The RESTRICT act

 I listed 10 things last night, and did a bit of practice on the shinobue. I'm pretty sure I can play a pretty good rendition of "Golden Chain" on the shinobue by next shakuhachi class, and have been listening to the temple choir singing it on YouTube daily to get to know the tune really well. If I know what it's supposed to sound like, I can learn to play it 100X faster. 

It'd be a gas to play the shakuhachi tunes I'm learning on the shinobue too, since the shinobue is not only easier to carry around but that little thing can be really loud which is why it's used in taiko. 

I remember reading years ago about a busker(?) or maybe just a homeless person who used their instrument as a noisemaker, who "terrorized" a particular street (I want to think Boulder, CO or somewhere in the Pacific Northwest) with a piccolo. I guess those can get really loud too. It might have been OK if the guy was a good player but it sound like he was not, and he could be heard all up and down the street which meant other buskers had tons of space taken from them to play their music. 

I don't want to be that kind of busker but I do like the idea of something that can be heard. 

My version of "Golden Chain" has part of it in the high register and then part in the lower register and might make quite the impression if I can play it smoothly and well. 

The ex-criminal-in-chief, Donnie Dumpo, is starting to get in actual legal trouble and of course his brain-dead followers are "rallying around him" according to the radio. It might be a lot fewer, who are being louder, though. And if they pull any terrorist stuff (and you know they will) that will harden the sane public's resolve against them and their idiotic leader. 

But there are new horrors: Something called the RESTRICT act, which is being described as Patriot Act 2.0, only worse. 10 years in prison, minimum, for using an app called WeChat. What if someone tricks you with a link, and suddenly there's a WeChat window on your screen? Now you're in for 10 years of hard time, and this is not unimaginable if the entity tricking you is your local police or sheriff because the local for-profit prison needs more bodies. 

People on Reddit are pointing out that if this goes through, the US will be far more authoritarian and unfree than China. It's already been pointed out that China is more free in a number of ways. A country that's lifting millions out of poverty while the US is throwing millions into poverty.... 

It's also being pointed out that the RESTRICT act means we'll end up with an internal passport system. I need to get my "Real ID" and renew my *external* passport, and keep working on that shakuhachi and shinobue as skills on those are all that will differentiate me from just another clueless American who wants out. 

This is what I don't get about the bums. You're out there on the street, eating literally hand-to-mouth as in the most you'll do is unwrap a burger and apparently getting enough ready-to-eat handouts to stay fed that way, plus drugs and alcohol. You've got tons of time on your hands. Why not develop some skill? There are tons of skills one can develop even if one is living in a pup tent. I offer the bums musical instruments all the time and there's never any interest. I suggest things like window washing or car detailing, and there's never any interest. 

Life is easy right now if you're a bum. But what if things get like they were when I was a kid in the 70s? No one shared food. There was little to go around and the concept of eating at a friend's place or a friend's mom caring if you were hungry was an utterly foreign one. There was no such thing as we kids going to a burger place after school, as there was no money to do so. I never tasted the burgers or fries served by a place right across from my high school. There was a WWII saying, "Food is a weapon" well, food was certainly a weapon in the Starving Seventies. 

Maybe that's one reason bums were super rare then. They'd have fucking starved. There were nothing like the amount of stray dogs and cats and chickens in Hawaii then. 

I was up in time to wash hair and shave and clean up and head out of here with 3 packages for the post office at a quarter to 4. It was cold and windy enough to keep the zombies at least somewhat holed up so that was nice. The deposit went fine and somehow I have a tiny bit more money then I calculated by a dollar or two. 

I went over to Whole Foods and got some sausages (which I suspect were made of chicken or turkey) and zucchini and peppers and a can of coffee since they didn't have any near-beer or seltzer water at all. In fact, the buffet I got my sausages etc. from was almost completely emptied out. There were two registered manned and long lines, which is becoming the norm there. I ate downstairs and thought about my day. 

I decided I'd do my Walmart run for the week now, even though I was certainly too late to get my TDAP shot at the pharmacy. So I rode down there and took my time looking through the store and putting things in my cart, and when I got to the last bit where the pharmacy is, I was surprised to see they were open. 

"You're open?" I said with surprise. "Oh yes, we're open until 7". And I wasn't too late to get my TDAP at all. I filled out a form and gave them my ID and Medi-Cal card, and the doctor fixed up the shot. Everyone in there was Vietnamese and I figured this would almost be like being in Vietnam and getting a routine vaccination, which even without insurance would be $10 or so and they people would be nice and take care of me. The doctor came out with his little cart and we went into the little booth and I got my shot which hurt a little but no biggie. I'm not saying I like getting shots but I've sure gotten used to them. And it didn't cost me a thing because I have Medi-Cal.

I paid for my stuff and even got some rejects from the CoinStar, 64c in change and a Mexican 1-peso coin that's pretty cool. 

It was a windy, somewhat wintry, ride back and I found a few books and got some bubble mailers at the Amazon place. I want to avoid that officious guy I ran into and I figure I never did for the longest time because he's in on Sundays and I'm basically never going through there on Sundays. 

I got back here, put things away, and took the step stool on the bike trailer and my "new" big orange bin and first took stuff from last night's food bombing to the base of the railroad signal (the other stuff got taken pretty quickly) and went and checked the medical place, finding some packing stuff mainly. 

I was back in here for the night a bit after 8, of course the equivalent of a bit after 11 in the before times. Late. 

Just put it in the pocket

 I practiced shinobue yesterday, as a separate session from the shakuhachi. I can at least play Twinkle now without referring to the fingering chart. I can also get the lowest note, a tricky one, to sound. What I love about the shinobue is not only its wide range but that it can get really loud. This is why the shinobue is one of the instruments in taiko, because it can be heard above the drums and tunes on the shinobue are used to actually lead the drummers. 

I'm really getting to like the little thing and am even considering getting a 2nd one. The one I have is a no. 8, and I could order a no. 6 which is lower and is also made by Aulos. The things are small enough to easily carry in my baggage when I return to Hawaii, and I love the idea of not only playing shakuhachi but also a "taiko" instrument. 

I practiced shakuhachi before bed, and noticed something. I'm lucky enough to have a nice little horizontal crease in my chin, a pretty deep one in fact. With the trumpet, I'd noticed that at times I got the mouthpiece placed just right on my mouth and high notes were easy. But it was not repeatable. There were no landmarks. I noticed last night with the shakuhachi, if I settled it into that crease just right, the tones were nice and clear and the highest note much easier. I couldn't just put the thing on my face, I had to settle it into that crack just right. Kind of like in the Army how they tell you to settle the rifle butt into the "pocket" of your shoulder. 

I woke up at 4 and realized - after the requisite hour to drink tea, have some aspirin, and get awake - that I have to get going because one package was for UPS and the local UPS closes at 6:30. So I packed everything and left at a quarter to 6, and went there first. A UPS guy out front said, "You're in the wrong place, FedEx is across the street" and I said, "There's actually one UPS box in here" as there was, in my teetering, 3-boxes-high stack on the bike trailer. 

Then I went up to the post office because that had to come next. That went OK, then I went to H Mart where I found the bum, sitting out front. I had a pop-top can of chili and put it next to them, "Here's a can of chili" and I think I got some kind of acknowledgement. Fair enough. I went in and got a can of BOSS coffee, then went up to the FedEx and dropped off my teetering pile of boxes. 

I went around back and found a pear. A nice big one though, perfect for a nice little bowl of pear chunks to go with Tom's breakfast. I went over to the chicken place with $7 in quarters because two chicken thighs are $6.50 or so. Now they're somewhere past $8 but the guy let me pay just the $7. Now I know. I ate the chicken at one of the tables and wrapped the biscuit up. 

I circled around the complex again thinking I'd give the nice buttery biscuit to the bum to go with the chili. But they were gone and the can of chili still sitting there so I took it. 

I stopped at Tom's and gave him the biscuit, the can of chili and a can of tomato sauce, and the pear. I brought the bike and trailer inside his place and we hung out and watch stupid TV shows for a while. Cheers and Wheel Of Fortune. It was kind of nice, though, talking and sipping on my can of coffee. 

I left after an hour or so and came back here, put things away, then loaded the bike trailer up with junky boxes that had accumulated in the trash enclosure, and dumped them over by the railroad tracks, across from the Coke place. Once dried out, they'll make decent fuel and the bums living around the bridge can probably use them for such. 

I came back in, got the motor start capacitor out of an HVAC unit the HVAC place had left out, and along with some nice packing boxes, found a huge box of Frosted Flakes with maybe a half-pound of them still in there so I ran that over to my food-deposit place and saw that the stuff I'd left was gone. I left the 'flakes there. 

I'm sure some bum will come along and be in 7th heaven because they have a 1/2 lb of Frosted Flakes they can eat out of the box with no more preparation than putting a paw in and digging them out. That's the mistake with leaving the can of chili for the bum - it would take actually popping the top off, finding a spoon somewhere, maybe finding a way to heat it up to lukewarm, perhaps by setting the can in the sun during mid-day. That's far too much preparation. And while cold chili is delicious to someone who's actually hungry, the bum is more hungry for cigarettes than anything else. 

Maybe I'm not so lazy after all.

 Last night I got all my jars and jars of fideo noodles as well as all that other stuff organized and bagged and boxed up and got it over to the place by Old Bayshore where hopefully families who need it will find it and use it. 

And I took apart a big arc lamp power supply. That thing was so heavy I had to take most of it apart in situ before getting the weight down enough to drag it into the office and then go through each sub-assembly carefully for good parts to sell. 

Then I listed 20 things on Ebay. 

Then and only then, practiced a bit on the shinobue and the shakuhachi. 

I woke up at 4, and it was raining. It cleared for  a bit and then started up again. The clouds are doing that spinning thing again so I figure it's like a few days ago - sit 'n' spin until they've dropped all the rain they've got. At least the food  I put out is all bagged up in new transparent plastic bags so the actual food will stay dry and people don't have to tear them open to see what's there, and the stuff in jars is sealed in the jar so they're OK. 

