MIRACLE CURE

At some point the sports programme on teevee in the backroom segued into an infomercial about a product which let us call 'Crepe Away'.A miracle balm. You have to have it. Now let's hear from actual users, all of whom because it's so good look much much younger. Instead of women between fifty and eighty years of age with flappy bits under their arms, they look like women a year or two younger with NO garbage bags under their arms.
Radiant and youthful! Just 'peachy'!

Actual users. Between fifty and eighty years old.

Which entranced the old fossils, and probably gave them dating ideas.

For a good two hours this afternoon I had a room full of vicious old farts huffing their cigars, scratching their piles, and peacefully gazing at the teevee and visions of feminine beauty. Younger women, crinkle-free, oh my.


It's a stellar product, and worth every penny of your grandkid's tuition!
Heck, sell a kidney. Your grandkid has two.

PINEAL GLAND EXTRACT, MANUKA HONEY, AND YOGURT ENZYMES

For senescent old bozos in their twilight years, this counts as soft-core porn. Their eyes glow, their brows pearl with perspiration, and their fingers tremble. Oooh, so good!

I think that henceforth, when they're snapping and growling, and biting each other's heads off again, I'll just put on another Crepe Away video to distract them and quiet them down.
Crepe Away, the unguent of pulchritude. It's better than old bozo bloodlust.



Gluten-free.



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UP WITH THE BIRDS

Some creatures are habitually up at the very crack of dawn. Roosters. Baristas. Men with loud motorbikes and small ineffective limp members. Plus Cantonese apartment mates who are ravenous, and masculine Netherlandish Americans who wish to have a good smoke plus afterwards plenty of time to commit ablution and other necessary things in a bathroom of their choosing.

Also many birds of course. Mainly worm-eaters.

Like you, I cannot face a worm that early in the morning. Coffee, then a pipe smoked while wandering around the neighborhood and glaring at folks pooing their dogs.
Can't they do that in the privacy of their own home?
Well dammit!


Or, to put it differently, I am not the most social creature at that hour.
Even after abluting and dressing I haven't improved much.
More presentable, still grouchy.
Dutch uncle.

AN EARLY BIRD

A coworker five years ago liked starting the day with an energy drink and a cigar. The good thing was that though half-crazed, he wasn't particularly talkative. At the toy company over a decade ago the operations department spent the first two hours irritatingly yacking on about Real Housewives and American Idol while slurping Starbucks frappies. It drove both me and the one intelligent member of that department nuts. I was on the other side of the nearest wall of dividers trying to tune them out while making necessary calls.


I have never watched American Idol or the Real Housewives. Nor do I wish to belatedly catch up on either of them. Never watched Game of Thrones either. The last actual watchable shows on teevee were The X Files, Forever Knight, and Absolutely Fabulous.
Also, I do not poo my dog. He's imaginary, and constipated.
Must be that cigar I mentally see him smoking.
Cigars early in the morning are evil.
Dries the membranes.



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THE CREATURE FROM THE BRONZE LAGOON

For some reason I've never gotten into beaches. School trips to the seashore were always fun, mostly because going somewhere is always interesting, even exciting, and new things to see get the mental juices flowing. But that typical Northern European thrill to be somewhat undressed where there is lots of sand and breakers gently rolling in? Yeah, um, no. Germans, by the way, love Scheveningen. Never figured that out.
Dunes, starfish, slimy things. Seaweed. Sunburn.
Not for me.

It's nice and scenic, I suppose, but is there a cafe terrace nearby that isn't crowded with slumps wearing swimming togs? And surely it has an awning, comfortable rattan furniture, and no angry earthmommas and papas screaming about the pipe and ashtray?

A nice cup of coffee, and stirfried noodles with clams, mussels, and fish, scallion and ginger, and a bowl of fresh red chilipaste would be nice afterwards. Splash the seafood with sherry or rice wine in the pan before dumping them on top of the gilded noodles. Salted black beans (豆豉 'dau si') and garlic are not essential, but add a nice touch. Pizzaz.

Children love the beach. I was a child, once. Briefly.


I've already apologized for that.

清水灣

It wasn't my finest moment.


There was the beach on Camaguin Island, where I tried climbing a palm tree and scraped myself. There was a beach much further south of that, approx 200 miles, where we hurriedly got back into the boat more than a year later, for ... reasons. I've never been to Kuta Beach in Bali because seeing Australians soaked in Fosters and drenched in Coppertone wasn't high on my list of priorities. A beach in England where I first saw razor clams.
Which are edible. Which is good.

In the Bay Area I've been to the beach maybe half a dozen times, usually because of someone else. A few of those times involved setting fire to stuff that wasn't tobacco.
And wasn't underneath a cooking vessel either.


A co-worker years ago liked to windsurf. I thought he was nuts.
His beach togs were, I believe, a rubber wetsuit.
He looked like a space alien.


