AFTER MONSOON SEASON

The Indonesian Chinese downstairs neighbor lady rang the doorbell and asked if my apartment mate was in. No, she wasn't home yet, was there something I could help her with? No no, just let my apartment mate know that she wished to tell her something. Okay. Can do.
I am capable of communicating.

It turns out that the neighbor had been a bit tight these past few months, and my apartment mate had helped out. There was now money coming in again, but she hadn't wanted to discuss any of this with me, because she was afraid that my apartment mate's "husband" would beat her.
By "husband" she meant me.

My apartment mate assured her that that would not happen, in fact I was a very generous fellow, and we weren't even in that kind of relationship.
Not husband and wife, nor lovers, just old friends. Also, her money, her choices. And both of us have our own funds.

My downstairs neighbor probably has some strong cultural memory of us Dutch imperialists being utter brutes. It's a generational thing.

Actually the generous person in this household is my apartment mate. After all, she described me in very positive terms. Which I cannot imagine myself deserving. Well, I suppose I don't beat the workers in the cane fields or withhold the measly pittance salaries of the peasantry on my tobacco plantations (Sumatra coastal strip OR central Javan Regencies; either would be nice), nor do I EVER request the colonial constabulary assist me in my ongoing battle to civilize the headhunters, convert them to Christianity, and in the process of doing so seize their lands for rubber planting.
But calling me "generous"? That's a monumental stretch.
Only because of insufficient other opportunities.
Anyhow, kudos to my "generosity".
Brownie Points!
Yay!

[Besuki tobacco: Banyuwangi, Bondowoso, Djember, and Panarukan.]


I'll admit to being a Dutch cliché. Linguist, Asian languages, scriptural knowledge, a very great familiarity with spices and colonial cash crops.
I might have made a decent "Assistant Resident" somewhere in the sparsely populated interior. But not a very effective one.

Yep, stereotypical Orang Belanda.

And I smoke a pipe.
Perfect.



"LETTER TO MY BROTHER GOMPERT"

I'm sorry, my area is rather miserable, and the harvest failed this year as well as last. If you decide to visit I shan't be able to offer you more than a cup of watery tea and a dry crust, perhaps sago gruel. And a dried fish, maybe, if it's a festive occasion. Malaria is endemic, the natives are barely literate, their religious scholars extortionate and indolent, and the last water buffalo was stupidly cooked up for the headman's wedding.
We are poor. How are Josephine and the kids?

This morning I went swatting around the perimeter of the kota, armed with a cane in case the wild men approached. A local sheikh greeted me, while expressing his envy of the fine pipe I was smoking (made for an American Company in New York, nota bene!), and a raggedy holy man reclining on the pavement prophesied grand things as I passed by. One or two members of the better classes or their ladies where out and about also, enjoying the cool of the day before it would be too hot to stir. I generously bestowed a shiny copper stuyver on a passing mendicant.

The rest of the letter to dearest Hendrik or Adelbrecht details how the latest fashions from Paris cannot be found here, how the local toko sells bucket loads of liquor because there are so many drunkards, and why do so many of these simple people have tattoos all over their bodies?
Enclosed please find a cunningly made frippery.
Charming in a primitive way, useful too.
Very much like a betelnut container.
For cheroots or some such.



KELAMBU

In actuality, the only thing vaguely "Dutch Colonial" about either of the occupants of this apartment are that we have mosquito nets. Because the bugs love her (a tasty non-smoker), and I tend to drive bloodsuckers out of my room with snow pear incense, her net is up most of the time.

Dutchmen are inedible.




UNCONNECTED AFTERTHOUGHT

The smoke from the wild fires up north is colouring the sky, the sun's reflection on shiny surfaces (cars, windows) is a bright copper hue.
The air to the east is pink and dense. Smog.
It smells like faint incense outside.
Tangerine sunlight.

TOBACCO INDEX


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THE COMFORT OF TROLLS

Years ago, after the collapse of my love life, I would hang out at the office after hours and on weekends with a Japanese troll for company. Which was really as social as I wanted to be at the time. The small troll would regularly borrow one of my pipes and head up to the roof of the office building to thoughtfully smoke a bowl. While looking at the stars.
Which was as social as he wanted to be.

He was a good friend. And still is. He smokes less than he used to.

Between the small library in my personal office space, the teas, pipes, and tobacco in my cabinet, and the sheer peacefulness of long hours being by myself twenty three floors above the Financial District, it was actually a remarkable and good time of my life.

It turns out that doing credit and collections for a toy company can be contemplative and conducive to mental health.

The Japanese troll was not part of our product line-up, but was a friend whom I had invited in to guard my stuff. Some coworkers at socially conscious companies in San Francisco tend to think that books, drafting tools, and tobacco products, are up for grabs, just like the chocolate covered bacon left in the company kitchen over the winter holiday.

Or "Camembert" in a convenient squeezable tube.

We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune.

With really terrifying cheese.



Life has improved quite a bit; frightening dairy products are more rare now (and my apartment mate, who buys the cheese for our household, is a keen fromage aficionado, so no worries on that score), and there are more stuffed animals than ever before. No, again not because of the toy company. Years before I had rescued a small pinkish grey teddy bear sitting in the rain at a bus stop late at night, waiting disconsolately for a bus that would never come, and more creatures followed. My landlords think there are only two people living in this apartment.
There are actually over forty.

Me, three totoros, a raccoon and a rambunctious amphibian, are the only smokers here. We are outnumbered. Most of the others hate tobacco.

AFTERWORD

What was in that small library in my office? Art and architecture, foreign language dictionaries (Arabic, Dutch, Indonesian, Sundanese, Chinese, Chinese Seal Script, accounting terms in Chinese), an atlas, and poetry.
Headhunting In The Solomon Islands, Biblical Hebrew. Isabel Allende, The Black Jacobins, Maria Dermout, both Jan and Johan Fabricius, Beb Vuyk, a ponderous text about the Atjeh war, three annotated translations of the Mahabharata, and Indian culinary reference.

