GLOOMITUDE

It has been cold and wet all day. Altogether very much like the Netherlands. Not frigid, not raining. But rainy. Drizzle. Dark and overcast. My apartment went and got us lunch, roast meat, duck, and vegetables. Plus rice, of course. She kind of went overboard, being a Cantonese American woman, who always thinks of good things to eat as unalloyed and unconditional methodologies for happiness. She also brought some food for the woman downstairs who is our landlady. Also a Cantonese American woman.
Who often does the same thing.

Good food does make happy much.
That's absolutely true.

I spent the afternoon using the paint program and occasionally gloom scrolling to see what that orange clown has been up to lately, as well as his pimps and enablers. If he were just a normal senile old fool, someone would have him committed or put on trail for any number of things. But the rightwing in this country is determined to protect him at all costs, and ruin us while doing that. So I did not go into the internet much. The darkness of the weather we're having here is more than enough to cast us down.


Before tea time I headed out with a pipe and enjoyed a bowl while puttering around the neighborhood counting things. Driverless taxis, dogs, tykes, couples, street people, and familiar faces. A neurotic mental glitch.

That is something I always do when heading to the further bus stop on work days. Usually there are more tykes, fewer dogs, and roughly the same number of driverless taxis. Familiar faces are also somewhat greater in number. There are three elderly Cantonese people who always wait at that time at the nearer bustop to head down to Chinatown. I expect that they have a set breakfast routine, and meet up with a friend or two at that time in the morning. Gracefully heading further into old age.

A fourth one gets off the Van Ness bus with his cane and strolls over to the bus stop on Clay. No hurry, calm of pace, jay-walking at the same spot, thoughtfully breaking the law. Which nowadays probably won't excite the police, but a few years ago could still get you cited. We allow sensible behaviour now. And only one person I know has ever been given a ticket for doing so. I still look both ways for traffic and a cop whenever I do it. Old habit. A neurotic mental glitch.

The pre-tea time pipe was an old Comoy off-brand Canadian from many years ago. It's a darn good smoker, exceptional, and extremely old-fashioned. It seemed appropriate for a day like today. There was a timeless quality to the air outside with the overcast darkness. The precipitation would not have been noticable if you were out there only a minute or so, but prolonged exposure would leave you damp. A coldness crawled up your feet from the concrete pavement.

A perfect day to smoke a pipe. But better inside.
Where I couldn't do that. Obvious reason.
Still. Quite pleasant.



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RABBIT RABBIT JANUARY 2026

Rabbit rabbit. Which is good luck, and the correct way to start the new month. And today being January first, many people are undoubtedly waking up with hang-overs regretting the things they did last night. That attempted hook-up with the two trashed blondes. The line of white powder with the cigar-smoking techno-lawyers. The offer to buy both the woman and her daughter. Or, if they're female, the panty incident. The champagne-drenched tee-shirt contest. The non-vegan food and gluten-rich pizza with rabbit meat.
The bottle of single malt stolen from the hotel bar.


One out of ten business-school graduates will wake up in jail-cells because of what they did last night. On camera. Both indoors and in a public place with friends they didn't know.

Was it worth it?

Well, it won't look good on your résumé. Best obfuscate if asked. You were forced to do that. There was a man with a gun. Or holding the keys to the executive washroom and you really had to pee. Jesus spoke to you. It made America great again.

It was a group-building exercise.

The Venezuelans!

Rabbit rabbit. Saying rabbit rabbit is rather old-school, waspy, East-Coastian. Sort of English. Although one of the people I know who also has the custom is of Bengali ancestry, another is Chinese American, and a third one is Ashkenazi. Good people. Solid.


One of the rabbit rabbit people always does an illustration of rabbits enjoying cups of coffee on the first day. I decided that, as I am a pipe smoker, my rabbits would have briars.
Whether they enjoy Virginia Perique compounds or Balkans is up to them.


Rabbit rabbit.



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THERE'S A LID ON IT

It started raining right about when I intended to do my laundry, and has kept up ever since. Not rain rain. More thick drizzle. Enough to nix laundry plans. If this keeps up for another day or two mildew becomes a real possibility. There may be a break Friday, but it will sputter on for a while. It is highly likely that the weather kept the old gentlemen who drop by the bakery in check, as none of them showed up. But there where three familiar faces there, and we wished each other a happy new year.

This weather may also subdue the celebrations tonight. Especially the crowds expected in the usual places, like the Embarcadero, Union Square, and the intersection of Grant, Columbus, and Broadway.

