A SOCIETY OF SUBSTANCE

Apparently Eindhoven is now the third city in the Netherlands. Saw an advertisement for a performance for three dates in three cities; Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Eindhoven. Well, Eindhoven does have a technical university, physics research laboratory, and well-known modern art museum. But in my day it was still considered a rather provincial dead-end.
So I'm kind of chuffed. We're world class now.

The only other times Eindhoven gets listed, even if it is only an honourable mention, is when they publish the drug-usage rankings of European cities based on waste water chemical analyses. Eindhoven is always in the top ten. Amstedam, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Tilburg, and UTrecht are usually also there. We Dutch-speakers evidently pee unadulterated illicit substance break-down products. And we're often zotsed out of our gourds.
That, too, chuffs me. We're number one, we're number one!


We're still monumental cheapskates, though, so I have to wonder who is paying for all those drugs? Is it subsidized by the government? Part of a strategy by Brussels to make the other Europeans a little more competitive or keep us from always getting the better of them?
A plot by American Commies to sap our vital juices and our manhood?

That last explanation is believable.

I've always distrusted American Anglo monolinguals, because they always resent not being number one, are attention hogs, and have a propensity for cheating. For proof of that just look at their history for the last fifty or so years, and their current society and government.

Crippled as regards ethics, moralls, and taste.
Poor weasily buggers.



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OH, THE VERISIMILITUDE!

Over on a distant internet page, there is a painting of Jesus baptising Donald Trump in a river (possibly Jordan). Trump is knee deep in water looking emotionally affected, in his trademark dark blue suit and red Sears tie, hands folded. Perfectly over-combed. His eyes downcast. Jesus, looking distinctly Middle Eastern, is holding one hand on Donald's chest and with the right sprinkling water on his head. A worshipful image. My first reaction upon seeing that was a mental barf emoji. Jesus porn, good lord. An obscenity.

Then I noticed the great similarity of that Jesus to an Iraqi liquour store clerk in the Tenderloin of my acquaintance. Wow. Abdullah has a second job!

Unbidden, that line from 'Oh Brother Where Art Thou' came to mind.


"THEY TURNED HIM INTO A HORNY TOAD!"


Featuring Trump in religious scenes with Jesus, no matter how Arab he looks, is just plain goofy. For one thing, Trump wouldn't be caught dead with a blitzed-out scruffy Levantine gentleman, or risk getting his suit ruined. For another, Jesus never existed. The whole thing is aesthetically blasphemous and obscene. As is the overlap between Jesus freaks and fascist dungtrolls. Almost makes one want to go burn the nearest religious edifice.

Those filthy meth heads in the interior have lost their everloving marbles.
Besides, Immigration and Customs Enforcement wouldn't allow it.
Dammit, where's General Sherman when you need him?

A further consideration is that 'them sireens' would never love him up and turn him into a horny toad. They would more likely simply stiff the diseased old impotent freak, steal his credit cards, and leave his corpse in a dark alley. Times have changed.

Abdullah would think somebody left a pile of garbage next to the bins the next morning when he opened up, curse these filthy Americans, then go inside with his unlit cigarette dangling from his grimacing mouth and before the first alcoholic stumbled in call his cousin Faeed in Lebanon to tell him that this country has gone to the dogs, please don't come.
You're better off where you are. Cleaner streets, better healthcare.

Are the remains of a senile syphilitic conman recyling, compost, or landfill?
In this case, probably not landfill. Toxic waste. Biohazard.
And not worth an obituary.
Burn it.




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ON THE BUS THROUGH HADES

Had I known what I was in for I might have caught a later bus. But I had spent the entire day babysitting special people (well, THEY think they're special) and I was keen to escape from deepest Fudgebunkum, Marin County. It had been frustrating. The senile delinquents had arrived early to watch the game, probably because their kinfolk did not want them around screaming their damned fool heads off. They were extremely vocal and full of caffeine.
The San Francisco team lost, by the way. Good.

In the front of the bus, there were a mommy, a daddy, a pizza, and an angelic blond tyke. The little fellow had eaten, and was full of himself. He kept singing the first stanza of the Wheels On The Bus Song.
It took an hour to get to San Francisco.
He sang the whole time.


