Um,

 Um,

When it's better to not practice?

 After doing a bunch of other things yesterday/last night I practiced, but I went about it ... not ideally. First I didn't warm up with long tones. Big mistake I think. Secondly I was just not enthusiastic about it. 

I went to bed at something like 8AM, and told myself I wanted to be up around noon to pack a couple more things that had sold and get them to the post office before the rain starts. And amazingly I was up at noon. It was more like 1 when I got out of here, with 4 things, and rode up to the post office and back, and then on the way back (I could see ominous rain clouds coming in) I went to Lowe's. 

What fun looking in the cleaners section of Lowe's. For some reason they sell Scotchguard there, which a while back I hoped to find at Big-5, since it's used on sports equipment a lot, right? I only found some off-brand, and here it is, the genuine stuff. So that's good to know. 

I was looking for floor wax/sealer though, and am still kicking myself for tossing out my tin of Johnson's floor wax, the real old-school stuff, which takes a little effort but the stuff wears like iron. So I was thinking of trying some Minwax which is for furniture which would be the closest thing, but first I'd look at the liquids. Back at the Blue Cross Animal Hospital, we used to use some stuff called Mop And Glo, which I figured was no longer available but there it was. I had $15 cash with me and it came to $15.18 so I had to use my card, but now I can take care of the bathroom floor. 

I got back here just as a few rain drops were starting to fall, and a few minutes after I got inside it started to rain in earnest. Which is why I was so eager to get everything sent out early, because it's going to rain heavily tomorrow (Wednesday) and I'll stay in. 

 

4/9

 Well here it is a great weekend done with, and everyone's just bubbling about what a success it was. 9 shot, 4 deaths, and other than them I guess, everyone had a great time. 

I did more practice last night, really early this morning. I'm not sure how to describe the new embouchure thing I'm trying to adopt, other than before, I was using the muscles *right* around the lips, and now I'm using the muscles needed for a "flat chin" which are an ring of muscles surrounding them. 

So I'm paying attention to this, and also doing the flat chin thing in my breathing exercises when I think about them. 

It's also time I start thinking about getting out there busking.  

I did my post office and FedEx run, and picked up some boxes, and once I had the bike parked in front, there was a guy banging on the door or something, at the next door place so I kind of watched ... it turned out to be one of the workers, one of the very few who speaks enough English to hold a real conversation, which we did. And I found myself talking with this scruffy guy who looks like he *maybe* knows how to operate a landscape sprinkler system, about global warming and Thwaites glacier and so on. It was amazing, this guy knows a lot more than a lot of people would think. 

I've seen this with people in Hawaii in the past, whom you'd not think were very educated or tuned in, and it will turn out they know a ton. And I won't even listen to the stereotypes that get pushed about people in Hawaii being lazy, because it's the opposite. 

 

The current unpleasantness

 Last night I was up listing things, and .... the illegal night club set up for a banger of a night, plenty of clients coming in. So  I filed my report online and when it looked like I was going to have drunks camped out and talking/yelling outside my door all night, I called the cops. The 911 op said they were just headed over (anyway?) and they came in, the "johns" and ho's did their "rats leaving a sinking ship" routine, and that was all great except there were 3 large, very drunk, guys who *did* seem as if they were going to spend the rest of the night outside my door so I called again. 

I got to talk with the cop a little, too, and he said the site of the illegal night club doesn't even have electricity and they might board it up, and I said it had been boarded up before and the Colombians had just opened it up again. But maybe they'll board it up again and it will lead to some of the scum being arrested. 

So this fun occupied the time until about 4AM, and I got about half of the things listed. I also made the mistake of eating not one, but two, of the "Crunchie" bars I had, which made me feel weird, probably due to high blood sugar. The coffee I swallowed them down with surely didn't help. 

So in the end I was just tired, felt frazzled, and went to bed. 

I woke up around 3 in the afternoon, and after exercises and some breakfast, I took the rest of the Crunchie bars and some other stuff to donate, and headed downtown. I did the usual; dropped off a bag of trash, put the candy and stuff into the little free library, then headed over to the Amazon place for bubble mailers. 

Downtown was even more dull, dead, and unfriendly seeming than usual. In fact, one of the doors of the Amazon place had police tape on it and I just went in the other door. I did my thing, got a few mailers, and got out of there. I stopped at Nijiya for a couple of things and got back here. 

 

A good practice

 I was amazed last night,  I had a really good practice. I guess all those years playing trumpet have not meant nothing, and I'm getting better on the Rubank exercises and also found myself able to play things that went pretty high on the scale. 

I might want to give some credit to the horn itself. Student horns can certainly be played up high, but most students never will before they graduate to an intermediate or professional horn. But a professional horn will be judged and judged hard if it's not equally easy to play high as low, as far as being in tune, having no difficult notes etc. 

You get what you pay for.  And as expensive as this horn was, this is all nothing compared to how expensive violins can be, or flutes, or a lot of instruments that need a constant input of supplies and extra equipment, like guitars. Someone like myself who is fanatical about playing with a clean mouth and who knows how to to minor maintenance like replacing water key corks, thorough cleanings, and even things like valve rebuilds and alignments, can have a trumpet or cornet last indefinitely. 

I woke up around 3, photo'd the 25 things I had all ready to list first, then had some coffee and nuts and then went downtown. I dropped off a bag of trash, some books at the little free library, then went to the Amazon place for some bubble mailers, and turned right around and got outta there. It's crowded, and our legion of ugly streetwalkers, as well as various other druggies and freaks, are out plying their various trades. 

I stopped by Nijiya for ginger and eggs and got back here and that's it. I just wanted to get a bike ride in because it's a bit tiring to just stay in here all the time. 

 

 

A bit less bad

I went downtown to deposit my check and buy things ...  I guess I wrote about this already. I got back here in time to grab a big box and get that to FedEx. 

In the early morning, because I was up all night again, I did some more practice and it was ... less bad. Thinking back to when  I was practicing regularly, it seems there was a pretty good correlation between the amount of practice I was doing and how well I could play out on the street. This is what I want to get back on track on. 

The plan is to get back to a regular busking schedule and also keep regularly practicing and reading off of printed music.  

I didn't wake up until a quarter after 3, and I surprised myself by packing all the things and I got them up to the post office and then went to 99 Ranch and H Mart for things. I also went to Ross to buy a T-shirt. 

Were there crazy zombies staggering around? Of course! I even had to detour though a parking lot to get from one end of Rogers Avenue to the other, due to a "zombie clog" in the middle. Zombies just doing crazy zombie stuff, yelling, filling the street with the utter crap they drag around... 

The funniest zombie interaction was inside Ross of all places. I was walking past a rack and there was a tall, blonde Zombess looking at the clothes I guess, maybe deciding what things to shoplift. The thing stepped back right when I was walking past and banged my foot kind of hard so I said, "Sonofabitch!". The thing then said "What?" and I said "Son of a bitch! It's what you say when someone trips you, SON OF A BITCH!!" and that shut the creature up. 

I had zero problems checking out, paying for my shirt, and even had a nice little mini-conversation with the security guard about those coin dispenser things that people used to have, how neat having one would be. Not even a crosswise look because the people working there know a human from a zombie. 

 

Just before the horrors start

 I'm glad I had my packages packed, just two small ones and one very big one, last night. I also did some practice last night, I sounded awful. 

I woke up at a quarter after 3 in the afternoon. That makes sense because entertaining Ken for an hour or more is always exhausting, then I'd packed the things, then practiced etc. 

But that gave me just enough time to get cleaned up, have some black coffee and aspirin as that's a healthy breakfast, and take off. 

I dropped off trash and a bunch of books and 10 "Crunchie" candy bars, bought a can of coffee at Nijiya and then got over to the post office and dropped off the packages, then got over to the bank and deposited my pay check for the week. 

Then I went over to Whole Foods and ate and got things, and then headed down to Walmart to get other things. Downtown is already different, with barriers and tons of police and police dogs. I did my thing at Walmart and on the way back saw something eerie: a large-ish box truck painted all grey, no logo, no numbers, not even some small number or anything. Just the kind of thing you'd expect to see people be disappeared into. 

I went to Nijiya again for a few more things, and got back here, offloaded the things, loaded up the one very large package and took that up to FedEx and got a few things in H Mart. 

There were the usual number of crazy zombies, zombies with zombie dogs (I tried to get the zombie dog to chase me out into traffic but darn it, it obeyed its undead master) and the usual craziness. But now I am set to hunker down until Tuesday. 

 

As the internet continues to enshittify...

 I got up and went right to work packing things to ship. 20 things, and I'd shipped at least that number yesterday. For some reason sales are up. About 2/3rds of the way through, Bill Gates tried to "brick" my computer. 

My response to this was to get out the newer computer with Windows 11 on it and put it on the charger, and to do a "hard reset" on this one by unplugging everything and pulling the battery and doing something else for 15 minutes, then powering it up again and waiting for things to load again on my slow-ass Silicon Valley internet. 

