$21 day busking

 I ended up staying up all night pretty much, until 4AM at least. I also drank 1 bottle of cheap wine and got into my good Friday night wine to the tune of about 1/3 of that. 

I could not get myself motivated to get out and busk for the lunch crowd, considering it was almost noon when I woke up. 

I could not get myself motivated to even go out, until I remembered that Whole Foods has a habit of closing at 6 on holidays. So I left here at a quarter after 5 with my trumpet and tip box. 

I got there at 5:45, got two bottles of cheap wine and a bottle of milk thistle capsules because if I'm gonna drink I'm going to take one of those morning and evening as part of the regime. That came to about $29 which I put on my card. I also asked when they were closing. "6, yep, 6". 

I stashed my things in the bike bags and took off for the Old Spaghetti. I played for half an hour and it was awful - I got a dollar. I took off and did a little ride around downtown and it was like the neutron bomb had been used - hardly any people. There was *one* person at Discovery Park. 

I decided I have my trumpet in-hand and if I go back home I'll get distracted and not practice, so I'll go back to the Old Spag and treat it as a practice. 

It was very slow going. One guy came up "This is all I have!" tossed $2 in quarters in. Very welcome. A large Hispanic family seemed to hold an impromptu knesset in the middle of the painted walkway and it ended in one of the young ones being sent over to put in ... a dollar. An old Christian couple put in $2 wrapped in one of those horrid leaflets - I made sure they saw me toss the leaflet in the trash. 

Some young guys came by and one made like he was putting something in but didn't, and they laughed hysterically over it. I got the impression they'll be laughing over that one dumb joke for the rest of the night. 

At one point, after a song, I heard clapping from a table in front of the Old Spag. I picked up my tip box and went over, and they gave me a $5, not bad. The guy who'd clapped wanted me to try "'My Favorite Things' by John Coltrane". 

So I went back to playing and put it in my rotation and played it several times. A short, very fat, man came out of the Japanese grill I was actually in front of and said he couldn't hear me but enjoyed watching me. I said he could just imagine I was playing the theme to "Keeping Up Appearances" which is a very complicated cornet piece. (He was a Brit.) We had a nice conversation about being able to read music vs. playing by ear. He plays piano and can't play without music in front of him, and I said I can make myself read music, using F-A-C-E and Every Good Boy Does Fine etc., but I find it much easier to play by ear. Both systems are good, we decided. 

It was just very, very slow and eventually, after 8, I packed up. I went over to the nice family again and asked if they'd hear me playing "My Favorite Things" and they had and appreciated it. They wanted to know where I was from and I said, "California, but spent most of my time growing up in Hawaii". We had a little talk about that place, and one of the ladies passed me another $5 so that was nice. 

My impression is there's a lunch crowd, perhaps a very good, "tippy" one, then it dies 'way down, then there's a dinner crowd. Probably 7:30 to 9:00 in the evening is a good slot. Once it gets dark the bums come out. 

I rode home, hearing tons of bangs and booms and sirens. Riding up Commercial to 10th, I acquired a couple of "friends", a guy on a cheapo mountain bike and his ol' lady on a folding bike. I said "Neat folding bike! I just got one myself". We got to the intersection and Mr. Bum tried riding on through, which you really can't do there. As he escaped a casual death I called out something like "Too many cars! There always are here". As the light changed I said "Now!" and now I had the bum following me. Maybe he thought I was trying to "charm" his skanky friend by talking to her. He was saying things but I'm not sure if to her or to me, or how friendly they were. So I applied the Eddy Merckx method (with a nice stiff headwind to help) and simply pedaled harder and faster and got out ahead. 

I took a couple of twists and turns coming back in here just in case, but I'd lost the bums. I fixed a big bowl of tuna salad and having a big tall can of PBR from TAK Market. 

So I'd busked about 2 hours. As mentioned, it was very slow. One thing was my endurance was better, I've become better at noticing when I get tired my vibrato would go away but this time I gave myself more breaks and worked on a "beautiful sound" all through. So I'll have to say it was a good practice session. 

The evils of the nuclear family

 Between getting one box out that *had* to go out, prior to that listing 20 things on Ebay, getting another 15 ready for today, and after taking said package to FedEx going over to Sprouts to scout out options for Shabbat (not very promising, their fridges were on the blink and all the meat was put away) and buying a couple bottles of cheap wine, I didn't get any practice done. 