Because of this rain, I'll have to do a post office and FedEx run tomorrow, and go to the bank on Friday. That's fine by me because I don't need anything, and although I spent that extra $50 on the sleeping bag, I'm still keeping about $85 in the bank from my last pay check. 

 

The reason for the baby bust

 I listed 10 "large" things last night, and sure enough, today there are some more sales - for completely different things. But sales are sales. 

The food bombers came by last night again, just as it was starting to rain so I hustled the boxes into here and sorted the stuff. More sphaghetti and a lot of bags of macaroni and various noodles. Lots of beans and long grain brown rice. A couple of large bags of roast peanuts but salt-free. They're oily enough though that I might be able to put salt on them and have it stick. 

I need to get into the habit of bagging this stuff up and donating it, and I have just jars and jars and jars of this pasta that's like little short pieces of angel hair that I picked up maybe 4 years ago and ought to be cycled out. 

So I need to buy some "thank you" bags to put the stuff in because I can't get enough bags to deal with it all even if I ask for a bag at the grocery stores every time. 

I just tried to get plenty of sleep after that, and slept through the rain that poured down all day. 

A thought I've been developing is that the reason why my own family was one with 5 kids and families of 3-7 kids were pretty much the norm, was that a family would have one car, if that. Generally the dad drove the ca to work and back, it was used for a weekly big shopping trip, and for trips to the beach. On a day-to-day basis kids took the bus or walked or rode their bikes. So you had say, a family of 5 with one car. 

Now, it's one car per person, Dad drives his car to work then Mom needs an SUV because everyone else has an SUV and it's an arms race. Kids need cars as soon as they're 16 or whatever the minimum driving age is these days. You end up with one car per person. 

Cars are expensive to support. Much more so than supporting another person. The general rule is 2 people per room max., so even my little hole-in-the-wall apartment in Sunnyvale on Maude Avenue could have housed two people pretty comfortably. Same $800 a month rent, the only additional cost being for a bit more food, electricity maybe, things like clothes. I could have easily supported another person, but the one car I had took a huge part of my income and supporting another person *and* another car for that person would not have really worked. 

There's also the matter of sheer living space. I'm going to try to find some hard numbers but I'm fairly comfortable saying that each car takes up the "living space" of two people. The Santa Clara valley here had some of the most fertile soil in the country and now it's almost all under roads and parking structures. 

And you *must* have these things to participate in our society. Without a car you're a nobody. Without driving it around frantically day in and day out, to get and keep a job, to shop for groceries in a rush before you are ready to just about drop in your tracks for need of sleep at the end of your day, to the tire place for more tires, to the gas station for more gas, to the smog test and to the dealership for a newer car ... drive an old clunker and you risk losing that job that supports it all... 

So as cars come in, kids are going out. Hence the baby bust. People are making rational decisions. The car is essential to survival, the next generation is not. Those of us who think about it don't want to condemn another human being into the rush-rush-rush slavery of it all. 

I made sure the cooler I got yesterday was clean, then put my packages of spaghetti in it - 45 of them - and then took the jars and jars of "fideo" noodles and all the other stuff and bagged or boxed it up. It made two heavy loads of 100+ lbs each. I took each load out to a large parking lot by Old Bayshore so that people driving by, if they see the stuff and decide to investigate, have plenty of room to stop and park their car. The best place ended up being by the base of a big railroad signal pole, which most people will keep some distance from because most people know they're idiots and will pile their car right into it if they don't give it a wide berth. 

Coming in from the first trip, the people a few doors down had their large dog out roaming around so I went out with the 2nd load in the other direction. I deposited the stuff, and stopped on the way back to pick up two large pieces of firm foam that, once dried out, is really handy for packing. 

I heard a sound and turned and going right by was a zombie on a bike, with a 2nd, no doubt freshly stolen, bike. This is why I don't like being out and around after dark as it's zombie hours. The zombie rode on by, and I heard a sound in the direction it had come indicating possible zombie activity. So, it was zombies, who now knew I was there and were probably salivating over the thought of some nice fresh brains to eat, or the dog, which I've seen before and it not utterly out of control. 

I rode in past the dog, going wide around the front of the place and I had my long steel bolt in my hand ready to go, but they'd taken the dog in so I was able to get back into here without incident. Whew! 

It's probably the best policy to take the boxes of food as soon as I notice some have been left, go through them for anything I might want for myself, for Tom, or for the bum up at H Mart, and then just put the boxes by the railroad signal pole. The stuff is almost totally things that housed humans, not zombies, can use anyway. Canned stuff, things that need soaking and preparation like beans, or pasta that needs boiling. There was a good 25 lbs of pasta in this batch aside from the 100+ lbs of "fideo" pasta in jars. Just the kind of thing a Mexican grandma would love to cook up for her family. 

I suspect the "food bombing" happens here because the people who are working for the food bank get points somehow for leaving it *somewhere* and this is a convenient place. 

Gavin Newsom for President

 I got 10 "large" things ready to list but they took enough cleaning and neatening-up that by the time I was done it was something like 4AM so I saved them for today. Instead I put things I'd listed away, and got things out of the warehouse area that I need to ship. 

A customer is worried their HP X-Y display will be packed well. Due to its length, all I have that will fit it properly is a huge box. I'm gonna predict they'll be happy. And we'll lose money shipping it but I don't care. We make enough on other things. 

We were food bombed last night and I went right out and took the boxes in here. Result: about 30 lbs of spaghetti to add to my "prepper stores" and a box of stuff I'll put in a location sufficiently far from here. I have to get the zombies used to *not* finding anything attractive in here. 

On Reddit just now I have herd that Gavin Newsom is setting up a bunch of "tiny houses" for the homeless. Of course tons of criticism for not setting up enough for every homeless in California, but it's more than anyone else in his position has done. 

My only critique is that I'm sure they'll be made out of wood, or will be Tuff Sheds or something and what they really need to go is come up with a design that's made of concrete and very difficult to damage and impossible to burn. 

I looked it up last night and I'll be able to vote in the California primary in 2024 with no problem since it's in March. That's where my vote can make a difference. Voting in that election is more important than voting in the general election that I've been so bothered about. It'd be nice to be (somewhat) safely back in Hawaii by the time the General election is, and if the country goes full Fascist I'll have the move and so on all taken care of - travel restrictions might come into effect. 

Also, if I bump off a Nazi in Hawaii it will have a greater effect than bumping off a mainland Nazi. There will be fewer of them in Hawaii and so, one turned into a good Nazi will be a larger percentage of the whole. 

I took off at a quarter to 6 with my package, trash to throw out, and some of the donated food to give out. After the post office, I stopped at H Mart both to drop off packages and also to find the bum, who was sitting in front of FedEx anyway, and gave them a bag of 12 foil packs of cooked chicken and a can opener so they won't be daunted by cans. I got a "thank you" and I asked if they go on Reddit - they don't. I tried to tell them about a user named "MrsDirtbag" who was homeless and knows the system in and out and likes to help people. No interest, really. 

Next I stopped at Tom's and he was all involved watching "The French Connection" on broadcast TV so he couldn't pause it. I gave him a bag with 6-8 packages of sphaghetti and "angel hair". I know he uses spaghetti because practically everyone does, and everyone knows how to cook it. It's also something he can feed his hangers-on with on the cheap. 

I got back here and equipped the bike with the step stool and reacher stick and went back out to check the medical place. Not much there other than some packing stuff, but by the aquarium place there was a Coleman cooler left out, and I asked a lady whose business was next door if she was tossing it out, just to be safe. She said it looked like it was up for grabs due to its being left outside. The hinges on the lid are broken so that answered it, but I said cheerfully that it will work great for what I have in mind. 

What I have in mind is, the spaghetti I have is in plastic packaging and mice love to chew right through that stuff. If I keep the spaghetti in the cooler, mice aren't going to get in. 

I got back here and put another thing on Craig's List. Wow are things slow.

Happy Birthday To Me...

 After listing 20 things on Ebay last night, I just played the shinobue a bit and decided to go right to bed, with the idea of getting up at about 1, and doing my planned visit to Central Computers to get some canned air to clean out my printer, and a bunch of other things I'd planned. 

I actually got up at 2:30 and decided I had time. And, I did. I left at a quarter after 3 and went to Whole Foods for a bottle of coffee, use the loo, and get $100 cash back. 

Then I rode for Central Computers on Stevens Creek, which was a bit of a slog being both very mildly uphill and upwind. I got there in plenty of time. They had canned air (expensive now) but they don't sell printer toners, and they had a lot of other interesting computer stuff. Kind of like Fry's in their heyday. Great place. 

Next I went to Starving Musician and looked around just for old times' sake. Interestingly, they had about 4 of the same Schilke trumpet mouthpiece I have, so someone must be promoting it as a good one. *I* think it is, but I figured it was as far as a teacher would go to put their student on a 3C rather than the universal 7C. 

Then I rode on the sidewalk up the other side of Stevens Creek and found Hamilton Euromarket right there. I looked all through it but most of what they had are a no-no on my diet. I ended up getting a small tub of black olives and a piece of smoked ham sort of like prosciutto.  Those cost me about $30 though. 

Next I backtracked and rode over to Mitsuwa Marketplace. I got a little plate of sushi for about $11 and ate that, including almost all of the rice which is not a good thing to do on my diet. Then I went in and looked around the book store, looked at the Genki Japaneses language learning books, and finally bought a fine ballpoint pen that writes really well for $4, for my tax forms and also for Customs forms. 

I went through the market and ended up getting some Xylitol gum on sale and a box of Hoy Hoy roach traps because warm weather is coming, and they were a couple dollars less than I'm using to paying. 

I rode back and had time to go to Stevens Creek Surplus because I thought they might have some of those wool "commando sweaters" and they do, but they're very expensive - like $50-$80 expensive. There was one that was $30 but I decided to skip it. 

