Some time to think

 I had plenty of time to think about things because I had two small orders to pack, one order of 4 things, one of 13 things, and one of 20 things. So I was up all night finding the things and packing them. Whew! 

The main thing I thought was, I was looking at flight and hotel packages involving close to a month in the hotel. But, I could look them up for 2 weeks in the hotel, about half the time, which would cut the cost down by quite a bit. In two weeks I'd have my feet on the ground, have found a storage unit if I feel I need one, and then if I haven't found a room to rent I can always do more hotel time, give the capsule place a try, or something. The Y's cheap too and actually comes up as an option. 

I wanted to get the things packed because these customers have a way of adding more and more things and in the case of the 20-item order, that took a wheel box to fit all the things. It's pretty handy having a wheel and tire place nearby with customers who order big rims.  They come in nice big boxes.

Before finally going to bed around something like 7AM, I thought of something more: When I had an apartment just a block off of "the strip" in Waikiki in 2003, it cost me $600 a month which means $20 a day. Now I know that easy money to hustle up in any of a number of ways. What made me feel I was in an impossible situation was the fact that I had bought a car, thus had the expenses of the car, parking for the car ($200 a month I think it was) and the fact that having a car means only seeing the world from the vantage point of one who depends on a car. This meant passing up on a lot of places due to lack of parking, etc. 

Being here in the Bay Area has taught me how to live on very little, live without a car or running water or even without electricity if needed, and at least a dozen ways to hustle up money. 

Before leaving the place in Waikiki, I actually paid up the rest of my lease so I'd have had I dunno, several months paid free and clear. If I was going to eventually default on my credit cards anyway, I could have done it there. I'm kind of glad things went the way they did, though, as long as I can get back there. 

I woke up at 3:30 in the afternoon, actually woke up around noon but decided to try to get 8 hours' sleep so went back to sleep then got up, turned on the radio, and the latest banana republic thing going on is El Dumpo and his circle of Chosenites have rigged things where there will be zero investigation by the IRS of Donny Diaper-Filler, or any of his family or Chosenite buddies. 

Now, this should piss off we goyim. Everyone but everyone has to deal with the IRS, and a lot of us believe tax returns are public information. I know I did until a moment ago, the law was changed in 1976 to make them confidential, and 1976 is only 50 years ago, the blink of an eye, politically. So most people should be outraged and it will be interesting to see if they are. 

I took the packages to the post office and FedEx, and after getting some sliced pork belly at H Mart that I wanted to try, a bundle of cilantro, and after going around the back and getting a couple of packages of manju for free, I circled back around and searched the store and bought a "tub" of salad greens, which I've just eaten, because I found a jumping spider in the parking lot before leaving, and put it in a little jar, and want to make a nice little habitat for it. 

It's a Phidippus johnsoni,  one of the common ones around here. I don't know how long I'll keep it, but the salad tub will make a great little terrarium for it. 

I made the mistake of turning the radio to NPR, where they're telling a tear-jerker fiction about some poor, poor little Chosenite who was kept in a box for 2 years during the Hollowco$t(tm) and thus at the end his arms and legs would not work yadda yadda. 

Here's why it's horse shit: Someone kept in a box needs to poop and pee, so he was getting exercise to go out and do that multiple times a day so he *was* getting exercise, or if he were kept in a box that long and not going out to poop and pee, he'd have died from sheer despair if nothing else, and it would have been a stinky nightmare, letting everyone within a mile know they were keeping a Jew. This shit is all fiction, it's one of their many, many grifts. 

So I thought, What if, given that the US gives about $32k to every "Israeli" man, woman, and child each year, while here in the US we do without health care, public transit, decent food, etc., what if all the money taken from the US taxpayer and given to Israel were totted up, from 1948 on, how much would be the check written out to every US man, woman, and child? Might it be a million dollars? 

The Jews have money, there's no doubt. They'll cry bloody murder but they certainly have it. Chosenite Michael Bloomberg spent $500 million on his failed presidential run in 2020, which means he could have given every US man, woman, and child a check for $1 million and had a good amount left over. 

I take comfort in the fact that the dozen or more ways I know to hustle up money do not involve the internet at all. The internet is dying. It's slower than ever, my connection drops out and re-connects constantly, and regular pages are either unreadable or inaccessible. Go to any newspaper's site with the possible exception of The Guardian and it's either paywalled or covered in ads or both.

As for private pages, here are a few examples. Marvin Naylor's nice little busking blog. You have to first know to Google "Marvin Naylor Busking Blog". Then you have to know to scroll down (it's not intuitive) to click on the center "button" that says "start here". That will take you to his very first post, 10+ years ago. Which is fine but if you want his latest, the page will let you see that the first time you click on the latest in the sidebar, then ever afterward that's the latest you'll see *unless* you know to go through the procedure and then click on Marvin's name, in smaller type, above the buttons. Then you can see his latest. 

The New Orleans crackhead's blog. First you have to know how to Google for him, using specific keywords. That will get you to his page, to a post that's getting to be two years old now. You have to know to click on the "masthead" then that will take you to his latest. 

Ran Prieur: You have to know about Ran Prieur and if you don't then tough. I think he's only being publicized by word-of-mouth. He's kept his page very, very simple which is rare and refreshing. But if you don't know about him you'll never find him and if you weren't reading his stuff 20 years ago you won't know about him. 

I used to quite enjoy the Bison Survival Blog. However, Bison has realized he can do better selling printed newsletters so now he does that. 

 

 

Rest in Piss, Barney Frank

 Yeah yeah great guy, champion of LGBT etc yadda yadda. Except like a true member of the Tribe, really only on the side of the G, not the L, and spent his last few years slagging on the B and T. AIPAC approved! So bye-bye.... 

I slept a bit better last night, and am amazing at how much money I'm not spending by not buying beer. I (over)spent $4 on some mustard today and that was it. 

I got back here, had some dinner and did other things like clean the place up, wash out the shop vac in preparation for putting in a new bag, and expected Ken to come in while I was still doing that, but nope. I called 2X and no answer. So here I am, waiting, and no pay check, no call no nothing. 

This would be less worrying if I hadn't gotten an email from the landlord saying he still hasn't paid the $1000 or so he owes them. 

Being evicted is a funny thing. In theory you've got a month, some even say longer. Some others say you can get kicked out in 3 days. The reality seems to be somewhere in between. When the economy crashed in 2007-08, I suddenly was only getting in about $1500 a month instead of the usual 6 grand. That ... was a problem. I would have been evicted and liable for what was left on my lease except (a) I arranged somewhere to go, and (b) I found someone to take over my lease. So in reality I had something like a couple of weeks. I wasn't delinquent any rent, either. 

The thing is that if Ken is really crashing out, things are going to get strange and quickly. I really want that extra year to save up money. 

I looked at the airline I want to fly on and for some reason I can't buy a one-way ticket, but one thing they have is a "package" of flight and hotel. Some of those are interesting. Like the YMCA and a capsule hotel. Some are regular conventional places. But it looks like I can get the flight and just under a month in a hotel for 4-5 grand. The trouble being I only have about 5 grand in the bank right now which might be where that capsule place comes in. 

 

 

Not fuck all.

 Last night was interesting. The illegal night club didn't set up at all. There were only a couple of cars with confused pimps and ho's that came around, and left. Maybe they nabbed someone really important to the operation last night. Just not fuck all went on and it was very quiet, like it used to be. It was really nice. 

That didn't keep me from staying up all night, finally going to sleep around 6-7AM. And was awakened by the guys next door messing around, and then starting up their pressure washer to clean up what looked like a lot of tables for a restaurant. It sounded like it was right outside my door. I took a peek out and well, they kind of were, but if I'd had to get out with my bike there was plenty of room so I couldn't fault them. It *is* an industrial area. 

