Listen to PimpinNinja

 I'm back on Reddit, a bit. This is due to my realizing that as a read-only "user" I'm not contributing work that they're profiting off of. Moreover, it makes me one of the "scrapers" they hate, haha. 

There's a thread on r/collapse about "Has anyone changed their lifestyle voluntarily? or something along that line, and one user, u/PimpinNinja put up an excellent post that unless I want to copy it out onto an index card in longhand and then type it in, I can't quote it here. Like most of the internet, cut-and-paste are no longer possible. 

But in short, Mr. Ninja gets along without driving, etc and without working. He cares for people who take care of him in return and I have a feeling he's someone who's known in the neighborhood, does things like weed yards and look out for the little old ladies and help guys work on their cars and so on. In return they make sure he's fed. Maybe he's living in a cottage in someone's back yard or in some way that's stealthy. 

I put all this here because reading his post, I realized this is what the competent, non-druggie homeless people are doing. It's the fuckups who are over on r/homeless. There are surely people like PimpinNinja all over my town, and I never notice them because they've mastered the first tenet of homelessness: Invisibility. 

Also, at least in my own experience, it's really hard to voluntarily "gear down" and the best way to become more attuned to the Earth is to simply become very poor. Just get good and spanked down, economically, and suddenly you're "greener" than the Dr. Bronner set automatically. 

Our "Ninja" is also childless which he says makes his lifestyle possible and he doesn't have to raise a kid in the coming times, and someone else said it's great because "you don't have to watch him starve". Speaking as one whose parents were just fine with their starving, I'd really like to live in a world where such care for one's children is a given, but I know I don't. 

I'm able to post the thread itself:  https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/14phuk7/were_you_able_to_change_yourself/ u/Abu-al-Majnoun has some super good posts on there too. The whole thread is really good.

There's a reason, I believe, that J.G. Ballard left his parents almost completely out of his book Empire Of The Sun. He learned to admire those who got things done - the Americans, the Japanese, the hard kids who knew no one was swooping in to help and fought their world head-on, tooth and claw. His book was based on a hybrid of his actual experiences and those of a kid whose parents had died and who really was on his own, who was a close friend in the internment camp. 

I'm on a J.G. Ballard kick lately. I was surprised to find a section in the used book store dedicated to him, as I'd just discovered him. Apparently many others have and in his way he's right up there with Stanislaw Lem or P.K. Dick. Except that rather than dealing in robot planets or soulful machines, he deals with, as I believe one of his story compilations is called, "Legends of the near future". 

Mr. Ballard learned early on that no one's going to save you even if you're a starving kid. Especially not if you're a starving kid. 

I listed the 20 things I'd prepared, started a cold-water load of laundry just to see how it works out, and cooked a "warm-weather" garlic shrimp dish, with yellow noodles I'd bought at Dai Thanh and wanted to try out. Basically it's cook the noodles, and put them in a bowl where there's already a bed of very finely sliced onion and green bell pepper. Put some butter and powdered garlic on the noodles, then fry the shrimp with salt and pepper, powdered garlic, and some butter. Put that on top of the noodles, and top off with some home-made chili oil. It was really good! 

I got some practice in but again the sleepiness monster got me again. I'm not sure I slept that well because I remembered at least one dream and I woke up at one point with a bit of sweat on my face, even though I had the fan going. 

At least it's a little bit cooler today and was rather pleasant on the ride back from FedEx. I'd packed a big thing I wanted to make sure to get out, and now it's on its way. On my way out I'd picked up a package of Romaine lettuce and a "hand" of bananas for Tom, and the same lettuce for myself and a tomato. I got to Tom's on my way back and put his stuff in his kitchen  as he was busy talking with James, a homeless guy who's keeping a car on Tom's driveway and is always going around doing things. 

I hung around, noticing Tom's re-done the front of the building, making it much more secure now. I said to Tom that if he's busy .... and he said he's busy because he's leaving in the morning, and went back to talking to his latest pet bum. OK then, I thought, and rode off. I guess I'll just eat the peanut butter mochi myself. 

I rode back by Junction Avenue, checked the blackberries as I rode by (some ripe, they're before their peak) and noticed a bunch of candles lit by one of the buildings on Queen's Lane. There was a cross set up too, and I remembered that I'd seen two police cars and something going on there the night before. So apparently a guy got killed. 

I wonder if this caused any sort of disruption among the zombies because that zombess I'd seen wandering around is new, and as I rode into the complex here there was a zombess hanging out listening to some awful music, sitting on the curb by the fence smoking a cigarette. I just rode right by, pretending not to even know it was there. 

It was a lot of candles. At least a dozen and maybe 15 or 20. Frankly most of the businesses around here are not Hispanic owned, and that's normally the group that lights a lot of candles and all that. But another group is the underclass, as those candles are sold in the same gas stations and hole-in-the-wall stores where they buy their staples of life; cigarettes and cheap beer. Between the Rogers Avenue encampment and the encampment by the bridge, that's enough bums to get that involved, with that many candles. Plus maybe the guy was their dealer - it's just good business to show a lot of sorrow when their current purveyor of crack rocks is deactivated, to reassure whoever is the next one that they'll be a large and appreciative customer base. 

Bums *do* have purchasing power. Currently even the minimum of Social Security, Disability, General Relief, Food Stamps, will add up to about $1000 cash with a couple hundred more for food, for anyone who knows how to work the system. They're not paying rent, and goodness knows they're not paying much for vehicle maintenance. Eating a crappy but very cheap diet, especially also making use of soup kitchens and food banks, they can save their food stamps for substantial foods like pork rinds and jerky, and have almost all of their $1000 cash for the real essentials like cigs and drugs. Also "cultural essentials" like tattoos and Lotto tickets and so on. 

But I get thinking about finances... for instance before getting out of bed this afternoon I thought about my situation back in Hawaii. I was making $5 an hour which makes for neat math: $800 a month gross, $600 a month net, and if I was careful I could save $200 a month. I know this because I found myself doing this without even trying to. 

My student loans were 10 grand. At $200 a month, that's $2400 a year, which means I could have paid my student loans off, working for $5 an hour back in Hawaii, in 4 years. The loans were on a 10-year payment plan and probably calculated so that I'd very likely have to re-finance and extend them. This I did not do, but it would have taken me the full 10 years to pay them off if not for some money I inherited. So by moving to the mainland I'd worsened my financial situation by quite a bit. 

But wait, it gets better ... rather than aim for a 4-year degree and burn out, if I'd just gone for a certificate or 2-year degree I'd likely have very soon been making the kind of money I made on the mainland, but with much cheaper Hawaii rent and food costs. 

I think I figured some years back that on $5 an hour, assuming 50c an hour raise yearly, I could have saved and bought a house in Manoa, an elite area. If I'd just stayed home. Even when I was back in 2003 I saw that Hawaii's much cheaper than the mainland. I keep hearing all this noise about it being expensive now but I'd not be surprised at all that once my feet are on the ground there I'll find that it's really not changed.