HOT RUMBLINGS

The entire week has been rather nasty, weather-wise. Hot. Most of the time the Bay Area is temperate, and there have been some lovely foggy nights these past few months. Since monday it has been more like Sacramento, Houston, or Dallas.
Where I do not wish to be.

Not having been to Houston or Dallas, I have little negative to say about those places, and one of my friends lives somewhere in the great state of Texas, so I don't want to say anything too bad about the place. He's a great guy, and many pipe smokers know him. He once forced his local pipe club to smoke Dunhill's Royal Yacht, and some of the members have still not forgiven him. Most particularly the chap who went out back to throw up.
In one hundred plus degree heat.

The opportunity to puke in an air-conditioned comfortable environment may be somewhat limited in Texas. I feel that this needs to be rectified. Seriously. What is this world coming to when losing your lunch cannot be done in cushy temperature-controlled spaces? Sad.

Thank you, Steve, for highlighting this painful situation, with Royal Yacht.
Maybe that stuff should only be smoked somewhere else?
I'm thinking Scotland. Or Reykjavik.

[ROYAL YACHT: Shade-grown Virginias, topping of plums (probably benzyl butyrate). A highly peculiar classic. It's been described as sickening and headache inducing. It was enjoyed by the Prince Consort, Simenon, and Prince Bernhard Von Lippe-Biesterfeld of the Netherlands, which are recommendations. Medium-bodied.]

There are a few twenty year old tins in my stash, but if I open one, I'll have one less.
So I think I'll acquire a tin this weekend. I need some excitement.
I'll probably share it with the pipe club.

Naturally this reminds me of mudslides. Not the combination of vodka, coffee liqueur, Irish cream, and whipping cream, but something that happens a lot during typhoons in Asia, or hurricanes in parts of the world where honestly I have no wish to go.


Here in San Francisco the only mudslides we normally have are the frat-boy sorority girl teenage alcoholic kind, which despite the imagined horror of my friend the bookseller, who is now probably going out back to throw up, actually sounds pretty good. Chilled, yes?
A boozy milk shake, in lieu of dinner during hot weather.
When one's appetite is down.

Perhaps I can convince him to smoke a bowl of Royal Yacht.

Please note: I am actually not a mean man.
Blame the blasted heat.



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SWEET PROSPECTS

It behooves me to get out and do things early today, well before the mercury climbs into the stratosphere. Last night, at ten o'clock, it was still uncomfortably hot, and the weatherman had still not apologized for leading me so painfully astray.
I shall have to have a word with that fellow.
I do not like feeling sticky all over.
And I probably smelled iffy.

The other day I had a mild curry dish and rice, with some sambal, for lunch. Which, properly considered, is a cliché. Because naturally a Dutchman in hot weather would do exactly that. The orang belanda in Jakarta, and the merchants in Formosa and Canton. The beer-swilling tourists in Thailand. Oh wait, they're desperate for frikandel and broodje paling which sadly the Thais don't know beans about yet we'll have to teach them they'll be so grateful.

I note, by the way, that many Dutchmen in Arizona and Los Angeles would prefer rookworst (fatty smoked sausage), stampot (weird mostly vegetable muck), and hagelslag or muisjes (chocolate sprinkles and little sugared anise gravel respectively).
My fondness for sambal is not universal.
How sad.

From what I hear, you Anglo-Americans had ramen, water melon, plus peanut butter and jelly sandwiches during this heat wave. Washed down with slushies and tapioca ball and ice cube pink sugar beverages. After starting the day with a hearty breakfast of sweet artificially flavoured sawdust and wood chips.

Where we agree is that both you and I have coffee in the morning. And even there some of you lot are unmitigated and incorrigible heretics. You know who you are. Savages!

By the way: iced coffee and anything oatmilk are for infidels.


I can't wait till this heat spell is over.
I will be a nicer person then.


I can understand now why Texans are such toxic cretins. It's like this most of the year there. Except for that brief period when the power is out, everyone is freezing, and Ted Cruz goes to Mexico.



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OEDEMA, SPATTER VEINS, AND A CUP OF TEA

By eleven o'clock I realized that the weather man was full of horse feathers, and probably a witch, who needed to be burned on top of faggots at the stake. But it was already too hot to do that. Maybe tomorrow. Per the report today was supposed to be ten degrees cooler. Yeah, no, that did not happen. Parts of the city went well over a hundred, and in my neck of the woods it was climbing past ninety. So I went out to lunch. And did nothing else.
Normally I get all my errands done on Wednesday.

