My arm is too many colors

 My elbow, really. First I tried to hide it by wearing my long-sleeved fleece, but that was too hot and stuffy so then I decided to not worry about it because no one's said anything. Hell not even Petition Guy. 

But it really looks awful and I wonder if it's affecting my tips, when I'm out playing. 

Right now I'm allowing myself 5 cans of IPA a day/evening but that might even be too much. I might want to go with four, or even eventually two. Guinness is the healthy stuff, but it's not always easy to get as I found last night, having a Foster's instead. 

I ended up sleeping late, until 4, with weird dreams that even at one point involved Miles Davis, not playing his trumpet, sadly. 

I was glad I'd picked out the things that have to go out today, last night, because then I had time to pack the things, put the smaller ones in the plastic tub with lid I use, and put the big box in a trash bag. But I didn't really get wet, and only a few sprinkles on the way back. 

I got a few things in 99 Ranch, and bypassed H Mart because I'd not eaten anything and just got back here for coffee etc. 

I have two problems right now: My Elbow Of Many Colors which a long-sleeved T-shirt will fix, and I can't believe it, there's a bunch of over-spray that I want to clean up and that calls for some more Goof-Off. Lowe's sells that and Ross will have the shirt. 

I dashed out again and Lowe's had the solvent and a scrub brush, but there was not a long sleeved T-shirt to be found at Ross. Wrong time of the year I guess. 

I parked the bike at H Mart and hanging out in front of the new food/boba tea place was Diabetus Legs Guy. He's 'wayy overweight, and his blood sugar has got to be something like 900. I was sure he was gone but he's still staggering around out there in the world. He told me about having three bikes stolen in quick succession, and also about how he's been left a house in this area and just needs to find out where it is, and something about a house (same house?) having a diamond buried in its wall that's 100s of carats. OK. "I'm going to Ross, be back in a bit" I said. 

Ross didn't have my shirt, but I got a couple of nice regular T-shirts, and some stuff for a cold-cuts dinner at Sprouts, namely some Swiss Swiss cheese, some Italian Italian salami slices, and a Munich beer from Munich. 

I walked back over to H Mart and Diabeetus guy was gone, but it was past 9PM and thus, like it would be at 1AM anywhere else. I got some green onions in H Mart so the security folks would see I spend money in there, and then took off for here. 

The warm weather brings the zombies out, but nothing too bad. 

Today a rather nice sort of cascade thing happened. In that, the cleaning guys next door threw out a rather nice half-height file cabinet, and I'd rolled it in here. It means I could get rid of this pale blue cabinet with drawers thing Ken had brought a few years ago, that was a screamin' piece of shit. And also, I got rid of the thing with drawers in the bathroom, that I'd found, because this new file cabinet being white, I can use it to put all our bandages and tape and pills and unguents, and the new file cabinet fits right under the tech bench in the office, so if someone is cut or injured or just has a nasty headache, they can get what they need without having to go into the bathroom and dig for it. 

This also means bandages and such things I have in the half-height file cabinet to the left of my desk here, can go into the new one and that frees up space for tools etc. So the introduction of one file cabinet can cause a lot of re-arrangement of things around here. 

 

 

Humid, gloomy Monday.

 I woke up at 3 or a bit after, had coffee and nuts etc for breakfast, and packed the things I'd that had sold and that I'd dug out last night. A big capacitor, a big hydraulic piston, and some smaller things. 

I got out of here the usual time, a bit before 6, and got the things to FedEx and the post office. It was very grey and gloomy and at the same time, warm and damp. I decided that if it's to rain the next few days, I should do my weekly visit to Walmart today. 

So I came right back here and put the bike trailer away, and headed for Japantown. I went to Nijiya first, and the thing is, I felt kind of weird, like one down when one is just starting to catch a cold. So I went into Nijiya and got a salmon belly slices (and eggs) on rice bento, and had half a bottle of Coke Zero I'd bought at FedEx. 

I settled down on the steps of the old hospital and ate and drank. I polished the whole thing off except for the parsley garnish and the konnyaku because I just don't care for the stuff. 

I then rode over to the Amazon place and found ... one bubble mailer. Better than none, though. Then down to Walmart where I poked around and found some interesting things to buy, as well as what I came for; mundane things like paper towels and some more little sticks of Blistex because I like to have spares. They don't have the foot powder I like though, and I may have to go to one of the big Walmarts to find it. There's only so much they can stock, and they have a few variaties,  just not the one I use. 

Late night, and in this town 8PM is late, at Walmart is always interesting and there were characters, but fortunately no actual craziness. I spent almost $50, so I'd really gone nuts. 

I rode from there back to Whole Foods, but somehow, by going on a street North of the one I used last time, I ended up much further South, of SAP Center, my landmark. That was weird! 

I did get there, though, and now it was 9, so a real night-owl hour around here. Petition Guy was there and was packing up. He'd been there for the day, and "had two signatures near the end" and seemed to be packing up. By the time I'd used the bathroom and talked with him a bit, it was closer to 9:30, and I went in and got, well, I was going to get a pint bottle of Guinness but they were out. I got one of those big cans of Foster's because it's cheap and you can make a neat camping stove out of the can. Maybe I'll actually do it this time. 

I sat at one of the benches and ate a bag of potato chips from Walmart (they sell these bags of chips that are just right for one serving and are a product of Canada, and only about $1) and had to do that fast because 9:30 is terribly late for this town and the workers were bustling around, cleaning tables, etc. 

In San Jose, you have to even relax in a hurry. 

I finished my junque food snack, had tanked the can of beer, and went out to the bike and put the 12-pack of Lagunitas cans I'd also bought, in a bag and tied that onto the bike handlebar. Petition Guy had set up again, and apparently wanted that one more signature... 

Now, he calls out, "California voter?" But it comes out more like "California voter" and he mush-mouths that. So I hung out there too, called out in a friendly way, "Registered to vote in California?". And in no time we'd reeled in a guy who looked a bit like the dad in "That 70s Show" and he got interested. So I left Petition Guy and him to do their thing, and got the bike squared away, and then brought it over, preparatory to hopping on it and riding off after a few final words. The guy finished up and Peitition Guy seemed kind of disappointed "the guy didn't sign them all". Well, some people just can't give themselves permission to be happy, I guess. I said maybe I should drop the trumpet game and just work by helping him get signatures. 

We had a few friendly words and then I said, "Well, see ya when I see ya..." and rode off. 

A Sharks game was just getting out and a good stretch of the road was blocked off to cars. So I had fun riding with the street all to myself, except for the shoals of fans, which were easy to ride around. And the cops didn't mind because I was being cool. 

The ride home was very peaceful. Traffic was very light today and I'm not sure why, except that this might be the week a lot of people get off for Easter which is this coming Sunday. And I thought, I need to work on some Easter songs. "Morning Has Broken" is a good one, being a Christian hymn tune. And "A Closer Walk With Thee" another good choice. And "It's Good To Be Humble", the Shaker tune that got used in a symphony, so tons of people have heard it. I used to play it a lot, years ago. 

 

A quiet night

 The illegal night club wasn't too bad last night, except the part where one drunk client backed their car into a corner of the trash enclosure, so it's a bit crooked now. 

I took three things apart, after listing the final 10 things out of the last batch of 20 I'd photo'd. So in the dawn, around 6:30 in the morning I got to make noise throwing case parts and transformers and junk out front in a pile, and as I tossed the last bit, sure enough, here came a bum, shambling up like it's a dinner call, to take the stuff away. I turned around, when inside here, buttoned things up, and called it a night. 

 

Bad Scales

 I woke up at 3:30 actually woke up around 1 maybe, went back to sleep for more weird dreams then got up. I thought, when the illegal night club people were making so much noise instead of just leaving quietly and doing burnouts and making noise right outside my door, I got the cornet and the Denis Wick mouthpiece out because it's much louder than my other one, and played "Deutschland Uber Alles" as loud as I could. This seemed to have a small effect, but I really think the way to do is to play scales, badly. 

What I was playing was actually musical, and the idea is to play something that's really unpleasant to listen to, and bad scales have worked well in the past. No one wants to hear someone who apparently can't play for shit, try. The people who were running the illegal nightclub eventually got the pimps and ho's and johns cleared out and it was actually quiet at 6:30AM. 

I washed the piss off of the front of this place, watched some YouTube, drank beer, and went to bed. I'd started a load of laundry, had the cornet all ready grab and go, and went to bed.

When I was up I thought for a hot second about going to Sunnyvale, and decided Nope I'll just play locally. I dropped off trash, stopped in at Nijiya for a bottle of "seasoned pepper" and $40 cash back, then went to the Amazon place for some bubble mailers, and then went over to Whole Foods. 

It was 6, and I decided OK, I'll play until 7:30. But I ended up playing until 8. It was slow, and I tried out some new things that worked out well. "Moonshadow" by Cat Stevens sounds good on the cornet, "Annie's Song" in a lower key sounds good, and "Blowin' In The Wind", ostensibly by "Bob Dylan", went over well - with Petition Guy at least. 

I also worked out "Brother Can You Spare A Dime" and that's kinda fun. 

When I got a chance, I explained to Petition Guy that Bob Dylan probably plagiarized "Blowin' In The Wind' like 99.999% of his material, that he's a huge Zionist, and what disgusts me the most is, that weird way of singing he had, was copied from Woody Guthrie after Guthrie had gotten very ill from Lou Gehrig's Disease and *he* sure didn't want to sound that way. This, the only reason I'll even play the song is that, "Dylan" being a parasite, it's almost certainly not actually "his" material. 

Finally it was 8, and I counted up: $33.50. My aim is to make $100 or better on a weekend, and I've done that. 

Now, I normally take $200 out of my $400 pay check each week and that's my allowance. But, when I'd taken $100 out, the guy at Whole Foods had given me a $100 and taken care to give me a "good" one, so I could not resist stashing that away in the cash stash. So I can take $300 out of this week's check, and so far I've actually only taken out a little under $100. And I've been buying stuff and beer, and have $70 on hand. 

 

Wut protests?

 I woke up at 3 in the afternoon, completely forgetting there were big protests scheduled today. I might have tried to get up earlier and go, just to look around and say Hi to Batman and check out the booths, maybe buy a sweet keffiyah I dunno. 