Next I stopped at Big-5 and amazingly, they had the Coleman "North Fork" sleeping bag in stock. So I got one, saving be damned. I decided on the ride home that I'll stow it away in the loft and toss the one I'm using now and get the new one out on my birthday in September. That day will mark only one more year until I can leave for home.  My system is, I get a sleeping bag and sleep in it for a year or two and then when it gets funky, time for a new one. I've generally able to get a new one for $30 or $40. This one was $49 c'est la guerre and all that.

I found a few books on the way back and that was about it. It was sunny but cold with a cold wind. It struck me that the busking might be rather good around Santana Row, at least at one of those corners where masses of people wait for the light to change, and that would be on public, non-Santana Row property. But even with the trumpet, I'd not dream of doing it now, it was too cold and windy out there. The busking season is really only half the year here. I was out until something like 8 tonight, the equivalent of being out until 11 in the before times.

I got back and had ham and olives and the rest of the bottle of coffee and tea, and looked at the latest news online. I'd been thinking while out riding that I ought to look up life expectancy in the US by income quintile and there *is* a correlation with the poorest living the shortest lives. My parents, having died in their early 60s, would have been off the left side of the cute little chart. 

In fact, when I hit age 52, I figured "Well, here goes; I've got 10 years left". But later I found my aunt on my mother's die was still alive, my mother's sister. In her 90s and sitting on her millions like Smaug the evil dragon and brimming with vim, vigor, and nastiness. And my uncle on my father's side, my father's brother, made it to his late 70s before he kicked off. He was fond of quoting Ayn Rand so he left the world a better place. But the point is, I should be on my last 2-3 years of life if I'm just looking at my parents, but looking at relatives, I can expect to make at least another 10 years, to age 70, with a good chance of making it to 75 or 80. 

I also, as a good reader of r/collapse, actually read the post about how the latest IPCC report/NASA report has us with a 10 degrees C. heating of the Earth "baked in". In other words, even if we do nothing, absolutely nothing. Even if all we evil humans were to suddenly die, or sit and photosynthesize like plants, or hop a bus to Mars, or anything, 10C is our future. Not 1.5, not 3, but a terrifying 10 degrees C warming and I believe this is by the end of the century which means by 2050 it should be quite horrible. 

Well, I return home in 2024, and living to 2030 ought to not take much effort, but if I live to be 75 or 80, I can expect to see 2040 anyway, and that might be bad enough. The thing I've been seeing over these last few years, though, is that the equator or near it might be the best place to be. People are hearing about global warming and thinking they should head North or South, and those are exactly the places that are getting insane heat, firestorms, huge floods, all sorts of problems. Meanwhile back in Hawaii people are talking about things like, "Too bad the Leonard's truck doesn't come out to X any more" and such minor things. 

And yes people are leaving Hawaii, and California, and other smart places. And moving to stupid places like Texas and Florida, and yes, Louisiana. That last is one of the states where the male life expectancy is below age 70. At or less than full retirement age. And falling. It will get interesting when the life expectancy is less than age 62, which it will fall to in a few years. 

Myself being in the lowest quintile, I should expect to die by 70 or so, but although income-wise I am poor, there are things people in the lowest quintile love to do, consider essential to a proper life, that I do not engage in. Things like going in and out of jail/prison, being covered with tattoos, smoking cigarettes and anything else that can possibly be lit and inhaled, casual violence, and eating an utterly horrible diet. I may be poor but I'm not that kind of poor. 

My poor is much more like that of Japanese people in Hawaii who were poor but would save money, plan for the future, and to whom things like having tattoos, taking drugs, and engaging in any kind of crime whatsoever is a deep, deep shame. Those folks are a big factor in why Hawaii has the highest life expectancy of the US states. 

Food bombing

 Someone, or someones, have been doing what I call "food bombing" here for a while. Every day or two it seems, they're dropping off boxes of canned goods, bags of rice and beans, even a bag of wheat berries and one of tortilla flour and packages of spaghetti noodles in this last batch. 

I'd taken to looking the stuff over and taking it out of the cardboard boxes and setting up a sort of "display" so that anyone even driving through can see that there's free food. I'd been kind of hoping the guys next door might take at least most of it, as they've got families. But they're probably making decent money and have a bit of pride. 

So it happens that once I got into my practice before bed, I heard some noises and a zombie was picking over the cans and packages. Except this is a really crazy, erratic, drugged-to-the-gills seeming zombie. It took forever for the thing to decide what to take (all of it) and now the damned thing is loaded up with at least 20 pounds of canned and bagged goods, and thus not inclined to travel far. 

Instead the disgusting thing is wandering around the parking lot, doing strange little dances, and at one point even settled down right outside the shop here so I had to stop practicing and be quiet. It's just wandering around, doing stupid little dances, around in the parking lot. I was able to get a bit more practice in while it settled down against the fence but it doesn't seem capable of settling down for long. 

The solution is pretty obvious. When I got back from my post office and FedEx run, I emptied the bike trailer and then loaded up a tube TV Ken had left here, and put it out by Bayshore because I didn't want to keep looking at the thing and out on the main road there's a much greater chance it will get picked up. It would have been pretty trivial for me to come back, load up the food, and put it out by Bayshore too. I will have to start doing this. As soon as I see a food dump, take the stuff and put it out by Bayshore where hopefully someone with a job, a family, and a car can scoop it up. If zombies get the stuff at least they won't get in the habit of coming into the complex here. 

I'd been planning to get up early enough to ride over to Central Computers in Santa Clara to buy some canned air to give my printer a really good cleaning, but that zombie, as the sun came up and it warmed up a bit, started acting even crazier, tearing off its jacket and dancing and staggering around. Finally the guys next door showed up and they'd not have any more compunctions about whacking a zombie than I would, and they have their cars and work vans to look out for so I felt OK about going to sleep. 

I woke up around 2 but felt I should get more sleep and nix my Saturday plans, and sent back to sleep until 5. It's sunny outside but cold and windy and wintry still. But Sunday is even more relaxed, traffic-wise, than Saturday, and the places I want to go are open on Sundays also. And the zombie was gone. 

It's nice having the guys next door around. Right now as I type they've cooked some ribs or something and are in their place, eating and drinking beer and having a good time. The main social division in this area is, You're a worker, or you're a bum. Workers are good and bums are, needless to say, bad. 

The thing with bums is, they are nothing but societal black holes. Kindnesses are never returned, but the bum you are foolish enough to do any favor for, responds by calculating you're "weak" and more can be taken from. 

This is probably why you see bums who have been on the street for years and decades, it never having occurred to them to find something to actually *do* like wash windows or cars, play music or make some kind of handicraft, or in some way become a being at a higher level than a rat or a raccoon. 

You'd think it would be boring, not teaching oneself to *do* something. But rats and raccoons are easily amused, I guess, and sitting on one's rump and being handed things - interspersed with occasional stealing missions - is entertainment and life-purpose enough, it seems. 

A more scientific basic division of society here might be those who would pass or not pass a Voight-Kampff test. We actually have a real-life one now, it's the functional MRI. 

Why is a worker a worker? Because they have empathy and thus are bound by the social contract. They work because they were raised to work, to cooperate with others. They were raised by a caring family and know they will go on, if possible, to raise a family in turn. They show up at work for the money, of course, but also to not let their co-workers down. They feel their place in society in the same way I felt, as a child, the comfort of my family members around me, and later, in Army barracks and rooming houses and college classrooms and work-places, the comforting presence of others around me. A single, atomized human has no more meaning than a single ant. 

But you have those kids who don't have this, are thieves and con-artists from a young age, they become the petty thieves and fire-starters that are a disproportionate problem in high schools, and are never able to fit in in a job and if they get one, don't last long. The empathy part of the brain isn't there or isn't working. Other causes can be traumatic brain injury, or drug use. People who are marginal in the first place tend to burn out the empathic part of their brains due to these causes more than more normal, well-adjusted people. 

I told Ken once, some years ago, "You grew up nice and normal and middle-class, and you assume everyone grew up nice and normal and middle-class!" in my exasperation at his interacting with the various bums who inhabited the parking lot here when we moved in. His pandering to the scumbags cost him a lot of money as it delayed our move in by at least a month or two and we had to pay extra rent to Tom who owns the old building. 

It's difficult for well-adjusted, financially comfortable people to understand feral bums. So they set up all these charities for "the homeless" and the hardcore, empathy-circuits-burned-out, scumbags make a living out of this. The majority of "the homeless" are people who run into a hard place, couch-surf or live in their car or bunk up in their office or something, and get back on their feet. They don't suddenly stop showering or shaving, start taking hard drugs, cove themselves with poke-and-stick tattoos, and start stealing everything that isn't nailed down. 

So these Good Samaritans set up soup kitchens and day centers and "tiny home" villages and things, and the bums trash the places, burn stuff down, deal hard drugs, kill each other, etc. It's all good fun to those operating on the level of a rat. 

Those who are still at the human level who run into a hard patch and try using services like homeless shelters have a very hard time because of this. They're suddenly expected to co-exist with the lowest of the low and that's an impossibility. This is why ideally there would be a ranking system where the just-ran-into-a-hard-patch homeless would be able to be housed decently while they get back on their feet, and the scumbags would go to what I call "Happy Fun Camps" where it's free junk food and all the drugs they want. Said Camps would have housing made of cement with stainless-steel combined sink-toilet things like in jails, and in general the housing very durable so the inmates would not be able to burn it down. 

There are a few structures in place for the decent homeless. Gyms are cheap these days, storage units not bad, living in a car or a van is engaged in by enough people that there's tons of advice online. Rooming houses like I lived in in Hawaii in the early-mid 80s are another way for decent people to stay off of the street. I suppose one of my old rooms might be $400 or $500 a month now, given they were $150-$175 back then. There were rules like no smoking/drinking/drugs, no overnight visitors, it was generally lights out at 10, and you had to mop the common floor and clean the kitchen one day a week. Druggies and party animals and scummy people avoid these places like the plague. They're great for normal people who need a safe, stable, clean place to live though. 