Yesterday on the bus a Chinese gentleman who lives a few blocks away stood near me, and I noticed that he was exceedingly tanned. Although he looked quite Australian, I decided not to mention Vegemite (維吉麥膏). He would not have understood the concept or connections, and that stuff is not something that Cantonese people normally associate with healthy living, suntans, beaches, or even food.

Chinese people, generally speaking, don't tan.
They can, but choose not to.


The main problem with beaches is that there usually aren't trash receptacles evenly spaced every hundred yards or so where one can dispose of pipe cleaners and other detritus.
If, on a foggy day, one decided to go somewhere quiet.



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THE MISSING DECADE

Yesterday evening the apartment mate and I had dinner at a local restaurant where the food is well-prepared Cantonese - American Chinese - Home Style. Their steamed salt fish pork patty is, in a word, heavenly. And while generally speaking I am wary of tofu because I've had it badly prepared by white people far too often, done with bokchoi and large whole black mushrooms they way they do it is splendid.

The parents do the kitchen, their daughter serves and answers the phone.

Clean and bright, with nicely prepared food.

Our kind of people.


Yeah okay, not hip. Good and hip are usually at odds anyhow, and it's strictly neighborhood, not easy to get too if you're a tourist from out of town or a visitor to the city. And where their from, Milk Tea is not a thing. Mom and dad speak a dialect further back than most people, wich sounds like it's been influenced by the Min group of languages. Intelligible if you struggle. Standard city Cantonese also can.

One curious thing I found out yesterday was that if the person was not ready to go, they will blow out the candles at the cemetery. Also, there is food offerings envy among ghosts. Just keep that in mind the next time you are at happy hill cleaning the graves.
The dead don't mind you swearing while cleaning.
They've heard it all before.


Taking them some decent coffee from Peet's might be a good idea.
Not Starbucks. And absolutely NO syrup-added stuff.
Show some respect.


This is vaguely related to a previous period of my life, people I used to know, and memories of previous places. Fermented fish also enters into it. They used to make that at Three Families Village. But that's a thing of the past now.



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THAT KIND OF EVENING

While waiting for the bookseller I was treated to a crazy person talking to himself about his girlfriend whom he had made into a pornostar, as well the gesticulating fellow, and the cretin mumbling, who was looking for his beverage which he had "just put there, and now it's gone". His muttering made clear that there had been several hours in between then and now, and that there were different newspaper racks than before, and the stop light had suddenly turned orange at that time which is why he put his drink down, which was the right thing to do.

As you've probably guessed, I am very good at not talking to people.
Although on Sunday I did respond to an eccentric who spoke.


"I just made a big coin for the Mexican embassy and left it at the gas station!"


I reassured him that it would probably all work out okay. Whereupon he left.

Living in San Francisco, I normally don't get into conversations with some people. That's a skill everyone learns here. My friend the bookseller told me that one of the customers, the woman who shouts about how damned Buddhists are killing all these people, had been quite distraught because "someone stole your elevator!" They don't have an elevator. They haven't had one for donkeys years. It never did go to the top. He told her that he'd file a report or something, and shooed her out. That's why he was late. It was one of those days.

Despite the cold wind there were numerous people out. The beer place looked like a war zone, someone was massacring La Bamba at the karaoke place to great acclaim (couldn't sing worth a damn, but his friends were drunk). The alternative place to which we went was, mercifully, quiet. Because the person tending bar does not speak Chinese, it attracts mostly American-born Cantos. Pretend, if you will, that the bookseller and myself are such.
He's of Italian derivation, I'm a Dutch American, but never mind.

The function of pipe-smoking Dutchmen is to confound your algorithms. That's why we exist.

Shortly after we got our drinks two gentlemen speaking some country dialect from lord knows where entered, and asked the bar person "ni swo tsong wen ma?" She told them she didn't, and I helpfully informed them that I could speak Cantonese. They left, discombobulated.

I'm fairly certain their dialect was Cantonese. Of some sort. But maybe from so far into turnip territory that the farm trucks are still stuck in the mud there. Far less intelligible than Toisan.

Still, the words beer ('peh-jau') and Remy ('le-mi') would have been understood.
They're comprehensible no matter how badly you mangle them.
Worst comes to worst, gesticulate!
Mime drink.


We have to deal with tourists from the rest of the country and the outside world all the time here in SF, we'll understand you if you make an effort. Really, I promise.


Just don't mutter, mumble cretinously, or act crazy.
And please, don't sing karaoke at us.


While we were at the bus stop a pick-up truck passed by blaring some tune from either The Beverly Hillbillies or Petticoat Junction. Possibly the Andy Griffith Show.
I'm sure it was meant ironically.


Yee haw.



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THE SMARTNESSES

Sometimes, out of the corner of your ear, you hear something that tingles. While we were eating she mentioned that she admired crows because of their intelligence. We had veered over the course of the conversation into various animals -- cats, foxes, gophers, rabbits, et mult autres -- but crows and drinking vessels and their understanding of volume and displacement struck a nerve.

