HATEFUL GIBBONS FILLED WITH P*SS AND VINEGAR, AND OTHER THINGS

Tzipporah asks: "Isn't there anything going on in the Bay area?
Besides rain and soggy smokers adrift among the self-righteous healthnuts."


The answer to that depends on whom you ask (okay, we know you're asking me) and what you mean.


I myself am still neurotically reading about tobacco blends, and looking forward to another shipment from Cornell & Diehl. I have ordered several basic blending tobaccos, and will, once I have them in my possession, be compounding a mixture provisionally called "ESSENCE of TOAD".

The blend name? Well, Savage Kitten objects most vociferously to my smoking when I light up something with Turkish leaf and Latakia (she hardly notices the smell of Virginias). This particular mixture is guaranteed to make her demand that I go smoke next to the open window in the kitchen, or even out on the front steps. And, being an agreeable old toad, I will comply.



Our cell of the conspiracy is ramping up for next weekend, when we will be counterdemonstrating International Answer's anti-war, anti-US, anti-Israel, pro-Chavez, pro-Ahmedinejad, pro-Castro rally. I myself don't really care about Chavez and Castro either way, other than considering both of them rather reprehensible panderers to the European nouveau-Communists & anti-Yanqui intelligentsia. And the war was clearly one of the more ridiculous things we've done in the last seven years.

You can probably guess what my points of view are on the other three issues.

After that we'll be dealing with the upcoming AIPAC conferences. The hate-filled gibbons usually come swinging down from their trees for that one, and after the publication of both Carter's book,and Walt & Mearsheimer's grotty little tract, the hate-gibbons should totally be full of p*ss and vinegar this year.

We hope to take the p*ss out of them.

[Metaphorically speaking, of course. They can keep their fluids. Honest.]


In the meantime, though, it rains. It blatters. It motters and mists. It fogs. My posterior feels arthritic, and I grumpily look out over the darkly glistening street in front of my apartment building at night, puffing wisps of Burley into dusk. I bemoan my ancient rump.

The Haunted Bookshop: "A predominantly Burley mixture with a touch of red Virginia and Perique". By Cornell & Diehl. I also have a few tins of Old Joe Krantz ("ribbon and coarse cut burleys, perique and red Virginia"), which I look forward to trying once this tin is gone. Autumn requires aircured tobacco, especially if the weather is inclement.



This evening I will head into North Beach to drink beer and whiskey and gibber insanely. As has been my once a week custom since the late eighties, in which I am not alone.

Savage Kitten will be fast asleep by the time I return. She will probably be clutching either the one-legged monkey (a demented Banan-o-phile who is convinced that he is the alpha male) or Mizz Bruin (her oldest friend in the world, who outranks everybody else - and that really does mean everybody else).
I will probably have to remove her headphones when I come in - she falls asleep listening to audiobooks.