"The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round ... "


This explained why the bus driver looke frantic when I boarded. I sat in the back and was quite frazzled by the time we passed the car wash on Bridgeway. By the time we went by Carl The Store and the attached coffee place, I was wondering what would happen if I went up to the front of the bus and carefully explained to the adorable little goblin "not the Eagles, kid, I've had a long day and I hate the f***ing Eagles!" What restrained me was the certain knowledge that the precious infant was probably a fragile flower, likely to be traumatized, and I didn't want to be part of the chain of events leading up to him taking his dad's machine gun to a therapy session. Or blowing his brains out during swim class because of his horrible psychological problems, polluting the pool and thereby forcing poor Dolphin and Moonbeam to have it completely cleaned of biological waste, as well as hiring a shaman to perform crystal purification rites and burn sage. Far better that someone else do that.
Little pizza-stuffed spoiled bitch brat monster.

One solid hour of "the wheels on the bus, round and round and round and round.
And round. And round. And round. And round.

The only thing that keeps me from advocating that precious adorable totally cute little white kiddie winkies be clubbed to death like baby harp seals is the knowledge that I myself was something like that, once. So actually, there is hope. They don't all grow up to be insufferable adults of the Karen persuasion or morons screaming at the television over a damned ballgame. I like to think that I've finally turned out quite decently. At long last.

Unlike the men I deal with at work, curse their rotten souls and spongy hearts.

Possibly because no one taught me the Wheels On The Bus song.
Or Baby Shark, Baby Shark. Both of those lead to brain rot.


I've had quite a day. Good heavens.



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HORRIBLE HOLIDAY ENVIRONMENTS

A friend and his wife were scheduled to join others somewhere in the Caribbean in a badly planned event. Where there is currently a lot of rain, some flooding. And sporadic power outages.It's close to ninety degrees. Humid, with rickety airconditioning. Plus, of course, mosquitoes. But besides all that, it's truly a wonderful place. Dengue, naturally, plus zika, chikungunya, and malaria. But what's little infection to the determined adventurous spirit? Among friends?

The wife decided heck no, ain't going.

Which to me, having absolutely no sense of adventure, makes complete sense.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity.

And the heat.


Let me know when they have a cold wave. Which historically has been never.

Look, anyplace with temperatures that are usually above a certain level AND plenty moisture will have chikungunya, dengue, malaria, and zika. Plus crotchrot and raging athlete's foot reaching all the way up to the sternum. You can count me out.

The entire Deep South. All the way to Buenos Aires.

Apparently, here in California, there is supposed to be snow falling in the Sierras. No plans to go there either. We had snow when I was growing up. Been there, done that. Besides, I don't trust country folk in the cold. Their little brains freeze. And they start burning books for fuel.

You folks who are going "home" for Thanksgiving are welcome to it.
Over the hills to granma's house. Tropics, mountains.
Arctic Circle. And the Carolinas.
The malaria zones.
Texas.



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SOME OF THEM HAVE SCALES!

One of my friends was, which surprised me, born overseas, and has two pasports. So he has a bail-out as well as a sanctuary in case the United States government really goes off the tracks. He mentioed that pursuant our discussion over President Trump calling off the ICE surge. Which pleases very many people here, not least of all myself, because many of the folks I know are Chinese American or in some other ways not lily-white Anglo, and I sound like a foreigner (due to diction and accent).

One third of San Francisco, by the way, is Asian American.

So I was not looking forward to the very real possibility that I would have to bail-out a number of friends for "assaulting" Kristi Noem's employees, as I'm sure several of them would have done if pushed. With my accent, and horrible attitude towards most people from the Red States, I would probably end up getting arrested too.
They would then have to bail me out.
Sorry for the inconvenience!


Years ago, in my first week at school, having come back to the United States for college, one of my clasmates told me "we shoot people like you where I come from". Thanks, Bubba, I still remember that. And I still don't trust you simple types in the interior, I hope nature wipes out your community in a flood, hurricane, debilitating plague, or massive wild fire.

Which is ironic, given the sheer number of relatives I must have among those simple types, considering the length of time my people have been in this country. Since New Amsterdam, so way before this country was a country. Ages before Sherman deservedly burned Atlanta.
Should've burned much more. And salted the earth after passing.

