Thursday, April 13, 2023

The ideals of Communism ignore the realities of natural resources and the laws of physics.

 Quote from u/Forsaken-Artist-4317 on Reddit. 

It's correct, too. Marx and Engels were working from an era where the Industrial Revolution was just getting its feet under it and it looked like things would get better and better if the rich would just share. They came up with a brilliant theory as to why the rich won't share and in fact the whole system of capitalism falls apart if they do, but an overarching fact is, there's not going to be much to share soon. 

This sounds theoretical but if affects all of us. The reason why the homeless have to be out on the street, immiserated, dirty, gibbering, violent, is that they're necessary to capitalism - to keep the rest of us scared to death of stopping our work. 

Thus, even my idea of the homeless being put into Happy Fun Camps with free junk food and free drugs, as elegant a solution as that is, won't happen because then they're not underfoot, ever-present, and flat-out dangerous to we workers, as a reminder to keep working. 

I just packed two things: A box of 25 ethernet cables a guy had bought, and two optical things that are essentially big, and very heavy, blocks of aluminum. That 2nd thing made for a 45-lb box right there. (The ethernet cables were light). 

I packed up a ton of canned food and two grocery bags of noodles, plus the two packages, and headed - slowly - for Tom's place. He was there and I put the stuff in his front room and we shot the shit for a while. Just stuff like how much apartments cost in this time and that time and other inane things. We sat in the sun and it was really pretty nice. 

I had to go, though, at about 7 and left, and took my boxes to FedEx and dropped 'em off, picked up a tortilla box behind the Mexican place, then looped around to the electric lighting place (nothing) then Sanmina (nothing also) where there was a bum working on a piece of equipment big enough to almost live in. It looked like some kind of ... plotter? Part of it is a giant slab of granite so it involves optics. 

The guy was wrenching away on it and I was friendly and took off a couple of small things that didn't have too much metal on them and asked nicely in each case if I could have them, and that was OK with the guy so that was cool. His girlfriend(?) showed up in a truck and as there was nothing else I saw that I wanted that I thought the guy would give up, I stepped back and she got down to wrenching on the other side of the thing. At least I like to be in good terms with the local scroungers! 

I stopped by the medical place and picked up a lot of little fans of a type we've already got tons of but I guess we can always use more. And I grabbed two big boxes, like 36 inches long by I dunno, 32? They're new, and have creases so they can be made larger or smaller as needed. Plus I got some other things. Pretty good. 

I went back with the step stool and with more room on the trailer, and just found a few packing boxes. 

I got back here and the welding place had put their trash can out. As always, I looked to see because at least in the past they've put out really handy bubble envelopes and useful packing stuff in general. But the thing was almost empty. 

Game on, I decided. There's a lot of scrap wood and junk around the back of the trash enclosure that I think is "ours" if we ever felt like paying for a dumpster, and I think that stuff ought to go. So I used my big orange plastic bin to take a couple of loads of junk over to the trash can and dump the stuff in. On the 3rd load I noticed the lid of the trash can down - that's funny, I hadn't put it down. There was also a big bag of trash in there. Oops. But there's no car around, so this is kind of proof positive that they've got someone who lives in there overnight. Or something. Anyway I got the hint. 

I got the trailer out again and used it to take the last load of junk to a dumpster on the other side of the complex. I'll try to get a load done each week, that won't be too much, and before long that area will be clean. 

I called Ken and he said the doctor had told him he had a bladder infection and had gotten dehydrated. He said the dehydration kind of made sense as he'd done a bunch of yard work and then drank "a bunch" of whiskey. As for the bladder infection, this is the great thing about being able to go see a doctor. Bladder infections, apparently, can be really bad especially in older people and can make a person go really loopy, mentally. Ken said he didn't feel anything, and the doctor had asked him about that. So now he's on antibiotics I guess and will have a follow-up visit. 

He may or may not be able to come by tomorrow, which is Friday. Which means the soonest I'm getting paid is Monday. I just want to make sure I'm covered for the check I have to write to the IRS. 

An interesting thing happened when I was talking with Tom today. He's got a hanger-on, a guy named Colin who has some sort of a speech impediment and gets Disability payments. He has a van he lives in and parks in front of Tom's building. I think he also earns a bit of money taking some of the local street campers grocery shopping and such errands, as quite often they get some kind of government check. Apparently he also earns some money working for Tom because ... 

He came up to us when we were talking and asked Tom if it was OK to take a picture of the whiteboard - where Tom keeps track of the hours and pay due to whatever flunky he has working for him. Surprisingly, Tom was against this. Colin said it had been 3 or 4 weeks, I think he said 4. Tom seemed in no way inclined to give Colin any money at all, even though I said he ought to "give him something". Then Tom get irritated, saying this should not be talked about in public like this etc. 

We went back to talking and Colin went away, but I'm even more sure now that I've been very wise to turn down offers of work Tom has given me in the past. He's offered to pay me some crazy amount, like $50 a day, to watch his place while he's gone but then he added so much drama and emotionalism to it that I ended up turning it down. 

Colin's saving up to move to the Pacific Northwest somewhere, where his father is, or a cousin, or something. Maybe just to get away from Tom and this area. So while he might not seem like a guy who needs money, I know he needs tires for his van and something else Tom mentioned. 

And to not pay a guy for 4 weeks? How broke is Tom, actually? It's been a fun game, supplying him with all this canned food and pasta, but he might be stretched pretty thin. I know he's keeping an apartment up in the north bay for his son, and who knows what else he might have going on. He drinks, and is a cheap drinker (beer and E&J brandy as far as I know) but I know myself that even the cheapest drinking is very expensive. 

Still, what this tells me is that while Tom's told me "we'll always have a place for you to sleep if you need it" I'd not want to, if things went to utter shit here, depend on him much. In short order he'll want me to work for him on some project, with pay which he'll use to toy with me like a cat with a mouse, and it will get very petty and political. 

Dinner was soup with shrimp, veggies mainly some garlic rabe I had to use up, butter, and this time around when the soup was done, I fried two eggs hard, breaking the yolks, and splitting them up into bite sized pieces in the pan, then putting on top of the soup. It was really good! This hard-fried egg on top of soup thing I've hit on is a real win.

I spent time fiddling around, getting 10 good things ready to list, but that was time consuming enough that rather than list them at 6AM I just put things I'd listed away, and hunted for and found one thing I thought I'd have to have Ken help me find. 

Yes I'd practiced last night but not that much. I've kept hearing "Honshirabe" or "Hon Shirabe" mentioned a lot in connection with the shakuhachi, and it turns out to mean something like "Basic Tune" or also "From the heart tune" or "Honest tune" if you interpret the "Hon" to be short for "Hon'ne" which means something like "from the heart, honestly". 

It's a lot more sophisticated than "Golden Chain" that's for sure, but it really shows what a shakuhachi can do. And one of the shakuhachi guys I'm subscribed to on YouTube has himself playing it and also sort of play-throughs that go line by line, and even more helpfully, exercises to master first in preparation for this "separates the men from the boys" tune. 


No comments:

Post a Comment

Heavy, man.

 Last night I got the Connstellation cornet out and put the screw for the 1st valve trigger back on, and installed new water key corks too. ...