HOLIDAY GRAYITY

It was supposed to stop raining. It didn't. The whole day yesterday was marked by drizzle, drip, actual rain, blattering, suspended moisture in the air, gloom, and greyness. You know, it's not the heat, it's the humidity. Reminded me of those highschool years when it rained on the way there, ten kilometers of bicycling, stopped once everyone was in, then started again in the afternoon when it was time to go home ten kilometers back. Of course, unlike middle-aged Dutch American men in Northern California, we didn't bellyache about it.

We just took the ghastly Netherlandish climate for granted.

Apparently it's supposed to be positively Beneluxian all weekend. If you're the nervous panicky type, please remember that there are only TWO more shopping days till Christmas. You still need to do all of your shopping. All these people who are to be gifted.
Not just any garbage, but stuff that's well chosen and perfect for them.
Ohmygerd only TWO DAYS LEFT!
Breathe deep.

On the other hand, tomorrow I'm doing laundry and I plan to have relaxed lunch of little dumplings plus Hong Kong Milk Tea. Followed by a pipe smoke and a long stroll.

That picture sure doesn't look like two days before Christmas, does it? Sunny. Not wet. No car crashes, bad hair, or soggy clothes. And nobody in that illustration smells like wet dog.
Or a group of Midwestern college grad yuppies in a downtown office building elevator.

There aren't any spiders or bugs in that pile of leaves; we gave them the day off.
Not sure, but I think they're Christmas shopping.
Big sale at the outlet in the mall.
Darling tiny sweaters.

With reindeer.
And holly.



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A DUMPSTER FIRE OF TWITTERY

Often while at work I get to hear the sour old dingbats in the backroom spouting Republican drivel and venom. Which does not leave me positively inclined toward them and their MAGA social circles. So it pleases me immensely that the states with the lowest life-expectancies are ALL solidly red. Also, some of the dumbest, reddest areas of the country are discouraging vaccinations as well as any talk of vaccinations. We should evacuate all medical staff, and leave those areas to rely entirely on thoughts, prayers, and Republican snake oil.

Unremarkably, the states with the highest diabetes rates are also red.
This says something about their garbage cooking skills.

Sane people avoid Texas and Louisiana.


I look forward to the coming civil war within the Republican Party. Which, given their penchant for violent rhetoric, bullyism, and crime, will be quite "educational".

President Musk may discover that his fanboys have cannibalistic tendencies. In addition to not knowing how things work, and trying to use the powers of government agencies both to destroy those agencies and each other. If you thought that the Tesla Cybertruck was a dangerous piece of garbage, boy, you ain't seen nothing yet.


There is just so much that can go kablooey.
The next four years will be Wagnerian.
Egomaniacs, and arsonists.
Psychopaths.



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OBSERVE THE GLOOMTH!

It's probably a Jerusalem artichoke. Topanimbur. Not ginger. But it looks like ginger. Very young ginger. It flummoxed me, and I feel that it flew into this household under false pretense. A tuberous conman.

Topanimbur, atawa karsyof Yerusalem, tumbuhanan melihat seperti bunga matahari ketjil.

Okay. Probably good with a touch of chilipaste.
But it isn't ginger, which I needed.
I feel deceived.

So, obviously, I will need to buy some ginger on my next day off, at the same time as other purchases, because on Christmas and boxing day I do not expect to go veggie shopping, although Stockton Street will probably be bustling with people purchasing groceries.

One or two places may be closed in observance of fat red uncle day (肥紅叔叔節 'fei hong suk suk jit'), or whatever they might call the gifting aspect of the holiday in Cantonese, in which I don't know if there actually is a word for Santa, but fat red uncle seems to fit.

A NON-RELEVANT ILLUSTRATION

How are people without fireplaces and large diameter chimneys even supposed to celebrate Christmas? Texans? The tropic hellhole that is Florida? Are they allowed to do so down there in the Christian nutball heartland? Fat red uncle is clearly pagan, not Christian nationalist.

Personally, I feel that in keeping with their disapproval of everything foreign and idolatrous, the red states should forbid Christmas, because there is far too much non-biblical crap that has crept in. It's just so heathen! Talking snowmen, flying reindeer, eastern mystics, singing hamsters, and so on. Any observation should be about beastly suffering out in substandard housing like Mary and Joseph, no matter how horrible the weather. A few years ago Texas did exactly that, although their leader Ted Cruz went to Cancun instead, because he's a heathen, and I'm sad that so far that that has not really caught on in the red states.

It should. It would be Christian and forbearing.
Very very thoughts and prayers.
Holier than us.

Hosanna.



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WHEN CONTEMPLATING FLUCTUATION

A cooking video was interrupted by stock advice. What on earth makes investment bankers (or their drug-addled marketing department) think that people interested in food might wish to consider their fast-tanking portfolio at that moment? Galangal, good. Green chilies, good. Shrimp paste, also good. A gold mine in South Africa? Pharmaceuticals?
Mmm, those are maybe not strictly speaking relevant.
At least not at that precise moment.

