SCREAMING FOR EDDY

None of us have actually met Eddy. But judging by the screaming from down the block while we were waiting for the bus, she has and blames him for a lot that is wrong with her life. Existential angst. Questions about the meaning of life. Bad hair days. Torpor.

From which I deduce that Eddy is a talented man.

Knowing Eddy is not high on my list of priorities. Nor is emulating him. The most I would wish a young lady to feel is kind of chuffed, and pleased to be eating cake with me. Black forest kirsch torte OR coffee crunch. Either or. Back in my early twenties, the phrase 'hip problems' suggested a weeklong adventure with a whiskey-swilling artistic type and an Underwood. Nowadays it's discombobulative creaking sounds upon getting up from a crouch.

In Chinese, "hip problems" are 臀部問題 ('tuen bou man tai'). After a certain age, those are amplified by circulatory (血液循環 'huet yik cheun waan') issues which you should probably discuss with your doctor, and which do not normally cause creaking.
Bad hair days, perhaps. No Eddies are involved.

I didn't have that adventure back then.
But I still own a typewriter.
Not an Underwood.

The idea of treating a nice person to a lovely slice of cake is charming, don't you think? Unfortunately there is no way of telling if a likely miss is suffering from a severe cake deficiency and amenable to the concept. One cannot trawl the waters at random.


As we have for many years, the bookseller and I met up after I had finished my pipe for our weekly pubcrawl, and, remarkably, his first sustenance of the day. The line outside the bakery this morning had apparently been too long. So he had had total bupkes in the way of nourishment, and a late night burger was breakfast. I had already eaten at tea-time and my blood sugar level was fine. The place to which I had gone is favoured by elderly Cantonese people, much like the place where I often have lunch on Wednesdays. So it's calm and good for people watching, as well as ideal for the single Dutch American grabbing a bite before heading out for a walk with a pipe.

For the last few days I've been filling my pipe with Atalaya.
A fine aged Virginia product from Cornell & Diehl.
It's excellent. I highly recommend it.


The beer place was filled with sparkling artistic types and Europäische Intellektuellen, the karaoke joint had people wailing in Country Western -- they sounded utterly miserable, as you would expect considering the ballads they had chosen -- so we headed directly to Miss Vivien's after his burger. He had stout and a whiskey, I had tea. We discussed 'Parks and Recreation', 'The Office', and Jimmy O. Yang, a comedian of great talent.

After which we listened to the female person hollering about Eddy.
Who must be a very bad person judging by her vehemence.
Quite the vile bastard. Heartless!
And somewhere else.



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