Crows resonated. There had been a huge colony of crows on the roof of one of the highrise office buildings three blocks away, which had probably suffered from the city's massive rat poisoning nearby. Poison travels up the food chain.


I miss those crows.


The city ocassionally does remarkably stupid things.
Governmental bureaucrats aren't particularly bright.

Their rat poison is still out there as toxic red tape.

The internet is filled with videos of crows being intelligent and other animals being cute or lovable -- that black bear uprighting the traffic cone in the Sierras, for example -- as well as bureacrats and Texans being stupid.

If bureaucrats could figure out a way to eliminate pesky problem people while keeping tax dollars and votes flowing, they'd probably poison all of us.

AI is not the solution.

Darn.



Release the bears.




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RESOLUTELY UNHIPSTER

Dined with two old friends yesterday evening in C'town at a place where I've known the owner for roughly ten years. It was great. Sadly, we didn't end up at a bar swilling multiple shots of whisky -- one of them now has a pacemaker, and I don't drink alcohol anymore because of possible interactions with my medications -- but all three of us were in fine spirits. After our meal we went to observe the rats in one of San Francisco's city parks.

Rats are splendid creatures, as you know.
Intelligent, very social, and organized.
Altogether quite admirable.


Well, except for that nasty rumour about the bubonic plague.
That may have caused some bad press over the years.


If you like rats (and who doesn't?), there is probably no better way to encounter them than at a protest encampment at a local Ivy League university. Discarded kale chip bags and half eaten cans of tofu are a magnet. As are musty smelling hoodies and sweatshirts.
And vegans are, of course, averse to killing vermin.
Which is what the protests are about.

That and the irresistible urge to be hip and with it.

As you have probably figured out by now, I am not hip and with it. My friends aren't either.

A large part of that is the tendency to see many shades of grey, whereas all the hippest with it people can only think in terms of black and white. Plus their knowledge of the world consists only of easy soundbites, and is virtually content free.
Some of them are simply stupid, of course.
Or stoned.



Vegans who are high as kites are sour and bitter, because they can't snack on so many things. Icecream and pizza are out of the question. So are yogurt and granola bars.
It's very sad. Dialectic is grim when you can't even eat yogurt granola bars.
Or labneh. Or musakhan. Or kabobs. Or pita chips.
So very very sad.




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TREMENDOUS IS MY FAVOURITE COLOUR

As a rational Dutch-American, I'll trust the Dutch experience with windmills, rather than the words of a racist gay hating felon. Not that his racism or dislike of homosexuals has anything to do with his great expertise in the field of windmills. But as regards that, he is, as his own words prove, absolutely off his rocker.

"We’ll have an economy based on wind. I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. I’ve studied it better than anybody I know. It’s very expensive. They’re made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none. But they’re manufactured tremendous if you’re into this tremendous fumes. Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything."

"You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right? Spewing. Whether it’s in China, Germany, it’s going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything, right?"

"So they make these things and then they put them up. And if you own a house within vision of some of these monsters, your house is worth 50 percent of the price. They’re noisy. They kill the birds. You want to see a bird graveyard? You just go. Take a look. A bird graveyard. Go under a windmill someday. You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen ever in your life."

"You see all those ..... They’re all different shades of colour. They’re like sort of white, but one is like an orange-white. It’s my favorite colour, orange."

That was four years back. There is no evidence he's become saner since spewing all that. Spewing tremendous tremendous into the atmosphere. Covefe is tiny compared to the universe. Tremendous, tremendous.

Far be it from me to criticize the bigly contributions of Adderall® and Depends® to American life. Bigger even than ketchup on well-done steak. The best. A+, it's huge.

If you're voting for him you're out of your mind.
Several other things too. Undoubtedly.
But this is a clean site.


Look, a shark!



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DARKER WHEN COLD

On the path up to the doorway of my workplace this morning I encountered a small presence, which I have since then concluded must have been a western fence lizard. I don't have much exposure to lizards. Well, the non-human kind, that is. I did not want to startle it, so I took a detour around it. Reading up on these things indicates that they are darker when they haven't gotten warmed up. It looked happy. Sunlight on the pavement.

It was shorter and thinner than a robusto cigar.
So less than five inches, fifty ring gauge.
Apparently common in California.

Often I find the personalities of animals more agreeable than human beings. More honest, less neurotic and psychopathic. Certainly during the work day those are the types of human being I often encounter. Quarrelsome old basket cases huffing stogies and stewing in their own funk, senile and often drunk-paranoid, in the back room, which is closest to the muddy salt flats upon which we'll chuck their corpses when they croak. The wild beasts might eat them, might take one look and sneer "this one is past its prime". They all are, my fine feathered friend, they all are.

I'm looking forward to winter, when pneumonia, gout, chronic acid indigestion, and sheer bitchy orneriness will cull the herd further. The salt flats are hungry. So hungry.


Until then, I'll try to get the local mountain lions and werewolves eating out of my hand.

And love the small creatures soaking up the sun warmth.

Here, lizard, lizard, lizard!