"When prices fluctuate ... "

Or hormones. Blood sugar. Caffeine levels. Armpit sweat, worry, wind patterns ...

Yes. While considering the miracle of a hot Sumatran dish, I also deeply desire to think about the Hang Seng index, the state of my oxsters, and whether I've had enough coffee or rain this year. Because I am the modern generation and have serious ADHD.

No wonder people use drugs. It keeps them on agenda.

Sertraline is good.

The chemicals that are so often prescribed I'll happily leave to the professionals, junkies, yuppies, and modern suburban white high school kids. For me, caffeine, nicotine, highly refined sugar, capsaicin, and the sheer overload of umami in shrimp paste and pork, work wonders, and one can adjust the dosage as needed. I'm not likely to crash my car while taking them -- don't have a car in any case -- or rip out my ears.

By the way: rich buttery shortbread also is a psycho-active substance.
Gentle enough for old ladies, strong enough for truckdrivers.



The same internet page also wishes me to consider that frequent flooding and an increase in extreme weather are the future in the SF Bay Area. And while that data is indeed extremely exciting, sexy even -- mmm, flooding (!) -- as a middle-aged bachelor who lives two hundred feet above sea level and over two miles from any large body of water other than my bath tub, I prefer to ignore that. This is not the swampy mudflats of Berkeley, but halfway up a hill in San Francisco. Noodles with fatty pork, shrimp paste, chili sauce, plus galangal and lemon grass (langkuwas and serei as we call them) are, perhaps, immeasurably more fascinating.

Like sex, however, this is an intellectual conceit; this bachelor will be having a light lunch in Chinatown later, which might include shrimp paste, and / or chili sauce, probably no flooding or extreme weather, and absolutely no galangal, lemon grass, or sexual shenanigans. It will include a caffeinated beverage, probably sweetened, and will be followed by nicotine. Which latter substance in the modern world needs to be enjoyed outside, regardless of climactic conditions. Like the horrid cold. Or rip tides and sneaker waves.

Yeah, probably noodles. Fried noodles. With Sriracha and a cup of HK milk tea. After which a sandblasted briar (Becker & Musico) filled with either Atalaya (C&D for Low Country Pipe and Cigar) or Cornell & Diehl Small Batch Carolina Red Flake with Perique (2023).

The pipe I mentioned is absolutely piss-elegant, and spot on.
A very fine piece, reflecting a previous era's aesthetics.
As sexy as a lovely woman or a good tobacco.
Contemplation inducing.



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BETWEEN GUNONG ALIF AND SUNGEI BA'A

The dream involved snacks at the restaurant in Kampong Tiga Puko. Slightly charred bits of fatty meat, skewered. With red onion pickle, and slivered chilies. Overlooking the water near Lower Tank Road. So different then. Peaceful.

But actually, coffee. I found out that I liked coffee when I was still adolescent. It tasted good, went well with tobacco.

Coffee, besides being the life blood of Dutch society and a groovy social lubricant, contains caffeine, a marvelous methylxanthine also found in tea and chocolate. Which not suprisingly are also big in the Netherlands. And all of them imply the availability of highly refined sugar.

Upon getting up from my dream, that is what I prepared for myself. Coffee, with sugar, and a jigger of milk. The only milk available in Kampong Tiga Puko was from a can with a lovely picture of a black and white cow and windmill on it.

After that, I went outside with a pipe.

Despite coffee's role as both fuel and social lubricant, I am not a particularly energetic social creature. And wandering around with a pipe sticking out of my mouth is something I do best by myself, although I would not be averse to similarly grumpy company, smoking his or her own pipe, at that hour of the day. If asked, I'll share the tobacco I'm currently enjoying.

Charred bits of fatty meat are, sadly, not available anywhere nearby. And unlike the climate in those hills it's nowhere near seventy five degrees Fahrenheit. More like fifty or below. I think I'll get back under the covers for an hour or so, until my bladder forces me of bed again.

Coffee with sugar. Grilled skewers. Sharp pickled onion. And fresh chilies.
Breakfast of champions. Grumpy barely awake champions.
The breeze smells wet. It might rain.



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THE JUNGLE'S EDGE

This morning I took a quick trip to the ghastly hinterland to pick something up, then came directly back home. Returned just after twelve. So you can imagine how early it was when I scooted out of here. The ghastly hinterland on the other side of a bridge was still foggy when I got there, and I turned around mission accomplished before it had a chance to clear. As far as I'm concerned, those trolls can crash into each other on the road and burn in the mists.

The hinterland is where they invented oatmilk eggnog.
It's a unique and special kind of place.
Very tofu.

The natives, who replaced the original natives, are too darn wussy for words.
We Dutch Americans should have taken over with fire and sword.
Come on, move it, you candy-assed Anglos.
This is my ranch now!