Amazingly it was back to working at least for now. So I was able to finish my packing and get out of here at the usual time and ship the packages. 

I stopped and got chicken at the chicken place, which has the advantages of outdoor tables so I can eat right there and have dinner done with, and also once in a great while their chicken really hits the spot. There was a cop SUV idling there so I ended up eating at a table right near it which is pretty funny. Eventually the cop showed up, got in their SUV, and drove off and it was time for me to leave too. I thought I may have seen the weird zombie from yesterday, the scumbag, ride by on a bike. Going toward H Mart too, so I was hoping I'd not run into it. And I didn't, as I went in there for coffee (out), Yakult (out) and wet wipes (they had 'em). 

I picked up odds and ends for shipping and got back here. 

For some reason we're almost overdue to the electric company and owe them almost $400. I don't know if Ken just forgot to pay the bill or whether this is another instance of tech being a very low-paid field and being in it, a sure way to scrape through life and be perpetually behind on utilities. 

Interestingly, on the front page of my browser there used to be "radio buttons" for commonly-visited sites but those are a thing of the past now, and I have to type in each URL. Kind of like having addresses and phone numbers memorized in the 80s. 

 

the 3rd

 And for some reason I decided, apparently, to celebrate it by sleeping in until 3 in the afternoon. I was up until 4AM OK no problem, that means I should still wake up at noon. But when I woke up I saw one hand on the clock on the 12 and one on the 3 and thought, "Oh, OK, it's a quarter after, good enough" and went around turning on the lights and the radio, and on the radio they said it's 3 in the afternoon. Conclusion: I need a bigger clock that's easier to read. 

So I had my coffee and nuts and got to work packing things, which were one large combination order and another order that was just one large capacitor. 

I got going to FedEx and the post office, and went in to 99 Ranch for some shopping. The lady at the checkout asked me if I'm a "senior" and said I am, and she gave me the 5% off discount they do for seniors on Tuesdays so that's cool. 

As I was taking things out to the bike some big overweight blonde guy, scumbag type, came up and asked if that was my bike or something to that effect. I was it was and that it "does the job" and he asked if it was "all original" and I said yes it is, well, except for the rear wheel which has been replaced by a heavy-duty one as I wore out the original one... " I had no idea where I could have met this idiot before, and he was being really familiar. He said something like, "We're all a bit worried about you" or some such rambling shit. I'm thinking this is a scumbag tactic in the same way that creeps will start a conversation with anyone female with, "Have you lost weight?" As is considered best practice with psychotics, I just went along, while loading my things up and hopping on the bike and getting out of there, without seeming too urgent. "Be careful out there!" the scumbag said, and I said, "I will" and was off. 

Honest as I write this it's hours later and I still have no idea where I'd have seen or met this particular scumbag. Maybe he's a friend of DL's (Diabeetus Legs) the hugely overweight Chinese guy whose legs are rotting off from untreated diabetes. 

I meandered my way back, picking up a few boxes, and got back in here. 

 

Still getting over this thing

 Busy day. I packed 17 things which I had to fund first, and got them to the post office. I didn't stop to get anything anywhere, except to pick up a few boxes. Tomorrow will be taken up with packing and shipping also, I'm that far behind. 

On my way back I came across a dozen "Kinder" something or other bars, which are Meh, and 45 Cadbury "Crunchie" bars which are amazing. It's like Violet Crumble, but somehow the nougat or toffee or whatever it is in the middle, has had an extra toasting making it extra brittle and a unique taste. Roald Dahl wrote about the Cadbury company giving out new types of chocolate bar to the school he went to, and all they had to do was write their impressions of them, and I imagine this one went over very well. 

So I put all the other candy I had out for the scavengers but am keeping the "Crunchie" bars.  

 

I might be feeling better

 I slept fairly well overnight, and into the area of 1-2 in the afternoon which is good. I also read books instead of being up and on the computer. 

Today, I had to get some things out since they were due to actually go out tomorrow and it seems I have to get things out one day earlier or they show up as late. 

There were four things so I started with the smallest which just went into an envelope, and worked up to the biggest, which went in a big box, using up a ton of padding materials. 

On my way to FedEx I saw Tom outside at his place so I stopped and we talked a bit. The bums around his place are going to get cleared away, again. I asked what the stacks of boxes by James' tent were, and he said they were cup ramen, "A lifetime supply" haha. 

I got the things dropped off and went into H Mart for a couple of things, paying using my card (and contactless at that) to avoid passing any of my germs. My lungs were really full of stuff when I got up. 

On the way back I had to do something about my now low supply of padding. So I picked up some stuff here and there, and from Noah Medical I got a couple of boxes of good stuff but even better, I saw they had these huge boxes that held some kind of medical apparatus, with the black foam with fancy cutouts to hold the equipment, and a nice big top piece with no cut-outs at all, just a bit rectangle a couple of inches thick. Just ideal stuff. 

So I took my shopping and the stuff I'd already gathered back here, had some coffee and a couple of aspirin, and went back out to get those. Someone had dug through some bags by their dumpsters and left a big mess, and I know there are cameras watching the area, there's only a sign saying so. So I cleaned up the mess. Then I got to work digging out the big foam pieces I wanted; there were four of the big rectangles and I ended up taking some other stuff to make the rectangles stand up between the sides of the bike trailer. On my way out I stopped at another company for a roll of bubble wrap and one of those big anti-static boxes that are great for shipping large circuit boards in. 

The only other actual work I wanted to do this evening was to take the 25 things I have cued up to list next and make them actually camera ready by cleaning them, making labels, etc., and I did that.  

So a ton of things accomplished for being sick, and I have a ton of things to ship out tomorrow. 

 

Another stay in bed day

 It's the only way we in the working class get anything like a vacation! At least all the time in bed gives me time to sift and sort through my mind ... 

For some years now I'd wondered if I should feel guilty because my eye operation(s) and special classes in school must have been a burden. Maybe I'm why the family finances tanked. Thinking about it now, though, my maternal grandmother paid for the operation(s), (I'm not clear on whether it was more than one or just the one) and the special classes didn't cost us anything. 

According to my older sister, a family friend, Mr. Bethune, stole all of Father's money somehow. Through some mysterious process, maybe witchcraft? Somehow I don't see Mr. Bethune doing this; we grew up with the Bethune kids and I wonder what Sean and Claudette are up to now (I believe Claudette is a PhD. scientist these days, congrats to her) and Mr. Bethune was always a can-do, scratch and scrap, make things work kind of guy. He built the boat, the Sea Raven, the Bethunes lived on, and apparently ended up having a time-clock company there in Honolulu. Not exactly the profile of a financial scammer. 

Nope what really ruined us was my older sister having to go to Punahou School, which these days is $32 thousand a year. It would have been proportionately that much back in the 70s. My older sister could have gone to McKinley, which being public was, and is, free, and is the high school for intellectual kids. Or could have gone to Kaiser like I did, which is another good public school, and not even need to take a bus since it can be walked to easily from Portlock Road. 

Of course the whole reason to go to Punahou School, and what parents pay $32 thousand a year for, is to marry someone who also went to Punahou School, which my older sister did. I guess this was worth the other 4 of us ending up poor as hell, two of us never actually graduating high school because we had to go out and work to survive, and probably due to the extreme hunger and hardship we went through, none of us talking to each other after we escaped at age 18. 

And my older sister was going to be a writer, and at least write a book about "Cats In The Pacific" and she's not written a thing. She's just a dumpy hausfrau, but hey, she's a dumpy hausfrau who went to Punahou School.  

Really sick, stay in bed day

 So to liven things up, here's a guy playing the same cornet I just bought, a lot better than me! 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8kddfpI8I0

He is playing Debussy's Syrinx, a piece normally played on flute.  

I can't embed the video but it's well worth watching, the guy's really good! I bet he didn't pay for his. I notice he doesn't seem to be using the fancy little levers that are supposed to move the 1st and 3rd slides. 

I'm taking the day off although I should be packing two big things, one really big, and hauling them up to FedEx but I messaged the buyers and said they'll be a day or two late getting out because I'm so sick. 

 

Got a cold

 Last night right after Ken left, I sneezed like 10 times and started having a really stuffy nose which I had to keep blowing. I finally went to bed, not being able to make myself feel any better. 

Sure enough, I got up and my sore throat is accompanied by a nice cough. I'm going to blame that stupid French class because we were all stuffed into that tiny room and the teacher was out with a cold last lesson (the one I didn't go to because I'd dropped the class). So not only did I have to "eat" the cost of the class but I've got a nasty cold. 

I've actually looked up local German classes, and there's a place that's on the next street behind the Whole Foods on Hamilton, a place that's not hard for me to get to at all. But I'd sure want to visit them in person and determine if the textbooks are as smartphone-dependent as the ones in the French class. The thing is, being "certified" in a language, by passing official tests, and German might be much easier to get to the much-vaunted B2 level in. This school I mention and the Goethe Institute up in San Francisco both offer classes and the tests.  