I kind of went into half-sleep until 3 then got up. I turned on the radio and it was on KPFA and the Background Briefing guy was talking about how much Our Most Zionist President is fucking things up. Australia running out of jet fuel because they normally get it from Chinese refiners. Things like that. 

 

My idea of fun

 Well, the hip's just about all better. I'm glad it wasn't going to become a chronic thing, like my sore back. 

I listed 20 things on Ebay last night, and the illegal night club, despite being rousted all to hell the night before, set up for a rousing night. By 2:30 in the morning there was a group of 10 or 15 having loud arguments right near me, two guys had parked their cars right in front of my door, and the overall vibe was that this night there'd likely be a fight. 

That's their idea of fun? OK well here's my idea of fun - calling da copz. I told the operator about the big crowd and the vibe, that I'd seen it before when people are more "aggro" and there was a lot of young guys, and pretty soon here came da copz. 

Now, at any given time da copz have priorities, and there are a lot of things more serious than shutting down the local whorehouse. But, if a given location gets enough calls, I think it moves up on the priority list a bit and da copz are probably starting to get almost as tired of these idiots as I am. 

(I keep putting off calling Zoning and Vice, thinking that well, maybe things are tapering down now. But they're not and during the week I have a couple of phone calls to make.) 

All these idiots had to do was leave me the fuck alone, and I'd not care one least bit. With the gate closed now, they should be able to keep their craziness over on their side but nope, they're like Israeli settlers* and the only reasonable thing to do is push back. 

*I'm exaggerating. If they were like Israeli settlers they'd have taken over that whole building, its erstwhile occupants in a lime pit somewhere, and this building would be a flattened pile of rubble with my bones under there somewhere. 

I'm emailing back and forth with Pat on the island of Hawaii and he's so full of Fox News crap it's unbelievable. I finally said that there are only two people who believe in this rosy vision of Israel; Zionists and boomers. And we boomers are dying off at a good rate, and the world is turning against Zionism. 

I went out to do some shopping, and the End Times wind was really riotous today. It was windy the last couple of days too but today was really nuts. This same weather system has made it to Idaho by now, hence a couple of airshow planes had a spectacular mid-air collision (fortunately all 4 crew, pilot plus so-pilot for each plane) got out OK. The planes, F18 "Growlers" are not being made any more but all they have to to is mention to Pete Kegsbreath that a "growler" is a name for a large container of beer and I'm sure they'll start making them again. 

I locked up the bike at H Mart and walked over to Home Goods - they don't sell luggage. Then to Ross, which does. There are tons of nice new pieces of luggage and if I don't mind spending a hundred or so, I can get kitted out nicely. It's tempting too. Get a nice "travel backpack" and a larger case to hold the cornet in its case, the cornet gig bag, and odds and ends like clothes to fill it out, have the important stuff in the travel backpack, and sell my fancy European made backpack and fancy messenger bag and will come out even. 

I got more Kerrygold butter, some soft Kerrygold butter with avocado oil in a little tub, more chocolate powder for my morning mochas, and one tall can of IPA. I went to sleep on 3 regular cans of beer and that was plenty last night. Tonight I'll go to sleep on the one tall can of IPA and after that won't buy any more beer. 

As usual there's discussion on Reddit of how the orange diaper-filler is fucking over his own constituents. He looks like a populist, but he's really not. Hitler, when he came into power, did tons for the regular working-class German. Huey Long, "The Kingfish", appealed to the working class and he meant it. If he'd come into power the working class would have made out well and our Great Depression would not have been so hard on the average person. Charles Lindbergh, same. 

In all of these cases, of true populists, yes, you'd do better if you were white, but in the case of Zio-puppet El Dumpo, his policies are hurting the white working class the most. What was that J.C. said, something about knowing a tree by its fruit? 

I've been puzzled at myself, lately. Why was it that when the financial troubles started, and Ken wasn't able to pay me, electricity off, etc., was my response to get out there busking? And why hasn't it been the case more recently when I've been barely even practicing? 

I think in the first case it was a combination of the "false summer" we had, and also, I honestly thought we had at least a year, more like a couple more years, on the lease here. So I thought times might get tough but I'd have a place to stay for at least another year. Then one day the landlord and his secretary came around and knocked on my door by mistake; they really wanted to talk to the people next door. But I had a chance to have a nice little chat, and Oh incidentally, when's our lease run out?  A quick look on her phone and the secretary told me August 31st. 

That's what makes the difference. There's no promise I'll have a place to live past August 31st. And while I could probably make a go of things here, in the most expensive place in the country, where if one is lucky they see the ocean once every 10 years, I don't really want to.  Living here in the Bay Area has taught me a lot about scrounging, living without running water or power, living on next to nothing and having about 10 tricks up my sleeve to make money, but I'd rather practice those skills back home than here. 

 www.archive.ph/iPDTU OK I can't post a clickable link, but if you cut and paste this into your browser, it will take you to a WIRED story about how horrible it is to work in computers/on the internet now. I'd rather collect cans! 

 

Am I getting old?

 Sometime last night or more like yesterday afternoon, I twisted wrong or something and amazingly, my left hip hurts. It doesn't feel like the bone or anything, but more like one or more of the muscles/ligaments that move my leg at the hip joint. 

My evening's work consisted of digging out 15 things a guy had ordered and packing them. Between that and dinner an a later night snack because I felt pretty hungry later, that was it for the night. Then I got involved watching an interesting documentary on early cartoon animation and had 4 beers and went to bed. 

Since it was Friday night and I had the package I wanted to go out all packed and done, I'd kind of given myself permission to sleep as much as I want, as surely I'd still be up in time to get the package to FedEx. And I was, although I woke up at almost 4 in the afternoon. 

I didn't feel great, but my hip was a bit better, and I had  a couple of aspirin and some black coffee, and got out of here just a bit after 5. I dropped off my very neatly packed box at FedEx and my trash to the trash can, and parked the bike by H Mart and looked around in there for quite a while. 

If I'm to take 2 rounded tablespoons of nutritional yeast a day, well, the concept of putting it in a smoothie type thing is just gross. And putting it in soup is just kind of weird. I've sprinkled it on buttered bread and it's delicious that way, although it's really easy to make a mess with the powder. 

So, I figure, the thing to do is mix it with butter and spread it on something and what would work really well is some sort of bread because that can be used to wipe every last bit out of the bowl I'd mix it in. 

So I was looking through H Mart for some bread, dammit. I didn't find any (although I didn't look in the little bakery that's in the store but actually its own thing) and settled on a package of 5 frozen "puff parathas" which I've had before and are good. Hell I even looked at the different flours, thinking of making my own pita bread or something. But 5 nice little flat breads with green onions in, for $2.50 and I can fry up a fresh one each day, sounds like something that will work. 

A good part of why I felt like shit when I woke up was, not only did I eat that huge flour tortilla I'd gotten from the halal truck, but I'd also cooked up the teotkebokki (sp?) which are just rods of pure rice flour, and then since the sauce was so spicy, once I'd eaten the little rods, I'd boiled up some spaghetti and put that in. So it was a huge carb-fest. And the 4 beers sure didn't help. 

So if I'm going to have a paratha or a crepe or a slice of bread or a roll or something daily, I'll stop having my chocolate quatratini's with my morning mocha, because the cocoa in the mocha is probably enough. 

On my way back I found packing stuff, and at the laptop repair place a huge orange anti-static bag, bright orange, large trash bag size so I used that to carry the bubble wrap etc I gathered up. I can cut it up and use it to wrap around circuit boards later, and carrying this huge bright orange bag was kind of hilarious. 