Well, anyway, too much beer really. But at least I got a big thing all taken apart (I'd started on it the night before) and while the illegal night club did its thing, it wasn't too annoying I guess. 

After waking up and having coffee etc., I masked off my lines again and masked off the other concrete stopper I hadn't painted, and then happily blasted $20 worth of white striping paint on everything. The guy who's the head honcho of one of the cleaning companies, whom I've heard called "Chuey" but I don't know if I'd call him that because it feels too informal, but anyway ol' Chuey had had a few cervesas and kept calling out to me, "Lakota" which I haven't the slightest meaning of the meaning of. Google was no help. Eh, I just went about doing my thing. 

Once I was done, I packed up the horn and tip box and trash and headed out. It was now around 6. I dropped off the trash and stopped in at Nijiya for a can of coffee and a couple of boiled eggs, and got $40 cash back so I'd have some money in my pocket. I sat and had my eggs and coffee with a group of people at the one table in front, which I discovered is a really popular place for people to eat shave ice from next door, and spill the same around, so the sidewalk under the table is a sticky mess. I think from now on I'll be less social and sit somewhere else. 

I chewed gum on my way over to Whole Foods, and got there and got situated and started playing at 7:30 so I'd play until 9. Things started out well with two $5 tips, then it got sparse because of two things: An ambulance parked on the street right by me, and there were police cars with their lights on at the intersection. And this big crowd of people came through, which turned out to be fans of college basketball, who had been at the U. of Arizona / Purdue game. And none in a tipping mood. 

Petition Guy was there, and was not mad at me for the other night. In fact, he complimented my playing a few times. And with the tips not coming, I got into a kind of "fuck it" mood, and worked on things I don't normally play at least so far. 

Once the ambulance had driven off and the crowd was gone, some tips trickled in, but by now it was late and there were not very many actual customers going in and out of Whole Foods. I tried pushing myself past 9 but while it did get me one more tip which was nice, I quit at a few minutes after 9. 

I'd made $28, $3 of it in handfuls of change from a couple different people. And I had some nice interactions with people, and I'm to learn a tune called "Gabriel's Oboe" because I promised a lady I would, and I've heard the title a bunch of times; it might be a banger. 

I grabbed a cart and went in and got a 12-pack of Lagunitas because it's cheaper there than anywhere, a pint of Guinness to have with dinner, and a bag of frozen shrimp. I got to talk with Petition Guy a bit, told him I'd made $28 which sounded really good to him, but is kind of low for me these days. But considering the big crowd of tightasses from the basketball game, and the ambulance and cops, I did surprisingly well. 

Petition Guy and I got to talk a bit, about finances. As mentioned he thought $28 was good for an hour and a half. I said my main job, which gets me what works out to $57 a day, has to take precedence and so this is why I came out a bit late tonight. But that when I'm retired, I'll be able to devote more time to playing music. He didn't think $57 a day is "big money for Silicon Valley" and said engineers make much more, and I riposted with "When they have jobs, and as far as that goes, my boss makes about $200k a year and he's paycheck-to-paycheck, and clips coupons to take to Burger King". Then we got a bit of good old Judenhass in and parted happily. 

I rode home by way of Hedding, I swear that hill is good for my legs. I got back here and removed the making tape on my paint job and looks like there's still some overspray but I'm not going to worry about it. At least the lines are night and bright, the narrow places are fixed, and the stoppers are nice and white and easy to see. Time will take care of the overspray. 

I got 20 things all photographed and listed half of them, the illegal night club was raucous enough that I ended up calling the cops 3X, plus at the time they knock off for the night, 5AM, instead of just all leaving, they hung out and one bunch of them hung out right outside my door with loud music and a guy pissing on the front of this place here.

I need to get one of those air horns so I can pop out and honk it at one of these pissers, that would be fun. 

They also did burnouts in the parking lot, again, around the time they normally just relatively quietly leave. It's like trying to co-exist with Israelis. The burn-outs were the reason for the 3rd call to the police, who were apparently too busy to come by but at least the call was made, and those do get tallied into where the crime hotspots are.  

I'm going to see if I can coordinate with the landlord of *this* building about this, because it's been a problem for them, too, and I'm not the only tenant who's complained. The best outcome is we can trigger an asset seizure of the other building, which is owned by an absentee landlord in Arizona.  

Sometimes the answer is 46

 Ken came by around the usual time last night, I got my check for this pay and the one before so it's caught up, and we talked about stuff. I'm keeping the numbers good and it had been a $900+ day so the mood was pretty good. And I had a bag of flashlights to give to Ken and a couple of cute cat dishes for his wife, so all was well. 

When Ken left, he almost left without his checkbook and the flashlights and stuff and I was lucky to flag him down as he was in his truck and leaving (this is pertinent because now, at 11:30 Friday night, he's just called me from his wife's phone as he's lost his and wondered if it was around here. He's only got 3 messy labs at his work and his very messy truck so it could be anywhere....) 

The illegal night club was a bit busy which was unusual for a Thursday night, but not too bad. I got started taking a thing apart, and drank beers and eventually went to bed around 7AM. 

I had everything done like packing packages, and when I woke up at 3 in the afternoon, I only had to clean up and pack up the trash, gather up the packages, tip box, horn, etc., and get going which I did at 4. I dropped off the trash, deposited my check in the bank where my math and theirs matched to the penny, and headed over to Whole Foods. 

Now, I basically had no money with me. The usual plan is to go to Whole Foods right after the bank, and in the process of buying some things, take out $200 of my weekly $400 pay check, and that's my allowance for the week.  

Since my busking sessions are as much practice for my retirement years as anything else, I decided, having about $6 on my clipper card so enough for one day's travels on the VTA system, I'd do the day as if I'm broke. So, when I bought a couple of beef sticks and a fizzy water and got $100 cash back, the checker gave me a $100 bill and took the trouble to pick out a nice one, I put that in my wallet to go into my cash-stash. 

Being broke means no train when the bus will do, and I took the #22 bus to Sunnyvale. The two-hour rule being unbeatable, since I'd left the shop at 4, there's no way I'd be in Sunnyvale before 6, and indeed, when I'd walked to the Whole Foods and set up and played my first tune, it was 6:18. 

I set up at the front door instead of the parking lot door, as the parking lot entrance had a guy with a table with some signs with stuff about kids and drugs and so on. So I decided it's a good time to set up on the other side and see how it goes. 

It ... didn't go well. I got a $2 tip right away, then nothing. The wind was really a problem, as wind makes people not want to take money out. So at 7 I moved over to the parking lot side, the table guy being away for a piss/smoke/crack break I could kind of justify setting up by the door as always (he was off to the side, on the sidewalk). 

I got to playing and it was slow. The thing is, last Sunday night, I'd put the horn away and not touched it all week. I played along and tips trickled in, and I determined myself that I'd stay until 8, making it an hour and a half. Every time I looked over at the table guy, he gave me the ol' hairy eyeball, and eventually he packed up and left. He'd have been entirely justified in yelling at me, "Hey! How long do you plan to be here?" and I've have said, "I'm only staying until 8, and them I'm outta here!" whereby he'd know that I'm a temporary nuisance, and he'd still have two sweet hours to get the late Friday crowd. 

Finally it was 8 and I had counted up, $46 which isn't that bad. For an hour and a half, pretty good, something like $30 an hour which is huge money in Silicon Valley. 

I walked back out to the bus stop, stopping in at Baraka Market for a yogurt drink. By the time I got back to my "home" Whole Foods, it was 9:30 and since I'd left here at 4, that's 5-1/2 hours to make that $46. And in most of the area of the US, you have to be in the tippy-top elite to make more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour so I have to call this good.  

So I got back to my "home" Whole Foods and offloaded some of the stuff I was carrying onto the bike and went in for some shopping. In the end I got cheese, olives, a 12-pack of Lagunitas IPA in cans, mustard, and put the remaining $7 on my clipper card. 

Petition Guy was there and called out to me. He wanted me to watch his table while he went to the bathroom. I was happy to help, but then instead of leaving to use the facilities, he then stayed here, moving things around and trying to get me to read and perhaps sign, his petitions. I said something like he'd better get going and use the bathroom, and he kind of started to, then went back to moving stacks of things around and I should read all the petitions. ... I put up with that for a few more minutes and then said, "Deal's off" and walked back to my bike, unlocked it, got on it, and rode off. While Petition Guy stood there, staring at me. Funny as hell. 

I come from years of dealing and selling at gun shows and swap meets. There's a code. If you ask someone to watch your stuff while you go pee, your end of the contract is you leave immediately, go to the loo, and come immediately back.  You don't stay there sorting through your shit and trying to get your benefactor to buy some of it. Nor do you tarry after having peed, there's no coming back 15 or 20 minutes later with a bag of groceries. If you break the code, no one will cover for you when you need to go take a whiz, nor should they. And I mean, not just the person you've burned, but word will spread and no one will cover for you other than whatever sketchy types are around whose time is worth nothing. 

Swap meets and gun shows where people all know each other are great; they're one of the closest things you can be involved in where people act as a tribe, and have codes about things like this, that aren't written out on paper anywhere but are known and followed, with consequences if one doesn't. 

And Petition Guy can just stick to having sketchy people watch his stuff for him.  

I got back here and it was something like 10:30. 

 

The US swallowed a poison pill

 I am seeing things like this: The USA swallowed a poison pill, thinking the pill would make it stronger. Essentially in its early days as a set of colonies and then a country, it decided, "We have been told that your People (Jews) are a Poison, but we think that letting you come here and flourish, will Benefit us, as it will bring more Commerce...." etc. 

Bring more Commerce the juicy ones indeed did, in the form of slavery and other grifts. But yes the US did benefit, because a growing parasite wants a healthy host. 

It was to their benefit that we got involved in WWI (we were brought in a Jew who had pull with the Brits) and then WWII, and now the US is essentially a zombie controlled by them. Hence our new forever-war in the Middle East. 

They were sucking Germany dry and the Germans fought back; then we got enlisted to punish the Germans. Now, with worldwide communication and The Great Noticing, those who are wise to, and who are learning about, their parasitical nature, are distributed worldwide. And there's a great interest in bypassing the mainstream media because guess who owns that? 

