HAPPY NEW YEAR; GUNG HAY FAT CHOI ETCETERA

Chinese New Year is in two days (February 12, 2021), and naturally I have something new to wear. Which is very important. No intention of doing any serious house cleaning, but I shall probably light some incense and have tangerines on the premises. Food-wise, it may be a bust. The grocery stores will be shut, and in any case because of the pandemic the usual bustle and variety will be limited. Still, some things need to be done.

A dish suitable for the beginning of the year.
Reprised from a while back.

滷蛋紅燒豬肉
LOU DAAN HONG SIU CHYU YIUK

Two pounds streaky pork belly (五花肉).
Two or three slices of ginger.
Two or three hard-boiled eggs.
Two or three whole star anise.
Two or three stalks green onion.
Quarter cup or more soy sauce.
Quarter cup or more sherry or rice wine.
Five or six soaked black mushrooms.
Two TBS sugar.

Peel the eggs but leave them whole.


Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Dump the pork into the pot, boil for about ten minutes, take it out and let it cool. When it's cold, cut it into chunks.
Heat some oil on the bottom of a stew pot or kastrol, add the ginger, stirfry briefly and add the green onion, which you have cut into one or two inch lengths and whacked slightly with the blunt edge of your cleaver. Remove all solids before they brown with a slotted spatula, add the pork, and gild it. When it has good browned edges, spoon off some of the grease that the heat had released, add the sherry or rice wine to sizzle, stir loose the crusty bits, then put everything else in the pot with water to generously cover.
Simmer on low heat for well over an hour.

This is a soppy version, with plenty of juices.
Good on top of rice or noodles.

The number of hard-boiled eggs can be increased if there are more people.
Increase soy sauce and sherry or rice wine plus water appropriately.
Equal parts soy and wine, one to two parts water.
Plus slight modifications else.


Other foods which are customary (which I shan't be preparing):

Dried Oysters With Black Moss 好事發財
February 1, 2011.

Sea Cucumber 海參
October 1, 2011



Plus a whole list of dishes (and New Year Greetings):

Lucky Wishes Lucky Foods
January 30, 2011.

Basically, I do not intend to do much for Chinese New Year. As long as the day is fairly pleasant, the living quarters comfortable, and the food is good, it's all right.


Tangerines. Or oranges. And new clothes to start the year.
Maybe fish (for surplus: 餘 sounds the same as 魚).
No swearing, no arguments.
Peace.



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DACHSHUNDS

Years ago I wrote an essay that was more like a rant than a serious view expressed cogently. Which, for folks just tuning in, is something that happens here rather a lot. Because this blog is a soap box, and I need to express my sanity somehow. In it I lauded a particular kind of canine, because I am an animal person. I like furballs.

Dogs were not the subject of the post.
But they took over.

WOOF!

I've been a bachelor for several years now. The alternative might be worse, but I'm not striving to change. Life with no dogs, cats, or significant other, is not so bad. There's tea, books, my pipe collection and tobaccos to smoke in it, and fascinating stuff on Wikipedia.
Plus dabbling in graphics, and reading disturbing news items.
In between I take walks, work a few days each week, take care not to insult the people with whom I come in regular contact, and sleep.


You'll be glad to know I do not hang around in bars ogling loose men or women, take all of my medicines regularly, eat well though peculiarly, and like observing people, so I'm not some antiquated antisocial old fart.


And I get along well with animals. Other than food and head-rubbies, they're not demanding.

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QUANTUM SCALABLE NONSENSE

On social media, someone sent me a post which made some astounding claims. As it turns out, a medical saint in Florida has found a cure for covid, and is making it public for the good of humanity. It's ten thousand time better than steam inhalation, which also fights covid.


"Scalar energy originates from the sun and is a fundamental force in all of nature"

" ... a remote treatment process to administer the scalar energy reverse-phase angle harmonic of a pathogen, thereby causing that agent of infection to disassemble or fall apart."(1)

"Scalar energy operates at the quantum level and is capable of disassembling all types of pathogens, thus eliminating the causative agent of disease"(2)

"These energy bursts delivered anywhere in the world using “a scalar instrument,” are good for viral infections, headaches, herpes, sleep disorders, stress, arthritis, digestive problems, chronic fatigue and other health issues."(3)

1. What the heck, what is this gibberish?
2. Complete and utter bull pucky.
3. Oh sweet Jesus.


I have blocked that person, and reported the post. If I could, I would send him dead animals in the mail. I am sad that I do not have spare cadavers.