And here I am with a shiny new mouthpiece to try out, a Denis Wick even, which is a brand I've always seen really talked up, and I don't even feel like picking up the cornet. I've got the new mouthpiece in its spot next to the one that came with the horn, in their two little holes in the case, and the stand folded up and stowed away in the bell and it fits just fine even though it's a "trumpet" stand, and all's well except I'm not going to be playing for a bit. 

I decided since I don't know if I'll feel even worse tomorrow, to pack a few things to take to the downtown post office, and mail those and deposit my check so I'll have that all done. I left here around 2 I think, and after the bank I went over to Whole Foods because it's an immutable law of the universe that I must go there after I go to the bank. I just got some vitamins I needed, swung by the Amazon place where I got one bubble mailer (at least I got two from the post office) and then went to Nijiya for a few things including a bento, which I ate as soon as I got back, a bit after 4 which is late here - the equivalent of 7PM anywhere else. 

There were a fair share of crazy zombies out there today, and on the corner by my bank the cops were rounding up one off of the sidewalk. On my way home, by St. James Park, a zombess was yelling on and on about, among other things, something about people not giving her matches. So I got off the bike and found two lighters in the top bag and rode over and gave them to her. No thanks for them of course, zombies aren't really alive or all that sentient. Maybe now this horrid thing, that went back to yelling as  I rode away, will burn the trash pile it lives in down, and end its nonsensical existence. 

 

I can't believe I played that, on that.

 Once I had all my listings on Ebay done and had some time, about 4AM of course, I got the new cornet out to do some practice. First I had to give the pistons some attention, since they were sticky. Typically a piece of hair or gunk of some type gets in there, and my remedy is to use some spray cleaner/oil for electronics I have, then lube with regular trumpet valve oil. 

I was prepared to hate the mouthpiece that came with the cornet. Since the cornet is a professional level "British brass band" type, naturally it comes with a mouthpiece that's aimed at that type of music. But I was able to play on it just fine, and get a good, clear, tone. 

I opened the new beginner Rubank book I'd been working out of years ago and since the one I had back then is one I ordered off of Amazon, I'm wondering if it was a fake with a restricted amount of material, printed larger. I did find exercises I'd been doing and ... 

I can't read the printed music for shit! I had to keep referring to the fingering chart I'd found online and printed out. Let's see, I've been at least a year away from the trumpet, then a year or three before that I'd just gone out busking and not putting in any time reading printed music at all. I believe it was that first year of covid, so 2020, that I'd been practicing off of printed music, in that (probably an Amazon fake) Rubank book. So I'm on Lesson 6. That's my level right now. 

I practiced quite a lot for someone just getting back into it, an hour. All I can say is it's good to be back. 

I went right to bed and woke up around 11AM maybe, went back to sleep until 1:30PM and got up, giving myself  half an hour to prepare and get out of here. I packed one package that had to go, and was out the door at just before 2. 

I stopped at Nijiya and got a little plate of beef and veggies and a can of coffee. I heated the food in their microwave and ate at the table out front, and here's where I made a mistake. I only drank a little of the coffee, figuring I'd save it for later. "Save it for later" is an extremely stupid way to think, when out on the street. Somewhere in my various errands, the can of coffee disappeared. This is what happens, out on the street, when you apply the idiotic rule of "save it for later". No, the correct thing to do is chug that shit so you're sure you get it, before it can disappear. 

There's a test in psychology called the "marshmallow test". The test is, you show a kid a marshmallow, and tell them they can eat it now, or if they wait a period of time, they can have two marshmallows. The idea is that "good" kids will wait, showing restraint and planning and all that. And "bad" kids won't wait. Except it's only a test of socioeconomic status. I'd have grabbed that first marshmallow every time. It might be the only food I'm given that day that I didn't have to fish or forage for myself, and marshmallows were a rare treat. Adults were not trustworthy, not my parents or any other adults.  

I rode over to Park Avenue Music and Eric, the owner, was there. This was great; I figured I could deal with Trombone Guy, who's nice enough but really not all there, but having Eric there was absolutely great. I showed him the Yamaha mouthpiece that came with my new Yamaha horn, important because it's a "short shank" cornet mouthpiece and those are rare. I said I wanted to get as close to a Bach 3C as possible which means a 14B4 in Yamaha or Schilke. He dug around in back and came up with two Denis Wick pieces, a 3 and a 3B. I decided on the shallower of the two. I also got a trumpet stand and asked about a mouthpiece brush, which he threw in for free. 

I was out front fiddling with things, figuring out how to load them into my bike bag, and decided to check the stand to make sure it was the 5-leg one because there are 3-leg ones and I sure didn't want one of those. While I was packing it back up (it's the 5-leg one) Eric came out and asked if I wanted the shallower or deeper of the two mouthpieces and I said the shallower one, and he thought I'd taken the deeper one, so the 3 I'd almost taken off with was exchanged for the 3B, and I was *really* thankful he'd done that. 

So much so that I went back in (come to think of it I had the can of coffee in my hand) and asked if he had the Getchell-Hovey book of exercises that Eric Bolvin had everyone use, and I found the 2nd book so I'll have to get the first one later. And, since we were talking about Eric Bolvin, I ended up looking at this book published by him called "The Big Songbook" or something like that, which is a surprising number of songs, all in one book. So I got that too. And come to think of it I probably left the can of coffee on the counter there. 

I went to the big Goodwill next, and looked at their musical instruments. I'd been thinking of buying a flute from them just for the case, using that case for the flute I want to keep, putting the Goodwill cheapie in the awful case the flute I want to keep is in, and so my "keeper" flute will be in a decent case. But I think I'll just buy a new case from Park Avenue Music. Flutes are $33 at Goodwill (or is it $38 now?) and I can't see a new non-name case being more than $35. 

 I didn't find anything I was interested in although it's interesting to know that there's a constant flow of cheapo musical instruments coming through there, violins and flutes and clarinets and guitars. I never see any trumpets and think I may have seen one, years ago. 

I stopped at the Amazon place and got a few bubble mailers, and got back here. Enough adventure for one day.  

I now have a new mouthpiece to try out, and now I have a backup in case something happens to one. When I'm ready to go out busking again, the nice thing about a "shepherd's crook" cornet like this one is, it can fit in my messenger bag. I've done this with a short cornet before. I just need to get a nice really smooth pillow case and a towel. Horn goes in pillow case then the towel's wrapped around it, and it goes in the messenger bag.  

Just as I was drifting off to sleep ...

 I was doing some breathing exercises. I got into doing these for flute and shakuhachi in a fruitless quest to be able to pump a lot more air since those instruments require so much air. But  I found they make me feel better and I have much more stamina on the bike, so I've kept them up. As well as at other times, I like to do them as a way to relax and go to sleep. 

But I thought, last night, I ought to do the exhale part with a flat chin, because I play the clarinet now and when you play the clarinet you keep a flat chin; it's what you do and it was taught to me by Pete Sowlakis at my very first lesson many years ago. 

So I did 'em that way and the feeling in my face ... I wondered if it would help with the trumpet embouchure. So I buzzed my lips first the same old way I always had, and then keeping a flat chin. I could go much higher the 2nd way. I told myself I'd do a search on this when I woke up.

When I woke up at around 1 in the afternoon because I'd been doomscrolling all night, I did a few things and then remembered to do that search. I searched, and Lo and behold, now knowing exactly what to look for, I found tons of people saying it's the way to go. That one guy, a student at the Peabody Institute, had a Horn player tell him, "You need to get 'The Art Of Brass Playing' by Philip Farkas" and the guy did, and it was all about keeping a flat chin, as Farkas and many others did and do. The guy said he practically slept with that book under his pillow... 

The consensus seemed to be that while it may not work for everyone, it works for an awful lot of people. And yes, just lip buzzing with no mouthpiece or anything, I can sure buzz 'way high and I've been out of the game for more than a year. 

I simply had to get my hands on a trumpet to try this out. The best way to do this would be to go to West Valley Music and test-play one of their trumpets.  No, just buzzing on a mouthpiece would tell me nothing. A trumpet is a resonant structure and just buzzing on the mouthpiece alone is not at all the same. 

So now I felt motivated. I packed the things that had to go out, got cleaned up, and left here just a bit before 4. I stopped to check out a few boxes by this food importer place and my reward was 63 Cadbury Dairy Milk bars. I put those in one pannier and went on my way. I dropped off trash and swung by Nijiya for some boiled eggs and sashimi and a can of coffee. Since I had time, I'd eat them there. 

There's one table in front, with four people sitting at it, but room for a fifth so I sat down. Two left, leaving a pair who were talking about, apparently, when the possibly older of the two, a Hispanic lady, was describing her recent experience having a stroke. High heart rate etc. When she mentioned Good Samaritan Hospital I chimed in, "I was there! I was treated really well" and we were off, talking about medications and whether getting an Apple Watch might be a good idea etc. Old-people stuff I guess. 

