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.