So now the US is finally in the nascent stages of developing an immune reaction against the parasite. Interesting times ahead but this time around people can't be kept in the dark so easily. On one of the juicy subreddits, some leech was saying he feared for Generation Z, who are more Naturalist or Nationalist I forget which, but he called them generation Nat-Z haha. 

I woke up around 3, maybe closer to 4, and had my breakfast and packed things and got out of here. Plenty of zombies around but no interactions with them, thank goodness. I delivered my packages and then went to Lowe's and bought Windex and Simple Green, putting them on my card and getting cash back, so I have "walking around money". 

 

Am I Right or Left?

 Goodness know, I should have taken a hard right on the bike today. 

I woke up around 3, and had a pile of mostly large things I'd packed last night to ship out, and I packed a couple more things, left here at 4 to take them to the post office and FedEx, and went right back here to pack three more large things that had to go out. I actually got them packed with time to spare, too, so that was good. 

I slogged with those up to FedEx and dropped them off, then went up to 99 Ranch and got a few different flavors of "Mama" noodles because I'd tried the green curry flavored ones and thought they were really good. I got 4 different flavors, including a shrimp one and in the fish department, they had some precooked shrimp. Essentially what they do is take fish that's not sold quickly enough and deep fry it and put it in packages so I got this big package of shrimp for $4. 

On the way back I just wanted to cook up the shrimp noodles dish I had imagined, and I wanted to get some IPA type beer to have with it. I figured I had just enough money. 

I didn't find anything in H Mart, so Sprouts it was. There's a sneaky way of going there which is to park my bike and trailer in the shopping cart area inside, which many who are in the know do, and I did this. I found a tall can of Lagunitas IPA and a smaller but still tall can of some Munich Germany stuff that looked interesting and was a dollar cheaper, I figured I had just enough for both. 

Well, I was 11c short after the checker and I counted out all this change, and the checker said she figures they have that much "around" so don't worry about it. Great. I put the cans in the bike bag on top of the shrimp and packets of noodles, and rode for home. 

Here is where I made a very large mistake. The proper way to cross Brokaw is to go opposite the direction I want to go, to go to the crosswalk at the light, wait for the signal, etc. But what the bums, scumbags, lowlifes, etc., often do is cut across where the train tracks are. I made the bad decision to do this. 

I rode around the back of the building and was coming up to Brokaw, checking out the traffic, and there was a zombess on a bike wandering across, not looking to be moving that quickly so I was paying more attention to the gap in the traffic it looked like I could time myself for. 

Well, the zombess was either moving quickly all along or sped up, somehow didn't see me (on a bike cruiser bike with blinking lights, and wearing a high-vis vest and hat) and blam! We ran into each other. The zombess sputtered, "How do you do that??" and I said, "I don't know, it takes a special talent, I guess". As we got up, I saw that her bike was OK, and I said "Can I offer you a beer?" and she said something like, "Are you drunk? Is that what's going on?" and I retorted that No, I am not drunk, although I planned to be .... and once I got my bike upright and got the handlebars turned around the right away again, I went into the bike bag and pulled out the Munich beer, icy cold, and put it into the zombess' filthy hands. I'd said, while getting out the beer, "At least it's not cars; even the smallest fender bender is thousands". The zombess seemed to be happy to have gotten a beer out of the whole thing and rode off, and I rode off in the opposite direction. 

Beer, along with cigarettes and a variety of drugs, is a universal currency among these subterraneans, and since her bike didn't seem to be harmed nor her, I'd paid my dues and shown good "street" manners. 

On my way back here, I noticed I now have a hematoma on my left arm just below the elbow. Lovely. Not painful at all, just a big bluish lump. Serves me right. Scumsuckers cross at the signals, too, of course. But train tracks are a magnet for zombies and it's kind of a free for all there. 

Being a little more panicky and twitching the bike rightward would have avoided the zombess, and I'd only have a near miss, hardly anything to remark on. The warm weather sure brings the zombies out and they're everywhere right now. Rightward... rightward... 

So am I left or right? Politically, I mean. I am 100.000% for LGBT rights, and since LGBT is a biological fact that's been with us and all the animals forever, and that's Science, and Science is "woke", some would call me Left or even far Left. But some very "Right" cultures have had no problems with LGBT people, it just varies by culture. 

I think people ought to be able to, and to some extent required to, work to support themselves. That would make me, to some, Right or far-Right. 

We don't have a clear Left and Right in the US. And the more I see of the Democratic Party's bumbling, I'm really starting to come around to the idea that they might just be an actual controlled opposition. 

But getting back to day-to-day issues, and by that I mean zombies. I've had a very good idea for a while now, which I call Happy Fun Camps. Your average zombie isn't really capable of working, since their bodies not not very fit, or their minds, or both. So work camps are not the answer. And having them out on the street, stealing and shitting and piling up trash, turns out to be very expensive as well as unsightly. 

Happy Fun Camps are a solution to this. Your average bum can collect Disability which is about $900 a month. You set up a development with little cement block huts, maybe 200 square feet with a combined toilet and shower, and anyone can enter the Happy Fun Camp to stay, voluntarily. They can also leave, voluntarily. Their Disability payment will cover electricity, water, etc., and junk food. This will get the junk food companies on board. Also, each bum gets the drug of their choice, all they want of it. 

This way they don't need to steal, rob, prostitute, etc., to get their drug of choice; they just get it. My model for this is the "Wet House" an organization runs in England. Alkies stay there and it's assumed they'll be alkies forever, so in the Wet House they can live, get their daily dose of alcohol, and they're off the street. 

This would be the same thing but for all drugs, not just alcohol. Since in the US, all the "illegal" drugs are legal at the user level, why not? There will be a doctor in the loop somewhere, and there could be adult education classes, accounting and computer skills and GED classes and so on. The classes won't be popular, but they'll be there. 

Anyone who's in there will be free to leave, but if they're real bums, they'll never want to. And non-bums will hate the place in no time because a regular person doesn't want to be a slave to drugs, wants to work some sort of job, etc. It's a brilliant plan to allow the bums to live their mode of life and those of us who work to live ours. 

There was a kerfuffle recently where some far-Right politician in Arizona said essentially what I've expressed, which is, "Let the druggies have all the drugs they want!" so does this make me far-Right? 

In any case, the shrimp soup I made was excellent. 

Now I'm in a quandary. I just called Ken and he feels better, and will come by this week but Thursday instead of Wednesday, which is tomorrow. So I guess I'll get paid then, and deposit the check on Friday. So do I hold two "no spending days" or do I do some busking, which I should probably not since I have to do work around here, or do I just take some more money out of my bank account, which I certainly can, because I have about $80 left of what I'll allow myself to spend this last pay period. I'll probably do that. 

 

73 Ham Radio

 I slept pretty late yesterday, and got up around 3 in the afternoon. Maybe a bit later like 4? I had mocha coffee etc. and loaded up the horn and tip box and headed out around 5. That means, by the 2-hour rule, I'd be in Sunnyvale at 7... 

I dropped off trash, picked up some bubble mailers, and rode over to Whole Foods. Petition Guy was there and I asked him if he was staying until closing and he said, "Probably". I said I'm heading off to Sunnyvale and should be back with plenty of time to talk. "What's going on in Sunnyvale?" he asked. I said, "Money!" 

I walked over to the train station and sure enough had just missed one train, so I had to wait around for a half-hour for the next one. At the platform, I was standing around and this Black guy came up and got in my face but in a friendly way, asking if my hair, Yeah it's short, but is it naturally that color, grey? I said yeah that's the natural color and it's grey because I'm 63. And I pointed out the grey hairs in his beard and he said Yeah he's 35 and I did something like say Well there you have it, and walked away. I'm pretty sure the guy was going to bug me for money, needed it for a ticket, blah blah yadda yadda. 

Funny thing about that; I'd tapped my Clipper card at the kiosk in the passageway, and as I took the card away it beeped and said to tap again, then I dunno, had me tap it a 3rd time and it said "TRAVEL OK" and had put all the balance back onto the card. So if they checked, on the train, that was gonna be my story but I rode for free. (And could have on the way back as no one checked tickets.) 

I got to Sunnyvale and walked over to the Whole Foods there and started playing, and sure enough, it was just a couple minutes before 7. 

So I played along, and there's plenty to work on, not only pieces but how well I"m articulating notes (needs work) evenness of tones (needs work) strong consistent air flow, good vibrato (needs work) and of course learning pieces which is probably the easiest part because I just play 'em in my head and then see if I can play 'em on the horn. 

There were a *lot* of people going in and out and some time before I got a tip, but then I got a $20 from a young boy who's walked past with his family, and then tips dribbled in, lots of $1's and a couple of $5's. 

At one point a Black lady obviously homeless, mentally ill, or por que no los dos, came along, dancing with her dirty blanket around here and making odd sounds. Yeah, that's all I need. So in the course of playing the piece I was playing, I played a couple of the higher notes very loudly and pointed at her, and she kind of gradually danced/wandered away. 

Pretty soon I'd been playing about an hour and a quarter and working out how to play "Experimental Film" by They Might Be Giants, and thought, Whew, it's about time to be outta here. At the very end of my planned hour and a half session, a lady came by and dropped in a $10. A nice way to end the day. 

I packed up and counted up. $73. There used to be a magazine called "73 Ham Radio" haha. There was also CQ, there's still QST, there was Radio-Electronics, Popular Electronics, The Monitoring Times, etc. 

That final $10 was really ratty and I wanted to spend it right away so I went into that Whole Foods and they didn't have pint bottles of Guinness, and I didn't want to spend $6+ on a Pliney because  I wanted a snack and a drink for $10 or less so I got a tall can of Lagunitas and two little packages of sliced salami for $8.50 and got rid of that $10. 

Now it was a quarter to nine and there's a train at 8:59 so I walked over to the station and got on it and pretty soon I was back at my home Whole Foods and it was a quarter after nine. And Petition Guy had packed up and left. It had cooled down and obviously he'd gotten cold and called it a day. 

I sat at a table and had my salami and beer, then rode for home. But I ended up on 1st street and decided I wanted more beer and something greasy to eat at the 7-11 which I'd not been in for ages. 