I'd written a peeved letter to the temple complaining that the Red White & Blue parade site was both vague and intimidating, and complaining that I didn't know where to meet up. I got a reply today saying more precisely where they'll meet up and I thanked them for the reply but said I'd gone out to do errands yesterday and it was really, really hot. Therefore, I'll follow my long-established tradition of having nothing to do with the parade and staying in on the 4th. 

I'd had a thirst for some makgeolli for a while so I'd gotten a bottle at H Mart and ... that's over with. I don't get what I saw in the stuff. 

Through all of this I had time to think, and we've all heard the stories about how you've got some guy who's right-wing, anti-gay, etc., then his kid turns out to be gay and that turns him around to being supportive etc. Well, since the American norm is to have the "nuclear" family at most, and often hardly that because the ideal is to be all alone, I think this might explain the sea of hatred for anyone different that Americans swim in. 

If you've got a large extended family, chances are someone in that network will turn out to be gay, or have a disability, or get cancer, or in some way be "different" and "weak". Maybe more than one. You'll have known this person for years on end, and know that they got cancer but they'd not been a bad person, or despite their disability done their best, or they were gay and you'd known since they were a little kid (or others in the network had) and they'd always been that way, it's not a quirky choice they'd made suddenly. 

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a book based on the idea that everyone would get born with a name and number combo that would result in everyone having a huge extended family, with everyone obligated to help those in this family out, and the family would help the person out. He gushed in his memoirs how great it was to have family all around in the town he grew up in, so if you had a problem with your parents you could go stay with an aunt or uncle for a while. 

This of course is un-American in the extreme. This is a huge part of why immigrants and foreigners are hated. Having large family/friend networks and helping each other out is "cheating". This is a huge part of why Jews are hated. 

Jews hold a special niche in the pantheon of Those Who Must Be Hated though. It's not just the big family/friend networks, it's that Jews esteem education, esteem thinking for the future, etc. A Real Amerian(tm) is supposed to live only for the day, think or act for the long-term. Jews who immigrated to the US in the late 1800s/early 1900s and worked at sewing machines in sweatshops were supposed to stay right in those sweatshops until they got old and died in an alley or maybe graduate to sweeping floors and then die all alone in an alley. 

Instead they saved literal pennies, got into better work when they could, started small businesses, even "microscopic" businesses, etc. Asians do this also and we all know how hated they are. 

College is really barely tolerated in the US, and now in these shiny new times Jews are being excluded from colleges except for Jewish ones like Brandeis and Yeshiva U. Going to college in the US is highly dependent on whether you're good at a sport, not how smart you are. 

I think back to my neighbor in Sunnyvale who got a full scholarship to Stanford because he was a particularly adept, and vicious, football player. He liked hurting people. His Stanford degree got him a job for life in the penal system, where he got to beat up teenagers and his leisure activity was windsurfing which I've done and is a very physically intense sport. He was dumber than a box of rocks but that didn't matter to Stanford or to anyone. He was a success because he was essentially a healthy animal not a thinking being. 

The guy who owned the Gilroy place I lived at for a while was like this also. He had a degree in chemistry but that was all he allowed himself to be "intellectual" about - some chemistry knowledge. Even there, he knew only as much as he was required to know to do his work - no more. As for other subjects, he knew next to nothing and was proud of it. He considered "book learning" like chemistry only a necessity to make a living, and his real accomplishment was being skilled in jiu-jitsu and having big muscles. I made myself the unspoken enemy by admitting that I'd passed the Mensa test on the first try and been a member for a bit, and mentioning things like Rachmaninoff, the composer and pianist, whom he'd never heard of. I'd passed him interesting books to read like The Curve Of Binding Energy by McPhee and he'd never read them. At this point he started accusing me of crazy things like pulling up all his garbanzo bean plants and loading tons of extra work on me to get me to leave, which I did. 

I might have stayed in his good graces if I'd not mentioned the Mensa thing (he'd tried to get in something like three times) and shown an interest in jiu-jitsu and joined in on his idea of humor, in which it's funny if someone gets hurt.  

"Be a healthy animal" is the message of American society. When I was a kid we got the National Geographic magazine for a while and on the back cover of one was an ad for Special K cereal. It had a photo of a polar bear on its hind legs with its front paws in the air, and beside it a photo of a tennis player in the same pose. I've always remembered it because it struck me as strange, aren't people supposed to be something more than mere animals? Don't humans have a "life of the mind"? No, even in the upper-middle-class world of the National Geographic, one is supposed to strive for no more than being a healthy animal.

This is why countries that treat their Jews badly turn into shitholes. They're expelling, imprisoning, or killing off outright, their intellectual class. You don't live at a level higher than the medieval without an intellectual class. 