The day was so nice and the convo going so well, my entertaining them with my tale of going ass over teakettle in the BevMo parking lot because I came in fast and didn't see the curb in the middle of it, and such adventures, and talking about the neat foods we had - "These eggs are from Hokkaido" etc., that I bubbled about my possible new discovery about trumpet playing, my going to clarinet, but now my plan to get over to the music store to try out my new technique on a trumpet etc. 

The Hispanic lady had to go and that left me and the other, Black, lady to talk. It seemed she was musical, everyone in her family is musical with tons of clarinet players and at least one teacher, and Oh yes, her cousin (?) Ambrose Akinmusire, the trumpet player. Had I heard of him? Everyone's heard of him,  I retorted,  and she said he lives in the area. 

I got her card, and she says she answers emails so that's great. Knowing musical people is always good. The thing is, busking is almost extinct as an activity here, and I almost never see Leroy, just about the last street musician in the whole city, any more. All the others are long gone. Recorder Ron is still alive, but doesn't do any music any more. He does little pieces of art and straight-out begging with a sign. 

I went to the post office next to drop off the packages I had, then went over to Whole Foods to lock up the bike and went right over to the bus stop. A guy there taught me a cool trick: You call 511 and say "Arrival time" and key in the number on the bus stop sign. A voice will tell you when the next bus is coming. That's pretty cool. 

I got to West Valley Music at about a quarter after 6, and they close at 7. It's basically 2 hours from my door to theirs. I asked about trumpets, and the gal had me to into this separately locked side room they have where they keep the expensive stuff. 

I asked to try the Eric Miyashiro model trumpet because it's a new Yamaha and although this gal didn't know it, I'd tried it before, some years ago. I also wasn't impressed with it but that didn't matter. I tried playing various things with a flat chin and without, and it makes a huge difference. So it was confirmed. 

I've just got to say I can't believe this, that I've read a ton of trumpet books, been on Trumpet Herald for years, had two different trumpet teachers, and never seen keeping a flat chin mentioned. And yet the great Farkas has written a whole book about it. And yet it's one of the very first things mentioned in my first clarinet lesson. 

I asked to look at their used, consignment trumpets and what a bunch of wrecks. The intermediate Yamahas were all made in China, and silver plated. Being made in China is probably a non-issue as far as quality goes but I have an irrational preference for the ones made in Japan. And silver plated, that's what the kids all want now but I really don't want that. 

They wanted "full boat" price for everything, of course. And no doubt they were all priced before the tariff madness. So I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Down at the bottom level of the display case, at the back corner, was something labeled as a Getzen for $1500. It was a cornet, shepherd's crook type, and looked pretty good but with that light in that little corner I could not tell if it was silver plated or not so the gal dug it out and of course it wasn't a Getzen it was a Yamaha but a pro level cornet, a "Neo", and not silver plated. 

So it was not cheap, but a few hundred less than the Miyashiro trumpet which is not a model I'm impressed with at all so the long and short of things is, I bought it. To me, shepherd's crook cornets have a huge cool factor, and I read somewhere that cornets like this are aimed at the British brass band market, and tend to have big bores and are not the stuffy things American cornets can be, like the old King Master. 

I then walked out of the music store, not back to the bus stop but the other way, to Castro Street. I used to spend quite a lot of time there, and figured I'd walk along, feeling nostalgic, and get on the train at the other end of it. 

A lot of stores and things have changed, and some old standbys were still there. I want to go back there during the day because there are a couple of store fronts with robot that do robot stuff I guess. On the walk I also saw a Waymo car with no human in the driver's seat, also no passenger so it was all on its own. Doing robot stuff. 

Castro Street's been blocked off to cars except for intersections where cars can cross it, and the result is a lot of people out walking around. I didn't see *any* buskers though, no questionable types hanging out at the Starbucks, and there was just one guy hanging out with a sign. It was pretty neat seeing all those people walking around and it strikes me as something approaching the people-walking-around situation Marvin Naylor has, for busking, in Winchester, UK. 

I got to the train station about 1 minute before the train came, and it was a nice pleasant ride as always. I got back to Whole Foods and had two slices of pizza and a near-beer, discovered that however big it seems the cornet case fits in a Whole Foods cloth bag just fine, hung it off one handlebar, and rode home. It started raining as I got onto Old Bayshore, and I got in here. What a day.  

I said the clarinet's a beautiful instrument and nothing bad to say about it, but that if my new discovery works, I might have a clarinet for sale, and she said her music-teacher relative might be interested. 

Haha joke's on them

 Well, last night I got an email, the teacher at the French class is out with a cold. Eh, I hope I've got this "foreign languages" thing out of my system. If I'm gonna learn anything I'll learn Spanish on my own because it's everywhere here, or German because I took it in college a bit and there's tons of stuff online thanks to the excellent DW broadcast service and the Goethe Institut. 

Eh, it's the same old thing, get check, deposit check, do Ebay stuff, take stuff apart and sift and sort and clean up the parts, which is what I did last night; come up with a nice set of 25 things from the stuff I just took apart. By the time the the things were "photo ready" it was past midnight and I called it a night. 

It didn't keep me from staying up all night doomscrolling though! 

I did a mail and FedEx run and did some grocery shopping so that was good. 

 

Phuck You

 I was up all night "worrying" pieces of equipment apart to have parts to list on Ebay. I say "worrying" because those pieces of equipment may have been hart to put together, and they're at least as hard to take apart. It requires seeing every screwed-in screw, every fastener fastened, as a personal insult. And just going around and around, gradually getting the thing apart. 

So I was too tired to practice. 

I'd emailed the French class telling them I'm pulling out, and got my replay today, as I checked my email right after waking up at a bit past 1 in the afternoon. They can only give refunds for dropping out in the first week. I guess it's my fault for signing up for the thing so impulsively. My biggest peeve is the class requiring the student to have a smart phone welded to their hand at all times. 

I looked at lessons in German of all things and only since I believe it's a lost easier and still a European place. Plus I took a bit of it in college ... Lessons are held at this school that's behind the Whole Foods (by a street or so) off of Hamilton Avenue so it's reachable by bike or transit (with a bit of a walk) and is $500 a semester. Classes are Saturday 10-noon. I guess I just feel, as so many do, an urgent need to get out of here. Music is my best ticket but a 2nd language would not hurt.  

I also heard back from a clarinet teacher I'd contacted and meaningful, hour-long lessons would be $100 a week. For that I could rent a studio in this artist space on The Alameda to ... do stuff in. Or rent an office in this one building I know of that's apparently cool with live-ins, to ... do stuff in. 

I also reflect that a hero of mine, Artie Shaw, was entirely self-taught. Other than working delivering groceries or something for a summer to buy his first saxophone, he was in a lucky place where his only job was music from then on out. But then, I'm due to retire in less than two years and will have nothing but time. Plus, since I'm timing it for when I turn 65 and can go straight from Medi-Cal to Medicare, I'll be of the age where I can takes classes at the University of Hawaii for nearly no money. 

And in the end all I want to do is be competent to play on the fucking sidewalk. 

I should see if I have the notes to play that little Mel Bay thing that's the first thing in the book that's like an actual tune. It's actually a cute little ditty. I can play the first two vocal lines in "Deacon Blues" by Steely Dan, then it takes higher notes I don't have yet. 

But I do remember struggling to hit C in the staff on trumpet and I just kept working at it. 

 

The Great Replacement Theory

 I woke up and turned on the radio and they're talking about Tucker Carlson, who after Charlie Kirk has exited the scene, is trying to be the Right's Horst Wessel. 

One of the guy's big talking points is "the great replacement theory" which is a theory that "da jooz" are engineering, in all first-world countries, a replacement of white people with nonwhite people. If you're of average intelligence for an American, it's pretty hard to not buy into this theory. 

The book "Dying Of Whiteness" pretty much explains what I want to say, better.  The problem is a self-correcting one. 

But it doesn't explain everything and it doesn't mean the replacement theory is all that wrong. What's really in effect is what I'll call the layer cake theory. The Jews, and yes it really is them as a concerted effort, want lots of non-whites in first-world countries to give the whites rivals to work against, and that the Jews can effectively hide behind. Make other minority groups layers in what was previously an all-white cake, and those layers will be eaten first, and later they'll get around to you. By then hopefully you're in complete control.

If you can bring in people who speak a different language, have different music and cuisine, have different cultural norms, then you can keep the dominant group busy paying attention to them and not paying attention to a much smaller group that's buying up the media (has bought it all up, really) committing usury, and steering the nation into wars that make us universally hated. 

