I hate magic

 I was too tired last night to practice so I didn't. 

I woke up in time to pack 10 things to add to the 8 I'd packed last night, and headed out. No problem with the post office and there were no FedEx packages in this load (on purpose). 

I made my rounds of the usual places to find packing stuff and other things on a Friday night, and got back here. I looked up the hours for H Mart and Sprouts and they were open until 10 so I had plenty of time. Also it might be rainy tomorrow. 

So I headed out again for an H Mart and Sprouts shopping trip. Since I planned to buy more d-mannose and cranberry extract as well as macadamia nuts, I took out the $30 I had saved for temple dues and put that in my wallet. I clearly remember folding the money and putting it next to the money I already had in my wallet, as I always do. 

I rode over to H Mart, locked the bike, and walked over to Sprouts. They had lots of choices for d-mannitol and cranberry extract and it turned out that the most "bang for the buck" was some powder combining both things so I got that. I also got my macadamia nuts, a bit over a pound because I had almost $100 on me, so no money worries. I even treated myself to a package of "Finlandia" fancy Swiss cheese. Why not? 

I got to the checkout and it was $45 or so, no problem. But the $69 I had was in my wallet but the $30 was just ... gone. I checked my pockets, every crevice in my wallet, etc. I even puzzled over it as I walked out of the complex, checking in the bag, and even doubled back thinking that the somewhat greasy old bills may have slipped out when I pulled out the main wad and fell into the counter or the floor. The guys (checker and bagger) hadn't seen it either. 

I said to them that this won't be the first time I've done magic, when you have magic capabilities you can make things appear and I often use this skill in my shop but it's hard to control and I make things disappear too. There are TV shows and movies about people gaining magic capabilities but in reality is sucks. That I have to use it in my work but only because it's necessary and in general, I hate magic. And the money's no biggie, don't worry about it. 

I walked back to H Mart, contemplating how, when I was little, I was puzzled by the TV show "Bewitched" and why the lady in it was always trying to avoid using her magic skills. Now, I can understand. And, the reason you don't see much magic is that is really kind of fucks with people's perception of reality and of their own sanity, and anyone having magic capabilities and really getting a handle on them, probably bugs out of this rather mundane reality tout de suite and moves on to better places. Fuck magic. 

I got a can of chicory coffee and a package of crawfish at H Mart and loaded those onto the bike and rode on back. Now it can rain all it likes tomorrow and I can just stay in. Maybe finish reading my latest J.G. Ballard book. 

I got back here and ... there was the $30, sitting here on my desk. I never put money on my desk because it's too easy to get it lost in papers or something. But there it was. Stupid fucking magic. 

Small trip becomes a large one

 I practiced some last night, my long tones, and even though I took a few days off, I'm becoming able to get some notes in the 3rd register. That's good. That's another thing, that I'm able to get a louder, fuller, sound out of the shakuhachi than out of the departed glass flute anyway. 

I woke up with just half an hour to have some coffee and nuts, take pills, clean up, and get out of here. I did my deposit at the bank and the balance was only off by about $2, which is about as precise math as can be expected these days. Sometimes it's dead-on, sometimes it's off by "some" and I guess that's the best computers can do. 

I got the idea that maybe I'd hop on the bus and go to Han Kook market which has this one type of Q tips that are by far the best, and I was almost out of them. So I went to Whole Foods, locked the bike and bought a coffee and got cash back, and got on the #22 bus. 

While riding the bus, I decided I could ride all the way down to Mountain View to "Bay Area Gun Vault" where they're sure to have many type of pepper spray, and get some. It was a bit of a nail-biter of a ride because I wasn't sure I'd get there before they closed at 6 but I did. They turned out to have exactly two types of pepper spray, one of them bright pink. I got the other one. 

That done, I walked over to 99 Ranch and got some "White Penang Curry Mee" for the spice packets of course, some white sesame seeds, and decided the hot food bar didn't look that enticing so I left it at that. 

I walked down the mall a few doors and stopped in at a Taiwanese place and had their "crispy chicken" snack which the printed menu said was about $5 and turned out to be about $8 but it was plenty of crispy chicken pieces and really good. It came with two bamboo skewers (meant to be an appetizer for two people maybe) so I had fun using one to eat my chicken pieces and enjoyed the atmosphere. It's a very non-nonsense place with tons of take-out orders, handled, apparently, but a large middle-class looking white guy who was loading tons of plates of food into two huge insulated boxes and taking off for a round of deliveries. I bet the guy really feels like he's made in in life, being a middle-aged delivery boy. 

Done eating, I walked down to the end and went across the street and over to the Nijiya market there and looked around. It's bigger than my local one but really about the same. I bought a can of coffee and went out to the bus stop - it was dark now. 

I caught the next bus and got off at Lawrence and went to Han Kook, the original reason for this trip. I looked through most of the place and ended up getting exactly what I'd come for - some of the Q-tips and some seasoned seaweed. 

Now it was late enough for the bus crowd to change. The next bus had all kinds of characters, a couple of which were at the stop with me and got on. This is the time, 8 at night, when it starts becoming the "22 hotel" where some characters ride all night. There was more than one person snoring. 

I managed to overshoot the stop by Whole Foods (which is "Bush") and got off at the Diredon stop. There were yelling zombies on the other side of the street so I took the short walk back by a route that avoided them - let them prey on *each other* is my motto. 

I went into Whole Foods for some shrimp to make a curry later tonight and to get a bit more cash back, so that all I'll allow myself to spend this week is in cash and in my pocket. 

The ride home was uneventful, and I got in at 9:30, the equivalent of coming in at half after midnight in the before times. 

So what was today's freebee? Well, besides 4 bubble mailers from the Amazon place, it was an interesting one: the guy at the fish counter in Whole Foods charged me $2.10 for the 1/3 lb of little "bay shrimp" when it should have come to $5 or $6. That was nice. 

Distractions are not good

 Distractions are not good. Besides taking care of 100 things "eligible to send offers" I packed stuff, and then got all involved watching some documentaries about professional poker players. 

Thus, I did not practice. But also it was a real sock in the gut to realize that I'm not going to tear it up playing Xmas carols on the glass flute, and that it's just not possible to pick up an instrument and sound good in a matter of months. No, you have to be married to the thing. 

I woke up with time to not only label the things I'd packed last night but also pack some more things. It wasn't a ton of 'em, it was 15. 

I took off and stopped off at Tom's to drop off the bags of chips. Tom wasn't out but James was, fiddling around with his huge pile of junk in front of Tom's place. 

I did the post office and FedEx, and then went to the "Krispy" chicken place for my usual two thighs to go. I had two $1 bills and the rest was change, and after counting out the best of it there was maybe 60c or 70c in pennies and nickels and a couple of dimes, and I asked the guy if he need pennies. "You can just have them, maybe someone will be short by a few cents" so he took the coins. I explained that I save my change each week and by the end of the week will have some saved up, which I spend on chicken or something. He said I could take a free drink and I considered picking out a Coke Zero but said I'd rather have another piece of chicken, a wing or something. 

He threw in a drumstick and a biscuit too. I ate over at the tables, and wrapped the biscuit up for Tom. The medical dumpster was my next stop and a "profitable" one, where they apparently put all their pills and potions and so on into two flimsy trash bags which I was just able to get into the tub I had on the bike trailer before they fell apart. 

I stopped at Tom's again to hand off the biscuit, and he said he appreciated the chips and as we talked ate a bag of two of them. We talked a little, just catching up on things. He was wound up in watching the presidential debate on his TV though so I said I had to go and left. 

There was not much else. I rode back, picked up a big bag of fresh basil at the veggie dumpster, and got back in here. 

Ken came by the usual time, I got my check and we hung out and talked, and I actually remembered to ask him something - if he could check my blood sugar. He was like, Sure, let me change out the lancet blade, and had his meter and lancet and strips ready in no time. The lancet kind of stings but no biggie. My blood glucose was 112. I *had* had that lot of fried chicken a few hours before, and had my black coffee and so on, so it was not a fasting blood glucose reading and I'd call it "Not great, not terrible". 

I'd expect it to be around 80 or maybe 90. Ken and I started talking about all sorts of diabetes things and he checked his own since he's not wearing his monitor and he was at 300 so he gave himself some insulin. I said I've concluded that in the American food environment, you have to assume you're pre-diabetic, and act accordingly. I mentioned how the low-carb diet had helped me, made "my headache' no longer a thing and said I'm sure I'm losing weight although I haven't been weighing myself as my BMI is in the healthy range so I don't see a need to get worried about it. 

I talked about how, reading the various diabetes sub-reddits, that there are lots of people who find out they have diabetes and end up in the hospital or at the doctor's and are tested and find out their blood sugar is 600 or their A1C is 12 or something. And how there are people who get right with the program once they find out, and get their numbers really good in a few months. While other people apparently get defiant and emotional about it, and let themselves get worse. Ken said he knows people like that, and I mentioned a friend who didn't seem to even understand what was going on. 

Diabetes and health are always an interesting subject to Ken, and it's a break from rockets, nuclear science, and the usual things he talks about. I showed him a recipe for "chaffles" on the internet and maybe he'll got a bit lower-carb in his diet but it's doubtful. His "food ways" are very set. The only reason mine are flexible is there were so many times when I was a kid and even a young adult that they had to be flexible for me to survive. 

After Ken was gone I put a few hours into cleaning things up on Ebay, sorted the latest medical stuff haul, and finished the load of laundry I had going. Busy, busy, busy, that's me.

Just move north!

 

Photo credit: cabinradio.ca

Now this whole post is going to be lined up on this photos, but anyway here it is. Courtesy of Cabin Radio in Canada, this is the bucolic scene in Yellowknife, a town that may ring a bell to those of us who have read our Jack London stories.

