Lost a day or two there

 Late-late Wednesday night, Thursday morning really. 

I've been busy, shipping stuff and gathering shipping supplies. The usual. We're doing well, we might even be making money. 

My printer, after about 10 years, is getting too persnickety to live with so I found a new open-box one on Ebay for a couple hundred and put it in our Cart. When Ken came over tonight I told him about the printer situation and got let him pull the trigger. So I'll have that within a week, I think. 

Ebay, in their theme of "We're Getting Harder To Use!(tm)" doesn't let me do refunds and hardly lets me send invoices so I'll have to tell customers that it's just tough, I don't combine shipping unless they can find a way to get Ebay to put it all in a batch. 

Ken and I talked about brass tacks a bit (money) and things are OK now, but he said he'd like to try to sell this business in July or so. I said I'm leaving in November, and he said "That's why I want you to mentor someone from July on". I made funny little noises. I said "The reason I'm making funny little noises is, I was thinking and I might want to stay on another year, more likely two. The rest of this lease. That'll let me save up more money and make my Social Security fatter". 

Ken perked up at this. He gushed about how he didn't collect Social Security until he had to for this reason, and he thinks it's the best way to do it. He wants it to be Alex and Ken, Krass & Bernie, into the indefinite future. He actually likes this stuff; I just like money and having a stable place to live. 

It might be time to retire this blog also. 

The Sky Crawlers

 What can say,  I did tons of work last night, tons of work as soon as I woke up, and have tons of work to go this evening. 

I discovered an anime move that's old enough for me to finally have found out about it, called "The Sky Crawlers" which is pretty good. I'm almost halfway through it. Computers have made me, along with everyone else, stupid enough that it's taxing to pay attention all the way through a normal-length movie. 

While watching I got some practice in and my breathing exercises and having learned to relax instead of press harder, from playing the shakuhachi, are paying off.  Regular practice, and experience and thinking about how to go about things, are amazing. 

I packed a 17-item order and what's more fun, I had to calculate all the individual shipping fees and do the calculations and it turns out we owe the guy $100 so I'll have to guide Ken in PayPal'ing the money to the guy when he's over. 

Since that one thing took so much time, I aimed for FedEx only things which meant I had another hour of time to work in, had left here at 7 with a good big load of FedEx boxes. It was a bit cold again so I dressed warmer, and it was actually nice weather for a ride - as it almost always is. 

I zoomed on up to H Mart and went in and got a Coke Zero, a bunch of celery, and because it was after 7 so everything was half price, two packages of grilled pork belly. Sort of like bacon but thicker and not smoked, but with a mild seasoning. That all cost me a bit over $10. I was starving and had been debating in my mind whether to go to the "Oh no!" Hawaiian Barbecue place or what, but this was the best bang for the buck. 

I dropped off the boxes at FedEx and finally asked the gal there what had happened with the bathroom. That corner of the store had been cordoned off with fans blowing for days now. She said the bathroom "got bloody". Eesh. I told her about the old hydrogen peroxide trick that I'd learned working at the animal hospital. 

I went over in front of the pizza place kind of but to the side, and settled in at one of their tables. I was able to eat without anyone bothering me because it was too windy and cold for anyone else to be outside, otherwise I'd have found somewhere else. 

After eating I followed my usual route to find packing stuff and came up dry. I remembered that I used to always stop by the old shop on Mondays because the people next door throw out packing materials. Why had I gotten out of that habit? So I steamed on over there. 

I loaded up a big black trash bag full of stuff and filled another smaller but still large bag of my own with loose pieces of packing stuff, so it was a pretty decent haul. Tom had James over with his truck and trailer and there was another truck there with a camper on it. 

I went over and How's it going and all that. James had a haul of stuff most notably an old claw foot bath tub. We all hung out and I learned the camper on the truck is Tom's that he got off of Craig's List on Tom's truck. The whole shebang cost less than 10 grand and I marveled a bit that with some more saving, I could buy the same thing, if I wanted. The camper is actually really neat and I'm not sure why, maybe its shiny dark grey exterior, has a "cop" or "government" look to it. Tom says he's going to put the word "SECURITY" across the front of it and keep it parked in front of his place. 

Tom and James were working out where to put piles of wood and stuff, and I suggested across the street, "It's not in the way of anything, and it's pretty obvious the stuff is up for grabs..." This does not seem to be possible these days as they told me whoever it is in the business there now, takes the stuff and puts it back on Tom's property. I was puzzled, because I'd lived there with no problems for years. "Yeah, you were low-key", said Tom "But *this* guy ..." meaning James. 

It was a pretty good time, really, and I told Tom I'll drink a beer if he offers me one so he got one out of the cooler in the cab of his truck (or something, that's where he got it out of anyway) and he got himself a fresh one too. I asked if he can use 3 jars of spaghetti sauce and some spaghetti and he said he sure could, so I'll bring that tomorrow. 

We were talking about places to find surplus, and places to find packing stuff, and I was relating how a couple of different places I got packing foam from have reacted by making their places super neat and clean which is kind of cool actually. And we talked about finding "technical" stuff which James said is actually much easier to find up in Fremont. 

At some point there was a pause in the conversation and James said that on January 1st he'd taken something he thought was OK to take, and was not. James got 6 hours in jail and it made the news and there's a court case coming up. Tom showed me pictures on his phone, of the thing and of James cutting it up, and gave me some hints on how to find the news story. "This is why I need to come here on Mondays! Packing stuff and the latest gossip!" I exclaimed. 

Tom and James both explained to me how it was a perfectly rational mistake that anyone could make, taking the thing. I was a good listener and agreed; from what they were telling me, it was pretty cut and dried. 

I finished my beer said I'd get going, and rode back here. The thing with the beer is interesting in that I really didn't feel anything from it, and my thirst for it was just that - I was thirsty and there is something rather refreshing about good old watery American beer. It really didn't feel different than drinking a near-beer which is just how I like it to be. 

Largely off'a coffee

 I think I've been drinking far too much coffee so I started my day with a cup and that was it. I can drink soda, tea, miso broth, lime water, etc. through the rest of the day and evening. 

I woke up at around 2 in the afternoon but didn't have to get up a time or two to pee so that's probably the lack of coffee already working for me. 

I packed the big order, about 27 small things and all checked off on a handwritten list because computers can't be trusted with important things. And I packed three other things, all large-ish or large boxes to go to FedEx. I also took a long thin fibreglas pole with a hook on the end I had around here (one of a set of three that screw together, for reaching wires or something) and sharpened the hook and on the other end, screwed on a couple of nuts and put a piece of heat-shrink tubing on to make a sort of a handle or at least make it a bit less slippery to hold onto. 

I ran the stuff up to FedEx and got a few things in H Mart, and on the way back tried my new toy out on what had inspired me to make it: a box with lots of nice padding in it that I couldn't reach yesterday. It worked great. 

I got back here with my goodies, put things away, and it was still only 6. So I rode out again to Nijiya. I wanted to get some beef and instant miso and other odds and ends and at least it will feel a bit like I got to go out and do something this weekend. Now I'm all stocked up to be rained in for the week. 

But it hasn't been rainy, in fact it's been bizarrely warm. It was 75 yesterday and in the upper 60s today. Today I wore my pale yellow, very thin, jacket and short sleeves under it. I know we can have a very wet March and April, but so far it's almost summer-y out there. 

Deprivation can make a person do strange things.

 When I stopped at Nijiya yesterday for a "few things" among those "few things" were a 4-pack of tall cans of beer, nothing fancy, just Asahi "Super Dry" which is 5% alcohol. And a bottle of "Takara Shochu". It's basically vodka that's 35% alcohol. I think Nijiya downgraded their liquor license because they no longer have any alcohol that's stronger than 35%. So it's probably a beer and wine license rather than one that allows hard liquor, which is 40% alcohol and up. 

I also got a very expensive little jar of Maxim instant coffee and some half and half. And some salmon sashimi and a tonkatsu don which turned out to be real garbage. But at least I ate. 

But not before making and having a thing I'd been thinking about that I used to make, that I call "atomic coffee". Poured some of the shochu in a cup, put in a teaspoon of the coffee which mixed instantly, then filled it up with half and half and mixed again. The result is a creamy, coffee-y, very alcoholic thing. 

It's a good thing I packed this guy's box of wire before doing this, because after drinking this, on a pretty empty stomach, I wasn't going anywhere. In the end I drank 1/4 of the bottle of shochu and 3-1/2 of the 4 tall beers. 

As an interesting aside, David Bowie did a TV commercial for Takara Shochu in the early 80s. It had been a favorite drink among middle-aged men and the Takara company wanted to popularize among young people, who were discovering vodka martinis and various spritzers. Writing now I only feel sorry for the middle-aged men. 

