Monday, March 18, 2024

THEY'RE GROOVY AND SENTIENT!

In many ways I am a severely disapproving sort. I dislike tattoos, piercings, patchouli, raggedy tee-shirts, potsmoking, public misbehaviour, inappropriate nakedness, and alcoholism, and displays of religion. Plus mascara. Today I witnessed all of that.
People leave a lot to be desired.

San Francisco is a hotbed of hippies. I had hoped that we had hunted them to extinction.
Sadly, I was mistaken. It's a profoundly diappointing thing to realize.

When I got home I found junkmail from a church inviting me to Easter Services. My attending would be a frightful idea. You can probably imagine many reasons why.
Where did you hide those eggs? Poke poke poke.


Where y'all on drugs when you came up with this cockamammie narrative?
I'm thinking ergot poisoning. Frequent, and recurring.
An egg-laying bunny rabbit.
Y'all nuts.


In other news, late lunch was excellent. A cup of milk tea, and Hong Kong style ma-po tofu. Which is by no means vegetarian, and requires a bottle of Sriracha hot sauce on the table.
After that I hid out on a quiet street with my pipe for a while.

All in all there are too many highly individualistic people in this city. And I am certain they are all unique, creative, and caring intelligent people. Their tee-shirts express their philosophies and exquisite taste in punk music or commercial enterprise. You can tell that they are brilliant by their interesting tattoos, all of which mean something. It's 'deep', man.

Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue. Beautiful plumage!

I get exposed to too many humans during working days.
How on earth did we ever get to the moon?
We're hardly clever enough.



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CULTURALLY INCLUSIVE, BROADLY APPEALING

In hindsight, the insufficient amount of sleep I got due to my legs, plus lots of caffeine, sugar, plenty of briar pipes, buffing wheel, reamers, and the usual nasty vituperative arguments of the regulars in the backroom only much more so -- and why did 'J' scream angrily about anal sex before even lighting his cigar? -- may have (and this is just speculation) made me quite insane most of the weekend.

So I'm glad the holiday week is behind us.

[March 14: Pie Day. March 15: Caesar Salad Day. March 16 and 17: Fratboys and their fellow travelers drinking themselves loudly into oblivion.]



Thank goodness that's over till Easter, when it's the Catholics' turn.
A mass orgiastic celebration of the end of Lent.
The feast of hard boiled eggs.


What this country desperately needs is a holiday when we appreciate petite female college graduates in San Francisco avidly reading mystery novels while enjoying their pipes, somewhere on Nob or Telegraph Hill, in a quiet backyard or patio with shady trees, butterflies, and dandelions. Aged Virginia leaf, a Comoy, and a beverage.

Sweetness, light, fine woodgrain, and a peaceful hour or so by oneself.


Elegant buzzards wheeling over the salt marshes to the north.


My friend Jonathan advises me that I should move to the West Bank for a different and far less cannibalistic set of cultural paradigms. Apparently where I live, which is San Francisco, is addictive and turns people into vampires. He knows a guy who knows a guy who can help me despite my non-Jewishness. I hesitate to even consider the offer, because the prospect of guitars, tanned hitchhikers, too much sunlight, and hyraxes everywhere, kind of scares me. And my internet search did not show me any decent tobacconists within reasonable driving distance anywhere there. They might not even import ANY good flakes!


Nothing but Captain Black and fruity shisha all the way to Istanbul!
No wonder the Middle East is homicidal.



Living in a desert turns people into psychopaths. Just look at Palm Springs and Vegas.



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Sunday, March 17, 2024

MISERABLE POTTY SAVAGES

Upon returning home from the saltmines the first thing to do is fix oneself a strong cup of coffee. Before wasting time futsing about with briars. Which one did all day anyhow. Mentally one ponces around the quad with a jaunty sandblast sticking out of one's jaw as if taking a deserved break from tutoring nice young things of whichever gender in Latin and algebra. Time for tea, Algernon, and perhaps some sherry!


"Pro amore dei culos meus cruor est!"
------Don Hertzfeldt, possibly a Canadian.