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ALL THAT GANDALF CRAP

There's always someone who wants to indulge in hobbit fantasies, but is averse to tobacco, because tobacco is evil. Or from the dark side, big business, non-natural, not organic, and generally speaking something that interferes with their pure natural yoga-filled lifestyle.


"Are there any smoking mixtures without tobacco?"


Whenever I hear that question, I know that the person asking it owns a churchwarden pipe. And has read Lord Of The Rings. Religiously.

I'd like a bacon cheeseburger, hold the cheese, I'm lactose intolerant.

You could crumble up a clove cigarette to smoke.
Oh wait; that does include tobacco.
But it smells like hobbit.

Many "normal" LOTR fans bite the bullet, and find the mixture popularized by a now defunct tobacconist to smoke in their churchwarden pipes, often while playing Dungeons and Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, and role playing games.

Others enjoy(?) it while engaged in "intellectual" pursuits.
Honestly, I cannot say anything bad about it.
It remains deservedly popular.




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HERMITIC DISAPPROVAL

Two buildings over there are workmen using chainsaws, a woodchipper, and a leaf blower. Which, for a person who dislikes loud noises, is problematic. Through the blinds I could see that they weren't wearing masks. Which is not so problematic for me, but if they do that a lot it may have bad results for them. Always wear masks when handling power equipment, as microscopic particles can get into the breathing aparatus and lead to problems.
Asbestos, for instance. Wildfire soot. And volcanic ash.
Or Covid 19 during a pandemic.


In the short term that's probably not as bad as the woman who used Gorilla Glue on her hair in lieu of fixative (look it up on the internet; Gorilla Glue is permanent). Or the vast amount of sheer functional illiteracy that grips a large part of this country and leads, directly, to manifestations of goombaism like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Louie Gohmert.
Plus "influencers", antivaxxers, and other dickwads.

But it's still bad.

Naturally I am smoking a pipe to soothe myself.

But this post is by no means about pipes or tobacco. The concept of triggering anti-smokers, health freaks, puritanical types in Marin, Berkeley, and San Francisco, or other pustulent droogkloten, is far from my mind.


Instead, for some reason, I am remembering my mother's attitudes about food, which unintentionally may have shaped my own gustatory preferences. She disapproved of herring, mushrooms, organ meats, and desserts. Herring is soulfood, mushrooms are divine, organ meat can be prepared in various wonderful ways, and dessert is a main course. She was disturbed by chili peppers, and believed they were bad for the stomach and caused ulcers.
The refrigerator right now has a veritable smörgåsbord of hot sauces and sambals.

Remarkably, on the subjects of chocolate, cheese, and Genever (mild Dutch firewater) we'd agree. But there may have been an element of self-justificatory rationalization on her part.


She would have approved of my apartment mate, who though Chinese ('all "civilized" people are of solid Protestant ancestry') keeps the pantry well-stocked with various cheeses. Cheese was possibly the only redeeming quality that the French may have had. And chocolate, of course, is both Dutch and Belgian, so they can't be all bad. Genever is Dutch, and might possibly be the only reason their country still exists.

She herself did not realize that she had all the attitudes and petty praeconceptions of 1930s America rock-solid in her subconscious, still influencing her views no matter how educated, openminded, and liberal, she was. That was not uncommon among people who had lived through the Depression and the War. An element of her own mother was still there. And, for her father, a military officer, she and my dad were veering suspiciously close to being communists.

She disapproved of communism.

I experimented with communism during my early twenties, reading sh*tloads of Lenin, plus Marx, Mao, and other tiefdenker. There are flaws in their gedankenwelt. But one can clearly see how the ideology that the Russian revolutionaries created made the transformation to brutal dictatorships possible and in fact inevitable.