The place is still run by Indian guys who have to deal with a lot of guff. I wanted the 5 or so chicken wings they had in the hot case and one of what looked like a sausage muffin. The guy kept saying the chicken wings are no good, the muffin and the pizza slices are. I said it's find that the wings are dried out, I like to *chew* on them, so the guy got the wings out and a muffin, and I said "Wait a minute," and got a 6-pack of Lagunitas in bottles. So the guy said he's just charging me for the beer, the wings and muffin are free. They were playing Indian music and I said I liked their music and tried to explain how I like the intermediate tones that Western music doesn't have. He said it's Punjabi music, because of course they're Sikhs. 

I rode home with my goodies and once back here, had my yes, tough and dry, wings and the sausage muffin which I added Kewpie mayo to and was pretty good, and drank 5 of the beers and ended up going to bed at 1AM. So I slept through whatever antics the illegal night club was up to. 

I woke up at 10, after having some pretty entertaining dreams. In one, I was using white paint to try to make a white T-shirt out of a black one. In another part, Ken (I think?) was with me and had found that this old derelict electronics store was actually open, run by an old derelict guy, and I was getting my bike ready to go on over to check it out. 

I counted my money and I've got $72 on hand right now.  Since my stomach was not awake yet, I hopped on the bike and headed for the sign place to buy some more striping paint. On the way I passed the "Natural Foods" place and there were new boxes at the base of the traffic signal ... I checked things out and among the cookies and Kinder Joys there were ... a good $150 worth of Ritter Sports, more "Joghurt" flavor and also a lot of cashew ones. So I grabbed those. 

I went over and got my paint, hm, $10 a can is what it works out to. It seems to work well though. I went by the O'Reilley's on the corner and got a nail brush, which will be perfect for scrubbing the overspray off - since I didn't use enough/wide enough masking tape the first paint job. 

In the end it was too windy for painting today and I was too busy. I packed some things and took 'em to the post office, found useful packing stuff on the way back, and now the name of the game is to pack things until however late it takes, to ship them off as soon as I wake up in the morning? Afternoon? Whenever that happens. 

On the return trip form the post office I got at H Mart, among other things, a 6-pack of Spaten beer, imported from Munich, and since I've been to Munich, why not? It's kinda meh though. 

Anyway as soon as I got here and offloaded my buys and finds, I set up the bike trailer and loaded it up with the banana box that the first big batch of Ritter Sports, the "Joghurt" ones, had been in, that I'd put out by the trash enclosure here with a few of the more melted and funny-shaped Sports in it for someone to find. Well, according to bum logic this means ... dump more stuff! So there were blankets and stuff, a pillow, etc. so I loaded that all up and put it in the "natural foods" place dumpster because I know it had room. It's actually handy to know where the various dumpsters are on various nights of the week, that have room. So that was my good deed for the day. 

I wasn't able to check in with Tom and brag about my weekend busking, because while I think he was home (he had the A/C on, but all lights out) I think he'd either walked somewhere (since both of his trucks were there) or was sleeping heavily. But to ease my curiosity and get a firm number, if I count the $50 gift card as money, I made $199 over the three days, total time 3-1/2 hours. So what, $33 an hour? That sounds reasonable. 

 

 

 

One to sing and one to honk

 Ahh, life in an industrial area ... the illegal night club had a bangin' night again and I made my reports ... cops finally called me back around 5AM when the nightclub was closing down. The 911 op did suggest calling Zoning, though, and that's a good idea. It would be funny, but not surprising, if it was a zoning violation that got the building seized. 

So the cops never came around, no need to by the time someone was free, and that was OK except for one ho hanging onto the side of a car with the potential "john" inside, noisily negotiating something. Maybe whether a blow job is an actual job? In any case, I got the horn out and my Wick mouthpiece which is markedly louder than the Yamaha mouthpiece that came with the horn. 

A few scales, with gusto, seemed to send them off. Ruins the mood I guess. 

Then a bit later (I'd done some cleaning of the cornet, valves and 3rd slide and so on and had it all back together) and about 6 lowlifes in a work truck with one of those cabs with seats in the back, came around for some trashy romance time. The lucky(?) guys had found a couple-few of the fattest, ugliest, ho's of the night and were doing .... things ... while crammed into this truck. Then hanging out, talking, etc. So I got the horn out and the Wick again, and worked on my "Die Fahne Hoch", a fine old song. Ruined the mood again and they were off. 

The Wick 4B is a very popular mouthpiece for "brass banding" as the Brits term it, and I learned to appreciate it a bit more. Not only its loudness, but I don't sacrifice as much range as I thought I'd be. So I'm really happy that I have the Yamaha mouthpiece that came with the horn, with a couple tiny dents, a brand-new identical one, and the Wick. 

 

Amazon Jews Again

 I got going early enough to take the bus over to Mountain View to busk, and I'm giving up on the place. Castro Street being pedestrian-only except for cross streets is great, but there are more buskers there than the area can support, they all have amplification, and as I've already mentioned, people in Mountain View are broke. 

The buskers are all probably local, as in it's a short walk to Castro Street, and if they make $10 after hours of doing whatever they do, it's food money. 

I played for 20 minutes and got no tips, not even any apparent notice, and wisely gave up. I got on the train to Sunnyvale and walked down to their Whole Foods and played by the doorway that leads to the parking area. This went well. I was able to play for 45 minutes or so, before I had to get back to the train station. I made $34, and a supposed $50 supposed Amazon supposed gift card, supposedly worth that much money. The poor well-meaning Indian guy with a small kid who gave it to me sure got ripped off. And I'd expect to be ripped off, my bank information stolen, perhaps my bank account cleaned out, if I attempted to use it online. 

I called it a pretty good day, though, and went to the train station. There was a confused Black couple first talking about whether to buy beef, chicken, or beef *and* chicken, and it was amusing me and I was going to tell them about the time I went to Black Bear Diner with a friend who was buying, and it was so noisy that my request for "steak and shrimp" got interpreted as "steak and ribs" and I had to eat this huge meal... but they were confused about which side the Northbound train was on, and I told them it was on the other side and that it's easy; just think of it like cars, the right lane is always going the way you're facing etc. 

I got back to my "home" Whole Foods and got a bunch of things amounting to a bit over the $50 on the gift card, and it turns out an Amazon gift card can't be spent at Whole Foods, which Amazon owns. I'm scared to death to use it online so I'm going to have to see how I can sell the thing for any sort of real money. Maybe a pawn shop or "We Buy Gift Cards" place in an especially skeezy part of town. 

So I paid real, actual, money for the stuff I'd picked out, loaded the stuff on the bike, and checked again with customer service and yep, you can't use it in a real store for real things. 

In the end I have to consider it A Nice Gesture(tm) by the Indian guy, who obviously didn't know any better, and why a Whole Foods employee would sell him a card that can't be used there is a Jewish mystery, as in the poor goyim working there probably instructed to "Always push those Amazon cards!"

So the kind, well-meaning young Indian dad got Jewed, and I'll get maybe $20 for the card if I sell it to Ken so I guess I'm getting Jewed too, but between the guy giving me the card, he can't be faulted for falling for the one of the parasites' scams. 

This is the first, and hopefully the last, time I get given a gift card, and all in all the day worked out well because Sunnyvale was hopping. Murphy Street looked promising, and if there had been someone else at the parking structure doorway, it looked like I'd have done fine at the front, by the movie theater, entrance. $34 for 45 minutes isn't bad at all. 

What I need to do is try out different Whole Foods stores, and have 3-4 of them picked out that are good. I know the one on Hamilton is awful, and the Los Altos one is actually worse.  The Sunnyvale one is actually really nice, and by trying out others, I should end up with a set of them I can rotate them. 

And yet, upon being back here and checking, there are not that many Whole Foods stores in this area. The only one with perhaps some promise is the one out near De Anza college and it's very much a "maybe" because it's in the middle of its big parking lot and so I can't set up and say I'm playing on a space that's "public". But I have Sunnyvale and The Alameda, and that's a good two, plus I haven't tried playing at H Mart or 99 Ranch by me, both of them being super-super busy on weekends.  

When I got back, Petition Guy was talking with a female bum, talking about where there are bushes along the Guadalupe River and where there used to be, and so on.  His own personal living situation is hellish enough that the young zombess would be wise to stick to the bushes. 

So I didn't get to regale him with an account of my "day". I rode home, and, remembering I'd seen it on the way out, grabbed a box of "Ritter Sport Joghurt" bars, about 48 of them, threw the box on top of the bike seat, and walked it in. So yeah over $200 worth of the things if one is counting. And they taste pretty good too. The nearby "Natural Foods" place that's really low-key, as in no signage or anything, randomly puts out things like that. 

RIP CBS.

 CBS, home of Walter Cronkite and 60 Minutes and well, a century of journalism and news, is now dead. It got the small-hat treatment. As someone said on Reddit, "truth might leak out over those airwaves". 

I was up early enough to pack a few more things, and get out of here to check a place called "Interstate" for spray paint stencils. They had one they'd made and the customer apparently never picked up, for the super deal of $50+ I said I'd check around. 

I rode the rest of the loop around and came across another place, "AWP" which had a nice stencil for $25 or $30, and somehow that and a can of parking lot white striping paint, the kind of can you hold upside down, came to about $34. Sold. 

I got back here and took the things I had packed to the post office, made a stop at H Mart for hamburger and more sour little bottles of Guinness (it's actually great with plenty if ice, just don't let anyone from Ireland see this). It's hot as hell out there. 

I made another stop at Lowe's for masking tape. 

Once I got back here I started up a cup of Guinness and plenty of ice, about 1/3 of the volume ice, and masked off the lines in the parking lot right in front of here, and between two lines, the cement stopper in front of the door, and two "NO PARKINGs" courtesy of the stencil, the one can of spray paint was done. But that's OK, apparently the paint's cheap and I can get another can next week and it's good enough for now. 

I'd been telling myself I'd go and get stencils and do this for a while now, but that last run in with that Karen was enough. 

I stayed in after painting and tried to think cool thoughts, then left here around 7 I guess. I stopped at Nijiya for coffee pour over things and some cash back so I'd have cash on hand no matter what. And picked up some bubble mailers at the Amazon place. Then I went right over to Whole Foods to busk. 

Petition Guy was there, and I started right in just a few minutes before 8. It went pretty well. I played lots of different songs, and a lot of the tips came with glowing compliments. Petition Guy was getting signatures too. I had plenty of time to talk with him, and he feels we don't interfere with each other at all. I don't think so either. I think it helps both of us for people to see us talking, obviously friends. 