One of the things that stood out today was the retired member of the judiciary, mere minutes after arriving, screaming about anal sex. No, I don't know what medication he's on. It's doing something to him. He's imagining things. Possibly there are ghosts in that backroom, or his marriage to the Vietnamese American fascist butterfly is stressing him out.

In his case, maybe it's continued intoxication from celebrating Saint Paddy's like a frat boy.
Which is a three-day weekend for some people. Especially retired old crocks.
And he was wearing green. It harmonized with his complexion.

Throughout the day I heard sqauwks of vituperation.


I shall henceforth think of him as 'Anal Sex Jeff'.
I myself would drink nothing stronger that sherry, but those boys infesting the back are all adults and have rotted many of their braincells with strong liquor and Fox News, so it's hard to have a conversation with any of them even when they're not plotzed out of their gourds. More so since the end of the football season which can only remind them that they have shallow empty lives and their children actively dislike them, if they didn't drown out their mediocrity with cheap Scotch and Bourbon.

They are cigar smokers. I am civilized. However.


The day ended with a lovely discussion about Rattray's Hal O'The Wynd (a very fine red Virginia broken flake) and Old Gowrie (somewhat fuller, equally good), as well as Gordon Pym (a rough cut mixture with depth and a pleasing Latakia edge). By that time the various constipated fossils in the back had stumbled home, where their nearest and dearest would change their Depends™ for them and feed them prunes for dinner.
Before sending them out to play in traffic till nightfall.



Several of the usual defectives were missing today. Possibly they were hunting bottles of Jameson's hidden in the yard so their grandkids and the local bums don't find them during the Easter egg hunt a fortnight from now, or maybe their kinfolk kept them chained up lest they hurt themselves during idiot drunken orgies. One can but speculate. And hope.


I heard the phrase "Erin go bra-less" several times today.
And I shall not repeat it. It's stupid.



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Saturday, March 16, 2024

MATCHING THE NASTY

One of the pipes I smoked today was a W.Ø. Larsen. Of which brand I own two. I am not much into Scandinavian excess, so very few of my pipes qualify as eccentric. These two are not too eye-catchingly shaped, though very nice, and hence do not advertise any personal insufficiencies. But W.Ø. Larsen as such no longer exists. The brand is virtually extinct. I was swilling cup after cup of oolong tea all morning, so a certain extroversion, nay manifested pecularity, was almost required with so much caffeine coursing through my veins.
You should rejoice that I have no perverted tendencies.
That would have come out.


I've long felt that Danish freehands should be smoked by weirdoes with piercings or tattoos wearing ethnic fabrics from the tropics, who favour mango peach raspberry hazelnut cavendishes that leave a sticky residue. No, that's not what was in my pipe.
Instead, a conservative Virginia Periqe concoction.

One thing I may smoke this weekend, seeing as Saint Patrick's Day almost begs for repulsive behaviour and vulgarity, is a suitable tobacco blend.
Either Sutliff's 'Slane' or Erinmore Flake. Don't know which yet.
All depends on how much of sicko I feel like being.

It will, quite likely, be in a Dunhill Pipe.
Alfred Dunhill was a frightful bigot.
So it would be appropriate.




Actually, both Hill Of Slane (Sutliff) and Erinmore Flake (formerly Murray Sons & Co.Ltd, now Scandinavian) are fairly nice tobaccos. Weird top dressings, but if smoked properly (meaning very slowly) they will not ghost the pipe or make you lose your lunch.
That's a fulsome recommendation.




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Friday, March 15, 2024

CAN I HAVE SOME MORE KETCHUP?

The grimness of a return to dark mornings weighs heavy. While I like Daylight Savings Time, this darkness when getting up in the morning so shortly after we had finally gotten over that is rather depressing. But it does not feel cold outside. It is tolerable. Zwoel, even. Not warm, but zwoelig. Sixty degrees Fahrenheit.

Keep the down comforter on the bed for a few more weeks, then take it for cleaning and put it away till summer when it will be cold again and everyone quotes that stupid line about the coldest winter being a summer in San Francisco.

