ALL THE ELEMENTS OF A SOCIAL ISSUE

Houston, we have a problem. The fine red sweater I gave to Savage Kitten for Christmas suits the small gorilla much better. That is to say, he's taken ownership of it, and happily informs the one-legged gibbon that he's styling: "Oh yes, I look much better than you. Oh well."
You can see where this could be tricky.
Don't want to disappoint him.
And it's not his size.

For another thing, being a rather perverted sort, I had expected that Savage Kitten would look quite splendid wearing it.

A slim Cantonese woman in a close-fitting top.

But the stuffed gorilla hijacked it.

Dang.

This morning, when I woke up, the gibbon and the gorilla were arguing. The gorilla told the gibbon that clearly he was unimportant, as he did not have a nice new sweater, all soft, and perfect. Hah, sorry-ass inferior creature!
To which the gibbon's response was outrage and histrionic despair.

All of this developed since yesterday mid-afternoon, when I gave Savage Kitten her present. I headed into Chinatown for something to eat, and she went over to the house of one of her siblings for Christmas dinner and the usual warm family hoohah.

As you will understand, we are just apartment mates.
So we do different things for the holidays.
I often end up eating Chinese.


Yesterday afternoon and early evening Chinatown was surprisingly busy.
Problem is that the moment I hear Mandarin, I cringe.
Those Northerners are ... odd.

Stockton Street: Cantonese folks shopping for dinner. Grant Avenue: Strange white people. Everywhere else: The discordant quacking of Mandarin speakers or staccato chirping in Tagalog.

Mandarin speakers aren't really our kind of people. They tend toward inexplicable insanity, and the good lord only knows what subcultural peculiarities they bring to the discourse.

Mainlanders are somewhat less properly Chinese than one would expect, and Taiwanese a bit too Chinese. Shanghainese and Fujianese are at times dazzlingly opaque. Cantonese people represent a civilized balance.

They are sane perspicacious realists.



Both the Gibbon (Eurasmus Wazzoo) and the small Gorilla (Mr. Arabello Oyster) speak only English, with, usually, correct accents. They do not speak Dutch or Mandarin, but there is very clear evidence that they understand foul language in Cantonese. All of the other small fuzzy beasties also seem to understand Cantonese to a certain extent.

They sound remarkably like Savage Kitten, my apartment mate.

I must often mind what I say because of their sensitivities.
The completely sane ones live in her room.
Those less so in mine.


I'm not sure how that happened.



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