Look, we once wiped out an entire island for strictly business purposes, so we could easily have plowed right over the soft and spongy whitebread mayo types that abound in the suburban quagmires. Piece of cake.

Tastes just like lobster? No, not there. Everything tastes like vegan chicken there.

They're ga as all git-out in that region.


Today at tea time someone questioned me about Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Then declared that I was basically a colonialist. Seeing as I wasn't born till long after independence, and had nothing to do with the emergency, that's a bit of a stretch. And also let us not forget the Batang Kali Massacre (12 December 1948), perpetrated by the illustrious Scots Guards. After the massacre, British officials attempted to retrospectively legalise the Scots Guards' massacre of civilians, and the British government blocked all investigations into what those kilted bastards had done. No one has ever apologised. As a Dutch American, I bear not one iota of responsibility for any of that. In fact, what the British did in Malaya and Africa after the war, and what the French did in Indochina, was so repulsive and horrifying, that what my kinsmen did in Java pales in comparison.

Afternoon tea was very enjoyable. Red Virginia flake made with a smidge of Perique afterwards, in the most recently acquired Dunhill pipe. Very much like a colonialist.



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FOG CAUSES FITS

When I woke up on Tuesday the fog was thick enough to cut it with a knife. Much much later it had disappeared. My late lunch in Chinatown was entirely fog-free, but not nut free. And it was probably a good thing I hadn't carried that knife around. There is enough madness on the streets of San Francisco that we don't need an armed irate Dutchman yelling at some random bozo to cut that out.


Besides, I'm pretty good at side-stepping loonies.
Rather than stumbling over them asleep.

Chap sleeping at the bus stop, half in the gutter. Didn't wake up when the driver tootled the horn, which is why the bus stopped three feet from the curb. A frowsty snoring gentleman near a half-eaten take-out meal. Old lady dozing in a doorway. And an insensate fellow sprawled across the pavement from the building to the parking zone.

Mind you, there were plenty of crazy people who were wide awake, erratic, and vocal. If you live in San Francisco you become adept at avoiding eye contact, attempts at imparting opinions, and a direct ambulatory line with stumbling people.

There are creatures stumbling through the San Francisco fog. A lack of visiblity is not these people's problem. Maybe they're just short on caffeine? Still, if they can't go in a reasonably straight line and refrain from conversation with non-existent friends and relatives while they ambulate, you step aside well before they draw abreast. They might be confused tourists.
But most likely not.

There are more of them at night. Liquor has something to do with that. In any case, I shall not tell them about the bags of tea in my left coat pocket, because heaven knows I do not wish to help them wake up. Smoking a pipe outside at night can sometimes be an adventure.

Avoid the dip in the pavement. Also avoid the dip on the pavement.
We really must do something about our sidewalks.



Burger place, beer hall, karaoke bar. It was saner and quieter indoors than it often has been. The bookseller has no more dentistry scheduled for the next five weeks, and he is very much looking forward to not having people in his mouth for the duration.

Last pub crawl until January.
Because of the holidays.



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CAKE AND LOBSTER

Yesterday evening I dreamed that I was smoking a pipe this morning. As indeed I have done. What I also dreamed, which did not happen, was that I was sorting mail and putting together a stack of letters addressed to Satan at the North Pole. I do not work at either the post office or a mail-forwarder, but I think Satan is going to be very happy this Christmas.
There's a whole lot of love there. Genuine fondness.


When I was outside earlier I realized that when it's foggy and humid, the moisture on the pavement does not dissipate. It was dark and wet on the ground under the streetlights.

One is quite glad of that second caffeinated beverage upon returning.
Warm, fragrant, comforting.

Because I got a lobster for my apartment mate's birthday yesterday, the kitchen still smells faintly crustaceous. There was also a cake, which we shared with the other people in the building (I had purchased a large one), and I discovered that even though I ate sparingly, four to five hours after amlodipine besylate my stomach hurts. This is something I already sort of knew, but sometimes I'm asleep at that point. Having napped before getting up again in the quiet of the night.

The young condor (gymnogyps californianus) and the plump tyranosaurus were in my bed this morning. They still haven't acclimatized to the rambunctious social activity in her room.
Not surprising, as they have only been out of the hidey hole where I kept them in the week before her birthday for less than one day. Everything is still so new to them.
This will take a bit of time. The young condor particularly.
He has taken a scunner to the turkey vulture.
Who slept on the other side.


With a bit of luck it will not rain long enough that I can do my laundry early today. One does not wish to head into Christmas smelling like fusty old granddad who has spent to much time at the compost heap in the yard at the far end to which he has been banished whenever he wishes to smoke. It's cold and wet there, and it smells rotten.