I rode back along Rogers Avenue, and on the way back, I decided to check out these dumpsters I go by all the time. In prime bum territory. So I stopped there and as soon as I did, a nasty dirty zombess of the type that never-ever washes its hands, came out and said Hi in its raspy voice. I said little pleasantries, and looked in the dumpsters. Not worth visiting again, but one had a box of salad type stuff, lettuce etc., in it. So I told the zombess, who said she could not lift it, and I said that's why to always have a knife on you, you can cut open the box and take some of the contents out. 

As we headed back to the street, I commented that the the teapot the zombess was carrying is the same one I have, and that it's a great little tea pot to use on a butane stove, and she said the guy who gave it to her wanted her to recycle it, but she wanted to keep it to make tea. I said that's a great idea and rode off. 

Once I'd covered the distance in the time it took for the zombess to get across the street and confer with the gaggle of bums there, she called out to me. No doubt wants to sell me something, or has made up something to motivate the gaggle of bums to attack. Maybe say I'd stolen something from her, or she's seen a lot of money in my pocket, anything that would motivate a bunch of druggies to gang up and presumably share the spoils. 

So I kept riding, speeding up a little, and hoping none of the bums were able to pursue, maybe on a faster bike or one of them has a car somehow. But none did. And thanks to the closed gate on my side of this complex, I had to ride around the far end which helps to be that much more misleading about where I'm going. I got in here and put things away and This, Kids, Is Why You Avoid Zombie Infested Areas. 

Ahh, the closed gate ... it's been really helpful. And interestingly, the cops seem to be if anything more eager to shut down the illegal night club/brothel. They seem to know the two buildings are under different owners, and the gate being closed emphasizes this. As always I'm ready to call the cops if the brothel and its clients cause trouble for me, but it looked like it would be a relatively quiet night, and then about half an hour after the place started its operation, the cops swooped in and shut that shit down. As always, it was hilarious. Sirens and lights, and the brothel participants apparently staying inside the place hoping the cops would go away, then eventually doing their "rats leaving a sinking ship" routine and swarming out of there. 

 

Nakhba day

 Some good things: First, Hawaii won their case against "Citizens United" which would be better called "Zionists United". Secondly, it turns out that in Hawaii, their Medicaid, called Medi-Quest, apparently will pay the premium I have to pay for Medicare. Something called Part B. I know there's something called Medicare Advantage which is mostly bad unless one is on a ton of medications then it's good. 

Ken came by last night and I not only got my pay check but ... my ballot! It was at the last minute, him searching through his car for any other boxes etc, to leave here for me to use, and I said something about "any mail...." and there was my ballot. Beats the hell out of getting it months after the election like last time. And now I don't have to go to my polling place in person, I can sit down with my DSA voting guide and some other studying and fill it out and mail it in, well in advance of Election Day. 

I spent the night getting 20 things camera-ready which was more time consuming then I thought. That's the big change; in the past the stuff I put on Ebay didn't need a lot of fiddling with, just clean it if needed and put it on. But these days I'm taking a lot of stuff apart and just putting a lot more time into the things. 

But all this situation has to do is hold together until mid-September of 2027 and I'm outta here.  

After working on the batch of things, I relaxed and had beers. Eventually 4 of them, but overall I'd still drank less than the day/night before. I got all involved in watching these YoutTube videos about motorcycle flat-track racing. Now it's all these old guys. It's crazy; one guy even proudly races a Bultaco lol. The glory days of Gary Nixon, Dick Mann, and bad boy Bart Merkel it's not. Hell they even had Bart himself on camera, he was super old and talking about how Gary Nixon put away more alcohol than anyone. "I'm surprised he could get up to race in the morning", he said in his Canadian accent. 

Long ago, in the 80s, I had two books I'd found at the local used book store. One about Dick Mann and one about Gary Nixon, both by the author Joe Scalzo. I must have read each 100 times. Dick Mann (1934-2021) was one of the older racers, while Gary Nixon (1941-2011) a bit younger. They had their heyday in the 1950s and 60s, a time when the US was at its peak and you could go and be a motorcycle racer and do fine. Many other racers were talked about in these books, and some worked jobs when not racing and some just winged it and that was possible back then. 

That was life before the internet. Many an afternoon I'd just lay back on the bed in my mobile home in Costa Mesa, about 100 yards outside the Newport Beach border, and read one of these books, again, with the window open and the fresh breeze coming off of Newport Bay to cool me.  It was escapism, the allure of imagining a life where all one had to do was race and get to the next race. 

I got as far as having an SRX-6 I'd safety-wired myself, a set of Z leathers custom made for me, and going up to Willow Springs a time or two to spectate. And creating a certain amount of havoc and annoyance on the streets of Southern California, on a few different bikes. 

I got to bed around 6AM  I think, drank 4 beers, and somehow managed to sleep in until 3PM anyway. I was glad I had the packages I wanted to mail all packed, so all I had to do was having some breakfast and get out of here. 

I dropped off the post office packages at the post office, went to the bank and deposited my check, then dropped off the FedEx package at FedEx, then adjourned to Whole Foods. I found a can of nutritional yeast that was $30, and some iron pills for $10. I also got some chicken wings and a can of seltzer water and that meal was $10, some macadamia nuts, etc. 

After eating, I packed up the bike. It was really windy and I joked about it being a good day to fly a kite to the Save The Children booth guy, but a guy with a bike thought I was talking to him since I was nearer to him, so he joked back. 

I rode over to the Amazon place and got a nice bunch of bubble mailers, then over to Walmart for TP and paper towels and things. I always lock my bike by the Big-5 and there was a homeless guy sort of camped there by the bike racks. I talked with him a bit, asking him if there's anything he wants from Walmart since I'm going there. He said he has money and doesn't need anything, and we got talking about things. He was sure I had bought him some food some weeks back, and I was pretty sure I hadn't, but could not dissuade him so I went with it. 

Like so many of the homeless people here, he used to be an electronics tech, for DEC,  and we talked about old stuff, old computers, etc. 

I wonder how you go from being a 'tronics tech for DEC and end up on the street, homeless? I mean, I used to be a tech for a company that's still around although they don't need techs any more since it's cheaper to just swap out a circuit board or just a whole new unit. The guy gets Disability so if he's OK with living outside, he can pretty much live a life with no money worries, though. 

I went in and got my stuff and found a 1952 10 Swiss Franc coin in the Coinstar, not worth anything but cool anyway.  

I got back to my bike and the homeless guy had stayed around to watch my bike because I'd left a bag on it, that was a cloth bag holding empty Amazon bubble mailers, tied to the handlebar. I told him it was just bubble mailers and no one steals those, but thanks anyway, it was nice of him. He wanted to talk computers some more and I did a bit, but then said I had to take off and did so. 

As I passed through downtown, I saw, in front of the 7-11 that's known for the junkies nodding out in front, a decent-sized Free Palestine protest. I cheered and yelled "Victory, Victory, Iran!" and showed my support. It turns out this is Nakhba Day, a day I will not forget now. 

I rode home, only stopping at one little free library which didn't have any books I wanted, but the knob on the door (which I'd installed months ago) was getting a bit loose so I tightened it up, and there was food in there so I picked out a small bag of potato chips and an instant ramen teottebokki (sp?) bowl because I've always been kind of curious about it. 

On the way home, I thought, how am I going to take my 2 rounded tablespoons of nutritional yeast a day? It seems best to mix it with butter and spread it on something. I thought I'd stop in at the halal truck on the other side of Old Bayshore from me and get some pita bread because fresh pita bread is awesome. 