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THE BLESSED FRUIT

Some people eat it for breakfast, and there's even coffee flavoured with it. Ronald, who passed away years ago, once bought a tonne of it and was barred from both public transit and entry to his hotel, so he and his mom sat on a park bench and tried to consume it all. Seeing as an excess comes out through your pores, they must have whiffed a bit.

For a few years a long time ago I would do a durian tasting in random places to introduce people to it, and enjoy their reaction. A friend confesses herself not a fan.

Nowadays urban southerners are quite fond of it and it's widely available.

Frankly, I cannot wait till Americans start obsessing over it, and do what they always do when food gains a cult following. I'm now imagining Durian Huts, durian pizza, durian bakeries, and Paddy's DownHome Durian Shacks all over the country. People assuring me that "in New York they have the best durian, man, that's why you need to go there".

Durian with grits. Durian with lutefisk. Durian with bacon, cheese, and hot sauce.

"Durian is life" teeshirts, durian body spray. Durian hats.

Durian themeparks. The Miss Durian contest.



I myself am not particularly fond of it.
It's okay, lah. But I can pass.



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SOMETHING ABOUT TEMPTATION

After having a quick cup of coffee upon returning home I headed out for the final pipe smoke of the evening. Further up the street, four leggy damsels wearing tight shorts were squealing and getting into a car. Which reminded me of the dye job on one of my favourite pipes. I've recently been re-finishing one of my Dunhill Bruyeres. Those were made of fine old briar from Calabria, with a brown stain undercoat and a deep red overcoat. Yielding what would have, as a lipstick hue, been appropriately named 'temptress scarlet'. The dense tight wood did well thus treated, but reds are usually not permanent, and can fade over time.

Temptress scarlet would also be a good name for a band.

Or a Japanese girl pop combo.


I had been working on it while my apartment mate listened to podcasts about the lives of scandalous women. She likes "researching" white women misbehaving. Heck, all she has to do really is eavesdrop on leggy damsels getting into a car up the street. I have no idea whether they actually knew the driver. If not, we may be reading about them later.

One has to be leary of strangers with candy or cars.

Coffee is okay. The problem being, of course, that coffee is only tempting to introverts in the evening, and they aren't likely to roam the streets wearing shorts and squealing, and even far less likely to respond to a middle aged Dutchman offering to supply them with a nice hot beverage. The weather is too good for that this time of year. Now, if they were soaking wet from a frigid winter rainstorm, it might work. Except they wouldn't be wearing shorts, of course. Nobody except nutballs wears shorts in that kind of weather.

I've never actually looked around for anyone who might need warming up in when the rain is pouring down. Perhaps I should. I lament the lost chances, and the likeable young persons who may have spent weeks in the hospital with pneumonia because neither I nor any other kind Samaritan came by at the right time and offered to pour coffee into them. There must be hundreds of traumatized librarians out there still questioning the choices they made during the horrid rainstorms in recent years. How sad.

If I ever get desperate for a date to the prom, I'll probably just start roaming around this part of the city with a thermos of hot coffee.



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THE PROGRESSION

It was rather cold in the city yesterday. As you would expect. Kind of March/April-ish. Which reminded me of the time I came down with a horrible flu which floored me for several days the year I had my stent put in, when I was still a bit unhealthy. So I decided to go have curry at a chachanteng which does a nice version, before smoking my pipe. Good curry weather.
Cutest little person there having fries with her grandma. Mahogany hair, deep deep shiny brown. Curious pale bug-like face. Extremely small delicate hands.


After finishing my meal and cup of milk tea I headed out into the gale, and ran into an old friend at the busstop. He got off four blocks before me. I had to convince a baifkoof (desi idiot) that he was in way before I escaped. He seemed somewhat dense.

It was less windy on the other side of the hill. Perfect pipe smoking conitions. The caffeine still coursed warmly through my veins, and my feet were far less cold than they had been.
I followed behind two little girls and their grandfather (爺爺 'yeh yeh') who had left the school play ground. The smaller one, while gaily swinging her stuffed monkey, tried to kick her older sister in the rear behind grampa's back. Sort of a surreptitious sideways full leg swing. Third try, success. Grampa oblivious. The older sister made sure to walk a little further away.
The stuffed monkey seemed to giggle.

They weren't walking very fast, so without even trying the gap narrowed. I was at this point keenly aware that the monkey was a trouble maker, and detrmined not to catch his attention. Monkeys, no matter how large or small, are unpredictable, and one should not get on their bad side. Lest noxious substance materializes or gets flung. This is a profound insight, as well as darn good life advice.

When I got to my street, I peeled away.

Home before the fog rolled in.

It was dark early.



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THEY'RE FILLED WITH NUTS!

One of my earliest grammar school memories naturally involves chocolate. Of which I was fonder than many of my classmates, who preferred Dutch licorice and hard sugar candies. Dutch licorice is excellent, American licorice humps bollocks. Dutch chocolate is also quite excellent, but here in San Francisco we know chocolate. As regards hot chocolate I distinctly recall my intense disappointment when faced with American commercial packets, which are weak, flavourless because they use crappy chocolate, and overly sweet because sugar is addictive and manufacturers know that if you feed addiction you win converts.