Even the WASP "going it alone" wasn't as bad decades ago, because it was always pretty easy to pick up some kind of a job and there was a sort of social contract that if you worked a job, you slept under a roof. You could always find a room to rent, and for example in the 1980s in Hawaii, I was able to live in a decent room and save $200 a month out of my $600 take-home pay. The room cost a bit less than $200, or a quarter of my gross pay.  

(On a personal level, on what I anticipate getting on Social Security, it would mean paying $350 for a room. I am actually allowed to make a bit more than I do now, without having money taken out of my Social Security check, so double that and it's $700 which is possible here and very possible back home in Hawaii.) 

In other news, I got some good practice in last night and also listed 25 things on Ebay which is pretty good, now I need to list 50 more to get caught up. 

I am considering quitting French class. I've recently read about the Antoine de St. Exupery who was an amazing author in French but despite years of lessons never learned more than rudimentary English. That's ... not encouraging. 

I'm beginning to think that sans a move to France in the near future, which I don't have the money to make possible, it's a needless expenditure of money and time to try to learn French. I was thinking that getting to the B1/B2 level would be some kind of magic entree to a French-speaking place, but people with that level of the language are still not having an easy time leaving the US. Without the kind of money that would come from selling a house here in California, one can just about forget about it.

The classes are expensive, especially considering they require having a smart phone. The same money could be put into taking clarinet lessons which would probably help me a ton compared to learning on my own. And get me out there busking that much sooner. 

 

Hard to write about much

 This all reminds me of one of the bad (and they're all bad) "Apocalypse" novels I read years ago, where the main character's sister was into ballet in the Before Times and kept up her daily training, all while of course the world is falling apart around them. But in real life, you can get into serious trouble, as in going-to-a-concentration-camp trouble, for talking about the actual apocalypse. So all you can write about is the boring day-to-day training. 

The 2nd session of the Franch class went well, and we're to listen to a couple of French songs and write down what French we recognize. I listened through them once; one was about the Champs-Elysees,  the other about a girlfriend I think, who's "incredible" and "formidable". I'll have to work on those more. 

I got my check, and deposited it on Friday and everything's fine there. Friday was yesterday, and I popped over to the antique store afterward to see if the guy was still selling silver coins but they're gone, as are the other ones another guy was selling that were overpriced but of course are not now. A bargain, in fact, and that's probably why they're gone. 

I've got a bit more practice in, and am inching forward in the band book. One thing about the band book is that there are plenty of actual tunes. I looked at the Rubank book and it's 90% exercises not songs. Of course some exercises can sound good and be fun, like one funny little one that makes you exercise "rolling" your finger to hit this one note. And there's one that's the first actual tuneful thing you learn in the Mel Bay guitar book, that I still have memorized because it's a nice little tune. 

The last couple times I was at Whole Foods there were no booth scammers out front, and a fair crowd going in and out. I'm really envious of Marvin Naylor, living in a country that among its wonderful first-world attributes like health care and education for all, has a "walking culture". The best that can be done in the US is to set up near some place for people to spend money, if one can do it without being clapped into jail. 

 

Practice and a bit of study

 Yesterday's whole afternoon was spent finding the things for, packing, and processing something like 15 refunds for (because it has to be done in little slices), ONE order. It was relief putting that ONE box on the bike trailer and taking off for FedEx with it. 

I then ate a beef on rice thing from H Mart, sans most of the rice of course, and rode up to 99 Ranch for a couple of things, and studied a bit at the Baguette. 

It's not the best study environment but beats none, as when I got back I got all involved finding more things, as I still had 20-odd to ship. I finally gave up on packing anything last night and did a practice session which was a good one. I learned there's a little key, between the middle and ring finger on the right hand, that changes B to Bb or is it the other way around? In any case, it's clumsy to do it otherwise, which is why that little key is a thing. Cool. 

And at least before I got more tired, I had a good vibrato. There are three kinds of vibrato; breath vibrato, jaw vibrato, and hand vibrato. At least in trumpet, breath vibrato was very much discourages. "Makes you sound like a bleating goat" was the opinion. I believe flute uses breath vibrato as the other two are impractical. On trumpet, "hand" vibrato simply involves using the hand to "vibrate" the trumpet against the lips. 

I never cared for hand vibrato, even though no less than Louis Armstrong and Maurice Andre' used it. And in old clips of classic jazz/swing bands, you can look down the row of trumpeters and see about half of them are using it. 

The other half are using jaw vibrato and that was my method. Why use my hand to shove the trumpet against my face in any form, when I'm trying to use less mouthpiece pressure, the enemy of good relaxed trumpet playing? And for better or worse, it's my go-to on clarinet. 

Since my goal is not the lofty one of becoming a classical clarinet player, I'm not going to worry about it. It's nice to see that even as a beginner I'm on the way to a sound the public will like. 

 

i drank a Guinness

 Yesterday I left here around 3:30 in the afternoon. I went to Nijiya and bought a can of coffee, since the bottles of coffee at Whole Foods are like 2X as much. Then I checked the little free library on 3rd and this loaf of home-made bread and a handful of candy canes were still there, so I took 'em. 

I got over to St. James Park and stopped where there were some geese, and got the bread out. Canada geese love bread, it turns out. So it was fun tossing pieces of bread to them. I parked the bike at the post office and mailed the packages I had, and left the candy canes on top of the trash can there, where some bum will be glad to find them no doubt. 

Then I went to the bank and deposited my pay check and my number and the bank's agreed to the penny I could tell, because this week it was a really easy to memorize number. 

Then I went to Whole Foods and got some chicken and onions and cabbage, and here's where the bad decision came in. I decided, since I'd been craving the flavor, and it's been such cold weather, to get a pint bottle of Guinness. I drank it all too because why waste? 

It *was* fairly good, but out the window went my plan to go to the big Goodwill on San Carlos, and it was all I could do to swing by the Amazon place for some bubble mailers and get back here. 

I got 25 things ready to photo and watched things on YouTube and went to bed at midnight. 

 

Up to "The Little Fish"

 I have one huge order, like 28 things, to pack and ship for one guy, but yesterday I packed all the other things and that was a dozen or so, maybe more. It was a decent load. Since I've spent my "allowance" I didn't buy anything anywhere. 

I might owe my life to a leaf, though. I was leaving the post office parking lot, to cut across Oakland Road. It was dark, traffic was stopped at the light  up on the corner so I was clear to go but wanted to make haste to make sure. I heard something run over a crunchy leaf to my right, and that alerted me that something/someone was coming on the bike lane coming the wrong way so I swerved just in time to let a guy on an e-bike, lights off, come by and he was hauling ass too. People have been killed in collisions with regular bikes, much less these heavy battery-powered monsters that are more like small motorcycles. If the leaf hadn't been there I don't know if I'd have sensed the thing coming, or sensed it in time. 

I picked up some bubble wrap and a couple of boxes, and stopped at Tom's to catch up on things because I haven't for a couple weeks. I told him about the leaf incident, and he nagged me again about not wearing a helmet. A don't think a helmet would have protected me from a side hit, and there's a reason "side impact air bags" were such a big thing in cars because the human body is a bit more vulnerable from that direction. I'll just have to watch out more carefully, especially because that guy might be a regular commuter alone that route and I'm pretty regular coming out of there at that time. 

I got back here and futzed around here doing I don't know what, and got a good amount of practice in. I swear I've not practiced for a week! I went through the book up to the page with "The Little Fish", which is as far as I went before I apparently took a week off. Things are sounding more smooth, I'm making less mistakes, and come to think of it I didn't make one inadvertent squeak. 

I need to practice every day, because I want to get out there busking ASAP. For the money? Not necessarily, because the money's taking care of itself although more money is always handy. For instance, the French class I'm taking cost me $435. That's the class, the books, and a year's membership in Alliance Francaise. That's a month's busking anyway.

The main thing is busking provides some very good practice, and with the clarinet I should be free of the rather restrictive limitations I had on trumpet. I need to come up with a list of 10 songs that I really want to busk with, such as "Summertime" and "My Favorite Things" and even good old "Autumn Leaves". 

 

Alphabet Francaise

 Haha I'm so happy with myself that I seem to have the French pronunciations down pat, of the alphabet. I need to learn numbers, too, and repeat them daily like I'm doing with the alphabet. 

I also need to study ahead; we've done Unit 0 and next Monday night will be Unit 1, and I need to study up on that so in class I won't be going in "cold". 

One thing I love about this French business is, at different levels you can take tests, so you're certified for level A2 or B1 or whatever. Apparently getting to B2 makes a big difference in things since this seems to be what people strive for. 

I'm really hoping I can get to the point where I'm able to read books and watch movies/TV in French, because then I should be off and running. Along with being signed up for the present lesson I'm also a member of Alliance Francaise for a year, and they have a big library of books. I can hardly wait to at least try out Ferdinand The Bull, Babar, and such things. Then French translations of Jack London and Ernest Hemingway stories would be neat to be able to read. Then on to things like Jules Verne in the original. 