Why did I do this very questionable thing? Since I went to bed around 10 I had plenty of time this morning to think about this. The root cause is deprivation. 

I remember one time when I was literally starving as a kid, finding something edible but not recognized by the competition (siblings, mother, various hippie moochers around the place) as food: A partial box of those pie crust dough sticks. I remember like it was yesterday, taking that box of stuff to a favorite hideout under a Brazilian pepper tree and eating my find. Once in a great while I'll still buy pie crust mix and eat all I can stand. 

Booze was this grown-up thing and to someone who was held back by sheer deprivation, it was one of those adult things I was being deprived of. When you've for 1 "good" T-shirt and you're sharing a single pair of shoes with two siblings, these things mean a lot. I remember sitting in my little rented room and eating a cold hot dog from a package I'd bought, and then eating *another*. That was a big deal, being able to eat that 2nd hot dog. 

It was why I spent stupid money on motorcycles and at one point had 3 sets of "leathers", one of them custom made and track legal. I had to have the coolest bike and admittedly, my SRX-6 was pretty cool. I could pretend I came from an upper-middle-class background like the other guys with sport bikes who hung out at the Newport Pier.

It was why I put serious effort into getting to like beer and to like the feeling of alcohol. I didn't want to feel that I was missing out. That feeling that I was missing out was part of why I got drunk last night. 

Ken had just come back from a vacation, and how come I never get to take a vacation? At least I'd have a short one, somehow my back would stop hurting and I'd be in some kind of pleasant la-la land for a few hours yet be able to bounce back and get a bunch of work done. The logic makes no sense unless I factor in that some of my thinking and actions have been influenced by deprivation. 

I'd grown up in an environment where if I got any money, I had to spend it immediately or it would be taken from me. I was so scared of being poor that I dropped art like a hot potato and went into electronics - if I'd grown up safe and secure and well-fed, I'd probably have found that art's a fine career and generally well paid. Meanwhile electronics has proven to be lower-paying than anything I can think of. My fear of poverty actually drove me into worse poverty than I'd have experienced doing anything else. 

My fear of poverty's getting triggered pretty badly lately as I've realized that Ken has his Ebay account set up so Ebay takes their fees out and the nightly payouts are what's left over. And there's no way those are covering things like the rent and utilities for this place. Just the rent works out to $100 a day. Since it's high tech surplus, this does not surprise me as there's no money in this stuff. But it's a real sock to my gut to realize Ken's running this place at a loss. Ken said he'd never let me be homeless and I guess that's what it amounts to. He's employing me to work a job I don't really like, as a charity. 

Now my back is worse for some reason, I feel like crap, and there's work to be done. I could kind of justify not going back out last night, because people on Reddit were saying there's a lot of craziness out there and sure enough, there were a lot of zombies around; screamin' zombies, staggerin' zombies, and plain ol' brain-eatin' zombies. 

I managed to get about half - the easier half - of the things in an order pulled out of their hiding places in the warehouse area and finally told the customer I'm sending the power supply - the one big heavy thing - in its own box and will send a second box with the other things. 

I headed over to FedEx and dropped the two boxes off (one was another customer's 6 rolls of wire) and rode around to California Pizza Kitchen. A slice of pizza might be decent get-well food, but they didn't have slices. I ended up getting some very mediocre cheese sticks from the Korean chicken place and 8 of those and a bottle of water cost me $12. I'd have bought some ranch to dip them in, but ranch was 50c on the menu and about $2 when you actually try to buy it. I declined. 

I got out of there (kinda peeved about their nickel-and-diming on the ranch dressing, plus a white family in there had a kid, maybe a well-fed 10 years old, with a cough which was why they were in the restaurant; to share whatever their kid has with as many others as possible. And I wanted no part of it.) I just sat on one of the little curbs in front of H Mart and watched the Odd People Show while eating half of the cheese sticks. I actually saw quite an assortment of interesting T-shirt logos and some Korean girls were being silly and cute hanging out by the bike rack.

I found some packing stuff on my way back, and got back in here. I made some dipping sauce from some Tapatio hot sauce and some Kewpie mayo and ate the rest of the cheese sticks. I started slowly finding the other things in that one order - 26 of them - and as the hours went by I started to feel more normal even though my back is quite painful. 

Oh a fun Friday

 Not having my little heater was something that bothered me more than I thought it would. My back-ache made it even less easy than usual to sleep, but I finally got some sleep with weird dreams. 

I got up at 2 and had a plan. I'd seen little heaters at Walmart for really good prices a while back. And I wanted to get another can or two of French Market coffee but it's been out of stock at my usual places. And I wanted to get some Postal Service packages out because the USPS isn't open on weekends. 

All of this would be answered by going downtown to the post office, then to this one Vietnamese market on Keyes that might have the coffee, and then to Walmart. 

So I packed the 5-6 USPS things and got out of here around 3:30. Dropped off trash and went to the post office and dropped the packages off, laughed at a screaming/ranting zombie, went down to Burger Bar and turned left, and over to Tien Thanh market. They had not only the proper coffee, defined as being in an orange can and having chicory in it, but sesame seeds and, as I reconnoitered a bit, good prices on shrimp and I discovered a while back, really good prices on meat. Dai Thanh you've got a competitor! 

Then I went over to Walmart, and sure enough, they had some neat little heaters for $12. I went over to the pharmacy and got my 2nd shingles shot so that's another thing taken care of. I told them there that if my insurance doesn't cover it, let me know and I'll pay for it. The lady said it used to be a $120 co-pay but a year or so ago they made all vaccinations free. That's Pretty Damn Cool(tm) in my book. I still want to get the hepetitus (oh fuck I can't spell it) vaccines because sad to say, hepatitus (damn) is a bit of a thing back in Hawaii. The lady said I want to consider the RSV vaccine and the pneumonia one is a consideration too. 

(When I tried ducking out of the rat-race by moving back to Hawaii in 03, I came down with a really bad flu or something and found myself wondering why the electric company was yapping at me to pay my bill, and so on. I'd kind of lost a week or two being sick. I'm 20+ years older now.)

So after the moderately painful shot (not as bad as the "yellow fever" we were told one in the Army, which I consider the gold standard; the needle felt like a pencil going in) I picked up a heater and checked out and did my old-man-bad-back walk back to the bike and saddled up and rode for home. 

Home by way of Nijiya, of course. There went the rest of my money, so to speak, after having set aside a $20 for cash-stash and the nice clean $10 I'd received in change to put in with the clean $20 for temple money, for March. 

A bad idea

 I got back in here last night, cleaned the place up, Ken came by at his usual time, I got that sweet 2-week paycheck, we talked about stuff, etc. 

We got talking about the advantage an attacking force has if they use cheap weapons, few hundred dollars for a Houthi weapon vs. say $20k for an American one to counter it. I mentioned the drones the Ukrainians are making out of foamcore and such things, showed him some videos of the cardboard drones, 3D printed drones, and the classic one of Flite Test and their "Guinea Pig" plane - that's the best intro to what Flite Test did at least 10 years ago, what fun they had and their general attitude. 

My problem right now is, I started yesterday with exercises, that day on legs. All well and fine, but I've learned that just because I go down into a deep squat at least 25X a day, does not mean that doing it for reps with added weight will not really aggravate my old lower back injury. Ow. 

I took the few things I had packed to go to the post office and got out of here at the usual time in the afternoon, dropped off trash, dropped the packages off at the downtown post office. Some big fat guy was in a big argument with the lady working there, about his "mail being thrown all over" who knows... 

When I'd locked my bike, the usual rack was completely taken up by a bike locked across it with a U-lock, unfortunately the thing with U-locks is you are required to lock your bike in this "fuck you" way. That's why I don't use one. So I had to park at the smaller, older rack but because my bike has wide handlebars, when I came out, a bum was locking *his* bike to the railing. I said I was sorry, that someone had taken up the whole rack, then I'd had to use this one and effectively take *it* up, and it's just "fuck you's all the way around". The root of it is not enough bike racks because if you don't drive a car, then fuck you. 

I went to the bank and deposited my check and my balance agreed with my calculation down to the penny so that's nice. Then I went to Whole Foods and got the last cherry turnover that was there, after getting a bag from the veggie department to put it in because there were no bags etc in the bakery. 

My back is really sore so I didn't feel like going anywhere else. There were the usual "Save the children" hucksters out front, and a guy with a van playing music loud. I asked him if he could look up anything and he said he could, so I said, "Look up 'Clarissa Jenkins The Edge'" and he could not find it. Oh well, I said, and started to ride off. Then circled around, and asked him if he could find "EBN Mac-10" but he could not even find that. I said that's the problem with smart phones. I have a real phone (pulling out my good old flip phone) and a real computer, the phone for phone stuff and the computer for computer stuff, with a real keyboard and a mouse. And rode off. 