This is how you get Pol Pot's Cambodia, China under Mao's temper tantrums, present-day Russia, Nazi Germany, MAGA America. Everyone just trying to be a healthy animal, and any animal that dares raise its head above the muck is killed. 

I had grandiose plans of taking my latest batch of books to the used book store today but it's already 98 degrees out there while it's merely 85 inside here. I'll save the books for Friday when I'll have to go downtown anyway to go to the bank and to the Friday night service. 

As usual it's the usual. The weather sucks, Ebay sales are in the toilet, our banned buyer list just got longer, and Ken's doing what he does best - losing money. I'm pretty fortunate that he's got the financial acumen of a 11-year-old. He can keep this business limpling along on a slow financial bleed, for a few more years. Long enough for me to get my conversion accomplished and get to work on moving to Israel. 

My plan for tomorrow is busking at the Old Spaghetti Factory. I feel funny saying that because they've moved a lot of big planters out so far onto the sidewalk that there's only a narrow area for walking and it's not suitable for a busker to position themselves at all. There are adjacent areas that work OK so I'm good for now, but it's an illustration of how the city hates buskers. I'm not even sure how they get away with it because if someone uses a wheelchair it's not wide enough and all I can think is they squeak by legally because the street is now closed off to cars and there are two skinny little ramps juuuuuust wide enough for a wheelchair to squeeze through, spaced far apart on the street. 

Although this place/city/culture hating anyone who's "weak" so much, it's been years since I've seen anyone who uses a wheelchair or any sort of aid like a walker or "knee scooter" or anything. The weak are not welcome. 

But the last time I busked at the Old Spaghetti, I'd done so for an hour starting at 2:30 in the afternoon, then gone over to Whole Foods where the wind was extreme and I got either nothing or a dollar, I forget. Then back to the Old Spaghetti to make another 7 dollars but it was very, very slow. My plan for tomorrow is to get out early, hopefully straddling the lunch hour. 

I need to find out if lunch-hour busking is a good idea. I'd have a hard time fitting it into my schedule now, but if I have to strike out on my own, rent a storage unit to keep my stuff in and sleep "wherever" and have busking as my sole source of income, I'll automatically be back on a daytime schedule because I'll be up every day at 6 or 7 in the morning. 

I did my post office and FedEx run but FedEx had closed early so I had to take the two FedEx packages right back. Then I went out again for to go to H Mart and Sprouts for things from roast beef and a good bottle of wine for Friday night to coconut milk powder and celery and garlic on sale at H mart. 

I got back here and listed some of the 15 things I'd photo'd before starting out. Ken came by a bit before schedule, I got my pay check, but not the burger and fries I thought he might bring, "All my coupons are expired" he explained. "Alright, you talk, I'll cook" I said, and cooked up vegetables, a package of Gefen Kosher ramen, and some beef. 

We talked about things, I got my pay check (which I can deposit on Friday) and when Ken was gone I finished listing the rest of the 15 things. 

 

Official Acts

 I've had overnight to think about this modern-day "Enabling Act" such as Hitler got, which allowed him to go into full dictator mode at one fell swoop. 

I don't think this is that bad, if it's interpreted correctly. For a president to have immunity for "official acts" makes sense. Would it be proper to throw Harry Truman in prison for having chosen to use the atom bomb in WWII? How about LBJ for "Project Linebacker" in Vietnam? I think the court has decided correctly in this case. 

Interpreted sanely, official acts within the framework of the law would be fine, but unofficial acts such as insurrection, treason, spying, and so on, would be punished. And Diaper Don has committed all of those and more. 

But the big industrialists, the same type who thought it best to put Hitler in power because they felt they could control him, are not happy with Biden's squeaking through some student loan relief, for getting insulin down to $35 a month, and such things. Within the restraints he's up against, Biden's been doing a great job. And that pisses off oligarchs. 

Hence my turning on the radio and there's more blather about replacing Biden with someone else, of course someone else more pliable or 99.9% likely, handing the reins over power over to Fat Orange. They really think they can control the syphilis-riddled madman. Or that they can control the Christian End-Of-The-Worldists who are clustered around Donnie Stinko. 

I practiced last night before bed, while watching the first half or so of "Hollywoodism", a neat documentary about Jews and Hollywood.

A willing suspension of disbelief

 I woke up around 8:30 then went back to sleep until 10:30 then got up. I made the mistake of turning the radio on as I always do, and it's nothing but the Jews control everything, Jews can't go to the "West Bank" - actually called Judea, etc. Tons on the evil of the Jews. 

