The gurgles strike again

 That double dose of Pepto Bismol kept the lid on things for a couple days but last night the gurgles were back. I'd started feeling a tiny bit queasy after dinner, watched some weird documentaries about chess players like Bobby Fischer "against the world" and so on. Then a visit to the loo made me realize the battle was not over. So I took a single dose of Pepto and read a bit, then went to bed. 

I did a fair amount of thinking about how I really am, now that I'm old, a real example of that story about the rich guy who goes down to Mexico and gets talking with an old fisherman who's lying on the beach, a bottle of beer next to him, and a single line out. The rich guy says the fisherman ought to buy more boats and get people working for him and build a fried-fish stand and do all sorts of go-getter things. The fisherman says, "Why?" and the rich guy says so he can kick back and relax, just lay on the beach with a beer beside him and fish only for fun. And the fisherman says, "But that's what I do now". 

All I want to do is play the shinobue and shakuhachi, pick shells, explore and "talk story" with people, scrounge for things. (I'm just going to pass on any more kimchi gyoza left out behind H Mart, lol!) 

When I was young I wanted a car, I wanted a better motorcycle than I had, and I remember agonizing with desire for one of those radioactive military watches. One could be gotten for as cheap as $60 or so for a while, then the prices started taking off. I remember also wanting a bicycle very much when I was a student intern and because I hadn't mastered the technique of saving money, in cash, well-hidden, I wanted to borrow $200 from one of the engineers who'd actually kind of sponsored my becoming an intern, but he was not about to lend me $200 and I think now, he was doubtful of my money-management skills if I couldn't have saved up $200 on my own. 

I started this day with a dose of Pepto and coffee, and took off for Japantown. To Nijiya, actually, where  I got some eggs, a couple packs of Yakult (enough to take 2 a day for 5 days) a bento, and a couple of packs of ramen. There was a super long line so I'd picked the wrong time to come, but I got a chance to tell a couple who were shopping around and in line behind me my hard-fried-egg hack for ramen so that was good. 

Some kind of lost guy tried skipping the line and I told him "There's a line" and he looked like he was trying to pretend he hadn't heard me so I pointed out where the end of the line is and he went back there, saying some hostile things but then the couple behind me told him to just relax. When I got to the till and was greeted warmly as a regular is, that probably showed that guy where he stood in the social ranking around there. 

I rode back here and had my bento, relaxed a bit and had two Yakults and then relaxed some more and then got some things from the loft to take over to Tom's. I picked up some apples and sweet corn on the way too. 

Tom wasn't there although his truck was so he was probably out walking somewhere so I just put the boxes on his table and watered his plant (some kind of mint we think) and rode back. I picked up a couple of those folding chairs of the type people take to things, that actually sit you down low but you're thankful to have a chair at all. But by the time I got back here I'd decided they weren't that great so I put them on either side of the chair that's by the trash enclosure. A couple hours later I looked and they were gone. 

All in all, pretty boring stuff. The news isn't boring though. Florida's suspended the Hippocratic Oath not just for doctors but for anyone connected with health care, at all. So if you're an EMT and you decide your religion or "beliefs" say you don't have to treat a Black or Jewish person, or one who's wearing a rainbow pin, you don't have to. You can let them bleed out at the accident site, or refuse to load them into the ambulance, or whatever. It's all OK in Florida. Which is right in line with Nazi 1.0 rules regarding treating Jews or other "Undermenschen" once Hitler was in power. 

Not to be outdone, Idaho is trying to outlaw leaving the state to get an abortion or even if you're suspected of doing so, or aiding someone who is. I believe they're using the old fugitive slave laws as the framework for laws like this. 

I probably could have bought a place in either of these states instead of coming here to the bay area in 2003. "Liar loans" were a thing, where basically if you could fog a mirror you could buy real estate. It was entirely your own lookout if you could make the payments. Or earlier, when I was getting my Ebay business going in the late 90s, I could have bought a place in just about any town in flyover shithole country. 

Instead I wanted to come back to California at both times, and my instincts were right. Besides, I'd read a book called "The Wealthy Barber" and one of the things pointed out is you don't have to buy property to do well financially. You can be a lifetime renter and just save money, have investments etc. Considering what I was paying in rent has been less than my home-owning friends were paying just to keep the lights on and the water running, I've never felt that left out for not having bought property. 

But this is a real problem for people who *have* bought property in some Red shithole, maybe even grew up there, maybe even being the 3rd or 4th etc generation living there. Whether to leave. How to leave? This was a problem the first time around too. The world was not exactly crying for European Jews, and most didn't have the money to leave and to do it successfully you needed to do so before 1933. Because afterward, the Nazis stripped you of all but 50 marks or something and unless you were very clever and very lucky, you couldn't get out.