I realize that I too have a streak of severe Protestant disapprovalism in me. There are many things that I find appalling. Fruity cocktails. Aromatic (candy flavoured) pipe tobaccos. Wilful ignorance. Starbucks. Bacon and Kraft cheese on everything. Texas. Doctrinaire vegetarianism and veganism. Fundamentalist religion. Republicanism. Consumer culture. New Age religions. Tattoos. Sexual profligacy. Marijuana. Twizzlers and marshmallows.
Cruelty to animals. Defective imagination, mixed dancing.
And a lack of a sense of humour.


Plus chainsaws, woodchippers, and leaf blowers.



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COPING WITH THE WILD LIFE

Having fixed myself something odd to eat, inspired largely by Hong Kong, Singapore, and Lombardy -- blaming all of them, because they all had a daemonic part to play in the result, which was "edible" -- I wrested a prize possession back from the turkey vulture, and prepared for digestive tumult. Fortunately the meal was small, only snack-sized.
Curry and Sriracha pork scraps over egg noodles.
Sort of spaghetti carbonara but not.
With hard Dutch cheese.
Melted over.

I could also have blamed the United States, seeing as in some ways it resembled macaroni and cheese. But the "pasta" was infinitely better, as was the cheese, and I doubt that any of the vast interior Americans would have eaten it. Hong Kongers might; "this is chachanteng chow, gringo". Italians also; "what strange things you Americans do with food, you should learn how to cook sometime". And the Singaporeans; "it's not spicy enough, and the cheese is giving me gas, you should have added durian instead".

The turkey vulture had seized one of my pipes, a Charatan I've had since my school days, and claimed that as he had 'found' it, it was now his. Along with the magic bowl of quarters (laundry money) and my computer.

He didn't know what it was. Perhaps a club for harp seals.
Surely harp seals are small and meatball shaped?
Kind of like little girl hamsters.

I needed to talk a walk with a pipe and some Astley's No. 109 Flake. My stomach had to settle. After that, a cup of tea, and then off to bed. No, that's NOT for harp seals.
Which are only edible if you're Canadian.

Harp seals are probably fundamental to cuisine up there.
Just like processed cheese and bacon in the U.S.
Goes with or on everything.

Hot sauce on everything, and a pipe afterwards.
That's the ticket.

TOBACCO INDEX


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SOCKS ARE IMPORTANT, LATAKIA FIENDS!

In one of the pipe smoking groups on the internet, someone asked "what kind of socks do you prefer and suggest when smoking Latakia blends?" Fortunately the question was not directed at me personally. Honestly, I think socks are good. Especially in colder weather, when the temperature of the pavement is bone chilling. But the specifice type of sock is probably a matter of personal preference.

I am now imagining a Latakia blend smoker happily skipping barefoot across the frozen tundra, his pedal digits turning blue and falling off. La la la, carefree! Oh happy frozen day!

Not all pipesmokers are sane.


Obviously, underwear is just as important as socks. Especially out on the frozen tundra.

Last time I smoked the pipe pictured above was on Nob Hill on the day that the sky had turned orange. September 9, 2021. I'm pretty certain that I wore both socks and undies at the time. Absolutely positive, in fact. But I wasn't smoking a Latakia blend.

I am not a habitual smoker of Latakia blends.
So I normally wear socks and underwear.
I know a number of Latakia smokers.
Really, you don't want to know.



Naturally I looked at his profile. He's African American, ex-military, and a pilot, likes Pease's Blackpoint, and occasionally Dunhill Nightcap. He smokes mostly bent pipes. Lives in Ohio.
Ladies, he's single. What is wrong with you?



G. L. PEASE BLACKPOINT
Leathery campfire. Latakia, Turkish, Viginia, and Perique. A complex mixture. Creamy, earthy, full Oriental. This is a Balkan blend with Perique, and would go well with strong tea, sherry, or Scotch. As well as thick scratchy woolen socks in icy weather.

TOBACCO INDEX


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ANTIFA TEMPTRESSES FIGHTING QANON

Per my pillow guy Mike Lidell, the insurrection by rightwingers and other well-meaning Republican loonies was caused by agents of the other side. Quote: "The rioters were hypnotized by antifa temptresses who hid psychoactive drugs in their vaginas".

Which begs the question: dammit, why weren't we invited? Y'all threw an unChristian commie sex orgy, and none of us got to be there! What's the point in fighting fascist turdbrains if the ONE time there's drugged licentiousness we can't play?!!?