Plus the following:
Subversion as Foreign Policy, by Kahin & Kahin.
The Abu Ghraib Investigations, by Public Affairs Reports.
Beyond Belief, by Elaine Pagels.
Book of J, by Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg.
Everyman's Talmud, by Abraham Cohen.
Webster's New Geographical Dictionary.
Complete Guide to Credit and Collection Law, by Winston & Winston.
2002 Supplement, Complete Guide to Credit and Collection Law, by Winston and Winston.
The Message of the Qur'ān, by Muhammad Asad.
Emes ve Emunah - A Sfas Emes Companion, by Nosson Chayim Leff.
Igrois Pinky - Responsa and Other Scholarly Writings of Rabbi Pinky Schmeckeldtein, SHLITA.
Dictionary of International Trade, by Edward G. Hinkelman.
The Roots of English, by Robert Claiborne.
Dictionary of Word Origins, by John Aito.
Nederlands Etymologisch Woordenboek, by Jan de Vries.
Chinese Characters - Their origin, etymology, history, classification and signification, by Dr. L. Wieger, S.J.
正草隶篆四体字典 ('jeng chou dai suen sei tai ji-din'), from the Shanghai Bookstore Press.

Lets just say that trolls are avid readers.
They also like trash fiction.
They're happy.

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CONSPIRACY AND SUBTERFUGE

According to the one-legged monkey, I am a stingy ass mofo. And I smell bad. This is because he has a banana plantation to buy, and one hundred dollars ought to cover it. Or all my future earnings and my life savings. Which it's so unreasonable that I won't hand over, he has plans.
Most of the stuffed creatures have plans, equally unrealistic.
At an early hour one finds it hard to put up with.
So. Coffee. News. Walk with pipe.



When I return my apartment mate has left for work, and the stuffed creatures are silent again. Many of them are in her room. And I'm sure they're plotting something as we speak.


Of course the other good thing, aside from the silence, is that I can close her door firmly, open the windows, and light up. It takes three to five hours for the smell to dissipate, so I'm safe until around two or so.

If I have a pot with sliced ginger and both red and black dates (紅棗，黑棗) simmering on the stove, the aroma of fine pipe tobacco will have been replaced by a pleasant brisk perfume.

Cigars take twice as long.

The stuffed creatures can't rat me out; they're behind a closed door, and they aren't tall enough to reach the handle. I've thought this through.


First walk of the day happens while she is breakfasting, which is usually well-before eight. The neighborhood is quiet, almost no one is outside other than joggers, dog walkers, and elderly Cantonese. The wind won't rise till late afternoon, and the street people are not stirring.

Now, does the aged goobus drawn above look like he can afford to buy a banana plantation? It's more than doubtful.

And I'd have manage it too, you know. The one legged monkey is more of an ideas man, and wouldn't attend to the minutiae of running a business.
I think he plans to pay me in fruit.

Honestly, that won't work. Can't trade it for tobacco, and my landlords would object to the rent payment being subject to spoilage.
Besides, bananas don't grow this far north.

I'm not much of a bananas man.

Mangoes, however .....

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THE CORRECT THING TO DO

Smoking steams out the wrinkles. Assuming that, like many people, you sit around all day in front of your computer getting indignant, but like a blessed few you have to leave your apartment to smoke. And smoke a pipe. So you take walks around your neighborhood, or occasionally through the narrow alleyways of Chinatown like you used to do on your days off after a late lunch at one of your favourite chachanteng.

Today after doing a spot of laundry I headed over to C'town to conduct some business, and to purchase dim sum, of which I gifted half to my landlady and her husband. She's Chinese American, with the same ancestral dialect as my apartment mate, who was also born here with English as her first language. So for the same reasons I refrain from speaking Cantonese with her. She speaks English better than Toishanese, and metropolitan Cantonese is almost like gobbledygook for her.
Caucasians speaking gobbledygook are a dime a dozen.
And difficult to understand in any language.

Plus I speak English very well.
It's also my mother tongue.

At the dim sum place I used Cantonese, because they understand that much better than English, and some tasty things do not have a useful English name. It's just so much easier. At the place where I purchased lok to pai heung yan yat baau (駱駝牌香煙一包) also.


Then I dithered with a bowl of red Virginia in the quiet streets, enjoying the balmy weather and the absence of tourists, who in previous years made pests of themselves at this time.

Those activities adequately steamed the wrinkles out of my butt. Essential, and good for circulation. Tobacco is a worthwhile part of a healthy active life. As well as good for the mood.

During this time my apartment mate stays at home on most Mondays. So sporadically throughout the day I could hear the turkey vulture (one of our fellow residents, a stuffed animal) plaintively inquiring about food (corpse, yummy corpse), and since I am not quite the most social of old fossils it was necessary to head out. There is only so much one can say about delicious cadavers, and my apartment mate seems to know much more about such things than I possibly ever could.


10. 20. 30. 40.

The correct thing to do, when you've been sitting on your rump for two hours, is to load up a bowl, head out to the front steps, and before you light up and set off up the hill on your walk, clench your arse cheeks forty times. This gets the blood flowing again, and it is something your doctor would highly recommend. The hour or so after tea-time is excellent for that. And counting, which is something a Dutchman like myself does automatically anyway, keeps the mental faculties agile.

Cantonese women and turkey vultures don't like the smell of tobacco.
Which is a good thing. It encourages people to exercise.



AFTERWORD

While I was in Chinatown earlier I bought some chocolate mint Pocky Sticks for my apartment mate, plus Sydney Fylbert the turkey vulture, and the other stuffed creatures, to snack on.

It's what Hello Kitty tastes like.
This or dried squid.

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BELATEDLY, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Yesterday was Parsi Navroz (New Year). And a person who does not live in San Francisco (resident of Bombay, Maharashtra) had an unpleasant time with that. She had ordered the special Navroz feast from a catering service (Mutton palav, Masala dal, Chicken farchu, Lagan nu custard) and should have had a wonderful experience. Instead she and her entire family ended up with food poisoning. Understandably she complained. And got ripped to shreds by the PR wallah of the enterprise.

Even Bamji is suffering!

Yesterday, for lunch while at work, I had a tasteless sandwich made for Americans, very cleanly presented in its see-through plastic container, with crisp lettuce on the side that you can put in yourself, oh the convenience, turkey and cheese on healthful sponge bread. Good for what it was supposed to be, but of course fairly bland and unexciting.

