BUT IT IS A PIPE!

On Halloween, people dress up as their favourite literary figures or celebrities, so that for one day they can bask in the idea that they might be similar. Albert Einstein, Steve Fallon, Gerald Ford, Clark Gable, Sir Bertrand Russell, Georges Simenon, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, or Prince Bernhard von Lippe Biesterfeld, for instance. As pipesmokers.

The facial prop speaks to people. One of my friends years ago sported a stogie and went out as Groucho Marx, to whom he bears great resemblance even though he hates ducks.

So the bright young man or woman goes out to purchases a pipe. And selects one that feels comfortable in the hand as well as the eyes, because ideally two or three years later he or she will hold it at arms length and say to him or herself "I'm glad I bought this", rather than "what the hell was I thinking?"

The next step is a tamper, with pipe cleaners and some matches.

As well as some tobacco.

Generally speaking there are four categories of pipe tobacco. The largest, between eighty to ninety percent of the market, is aromatic. This is the kind of shite that all hobbit wannabees smoke, as well as Gandalf, plus several notorious old pederasts. Very popular. Chemicals and artifical flavourings that smoke hot and leave your pipe wet. What everybody's grand father allegedly smoked (but only during family get togethers, because the old fellow wanted to sit indoors at Thanksgiving and Christmas rather than out by the compost heap in the freezing cold).

Next are English mixtures, what the dashing young man at Harvard or Yale who turored bright young things in algebra or Latin prefered. Tutoring paid for his tweeds and tea time pastries, plus some sherry now and then, and expanded his dating pool enormously. These reek of terpeneols because one of the main blending tobaccos (Latakia) is a smoke-cured leaf from the Levant. Clark Gable and William Faulkner liked those.

Tolkien smoked flakes, which are blends of Virginia with a smidge of "other", steampressed to unify the flavours and mellow them. They smell noticeably of carotenoids -- flavour, aroma, and colour compounds that occur naturally, especially in grasses and stone fruits such as peaches, apricots, and plums, as well as Virginia tobaccos -- and are gently satisfying if smoked on the cusp of going out. Do NOT smoke too fast. Calm down.

Third category: old grandad wearing his bib overalls out on the tractor doing the back forty. Everybody hopes he'll croak soon because he's a mean old cuss. He's puffing a Burley dominant blend, like many people did back before the war, because Burley was cheap.
Many old coots such as myself intellectually love products like Bailey's Front Porch or The Haunted Bookshop, but if you poke us we'll admit that we're having a hard time finishing the tin we opened eight years ago because it kicks us in the jaw. Every time. Wonderful stuff. Gerald Ford and Mark Twain smoked similar blends.
So did Einstein.


Steve Fallon. Georges Simenon, and Prince Bernard von Lippe Biesterfeld, are aficionados of Royal Yacht, which is an anomaly. Technically a Virginia blend, with a very minor amount of darker leaf, but spritzed with benzyl butyrate (plum flavour chemical), and perhaps a trace amount of tonquin to alleviate the sense of strength. The benzyl butyrate would disguise that. My experience with it is that it's smooth and flavoursome, though slightly mono dimensional. And it wallops me. Two bowls and I'm done.


On a final note, Virginia blends and flakes are stealth tobaccos that you can smoke late at night without most other members of the household noticing after they're asleep.



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IT STARTS WITH CAFFEINE

Mordechai kvells that because he is a coffee maven, his friends, relatives, and fellow citizens gift him with beans. He likes the stuff his bashert and son give him best. He is so lucky! As a pipe smoker, the equivalent is random unstable people giving me samples of blends that will assuredly change my life. Mango papaya sunrise. Vanilla custard caramel pumpkin spice; it's seasonally appropriate till February! Dead Skunk Perique Overload, from the Peoria Pipe Guild. Or, more polite, Midpa Sommar (Mafārǝk Chāgāy) from the Svendborg's Pippen Klubbe up near the arctic circle. It is unique and subtly topped with elderberries.

Oh joy. My cup runneth over.

Mm, yes.

It is the thought that counts, and they think that a whiff of urinal cake will make me more socially acceptable, why, it will revolutionize my life. Much like Hello Kitty aftershave did for them. People might start inviting me to parties! They threw a suprise party for my birthday two weeks ago but didn't invite me because of the odour of aged Virginias.
Perhaps next year.

Lord knows I appreciate the thought.
It is good that they think.
Exceedingly so.

榕樹

Per an advertisement that appeared on my computer I am supposed to find my Fall Vibe. Not sure what that means. Dead leaves? Dead bugs? Go south before winter? Listen to enka ballads while wearing a t-shirt with something in hiragana or a print by Hiroshige?

My Fall Vibe remains the same as my Summer Vibe, and my Spring and Winter Vibe.
Like my pipe tobacco it requires no drastic change.


