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.
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