After lunch I purchased a box of chocolates to bribe the stuffed turkey vulture, who when he isn't fed starts growling and importuning about fatty inner thighs. I do not know where he got the term from, possibly a manga he (we) read years ago. It's disturbing, just like his recipe for soup, and his considering imaginary little girl hamsters (one little girl) that visit the apartment during afternoons as potential meatballs. Turkey vultures do not normally have access to meatballs, what with not being Italian or Mexican. Or Swedish.

No, I shall not introduce him to the Dutch gehaktbal. That would simply spur on more evil. We don't need that in this apartment. Please imagine a saintly Dutch American calmly putting up with all manner of misbehaviour and insurrectionary activities while sipping a refreshing cup of tea and contemplating navels in the abstract. We're good at that.

蓋碗

If more people enjoyed caffeinated beverages (instead of acid, adderal, adrenochrome, and cocaine snorted off gold toilet cistern lids in the White House) this country would be a calmer and more peaceful place. Less grifting, fewer murders. Problem is that most Americans look to tacky celebrities for examples, rather than sober quiet people like myself.


You are all vulgar, uncivilized, and going to hell.
Happy New Year. Enjoy the rain.
Good night.



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THE FESTIVITIES

On the last day of the year it is very good to remember the imaginary past, when one was a brother in a modest fraternity at an old university where every student wore scholar's gowns and spoke Latin. While embracing the modern age's pizza, alcohol technology, and clocks. They never got arrested for public drunkenness, indecency, or vandalism.
Because they were well-behaved studious fellows.

The ancient town of Ferusgruniens. The university was founded after the savage slaughter of missionaries in the sixth century as an act of penance. Forgive them, father, because they know damned well what they did, and they actually kind of regret it now. Sort of.

[Well, not really, but, you know. Act like it.]

That same embarassed and self aware regretfulness informs student behaviour to this day. They are polite, quiet, and sometimes pig-out on greasy pizza while drunk, out of sight of the townspeople and churchmen. The campus police are well-practised in saying "tssk, tssk", and "perhaps you should call an Uber".

A famous local specialty is small loaves of sweet lard bread with cherry filing. There are two types; the Honoriuspan, because the cherries look like little flecks of holy blood, and the Albertusbol, because Saint Albertus commented extensively on Aristotle, making that philosopher's thoughts available to all and sundry. They are virtually identical.

It is eaten accompanied by hot chocolate. Never coffee or tea. You heathen.

After which students head to the Quad for the first smoke of the New Year.

A venerable tradition! Even clergymen join in. It is claimed that the favoured brand of fags' name actually refers to the Holy Trinity, though the philosophy faculty claim it actually harkens back to The Elders, The Prophets, and The Men Of The Great Assembly.
Naturally the philosopy students only eat the Albertusbol.
That other one is unthinkable.



SAN FRANCISCO, DECEMBER 31, 2025

Anyway, I shall not be out there celebrating tonight. The last time I did so, I left the bar early enough to catch a bus back over the hill, after only one Scotch (because I am not partial to champagne). Three buses went by and did not stop because they were packed, and there was no fourth one. The Sacramento Street incline is a mighty hard slog at after two in the morning, in frightful cold and rain. Also, I am not fond of inebriated company.
Especially vast rowdy herds of them.


Good luck, all of you.
Have a good year.



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THE SOUND OF FLOWING WATERS

A pleasant meal involving mustard greens, chicken pieces, rice, and sambal (chilipaste). That last being my own addition to everything else as prepared and served by the splendid dining establishment where I went for late lunch. Plus a cup of milk tea and a cup of regular tea. And two aged peasants having a discussion at the next table over tea. I've noticed that commerce and purchases are often in standard city Cantonese (quite intelligible) and conversation is, naturally, in the home town dialect. Garbled, often much louder.

Also, at the table immediately behind me, a Taiwanese person and her Caucasian husband. Partly in Mandarin, partly in English.

So naturally, being entirely by myself, I was all ears.


We Dutch are often nosy parkers.


My own home town dialect (a variant of Kempisch, one of the North Limburgian dialects) is, of course, absolutely understandable and remarkably mellifluous. As everybody agrees.

Toishanese somewhat less so.