I do like certain smells -- freshly baked pastries, ginger wafting from the stew pot, chopped scallion, orange zest, et mult altres -- but like perfume in a woman's hair I do not think them nice splashed on by the concentrate bucket in my pipe tobacco or my zesty cup of tea.
I am not Starbucks, I have no fruity vulgarities.



Parties? What parties? I do not need any parties to celebrate my birthday, halloween, Guy Fawkes Day, Thanksgiving, St. Nicholas Day, Christmas, New Years, Valentine's Day, the Spring Festival, or any other such. Neither do you, you pot-smoking heathens. I'll just be sitting in the shade at the centre of the village with all the foreign merchants, mendicants, and money lenders, spitting crimson betel juices and smoking my pipe.

Oh crap, is that the reek of pumpkin spice?
Heathens! Pot smoking heathens!



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THE TREE OF WISDOM

Everyone knows that ghosts, djins, and the feral ancestors live in the banyan trees. Which is why you see sticks of incense burning below, stuck in hollows in the roots. And why some birds avoid roosting there. Cats and goats remarkably appreciate the shelter during the rains. And old codgers with their cheroots or bamboo pipes gather underneath, discussing the affairs of the community and which young man's testicular fevers make him socially unbearable he really should find a wife.

If you can find Yorkshire men anywhere in South East Asia, it is there, going 'ooh aargh' and sounding otherwise unintelligible, muttering darkly about kids these days. Their odd utterances and pungent smells do not disturb the owls that sleep in crevices.

In the modern Cantonese villages of the western American urban areas, the role of banyan tree is occupied by the bakery-coffee shop, where at back tables the old fossils and retired country folk make unique statements and discuss matters of the world.


"Ooh aargh!"


Sometimes I do not settle anywhere for a cup of milk tea in the afternoon and a pastry in Chinatown. I do not feel old enough, and listening to Yorkshirese might not particularly appeal to me that day.

It rained last night. Imagine sitting under a banyan, in a spot where the water does not penetrate, near the trunk, below thick branches and dense leaves.

You just muttered "ooh aargh". I heard it!

Ooh aargh to you good sir.

Wisdom.



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WETNESS

Rain has entered the forecast, there is a prospect of precipitation ahead. Either late tonight or tomorrow sometime. Though it probably won't amount to much, it is colder. Earlier an old woman had told that it was quite warm. I suspect that the white flower lotion she had rubbed all over herself fooled her senses. Frankly, I was freezing when I smoked my pipe after lunch (which was mediocre). A cold blast of arctic air, oh woe is me that pipe aficionados have to shiver outdoors while vegan anti-smoking communists rejoice in comforting warmth inside.

Woe! Woe!

Anyhow, got my shopping done, and hastened back home. I didn't feel like any of the usual places for tea. Instead I put the pot on the stove and fixed myself a strong cuppa Ceylon, which I took with me into the outside stairwell to drink with a pipe.

It's over thirty degrees Fahrenheit warmer in Hong Kong and Singapore. Which is actually too hot, but that sounds rather nice to me in this frigid wasteland, with frozen penguins and walruses everywhere, their unrotting carcasses litter the far horizon, ice-block solid till Spring, whereupon either they will pong to high heaven or the street people will feast, and politicians will be outraged that the city allowed this to happen, vote for me, we must do something about this! Common sense! Stop the waste!

A double bagger with sliced fresh ginger added. Warms the tired old bones.


It's probably time for a nap now.



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INTERPRETIVE DANCE

Now that the weather is cooler, there are fewer naked people roaming the streets. Heat and illegal substances, as you know, are major causes of nudity. Not being enamoured of illegal substances, the only times when I am naked of which I am aware are around bath time inside my apartment. And I am reasonably sure there have not been other incidents.

At times I wonder at my fellow citizens wandering around the city.
Are they aware that the entire kitchen sink is showing?


Proper clothing is a reppressive imperialist construct invented by the patriarchy to limit the free expression of the ruled classes and impose an exploitative capitalist order on society.

In a world of prickleburs and sharp thorny things, it takes guts and glory to tempt scratchy mishaps and cuts in inconvenient places. Show your cojones by defying nature. Be free!


As a slave to convention myself, I would rather you didn't show them.
Or any other squidgy bits.

It's good to be protected from the elements, but apparently it takes sentience, ego, and a degree of not being under the influence of regrettably legal substances or quite possibly highly illegal chemicals to maintain that.

Free spirit dancing while besotted is regrettably common.
And conflicts at times with dog leavings.

Perhaps you should have worn flip-flops?
As a practical consideration.
At the least.



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DIFFERENT AND QUIET

It was short. The first place where we went after the burger was closing early for electrical work, the second was filled with yutzes. So we headed to the third, which has actually been our first drinking hole more often than not for a few months now. A birthday party, too full.
The fourth place was closed. So this was a pub crawl that wasn't.
I didn't get to pull a single tea bag from my pocket.
So I am, sadly, not wired to the gills.
Distinctly unhepped.


