotgun around? 

Lugging a damn pistol's bad enough. I've carried concealed and it's a pain. Damn thing digs into your side, and now of course you're carrying something worth more on the black market than any iPhone. 

Goddamnit now I have to consider getting a holster for the ol' Glock, along with, I think, it's a set of decent sights, and this trigger transfer bar thing that takes the trigger pull from 8+ lb and atrocious to 4+ lb and rather decent. I haven't even taken the thing out of its plastic tub and hope I never have to. But here we are. 

M-Squad's a great old black-and-white TV series. Back when I lived at the old shop and didn't have internet and Fry's had cool old TV series on DVD for a song, I had the boxed set of M-Squad. It was great, great music, Lee Marvin when he was still relatively young, and every purse seemed to contain a snub-nosed revolver or one of those .32 automatics. Where do you think all those came from? Anyone who's dealt in guns a couple of decades ago knows there were tons of the things made and carries, apparently, as "pocket or purse" guns. 

Is that what we're getting back to? The crime and violence rate was *much* higher back then. This is what people don't seem to want to remember. People want the 1950s back and don't seem to be thinking it through, that the 1950s mean segregation, a high crime rate, being able to order pistols through the mail, Presidential assassinations... 

The 1950s sucked. To give an example, my dad hated IBM. HATED it. This would be 1950s IBM, and my oldest sis was born in 1957. I'm pretty sure it was because while my father was a pure-bred WASP, my mom was quite brown and we kids were pretty brown too. This made him un-employable to IBM and they probably told him so in so many words. That was the 1950s. 

I listed 20 things on Ebay last night and got over an hour's practice in. This is what I need to do; practice at least an hour a day, plus figure out why I'm shit at the octave exercise these days. 

I got 7 things packed, took them up to the post office and FedEx, stopped in at the falafel place for a yogurt drink, and found a large bag's worth of packing stuff from the circuit board place. 

"Recon" showed the bountiful dumpster was worth a visit, so after coming back here to drop things off, I went back with the trailer and got about $250 worth of stuff, so that's nice. That dumpster is "bountiful" enough that I could seriously consider going on my own with a combination of busking and selling stuff I pick out of there, but the trouble is, Ebay's non-compete system means even if I rented a place downtown, used a new computer, etc. they'd still shut both Ken and I down. I'm really only safe, and sure of not killing Ken's business, if I set up over in Hawaii and even then, better to wait a year or so first. 

I also got two onions from behind H Mart, and some strawberries from the veggie dumpster. And a big bag of broccoli that I took back here and sorted out the good pieces from, trimmed, and made up two bags of one meal each, and tossed the rest. Also the birds will dine on a Whopper from burger king someone at the welding place didn't even touch. 

What a different world it's become! In the 70s when I was a kid, someone throwing away a Whopper, untouched, was unheard of. That's a person's food for a whole day. There wasn't a lot of fruit sitting around unpicked, the seashore was close to "fished out", and there were next to no stray dogs and cats. The present-day feral chicken problem in Hawaii wasn't even a thing - I never saw or heard a single feral chicken. 

How are people born after 1980 going to cope when it turns into the lean mean 70s again?  

But getting back to my going back on Ebay on my own - who am I fooling? I want to be as "off the grid" as possible. Let's say I played by the rules, maybe took some summer classes somewhere reputable, like Stanford .... 

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/stanford-cancels-summer-classes-due-to-power-outages/2926210/

Oops, even the mighty Stanford can't prevail against our ongoing collapse...

A muggy 90

 I didn't list anything last night and come to think of it, my replying to Ken's email saying the internet's slow as molasses gives me a bit of a cover. 

Some of the stuff I put out went, and as a bonus, the bums shuffling things around loosened a mouse pad from the laptop case and I went out and got it - a nice "Allsop" brand one with a pattern like water droplets. I'd bought that at Fry's - never thought Fry's would only be a memory ... I think I'd bought three of the things over time, due to losing them. This was one I kept in the case and never used except when I was over at Ken's so it was like new. It was like being able to pop over to Fry's; like it was the Before Times.

I got an hour's practice in, and not messing around with octave exercises on the headjoint only but actual practice up through "Muffins" in the book. I need to become a real bug about at least an hour's practice a day. 

There's more and more discussion on r/collapse of people escaping places like Texas to sanctuary states like California. And not joking but serious discussion. 

To think at one time I was considering retiring with a trumpet or three to New Orleans, or perhaps going to "Hill Country" Texas, or even venturing up to Saratoga Springs, NY, to hang out in the same town as the author of "The Long Emergency". The whole country with the exception of California and Hawaii is turning out to be, or becoming, a fascist hellhole. Apparently in New Hampshire, if you collect unemployment insurance, a thing workers PAY INTO, you have to pay it back - they'll send you a bill, with interest.

My best two futures, aside from being able to leave the US somehow and assuming THAT isn't jumping into some kind of meat grinder, are either staying here in California or, as my present plans call for, returning to Hawaii. 

It's a cloudy, muggy, 90 degrees as I type and as a good old Hawaii kid I love cloudy weather so it's really nice. 

I packed 9 things and headed out. One of the "war rigs" (decrepit old RVs) on Junction apparently burned, with a big hollowed-out part in the middle, and the zombies that inhabited it taking their zombelongings out and loading them into various vehicles. I saw a wisp of smoke up in the sky when I got onto Brokaw, and by the time I got to the post office the air was very smokey. 

It was likewise smoked out at H Mart where I stopped to drop off two FedEx boxes and went in and bought a big bottle of diet 7-Up. 