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GRUMPY LOBSTERS FROM SPACE

Facebook, which is staffed by mush-mouthed weasels, artifial intelligences, and complete bithering idiots, did not like something I wrote recently anent Israeli disapproval of the Irish government's support for murderous thuggery. What I posted was "Of course the Irish premier is anti-Semitic! As leader of the ONLY predominantly Catholic first world country, being a poisonous bigot is part of his/her/its official role!"

Oh dear. What a shame.

That's more or less the equivalent of the retired member of the judicial branch, who is part of the senile troglodyte infestation in the backroom at work, being hideously upset over the widespread approval of Liugi Mangioni exterminating that repulsive slug CEO.

Oh dear. What a shame.


It strikes me that there is far too little pissing up ropes nowadays.
There are far too many easily triggered candy asses too.
My piles bleed for them, bless their hearts.

In other news, to celebrate my apartment mate's birthday, I brought home a large live angry crustacean. She loves crustacean. She is feasting on it now, there are slurping and sucking sounds from the other side of the table.


I am perfectly okay with slagging the Irish, Catholics, and senile old garbage in Marin County.
It was 100% Catholics who told me that I was going to go to hell.
Which made my school years surreal.


The list of things and people whom I mildly and all in all apathetically dislike is quite long. And I'm okay with that. Being passionate about such matters would be far too much effort, and a monumental waste of time.


In some ways I'm rather fond of the Irish. Despite their absolutely horrifying tobaccos, they make some decent pipes.



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COLD AND NASTY AND DARK AND WET

It was necessarily a somewhat short and circumspect walk with a pipe this morning, given the downpour. And, naturally, once I had finished my smoke and got back home, it stopped raining. During my walk the only people I saw outside had been garbage men and electric scooter picker-uppers. People who had no choice. Theoretically, I had a choice.
Just outside for a smoke. Tobacco is not necessary, no one forcing me.

Well, no one is forcing vegans to eat flavourless crap, yet they do it anyway.

It was very much like the wilds of Scotland out there. With occasionally a hairy savage on the horizon. Wielding a haggis offensively and screaming "freedom !"

Their arses are painted blue with woad. Which is known to keep Englishmen away.

It must be working. Didn't see a single Englishman out there.
So in that respect it is actually not like Scotland.
Apparently the English love Caledonia.
That refreshing weather.

On non-inclement days I carry a blackthorn walking stick for whacking the weeds, or, this being San Francisco, the rabid vagrants and violently insane zombies collectively pooing on the sidewalks and setting trashcan fires according to commentators in the red states.
This morning, an umbrella. To shield the pipe.
Filled with Red Flake with Perique.
C & D Small Batch, 2023.


I have never been to the red states or Scotland. The latter is on my bucket list, eventually, sometime when it isn't haggis season -- having made haggis years ago I never want to see it again -- but there is no reason to visit the red states, given that I have scant interest in eating their cuisine (google "Altoona Pizza" if you're curious) or seeing the world's biggest ball of shoelaces. It's basically all Graceland, blue hair, and gun wielding overweight diabetics between the Sierras and the East River.

Plus bridezillas, monster truck shows, and fundamentalists.
Fortified hospitals, hundreds of miles apart.
Grunting Trumpites.



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BETTER THAN A BOX

This is the season when family members of smokers are desperate what to buy for smelly old uncle Bertie the last tobacco addict in the family whom they'll gladly invite over for the holiday celebrations but hell will freeze over before they tolerate him indulging indoors. It stinks! And gives you cancer! Go out there to the compost heap and stink with the rabid raccoons or streetpeople getting pneumonia

But first, here's a present. We were thinking of you!
And they hand over some nasty cigars.
With colourful bands.

They tried, they were thoughtful, they got you something that's absolutely perfect!.
Totally oblivious to the fact that you know your own tastes best.
Joya De Chupacabra, handmade by goats!

Yeah, okay, we know what we smoke. And as you should expect, we alreay have it.

Please don't buy us smokers' requisites. Your bad choices in an area where you are clueless and disapproving will lead to stuff that no one in their right mind would enjoy.
But we'll have to show our appreciation, how sweet!

No.

You're going to send us out in the blistering cold, and probably rain or snow, whenever we even think of lighting up. So something more practical, like an urban stealth garment that advertises "don't disturb me, dammit" is much better.



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SURVIVING AMONG THE COYOTES

He asked when Christmas would be this year. So I told him same as every year. Turns out that he meant what day of the week. Being a typical product of the American educational system using math to figure out the day so far ahead counfused him.
And here I thought he was just a typical idiot.
Instead of number-challenged.

Shortly after that, Neil came in and smoked a cigar while I ate my lunch. Neil is not that way. Probably because math has always been a useful tool for him, along with logic and common sense. Neil is also American. As am I.

Where we differ is hot sauce appreciation and fondness for coyotes.
I asked about the coyote that's been eyeing his cat.
Sadly, the animal is no longer around.
It had leered at a child.


Typical pampered Marinite kiddie-winkies are so easily traumatized.
In my day, son, there were coyotes everywhere.