There are happy sounds from the monkey house at the zoo.
The election season is gearing up.
For some reason I remembered the movies that my parents took me to see at the theatre on the Leenderweg in Valkenswaard in those first years after we moved there. Stagecoach, King Kong. Those were good. The Sound Of Music and Oliver. SOM was overdone poofle, rather sappy, and Oliver, well, what can one say?

There was also a horror flick which was frightfully bad. Not scary, just garbage.


Also flitting across the mind's desk were memories of the Philippines, especially Binondo and Quezon City, and the computer company that used to be on Pacific Avenue before it moved down to Palo Alto and my commute became much longer.
Plus a coworkers "condiment ghetto".
Sleep was fitful.



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Thursday, March 14, 2024

IT MIGHT JUST BE INDIGESTION

Thanks to a fortuitous internet post about spring rolls, I now know what a laminectomy is in Chinese: 候椎板切除 ('hau cheui paan chit cheui'). Not, of course, that this will be of any use. The operation may be done to take pressure off back nerves.

It's happened a number of times now. I'll be quite happily enjoying my post-prandial pipe in Chinatown, when I see a medical emergency in which I am of no help whatsoever, due to both my lack of training and my inability to ask intelligent questions in Cantonese relevant to the situation. An old guy slides to the pavement, concerned bystanders call an ambulance, the aged fellow is loaded up and carted off. What happened?

Yeah, um, very sorry. Can't help.
Mijn Cantoneesch strekt niet.
A failure to communicate.

That said, given the haphazard medical vocabulary I possess in Cantonese (please don't ask about Dutch or Flemish, because I am actually quite ignorant about many ailments in those languages), we could have an interesting conversation while waiting for the emergency services and the wee-oo wagon to arrive.


敏性反應 ('man sing faan ying'): allergic reaction.
關節炎 ('gwaan jit yim'): arthritis.
香港腳 ('heung kong keuk'): athlete's foot.
驗血 ('yim huet'): blood tests.
心血管疾病 ('sam huet kun jat peng'): cardiovascular disease.
循環系統疾病 ('cheun waan hai tung jat peng'): circulatory disease.
感冒 ('gam mou'): common cold.
驚厥 ('geng kuet'): convulsion.
囊腫 ('nong jung'): cyst.
妄想症 ('mong seung jing'): delusions.
('din'): derangement; mentally ill.
糖尿病 ('tong niu peng'): diabetes.
('waan'): dizziness.
消化不良 ('siu faa pat leung'): dyspepsia.
癲癇 ('din haan'): epilepsy.
羊癲瘋 ('yeung din fung'): epileptic fits.
存在焦慮 ('chuen joi jiu loi'): existential angst.
昏倒 ('fan dou'): faint. 發昏 ('faat fan'): to faint.
發燒 ('faat siu'): fever.
('pei'): flatulence.
痛風病 ('tung fung peng'): gout.
心臟病發作 ('sam jong peng faat jok'): heart attack.
腹部衝擊 ('fuk pou jung gik'): Heimlich manoeuvre.
低血糖 ('dai huet tong'): hypoglycæmia, low blood sugar.
流感 ('lau gam'): influenza.
麻風病 ('maa fung beng'): leprosy.
瘧疾 ('yuek jat'): malaria.
孟乔森综合征 ('maang kiu sam jung hap jing'): Munchausen syndrome.
卵巢 ('leun chaau'): ovary.
骨盆檢查 ('gwat pun kim chaa'): pelvic exam.
血小板 ('huet siu paan'): platelets.
芝士肉汁薯條 ('ji si yiuk jap syu tiu'): poutine.
精神病 ('jing san peng'): psychosis.
放射病 ('fong yik peng'): radiation sickness.
雷诺氏综合征 ('leui nok si jung hap jing'): Rainaud's phenomenon.
病突發 ('peng tat faat'): seizure.
喉嚨痛 ('hou lung tung'): sore throat.
殫悶 ('daan mun'): swoon, pass out.
氣管痙攣 ('hei kun king luen'): tracheospasm.
腫瘤 ('jung lau'): tumour.
上呼吸道感染 ('seung fu gap dau gam yim'): upper respiratory tract infection.
In my most trustworthy voice, I will diagnose (診治 ' 'chan jing') the patient (病人 'peng yan') with Canadian junkfood and explain that this caused profound psychosis.