I got a few bubble mailers and a lot of tough bubble wrap at the Amazon place, stopped at Nijiya for some things, and got back here. 

I turned on the radio and there was a big discussion of the new FAFSA form which is needed to get financial help for college. Since college is this paradoxical thing that makes you poorer the more of it you go to, they have to keep urging young people to go to it to keep the scam going. 

So they talked about all the difficulties and to me it sounds like the new FAFSA is working just fine. In tons of little ways it's effectively keeping those who actually need help from getting it. That's a win. In the US, college only makes sense if you're wealthy enough that college doesn't matter. In other words, it's a frill, it's a sort of rite of passage that is only useful to show you're a full-fledged member of, well, the cadre of people who've graduated college. 

You're really only supposed to get a college degree if you're in one of the right squares in the race/class matrix AND you have substantial wealth. If you're smart you'll have that wealth hidden away so you get all the scholarships and grants you can, but you never end up desperate or having to sluff off your studies to go work as a parking-lot attendant because you will somehow always have the money you need. 

In my own case, white or at least white enough, originally middle-class, OK all's well so far, but due to my parents crashing and burning, none of the five of us were going to go to college. I was stupid enough to go about halfway through, and lucky enough to get one of the last handful of electronics tech jobs in the country and hold it just long enough to pay off half the loans, and luckier still that I got a small inheritance that enabled me to pay off the 2nd half of the loans and buy my first car - at age 30. 

You can have the money, but you need to be on the first square on the race/class matrix too. Why else are there so few Black engineers? And Hispanic engineers are practically unicorns. You have to be some type of white or Asian. And in parts of the US now, the parts I've lived in, you have to be Asian or ... Asian. I can't even be mad about that any more, more like grudgingly respectful. Asians are doing it right - whole family working for the kid or maybe 2 kids to get their degree in engineering or dentistry or something, then the kids who were boosted up looking after their parents and siblings as they go through their lives.  

But going to college to earn a good living is ... delusional. 

And as the economy contracts, the trick for the ruling class is to make things look like they're helping the little guy get a leg up, really rooting for him, while doing everything possible to make sure he doesn't really rise in life. Hence the new FAFSA. 

Practice has been going well and I have pretty good hopes for the busking season when it starts again. There's a lot I've *not* been spending for instance, this will be the last winter my faux-Ugg boots can do but that's OK because it's my last winter here. My little heater just gave up the ghost but I think we're past the coldest weather. 

Good day to get some packages out

 I slept until 2 or a bit after, but practice last night went well. 

The people I know back in Hawaii who are still alive, that is, will be my age or older. My tech/ham radio friend has got to be at least 75 by my calculations. 

My Honolulu friend will in all likelihood not be alive when I get there. He's said as much himself. He's into every conspiracy theory under the sun, and seemed to relish - while he moans about it - the prospect of the "government" taking his houses and properties, because while it's an utter fail on his part, it means he'll be Right. He should have known everyone in audio and broadcast engineering in the state and yet no one's helping him so that should give an idea as to his personality. 

What I'm saying is, it's nice that I still have a larger social network there after being away 38 years, but these people are going to be useless. There's not even a match in interests any more. The Big Island guy has an interest in electric cars, but electric cars and bikes are being done to death now and no longer the province of garage tinkerers. And I'm not interested. 

Ditto ham radio. I told the ham radio friend that I could never get that interested and in fact the only bit of it that interests me is listening, in other words I'm more of an "SWL" or short-wave listener and that's thought of as being a bit of a dilettante. Plus he's old, and who knows how far down life's downslope he is. 

I packed 20 things and got 'em out, lollygagged around until it was just past 7 so the hot deli things in H Mart were half-price, and got two packages of "pork bulgogi" for a bit over $3. It was probably a half-pound of grilled pork belly, burp! 

One of the things I did to lollygag was check the dumpsters behind the gym, so after H Mart I went back over there to pick up a big Lowe's box I wanted. I heard something rustling around in the trash and wondered aloud, It's too big to be a rat... maybe a raccoon ..... Pretty soon a bum popped out. "You're not a raccoon" I said, smiling. "Huh?", said the bum. I said again, "You're not a racoon....." and he said "No, I'm a ... Possum!" and we had a laugh. I told him how it was boxes I was after, and pointed out a shopping bag full of condiments someone had tossed out. "Here's mayonnaise, or maybe you're a mustard sort of guy...." and he said the other dumpster was generally better for food. 

I took off after picking up that one really big sturdy box and checked the EMT place, got some pills and bandages and a few more boxes, and wended my way home. 

I've been thinking a lot lately about the Matthew Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect this odious behavior pattern seemed to be Jesus Christ endorsed, and here I didn't think my opinion of Christianity could get any lower. 

But like so many human behaviors that make eminent sense if you're one of a few dozen living in a clearing in the forest or by a stream on a veldt, it's maladaptive when living a society with a money economy and artificial scarcity and so on. Long and short, the Matthew effect says if someone's rich you ought to give them more, and if they're poor and ask for anything you ought to tell them to go pound sand. 

In "primitive" societies, this makes sense. In proper Samoan society, if you get some sort of a windfall or good fortune, you give all you can to your chief, because the chief's job is to allocate wealth as needed to everyone. In these societies, those who seem to be in charge, tend to have been put there because their power arises from how much they give away and they're generally the smartest and best at sharing things out. 

Also in primitive societies, if a chief doesn't take his social obligations seriously, he gets un-chiefed. Either people stop funneling stuff to him and start ignoring him, or he gets deposed by less peaceful means. 

But in modern society, you end up with the Christian formula that says the more money you have, the better person you are, and the less money, the worse. Winning in Christian society most often involves convincing people to give to you, and never-ever giving back. "Screw unto others, then split" I believe is the saying and I'm sure it's in their Bible somewhere. 

I can almost rationalize the Matthew effect in modern society, in that if you give to a poor person, often they're a black hole of need, whereas if you give to a person with some wealth, well, they must be good at managing wealth if they have it in the first place. So the person with some wealth, if given to, may scratch your back later. But that's the problem: In modern society it's too easy to take and never give.

But what does the Matthew effect have to do with my own plans, to go back home and live out what years I have left, on a very small budget? Simple - if I ask for help, I'll never get it. But if I don't seem to need help, then help will come flooding in. Help in this case just being finding a safe, stable, place to live. 

In fact, if I've ever seemed "needy" in the past, it's really not a thing with me now because I save money better than most rich people, and whatever needs money to get done, I can generally find a way to do without money. Plus being able to just about whistle up money out of thin air. 

An above-average discussion of the zombie problem

 Here: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/SanJose/comments/1avp6yg/there_is_now_homeless_camping_within_martial/

I've long maintained that the solution is to set up camps, out where land is cheap and where there's still bus service into the city (there's a unfinished development south of the main part of San Jose that would be perfect for this; it has sidewalks and all that, just no houses yet) and provide 3 hots and a cot. Provide free junk food (the homeless diet of choice) so McDonald's and Burger King and so on would be on board. The bums' Disability or Social Security would pay for it all. But here's the kicker. FREE DRUGS. Whatever a given zombie's drug of choice is, they get it supplied to them. Their whole reason for being, their daily bottle or rock or needle, is provided and no skimping on the supply. Let 'em get blasted and stay blasted. Because their whole reason to be "alive" is provided in the camp, although they'll be free to leave, 99% of 'em won't want to. Call them Happy Fun Camps. 

You'd not be required to take drugs or drink. It would simply be allowed, ad libitum. You'd not be held there; you'd be free to leave, to come and go. It would give the career druggies and alkies a way to live out their lives humanely, crime and squalor would go way down, and those who had the willpower and self-respect to sober up/get clean would at least be off the streets and able to recover and recoup and ready themselves to live like normal people again. 

 

Keep getting better

 Besides listing Ebay stuff last night I practiced and I've got to say, the "song method" is working out well. Maybe because there are only about 8 valve combinations to worry about, I was amazed at the stuff I was able to "work out". 

I just need to work on "Eentsy Weentsy Spider" for the little kids. In actuality, "Saints" is my go-to for little kids, especially if they're fussing. It often gets them out of their funk, which their parents appreciate.  

I'm just glad I keep coming along, as long as I keep the practice up. I wonder if this is how it would have felt to be an aspiring trumpeter in Europe in the 1930s; the world's looking worse and worse but hey, my playing's coming along.

It was supposed to be pouring today but it was dry out, so I took the one large thing I had to ship (large but light) packed it, put a tape handle on it, and rode up to FedEx with it to drop it off, got a couple things in H Mart, and got back here. It only sprinkled a tiny bit, and the big thunderstorm there was an actual warning about on the radio, slid by to the North of here. 