I'm always surprised when folks from certain places demonstrate reading skills and thinking ability. Not often enough, not nearly often enough. As far as I'm concerned, Florida man isn't limited to Florida.

Remember the pandemic? They proved that then.
Bunch of ignorant submentals.
Swamp things.



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THE MISSING PETRI DISH

Got out of the house late yesterday, after making myself some salt fish and egg fried rice with grilled sausages and two kinds of hot sauce. Basically, breakfast closer to dinner time.
So I ended up having a postmeal pipesmoke at dusk, when it gets colder. I had unwisely stepped out wearing a shirt too thin for the conditions. And decided to just suck it up.

The sanctity of the ritual outranks the need to be comfortable.
Yeah, okay, that's just weird. Crazy stupid stubborness.
If I die of pneumonia I'll have myself to blame.


Unlikely, given that it's merely early Autumn, late October. Which in San Francisco is actually pleasant weather. And I do own a functional coat. Which has capacious pockets suitable for holding pipe and tobacco. As well as two teabags because you never know when you might require a restorative hot cup.

Two pipes. In case a woman politely asks to join me.
Two teabags. Similar, but also planning ahead.
Sometimes a man needs another cup.
I'm actually a boyscout.

Actually, that's really why I have two briar pipes with me, because the chances of meeting a woman who indeed does want to smoke a pipe and isn't a tattooed free spirit with issues is remarkably slim. Non-existent, really. Two pipes gives me a choice, even though I've usually already decided which one I'll smoke before I leave the house. I just like having a suitable second to match. Neurosis.

I'm not socially adept enough to strike up conversations when I'm outside smoking my pipe. Not used to the idea. And I'm okay with that, comfortable with what I am. Also, a woman would in any case have her own smoking equipment. Her tastes, her preferences, her favourite shapes and brands.

Or maybe she prefers refined cigarettes from overseas, and has a steady supplier of same, because they're usually no longer legally available in the United States. Something slim and elegant. Something that one could let burn down in the ashtray while deeply involved in a textual ellucidation of something rather interesting.


It's a concept. I should write a science mystery with a protagonista exactly like that. A laboratory in a picturesque English village where most of the natives are pretentious eccentrics or blinkerdly ignorant snobs, and not good conversational company at all.
With a tea-shoppe with mediocre pastries, dried cucumber sandwiches.
And really cheap tea, clearly not Taylors of Harrowgate.




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DO GHOSTS HAVE GHOSTS?

Did I mention that bloodpressure meds make dreams vivid? Especially if one is in the habit of having a hot caffeinated beverage in the evening. Now, I know that what I'm supposed to do, having reached the age when pills are part of the daily program, is to quietly tone down my habits, and over a period of the next four decades or so slowly become a vegetable, only starting up to scream "damned kids get off my lawn" or occasionally babbling incoherently while gumming a rusk soaked in warm milk, but the problem is that I do not have a lawn for the damned kids to get off of, and I hate rusks.

As a Dutchman, rusks (beschuit) are a tangible part of my cultural heritage.
They're "okay" with a very thin slice of jonge kaas (cheese).
Or butter and hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles).

That latter is also something which I do not have. I live in a cultural wasteland.

What I do have is dreams, which are sometimes populated by ghosts. A cat that visits the corner of my eye when I'm still half asleep, before vanishing. And, most recently, a female figure in a loose shift that does the same. Possibly the former owner of the cat.

She floats a bit, shimmering, mouthes something I cannot hear, blinks out of existence. Then it's time for me to get up, go to the bathroom, and head into the kitchen to put the water on for coffee. I expect that as the weather grows colder she will start to wear something warmer, perhaps a sweater or a fluffy bathrobe. Flannel jammies.

She isn't my apartment mate flitting through my room. I know this because of her hair colour. My apartment mate, though of a similar height, does not look like that, never wears a shift (jammies with penguins, or happy sheep, or grizzly bears) and has black hair that's rather short. And I'm fairly certain she does not have a ginger wig, as she has no desire to be mistaken for Irish or Scottish.

Maybe I should research the occupants of this building before my landlady's parents bought it decades ago. They're all Chinese American (landlady, passed parents), but before then it was probably mostly Caucasian-filled.

In the years that I have lived here, it has still been mostly Caucasian.
Even though many of the folks nearby are Chinese American.