"Venerable sir, you ate poutine! That is why your athlete's foot attacked!"


It is a well-known fact that such things cause existential angst. Why, look at Alberta!
They haven't been the same since they discovered beef gravy.
Permanent existential dread is what.



When this happened a few years ago I was smoking the pipe pictured above. It is probably my most medical-expert looking briar, but very likely I think that because I associate it with that event. Perhaps I need a lab coat. For additional gravitas.



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LOOK EAST, YOUNG MAN!

Several years ago south of Market my apartment mate asked me if I could identify the bus five or six blocks away. With supreme confidence I informed her that it was the bus going to Blitzpah. It was cold, you understand, and that influences the eye's ability to focus and see clearly. Blitzpah. Actually the 15 Third. Even today I can unerringly identify buses in the distance heading toward Blitzpah.

It isn't until about three blocks away that their real destination becomes apparent.

Everything beyond the immediate boundaries of the world is Blitzpah.

To a tourist, all of San Francisco is Blitzpah.


Which probably explains why that woman yesterday dithered so incredibly at the corner of Grant and Clay, finally coming to a standstill righ in front of me, despite my having tried to avoid her wavering presence. She was from out of town, and quite unaware of traffic.
Her head and heart were still in Blitzpah.

From a vantage point on top of Nob Hill looking east, Oakland is Blitzpah.
That is to say, the real Blitzpah. Can't get more Blitzpah than that.


If wherever you are is filled with strange things and terms you do not know, it's all Blitzpah. For almost all Midwesterners and people from The South, all the world is Blitzpah, with the exception of Fishermans' Wharf, where there are businesses that cater to them, and chain restaurants serving kibble which is cooked precisely to their tastes, which they know by heart because they've seen commercials on Fox for precisely the same eateries in Tonkers harbor and Point Boudin, or whatever big city is closest to their town. The bus to the nearest mall goes right by five or six of those places. And it's all so delicious!
Why would you want to eat anywhere else?

There used to be a movie theatre there where they went with their aunt on weekends. Afterwards they'd have burgers, fries, and a shake at the fountain on Main Street.
Before window shopping at Woolworths and Walgreens.

We San Franciscans can only imagine.



First pipe of the day lit up after taking the bus to the top of the hill with all the office workers. It's easier than walking with these legs. Looked at the Bay Bridge, wandered around a bit, then headed downhill again toward my apartment building. Tapped the ashes out a block from my front door. It's time for another cup of coffee.



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Wednesday, March 13, 2024

THERE ARE LIMITATIONS

The pilgrim, who is an aging Taiwanese gentleman fallen on hard times, largely because he's an inveterate drunk and fupuck, needed wu kuai (五塊). So I gave it to him. He's harmless, and one of us. Everyone in Chinatown is, more or less, in a circle of of outsiders of differing definition and particularity, and the pilgrim is a gentleman I've know for roughly a decade or more. He's considerably saner and more human than some of the other marginals, just incorrigible. His Mandarin is excellent. Fluent in Fujianese, able in Cantonese.
Possibly semi-intelligible in English. If and maybe.
But I've never tested him.

He's taken in recent years to hiding out in full view on Waverly Place, near businesses run by Toishanese speakers, who may not be the most hospitable towards his lifestyle, but who would never-the-less consider him an acceptable part of the landscape, I think.

There are about half a dozen men who are as unsuccessful.
The move to the United States didn't work for them.
Only two of them are Taiwanese.
Back when the Taiwanese woman was still running a particular dive where a friend and myself might end up late at night, he'd bum a cigarillo and head outside for a smoke. I no longer have those cigarillos, and possibly he no longer smokes. I avoid alcohol for medication related reasons, he abstains due to financial constraints.



For many people Chinatown is a safe space, a sanctuary, even a half-way house on the path to a more successful American life. Essential goods and services there, and an environment that provides necessary familiarity and insulation.

For some folks it's the end of the line.