But when I got there, they said they don't have pita bread. It was $2 for one, or 2 for $3. I said I'd just get one, but they didn't have it? But, the guy said, he could heat up a tortilla for me and for free. OK, I said. While he was working on that, I took the two $1 bills I had and stuck them amongst the things on the tiny counter there. The guy handed me a very hot, aluminum-foil-wrapped thing, and I rode back here. 

I ended up putting pats of butter on the hot tortilla, and sprinkling on the yeast, and rolling it up. Yeasty butter still dripped out, but it kind of worked. 

 

 

Backsliding

 Somehow I got an unusual number of things done yesterday and then today... not so much. I drank less beer which is very good, got in bed by 6AM which is good, but then slept until 3 in the afternoon for some reason. 

I was all caught up on shipping to where all the things that had to be shipped, could wait until Monday. So I relaxed a bit, considered staying in and just getting things done like a haircut and laundry. 

Then I realized I had one thing that ought to go out today. One. Thing. So I packed it up and took it up to the post office, and didn't buy any beer because beer's on the way out, and only bought some eggs on my card. 

I got back here and had "egg ramen" which is, well, ramen with veggies and then after cooking it, I fried my last three "old" eggs and put those on top. So that took care of dinner. 

Then I did my haircut, got all shaved and cleaned up, cleaned the bathroom and office, and that was a nice feeling. 

 

Ugly Bugly

 After taking a lot of packages to the post office and FedEx and getting back here and cooking and eating dinner, I got involved taking a large HP test instrument apart. There were two of these things I guess might be called electromagnetic positioners (linear type) on top and I was just going to move those, then I decided, why not take them apart? 

So I took those apart, because the bearings and their tracks and the positioners and their tracks are pretty universal, it's just the big, heavy "beds" of the things that are heavy and were likely made for one applications for one company. Hard to sell. But the parts, in their their greasy glory, sure. 

Then I lugged the big HP thing up into the office here and got to work. That was pretty much the night's work. The guy who picks up the scrap I leave out here was surely happy, because I heard him pick up the scraps from the positioners and the outer covers of the HP thing, and then when I was done with the HP I had an even bigger, possibly almost as heavy, pile of scrap to throw out. And pretty soon he was picking up those too. It's a nice service he provides. Yeah I could be turning in the scrap myself but it's a hassle and if there's any side thing I need to do for money, it's busking. 

I call big pieces of test equipment that are heavy and hard to deal with or ship, "ugly buglys" and this was possibly the most so that I've ever dealt with. It was some work! 

I went to sleep on 3 beers instead of on 4 or 5 or 6, and woke up feeling better. In the last few days I've realized, with absolutely no interest in buying my musical instruments that I want to sell off, that I'd be best off selling the clarinet back to West Valley Music and donating the reeds, books, and aftermarket mouthpiece and ligature to San Jose Jazz. Donating the shakuhachi and shinobue flutes to the Nichi Bei Bussan store in Japantown, donating the concert flute I'm not keeping to San Jose Jazz, and as for the glass flutes, maybe West Valley will want them also. 

And putting the time and energy into busking. I need to go to sleep on zero beers, because if Guinness is making me feel a little bit better, than I need to have maybe one Guinness with dinner and that would be it. But probably it's made me feel a bit better because of B vitamins and/or iron so I could just obtain and start  taking nutritional yeast, and look into what greens are good for iron, like beet greens maybe. 

Waking up at 1 in the afternoon, I had time to pick out 20 things to list out of the parts I'd freed up last night, and to list them on Ebay. Then I packed things that had sold and took off at the usual time. I took a quick look at the dumpster on the other side of the building and there was a nice checked-bag sort of luggage, so I put that on the bike trailer, took it back here, then headed out to do my mailing/shipping. 

Besides visiting the post office and FedEx I went to both 99 Ranch and H Mart but didn't buy any beer. I have enough around here to taper off on. I used the last of my money to get the 2 for 1 after 7PM special at H Mart, those little crabs that are fried whole. I'd not had those for a while. 

I picked up some packing boxes and stuff on the way back, and on the ride back here, I saw two bums on bikes on the intersection of Brokaw and Zanker. One bum, with two bike tubes hanging off his bike handlebar, had finished talking to the other one and doubled back and rode off, and as I got closer I saw the one still there was good old D. L. or Diabetes Legs. 

My God he's even fatter and I didn't think that was possible. Also his legs look like they're just about to rot. It was all Heyyyy good to see you, didn't know you were still around, etc. He said he had to go use the bathroom somewhere, something about staying in Milpitas, I dunno, and rode off. The guy lives on 2-liter bottles of soda.  

I was finishing off the crispy crabs when Ken called. Suzy's had some kind of back surgery and he can't come over tonight so will come by tomorrow night. I said that's fine and tell Suzy to get better soon. 

On my way back from 99 Ranch I'd taken the trouble to ride back on the "wrong" side of the road, on the sidewalk, to check out a large suitcase I'd seen lying there for the last week or so. It looks OK so I grabbed it, so now I had two to choose from. 

I had a look at them, and I like the one I found first, best. I found out why it was discarded; it's missing a wheel. I thought it was just a two-wheeler. That doesn't bother me that much. I could put another wheel on it somehow, or just use it as a two-wheeler. It looks pretty good, Hung Phat brand, and still had airline tags and stickers on it from a recent flight. I can't beat the price, and now I don't have to worry about the logistics of buying one at Ross and getting it back here. Thank you, someone at Silicon Valley Precision Machine, for taking a flight and losing a wheel and thus supplying me with a workable checked bag. 

In other news, Marvin Naylor lives! His web page is very wonky, and it takes some real digging to find his actual latest post. All I could find was the last post I'd tried to comment on, failing. I was afraid the guy had keeled over dead or something. But no, he lives, you just have to dig at every possible angle to find any sign of this online.  In a way this is right and just, because the internet is pretty much a fucking load of nonsense and what matters is what you go out there into the world and do. 

 

 

Americans crave the stupid

 Americans crave the stupid; they yearn for it with all their hearts. Why else would Americans be moving to places where the stupid is thickest like Texas and the South in general, especially Florida? 

In Hawaii, this translates to moving to the legendarily lawless and crime-infested Puna district of the Big Island, where at least until recently you could buy land for a few thousand an acre, the catch being that then you have to live in Puna. 

I just got an email today from my friend Pat who does indeed live in Puna and cannot comprehend why I'd not want to move there myself. This is someone who had a couple million around 1990 when that was real money, pissed it away in record time, managed somehow to buy one of those "unpermitted structures" in Puna, and has been living there in misery, with a mystery illness, a freeloading girlfriend, neighbors he's enemies with, and the poverty that comes with living off of Disability with absolutely no desire to work in any way, not even under the table, since. 

He's also a vegetarian who can't stand for me to mention fishing, who keeps 3 cats (which amounts to the meat consumption of 1 human) and feeds those cats on food shipped in from Australia, since apparently buying fish off of the locals isn't something he's going to do. 

So we're discussion the failing colonial project of "Israel" and he just came back with all those Fox News bullshit, how "they" are going to institute sharia law, yadda yadda. 

Being out in the sticks, he can only get AM radio, no FM and no TV, and who knows how rudimentary his internet is, if mine is slow as shit here in Silicon Valley, he's probably down to text and the occasional .gif. Right-wing web sites tend to cater to people with old computers and outdated skills so he's probably on those, like Breitbart etc. All day every day because ... work is a dirty word! 