I even found a thing with about $30 worth of bits on it, that I took back here, removed the good bits, and put the main aluminum framework out for the bums. Yesterday's freebee was a neat pair of heavy-duty needlenose pliers with a built-in wire stripper that you can actually change out the "dies" of. It was right out in the middle of the road. I think Ken can use them around his house. 

 

A sunny day for fascism

 I woke up around noon. After taking all that stuff apart and all the things I did, I called it day/night and went to bed. 

I'm continually amazed at what a soft spot for fascism the media, even National Public Radio, has. Everything Donnie Dumpo says, they put on the air. Oh, he's selling sneakers? Let's be sure to let our audience know, and what they look like (glittery!) and what they cost. 

At least as I write here, "On The Media" is doing a piece critical of John Stewart, a guy who was on the TV and then was off the TV and now is on the TV again, who's reportedly witty and entertaining, but is a "good people on both sides" type who's obviously there to try to provide a few chuckles on our downslope to Nazism 2.0. Tom was raving about him because Tom, as a dutiful white guy, is kind of required to side with the fascists. Also he's an idiot. 

A sunny day for fascism but a cloudy one for me.  It was between rain storms, though, it seemed. I got some stuff to donate together and a bag of trash and had about $7.60 I'll allow myself to spend. Today was "Nirvana Day" where Rinban Sakamoto wanted to get everyone possible to show up, but with this rain I realized that was not going to happen, hence my sleeping in. But I could donate the stuff, get rid of a bag of trash, and buy a couple Coke Zeros. 

So that's what I did. I got wetter than I did last night coming back, but at least it's not very cold at all. I did some parking lot cleanup - bums had taken the metal and wire I put out last night, but not the big box the stuff was in - and now I'm in and the rain can drip and drop all it likes. 

Japantown was pretty subdued, with very few people around due to the rain. They even re-schedule this weekend's lion dance at 99 Ranch, to next weekend when it will hopefully not be rained out. 

I'm really beginning to wonder about the utility of having this blog, though. I was inspired by blogs like that of Marvin Naylor, who'd give a blow-by-blow description of each busking session, talking about all the characters who were regulars - England has a lot of quirky people and actual street life. 

San Jose, by comparison, is a very boring place not least so because it actively tries to be as bland as possible. I blame it on tech. Like banking, you don't want operating a computer or phone or table to be exciting. You don't want quirks or "personality". In fact, even if you're Apple, you want your things to look and feel as much like Microsoft's as much as possible so if someone wants to switch to your stuff, it's easy for them. This drive for blandness and uniformity bleeds over into everything else. So no interesting street-character or "fun, quirky location" stories were going to come out of my blogging from here. 

Marvin Naylor, these days, is on YouTube which is about 1000X better. Of course he's in England so he's got good internet access and from what I understand, they only pay about $30 a month there, for access speed that would cost $300 here. My own internet access is slow as well as expensive. It's good enough to upload photos to Ebay and that's it - that's all it's intended to be. If I did YouTube stuff I'd have to think like a composer of commercials, who have 15 or 30-second bits of time to work within. Maybe this is why YouTube has those weird "Shorts" things now, because most people don't have the connect speed to submit things of any length. 

 

And I'm not sure if there's a point to blogging from Hawaii. There are already a million people doing that. 

A rainy-day miracle

 I was so tired last night, I went to bed and didn't get up until 3PM. I guess it was all the running around, packing things and riding my bike all over... 

I had a customer all pissed off that I hadn't sent their thing which hadn't been paid for until after I'd done my Friday post office run and I told them so. They said the post office is open today (Saturday) and they said it was and I said it wasn't, but since the item is small, I think I can put it into one of the drive-through mailboxes. 

The buyer is in Texas and they probably have their post offices open 24/7 just to handle all the shipments of drugs and the firearms going out to Mexico and other places. 

Since I'd hoped to go to 99 Ranch Market if it wasn't raining too hard, this was all OK and I packed another small thing too. Here's the miracle: The lobby was open and the chute was working. 

I was then able to do some shopping at 99 Ranch and H Mart. I was not able to get coffee or sesame seeds, which are random things for both stores to be out of, but that's kind of how things are these days. 

To give an example of how things are going, the Pacific Coast Highway is now closed overnight in the Malibu area. The same road I traveled up by motorcycle when I was leaving the hopelessness of flyover country to come back out there. It was no problem back in 2008, but now I'm not sure if it's even functional at all since there's a bridge that fell down and I think another part blocked by a huge landslide. So much for the great Pacific Coast Highway. 

I got rained on but not soaked getting back here. It was fairly miserable, fighting the wind and getting splattered with rain, and I stopped in at the African store for a couple of different brands of "bitters" to try them out. Then got back in here, put things away, and cooked some dinner. 

I put some hours into taking a big heavy thing Ken had put, in a large tub, on top of this one cabinet for some reason, out of there and into the office where I took it apart - now I have lots of goodies to list. And now I can work on putting all the boxes of various light bulbs that are scattered all over the place here, in one location - on top of that cabinet. 

I'd better enjoy the dryness

 Yep the forecast is for rain right through into the middle of next week. Fun. 

I listed the 10 things I had photo'd up last night and when I was done with that I went right to bed because I could barely stay awake. 

Another day, more wars and rumors of wars.... the consensus on Reddit is that the time to leave the US is yesterday in the best case, next best is now, and if Diaper Don end up in power there's going to be maybe 6 months to clear out and after that you're not going to be able to get out (unless you're one of the Aryan Herrenvolk in which case you'll be in the honeymoon period and think things are wonderful and not want to leave).

As I keep saying myself, my plan is to go back home to Hawaii as soon as I turn 62 and thus am eligible for Social Security, and if things turn really bad, I'll be halfway across the Pacific at least, and perhaps it will be time to consider a vacation in Vietnam or somewhere. 

At least I no longer have the delusional plan to retire in New Orleans, where the things to do are crime and drugs. 

First order of the day today was to clean up, including not only a shave but a haircut. I'd been up before noon so I had time to do this. 

Then I packed 14 things that can go by post office, and put them in my Whole Foods bags I hung off the handlebars,  plus a load of trash, and headed downtown. I dropped the trash off, then dropped the packages off at the downtown post office, then headed over to Whole Foods where I got some hot bar food and a near-beer (not that brand that seemed to give me a headache) and ate and drank at one of the tables downstairs. 

This was kind of interesting because there was, as there's always been every time I've been at Whole Foods for months now, a zombess parked at one of the tables with a shopping cart loaded up with stuff, with bags hanging off of it. Said zombess was always very quiet, though, and in fact the first time I thought she was a shopper just waiting for someone (the cart wasn't so loaded up then). 

This time the zombess seemed to be stuck, in that she was doing a good version of the old Andy Bumatai "Baby like-like ride-ride bus-bus" routine, except each word or phrase was repeated 4 times. And it wasn't a phone call, as I'd thought at first, but just a conversation with ... well, with the zombie virus which was affecting the speech center of what's left of this one's brains. 

It was kind of hilarious. She actually said "Spam" 4X at one point, but it was all kinds of random stuff. I just ate and ignored it, as everyone else did. When I was done eating, I walked up to the hardware store and got a bottle of Simple Green, which I was almost out of. I also got a few small boxes out of their Big Box 'O' Boxes out front, and walked back into Whole Foods and got a small box from the Amazon return desk. 

Now the zombess was saying some angry stuff to herself, but at least not repeating it 4X. 

I rode over to the Amazon hub downtown and got bubble mailers and a couple more small boxes, then rode to Nijiya for some things, and got back here. It took me about half an hour to package up a big, fairly heavy, power supply and I took that up to FedEx. 

On the way back I checked the computer repair place and got a lot of small boxes with nice pink foam inside, so I was busy for a while loading those into a large box, plus bagging up bubble wrap and anti-static bags and other handy things. A bum was across from me, raiding the metal scrap this one place throws out. They'd called out something like 'Sup, dog? and I'd just kept doing my thing - it was pretty obvious I was after different stuff, so not a competitor. 

I got back in here, put stuff away, did some parking-lot cleanup, and got in for the night. 

 

You can vote your way into fascism, but you'll have to shoot your way out

 I practiced last night, with a mind toward the approaching busking season and my getting out there. The "Song Method" is working well, as it keeps it interesting. 

There's more discussion on Reddit about how, if the fascists win the coming election, they've already made it very plain they plan to deport "10 million suspected" illegal immigrants. That means anyone who's not Aryan. They're not going to care if you're 3rd or 4th generation and even voted for them, not any more than the Nazis 1.0 cared if a given Jew had served Germany bravely in WWI. A Jew was a Jew and a non-Aryan was a non-Aryan. No consideration of service to country, political views, abilities, anything. 