That addictive bit, by the way, is why people watch Fox News.
It satisfies the addictions of the country's idiots.
Conspiracies, paranoia, xenophobia.

There's no actual content there, just an endless stream of nuts.


Our landlady returned from a trip abroad recently; England and Spain. The latter introduced Europe to cacao, so you'd think they would be absolutely afloat in a sea of chocolate. Yet for historic reasons, they prefer their sweets made with fruit and nuts. Mostly nuts (no idea how they are on newsblathering).

She gifted us with candy (Spain) and soap (England).

For some reason I now have an urge to take a cold shower and eat hard sweets afterward.


Not only do I have a somewhat addictive personality, but I'm also susceptible to suggestion. Which is why I just ate a dozen chocolates (they were in the corner of my right eye), and am determined to smoke a Dunhill Shellbriar, a bent with Canadian Patents 20984 / 21 & 197365 / 209 on the underside of the shank. A pretty old piece. Lovingly restored by yours truly.
It's in the corner of my left eye.

What I'm actually smoking is a 大重九 ('taai jung kau'; "big heavy nine"), a long thin luxury cigarette made in China, from a pack given to me by a friend whose English abilities are sadly severely limited but whose skill at getting tobacco products not allowed for sale in America into the hands of avid consumers is unsurpassed. Good man.

Although the burning season here in California has started, it is considerably cooler in San Francisco than where he is from. Far Northern China. There do not appear to be any luxury chocolate products there, the Chinese have largely not developed a taste for that, but they've gone into cigarettes big time. Possibly they remember that Napoleon funded the conquest of Europe with a monopoly of that. It's also a state-owned branch of commerce in China.

Russia, largely empty though filled with nuts, is the back door to Europe.
That's probably nothing more than a disturbing coincidence.


大重九

Great red nines are made by the Hongyun Honghe Group. 紅雲紅河集團，總部及地址位於雲南省昆明市五華區紅錦路181號，董事長為姚慶艷。Located at no. 181 Red Brocade Road, Wuhua District, Kunming, Yunnan. The chairman is Mr. Yao. Excellent cigarette.
All your favourite animal manga characters smoke them.


You know, I've never really developed a taste for chocolate with nuts.
That's probably why I don't touch energy bars. Nasty stuff.
Smooth rich taste is what I crave instead.
Slim Chinese luxury coffin nails.
Fine Virginia flake.
Chocolate.



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BRAIN FOG

Far be it from me to bellyache constantly about the weather, but never-the-less. It seems that another heat wave is going to blister the inland areas. Which San Francisco isn't. We are on the coast and have fog. Jolly good. I hate hot weather. It makes my legs ache and moving about difficult. It forces the active man into inactivity. Hyper-active to hyper-inactive.


By the way, the thing about some detective series is that the one who did the dirty deed often had a damned good reason to do so and the readers, or audience, naturally sympathize with the murderer. If it's a good British series, there must be brassieres.
Just a thought. Never mind.

Yesterday's adventures with stacks of stuff to be burrowed through meant that I didn''t even get out of the house, and left several things undone. Speaking of being an active man.

Brassieres are a metaphor.
Clearly.

Honestly, I do not have brassieres on my mind. It's foggy there. The brassieres in question are still hanging in the bathroom. They may not be quite dry yet, but I am not planning to investigate. It's not my business. When a man has a female apartment mate, there will occasionally be feminine undergarments in the fog.

Their humidity level is not my concern.


Instead, I shall go outside for a walk with my pipe, and they will disappear eventually.


I suppose the benefit of a bra is that it protects tender skin areas when one is wearing a scratchy sweater. Such as might be necessary early in the morning when the temperature is low fifties and it's foggy outside. Which might be why there are no women, not even one, taking a walk with their pipes at this hour. Their brassieres are too moist. It's unhealthy.

That doesn't explain the women dogwalkers, though.
Shan't ask about the state of their bras.
Not a single dang word.



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GREAT REPTILE INVESTIGATIONS

When you go through stacks of stuff, and you are a packrat, you end up with dust on your spectacles, happy discoveries of things you didn't even know you had, and a far greater self knowledge than you wished for. I found pipe tobacco in sealed tins that I had totally forgotten about, half a dozen kippot (one of which is pride month suitable), and correspondence which I meant to answer years ago but didn't. I also revisited the stuffed armadillo that stood on my credenza at the toy company. I knew I still had him, and precisely where he was (near the boom box and precisely in the way of my feet when exploring among the tins of Dunhill tobaccos from twenty years ago on my computer desk).

There is now dust everywhere. This will need a damp cloth and ventilation.

And fairly brisk effort re-stacking things and making the place look "undisturbed" by the time my apartment mate returns. She's left two bras hanging to dry in the bathroom, by the way. She had upon leaving for the day expressed the hope that I would not be irked by the immodesty of her doing so.