Going to school each day meant tromping through miles and miles of snowdrifts filled with coyotes on an empty stomach to the unheated little red brick schoolhouse. We scared them off by reciting the multiplication tables real loud. If you couldn't do that, you were shipped off to 'Nam to fight the Russians without any food that day. Lord help you if you had laryngitis.

Bah, kids these days! Buncha wussies! Soft!

In retrospect, I may have had too much caffeine. While at work I stay hydrated with multiple cups of tea, and as it was quite busy I was doing double strength. So I might have been berserk, though hiding it well. High as a kite by that time.

One of my coworkers only has one regular strenght cup during the day, with two or three barely coloured cupfuls afterwards, and far greater intervals in between than me.

Pees a heck of a lot more too.


The trick is to spend the afternoon buzzing, and flitting about like a hummingbird.
It takes at least full strength to achieve that.




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A MARKED LACK OF CHEESE BURGERS

The thought processes of the night continue more consciously into the first cup of coffee. It is doubtful that the rain overnight has anything to do with that. An odd sense of timelessness.
I remembered stuff I could not possibly know, from a generation before I was born.

When I stepped outside to smoke my pipe the sidewalks were wet, down on Polk Street a brightly garbed garbage man trundled a bin toward the truck. There were no homeless people, no dogwalkers, no joggers. Darkness, moisture, early donut fiends.

It is important to mentally reconstruct. Things seem so long ago. I thought of my father, and his father, whom I never knew, as he passed away years before I was born.

London after the great war must have been a fascinating place.

When he died, my grandmother brought the boys back to America and settled in Beverly Hills. My dad was six at that time, so his schooling was entirely here. My uncle was eight, and never quite lost that English accent. Both of them were at Berkeley just before WWII. Where afterwards they went again.

When I came back to the States I also ended up in Berkeley, which was a different place then. But I haven't been there in years. It's changed in the intervening decades. There is a lot of tofu and veganism there now, and they're determined to "awaken" the world.


Did I ever mention how much I dislike piercings, tattoos, and meaningfully expressive clothing or jewelry? As well as dining to save the planet?


I am unabashedly culturally appropriative, and semi-colonial.
It's both a life style and an aesthetic.
Consciously.


Bring back the Roman Empire.
The Vandals demand it.



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IT GETS COMPLICATED

During the middle of the afternoon, I went to purchase a stuffed animal for my apartment mate's birthday, seeing as she's suddenly turning a year older this weekend. I've done this several years running. With luck, the animal turns into a cherished roommate, secure in the hierarchy of rowdy anarachists living in our apartment. Where the others will nurture it's personality as it develops, as well as any gender identification it may insist upon.

The octopus, for instance, is considerate and caring of the turkey vulture, with no strings attached. The spider and the she-sheep have a thing going. The small purplish gorilla is deeply resentful of the rabbit being the boyfriend of the senior roomie Ms. Bruin.

Key desiderata: must have character and intelligence. No wussy little poofballs.

My eye fell on two fierce meat eaters.
One of whom is reptilian.
One, avian.

THEIR NATURAL HABITAT

The woman who relinquished them at the bestial adoption agency believes that I am a grandpa with a granddaughter. It has been easier than explaining the actual facts in this case, and she takes pleasure in my gifting the wee tyke stuffed animals for Christmas. This year the imaginary grandchild is eight years old, and I'll be doing Christmas with my imaginary offspring and their equally non-existent spouse.

I'm hoping that next year she doesn't ask too many questions. It's hard keeping the backstory of my fantasy family straight. I cannot remember what I told her last year or before that.

I am very fond of my imaginary granddaughter.
She's a good kid. Lots of imagination.



Afterwards I had lunch, then loaded and lit a pipe. A merchant complimented me on the smell of my tobacco, so I must make sure to remember that his awning is a possible sanctuary during the downpours this winter.

It's near the place where last winter I'd occasionally see Russ, before he got pneumonia and was out of commission for three months.

Which is also a good shelter when it rains.
Good for people watching.



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AN EXTRA LAYER OF UNDERWEAR

According to the weather reports great chances of inclemency will mark the next four days. With lower temperatures, which means I might want to bring out the Canadian winter coat. One of my coworkers will be in a sad-sack depressed mood, making little whimpering sounds all day. Which I mostly ignore, because that is their natural state anyway. At such times I am deliberately and offensively upbeat. Cheerful even.

"Nonsense, this is just mildly bracing Autumn weather!"
"Just put on an extra layer of underwear."
"You didn't bring any?"
"Thoughless!"

The person in question is much younger than myself and has far more insulating body fat.
For myself, I am a joy to be around. Far less so, conceivably, for some other people.

Facebook memory from a few years ago: "Just in case any of you forgot, I'm still an irritating unlikable person, not socially suitable for your friends and family, and I smell bad."