It was dry today so I was able to pack things and send them out, and so I made my usual round of the post office and FedEx, and places to look for packing materials. I wanted some large-ish boxes and only found some at the very last stop, at the armored car place which had some nice ones. 

Tomorrow will be dry also, but then the entire 3-day weekend, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, will be rainy. 

 

Dodging the rain and losing money

 Today was to be a rain day and I was tired from all the rushing around and although I stayed up until 6AM for some idiotic reason, I did some practice before going to bed. 

I was up at 12:10, and at 1:10 I was heading out the door with a VERY big box holding that stupid large thing, and taking it to UPS. UPS because by using them we only lose about $25 instead of about $50. This is a thing Ken listed which is why it's been an utter disaster. This is how everything's going to go once I'm gone. 

Rain had started when I was riding to UPS but it didn't do more than sprinkle so that worked out OK. I relaxed on the way back, found some packing stuff I can lay out to dry in the loft, and stopped at that one lunch truck I like and got a plate of spaghetti for $6 which I took home and put lots of cheese and chili oil on and ate. 

On the radio it's the usual news. All these tears over the "Palestinians" by the peace creeps, who the "Palestinians" would happily kill off if they had the chance. I find it hilarious that the US is preaching about this matter when we actually set the example for the Nazis and only feel kindly disposed toward our "Indians" at all because they're utterly defeated and our nation has been almost completely "cleansed" of them. How would things be if the "Indian" population was equal to the white population or greater, and still fighting for territory? 

And our "Indian" population was never as nasty as the "Palestinians" are. For one thing, the "Palestinians'" religion, Islam, is an evangelical one which basically means convert or die. Same as Christianity. Even in the Roman Empire, you could get in some real trouble for not worshiping the Roman gods, which might be where Christianity, a sort of mishmash of Judaism and Roman/Greek cosmology, got it from. 

So while if there can be said to be a worldview of "The Jews", it's to get along and go along and not force their views on anyone. While to the Christians and Moslems, the desired end-state is every human on the planet following *their* religion, or dead. 

It's like living next door to a psycho neighbor who doesn't just want to get along, but wants *your* yard, *your* house, *your* wife, etc. Modern laws are written with the assumption that the neighbor just wants to get along, and can't deal with the actual situation where it's You or Them, only one emerges alive. 

Our modern, post-WWII thinking says this is wrong and bad. But I'm coming to the conclusion that this type of thinking has no grounding in reality. 

 

More progress in practice

 I did more practice last night while watching things on YouTube. It went well, and I think I'm on the right track. The thing is, even though it's not busking season yet, I have to always be ready in case some opportunity to play comes up. This will be even more so back in Hawaii where there's no off-season, and where a trumpeter may be called upon to play Taps or the national anthem at any time. 

I got up at noon, and before having my coffee and nuts and so on, I got the blood glucose meter out and started in on the process of learning to use it. I trashed a few strips and a lancet, and learned a couple of the error messages, but made some progress. Another one or two of these practice sessions and I might get a useful reading. 

I packed a dozen things that were small, took them up to the post office around 4PM and after that went to 99 Ranch for more of those dim sum - this time a lot fresher - and then stopped in at FedEx to see if they have those tags for keys, which they don't. 

So I went to Lowe's where they did, got some, then went over to the storage place. The bottom-floor storage is all family stuff, then I checked one of the 2nd floor ones and jackpot, where was this big thing I need to send out. OK so I knew where it was, great. 

I stopped by Tom's to check in, and we talked a bit. I said I was thinking about coming back with the bike trailer to pick up the thing but was not sure. 

After talking with Tom I got back in here, packed a couple of things so they'd not go overdue, went to YouTube and saw a video in the lineup of the local news station saying there's a storm coming. I checked the weather service site and actually said, "Shiiiiiiiiit!". I got dressed again, hitched up the bike trailer and put the two packages on it, and set some kind of a speed record getting up to FedEx, where I noticed the packages are actually for the post office- they're the size I used to always send FedEx but I'd gone with the new USPS "Ground Saver" or whatever it's called. 

Years ago I used to go to the post office pretty late, like past 9, to just put my packages in the chute. I stopped doing that because the chute jammed so much, but recently it's not been too bad and I thought I might have a chance, so I rode up there and the chute was working so off those two packages went. 

I came back to H Mart, got a couple of things, used the loo, and then went to the storage where I took the bike and trailer up to the unit where the thing is, and loaded it up along with some other things to list also. 

Then I rode back here, put the stuff away, and cooked some dinner. Tomorrow will likely be rained out according to the weather forecast. 

 

 

Thank you, Adam Rapa

 Well, sure enough, the 49ers didn't win, the other guys won. Haha! If I had any clue as to how to bet on a football game, I'd honestly have bet $100 on the game. But because gambling of all kinds is illegal in Hawaii and to do what illegal gambling there is, you have to be raised in a family that's done it for generations and I was not, I don't gamble at all. 

It's still funny though. 

I could round up about $7 so after taking some big things to FedEx I rode over to Nijiya for some eggs and a couple of packages of ramen because I wanted to use up the other half of those sausages and with the weather so cold, I crave junky foods like ramen I guess. 

It was very calm as most people were inside watching the game, and I talked a bit with a couple of friendly Hispanic guys out front. We were all kind of at loose ends, the guys because one of them had farted in the car and they were waiting for it to air out. That was pretty funny. 

I rode back here and did stuff and eventually practiced. I've not been practicing regularly and that's a bad thing because as it stands now, this job with Ken is the thing that's fleeting while busking is going to be my career from here on out. 

So I practiced and warmed up by doing those half-step bends just like Adam Rapa says he did a ton of as a young student and that he swears by now, and I'm beginning to see why they're such a good exercise. Half-step bends require the back part of the tongue to be "anchored" firmly while the front part moves. I have no idea how air gets through with the tongue like this but it does, somehow. And it's pretty much the same tongue movement that allows one to, without street and strain, go from low C up to high G and higher. 

The other thing that I think has been helping is a breathing exercise I've been doing, when I remember to, while out riding the bike. It involves keeping the chest up and breathing using the diaphragm but with the chest up, and it can be a real workout. Done right, I can feel it in my *back* and that's what trumpet people online are saying it should feel like. 

I packed 15 or 16 things, all small things so I didn't need the bike trailer. I took 'em up to the post office and then rode up to the little head shop by the tiny Filipino market to see if they had a mortar and pestle. The thing is, "popcorn salt" which is salt that's in really tiny grains so it sticks to popcorn, is no longer a thing. So I want a way to grind regular salt down smaller, so I can have finely powdered salt to season nuts with, as it's hard to find macadamia nuts with salt on them any more and the ones that do have salt are unreasonably expensive. The guy in the head shop, a nice Indian (maybe Pakistani?) guy, told me he'd seen popcorn salt in a market ... but he's not sure it's a market was have here in California. Very pleasant guy though. I think I'll have to improvise something.

I went to 99 Ranch and go some things and got some money back because Ken's not coming by this week - I think he's off on a mini-vacation somewhere. I think what goes on is that Suzy, his wife, gets stir-crazy sitting around the house all day for days on end, and drama happens, and next thing is Ken booking a hotel somewhere nice. It's not like it's off to Cancun or something, they're somewhere here in California or in Reno or Vegas. 

I also ate some dim sum, three little porky things, at 99 Ranch because I was hungry. After 99 Ranch I stopped by one of my chin-up places and did some chin-ups, then went to H Mart. I got ... more things. By this time it was well after 7PM, which is late for this town. Also there's the permanent "law" of the Wartime 3-Hour Shift, such that 7PM will feel like 10PM so... it was late. 

All I wanted to do was get back here so I rode back post haste. It was 8PM when I got in, so the equivalent of getting in at 11. 

Super Throw-In-The-Towel Sunday

 It'd be funny if the 49'ers lost. Just saying! 

I listed 10 things last night, tried the "K-Army Stew" ramen which was interesting, and pretty soon felt tired enough to go to bed. 

On the radio and online it's what it always is lately: wars and rumors of wars. I think the present situation we're in is as if Charles Lindbergh had been president, not done very well at all, been voted out but was running again, and all through this had made very, very clear that he's a Nazi, intends to aid Hitler rather than fight him, etc. And as if Henry Ford was officially helping the Allies but unofficially aiding Hitler all he can, this being fElon Musk and his Starlink system, now being used by the Russians also, plus you just know Muskie and his fellow fascists are funneling all the money to the Russkies they can. 

In Australia, anti-Semitic groups, which seem to be powerful there, have totted up a "Jew list" of names and addresses. I saw this on Reddit and Redditors are chiming in, saying this is happening in Canada and England also.

I'm not sure how much worse it will be in a year but I'm going to be glad to be about 2500 miles away from most of the US. 