Plus I feel nauseous from the heat.


But I was home in time for tea, which as everyone knows is the time between after three o'clock and five, more or less. Milk, sugar, and in a nod to climate change an icecube.

Two cups.

I am, naturally, thinking of parts of the world where it rains and is cool at this time of year. Amsterdam, Eindhoven, 's Gravenhage, 's Hertogenbosch, Tilburg, Utrecht.
You know, where the modern age began.

Imagine sitting under a cafe awning after a late supper enjoying the final smoke of the day (a nice English flake) in a smaller sized Charatan, or group three or four Dunhill, with a cup of tea, while looking out over the park where resistance members were shot during the war. Ah, the good old days. When we still owned Bali, Celebes, Java, Sumatra, and the Moluccas. When Capstan Flake was still made by W.D. & H.O. Wills, and smoked by noted poofy snootwads like Tolkien.

Perhaps we should have left The Dutch East Indies far sooner than we did. Let the locals declare independence, repatriate all the POW's and our educated bureaucrats, doctors, and engineers, and pension off the native soldiers. It would have created much better blood and a more acceptable transition on both sides. Let's face it; all we really needed was the recipe books, and basically that's all we have now.

We would have been so far ahead of the British in edible post-war food that it would have made your head spin, years before they stopped eating baked beans out of a can, tinned meat, and margarine.


What, they're still doing that over there?
Dudes, the Blitz is over.
We won.



Oedema and vericosity ("spat aderen") are the two curses one's lower extremities may suffer with poor circulation and high blood pressure. Especially during heat waves.
Which is why the weatherman deserves to snuff it.
It's his fault.


Terlalu panes sekali, hari ini.




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THAT'S JUST YOUR OPINION

It strikes me that conversations in this country are far too civil. What happened to the fine tradition of calling people out for being insane? Or simply too ignorant to have anything worthwhile going on up there? Back in my parents' day, when someone spouted batshit drivel, people did not hesitate to tell him or her "you are nuts and should be locked up".
Or sternly warning them that one step closer to the children might result in mayhem.

Nowadays, cognizant of the right of even loopy Christian extremists to have opinions, we have become far too tolerant of them actually voicing them. This really has to stop.
It's poisoning the discourse.

Item one: "The earth is flat."
No it jolly well isn't you loon.

Item two: "I'm looking for a biblical woman."
Marry your darn dog, you demented retard.

Item three: "There are nano chips in the vaccines."
You failed high school science, you are failing at life, now shut the Jayzus up before people think you and I are pals or you attract other morons of a similar idiotic bent.
I may kick you in the goolies if you say one more word.

See? That's much better than patiently listening to John Boy blathering on and on, on his deranged tangent, using words of which he can not possibly know the meaning, smirkingly self-satisfied at having an audience for his waves of wisdom. What's that nonsense about patiently by rational argument convincing him otherwise? He's an idiot. Just shut him up, decisively. Threaten violence if you have to. Sending him back weeping to his mental basement will clear the air marvelously.

Of course I realize that this will silence a large part of this country. Christians, very many southerners, folks in Placer County, Florida, and Texas, and possibly some decent but bafflingly ignorant humans too, but that's a cross we should be willing to bear.
I know I am.

By the way, anytime someone starts mewing about the children, butterflies, yoga, gluten, or all natural macrobiotic honey and apple cider vinegar they need to be slapped down too; the adults are talking (or not), dear, play with your dolls.

It's raining outside. "That's just your opinion." Shove it, dude. I'm soaked.

"The moon landing was staged." You, sir, are a fool.

"Ancient aliens." Good lord you're dense.

"Shirley MacLaine." Shut. Up.


You can probably understand why I do not go to North Beach coffee shops anymore, or visit Berkeley. And I no longer watch teevee. Not doing so additionally saves me a lot of money, aside from being good for my mental health.

BTW: I am going to get my flu shot and the latest Covid booster soon. No, I shan't consider all-natural alternatives or ancient herbal medicine instead.



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PERHAPS CONSIDER SHAVING YOUR BODY?