Good lord, woman, I knew years ago that you had breasts.
It's not a sudden horrible surprise.
There are two.

I also know that you have no tattoos between them.
Or anywhere else.

Don't ask.

A PAUSE FOR CONTEMPLATION AFTER LOOKING FOR SOME MISSING TINS

When she returns this evening I'll just be sitting on my rock soaking up the sunlight, la la la, as if nothing happened today. Think of me as the mysterious monitor lizard of pipe tobacco hoarding, with unknown superpowers. No, I did not find anymore My Mixture 965 from 2004.
A friend wanted some, but it may all be gone by now. Plenty of Durbar and London Mixture, some more Rattrays, McClellands, and some G. L. Pease flakes in nicely bulgy tins.


It has always struck me as a very great pity that there are so few women pipe smokers. The distaff side often likes tea as much as a man, and avidly reads Faulkner, Simenon, and Sir Bertrand Russel too. Curries and delicious pastries by the fire, also. In many ways they have exactly the same tastes as men. And aesthetically they can certainly appreciate the craftsmanship and fine grain of a prized old briar.

They just never really developed a taste for blowing fragrant fumes out of their nostrils while swotting Latin and Algebra. Or even once they developed an obsession with applied geology. Such as might stand them in good stead drilling through the piles of books and documents in their digs while looking for missing tins.

Maybe they're just too organized, and don't have piles?
Further investigation is required.



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AND DINGUS, WHOSE NAME I DON'T REMEMBER

There are strange things on the street these days, which is probably because the weather is decent. On one corner a gentleman was seated at the curb looking remarkably dog-like from nearly a block away, which fooled me till I got closer. A few blocks later I saw another man at the corner who turned out to actually be a dog. A large patient beast patiently waiting for his inebriated human to stumble out of the nearby bar, which he did when I was a quarter of a block away.

Having spent most of the day putzing around at home I didn't get over to C'town for a late lunch till around teatime. Before I got to the chachanteng I passed 'Dingus' smoking his pipe (a Savinelli, recognizable shape). After lunch I lit up the pipe I had brought with me (Comoy, Canadian, old piece) and wandered into the bowels of the International settlement / antique district on the outskirts of the Financial District, where I encountered Tat-yee with his pipe (straight corncob). He's gotten older, and seems to be missing a tooth or two.
Nice chap though. I've known him for a long time.
His English has improved remarkably.

There were also a number of loonies in the blocks between then and the bus stop. All except the last were male. And very much out of contact with reality. The San Francisco Financial District is a good place for that.

Out of the house again a number of hours later for the weekly "pub crawl".
Which is always a sane, almost Lutheran, event.
We are sober individuals.

After leaving the burger place the bookseller and I encountered Solomon, who was smoking a beautiful bent Radice (excellent pipe brand) filled with Tree Mixture (by Robert Lewis), which is an extremely old-school English / Balkan / Scottish product. We chatted briefly about pipes and tobaccos, before heading on to the karaoke joint, which was filled with loud young drunks squawling. And we decided to go elsewhere.

My friend the bookseller recounted waking up from a recent dream involving his father and his cousin (?) or uncle (?) in upstate after a ballgame. Which was his alarm clock-radio rousing him in time to think of garbage.


I often think of garbage. That's simply how my mind is.


At the bus stop heading home we were treated to the sight of a crazy person offering a short-skirted restaurant worker food, then slinking away, followed within minutes by a young drunk coming up to assure her that a bus was coming soon, it was just two or three blocks away.

Again, it's probably the pleasant weather bringing them out.
Or the short skirts, but that's the weather too.


On the road home from the bus I encountered a young fellow crouching behind a parking meter who confessed that he was a New Yorker who had sipped too many Tom Collinses earlier. Nice chap. Very civilized. Quite drunk.



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A SLICE OF HOT CHEESE

A rabbinic friend has strong feelings about pizza, in which he echoes Jon Stewart. He also mentions Detroit Pizza, and has totally avoided California pizza, which we don't eat here in San Francisco unless we're suburbanites or from the Midwest. Which real people aren't. Pizza is a great and universal good. A sign of civilization.

It is probably not coincidental that there are pizza joints all around Chinatown. Sometimes a man needs a break from steamed pork patty with salt fish or bittermelon and fatty chunks. Pizza, of course, goes great with rice.

Real pizza NEVER comes with ranch dressing. There might be a bottle of Sriracha on the counter, which is our equivalent of ranch dressing.
And far better than.

Shan't mention pineapple here.
That's a secret perversion.
Kind of Oaklandish.

Pizza is chiz.

The best pizza is made in joints owned by Palestinians who employ Mexicans. You buy it late at night after you've sent your out-of-town relatives back to their hotel and can be fully human again. E-commerce yuppies will have a donut instead. Proof that they aren't human.


Pizza is also the breakfast food of choice, and the reason why some of us go jogging at the crack of dawn; it's guilt over that left-over slice we bunged into the oven to reheat just after getting up to pee when it was still dark outside. We woke up the neighbors with our joy.