A Bright Blue UV-Rich Sky

 Yesterday was unremarkable in that I got up, went to a thing I'd planned to go to and did my business, came back and loaded the three boxes I had to take to FedEx onto the bike trailer, stopped by the lunch truck I owed $4 to and got some egg rolls and a diet Pepsi and paid my debt so that was $10, delivered the boxes and picked up packing stuff on the way back, then packed small things for the post office and got those out before the post office closed, and found some more packing stuff on the way back from that 2nd trip. 

By the time the end of the day rolled around I was kind of too tired to do much and tried to get settled down to sleep, which I did around 4AM - not good. 

I woke up at 10AM, did exercises and had coffee etc., and got over to Japantown around 1. There was supposed to be a big festival but really all it was, was they'd popped a lot of firecrackers which I could smell the aftermath of which was nice, and there were some little tables out for various businesses. I was hoping Gombei had their $10 katsu curry special going on but sadly they did not. I got a little tempura bento from Nijiya instead. It was pretty nice, with lots of people out for a hardly-a-festival, and the weather's amazing. Clear and cold and no cloud to be found in the sky anywhere. One imagines the clear, blue, lethal, skies in times to come... 

I rode down to Walmart and in the end only got two things; a package of "Wet Ones" and some paper towels. 

I rode over to the Amazon place for bubble mailers and got plenty. I'll need 'em if Ken doesn't order more small bubble mailers like he's supposed to. 

Then I rode back over to Nijiya for a couple of Coke Zeros and a package of Japanese sausages I can use in this weird "K-Army Stew" ramen I got. 

I got back here, all ready to pack this one large thing that's overdue and get it out of here. Except ... I can't find the thing. It's one Ken listed which means the thing itself is either at his house or in one of the storage units. 

The Super Song Method

 Yesterday was rained out all day. I listed 25 things, hooray for me, and had the place all nice and clean when Ken came by. 

By that time I'd rounded up some things that *need* to go out - I have a bunch that are overdue! - and also, in light of the actual $1400 day, about $1200 of it being from the stuff I'd so recently dumpster-dived and had sold right away, I decided to "strike while the iron is hot". 

I'd rounded up all my guns'n'ammo and related things like a set of shooting glasses and a 'scope and an old bottle of Hoppe's No. 9 and so on. I went online and looked up the current prices for the guns and ammo themselves, and came up with a number a bit over $1200. 

When Ken came by, along with my paycheck, I got another check for the amount and Ken loaded the goodies into his car. That's a big hassle off of my mind. I even quipped to Ken that planning to move is like knowing you're going to die at X time, and getting rid of things because you know you'll be gone. 

The truth of the matter is, if things get bad enough that I need the rifle or the pistol, then I should have gotten out of here long before. Instead, my zombie problems have decreased over the years and a gun would only make things worse, not better. There are less-lethal things I carry and that's been more than good enough. 

It's early in the year but I'm really keen to sell off all the shit I don't need, that I spent money on and should not have, in hindsight. 

I guess maybe I should have been packing things to ship yesterday, staying in with all the rain, but I felt like I was busy enough. I read a thing about Bix Beiderbecke that was pretty good, though. I talk about the "Song Method" to keep me from getting bored and tensed up, in practicing the trumpet, well, it appears ol' Bix did something like the "Super Song Method" in that, according to the author of this piece I read, he listened to records (he was middle-class so having his own record player and being able to buy records was no problem, plus he could go sit by the river and practice undisturbed) and worked out how to play little licks that the trumpeter on the record was playing and just worked from there. Because he had no formal teacher and was *so* keen to play like the records, he ended up with his unique, and much-desired, sound. 

This is pretty much what young guys do with the guitar now. I remember reading the guitar magazines, I think with the idea that if I read enough of 'em, I'd somehow get truly interested in playing the guitar, and there were all kinds of hints and tips and guides, and even someone selling something called "Star Licks" which I guess was a method based on learning the "licks" in guitar solos and putting them together into solos. 

In fact, no less than Louis Armstrong himself, published a book with a title something like "101 jazz licks and turns" which is a sort of Holy Grail for me. It's among the books I want to seek out and buy, once I'm settled in back home. 

Bix Beiderbecke did something like 150 recordings and they're showing up on YouTube these days. It takes some listening to get used to 1920s style jazz, but I'm digging in there. Since I can't afford a teacher (and have been very unimpressed with what teachers I did take a few lessons from) I'm pretty self-taught myself, if one can say that with all the helpful videos on YouTube to watch. And my ultimate trumpet dream would be to be able to play the guitar solos I grew up hearing, that are practically encoded in my blood. 

This is all to say that Bix isn't considered a jazz hero because he was white, he's considered so because he was *good*. 

I left here at about 2 PM, dropped off a bag of trash (I need to fill a bag of trash daily if I'm to live my life right) and then went to the bank and deposited the checks, which agreed with my own calculations to the penny which is nice. 

I went over to Whole Foods and got chicken wings and a near-beer, of a brand I've never had before. It tasted OK but .... I actually got a headache from it which was not good. 

I stopped at Nijiya and got a bunch of things, and got back here. Now my headache was bothering me and according to Google, hops can cause headaches. So this near-beer probably has a ton of hops (it was an IPA and sure had hops) that were extra fresh or something. Blah. I'm not having that again. 

Once I got back here I had aspirin and hot sauce and things like that to try to get the headache to fade, and now I know another thing to watch out for. 

I packed 6 things, which meant 4 large boxes, and got out of here at 7 to take those to FedEx, and found a good amount of packing stuff on the way back. I put things away and got right to work packing 5 things, which went into 3 boxes all going to the same guy, that were overdue so I can just grab and go with those first thing tomorrow. 

Whole Foods had the black guy who parks *in* the bike racks, bothering people about his petitions, and some lady bugging people with some Save The Children or some-such scam sign, no booth, just a chair to sit in and a sign. But it was cold and windy and not really great for busking anyway so I didn't feel I was missing out. 

 

Back to the regularly scheduled buckets of rain

 I woke up around 10:30, got up an hour later. It was absolutely pouring outside. 

Last night I'd heard a sound and watched a zombie spend an hour or two stealing the metal chair left out by the people next door, then go through the dumpster and enclosure that's always full of stuff, taking what I think was a dishwasher and having a delightful time banging on things, using the (heavy cast) metal chair as a hammer, and I thought had too heavy a load to make it out of the parking lot but in the end the thing left with its load quickly. A load that will buy lots of crack, meth, or good old vodka no doubt. 

What's funny is, when I'd gotten in last night  I took the parts of the oscilloscope I'd thrown out that the bums didn't want (plastic case parts etc.) and put them in a big shopping bag and on my way to a dumpster had gone by the HVAC place and there was a furnace put out for disposal, ready to poach parts off of. So after dumping the trash I came back with tools and got some good parts from it, but it appeared that someone had been there first, and hadn't had the right tools to actually get the parts off. Probably the zombie I just described, or possibly another one. Zombies can generally just barely keep dressed and lift a crack pipe or bottle of vodka to their slavering mouths, so tool-use is kind of beyond them. 

Then an hour or so later I heard a sound and a different zombie had sort of collapsed into the plastic chair the neighbors keep out front and was there for a while. They'd not sit in that chair if they knew a zombie had been in it - too many diseases and things like scabies and lice that zombies spread around. This is a good lesson in not leaving chairs outside because you don't know who/what might use them. 

I'm emailing back and forth a bit with this other friend in Honolulu (actually in the Hawaii Kai area) and... I have to assume he's at least 10 years older than myself. So if I was 24 when I left Hawaii, let's say he was at least 34, and maybe closer to 40. So if I'm just short of being 62 now, he's somewhere between 72 and 78. At least he's still alive and communicating. 

Sitting here with this heavy rain going on - it's been going on for hours now - I'm just glad I'll be going back home. It's just over 50 degrees F out there and this kind of weather is lethal if you're out in it and sick or injured, or just old. 

But I should write about something more cheerful so let us praise the Crumbley family, the most American family. The parents, seeing that their son was depressed, bought him a gun and effectively told him, "You'll be less depressed if you shoot up your school, and we've given you the tools, so go for it!". I'm sure they feel they're being treated unfairly that so far, Mrs. Crumbley is looking at prison time. Mr. Crumbley will probably soon follow, and they've got decades ahead of them of being heroes to the Conservatives, the most American Americans and really, the only real Americans. 

Needless to say the young Mr. Crumbley was taken into custody with no harm to him, since he's white. They probably took him to Burger King too. So that's a third one added to the litany of Conservative saints. 