I did enjoy a good smoke, though. That Sardinian briar is singing. And now that the weather has turned colder, my legs feel a lot better than they have for much of the past two months.


Looking forward to getting out of the house early tomorrow.
Lunch, grocery shopping, a bit of spazieren.
And contemplating evil.

On the way down to C'town I ran into the chicken-sexer, looking older and more Gandalf-like than ever. We chatted a bit and I wished him a belated shana tova. On the way back home on the bus I half-listened to a middle-aged white woman explaining Chinese characters to her companion, speaking with a cadence that sticks in the ear, and might cause madness eventually. She said some interesting things, and knew the radicals. At one point I saw her "air-writing" the words -- we all do that, it helps mentally picture characters and recognize stroke order -- before launching into something about water buffalos (水牛 'seui ngau').

The bookseller probably also heard her, and likely was happy that I didn't jump in.
But it's never a good idea to rain on a stranger's parade.
Especially not in this town.


There are, in fact, three alternative places we could have gone. One of them has a mental person behind the bar, another is known for very drunken Caucasians, and the third one is where the decent gangsterish Toishanese now hang out.
Nice guys. But a bit rowdy.



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THE SWEETNESS

With only one week left before the election, it's time to stop worrying, tell the Hindustani who blind-called me from "Diabetic Center" that he's out of his mind in Cantonese (你係傻嘅 'nei jan hai soh ge') so that he hangs up sadly realizing that his Spam will go nowhere, and think about lunch. Yesterday's lunch was excellent; northern style little pork and pickled vegetable dumplings (豬肉酸菜餃). Apparently my Mandarin, though sucky, is intelligible within context. The counter lady did not speak Cantonese.

In all honesty I haven't a clue how I ended up on Indian Spam call lists. Must have something to do with age. Michael was bally certain I had diabetes, but, because I did not speak a word of English, we did not have a chance to discuss it. I am convinced that if I actually had diabetes I would have found out ages before some ethically crippled conman from Secunderabad or Gandkipoojahpore called me.

He would have better luck talking to his office mates. Most Indians, with their taste for overly sweet laddoos and sugar-laden ghee bombs are well in line for diabetes by age thirty, and the pudgy spoiled brat sons of middle-class families often have it by the time they graduate from grammar school.

Remarkably, none of the Indians I know presently is rotund. Years ago I knew many more Indians, because of employment part-time at a restaurant, and most of them weren't obese either, but they had relatives who needed to take the freight elevator up to the cheesecake factory on the fifth floor. Indian ambulances, as I understand it, are often very cramped.

Don't talk to me about diabetes, tum murke baifkoof. Call your aunties instead.

And stop adding sugar to your masala chai.
It's unbearably sweet already.



No, lunch is not going to be Indian food. I like it, but for some reason I think I'll head over to Chinatown instead. Something over rice at a chachanteng, hot cup of Hong Kong milk tea, then fill up a pipe and have a quiet smoke afterwards.




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SOMETHING SINISTER

In the middle of creating a painting of a water monitor (a large South East Asian lizard), my apartment mate hollered joyously "I ain't evah gonna stop shooting gators!" It turns out she was watching "The Alligator People". A movie made in 1959, and a monument of its genre. Sort of Gothic Southern Mutant Horror. Mixed with classic drive-in theatre stinkeroo.
About a serum that regenerates limbs but turns the patient reptilian.

Some movies have classic lines. Hump, what hump? I don't know nuttin' about birthin' no babies! To reach her arms I would sell my people into Mongol bondage! It's alive, alive!
Do you know what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning?
And what the hell is that smell?
Another shrubbery!


The water monitor is all over the place in the zone where it is native. Including urban parks and nullahs. It is invasive in the Deep South. They are carnivorous and will also eat carrion, competing with some humans for roadkill. There are venom glands in the mouth of the beast, but these are not particularly significant. Their bites are not fatal, unless you're a frog or small animal, and they can be domesticated. They do not fear humans, nor are they a threat. They can be surprisingly affectionate, but it is wise to wear thick protective gloves and long pants at the least, because playful bites may require lots of stiches.

They like water. So close the bathroom door when you're showering or soaking. Unless you like visitors. If your kamar mandi houses frogs (sejenis kodok, katak), you must know that these are tasty snacks.

Like all reptiles, they can be stubborn.
Drop that chihuahua right now!
Doesn't listen.



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ANGRY WHITE WOMEN

The first thing I do after my apartment mate has left for the day is firmly shut her bedroom door and open a window, so that I can smoke. She dislikes the smell, but unlike Caucasians does not have that severely entitled disapproval of things that would turn her into a harpy at the slightest. And the key thing is that both of us are quite comfortable living like this. We're hospitable to the other person's peculiarities. Supportive even. I supect a white person would lecture me about how two or three of my habits are ruining the planet and going to kil me, for whatever imagined reason.