Among the doomsday prepper crowd, and aren't we all these days, the Word is to simply move north to avoid the bad effects of global warming. Nevermind the Martian levels of red smoke and junk in the air, the heat domes killing off wildlife and sea life, and the hordes of preppers who will come to share with you on the "what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine because I've got more guns" plan. 

I follow r/hawaii on Reddit a lot and there's no discussion of it being hot at all there. People are used to the constant 82 degrees as someone has described it. I'd describe as being - out in the middle of the largest ocean as it is - being in the center of a boat, both fore and aft and abeam. However the boat rocks, you'll feel it the least there. 

I was up in time to pack the things I'd "staged" last night, plus one more large-ish thing the guy wanted shipped "right away" so that was good. The post office was first, where I put a bunch of packages and also stood in line and shipped the glass flute and books back to Hall Flutes to the tune of about $12, shipping's a lot more expensive as a regular person as opposed to shipping with an Ebay account. 

I then rode around the corner and to the exercise place and did some chin-ups. Now I'm really testing my welcome because not only did I have the bike trailer but it was a weeknight and there was a guy chilling in his bright yellow sports car there, whom I had to pass. I did my pathetic little exercises, although a bit better than last time, then rode out, noticing only then that there was a pickup truck with a security emblem on the side but I rode right by and it would have been easy for the guy in it to say something but ... nothing. Maybe doing a few exercises is looked on as a social good; it'd doubtful the employees of the company there use the equipment much. My usual plan is to hit that place on Sunday but I hadn't been over that way, hadn't thought to use the equipment over by the police station, and had forgotten about it completely yesterday. 

I stopped in at H Mart for some garlic and a "Size Up" bottle of black coffee since I'd forgotten to bring the bottle of black coffee I'd brewed last night. I dropped off the FedEx things then went around back, picked up a box or two, then investigated the green veggie dumpster. 

As I was pulling up, a lady (Vietnamese? Chinese?) had pulled up in her car and got out a little step ladder thing and a plastic bag. There was a milk crate for me to stand on there also, so we both got to digging. She was after some things and I just wanted the apples and bananas that were there for Tom so it was a friendly dumpster-dive even though we shared not a word in common. I tried to convey to her that I thought she was smart for getting veggies in this way. 

I went over to Tom's and he was out so I just put the bags of apples and bananas on the table there and wondered at how his favorite pet bum, James, has shitted up the place. Not only are James' two junky cars there but a veritable junkyard of electronics junk and tons of those things with a million little drawers, I'm guessing the load of stuff he wanted to try to sell me. Tom's place looks like crap now, not that it matters on that street. 

I went over to the blemished food place next. There was a car or truck or something, with, right behind it, a small mountain of everything bums love - junk bikes and all sorts of crap, and a zombess fiddling around with stuff, frantically sweeping the street around this horrible pile of junk for some reason. I went around, got some of the blemished food place's boxes they throw out on Tuesdays, and got out of there. 

I finished my route, amassing a big load of shipping stuff. Most fun was the day's freebee, besides the apples and bananas for Tom; 28 bags of various chips from Doritos to good old potato chips to every flavor of Cheetos and Fritos it seems. This was at the Coke place and there were tons of cans and some bottles of soda too but no Coke Zero or diet Pepsi so nothing I wanted. I'll drop the chips off at Tom's tomorrow and he can pay his bums in chips. 

So, why did I send the glass flute back so quickly? Mainly, I read the terms and there's a 1-month window to try it out and I only had about a week left. That takes care of the "quickly" part. But I sent it back at all because I think I've finally learned a fundamental thing about any musical instrument: 

There is no instrument that you can get up to speed on in a month or two and sound good good enough to effectively busk with it. Not only not the trumpet or the violin or the piano, but even the pennywhistle, "uke', harmonica, etc. There are people who can sound very good on these "trivial" instruments but they put in serious years and time to get there. 

I thought I'd be able to get one of these glass flutes and go out and cash in on Christmas carols and sentimental songs for the holiday season but I found it would take serious work and a few years, not a few months, to sound good. 

In fact, I found that I could get a better sound - and louder, surprisingly - on the shakuhachi. That's because I've put more time in on it. 

Good ol' Pepto

 Well, I guess you can't have an American home without a bottle of Pepto-Bismol in it. I wonder if this is worldwide, or if there are similar salicylic nostrums in other nations? 

I practiced the shakuhachi last night, long tones and a few songs, then got the glass flute out and did a bit of practice but felt frustrated with it. Frankly I can get a louder, nicer tone out of the shakuhachi and I really wonder how much I'd wow 'em when out busking, holding what's really a relatively small, non-eye-catching piece of glass? 

In the shakuhachi club we're learning gathas which are Jodo Shinshu/Buddhist Churches of America songs which is all well and fine but they're not necessarily shakuhachi songs. There are definitely shakuhachi songs, the more advanced of which show off the capabilities of the shakuhachi that make it such a unique instrument. 

There are also tons of "minyo" which are folk/children's songs, often played on smaller, higher-pitched shakuhachi. Those are neat. 

But I can also make stuff up on the fly, bending notes and doing little filigrees like that that sound cool. 

So I really wonder if I should work on "dressing up" my shakuhachi by painting it to look more like a bamboo one and putting some bindings on, and just getting out there with it? 

I can't say I really regret spending $120 or so on the glass flute, it's kind of a neat thing and I might change my mind but I'm beginning to think that if I'm going to be a shakuhachi player, the "shakuhachi universe" is huge and there's no need for me to venture beyond it. 

I packed a ton of things last night, leaving 7 large/large-ish things for today. I woke up around 3 and my stomach hurt like hell. It hurt worse with some food and coffee and finally, while packing things, I got out the Pepto. Here I was thinking that on a low carb diet I'd not need it, but there it was in my medicine drawer and am I glad it was. 

I was able to get 7 boxes packed and get out of here on time, do the post office and FedEx. Behind H Mart  I found a friendly bum going through their dumpster and we had fun digging around and talking about the things we'd found. I got a bottle of almond milk and 6-7 wrapped mochi with black bean fillings. All stuff that's not on my diet, but Tom should like. 

I'd run into H Mart not only to use the loo but buy some celery and that was *my* treat. 

I went right over to Tom's and he was out so I left the bag with the almond milk and mochi on the table out front - he'll get 'em. 

I went around by Sanmina and this other place that throws out stuff. I picked out a Nalgene bottle that looked interesting, was going to keep it, then decided it had something inside that was greenish .... opened it and took a good sniff - Strong chlorine! Greenish, duh! I put it back and now my nose feels like when I was a kid and would swim in some neighbor's pool that was heavily chlorinated. 

I picked up a good load of packing stuff and got back in here. I eventually settled down and had a soup with shoyu tonkotsu base I had around here, snow peas, pork, ginger, and garlic. It was really good. 

They cared so much about my family ....

 They made a chart! 

This was posted on Reddit on r/lostgeneration. It sure fits. During the "golden age" my parents were having kids, the first three anyway, 1957-1962. This would have been the time of living in nice houses, and the oldest of us even having a "governess" for a while. 

In the "crisis" stage, it didn't seem that much worse if they even noticed, and had two more kids. We'd moved to Hawaii in 1968 into a large house in a rich neighborhood (Portlock Road) that was a fixer-upper but my dad was good at carpentry and fixed the place up. The years 1974 or so to 1980 saw us falling from middle-class to very poor. We'd sold the Portlock place in 1974, been rushed out of it because the house my father was having built on a lot in Pupukea was taking longer to finish than planned, then we moved into the Pupukea house and lived there a few years before being foreclosed out of there. By that time Dad was hardly in the picture and it was we kids and our mom, who figured out the ins and outs of getting food stamps and welfare and WIC and all that. 

By 1980 I knew plenty of ragged-edge-of-survival tricks and we'd run off from Mom's to present ourselves on Dad's doorstep. He took us in but even that was bare survival (granted in a nicer place) as Dad's choice of computer programming as a way to make a living was just as stupid as that sounds. His back was bad too so maybe that kept him from apprenticing in the carpenter's union, I don't know. Jobs were very hard to get by 1980 and as the chart shows, "tech" did not really help the economy, which just pooped along pretty much level. 

The smarter ones of us never set foot on a college campus and the smartest one found a rich guy few others could stand and married him. The 2nd smartest put in some time in the Navy and then, using that job and security clearance as leverage, got in with Grumman and stayed with them, I'm pretty sure, for the rest of his working life. 

Arguably the 2nd smartest one though is the one who married a guy who became a police chief. Besides myself, the stupid one who went into tech, the only one left is the one who was in the Army and then went to work for a credit card company, berating people to pay up. The wealthy, the military, the attack dogs of the rich (police) and the loan sharks, those are the groups to ally yourself with. 

Tech has followed the curve closely. 1996 was when most people got online; notice that nice downward slope showing how much "the miracle of the internet" has helped everyone. There was a brief respite for a few years in the early "oughts" and from '06 on it's been down, down, down. 

Even when tech was doing well, warehouse workers who'd dropped out of high school made more. Even at places like Stanford University, people may use tech to get a job for the university, but then they change to something like food service because the pay and benefits are better. 

Of course now we're into Great Depression II territory now which is why we're seeing fascist parties becoming popular again. 

My back hurt a lot starting last night actually and continuing today. I took some aspirin and went to bed early (for me) and read more of "The Kindness Of Women" by J.G. Ballard, and other than keeping getting up to pee, slept until about 4. 

Ahh, such is life, I thought, but then thought, I really want to get my "weekly Wal" done so off I went at about 5. I steamed on down to Walmart and filled out my list, then rode back up to Japantown and my beloved Nijiya where I got broccoli, some fresh ginger, and some cold grilled mackerel. I also doubled back and got a can of "Boss" black coffee and sat out front, just sipping it and savoring being out and not working, and people-watching. 

I rode back here and by this time had the bike lights on because it was dark. Just the standard tootle on home, zombie-dodging as I had all through this trip. They're really getting thick out there. 