[If from this you deduce that I hate typical American food, you might be right.]

Tasteless crap. But NOT food-poisonous.


So Villoo and Bamji have my complete sympathy. Especially because having been in the restaurant industry, I actually have many years of experience of Indian commercial food preparation, which the worse it is the more defensive it becomes. "We are doing all very best only!"


Admittedly, at Indian restaurants in America and Great Britain, many of the customers sadly don't know anything, but even then they do deserve the very best.


Villoo and her relative Bamji could have and should have had a better meal. From Pot Pourri Restaurant in Vashi, New Bombay.
Bombay is more or less Parsi central.


One of the Parsis on that comment string had this to say about that feast:

"The food sent was tasteless. If any person knows what a pulao is, then plain rice is definitely not it. Added to that, the mutton pieces were tasting a little wierd. The chicken farchas were tough on the tongue as well as the stomach.(More on that later on). The masala daal was not even grinded and had full daal pieces swimming in the thin gravy. It was a mix between yellow dal and masala dal.
All in all we did not want to spoil our afternoon and took all of the above with a pinch of salt and an abberation on the part of the caterer.
This post would not have been put on FB but for the fact that all of us landed up in bed with severe upset stomachs, and the audacity and rudeness of the caterer when we contacted her with our problem.
Madam Caterer......  if you're reading this post, as you have very kindly suggested that "if the food was bad but we ate out of choice". What do you expect us to do at a moment's notice? We still gave you the benefit of the doubt and took it our stride. Also, I assume you must be a superhuman to pass loose motions and vomiting immediately after ingestion of lunch. It's only by night that the effects of your "delicious meal" started to affect our innards. That was the reason a feedback was offered to you the next morning. I think we should have also been shameless and given you the feedback midnight.
Madam, in the hospitality business you have to learn to take criticism and brickbats as also praise for a delicious repast. Your coordinator, the chef was gratious enough to offer an apology instead of the rudeness that you have responded with."

Now that exactly is why you need to be careful about who you choose to interact with the public. Two of the staff members at our restaurant would have raked the customers over the coals for the sheer temerity of heaving, and any subsequent toilet emergencies. And at several other Indian restaurants there were similar people.


Note that others in the comment string shared similar sentiments about the food, the mutton palav especially.

And Parsis know food.

As a matter of common sense, if at the holidays a restaurant or caterer offers customers the convenience of ordering a full set-up, it is probably a good thing if they do their research beforehand and make it the best possible experience the customers will ever have.
It's a priceless opportunity to make a splendid impression.
Might be the only chance they get to do so.
And word will get around.



There used to be two cities in which, despite the huge number of Indian restaurants, I would be hesitant to order Mutton Palav, or even anything claiming to be Biriani. San Francisco and London. Now there are three.

So I'm looking for recommendations.




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KAREN IS MALE AND LIVES IN MARIN

The bad guys in old timey westerns are almost always skeevy looking white trash types whose behaviour is less than "white". Strange.
Today I had to convince someone that I was the bad guy, and could easily be homicidal and psychotic, IF he didn't put on his damned mask. "I've got medical issues, it will be incredibly dangerous for me, I have a heart condition!" Well, buster, I also have a heart condition (and I'm a murderous bastard), and I'm wearing a mask. And you will get precisely nowhere if you don't put it on.

Rhetorical question: Why is it always white people who pull that shit?

Rhetorical statement: intercourse your g*damned freedoms.
And your sh*tty retrograde a**hole point of view.

That's mighty white of you, podner.

Thoroughly enjoyed the first pipe of the day while at work, before the heat later made life miserable and the prospect of slaughter both charming and attractive. As a strategy of interpersonal socializing, violent bloodshed, when it's hot as blazes and nearly one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, has a lot of solid arguments in its favour. Or, if you're from Northern Europe and you are used to colder weather, anything over 77°. See, I've figured out that one of the least pleasant side-effects of Amlodipine Besylate (a medication) becomes almost unbearable in warmer weather. To the point that I'm in excruciating pain when it's significantly over eighty.
So, extrapolating from that, Vikings and Irishmen start off thus crippled already, and turn into homicidal maniacs when they hit England in summer, precisely like British soccer fans loose their minds when they go over to the continent and enjoy the balmy weather there. Their natural environment is Birmingham or Manchester, where the climate is cold nasty frigid and wet. They're nuts everywhere else. Drink like fish too. Drunk out of their bubble-and-squeak minds. Proper hydration is very important.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

A smaller pipe later. Too hot to smoke.

Californians pull weird crap like claiming surgical masks will give them heart attacks and remind them of their mom. But it's really the same.

Who the hell decided that California was the perfect place to live? Beastly climate with heat waves, which leads to insanity. Plus we had thunder and lightening during the night, rain this morning, and a firenado.


I did NOT have 'Firenado' on my bingo card for 2020. This is most irregular! Expect a strongly worded letter to the editor!


If you eventually read about a Dutch American killing someone in the interests of public health that might be me. We Dutch invented the term "bardenwerper" for one of our cherished activities eight hundred years ago, when we burst out of the frozen wastes of Brabant and despoiled all the more temperate regions, like Flanders and Limburg. And Drenthe.

A 'bardenwerper' is the stalwart who hurls battle axes.
A valuable man in the heat of combat.


Please wear your damned mask.
You might live longer.
I have an axe.



Once I got home a cream pastry fell onto my crotch. Then onto the floor. Probably just an accident, but I'm blaming Karen.

TOBACCO INDEX


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ELDERLY PERVERTS AND LARD

When you look at a sweet young thing eating a burrito, to what do you pay most attention? Do you focus on the fact that she is pretty in a Cantonese way? Do you try to analyze the filling, or note that there appears to be an excess of cheese in her 墨西哥卷 ('mak sai go keun'; "Mexican roll").
Do you ask her where she got it?

Based on past experience, and the wisdom of many years, I suspect that exlaiming "ah siu jeh, ko-go mak-sai-go keun kam leeeeeng ga, hai pin tou mai ge?" would have disturbed the young lady.