When I lived in them, people there were getting by on maybe $500 a month, or even less. At first I was taking home something like $350 a month. $150 rent meant $200 a month for everything else. Of course no one had a car. Once I started making $5 an hour, I could save $200 a month if I was careful. The thing is, this is how decent people live if they don't make a lot of money. They're not out stealing bikes and living in the park and drinking 40's for breakfast. 

Due to Hawaii being a largely Asian place, you could be very poor and still be a decent person. Mainland culture seems to expect someone who's financially poor to be an utter scumbag. 

I guess I've come up a bit

 Friday night here just late, so it shows up as Saturday. I got up in time to pack all the things that needed to be packed and was out the door at 6 (it's staying light outside until past 7 now) and delivering them went fine. I got a cucumber in H Mart and two chicken thighs at the chicken place and ate those outside. 

I got some veggies behind H Mart and put some in a bag for Tom but he wasn't in so I left the bag hanging on his doorknob. There was a biscuit from the chicken place too so I hope he got the stuff. 

Some more things about last night's shakuhachi club meeting: Rinban actually has a Monty Levinson shakuhachi, one of his ones that don't have a root end but since they're made by him is sure to be a good player. He insists on using his humble PVC one in the class though. We did all right on Nori No Miyama and he wants us to work on this Golden Chain song, which we worked on the first two lines of. So I have a goal for the next month, to work on that song, to "show my work" at the next meeting. Also, Rinban can blow tones longer than any of us by far. I guess he's only been playing the shakuhachi for 20 years, or maybe even 30 or 40, as he's my age and say he first dabbled in it at age 20 which is not unimaginable at all. 

I was thinking today, about how I can understand a bit of Spanish but I've not learned the language fluently because in the caste system here on the mainland, I would actually drop in social position by knowing it well. That led me to ponder how my siblings and I have done with regard to this caste system. 

When we were middle, perhaps "lower upper middle class" as Orwell put it, the expectation would have been that the oldest was to have been a writer, my older brother probably an engineer, myself an engineer or a scientist but it was hoped an artist, and the younger two would "marry well". Once we became really poor, my oldest sister was able to just squeak through without too much of the stain of poverty clinging to her, and indeed was able to marry well. 

The rest of us were firmly on the school-to-prison-or-welfare pipeline that had been hastily established in the late 1970s. As it was, my older bro went into the Navy and was a tool and die maker and was able to work for Grumman afterward, apparently until he retired. The youngest married well, as well as one does when working-class, marrying a guy who worked in a warehouse but who eventually joined the police and is now a police chief on Maui. The next youngest went into the Army, married well with regard to finances but poorly with regard to sanity as the guy was nuts. Then she married a loser who never worked but she got in with a credit-card company, nagging people for money and then supervising people who nag people for money, and it's a good fit. Past that I don't know, but credit card companies always need bossy people like her so I figure she's OK. 

As for myself, I'm the one out of us five (and not one of the two out of us five who actually graduated high school) who fell for the college scam. Thus was wasted the best part of my young adulthood. Oh, and the hangover! Paying off those student loans! I got about half of them paid off on my own and then a small inheritance from my grandfather enabled me to pay off the rest and buy my first car. 

Because I have the most formal education (getting into college even if you're a HS dropout with a GED isn't hard if you just take the SAT) I'm of course the poorest. I'm rich in "street smarts" though, at least I like to think. 

Because I'm the one who knows how to be self-employed. Yes I work for Ken now but I do that because it's relatively simple and there's a lot I don't have to worry about. But I could easily rent a storage unit, buy a new used laptop, rent a small office to work out of, and start up on my own. My knee-jerk reaction to "I need money" isn't "I'd better find someone to work for" but rather, "I need to go out and make some money". 

My father had always talked about being self-employed although I don't think he'd have been able to make it work - he was really bad at managing money. My older sister had tried, has qualifications and skills out the wazoo as a jeweler, but it's hard in a business everyone wants to be in, like jewelry. I really feel for her, as she did such wonderful designs and she'd enter pieces in design contests and the winner would always be the nephew of the judge or something. 

The thing is, by the time I was 18 there were three possible futures for me. Some scut job like cleaning hotel rooms or being a janitor, for life. Going into crime and ending up in and out of the penal system. Or a lifetime on welfare, like so many of the people I did odd jobs for as a teen. 

I tried to break out of this bleak future by going to college, and at least it got me out of falling down one of those three paths. 3 years of living like a monk, 10 grand in student loans (early 80s) and some years paying those off. So for a tiny nudge upward in caste I had to pay quite a bit in money and in time. 

Getting into the sport I did for a while was another expensive - more in time than in money - small nudge upward. It taught me a bit about buying and selling because people were always buying and selling equipment. And after I was done with it, I just didn't want to work for anyone else any more, at least not in the usual awful, demeaning, master-slave relationship a job implies. 

There's quite a difference between being someone who, desperate for a living, has to go around hoping some business needs someone to sweep their floors or clean their bathrooms, and someone who knows how to buy and sell things, make things they hustle, play music, or a bit of all of those things. The person sweeping floors might make more money, but the hustler is a bit more free. A hustler doesn't have to worry about everyone being happy with them, all the time. A hustler can stand on their own two legs and say, "I don't need to do that" and "I don't want to" etc. You can't do that as an employee. 

So unlike my parents who were both nothing if they didn't work for someone else, and unlike my siblings who have had to work for someone else or be good hausfrauen, I've actually moved up a bit. Not a lot, as a lot of movement is not possible in a class system as rigid as ours. Just a bit. 

I'd not mind so much being a writer, but everyone writes for free these days. Newspapers from rags to the big ones don't need reporters any more. No one needs problems solved or data gathered an analyzed as an engineer or scientist would do, so that's out. In art, it's all been done. In music, too, but at least music feels good. So that's what my mind is to be turned to, scrounging around finding things to resell if I care to do that back home for a while, playing music, and maybe writing things for free occasionally. 

Shakuhachi club meeting

 After dealing with Ken and the bunch of stuff he brought in, I listed 10 things on Ebay and got my usual practice in. 

I got up in time to clean up and have my tea and aspirin and leave here at 4. After putting my check in the bank I went to Whole Foods and had some pork, beans, and mushrooms and a fizzy water and then walked over to Target where I got a number of things, then to Cost Plus Imports mainly for tea but I got a couple of other things too. 

I walked back and looked at the time and realized I had to get going, to go to the shakuhachi club meeting which starts at 7. It was something like 20 after 6. 

I rode over to Japantown and since I'd forgotten to bring some gum to chew to clean my mouth before playing, I got some gum in Nijiya and started chewing as I went over to the temple. It was starting to rain so I locked the bike up around the side of the building where it seemed a bit sheltered from the rain. 

The meeting went pretty well. I played Nori No Miyama a bunch of times, then Rinban wanted us to work on Golden Chain which has notes you're supposed to bend downward a half-step so we struggled through the first two lines of that one. Then he was ready to work on something else but wanted suggestions so I suggested Shinran Sama which we were able play fairly well. "Ready for a concert" Rinban said which was far from the truth. 

I'd say we sounded a lot less awful than the last time but that  there were fewer of us, there being just Rinban, myself, one of the ladies, and Keven the saxophone-background guy. I put a bug in his ear about buying my trumpet too. Old Kevin got himself a Shakuhachi Yuu and even had a fancy cover for it "from Amazon" but during the playing had just played the PVC one he'd started with. 

It had stopped raining when I went out, and I rode home then unloaded things and went back out with the trailer and step stool to check out the medical place, but only found a couple boxes for shipping and a bunch of bags of corn chips to put out for the bums. 

The storm that spun

 Well, the latest storm came in from the direction of Hawaii, stopped right over this area and sat there and spun, wringing out a good amount of rain and high winds, all through last night. It's over with now although the tiny remnants of clouds are still rotating a bit. They're calling it a cyclone of some type. 

I got out the shinobue last night and worked with it a bit, struggling through "Twinkle" in the shinobue book, then called that enough and practiced the shakuhachi about an hour. I had trouble with the high notes but kept at it and eventually was getting them kind of OK. 

I can see why the character in the anime "Nitaboh" had a trusty shinobue to play when his shamisen was down for repairs. It's small and easy to carry around, can play a large body of music, and can get plenty loud. 

I got going at about 5:30 with a ton of boxes loaded onto the bike trailer and the smaller stuff in two Whole Foods bags. Post office first and then FedEx, except I stopped in front of the H Mart (I have this theory that someone thinking of nicking my bike might hesitate if it's loaded down with a huge trailer load of boxes) and went in and got a cucumber. I saw the bum, and told them about the Bill Wilson Center and they were like, "Meh" they just asked for "a few dollars or a cigarette". 

I dropped off the stuff at FedEx, got a few boxes around back, checked out EMT training place where I got a lot of Datrex emergency rations and another box or three, and got back here. Unloaded everything and took off again for the medical place where I found a couple of things. 

 

Nothingberder

 Today was the day Mr. End-Stage Syphilis himself, Donnie Dumpo, was fussing and crying that he'd be arrested. It's turned out to be a big nothingbuger, or as Donnie would say it, a nothingberder. 

Last night after taking some stuff apart to list, I made a lovely bowl of beef soup with fresh shiitake mushrooms and after that I really didn't do anything. I practiced a bit but I was really falling asleep so I went to bed and woke up today around 5. 

Nothing about Dumpo in the news. Instead it's about Xi visiting Putin and Fumio Kishida visiting Ukraine. China's *appearing* to cozy up to moscovia but in reality I'm pretty sure they're just doing so to "keep their enemies closer" and look out for an opportunity to get Mongolia and Siberia back. Fellow Asian countries. They'd not want anything to do with those pale-ass orcs than anyone else does. And, sadly, they don't give a shit about what the orcs are doing to the Ukrainians but then why should they? Not their kuleana as we'd say back home. 