My friends back in Hawaii are useless. Sure, the guy in Honolulu, the guy with two houses and a condo and all that, is into Qanon nonsense and thinks Mango Mussolini hung the sun and the moon, but now I'm getting crazy stuff from the guy on the Big Island. If you ask him he'd say he's a "liberal" and he doesn't know how truly he's speaking because he really *is* one, it appears.

As in, he's a vegetarian and very self-righteous about it, yet keeps a few cats to kill native birds and to feed the same amount of meat a person would eat, or even a bit more. And said meat shipped in from 1000s of miles away. And he *must* have a car, and he *must* have the gov't pay for him to fly back and forth to Oahu for doctor's visits for his mystery illness that keeps him from working. And his girlfriend can't work either.... 

In other words, he's a textbook example of every haole hippy Hawaii was cursed with in the 70s. I grew up seeing these losers up close. I grew up a hungry kid but by Hippy God hippies never went hungry, and if you were a kid and went without, well it was your fault for being smaller and weaker. 

A hero of mine, cartoonist Robert Crumb, hated the hippies. Crumb came from actual working-class poverty, his father a hard-boiled WWII vet. He worked his way up, and lived super cheap and deprived himself to save up money (I think he put money into stocks) to not be dependent on any system. That's the key to live. Save your money, live modestly, even radically modestly. Crumb started in with a big greeting-card company and in a role that traditionally one was locked in for one's entire career. But not Crumb! He started an in-house comic strip and got himself noticed and got going. 

I'm certain the biggest mental block I have against doing art is it takes "stuff" and I resent any way of making a living that requires more living space than a pup tent. But Crumb had the good judgement to stick to pen and ink which takes the least amount of "stuff". I prefer music because it takes the least "stuff" of all as long as one sticks to a small, non-amplified instrument. But pen-and-ink is close. And Crumb's a huge music lover with a vast collection of blues records. And he escaped the US to France. My hero! 

Yesterday I checked the hours of the Nichi Bei store in Japantown and they were supposed to close at 4:30. I packed one thing that had to go out, and got the bunch of Japanese language books I had, and took them over there to donate to them, along with a huge, thick, cartoon biography of Osamu Tezuka which I figured I'd never get around to reading; I've only started on it. Well, they were not open, and I got there a bit before 4. 

So I took the books over to the Little Free Library and put them in there, keeping the Tezuka one. Maybe I *will* get around to reading it. And, the Little Free Library had a copy of "In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts" by Gabor Mate' so I took that one. 

Then I went to Walmart to get some things. I had $7 cash and $9 or so in quarters, and left with my things and $2 in quarters. I'm back to following the plan of putting each pay check into the bank and taking out half. 

I got back here and listed the 25 things I had lined up and photographed, cleaned the place up, and Ken came by and I got my pay check and we talked for a while as usual. When he left it was half after midnight. 

 

There are transcripts

 Last night along with getting 25 things camera-ready for listing on Ebay, I dug into what I'll call the smartphone problem. 

In the French book we're using in the class, Edito A1 + the Cahier de Activites, or workbook, you'll supposed to have a smart phone in your hand at all times, and not only use the QR code on each page, but actually "take a photo" of each page, the access that page's audio files. 

I can see why they do this; it's to make sure people have bought the actual books. The "photo" of each page probably has to be in color, so you'd have to have a color printout of each page .... cheaper to buy the books! 

This is all well and fine, since most people have a smart phone welded to one hand already. But I'm a holdout, and I looked around quite a bit for the 2nd edition audio files to no avail. But then I remembered something I'd noticed when I first got the books which is that there's a written transcript of each audio file, page by page, in the back of the book. 

It's like having a math book with all the answers in the back. But of course in math the correct answer is almost coincidental, it's all about learning to apply the correct process. Likewise, the answers are all written out for me but since there's audio to learn the sound and pronunciation of French, this means I'll be doing things a bit differently. 

Instead of just listening, I'll be first choosing the right answer (hopefully) and then referring to the transcript and reading it in my mind or even out loud, in the proper French accent/pronunciation. In a way, I'll learn those bits better than a student who just listens and guesses the right answer and moves on. 

Plus there's a ton of material on YouTube, not on Edito 2nd Edition of course, but tons of stuff on each but on learning French. Plus tons of helpful stuff on avoiding "studentisms" like stop saying "je m'appelle" so damn much.  "Je suis" is better most of the time, apparently. 

 

RIP Erich Von Daniken

 Well, it's a sad day, as beloved writer of utter horseshit Erich Von Daniken has left us. His books were complete nonsense, but they were *interesting* nonsense, and were very popular when I was a teen. 

Oh yeah and the Dilbert guy died. Anyway, I took some powdered Parmesan cheese and combined that with butter to make a sort of spread, and had that on crackers for dinner last night. It was surprisingly good. 

 

First class session

 I was up at 8:30 in the morning which is about right, since I went to bed "around" 1AM. 

I packed things to ship, and let here at about a quarter to 3. Lasts night I'd bought a couple of shirts and a new pair of sweat pants at Ross,  and everything fit OK. So I was layered up nicely for the cold. I dropped off the packages at the downtown post office, and rode over to Diridon Station, which has been re-done with new paint on a bunch of things and new "graphics" on the shelters etc. That's kind of nice. 

I got down there with plenty of time to spare, and rode around the shopping center the class is in, and found the bike rack which is good because with some of these shopping centers, they don't like bikes parked randomly around. 

I used up some time looking through my books, sitting on a planter in front of the Purple Onion, and will have to try to remember to bring some nuts for the little birds there next time.

When it was class time we students gradually filtered in. It's 8 students, 4 gals and 4 guys. And it's quite a mix, a regular United Nations. I've got a Russian or Ukrainian, not sure which yet, guy named Vladimir on my right, a guy from the island of Dominica to my left whose brother lives in Switzerland, and there's an Indian guy on the other side of him. The gals are a mix too. 

Our teacher is a wonderful Irani lady, and the class went well. We learned some very basic things and the French pronunciation of the alphabet. The funniest one is "y", which is called something like igrik, pronounced ee-greek, or the ee sound as used by the Greeks, at least that's what we were told. 

The only possible hitch is that the book and workbook are set up assuming you have a smart phone in your hand and that's how you access the audio files, which it looks like we're going to use a lot. You scan a QR code for each page. I'll have to see if I can use my laptop. 

When class was done it was good and cold out, but I was OK due to my dressing for it. The light rail on the way back had plenty of bums, but no one acting crazy so that was good. I rode it up to Karina Station so I just had the short ride back here. That station's had a make-over too and interestingly the trash cans have been changed to a type with transparent sides and look pretty easy to get into too. I think the idea is that if the trash pickers can see exactly what's in there, they can see if it's worth it at all to dig in a particular can, and if they do dig, they can go right to the stuff they want, and make less of a mess. 

 

Sunday and pardon my French

 Just in the last couple of days I've switched over to going to bed at midnight on the dot, and ideally waking up at 8AM on the dot. In reality I've been waking up sooner for some reason, but I'm sure I'll get it ironed out. 

I've been spending too much time too tired to do much but stubbornly staying awake even while starting to fall asleep in my chair, and decided to stop fighting it. The kind of night-owl schedule Ken follows may be natural for him but I've been both an early riser and a late one, and I think it's come to, at my age, being a regular daytime person will be best. 

Let's see, I deposited my pay check on Friday and my number and the bank's only differed by a few cents so that's good. 

Saturday was the big adventure if it can be called that. I've signed up to take a French class from a place called Alliance Francaise, which seems to have offices all over the US even back in Hawaii but most importantly for now, here. Where "here" is a mere 20 miles away or so, considered a tiny distance here in the Sprawl, in Los Gatos. 

Since the weekly class starts this Monday night, but the office is open 10-noon on Saturdays, I went over there to make sure they've got me on their roster and to pick up the text book and work book. The books are funny in that they're $50 or so online but $25 or so directly from the school. 

It had gone down to the mid-30s overnight and really only got up to 40 or so when I left, so it was a cold day to be out riding a bike. So, I just rode over to the light rail station and took the green train down to Winchester station. The trouble with taking the light rail at 9 or 10 in the morning on a Saturday is, almost no one's on it but bums. So yeah, there were bums. Oh well I was among plenty of bums taking the light rail to and from the last class I took, and they just do bummy stuff but so far have left me alone. 

The place is easy to get to; just go South on Winchester from the Winchester station, turn into the Vasona Station strip mall and it's right there. I popped in, the lady there with a couple of students looked me up and for some reason while there was a stack of text books with students' names on them there wasn't a set for me but she went in another room and got a set for me and that was that.

After that cold bike ride I really wanted something to eat and there's a small cafe called the Purple Onion there, where I had a bacon and egg and cheese sandwich and some coffee. It was really good and less than $20 with the tip which is doing well these days. I guess the place is popular with runners because a table nearby was full of 40 or 50 something gals talking about their last marathon and their next marathon and so on. And some fit older guys going in and out of the place. 