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PLATE-SIZED POUNDED TENDERLOIN

One of the best descriptions in a book review I have read recently is "it's a romance novel for the lowest common denominator". Which paints a picture that is hard to get out of the mind's eye, despite being basically a plain monochrome rectangle. No, the book in question is NOT pornographic; any and all breasts, collar bones, or private parts, therein are entirely clothed, three layers, and there is a pick-up truck too, because the action such as it is takes place in rural America. Somewhere between the East Bay Hills and Staten Island.

Where even the little yellow school bus is probably a pickup truck.

After brief forays, I have no intention of ever going there again.



Several years ago I was exposed to two books: The DaVinci Code, and The Bridges Of Madison County. The first deals with mediaeval shenanigans as Midwesterners imagine it, the second details sex as Midwesterners imagine it. Somewhere twixt turgid and bland.
Both are the Iowa pork tenderloin sandwiches of literature.
Bland tasteless witchburning, procreation, and mastication.
Done because it's necessary. Not because it is good or fun.


The Midwestern pork tenderloin sandwich is a flavourless slice of pig pounded extremely flat, dipped in beaten egg whites and crushed saltine crackers, then deep fried and served up in a hamburger bun with lettuce, pickles, tomato, and yellow mustard. Apparently folks in Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri, can't get enough of it, and practically live off this stuff.
In between stodge casseroles and bean lard mulch.

Texans do the same, but add a few slices of jalapeños en escabeche, for spice.

In the Deep South, grits are served alongside, and there is a bottle of hot sauce.



Are you traumatized enough, or must I mention what they do to chicken and pizza?



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Tuesday, March 12, 2024

NOT QUITE SYMMETRICAL

After the appointment with the cardiologist yesterday I suppose a fully rational adult would have pondered his wise words and introspected. We confirmed that indeed I do have a heart. And the blood pressure is now under control, so in that sense I have become normal again. But there are still circulatory issues in the legs, which may get worse over time, especially because I smoke, which we both realize probably isn't going to end anytime soon.

So the good news is that for the time being little nurse Mak will not swear under her breath when she takes my bloodpressure, which she did the first time, when it was sky high. The bad news is that I still may need a peripheral angioplasty on my lower extremities, eventually, which may solve all of my problems ranging from psychological (where DID those little green men come from?) through romance (briskly walking angular man attracts ladies world-wide and takes them to openings of art galleries) all the way to ambulating for wealth and profit (and gosh a pipe tastes good while strolling over the moors and soggy blasted heaths of Yorkshire!). Long walks, rainy weather, tweed coat, and all.

The bad news is that I think little nurse Mak no longer works at my hospital.
I haven't seen her there in sheer ages. Two years.
She was darn cute.

Not that my cardiologist would know that, as he works out of a different hospital.
And he speaks proper Cantonese instead of Toishanwa.
Different environment.

I am thinking of learning Toishanwa, by the way.
May take several months.
Not being a fully rational adult, I spent most of yesterday after returning home from lunch in Chinatown putsing around with briars. Redabbing the cake (carbon layer) inside one of my Dunhills with homemade "mud" (alcohol, sugar, ash, and finely ground reamings) because it still seems a little iffy in one spot) and going over the rims of a few other pipes with microfibre pads. All of which counts as Aspy neurotic. Not that all people with Aspergers do that.
But they have stuff like that going on in their lives.


"Another shrubbery! Then when you have found the shrubbery, you must place it here, beside this shrubbery. Only slightly higher, so you get a two layer effect."


The sugar is adhesive, which helps hold it together and keeps it from blistering. And because sugar becomes carbon after heat, it functions as an almost completely neutral substance in the cake, provided it isn't included in excess. The alcohol (whisky) acts as a preservative so that the little bottle of pipe-mud slurry doesn't go bad.

The picture above is what happens to your shrubberies over time. The Knights Who Used To Say Ni would know that. I'm fairly certain they were all on the spectrum.

If they existed today, instead of ten plus centuries ago, they'd probably all be pipesmokers with a tendency toward high blood pressure and neurotic fussing with their briars. This rim seems a little off, if you look at this Charatan from the front it is slightly unsymmetrical, the shank on that Savinelli is too ellypsoid, the draft hole is not quite centred, that bulldog is a damned cliché, this GBD apple is a little cutesy-poo.