I went over to Lowe's and looked around  - it must have been close to an hour - for some sort of pieces of plastic pipe or something, 1-1/2 inches O.D. and about 4 inches long. Everything was the wrong size and I really looked. I realized that really, if I just took some heavy-gauge plastic and rolled it up, it would work fine because all I'm asking the pieces to do isn't even bear a lot of load but to keep the top and bottom halves of the "new" shelf aligned. So I went over to the garden center, grabbed an (overpriced) black plastic plant pot for $4, paid for it, and got out of there. A nice part of this, though, is those tiki torches so beloved of the modern-day Nazis are only about $5 each and they come with bamboo poles, so I now have a nice source of bamboo to experiment making my own shinobue flutes with. The torch part is full of citronella oil which smells nice and I could just use to make it smell nicer around here.

I found a little packing stuff on my way back, and while there was nothing in the bountiful dumpster tonight, I did pull some very nice celery stalks out of the dumpster behind H Mart. I've paid money for a lot worse ones... A couple of stalks, very well washed and trimmed, went into egg salad. Last night's dinner had been a pork curry that included two tomatillos from behind Baja Fresh - they made it taste spicy and lime-y. If I can't forage, at least I can scrounge. 

Getting back in here, laden with packing stuff, a flat box that held a brake rotor and will be perfect for a technical manual, and a sprayer that looks like a better one than ours which I can't find, I ran across this guy who lives in the shop a few doors down. It's some kind of machine shop, the guy lost his job/business/wife in Utah I think, and now lives here in his brother's shop ... anyway I mentioned that outsiders were coming by at 4AM and dumping stuff in his dumpster and it's amazing; it'll get emptied and next day it's stuffed full. We discussed various ways to cope with it, like putting fencing on top of the enclosure or locking the dumpster... he seemed friendly enough and the fact that I'm still here as he is, as we were in '18 when I moved in, and now it's '22, means we're both "legit" at least as much as one can be, living in a shop. 

Ken called to say he's not coming by tonight ("I forgot my check book!") so I just said, "OK see you tomorrow!"

101 degrees

 Last night I didn't list anything but settled for pre-packing (printed up label, finding box or envelope, all but the very final finishing) "only" 26 things, and then fiddled around a bit on the shinobue (that thing can do high notes really loudly) and then did some octave exercises but I think I'm doing something wrong because I'm getting worse at it. 

I woke up a bit after 3, had coffee etc., and finished off the packages, and had a couple of hard-boiled eggs I'd boiled last night before taking off. That went without a hitch although of course on my 2nd load into the chute, the chute jammed, which is why I always go to the post office when there are people there. 

I dropped off the FedEx stuff and did my usual route to find stuff, and found some plastic pallets that look really heavy duty, good enough for these two big motors Ken has that he thinks he can sell. I tried calling him but no answer so I just loaded them up, with my handy orange box on top so it was an impressive load. 

I stopped by the bountiful dumpster and it looked worth coming back for, but I had to park the bike a little distance away and tiptoe up to have a look because the business it's associated with was still open. 

I came back here and had some "corned beef spread" with mustard and at 8:30 headed back out to the bountiful dumpster. I got another fiber optic cable and some packing foam, and a Dell laser printer I'm going to see if I can get working for Ken. 

I've been thinking lately that if I made a set of shelves that were the right height, banker's boxes would sit on them and slide out just like drawers, with just enough space there's be little chance of dust getting in and it would be a really neat way to store my clothes and things. I'm tired of fighting with this plastic drawer thing I've had for years. 

When I came back in here with my printer etc., I'd decided that as a favor I was going to take the ugly plastic table and ugly plastic shelves a neighbor was throwing out and that hadn't been taken by anyone, out to Old Bayshore where someone will pick them up. I did take the table out, but the shelves turn out to be just about perfect for what I have in mind. 

I cleaned up the shelves and the printer, moved a bunch of stuff out of the loft and put it out for the bums to pick up, including that plastic drawer thing I always fought with. I printed out a test page on the printer and when Ken emailed asking for a photo of the plastic pallets, the internet being as slow as molasses, I said the internet is slow as molasses right now and I have the pallets at the shop so he can see them soon anyway. 

The internet *is* as slow as molasses, for some reason. I think the heat slows it down somehow, but it's also just general decay. I just need things to hold together for two more years...

Too hot for Google

 I read "Everything Falls Apart" or whatever it was called, last night. Interesting book, reminds me of "The Dahomean" by Frank Yerby, a book I loved when I was a teen. Of the two, "Dahomean" is by far the better, I think. 

Since I'd been up and reading etc I woke up at 5. It was hot, the wind's howling, etc. I'd done octave exercises on the flute and messed around with the shinobue a bit. There's a little set of lessons by a guy named Kano on YouTube, and he can hit the lowest note - I can't seem to get that one on this shinobue, but it's reputed to be hard to play by comparison with a good bamboo one. Kano's a great teacher though, and he emphasis over and over again keeping the mouth chamber and throat open and keeping the jaw open. 

I'm going to try to send Ken some alternative to the right-wing tabloid sites (the Examiner and The Sun) he's getting his news from, for some stupid reason or another. He asked me if The Guardian might be a better source and I said it's probably the best source and I read their articles all the time. I have a feeling his wife gets tired of his political rants, which he can get into, and because of his sources, rather right-wing ones. I'm going to try steering him into a bit more sanity. 

I've also been doing things like, if a customer buys something we've got tons of, like fasteners or certain integrated circuits or such thing, I'm putting 6 in their package instead of the 5 they paid for, or 11 instead of the 10 etc. I believe that effectively those parts will "never" run out, because once I'm gone this business of Ken's is going to get a *lot* more chaotic, and between the coming political storm and the climate one, 99% of what Ken has stocked up in here will never be sold. 

I'm also keeping in mind that I really need to not only prepare to jump out of here in two years, but that something or other might happen that makes it necessary to leave sooner. And in that case I will want to leave quickly. I need to have ID papers and passport all in order, important documents scanned, etc.

I got onto Gmail and it took 15 minutes to "get in contact with Google" and in general, the hotter it gets, the more it slows down the internet. But not being able to get in contact with Google for a quarter-hour, here in Silicon Valley, a place many consider synonymous with the internet, is startling. 