"Stop eating so much chilipaste, it's cultural approriative and tortures little kittens. You should add butterflies to your food instead. And perform appreciative spiritual gestures while cooking, like the Wahaku do."


Liking hot food and smoking a pipe are, of course, known signs of a colonialist mindset.
Signs that one hates kittens, butterflies, and children.
Engages in rain-forest destruction.
A gluten eater!

Regarding tobacco, Anglo women fall into three categories, the largest of which know for a fact that it requires slave labour in the salt mines of Ganymede, gives children ulcers, and ruins the planet. There's a vast floating waste raft out in the ocean composed of discarded tobacco products that kills penguins and harp seals, like the Canadians, and I'm contributing to that! Somebody should do something! Unleash the Greta Thunberg! Forthwith! Storm the barricades! Howl, and hold a concert to raise awareness!

The second category just loves the aroma. Rancid vanillin reminds them of grampa, and Gandalf, and precious little hobbits.

The third believes that tobacco is an offering to the ancestors of peaceful natives who were spiritual, in touch with the earth, and sincerely practiced art while dancing around carefully craft-constructed altars where the best fruits of the Autumn season were worshipfully offered; we should thank those natives for their wisdom and insight. And oppose imperialism in all it's forms, evil white male!


There is a small minority, almost insignificantly miniscule, that differs from all the above and has little inclination to imitate them. Han Chinese. They have relatives that smoke, or know people who do. A few of them also indulge. But because they don't roam the world in vast herds screaming imprecatives, no one really notices them.

[Except to complain about their frightful habits, like stir-frying (penguin slave labour) and silk making, which sexually exploits bombyx mori. Or caligraphy, which drives you insane and is a form of boogah-boogah mind control.]

You know, almost everything I do is bad, and destructive to the planet. Later on today I will probably do some laundry, which kills shrimp in the tidal estuaries and innocent tribals in the Amazon, after which I'll probably go out for a bite to eat, impoverishing tidal shrimp and Amazonian tribes, followed by enjoying a bowl of tobacco and some milk tea.
Both of which are horribly traumatizing for shrimp and tribals.



At the present, I am drinking my second cup of coffee, which may or may not come from ethically sourced beans -- which does not detract even one iota from the enjoyment, so it's immaterial -- and smoking a bowl of Fribourg & Treyer Cut Blended Plug (fine long pressed Virginia flakes made of tobacco mostly sourced from Africa, made in Denmark, and imported by Laudisi I think). Doing this is torturing a kitten or butterfly several blocks over, probably.
And traumatizing an angry white woman.
My piles bleed for them.



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LITTLE BLUE SAUCEPAN

My apartment mate is mildly down because she ruined the little blue saucepan she used for tea. I have examined it. Salvageable, but it does not look like it would be worth the effort. Shan't ask how it happened. She is purchasing a new saucepan from Amazon.

I feel her pain.

I've done stuff like that.

It's easy to forget things in the kitchen, and when that happens we up our game.
Saucepans are precious.

Tried scrubbing it. Interesting textural effect. Blackness.

Her browsing has turned up what may be the next saucepan.
The relief is palpable.
Oh joy.




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THE VIPER PIT

According to one of the people in the backroom I am a "fucking moron", a typical liberal, and we're all like that. He has expressed loathing of people like me too often to count. Loudly.
I am strongely considering retiring, and not having to see any part of Marin ever again.

If you ever wondered why I keep posting pictures, using computer paint keeps me sane.

Also, I'm tired of the unending hateful meanspiritness and sheer venom that those haramzadas spout. Unceasing, ad nauseum.


Years ago the Irishman expressed joy at the idea that Obama care would be ended and all of us would end up unable to afford medical attention. One of the bald fellows was hideously upset at the time that undeserving people even got medical attention.
None of their vaccines are up to date.
I'm hoping that bites them.


I judge all Irish and all Republicans by what I am exposed to, and you can imagine what that does to my estimation of either category. Harsh and unfair, I know, but ask me if I care.

I like animals. Animals are nice and don't have stupid opinions. They're often more human than the humans, many of whom are animals. Rabid dogs.



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THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS

Lunch at work yesterday was made nigh inedible by the discourse of poisonous rightwingers spewing buckets of venom at all the usual targets. Two of them are younger than myself, and have also refused to get vaxxed this year or even for the last two years, so I have high hopes that they will croak miserably choking on their own fluids. Or, if there is any justice in the world, some of their associates will be moved to expunge them.

This election is bringing out all the best in me. Bile toward SS member wannabees being number one.

I am resolved to avoid ever visiting much of this country, specifically Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

And I would much prefer that the natives of those places not come to California.

For one thing, there aren't enough buckets.

Fox News has a lot to answer for, and in a righteous world the pitchforks and torches would be coming for them. Perhaps after the election. Apparently the bastards are located in New York City. The place has gone entirely to the dogs now that Dutch Americans are not the majority of the population thereanymore. Too many English and Irish.