My apartment mate, also Chinese American, has a theory that Chinese ancestried people, if they're lucky, are visited by the ghosts of all the seafood they have eaten. Delicious haunting. And I should mention that Cantonese people are quite seafood obsessed, which may play a part in that belief-system.


I'm imagining little flocks of ghost lobster and shrimp all over the hills of San Francisco, scurrying after people and trailing fragments of salted black beans and garlic. Which explains why elderly Chinese often take the bus, even for one block. Ambulatory Crustaceans can't mange the step up into the vehicle. They probably cluster at the stops forlornly, waiting for someone likely to get off.



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STAY BEHIND THE YELLOW TAPE!

Sometime soon the first wave of Trump's goon-surge will hit the Bay Area, according to some local news reports. Which will overjoy several repulsive Republicans (including two retired police officers) in Marin County. Despicable men. Too long alive. So by this time next month, just in time for turkey day, the fans will have been well and duly spattered, and the locals will be hunting down uniformed Texans and "talking to them". Or something like that.


Imagine several possible conversational scraps:

"Don't go there, son, that's where they gutted and skinned a Fox News reporter two days ago." "Who knew that the Salesforce Tower was so combustible?" "They're combing through the building for surviving feds." "Yeah, okay, their demise was extrajudicial, but it was proven that they were college Republicans, so no biggie."

Myself, I shall stay out of trouble. I fervently hope that the people I know and like will too.
As well as all the medical personell I know, only ONE of whom is Caucasian.


I fully expect San Francisco to be a war-zone within hours of the thugs landing.
Probably most intensely near Salesforce, Fox News, and Sansome Street.
Secondarily places like Union Square and Pacific Heights.
At all times, stay behind the yellow tape.

Remember that tear gas residue stays on surfaces for a very long time, so be careful touching your eyes even after it's all over. Also, Kristi Noem's gestapo is no respecter of rights -- the Immigration Department is chock full of old-fashioned bigots, just ask anyone who has arrived from overseas at our airports in recent years -- and if you're arrested by them you will be treated badly, so be prepared to sue them and be tied up in the courts for years. Furthermore, and this interesting, masks are penetrable, and protective gear may or may not be combustible. Do with that info what seems best for you at that moment. California's law against facial coverings to prevent recognition by police and Federal Christian Nationalist bullies does NOT go into effect until January, and they will disregard it anyway. Same with the requirement (same law) that they identify themselves by name and badge number. Assume that those people are actually inbred syphilitics from a red state.
Possibly swamp creatures. Do NOT get their fluids on you. Unclean.


And again, stay behind the yellow tape.


As a man with peaceful inclinations, not at all likely to get involved in shenanigans or law-breaking, honest, the worst that I expect to happen personally is that drifts of teargas and smoke might interfere with my quiet pacifist enjoyment of a pipe after eating in Chinatown. Smoking a pipe is good for the digestion. Teargas isn't.
Reagan taught us that.



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BOYSCOUTING AND URBAN LIVING

They're working on the street again. Sounds like heavy machinery. Somewhere there is a jackhammer. The newly laid concrete along the near edge has had a few days to cure.
If I lived at the front of the building I would be bothered.

Because two buildings are also being worked on, there are now three porta-potties on the street. A mommy, a daddy, and a little baby Jesus potty. Now imagine Goldilocks having to make a choice. After eating and napping.
One of them is "just right".
Confused bears.


"This one. This is totes the one! OMG!"


She has a little self-satisfied smirk. Like a spoiled blonde yuppette would have after trying on everything at the store. The latest fashion in porta-potty garb, designer, costs more than your weekly pay cheque. Onward to the luxury potties of Union Square!

It might be worth it to purchase monthly memberships to the gym around the corner for the jackhammer boys. Cleaner, more comfortable, flushy flushy, and better lighting. Lighting is very important at such times, there are few things so depressing as a badly lit loo.
And you can't see the spiders when you're in there.
Uncomfortable angry spiders.

About seven years ago when they were working on Van Ness (a project that consumed a generation), one of the local crazies or street people got accidentally locked in a porta-potty at the beginning of a three-day weekend. I sure hope someone with a cell-phone called the authorities to rescue him. I didn't have a cell-phone at the time, and it was dark and cold.
Being pooped from a long day, I forgot about it by the time I got home.