Instead of modifying my diet and quitting smoking, I have resolved to walk a lot more and include more slopes. Good for the digestion and circulation, as well as fully lubricating all the tubing, and increasing stamina. I should be able to ace the stress-echo test in September and flabberghast both my regular care physician as well as the cardiologist.


"Good lord this antiquated fossil is fit!"


And by the way: contrary to what my apartment mate says, as well as two of the people I've seen nearly every weekend, I am NOT scrawny. There is pudge. Shan't tell you where, you do not need to know and I don't want you looking for it.



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Monday, March 11, 2024

EVEN ONE IS TOO MANY

If you see someone wearing a keffiyeh, it's very probably an Anglo-origin bigot embodying societally acceptable anti-Semitism, and might even be a Berkelyite (or a Hollander). Not someone from the British Isles ( that's England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Pakistan), because they dress funny and have no sense of style anyway. Berkeley. Or Holland.

Don't set fire to it, put away that Bic. It's probably made out of synthetic fabric, and you will poison everyone on the bus.


Admonitory phrase useful in so many different circumstances: "For god sake, Janet, get a grip on yourself!" Second best: "I'm here, so there's nothing to worry about".


The first five or six times I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show were in Berkeley. At the same theatre on University Avenue where I fell asleep during some artistic and pretentious French porno flic. All I remember about that movie is that salad was involved. Fond memories.
Nowadays, of course, Berkeley is a ghastly hellhole filled with Oaklanders.
Terrorism supporting revolutionary Oaklanders.

21st. century puritans.
What I really wanted to have after returning from my cardiologists appoinment was pork liver congee with a fried breadstick and a strong cup of Hong Kong milk tea. The chachanteng was crowded, however, so I had lean pork and preserved egg congee and a breadstick at a place down the street. No milk tea. It was marvelous never-the-less. That eatery does not cater to white people, which is more of a language issue and problems recognizing the food than anything else, so not a single Berkeleyite was on the premises, nor, sadly, harmed. But for all I know there may have been piles of dead and groaning East Bay residents out back near the garbage cans. I didn't ask.

Gluten, corn sweetener, and non-ethnic fabrics were in evidence. Abundantly.
Along with plastic bags and deep-fried foods. Plus meat and peanuts.
So it would have been traumatic for them.

The only cloud on my ointment was the two Karens on the bus back over the hill. Who didn't listen to the detour announcement, objected when the detour started, loudly wondered where they were going, tried getting off while the vehicle was moving, and when it got back on the route and the bus driver went to reconnect the cables squawked "what on earth is it THIS time?!?"


"For god sake, Janet, get a grip on yourself!"


Instead of telling Janet to for gods sake get a grip on her damn' self, I informed them that the busdriver was reconnecting to the overhead cables. Despite having vocalized for six blocks in English, I don't think she understood that language when someone else was speaking.

Echt een irriterende zeurwijf.

Kvetchbitch.



You know, as I get older, I have less patience for my fellow Caucasians.
Far too many are highstrung petulant needy whiners.
Or from elsewhere in the country.
Often both.



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Sunday, March 10, 2024

REMEMBER TO WEAR NEW SOCKS

At the two nearest gay bars they're having Oscar parties. Naturally, I am not there. Seeing as I do not drink nowadays (it might combine badly with medicines I'm on) and don't give a hill of beans about the Oscars. And, speaking of medication, I've noticed that now sometimes late at night there are hours at a stretch when my feet itch from the inside out. Which keeps me awake. I shall have to mention this to my cardiologist tomorrow during our visit.

Nothing says good luck during medical appointments than having something good to smoke afterwards. A pouch of a nice Virginia and Perique compound and two handsome briar pipes will, naturally, be in my coat pocket.

Distributed in different parts of my habiliments will be a tamper, matches, and pipe cleaners.
I'm like a boyscout. Always be prepared when heading into a medical appointment.
Professionals appreciate that. It makes life more exciting.