New flute day

 I woke up at about 3, and realized after having coffee and breakfast and vitamins and all that, that I needed to get going. The Japanese shinobue flute I'd ordered had arrived at that Amazon place. 

I had some definite plans, though. Last night I'd bagged up some clothes I don't need, and I'd also put my coffee can of copper pennies into my bike bag, plus bags of  cold etc. pills from the EMT training place, to put in the little free libraries. 

I realized I had little time, so I decided to see just how quickly I could get down to Wal-Mart first, with the plan in mind of putting the pennies into the Coin Star machine, using the $8 or so to buy a few things, then getting back downtown before the Amazon place closed. So I dashed down there pretty quickly, accompanied part of the way by a Mexican guy who made a big show of riding no-hands and nattering at me in Spanish, to which I replied by doing a little careful no-hands riding and saying "No comprende" and laughing along. He was kind of annoying and I was glad when he sped off ahead. 

I got to Wal-Mart and .... the Coin Star was shut off. I forgot that it's Wal-Mart after all, and they live to disappoint. It was stupid of me on my part to assume that just because the Coin Star was always working whenever I was there before, it would be when I actually wanted to use it. I was pretty ticked, though, and walked out without buying anything. 

I got back downtown in plenty of time, though, and picked up the shinobue but no bubble mailers this trip. I even had time to stop by Nijiya and get a few things with the cash I had on hand that wasn't pennies. One of the guys there congratulated me on being able to find the "American" mustard which most people can't, "because it's 10 feet from the ketchup". 

The wind had my slowed down to a slow-jog pace coming back here. In all fairness, when I moved from Gilroy to here, my last load being my bike and a few things, the wind was like this and I was slowed down like this too. I'd even had to take shelter during an intense thunder storm in Morgan Hill. It felt good to get back here. 

It had been pretty nice out, though. Lots of zombies, though. And down by Wal-Mart, streetwalker zombies. I got my zombie-dodging practice in. 

The shinobue is very pretty; very finely made if of plastic. It came from Mejiro, a store in Japan I'd love to visit someday. It sounds, at first try, rather awful. But, I'm sure practice will pay off. There was one question I knew I'd pretty much only get a straight answer to by buying one of the things and that's whether the bore is a straight cylinder or tapered, like a pennywhistle. It's straight. This means I can take any old tubing and have a try at making my own.

All in all, even though I got kind of "skunked" riding in such a hurry all the way down to Wal-Mart, it was a productive time out of the shop and I'm really glad, as always, that I ride a bike instead of driving a car or even riding a motorcycle. Gas, insurance, wear, maintenance, it all adds up. Let's say the cost is 50c a mile, that's still the $7 or so VTA fare would have cost me and a bike is just so cheap by comparison. Some bike tires wear out, but the ones I have on the bike now will last me until it's time to leave. I've already replaced the rear wheel which I pretty much wore out, and the frame and everything should hang in there just fine. I seem to go through a set of panniers every couple of years on average, but my latest set seem to be lasting well.

Bush gas and Biden gas

 I was up all night again, having ordered my neat-O Aulos brand plastic shinobue on Amazon, I did some watching of videos about the shinobue. First, taiko groups like to have some shinobue players to play with them so that's neat. Also, the Aulos shinobue isn't the best sounding or the easiest to play, but according to Amazon reviewers at least it plays in tune. I just want to get my hands on one, because I am very curious whether it has a straight or a conical bore. If it's a straight bore, that makes it really easy to experiment with making my own. And one of the attractions for the flute for me is that I can learn to make them. 

I'll have the silly thing in a couple of days. There's also a method book in English, by a noted taiko guy. Some reviews say it's great, and other say the first 10 pages are useful and after that "it's just songs". In any case it's $25 so I'm just going to mess around on the thing before I decide if I want to spend that much on a book. 

The thing is, Obon is coming up.

I listed 10 Ebay things also. I've been slacking off, listing maybe only 30 things a week and that's not good. So I've set a goal of 50 items a week and that will get our sales back up where they should be. Discovering the "bountiful" dumpster is a nice game-changer too. 

There are the usual complaints all over Reddit. People bitch about $5 Biden gas, but somehow $7+ Bush gas in 2008 was OK? My 250cc motorcycle had a bitty little tank, and it cost me close to $20 to fill it if I'd used it down to Reserve. And this was even in Arizona, a red state. 

People have such short memories, and this is one thing Ken brought up when he was over. He thinks if we tip into a recession/depression people will look back to the Trump years as "the good old days" when they were really not good, but with such short memories, they'll think they are. And certainly better than the days of a recession or depression. 

I wonder what they'd say about the Obama years, when dear old Barry only rescued the economy and cleaned up the mess left by Bush?  I remember in 2003, having to carefully explain the events of 9/11/01 to a gal who was a teller at my bank, who had no functional memory that went back that far. 

I left here around 6, dropped off goodies at the little free libraries and got "Life Is Beautiful" on DVD which I could not even find to buy and here I got it for free, and "The Metamorphosis" by Ovid in 1950s paperback form - a relic of a time when it was encouraged for the working class to educate itself. 

I went to the used book store first and looked around, but there were no flute books or interesting political books, and besides, it's hard to feel like buying books when I won't be able to take any with me in 2 years and I'm finding tons of them for free. I bought a copy of "Survival Guns" by Mel Tappan. I'm old enough to remember him being talked about a lot in the gun magazines, and always wanted to read this book and just never got around to getting a copy. I probably already know everything he did, but he's a good writer. 

Then I went over to Whole Foods and turned in the cornet mouthpiece and got some meatballs and broccoli and a near-beer and enjoyed those. Then I got some groceries, only using the money I had on me, because I don't want to take any more out of the bank. 