THE FALL GLORY OF THE SALTFLATS IN BOONDSNORGLE, MARIN COUNTY

There is a persimmon tree in the yard downstairs which is glorious at this time of year. I can see it through the blinds of the television room windows. Further uphill gingkos are golden yellow, and in various areas there are drifts of crispy leaves. Perfect weather for pipesmoking, lots of tea, and vast rolls of thermal underwear.

Me and my vast rolls of thermal underwear will be heading over to Chinatown later today for lunch at a slightly seedy place with sticky tables. I'm looking forward to that. Pipe afterwards.

To be honest, I do not enjoy cold weather much. But smoking a pipe means at least half an hour outdoors, and with fewer people about it's quiet time. Centuries ago you could do that inside, but the world has changed. The fairer sex does not approve of the smell of tobacco, and little kiddies now wrinkle their tiny button noses while whining pointedly about the stinky man, or sometimes throw rotten fruits in my direction.

Back in the stone age, as I rememember it, I'd be comfortably ensconced in the living room of the house in Berkeley with tea and a loaded briar, while rain blattered against the French doors, and the cats quarreled with raccoons outside.

Nice. Bookshelves, and a full set of the encyclopedia.
Steaming cup of Russian Caravan.
Very comfy.



Disapproving little kiddie puritans were quite rare in those days, and one did not need vast rolls of scratchy thermal underwear to enjoy life.



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STAY UPWIND

The ideal woman speaks more than just English, is okay with food that has flavour, won't try to reform her man, does not drink more than rarely, and even then very conservatively, is somewhere on the spectrum, and is younger than me. Which, you would think, applies to a great many people. This is relevant because years ago after my break-up some friends were anxious that I find someone, but due to apathy and stubbornness on my part that never happened. And I am not concerned about that.

Considerable apathy and stubborness.
Total non-cooperation, in fact.


I'm not particularly social. And I'm comfortable eating by myself. It would probably disturb the people at the dumpling places or the chachantengs where I have a late lunch on occasion if Mak Lou-kwai (麥老鬼) had a female person at his table. It would make them doubt the certainties of existence. And how can she stand it? He's a smoker! Stinky!

I am not in the business of unduly disturbing people.
That's what hot sauce and editorials are for.
Plus tacky reality shows on teevee.

Trust me, if I really wanted to attract someone, I'd probably douse myself with Chick fil A Sauce and carry a tarp everywhere, but I'm reasonably certain that that would appeal to all the extremely wrong people only. Likewise, I do not think that I could have a conversation let alone friendship with someone who used that technique, OR was inexplicable drawn to such behaviour. It seems so yuppie, so blonde, so Starbucks Frappay-swilling yoga mat.

You will kindly note that in Wind In The Willows, there are no passionate affairs. None of the main characters does stupid things because of the opposite gender. Strangely, none of them actually IS an opposite gender, which is hard to figure out, but two or three of them are rather like myself, so I shan't question it. Certainly I am not an opposite gender.

I tend to think of myself as a fairly typical pipesmoking Dutch American male with a taste for chilies, and salt fish, surrounded by books. Who knows how to cook.
Nothing unusual about that.



My favourite season is Autumn. I don't take long walks on the beach. I have no dog.




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THE MAGIC LIBRARY

What if there were a club, of varied gender and racial/ethnic spectrum, that all smoked pipes, swilled tea, and read foreign languages? Let us say in a building no more than ten blocks away, near bakeries and restaurants, but discreet, you know? Not blatant and likely to upset the little kiddie-winkies, or the Karens of which San Francisco is so generously endowed.

Yes, they'd all be variations on me.

Dutch, Colonial Malay of a by-gone era, or Cantonese, might be nearly common languages. The club fridge would, among other things, contains pots of sambal. In case someone decided to have their lunch on the premises.

Obviously some extra ventilation would be required, along with lots of bookshelves, plus reading desks, and comfy rattan chairs, as well as good directional lighting.

As you can tell I have thought this out, and it's probably not ever going to exist, but it would be rather like the reading room attached to a bar on the Market Square in Valkenswaard, as well as the two or three sociëteiten where many of us were more or less members back in the day, but withoout the beer component. A spot of sherry, perhaps.

On a cold day, early in the morning, it would be rather nice to walk into a warm quiet place which smelled of hot beverages for a nice read in a comfy chair, instead of stumbling out into the bleak and almost gothically grim public street where people walk their teacups and jog if they are excercise freaks, sniffing disapprovingly over all of us in a soi disant superior way, why the nerve of us taking up space in their world, polluting the air they breathe with our utterly nasty industrial smells, moist body odours, or foul brimstone reeks!

Who let us out of the work house?

Why isn't there soy milk latte available at the top of the hill?

There are just so many things wrong with the world, they think, and it's our fault!