Among the preparations, as you would expect. Bath, clean clothes, respectable underwear, new socks. After morning coffee and a walk with a pipe. No, not breakfast -- eating anywhere near the crack of daylight savings time dawn is out of the question -- but the coffee will be accompanied by pills.
After I get back to this part of town I may require fortifying sustenance. Hong Kong milk tea and a bowl of pork liver congee with a fried dough stick. I rarely leave the house so early at this time of year for anything other than the early morning pipe-walk while dodging people pooing their dogs and the near-naked joggers one encounters in all weathers.

The new socks are extremely important. He will examine my feet for signs of poor circulation. New socks make that a more wholesome experience. The feet may be lousy old dogs and splotchy here and there, but the new socks add a stylish touch.
Grey, woolen, and plenty roomy.


There will be no pictures of either the feet or the socks.
I shan't encourage the non-cariologically inclined.



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THE ELEPHANT

The Academy Awards are tonight. To the best of my knowledge, my cousin's brilliant oldest doesn't have anything up for an Oscar this year, so I have no dog in the race. No intention of watching the ceremony. Precisely like the last dozen times or so. Or ever. In fact, the only two Oscar winners I can name are my relative and Hattie McDaniel.

So I'm likely to have a nice quiet evening.


I found out yesterday that my relative is married to a blonde. Which is remarkable primarily because that makes him the only one. I've made a helpful schematic in order to help me recognize her in case we ever meet.
Hi. I'm your granduncle-in-law's kid. The only surviving member of that side of the family.


Both of them are Hollywoodian, so I fully expect them to catch weird religion and develope peculiarities and strange dietary habits within the next decade or so. Which will be a pity, because I know that at least one of them comes from decent stock.
Statistical probability. It has to be so. Fifty percent.



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Saturday, March 09, 2024

BEATINGS TO IMPROVE MORALE

Complaining is a valid form of communication. As the kvetchy old hosebags in the backroom demonstrated all day. It was, of course about Biden instead bowels. They can do something about their bowels (prunes, fibre, probiotics, kaopectate, etcetera), but they stolidly refuse. Biden gives them gas, constipation, and diarrhoea. Sweet potatoes! They should eat more sweet potatoes! And please stop thinking about Biden. Other things instead.

Perhaps you lot should obsess about panties, breasts, and curry?

Oh wait. Those are probably bad for your bloody bowels also.

Maybe stop thinking. You're doing it wrong in any case.

What should be clear by now is that I'm well on my way to sainthood. Or in fact becoming a modern-day Indiana Jones, whipping them all into shape with my ten foot long bullwhip, which for inexplicable reasons is one of my cinematic props, always within reach.

The only good thing about them is that they tolerate my pipe smoking.

They have no choice. I've got the bullwhip.
Over these past few years at this job I have become a very tolerant and forbearing man.

I am legendary in this regard. Damned well godlike.

And humble, too.



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Friday, March 08, 2024

THAT FEELING OF DREAD

Not having watched the State of the Union speech, I do not know quite what to expect when I'm at work today. I am certain the repulsive old lizards will have things to say -- they never effing shut up -- and they're probably going to blow it out their ass as usual. Republicans, closet Nazis, and Christians. A very tight Venn diagram.

Yeah, it's gonna be a crapshoot.
Mentally, they're from Ohio.



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Thursday, March 07, 2024

THE POX UPON THIS LAND

Five states to avoid like the plague, because they are filled with dumbass inbred syphilitic hick Christians who wish, passionately, to destroy everything good and wholesome in this country: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, and West Virginia. I can probably say this in complete confidence that I will not be contradicted, because most people there don't know that if you don't plug in your computer, the internet won't work.

No, my ire is not excited by their food. That's the Midwest, particularly Iowa. And I give no credence to rumours of rampant cannibalism in the five states mentioned, they got spongiform encephalitis some other way.

Besides, there are far worse pockets of endophagy much closer to home: Placerville in El Dorado County, Stockton in San Joaquin, San Bernardino.
It still pisses me off that we named a national airport after a man whose grave we would have been better off pissing on, bombing with napalm, digging up and vapourizing, and dumping in a toxic waste dump.