I can seriously see China, if they give muscovia "military aid", their sending them clapped-out old shit that doesn't work worth a damn. Get rid of cold crap at premium prices and when more ocs die, say "Sorry! (not sorry)" 

Last night I got the ol' shinobue out, and looked around and found I'd been smart and not gotten rid of the book by Marco Lienhard on how to play it. For a little plastic Aulos (Japanese brand) flute it's a neat little thing. It doesn't *look* great because as it comes new, it's very plasticky looking with a shiny finish and these horrid plastic "bindings". 

I've gone about halfway in making it look a bit better by satin-finishing it and trimmed away the plastic "bindings" and replaced the center one with black hemp cord. I actually need to re-do that one because I have plastic tape underneath, and do the ones on the ends and then treat the bindings with Tru-Oil which will make them very durable. 

I'm glad I've kept the little screamer because both Marco Lienhard and Markus Guhe play both shakuhachi and fue/shinobue, and if the shakuhachi is easy to carry around, the shinobue is even more so. The book by Lienhard has a lot of neat beginner songs in it also. 

Trying a few things

 Last night I got out one of my two Yamaha flutes and carefully oiled all the little places that need oil once in a while and treated the pads with "pad juice". 

I'd gotten out my "Complete Flute Player" books and started messing around with the basic fingering chart in the first book. But wow, the low notes are hard, I could not do them. People say the shakuhachi is hard but the concert flute is probably harder. I put the thing away. 

I got the trumpet out and tried a few things on that. I can get a good tone, but as always, high notes sound like a small animal being tortured. Plus, I may be able to get a good tone but I'm sure it could be heard that my heart is not in it. I put the trumpet away. 

I settled in for another episode of "The Century" with Peter Jennings and practiced on the shakuhachi. It may not be as loud as a trumpet, or as easy to play Western popular tunes on as a concert flute, but it's where my heart is and if I'm gonna busk, it looks like that's what I'm gonna busk with. 

At least I've already bought some dark stain to make my plastic flutes look a bit more bamboo-like, and I also have a Dremel tool around here that I think should work well for adding details to the designs - the Shakuhachi Yuu may be an excellent student instrument but it's kind of crudely molded and could use some work to make the root end look more like a root end. 

I also got the "enhanced" Yuu out and played it a little. I think I'll need to develop more as a player to really appreciate it but I got better sounds out of it than the last time. 

I started in on packing things and my printer would not print at all, jamming the paper every time. I looked the problem up on google and found a youtube video for a different printer of the same make with the part I needed to clean in a different place, but it was obviously the same mechanism. I cleaned that, and the printer fed the paper again, but it would still jam. I remembered a day or two ago taking a piece of paper that was jammed, out, and a little slice of it missing. So I opened it up again and it was in there, under the toner cartridge. So now the printer works again and I was able to pack 14 things that were small enough to not need the trailer to take them to the post office and FedEx. 

I started out my usual way, through the parking lot that has FedEx (but the hub for drivers, I can't drop off packages there) because I put my trash in their dumpsters. I noticed something lying in the driveway as I turned in. I went around to go pick it up, and it was an interesting thing: a piece of thin wall steel pipe that had been hammered flat on one end, to hold a Stanley knife blade. A rather nasty weapon. I noticed far ahead of me, a zombess with a bike and trailer, and surmised this lovely playtoy had been dropped accidentally by the ghoulish gal. I hammered the knife blade end sideways etc until I got the blade out, put the pipe in my bike bag and the blade in the little pocket, and pretty casually rode past the zombess, and put the parts of this thing in the dumpsters along with my trash and rode blithely on. 

With the warming weather, the zombies are becoming more active again, and I saw a couple more that I pointedly ignored. 

Marty Levinson had sent *back* the $3 I'd sent him, telling me in a handwritten note to give it to a homeless person or something. So when I stopped at H Mart, I looked for the bum and there they were, huddled in a corner in front of the bagel shop. I said I had a few dollars for 'em from a friend, and handed over the $3. Of course this led to their asking for "another dollar or two". I asked if they were finding the smartphone I'd given them useful and they said they have, but I've not seen them use it at all. I'm pretty sure it's long gone. 

This is why the bum will stay a bum for the rest of their (probably) very short life. They have no concept of the social contract. No kinship with other humans, who are just seen as a sort of vending machines. Would never pass a Voight-Kampff test. 

I went in and got things, including a little package of dried scallops that was something like $20.  Tomorrow will be a rainy stay-in day, and Wednesday I'll be loaded down with packages and not able to shop in H Mart. And Thursday I'll go downtown to visit the bank and will have my shakuhachi club meeting in the evening so I won't be able to go to H Mart again until the weekend. 

Around back they were throwing out lots of good stuff including shiitake mushrooms so I took some for myself and then loaded up a Walmart bag for Tom with vine tomatoes, shiitakes, green beans, a bit of cauliflower, etc. 

I rode over to Tom's and dropped it off but he wasn't able to hang out and talk because he had an electrician over working on the lights. At least he said thanks and like it meant it, for the veggies. 

I got back here, found some bubble wrap in one of the dumpsters around here, got rid of a big box by putting it out by the road where someone will probably take it (there's an SUV for sale out there too) and then was in for the night. I weighed the dried scallops out and put 5, 1-oz. bags of them in the fridge and had an oz. to eat along with some cheese and a cucumber, and they're pretty good. 1 oz. of them is a pretty decent serving. 

Gem & Mineral Show

 I had had only 4 hours of sleep before yesterday, so I went to sleep at 3AM instead or something like 8AM. I woke up at 5AM or so and had trouble going back to sleep but eventually did, and woke up at 11:30. 

I've said to Ken a few times that I'd really like to go to one of the gem and mineral shows and how, years ago, I'd even tried to go to one in Hayward and could not find it for the life of me. So on a whim yesterday I did a search and what do you know, the big gem and mineral show for this county is this weekend. So I'm going to catch some of the 2nd day. 

I practiced last night needless to say. Just on the shakuhachi though. I want to go over my two Yamaha student flutes with *very* careful applications of key oil, and go over their pads with some stuff called "pad juice". I think "The Complete Flute Player" by John Sands is just the kind of course of study I need to get out there busking. And I really want/need to, because my bank account has been taking a beating lately. Not only my spending, but if Ken won't get off his duff and pay the $900 we owe the landlord by the end of this week I'll go and pay it myself to keep us out of the dog house and he can just pay me back. But I'll need to be paid back before April 15th so I can pay my taxes. I'm really hoping it doesn't come to that.

I'm amazed to see it dry outside. Not sunny, but at least not raining. I got going around 1:30 or 2, rode over to Whole Foods and got some roast beef and a near beer, then started for the bus stop (didn't want to take my bike down there) and got almost to Cahill street before I remembered I needed to put some money on my clipper card so I doubled back, did that, then headed out again where I had to wait 15 or 20 minutes for the bus that was there to head out. 

Once I got to the right stop I had to walk maybe a mile in, then it was pretty easy to find. It really only took me an hour to go through the thing. Among other things I saw lots of peridot (the stuff my childhood green beach was made of) from the Middle East that appears to be water worn, like from a river, and some faceted pieces. And I saw a fair amount of malachite, my older sister's favorite mineral. But none that jumped out at me as beautiful-gotta-have-it. 

I was actually hoping to find more people selling tools and things, and thought maybe I'd find some neat thing for drilling little holes in seashells. I guess all that's online now. I didn't buy anything except for a little "Dodge Trucks" coin for 50c I think Ken might get a kick out of since he drives a Dodge. 

I stopped at Walmart on the way home and got a bunch of things, then rode the bus back to Diridon Station. I walked back through the station for a change and there were big banners up saying there's no weekend CalTrain service because they're working on the electrification. 

By this time I was hungry again and went into Whole Foods for another near beer and some chicken wings. Then I just rode back here, getting very lightly sprinkled on at times. 

Kooky good deals at Han Kook

 I got a lot earlier start today. Mainly, instead of doing these things before heading out, I did 'em the night before, such as wash head/hair thoroughly, polish shoes, pack packages, round up trash to go out, etc. 

So I was out of here at around 2:30 or so. I went to Whole Foods and got chicken and a near beer and then a coffee, and hopped the bus over to Sunnyvale. I got more stuff at Han Kook market including some beef that might be really good, and some paper towels that although they were in separately wrapped rolls, are as cheap as I've been paying at Walmart. 

I even lucked out on getting pretty quick buses both ways. The way out it was a regular #22 but the driver must have been in a hurry because he was really gassing it. On the way back I got talking with an acquaintance and he was taking the #522 so I waited and got on that one with him. 

I'd also shipped 4 FedEx packages at the FedEx that's not too far from Whole Foods so that's a useful thing. 

On the return trip, I of course stopped at the Amazon place to pick up bubble mailers. I've been doing this for a few years now and at one point an employee, a nice Filipino guy, even offered to save them for me. He was not able to, but the offer was very nice. All the others didn't care one bit. The mailers say right on them to recycle them. So today there were two Firsts. The first time I've seen a black employee there, and I was made to notice this by said black employee leaving the counter to come over and harass me about taking bubble mailers out of the trash. 

I said I'd been doing this for 3 years now without a problem, and he said he'd never seen me before and he's been working there 3 years, himself. (I'm thinking, Bullshit.) I said I've never seen *him* before. He then said something about my obtaining the addresses of buyers and I said the only addresses that show up are the ones for the Amazon locker there and I peel the address labels off. He ended up saying, after I said I'd never seen him before, that he "must be new here" and pretty much shut up. 

Certain people get given just a little bit of authority and become little tyrants over their microscopic domain. I just hope he keeps hassling people because (a) it loses business for Amazon which I'm in favor of and (b) it will get him fired which is good because he most he should be allowed authority over is a push broom sweeping the streets for Groundwerx. 

At least back in Hawaii I won't have to even pretend to like popolos which is what we call black people, and while whites commit a large number of crimes, popolos are in a whole 'nother league. No one pretends to like them there. I remember when the George Floyd business was going on, Asians showed up in large numbers at the protests and in return the blacks declared open-season on Asians. 