The thing is, like myself, he grew up on the island of Oahu. Unlike myself, he didn't go through the kind of poverty I did. Maybe that's why he never became as "local" as I did. I'm going to assert that if you're fishing on the reef for dinner, doing odd jobs to buy S&S saimin with spam and green onions for dinner for yourself and your siblings, if your idea of a good time is beach combing especially at 4AM to find Japanese glass floats, etc., you're local. 

Pat never had to do these things or would be inclined to. He may not have even gone to public school, and I know he went to the Catholic summer camp. He always had enough to eat. He graduated high school and I'm sure he has a college degree. 

He's also so "fair" he practically glows. He has no "local" accent, so for the longest time I assumed he was pretty fresh off the boat from the mainland. 

The thing is, though, he knew a ton of people, had a ton of connections, could have found a cheap way to stay around the Honolulu area which is a pretty intellectual place, and he intentionally moved to Hawaii's answer to Bumfuct East Texas. 

He's basically replicated the lifestyle of those leeches, the 1970s hippies who moved to Hawaii to leech off of welfare and food stamps. And he didn't have to end up this way. 

Of course Dave T. in Honolulu is if anything even worse, he's lost his houses, tons of electronics equipment and collectible records, valuable coins, etc., because he wouldn't let Pat and with Pat's arrangement, myself, help him. I was ready to jet over there to Hawaii a few years ago because Pat tried to arrange to have Dave let me clear out a room in one of his houses to live in, and help him sell his stuff and prepare one or more houses to sell. I thought this was a great plan because I'd not have to have $20k or more on hand to make the move. 

That all fell apart, and if Pat is a right-wing loon, Dave is the same, in spades. Dave's Chinese, or more precisely Cantonese, probably third-generation American and fell for all the right-wing radio and loon sites Pat's apparently into. 

Getting back to the email, I told Pat that no, sharia law is not coming to Puna, and no, the news about the "Israelis" shooting children and reporters isn't just an invention by what he called "al-jazzera" but is solidly documented.  

Too dumb to know you're beat.

 Here it is Monday night and, well, it's a Monday what more to say. I woke up earlier, around 1 in the afternoon and I need to keep "marching" my wake-up time back to a reasonable level because I really need to be able to show up at the DMV with a ton of papers and my passport and get my "Real ID" taken care of. The email I got months ago isn't very helpful except to give me an idea of what kind of papers they want; the passport takes care of proving I'm a citizen, and tons of stuff with my address with it will prove residency. 

Our Most Zionist President is proclaiming more victory over Iran, they're in their last gasp yadda yadda. I wonder if the Vietnam debacle was like that? I only remember all the stop signs on Portlock Road being spray painted with the word "WAR" so they said, in effect, "STOP WAR" and being a little kid, I just thought that (a) it was normal, and (b) we're at war somewhere and that's normal too. 

There was Army/military stuff around, our going to A.L. Kilgo's to look at all the neat military surplus stuff, and it was always a fun thing when Dad steered the station wagon to the part of town where there were Quonset huts, like the one Kilgo's was set up in. I love Quonset huts to this day. 

Later, when we were staying at the luxurious Schofield Sands, one morning we were awakened by tanks coming down the street, right out the window, at 7AM. If there's anything a kid loves, it's tanks coming right down the street, right out their window, at 7AM. My mother was less than thrilled. We waited eagerly to see if the tanks would come back by, but they didn't. 

So those are my real-world impressions of the Vietnam "war" and they're not much to build a thesis on. But of course we got our asses kicked out of there, and my point is, apparently we charged in there for real in around 1965, and were probably proclaiming all kinds of victory and "We've got 'em now!" from then on, and could not see that we'd get rousted out of there in 1975. 

We were not smart enough to see that we weren't going to win, and why would we think we would not win? We had all the planes and war materiel, all the high-tech, etc. We even had a little of what our enemy had, which was determination and guts. They just had much more - they were fighting for their homeland and against utter extermination. 

This is the situation we're in with this Iran thing. The Iranis are fighting an existential war. As the saying goes, Whenever you think you haven't accomplished much, remember the US in Afghanistan took 20 years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. Iran is Afghanistan squared. 

So here I am now as an adult, seeing a fiasco not as funny signs and neat machinery but as the possible end of the US as biggest bully on the block. 

I'd packed things last night, packed more things, and took them to the post office and Fedex. At least I have to pack more things. 

Oh and last night I got a practice in, hurray for me. Practice is going well. It seems that some of my troubles with higher notes are not just a lack of conditioning, perhaps, but also a lack of relaxation/coordination of all those little muscles and systems I don't have names for. 

 

 

RIP Abe Foxman

 Where RIP = Rest In Piss. Or maybe in a big vat of boiling excrement, as the small-hats insist Jesus is, for his horrible crimes of empathy, love, and universalism. 

Abe Foxman was one of the leaders of the small-hats' parasitism, insisting everything's "antiseptic" even the air, haha. As the saying goes, he left the world a better place, by leaving it. 

I slept in until about 3 in the afternoon. I packed one thing that the buyer wants ASAP, by UPS on their account, and those never go well especially on a Sunday. So I just sent it FedEx and they'll likely get it tomorrow because they're really close to here. 

 

Richard Wagner was right

 The small-hats destroy music. I woke up at a quarter to 3, turned on the radio, and they've got some interview, big puff piece, on a small-hat who somehow won the Pulitzer Prize for composing some opera about the little match girl or something. 

The guy's not musical. He can't sing, he's "not a good keyboard player" and the singing he did, as he admitted, is off key. He seems to be using computers to do a lot of the actual composing. His explanation of how he composes, I thought would be like I would do if I were a composer, you develop it in your head, hear it in your head, can zero in on what the flutes or the tuba would do, etc. He would be better at it than I am, being a composer and all, but no, his explanation is singing tunelessly and using computers for this and that. 

But he's a small-hat with small-hat money, whose parents sent him to Stanford to become a doctor because what better profession for blood-suckers than to be able to actually suck blood, literally as well as figuratively in the form of money. But I guess he sensed a better con. And he's working on an opera about the book "The Wealth Of Nations" because what subject is dearer to the small-hats than money? 

I will have to study, and listen to, Wagner more. A real, creative, composer who gave us the language of modern music. 

I was up all night listing stuff on Ebay, and the illegal night club did its thing but wasn't enough of a bother to call the cops. 

I was up around 3 this afternoon, and packed a big capacitor for one customer, who then ordered another one so I packed that also. I took those to FedEx, stopped in at Sprouts for some Guinness in cans (there seems to be a situation where it's only possibly to buy it in those tall cans or in these weird bottles with the same nitrogen mechanism in them as in the cans) and followed my route finding packing stuff on the way back, which got me a lot of packing stuff. 

Dinner was Mama green curry ramen with hamburger and a whole bundle of cilantro. It seems like an inexpensive way to get a lot of greens for less than a dollar and I like it. 

H Mart where I picked up the bundle of cilantro,  was super busy and it made me wonder if I should try busking there. There's the "island" in the parking lot where the gypsy kid had been busking a while back, and lots of people going back and forth. The only problem being the wind, I'd need to put something pretty heavy into my tip box to keep it from blowing away. 

My friend Pat on the big island has been emailing back and forth with me for a bit, and he mentioned a Phil I think, who often has a room for rent around the Manoa area. I said that'd be perfect. I said I don't know how things will go here but I'll have at least 2 weeks' time before I hop on a plane. And that I don't mind landing in a hotel, it's just that hotels are expensive so it's not really sustainable long-term. 

This is promising though. Pat may be a doofus but he knows people.  

 

Friday payday woooo

 I spent most of last night getting things ready to list on Ebay, then hit the sack around the usual time, about 6 in the morning. 

