Ken came over last night and I got my check and we had a good ol' talk about this and that. He seemed a lot less tired than he was on Monday night. He said on Monday he'd driven just about a "full tour" around the Bay Area getting various things. That'll do it.
After he left, I got busy first cooking up a curry for dinner, then after eating I took the things Ken had brought over on Monday, apart. That was my work for the day although I'd also walked the bike trailer up to the bountiful dumpster and found some things that might be pretty good, I have them "ripening" upstairs until I get around to them.
After spending hours taking stuff apart, I did about an hour practicing on the shinobue and flute headjoint, trying to figure out the "secret" of doing octaves. Maybe the secret is to keep stubbornly practicing.
I went to sleep thinking I'd wake up around 2, and thus have time to either fix the bike or get walking. I did in fact wake up at 2:30 or so, then "rested my eyes" and woke up again at 5:30, too late to do anything.
This is OK, though, because tomorrow is Friday and I can go to the bank then.
I looked and the huge dumpster that the bums can't resist and dig through all night is gone. An "attractive nuisance" no longer there and now the bums will have to find something else to do. The scrap metal I put out at dawn sure disappeared quickly enough.
I'm still corresponding with my friend back in Hawaii. He's in Puna. It's too bad I have no interest in living on the Big Island, because I could actually save up the money to buy a place nearby if I really wanted to. It turns out he grew up there too. I got the impression he'd come to Hawaii for college. He always seemed to be "mainland" but then, that's the burden of being 100% Caucasian there. People will always think you're "mainland". I, myself, back in 2003, even effectively accused a 100% Caucasian guy of being "mainland" and his family had been in Hawaii for 3-4 generations. Back to Kingdom days.
I haven't heard from my aunt for a while, so I shot her a quick email asking how my maternal grandfather died. My understanding is he died pretty young, and although he was a shooting competitor, he died during a robbery of his men's wear store. Pasadena may have been becoming a bit rough even back then. It's a mordant subject, but I don't have a lot to talk with her about. There's not a lot in common with someone who grew up poor and started from nothing, and a mean old money-hoarder who'd rather cut off her hand than giving a starving person a sandwich.
And the country sliding into Nazism proceeds apace. On the radio there was coverage of a race for Senator or something, with one candidate Jewish and the other a guy who rants about "Jews, pagans, atheists running the country". Yet another voice calling for pogroms. It won't be Jews this time, though, at least not at first. And it won't be Muslims or Hispanics. It'll be LGBT people, being both a minority and having no powerful countries backing them.
If I could just get this headache to give it a rest! I tried coffee and aspirin and shots of Sriracha sauce and eating some chocolate and walnuts ... I finally got my ass going, walking with the bike trailer, to the bountiful dumpster at almost 10 at night.
Bountiful it was not, plus I dropped the little flashlight I was using - a bike light that the latching mechanism had broken on, demoting it to being a small flashlight. I had a feeling this might happen since it was shaped like a slippery little bar of soap. It's shining through a crack in the bottom of the dumpster as I type. At least I got an onion and a tomato from the veggie dumpster.
I walked back here, contemplating coming back out with another flashlight to check a couple dumpsters in the complex here, and also bringing out some reflective sheeting to put on this big metal pole that, although I'd put white sheeting on it, has been whacked a couple more times. I was just going to go into the karate school dumpster enclosure, noticing that oddly it was closed, when it opened and there was a zombie! Said zombie looked at the long pole with a nasty deck screw sticking out of it and my look of immediate hatred, and decided to say "Hi" and "Stay safe" while I looked at it icily and walked on.
My soul is warmed by the thought of having a WWII type flame thrower and using it on zombies, watching their undead bodies dance their final dance!
I checked the other dumpster - nothing, and got back in here. I'd just taken the bike trailer inside and was in the doorway to close the door when Crazy Chrissie drove by slowly, leering and saying something in Bum, in her rough, drug-damaged voice. I don't understand Bum, the language of bums, any more than an Eton boy could be expected to understand the strongest Scouse version of English.
The beauty of Bum, as a language, is that it's an example of efficiency and brevity. If someone's speaking Bum, you can be pretty sure they're (a) begging for something, (b) offering to sell you something which could be drugs or their body or something they just stole or (c) challenging you to a fight. This the non-speaker of Bum can look at the mumbling entity confronting them and tell which is which by observing whether they're a streetworn whore or proffering a little bag of powder or have their hand out and a much-practiced hangdog look on their face, or are using aggressive body language. There is no other need to communicate in Bum, as speakers of it are not wont to discuss politics or remark on the beauty of a sunset etc.
This I believe Crazy Chrissie was attempting to communicate a variety of (c). She's pissed off that I'm a decent person who lives in a decent place and does decent work.
But I've digressed. I'd been reminded that once it's dark it's really not safe out there and I should have been inside already, everything buttoned up tight. Once it's past working hours, so past 5 or 6 in the evening, all the "normals" have gone home so the scumsuckers figure it's their place now. Those who work late either scurry to their cars when done or walk, as quickly and directly as they can, to the bus stop or light rail station.
I still like my reflective tape/sheeting idea, and will plaster some on tomorrow, when it's daytime.
I got reading on r/preppers on Reddit and someone's describing something I worry about myself, a dog attack. On his dog, of course, but the dog almost turned and attacked him after he'd stabbed it a couple of times. He concluded that he should have gone for the neck instead of hindquarters right off, and that he needs to up his knife game and thinks he might start carrying a Leatherman K2. So of course I had to look up the Leatherman K2 and it looks dandy but there are some people saying the steel's not that good and there are other nitpicks.
So I ended up ordering the big yellow Victorinix rescue knife, which I wanted years ago and settled for buying this other rescue knife which I've not carried because it needs some filing down before it will be comfortable in the hand. But any rescue knife, I want to be something I'll carry every day even when I'm futzing around at the beach back in Hawaii and you can't be Victorinox for a knife you can futz around with in salt water, rinse off, give a spot of oil, and it'll be fine. But I probably need to up my own knife game, what with all the zombies around, and for some reason if something is yellow, it's perceived as not-dangerous.
The other rescue knife, still in its box, will probably get sold along with a bunch of other things I plan to sell at the ham radio swap meet. A person is allowed one sale a year there without having to have a resale number, and I'd probably do what I did once before - get there the night before, sleep or not-sleep, maybe have a Red Bull or two, sell and then go home. Assuming we're not deep into WWIII, I'll have a nice load of knives and various gadgets. Or I could make things up into lots and sell on Craig's List but there's something to be said about taking one load, selling everything off, and riding home with a big wad of cash.
Word to the wise: If there's something like a rescue knife you want, get that one rather than something that's second-best.
I also ordered the basic shinobue Mejiro sells on Amazon, and that will get delivered to the house and then to me. The price of the thing keeps going up, so I figured I'd better get one while it's still possible at all. That's almost $200 with the shipping so I'll be 'way down into the negative for saving this week, but that should turn around once I'm busking again. Or if WWIII starts I guess I'll regret not spending all my money.
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