Much of the country has the same problem.
A foetid morass of evil stupidity.
Moral cripples.



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HAPPY LITTLE BIRD!

First call of the day was an Indian accent on a recorded line at this close to six in the morning. Whatever he wanted to know was none of his damned business. Bhainch ....

Do ALL little Indians aspire to working in a phone center? Or just the lucky little Hindustanis? Why on earth do you think it's okay to call someone in San Francisco about their medicare part A and B status when it's still dark outside? Are you stupid? Dense?
Don't you drooges ever sleep?

First call of the day. Should have answered in Cantonese.
The stupid call center baifkoof would have hung up.
May a giant squid attack your privates!


At least no one connected to a political campaign is calling me up. Probably because of the reaming I gave the last Republican who stupidly did that, as well as the fact that I am not a know contributor of funds to any election.
If they all die, I'll spit on their graves.
Metaphorically.

It's a good thing I do not have a Twitter account. And since that Apartheid profiteer took over, that platform has gone to blazes anyhow. I've blocked all politicians on Facebook, and e-mail entreaties get circular filed the moment I see them.

Yours too, Barrack. Stop sending me that crap.


As usual I'll be voting the complete partisan slate, because I don't trust the Republicans for squat, and consider the entire rightwing to be sodden with traitors, opportunists, religious freaks, snake oil salesmen, and Russian stooges.

Good 你嘅 morning!



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I MAY BE MAGNETIC

Perhaps I shouldn't have ordered the Baked Portuguese Chicken Rice (焗葡國雞飯 'guk pou gwok gai faan'). It just wasn't very good. As I knew. Also, one of the people who subsequently sat at the next table had that vacuous look of someone who spends too much time working on her face, like her fondest wish was to be a decadent money-lenders plaything.
Or Shanghainese.

Tea time found me after doing errands at a place where I haven't been in a while. Which was empty when I went in, and crowded with white people when I left. That's two places filled with experimental caucasians this week.


There's something wrong in the matrix.
I seriously doubt it's me.
It's flooding.

Possibly the problem is that I radiate sheer healthfulness because of two recent vaccinations which should be reaching peak effectiveness right now, or the fact that my pipes say this is a man you can trust and feel safe around, or my bonhomie and good nature.
More likely the first than the latter two.

Any moment now I expect a Karen to tell me "smile" or inform me as if I wanted to know that if I didn't smoke (a pipe) I would have just oodles of friends and a very active dating life.


Whereupon I will tell her that I am just here to observe, I'm waiting for the mothership to take me away, and in any case her planet is doomed.



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SOMETHING IN THE ZOO

There was an argument on my bed. Larry, the small cthonic entity who lives under the bed, was trying to tempt Otto, the orange brown cephalopod, into a card game. Larry is a known cheat. Otto is no fool. He called Angus, the small she-sheep, over to speak firmly to Larry. She has a fierceness to her, and brooks no advantage taking of the other creatures.
And she has had to chastise Larry before. He is afraid of her.

Larry has more tentacles than the cephalopod. I am not sure what colour he is, as he is more or less imaginary. Otto is orange brownish. Brownish orange. Spotted, sort of siena-umber-carotenoid. And soft. Angus is cream coloured with a black face. And wooly.
I am slightly pinkish greyish off-white, depending on the angle.

In this exchange, I am just the dispassionate half-asleep bystander. Not standing. Recumbant.

No, I have no idea how I ended up with a monster under my bed.

A rather defective con-man elder god.

A "card squid".

I really should investigate what lies underneath. I know there are some large dictionaries there, including a huge reference work on Chinese. As well as quite probably that impressive tome put out by the University of Hawaii before computers were a thing. Plus objects. A few socks. So it's probably quite natural that a smallish defective elder god would end up there. Who is mostly quiet, except when he softly says "hey man wanna play a game of cards" to trusting passers-by. And then suggests that they fund their gambling with the contents of my wallet. Which he can't reach, because it is up on a stack of books that he cannot climb.

It's sort of a jungle in that darkness. Having stiff knees and a sore hip, I haven't been there in years. It requires someone considerably more limber than myself.




To make a choice, please press one now.
Per the monster on my phone.
Banana for scale.




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SOUNDS LIKE CRICKETS

According to Marjorie Taylor Greene, we liberals control the weather. If that is so, we're doing a bang up job, because it was lovely today. While smoking after lunch and before doing my shopping I wandered around avoiding tourists and little old ladies, heading into an alleyway past the hospital.

You know, I've never understood why some women dress like slags in good weather.
Don't they need pockets? Where are they stowing their smokeables?
To say nothing of pipe cleaners, a tamper, and matches.

No, don't try putting them in your bra.
Sharp corners.


We men, of course, don't have that problem. We have pockets.
And very few of us wear brassieres.