阿小姐，嗰個墨西哥卷噉靚迦，係邊度買嘅？


Prefacing almost anything with ah siu jeh (呀小姐; miss, familiarly) and drawing out the adjective ( 靚 'leng' pretty, beautiful, attractive, but here applied to the burrito) makes the entire sentence skeevy as all git out.

[小姐 ('siu jeh') simply means 'miss', and can be politely used to address any woman. Adding the praefix 阿 ('ah') to it makes it both more polite and more familial. Which, if there's any chance of misinterpretation, is not a good thing. If you're calling me 'uncle', then ah sook (阿叔) is good. Ah-yeh (阿爺) isn't. Shan't explain.]

I can sound like a creep in almost any language.
But especially in Cantonese. It's a talent.

It would also be a waste of time; Cantonese girls who eat burritos almost by definition went to grammar school and high school here, and don't speak Cantonese well enough to communicate easily with a linguistically flexible white guy. If they went to college here too, you might as well forget it.

Besides, it wouldn't get me the information I want, namely: is it nearby, and do they also have carnitas?

The most important thing about a pretty Cantonese woman devouring a burrito is whether carnitas is an option at the taqueria where the comestible was purchased.

[Carnitas:「卡尼塔 ('kaa nei taap')」 豬油煨豬肉 ('chü yau wui chü yiuk'), also incorrectly called 脆皮猪肉 ('cheui pei chü yiuk'). 脆皮 ('cheui pei') means crispy skinned, which is just plain wrong. The pork is simmered (煨 'wui') in lard (豬油 'chü yau') for three or four hours, resulting in rich, delicious, tender, succulent meat. If you are very white you don't eat this; probably to much gluten and bad karma for you. 慢火油煨豬肉真係美味 ('man fo yau wui chü yiuk jan hai mei mei'; slow-fire lard-simmered pig meat truly is delicious.)。 ]


Just asking in English "where did you get that delicious-looking burrito?" would be much more likely to get me a useful response. I bring this up because today was burrito day at work; the Cantonese miss scarfing down a yummy comestible was two years ago, when I was still at death's door. Being clobbered by a young lady might well have pushed me over the cliff. Sadly, neither of the two coworkers who are frequently partners in burrito days actually look charming or pretty when shoving a burrito into their mouths (sorry, Hector), they're just having a darn good time.

Didn't ask, wasn't clobbered. So I'm still here.
And I've gotten better since then.


Dinner this evening was roast duck and rice (燒鴨飯 'siu ngaap faan'). Purchased in Chinatown by my apartment mate, who unlike Caucasian ladies of that age does not worry about good karma bad karma gluten free peanuts low cholesterol wheatgrass paleo is it spiritual and green dolphin-saving non-gmo crappahooe. Her cholesterol levels are fine, and she's quite trim. She didn't feel like cooking herself a meal today. When I got home she was dozing on her bed, replete, with a happy stuffed animal (a turkey vulture) beside her.


I've never asked her about carnitas.




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IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH

Sometimes you are baffled by the sheer audacity. And the idiocy. And the outright shameless pandering to the inbred bigots who comprise ninety percent of the Republican electorate.


"Look, China will own the United States if this election is lost by Donald Trump. If I don't win the election, China will own the United States. You're going to have to learn to speak Chinese, if you want to know the truth. And you'll have to learn it fast. They will own the United States."

-----President Donald Trump


Well, his suits were made in China. I believe his ties were too. But his foreign policies were made in Moscow. Which owns Donald Trump lock, stock, and barrel. Probably pee tapes, Deutsche Bank, and the National Rifle Association.

如果這次選舉唐納德·特朗普輸了，中國將擁有美國。如果我輸了，中國將擁有美國。 你會想知道真相的，你們會不得不學習講中文。他們將擁有美國。

[In Cantonese pronunciation: 'Yü-kwo je chi suen-geui tong-naap-tak tak-long-pou sue laa, jung-gwok jeung yong-yau mei-gwok. Yü-kwo ngo sue laa, nei wui seung ji-tou jan-seun dik, nei-mun wui pat-dak-pat hok-jaap gong jung-man. Taa mun jeung yong-yau mei gwok.']


Kushner, of course, very likely is owned by the Saudis.


The patriots have no problem with Donald.
Which is entirely odd.




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ICE CREAM IS CRUCIAL!

Yesterday evening while out walking I passed by a recumbent form under the awning of the retired realtors down the block. Head not visible, motionless. And I remembered that the same gentleman (recognizable from the bags he was using as pillows) had been there in that position each day since the weekend. Was he alive?

He's been in this neighborhood for years. Quiet guy.
Inoffensive and non-talkative.

He's alive. Slow gentle breathing. Gone this morning. A man of stable habits, he'll probably be there again by the cocktail hour.


We are all relying on the regularities of our lives to get us through this period. One major change in my life is that between afternoon and long past darkness I now drink far too much tea, and consequently am often still vibrantly wide awake at midnight.


Another major change is the company of an animal that demands my attention. A ruthless and fierce hunter.

The majestic and imposing turkey vulture and his helpless prey.

Yeah, not a dog. I'm more of a stuffed animal person. And it's practical, too, because I'm saving tonnes on vet bills. Plus they eat what we eat.

Sydney Fylbert (the turkey vulture) likes a bowl of ice cream after a meal.
He's almost childlike in that regard, and has strong opinions about food. In particular, he plots constantly about eventually eating the imaginary little girl hamster who visits nearly every day, and has to be reprimanded on that score by the other roomies. The cat has promised to execute him painfully if he succeeds. Clarissa the hamster looks, we've been told, precisely like a little meatball.

A yummy scrumptious meatball. Juicy.


"What kind of mustard is good with carrion?"

"Green Poupon."


So how am I getting through these times, when going over the hill to Chinatown for lunch at a chachanteng or snackies at a bakery is impossible?

Smoking my pipe, fixing curry, preparing snackies at home, reading a lot, walking by myself, and talking to the stuffed creatures.
And still working three days a week.



歡迎舊雨新知惠顧
['fun ying gau yü san ji wai gu']
"Welcoming the patronage of old friends and new acquaintances."