I was done at 9:20 and had made $42. There wasn't time to sit and relax with some food, so I just bought an 8-pack of tall Guinnesss cans, which were at a very good price, and hung out a bit with Petition Guy before leaving for home. 

I pooped along, riding home, enjoying the peacefulness and quiet of the little neighborhoods. It's amazing that there are so many of these little houses that people grew up in, like Ken did, in the same house all along, and whether it's a rich neighborhood in Menlo Park or a not-so-rich neighborhood south of 280 in San Jose here, it's home to someone. 

Our neighborhood of Portlock Road wasn't so snooty, I never thought, as a kid there. Sure it seems about half the people with houses on the beach has a swimming pool too, and one lady had an indoor pool with a little island in it. And there were the Kaisers, as in Henry J. Kaiser and Kaiser Cement, they were up at the end of the road. One of the "Kaiser Kids" had a pale yellow Corvette which I loved to see, as it seemed like such a "cool" color in that generally hot, sunny neighborhood. 

But there was also Mike Noise, who lived with his mother and an incredibly dirty sheep dog, and often this or that man around, but none really identified to us as Mike's father. Mike could draw on his sheets, Peanuts sheets with Snoopy and Charlie Brown and the gang, who with Mikes help with a pen, were all uttering the most filthy and naughty things, which I loved and envied and are why I bugged my mom to buy me sheets like that, although I never had the guts to "improve" them the way Mike had. 

The other Mike was Mike Hertz, as in Hertz Rent-A-Car.  They were not poor and no doodled-on sheets there. In fact Mike Hertz had more toys than I'd seen anywhere. And there was Miss Wilder, the Wilders being one of the old, powerful families in Hawaii. Kind of like the Biddles of New England. She has a Steinway grand piano in her living room and would not teach me how to play it. I'm still miffed about that. But she took me to places like a symphony concert and the newspaper office where she was greeted like royalty and there one of the guys made a little lead "slug" with my name on it. I didn't like my name so I didn't keep it for very many years, but this is the kind of personage Miss Wilder was. 

So Portlock Road was a strange place, with single moms and elderly spinsters who probably never thought about things so vulgar as money and children of single parents who were probably who I learned to properly spell "fuck" from, and kids who'd throw rocks at you, and all kinds of characters I wish I could catch up with now. I guess this is what I think of in the back of my mind when I ride through these quiet little neighborhoods. 

I got back here and saw that the overspray from my insufficient masking off of my painting is a problem, and tried "Goof Off" and a tooth brush on some of it and that seems to work. 

About the busking, I'm having the high notes come out well, and I not only love my unreasonably expensive cornet, but I'm kind of glad it's stuck me with traditional cornet type mouthpieces, since it takes "short shank" ones and the only ones of that type are all deep cup types. The sound is very sensitive to mouth cavity shape, which I don't remember being more than a very slight thing with the 7C/3C type mouthpieces. 

And I'm effectively kept from just going out and buying another student trumpet to busk with because the cornet seems to really go over well with the public, and because if I'm flying to Hawaii in a year and a half, I need to sell off all I can, slim down, not buy more instruments. 

 

Morning after the almost like a day off

 Well, I managed to finish off a six pack of those sour little Guinness bottles, and at something like 3AM I felt like I needed something fatty and protein-y, so I cooked up one of my 4 oz. servings of hamburger I had in the freezer and ate that, drank one last small bottle of Guinness I had here, and went to bed. I slept OK, and woke up a bit after 3 in the afternoon. 

Some Karen type parked her SUV in front of the door here and sat, running the engine so I tried to run her off, and all in all it wasn't a great scene. Fat Karen pointed out that it's not marked "No Parking" and I said just wait, I'll have it marked. It is a very valid point. 

I packed things, took 'em to the post office, found packing stuff, the usual routine, and came in with the bike and trailer laden with stuff. I saw the cops were talking to the people to one side of this place but on the other side. So, being nosy, I wanted an excuse to just happen to pass by and see what's up. 

It didn't cool down today like it did last night, so I decided I'd go to Walmart and that would get me out in the breeze for a while. As I passed by, the cops were gone. Maybe they'd followed someone in from the main road, or there was some car they were looking for, who knows. 

I went to Nijiya just 10 minutes or so before closing, and got a can of cold coffee and a couple of boiled eggs, which were only there because they'd fallen down between that display and the next one (quail eggs), the place was really shopped out. I sat out front, in the heat, and ate my eggs and washed them down with some coffee. 

I went by the Amazon place and found 6 bubble mailers, so that's rather good. And went down to Walmart and first thing, put my heavy jar of pennies through the Coinstar. That got me $6.90. I got the things I was after, and some cheesy made in Canada potato chips which I had with the rest of the cold coffee. 

Then I rode over to Whole Foods but they had some streets closed down so I rode over to Almaden and then over to Whole Foods. Skinny Petition Guy was there, and I talked a bit, then went in and got a pint of Guinness and some "healthy" pork rinds (bleh) and at at the bar upstairs because the upstairs was practically empty. The guy I sat next to seemed to recognize me and asked me to hit him with some rock and roll trivia so I told him "Surfin' USA" was actually written by Chuck Berry and a couple of other snippets. That seemed to please him pretty well. He didn't want any pork rinds though. 

We talked about the Sharks losing again, and on the TV they were calling it a losing streak and I said it can't be called a losing streak until it's 3 games so it's only become one, now. The bartender was hustling around, closing things up, and I guzzled the Guinness and went back downstairs. 

The bike racks were hardly visible, being buried in a huge crowd of intermediate school students, who were now done with their field trip, to see a Sharks game. Skinny Guy and I talked a bit, and he rambled on about being given all these stocks by his family that he sold to buy new movie cameras and stuff, and I talked about how when I was 18 my father told me I had to be out, and I joined the Army and when it was time to go to the airport, both my father and my older sister had told me they'd take me, and when the time came they were not to be found, and I took a cab there, which I only had money for because I'd been working at the local gas station. 

I rode home by my twisty way, along Montgomery to a zig-zag through the quiet neighborhood by Bellermine, through a tiny part of Bellermine, then on Hedding, over the hill the train tracks are underneath, and on home. 

I got back here and found some useful plastic bags in the welding place's trash and put in some metallic bags I never use, and basically did some re-arranging of the parking lot junk, keeping a couple of useful things like a brass ball valve and a broom. 

A bit later I gave myself a haircut and put the wrapped up clippings in the welding place's trash too. It's nice getting a cut for essentially $0 since Ken pays the electric bill around here, whenever I like. 

 

Almost like a day off

 Last night I was preparing to get the place all cleaned and ready for Ken to come over, and he called around 9. He had a cold or something, with aches and pains and wasn't coming by. We agreed he should just come by next week, and get better; no need to come by this week as we can catch up next week. 

So it felt almost like a vacation. I got 20 things ready to list, easy as I'd taken two large things apart last night. 

 

92F out there

 I woke up at 3:30 in the afternoon and it was 92F out there. 

Practice before bed went surprisingly well. Regular practice plus busking should get me further along. It's just that the day job has to take first precedent right now. As I've told people, it's $57 a day I can count on, and a safe place to live. 

It had cooled down to 91F when I'd packed what I had time to pack, and got out of here. First a dropoff to FedEx, then the post office. Whew it's warm! Dropped off the post office stuff and went over to 99 Ranch for TP, and a bag of "double choc" Loecker "Quadratrini wafers. Those are dark chocolate filling and dark chocolate wafers, and well, seem to stop me up a bit. 

I'm having my breakfast mocha and 2 oz. of quadratini and 2 oz. more of quadratini later in the evening. I'm not sure it's the answer; the answer is probably eating broccoli every day. But it works better than not eating it, and I have a budget of $3-$4 a day for intestinal help, since I've been spending that on Yakult and kim chee, to no avail. 

I'm not saying quadratini are super healthy, but the double choc ones are less sweet, and the stuff's made in Austria, my first choice of source for quadratrini and painters who become politicians. 

 

 

the 2nd holocaust

 Well, it turns out ... holocausts are kind of  ... routine. I'm far more educated than most, in that I know very much about "The Holocaust(tm)" at all. But that only goes so far - just means I'm a good goy. Quite a while ago now, I found a long documentary on YouTube showing that genocides are actually things that happen and fairly often, and how much they're cried over depends on who they happen to and how much money and power they have. 

Hence, hardly anyone knows hardly anything about the Circassians, while the small-hats, whose whole guiding book is filled with little more than accounts of how they were able to kill off this and that group and it's OK their god said that's great and (pointing) go over there and there are some more people you can kill... ended up getting too greedy for their hosts in Germany, which naturally developed a proper immune reaction against them and well, of course to the small-hats this is the end of the world. 

But snipers intentionally aiming for children and members of the Press, A-OK! And so now there's a 2nd holocaust, arguably worse than the one the small-hats are always crying about,  and somehow this is all OK because they have all this money and power. Or so they think. 

I got up, packed things, and got going, taking said things to the post office, and I swung by the Filipino market because I'd not been there for so long. The guy there remembered me and said Hi, and I looked all around and just bought some ginger, and "Michael Savage" was on the TV. I mentioned he's Jewish and his actual name is Wiener (pronounced weener) and he wants you to send your kids to die for Israel. He said the Jews "have their hands in everything" and "all we can do is pray" and I said, "Also vote, and try to avoid giving them any money, don't buy their products". so that was a nice cheering little bit of Judenhass. 

I went to 99 Ranch and got a couple of things and they had bags of crispy fish skin for 97c so me and this little Chinese lady each got 4 of the 8 bags that were there. The chips are OK, but they forget to salt them. So I'll have to have them with some dip. 

I stopped by Tom's and we talked about things. I keep trying to get him to practice his trumpet and keep telling him to put something on the TV that's semi-interesting, and while watching it, just do basic exercises. 

Speaking of which, I had indeed played a full two hours last night and I'd noticed an interesting thing. I've found that when I was playing high notes like that one in "Danny Boy" or the high bits in the Sesame St. theme, which goes over surprisingly well, I was doing this subtle thing with the tip of my tongue, with the effect of making the mouth cavity small especially at the front, that was making the notes come out better. So I might be onto something. 