I keep seeing tons of things about Hawaii being teeming with homeless but I bet it's not as bad as here. When I was out in flyover country, Arizona, there were more homeless than in California and they were more nasty/drugged-up/aggressive. Likewise, with the ever-present few exceptions, I'm willing to get Hawaii homeless are a bit easier to avoid. 

In fact, when I'd headed out I'd taken the 6 boxes of tamarind pods, a bag of sesame seeds, and some other things with me and gone straight to to little free pantry in front of the Peace & Justice Center and loaded those things in, taking in exchange a green bell pepper. A group of bums were right on top of me in no time, and I got out of there quick. 

Once I was back in I did the exercises I would have done when I got up but hadn't, and got all the things that had sold out of the warehouse area then packed a bunch of 'em. In fact I packed so many and I usually don't pack things on Sunday evening, that Ebay freaked out and I had to keep signing in, then do one of those things where I had to click on all the photos with a computer mouse in them, then it sent a secret code to Ken's number so I tried getting hold of Ken but no luck, but then it let me do stuff again so I packed a few more things and called it a night. 

 

I spend money

 I practiced last night on the glass flute, and on a whim worked out "Smile" by Charlie Chaplain. This is a tune I got a lot of mileage out of on trumpet, and it works out OK on the 6-hole flute too. There are two notes I have to half-hole, the lower one a bit weak and the higher one good and strong. 

I got some sleep, but kept waking up because I wanted to be up by about 2. I managed to finally get up around 2:30. After having a neat dream where, when you went to Walmart, you had to play this race car game where you sat in a car-shaped thing (like you find at a lot of arcades) and qualify somehow, before you could shop. I'd gone in to do this and for some reason the game wasn't working as normal, but I found I could drive it around the store, which was fun. The store, somehow, was like a Big-5 with narrower aisles and full of sports stuff. All in all a pretty great dream. 

I went out and did a big spend, biggest except maybe for whatever my airline/hotel package will cost me when I actually leave, in a year. 

I then rode over to 99 Ranch and H Mart for things, and walked over to Sprouts for my $10 a lb. macadamia nuts, some eggs, and a couple (2 for $3) "low carb" beef sticks which I sat in the employee lounge area and ate. There used to be an area where customers could sit and eat but I guess that's the employee hangout area now. But so far no one's said anything about my sitting there and I don't leave a mess. 

I gave $3 to a bum who was sitting in front of Ulta Beauty. It's the same guy who used to kind of live at the electric light place, and before that, used to hang out in Japantown, yelling at people. He's a lot plumper and less crazy now. He was glad to get the $3. He's the only Asian homeless guy I've seen around here, a hugely Asian area. 

Asians believe in this thing called "family" and will not let one of their "family" go homeless. In fact, the guy might have found some sort of a place to sleep safely with one or another of this "family" and just be hanging out because it's what he's used to and he gets to watch the world go by. 

It's starting to get dark at 7PM and I'll have to move my schedule back so I leave here at 5 rather than 6. I rode back here, hurrying so I'd not have to bother with my bike lights, and going past Tom's place without even stopping in. I didn't have anything to drop off with him, and he's getting pretty busy with his "pet" bums, one of whom, James, he plans to employ drilling sampling wells again. 

And speak of the devil, I just got a call, from James. He's found a dumpster "Full of electronics, capacitors and stuff". It's nearby and he could take me to it. I said I'm just not interested. A few minutes later another call; James can bring the stuff by here for me to "look at" (buy). No, just not interested at all, I said. 

Not only are components really hard to sell these days, but I don't want any dealings with bums. James seems to have a high opinion of the junk he gathers, and has sold Tom stuff that Tom's lost hundreds on and will never be able to sell. I'm pretty sure James simply finds the things he gets, but "find" may be a loose definition. 

More importantly, we're on the glide path around here. Once I'm gone this business will be over with. I could almost not list another thing and keep us selling 10 grand a month for the next, the last, year. There's no need to buy more stuff at all - or even find it on the street. 

Speaking of which I've slacked off mentioning the day's freebees, like yesterday at 4 white onions, and today was 6 boxes of dried tamarind pods.

What a Blah Friday

 I practiced on the glass flute last night, got to sleep early enough that if I woke up at 3 I'd have 8 hours of sleep. This worked out OK except I woke up at 3:30. 

I packed 14 things in a hurry, one of them kind of large, a real mix of sizes. I did my post office and FedEx run, and someone had left some small packages on the counter at the post office with their labels just tacked on with tape but not really taped on, and left the little roll of tape there, like they expected the post office workers to finish them up. I seriously considered finishing them up because I hold post office workers in high esteem and resented their having extra work put on them, but decided not to get involved in it. 

At FedEx, someone has apparently finished using their cart and just left it out front. So after bringing the FedEx package I had in, I took the cart in for them. 

Drivers are angrier, people are more absent-minded. 

I picked up my usual bunch of packing stuff, and had quite the large and somewhat lopsided load on the trailer as I made my way back here. I'd even found 14 hard drives at the computer repair place. 

It's the equinox and the weather is not "summer" any more. Maybe that's what has people off their best game. 

I got in and buttoned up and cooked dinner and the usual things, the unusual things being  I fixed the front door (the knob mechanism wasn't latching) and put an honest couple of hours, probably more, into one of my many projects. Two "Behind The Bastards" podcasts while I sat here and fiddled with things. 

 

No one's happy to be back in the office

 Ken came by last night, I got my check, did more Ebay stuff, and practiced on the shakuhachi, mainly long tones. I also worked out how to play Edelweiss but in the key I was playing it in, I could not get the second to lowest note to sound. 

I got "some" sleep and woke up in time to, in a mad rush, clean up and shave and get out of here with my shakuhachi stuff. 

I went to the bank first, then to Whole Foods where I had some sausages and mushrooms. I was going to read the Metro weekly but they don't have it any more. What they *do* have is a new thingie that looks out over the parking lot with blinking red and blue lights and a PA system. I heard it playing a message about the parking lot being private etc. I also found it unusual that there were no charity people set up by the bike racks like they usually are. 

A mistake a lot of these charity people were making, though, was they were not staying on the public sidewalk. They were setting up on Whole Foods property and right next to, or even in, the bike racks. Who knows what kind of drama, threats, etc. have gone and the manager of the Whole Foods has decided, Enough of the nonsense. 

After eating I went to the Amazon place for about 15 bubble mailers, then over to Japantown for a few things from Nijiya. There were some old people in front of Hukilau who'd been there when I went in, and as I walked the bike on the sidewalk there, one of the ladies asked me about the parking meters which they were really perplexed about. So I had a look at the (hard to read) screen and verified that they don't have to pay after 6PM (it was something like 5:55) and which side of each meter goes to which space. The lady was incredibly grateful and explained that the other old couple (who'd walked across the street) were visiting from Los Angeles. She said it like it was some distant country, but then that's how things are becoming - as the economy gets worse, distances get longer. 

I kept saying it was no problem, no problem at all, to her profuse thanks. Really routine, it's nothing. Do people not enjoy being helpful these days? 

I set at the long bench at one side of the temple and practiced for almost an hour, then heard the door shut so I knew the people were there, and went in. Rinban Sakamoto was there and said, "Hi Alex!" and we got to talk for a bit. I talked about my plans to return to Hawaii and he said he'd been considering it himself. 

Pretty soon the rest of the people came in - the two old ladies who are always there, one of the guys from the choir, and a new guy, I think one of the old regulars at the adult Buddhism classes. 

I got 3-4 new pieces of sheet music, and the class went pretty well. We actually started working on "Rainbow Connection" which is not an easy song, one called "Beach Song" and we went over Nori No Miyama and worked on Golden Chain quite a bit. I'd have to say it was the best class session yet. 

When I got out of there, I gave Ken a call. I'd gotten a call when I was in the class, from Suzy. Some alarm was going off in her house and she was trying to call Ken but could not get him at any of the numbers she had. She didn't know how to turn the alarm off. "You could always unplug it," I suggested and said I'll try to call Ken. 

I got him right away and told him about Suzy calling and not getting him. "I don't see anything on my phone...." he said. I said she was kind of panicked and he should call her, so he said he would. 

I rode around Japantown a bit but it being past 8PM most things were closed. So I just rode back here. 

One thing I've noticed is there's a lot more traffic out there, and the drivers seem a lot more angry. Everyone's being called back to the office I guess. The thing is, the pandemic seems to have kicked off some pretty wild inflation. Workers were able to demand higher pay, and to be able to work at home.

All well and fine, but then the powers that be, probably wisely, have clamped down on inflation to some degree by doubling interest rates. Also calling in student loans or at least resuming payments. The dampening effect on the economy has removed the leverage workers have and there have been lots of layoffs in tech and for a lot of workers, it's come back to the office (with all that entails like a dress code, a commute, having to eat lunch at the right kind of restaurant or be ostracized, etc.) or say Goodbye to their jobs. And they're not happy so they're in a mood to get in their car and kill someone. 

Nice dent, Karen.

 I practiced long tones on the shakuhachi last night and that was about all I could do. Watched about half of an excellent Japanese movie called "The Shoplifters" with subtitles (lovely, as I can pick up on some Japanese words and expressions). 

I woke up with time, if I rushed and I did - to pack all the things that had to go out today and I'd already packed the big ones last night. 

I took off and did my post office and FedEx thing, and a funny thing happened. At a standard intersection, drivers love to make their right turns on red. An inexperienced cyclist will wait for the light right at the curb and they get injured or killed in this way routinely. In fact one just got offed by a driver in the last day or so, who doubtless felt very proud of himself. 

So, I always way just to the left of this little island of debris, shaped like a capital F without the smaller cross-bar, that denotes where drivers don't drive - hence the debris gathering there. Drivers making their right-on-left can go on through and everyone's happy. 