I woke up around the usual time too, around 2:30 in the afternoon. I had 3 small things packed and in the bike bag and only had to have some breakfast and clean up a bit and got out of here a bit before 4. 

I dropped off the packages at the downtown post office, and deposited my check in the bank, and my math and their math were very, very close. Close enough for me! I think I pay a $3 or so charge for getting a mailed monthly statement if I have less than X in my account and if X is 4 grand, that could explain it, but I think X is actually only about $2500 and I think it's just slightly buggy math. Off by less than a dollar in 5000 dollars is a tiny bit. 

I went to Whole Foods and got some food and a beer and cash back, then when I was done with that I got some other things and cash back, so that I'd taken my "allowance" of half my pay check out. I ate upstairs and got curious about a fake rock they had there. I took a look and it's a mouse trap. Some utility worker guys were at a nearby table, talking about work stuff, and we got talking about the rock and rats and mice in general. 

The 2nd time I'd gone into Whole Foods to get things and cash back, a guy thought I worked there and was looking for something. I said I don't work there but what's he looking for because I know the store pretty well. He had "low vision" so finding things was hard for him. I said "Follow me" and we went over to the cracker section where I found his black sesame crackers right away. He thought they had some medicinal value, it seems. He has to get up to pee too much at night, he said. I said that sounds like (hedging my bet) pre-diabetes. He said he's got diabetes all right. Low vision, 35+ BMI, yeah... pretty easy diagnosis here. 

I went over to TAP Plastics for a plastic bottle and a squirt top, because I've found that "Lime Away" is a great product but not the bottle it comes in, which not only had a hard to use dispenser top, but leaks. 

Then I rode over to the Amazon place, only finding a couple of bubble mailers but Oh well it's two more than I started with. I also found Leroy busking in front of the old Johnny Rockets. 

Leroy's looking (and sounding) great these days. He's got a shirt with his name and a saxophone and music notes on it, and is playing his new Selmer which has a nicer sound than his old horn which was actually turning green in places. He's also using backing tracks which are a big help. His guitarist friend had gone back to New Orleans. We talked about this and that; he told me the Starbucks is gone now, and how, online, there's the legend of the Starbucks cup in the Johnny Rockets, sitting there for years now, like the whole place is trapped in time. 

I rode down to Walmart and got a bunch of things, stopped at Nijiya on the way back for garlic, and got back here. 

I feel like I haven't played or practiced for a month. It was warm, then it got cold again. I find it hard to practice unless I've got everything else done, but that's not working. The ideal time to practice would be,  I figured, after the daytime things are done, but before it gets too late. There are too many hinky characters around here now to risk being heard in the wee hours of the night. 

And, for three nights of the week, the illegal night club is operating and I don't want to be heard by the sketchy people associated with that place. So there's a time window of something like 9 or 10, until 1AM. Tonight after eating dinner I brushed and flossed and chewed sugar free gum and got some practice in. It went well too, considering the time I've taken off. I got a solid hour in, and now, for the rest of the night, I can do Ebay stuff which isn't noisy and not much of a tip-off that I'm in here.  

Registering to vote

 Ken came over last night, and I got my pay check which he says won't bounce. We talked about stuff, and it was pretty much just the usual. 

I woke up the usual time, around 2:30 in the afternoon, and packed things. I can't deposit my pay check until tomorrow so it was the usual route of post office, FedEx, stopped at Sprouts for beer, found packing stuff on the way home, and got back here. 

I'll deposit this latest check tomorrow, and my level of worry is down maybe by one notch. I'm still worried because Ken's not paid that $1000.95 he owes the landlord, and we still have our present lease running out on August 31st. 

So the plan is still to be able to step onto a plane September of this year instead of September of next year. Maybe Ken will be able to make things hold together and maybe he won't. 

The guy makes pretty exactly 10X what I do, $200k to my $20k. But being a devout Suburbian is expensive. You have to have a McMansion or at least as big a house as you can possibly afford. You have to have N+1 cars where N is the number of people in the house. You have to eat in restaurants a lot, take regular vacations whether you can afford them or not, and you have to have several credit cards that are at or near their limit.  It's a very distinct, and expensive, subculture. 

Another piece of mail that went out was my voter registration. I've been sent two forms with different serial numbers, so I filled out one (disposed of the other) and sent it in. Of course among other things the form asks for one's race. because race is everything in the US. 

I wrote in "White" because although I am certainly more than "one drop" Tatar that doesn't count the way being "one drop" Negro would. "One drop" Negro would have gotten me life on a red carpet, with free college plus extra pay for going to college, plum job offers, etc. 

Now ask yourself, would Japanese, over there in Japan, their nation, enact laws putting Japanese at a disadvantage and, say, Koreans or Filipinos at a huge advantage? Would Spaniards set up laws against themselves, and in favor of Ethiopians? When has any group that's doing fine, enact laws to sabotage themselves? 

The answer is plain and clear and can be expressed in a single word: Jews. The very group whose signature move is to infiltrate a host country, then open its gates to an attacking army because profit. This ranges in practice from physically opening a medieval fortress' gates to taking over the media of a country and brainwashing people, as is done in these modern times. 

In any case, growing up where being white is a disadvantage, and living in a time where it's the same (moving to California didn't get me away from anti-white discrimination because Da Jooz run the whole thing, not just the state of Hawaii) I've had to become canny. 

Going onto Ebay has been a lifesaver because Ebay has no mechanism to pay a seller more of less according to their race. Being self-employed is pretty much the key to getting around the ZOG rules. 

But in Hawaii there have been extra nuances. For instance, selling trinkets in Waikiki. You can't do that if you're white. If something physical changes hands, you're going to spend the night in jail, if you're white. If you're non-white, go ahead it's fine. But in playing music, nothing physical changes hands. Plus, being white and being a musician is actually kind of good because there's the "exotic factor". 

The most valued tourists in Hawaii are the Japanese tourists and Asian tourists in general. They spend money, they're polite, etc. And imagine growing up in Japan and seeing on TV etc all these musicians who are white, and then in Hawaii there's one in the flesh. 

I've been astonished seeing white guys playing guitar not only barely tolerated but considered as OK as anyone, on the strip in Waikiki, on YouTube but that appears to be the situation. I think there's always been less racism against whites in music in Hawaii for various reasons. Firstly, music is not considered a prime occupation, and also a lot of musicians that Hawaii musicians admire are .... white. Get any old local musician guy talking and he'll gush about white guys like Chet Atkins.  

So this is why busking and doing things like maybe playing in some bands to fatten up the sound, playing Taps, stuff like that factors so largely in my plans. 

There are tons of other things I can do but I'm not even counting on Ebay any more because although once back in Hawaii I'll be out from under the rigid non-compete situation I'm in now, it appears the small-hat that runs GameStop (running it into the ground apparently) is trying to buy Ebay for some reason. And given that the small-hats own and operate our financial system, this may actually happen. The problem is the particular parasite proposing this has no knowledge of the history of Ebay, and wants to try changes that have been tried and failed utterly. 

So Ebay may ... go away. Etsy will presumably still be around, and there are tons of other ways to sell stuff so I'm not that worried. But it will be interesting. The small hats are over-reaching and over-reaching and the anger is building, like a tsunami that is only inches high when it crosses the high seas and then when things start to pinch and the water gets shallower.... 

 

Visiting a sick friend

 That sick friend being my bank account. Amazingly, the pay check I got last week didn't bounce. 

 I rode downtown to the bank to check on that, because Ken typically can't find out from his phone or anything, so it's easier to just ride downtown. I figured I'd get bubble mailers too, but only got one from the Amazon place. 

And I stopped at Nijiya on the way back for $20 in sushi, a bottle of tea, and a little apple pie thing for dessert, to sort of celebrate. I was worried enough about things that I even had a weird dream about my money situation. 