There's always left-over pizza. No civilized person ever orders "just enough".
You never know when the frat boys might come over.
Gotta be prepared, boyscout.



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THE LEGENDARY HEARTLAND

It's a guarantee that if you're on social media for a few minutes you will see a comment from some slope brow with his pick-up truck on cinders in East Fudgebungus, Iowa, who hates San Francisco and California. Which can be irritating, sure, but just remember that they have no healthcare and are related to the human elephant and the human skunk, inbred kinfolk whom they see every holiday. In East Fudgebungus, Iowa.
Plus they're probably Christians.
That kind of Christian.

On the other hand, if you're reading my blog, you'll encounter nasty remarks about the rest of the country. Much of which is East Fudgebungus, Iowa. They eat grits, cottage cheese, and breaded deep-fried porkloin sandwiches regularly and think that Sriracha is witchcraft.

Plus they've probably got a suspended license and the single lane highway is out for repairs.
Probably a good time to have their pick-up truck on cinders, I guess.

Duck Dynasty and Honey Boo Boo were filmed there.
American cheese country.

I like to think that my social media presence is a welcome breath of fresh air and the best of late twentieth century civilization, after people have been stuck all morning reading the rancid philosophical insights of racist cavemen desperately trying to sell time shares and pyramid schemes in East Fudgebongus, Iowa, which they themselves would escape in a heartbeat, because this year it's their turn to host the family at Thanksgiving and Christmas. The human elephant and the human skunk. Aunt Mabel and Cousin Jimbo. The Sears couch is still saggy from the last time. Something broke.

There is no Sears store there anymore. Nor a Mervyn's. The only thing that hearkens back to simpler times when life was good are a Denny's and a Cracker Barrel, where long haul truckers fight with drunken locals at three in the morning.

If you're willing to drive fifty miles there's an Applebees and an Olive Garden, and a twenty four hour convenience store with White Castle Burgers in the freezer.

People only use twenty letters of the alphabet there.
They count up to three fingers.
Life is simpler.



For a taste of exotic food and fancy foreign cooking they add a sprinkle of dried oregano to their grits, cottage cheese, and breaded deep-fried porkloin sandwich.
They ordered that spice from Amazon.
It's kwee-zeen.



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ANATHEMA, HERESY, AND THE REEK OF EVIL

Apparently there IS such a thing as 'Raspberry Cream Pipe Tobacco'. Which aghasts me. It's favourably reviewed by smokers of aromatics, about most of whom I have less than flattering opinions. It would probably go great with a fruity cocktail, and I can just imagine what would happen at the local cigar bar if I lit this up, which might make me want to try it. Kind of like letting a large weasel loose in The Dude's bathtub (movie reference).

You know, eventually the aficionados of fruity boba tea drinks will start adding a jigger of fruit liqueurs to their favourite beverages, and please just imagine hordes of tiddly Hello Kitty freaks and fanboys rioting in your neighborhood after work.

Did someone say "tempting elderly syphilitics"?
If not, they should.


Boswell Pipes & Tobacco
Raspberry Cream
Rich toasted raspberry cavendish with a sprinkle of golden cavendish.
Raspberry with hints of creamy chocolate and vanilla.

A mild sweet blend.


As I said, favourably reviewed.

As an ice cream it would probably be stellar.

This is not something I will recommend to my fellow pipe smokers in this locality, because the natives already look at us as if we were ruddy perverts. There is no need to upset them any further. I have no wish to be beaten to death just as yet.


Instead, I shall mention it on one of the internet pipe forums. Someone will probably have smoked it. Who will unsuspectingly out himself.

Or itself.



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BOATING ACCIDENTS

During his recent campaign speech in Las Vegas, our ex-president and 34-fold felon Donald Trump waffled on about boats sinking, a young lady swimming nearby, and sharks attacking him. Which was delightful. I may be letting my fondness for America's favourite batshit crazy senile uncle gain the upperhand here, but I also think that shark attacks are a crisis. Clearly the sharks are not getting fed enough. Young ladies, no matter how leggy and well-marbled, are not a suitable diet. Why are sharks desperately doing this? And has the United Nations been notified? Look, we just cannot have America's sharks randomly eating people!
It's bad for them. Must be all that electricity in the water.

If we ban the windmills, that will stop.
It's a matter of public health.


It was one hundred and ten degrees in the shade during that rally, and the audience had Taylor Swift on their minds. Over a dozen of them had to be hospitalized. Sharks.

Oh, the humanity!

America's poorly fed selachimorphs are a problem for which there is no easy solution. Clearly junkfood is not going to help. Lean red meat, from the great red heartland -- McAllen, Texas; Jackson, Mississippi; and Shreveport, Louisiana -- might, though. Plus vegetable fibre.
The great state of Iowa comes to mind. That way there's finally a use for it.