Now please note that to the native speaker of only English, Toishanese sounds for all the world like hacking, spitting, and snarling. The first time I heard my apartment mate speaking to her mother on the phone I thought she was having a fit. And, surprisingly, to many English speakers my dialect of Dutch sounds like someone is coughing up hairballs while drooling, even more so than regular Dutch (known as ABN; 'Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands', or "Normal Civilized Netherlandish"). When she heard me speaking to a local person in Eindhoven she thought I had gone rabid or was having a stroke. Very odd.

[The best version of ABN is 'Gooisch'; the pronunciations and cadences of the Gooi region. Because we lived in Bussum and Naarden before Valkenswaard, I speak perfectly so. And slightly Den Haags too. I am quite delightful to the ear.]

Sadly, tea does not influence the impression a different language makes on the un-initiated. Otherwise that chachanteng would have been the most musical place in Chinatown at that time. As it was, it was a very pleasant place evenso.



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I AM NOT A LIZARD!

Today I picked up two refills from the pharmacy over at Chinese Hospital (東華醫院藥房 'tung waa yi yuen yeuk fong') after which I purchased some ciggies (五葉神香煙) and had lunch.
I noticed, while removing the densely folded fine print multi-page warning glued to container tops, that the yellow warning flaps attached to the labels of both said substantially the same thing: "do not get pregnant while taking this" and "don't take this while pregnant".

"DON'T BE PREGGERS!"

Ladies, there is no fear of that. Set your mind at ease on that score. I'm too old, masculine, and quite unattached. Pregnacy is in several ways so far the very least of my worries. Three of the four other medications, refilled last month, advise me that they may cause dizziness, and at least one of them tells me that if I'm nursing I must talk to my doctor or pharmacist. Which, if it happens, I certainly will.

Recently I realized that I must be in much better condition than I have been for a long time. Raynaud's phenomenon is no longer a thing. In the past if it got any colder than fifty seven degrees Fahrenheit my fingers would turn greyish-white, then dark blue. A circulatory issue.
It has, several times these past few weeks, been significantly colder than that. This evening the temperature went down to forty nine degrees. Not a peep out of my fingers. They were fine. I haven't worn gloves even once this year. Which means that I am no longer reptilian.

The creature in the illustration below is a huggable warm-blooded mammal.

Credit goes to my regular care physician at Chinese Hospital, the staff there, my primary cardiologist, and the cardiologist who did the angioplasty on the leg recently. All of them except the last mentioned are Cantonese Americans, the angioplasterer is Vietnamese American. Only one of them has lectured me severly about smoking.

The ladies in the pharmacy used to holler at me that smoking was dangerous and I should quit, but they've given up on that. Very likely their hearts weren't into it, because over ninety percent of the gentlemen they see there are crusty old farts who reek of tobacco, and very many of us keep coming back. Women, not so much.


A well-filled group three will last about fifty minutes. I had barely emptied the ashes when the book-seller arrived. As we passed the karaoke bar I could tell that there were too many 鬼佬 (non-Chinese) there. After we had been at the burger place the karaoke joint was even more crowded, packed, and exceedingly loud.

So we headed directly elsewhere. 嗰度都有太多鬼佬！But no karaoke machine, so more tolerable. There are only so many times one can hear 'Hotel California' or 'Country Roads' before one says enough, no more, my foot is down.


The wise do not drink on New Year's Eve.
Which is tomorrow.



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TEENAGE HERETIC REBELLION

Over on Facebook someone is expressing happiness because he's smoking black cherry vanilla in his favourite pipe. Now, I know that doesn't mean bupkes to most people, but to a frightful puritanical purist like myself, who sneers at candy flavours added to tobacco, that's downright heathen, almost like rolling in cadaver slime on the wet grass in the ante chamber of hell. Boy, how could you? Didn't your daddy ever tell you to stay away from sailors, loose women, and missionaries? You wild dog you!

Alledgedly the 4th generation 2012 which I enjoy has a subtle topping of pear. A previous iteration did, and it was indeed subtle, but the current version doesn't. It's a very nice Virginia rather like Golden Sliced without the Perique. But once you mention fragrances the rumour continues, even if unsupported by facts.

[It's actually a very pleasant flake with old-school characteristics.]

Among other lapses of judgement he may be a Christian and might have voted for Donald Trump. In addition to using teenage boy body spray. Shan't investigate.

Black cherry vanilla. Ugh, feh, and forsooth.
Heathens, humbuggers, and heretics.


The road to hell is paved with candy cavendish.