I often think about panicked frantic Goldilocks locked alone in a crapper on Van Ness.
If you're going to sneak into a porta-potty when it's dark, maybe bring along a crowbar or an axe. Or at the very least, a flashlight and a walkman or cell-phone.
Plus water and maybe a bag of snacks.
Be prepared.

During one of the Union Street Festivals (yearly events with drunks, food stands, and artists worried that a drunk would knock over their shelves of pottery) I stood in line for one of the porta-potties. Not exactly traumatic, but in hindsight not a memory I'll cherish. I can't even remember which lovely ceramics I bought that day, OR whether I had patronized the fried snack concessions. But I remember the porta-potty. So my sympathy is decidedly with working types forced to use those things.

Who might worry, on a slope in San Francisco, whether it's going to start sliding downhill and they'll end up smashed into a local restaurant amidst horrible wreckage and overturned wine bottles with their pants around their ankles.

And spiders.



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ANCIENT FRAGRANCES

North Beach has become too popular with the out of towners. Mobs of them. An infestation. Fortunately once we left the burger place there was the party wheel chair across the street, with loud Latin dance music and strobe lights. He wheels through the darkened city waking the natives with salsa. In a radius of half a dozen blocks.
A breath of positivity and light.

Besides, at the intersection of Columbus and Broadway the only people sleeping are drunk or drugged. A long time ago I used to live very near there, and I can remember sometimes being up until dawn, when the robust aroma of fresh roasting coffee beans from the Caffe Trieste and the Roma beckoned.

Some of the local bars already had the early alcoholics at that hour.

We ended up at Vivian's (not the actual name of the place) because both the beer hall and the karaoke bar were insane asylums. Tat Yee expressed wonderment that I had not gone to the latter, and I explained that there is nothing worse than twenty-something white people singing Hotel California or Country Roads. Or, heaven forfend, the Okland Booty song.

Caucasian yuppazoids love the Oakland Booty song.

Whereas a bar with only half a dozen people inside and NO loud music is a slice of heaven. Quite tolerable. Especially if they have hot water for tea. Plus Guinness and Jameson whiskey for the bookseller.

A few hours before pipe and pub crawl I had been down in C-town enjoying a plate of salt fish and chicken chunk fried rice (鹹魚雞粒炒飯 'haam yü gai nap chaau faan'). Hong Kong people may claim that dimsum is their quintessential home town food, but nothing evokes a sense of comfort and well-being quite like salt fish. That briny cheesy saveur! That intense baconesque jolt of umami! That richly fermented pong! AND it combines harmoniously with chicken or fatty pork, much like cheese for many westerners. Which it scares considerably. Despite being great with dollops of chilipaste.

Sadly, I have never been able to convince other English-speakers of this.
I guess I will first have to teach them all Dutch. Then they will know.
The Netherlandish tongue inculcates gustatory understanding.
Denk aan nasi goreng met een beetje trasi of daing.

Or, in the case of my apartment mate, bacon and eggs over rice for dinner with a dollop of oyster sauce. Which isn't Dutch, even though a Dutchman would assuredly enjoy that also, but very American-born San Francisco Cantonese. 真好食呀！
See, an Anglo would have potatoes and ketchup.
In lieu of rice and oyster sauce.

We do have ketchup in the fridge, but we go through oyster sauce far faster.

In some places like Mississippi or Alabama you have to travel out of state to purchase oyster sauce. I cannot imagine living there. How horrible!


Crowded bus on the way back over the hill.
Dammit y'all, go to bed already!



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GLOBULAR FRUITING BODIES

Elaeomyxa are slime molds in the family Lamprodermataceae. There are four known types. They are true slime molds (myxomycetes) with distinct phases. During their plasmodium stage they ingest nutrients in an amoeba-like fashion. After they have become replete, they produce globular fruiting bodies. Like most slime mold species they grow on rotting wood in moist forested environments.

Which, personally, is interesting to me. But I can understand if most people would find this unexciting to the point of mental immobility, hardly thrilling at best.

Especially as the individual slime mold manifestation is microscopic.
Barely noticeable except in masses or when mature.
Strange small alien things.