This blogger longs for the day when vast herds of great white sharks once again thunder across the prairies, like they did when the United States first rose to greatness and made Western Europe safe for literacy, freedom, and civilization.


We must move forward, not backward. And upward, not forward.
And always twirling, twirling, twirling toward freedom.
How wise these words from years ago.
Prescient.



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A GLÆDED AREA

Two dogs on leashes approached, and respectfully smelled at each other. Their humans, sadly, did not do the same. It's rare if people do that. Sunlight drenched the scene. Today is street cleaning on this side of the street, and it was too noisy, so I hurried up the hill to get away from the slow-moving sweep-vehicle, and did not stay to continue observing them.
I don't really like discordant noise, so I tend to evaporate when possible. Which characterizes my interactions with the rancid old fossils in the backroom at work, who take joy in swearing at each other and hurling rhetorical abuse. They particularly dislike where another person's head is at. Whichever other person. Whoever. He's wrong, damned wrong.
And undoubtedly the worst moron to roam the earth.

If it weren't for the calming effect of cigars and liquor, and the snug constraints of their incontinence pants, they'd probably engage in gladitorial combat. They are elderly, disappointed in life, and Republicans. They fling rhetorical pooh.

Quite often I wish I was allowed to use a cattle prod.

Old fascist men need to be medicated.

Or straightjacketed.

Today is a day off, and I was planning to get up later, but at six o'clock I decided to fix myself my first cup of coffee and head on out for a stroll and a pipeful. This neighborhood can be delightful early in the morning when the sun is shining.

I enjoy my days off. At the end of several days at work in Marin I am not quite sane. This may be because I am nearer the age when men sit in corners with their glasses of brandy or port wine and reminisce about their great deeds during the Crimean war, and complaining about this modern generation and their queer fondness for horseless carriages.

Being away from Marin and those old bastards is restorative.

They are too modern for port wine or brandy.

And never did any great deeds.

Which sours them.


Sometimes people should be shouted at or they will never know how stupid they are.


When I returned and fixed my second cup of coffee I noticed that a pair of wood doves have made a home beyond the drain pipe at the far end of the airwell. That corner of the building is unoccupied, and they will not be disturbed. Chirpy tweets and coos whenever one of them arrives with food. At some point, presumably, there will be attempts at flight by the juveniles. Which should be interesting. My landlady, who lives downstairs, directly below me, will probably discover the hapless chick(s) when sweeping there and be distressed.
Probably keen to get them off the ground before the cat gets out.

I like wild doves. They're sort of like city pigeons' more genteel and cultured country squire cousins. Not brash, rude, or likely to sound like a tough guy from the Bronx.
Rather pretty small birds.



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CIGAR SMOKERS AND THEIR DISEASED MINDS

Cigar smokers, as I heard today, all remember the first time they got a ( -- blank -- ). Pipe smokers remember their first tobacco. Not because they are sexless, but because they are cleaner-minded, nearly saints. My very first pipe tobacco was Niemeijer's Scottish Mixture.
A month or so later I bought a tin of Niemeijer's Irish Mixture. Basically the same variegated blend of light and dark ribbon, with for the first heather honey and Scotch whisky notes, for the second, Irish whiskey with a touch of citrus. I cannot remember which of those two my father handed me back disdainfully when it was discovered that at fourteen years old I had become a pipesmoker.


"Good pipe tobacco does not smell like a Turkish bathhouse; smoke good tobacco."


Having crossed that bridge, and been outed by the cat, who had found my stash and played with the pipes, I was became blatant about it. I asked for a serious increase in my allowance because good pipe tobacco is not cheap, and within a fairly short period discovered Latakia blends. Whereupon well meaning elderly degenerates would take me aside in coffee shops and whisper conspiratorily that I'd have a lot more friends if instead I smoked Clan.

Two things must now be mentioned: 1): I did not smoke to attract friends (or aged dingbats). 2): Latakia blends are splendid and delicious, whereas Clan (by Theodorus Niemeijer) is nasty aromatic shite that will wreck your pipes, tastebuds, and morals.

So, speaking of first times, today a respected member of the pipe club brought a bottle of grappa to the meeting. Naturally I did not have any -- one of us has to remain cold sober to drive them all out into the snow at the appointed time -- but I did thoroughly enjoy the pâté. Sometimes there is nothing finer than duck organ meat made smooth and oleaginous. Neil also brought a big bag of shortbread, because he knows I like his shortbread very much. One of the other members is currently reading about Jan Pieterszoon Coen -- an accomplished man, much admired -- and I was happy to remind him of what happened in Banda, about which we shall not speak, but it does rather illustrate how we Dutch engage in trade.


At one point one of the attendees said something berserk, but his marbles were always on shaky ground anyway, and sometimes I think he lost it. We are all getting on in years, and not everyone has my gravitas and equitable personality.

All in all I had a very good time. The others did as well.
Sex was not mentioned because we are clean-minded.

Unlike the cigar smokers in the back room.
Who are a bunch of filthy hooligans.
Icky and quite cretinous.



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