The usual zombies were out. On my way back, one zombie tried to look "innocent" as it lurched seemingly randomly but in a direction such as to bring itself within lunging range. So I kept my direction resolutely and at the last moment turned and went around another way - as much as a zombie can show emotion, this one looked like it felt cheated. 

On my way back along 10th, in the industrial area, there was a female zombie on the other side of the street wearing prostitute style shorts, which is to say very very short. It meandered along on the other side of 10th until I came along and then just "had" to cross the street, which I noticed it did both quickly and quietly - I didn't check to see if it was barefoot, all I needed to know was that if this zombie decided to give chase, whether due to being full of meth or merely of the zombie virus, I might not get an audible warning so I sped up and kept sped up until I got to Old Bayshore. Then, checking behind me, it was gone - off in search of an easier target's brains. 

I checked the armored car place's trash and they'd thrown out a lot of radios so, making 3 trips, I got all but one. The first trip to snag one and take it back here and do a little research as to whether it's worth anything. The 2nd trip with a step stool to reach into the dumpster better and perhaps, I though, climb in. The 3rd trip because I'd decided I did not want to climb in, and this last trip bearing a little wire tool I made to snag the radios by the antenna or the belt clip. The only one I could not get had neither. I got two big chargers too. 

As I was snagging the last radio and packing my stuff up, I saw a zombie passing through (on a zombike of course) so I was cautious, Would this zombie lay in wait just out of sight as I came out the way the zombie would assume I would? So I went back here by a different way, ha ha! 

A cool Friday

 After Ken being over and my having to put a lot of things away and sort things, I didn't list anything last night. 

I did over an hour of octave exercises on the headjoint while watching some stupid thing on YouTube about consumerism, and went to bed. 

I woke up in time to clean up a bit and head over to the bank with my check, and go around and do the usual things like have some buffalo wings and a near-beer at Whole Foods then do some shopping there, find free stuff, visit Nijiya, etc. 

Zombies were certainly out and about today. It's cool so it's sunny but not too hot. Nice weather for humans and the undead both, I guess. 

Today's freebees were the books "Native Son" by Richard Wright and "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe, a DVD titled "Last Call" about the poet Dylan Thomas, and a large onion. 

After coming back, pretty heavily laden with groceries and things, I bypassed here and went to the bountiful dumpster where I got a couple of goodies that ought to bring us $100-$150 so I'm glad I stopped by to check. 

I got in, put all the treasures away, and I have a three-day weekend ahead of me because we've got a new federal holiday, Juneteenth, on Monday. I thought Juneteenth was about some slaves not being told they were free for a couple of weeks but no, it was for a couple of YEARS and of course they were kept illegally under slavery for those two extra years in Texas, the sweaty ass crack of the US. What a steaming pile of shit of a state. 

And for extra grins and giggles, there's going to be a big "heat dome" over Florida, the state that vies for the position of most hellish with Texas and the South in general.  That will be interesting to watch the news about, next week. 

I ordered the Japanese shinobue flute from Amazon, so that was about $31. But I realized I'd never taken the 3C cornet mouthpiece I got for the cornet, out of its sealed plastic bag and noticed on Amazon I could still return it, so I'm returning it. That will be about $32 back into my account. Basically I'm trading the mouthpiece for the shinobue which is A-OK with me. 

The shinobue is actually made by Aulos, the company that made that first recorder I had because it was all I could afford, back around the end of high school. It comes with a new bag like a shakuhachi is kept in, and a fingering chart, in Japanese. It's an "Uta" or song, shinobue so it uses the standard Western scale and will have the notes on the staff on the fingering chart so that's all I'll need. 

It's funny that the return options didn't include taking it to the Amazon hub place I pick things up at and get bubble mailers from, but showed as the nearest choice, the Whole Foods on the Alameda I go to all the time. I helped a guy take some kind of big piece of furniture in, today. Actually his cart got stuck and I helped him deal with that. He ended up getting another cart, we put the thing on that, and he wheeled it in. 

When I was busking there I saw lots of people bringing in Amazon returns. Not usually as large as furniture but some fairly large things at times. They'll be happy to get my little cornet mouthpiece. 

I'm really amazed at how much *cleaner* the flute is than the trumpet or cornet. I've got cleaning brushes and pull-throughs and such things scattered all over the place here, hanging off of magnets on the side of the fridge, and so on, and frankly it's kind of disgusting. I actually clean my lovely $2000 new flute with .... a paper towel. I just roll one up tightly and stick it in there and it gets what little moisture is in there, and doesn't seem to leave any fluff. 

I've got tons of pad cleaning paper too, but I'm big on having my mouth really clean before I play. Generally I've brushed my teeth, flossed, and then chewed sugarless gum for a good while. It's playing right after eating that can make the pads get sticky, I think. Hard to avoid when you're in high school and Band is right after Lunch, or you're a traveling musician and haven't eaten all day, use your "tab" at the venue to buy some dinner which you eat right before going up on stage. Charlie Parker, at one point in his career, swapped out heroin for hard candies and it resulted in a very sticky saxophone. 

It's just really hard to leave

 I got 10 things listed last night, Ken called and said he'd not be by, so I put things away and did a lot of things like that. 

I did some octave exercises and am now conscious of how much pressure I'm using but I still had some trouble. I think the octaves exercise on the headjoint is probably a good warm-up but it's probably harder on the lips than actual playing. 

Needless to say I've been not only listening to the radio but reading lots of things on Reddit. It's looking really bad. Someone on Reddit: "What about the 70% of us who don't want these things to happen?" Well, easily 70% of Germans would have voted not to be Nazi, keep in mind they were more educated and cultured then than we are now, and yet the Nazis ended up taking over. 

On leaving, I'm seeing over and over that it's just really hard to leave. And it's going to get worse, as there seems to be a worldwide recession, perhaps depression, building. It's the same situation as Germany, 1931 or 1932. No one wants you, unless you're highly skilled in some niche area and even then, it was very hard for even atomic scientists to get out. The US was not only not taking German Jews, it wasn't taking German, period. Scientists, writers, etc. had to have lots of fame, lots of fame, lots of money, and lots of patience as they got out by country-hopping until they got into England or the US. 