When I showed my apartment mate an illustration of slime molds recently she said that they looked 'evil'. This is the same woman who went through an entire phase of pimple popping videos and would invite me to appreciate "how big that one is can you believe that?"

I would rather not. It's icky.

There are many things which one of us finds fascinating, and the other doesn't. I discovered this morning that my little plastic envelopes of pipe carbon for making mud to patch the inside cakes of damaged pipes are missing. She probably thought that it was just weird ash, which the toad (me) was saving for some berserk reason, and out with it. Housecleaning.


The toad (me) is not one for fits of housecleaning. Although I recently realized that I have way too many scraps of paper that I will never look at again.
Which I should probably throw out.


It fills me with discomfit.



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AND GRAVY FOR THE MASSES

Everytime I look at comment strings under news, I see a number of Trumpites shitting all over everything. It's like a junior prom version of the Young Republicans. Slightly fewer nasty digs at African Americans, Asian Americans, Jews, Latinos, Muslims, and Native Americans. Because they know it will get them axed. Far more sneers, slights, outright falsehoods, and approved government talking points.

The good thing is that there are no calumnies directed at Dutch Americans and pipesmokers. We are not a significant blob on their admittedly limited mental horizons, and that, basically, is what people like me are for.

Excoriating hard-core bible-thumping cretins in Michigan is something I occasionally do. Fortunately, there are far fewer of those trogs in the current administration. I guess they weren't vicious enough.

By the way: they aren't many of them in Placer County either. The rot there is all home-grown inbred Anglo etcetera. Syphilis rates there have stabilised, because they just keep intercoursing themselves. Bless their hearts.

Fortunately I do not have to deal with such people very much when I'm off work; they stay in that one suburban venue festering in their own bile and cheering for the local football team, because it represents all that they hold dear and no one kneels for the anthem anymore.

As organised and televised team sports often do.
Junkfood and beer advertisers demand it.
All-American cheese, grease, salt.
It's what people love.
Patriotic!



Delicately I raise a minute pinch of Fribourg & Treyer snuff to my refined nostrils, and sniff deeply, appreciatively. Mmm, lotus fragrance! Bugger the sports pigs.



Do you see a television in that book room illustrated above? Well, do you? It isn't there. During the football, baseball, basket ball, and ice hockey seasons there is naught to watch, and now that the Trump regime has yanked funding for PBS there isn't enough money to pay the British for their snooty productions, which are literate and well acted by clearly enunciating people with correct diction for their class.

Certain accents, like Belfast, Cockney, Mississippi, and Gronings set my teeth on edge.
Oxford, Cambridge, Dick Cavett, and Den Haags are fine.
Glaswegian and Liverpool, just no.
Gibberish.



Speakers from Texas, on the other hand .....
Sometimes quite eleoquent.




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REVERIE

There is nothing quite like snarfing down a plate of pork and cabbage dumplings 豬肉白菜餃子 ('jyu yiuk paak choi gaau ji'). No hot mik tea, because it's a Shanghai place, and that isn't their thing. But they have chili crisp (香辣脆 'heung laat cheui'). And their dumplings are quite good. So I enjoyed my meal. Immensely.

Had a long smoke in the Financial District afterwards. I must have looked jaunty and dashing with my pipe sticking out of my mouth, as a passing lady security guard smiled warmly at me as she passed. A fine briar is definitely an excellent style accesory. It makes any man or woman look brilliant, like Einstein or Faulkner. And soigné, like Clark Gable.

Warm enough today for shirtsleeves. Even at dusk, when it was cooler.
Downtown, empty at evening, is reverie inducing.


Over in England it has, I have been informed, been rainy and autumnal. Twenty degrees Fahrenheit colder than San Francisco, with some downpours. Perfect for a stomp in the woods with a magnifying glass to inspect the small bugs and slime molds.

Myxogastric slime molds of the genus cribraria have globular and soft fruiting bodies with an abbreviated thready peridium, forming a net-like structure. They are widespread, with more than thirty species. They flourish in shady moist environments, often on rotting wood or dense vegetal matter in forests.

In the illustration above, cribraria are shown on rotting wood.

Slime molds are in fact quite fascinating.

Some are dumpling-shaped.