The worst thing my generation did was vote for that repulsive man, twice, and empowering the accursed christians.


By the way: we never should have given immunity to Oliver North.
Cake and a signed bible. Good lord.
Whackjobs.



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THE TYRANNY OF JIN

One of the places I like to go for a spot of tea before smoking my pipe in Chinatown I actually do not like to go to. Not so much. The people who work there are fine. The customers quite frequently not. One youngish coarse mouthed harridan (curses like a fishwife) and a dozen antiquated Toishanese peasants who seem slightly crippled in the courtesy department.
Plus several old bags of both genders who scowl and grumble.

Country people are naturally paranoid and suspicious, and tend to be cold and offish toward outsiders such as myself. As, with skin that glows in the dark and horns growing out of my head (meaning that I'm Caucasian), I naturally am.

For all they know I work for the salt gabelle (鹽稅 'yim seui') and the tax office, and will demand that they fill out forms in a language they don't understand.


Or, even worse, start dancing while strewing mininimity.


Yeah, I know. It's their own private world.
And in a way I represent invasion.
The other side of the wall.
The stench of other.
Bumpkin rebels. I am fully aware that it took tyrants to keep their country together. If it had been left to the salt of the earth, they would have fallen apart into several warring states.
Which, several times, they did.


As a whitey-white individual (鬼佬) semiliterate in Chinese and speaking Cantonese I am an anomaly, but despite the love of the odd and unusual which many Chinese have, that bunch of snooty country folk want more than that. And I'm just not entertaining or engaging.


It is significant that only in their ancestral district, (四邑 'sei yap', "four counties"), gun towers and heavily fortified farms (碉樓 'diu lau', "rock-hewn tower"; 砲樓 'paau lau', "cannon tower") were widespread, to ward off bandits and the outside world. Extreme local poverty alleviated by funds from overseas made them more paranoid of everything. So, massive multi-storey buildings with metres-thick walls, iron doors, and turrets. Basically, bunkers.
Common in rural Kaiping (開平 'hoi ping').

[Paraoia: 偏執狂 ('pin jaap kwong'); 妄想症 ('mong seung jing'); 仇外心 ('chaau ngoi sam').]


I have learned not to go there when it's busy during lunch time. Unfortunately the "Resist Foreign Imperialism & Pipe-smoking Dutchmen Revolutionary Association" (反外國帝國主義和抽煙斗的荷蘭人革命協會 'faan ngoi kwok tai kwok jyu yi wo chaau yin tau dik ho lan yan gaak ming hip wui') now gathers there most days, having bailed out from another place to which I go. Good, because there are now only two dingos who frequent that place, and usually I don't encounter them there anymore. But it is closed on Thursdays.
The number of bakery coffeeshops in Chinatown has decreased.


And I've already been to the other establishment run by the same fine people this week.


So where do I go today for tea-time?
係一個好嚴重嘅問題。



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LATE NIGHT WITH OCHRES

The bottom apartment across the street has finally been rented out again. During the first few months of the pandemic a resident there lay in his or her bed near the window looking at the street. Then it was empty for a while. The next tenant, over a year and half, developed a social life and eventually fled. After a while a younger fellow moved in, occasionally had friends over, then also moved out. And it was empty for several months after that.

All I know about the new occupant is that they have potted plants.
And a greater sense of privacy than previous residents.

They know how to use curtains.
Whenever I take a late night walk smoking my pipe, I note which windows show evidence of human habitation. Obsessively. There is a neurotic pleasure in seeing all floors of a building lit up, whether in an alternating pattern of lit versus darkened windows, or in a straight line all on one side of a building. Symmetries and recurring balance. And other details that mark me as obsessedly observant (seeing things because of oddity or regularity).

For the first time, that building was lit top to bottom on all floors on the right hand side, with curtains yellowing each window. It felt like victory.

Welcome, illuminating person.



No, I do not need help.
I think I'm normal.
Perfectly.



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THEY'RE GROOVY AND SENTIENT!

In many ways I am a severely disapproving sort. I dislike tattoos, piercings, patchouli, raggedy tee-shirts, potsmoking, public misbehaviour...