Hence, going back to Hawaii is my most solid plan. From there it may be possible to take a small boat to some other part of Oceania, thence to Asia but again, that's not going to work unless I end up being very skilled at the flute or shakuhachi or something. But Hawaii may be safe enough. 

I mean, I was there one day in the 80s when a lady rammed her car into a traffic signal box to keep from going into cross traffic. Her brakes had gone out. It was quick thinking on her part. When I went back in 2003, that same traffic signal box was still messed up. Hawaii is just slow and lackadaisical enough that it might be livable when the mainland is not. 

Ken came over and brought stuff to list, packing boxes, and my check. I also got the Flute 101 book but not the key oil which is out of stock - "to follow later". I have a sneaking suspicion that Yamaha trumpet valve oil is the same oil, or close enough... 

Ken and I talked about everything under the sun. He said Suzy, his wife, who'd been getting about $900 a month from Social Security, is now getting about $1200. She and I have about the same profile; enough years in the work force to get a payout, but not very high earnings. It's impossible to get a statement from the Social Security Administration outside of East Coast working hours, even online, it seems, but I found a little calculator and once I put in earnings somewhat like what I've earned over the years, it came out around $1200. 

This subject came up because we were discussing plans for the time between now and 2024, when, I maintained, the country is probably going to go full fascist. I said between now and then, there are only a couple of things that can happen. (a) Something can happen to Ken's health like a stroke or car accident, or (b) Ken can lose his day job. Ken said in that case he'd just ramp-up his Ebay selling and work here. That's when I got hepped up about telling him how eager I am to be back home in Hawaii, where my memories are... 

I said I planned to have enough money saved to do nothing for a year once I'm back, and that my plan is for Social Security to enable me to rent a room if not a small apartment, and then my busking will take care of food money. Left unsaid was the fact that if Ken's around here all the time I'll want to get out of here, and back there, as soon as possible. I just need things to hold together for a couple more years... 

 

All Putin has to do is wait

 I got my 15 items listed on Ebay last night, did a bunch of octave exercises, and went to bed. The little zombie car had been "patrolling" through here but still, I think it's just using this route as a way to avoid being seen by the cops on a public road, as a sneaky way to travel between Crack Alley, the zombie camp on the other side of Bayshore, and of course, guys looking to meet up with an undead prostitute. 

I woke up at 3 and turned on the radio, to hear the announcers on NPR calmly and smoothly talk about the downfall of my country into brutal fascism. The Republican party is no longer a party in the conventional sense, but has become a cult of personality - in the few states that just held their primaries, candidates' success depended solely on their loyalty to Trump. Just like the Nazi Party which banned all other parties and required an oath to Hitler personally. 

I have a theory that Putin's war on Ukraine was planned based on Trump stealing a 2nd term, Putin was right to assume there would be one, as there nearly was the beginning of our Trump-for-life period, or our 2nd civil war, on January 2nd. When Putin's paid underling didn't in fact make it, Putin was faced with internal unrest after he'd gotten his "military" all hepped up about the rapine and plunder they'd get to do in Ukraine. (Keep in mind also that just about first, he sent assassins to kill Zelensky, which probably would have indeed won him Ukraine quickly. Zelensky is truly Ukraine's, perhaps Europe's, Winston Churchill.) So faced with perhaps his mob exerting rapine and pillage on Russia itself, Putin decides, "OK, we'll go ahead". 

The 2nd part of this theory is, his fat orange debtor doing surprisingly well, Putin's going to hang on with the hopes (not at all unfounded) that the US will indeed fall to Fascism in 2024. Thanks to Trump, we can look forward to two more years of bloody war in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. 

And when this fall happens, what then? We can expect a roll back to the Jim Crow era, a re-introduction of segregation and the banning, perhaps dissolution, of interracial marriage. Perhaps a return to out and out chattel slavery, as up into the 1950s in the South, blacks women who were jailed were impregnated and their children sold to fund white schools. Plus prisoners are, legally, slaves in the US due to the 13th Amendment. 

I've lived in a country where a Constitutional Convention was thought to be a thing that would never happen but we can expect one of those, with the Constitution radically re-written. Probably non-whites will lose citizenship, we'll end up with a state religion, Krazy AmeriKKKan Kristianity, and who knows what else. 

Hitler made a major thing out of the Jews, but they were less than 1% of the German population. That's about the percentage who are LGBT, who the fascists are already starting in on. With blacks about 13-15%, they can be expected to become the slave class again. 

It's already being discussed on Reddit that no, Canada is not going to want, or be able to absorb, millions of American refugees. International asylum laws should apply to quite a few of us, but as with Germany under Hitler, hardly any who want to leave will be able to. The joke for years has been that Trump's wall is to keep people in, and it's not seeming like a joke any more. 

I got out of here with three FedEx things, dropped them off, picked up some packing stuff and a bunch'a free pills from the EMT training place, checked the "bountiful dumpster" and there's nothing new today. 

I got back in here and had a little can of corned beef spread with mustard and celery for a snack. I've learned my lesson on that spread: If I buy it at 99 Ranch, it's not a fast seller so it's pretty old and gamey. But buy it at Wal-Mart and not only is is cheaper but it's fresh. In fact, Wal-Mart's great for canned meat and fish and a lot of unexpected things. I saw soursop drink there the other day, which was amazing - here on the mainland you'd think soursop doesn't exist. I didn't buy any, but they have nice little 6-packs of diet 7Up for the same price as club soda at Whole Foods so I got one of those. 