I did a final visit to Nijiya for market things and then back here. Now I can take it easy to morrow and stay comfy outside while it rains outside. 

Also, the weather warming up and St. Patrick's day sneaking up on me has got my thinking of busking. So I've only got 6 months of the year when it's worth it to go busking, from April 1 to October 1, but April 1 is only about 10 days away. 

I am nowhere near ready for busking with the shakuhachi yet. It's not just that I'm playing a plastic flute; after all, I just got some wood stain and I'm pretty sure I can make that thing look an awful lot like actual bamboo. It's that I don't sound good. I'm "puffy", and I was there long ago on trumpet and it didn't sound good on trumpet either. And I have nearly zero repertoire. 

So if I want to get some extra money in, it's either pick up the trumpet again, or, I thought today, I have a plan that might make some sense. I may have sold my fancy flute, but I have three others that seem to be perfectly serviceable. And while I got into grinding away on practice routines in the Trevor Wye book, going to the shakuhachi club meeting was a bit of a revelation. 

There were no exercises other than doing scales to warm up and not "we'll stay in otsu because you're all beginners" nope, it was all the way up to the top and back down and then again a time or two. No excuses, you will play the full scale. And then on to songs, and if you couldn't get this or that note to sound, well tough because that's what we're doing. 

I might have kept grinding away on silly exercises for a year before going as far as we've gone in two meetings. In flute and in shakuhachi, I feel I was in a rut. But not with old Rinban Sakamoto, Here's the Jodo Shinshu repertoire, and we're gonna play it. Try to keep up! 

And it struck me today, that yes I can get a decent sound on the trumpet but what if I got out of my rut on the flute? Forget old Trevor Wye and his 1600s Elizabethan tunes, I'm never going to be a concert flutist anyway. 

I realized I have my Complete Flute Player books, all 4 of them, that use popular music like Beatles songs from the start and all through. Things a busker can play and people will know. And I'll still be using flute-type breathing that won't be at cross purposes with playing the shakuhachi. 

My left shoulder not liking the playing position is an issue, but I'm thinking that with some simple exercises I can solve that problem. I might be able to get out there when the busking season starts with the month of April. 

St. Patrick's Day

 I practiced some last night, maybe 45 minutes. I also got 15 things listed, bringing the week's total up to 45. 

I tried to get to bed a bit earlier, and woke up at 2:30 which means I was out the door at 3:30. I didn't know it was St. Patrick's Day and if I had known, I might have dragged the trumpet out to do some busking because I could probably have made some good money playing "Danny Boy" and so on. 

I did other things, went to Han Kook market in Sunnyvale and got a few things. They have really good prices on a lot of things.  I also  was disappointed to find that Whole Foods didn't have corned beef and cabbage and as this was my bank day, I'd gone there to eat after going to the bank like I always do, and just had meatballs and a bottle of soda water. 

It was actually kind of warm outside and that means zombies, but it's just a matter of being careful. I got a few things at Whole Foods, got 2 bubble mailers at the Amazon place, found several books in the free libraries, and after getting back here I went back out to check the medical place. Lo and behold, on my way there by Grill 'Em there was a zombie leaning against a car trying its best to look inanimate and it's just a good thing I didn't get too close - I did my checking for stuff and got out of there, going past where the zombie was from a different direction and going fast enough that the damned thing wouldn't have time to react before I'd be long gone. 

For some reason Ken is having real trouble paying the rent here. First a check got lost, then he went over in person and supposedly got everything caught up, but now we just got a bill for another $900 with a week to pay it and knowing Ken, he'll find some way to fuck that up. 

I don't care if Ken gets evicted from here after I'm gone, but I have a definite interest in this being a safe, stable place for me to be for the next two years. I've talked about not leaving for Hawaii until early 2025, but in reality I'll be eligible for Social Security starting in September of 2024 and maybe I should shoot for then. Leaving before the winter holidays instead of after. In fact, I could leave sooner still, because I won't be applying for social security right away as I'll be busy getting settled in, doing enjoyable things for a change, and deciding if I might just work by selling things on Ebay or something and not even bother with Social Security for a few years. 

Racist Mobil Home Park

 I had the weirdest dream last night. I was walking Ken through the things he needs to know to live in the Anchor Mobil Home Park in Costa Mesa, California, a place that in real life is long gone. How the toilet was OK for #1's but for #2's I always used the bathroom in the clubhouse, ditto for showers. How #2's would pop out a hole in the pipe and end up on the side lawn so you really want to use the clubhouse... 

I talked about my old neighbors, how this one lady worked for this department store nearby and they'd been robbed by a guy they called the "John Goodman bandit" because he looked like John Goodman. How this other neighbor sold pills to doctors for a pharmaceutical company, this other neighbor this, that other neighbor that... 

And it came out somehow that one had to pass through quite a racial filter to get into the place. I'd passed fine, back in the 80s when I'd moved there, due to being recommended by Bobby Stuber who was racist, and especially his brother, Fritz. Also, I explained to Ken, I had short hair and a motorcycle and a black leather jacket and Doc Marten boots so I was "in". If they only knew that I'm the opposite! Kind of like Henry Rollins, I explained. Looks like a fascist, is true-blue Left.

It was a very strange dream because then I explained that it would only work for Ken, living there, because he's got so many other places also to store all his stuff. And indeed in reality Ken has a lot of stuff scattered all over - out at the "Rocket Ranch" in Patterson, at his house, in storage units, and here at the shop. 

I remember also in the dream, after I described this and that neighbor, Ken saying "Wow you were really close to these people" and my thinking at the time, No, this is just normality instead of the anti-social normal for the Bay Area. 

The time change has really messed me up and while I thought there was a small chance I'd wake up early enough to go to the bank today, I didn't sleep that well and woke up, or got up finally, at 7PM. 

At least I practiced last night. My long tones are getting very gradually longer, and I'm working a bit on Shinran Sama which is actually a pretty catchy tune. 

So it's the bank and errands tomorrow, and I bagged up all the make-up stuff I'd gathered in a big transparent bag and put it out in the usual place for the bums or whoever wants to pick it up. I'll have to take postal packages downtown tomorrow. 

I've got things on Craig's List but I'm not getting any calls or emails. It's strange because the flute sold really fast. Although there are a ton of flute players at least in this area, and it was nearly new and still under warranty and the box and everything kept pristine. As for other things, I dunno. I guess they'll sell over time but it's a good thing, I think, that I'm working on trimming things down in preparation for a move that's two years away. 

No coffee for you

 I was up all night, listed 15 things, surprisingly the "parking lot sweepings" have turned out to be more valuable than things I thought were worth something. Some of the most ridiculous, cockamamie things... 

I practiced for maybe an hour, maybe more like 45 minutes while watching the latest PBS documentary on "the age of easy money". Now that I'm older I know the capitalists' tricks very well. They'll offer really cheap, easy, credit so you borrow a lot, maybe building up a business like I did, then the interest rates go up, and up, and up further still when they know you can't pay the bolus of debt you've built up, off. 

The right way to do it would have been to keep that debt paid off, bought a modest house, and game-ified saving the way I do now. House would have been in Old Town Scottsdale and I can think of worse places to be. I was only in my mid-30s and was I ever innocent. 

I woke up at 4:30 and at 6 I was out the door with everything I'd pulled out of stock last night, packed. The weather's warmer and this means more zombies out, but no problems. 

After the post office I figured I'd use my $1.50 or so in change to buy a can of Mr. Brown black coffee in H mart but I counted my change up and I had $1.34. No coffee for you! 

I picked up a bunch of packing stuff, mainly a good big box and a ton of that firm foam that's not Styrofoam. I also picked up, if my price searching is correct, about $40 worth of a package of Rice Krispy sort of things from a Chinese bakery in L.A., and a roll cake from Paris Baguette. These were left at the electric lighting place and I think they have at least one customer who gives them these things. The Rice Krispy things are nice in that they're barely sweet. The roll cake, which seems to go for $30 or $35 or so, is kinda meh. It's OK, but wow they're pricey. 

I only found packing stuff at the medical place tonight, but I got a bunch of nail polish in wild colors and various make-up stuff like that, to donate downtown. Downtown by City Hall and 5th and 6th streets down there have by far the most crack ho's and I'm sure they'll appreciate this stuff. 

So I had one square of the something-like-Rice-Krispy-treats, and one, OK two, slices of the $30+ roll cake, and put the rest out for the bums. I cleaned the place up and Ken showed up right on the dot. We talked about stuff and I showed off how I have all the NIMBIN modules in one place now, and he wrote out this week's check, then we talked some more. He'd also brought two bags of French fries and two small burgers from Burger King so I had a burger and fries (but at least didn't eat the burger bun) so, so much for the low-carb diet today. 

Ken eventually left, leaving his checkbook as it turns out. I tried calling him but of course he was driving so he didn't answer the phone. I called the house and got Suzy, and told her "If Ken's wondering where his checkbook is, it's at the shop" and we talked a bit. She's joined a different choir, as covid basically made the one she was in blow to bits. I said it was about the same with my temple, that we had dinners and all kinds of things and there's hardly anything going on now - but there's the shakuhachi club that I'm convinced was re-activated because of me. 

Suzy's going to sing in a performance Friday after next, the night after the next shakuhachi club meeting. I have to decide if I want to pay $30 to go to it, and I might just. 

Good news, everyone.

 I listed 15 things last night and by that time was tired enough that I didn't practice, just vegged out for a while watching idiotic stuff on YouTube. 

I woke up, or was kind of half-awake, around 5 and got a call from Ken. He'd gone over to the landlord's office and settled the rent, and they admitted the check might be lost in their office, and they even waived the late fee so it's all good in that department. 

It just plain poured overnight. Sometime around 5 or 6 in the morning so still dark, a bum came through. He had a big grey plastic sort of tub on wheels, full of cardboard and the usual crap. It was hard to push. He stopped in front of here and tried leaning against the building to avoid some of the rain, but the wind was not in his favor. 