Men who smoke such concoctions date women who drink flavoured coffees from Starbucks. Double shots with caramel, hazelnut, vanilla, half low fat frothed milk half almond, and an excessive dusting of nutmeg. Sometimes seasonally pumkin spice.

Their mill-pond is overflowing with discarded mattresses.

One can imagine hobbit-wannabees running around a Dickens Faire with eccentric Danish pipes, reeking of rancid vanillin and coconut body lotion underneath funky period clothing that has not been washed since the original owner died in the last century, using colourful metaphors and turns of phrase they learned in high-school Shakespeare. They have a slouchy Gandalf hat and walking stick. And a book of spells in their Tesla.
Which has too many Grateful Dead bumper stickers.


Call an intervention. Snub, confute, abjure, repudiate!
The world is awash with ruddy perverts, tell you what.


Black cherry vanilla, 你老母！



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YELLOW FLECKS, DARKNESS

Having left the building while there was still plenty of daylight -- which at this time of year means just around teatime, no later -- it was still not quite cold as the dickens when I got to the dumpling place. Where they were glad to see me, and greeted me warmly. Caucasian dudes who talk lousy Mandarin are, of course, a dime a dozen. But caucasian fellows who can actually read Chinese, albeit speaking it like crap, are slightly more unusual.
Especially in a city where so many locally born can't even do that.
My skills are strictly pedestrian.
Exceptionally so.

One plate of dumplings (豬肉白菜水餃 ' 'jyu yiuk paak choi sui gaau'), chopsticks, dribbles of fried chili crisp. Great enjoyment. Satisfaction. Pipe afterward. Filled while waiting for food.

A complex Virginia blend, smoked while strolling down toward the Financial District. Where a gentleman waiting for his vehicle remarked that it was nice to see a fellow-pipe smoker.

Which I can confirm. There used to be more of us. And we were somewhat more visible.

In the last two decades we have become oddities in this city.
Probably in most other places in this country also.
Vast herds, edge of extinction now.
Sad. Blah blah blah.

There are leaves scattered on the dark sidewalks along certain streets downtown. Hues of gold and yellowish brown-green. It is all very lovely. This time of year there aren't so many pedestrians to scatter them, they're probably stuck over the hills and through the woods at grandmother's house, having unwisely gone there for the holidays when foul weather strikes huge parts of the country and air-travel is packed with long delays. Also, they're not allowed to smoke inside and the heater in the garage is out, so they can not enjoy their pipe without freezing their squidgy bits off outside in the snow drifts. Whereas the day here was nicely mid-fifties, and positively tropical by comparison.


So yes. A quiet day, a lovely late lunch, warmth, cheer, condimental joy, and some good solid enjoyment of tobacco without people screaming about their lungs and what about the children you heartless fiend. It was very nice.



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A WARM BATHROBE

Fourteen years ago, pursuant a conversation with my apartment mate which I incautiously mentioned, various friends wrote comments that indicate that their ideas about me might be a little off. Divergent. Considerably more reflective of themselves than of me. Cite 1: "I have long thought, judging by your blogs, that you prefer underwear that is pink, frilly and off."
Cite 2: "I thought he liked no underwear, and prefered skinny dipping in Antarctica."

For the record, pink and frilly aren't my thing. Neither is skinny dipping. In any weather. And although I can swim, I don't. In fact, I stay out of public bodies of water entirely, for obvious reasons. There are crabs in SF Bay, by the way, which is a good reason not to go into that body of water. Nasty pinchy things. They're the reason people wear rubberized total body coverings. Very uncomfortable, I would imagine.

The proper garb, if you are reading this, is either cotton underwear with more layers of clothing over that, or pajamas and a bathrobe. Because although it is sunny, it is cold.

The conversation with my apartment mate fourteen years ago had her informing me that she liked black underwear. We did not discuss what items of underwear, nor cut and style, or material. We have, to the best of my recollection, not discussed underwear since then.
I cannot remember what steered the conversation in that direction.

If I were to mention this to a friend who is a geologist (university degree) and has taught mathematics, I am fairly certain that he would say something to the effect that if you are out in the dessert with a rock hammer and a compass, it would be advisable to also have underwear. And other garments. The hot sun and scorpions, you know.
Also, rattle snakes can't get through stout boots.

It's a matter of perspective. Whatever you do and are will influence your views on underwear. In the past several decades I have been a mechanical draughtsman (pre-CAD), a credit and collections professional, part time cashier bookkeeper at an Indian restaurant, and various other things. In college I studied mediaeval history. In all cases my performance was improved by underwear. Things wouldn't have been the same without it.