While putting things away and re-arranging I pondered my octave exercises last night. I'd been having trouble and finally realized I was pushing the headjoint against my lower lip far too hard - a bad habit from trumpet. With my stubby little hands I have to use the "3 point" system to hold the flute, where it's the base of the right and left first fingers and the place below the lower lip that stabilize the flute. But compared to trumpet, it's very *light* pressure. Once I let off on the damn pressure, I blew some beautiful octaves. 

I really need to get out there getting that money in, busking. And all I have to do is pick up the trumpet or cornet and head out there and I could do it tomorrow. But I am just tired of the whole idea. I'm tired of brass instruments. Whatever I had to prove, I've proven it. I can play up to high C, I've made good money busking, I even outlasted Rabbit Trumpet Guy.

Hot and windier

I listed 15 things on Ebay last night, pre-packed a bunch of things by which I mean did just about all of it but stick on the label, which I print out but just tack on with a little cellophane tape and leave for later. This gets finding the things and finding the packing materials and doing the actual padding and packing if the thing goes in a box, out of the way. 

I had a guy buy 2 of something Ebay was sure I had 26 or so of, even after taking out his two. And searched through 4 boxes of stuff before I finally realized a repeat customer had actually bought my last two and he'd paid enough shipping that if I'd had a third I'd have sent him that too. Ebay pulls this scam once in a while, it will decide you have two, or 26, of something that you don't. So I had to cancel the order and end the listing. 

This left me pretty pissed off and very much reminded of how much I hate Ebay with all my heart and soul. I got ready for bed and put in a bit over an hour of practice but not just octave exercises but actual practice, up through "Muffins" in the Wye beginner book. 

The thing with the Wye book is, I think he doesn't want the student just playing by ear so besides things that are just exercises, he chooses pieces of music, generally archaic, that the student won't have sung as a little kid or heard on the radio. Plus there are techniques to teach. So old Muffins has staccato, slurred notes then a staccato note then a regular one, and so on. 

I *will* get to actual music eventually though. I still can't remember what I had for repertoire when I busked with a flute, those years ago. Did I just flog the same thing over and over? I can't believe I did that much of that. I guess it doesn't matter but what does matter is I get out there as soon as I'm able. 

I went to bed at 8AM and woke up at 12:30, thought about staying up to set myself on an earlier schedule, and decided I need sleep, so went back to sleep until 4. And the computer needed a bunch of updates which took at least an hour so it's a good thing I had all those packages set up with labels printed and nothing needed doing that requires a computer. I packed those, put things away, and once the computer was operational, with a half-hour left, packed a few more things. 

I headed out the usual time - it was hotter and a lot windier than yesterday - and did my post office and FedEx drop-offs, and stopped in for a yogurt drink. I think this is about the last time I'll be able to hand the guy a bag of change - I think he's getting tired of it. 

I rode back, finding a very few shipping things, and saw Tom's truck in front of his shop. So I circled around and stopped in to hang out for a bit. He'd been back up to Alaska to see his dad, who's really bad off - end stage Parkinson's. His "ace carpenter" buddy, Rob, who he's got for a helper now, and who has/had a big, beautiful, top of the line truck, smashed that truck completely in a head-on collision out on Old Bayshore. 

It's the guy's fault, but the other guy, apparently, is a character the cops hate so they decided it's his fault. Meanwhile, Rob's got a metal pin in his neck and was in a coma for 48 hours and some Sawzall blades in the center console of his truck flew up in the crash and sliced one of his ears off so they had to staple it back on. And he's got a new truck on order, the very same one only it will be a 2022 model. 

There wasn't anything in the "bountiful" dumpster but that's OK. I got back here, took some car body part someone left by the dumpster out to Old Bayshore and put it in a dumpster there, and got in here and closed things up for the night. 

Warm and windy

 I was up until past 7AM which is just messed up. If it were the Before Times, and I lived in a place where all-night busking was a thing, that might be excusable. Even here, in the Before Times, I used to be up busking by the Old Spaghetti Factory until midnight or even a bit after. That's all gone and done with now. 

As it is, it's merely warm, mid-70s, but the wind is really making a ruckus outside. Howling and knocking things around. 

I thought I saw a kid with a guitar yesterday, I really did. But as I rode closer I saw it was just a skateboard and I gave him a nod as I rode past. 

Among other things, last night I went through the very heavy can of copper pennies I had and saved out the "wheat" pennies, maybe 20 or so, because those are cool. And the rest, I counted out into  8   $1 bags which I could try to sell to a coin shop, maybe. Or it's two yogurt drinks. 

I also need to go through my clothes, esp. cold-weather clothes which I just don't seem to need much of these days. I think I wore a hat and gloves maybe 1-2 times last winter, or was it the winter before? I might not have worn them even once this last "winter". So I really only need one fleece pullover, my two basketball-themed long sleeved shirts, and maybe three jackets. My yellow one for visibility when it's barely cool, my orange one for visibility when it's a bit cold, and a black "Marmot" waterproof one that's handy if I have to go out in the rain. I need maybe 2 pairs of sweat pants to go through winter. So there's a lot of stuff that's going to get tossed over the fence at Goodwill, and then I need to take the minimal clothes I'm keeping and get caught up on washing them. 

The same sort of thinking goes for books. It's a fun hobby collecting them, but I'm just going to start asking for cash from the used book store, said cash to go into the "get the fuck out of here" fund. Same goes for busking money. 

The guns will have to go; almost everything will have to go. I need to get a scanner and scan all my important documents and stick them on the "cloud" and also put them on a few thumb drives or those tiny cards. More than one in case one gets lost I'll still have the others. 

My whole plan depends on things holding together for the next few years, well enough that travel to Hawaii is still possible, and it'd be nice if things held together long enough after that that I might have a year or three to relax, even if half-starved and homeless, being back home where my memories are before I die in whatever ideological or climate wars come. 