I'm presently contemplating a pipe from a previous era. An unremarkable grain to the briar, but the glow of fine old wood. It's a Corinthian made for Grant's by Comoy, which a friend recently got rid off, because it's just not his style and he's simplifying. He hardly smoked it, it's nearly new. I think I'll load it up after teatime today. One or two smokes and it won't have even a trace of the vanilla tobacco he puffed in it. It's a Canadian shape (meaning longish oval shank, standard billiard bowl, and a tapered stem). Looks very colliagiate.
Should be interesting. Reflective of a disappeared time and place.


Thank you, Herb. It will live again.



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FRUITCAKE IS WHAT KARAOKE SOUNDS LIKE

There seem to be many more marginal types about than normal. Perhaps it's the weather? Personally I would like to think existential despair, what with climate change, the state of the world, and the dawning realization that voting for MAGA to "own" the liberals will result in shortages, job loss, and increased civil unrest, but that would require too much intellectual clarity from a population known to be dumber than the average monkey. Remember, the third pounder failed because most Americans believed that it contained less beef than the quarter pounder, and this is also the country where a state legislature once proposed to make pi (π) officially 3.2 because that would be so much easier (the vote was postponed when some people pointed out that they didn't have the power to define mathematical truth).

Also, in this state some of our lawmakers are proposing setting π as three exactly, because they don't want substandard students to be frustrated, or even think that some numbers are inherently more important than other numbers. It would traumatize them. Plus it leads to all kinds of problems with obsessives and people on the spectrum.


"Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached ... "


Yeah, um, there are very good reasons why we put a man on the moon. We stole a whole bunch of German scientists, that's why. We don't know how they done it, but we couldn't have did it without them.

While heading down to my usual spot puffing my pipe I felt somewhat uneasy. Though the streets were mostly empty, there were odd individuals demonstrating eccentric behaviours evident, including the flaked out dude listening to rap in the niche near where I usually end up while waiting for the bookseller.

At one point I clarified to a passer-by that it was not marijuana in my pipe but a mostly red Virginia loose-pressed flake with some Turkish and Perique compounded by Jeremy Reeves at Cornell & Diehl for Low Country Pipe and Cigar in the Carolinas, which is the brick and mortar representation of Laudisi Enterprises, who own Cornell & Diehl.
After which he asked if I was by any chance a doctor.
Possibly because of all the words.

It's probably a good thing that he didn't ask me what π (pi) was. Which is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, very approximately 3.141592653589793238462643 et cetera.

Both of the places to which the bookseller and myself go after the burger joint were packed. Europäische intellektuellen at one place, loud trashy karaoke yutzes at the other. We ended up at the bail-out bar, which was nearly empty and quite sane by comparison. Actually sane in real terms. Not just relative to elsewhere. Sane is good.

At present I'm wide awake and sparkling, because I drank tea.
It should wear off in an hour or two.


Things are more fraught at this time of year.



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AH, MEMORIES

Facebook reminds me of things from the past. Stuff I posted, which at the time reflected something reasonably true about my life and what I was thinking at that time.

A long time ago:
Santa Con this coming Saturday. Intend to miss it. Hate drunken elves, and puking red-clothed perverts. Stay sane, stay sober. And bah humbug.

Somewhat more recent:
The local market carries gluten-free whole wheat tortillas. That's it, a sign of the end-times. The millennials are ruining the world.

And then:
It only seems like yesterday when I was a Trotskyite race-hating homosexual, neurotic, heathen, liberal, Jesuitical, a neo-nazi, a communist, a very well-trained Christian critic of the Talmud, and a savage Christian-hating Jew.


And also this wonderful map of our country:

That map is still accurate social cartography.
Quite.


Also, it's exactly eight years ago since I started avoiding a nearby place where I had been accustomed to buy a drink or two and then spend most of the time in the downstairs portico quietly smoking my pipe, leaving my drink on the bar to mark my spot. On slow evenings that usually presented no problem. But over time the clientele changed, and lets face it, a middle-aged pipe-smoking loner is not exactly the warmest presence. So even though I tipped well, and didn't bother anyone, I no longer felt as welcome as I once had been.

They are no longer in business. Changing clienteles do not translate to increased prosperity and joy in the world. A few of the regulars are still in the neighborhood, but some of them have regrettably passed away, which dismayed those of us who knew them.
Others have simply gotten older. Not me, of course.
I'm still the same as I was then.
Just better at it.


What this world needs -- meaning what the neighborhood and this blogger need -- is a place where once can have a cup of Hong Kong milk tea in the evening while smoking a pipe on a secluded back patio with an awning and a light source bright enough for reading.
I think that there are enough elderly geezers here to make it go.
Not me of course, I'm not at all old. Not "old" old.
I'm young, springy, and vibrant!
Muchly.



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IT'S SPARKLING!

Early in the day, two days a week, people in my neighborhood panic. Certain people. Only. Because of street cleaning. One day one side, the next day the other side. If they're parked on the wrong side, they get ticketed and sometimes towed. A substantial fine and charge for reclaiming their vehicle, a black mark on their permanent record, they'll never get into the best colleges, will be turned down for good employment, looked at askance, and other members of their church congregation will whisper bad things about them.