Well, this Karen pulls up next to me and says, "Right in the middle of the street??" and I reply, "Yep!!" and then as this standard overweight Karen in his standard dumpy sedan goes by I noticed the big dent in the driver's side door and called out, "Hey! Nice dent!". 

The thing is, Karen would either not have been able to go by if I were not "right in the middle of the street" and out of her path, or more likely, I'd deprived Karen of a chance to injure or kill me. At the conscious level, all Karen knows is she's irritated that a cyclist is "in the middle of the street" but the 90% that's below the surface about cars is to be able to bully, intimidate, injure, or kill anyone/anything perceived as "weaker". 

I found the usual load of packing stuff at my various stops on the way back, and got back in here. Did a neatening-up job on the parking lot and found the HVAC dumpster locked. Bummer! Luckily there was a guy going through the Usually Overloaded Dumpster(tm) which was unlocked because it'll get emptied in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. 

Obviously the guy's a down-and-outer as the car he's driving is missing the rear bumper entirely and looks pretty rough. He was looking for metals, and I said my "thing" is boxes and packing stuff like bubble wrap. I handed up my bag 'o' trash and said there are a few cans in there, and also that the dumpster on the other side of the complex, mirror-image with this one, has a bunch of stuff in it, plumbing fixtures and so on. Good pickings. He was an Asian guy, with tattoos so unfortunately for him, Americanized. Nice guy. 

On the glide path

 I practiced last night, long tones and worked on "Amida's Shrine" since the ending puzzled me a bit, then played "Danny Boy" on the glass flute for a while. 

All I'd done is pack, no listing as the packing is keeping me so busy, as it was mostly medium and large things. 

Sending out offers on "items eligible to send offers", a feature I'd ignored for literally years as I thought doing so might be "pushy", is a win as far as moving things. As a general rule I'm sending the offers at half price, because what I realize but I'm not sure Ken does, is that we're on the glide path (whether to a smooth landing or a crash will happen after I'm gone) and 1/2 price is really good compared to what he will get when he liquidates things. 

Fed ... Ex ...

 I practiced last night, long tones on the shakuhachi then played Amida's Shrine a bit, that one's got some swing to it... then up and down the scale on the glass flute and some Danny Boy. 

I'd been up for hours and hours packing stuff; packing all the small things I could to bang out a lot of orders and in case I didn't have much time to pack more today. 

This was true, as I woke up at 4 in the afternoon. I packed some more small things and took off. The trouble is, at the post office, I only caught one package that was actually for FedEx because it was too long to fit in the chute. And even then  I was halfway to the counter with it in my hand. I don't know if I've put in another package or two that are FedEx ones, and will see if they'll let me check somehow, tomorrow at the P.O. 

Next was FedEx for that one lonely package, and I asked them if they had some stickers or tape or something I could have to put on my packages to make sure I can tell them from the post office ones. They could not. 

I picked up various boxes and bubble wrap and stuff on my way back, put things away, and got out some yellow sign vinyl I've had around for a few years, found some things to use for measuring off rectangles of about the size of a Priority Mail or FedEx sticker, marked and cut and lettered in blue and red ink, and now have 115 little FedEx stickers that I can stick on next to the shipping label. They're not necessary for the big boxes, since those are almost always FedEx and a big box that's postal service because it's going overseas, will have one of those pockets installed, holding the required 4 copies of the Customs form. 

But the intermediately-sized ones, those are the problem. First Class mail isn't really a thing any more, it's now all Ground Saver or something like that, and what's worse, the packages have a G on them like FedEx does on FedEx Ground packages. And the Ground Saver service is a huge overlap with FedEx and generally cheaper so I've been using it a lot. 

It's a good thing I can be very systematic about things, because it took being very systematic to cut out and letter 115 of the little things. First writing "Fed" in blue on all of them then "Ex" following in red. 

I used to use Ebay logo tape to designate the FedEx packages and might go to that when these stickers I've made run out. Easy to apply and even smells nice. 

Edelweiss

 I was up all night finding things that need to get packed and shipped. I did some practice on the glass flute also, working on the song "Edelweiss". 

I'd kind of planned to go out busking today, however much I suck. But I'm not ready yet to play for an hour or so; my hands are not used to the position (although it's a lot easier than than the concert flute) and while I can pick up a new song on the glass flute much more easily than on the trumpet, I don't have the smoothness yet that comes from 100s of repetitions of a piece. 

I sent out 50 more offers (1250 to go!) and hence, when  I woke up at 4, I saw that the things I have to pack and ship number about 40 now. Call me Emeril, because we're cooking! 

I took off to do some shopping at around 6. After dropping off a bag of trash in a nearby dumpster, I rode straight up to Dai Thanh for some things, then rode back to the secret exercise equipment place and did some exercises, then to 99 Ranch for a 4-pack of "Penang white curry" ramen which is a nice spicy red tropical curry with "coconut milk" which is actually coffee creamer. 

I'd also bought some "black garlic oil" ramen, a 5-pack, at Dai Thanh and back out at the bike, I opened them up and took the spice packets out kept those, putting the packages of noodles, in their larger package, for the bums. It's not the most economical habit, but I like to use ramen seasoning packets but not the noodles. It's not any cheaper to buy the spice packets alone (it can be done, by ordering them online, and the selection is extremely limited) so I do it this way. And the bums will eat the noodles because bums will eat just about anything that is strictly hand-to-mouth with no preparation needed. Birds won't touch the things. 

I parked at H Mart and walked over to Ross, found a nice fleece top for the winter, then got a lb. of macadamia nuts at Sprouts. I had a bit over $10 left so I "invested" that in two packages of olives from Home Goods. 

By this time it had been dark for a while, and just past 8. The equivalent of being out until 11 in the before times yadda yadda. I bounced back to H Mart and they had a package of lobster claws so I got that and a couple of packets of coconut cream powder (to use in Penang white curry instead of that nasty coffee creamer) and that used up the $8 or so of change I was carrying around in the bike bag. 

 

Nuts!

 I ... did stuff last night. Like, photo'd 20 things to list on Ebay and listed half of them, cooked up a soup using some "seasoned" mackerel I'd bought at Nijiya and wasn't sure how to use, and so on. I didn't practice though because (a) the guys next door were doing their early-morning get-together and I didn't want to make flute sounds showing that someone lives in here, and (b) I was tired. 

I went to bed and woke up in the late afternoon, around 3. I considered just staying in and reading a book, but when I went to wash my hands/face I saw how low the level of diluted Simple Green I had in the sprayer was, looked for the bottle of concentrate, and it was gone because I'd used it up. I'd take a trip downtown to the Ace Hardware and get more. 

I also had another problem. I've been, as part of my latest iteration of the keto diet, been eating a lot of nuts and seeds. I found out, thankfully fairly early on, that Brazil nuts have so much selenium in them that the safe amount is something like one a day. But I still had macadamia nuts, pecans, pumpkin seeds, and sesame seeds. So I've been eating a lot of those. 

The trouble there is that, lately, when I piss there's a burning sensation. I'd done some quick and dirty (literally) testing to see if I was excreting stones, and I don't appear to be. This really came on when I did two things; changed out my chewable vitamin C tablets for hard swallowable ones, and started in with the sesame seeds. 

Going to the doctor could clean me out, financially, so I started my day with 1.5 liters of coffee and ice water with some lemon juice in it. And a sugar-free Lipovitan. 

I headed out at 5, dropped off a bag of trash, and stopped at the little free library/pantry in Japantown to drop off the hard vitamin C pills, some xylitol toothpaste I don't like (no fluoride) and the snow peas I'd originally planned to give to Tom. 

Then I rode over to Whole Foods, locked the bike, and walked over to Ace for my Simple Green. Then had some carnitas and asparagus with cold water at Whole Foods, and after eating went back in for butter, some plain yogurt, and two bottles of pills that might help my hurts-to-pee problem: Cranberry extract and d-mannose. Those two bottles of pills were about $35 each, they really know when they've got you. 

Whole Foods has a new "performer", an older Black guy with no feet, a cross around his neck, and definite views on blackness. "Don't put your bike here!" he exhorted as I'd pulled up. "There's a black guy here who might steal it!". I said I was more worried about the white crust punks. 

Since I was going back and forth to my bike a lot, I talked with him a bit. I told him he ought to make an eye-catching sign that says "Ask me how I cured my athlete's foot" and put it down near his feet. He wasn't irritated by this, just failed to see the joke, which is a pretty good one. I also said he might consider sitting by the Whole Foods sign because the way people come in, he's facing them - the bikes, which he was amongst, and the pumpkins stacked up are distractions.

Finally as I unlocked the bike to leave,  I said he might try over by the Old Spaghetti Factory because it's become a pedestrian-only area there and there are tons of people walking around. I explained how there used to be street musicians and "people asking for money" - I didn't want to say beggars - and that was the go-to place. That I was a street musician myself and I study the "flow" of how people move around. And that I'm leaving in a year so I don't mind telling people about the good places because I'll be gone. "Where to?" he asked. "Hawaii. It's a lot cheaper than here", and rode off. 

I had time to go to Nijiya for some broccoli, ginger, and a can of coffee. 

The "end times" wind was strong coming back, making it a slog, and I had to dodge plenty of zombs. (On my way back almost here, on 10th, a pickup truck dropped off a zomb/zombess pair with a pit bull, so I crossed the street since I didn't want to be a chew toy for any of 'em. But zombs were just everywhere.) Dust clouds too for some reason. I thought, "Hm, in 5 years it might be radioactive dust clouds, rabid zombies with machetes they've fabricated from Tesla body panels, and having to hunker down from say 2-5PM because that's when tornadoes scour the land". 

I got back in and buttoned up for the night. Took some of the d-mannose and cranberry extract. It's nix on the nuts, except I'll allow myself 1 oz of macadamia nuts a day. The rest, well, treats for birds. 