During the day I listened to KPFA instead of NPR, to get away from the alternating insurrection trials and fundraising. KPFA had an interesting discussion of black fatherhood. A guy said that when he was out with his kids, doing daddy stuff, it seemed to actually piss off some white people. Like he wasn't obeying the role he's supposed to, that of a deadbeat dad. It was like, if a black father could be a good father, then that means maybe blacks are not inferior, and that incites anger and fear. I can say that whites just about have the monopoly on being deadbeat dads and it's yet another case of projection. Plus, black culture has tons of aunts and uncles and tons of family, biological and not, while whites are completely atomized, so it's no wonder whites are looking over their shoulders, nervously. 

That's a stunning difference between how things are done here on the mainland and back in Hawaii. In Hawaii it's all about family and connections, people you get to know and you don't just meet them once and never see them again; you meet them, say, at the local fishing store because you're both into fishing, and you have *some* connection with that person forever. It was kind of like that when I lived in "the rurals" here but the problem here is, 99% of the white people here in "the rurals" are right-wing nutcases once you scratch below the surface. 

I went out at 8, not yet zombie hours and still light, found a few computers odds and ends like a fan, drives, and a couple of RAM sticks, and most notably, from the veggie dumpster a couple of peppers and a bunch of those huge "portobello" mushrooms that cost a lot in the market. 

In other more cheerful news, someone on r/flute on Reddit mentioned buying a flute, which turns out to be an Aulos "Uta" Japanese flute called a shinobue, and while they argued over whether it's a "real" flute (that part seems to have been snipped out) I looked it up and ... now I want one. Aulos is the brand of that recorder I spent what little money I had on, back in 1979 or so, and tooted away faithfully every afternoon, doing scales and trying to do some songs out of a book I got that was probably too advanced for me - recorder method books were rare. But the reviews are decent and I have a soft spot for that maker and it's only about $30 delivered off of Amazon. So that will be my silly purchase out of my next pay check. 

A shinobue is a side-blown flute, like the Western flute a tube that's closed at one end which is a relatively rare feature. And by the demo on the Mejiro site, they sound decent. In the anime "Nitaboh" the kid plays a shinobue when his shamisen is down for repairs. Also Robert, a guy who used to be a fixture in Japantown at various festivals, dresses as a wandering samurai or something and plays a bamboo shinobue. So if I don't take mine with me to Hawaii I can always hand it off to him because the last I heard, his bamboo one broke. 

Maybe I'll see Robert at this next Obon festival. I'll jump in and dance if I remember the steps which I probably do, and Pokemon Ondo is too much fun to not do. And the one where you do jun-ken-po.  I plan to spend a fair amount of money on food and things, whatever's out there. 

I've not been practicing enough although I have been doing octave exercises fairly often, and I am, when I get my embouchure just right, able to do them pretty long. So much of flute is breath. People say trumpet is, but I think you can be minor-league at breathing and do all right on the trumpet, as long as you can do high pressure. But flute is real breathing.

Calculations

 I woke up at a bit past 3. It was pretty warm last night, and around 2AM I had the door open because it was in the 60s outside and mid-80s in here. So that was a nice cool-off, until the little zombie car came prowling around, then I closed up very quickly. 

I think the deal with the zombie car is, going through here is a handy way to go between Crack Alley and out to Bayshore, probably to just dart across there and into this little loop of a street that "houses" some of the no-goodniks who used to live in the parking lot here until I hounded them out. Since the profession of the female zombies is prostitution (ecch, how do some guys risk having their dick rot off??) it's probably a constant loop, on a good night, of servicing johns by the trucking company or around that area and then going out to Old Bayshore to meet their drug dealers who are a phone call or text away. It's the route least taking public streets, and besides, Queen's Lane is very rough and zombie cars can hardly make it over a cigarette butt. 

Anyway, I did a bit of octaves practice and hit the sack. I think I'm going to have to do without a practice "system" I've used the last few years. I'd find a movie or documentary on YouTube that's somewhat interesting and halfway watch that while practicing. But YouTube is becoming unwatchable, and Amazon Prime Video also, due to the deterioration of the internet itself. 

Also, the temple just sent me $48 worth of raffle tickets with instructions to sell them ... I'm not going around hustling tickets sorry, so I'll just buy them myself so that's $48 I need to give them. 

I'm starting to do calculations for my final "glide path" in that, I've only got two more years here and then I'm going home. I might not live long there but at least I'll be home when things get bad. 

I took off with a bag of trash, three bags of batteries out of the pumps, 28 or 29 AA batteries per bag, and two bags of clothes I won't need. I dropped off the clothes at Goodwill, throwing them over the fence, and took a book from a pile of junk someone had left. I stopped at Nijiya and bought a pack of "Black Black" gum and got $40 cash back. That spurred some conversation between the two guys at the checkout - "Does that have caffeine in it? It does! And mint! I'll clear out your sinuses! It's for people who study!" and so on. 

I dropped off the batteries at the little free libraries and picked up a few books. It was a lovely day in that it was cloudy and I even got sprinkled on a bit. I headed down to Wal-Mart where I got some things, using cash of course because their card machines barely work. I got $10 and change so I'd spent a bit more than originally intended. 

On my way back I stopped at Dai Thanh for some veggies and got $20 back. The cloudy front was just about all blown over and I could see clear sunny sky now - bummer. I got back here and put $30 in the bag with the tickets for the temple, so now I just have to put another $20 in there and I'll have enough, and get change to turn the $10 into $8 and it'll be perfect. Then I just have to write my name and address on them all and turn them in with the money. 

So I was able to do everything I needed to plus a bit more, and am saving $111 this week in the bank.

A good long sleep in the heat

 I was up until 7AM and finished my awake cycle by doing some octave exercises while watching what little was watchable on YouTube.  The video is always messed up or hardly video, at a few frames per second between freezes. The audio still mostly comes through, fairly much in sync with only a few pops and clicks. 