When I went down Beckett (白話轉街) earlier after lunch there were about half a dozen city services vans plus three or four police vehicles parked there, and a major operation was underway ("homeless outreach") meant to clear the rough sleepers out. They were waiting for the old Chinese lady who is a longtime pavement fixture to pack all of her stuff up. She's actually not homeless, just too eccentric to stay housed. She likes the life on the street and feeding the pigeons. And the birds like her.

Well, when I looked into the alleyway just before eleven at night it was worse than ever. Among the ambulatory wreckage were one entirely naked man and two stumbling and gesticulating half naked men. Plus some indistinguishable shapes that twitched.
So I cannot say that "operation clear Beckett" was a success.
The old woman isn't there, though.

As my friend the bookseller and I headed toward the busstop, we took care to stay out of the way of Sasquatch (another half naked man, excessively body-haired) and a crawling raggy lump. To the best of my judgement, not a single one of the non compos mentes crew tonight were Chinese. I'll go out on a limb here and say that Chinese people are, largely, neither half naked nor excessively hairy. As a rule.

Body hair is more apparent in San Francisco during a heat wave.
It felt exactly like the worst part of the tropics out there.

Imagine smoking in a monsoon climate outside late at night when it has finally cooled down. Yes, parts of your body still hurt like blazes (bad circulation), but you are feeling more human from the legs up (except for the veins in the neck, and that large zone in the left shoulder and scapula (肩胛骨 'kin kaap gwat') which burns most of the time anyway), and perhaps your blackthorn walking stick serves as a warning to the really insane passers-by that "pipe smoking uncle" could get very crusty on them.

Many of the non-Chinese pedestrians in C'town tonight had screws loose. Several. Which tells me that the tourist season is nearly over. And that hot weather brings out the lizards.

The little wheels in their heads have stopped spinning, their hamsters have escaped and chewed throught the electrical wires. The gears are rusty, and there are holes in the grey matter.


We avoided both the beer place and the karaoke joint. Instead we ended up at the third drinking place where it wasn't crowded, noisy, or filled with howling twenty somethings.

Other than evidence of lunacy, it was a fine night.



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RABBIT RABBIT!

It's going to be a bitch of a day. The temperature in SF is likely to head over ninety degrees Fahrenheit, around thirty three Celsius. Optimum for me is low sixties to seventy. This puts a bit of a crimp on my plans. Laundry and bank early, then act like a limp boiled vegetable till sundown. Around mid evening head out for jollification, and cups of tea.

Warmer than Hong Kong and Jakarta at this time of year.
So I'm expecting cholera, typhoid, and malaria.
And dockworkers weakly rioting.


That is of course an exaggeration.

Normally on Tuesday I head over to C'town at some point for a late lunch around tea time. But what with west-facing eateries and one-storey buldings, and a whole host of kvetchy old grumpers wearing too much because they don't have internet and can't sense extremes of heat anymore due to age -- and sweating kitchen staff suffering in poorly ventilated working environments -- that may not be a good idea. I myself have a hard time understanding that I'm overheating and will be miserable because of it within an hour.
Aside from it making food far less enjoyable.

If, contrary to my own better judgement, I do end up going out, I will still have my milk tea hot. Because. Cold milk tea is for silly young things. An adult man who does not sport meaningful tattoos and is dressed like a human does not indulge in boba sludgies.

Unlike many of my younger fellow-citizens I shall not be poncing around in lingerie or skimpy ripped tee-shirts and jeans shorts. I do not have a Daisy Duke thing going on.

Long pants. Clean shirt. Pipe.



One can well understand how so many English people with no self control went to pieces in the tropics, swilling gin and tonics and fruity mixed drinks before passing out on the billiard table in the club or assaulting the staff when the ice bucket was empty, but one does not do that. And unlike the hippies of a bygone era one will not search for oneself or flashes of insight while lounging in a dhoti under a banyan tree. Om, you bozos, om.

No more gin pahits for you.

At least in Calcutta, with exactly the same temperature range as San Francisco presently, they can expect light rain showers. We have no such gentle amelioration.
We'll have to tough it out.



It will be over one hundred Fahrenheit upriver in Muddy Estuary Kuala Lumpur Sacramento. There are headhunters and cannibals there, among the colonials, gangsters, and politicians.

Rabbit rabbit.



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