NEED TO TIGHTEN UP

Given that the noisy and gibberingly insane backroom boys were not in today, probably because they were out there loudly hollering obscenities at a no-kings rally or something equally repulsive -- and I both expect and fervently hope that they got arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct as well as disturbing the peace -- the afternoon was quite enjoyable. Especially because the airconditioning works. So it was cool and bank-like at work.
Despite the blazing Texas-like heat outside.

Please imagine a good-looking mature man enjoying his pipe in a super-cool environment. Mmm, good. Mature Virginias. Merest touch of firecured leaf. Cups of tea. Some chocolate. Intellectual stimulation. Smells like teen-spirit. Baby.

And by mature you don't need to know what exactly I mean.
I am only as old as I feel. Fully caffeinated.
And the tobacco was well-aged.


This evening, in discussing the mobs rioting across the pond and burning France down to the ground, my apartment mate asked "aren't they always destroying something over there?" Well, yes, they are. We Dutch don't do stuff like that, we're very sensible people. The French aren't; they're insane and intoxicated, the drunken oafs. Whereas we Dutch folks are always calm and phlegmatic. She's lived in this apartment as long as I have. Judging by her peals of laughter, she might not see "Dutch" as in any way connected to "calm" or "phlegmatic". Maybe she was thinking of some other allegedly Dutch people?
How many Dutch people does she actually know?

You know, not everyone is as Dutch as they claim to be.
They might actually be Belgian, but hiding it.
Or, bog-forbid, French. Those people.
The Dutch I know are rational.

One of the pipes I smoked is the bent billiard pictured above, which Tiberio gave me ten years ago after I had cleaned up a number of his Blue Ribands. I associate it with rainy Fall afternoons in Chinatown. It seems that it rained a lot during that period, but that's probably shaded memory. Still, I remember the pavement on that particular street glistening, wet.

The other pipe I loaded up is one that during that same period alternated with a straight sandblast panel from a long-gone shop in Hollywood. I stopped taking it to work with me because one coworker really liked it, for unremarkable reasons, and I'm often petty.

That was also the same year when an elderly gentleman toppled sideways on Grant Avenue, and I realized that my abilities in Cantonese were not as useful as I would have liked, at that time. My speaking skill was glib, but not necessarily useful. I lacked the vocabularly to have been any help at all during that event.

I still haven't sharpened it all very much.



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