Come to think of it, many young ladies don't smoke pipes. Seeing as the chemistry of taste, and the psychology behind textural fondnesses and favourite shapes, is largely the same, the only possible explanation is that women as a rule lack a sufficiency of pockets.

Well, most women are not adequatly garbed for eventualities. Clothing ideally should have many capacious pockets for stowing things when the weather turns nasty. As it does in parts of the country targeted by liberal weather engineers. Just shove aside the lipstick, chapstick, and sunscreen, ladies. Make room for a small leather pouch of Churchman Flake and a good solid Charatan Dublin. Plus cleaners, tamper, and matches. Leave the bra for other things.


The post tea-time smoke was a Virginia blend in a Dunhill shellbriar bent bulldog I recently acquired to mark a significant date. There are benches down a nearby alleyway, the afternoon sun slants softly through the branches, the world is far away.
I've rarely had such a marvelous time.

Must be the weather.



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LATE NIGHT MOSS SQUARES

The dream transformed nostoc into spanakopita, such as was available once till four in the morning three blocks away. Before San Francisco after dark turned into a third-rate college town like Modesto or Laskabula, with only greasy pizza and donuts after ten. You used to be able get Vietnamese food, Chinese barbecue, sushi, grilled sausages of many types, Korean meats and snacks with or without a side of some really interesting kimchi-type pickled vegetables, wraps, curry and naan, beefsteak, onion soup, pastrami on rye, burrito, chocolate cake, and many other things until the wee hours.

Then the pandemic hit, along with work at home, and thoroughly pedestrian tastes.
Now what's available at that time is basically slice cheese, donuts, and drugs.


Sometimes a man wants something green and greasy.

A spanakopita that reflects the cook.

A tormented Aegean soul.

Aidiastikon.

Personally, I blame the computer age. This generation lacks a spirit of adventure, and abstains from Bohemian eating. It might interfere with streaming the latest pierced and tattooed influencer or get all over their keyboard. Or texting while zotsed. Sad.

When was the last time you had fried chicken with hot salsa after midnight?

Instead of microwaved thing with ranch dressing.


I miss the sleaze food.



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DIFFERENT OTHER CHAP

Lunch was Portuguese Chicken Rice (葡國雞飯 'pou gwok gai faan') at a place where I like going, because at that hour there are only a few regulars, not the crowd of gabbadooks that hang around most of the day. It does not resemble anything Portuguese, or Macanese, or even the Hong Kong original, being instead a mild curry chicken and vegetable dish next to a mound of rice. Very pleasant. Positively great with sambal. Along with two cups of tea it was a lovely preamble to smoking my pipe while listening to a nutball having a screaming argument with herself at the edge of the park, nearly a block away.
A nice peaceful afternoon.

All of us ocassionally have arguments with ourselves. Most of us do it silently in the mind, not screaming and howling out loud. We learned self-modulation as children. It's a valuable skill.


"I am retired window cleaner and pacifist. Without doing war crimes."
------Heinrich Bimmler, who was not head of Gestapo. At all.


I know nothing, NOTHING, about the North Minehead by-election, Britisher pig!

As soon as the bartender at the place where my friend and I went after the burger joint saw me, she put the kettle on. Which I appreciate. Not that I am by nature abstemious, but I haven't touched liquour in years. It could interact with my medication to unfortunate effect. Truth be told, I don't miss it. And sofar no stupid butch hickster from the primitive hinterlands has called me a pussy for my old lady drink. Possibly because I radiate homicidal insanity, or possibly because I look both fierce and deftig at the same time and they don't know what to make of that. Two cups of tea at the bar several hours after lunch.

The eccentricity level outside was much as it had been then. Different people, same level of normal unusualness, but far less screaming. The unstable gentleman who has fights with newspaper racks and instateller machines floated past while I was waiting, quieter and more restrained than normal. One of the regular insane people wandered past with his bedclothes, there was a mystic white person worshipping nature in one of the alleys, and a young woman with an non-existent cell-phone tromped along the street ahead of me for a block before hanging up and turning the corner.

There were the usual small groups of outsiders wandering past now and then. Some of them loud, some looking suspicious and being quiet. Which I can sort of understand.
Given so much text which is not clear for those who can't read.
Almost like it's a foreign language.
Huh.



At home during the morning I had looked up the lyrics of a song in Hokkien (閩南語). Which really is a foreign language. Leastways not understand by very many people here, other than Filippino Chinese, and even then their version differs somewhat from the standard. And tone sandhi (變調 'pin diu') makes everything more complicated to the outsider.
So best stick with Mandarin, all of you kwailo. Easier lah.

FYI: My Cantonese is sort of okay. My Mandarin is frightful.
Dutch and Malay, quite good, albeit old-fashioned.