"The rioters were hypnotized by antifa temptresses who hid psychoactive drugs in their vaginas"


Mike "Pillows" Lidell, Lou Dobbs, and Marjorie Taylor Greene are fast becoming the braintrust and public face of the Republican Party, which proves that America's conservatives are not only completely off the rails, but have mutated into rabid poo-throwing monkeys.

No, don't blame Trump for this. Trump was merely the symptom.

They played that conceited shitbag for a sucker.


If anything, blame inbreeding, dysfunctionality, sexploitation, beer, and Bible Thumping. Which are the fundaments of society in both the Midwest and the South. As well as the Mountain States, and Idaho, where Mormons rustle potatoes. Plus Alaska.

Goh-damn, you folks are stupid.

Mentally all Texas.
Florida man.



By the way, how was your dumb-ass game yesterday? Did y'all get drunk? Of course you did.




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TRIBAL ELDERS' SAGE WORDS

As John was leaving, he gave me some advice. Now, being a polite sort of fellow, and always keen to learn about life, especially as other people see it, I attended to his words with avid interest. But I suspect I may have been listening for a bark up the wrong tree.


"Always wait to pass gas till you exit. So people will be sad to see you go."

"And then you won't have to hang around in your own low-lying cloud."


Shutting the door behind him, he remarked "it's denser when you get older; drifts less."

It's safe to say he had the final word on this. He's in his eighties, and obviously has given it much thought. When I am his age, I shall try to think of other things. Not to say he wasn't original, but his digestive rumbling may be of importance to him alone.


Evenso, I may put his words to a practical test. Several tests. Have to establish a pattern, to see if his observation holds. This may require a change of diet. I wonder what he eats.


Years ago one of the regulars at a nearby establishment had a dog that seemed to subsist entirely on cabbage. A delightful animal, great friendly shaggy personality, and unfortunately silent but deadly. We eventually modified our schedules so that we could have chats that wouldn't be interrupted by weapons of mass destruction, given that the ventilation there was insufficient to the task. I doubt that he himself ever noticed, because though mostly likable, he really was an insensitive sort of chap, in very many ways.

And also given to sage pronouncements.


Word of warning for anyone reading this: be selective of the old farts you listen to; some of them blather. Or worse. Giving advice to the young is an art.


Oh, and don't eat too much cabbage.
Or feed it to your dog.



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A SPLENDID GAME

As you might expect, what with being a foreign commie and all that, snobbishly superior and European, the Super Bowl has no meaning in my world. I am, in fact, reclining gracefully upon my settee, eating lotus petals. Oh, the sadness, languor, ennui. It is profound.
While sneering in my usual fashion about beer-swilling Yanks.
Most of whom are middle-class men.
Sportsfans.

Howling sweaty jobbies fondly clutching their balls while mutant freaks pound each other into the astroturf down in Florida. Which I did NOT express in any way on the internet, merely remarking that the game was on.


John O, who lives in Georgia and has religion, wrote:
"To those who want to badmouth football or the Super Bowl, fine. Do so elsewhere. If you use broadcast TV you have at least 4 other choices. Cable? You have at least 80 or more. Streaming services? It'll take you the length of the game to make a choice. Live in a town with a library? Own a DVD player? How many TVs are in your house? Do I bitch and cajole when you watch those damn romances? (Oops, sorry. I have marriage PTSD.)"

My response: "The Piano is probably the best movie ever. Way better than Gone With The Wind."


I'm not really passionate about Foot Ball.
It's a very stupid game.



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FATTY THIGHS

That's just wrong! None of the other individuals here smell like rotten fish! Obviously turkey vultures have a bad sense of smell. And he's inclined unfavourably toward the octopus.
As well as the penguins. Who don't actually smell fishy. At all!


Also, he's a very biased individual. Everything he doesn't like smells nasty. Incredibly nasty. Creatures whom he does want to eat, and would opportunistically gobble up when no one is watching, smell good.

Given that he also has a fondness for fatty thighs ("turkey vultures just LOVE fatty thighs!"), it is disturbing that he is encouraging me to eat more. My thighs, apparently, are not up to snuff.

My legs, while undoubtedly better than Louis The Fourteenth's gams, are NOT going to be on the menu. I have no plans to croak for your delectation.

He also talks about yummy chicken thighs. I am unflattered by the comparison.