 

I play more locally

 It was a bangin' (tee hee) night for the illegal brothel, and I called the cops of course and they had a great time rousting everyone out, the rats leaving the sinking ship routine, etc.

I finally went to bed and slept until 1PM or so, then woke up again around 4. After all the transit time yesterday, I wanted to just busk locally. I headed for downtown around 5, swung by the Amazon place for bubble mailers, and got over to Whole Foods. 

The petition guy was there, and I gave him a bag of clips I had for him, that are a size he likes to use. Then I set up, did a little warm up then a song then checked the time; it was 6. So I'd play until at least 7. 

It went slowly at first, and eventually I got a dollar. Then I played for and ended up talking with a nice older Swiss couple who tipped me a $20. Then it went a bit better, but the main thing is, busking is really good practice. And I got tons of compliments. One (Black) gal came up and had no money but she's a trumpeter too, and said she'd get cash back and get me on the way out of Whole Foods, but of course that never happened. I can't really fault people for this though, because it's really easy to forget, do one's shopping, and not even think about it again. No biggie. 

Petition guy told me he had someone do something like that too, and he was a bit miffed. But I said it happens all the time, and I don't let it bother me. 

I ended up holding out until 8, so a whole two hours, and had made $42. So that brings me up to $100 for the weekend (actually $102 I think) and that means that more than half of my pay check stays in the bank this week. 

After I was done I went in and got some pork and cabbage and a pint of Guinness and ate and drank upstairs. By the time I was done with the eating part the only people upstairs were the bartender who was closing up, four rowdy guys at a table near me, and myself. Enter a skinny, kind of weird acting Black guy who kept going back and forth, and at one point the bartender asked him if he was OK. He was starting something with the four rowdy guys when I drank the last of the Guinness and got out of there. 

And the petition guy was still packing up. He'd quit the same time I did. So here it was about 9. A new player had entered the busking space; the skinny gal I'd shared the space with before, who has a cardboard sign so old it's almost more like cloth and she unrolled it. She sat on one of the bike rack things right next to my bike but I guess that means my bike was being watched. 

Petition Guy had a badge on a lanyard with one of those retracting things, with just a bar code on it. I took that inside and handed it over to Customer Service in case anyone comes looking for it, and as a reward for my little favor, found one more bubble mailer in the Amazon trash can, and a marking pen that writes perfectly well, too. I gave the marking pen to the skinny gal, and she thanked me for it. 

According to Petition Guy her name is Chloe and he'd bought her a bunch of food not long ago. He'd finally packed everything on this wagon he has, and I saw he was rolling it into the Whole Foods parking lot so I followed because I was curious what he'd driving. He's got a Toyota SUV with a V6 in it, which might explain why his mechanic wants 6 or 7 grand to put a new engine in it, since the present one has a cracked head and can only be used for short drives. Of course he's got tons of bumper stickers plastered on the back. 

The ride home was really nice and quiet, and I got back here, had plenty of coffee, and took some stuff apart while watching "The Best Days Of Our Lives", a 1946 movie about vets returning from WWII. I'd seen it on TV in the apartment I had in Waikiki in 2003, since the guy who'd lived there before had a really nice cable package then died suddenly which is how I got the place, and the cable company hadn't gotten the news. So it was a bit of nostalgia to see it again, plus it's a great movie. 

 

 

I play for the impoverished of Mountain View

 I took some stuff apart last night, made my usual online report and phone call to the police about the illegal brothel, yadda yadda. But if I'm up anyway, listening to stuff on YouTube, the pimps and ho's and johns aren't so bothersome. 

I slept so deeply when I woke up around 3:30 in the afternoon, I first thought I have to pack things to send, then realized it's Saturday and I don't have to do that, but planned to busk in Mountain View. 

I left here at 5:30 and by the time I got to Mountain View, on the #522 bus which is supposed to be faster but isn't, it was a bit past 8. 

So I was really only able to effectively busk for about a half hour, maybe a bit more. Now, people in Mountain View are poor. But there are a lot of them, and the main street, Castro Street, has been made mostly pedestrian-only, and the city has even put up things like ping pong tables, "corn hole", etc., all sorts of neat games to play for free, and of course walking is free. 

So the result is tons of people, and it's loud so I have to play loud, but not as many tips as I'd have thought. Still, in the half-hour I had to work in, I made $24.50. 

The main problem here is, 1/2-hour of actual earning, with two hours or more on each side of it. 

I played as late as I dared, until almost 9, and got on a train back to Diridon Station to walk back to Whole Foods where my bike was. I had maybe another 20 minutes I could busk there, and did so, making another $2. 

Again, it's money a person could live on, but the hours and hours of travel make the actual hourly pay quite low. My going to Mountain View to busk is like living in Hau'ula and busking at Koko Kai Marina in Hawaii Kai. At least once I'm out of here, I'll be living somewhere that's a walk or at most a short bus ride to Waikiki, the main busking venue. 

It had been another spendy day, as I'd checked places for those chocolate Quadratini things that seem to be straightening out my insides. CVS, nope. Ada's Market, yep, one overpriced bag, which I bought anyway on principle. Easy Foods had tons of them, a dollar or two cheaper than Ada's, so I got another bag there. Plus I'd bought two meat sticks and a bottle of coffee at Whole Foods before getting on the bus, plus when I was really all done and it was 10 minutes to closing at Whole Foods, I bought a pint of Guinness for just under $4. 

One back here, I counted my total money and I'm up still, to $72 or so. This isn't counting bus and train fares though, and I think there's an optimum way to "do" Mountain View. 

The optimum way is to walk out to the light rail station and take the light rail there. That takes a bit less than an hour, and the walk + the light rail ride is at least 1/2-hour faster than any other way and the cheapest. I could stay and play later without worrying about my bike being back at Whole Foods where if it's left in the rack after they close, will be stripped down and probably utterly gone. But taking the light rail back, I can get back later than 10 and just walk in. 

 

Ayman Mohamad Ghazali RIP you poor bastard

 I woke up at 3 this afternoon. Turned on the radio and the professional victims are filling the airwaves as usual, have "no idea of motive" of the latest attack on a Reform synagogue somewhere in flyover country. 

The long and short of it is, a guy came over here from Lebanon. Became a citizen. Did all the things he was supposed to do. He was 41. Living as an average American, he was not able to afford to had children. He had a niece and a nephew back in the Middle East. They were probably his love and his hope. 

Out of the 5 of us, my brother and my sisters and myself, none of us have kids. I guess none of us saw a way to avoid subjecting a kid or kids to the kind of despair and poverty we went through and opted out. Ayman probably made the same decision. But he loved his niece and nephew, probably wanted to make sure they were safe, maybe bring them here. Give them some kind of hope in life. And Israel killed them.  

The attack was amateur, inept. He had fireworks and some jugs of gas. Aside from knocking out one security guard with his car, the only harm was to himself. 

Ayman being from the Middle East would know what it took me a fair amount of time, temple attendance, and classes to learn: Reform Jews have the purpose in the scheme of things to act as a friendly face, but they are every bit as Zionist as Itamar Ben-Gvir himself. "My" rabbi seemed actually scared that Trump would not win. He could bag on Trump with the best of them, but that was all a cover. 

And so now the professional victims put up this big show of not understanding Ayman's motives. Middle-Easterners are just "bad".  And not understanding the despair of perhaps a guy's whole genetic line killed by Israel and what the guy might do, however inept, is a sure way to ensure these things keep happening. Which is perfect for the professional victims. 

I packed all the things, and headed out to the post office. After dropping the things off I rode up to Dai Thanh Market to look for Loacker chocolate wafer things and they had them. I also checked 99 Ranch and H Mart, and they don't have them. There's a chance Wal-Mart does. 

At H Mart I got some chicken and a can of black coffee and ate sitting out front by my bike. A tattooed scumsucker came up asking me for a cigarette, and I said I don't smoke, and then the security guy noticed it and told it to leave. But not before I suggested asking people at McDonald's. I mean, people who eat shitty food also do shitty things like smoke and cover themselves in prison tattoos... 

It was getting LATE. Of course I picked up shipping stuff on my way back, then got my things together and headed out for Whole Foods to do some busking, however late it is, for the practice if nothing else. 

I played from 9:00 to 9:45 and actually did surprisingly well. This being the kind of town where most people are in bed by 10, people who are out shopping past 9 at night can be called late-night people and I'd forgotten how generous late-night people can be. I also got to talk to some neat people. I played 45 minutes and made $34 and that's wasting a fair amount of time talking. 

When I got back here I counted up my total money on hand. I'd started the day with $62 or $63. I now have $68 in my wallet. A couple bags of quadratini - almost $10. A can of coffee and chicken - about $10. A bag of pork rinds - $3.69 or something. A pint bottle of Guinness and a little tub of Irish cheese cubes - about $10. It's been a spendy day and I'm still up by at least $5. 

 

Chocolate of all things

 I'd basically had the runs for months. I even mentioned it to Ken while I was telling him that celiac disease is in fact real and not a communist disinformation plot. 

I did my things, got a surprisingly good practice in considering it was again at 6-7 in the morning. The thing is, doing notes higher than C in the staff requires a pretty coordinated set of actions, and muscle tension, and all this while the body is just plain tired and wants to just go to bed and rest. 

I practiced while watching a movie called "Area Of Interest" which was interesting. It was based on the idea that a fellow named Hoess, and his wife, in command of Auschwitz, would not only live it up, but experience some kind of deep guilt and then one of their daughters would sneak out at night to stash apples where the prisoners would find them. 

In reality no doubt the real-life Hoess and his wife lived it up, and experienced no guilt at all. It's a pretty close analogue to the experience of someone administering a concentration camp, or "reservation" the remnants of one of our "Indian" tribes are in, or the wealthy administrators/owners of one of our for-profit prisons. Hell, kill off enough people, even children and especially children, and you're a hero. Abraham Lincoln was a noticed "Indian fighter" and Andrew Jackson, who was behind the "Trail Of Tears" and such enterprises, is on our $20 bill. (Benjamin Franklin, who didn't want "Swarthy" people in our country at all, is on our $100 bill.) 

I finally went to bed and woke up at 2 in the afternoon, did things and got going at the usual time, dropped off packages at the post office and deposited my pay check and now I know last week's check was good, and everything adds up. 