The guy was short, bald on top, and wearing the world's baggiest pants. The thing is, a hat or anything improvised as a hat would have been a big help. And his cart of crap, with rain pouring on it, was only getting heavier and heavier. Just simple trash bags, the big black kind, would have been a great cover fo the cart and an improvised poncho for himself. He eventually dragged his ever-heavier junk away to places unknown. 

First, it's been no secret that this weather is coming. If it were me out there I'd have found a way to get to Stevens Creek Surplus and gotten surplus Army stuff. A poncho and poncho liner would be just great. Army boots and Army wool socks, and I've seen German Army wool pants there too. 

When I was at H Mart I'd seen the bum again too. They've hit on the idea that if you're moving, you can more effectively panhandle. I told them I used to pick a street, say Castro Street in Mountain View or California Street in Palo Alto, and panhandle up the street one way then down the other, and if I didn't have enough I'd hit another street. I didn't get much of an answer. 

The thing is, though, that I have some real advantages over the average panhandler. Firstly, I speak recognizable English rather than the underclass grunt-and-mutter that I can barely understand, myself. I also have skills in music and in arts and crafts, and a fundamentally middle-class mindset. 

My first big interest was in collecting seashells, and from that I learned that the shells are out there but you have to go out and find them. Later when we'd become very poor, I learned that fish were out there but I had to be persistent to learn to catch them. In our middle-class days we'd done the usual things like trying to hustle Almond Roca door to door. That was a hard go, considering all the other kids had been through first. But it's very middle-class that you have to keep at it, anyway. Much later we did this stupid Walk For The Whales thing that feral kids would have quit right away but we walked that whole stupid route in the hot sun. 

Part of being middle-class at least American middle-class is the idea that you have to justify your existence. You have to make yourself useful. So as a kid I strung all kinds of jewelry and set up a little stand and didn't sell a thing. And made airbrushed shirts that took a lot of work and carefully cut stencils and didn't sell a single one. Artwork was one very thin trickle of money, along with babysitting, weeding, really any work I could get. 

So a fundamentally middle-class person who finds themselves homeless will find some way to make themselves useful. Assuming no one will hire you, due to lack of documents for instance, what can you still do? It turns out all kinds of things from playing street music to doing odd jobs for small shops like mopping the floor or cleaning the loo, to detailing cars, yard/lawn work if you can get it, and I still think sign painting is a good one. 

These bums I see around here have no developed talents, no interest in gaining any, and seem to think the world owes them a living. But they've got plenty of that "poor pitiful me" feeling. They have no concept of the social contract and I'm convinced that the social contract is what makes us human. 

... And then it got worse

 The internet had conked out for a few hours last night and I called Ken to make sure he'd paid the bill. He had, "It's on 'auto'" so I said I'll save freaking out until tomorrow and just found something else to do. 

Something else to do was going through a big box of cables and power cords and putting most of them out for the bums, and taking a big alpha scintillator and putting it in a box that's not falling apart and labeling it on all sides. I kind of petered out there, but now I just have to move two things where the box was and I have a whole 'nother shelf to put things on. 

The internet actually came back and I packed 2-3 more things to go out. 

I practiced and not only worked on good old Nori No Miyama but started in on Shinran Sama, just reading it off the notes and it's a pretty nice tune. I need to find  that temple in Minnesota that plays all these tunes and listen to their rendition of it a bit, but I'm pretty sure I've got it about right. 

My long tones are getting longer too. There's nothing like regular practice. 

I woke up at 5 because I wanted to get lots of sleep, and while preparing my tea as aspirin and having a breakfast Yakult and so on, I checked my email. Our rent has still not arrived at the landlord's. Oops. I called Ken right away. "Yeah?" "The internet's back but this is worse - our rent's still not paid". "Oh! I'd better call them, wait, it's 5:20 it's probably too late". "Maybe not, there still might be a chance". "OK". "I'll get off the phone now". "Bye!". 

I took off a bit before 6 with the day's packages. Post office first, then went to 99 Ranch. I got two tea eggs and a Mr. Brown black coffee, and ate out front on the curb because there were no tables and chairs out. Seems the boba places are closed on Monday (as a kid in Hawaii, it was a thing that Mormons took Mondays off so I always think of it as the business being "Mormon"). 

I went back in to see if they sold the same boxes of frozen prawns that Dai Thanh does, but they don't. Oh, well, I got some sliced lamb for soup, a cucumber and a small toilet brush that might make a pretty good back-scrubbing brush. 

I then rode to H Mart and locked the bike up, took the FedEx package to FedEx and bought some paper - it was $10 this time, whew! I went back into H Mart to check the prawn situation, and those rotters, they're not even pretending they're not getting them by the box, thawing some and selling them as "fresh" and then having some in packages of three, frozen. All at insane prices compared to just going to Dai Thanh and getting a box. 

I stopped by Tom's on the way back because the place next door to him almost always throws out big black trash bags full of packing stuff on Mondays. Sure enough there was a nice big one but not so big that I'd need to come back with the trailer. And I picked up some plywood boards I have a use for. 

I knocked on the door and Tom and I talked for a bit. He'd not gotten any further in cutting that stuff that he wrecked his $50 saw blade on, and I said he needs to set up a gallon jug with a piece of tubing, so his pal can put the water right on where the saw is cutting the material. 

I honestly don't know why Tom piddles around with stupid shit like that, surplus wood and nasty countertop material and so on. He makes so little money on it. He could do great just finding chairs and desks and file cabinets and things like that. I've tried to get him into busking and that's never going to happen. Oh well his choice. 

Tom said after a short time that he was sick and had to lie down. I asked if he'd gotten covid, and he said, No, it was too much beer. "Too much beer for Tom Price?" I asked. So we said Bye and I rode home, one-handed, with packages hanging off the bike in all directions and the big black trash bag in one hand. Made it fine too. 

I got back here, put things away, and went back out with the step stool and checked the medical place. I found some odds and ends and some packing foam so it was worth it. 

I got back here for the final time and checked my email and the landlord's representative had given me her cell phone number so I called Ken and gave him her name and the number and we discussed what might have gone wrong with the check (lost, etc) and how to handle it. If anyone hand-delivers a new check it will be Ken so I won't have to worry about that. It's not like we don't have the money, it's just very annoying and I think there are late charges we owe now too. 

At least if I decide to start a small business in Hawaii I'll be fairly familiar with the various hassles. 

A shakuhachi mystery solved

 I packed 18 things last night, 8 of them to go to FedEx today. 

I also practiced, and noticed something very important about the "enhanced" shakuhachi Yuu I'd spent so much money on. The utaguchi, where you blow, is at a different angle and this makes the curve at the opening much wider. 

There's a video on YouTube by Jon Kypros about blowing the shakuhachi, and he says that beginners tend to have the mouth closer to the edge, and as players gain more strength and experience, they position their mouths further away and blow with a more focused air stream. Those allows much more mature and expressive playing. 

In other words, this rather advanced shakuhachi I just got, is too advanced for me right now. I'd only gone ahead and gotten it because I thought I might be leaving for Hawaii ASAP to help Dave out. I'd originally planned to get it at least a year from now. 

I am getting stronger as a player, slowly but surely. My long tones are very gradually getting longer, I can call up the highest note with more ease, and so on. 

I had to move the clock an hour forward and got to bed at (by the new time) 8AM. I woke up at about 4, had my coffee and aspirin and washed my head/hair/ears with simple green, then ears with Dettol, then rubbed tea tree oil into my ears especially the left one that's having all the problems right now. 

All I had to do was load up the packages and go and that's what I did. Dropped things off at FedEx, picked up a couple of these cardboard trays I'm making the standard around here, and stopped at the chicken place for a couple of thighs and they threw in a biscuit. 

I at the chicken over by the bagel place where there was a place to sit, and wrapped up the biscuit. I also picked up a few bunches of bananas and an apple behind H Mart. 

I'd noticed Tom was doing stuff at his place when I rode past on my way out, so I stopped by on my way back and handed him the box with the fruit, and shot the shit for a while. He had one of his bum hangers-on helping him with some pieces of countertop material that were long, heavy, and had cut-outs for a sink. 

So he had these stacked in his truck and was taking them out one at a time and cutting off the sink part. He'd spent $50 on a diamond saw blade and I watched while he started cutting the 2nd one. He let the blade get too hot and ruined it. I told him how the guys next door to him, when they cut that kind of material, always ran water to control dust and to keep the blade cool. So he tried to get his friend to drip water onto where he was cutting, with a carbide blade he got out, from a small peanut butter jar. That went about as well as one would think. I left then. 

Then it was the usual, got back here, put things away. 

Do shakuhachi break in?

 I got 15 things ready to list and I had to keep doing more to them, cleaning them up, putting back in package neatly (tons of little connectors) and so on so I didn't list them. But they're cued up ready to go. 

I practiced and, as a change, got out the fancy "hot rodded" shakuhachi I'd paid Monty Levinson $700 for, to compare to my "stock" Yuu that honestly I think Monty "leaned on" a little before sending it out. 

The fancy shak' was quieter and not any easier to blow. I went back to my stock one that I've been playing enough that the place where I rest my chin is highly polished. I was right back to, by comparison, a "booming" tone. 

Do shakuhachi "break in" or "wear in"? I know with violins, it's considered to be a big factor and a fiddle that's been stored a while is said to sound "dead" until it's played a good amount. This is a huge reason why the remaining Stradivari's and Guerneri's are loaned out and played, because if they were just kept in museums they'd just be dead pieces of wood. 

But these shakuhachi are plastic! This is all very strange and I'm embarrassed to ask Monty about it; to say that I found his finely tuned Yuu for which I paid $700, seems dead and dull. 

I will have to play both, and see. On YouTube I've seen some amazing playing on a dead stock Yuu. 

I woke up at about 4:30. It was dry out. FedEx closes at 6 on weekends so I really wasn't going to get any packages out today but that was actually not the plan I formulated last night. 