Australians, he says, are particularly tasty. Crunchy, creamy, and pudding-like. Enrobed in chocolate. Dark chocolate. I should in all ways strive to be more Australian.
And seriously, work on those thighs.
Avoid fish.


Stupid ugly people smell like fish.
Doesn't everyone know that?



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WHAT WAS THAT CHICKEN?

Hard to tell whether it was in fact chicken at all. Maybe one of Gonzo's friends from the Muppet Show. A bit fibrous. Pearl Chicken (珍珠雞 'jan jyu kai') is normally not like that. Pearl chicken ("petite chicken") is a smaller version of glutinous rice chicken (糯米雞 'lo mai kai'), being bird flesh, a slice of lap cheung and maybe a black mushroom, packed in glutinous rice and wrapped in a lotus leaf for steaming.


Perhaps I should have had it a cup of with Pu Erh Tea.
Still wouldn't have made the meat recognizable.
Chicken isn't normally "beefy".

Somewhere in between lunchtime and dinner. My eating schedule has always been somewhat off-kilter, but during lockdown now on my days at home it's much more so. First cup of coffee at around seven. Second between nine and twelve. Third after that, then an interval during which I may walk around the neighborhood avoiding people with my pipe. Then lunch, often at tea-time. A cup of hot tea, then another pipe full. Sometimes it's already twilight by that time.

Regular meal times make sense when one is a social diner. When I was still doing credit & Collections that wasn't the case, and at my current job that ain't the case either. Dinner itself is an imaginary construct. Food does taste better in company, if one has chosen that company and likes them in the first place. A shared meal. If they're just in the vicinity, then by all means snarl at them and make flesh-ripping sounds. If possible, foam at the mouth. That's MY glutinous rice and chicken, get away you skeevy person! My plate! My fork!
Stab you with the sharp item! Back! Back!


Pipe smoking is, nowadays, considered a non-social activity, probably even anti-social. So no need to share the fine brown flake tobacco, richly flavourful from long fermentation, with its faint whiff of freshly mown hay, the fields in summer, and over-ripe stone fruits fallen to the ground and slightly rotting in a distant orchard.


It feels like my entire life has been training for a pandemic.
Everybody out there is a disease carrying organism.


Especially if they dislike pipe smokers.

TOBACCO INDEX


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WEIGHT, HEIGHT, AND AN URGE TO MAINSPLAIN

Once again it is clear to me that many (probably most) people can't read very well. Someone assumed a meaning to one of my internet comments that was not at all implicit, and got her dander up. Now, I could have reacted huffily, and turned it into a flame fest -- which over a decade ago would have been extremely enjoyable, because I'm mean, and fighting a battle of wits with a virtually armless person can be fun -- but I merely clarified what I meant (because an admin requested that I do so) in easily understandable language.
Even to Texans, who are very stupid people.

Sadly, I have grown up.

There was a high quotient of trollism on that entire string.
Danders were up and flying all over the damn' place.
A shallow easily offended judgmental twat.

Please note that I'm using the word 'twat' in the sense of 'dick', not as a sexist dig. Yes, she is female. But in this case she's a real dick of a twat, and that's what is objectionable, in a non-gender-judgmental way. No, she is not a Republican, most of whom are twats.
The dumb twit is almost certainly a fellow Democrat.


My possibly final word in that comment string: "On a personal level, whenever tall Midwestern types crowd an elevator, I often wish that like my Brabantine ancestors I had a knife with me at all times so that I could stab the offensively large Frisian fuckers to death.
Best stay away from height."


Per a comment that was quickly deleted, I am "a colossal idiot".


I have nothing against armless people.
They're fine too. Really.



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SPARKLING NEGATIVITY

When I stepped out for a walk around the neighborhood last night there were sounds of jollification from the bars on Polk Street, where the maskless throngs were having drinks and snackipoos. Now, I too like snackipoos. But with all those unprotected people clustered together, that's a recipe for another lockdown in three weeks.


The disease spreaders are not the children -- normally a source of germs and disease -- but the dim old farts who don't wear their masks if they can get away with it, joggers spreading waves of droplet-laden turbulence as they run past being all healthy la la la, bicyclists, and above all the social butterflies who need their drinks and snackipoos in vast cheery herds.