Chachanteng: Washington Bakery & Restaurant (華盛頓茶餐廳 'waa seng tun chaa chan teng' 733 Washington Street, SF, CA 94108); Cafe New Honolulu (新品味 'san pan mei', 850 Stockton Street, SF, CA 94108); New Regent Café (新麗晶西餐廳 'san lai jing sai chan teng'; 638 Pacific Avenue, SF, CA 94133); The Boiling Shrimp (浩味茶餐廳 'hou mei cha chan teng', 150 Waverly Place, SF, CA 94108.

I'm holding up. But I miss the people I used to see, as well as familiar environments. These places were like home. Good folks.

My apartment mate is also dealing with it well.
But we try not to talk about it.



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THE RIPE RIPE APPLES

Reading about women pipe smokers, who are rare, and other than a few freaks who want to be Gandalf, smoke good tobaccos. Either Latakia mixtures or matured flakes. Like a friend located in North Carolina, who photographs her cats, pipes, and husband in the same alluring pose. She graduated from Cherries effing Jubilee to the side of light over the years. Except for the occasional bowl of Hallowe'en Fruity Spice Gasm, which chases the cats and husband out of the house and ghosts her pipes and the drapes, because she worships at the altar of the Great Pumpkin, and has a thing for the season. I've heard she also like candy corn.


The best smokes of the day are late at night and early morning, when there are almost no maskless cretins about. Dinner time, however, is lousy.

Yesterday I mentioned that I will fondly imagine someone saying "that tobacco smells so deep and mysterious", when I am outside smoking. Which really applies to pressed Balkan blends, precisely like Penzance (Esoterica). Greg Pease's Lagonda and Quiet Nights are similar, and are just as quite exiting. Chelsea Morning is in the same style, but a bit lighter (and therefore more complex; more of a spectrum to play with, recipe-wise). These are all incense like, perfumy. Pressing changes the complexion of Latakia markedly, and softens it.

Though nowadays I smoke different tobacco blends entirely, I still love the aroma of a good Latakia mixture.

Another fantasy is that some intelligent and perspicacious young lady will develop a liking for Virginia and Perique compounds. Which really do smell old-fashioned and comforting, precisely like home. The warm kitchen, the booklined study or private library, the back garden in late summer when the apples ripen.

Like tea time, always.

Late summer this year in San Francisco is colder than in previous years; by seven in the evening the fog starts drifting in, the top of Nob Hill turns grey.
I wonder if the loquats have ripened yet.

Both Big Ben apples pictured above were purchased on Market Street when I still worked for the toy company. The Charatan bulldog was acquired when I was in the accounting department of a law office, on California Street. They are comforting pipes, happy pipes.

Irrelevant observations:
When it hits roily-boil, the saponins make it foam up.
The best kind of bread is cheesy bread.


I honestly cannot understand the appeal of aromatic tobaccos, with added flavouring; it's like American tea blends or candy-liqueurs.
Why would you do that to yourself?

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IF YOU WRITE POETRY, YOU MUST SMOKE CIGARETTES

As some of my readers may have noticed, I tend at times to be a frightful asshole. Particularly in my political opinions and how I socialize with the rightwing hosebags among cigar smokers with whom I often come in contact. That's natural, you may think, because especially in California cigars are an expensive proposition, punitively taxed, and working class people cannot afford them. Which is not strictly true; some working class individuals budget themselves so that they can buy ten stogies at fifteen dollars a pop a week, and abstain from alcohol and drugs accordingly.
Then relish the mental health a cheroot gives them.

Some working class people stumble past my front door at one in the morning blind roaring drunk.

Typical Republicans who get smashed take an Uber back to Belmont.

Then recover on a patio in Marin the next day.

In the 'Qanon Corner'.


Several of them are regular visitors at the old Glue Works behind the parking lot in East Pickleweed where I work. I shall refrain from listing them by name, suffice to say that when the opressed peasantry finally awake and rise up, I shall happily lead the pitchforked Jacquerie to their palatial suburban ranch dwellings for the justifiable blood bath.


That said, I bear them no ill will.

The Charatan above was a basket pipe at Sherlock's Haven, Marty Pulvers' store
on Sansome Street, nearly twenty years ago. Cheap. Reason being that a previous occupant had far too enthusiastically reamed it. For many years I used it to test
blends, gradually building a suitable carbon layer. The rim remains messed-up.
It still needs to be tamped at a diagonal, but it's now one of my favourite briars.

At times I enjoy a cigar also. But whereas smoking a pipe on the streets of my neighborhood says that this is a quiet man, possibly a wizard who can turn you into a toad, a cigar will prompt the passing street person to ask "you got a cigarette, dude?" or the random Vegan earthmom to call one names because you're poisoning her precious chihuahua. It was a Havana, quite nice. And if Foofy was having breathing problems, that was not noticeable. He seemed to be peeing.

I've been told that's normal.


Unreasonably, I still harbour a fantasy that I could be smoking my pipe outdoors, and some sweet young thing (which at my age means that's she's anywhere between post-graduate and late thirties) will happily exclaim something to the effect of "that tobacco smells so deep and mysterious! Are you perhaps an intellectual?" But I suspect it's more likely that, precisely like my benighted classmates in high-school, she would instead suggest I smoke something raspberry and vanilla froo-froo.

And pursuant that thought, I have it on good authority that when my mom first met my dad, who was a pipesmoker with a neat beard at the time, she sneeringly asked "are you a poet?!?" Berkeley was full of poetasters with pipes and facial hair in that age, and as a serious writer (published) and an English major (with three masters degrees in dead languages), she detested such pretentious gits.


Myself, I have no masters degrees. Though I do know lots about dead languages. And I write poetry, but it's entirely in Dutch, which I don't often mention, nor have I ever shown it to anybody. Dutch and Flemish are splendid languages for both sonnets and heroic verse, by the way.

"Hey man, you got a cigarette?"

Alas, there are no sweet young things in this neighborhood. This morning, while out smoking my pipe, I dodged an old codger drooling to himself, an entitled earthmom walking her dog, and a street person.
Who looked and smelled like a poet.

I detest poets.