Rather, I headed out at about 5:30 (now that I'm an old guy it always takes me an hour to get moving at the start of my day and although I can if I have to, deploy in 10 or 15 minutes, I generally don't have to so I don't). I'd done the routine of washing my head with hot water and soap, then ears with Dettol, then rubbing tea tree oil into my ears, first thing. 

My first stop was the FedEx dumpster where I got rid of a lot of trash, and found a box of veggies someone had dumped into the recycling can. I pulled it out, and got about 6 onions and two cucumbers, the kind you have to peel. As a way of payment, I balanced the rest of the box, holding potatoes, apples, pears, etc. and took it over to the very end of Junction where bums and all sorts of people hang out. 

Then I went straight to 99 Ranch, where I got two tea eggs (you pay cash for those) and then went into the main store and got a Mr. Brown black coffee and a couple of cans of pate' just so I'm buying something. I ate the tea eggs and washed them down with the coffee at one of the boba places' tables. I thought it was funny, Chinese people going by, contemplating which of the two boba places to get their $7 or $8 cup of fancy tea, while I, a non-Chinese, sit with the cheapest can of coffee ($1.50) I could get and tea eggs, a traditional Chinese snack especially for the working class.

I paid for my stuff and got $100 back to put into savings. That was kind of the reason for the trip.  

I then went to H Mart with the $60 I already had on me that I'll allow myself to spend, and went through the whole store looking for things I want to buy. I spent $30 of my $60, and even that was with, somehow, someone's little package of grape gummies ending up in my bag and my paying $2 for them. I found them when I got back here. 

Packing materials were a big fat zero except for, on the other side of this complex here, some bubble wrap that wet but I have it hanging up to dry in the loft. 

How different this place is than a lot of places in Hawaii. I have 400-500 square feet of "my" space (office and loft) plus a huge parking lot if I ever want to do huge parking lot things, can come and go any time, can be as noisy as I like, etc. *Most* places in Hawaii are a bit more restrictive. 

I am perfectly well prepared, though, to live in a small room where it's peaceful and I can have my books and can walk over to the University of Hawaii campus to do my practice and to "wherever" to play, maybe in Waikiki of course, but perhaps in any of a number of other places where the shakuhachi would be welcome where the trumpet is not. 

Then to Eggs & Things or some night-time spot for some dinner, and back home to my books and ideally my tatami mats and some tea... 

Aaaaaand it's gone - I mean, yep, good old Etsy was banking with Silicon Valley Bank and guess who can't pay their artists/crafters now? https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/11osepf/etsy_warns_sellers_of_payments_delays_due_to/

This is why I'm getting bigger and bigger on the underground/undocumented economy. My collecting those onions and cucumbers is actually part of that economy. I was considering whether to buy another onion or two until I found that box. In return, I put the rest of the stuff where other people will find it and use it. I put things out all the time, and pick things up fairly often. 

My dribs and drabs of cash from busking are another example. My giving the phone to the bum is an example. Now they don't have to buy a phone, and the $100 or $150 I'd have gotten for it from Craig's List is money off of the documented economy onto the undocumented one. 

By the way I saw the bum today, walking past as I locked my bike, called their name and they turned around and came back. I asked if the phone was working out OK and they said a dull "Yes", and that was it. I said there's a building on Monterey downtown where there are services for homeless youth, and maybe this person will start hooking up with some of them. 

If I depend on anything on-line, like Etsy or any thing "tech", it's only a matter of time before I'm let down. The boom-and-crash cycle guarantees it. 

I got into a jag packing things - everything - not just the FedEx things to take to FedEx assuming I can wake up in time. I had to move my wall clock forward an hour. So, I wanted things ready to just grab and go. I don't know how wet things will be but at least traffic is much more relaxed on a Sunday. 

 

Bank run

 It's all over the radio - "Silicon Valley Bank" had a bank run, with billions-with-a-B taken out, and Federal takeover. The name alone is enough to scare me away from that bank, but I remember the bank failures and bank runs in 2008, so I have to wonder if this is just the first. 

The pandemic has made everything worse. I thought the medical system would bounce back stronger but instead it seems to have taken a permanent step downward and reading the various subreddits like r/nursing is very depressing. 

At least Hawaii or the island of Oahu anyway, actually has very good access to medical care. It would make sense between all the veterans, all the retirees, and a strong strain of New Dealism as I'll call it. That's how I describe myself - a New Deal democrat. 

Needless to say it rained all yesterday and last night, generally heavily. Now at 7PM Friday night it's not raining, and I believe there will be breaks in the clouds over the weekend. I'll watch the radar map and should be able to find some gaps in the rain to take some things to FedEx. One customer is very antsy to get his thing so although it would normally go by US mail I think I'll send it FedEx also even if it costs a couple extra bucks. 

I practiced some more last night so at least I'm being consistent.  Once this rain stops, I need to get out there busking. I even got, a couple-three weeks ago now, some dark stain to hopefully make my plastic Shakuhachi Yuu look more like bamboo and will probably make a little sign explaining that the flute I am playing is a shakuhachi and a bit of simple explanation about the shakuhachi.

I don't care if all I make is my train fare, I need to get out there because in 2 years I'm going to be making my day-to-day money and, hopefully, developing as a person by playing the shakuhachi back home in Hawaii. I assume I'll only make about $10 a session, maybe $20. But that's enough to eat on, day to day. 

I'd slept in until 6PM today and honestly thought it might be Saturday and I'd slept the day away but I was relieved to look at my phone and see it's Friday. 

I just futzed around, staying in, and got 15 things ready to list but in the end did not list them but they're ready to go tomorrow. 

The bank run and take-over by the FDIC is apparently big news as it's not only on the radio but on YouTube and Reddit also. It's the biggest crash since the systemic crash of 08, and they're comparing it to the crash of Washington Mutual AKA WaMu. I actually banked with WaMu at that time, and I remember having something like $300 in fines for bounced checks as I was writing checks for my bills but the money was just not coming *in*. My solution was to stop writing checks. I let everyone hang, pretty much, and when I'd moved to a friend's in a very remote place in Arizona and they eventually tracked me down, like the my phone company, then I bought postal money orders and paid 'em. I'd also gone around and paid people like the state of California, and closed out and paid up the taxes on my business license before leaving The Golden State. The big bills, I just laughed at and put in the trash. Good times. 

So the feeling with this Silicon Valley Bank is it might cause a "contagion" with other banks having runs, and also that tons of tech companies were using that bank, and now there might be tons of tech workers not getting paid. Depositors are insured to $250k, but it's not hard to run through that making payroll. I just hope the bank Ken's day job is with, wasn't with that bank. Otherwise things might get interesting. 

In a fair amount of pain

 I've decided my routine to clear up the cellulitis on my ears is to wash my head/face/ears with hot water and soap upon awaking and upon retiring, following the hot soapy wash with vigorous washing of the ears with Dettol, then massaging in tea tree oil like my hero Kimagure Cook massages salt into shellfish. 

However I twisted wrong picking up my washtub and now one side of my back hurts like hell. I can't cough, and am in constant pain now. I didn't think 60 was an advanced age, but maybe I'd better start thinking realistically about this. Even before this "twist" it was painful to walk yesterday, and now I can't even cough.

I'm still emailing daily with Pat and Dave back in Hawaii. Dave, with three properties, can't supply even a small room for me, he says, and simultaneously cries poor and refuses all help so I guess, distanced by email, I'm going to watch him die in a year or two. 

Pat's actually doing OK if by "OK" is meant a non-permitted place on the skeeziest part of the Big Island and supporting a non-working girlfriend while on disability. Somehow he had a place in Pupukea which by the 90s when he had the place was already expensive, but managed to piss that away. 

Both of them have had very good fortune and have managed to piss it away. Not quite as extreme as a guy at the Gilroy place who inherited $400k and managed to piss it away in 3 years and in the end, offed himself, but the same kind of thing if not the same degree. 

It started raining last night and will continue to do so as far ahead as the forecast can predict, up into mid-next-week. There may be a break in the rain on Sunday and if so I'll pack some FedEx things and get them out. 

This latest injury makes it more difficult to clean up, too. I've made up my mind I should do a weekly bath, which I do using a tub with cardboard underneath it to catch the splashes. More difficult to move means more difficult to scrub. But scrub I certainly should. 

There are basically three ways to clean up around here. (1) in here with a tub, 2-3 500ml bottles of hot water I prepare, Simple Green, back brush, a nicely worn-in Scotch Brite. (2) Get a motel room and shower there. Nice, but costs at least $100. (3) Go to the local gym. It's walking distance away, and when I first came to this area I went there right away to check it out. The problem is that gyms, even in these modern days, adhere to the old Roman baths standards and a big part of that is guys parading around naked with each other. At least with the gym I went to in Gilroy, with an almost entirely Hispanic user base, the showers were private and very nice. 

So I'd have no privacy, and due to my injuries and relatively small size, it would be quite dangerous. Plus, showering there would mean I would become known to whatever bad actors were around. I'd have to have dedicated gym clothes because you can't go into a gym with non-gym type clothes, and I'd have to conceal and carry a knife and pepper spray. So I'd have a whole bundle of stuff, special get-up to walk to and from the gym in, have a Ka-Bar or a Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife concealed in all that and yet easy to deploy at a moment's notice. And lopping a few fingers off of or gutting a bad guy means even *more* inconvenience. I guess I'd have to have a bottle of hydrogen peroxide handy too because that stuff is the ticket for cleaning up blood.

So cleaning up in here it is! In Gilroy, once I'd made a "deck" by decking over pallets in front of the small trailer I was living in, and putting up fencing and getting grape vines growing, it was pretty logical to get one of those hose hanger things and a dark green garden house with a sprayer. The sun would heat the water in the hose up really hot and as long as I took my shower when the sun was up, it was great. Simple a matter of stripping down, making sure a towel is handy, and showering right in front of my front steps. There was no one I was in view of, and it was as convenient as the shower facilities any apartment-dweller has. 

Once I'm back in Hawaii I suppose I'll have access to a real shower and will be able to shower every day if I like. Back to the first world .... people back home have no idea how most people live here.