I confess I am not a social man. Company is best if severely limited in number. One or two exceptional people, rather than five or ten chance-met bar-hoppers and dance-hall types.

I probably wouldn't mind some social contact, if the other person was sensible and not gregarious. A reserved person with a mask reading a book at the other end of the room.
Where there are two cups of tea, placed six or seven feet apart, and an ashtray.


What this city needs are skunks wandering down busy thoroughfares. As well as crazier and more rabid street people. And howling wolves. Lots of howling wolves.


A lone pipesmoker, no matter how feral, just isn't enough.

Skunks, fox girls, daemonic presences, glowering from the shadows.
This pretence of normal life will end up killing people.
Keep your mask on, and avoid party animals.
Oh, and put sambal on everything.



Modern American society is a toxic construct.
Especially in it's white yuppie form.



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AND TEN POUNDS OF PORK SHOULDER

Without intending to, a friend reminded me of a farewell party at a local dive a number of years ago. A wake, memorial service, and final goodbye. Please bring something to eat, we'll provide the songs and liquor. So I made two huge pots of chile verde, the style with no tomatillos. Not the first food to arrive, definitely the first food to disappear. Because I was fussing with the furniture I delayed having a bowl, and when I turned around it was all gone.

New Mexico chile verde is perfect comfort food.

My friend recently posted a link to a chile colorado (red chile meat stew) recipe in Bon Appetit. Which, with very minor tweaks, is also comfort food. As is Birria, a long-simmered Mexican dish. The proper bachelor should have all three preparations in his repertoire.
Actually, he or she should have an entire cookbook in his repertoire.
Because both social life and loneliness require food.

Many people are so handicapped that they can't even make coffee well.


Anyhow, the point is that there are things that add richness to living, and good food and drink must be among them. Our ancestors during the fifties of the last century only half understood that, which is why many of them combined canned food and jello in strange ways and washed it down with a three martini lunch. It was a generation of he-men, both genders, and had tastes formed in the crucible of advertising. The sixties and seventies were NOT significantly better (carbonated beverages used in marinades?), and the all-American peasantry couldn't find outer space on a map they were that innocent.

The only good things to come out of that era were pennicilin for the clap, crocodile green wide lapels, and the nuclear bomb. All three of which were in the typical Sears or Mervyn's catalogue for the prairie housekeeper to purchase.

Obviously I wasn't awake then.


A man who was, dropped by my work the other day and left his pipes and ashtray, to be disposed of as we saw fit. I don't even know what he looks like, as I was occupied with something else at the time.

I cleaned up this one, because it was an interesting shape and felt good in the hand. Haven't smoked it yet. Probably will before the end of the month. Sometimes people just give up their pipes after several years of not smoking, the passion has gone.
The maker of the pipe above is believed to have been active before and up till the nineteen eighties, but almost nothing is known about him. The pipe is stamped "made in Belgium".
Old briar, with a grain pattern on the other side that looks cancerous.
It's an interesting piece. It was fun to work with


Both the pipe and the former smoker are a mystery.
There is a sort of seventies look to it.
Rainy weather, northern city.
College boy.

TOBACCO INDEX


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CHOKING ON APPLE PIE

Sometimes there are conversations that you know are worthwhile, but you avoid having them. Because they could be personally uncomfortable. My apartment mate is Chinese American (born and raised in San Francisco, her daddy was Chinese from Texas), my landlord is too, as are the staff at the clinic where my regular care physician works, and also my cardiologist.
I am Caucasian. My first American ancestors arrived here in 1630.

Though there may be a native American in the woodpile, I am so white I glow in the dark. You can read fine print by the pallid glow.


"How has (the recent increase in) racism toward Asian Americans affected you?"


Yeah, not going to ask that question. Reason being that increased internet chatter, and recent news articles, rather answer that too well. San Francisco and the Bay Area are becoming worse. And I would rather stick my head in the sand.

Other than the elderly Chinese woman from Jakarta in one of the downstairs apartments, every "Chinese" resident in this building was born here, and speaks worse Chinese than I do. Or even barely any. American English is their native language. One of them has a fixation on finding the most buttery pastries, my apartment mate eats far more cheese than I, and the only other person here with childhood exposure to sambal is, naturally, the lady from Jakarta.