The last things I watched, after I'd put the flute away, were two short videos by James Galway. I'd watched the documentary "Being James Galway" and some very recent stuff - he's an old duffer now. But these were uploaded about 10 years ago and were probably a bit older than that. They were amazing. I was beginning to think, "What's the big deal about James Galway? I like his attitude, but I'm not sure I'm that crazy about his playing". What I heard was so amazing; now I understand how he could say that, after studying in France, that he had come to learn the French style and had been told he already played the French style better than anyone. 

When I was a teen and had escaped my mom's place, my dad had James Galway records and Jeanne-Pierre Rampal was a big deal, his records being on almost all the time at this one art gallery I hung out at a lot. Maybe this is why, it being all I could afford, I spent about all I had for a little Aulos recorder and practiced scales with it so much. Two things happened: My dad said at first I'd sounded awful but was starting to sound good. And I'd realized it would never sound like an actual silver flute and I quit. 

But what I heard last night was the dream, the ideal, of what a flute could sound like. I think one piece was by Poulenc and the other was "Irlandaise" by that wonderful composer Claude Bolling. I was gobsmacked and thought, Can a trumpet ever do this?

I went to sleep the fan blowing on me as I do these days, and told myself I could sleep all I wanted. All I wanted turned out to be until around 8 in the evening. 

I got up and first thing thought I ought to go outside and look, because I'd found one of those metal briefcase things, quite well made and heavy actually, in the bountiful dumpster. It had turned out to be equipped with lots of foam, some Plexiglas etc., holding an assortment of sales samples of Sony LiPo batteries. Eh, not interesting, and I'd decided I didn't want the case, either. Too heavy and likely to attract attention. So I'd left it out last night and early in the morning one of the guys from next door picked it up, seemed to pull the stuff out of it, and took it. Great. 

But I wanted to check for any of the insides left lying around. I heard a little sound and peeked out the mail slot - there as a bum, stuffing bags with ... something ... from the dumpster I'd cut up cardboard in. Woops. After Mr. Bum was done and had wobbled off, heavily laden, on his bike, I went out and checked and yep, there was foam and Plexiglas left out. So I put that into the dumpster, noting that my bag of plastic and tubing had no been taken. So I'd done right putting it in there. 

The heat's supposed to let off a bit, which is nice for adjusting to it.

Zombie problems.

 I took the medical display things apart last night and thought I was so smart, putting the parts into boxes and putting them out at about 1AM for the bums. 

Well, the little zombie car came by and an ugly female zombess got out, looked over everything, and passed on it all. I believe the zombess may by Crazy Chrissie, who had short hair before but I believe that especially in cases where the perp is violent or psycho, hair is cut to shoulder length in women's prisons. She's have grown her hair out, as her profession, along with stealing, drugs, etc., is prostitution and long hair would make her a bit more marketable. Keep in mind, anyone who'd be up for sex with an undead ghoul.... 

After a few hours a guy zombie on a bike came by and sifted and sorted the stuff, then left it. After a couple more hours, it came back and put everything into a big black trash bag and left the boxes. Also, since the toilet here does not handle solids, I'd put a poo-bag into the welding place's trash can and the trash truck that picks it up had not come, and sure enough, this zombie had rooted around in there and taken the poo bag. Why, I have no idea. Is there something about being a putrefying re-animated corpse that makes one want to eat poo? 

After some octave exercises for a half hour, I went to bed and had sorta bad dreams about the annoying zombie. and when I woke up, at 3, I thought about some rules to deal with these things. First, poo bags to be disposed of miles away. Second, if I'm putting things out for scumsuckers to pick up, bag the things up; no boxes. Thirdly, since I'd really rather someone with a car or truck or some of the guys next door pick up my scrap metal, I should put the stuff out in the daytime not at night. 

I was up in time to clean up a bit and dress in some of the nice clean clothes I'd washed and hung up last night. Especially in this weather, the upstairs is like a big dryer so everything was nice and dry. 

I got out of here, took 4 things to the post office, then went to the bank and did my deposit. Then I went to Dai Thanh for some shopping, went by the Amazon place for bubble mailers and the zip ties I'd ordered, then Nijiya for more shopping. I picked up a couple of free books too, "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser and "The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons why I Run Long Distances" by "The Oatmeal". 

I'm actually going to change how I play the book game. Since I plan to leave here in two years, I'm going to turn around and trade my books for cash instead of trade. I'm getting a very good flow of books I've always wanted to read for free, and I just don't need any more music books than I already have and what I might need, like the 2nd of the Trevor Wye Beginner books or La Sonorite' by Marcel Moyse, I'd buy from West Valley Music or order from Flute World anyway. I need to work on trimming down my "stuff" not increasing it. 

It was windy as hell and hot. People in cars seemed to be on edge, one hilarious example being a guy on Taylor who wanted to turn left right in front of me so I had to turn to avoid him and ended up having to ride in front of him, slow of course because ... I'm on a bike! And when he tried to push past I just had to make sure he couldn't do so because that would be unsafe. Some other car honked at him, it was great. I turned finally into the opposing lane because there was an opening, back onto 7th and on my way. 

Zombies were everywhere. Wind usually keeps 'em down but the warmth does the opposite. The wind truly had me down to walking pace at times. This is why I like to get out, get back here, and be done with everything before the sun's down. 

I got back here, put things away, and went over to the "bountiful" dumpster where I got a lot of little pumps. A few minutes' research showed me the pumps aren't worth much at all, so I took 'em apart, kept the motors out which are going for what the whole pump goes for, kept also the battery contact springs which are neat, and the batteries. The batteries went into three bags and will get donated to the little free libraries tomorrow. The wire went into a bag which I put out for the bums. 

I was surprised to find that the dumpster was full after it had just been emptied at about 4AM this morning. It was full due to lots of boxes which hadn't been flattened. So once the coast was clear I went out there and cut 'em all up, and put my bag of scrap plastic parts from the pumps in too, with plenty of room to spare.  I feel if I'm going to use whoever's dumpster it is, I owe a certain amount of work making it better for them.