When you send your kids off to college, make sure they have underwear.

Also a warm bathrobe. During my mid thirties I did not have a warm bathrobe.
There are things which I regret from that period in my life.
We shall not discuss them.



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THE SOCK IS ESSENTIAL

The big questions occupying my mind at present, it being a day off, are should I have rice sheet noodle with pork (豬肉腸粉同芫茜 'chü yiuk cheung fan, tong yuen sai'), OR delicious little dumplings (豬肉白菜餃子 'jyu yiuk paak choi gaau ji'), later in the day. Or something else. Both of the places I'm thinking of lack milk tea (港式奶茶 'gong sik naai chaa') entirely. I'm rather a milk tea maven. At a Hong Kong style place with a sock it just tastes better.

The problem is that chachanteng (places which usually have the sock) often do not have the tastiest nicest rice sheet noodles or dumplings. Quick comfort food instead. Not specializing in certain items in the snackipoo category.


Also, there are two chachanteng on the list already for this week, Tuesday and Wednesday, and the occasional Monday place has a Toishanese waitress whom I actually dislike somewhat so I'm avoiding it for the time being.


The eatery that has the superior stewed beef with chu hou paste (柱侯牛腩 'chü hau ngau naam') serves lovely milk tea too, but no rice sheet noodle or little dumplings.

Besides, for some reason I'm thinking of going there again on a rainy day.
That would feel right.

Obviously this is not a profound moral quandary.

But if you have ever had to deal with neurotic Dutchmen, you can probably understand what I'm going through. It's a question for the ages. Which of these and what? And should I have milk tea at home before I leave the building, or make some when I return?

You are quivering with curiosity.
Don't deny it.



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AMBLE TIME

Two failures of people's mental spellcheck struck me today. The first one is on the coffee machine at work: "please disguard spent pods". Mmm, okay? The second is on a tin of tobacco. "The 2012 Flake blend celebrates our going to market with the 4th Generation products. This 100% pure Virginia blend delivers a medium strength sweet taste and slight tones of citrus aroma. The Flake tobacco blen hes been given amble time in the pressing process for a slow and enjoyable smoke." Amble time? Amble time?!?

Very well. Amble.

Indeed, ambling is precisely what I shall do when smoking it tomorrow morning. Because the first pipe-full of the day is after a cup of coffee, while my apartment mate is fixing herself breakfast. One cannot smoke indoors when a small fierce Cantonese American woman is in the house. So one ambles around a bit outside growling at random strangers.
Provided it isn't raining.

It's good stuff. But I would not automatically associate it with amblitude.
Still, I shall amble. I do it gladly.

After she has gone to work it's a different story. Close her bedroom door, open windows, and plonk oneself down in front of the computer for a few hours. News, Wikipedia, superpaint. And a pipe. Which may or may not be filled with ambling tobacco.

Today I had two bowls of amblesome and amblicious flake. So it was a good day. Cold, but sunlit, no rain. Six cups of tea. Presently on my third cup of coffee. I'm wired, babies!


Mmm, these corn chips are seaweed flavour!
Plus ten percent daily sodium.
Taste the ocean!


There are presently screaming men in the backroom at work. I left my coworker who likes football to deal with them, and bailed out when my shift ended. You couldn't pay me.



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MAD MAX ATE HERE

Some people from Latin America like to visit the United States over winter break. Well, California. Where there are enough Spanish speakers that one can easily navigate the wild areas outside the cities without having to worry much about rabid white Christian nationalist savages. They probably don't visit the Midwest or South. Where if you see white Americans it's best to run for your life. If I travelled over the holidays, I would do something similar.
New York. Canada. Seattle. Portland. The places Trumpites fear to go.

Bigfoot country, rather than Bubba-stan.

Places with food as well as liberals. And where you can be reasonably certain there aren't grits, but there is hot chili sauce. Not that it's my life's mission to avoid grits, but there have been entire years when grits weren't on the menu, and I've survived perfectly well without them. Cooked grits a few times, threw the bin away one day when I realized that the rest of the container was long past its prime. They're decent with cheese, chilies, and bacon.
Much like taco chips and all of Texan "cuisine".

There are probably several eateries in San Francisco where grits are on the menu, because we don't want visiting red staters to starve. But I don't know where they are.

We're good that way.