And to think I was considering retiring to New Orleans, being a trumpet player and all. It's about as expensive as living in Hawaii, so 25%-30% less expensive than here or most places in the US. There's one streetcar line that goes pretty much everywhere a person needs to go, and officially the city has a soft spot for musicians, especially players of traditional band instruments. I'd not even need to fly to get there, but could go by train. 

But it vies for top spot for murders and violence, and as I told Ken, what really made an impression on me is how, on one of those TV ambulance shows, they were able to simply send a cameraman out with an ambulance crew for one night and get enough material for an hour's show, a thing that would take weeks in any normal place. 

Plus for any normal person who goes there to be a musician normally, like Tanya Huang, there seem to be a few who crawl inside a vodka bottle or a crack pipe and never come out. And no doubt spend a fair amount of time as zombies, staggering around trying to eat people's brains and stinking up the place. Who needs that? 

I've been thinking a bit lately about how I might fit in as a trumpet player back in Hawaii, and am thinking that in a lot of cases, a trumpet might be appreciated to fatten up the sound of a band, plus there's military stuff like playing Taps. A while back I looked on Craig's List in Hawaii for this service, and there were none who would do this in Hawaii, it was all guys who needed to be flown over from the mainland. 

 

 

Beautiful day after the storm

 Last night, eventually the guy who was manically wiping off one of his cars, got in the thing and drove off. I'm beginning to think he's someone who drives for Uber and lives out of one or both cars. I'm also thinking he's the guy who I found sleeping off what was apparently a really good drunk, in the street by the cement plant. So yeah, sleep deprives, alcoholic, and ding-y as hell. Sounds about right for an Uber driver. 

By the time he buzzed off I decided to just go to bed, read a little bit of "The Third Chimpanzee" by Jared Diamond and went right to sleep. 

I woke up at 9AM, which is great. It was only raining a little and pretty soon that stopped and it looked like it would be dry enough to get some packages out. I packed all the small/smallish things I could, amounting to 16 things, and headed out. 

I dropped off a bag of trash in a random trash can and then stopped in at Nijiya where I got a chashu don and $40 cash back. I think they make the chashu don bowls using the chashu they have to cycle out anyway, because I swear there must have been a half pound of meat in there. So that was my big meal for the day, at around 1 or 2 PM. 

Next was the post office, where I dropped off the packages and was quick about it because a $%#%^#% zombie was in there, bugging one of the workers at the counter about things not getting to its PO box for months or something. The zombie smelled, well, like it was dead. That poor worker! At least the zombie wasn't being loud or aggressive, probably because, since it was rotting as it spoke, it didn't have the energy. Peeyew! 

I rode down to Walmart next and ... it was closed. The power had gone out, and while there were overhead lights on, no doubt powered by the big emergency generators set up in back, one saying SurePower and one Cat Power, I'd also seen employees throwing out tons of thawed frozen stuff like Popsicles and such things. 

It's natural for me to think that if Nijiya was open, and across the street, the ukulele teacher was strumming away, and things were pretty normal, that a big outfit like Walmart would surely be up and running. But in actual fact Walmart being bigger, makes it more delicate. So no Walmart run for me. 

I rode back downtown and to Whole Foods where I locked the bike up and walked over to Target. I was able to get what I was after there, including refill rolls of cellophane tape. Wow, the prices though. Every time I buy them, it's $1.50 more for a package of three. First they were $3.50, the next time they were $5, and this time they were $6.50. 

It was very clear, rather cold, and the sky was beautiful. I got to see some very neat looking anvil clouds. At Whole Foods there was one of those booths for one of the scams, "Save The Children" or something but there was no sign on the booth, making it look a bit suspect. I asked the gal about it and she said they'd "run out" of signs for the booth. But they were totally legit; they had some laminated "certificates" like anyone could make in Photoshop or probably even just using Notepad. I was friendly with them of course, joking around about how cold it is today. 

I went into Whole Foods for a cucumber and a bit more cash back as I'd spent almost all of the $40 I'd taken out and then as I rode off, thought I'd rather see those booth scam hustlers there than the skinny white guy with his petitions and bad attitude, or Pee Pee Lady with her psychotic episodes. 

I stopped at Nijiya again for some beef and now I have $4 change to give to the lunch truck lady to whom I owe $4 tomorrow. 

A somewhat productive Monday

 I'd been up most of the night so I wasn't up until a bit past noon. The rain was certainly productive, as it rained all through the day. 

I had 10 things photo'd and just had to list the things which I eventually got around to doing, with the result that a bunch of them sold making it about a $1200 day. That's good. 

It's supposed to be fairly rainy all week so I'll have to ship things when I can, timing it to get as little wet as I can. 

After listing things and having some miso soup with fish in it and veggies and so on, my big meal of the day, I relaxed a bit and got out an oscilloscope that doesn't power up and took it apart for the parts which with other things means I have 20 things all ready to list tomorrow. 

I put the parts I didn't want outside, along with some coat hangers I didn't want and a banner from the end unit that had somehow blown from there to in front of here, all out by the trash enclosure. I was just getting ready to do some practice, which I'd done last night, when I heard a sound. 

Someone was picking up some of the stuff, which was what I intended so that was good. But what's not so good is, the guy seems to have keys to both of the cars that are parked in the parking lot across from the welding place, and is futzing around in the most random way with both cars, and the stuff, and uh, other stuff. I think the guy's actually shitfaced drunk, or maybe on drugs but probably just really, really drunk. The kind of drunk where one is "blacked out" which doesn't necessarily mean sleeping it off, it often means doing all sorts of things, even driving cars, while having one's conscious mind turned off. 

So the guy's got both cars with the doors etc opened up, has one of them parked in the middle of the parking lot where cars and trucks drive through, and is behaving really .... random. He's got the one car in the through-way with the doors open and hood up, and is furiously wiping the other one all over with a rag. Hello, it's supposed to rain all week, this is no time to wipe down a car, and with the wind we've had, you're likely grinding sand and gravel into the paint... 

Since I'm not supposed to be in here at this hour I'm not inclined to attract this bozo's attention with trumpet playing... 

A certain kind of New York Jew

 So it started raining at 7 last night, I got a few things rounded up and ready to list after the batch I should have listed last night and will list today. 

I watched stuff on YouTube and finally went to bed at 3AM or maybe a bit later. Awful. I don't want to fall back into that night-owl schedule. 

I woke up around 1 in the afternoon and turned the radio on. They were playing an interview with Paul Simon from 8 years ago. It was pretty neat, showing just how hard he works on a song and it made me look him up on Wikipedia (again). 

"The musician Donald Fagen described Simon's childhood as that of "a certain kind of New York Jew, almost a stereotype really, to whom music and baseball are very important. I think it has to do with the parents. The parents are either immigrants or first-generation Americans who felt like outsiders, and assimilation was the key thought—they gravitated to black music and baseball, looking for an alternative culture."^[8] Simon said Fagen's description was not far from the truth.^[8] Simon played baseball and stickball as a child. He described his father as funny and smart, but said he worked late and did not see his children much.^[8]" 

^{Now, digging into the Wikipedia entry, Simon got to know Garfunkel around age 10 and they set about making songs right away. If there's anyone who's earned what he got, it's Paul Simon. But what's always, always unsaid is that Simon's parents had stable careers, doing things like schoolteacher (mom) and college professor who was a bandleader on the side (dad).} 

^{What's not mentioned is that immigrant parents, 2nd or 3rd generation, will bust their asses for their kids. Provide them enough to eat, a safe, stable place to live, even set money aside for the kids to attend college or at least trade school. It doesn't matter if those parents are Jews or Vietnamese or Chinese or Hispanic or what have you. Until they become thoroughly Americanized, immigrants come to this country and act like human beings.} 

^{Among those who are thoroughly American-cultured, "Raised by wolves" is the rule. By the time you're 18 you're on your own and really American parents don't care if you get a Ph.D. or 20-to-life.} 

^{I've long concluded that this is why there's such a hatred of Jews, and Chinese, and Vietnamese, and Hispanics, and so on. Their working together like normal humans always have. This is hated because it's feared, and feared because people who are essentially Iks who drive cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ik_people#The_Mountain_People}

^{Even Louis Armstrong, coming from deep poverty, had people he could take refuge with, be fed by, who got him jobs (like his coal-cart job) and encouraged his music (his first musical work was playing simple blues is a bawdy house).} 

^{Charlie Parker came from modest beginnings also, but his parents actually bought him a saxophone before he was a teen, and I can't conceive of really American parents doing something like that. Really American parents won't even feed you enough, they're sure as hell not buying you something as expensive as a saxophone.} 

