I did a ton of "A/B" testing last night, between my fancy-schmancy or at least expensive, "Enhanced" Shakuhachi Yuu, my regular ol' Yuu that I'd applied some wood stain to and red paint on the internal surfaces to try to make it look at least a bit like bamboo, and the PVC shakuhachi that Rinban gave me yesterday.
The PVC one plays the best. And this one's a dog. I can see how it would end up knocking around in a drawer in his office along with the one he plays personally and a bunch of other junk, because the utaguchi is not aligned with the finger holes and it had rough surfaces on the utaguchi cut and where one's chin rests, and the other end's a bit beat up too. And it *still* plays better than the expensive ones I have.
Plus it could probably use a good cleaning inside and I don't have a proper cleaning rod to do that.
I practiced until the power went out because of course it did, and went to bed. It was on again when I got up. This is just normal Silicon Valley stuff.
I really fought my urge to go over to West Valley Music today to get one of their Hall flutes just to have one right away, or at least a pennywhistle (which has the same fingering) to get going on learning some Christmas carols. But in reality, if my flute is coming from Hall up there in the Pacific Northwest somewhere by Priority Mail, it should be at Ken's house in time for him to bring it by when he comes by on Wednesday. And I won't need it until then because I have to devote all my time to the shakuhachi for the next couple of days.
I have the printed music for "Amida's Shrine" but to play something well, it really helps for me to *hear* it. And I can't find it anywhere online. So the informal practice session on Monday night is something I can't miss. I need to learn the tune properly, and anything else the shakuhachi club is playing these days.
The illegal night club didn't open last night, and only a few disappointed johns, pimps and ho's passed through. One guy, drunk of course, spun a few donuts in front of here then sped off to go drive drunk somewhere else. A cop car came through a couple of times as they should, this area being such a source of trouble.
After getting up and doing some exercises and having some breakfast I went up to Lowe's and got a couple of pieces of PVC pipe to experiment with, and some long thing pieces of "Pex" tubing to make into cleaning rods for the PVS shakuhachi we're playing in the shakuhachi club. I realized the one Rinban gave me needs a good cleaning and no, just pulling through the clarinet pull-through I have around here won't help.
I gathered some packing stuff on the way home then after dropping things off, went back as far as the California Croissant place and picked up a big microwave oven they'd left out front, got that into here and put the trailer away, then went to Nijiya for some things.
It's getting dark and according to the zombies, once it's dark the workaday people should be home and the streets belong to the zombies. So I had to dodge a couple. One seemed like it was following me on its Zombike, and I ducked into this complex by way of the armored car place, and popped out of there to surprise the damned thing which had probably tarried a bit to look for where I'd gone. It was obvious that if I were armed I'd have the drop on it and it emitted some sound in Zombese, and rode away along the other side of the complex. I got back here and got the bike in quickly because I didn't want some zombie knowing where my shop is.
I'm pretty Left but I do agree with that one right-wing politician who said they ought to give the druggies all the drugs they want. Let 'em have all they like, so they don't have to steal to obtain them, and the problem will be self-correcting.
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