Plus of course there's polenta. We joined the polenta craze briefly when it happened, and then kind of lost interest. It tasted much too Mississippi, probably. Like something General Lee would eat. Possibly while slogging through Delaware. Dunno, wasn't he supposed to have battled the British at Valley Fork or sumpin'?
Possibly he fought Scarlett O'Hara.


Sometimes the entire rest of the country sounds like total culinary nightmare country. Fried chicken, cornmeal sludge, and kool-aid soaked pickled cucumbers in one area. Casseroles, greasy deep-dish pizza, and baked beans everywhere else. A long indigestion road trip.

You're welcome.



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THAT SHOW FROM THE OLD DAYS

Something new to me: You have to be at least in your thirties to discover dead bodies. That seems to be the logical thing I get from half-assedly listening to my apartment mate critiquing a teevee show from back in the stone age. Twenties just won't cut it. The heroine in that show was moronic and irritating, far too immature.

I'm inclined to agree. Juveniles should never discover or stumble over deceased people. That's something only adults should do. The older the better. Super-annuated old fossils have much more in common with cadavers.

Given that work brings me into contact with elderly Republican hosebags, naturally I would think that. And I'm still somewhat staggered by the young lady I encountered several months ago who was studying to be an embalmer. She seemed happy at the prospect of eventually squirting the recently departed full of preservatives and plastic, and I don't think she even knew any of the old boys in the back room. Just a naturally sunny disposition, I guess.

The young are often overly optimistic. Reality and a sober view of the world usually don't manifest themselves until after graduation, sometimes years, after which hysterics and existential angst may kick in.

"I trained to become an embalmer, and the only dang employment I could find was in a corporate marketing department. What gives?!?"

Well, in a way, that's close.

Far too many college kids think that they should specialize in a field they love, like embalming, and end up bitterly disappointed in soul-crushing marketing jobs.
No cadavers, just zombies.


There are embalmers manqué coming out of the woodwork.
It's a dying field.


Kid, trust me, develop an affecting for marketing. Work at it, and eventually you'll find dead people all over the place, they just don't know it yet. Or go to the culinary academy.
We'll always need tattooed and pierced fry cooks.
Disillusioned, drunk, angry.
With knives.


Note: The illustration has nothing to do with this post. I drew it two days ago and I wanted to show it. The post itself was more or less inspired by listening to my apartment mate with half an ass, after a full day at work hearing someone detailing the sleazy hook-up attempts of a mutual acquaintance. Which could have been successful, if she hadn't been married and there with her husband, if he had not been surprised in mid-sleaze by his current crazy girlfriend (who is very possessive), if there had not been so many observers stirring up the cauldron, and if neither of them had been drunk. Yes, I was an unwilling witness. But the listener had not been there, and though quite uninterested somehow "needed" to hear all the dreary vulgar details.



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IT'S A BEAUTIFUL RIVER, BOB

Every year at this time on certain forums the plaintive cry is heard: "it's freezing out there, the heater in my garage is buggered, my wife won't let me smoke my pipe inside, I have relatives visiting for the holidays and I have to get away dammit how do you guys stand it?!?"

Indeed, I know how the poor fellow feels. Yesterday I smoked one pipe on the way back from the curry place, and another after teatime fully bundled up on the front steps mere inches away from the frigid downpour.

So I'm sympathetic to the suffering of that man.
Oh boy golly gee yes.


Naturally I do not show it. Instead, I respond with a statement much like the following: "yeah man, the wheather is unseasonable here too. Over eighty degrees. I usually have a pipe on the veranda of my bungalow looking out over the slow-moving Hooghly early in the morning. Distantly a peacock screeches. Probably on the river's opposite shore where the fields come down to the banks. The air-conditioning is out, electrical grid problems. Drongos and mynahs are foraging several feet away, they have gotten used to my presence. Lazily I lift the glass with sabja biji jala and take a sip. Mmm, quite refreshing. I am looking forward to mustard seed fish and rice for breakfast."

Hooghly river, river full of fish, and river of the eastern dream. Teeming with carp, and trout, and hilsa, and perch, and bream.
------ M. Python

It's a lovely fantasy. Warm weather, cooling drinkie, nice spicy shorshe ilish, a muddy tropical river. I'm sure that Bob in Michigan can sense my deep fellow-feeling for him stuck there in the horrible blizzard just south of the Canadian border. Where there's five feet of snow, the gas heater is on the fritz, and his relatives are super-swozzled on extra-strength egg-nog and holiday punch, setting fire to his comix collection to keep warm and yelling at him to stay the heck outside with his stinky dang tobacco, you heathen!