^{The one Kurt Vonnegut book I've not read, Slapstick, introduces a fictional solution. Vonnegut grew up in a huge and loving family compared to modern Americans, and remarked how everyone ought to have what he had, where if a kid was having a hard time with his parents, he could go stay at a relative's a few houses over for a break for a while. He had relatives all around his home town, and parents who didn't hate him for coming into their lives. He was fed and never had to sleep in an alley. Anyway his solution, inspired by the newfangled issuance of Social Security numbers, was for each person to be issued a name and number to go into their own name, so that you might be John Daffodil-14 Smith. You'd have thousands of other Daffodil-14's scattered all over who'd be your extended family as a mutual aid network.} 

^{In reality what will happen is (this is assuming global warming doesn't kill off everything larger than a mouse, which is a big ask) people of inferior cultures like the American one, will simply die out. While I want to stick around as long as I can to see, out of curiosity, just how bad things will get, I'm pretty proud of the fact that our "line" stops with my generation. American culture is so wonderful that out of the five of us, none of us wanted to have kids. Why bring kids into this horror?} 

^{In other news, I'm even more confirmed in my belief that the cause of "my" headache was ... .chocolate. Chocolate is in so many things that if one is a snacker at all, it's really hard to avoid if one isn't thinking about it. Even the "day-old" bargain bags of croissants and such things from Lee's pretty reliably had at least one that was stuffed with chocolate filling. As far as the headaches go, it doesn't seem to matter much of I'm eating high-carb or low-carb. But low-carb is better for health of course.} 

Dodging the rain

 I had time to practice last night but not time to list Ebay things... finally I've got my priorities right. 

I woke up around 9, and started packing things as well as having coffee and nuts and so on. I had six things that could go by FedEx, and those are what I packed. After getting them all packed I decided to take a break for Korean "Ace" crackers with  butter on them and another cup of coffee, and after that, saw that the little weather thing on my computer said "Rain coming" so I got the hell out of here. 

The thing is, though, that it was dark and kept looking like it was going to rain, but never did. I was able to drop off the packages, get a couple things in the iTaiwan store, find shipping stuff on my way back, and when I got back I still hadn't been rained on. 

I did some cleaning up around the parking lot, and got out my tools and took some parts off of a furnace that had been left out by the HVAC place. And it still hadn't rained. 

I got back in here and made out the little form etc and everything into an envelope for my February pledge to the temple, and rode for Japantown. On the way there, I stopped at the big park that's on Hedding and tried out the chin-up bars I'd noticed there the last time I was by. For the longest time I thought there weren't any, but I'd finally spotted them and noted how to find them again, using a couple of trees as landmarks. So I stopped by there and did some chin-ups. There were some little kids playing around and their mom, I guess, on her phone walking up and down and I just made sure to face away from the kids so it would not look like I was creepy, and did my chin-up thing and hopped on my bike and rode off. I think that place will become my go-to for chin-ups because I go by there a lot. 

I dropped my pledge off at the temple and went to Nijiya. I had this grotty old $20 bill I'd gotten from them, actually, that I wanted to spend and I got some eggs, a bento, and some salmon sashimi and that worked out just right. 

It was kind of neat out riding around in this almost-going-to-rain weather, and enjoyed the ride home. The actual rain didn't start until 7PM or so. 

A red letter day

 I was up a bit before 9 which was good. Ken had come by last night, we'd talked about tons of things, I got my check which I told him I may or may not deposit this week due to the rain, and before Ken came by I'd gotten 10 large things all photographed and ready to list. 

After Ken left it was close to midnight and I went to bed a bit after 1. 

I checked my email and there was an email from yet another friend back in Hawaii, to whom I'd written that letter. It had traveled to his house that quickly! And email, which is kind of dodgy these days, was working in our favor and I got an email from him, saying he's glad I remembered him and he's looking forward to seeing me once I'm back in Hawaii. 

Now this friend, whom I'll call AA, isn't a ding dong. Pat, over on the Big Island, was a bit of a ding dong when I knew him back in the 80s, and I was hoping had kind of matured out of being a ding dong as he aged, but apparently he never matured. He'd inherited the big money he'd talked about, and had managed to piss it all away in a fairly short number of years, and is now living in the big trouble spot on the Big Island and is just as ding-y as ever. Lately he's not even sending emails and I have no idea what the "silent treatment" is all about and frankly, it would not benefit me to know or even hear from him again. I don't plan to be an aging hippie on Welfare on the Big Island's "wild East" and die because I looked at some local meth dealer wrong so frankly if I don't hear from him again, no loss. 

My Honolulu friend, the crazy conspiracy theory nut, is likewise being very quiet. And is also useless. He won't even let me pay him to rent a room at his place, and I think as he circles the drain due to bad health - self-imposed I might add - and the big evul government takes his houses and stuff, he's going to feel smug and justified, just like those idiots dying of covid who's say with their literal last breath that covid's not real. 

But AA isn't a ding dong. He was in charge of big things when I knew him and apparently is now. He's got a house in a good, if a bit car-dependent, neighborhood on Oahu, and if anyone knows of someone who's got a room to rent at least as a place to "land" when I arrive back home, he will. At the very least I'll have him as a reference. 

Rained-in Thursday

 I finished the load of laundry I'd had soaking and had the place all cleaned up and waited for Ken to show up. And waited .... and waited.... 

I noticed I'd missed a call on my phone and it was from Ken's number so I assume he tried calling to let me know he'd not be by while I was upstairs hanging the laundry up or something. At least he tried. I tried calling back and of course no answer. 

I'm assuming there will be enough of a break in the rain for me to at least only get a bit wet, walking out to the light rail and taking some Post Office things in a large plastic bag to keep them dry to the downtown Post Office, doing my banking and perhaps stopping in Japantown for some shopping, then back here. I might get wet but the bike won't get all gunked up. Or I can take the bike but keep it really, really slow. 

Then I think Saturday's supposed to be somewhat dry and maybe Sunday. Those days can be used to take FedEx things to FedEx. 

This is why it's not a prime busking time here. My main job and the logistics of dodging rain storms makes it a very low priority. Meanwhile in New Orleans it's Mardi Gras time and a prime busking time and no doubt the actual musicians there are cashing in. And in Hawaii it's the time of the "Winter visitors" who are known to stay longer and spend more than the summer crowd. 

In today's news, apparently in Palo Alto which is one of the richest, whitest, areas here, the town council meeting was taken over and effectively ended by a mob of white, Christian, Hamas supporters/Holocaust deniers. In Palo Alto, ostensibly an educated place and a place with a large Jewish community center I'd love to live nearby because they have a gym and a bunch of neat stuff, and classes. I don't know why I'm surprised by this, since hating non-Christians and even Christians not of one's own narrow sect is central to Christianity and they especially hate Jews. 

I hope my Jewish friends are arming up, and in fact I now know how I'm going to pass on the guns and ammo I have, since Ken's pretty consistently said he's not up for buying anything "extra" besides paying my pay check, the last few times I've asked. I think I'd rather *give* my guns etc. to a Jewish cause than sell them to some random person. 

I'll have to step up the busking if I want to "fill in" the approximately $2k "hole" donating my arms will represent, but not this weekend; it'll be all I can do to get the packages sent and stay not-too-wet. 

It's only taken me 35 years to get back to making $20k a year. Back in Hawaii my official income at least, will go down to about $12k a year. Which is a lot of money, honestly. It's just far from what a lot of people *think* the average American with technical skills makes. 

The median income in China is just a bit under $5k but everything costs about 1/4 as much, putting them around $20k in buying power. And things are improving for the Chinese as quickly as they're getting worse for people here. 

Amazingly, around the middle of the day it cleared up and was sunny. I quickly packed the three things that had to go out, and rode to the post office to drop off the smaller ones, and then to FedEx to drop off the bigger one. It stayed dry all the time until I got to FedEx so I locked the bike at H Mart and spent a good ol' time poking around and buying weird stuff as well as routine stuff. 

It was still raining a little when I was done, and on the ride home it was sunny while I also got rained on a bit. My mid-day meal, I guess, had been a corn dog from one lunch truck on my way out, for the $2 in change I had on me, and then on the way back, there was a truck I stopped at to ask the lady what hours she's there, and said I was out of money so she said "Just get something and pay me later" so I got a thing that's basically a giant hot dog wrapped some kind of somewhat flaky wrapper. 

I got back here and ate the giant hot dog thing and had some other munchies, and watched it get grey and cloudy again. 

I've been eating some carb-y things lately just to play around with things, to see if my headaches would come back. But once I stopped eating chocolate, it seems to be really gone. It's not like I'd eat chocolate and 1/2-hour later, here comes the headache. It's more like whatever's in chocolate that was harming me would be there in my body, waiting to make a headache late at night, or overnight, or when I got up in the morning when I'd have some real whoppers. 

I've been looking very closely at snacks and things in the various markets I go to, and almost everything has chocolate in it. One display at Walmart had nothing that didn't have chocolate in it. Chocolate is a popular flavor but I never thought about how popular.