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VOTING THE SOLID TICKET

At least with rat poison you don't see the evidence all over. It's effective, it gets into the food chain, and many more creatures than just rodents are effected, so there are fewer of them. But with election literature you end up seeing it all over. Everyday there is an infestation in my mail box. I suspect that caller robots have probably tried to inundate my last recorded phone number. "Hi, this is Barrack Obama, asking you to do your part; please vote for Ms. Zingbats Derhooptie in November." Yes, actually, Barrack, I'm voting for the irritating Jew. He may not be a perfect party player, but he's a liberal we want and need, he's been effective for over two decades, he pisses off all the right people, and he's part of my community.
So you know sumpin'? Ms. Zingbats Derhooptie can go pound sand.

If given a choice, always vote for the irritating Jew.

That's just a rule of life.


In fact election literature is largely wasted on me. If there are liberal Chinese Americans or irritating Jews on the ballot, I'm voting for them. If my own people (Dutch Americans) are on there, I will quite likely join the campaign staff of the irritating Jew or the Chinese Americans, because the vast majority of Dutch Americans are rightwing blisters, religious fascists and bigots, ethically crippled business people, and the children or grandchildren of people who collaborated with the occupiers during the war. Just look at all the Dutch Americans in the last administration; stuk voor stuk schorem, zo verrot als de pest.

Kindly do NOT send me your damned glossy agit-prop.
There's plenty of bonfire material already.

Also, the irritating Jew in question is shorter than me, so that too is a point in his favour.


Sadly, I can find no evidence that he's a pipesmoker, tea drinker, or a reader of Dutch Indo literature, or even stuff like Vladimir Vladimirovitch Nabokov; might be barely above À la recherche du temps perdu and Ulysses, but we'll take what we can get.



If there were a liberal Dutch American individual of impeccable New Amsterdam antecedents on the ballot, I'd vote for him or her in a flash you betcha, because American elections are all about finding justifications for one's bigotries and biases, and clothing those in acceptable robes, as it were, but I might be the ony one such in San Francisco, and I'm not standing for office, which is something about which we should all be damned glad.

I am strongly in favour of the Oxford comma.
Use of which would be made obligatory.
No ifs, ands, or buts, about it.



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BRIGHTLY SPARKLING PAUSE TO REFRESH

Late lunch coinciding with tea time. At home, because I need a break from the multitudes today, having dealt with them and their mega brain death all weekend. Sauteed sausage, peppers, and tofu. With a little curry spicing, and a sploodge of hot sauce. Good healthy food such as is largely unavailable in the suburbs, where one of America's five favourite fast food chains is only a quarter of a mile away Closer than a liquor store, in the same stretch as a popular caffeinated beverage chain with wifi. You can work from home either at the Pizza Bunker OR Joe Five Cups in the same strip mall Both with soft easy listening music.
Heck, you don't have to see your family unless you're asleep.
Or they want a slice of ham and pineapple.

Probably the next step in commercial living is a sleep shack; somewhere that you can take a nap in a comfortable pod with a clean non allergenic seasonal weather appropriate coverlet, soft lighting and people with a credit score and Apple Pay only, no bums, for a nominal fee. The price of a big boy bacon burger with fries, for instance. While your phone recharges.

Obviously air conditioning and ventilation would be necessary. As well as surface cleaning robots, and self-cleaning toilets. When you wake up, go next door for coffee, and then start "working from home" while nowhere near the place. It is filled with your family members anyway, and who wants them around?

Not shown here: banana for scale. Download the App.

Tea time. Real tea. Nothing pumpkin spiced.

An almond sponge cake with variously coloured sections held together with strawberry jam and covered with an outside layer of marzipan. A version flavoured with coffee and walnut paste was invented to celebrate the queen's jubilee in 2022.

As yet, there is no version that tastes of pumpkin spice. Nor should there be. Hellfire and brimstone are too good for the degenerate who creates that. Damned Trump cake.

The alternative, if you don't bake yourself and no Battenberg cake can be found in San Francisco, would be Swedish Princess cake. Which is also very nice.

Also not flavoured with pumpkin spice, because the world outside of Dixie just ain't ready for a Marjorie Taylor Greene cake. Damned dingbat.



Heading out with a pipe soon for a long smoke near the top of the hill.
The air outside is cooling down, it's a little windy.
Still over an hour of daylight left.



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THE SHORTBREAD STRATAGEM

Positively the worst phrase to utter lasciviously at a stranger of almost any type may very well be "I wish to lick the crumbs off your bare midriff". Using your Bela Lugosi voice only detracts slightly from the total creepiness. It is, however, excellent for saying to Indian phone centre drooges when you have a mouth full of shortbread and they call you up out of the blue desirous of scamming you. Over the past several years I have gotten sick of Indian accents, because over ninety percent of the time it's a telephone criminal trying his luck at defrauding the stupid white people. And normally I simply pick up in Cantonese.
Good luck with that, stupid aparadhi.

This came to mind, and was immediately put into practise, because my friend Neil makes fabulous shortbread. Of which I was eating some (yes, there still is a supply a week later) when the subcontinental electronic bottomfeeder called me up.