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PITY THE POTATO

Andouille. Mustard cabbage. Tamarind liquid. Green curry paste. Sriracha. Satori. Oh yes, there was also tomato and onion there, and I glopped it over Kwan Miao noodles. Meanwhile, my apartment mate demolished a bag of cheddar potato chips. She does not like spicy food much, she loves cheese, and she's on her period.

Which I mention strictly for mise en scène. It isn't relevant, except for the potato chips. Which I had bought at walgreens when restocking on foot powder. As a little greasy token of empathy.


If the space aliens taste like cheese OR fried chicken, they had better pray that they do not encounter any women experiencing the menses after landing. They'll never meet our leader.

It is, therefore, in the interests of galactic understanding and friendship that the male of the species should take pains to provide cheese, chicken, or bacon flavoured snacks to the female of the species.
Possibly also shrimp and lobster.



I am only familiar with one female of our species, but I'm assuming that she is not unusual in this regard. This isn't a scientific approach.



Maybe it's different case by case. I should print out a survey and distribute it in postage paid envelopes. Leave a stack at the clinic. Mass mailing. Inserts in magazines at the news rack. I could incentivize respondents by promising cheese or sourcream potato chips.

What do you think?
Worth doing?




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RECYCLING HERRING AND MACKEREL

For several days now the most popular essay on this blog has been about fish: 'mackerel is not herring'. Which dates from ten years ago. Naturally, I am pleased that people are still reading my ancient gibberings. And go ahead, please feast upon the fatty fish, and lambs, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats ....

Along with 'how to cook a zebra', it's one of my most popular posts.
Mostly found by people in England, late at night.
I wonder why they read about food.


From that same time period, a recipe for something I doubt that my apartment mate has ever had. It's mostly served to white people.


芙蓉蟹
[Fu Yung Hai - Velvety omelette with crab meat]

1兩 (one ounce) 蟹肉 (crab meat).
2支 (two stalks) 青蔥 (scallion).
4個 (four) 蛋 (eggs).
少許 (pinch) 鹽 Salt).
2大匙 (two tablespoons) 油 (oil).

½杯 (half a cup) 高湯 (superior stock).
1大匙 (one tablespoon) 醬油 (soy sauce).
½小匙 (half a teaspoon) 大白粉 (tapioca flour).
少許 (pinch) 糖 (sugar).

Remove all shell fragments from the crab meat, rinse and chop the scallion. Gently beat the eggs till smooth, add the pinch of salt, the oil, the crab meat, and the chopped scallion.

Mix the tapioca flour with a little cold water.

Heat some oil in the pan, pour in the egg mixture, cook till barely set, and slide onto a plate. Wipe any fragments of the omelette out of the pan, add a drizzle oil, and when hot pour in the superior stock and soy sauce, adding the pinch of sugar. After two minutes or so of cooking, stir in the dissolved tapioca flour and when the sauce becomes glossy pour it over the omelette. Add a drizzle of fragrant sesame oil and some minced cilantro if you must.

You will note that in this recipe tapioca flour is specified. But you could also use corn flour, it would simply require a little more. For the Chinese style superior stock you may substitute the normal chicken and bones stock. And feel free to use more crab meat.

Oh, and adding sliced avocado on top is not a bad idea.

Sambal or sliced chilies on the side.


Thinking about good things to eat also reminds me of naughty business.
As it should most normal people.

As I said, I wonder why English people read about food.




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AND IT TURNS OUT WE HAVE NO KETCHUP ANYWAY

Gustatorily this blogger is more Dutch Indonesian than European, or South East Asian, American, and Chinese. Some things just taste much more like real food. So it is with some amusement that I observe my apartment mate's attempts to make me gain weight, now that she's realized that I am older and thinner than ever before. What with the inexorable march of time, as well as my not having regained the weight I had before the exploding appendix and subsequent hospital stay over a year ago. And please note that describing me as a scrawny old git would be an exaggeration.

My apartment mate is Chinese American. Because of her we now have over half a dozen cheeses in the house. A surfeit. She likes cheese. And I am a Holland-raised American white dude. So I should absolutely love cheese and thrive on it. Right? Well, yes. But she eats as much cheese as I do.

And truth be told, cheese does not mix well with hot sauce, fish sauce, crunchy greens, and coconut milk. I've tried.

I do like cheese, though.


You can make everything taste American by adding bacon, cheese, and pickled jalapeños. Except for food that already had flavour to begin with, like, as just an example, Boeuf Bourguinonne, for which you might want to have sambal and shrimp dew on the side.

[Sambal = Hot chilipaste used both in cooking and as a condiment, much favoured in Indonesian and Dutch cuisine. Fish Dew = Fermented sauce made of fish or shrimp (魚露 'yü lou'), common in South East Asian and southern Chinese kitchens. It's almost omnipresent in Vietnamese dishes.]

At this point a Frenchman would probably exclaim "quelle damned horreur", whereas the Dutch, Vietnamese, and Cantonese would thoughtfully say "why the heck not?".

One of my Facebook friends, whom I also know in real life, periodically posts pictures and recipes for Filippino and popular Chinese dishes which he's cooking. Which are beautiful to see, and the only thing missing is the little saucer of sambal which I consider essential.

When I was waking up this morning (at the ungodly hour of five twenty A.M., because I needed to pee), the remains of a vivid dream were in my head. It featured food. And I realized that if I weren't so fond of chilies, my vegetable intake would be altogether minor, precisely like if I did not smoke, I would get a lot less exercise.

Or to put it differently, chili paste and smoking contribute mightily to a healthy life style. Mental and bowel health in any case.
Both help keep me sane and regular.


Whereas if I ate as much cheese as my apartment mate thinks I should, or like a typical Hong Kong resident would want on his Baked Porkchop and Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce (蕃茄豬扒意粉 'faan ke chyu baa yi fan'), or strewn with gay abandon over his Portuguese Chicken Rice (焗葡國雞飯 'guk pou gwok gai faan'; a base of egg-fried rice with mild coconut curry chicken and cheese crusted under the broiler), and abstained from smoking in order to be a hit with the ladies, and otherwise ate like an American while huffing three packs of Double Happiness brand cigies (雙喜 'seung hei') daily after having succesfully landed a wife, I'd probably have kicked the bucket before I even hit forty. Constipation and clogged arteries.

