THE SOUNDS OF GARBAGE

What should not surprise you is that I am not into sports. Of any kind. So I am peeved at bars that show the game. Could they not have better shown the musical numbers from Sesame Street and Girls Und Panzer? More conducive to drinking, and any curses hurled at the screen will be tempered by a greater sense of unseemliness. There's ladies present!
High school tank drivers! Big bird! Control your bestial self!

Kermit the Frog would approve.

We noticed tonight that a beer-pouring woman of our acquaintance is pregnant. She was not showing two weeks ago. It seems that we're always the last to find out. Which is no problem, as we end up there for the gemütlichkeit, not the sports or femininity.

No one should end up in drinking establishments for the opposite gender. Relationships that start in bars too often break up with booze.


It's garbage night in Chinatown. The garbage truck that went up an alley was barely out of sight when another headed down Grant Avenue in the other direction. For the benefit of the tourists, trash gets picked up fairly frequently. Mah and Pah Kettle from Paloozie don't need to see certain things. Can't do much about the occasional bit of human misery or outright whacked-out insanity on the streets, but trash we can do.

It was quite noisy near where I smoked my pipe while waiting for the bookseller.

One person vocalizing heartache, another screamingly singing further up the street, and a whole passel of gabbling tourists. One or two passers-by observing the pipe with interest. Quite likely they had seen folks smoking pipes in old black and white movies, and didn't realize that people still did that.

Perfect night for a pipe. Decent temperature, slight mugginess, scant breeze.
No stumbling drunks or blithering potheads.
Hot cup of tea after.


All in all, despite the sound of garbage trucks and bad singing, it was good.


I often feel that I should tell people to stop singing.
Your father hates it. Think of the old man.
And huge ... tracts of land.
Stay in your room.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================