I should mention the good things though. I am losing weight and making progress in my exercises. I don't have "the headache" any more and haven't taken any aspirin in a couple of weeks. I'm spending less on food because I'm cooking at home so much. Even when I got hot bar food at Whole Foods or some restaurant thing I'm spending less because I have to choose low carb stuff. 

I listed the other 10 things I'd photo'd last night, and found things I have to pack and ship, no small job when it's 36 things and some of them did not want to be found. In fact there are two that may not be found. That's just how things are around here. It takes time to get a thing ready to list, time to list it, and often the most time to find it when it's time to send it out.  

Such was my Saturday... 

 

It's free - that'll be $1000

 I packed 9 things last night and once I had the ones that needed to go out by Friday (today) done I suddenly felt very tired, almost like I hadn't gotten enough sleep last night which I hadn't. 

I managed to stay up long enough to practice on the glass flute and that little thing's a real banger if I do my part. I worked on Amazing Grace and it turns out I can play Nori No Miyama on it really well too. What a thing to surprise the shakuhachi club with when my playing on the glass flute is more polished. 

I also sent out offers for 100 things since I didn't do any listing, so orders are flooding in. 

I also got a reply email from this thing, a movie about the shaka, that's free but you "must" RVSP to see it. I'd written them an email saying I don't have a smart phone and is there another way to RVSP? I got my reply; they told me to go to their page and use a link ... that not only doesn't work, it doesn't exist! 

I told them their link doesn't work, that I probably have forgotten more about the shaka than they'll ever know, and "good luck, you're gonna need it". 

This is typical mainland gatekeeping about anything remotely connected to Hawaii. They won't come out and say I need a $1000 smart phone to be worthy to see their damn movie, that would be too direct and honest. And back in Hawaii, if they were showing a film like that, it'd be something like $3 at the door at the UH Manoa campus to support the film club and you'd just go in and see the thing. 

I'll watch it for free on YouTube in a few years anyway. 

I packed what I could, only 4 things because it takes time to find things here, and took off at my usual time. I had 1-1/2 lbs of snow peas, for that's what they're called, in a bag for Tom too. 

I did the post office and FedEx, no biggie, picked up a couple of medium-small boxes behind FedEx, so far so good. Went by the Apple repair place and got some bubble wrap and stuff, that's good. Then I was heading out of there and there was a large gap in traffic, so I crossed Brokaw to get into the left-turn lane. As I was just about across, I heard screeching tires and there was a dark-colored car that had apparently been thinking its best of running me right over, then thought about the mess and changed its mind. (I think this was someone racing for the light which was still green for cars going straight ahead) and stopped, by then the light had turned red so the car has to stop. 

So I went over to the left-turn lane but didn't pull all the way up to the line which would put me right next to the potentially attacking car. I held back, and since I saw the window go down on the hostile car, got my "tonker" out of the saddlebag. The window went back up. The light turned green for left-turners and I went on, but then a white car got involved. 

Cars as pack hunters would be truly scary but they are not that coordinated. They are opportunistic hunters though. The white car wanted in on a potential kill. I rode down Junction with the white car following. I went over to the "wrong way" side of Junction and the while car waited by the tire place to see if I'd cross right back over and be an easy chase. I did cross over, but 'way down. 

I ducked into a long parking lot that reaches all the way across to Rogers. It used to pass right through and this is what I assumed. I got to the other end and it was fenced and gated, though. I stopped and took my safety vest off and put it away in a saddlebag. Then I cut up my two medium boxes and put the brown cardboard over the white tub I had in the trailer - now if they're telling the police or other hunters "guy on a bike with a trailer, orange safety vest, white tub on trailer" I now didn't look like that. 

I rode back out the way I'd come, onto Junction and made haste to the cross street that crosses over to Brokaw, wrong-sided it back to here and got in here and put the bike away and buttoned up for the night. 

What would they tell the cops anyway? "I was speeding to make the light and almost hit a cyclist who was actually making a legal lane change"? The cops aren't going to do shit anyway as they have far bigger problems than that a cyclist made Karen a few seconds late for her first tumbler of Tanqueray and tonic after a long day's work tapping on a keyboard. 

Same goes for the white car. Hello, I already know cars and cyclists are mortal enemies. I know it, the cops know it, everyone knows it. The cops would rather bust someone with a car because, Hello, idiots with cars have got money to burn on things like tickets. 

Up and at 'em I guess

 I stayed up, watching YouTube videos about various people climbing Mt. Everest, and practicing on the shakuhachi. I'm getting stronger, and I practiced the last line in Nori No Miyama a lot because it always kicks my butt. A lot of it is, just as Rinban told us, being nervous or "conscious" of the note that's "difficult" and it seems to amount to tensing up. The solution: More practice! 

I was up until past 9AM and called the building owner's office, and the lady coming to pick up the checks (Ken wrote two, for some reason, amounting to about 4 grand) was "on her way". 

About half an hour later there was a knock on the door and I handed the checks off to the lady, and once that was done, settled down for a bit and went to bed - it was 10AM. 

For some reason I woke up a bit before 3. I thought about how much easier my week goes when I go to the bank on Thursday, and got up and did my standard Thursday routine of going to the bank and then Whole Foods. I had no big plans and mulled over various low-reward things to go, and finally settled on gong to Walmart because I can always find something to buy in there. 

I rode down to Wal's and sure enough, found things. I wanted to find cream of tartar to take as a potassium supplement and a tiny bit of it was about $6 at Whole Foods and a 78g bottle was about $2 at Walmart. 

I rode back, stopped at the Amazon place for  bubble mailers, then went to Nijiya for a thing or two, then headed for home. 

When I got onto 10th street, I found myself behind a weird zombie I felt a strange vibe about, so to let the zombie get well ahead of it and thus myself not on what's left of its mind, I stopped at a dumpster that generally has vegetables in it. And it did, green beans past their prime and such junk, but I pulled out - with quite a bit of effort - an interesting black box which turned out to have about 10lbs of those "Asian sugar peas" some of which were going back but most of which are fine. They're spendy in the store, so I put all of 'em into a Whole Foods cloth bag and carried 'em off. I'll sort them, then figure out how much I want to give to Tom (at least half) and how much for me. 

I got back here at 7:30 which is just like 10:30 in the before times. 

So we don't believe in paying rent now?

 I practiced a bit last night and all it told me is I need to be practicing for hours a day. At least I got to watch "Everest For Mountaineers" which is a good documentary on climbing Mt. Everest. A thing I have zero interest in doing but it's fun to watch others do it. They encountered unusual heat this year.

I listed 20 small things, packed 7, got up and exercised and had coffee and nuts, checked Ebay and one customer was livid that he got charged Ebay's sky-high shipping charge so I refunded him. 

Then I checked my email; not a good idea before I've had my first mug of coffee. Apparently we've not paid September's rent, incurring about $400 in late fees and the ire or at least bewilderment of the building owner. 

I tried calling Ken and couldn't raise him but I should see him tonight. 

Half of this month is gone but this month is kind of important. For one thing, it will start the one-year countdown to leaving here that I've planned. Also, this month I do the final bit of one of my major preparations, at least the part that involves spending money. 

I've got our cash flow back up, and it will take them months to rout us out of here if Ken's simply not paying rent any more. I have a lot of papers to get in order but if push comes to shove, I don't need a "real ID" until 2025 so I can flit out of here fairly quickly if things start turning bad a lot faster than they've already been turning bad. 

I packed a big thing - really heavy - then tried to ship it and there was no way to ship it for less than $200. The guy's paid $50 for the thing and $50 for shipping. So I canceled it and refunded the guy and didn't re-list it, to part out later. 

I then scrambled to get as many things packed as I could before I had to leave and left here with 10 packages. Off to the post office and then FedEx and the fried chicken I'd had yesterday was so good I got it again today, then went around finding packing stuff, boxes and foam. 

I got back in here and among other things at least got the heavy things unpacked and put all my new largesse of packing stuff away, and got the heavy things out of its case (not easy) and then put a black bag over it and cleaned the place up for when Ken came over. 

Ken gave me two checks to give to the lady coming over for the building owner, so Thursday's an "in" day probably, because I have to be around. 

After Ken left (we'd had a good time, talking, and watched a Cody's Lab video on YouTube where he builds a Sprengel pump and uses it to evacuate a Crookes radiometer. Pretty interesting.) 

When Ken left I cooked up a pork curry soup and then got down to taking the heavy thing apart. That took hours. So now I have parts to sell tomorrow because I'm not listing any tonight. 

I thought about how I got into electronics. When I was a teen I really liked synthesizer music. There were some great musicians creating it in those days - my favorite was Isao Tomita but there were tons of others too. So I guess I had the vague idea that if I got into electronics that somehow that would enable me to get into synthesizers. 

But not only did it take me years to get into any kind of work in electronics at all, but when I did it was by no means an entree into the music world. About the closest I got was, many years later, building one of the original Moog theremin kits. I actually thought it would be great to go busking with the thing, but then realized I'd need two AC cords to do so. I was familiar enough with farmer's markets and outdoor spaces in general by then to know how impractical that is. 

That's what got me interested in an instrument that doesn't need electricity - kind of negating the reason to be involved with electronics at all. I also lost all interest in the theremin when I found that the very same sound is made by the erhu, a pretty simple instrument that the Chinese worked out quite a while ago with no electricity involved. 

I just wish I'd learned a lot earlier about the shakuhachi and about simple 6-hole system flutes. I really like the idea of an instrument I can at least theoretically make myself, and I have in fact made a flute. That was the PVC one I made when I lived in Gilroy and was too broke to obtain anything else.  It worked out really well considering it was my first try at making a flute. I could have figured out how to make them as a teenage for sure. 

Artificial Stupidity

 If AI is so smart, then why do I get tons of ads on YouTube and Reddit for cars (I hate cars) make-up, cruises (eww) stuff in Spanish and occasionally even Chinese, Huel (good idea there guys, come up with a puke-like "food" and name it something suspiciously close to "hurl") and all the other inane stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with me or in most cases, are things I actually hate? 