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ON THE ISLAND OF NEUROSIS

At present I am amused by the imagined frustration of two people at constructing a series of interlocking cubes at my work place. Soon to be augmented by a third, when his shift starts. Who will, undoubtedly, after half an hour say "heck it, let's just toss this crap and have a shot of tequila". I put it together yesterday, and deconstructed it entirely before I left at night. The marginally demented anti-vaxer who works tomorrow may take an axe to it. Another brilliant idea by a marketing department, leapt upon alacritously by the boss, which has proven both goobus and capable of inducing psychological trauma. I work in an unique environment.

Much about what I do in a work context is likely to cause weeping, wailing, and, if the wind is right, gnashing of teeth. Not by me, as I am an equitably-tempered bloke. But others.


Under certain conditions at work I may grumble, but sometimes there is cheese.


I keep fantasizing that one day a skunk or a badger may wander in.
Friendly, extremely self-assured, and quite curious.
I shall give it a tuna fish sandwich.

Animals like that often react 'decisively' if other creatures nearby make sudden or threatening moves. As a Dutch American, and a pipe smoker, I understand that. I also react decisively at those times. And I have trained myself to be calm, as I do not wish to bite through the stem of my pipe. Those things are a pain in the gand to replace. Obviously I do not wish to inflict that pain in the gand on furry entities. Some of whom are adept at sharing their gand irritation.

To put it differently, I see myself as good at sitting still, not disquieting animals, and gently feeding them tuna fish sandwiches. Besides constructing cubes.

Because it was my birthday last week, and to reward myself for being a good little patient (saw medical professionals recently, like every year at roughly this time) I bought myself another pipe. A black sandblasted Peterson straight-shanked billiard, silver-banded.
A handsome piece. Very skunk or badger like. Which a crow might also like.

Breaking-in a new pipe is a neurotic project. Smoke it gently, partial bowls at first, gradually increasing the tobacco, until finally somewhere at around twenty smokes or so one can do full loads. By that time the carbon layer on the inside of the bowl will have developed enough that it's the perfect interface with the tobacco and acts as a protective layer between the fire and the wood. Which should probably be sometime in December for this pipe.

This item looks very similar to an older Dunhill shellbriar banded billiard which I mentally associate with club sandwiches and Hong Kong milk tea for lunch. Perfect for the rainy season and the return of colder weather.



By the way, and speaking of neurotic, I should mention Greg Pease's Ellipsis Flake. Mostly lighter leaf (Virginia flue-cured and a little burley) augmented with Smyrna (Izmir) and a touch of St. James Perique. Rather delightful. Off-kilter label art, which seems to be three dancing nudes erupting from tobacco leaves on a sunny day. A seascape. I shall have to purchase more of this. This might be something to stockpile.

TOBACCO INDEX


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THEY'RE RUINING YOUR DINNER TODAY.

Naturally the senile Republicans in the backroom stayed to watch the ball game. Equally naturally, I left my coworker, a sportsfan, to deal with that. I cleared out when my shift ended, and was glad to get on the bus back to civilization. My workweek is short, but bitter. I am far less of a people person than I was years ago. Not a psychopath, but not exactly warm, cuddly, outgoing, or neurotypically standard.

My apartment mate ditto. A conversation which she was party to: "How dare you fail my precious! He's a genius!" Her interjection: "I see. Gets that from his parents, does he?"
That goes into the 'screw you Jennifer' file.

So basically, we get along fine.

The gentlemen in the backroom cannot understand why I am not into sports on teevee, and have made clear that they consider that un-American and snooty of me.
These are the same fellows who will watch golf on the telly.
Can't get more un-American and snooty than golf.
It's the paradigm of dickhead pastimes.

Saruman, Sauron, and the Nazgûl play golf.
That tells you everything, doesn't it?

Anyhow, the Forty Niners are playing this evening, football I believe. Thousands of people are eating hotdogs and creaming in their panties because of this. The Forty Niners, I have been told, are America's team. It is unpatriotic to not adulate!

The game started at five thirty, lasts about two hours, and features screaming from fans. So dinner table conversation is out of the question for many people, unless they have mastered the phrases "yay team", "how about those niners, hey", or "beer".

There is silence in my neighborhood at present. Yay!
I appreciate such neighbor silence greatly.
Perhaps the team has already lost.


Yay!



