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.
No comments:
Post a Comment