The only one that's popped up lately that I might be remotely interested in is one saying that Gerber (not the baby food) is having a sale. The only problem is, I just don't like Gerber stuff. It seems to be made to wow designers but not actual users. I'm pretty sure I've got a Gerber multi-tool around here I never use. 

And I was getting them, well, still do, for Cotopaxi backpacks the only problem being they're only sold through REI and REI does not appear to want me as a customer. 

So robots are not going to take your job. AI's might tell you how to do your job though, once they get their shit together.

I see a scenario like in Marshall Brain's novella "Manna" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna_(novel) where you have an AI making the decisions and the humans scurrying around doing the actual work in the physical world. The beginning part, anyway, where the burger chain Burger-G works this way. This is essentially how an Amazon warehouse works. 

I not only packed and shipped 17 small things but packed 20 more medium-large-ish, then did some practice; my long tones routine on the shakuhachi and a song or two and then played the Hall flute for a while, working on tone and worked on Londonderry Air. 

I was up around 3, packed 7 more things and, surprisingly, fit them all onto the bike trailer or into two bags hanging off the handlebars. I'd be able to do it all in one trip! 

I got to the post office, put the smallest things into the chute which promptly jammed, then put the rest, medium sized, on the counter. It was close to closing for them anyway and the atmosphere was relaxed. 

I rode around to H Mart, went in and got a bottle of black coffee and the lady who checked me out asked if I worked there or something (due to my safety vest) and I said No, I do deliveries, riding my bike around, taking things to the post office and FedEx, and I wear the vest because where Brokaw goes under the bridge, the traffic lanes and bike lane cross, and I want to make sure they see me. She said the coffee would "make me feel better" and she's not wrong there. 

I dropped the FedEx things off and bought some paper, and went around to the "Krispy" chicken place and got two thighs to go - it's still $6.50. I ate at one of the tables by the end of the strip there, drank some of the coffee, and was on my way. 

Next stop was my little route, hitting the electrical lighting place, Sanmina where I got some foam, and the manufacturing place where I got all kinds of neat stuff, bubble wrap, couple small boxes, and most importantly, a large, long box that looks perfect to send this one thing I have to ship, a real beastie, in. 

I got back here, gave the big box a good wiping down (the top was really dirty) and put things away. 

 

9/11

 It's 9/11. 

After such a busy day yesterday I took a couple of things apart, and also got things out of the warehouse area that have to be shipped out. That was a fair amount of work as it was about 35 things. 

I did a little practice last night on the Hall flute and sounded terrible. I felt very discouraged. I told myself that it makes since since I've not put in hours and hours on the thing yet. I just found something semi-interesting on YouTube to watch and played it a bit and after having put it down for several minutes picked it up and played and it sounded wonderful. I was also very tired so I went right to bed after that. 

The Hall flute requires a different embouchure than a concert flute or, needless to say, a shakuhachi. The edge of the blow hole needs to be right on the edge of the lip, apparently. This needs to be made unconscious by tons of practice. 

I woke up in time to pack 17 small things and took them to the post office, then went into H Mart for a cooked fish and some bean sprouts, then checked my membership card and I had something like 1007 points and you get $10 for every 1000 points so I got my $10 gift card and then since you have to spend it all when you use it, got some gum too, and it ended up being $9.88 or something like that so I got a little change back and the stuff was free. 

I stopped then at Lowe's for some PVC pipe pieces to try making my new light setup. And then just rode back here. 

Where, after having my fish and bean sprouts, I packed another 20 things. These were almost all medium to the lower end of large, so that was my evening, as far as working goes. 

 

Bikes!

 I listed 10 things on Ebay last night, and got a good practice session done on the shakuhachi. I can do 15 long tones in a row now and I'm finding that when I play pieces they're flowing a bit more smoothly. 

This all had me up right around to 8AM so I went right to bed afterward, and woke up at around 1. I got up and had my coffee and so on, and left here at a bit after 2. 

The "Viva Calle" thing was going on where the streets were shut off to cars from the middle of Japantown to downtown to South of downtown at a park. It was kind of neat, riding along with all different kinds of bike riders. The thing ended at 3 and I only got to ride in the last 15 or 20 minutes of it but this beats last time when I didn't get out early enough at all. 

I rode as part of this almost all the way down to Walmart where I locked the bike, and went in to buy some things, then went back in to see if they had cheapo "work lights" preferably battery powered. They didn't have any kind of flashlights. I went into Big-5 and they had two - and only two - really neat ones for $12 each so I got those. They run on 3 AA batteries each which I have a ton of. 

I need to make "extenders" to mount them on, then I can use them to take my Ebay photos and they ought to be just right - they're kind of too bright right now, using an AC powered LED light I found around here and mounted at the top of the window. The thing is, I have to climb up on the desk and hook up the extension cord, and I can have light, or power something up that I'm taking photos of, not both. 

The extenders I have planned will be made of PVC pipe. I'll still have to get up on the desk to turn them on and fold them out, and when done with photos, turn them off and fold them back in, but such is life in Silicon Valley where things are very "second world" for 99% of us. 

I rode back home with these ideas in my mind, and stopped at the Amazon place for bubble mailers and also, that's where I solved the mystery of my bike making a funny sound when I'd hit a bump. I was pretty sure it was coming from the front wheel somehow, and it turned out one of the axle nuts was very loose, as in halfway off. I hand-tightened it and got home, put things away, and tightened it down properly with a wrench. 

Then I set out again for Dai Thanh for a couple of things, 99 Ranch for a couple more, and H Mart where I got a 1.99 "Lunchables Cracker Stackers" kit with crackers and little slices of ham and cheese, and a can of black coffee. I just ate the ham and cheese without the crackers and it was actually a pretty nice little snack. 

I walked over to Sprouts and got some macadamia nuts and something called potassium citrate that I want to try taking. I also got a beef stick which I ate out front. 

By this time it was about 8PM, the equivalent of 11PM in the before times. Honestly, long ago I used to take my postal service mailing to the post office just before the lobby with the chute, which worked well then, closed at 9. Then I'd shop at H Mart before they closed at 10, and be out looking for packing stuff past 10 at night. So I'd be out until 11. Those times are long gone now. 

I was going to stop at Lowe's for parts to make the extenders for the lights but decided I'd done enough and came straight back here. 

The long and short of it

 I did the usual stuff Thursday, Ken came by and I got my check and I listed stuff and besides that took stuff apart and kept busy, then decided I'd not go to bed and go to the bank in the morning, and left for the bank at 11AM, deposited my check (numbers dead on) and rode back, finding a handful of books as usual, and stopped by Nijiya for some things and a lunch truck for some chicken wings (breaded and dried-out and very salty but at least you don't get very many) and ate those, putting the goodies from Nijyya away. 

I decided to stay up, and realized I could go ahead and photo the next batch of stuff, then realized that with the things photo'd, I could go ahead and list them so I did that. I finally just plain ran out of gas at about 6, and went to bed, waking up at around 4:30AM. 

I stayed up a little, ate some corned beef and olives, then went back to sleep and woke up at 3PM.  I realized I have a "load" of books so it's off to the used book store. 

I got out of here a few minutes after 4, and got to the book store in time, which is good. Unfortunately I only got $4.50 for the books and it was a pretty good load so I think that's it for me and selling books. I could make that just noodling around with my glass flute in front of Whole Foods and not have to carry heavy books around... 

I went over to TAP Plastics and picked out some tubing, asking them for a 1-foot piece and picked out some end caps that fit OK. That turned out to cost me a bit over $11, ouch. 

Then I went over to Whole Foods and got some chicken wings and asparagus spears and a near-beer, ate and drank, and got some cash back too. 

Next I went over to the Vietnamese market on Keyes thinking I'd pick up the same sort of things I get at Dai Thanh but they didn't have the little cucumbers I liked and also didn't have the brand of fried shallots I like. I ended up getting a couple of bunches of celery, and since there'd been a bum sitting on the curb in front - not right in front but down a little - who looked particularly hard-up, I got a tall can of beer. 

I went out, gave the beer to the bum who said "Thank you" which was nice, and rode back. I stopped at the Amazon place for bubble mailers and then was even able to make it to Nijiya in time to pick up some eggs, mackerel, etc. And a nice cold can of coffee. 

I got in quite the talk with one of the guys there about learning the sax, and hopefully I have the guy all jazzed (lol) up about renting one and getting some lessons from Park Avenue Music. I told him I was making $40 an hour with my trumpet and since all the other buskers have gone, he'll have the pick of places to play. There's a career in the sax, honestly. 

I sat and enjoyed my cold can of coffee out front, looking at the clouds (the clouds were particularly neat today). I guess that's my "third place", the tables in front of Nijiya. 

I rode back and put things away, then headed back out for a quick look at the medical and veggie dumpsters. The medical dumpster wasn't even there, while the veggie area had 4 hands of bananas with only tiny brown spots on them. 

I took the bananas over to Tom's, pacing myself behind a zombie on his zombike, who was riding erratically and I think trying to get "the jump" on me by getting behind me - I didn't let him. I pulled into Tom's who had James and another hanger-on there, and I gave him the bananas and hung out for a while, catching up on things. That was a kind of nice, to be able to socialize a bit. It's funny though how, back in Hawaii, my social circle included doctors and engineers and scientists, and on the mainland it's always been a few social steps down. 

If there's one thing covid/quitting drinking/coming to terms with leaving here soon has made me, it's made me more social. For instance, I was in Whole Foods and stepped right on a big fat cherry, making a mess in the vitamin aisle. I told a couple of workers who were discussing something by the computer terminal, and they were glad I'd told 'em.  I said I'd worked for a market a little, and the worst thing was grapes, because they come off of the bunch easily and the seeds are very slippery. 