[There's a well-known tale of an Italian Renaissance muralist who fled the monks who had employed him to decorate their chapel, and when at last they found him again, explained his scarpering thus"I was afraid you were going to plug me up, because you fed me so much cheese".]

The only improvement that might possibly be needed to Portuguese Chicken Rice, by the way, is the addition of fish dew, bacon, and pickled jalapeño slices. Plus sambal on the side.


American cheese, as is well known, benefits enormously from tomato ketchup. Fortunately we only have California made Dutch and French cheeses in the house. Which are excellent.

I must remember to ask my Dutch and Chinese friends about their bowels.
Are they holding up these days, and staying reasonably active?
Sambal and smoke, boys, sambal and smoke.


The bookseller with whom I used to go bar and burger joint hopping need not be asked. He smokes a cigarillo occasionally, eats plenty of hot sauce, walks a lot, and is of Italian ancestry, so he knows what to do with cheese and vegetables in any case.

On the second pipe of the day right now.

A good solid red flake.
Healthy.

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PUTIN'S PIMP

President Trump banned WeChat recently. And the publicly stated excuse is valid -- security against overseas snooping and information sharing with a foreign government -- but given his relationship with Russia, whose gangster leadership does worse, and which blatantly meddled in the last presidential election, one has to reject it.


Trump WeChat ban - BBC


Donald Trump banned WeChat because he's a racist piece of shit.
It's not national security but assholism plain and simple.

Banning a social media app like We-Chat while permitting massive Russian penetration, payola, and influence peddling, as well as intelligence gathering and spreading mis-information on a monumental scale, shows that Trump has no problem with whiter than white scumbags, but angrily soils his knickers over other people.

Who should probably just makes his ties and suits.

Keeping quiet when he speaks.

And picking cotton.




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THE FINE AROMAS OF HORSES AND OTHER CREATURES

For some reason today I have been reminded of the complete collapse of my love life several years ago. Which, at the time, left a huge gaping hole, now largely spackled and plastered over. But sometimes things remind me of the past. No, not in a weepy way; I am spectacularly unemotional. But there are many things I remember fondly. Some of it is food. Movies. Music. Books I bought during and after, tobaccos and pipes enjoyed since then.

My ex did not like the smell of tobacco smoke.
But she tolerated my bad habits.

Probably because I'm a fairly decent man, and one cannot insist on perfection. She was (and is) a far better person than I am.

I am, as she often called me, the Old Toad.

Amphibians are a bit cold.


Like many of my pipes the one pictured above was acquired ages before the end of the relationship, smoked before and after. Sometimes it goes into the big box of other pipes I shan't look at for a while, sometimes it goes back into use for several months.

During the last years at the toy company, this briar and a similar one from the same maker gradually made a transition from Balkan blends (heavy on the Latakia) to gentler Virginia Perique mixtures and flakes. In the three years after Savage Kitten and I broke up I often hid from people by staying late at the office and wandering around Chinatown and the Financial District with a pipe on weekends, no need for conversation, and now kindly piss off all of you noisy twats.

Intellectually I like the idea of a love life. But as a practical matter it's a bit iffy, and a number of my friends have survived quite well without it.
Or without it imposing in any way on the rest of their lives.

And honestly, you can see the problem, can't you? Perhaps a man would want to have a hot cup of tea, preparatory to a long walk on the moors, the blasted heath of Nob Hill, with a pipeload Dunbar or Dorchester, perhaps even Tilbury, and his wife, girlfriend, or lithe young male companion would grouchily remind him to take out the garbage. After a long day at the glue works behind the parking lot in East Pickleweed he'd return to the city, and he-she-it would pout and say reprovingly "you smell like dead horse".
Or even worse: "get changed, we're going over to dinner at my sister in law's, and she hates you and your ghastly clothing sense".
"And that horrid smell of matured Virginias."

We've got a charity ball to go to.

Tilbury, one of the Esoterica Tobacciana blends, made by Germain and Son in the Channel Islands, does NOT smell like dead horse at all, by the way.
A reviewer years ago stated that it reminded him of unwashed flatulent peasant in a mediaeval dungeon.

It's lovely.


Maybe I should open another tin of it soon. Not today. I'm heading out into the fog and chill of a San Francisco summer after my cup of tea, with a pipe loaded with a mixture I made myself. Tilbury will have to wait for a while, I've still got too many open tins of other stuff that I'm happily smoking.
Mostly flue-cured leaf, slight condimentals.
And some nice flakes.

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PENZANCE TOBACCO AND OTHER STUFF

So a small group of people is currently experiencing their periodic breeding frenzy, twirling about giddily while displaying their engorged wattles and vocalizing. Because Arango got a freightload of Esoterica pipe tobacco in, and there have been shipments to the various mating grounds (retail establishments). As usual the news got around.

A few years ago I spoke somewhat depreciatingly about this phenomenon. And was roundly condemned by the good people on internet. Who accused me of being heretical, and not taking the most important thing in life sufficiently seriously.

See this post: pseudo intellectual, a pissed off neckbeard, the incoherent ramblings of a madman, and probably drunk.

That essay was clearly written by a witch! He weighs the same as a duck, he's made of wood; burn him!

I have been castigated for not bowing down worshipfully at the altar of Penzance and Stonehaven.

Nearly the same response as when I sneered at Hobbit's Weed.

Which is the be all and end all of pipesmoking.

Yes, there are people out there who enjoy aromatics (quote from someone on the internet this morning "I'm an old codger who has smoked nothing but aromatics for over forty years.").


In this day there is such a variety of smokable stuff out there that you're an idiot if you can't find something good to enjoy in your briars, without ever having to regret waking up too late on the day when the shipment from Jersey hits your local tobacconist.


Esoterica is made by half a dozen grizzled old virgins in an ancient brick shrine in the wilds of the Channel Islands. It is hard to get. Arango only ships it out three or four times a year. And people hoard it.