After all the bums on the light rail, and it having warmed up a bit and being a nice sunny day, I decided to just ride back. That was OK but it's amazing how much riding the train replaces. It was a long ride. 

I stopped at the big Goodwill on San Carlos and didn't find anything, and checked out the chef store and they're all out of plastic "thank you" bags except some overpriced, thin, green-tinted  "biodegradable" ones. I opted to get a roll of pretty nice "vegetable" bags, just as many for half the price. 

Plastic bags are becoming only a memory. I think I might set up something to support a "vegetable" bag and use that for organic/wet trash, and put dry stuff into the regular trash can, lined with a proper bag, and that way it can be emptied into a paper bag to get rid of the stuff. 

After getting back here I listed 25 things on Ebay and called it a day. 

Today I packed things (which sounds easy but some of the things can take a lot of time to find) and sent them off via FedEx. After returning from that trip I dropped off the trailer and headed back out again. I went to Dai Thanh and got 6 cans of pate' which last time, they charged me $7 for, a real mistake. This time I was charged $21 which is the proper price. 

I got a couple of shirts and a pair of sweat pants at Ross, and got back here. 

OK so pardon my French but why the fuck do I want to learn French? Well, part of it is what I call escaping the Anglosphere. With various cultures come basic assumptions about things, and the Anglo, or English-speaking, culture seems to be almost uniquely hyper-individualistic and, well, nasty and mean. 

My getting sucked into the self-promoted bubble about that particular ethno-state in the Middle East started in high school when I wrote a paper on Albert Einstein. The book I read about him stated at one point that "It was a custom for wealthy Jews to invite a poor Jewish student to their Friday night dinner, the most sumptuous meal of the week" and reading that almost made me fall off of my chair. In the Anglo, WASP culture I was used to, rich or even moderately wealthy, or hell, even "doing OK" people don't want anyone poor within miles of them, even if they're family. It's just assumed that in that culture that a poor person, even if a sibling, is as welcome as the smallpox virus. 

So I was shocked, amazed, in a good way. But it turns out that in any normal culture, people help each other out. Anglo, Protestant culture is, like the culture of the Iks, an outlier. 

(And it turns out that Jewish culture is not as lovely as it would like people to think it is. Not by a long shot.) 

So, just being able to read news in a different language, of a different culture, would be really interesting. Spanish doesn't interest me as it seems to be an even dumber culture than white American culture. I started, but dropped, a German class decades ago in community college, not because it was too difficult but because I felt I had too much else to deal with. And German's not found that many other places in the world that are not Germany. 

But French is found everywhere. Viet Nam and French Polynesia and Canada and a lot of countries in Africa and even, despite the US's efforts to stamp it out, in New Orleans (where French was banned in schools in the 1920s and may still be banned now). 

 

Thursday

 Imaginative title, I know. 

There's not been much going on. I got things sent off yesterday, came back and cleaned the place up and finished a load of laundry, and almost thought Ken wasn't coming over, but he did. I got my check so that's good. 

Ken also wanted to finally get this big heavy gas compressor thing out of the back of his truck, which he'd had in there for months on end. Maybe something like a year. The thing is, with his style of driving, which involved doing stupid things and increasing the collection of dents on his truck, this compressor, all 300 lbs or so of it, was being bounced around and denting his truck bed from the *inside*. 

So we got that out of there, and after he'd gone and after I'd found and packed a bunch of things, I took the compressor apart and got a bunch of electrical parts off of it, and finally, at around 7AM, put the scraps and the main part with the compressor itself and a bunch of pipes, out for the scroungers. And sure enough, someone came by surprisingly soon and picked it up. 

I might be wrong on the time I put the parts out, because it took some real hours to take that thing apart, and I might have put the parts out at 8 or 9. When it's dark and gloomy and rainy, which it was, it might have felt like 7. 

I'm glad I set my alarm clock because I was really tired, didn't practice, and went to bed. I was very glad to be woken by the alarm at 5 in the afternoon because due to the alarm, I was able to have some coffee and breakfast, and got out of here at 6, with the things I'd packed to go to the post office and Fedex. 

When I got back here I saw something interesting. It seems that the electric company sent someone around to do something with the building next door, the one where the illegal night club operates. It's been pretty quiet there and maybe they've stopped paying their bill. 

 

More practice

 I got more practice in last night, and experimented with the "double lip" embouchure, which gives a better sound but it's tiring on ... the lips. 

I've been starting to listen to some good clarinet music before bed. Somewhere I'd read about how Artie Shaw's first piece that got any notice was "Streamliner" so I listened to that and it must have really been something at the time. I can't find anywhere that says Shaw ever took lessons, too. 

The main thing is to practice every day. I figure I've got a year and 9 months to get good. Because after that stretch of time I'm moving back to Hawaii or ... going somewhere. In any case it's when I plan to stop working for Ken.  

I was up through the night, practicing and watching the movie "Seabiscuit" which sounds like a Spongebob cuss word haha. Pretty decent movie, and everyone raves about the book it's based on so I'll have to look for that. 

I had a lot of small things all ready to go to the post office so when I got up, around 4:30 in the afternoon, all I had to do was have my "morning" coffee and some nuts and seeds and take off. It had dried up pretty well although now it's cold. 

I dropped things off at the post office and it was dead. There was one guy doing something and his little kid, who kept staring at me as I brought stuff in, in a big green plastic tub, and figured out that the kid, before he turned his attention to me, had been fiddling with the inner one of the two automatic doors, which wasn't working. It was pushed partway open, and I pushed it the rest of the way open to make it easier for the next person coming in. 

I went over to 99 Ranch and it was dead. I just got a couple of things, some dish soap and a new type of ramen to try. 

Done there, I went straight back here and put things away and left the trailer here, and took off again. I locked the bike at H Mart, went in and got ... just a small bag of potato chips it turns out, although I also got a free bag of these fish cake chips which were their freebee for today. 

I walked over to Sprouts, which was ... dead. Everyone's just done with the weekend and the rain, and other than the traffic which was quite heavy, stores were all very quiet. I got two T-shirts and a package of underwear at Ross, and even Ross isn't giving out plastic bags any more. Instead of a huge Ross plastic bag I got a huge Ross paper bag. 

I then went to Sprouts and got some vitamins and the gal at checkout had me enter my phone number for "The discount, this is the last day". I'm sure I don't have my number filed with them so I used good old 8675309 but I messed up by not putting the local area code first, but the gal didn't feel like correcting it and just gave me the discount so I saved $5 which is kind of cool. 

I walked back over to H Mart and made sure to check next to the closed store next to the Starbucks, expecting to see the pallet of protein drinks long gone. Instead half of 'em are still there, and also an interesting framework for dispensing drinks or something. And a guy I'm gonna call D.L.

D.L. of course for Diabetes Legs, or Leg, anyway, as one of his looks about ready to rot off. Probably both, but since he gets around by bike he keeps his pants leg rolled up on just one side and that's bad enough to look at. 

We talked about stuff, the protein drinks still being here, and what kind of pumps might be in the motor/pump units on the rack thing, and how late Sprouts is open. The guy was worried they close at nine, but I called after him as he rode off that they close at 10. He has a sleeping bag and some extra clothes tied down on his bike because it has been getting cold at night but he's so overweight the cold is probably a relief. 

I got back here and put things away part 2. I put on one of the T-shirts right away, the heavy plain grey one, and the lighter one will be nice in the summer.  The lighter one's got a Jurassic Park design on it, in the real world that was filmed in the Kualoa Valley, the very same valley I used to go past all the time on the bus when we lived in Waikane, a valley that was a no-go area in the 70s. I guess one can take tours there now and if I get back there I'll have to take a tour. 

At least I got to go to Sacred Falls several times as a kid, and it's really a no-go now since a rock fall killed 8 people and while it was a forbidden place to go in the 70s it wasn't really enforced. It is now. Of course I've done the Haiku Stairs, and between that paddling out to Chinaman's Hat and bugging the fairy terns I guess I've done the requisite amount of illegal things back home. 

 

 

Basic Cultural Assumptions

 I listed some things last night and eventually got around to some practicing. Apparently I'm not supposed to play one reed more than an hour, so I played one for almost and hour then switched to another one. Fortunately the little reed holder I have holds two reeds so it's easy to play one, then clean it and put it away and get out the other. 

This is the time of year when everyone withdraws and gets through the dark, rainy weather on their own, and might see each other again in April. I've got a bunch of things ready to pack and ship but there's a big rain storm parked over this area according to the radar map and it may or may not have moved on in time for me to go to the post office etc. 

Of course cold/wet weather is only one of many reasons for people to withdraw from each other. I've mentioned that this area, the San Francisco Bay Area, is one of those "You're not here to make friends; you're here to work" places. That's the standard mantra of any US work site, and here it applies to all 24 hours of the day. 