I was looking for potassium citrate which we had a look for and they apparently didn't have. That was no problem, I said cheerfully, they're not a full-on pharmacy. They probably have customers who get cranky if they don't have a thing. 

And my convo with the guy at Nijiya, it started out with my saying that it's hard to make friends in this town but if you do some hobby or activity, then it becomes easy. 

A big part of being a busker, I think, is you have to be fairly social. It's too bad I can't get very excited by the idea of doing art, because I don't care if there's a crowd watching me draw or paint. I got desensitized to that as a kid. 

First toots on my new flute

 Ken came by last night and I got my check and we hung out and talked, the usual routine. He'd also brought the box with the glass flute and two books etc., but for some reason was very coy about whether he had it or not - he probably wasn't sure himself. 

He'd also brought a load of stuff to sell so I got a generous pile of ... stuff .... but in all fairness this is a pretty good batch. He even had a bicycle which I'm sure he meant to be a spare for me. I wasn't interested though and eventually told him about Good Karma Bikes and he was happy when he heard about them, as he likes to donate things just like I do. 

Eventually we settled down to talk and I opened up the flute package and got the books out and the flute, and blew some notes. I could tell it's a winner by how much the high notes irritated Ken. 

At half past midnight it was time for Ken to go, and I worked on putting the stuff away so it's not filling up the office and then ate something and got to work listing the 15 things I had ready to go. 

Eventually I was able to try the flute out and it looks like it's going to be a real winner. The books are kind of simplistic and turn out to be the very same format as pennywhistle music but that's a plus because it means there's a sea of stuff out there for me. A lot of it is free online too. 

I did a pretty decent "Silent Night" - a beautiful song - and Danny Boy, and could put filigrees and ornaments on too, so yay for the 6-hole flute! 

I've sure spent $120 in worse ways. 

I decided I'll go to the bank tomorrow, as I was having fun with my flute, and I'd sleep as much as I like and let things work themselves out. I also finished a load of laundry I'd started a day or two ago so that was done, and although I only hung it up at 2AM or so, it's dry now because the loft is like a big dryer this time of year. 

Ken's first thing to say about the flute was, "What if you break it?" I looked in the paperwork and it turns out that if I do so, I can send the pieces back, in the box with proof I'd bought it from them (and not second hand or something) and they'll replace the thing for $10 and shipping. 

I woke up around 4:30 which gave me time to pack three more things that had sold. So I had six things to mail, and one additional one that had stuck to the box I'd carried packages in yesterday. White bubble mailer + white tub = a pretty good job of hiding out. So at least that one had to go! 

While riding I thought a bit and remembered I had a Home Goods and a Ross right there across from H Mart. And I had enough money on me (I thought $8, I actually had $13) to buy a towel or tablecloth or something to use as a photography background. 

So on my way back from the post office I locked the bike at H Mart and walked over, looked in both places, and settled on a towel from Home Goods. And I even had enough left over to get a nice piece of fish that became tonight's fish soup.

I headed back from there and found a few things to pick up and checked the medical dumpster - there were no clothes and no hostile zombie, and there was at least one big piece of packing foam so I went back here to drop things off and went back with the trailer and got that piece of foam, an even bigger one, and a smaller one too. And on my way out with the trailer I'd loaded up all the stuff I'd left by the trash enclosure that the bums didn't want, and put it in the HVAC's place's dumpster. 

Then  I got in, took a couple of things apart and got together 10 things that I think are pretty high value. I've also been going through the "items eligible to send offers" on Ebay to drum up some sales. 

Our sales are awful right now and I can't figure out what's going on. If we're headed into another 2008 then I know exactly what's going on; we're heading into another 2008. But there are a lot of other things I can at least try doing. Ken *can* keep going at a loss like this for another year and after that I don't care. But I'd rather leave here with things going well. 

Personal or Poverty finance?

 Nothing much else to complain about right now so I only offer the observation that I'm halfway between Reddit's subs of r/personalfinance and r/povertyfinance. I'm not scraping bottom like the poverty crowd (much less a Syrian refugee who's just posted) but not as well-off as the personal finance crowd because I didn't start game-ifying saving early enough in life. 

So I'm adding r/personalfinance to the subs I read. 

I got out of here with 12 packages all for the post office, and found a couple nice boxes on the way back, along with one of those red tubs cheap coffee comes in, and a package of Romaine lettuce so I'll get my fiber for the day. 

The medical dumpster had the aftermath of a breakup, probably, in it. Plus a skinny zombie with the usual Mad Max bike and trailer shaped objects. This thing had laid claim to the entire contents and as there wasn't any foam or good boxes I didn't get anything. I picked out an ugly purse with a baggie of jewelry in it and said to the zombie, "Can't I just have this? My boss's wife is really into costume jewelery..." and the zombie snatched it out of my hand "No! It's all my stuff!". 

So it came down to, either fight the zombie or move on. I'm all for shooting zombies (and their zombie dogs) for sport, but unfortunately there are still laws where zombies are legally considered human. So  I can't just go back over and take care of the problem. I comforted myself in knowing that in 10 years I'll be fine and the zombie will still be feeding their drug habit and digging in dumpsters, but really, in 10 years the zombie will be dead for the final time. Good riddance! 

 

Using your words

 ...if you have them, which is really what George Orwell warned us about. The point of the book "1984" was that language was being impoverished so that people didn't have the words to describe things; to even think about things. That's what held the whole system up. 

Even in a house full of books with an Ivy League graduate father, I was not taught to be verbal and people were, in general, no more verbal than they absolutely had to to. So that I ran off and joined the Army when my father said he could not guarantee we'd have the condo we were living in, in another month. I interpreted it to mean I had to be out in a month, and talking it out would have clarified things. 

Likewise, when I got back from Army training, my grand-aunt gave me $500 but it was never cleared up whether it was a gift or a loan and as little as I made, I never touched it and eventually gave it back. Talking it out would have helped a ton. Also talking about her spiteful decision to not help me with college because my older brother had taken money she'd given him for classes and spent it on a bike. Hell, I'm a whole different person? And I'm the one who had to be responsible when my older brother was allowed to slide on everything. 

Grand-Aunt Mary also didn't want me to go to college (it took me years to realize how smart she was in this) but could not verbalize why. Instead she tried to scare me with hints that college campuses were incredibly dangerous, infested with violent crime. This did not work as I'd been around tons of violent crime and nothing on campus ever scared me; I went to college and years later realized what a scam it is. If Aunt Mary had been better at verbalizing her actual thoughts, I might have been more sensible and gone into a trade instead. 

(The longer I live, the more I believe that the only sure thing is a skill that was viable 100s or more like 1000s of years ago like art, music, maybe being a particularly adept tatooist or pickpocket or having a gift for begging or conning.) 

The rift between my older sister and myself could have been solved with more words. Simply pointing out when she said, haughtily, "Well, if you're going to be homeless....." just saying "Look. No one wants to be homeless...". 

I think writing this thing is helping me in this respect, this and various things I write online and even communicating with Ebay customers probably helps. 

I will certainly need some verbal skills to convey how I could leave Hawaii for what's termed by many, "Gold Mountain", and not become rich. I'll need to get across that life is actually a lot harder here, that it's more expensive, the distances make everything difficult, and there's not really a society. California's but really the US's motto should be, "You're not here to make friends, you're here to work". 

OK so I got some good practice in last night, lots of long tones and played a couple of songs. I'm starting to sound a bit better - this is like training to run a decent time in the mile, it takes years. 

I was up in time to pack a whole 4 things, two of them big and kinda-big, so that's OK. I took 'em up to the post office and FedEx. In front of FedEx was a guy with the worst diabeetus feet I've ever seen. They were wrapped in bandages and frankly, kind of looked like they were rotting. The guy was just kind of loitering around, not sure if waiting for family to finish shopping in H Mart or a beggar who just didn't beg from me. The guy wasn't hugely overweight be just standard American overweight, in that zone between overweight and obese but in America if you can still walk you're good. 

The poor guy's probably taking tons of insulin, eating tons of high-sugar foods, pretty much one foot on the brake and one on the gas, as is standard procedure for diabetics here. 

I've been paying more attention to this stuff because I must assume I'm pre-diabetic myself. The food environment here pretty much guarantees it. I've gone low-carb to try to cure my headaches, and so far it's worked. I'm also losing weight, which I can tell without having weighed myself. I don't talk with anyone about this because "the first rule of keto club is you don't talk about keto club". 

It'd be nice to just go to a doctor and get an A1C test but that seems to be very expensive and difficult to do. I think I might be able to buy a glucose monitor, the prick-your-finger kind, without a prescription so at least I can get an idea of where my blood sugar is and I may do that. Blood glucose is actually the last link in the chain of things, and your body can be putting out heroic amounts of insulin and keeping your blood sugar even, and you only get high glucose readings when your poor pancreas is failing. 

But it's an idea, and in the interest of cheapness I think I'll just ask Ken to test me. It won't be a fasting test but it will be a number. I'll at least know if I'm cruising around with a blood glucose of 400 or something. 

I found some good packing stuff and got back here, cleaned up the parking lot, and that's my day. 

Eagerly awaiting

 Labor day. A day off, as thou shalt not labor on Labor day. Or thou shalt stage a riot against the capitalists, but I didn't see any of those kicking off to join in on. So a day in it was. 

I did a fair amount for a lazy day. I cleared off some shelving that's hard to get to and I don't want listed things on, and put 5 of these things called "nimbin racks" onto it, getting them out of the way as they were on the floor before and in the way. I moved a fair amount of other stuff around, and got rid of some things, and took an old electrophoresis power supply apart - we can't give those things away especially the older ones - so I had some neat parts to list. 

After all this moving and taking things apart and digging around, I had 15 things to list, and listed them. 