I spent the last three days in very close proximity to enough Esoterica to sink a battleship. A friend came in, and then left happy as a clam. He has bought enough Esoterica over the years that he can smoke nothing but well-made Virginia compounds till they have to club him to death at one hundred and twenty. More tobacco he doesn't need.
A different friend also showed up, and since he has too much King Charles to smoke it all in the rest of his life, he paid no attention to the stockpile of Margate, And So To Bed, and Penzance.

A wild pornographer I know who lives in the mountains should have been there; he would've creamed in his panties over it all. Damned freak.

Nah, I didn't buy any. I'm still feeling guilty over my stockpile of tobaccos (including McClelland. And I've currently got too many open tins.

And yes, I spent all weekend smoking. Classic flakes.

National Geographic - photo of priest at the Esoterica Tobaciana Temple

 in Jersey engaged in the manufacture of Penzance for the cult members.

ESOTERICA – AND SO TO BED
Full Latakia, addictive. Comparable to Black Mallory, Balkan Sobranie 759, Dunhill Nightcap, and also somewhat to Synjeco's Elephant Dung.
Cyprus, Greece, Virginia, Maryland.
Tangy, smoky, incense-like.
Extremely good.

ESOTERICA – BLACKPOOL
Aromatic. Dark-stoved with a remarkable bright flavour. Virginias top-dressed with a hint of licorice/anise. It offers a thick, creamy smoke, reduces to nearly nothing.
Black, mildly fruity.

ESOTERICA – BRIGHTON
A straightforward mixture of flue-cured leaves, somewhat light and bright in taste. Smooth, a pleasant lighter smoke.

ESOTERICA – CARDIFF
Four Virginias pressed and stoved till brown, fully rubbed.
Light, herbal, earthy, and sweet.
A codger blend.

ESOTERICA – DORCHESTER
A lovely flue-cured compound, touch of Perique. Deeply fragrant, with a naturally occurring aroma of carotenoids from the Virginias (plummy, apricot-like). Bright and happy tobacco.

ESOTERICA – DUNBAR
A blend of several Virginias, Perique in a manageable measure.
Ready rubbed. Piquant.

[Note: smoked both Dorchester and Dunbar during Autumn and Winter in the second to last year that I worked at the toy company. Because of a huge gaping hole in my love life I hid out at the office on weekends, and wandered the alleys of Chinatown and the Financial District after a late lunch. These were extremely comforting then. The rains did not come until sometime in January, the air was still, light fog in the evening.]

ESOTERICA – HASTINGS
Aromatic. A complex blend of Virginias with a fruity berry-like topping, possibly apricot brandy. Really mellow and really smooth.
Possibly too simple for a complex man.

ESOTERICA – KINGSBRIDGE
Non-Aromatic. Dark-stoved fully fermented Virginias. Solid, yet ethereal. Prunes, raisins, plums. Long matured. Ready rubbed.
A deep mellow tobacco for old coots.
Sweet. Licorice. Anise.

ESOTERICA – MARGATE
The classic full English. Lighter than Germain's Latakia Mixture, comparable to Balkan Sobranie. Mouth filling. Delightful, rich and reeky.
This will piss off the non-smokers like nothing else.
The quintessence of Latakia smokes.

ESOTERICA – PEMBROKE
An English mixture spritzed with brandy.
Margate, with booze.

ESOTERICA – PENZANCE
Latakia, Turkish, Virginias, all pressed and steamed into brindled flakes. Very reminiscent of the old Bengal Slices and various excellent products from G. L. Pease. This has become a cult tobacco, and occurs on every damned “must-try list”.

Penzance goes very well with a glass of sherry late at night. I am baffled by the adulation it receives, though. It is good. But personally I find this less than mid-expanding, and surely there are few insomniacs living out in the industrial area where the freight trains keep them up late on summer evenings? It will keep the mosquitoes away.

ESOTERICA – RAMSGATE
Aromatic. Virginias steam-pressed till black. Topped with licorice. Possessed of great character, yet sweet and mellow, and easy to like. Broken flake.
This will get you kicked out of The Occidental by Curtis, who abhors anything aromatic.

ESOTERICA – STONEHAVEN
Virginias and air-cured leaf steampressed. A very English product. A broken leaf for old-codgers, but a surprising number of young men are old-codgers. I could have done with less Burley. Shows up on every “must-try list”.

ESOTERICA – TILBURY
Virginias with a touch of air-cured. Light and buttery. With a plum-like Virginia sweetness. Top notch. Noticeable nicotine.
I recommend this highly.

ESOTERICA – WOODBRIDGE
Aromatic. Several flue-cured tobaccos. Brights somewhat dominant. Mottled and shaggy of appearance. Fruits and anise / licorice. Hay, citrus. Not fruity enough for most Americans. The hobbits like this one.


UPDATE

HASTINGS
Ready rubbed black cavendish and Virginia. Aromatic.
Dark, fruity, leathery. The Virginias sing, the fruity topping is traditional and boozy. It is deep, and may convert you.

PEACEHAVEN
Non-aro. Virginias, on the lighter side. Golden broken flakes, fruity, slight grassiness. Bright, rich, reminiscent of pastry. Like many Danish and German golden flakes. Fribourg & Treyer come to mind.

SCARBOROUGH
Virginias.
Complex, beguiling, of variegated appearance. Rich and smooth. Very flavourful. Because of aging, it presents a slightly spicy note. Probably not suitable for the very young. Excellent.

ST. IVES
Virginias, black cavendish, Turkish, and Latakia. Aromatic.
A darkish peculiarity with fruit. Slightly citrussy, slightly floral, slightly smoky. On the milder side, and will probably appeal to Texans. Tastes like old lady. The Virginia could have better company. Goes well with Bourbon. I avoid American whiskeys.


All in all the Esoterica Tobacciana products are excellent, and very much worth your attention. If you were stuck in a nasty mildewed provincial town somewhere in the north of England, and your local shop had all of these, you would not mind staying there for several more months or years, and would gladly put up with the natives and their alcoholism. They are very amusing! And you can barely even smell them!

But there is so much that is well worth smoking with which we are familiar with nowadays that there is no need for desperation. Tonnes of other good stuff. Kindly stop demanding tours of the factory, don't bother the hermits, and cease whining about unavailability.

I might open a tin of McClellands soon.

TOBACCO INDEX


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