Today I'll be mostly smoking indoors. Admittedly in the same building as a bunch of odious Trump voters with stupid opinions, dammit, but inside, away from the rain, and reasonably warm. I'll ignore the senile gibbering. And the smells they generate.

Did I mention the drongos and mynahs?
Those are common there.
tropical birds.



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THE BESTIAL DINING PLEASURE

A popular tee-shirt reads "I got crabs at Fisherman's Wharf'. Humorously suggesting that the wearer enthusiastically performed unmentionable acts in a fit of touristic inebriation or wild abandon while away from his or her family at an event in San Francisco, with a human being, animal, or mutant, of either gender, dubious morals, and physical cleanliness. Which, having met numerous conventioneers and business visitors, I would definitely believe.

All of us here at Amalgamated Acme Crustacean Corporation are passionately committed to bringing you more arms, legs, claws, and carapaces than you can possibly consume. Which is why we wish to assure you that crabs, as such, are NOT sourced by misguided lascivious acts done while drunk, but bought at emporia on Stockton Street or out on Clement, using cold hard cash. Or cold hard credit cards. Either. Live at time of sale, it's up to you whether they perish on the block at time of purchase (whackity whack) or get slipped head first into a pot in the privacy and comfort of your home.


An acquaintance insists that suffering makes the flesh sweeter, and that therefore you need to rip off the legs to be added last. Personally I think that's utter balderdash and batshit crazy, as well as horribly cruel. The best is instant death in that pot of boiling water.

If you have them whacked at the store, you should sautée them with garlic, sweet tomatoes, and lots of chilipaste. Ketam tjabeh (辣椒蟹 'laat jiu haai''; chili crab), made with Dungeness crab (鄧杰內斯蟹 'tang kit noi si haai') instead of the usual mud crab (青蟹、鋸緣青蟹 'cheng haai', 'gui yü cheng haai'; scylla serrata) here in San Francisco, is intercoursing divine.

This is supposed to be a communal dish. A feast enjoyed with company. I would suggest that given how messy eating crab is, it would be far better to feast in private, alone, at the kitchen table under the brightly dangling light bulb, with lots of newspaper on the table, a roll of paper towels, and wash your face and hands at the sink afterwards. Eat all of it, leave no scraps. Those angry vegans you live with won't be home from their weird tofurky Christmas banquet followed by psychedelic mushrooms and ayahuasca for meaningfulness till much later, but they would be outraged and disgusted at the murder of an innocent animal for your bestial dining pleasure.


If your apartment mate or apartment mates are Cantonese American, they'll be perfectly fine with unaliving the crustacean. Just cook some of it with scallion, ginger, and black bean sauce, instead of so much chilipaste. That way they can have it too.


NOTE: after a lovely Pakistani lunch in a place filled with Muslims and various types and Chinese, we walked slowly home while I smoked a pipe. She then watched some drama teevee, and then retired to her room for a long nap.
It was a good Christmas.



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VICARIOUS CELEBRATORY PERCEPTIONS

Seeing as it's Christmas, it is fitting that for one day I do not angrily call for the slow agonizing dismemberment of certain people. And you know who you are. Enjoy it while it lasts. Here on the West Coast you still have fourteen hours. Of which less than seven will be light, the rest darkness. Gloom, the howling void, failing street lights, an unlit oncoming train barreling at you. The all-enveloping dank black of existential despair.


"If a little kid ever asks you just why the sky is blue, you look him or her right in the eye and say, "It's because of quantum effects involving Rayleigh scattering combined with a lack of violet photon receptors in our retinae."
------Philip Cary Plait


It's all about the little children, isn't it? The charming wee tykes that torment grown-ups and force them to wear talking fish hats at festive gatherings, one by one, so that those of us who see the handwriting on the wall will hide outside in the garden just beyond the field of vision through the plate glass windows of everybody else in the sun room where the feast was held nearly freezing our cojonus off while having two or three cigarillos until we see our chance and sneak back in to hide the damned piscine chapeau where she will never find it such as happened two decades ago. She's grown up now, at college on the East Coast, and the hat has undoubtedly been thrown out. I would still be traumatized if I were the type to harbour traumatization. Which I'm not.

