STRICTLY NORMAL, NOTHING TO SEE

An airport in a deity-forsaken part of the country is now warning passengers that they should be present four hours early for flights, so that the goons can security-screen them, challenge them to wrestling matches, and then rip their luggage apart into fragments of ever decreasing size. Just to make sure they aren't hiding any "evidence" in the lining. "Travel should be fun", they say, "and we have a doozy of a ride in store for you".

So the question is, how do you get your praescribed medications on board? ICE agents are notorious for denying people their life-saving medicines by now, and most of those red-state slope brows wouldn't recognize legitimate pills if they jumped up and bit them. They're more likely to think in terms of ivermectin, bleach, and praying the daemons out.

Plus sacred amulets. Juju. Dried heads.


Given that we've become a tish hole, why would anyone even travel in this country? The natives are vile, the food is garbage, there is scant hygiene, mildew and bedbugs everywhere, and ignorant Texan imbeciles for three thousand miles.

Except for San Francisco and New York.
New York has pizza.

This morning while out for a smoke with a Charatan Canadian and some Greg Pease, I saw that bus-stop uncle and auntie were at their usual spots waiting for the trip over the hill to Chinatown. Breakfast, social club, clinics, and physical jerks for the elderly. A full day, then back home to this neighborhood shortly after tea time. I strongly suspect bus-stop uncle of being a cigarette smoker, but I think he keeps it in check till auntie is out of sight.

They know each other. And probably live in the same building. But I don't think it's anything more than that. Neighbors, friends, same doctors. Different mah jong parlours.

They are probably not as disrupted as I am by the closing of my favourite provisioners for a two week vacation. The time when the cheap eatery near the high rise was shuttered for the day may have impacted them, but much less than it flummoxed me. I was happy to get back to Chinatown after the cardiologists appointment, and quite taken aback that my plan to have congee (皮蛋瘦肉粥 'pei daan sau yiuk juk') and an oil stick (油條 'yau tiu') at a place I hadn't visited in months -- no routine is set in stone, not even regular ones -- had come to naught. That Monday the applecart of routine was upset.
I relish my irregular regularities.


A friend likes to have a bowl of chile verde at a gas station near his house at least once or twice a month. Made with hot green New Mexico chilies, no tomatillo, and pork shoulder. Three staff members there know the recipe, so he'll not be left hanging. They're open 365 days a year. Last thanksgiving he had it with a plate of fried chicken on the side. He thinks he might do that this Easter also. It's a bit hard to hide Easter eggs where he lives. Scant grass. Cacti. Hardly any little people to search for them. Tiny thugs.


The last bunny they saw was a jackrabbit.
It went into the stew pot.



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