And while the idea of licking shortbread crumbs off the bare midriff of an attractive member of the opposite gender has a certain playful charm, proposing that might get me into trouble.

That's just a guess. Won't test the fates on that one.

Neil would probably be upset if his shortbread necessitated bail money.

Besides, it's far too early in the day to think of disturbing random women.



For your information, saying "I wish to lick the crumbs off your bare midriff" in Cantonese makes very little sense, does not contain the appropriate skeevy frisson, and sounds both clinical and quite staggeringly deranged in Cantonese. 我想舔走你裸露嘅中腹嘅碎屑 ('ngo seung tim jau nei lo lou ge jung fuk ge seui sit') suggests strongly that you have a need to clear debris off her mid-stomach. And things would have to be pretty far advanced before the manner in which you propose to do that makes even contextually any sense at all.

"How did you two meet?"
"He proposed clearing my debris. So I hit him with a baseball bat."
"Oh, so romantic (嘩，噉浪漫 'waa, gam long maan')!"

The proper woman, naturally, has a baseball bat in her purse.
One must be prepared for any eventualities.
Stands to reason.



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THE CRISPITY

Sunrise nowadays is well after seven o'clock. Quite a change. In the old days it was before six, what is this world coming to? Kids these days! Errm, what I mean is that Autumn is more or less here, and everyone's favourite all-American flavour is back. Pumpkin spice! Pumpkin spice mochachinos, pumpkin spice cookies, pumpkin spice cola, pumpkin spice candles, pumpkin spice pickled meat, ranch dressing, hard candies, and pipe tobacco.

Recently, I tried some of that last product. Reason being that a fortnightly associate hates aromatics. He cringes, wails, tantrums, and laments, most delightfully whenver I smoke garbage like that. And I was working with him yesterday.

No reaction. Not that covid wrecked his nose buds -- he has pretty much recovered from that infection four years ago, still one or two very mild touches of brain-fog, which will eventually fully pass -- but that the stankweed in question is actually pretty good and very subtle.

The most recent holiday blend by Cornell & Diehl is quite smokable, and I'll probably buy a few tins in addition to depleting the sample tin on the shelf. The great thing about C&D is that unlike several other manufacturers they abstain from use of the usual chemical humectants, preservatives, nasty syrups, and industrial oils and moisturizers, in consequence of which their aros don't feel like greasy nuclear fall-out shelter spagnum.
They look and feel like tobacco.

And as I said, I will probably buy a few tins.
I loathe aromatics, generally speaking.

PUMPKIN SPICE PIE LATTE

The less said about America's fondness for pumpkin spice, the better. All over the country vacuous teenage spazheads (female persons of any age up to retirement) are swilling hot syrupy high-coloric caffeinated beverages and driving their adult coworkers batty because after all that sugar and caffeine they just can't shut up. The Starbucks directly underneath Swansen's Mortuary and Funeral Internet (download the App now!) keeps them wired and does a booming business! All with-it young professionals drink pumpkin spice lattes.
With ethically sourced all green biodegradable ingredients and styrofoam!
Soy and oatmilk versions available! It's vegan!


A few years ago I used to work in a spazhead environment, so I can just imagine what the situation is now. I still shudder when people talk about teevee shows they watched last night. And I avoid Starbucks products and environments.


No, what I had in my pipe this morning when I stepped out for a smoke after my first cup of coffee was not a Cornell & Diehl holiday blend, but Fribourg & Treyer Special Brown Flake. When it's grim and depressing on the street, with homeless addicts slumbering in doorways and Republican tourists from the red states waking up from adenochrome jags while rolling in their own body wastes (that's what they come here for), and local yuppies walking their dogs and collecting poo, a nice crisp fragrance is required. One could almost feel like it was the fifties again, before beatniks, hippies, and vegans.

It smells like victory.



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FILL THEM ALL WITH BEANS

When I get to work I keep an eye out for crows. There are quite a few of them in that neighborhood, particularly two big ones that perch nearby at that hour. I've taken to giving them little treats. So eventually they'll recognize me, and think me not a bad sort.

Perhaps after several months I'll have an unstoppable army of crows and can conquer the world. Or perhaps not.

Crows often are far more likable than people. It's that cocky self confidence combined with a calm determined curiosity. And a happy sense of discovery. They're rather like Captain Jack Sparrow in some ways.

The rest of day contrasted with that. One of the old codgers in the back used profanity and sacred terminology in equal measure for over an hour as the San Francisco numeric team lost pitifully to the folks from Kansas City. A total debacle. They played miserably.
Damned poor show, what? Oh well, better luck next time.

Tssk, tssk.

Myself, I wasn't interested in the game.
The crows likely weren't either.
Very sensible.

As far as I'm concerned, the inmates are ruining the asylum.

I've learned to interpret their crazed gesticulations.

You know, I wanted to be a lumberjack!




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