So I figured I'd better go. Then after getting back here, I packed one thing that had to go out today so that was a ride up to the big post office and on the way back I looked for packing materials and neat stuff in general and found nothing. At least I spent my last bit of change for two packages of "Mama" brand green curry ramen, because I really like that flavor and I might not be up by 99 Ranch until Monday. 

 

 

It ruined me

 "Streaming ruined gaming for me for YEARS. It took me ages to find that part of myself again" 

- u/OhGodImHerpin on Reddit

I was considered destined to be an artist. The oldest was going to be a writer, I was going to be an artist, and the youngest, a natural entertainer because it's that or starve if you're the youngest/smallest/weakest, was going to be an entertainer. 

I was continually having drawing materials put into my hands, and I was probably known as the kid whose hands always had ink all over them (from pens) because that was pretty much the case. 

Both parents were frustrated artists, and I think the fact that I showed any interest in drawing as any kid would, plus my eyesight being so bad, the idea was I'd become this genius nearly-blind artist and save the family fortunes. 

As we became poorer and poorer, art-for-fun (I loved drawing my seashells) became art to make money, and I really tried my best but the internal motivation was not there. It had already become a job. 

I spent tons of time as a teen thinking there must be something wrong with me that I'm "talented" (I am not, but tons of successful artists are not) and thus I should love doing art, should do it instead of surfing, fishing, shell collecting, skateboarding, reading books, all the usual kid things. 

I really tried to push myself, thinking that would make me *want* to do it for hours a day, but that never worked. I could do it, but I was never actually all that interested. 

This same thing is why I think my mother was so miserable. Her mother was a tailor; took classes and could make a suit from scratch, really something. She probably loved it. She also gardened and had a number of plots of land in Pasadena that she gradually sold off as finances demanded. 

The thing is,  I think my mother showed some interest in the tailoring, and then was pushed to do it. My mother would become this great tailor and/or designer, and save the family fortunes... And my mother really tried. She could sew, all right, but I don't think her heart was in it. And she was miserable. Because here's this thing you know how to do, but you don't have any internal motivation to do it because it's become this thing you have to do, or are supposed to do. 

It seems simple as hell but it's taken me a long time to realize this. The first hint of this kind of thing is how Fielding Benson, noted surfer Becky Benson's younger brother, was being pushed to become this champion surfer (he was our neighbor) and instead liked to skateboard and do usual obnoxious kid things. The Bensons were a kind of surfing royalty, with their father, "Colonel" Benson financing and filming a lot of surfing movies, and here was the crown prince not doing his duty. 

The thing is, there's art I did love, I loved comics and once I was exposed to them, "underground" comics. But I knew that if artists don't make a living, underground cartoonists *really* don't make a living. Plus you can get in real trouble poking even the mildest fun at, well, anything or anyone, in visual art.  

I'd packed a bunch of things last night, packed a few more today, and took my big load to the post office and FedEx. 

Running on financial fumes because of my rule of putting my $400 weekly pay check into the bank and taking $200 out and that's it, that $200 is my allowance. But I got what I need. 

It's been cloudy and grey and not all that windy, but like a big lid has been put over the valley, made of cloud/fog. Kind of neat really. Not primo busking weather though. 

It's hard for me to concentrate on busking when I've got a million plans going through my mind about what to sell off, what to give away, and how to at least go through the motions here and keep the sales numbers good. 

 

 

 

Don't start none, won't be none.

 A classic example of this is seen all the time on r/publicfreakout on Reddit, where, say, Generic Out-Of-Shape White Guy at, say, a restaurant, goes over to Relatively Fit And Larger Black Guy (and family) and says something, generally including the word "vinegar" without the "vin" and thus, gets his ass handed to him. Things were going along fine, and then someone's going to start shit and then cry about being a victim. 

Firstly, I'm hearing on the radio that Our Most Zionist President has cooked up a plan for us to have Navy warships and who knows what other assets, to escort commercial ships through a 500 to 1000 foot wide "channel" through the 20 miles of the Straits Of Hormuz. So, instead of just the cost of fuel, now these ships, or more like we US goyim, are going to pay for this additional expense, which has to be several times the cost of the merchant ship's fuel. Iran was minding its own business as always, and now we've got this huge problem we, under our Most Zionist Government, have created. As always, victory to Iran! You're fighting for all of us! 

2nd example. I was up most of the night as usual, listing 20 things on Ebay and also during the day had done a bunch of stuff, sorted things, found things to toss out, etc. At 2AM the illegal night club started up, but no problem, it looked like the crowd would be small. The night before, the cops had come around on their own and rousted the pimps, hos, and johns out in the usual hilarious ants-leaving-a-kicked-over-anthill routine. I hadn't called them or made a peep. 

Well, sure enough a pimp comes in with a few ho's and one of them comes up and knocks on my door. I've had these idiots pound on the door, in the past, so hard that the door was actually flexing like in a cartoon. So I had no idea how persistent they were going to be, made sure my big knife and pepper spray were at hand, and called the cops. 

And the idiots got rousted again. Fuck 'em. As I explained to the police operator, I'm not bothering them, not even going out there at night, but they're coming over and bothering me. And in not too much time, the cops came around and rousted them again. 

The thing is, if I'd been following normal hours, I'd be asleep and the knocking on the door would have awakened me, probably thinking it's Ken or Tom or someone, some kind of emergency or at least urgent thing. The result would have been the same, calling the cops, but being rousted out of sleep is even worse. This is one reason I keep staying up all night. And also, the people running the illegal night club not only have made an enemy, they want to make sure I hate them with the maximum amount of vitriol. 

Getting back to the Iran Kicking Our Ass thing, it's hilarious that the expectation is that large commercial ships, larger than US aircraft carriers, will be able to stay in a de-mined 500-1000 foot wide "channel". Ships are just not that precise, and even with a compliment of tugboats it would be tricky. Plus of course the companies that insure ships are going to raise their rates, drastically. Hell I've known at least since I became an adult, that no one will attack Iran because they can shut down something called the "Strait of Hormuz" which would be terrible. Well, no one, at least, until our Zionist Occupation Government finds someone stupid enough to do so. 

 

Depressed

 That's why I haven't been practicing, much less busking; I've been depressed. It's kind of helped that it's been grey and blustery and not all that warm, not great busking weather. 

I've been depressed I think because I'm feeling like I have a bit less control over my life because right now I don't know if I have to be out of here in the planned year and a third, or in 4 months, or in less time than that. 

And because there's stuff I have to do like get my Real ID. My driver's license is ... well .... it expired last year and that's all I'm gonna say. 

So I *finally* had a look at the email the DMV sent me and somehow I'm supposed to send them documents ... like scan them? But bring in the originals too... And there's mention of both making an appointment and simply checking wait times for walk-ins. 

So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to get together all the papers I can which is basically my passport to prove I'm me, and then a few things with my address on them to show that Yes I live here in California and have been doing so for quite some while. And my $2 thrift store glasses in case I need to take an eye test. That's it. 

But really, I don't give a flip about being licensed to drive a car or ride a motorcycle any more. I've gone since 2012 without having to drive a car even once, and back in Hawaii there are buses, cabs, Ubers etc. I haven't even taken an Uber, ever, and have used cabs a bit, and I'd rather my money go to the old local guy with a big yellow car that says SIDA TAXI as far as that goes. 

Sure, I've thought about how neat it would be to get a cool vintage bike like a Honda C70 "Passport" but in reality anything with a motor can be a real pain in the ass. So just having a state ID card would be fine with me. Those are a bit of an oddity here in California but back in Hawaii they're routine, and all I had for some years. 