Then I went to Whole Foods to lock up the bike and took the #522 bus, the "rapid" one, to the music store which got me there in an hour, the time from my door to theirs the law-of-nature 2 hours. I asked about the soft flute case Craig had shown me last time, and instead he showed me another one which would not work. And I had to wait a half-hour for him to finish a lesson. 

I took the bus back as far as Lawrence and went to the Korean market where they sell really good packing tape, of which they had 3 rolls so I got those, and some cookies that looked like they were chocolate but they were really not. 

But was it ever a day for zombies! It's the warm weather. Crazy people on the bus, at the bus stops, etc. 

I got back to Whole Foods at long last, emphasis on long. I had some chicken and broccoli and a pint of Guinness, and by now it was about 9 in the evening. Keep in mind most people in this town are in bed at 10 and almost everything shuts down at 9. So I didn't get to sit upstairs, but rather had to sit downstairs and watch the antics of ...zombies. 

I got done eating and drinking and riding home, saw a ton of police cars etc at Diridon Station. It was, as could be guessed, a zombie going nuts, yelling a ton of things no one could understand. The thing's zombie dog was taken away by Animal Control and the zombie eventually ran out of energy and ended up in the back of at police car, still yelling but a lot less loud now, and still not yelling anything coherent. 

At one point, riding back on the buses, I'd gone to sit at a seat near the back and there were a bunch of hair clippings there. Someone had given themselves a hair cut there? I said something about getting on a bus and not realizing it was a barber shop, and someone said something like "Sit here" and it was a guy from the Jewish temple. The guy who plays trumpet. We talked a bit, he's still playing trumpet, I'm still same, yadda yadda. Nice enough guy, on the surface and that's what the Reform Judaism crowd is for - to put a happy face on the genocidal cult.  

But the main thing is, the day before yesterday I'd found a bunch of "Loacker" chocolate cookies behind the gym and well, they're good so I'd eaten them all. And today was the first normal "movement" I've had in a long time. 

Now, I'm going through about $3 a day in kim chee and Yakult, which hasn't been helping. If I can eat Loacker chocolate wafers with my breakfast and they cost that much, fine. No headache at all. One big difference is Loacker stuff is made in Italy and has to conform to EU regulations. American chocolate and even Japanese chocolate does not. 

So along with my Guinness and hot-bar dinner, I got a 1/2-lb can of Guittard chocolate powder, which is a local product, made just up the peninsula in San Francisco. No additional ingredients, just ground-up chocolate. I've no problem with having Loacker wafers as part of breakfast, but I'm thinking I can use this powder to make my breakfast coffee a mocha, and that might do it. 

 

Predictably

 I got some practice in around 6-7AM this morning and as could be predicted, it didn't go very well. 

How I'm hoping for when I'll hop on a plane and decrease the number of buskers in a 50 miles radius by 50% by leaving. 

Since I'll be turning 65, I'll be eligible to "audit" classes at the University of Hawaii, and I'll have all day to just play music, practice music, pick shells, go fishing, etc. 

I woke up around 3:30 I think, maybe more like 4:30, had coffee and nuts, and had packed all but one thing last night (a large flat roll of wire was a challenge to find but I eventually found it) and just packed one more small thing, and got out of here the usual time. 

I went to 99 Ranch first for a couple of things then the post office, then dropped off the big box at FedEx and in H Mart, got a package of sliced cheese and a can of cold black coffee and sat in front, enjoying half of the cheese and the coffee, and a little package of two Walker's shortbread cookies that were in the free box. They go well with coffee. 

Ken came by, later than usual but at least he came by and I got my pay check. When I go to the bank tomorrow I'll find out if the check he gave me last week was good. I was going to try to do things where I'd check with my bank today, but I didn't have time and had that big box to  take to FedEx. 

Ken and I talked as usual,  and at one point when on this idiotic "I don't like 'gluten-free' being pushed on everyone!!" thing. I fired up Google and showed how celiac disease is real, and went on about how if I see gluten-free written next to items on a menu, I don't consider that to be pushed on me; I'm glad to see that those who need to avoid gluten have some things they can get on the menu. Furthermore, I told him how I've had the weirdest thing happen, where I have diarrhea every day. It's not that big a problem, I "go" after breakfast, have my ass explosion, clean up, then I'm good until the next day after breakfast. But it can't be healthy and while talking, looked up all this stuff about celiac disease and decided I might try avoiding gluten for a while and see if it fixes things. 

Maybe I should have told him his diabetes isn't really real, and instead of insulin he needs to pray to Jeebus or some shit. In any case, he seemed to come around to admitting diseases that are real, can be real. Fucking Boomers man. 

He also mentioned, now that I found out, and told him, that the lease here is up on August 31, that he wonders what the landlord will do in terms of how much the rent will be, how long a lease to sign, etc. I said that it's not just me leaving in about a year and half, it's also if his day job lets him go, then he'll want to operate this business full time. He agreed that's what he'll want to do. 

In any case, although I keep repeating that I'm "white-knuckling it" and holding out until September of 2027, I'm getting prepared to leave earlier if things turn to shit here. If I leave a few months early, that's only a small time window where I'd not have Medi-Cal and not yet be on Medicare. Not drinking, and maybe being off of gluten, means I could assume I'd be healthy for that small period of time. 

 

 

The ol' 198th mitzvah ....

 Look it up, I still can't link it. It's a juicy read! 

It may be time to switch to Upscrolled, "It's not Zionist controlled!" and for blogging purposes, whichever one The Archdruid Greer is using these days. Wordpress I think? 

I got to work listing the 20 things I had photo'd last night and just kind of "ran out of gas" and had a stomach ace, which totally had nothing to do with the big batch of mushrooms I dumpster-dived and cooked up, and the 3 Romaine lettuce hearts from the same source I ate like potato chips, raw. 

So I kind of "ran out of gas" and slept until 3:30 in the afternoon. 

No practice, didn't even brush my teeth.  

I had my brekkie and packed what I could, and got out of here at 10 to 6. Dropped the things off at the post office and bounced back to H Mart where I locked the bike, and took my bag of change with me to Ross, where I bought a couple of pillow cases, and Sprouts, where I bought some olives and some expensive Swiss cheese from ... Switzerland. 

I walked back to H Mart, where I wandered around for the longest time .... I dunno, I was in a "meh" mood and everything was "meh". I eventually bought a package of frozen scallops and got out of there. 

Behind the gym I found a good $15 or more worth of Loacker chocolate wafer things, there goes my diet for now I guess. At least $15 or more worth of them is still not that many.  

So today's freebee was the Loacker chocolate wafer things, and today's excitement was a horrible screaming zombess, that was staggering along through the intersection I had to go through to go from H Mart to Sprouts. The thing was screaming incoherently, as you'd expect the undead to scream, and could still be heard from an amazing distance. Zombie virus ain't no joke.  

When the planes stop flying

 Is is now? 

 I'm not allowed to paste links any more. Yes, the Internet is dying also, but right now it's about being able to fly on a plane anywhere, unless one is wealthy enough to charter one. 

How much worse will it be in a year and a half when I want to return to Hawaii? If the planes are not flying, one plan would be to take a cruise that stops in Honolulu and jump ship. Another plan is to hitch a ride with someone sailing there, or even buy a sailboat and sail there myself - this last could get complicated as I have zero ocean-crossing experience. I guess I'd have to take sailing classes and get certified, then the whole buying a boat and provisioning it and making sure it's seaworthy. All a huge bother, so here's hoping the planes will keep flying for a while. 

OK I've just looked up the Wikipedia listing for Osmium, the most dense element and the most non-political thing I can imagine, and I'm not even allowed to link that. 

I got up, due to my alarm clock, at 2 this afternoon, was out the door at 3, and got over to Grainger before 4, and got a bright yellow hat that's an exact match to my bright orange one, but yellow. And it was $15 and change, a very fair price. That place is amazing, they have every tool... 

On my way back from Grainger I dropped off the packages I had, that I'd packed last night, at the post office and then went over to 99 Ranch for a bit of shopping, then hit H Mart for some other things. 

Then the dumpster patrol, and I found some good packing stuff and some things to list on Ebay to the tune of at least $100 and maybe more than that. It's funny too because there was a bum resting with his back against the building, just sitting on the asphalt, taking a break from can-collecting by the look of things. He made some weird sounds like groans and other than that didn't even acknowledge I was there, having a look at the same dumpsters he'd just gone through, and here I found a box with $100-$200 worth of stuff and eagerly put it on top of the plastic tub on my bike trailer and headed off. Tootle-oo!

Of course Mr. Bum has no way to list things on Ebay, no storage, probably no credit card or bank account or ability to stay on top of shipping, etc. Those guys are strictly hand-to-mouth, or collected cans to recycle place to cash to drug dealer. 

I could do that once I'm back in Hawaii. No, not the routine involving a drug dealer, I mean getting going on Ebay on my own again. I'll have enough money to float on while I'd get it established, but every time I think about doing this, I realize I don't want to go back to the Ebay grind, not for Ken and not for myself. Living cheap, learning and playing music, and collecting my Social Security check will be good enough for me.  

 

Time shifted back

 I woke up at 3:30 woops no, 4:30. I wanted to be out the door at 5, Oh joy. 

By the time I was out the door it was 5:30, but I only had to be at FedEx before 6, to drop off a box containing $1000+ of capacitors going to MIT. 

I got back here and went through a ton of scenarios; I wanted to go busk in Mountain View, and I debated whether to walk to the light rail, ride the bike to the light rail and take it along, ride down to Whole Foods and take the train, or take the 500 bus .... 

I ended up riding the bike to Whole Foods by the quickest route, over the hill that overlooks Bellermine, and since I'd chewed my sugar-free gum on the way, my mouth was all clean and I was ready to go when  I got there. 

Skinny Petition Guy was there but we're friends now so no worries. 

There were lots of people going in and out shopping, but the tips were very slow. Interestingly, I got two of the larger tips, a $5 and a $10, from Muslim-looking guys, while or right after playing "Morning Has Broken" by Cat Stevens, a musician who famously converted to Islam. I'll need to learn more of his stuff because he wrote some really nice songs, and we had his albums "Tea For The Tillerman" and "Teaser And The Firecat" around the house when I was a kid. 

Petition Guy and I talked a bit, and he was especially congenial since I'd given him some pens. I seem to buy pens faster than I can use them up, so I'm happy to share. 