It's NPR so they're dressing it up in grown-up language but the underlying message is clear and the callers to the show are happy to weigh in. On NPR, at least in its present state, one won't hear about Jews having horns or using the blood of Christian babies in their matzo (need I mention again that the eating of blood is really, really, abhorrent in Judaism) but they'll find plenty of ways to say "We're all in dire danger due to da Jooz" in language suitable for college graduates. 

When do we come to the voluntary suspension of belief? In 1930s Germany, there were plenty of Germans who could not get themselves to believe that their Jewish neighbors, their Jewish war buddies, actually had horns or ate blood-matzo or controlled the banks. But there came a time when the message was pounded out that these things were true, on the radio and in the newspapers, in jokes going around, etc., that at some point Mr. Normal German willingly decided to go along. It was far more profitable, as anti-Nazi Germans were some of the first to go into the first camps, and besides, if you decided you believed these things, you stood a good chance of getting your Jewish neighbor's house, or his business. 

When you've got every media channel from NPR, using college-graduate language, to crude jokesters on YouTube (YouTube loves fascists) drumming this message, it's only a matter of time. If the orange embarrassment wins the election, we can expect a lot of vicious rhetoric against anyone who's not "Aryan" and this will include Jews of course and perhaps Jews will be particularly railed against and laws made to oppress because Jews would be considered "more dangerous" because of their being an educated group. 

"Brown people" will of course have their own death camps in their future, but a fascist US government might find them very useful as shock troops before liquidating them. There's an unsettling level of support for Dirty Diapers Don among Hispanic people, who think by going fascist they're at least better than the blacks. I've actually met, far in the past, brown Nazis and they're very much a thing. 

I fired up the computer and that was even worse - apparently we've undergone a voluntary suspension of the Constitution. Presidents now have total immunity for any "official act" which probably includes treason and insurrection as long as the president wears a suit and tie. So, the sensible thing to do would be to have Biden call up Seal Team Six and have them "retire" Dumpo and his cronies. 

Paradoxically, Biden, now given the powers of a Ferdinand Marcos or even Idi Amin, should now use that power to decapitate MAGA with extreme prejudice. Go all General Sherman on them. But since Biden is normal and a nice guy, of course he won't do this, the one thing that would lead to, by far, the least death and misery. 

Hitler said himself that the only way to stop the Nazis would have been to apply extreme force, early, and with no compunctions. That's how you solve the problem of an actual internal enemy. The Germans should have rounded up everyone who participated in the Munich putsch attempt, and lined them up against the wall. But the Germans were already divided between Nazi sympathizers and normal people who quailed at the idea of being that expeditious and "mean". 

This is a problem in Israel also. Israel had the right spirit around the founding as a modern country. They didn't keep up that spirit and look at all the trouble they're in now. "Gaza" should never have been allowed to exist. Judea should have been settled heavily and the settlers armed more heavily, given free training, etc. Now the only politician they have with the old spirit is Netanyahu. 

I need to study Bibi more, because right now I like him. He's willing to get in there and remove Arabs, most often feet first, the best way. I know he and his brother served bravely in the raid on Entebbe. I don't understand what's not to like. So I need to study him and hard, because a lot of people don't like him and either they're onto something that I should know about, or I need to learn how to refute their arguments. 

I got 20 things ready to list, even taking a test instrument apart, so I can just clean the things photo them, and list. Then I went on to shipping and shipped out 13 or so things, a mix of small to kind of big. I was going to hang out at Tom's but he wasn't there when I went by, then was there when I next went by, then I went and collected some packing stuff and went back and he was out again. He'd asked me in an email about the place downtown I buy computers from, and I told him where it was with a Google map link and said I've been happy with them so far. If his wife is now out of work and living with him, she might want her own computer or one of his might have broken down. 

All day I've been working out how to do my listing, do my shipping, and also fit in a trip to the used book store to get cash for the latest batch of books and over to Target to return the duplicate Oxo corkscrew I'd bought. I finally realized I can take care of everything just fine if I just stick to my plan and don't spend any money until my next pay check. 

But it actually gets a bit more lenient. Because I have the $60 cash here and I can allow myself to spend some of it starting on Thursday, as long as I just take out $140 on Friday which is the soonest I'll be able to deposit my pay check. That's all right - it means I can go take part in the Red White and Blue parade on Thursday morning/midday, then come back and do some Ebay stuff and do at least basic Shabbat shopping. 

This means I don't have to worry about busking at all which I probably won't feel like doing in the 100-degree heat after being in the parade.