That is probably not too unlike the rest of the street.

And the immediate neighborhood.


I won't ask the staff at the clinic, the bakeries and grocery stores where I shop, or any of the other people I know, that question either. In Chinese or English. Or Dutch, for the folks from Suriname at a Chinatown grocery store, and the elderly couple who live a few blocks away.

I will note, however, that more of this country has become off limits in the past four years than ever before, especially in the past year. Most of the South, all of Texas and the Midwest, all of the mountain states, and almost anywhere outside the coastal urban crust.
I do not need to see "the real America". They've visited California.
And, thanks to the internet, we know how they think.
Karen, My Pillow Guy, and Trump.




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GENTLY DRIFTING WRECKAGE

It started raining yesterday after tea time. Fortunately I had finished everything that had to be done outside, and there was no need to step out into the weather. Except, of course, for a pipeful. Seeing as like many people nowadays one cannot enjoy a pipe, cigar, or even a ciggie indoors anymore. So the entire city is littered with folks from a bygone era (past their early forties) enjoying a pipe or a cigar in the howling gale or swept into abandoned doorways deceased sadly from pneumonia and unlamented by the pure.
While children and Vegan health freaks disport themselves indoors.
Naked and warm, safe from the evil tobacco.


Just after lunchtime (I did not actually have lunch) while wandering around the downtown I was smoking a mixture of mostly red Virginias in a small rusticated panel French item.

After having something to eat at tea time I dawdled a bit, and loaded up another panel (sandblast, English) with Astley's 109, and headed out just as the rain started.

That second smoke would have been more enjoyable if I had not been rained upon.
Damn those naked Vegans and kids!


Okay, if you see a cigarette smoker outside, you can safely assume that he or she is a sailor or drunkard, perhaps a social and sexual deviant, and walk in a wide circle around them. And a cigar smoker is probably a scungy old Republican lamenting that black lives matter, which pisses him off, and why isn't Trump Jesus president anymore?
But a pipesmoker enjoying an honest puff of unflavoured tobacco (not vanilla dreck or cherry froo froo) is assuredly an upstanding sort of fellow, with complex thoughts about a variety of things, quite civilized and liberal, who welcomes the opportunity for women and minorities to express themselves politically, and has read a lot.
Perhaps you should invite him in.
And make some tea.



This is just a suggestion, I do not have an agenda, I'm alright, and honestly, I have enough hands to juggle pipe, tamper, matches, and umbrella. Four. Yes, precisely, four.
A hot cup of tea might complicate matters.
This seasonal storm is just fine.
We need the rain.

TOBACCO INDEX


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AWRIGHT! THAT WAS A REAL STINKER!

Who the heck wrote this garbage, and why does that woman's acting keep getting worse. The answer to the second question may have been because the drugs wore off. For an answer to the first, read the package the video came in. But that was not part of the plan. She intended to enjoy the stinky movie without any recourse to further research. It had a happy ending; the monster dissolved in the waters of the Bay of Naples.


"Yes, I love him, you can have your stupid blonde who keeps fainting!"


The apartment mate at various points invented her own dialogue for the movie, matching as far as able the foreign accents of the characters. Being the only legitimate foreigner in the room, having spent my formative years among the inbred syphilitics of Van Gogh country, I can claim to be a keen judge of foreign accents. Rather than fiery Italian, she sounded like Bela Lugosi, a famous Hungarian actor.

I was only half paying attention, because I was having a hunter curry (meat I shall not identify plus vegetables that were not something I have seen before) over rice, with gobs of chili paste. Mmm, so good. Still can't name that vegetable. Reddish stalks, green leaves, somewhat similar to choisum. Red-stalked choisum would be logical. But I have doubts.


"If necessary, pound the bejazus out of him."


What can I say? She's of Cantonese ancestry, and those people believe in firm remonstration. Which bejazus-pounding would effect. Monsters are, after all, human, and in the end, fallible.
It's a painful reality.

I call it hunter curry because not all the ingredients are identifiable, but a bit of curry flavour and hot stuff makes it something that can be recognized. She was having fried chicken and rice from a bag. Took far less time to prepare, no condiments.
She saw the entire movie in consequence.
Enjoyed it thoroughly.



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LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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