I put in my hour and a half and as always, it was worth it because it's such good practice and besides, I learned a new son, "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head". I remember when I was little I bugged and bugged and bugged my mother for a guitar. So I finally got my guitar, a Sears Silvertone which most guitarists concur is one of the biggest hunks of shit ever made. It was way too big for me, or I too small for it, and those steel strings were much better suited to slicing cheese than for an 8 or 9 year old to learn chords. 

My mom, in frustration, finally took me to a teacher, a nice lady with a guitar of her own with black nylon strings, and which was only a little bit oversized for me. She wanted me to learn "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" which I figured was kind of a dig at my crying in frustration. Later, there was a movie about Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and for some reason this song is played at the end of the movie.  Of course we had to see it because it was shown at the Mormon-owned theater in La'ie where my mom had a job, and free or cheap tickets, that job being conditional on our becoming Mormon so it didn't last, but having Mom work at the movie theater was pretty cool there for a while. 

And here it was, my fingers going in mostly the right places, and I could play it. 

Slow tips or not, after an hour and a half I'd done enough and I counted up: $43.31 making it pretty exactly $100 for the weekend. And lots of compliments on my playing. 

I went in and got meatloaf and some chicken bits and broccoli and a couple of curried shrimp, and a pint of Guinness and went upstairs to eat. I actually ate all that too. 

I went back downstairs and hung out with Petition Guy for a bit, and he told me all this stuff about his rather awful life. How he married some gal in Africa who's 30-odd years younger than him, how useless she and their daughter is, how his "life's work" a bunch of photographs and stuff, file cabinets full, are in a storage in Santa Cruz with her stuff stuffed in front so he can't get at his, how his car has a cracked head so he can only drive it short distances, how his computer's broken too, and the room he lives in is full of mold so he's dizzy all the time, yadda yadda. 

How much of this is self-imposed! He won't buy a used computer but has to have a new one with Apple Care. He won't store his stuff in the rather nice storage place Ken found where you can get a huge space for $300 a month, because Milpitas is "at sea level". How he won't live in an apartment because of all the electromagnetic fields ....  And marrying someone in Africa who's 30-odd years his junior... she was 21 or so, he says. I said in the 50s when my parents married, if you got to 21 or so without being married, it was because no one wanted you. So ..... 

By this time Whole Foods was closing up so I left for home. On Hedding Street I found a whole garage sale worth of stuff with a big sign, "FREE STUFF" and all I found I wanted was some paper bubble mailers. There were dressers, clothing, shoes, even some kind of motorized juicer thing. But in a Depression economy, no one wants that. 

 

Calm day

 I woke up at 3 in the afternoon. By the time I got cleaned up etc., I realized I could go play in Sunnyvale or Mountain View, and spend half the money on transit, plus two hours traveling each way, or I could just see how things are at Whole Foods. 

It was calm, and there was no one else there at Whole Foods. I started playing at 6:30 and stuck it out until 8:00, making $31, and when I was inside the store at the check out a guy came up and handed me another $2 so it was really $33. Plus I got some nice compliments from people. It was warm and not windy at all. 

And it's still the time of year when I don't even bother going out busking, as it's not in the "busking season" that's from April - September, the warm 6 months of the year. 

 

I feel *so* much like I dodged a bullet

 I got up at 2 this afternoon, early for me lately ... on the radio they were discussing the things that I think went into my waking up one fortunate morning and realizing I'm not retiring in Israel. 

They mentioned that something like 80% of Israelis are all-in for this latest war/genocide of theirs. That while they don't like the Netanyahu government, they're all for war and if NPR had the time to discuss this more deeply, they'd mention that their dissatisfaction with Netanyahu is he's not warlike *enough*. 

There are still not enough ultra-Orthodox in Israel to account for this; this is across the board. This is scruffy kids who are secular and sit around playing hippy music and middle-aged ladies with gift shops specializing in "dreamcatchers" and college professors and dental assistants and, well, everyone. 

There's a lot of talk - some of it by myself of course - about how Trump's regime resembles Hitler's and it's not a hard parallel to make considering the guy used to? Still does? Keep a book of Hitler's speeches at his bedside. But I think now a much closer parallel is the Netanyahu regime. 

I had one large thing packed and a handful of small things, and I was really on the ball today, getting out of here with time to drop off the big one at FedEx, then I'd go up past the post office to the next street, Ringwood, and go to Grainger and buy a new hi-vis hat. 

So I do that, go past the street the post office is on and start looking for Ringwood and can't find it. I rode up some street, and found a cross street, Consource, OK great I'm on .... Qume? I'll go up to Trade Zone and loop around, Grainger is just south of Trade Zone anyway.... 

There was a strong wind and I was going all-out to make good time and it was an hour's hard riding and I never found Ringwood, or Grainger. It was weird, because I'd even been there before. 

I found a bunch of packing stuff and rode back here. In theory I had time to relax a bit before taking off again, to go busking, but in reality, not really. I got the cornet ready, and took off and it was already about 5:30. 

I stopped at Nijiya for two boiled eggs and a can of coffee, and got over to Whole Foods. The wind seemed to have died down, and I'd just busk there, I figured. 

I started at about a quarter to 6, and held on until 8:30 but it was rough. First I was tired. Secondly I had a booth-botherer and the skinny guy who sets up a table to college signatures for petitions, for company. My stamina was not great, and I started sounding tired at about the 45 minute mark. The booth guy eventually packed up and I thought it might get better but it did not. 

In the end I made $27.01 and I'd also realized, this isn't even the proper busking season. Normally I don't even bother until April. I walked around Whole Foods and didn't see anything I wanted to buy, so I just called it a night and rode back here. San Pedro Square actually looked worth a try, but my prime playing condition was just plain used up. 

Back here, I cooked some dinner and then it's back to work. At least I looked up the Grainger again and Ringwood is one East of the road the FedEx is on, not the post office. So if I can get going early enough, I can have another try on Monday. 

 

 

A decent practice, considering

 Ken came by an hour early last night, but I had some things packed and had the office vacuumed so it was OK cleanliness-wise. 

I got a double check to compensate for the one that had bounced, and interestingly, in the mail he brought me was a notice that the check from the week before last had bounced. 

I also got my cornet gig bag which is pretty neat. 

After Ken left I packed the other things, being a few more small ones and three large ones, two of them quite large. 

I also called the landlord's secretary about her blaming me for the tables left outside and it turns out the guy next door is also called Alex, and the email was meant for him. I explained how, when the guys next door leave out a bunch of tables or chairs or something, I do them a favor by putting a "free" ad on Craig's List and people come and pick the things up. I'm not to do that any more. I guess the secretary would rather hassle them and fine them etc. But I'm still inclined to help, sneakily. 

I got a practice in that went surprisingly well considering it was like 6 in the morning. I went to bed a bit past 7, and was awakened at 1:30 or so by a call from the music store, my new mouthpiece is in. 

I had things packed, and stacked the three big things onto the bike trailer and took them to FedEx. Then I got back here, put the small things in a bag and took off for downtown. I dropped off trash at my Super Secret Trashcan(tm) and stopped in at Nijiya for boiled eggs and coffee. I ate the eggs at the table there because it beats eating them and being extra careful to be neat on the bus. 

I dropped the packages off at the downtown post office then stopped in at my bank and deposited my check. Then over to Whole Foods to lock the bike, and went right to the bus stop in front and got on the #22 for Mountain View. 

The ride was OK as such things go, until I was a mile or a bit more from the music store. There were a few stop lights out and they were blinking red lights. Those are treated the same way as stop signs. The only trouble is, we're talking 3-4 lanes of traffic each way. And everyone wants to get ahead of the bus because it's just the bus. 

So the progress was a bit slower than walking speed. But I preferred to sit and ride rather than walk it across the freeway "hump" so I sat, and eventually got to the music store. The time was a bit more than the usual 2 hours door to door, more like 2-1/2 hours. 

I got there and Craig was there and he had my mouthpiece, and I tried to buy a flute case but they had a soft one with an extra compartment on top that I didn't want, and a very sleek Yamaha one that apparently is for a certain model of Yamaha and nothing else, as a standard student flute won't fit. So besides picking up my mouthpiece, I got a mouthpiece pouch and that was it. 

I mentioned to Craig that I'd gotten my Gard cornet bag and he said something like, "Oh, same as mine" and got out his horn, an Adams A4 in a bag marked Adams but he said made by Gard for Adams. The A4 is the best trumpet he's ever played and I believe him. It's beautiful.  

I didn't want to be on the bus another 2-1/2 hours so I walked to Castro Street and stopped in at the Paris Baguette there for a croissant with a hot dog in it. Interestingly it was about $2 cheaper than it would be at my local Paris Baguette. 

The pedestrianization of Castro Street is neat, and there were no street musicians, beggars, or anything except up at the North end where there was a small band set up. They were between numbers (I didn't recognize what they were playing before they stopped) and I yelled out, "PLAY FREEBIRD!" which got a laugh or two from people. Then I yelled/sang "And this bird will neverrr chainge-y-yange-y-yange!" in the hokey way that song is sung. Good fun! The singer then launched into "The Donnie Darko Song" which is a good one, so here's to him for being a trouper. 

I got to the train station as the train did, so I ran and amazingly had time to click my card and get onto the last car. So that was nice. A tricky thing; that train was going to Tamien station so I had to be sure to get off at Diridon. 

I got off at Diridon along with a couple gals who seemed kind of lost so I asked them what they were looking for/ A bathroom, first and foremost. I said there's one in the station but it may or may not be clean, or even open. But if they follow me, I'm going to Whole Foods which will have one that's clean and open. So they walked along with me, and it seems one of their, or their, brother I think, got sick in the Philippines, and was going to meet them here in San Jose but is now in Singapore, being sick. So they're here in a house, an AirBnB I suppose. Oh, and they're from Ohio so this is all kind of new. 

I told them this Whole Foods, which they'd never been in one of, is a good "home base" and go them to the loo, and we said our cheerful farewells, and that was it. Gotta take care of our visitors from Ohio. 

I picked out some olives and feta cheese in oil, and a pint bottle of Guinness, and went upstairs to eat and drink. Long day. Eventually I went by the Amazon place on my way home to find one bubble mailer but it's better than none, and got back here.