So if I run into some hitch at the DMV like they don't like my eyesight (they never did), I can say Look, I just want a state ID card. 

So I think the plan would be to go to the Los Gatos DMV because that's the really nice one. It's somewhere around the south end of Vasona Park and I've been around there before. 

 

Making up my mind

 Last night I made my mind up about the flutes; I'm keeping the Yamaha in its Yamaha case, which fits in my Fjallraven backpack just fine. In the time I've had the backpack sitting upstairs in the loft, it's collected a nice patina of dust, making it look suitably "humble". 

Fjallravens are not waterproof, and one is supposed to apply special Fjallraven wax to it and hit it with a heat gun, but I can just genuine 3M waterproofing stuff at Lowe's, or if needed I can just carry a large plastic bag with me to put over the backpack if I'm caught in rain. This is much more of a concern back in Hawaii where it rains a lot, but unless I end up homeless, I don't plan to carry the thing around. 

Last night I got 20 things camera-ready, because the Ebay business must go on. I also tossed some things out and each day I'm going to de-list and discard one thing that's a real loser. 

Today I went out to dispose of trash and buy things and the usual futzing around. On my way back (I hadn't realized how late it was; it was 8:00 by then) I stopped to check out a new shawarma truck that's set up across the street from here.

I'd checked them out online some days ago, so I had a general idea of the food and the prices. I decided to go with a beef shawarma salad, and the gal said they were out of rice. I said that's OK, just substitute in a pita. OK! I paid, and it was something like $18, so I handed her a $20 and she didn't have change so I said don't worry about it (I was going to say to keep the change anyway). 

While waiting, I ended up talking with a couple of Turkish guys, about various things. One useful thing that came up was, one of the guys, an engineer, wants to try an Apple computer. I said to go to Fix Laptop or just about any computer repair place, and if they get a desktop instead of a laptop, they'll get a lot more capability for a lot less money. 

We also got talking about where we're from, and they're both Turkish, although the darker guy joked about the lighter guy being Bosnian or something and I said Yeah, he could be Bosnian. Then the "Bosnian" joked about the darker guy being Indian and that was a big laugh. But no, they're both Turkish... I said OK what am I? They said I look "Baltic" and I said that's funny because on my mother's side they were all Lithuanian, but actually Lithuanian Tatars. That got me fist bumps because for some reason Tatars are considered "Turkic" as much as Central Asian, maybe more so, although being Turkic has more to do with language groups then genetics. The warm weather has me tanned up a bit early this year. 

So of course some joking Judenhass happened, and that was a good time also. Eventually my order was done, which was odd because the guys were there first. But the gal insisted it was for me, and handed me a heavy bag. OK then, See you guys, have a good weekend! And rode off with the bag hanging off the handlebar and back to here, and I seemed to have gotten a full dinner. A huge portion of beef, on ... rice! And hummus, 2 pitas, parsley salad. 

I ate the good parts and one of the pitas, and now the birds will have rice and pita bread in the morning when they discover the plate left out here. And I have to wonder, did the gal screw up and then have straighten things out when one of the guys got the salad I'd ordered, or did she hear our Judenhass joking and decide this deserves a full meal, and cook one up for me instead of the salad? In any case the food was really good. 

But getting back to the computer advice I gave the engineer guy. I, too, could just get an Apple desktop if I want to go to the Apple ecosystem, or a PC desktop, instead of a laptop because honestly the only reason I use a laptop now is that originally I had to pack up my 'puter and take it to and from Ken's house once a week, and when I list things on Ebay I have to set this laptop aside to clear the desktop to put the things on to photograph them. But once I'm back in Hawaii I either won't be selling on Ebay or if I am, I can arrange some other place to photograph things since I'll be dealing in very small things like seashells, jewelry, trinkets of various types. Nothing big. And that means I can just go to a used computer place and get a desktop. 

 

 

"Oh, shit"

 I woke up around 2 or 2;30. I decided to get out of here quickly and get over to the music store to look for a flute case. 

I have two flutes; a Yamaha that's not great, kind of rattly compared to new, but plays, and also had a ding on the lip plate that doesn't affect playing but would make any flutist cringe. And a Bundy that's got a wonderful glow to it, looks playable (haven't tested it) no dings, but comes with an horrible big clunky case. The Yamaha has a nice sleep Yamaha case. 

I want to keep one flute and one case. If the Bundy plays OK I frankly prefer it to the Yamaha because it looks so nice, and is perfect to be "my old high school flute". So ideally I want another case, keep the Yamaha with the Yamaha case, the new/used case would be for the Bundy, and the ugly Bundy case would go in the trash. 

The music store closes at 4:30 so I really wanted to get a move on. I left here around 3 I think, got over to the bank and deposited my pay check; the IRS has cashed my check so this, with my pay check deposited, puts me at just about exactly 5 grand. 

Then I rode over to the music store. This all sounds easy but in fact there were tons of detours and road work and stuff, so it was all a bit of an ordeal. 

I got to the music store and the guy has two types of flute cases, a generic case for $50 which he swears is new but the latches are corroded, and a "French style" which is probably about $100 and is sleeker, having no handle. 

My phone rang and it was Ken. Did I deposit my check, he wanted to know. I said sure, just did a half-hour ago. "Oh shit!" said Ken. I said that the words Oh and Shit are not words I like to hear in connection with banking. His work hasn't paid him, and he thinks he can move some money around so my check will clear but also the landlord isn't being paid their $1000.49 which is becoming the hill Ken, or this business anyway, is heading to die on. 

I decided to wait on the case; It'll always be here the music store guy said, and I rode off, back towards downtown. It was about 4:00 now and I thought, I still have time to go over to the bank but is un-depositing a check even a thing? And I should not have to. 

I went over to Whole Foods and got some meatloaf, broccoli, mashed potatoes, and a beer. I hung out and talked with some guys some, and ate my food, and tried to think a bit less. 

Pretty soon I was done, went downstairs and bought more stuff, and as I did with the food, got cash back so that my total withdrawal from my bank was $200. That's my allowance for the week. It's a pretty good idea; spend half and save half. On an income of $20k, it means saving $10k, except for the $3k going to the IRS so call it $7k. Still a pretty good savings rate, about a third of my income. 

But now I don't know. Ken's got all the good intentions in the world. I could sell some stuff around here that's too big or awkward to ship on Craig's List and count that towards my pay and can limp along that way for a while. 

From what Ken told me, he's got too much credit card debt and he's trying to get that consolidated. The guy at my bank told me, again, that they can offer a credit card with somewhere around a year interest free, to Ken or for that matter, to me. It appears everything's not done by mail any more, and payment is done online, somehow. There's even auto-pay. 

But it makes no sense to get a credit card with a bank I won't be with much longer. I like to think I've got a 4 months here left at least because our present lease runs out on August 31, I might not even have that much time. 

 I need to sell off a lot of things. I plan to travel as lightly as possible going back home. There are no winter and summer clothes back home, just ... clothes. I have a Fjallraven backpack that I guess will do for a carry-on bag holding the flute, important papers, phone and charger, a good book for the plane ride, etc., and then I need to get a larger thing for a checked bag that will hold the cornet in its case, the cornet gig bag, clothes, etc. 

I plan Moving Day as, taking everything that's mine that I don't want to leave to Ken to deal with so pretty much everything, put in the parking lot and putting a free ad on Craig's List, Come And Get It. Stick my bags on the bike trailer and ride to the #60 Airport Flyer bus stop, leave the bike trailer etc., there with a big FREE sign on it, hop on the bus, and off to good old Alaska Airlines' terminal.