I've finally gotten it through my thick head that the glass flute I have coming uses the same 6-hole system as the "penny whistle" so anything written for penny whistle will be easily playable on the glass flute. This is good because there are actually a lot of penny whistle players out there and a ton of stuff's been worked out. There should be a ton of music for free online for the 6-hole system. 

I mean, I just jumped on Google and looked for "simple pennywhistle songs" and found a ton. Some of them, like Old MacDonald, I can live without, but there are good ones like Amazing Grace, Silent Night, even some Simon & Garfunkel if that can be believed. 

So I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of the flute, which should be Wednesday night when Ken comes over. 

A new family

 I got some good practice in last night, and went to sleep. Before that I'd taken some big ugly piece of equipment apart so I had 15 things to list but since that was a fair amount of work I didn't list them. 

I woke up at 5, having slept all I wanted, and took off at 6 for Dai Thanh Market. I got a couple of things there, then stopped at H Mart for a couple more things, then went over to Tom's to visit and catch up on the latest. 

I dropped off a bag of fancy pancake mix I'd found, telling Tom "You can cook up pancakes for your crew in the morning". The pancake mix was expired in 2021 but I know suburbian culture well enough to know that there are no expiration dates on things like flour, spices, mixes, etc. A proper suburbian house will have jars of spices that are 15 or 20 years old. 

We talked about things, while his latest dependent, James, futzed around with one of his Mad Max vehicles. James' dog barked at me at first when I'd ridden up but I said "whuff!" a couple of times which is a way to make peace with dogs, and now the dog was just wandering around inside Tom's place. 

Tom and I caught up on gossip and I said he's got it made now - got a dependent, a dog, it's like a happy family. Americans don't consider it a family without a dog to piss and shit on everything and to get into things, give you fleas, etc., so Tom's doing it right, in American terms. 

Tom told me how he has to fee James on nothing but junk food, that he can't even digest anything that doesn't come from a major hamburger chain. At one point, Tom was munching away on one of the rock-candy-on-a-stick things I'd brought by a few days back, with purple crystals of sugar on it. Americans don't savor sugar, they wolf it down like it's beans or mashed potatoes, and this Tom was doing, breaking the sugar off of the stick and shoveling it into his mouth while talking. At one point he smiled a bit and I lost it, laughing. His teeth were purple! We had a good laugh about that. 

Tom's wife was still there, wandering around, trying to spread her covid. She went out for a short walk but returned saying she was short of breath (no surprise). I just kept a polite distance and upwind, and didn't go inside Tom's place. I don't think I'll get it but James probably will - his fast-food diet will protect him, though, I'm sure he's sure of it. 

It got dark and I said I have to go, and rode back here. It's actually cool out there tonight.

Mudding Man

 Mother Nature decided the dirty hippies needed a mud bath, and watered the Burning Man "festival" well and thoroughly, with more rain to come.

I listed 10 things last night, and didn't practice much as the guys were washing their vehicles and just hanging out and I didn't want them to wonder what kind of loon would be practicing the flute at 6-7AM when I'm not really supposed to be here at all. 

I told myself I could sleep all I wanted and this woke up around 4 or 5. I decided to ride downtown, stop at Nijiya in Japantown for some gum, throw a bag of trash away in some random trash can, look for books, and maybe have a ride around just to see what's happening in a town as dead as this one on a Saturday night. 

Along with the gum I bought a can of "Boss" black coffee too, and sat at one of the tables outside to drink it and enjoy being somewhere that's not here. 

I checked the little libraries and found 4 books that are interesting, then meandered around by the college and Paseo de San Antonio. That area used to be so lively, and there would be at least three buskers but now it's dead as a doornail. 

I decided to, having been told there's a ukulele player at Whole Foods who comes around "late at night" which in this town means after 6PM, I'd ride over there because if this person is real, Saturday night would be the time to find them. 

I passed by San Pedro Square - tons of foot traffic but no buskers - and over to Whole Foods. The skinny conspiracy nut guy was just setting his table up. I said Hi and started to talk with him but he was going back and forth to his truck, so I went into Whole Foods. I could not find anything I wanted to buy other than a little bottle of taurine pills so I got those. 

I went back out and said to the guy that I'd looked up the Fulani flute he'd told me about, and that I could make one from plans online out of PVC and after I've played it a bit and made sure it plays right, give it to him. He doesn't play the flute, he said, and "used to be able to whistle but can't really do that now". 

I made the mistake of mentioning my going back to Hawaii as my reason to play the shakuhachi and flutes in general. "Do you know what happened in Maui??" he said, the very same thing everyone I make the mistake of mentioning going back to Hawaii to, says. 

As if I'd have no idea, never-ever read the news, or listen to the radio.... 

I said, "I know, do I ever know..." and he was off and running. Off and ranting more like. All about Jewish space lasers or some crap and I tried to explain that no, when the sugar cane plantations had shut down the land was allowed to go fallow and people were not paying attention to fire safety in general, and that, combined with a wind that's like the Santa Ana winds..... 

He'd not hear of it. Back to the Jewish space lasers.... I walked away. 

This guy will wear out his welcome soon enough. He's not been around because he's been banned, either something like for a year, or as long as a particular manager was in charge at Whole Foods. The guy's back and he'll get more and more obnoxious, eventually reaching his final form where he holds one of his banners up and literally tried to trap people coming from the parking lot, holding them prisoner until they cough up some money. 

It's enough to make me want to get a trumpet again, just because trumpets are loud. 

I rode out of there and by a different route to check one more little library, and was going to check one last one I've not been to for ages, the one behind Bad Boyz Bail Bonds, when it started to rain. When I started feeling drops I rode the shortest route back here and didn't get more than damp, got inside and that's my night. I got in at 7:30, which is like 10:30 in the before times. 

This all gave me plenty of time to think about my interaction with the old hippy guy. If I said I'd *not* heard about what happened in Maui, I'd have gotten the same frothing at the mouth tirade. No, my problem was admitting that Hawaii was home to me. It's not the first time I've made this mistake either. 

White mainland people who only go to Hawaii for vacation apparently believe they own the place, and get very, VERY gate-keep-y if the place is even mentioned. Saying I'm actually from there seems to send them into some kind of indignant rage. I had this happen not only with the old hippy guy but with a very nice guy who rides a cargo bike, who I used to talk to regularly when I was busking with my trumpet at Whole Foods. The underlying ugliness really came out, and he's a nice, normal guy otherwise. I was able to talk to him just fine, afterward. 

So my mistake was in mentioning at all that I had any connection to Hawaii. The proper response would be something like, "Oh, I've always wanted to go....!" maybe adding that I love the Blue Hawaii movie with Elvis and can feel the "mana" whenever I have pineapple on pizza. 

As for where I'm going to retire, I guess I'll have to invent a place that's cheaper than here. Colorado Springs, here I come? I lived there long enough to at least be able to talk about the place a bit, and it *is* cheaper to live there than here. 

What's funny is, when I was losing everything in the crash of 2007-2008, one thing I could have pulled off would have been to take all the cash I could off of my credit cards and go to the 'Springs to take the full bicycle repair course at the Barnett Bicycle Institute so I'd have gone back there for a while anyway, long enough to learn to repair bikes. 

But I know enough about the place to use it as protective coloration for the remaining time I'm here. 

I guess this post is really about aggressive gate-keeping which seems to be a white thing. Whether it's calling the cops on some kid for selling lemonade, or calling them on a family having a barbecue in the park or making up accusations against some peaceful birdwatcher and making sure the (white) cops kill him, gate-keeping seems to be essential to white culture. 

I've just never seen other groups do this. Other groups will gate-keep but they don't make it into a fight, in too many cases a fight unto death. If I go back to Hawaii and say I'm from neighborhood X, someone from there will just quietly ask if I know this or that family, etc. and let's say I fail the test, I'm utterly lying. They'll just laugh and turn away or tut and say "Typical" and turn away, etc. I'd not be shot or stabbed or beaten to death, just laughed at. 

This is what turned me off of going to Burning Man. I've been offered a free trip there a few times when I lived at the Gilroy place and as I've done the desert thing - dust, heat, dust devils the size of small tornadoes - I just shrugged and said No, I was really not interested. But another factor was the gate-keeping. You've either Been or Not-Been, and there's all kinds of stupid bullshit like you have to make a "dust angel" in the dust when you first arrive, and there are other hazing rituals too, and the whole thing is very white, very suburban, very middle-class, and extremely judge-y. 

It's also a festival for cars that just happens to have people because someone has to drive the cars. But make no mistake: It's about how expensive an RV, how fancy/expensive an "art car" you can have, it's drive-in-only unless you're wealthy enough to fly in and have a car waiting for you. Tickets are a few thousand dollars apiece now to keep the working class out. Essentially it's building a big suburbia out in the desert where no working-class or "coloreds" are likely to make their way in. 

And that's what makes it hilarious this year - pouring rain, with more in the forecast. And the mud out there is even worse than Kahuku mud. There are 70,000 or so entitled white shitheads bogged down in that crap as I write. Their Aryans Uber Alles consumption-fest is getting a round spanking or maybe it's best termed a much-needed bath, by Mother Nature. 

I think I have figured out, as well as can be humanly described, why our Ebay sales are so horrible right now. For some reason, although we had something like 25,000 - 30,000 things listed, we now have about 11,000. Notice I have these numbers rounded off to the nearest thousand, because no one, not ourselves, not Ebay, no one at all, knows. But Ebay used to show in the high 20-thousands and now it's around 11-thousand. 

Was Ebay simply drastically over-counting, before? This is not impossible. The fact is though that no one knows because it's not knowable. Customers continue to find the most obscure things, things we've had listed for over a decade, and are buying them so all so it's not older things dropping off of Ebay. All I can do is keep listing things and going along as usual. Ken seems to accept my theory that it's people spending less because their kids' school year is starting. He never seems to worry about much, having been born into the class that never misses a meal, owns the place they live in, is never-ever insecure in any way so as a member of that class, his worldview is that everything will always be all right.