FRIGHTFUL CELEBRATIONS

Dear sir, I wish to register a complaint! Today on the seventeenth day of March of 2026 the temperature in downtown San Francisco after three o'clock was eighty five degrees. This is unheard of, and an outrage! I blame the Irish, the Trumpites, and the Lutherans! As well as everybody in the Eastern half of the country keeping all the delicious coolth for themselves, those poxy rotten selfish bastards!

In the past, temperatures on the feast day of Saint Gertrude of Nivelles (patron saint of cats) would be somewhere between fifty and sixty or so degrees Fahrenheit. Today it wasn't.
It was quite buggery awful.


I am currently sitting in the teeveeroom in my underwear (boxers and a wife beater) with no intention of going out to deal with drunken Irish Americans celebrating Saint Gertrude's Day.

And thanks to President Trump ranting pointlessly about windmills in answer to a question about something else entirely, I'm proposing that Saint Gertrude's Day should ALSO henceforth be Windmill Day.


During lunch while sweltering I got to hear several phone calls that Victor over at the next table in the chachanteng had to deal with. "hey, Kaufoo, what the heck did you tell Connie?" Judging by what followed, Kaufoo (舅父 'kau fu'; mother's brother, uncle) may have told her something about someone being real cheap and going through all the tinned pineapple. In any case, Connie should chill the F out, and the nephew should simply buy some more tinned pineapple. Now stop bugging me.

Then there was the call about an ex employee drinking on the job. Shipcanned while tipsy. Didn't even lock the door at night, or take care of business. Some other employee now no longer drinks at work, he's just an alocoholic when off duty at home.
I'm surprised to realize that Victor seems to think in English. Given that I've usually heard him holding forth in Cantonese, Mandarin, and something Min Nan which might be Teochew.

On Saint Gertrude of Nivelles Day many people in San Francisco get lacquered out of their gourds and dress in ichor green. It's a very strange custom, and civilized people stay home on that day and lock the doors. Going anywhere near bars would be madness. So the bookseller and I will not meet today, we'll have tea and cocktails next week.

But I did mark the day, in a manner. Smoked a pipeful after late lunch in a Peterson pipe. Nothing is more Irish AND more pipish than a Peterson 312 System Standard.
Shape 69 is also an option.

So I was more observant than all the yutzes wearing shades of green. You know the VC snipers can still see you, right? Y'all stand out a mile in the desert like a sore thumb.

How are you going to mark Windmill Day? We Dutch don't get disgustingly drunk.
That's something only English monolinguals do.
Habitually.

It's downright nasty, is what it is.
Bunch of fratboys!



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