Since the US is a Calvinist country, the basic assumptions are far different than most places. And by "most places" I mean not only the "West" but places all over, Asia, Africa, hell even among the Eskimos. 

Since according to Calvinism, everyone's on their own as to whether they get to Christian Heaven, and even then, it's up to their God and not anything the individual has any power over, helping anyone else is foolish and wasteful. You're one of the Elect or you're not. How do you tell who's one of the Elect? That's easy - they're rich. And the cursed? They're poor, of course. 

So the basic cultural assumption whether you're an African cattle herder or an Eskimo fisherman or a French person whose family's been Catholic since the Roman Empire, is that if a family member could use a hand, you help them. The family member in need, will get back on their feet and if your positions are reversed, will be able to help you. 

This is not so in the US. Kids are thrown out of the house by age 18, and in most cases there's no college or trade school fund and in most cases the kid who's been thrown out may have to do shitty work no one else wants to do, like clean animal kennels, and live in a tiny room but they are already living better because their pay check is their own and they can eat food, as much as they want, every day. (Yes this was my situation.) 

If anyone, family or close friend (this last a stretch since Americanism pretty largely prevents having close friends) is in need, you tell them to go fuck themselves as the Americanism goes, and if you can you make their situation worse. It's good for them, is the reasoning. 

This is why, as I kept saying to Ken and his family years ago, well before 2016, that I wish I'd known what I know now and when I was young and able to do a lot of work, I'd gone to France as a "wetback" and put in my time picking grapes or whatever, behaved myself, and become a French citizen. Because Calvinism never got far in France, they actually give a shit for each other, and this is why when American style class warfare is tried against the common people there, they fight back. 

Now Americans, being good Calvinists, don't know they're Calvinists. Their hyper-individualism and psychopathy is baked into the culture. It's like those unspoken rules that being unspoken, are more rigidly followed than rules that are spelled out. It's considered natural here that everyone's in a mutual "Fuck You" to everyone else. 

The only way out of this is to escape the Anglosphere because the UK, Australia and New Zealand, Canada are a little better but not much better. It's only from reading a lot online that I know that the UK is considered sort of the Florida of Europe. New Zealand is more car-centric and has more cars per capita than the US does and that has to have taken some real effort to accomplish. "Only slightly less America" is not a goal to strive for. 

It *is* a shade less impersonal and psychopathic back in Hawaii, if only because it's about 2/3rds Asian. It's still part of the USA but might be a more survivable part.  

Got the flute

 Yesterday, I stayed up all night again, packed things to take to FedEx (their Economy service just hands the packages off to the post office, and occasionally is actually a little bit cheaper) then headed right over to Goodwill and yep, the flute was still there. The North Face fleece wasn't so I can't win 'em all, but the flute was and for $33 it was mine. 

It's in one of those hideous Bundy cases so I'll buy a modern case for it or I could keep it in the Yamaha case I have, put the Yamaha flute in the awful case, and sell the Yamaha telling the customer "sorry I don't have the original case" haha. I can "flip" the Yamaha for several times what the Bundy cost, and I love the look of the Bundy, with its nice thick silver plating, which backs up the story of "It's my old high school flute". 

In fact I need to sell off a lot of flute stuff, to get money back out of it and also as part of simplifying my possessions. If I have to "grab and go" now, it will come down to throwing everything into many boxes and taking them over to the storage place, then staying in a hotel while I sort things, sell everything off I can, and arrange a plane ticket back to Hawaii or a place to rent here. 

Yes, moving back to Hawaii is not guaranteed. Yes I miss the place. But I also know that I might well go fishing once, shell-picking once, go around and see all the places I lived growing up and as a young adult, and decide that's enough. Moving back to Hawaii to devote myself to the shakuhachi makes a lot of sense, but since I'm not going to bother with that any more, Hawaii has no advantages over anywhere else, and quite a few disadvantages.  So I'd say it's 50/50 right now if I'm to go back there. 

 

 

My solution

 My solution to the shipping + getting to the bank situation was, since it was going to start raining again in the afternoon, to stay up all night, pack everything and I mean everything, even a last-minute sale of some capacitors, and take things to the post office and FedEx right after they opened. 

It was 28 things, although about 10 of them were all in one package. So it was a good healthy load of things and this is why I wanted to get them out so much; not only did some things have to go out and still might be chalked up as late in my Ebay stats, but I like to have everything go out before the weekend.

I got back here and cleaned up and headed out again for the bank. I stopped at Nijiya and treated myself to one of my favorite bento, grilled pieces of salmon belly skin and all, with salmon eggs, on rice. Yum! 

I went to the bank and their math and my math agreed to the penny so that's nice. I had a nice talk with the guy there too. He's working for the bank because .... something like his wife is going to school in this area and they commute from kind of far away so he goes along too and works a job, this job, at the bank. At least that's my understanding. 

I went over to Whole Foods and got some macadamia nuts (1 oz. is part of my breakfast with coffee) and then rode over to the big Goodwill on San Carlos. I didn't buy anything but maybe should have bought this one North Face fleece. They had a nice Bundy, I think, flute for $33 that might be something that could be resold for a profit but I have flutes here I want to sell. 

Now the main part of my plan: I walked down to the restaurant supply place and bought a box of 200 plastic bags of the type the stores up until very recently *were* supplying with one's groceries, but now everyone's going over to paper bags. Even Nijiya and Walmart. So for less than $20 I got 200 bags, and it's only because the box was so heavy that I didn't buy two boxes. I was able to carry the box in one of the Whole Foods cloth bags I keep on the bike, so it was no problem. 

I need to go by there more often, not only to stock up on those bags (ideally I want two more boxes, giving me enough to get through the next year and a half, the time I anticipate I'll here working for Ken before I leave) and also to check the musical instruments there at Goodwill. I'm thinking I really should have bought that Bundy flute, because I looked it over and either the silver plating was *very* thick, or maybe it had silver plating over "German silver" which is how Yamaha student flutes are made, or it was actually one of the solid silver models. 

In any case it was a good use of the half-day that's not rainy and on my way back after picking up a handful of bubble mailers at the Amazon place and picking up a chashu don bowl for later, I got back here. 

I got the side-eye from one of the guys, a new guy probably, as I went in here with the bike. I'm smart enough - usually - to not leave anything out there and that was reinforced by, a couple of weeks ago, seeing a guy from next door who has a nice car, looking at my bike and trailer out front as I was bringing things in, like he'd like to abscond with it. "If I only had a van, I could make this disappear" I could almost hear him thinking. Because he has a nice car - actual poor people will steal but not nearly as often as the more wealthy, who got to be more wealthy by stealing in various forms. 

I went right to sleep and woke up at 11PM. It had been 3 in the afternoon so that makes sense. 

I turned on the radio like I do every time when I wake up, and apparently we're committing our Guernica, in Venezuela. We're bombing Caracas, which is in anyone's book an act of war. Thank goodness for the BBC which they play on NPR, because I doubt our own news sources would report on it. 

 

New Year's Day

 I got some good practice in last night and went ahead one more page in the band book. Using a number 2 reed is a HUGE difference from the 1.5's and I probably could have gone with 2's right from the start. After all, my trumpet experience has to factor in somehow. Awareness of what my mouth cavity is doing, for instance. 

I'll be ready for busking when I've got, say, ten good songs under my belt. And not junk like Amazing Grace but fairly good ones like Summertime and jazzy things like that.  

It actually wasn't *too* rainy today in that when I woke up around 4 in the afternoon, it wasn't raining. And it's set to be clear the rest of the night but of course it's the 1st of the new year so nothing's open. 

My beloved Asian markets might be open on Christmas Day but New Year's is a whole different thing. New Year's is much more important and some places ONLY close on this day. Interestingly, here on the mainland, there's not just "American New Year" and "Chinese New Year" but also Tet, which is... Vietnamese New Year I guess. 

Chinese New Year was always the best one back home, with some streets having actual drifts of red paper confetti from all the firecrackers and the air still smelling of black powder.  People today complain about fireworks in Hawaii but .... they're wimps. If it weren't rainy and since I'm not ready for clarinet busking yet, I'd probably have gone over to Century Center Plaza I think it's called, over in the Vietnamese part of town, just to see what's going on. Hopefully tons of firecrackers. 

 

New Year's Eve

 Surprise surprise Ken came by at about 8:30 tonight, hung out a bit, and wrote out my check for this week and last week. So I can deposit it in the bank on Friday if I want to. 

 It's raining, has been raining for a day now, and is predicted to be raining right through the weekend. Partially due to the rain, I'd slept through the day until something like 5 or 7 or something. 

Tomorrow's New Year's Day so of course nothing at all will be going on, with the rain. I have packages that *have* to go out on Friday, the 2nd, though.  So I'm thinking my game plan will be to take them to the big post office because it's closest to me, then if it's raining much I could continue on to Capitol and get on the light rail and take that to St. James where I can take a short ride to the bank, to deposit my check.