Yesterday at some point my apartment mate heard a street person yelling up at a third floor window that the resident should get his or her raggedy ass down for the purpose of receiving something. Which sounds promising and Christmassy, doesn't it? Christmas is about gifts.
I wonder what the person with the raggedy ass was going to get.

That was, I believe, just after she left a Walgreens where a loud and monotously droning individual was showing off his stylish boxers and complete unfamiliarity with belts. The correct choice of male underwear can say "Christmas" like nothing else.

Like many men, I need to choose my undies better.
Pre-empt a raggedy ass invitation.


I pride myself, especially at this time of year, for not having a particularly raggedy ass.
Actually I have never thought about it, but now I can't get it out of my head.



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THE DEEPEST OCCIDENT

On Christmas Eve, the streets empty out and people head home. Which means that the few remaining pedestrians are either off their rocker or drunk. I observed a gentleman across the street arguing with a hypothetical person, while I was waiting for the bus. He was vehement, and strongly opinionated. And felt very much put upon. By the hypothetical person.

Two young ladies dressed scantily, like sexy dominatrix Santa, walked toward me, passed, and presumably kept on going, getting further and further away. I did not swivel my head to check. The Sfas Emes teaches that one has control over what one sees, or chooses to see, and what one hears or chooses to hear.

Consequently I can clearly remember the shade of red. All other details are hazy.
Maybe there were pom poms.
I'm not sure.


Sometime after I had left for Christmas eve dinner my apartment mate returned home from the graveyard, where she had gone to pay respects to certain relatives. I do not think that that is a firm part of Cantonese American Christmas tradition, just her personal innovation. It was raining. Her bus back had talkative crazy and smelly people on it; also not part of any Cantonese American tradition, just the luck of the draw on a cold wet Christmas Eve in San Francisco. My bus had two Muslim women passengers and their children, and a loud man dressed in glitter. A little earlier in the day I had seen 'Patches' (a raggedy angry local eccentric) on a different bus.

Many of the residents of San Francisco are Chinese or Latino. Most of the loonies here are painfully white. Little Asian and Hispanic kiddies must get a queer impression of American society, especially around the holidays.

"Mommy, why is that man talking loudly to no one?" "Hush, my precious, it is part of Anglo culture. Strange and mysterious indeed are the customs of Caucasians, particularly when they can see dead people!"

Whatever you do, don't pick sides in arguments involving people who aren't visible.
There is no right or wrong there, and nobody is a winner.
It isn't black or white. Just shades of grey.
Technicolour tie-dyed grey.

聖誕快樂，大家！




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GLAD IT DOESN'T SNOW HERE

It being the season for sugary pablum warm feelings, I suppose I should express tolerance and goodwill toward people. No. The category "people" would include individuals who, with the best intentions in the world, I wish all holy hell upon. And I sincerely hope this is the year their damned farm washes away in a flood, their plantation gets burned to the ground, their factory closes, and their kids get taken away by child protective services.

Oh, and I also hope they get sick from shitty cheese logs.


My message to most of the country is you eat too much, you smell bad, and your mom dresses you funny. And, speaking of your mom .....


One notable bright spot this year is that there are two British lads on the internet who make videos about American foods, some of them featuring their father, expressing delight and keen appreciation for many of our more berserk culinary items. Their dad is pleasantly surprised. That's the positive spin we need. It's entertaining, and heartwarming.

Nothing says Christmas, in a good way, better than British people eating.

Especially because they no longer eat what they used to.

Thank providence neither do we.

My apartment mate has suggested that if that Pakistani place is open we head over there on Christmas day for eaties. A splendid idea. No slaving over a steaming stove and a greasy flame, riding primitive conveyances to grandma's house over in the holler for rural jollification amids snow and ice and gloom and the fireplace being out and no running water or central heating, too much liquour, and various indigestibles prominantly featuring lard.
Simply good food, with plenty flavour, in a pleasing environment.

The last time we were there I paid. I excused myself as if to get some more garlic naan, and quickly forced the maître d'hôtel to accept my money. She saw what I was doing and rushed over to sabotage that effort, threatening violence to both of us if I didn't let her have her way. I'm somewhat larger, I was there first, and I pointed out that I was still convalescing from the medical procedure oh look there's a flying pink elephant!
So I won, barely, and I felt good about that.

I may have to gracefully acquiesce this time. Seeing as I have recovered from the leg thing as well as the flu (subclade K), she is a stubborn and strong-minded woman with belts and medals in martial arts, and I am, largely, a man of peace. Chicken, too.



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