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HEALTHY DELUSION

It wasn't until I got home yesterday that I realized work had clopped me a good one. Long day, with lots of noise. My feet hurt like billy-o. What had delayed the realization was 800 mg of acetominophen. A miraculous substance. One especially loved by autistic single moms, per our politicians. Who are stark raving mad.

My evening routine on work days is to fix myself a cup of coffee, sit in front of the computer looking up stuff on Wikipedia or doomscrolling, and hitting "like" under social media posts. Such as the seance cartoon where they've summoned a pizza delivery guy, or the dark nursing humour page. Or pipe smoker postings.


The acetominophen was an extra strength caplet at nine in the morning, and half a regular tab in mid-afternoon. Acetominophen works for around twelve hours, with minor continuing effect for another twelve afterwards. There are cautions about using it too much too often.

Just call me the Tylenol whisperer.


It's usually the right leg that's the problem. Sometimes only the right leg. That's why we're going to do the angioplasty there first. See how it holds, then the left.

Which inevitably brings up things like gooey Brie, Stilton, cheesy poofs, Cheddar flavoured crisp biscuits, smoked Edam, and that it's a darn good thing that I have the digestion of a pre-menstrual woman AND am taking statins.

I snacked a bit after coming home.

Statins made it guilt-free.



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PURCHASING THINGIDINGKY

One of the major effects of tariffs and punitive taxes, other than bankrupting businesses, is that smuggling goes through the roof. Which, surely, is free-enterprise at it's finest! "You want thingidingky, stupid white man? Very good, I supply you with thingidingky! For one quarter the price that your licensed thingidingky vendor charges!" Several people I know haven't purchased legal cigarettes in California in many years. They don't have to. They have several contacts who will sell them cigarettes smuggled in from elsewhere. For considerably less than they would pay from a legitimate cigarette store.

We spent years fighting the war on drugs. Drugs won.
Which wasn't a big surprise to anyone.

A century ago we banned alcohol. Over the next decade prohibition gave us the FBI, the Kennedys, and organized crime. We're still on the fence about two of those three.

And everybody loves stockcar racing, right?


It's against the law to hire illegal aliens, or anybody without correct papers. There are now many enterprises which, because of ICE, have severe labour shortages.
Many of them are Trump voting family farmers.
Funny how that turned out.

Far be it from me to speak any ill of certain activities.

As a red-blooded American, I must instinctively applaud all manifestations of laissez faire free-wheeling capitalist free-enterprise. It's what made this country great. The colonists during the revolutionary war did it, starting a tradition which maintains to this day. John Jacob Astor of the American Fur Company smuggled opium on a truly massive scale, the coastal English during the Napoleonic war smuggled as well, United States Citizens near the Canadian border do it as naturally as breathing, Russian citizens during the Soviet Period did it all the time, and the Dutch province from when my ancestors hailed regard it as part of their intangible cultural heritage, we're planning to file papers with Unesco about that.

Something about butter, guns, and tobacco.


Thumbing one's nose at the Feds, sneering at Washington, and buying stuff illegally, are all as American as apple-pie. We Americans are very fond of apple-pie. It runs in our veins.


Yay, thingidingky!



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REVERSE BATHTUB!

Donald Trump, famous felon, gobbledigooker, and failed businessman, sometimes says truly remarkable things. "We built a thing called a reverse bathtub. You seal it. The problem is, nature always wins". No one knows what that means. It's covefefic.

No, he didn't rant this in a late-night twitter rampage, as you probably thought. That being when his more incoherent brain turds drop. Said it out loud in front of witnesses.


"We built a thing called a reverse bathtub. You seal it. Nature always wins. I know a lot about reverse bathtubs."


You know, old man, the next time you have a thought, consider keeping it to yourself. Leave it sealed up. Unsaid. Not on the record. Not in front of guests at a White House dinner, when your audience feels constrained to be there because they need something out of you and consequently will look politely quizzical instead of giggling at signs of dementia.
Keep wisely quiet. Just. Shut. Up.


Reverse bathtub, 屌，你老母，reverse 你嘅 bathtub!

By the way, is it time to release the Epstein files yet?


Lunch yesterday was excellent. Pork cheung fun with cilantro.
And condiments: chili crisp, hot sauce, peanut sauce.

Can't get that at Trump Tower or Mar-a-Lago.
Not showy and vulgar enough.



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