People know who they are. They'll be burned for witchcraft.
The rest of us, not having motorcars, don't care.
If we had wheels, we'd angle them.

NOTE: When parking in San Francisco, if it's on a slope, you must angle your front wheels correctly in case the beast starts rolling. This is very important! Tourists and visitors, being unaware of this, will get severely fined and on a bad day might be hauled off to involuntarily donate a kidney.

I do not have a car.

HILLY STREET IN SAN FRANCISCO

My first pipe smoke this morning while taking a walk was marked by panic. Even saw people wearing bathrobes rush out to repark before the sweep vehicle passed by, preceded by the parketing officer. We are very insistent about clean streets in this city, although considerably less concerned about the sidewalk. Which might be needle-strewn and dogpoo-smeared.

I returned to my apartment building at the time when on a work day I would be getting off the bus in Boondsnorgle (located in deepest Marin) to make a cup of tea before sweeping and emptying ashtrays, in preparation for the eventual arrival of a few senile old geezers whose family members (wives, or last living kin) don't want them around during the day, because they smell bad, dress funny, and cuss and swear and argue.

Naturally I thoroughly enjoy my days off.

At present I do not have a wife or last living kin who would chase me out of my home, and my apartment mate has an entirely different schedule, so her being present does not overlap much with my cussing, swearing, or arguing. Which I mostly do at work anyway.

Also, clean streets. That counts for something.
They're filthy when I'm at work.
Now they're clean.




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GLOWING WATTLES

On the bus back from deepest Boondsnorgle, Marin County, I have come to recognize some of the regular passengers. The somewhat plump and dumpy somewhat middle-aged Chicana with the intelligent kindly face that has character, the fat-eared gentleman who lives in my neighborhood (always interesting to observe), the somewhat crazed redneckish lout, and the petite woman who is Mandarin-able, who gets on about halfway down the line after work. What they all have in common is no tatoos or highly individualistic clothing choices.
And not addicted to glowing cell-phone screens. So their faces look alive.

People are so much better to observe when they're actually still living and breathing, rather than chin-lit dead-faced screen zombies.

Central Sausalito has more dead people than any other bus stop.
I haven't quite figured out why that is.

The Chicana and the Mandarin-able woman are quite the most interesting. One can tell that their minds are doing things. And that they have personalities.

Personalities are unusual on the bus back from work. Or in Marin. Where many people lack much in that regard.

Observing people on the bus is the extent of my interaction. I am not a people person per se, and by the end of the work day I've often had quite enough of them.
And I need to decompose, as it were.


Sometimes one or two of the regulars are absent.
Which is rather a pity.
I miss them.



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PROBABLY FRENCH OR GERMAN

The world to which I wake up this morning is a different place than the it was exactly a week ago. The beverage at crack of dawn, however, is the same. Caffeinated. I have a theory that without coffee and tea the entire modern world -- everything from widespread literacy to consumerite culture -- would not have happened. Neither would two world wars, probably, or the revolutions that, ehem, revolutionized the world. And beyond doubt beatnik poetry would never have come into being, although cheap booze had a lot to do with that.

Can't start the day with cheap booze. It's just not done. Some people do, of course, but aristocrats and Europeans start with expensive booze or bust.


Many Americans are the children and grandchildren of people fleeing old world alcoholism.
Vodka or gin at six in the morning?
Very European.



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IT SMIRKS PERKILY!

One thing I've noticed about commercials is the preponderence of women who sound blonde, middle-class with aspirations or pretensions, well-fed, and perky perky perky!
Doesn't matter what the product. Cars. Clothes. Make-up. Eloctrolytes.

Perhaps that is the ideal woman in suburban America.
Judging by media to which I've been exposed.
The background noises of the day.
Perky! And blonde!

None of whom showed up to the meeting of the local pipe club. Which is their loss, as there was good stuff to smoke, as well as some very nice earthy brandy, of which I did not partake for a variety of reasons. There were also some lovely pipes there, old briar well-shaped and properly maintained.

Plus brie, preserved meats of various types, and a delicious bit of pâté.


Snacks, tobacco, good company. As well as discussions of gold prospecting, ore, amber, carbon rubber, terpeneols, carotenoids, natural sugars and oils crystalizing, engineering.
And diverse other subjects.

About a dozen of of us gathered. I know and like all of them, but I did not participate entirely because I had things to do, and did not wish to unduly burden my co-worker.
And I probably smoked too much, mostly Virginia-Perique blends.


Plus by the end of the afternoon the lack of sleep from the previous night combined with perhaps too much caffeine from all the tea I had drunk throughout the day made me less than rational. Or perhaps super-rational. Transcendent. Inspired.

Sometimes I wonder how people put up with me.




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