TEA TIME CAME EARLY

Given what the weather is like, one fortifies oneself with a hot beverage ere going out. On a day off. When one must go out. Because otherwise one sits on one's duff all day and becomes a vegetable. A stagnant cabbage of a man. Exercise is good for the soul.
Sometimes the hot beverage is in multiples.


KUNG FU TEA

Smaller pots than you are used to, and more tea leaves. Shorter brews. Each steeping being slightly different than the one before.

The first steeping, roughly thirty seconds, is to open up and rinse the leaves. The second is approximately a minute, subsequent steepings a little longer each time. If five minutes for an English pot is optimum to extract the flavour, you can understand that shorter steepings and stronger brews will present a range.


If there is only one of you drinking the tea, you can see that with great ease you'll end up wired to the gills. Today I used slightly less tea leaf, and had only three steeps. And so, fully energized, I went out and braved the arctic wind and hairy savages on Nob Hill.
Leaving the turkey vulture to guard the apartment.

He abstains from stimulating beverages.
Except coffee. He loves coffee.
Coffee and a biscuit.

It's what all young birds wake up with in the morning.
He's bouncing off the walls by seven A.M.


普洱，水仙茶

Lunch was bami goreng with lapcheung, egg, and chopped greens. And lots of sambal. The strong tea (Pu Erh and Sui Sin) was not only fortification, but also a digestive aid.
All of this was followed by full Virginia flake in a Comoy.

It's not quite springlike weather outside.
Still Raynaud's phenomenonish.

TOBACCO INDEX


==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

IT'S CREAMY!

This blogger did not find out about Lola Bunny till Tucker Carlson lost his shit. Sorry, I'm just not up on rightwing America's icons of femininity. I always thought that rightwing sex fantasies began and ended with Tammy Faye.

I have never seen Lola Bunny in any movie or video.

A female sex bombe bunny wabbit with realistic humanoid boobs and curvy gams is, to put it mildly, the most peculiar thing I can think of, so I'm a bit staggered by all the rednecks who thinks she's the bees knees and are getting her tattooed on their arms in protest at cancel culture. Especially interesting when Elmer Fudd best represents their subculture.
There's something really queer going on in macho-murica.
Y'all okay there in the backwoods, boys?


It's not too surprising though when you also remember that Dweebs wet their panties over anime fox girls and cat heroines. I guess most American men need something to fantasize about. Unlike Australians and New Zealanders, they don't have sheep.


As a side track, I guess there's something overtly sexual about Paula White and her and strike and strike and strike video. Oooh, Bubba getting all hot and bothered, cupcake, make it sting! Get the cold shower ready.
Peach!


Perhaps y'all need to watch some Girls Und Panzer? Curvy mostly Caucasian girls speaking Japanese, driving tanks, and singing Russian war-songs. Fantastisch und zesty!
Just what the doctor ordered!

Heavy machinery, oil, sweat, and play-combat! Sailor uniforms!
And they're unabashedly ultra-feminine!

They're appealing whatever your socio-political stripe.
Assuming you're a red-blooded American male.



Food for thought: America's bizarre mom-fixation.
Meatloaf and heavy casseroles.
Is ketchup sexist?




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

WHAT TRAVELERS NEED TO KNOW

The four most repulsive states in the country, in alphabetical order, are Florida, Idaho, Mississipi, and Texas. Colorado should also be in mentioned, as should most of the Midwest and the South -- in the words of a native southerner who lives in North Carolina, "I hate it here", but I very much wish to keep it short. Basically all the red states, so everything between New York and San Francisco.

Oakland too.

I was born in Southern California. I'd gladly add that region to the list. But remember, we're keeping the list short. A good friend lives in Georgia, and he would argue that most of Georgia belongs on the list, but seeing as part of Georgia voted the right way, even though it is a regressive devolutionary hell-hole, I'll keep them off the list. Alaska, of course, is responsible for Sarah Palin, so it should definitely be mentioned. But there are some adorable moppets in a community overlooking miles of frigid water all the way to Russia there, who looked so happy jumping into spring puddles in late may a few years ago, wearing so many layers of clothing that they looked more horizontal than vertical, and not everybody there is methamphetime making trailer park trash, so maybe not.

The entire East Bay, most of the peninsula, and the regions north of the bridge.

Hawaii is probably okay. The trash couldn't get there by pick-up truck.

Everything that isn't Maui or Honolulu (the tourist areas).

The Central Valley, of course. Manson territory.

From Treasure Island east to nearly the Brooklyn Bridge, it's racists, illiteracy, incest, junkfood, rednecks, Christians, very spiritual people, anti-vaxxers, science deniers, flat earthers, and football fans. Kinda describes Texas, but in a way it's all Texas.
Plus the outright insanes (Salt Lake City and the Mormons), whoremongers, criminals, and gamblers (Nevada), Baptist shitheads (Waco Texas), and sadistic salt of the earth types (Deerhunter and Deliverance).

But it's just a short list.
Only four states.
FIMT.




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

IDEAS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE INHABITANTS OF MARIN

Some of the people with whom I have to deal regularly fail to understand that they breathe through their nose. It is hard to correct them, because they are stupid and entitled and white (describes most people in Marin County), and they're convinced that they absorb oxygen through the many folds in their thin skin, which has capillaries close to the surface.

Also, covering the nose requires skill acquired through rigorous training and practise, and they just don't have the time for that. They are important people.

You'll be pleased to know that there is a solution. Condoms. The standard condom can fit over a human head. It stretches. All it takes is a little effort, such as an angry Dutch American from San Francisco might expend if pushed, and a snug fit is assured. Several people in Marin would be immeasurably improved by having a condom forced over their heads.

The many folds of their skin will not be affected.
So there is no cause for them to worry at all.
It will also improve their conversation.

If you doubt me, consult a doctor.


An additional benefit is that it would add to their aerodynamic qualities. They could easily fly afterwards. A smooth flow of air, scant turbulence, like a well-designed projectile, a flying log or some such. The human zeppelin, filled with hot air.


Oh wait, we'd have to staple down their many folds of skin.


Can do.




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

IT WAS PROBABLY THE BANANAS

Bananas. Lemonade. Coffee. And medications. The logical suspects are either the bananas or the medications. My blood pressure pills are known for making one's dreams vivid, and sometimes memorable. But banana makes me itch, and does weird things to the muscles and the senses. Normally I avoid bananas unless they're cooked (which neutralizes whatever that is that does that), but last night's cake for dinner had, as it's third layer, banana chunks in stiff whipped cream. Raw banana. And it was delicious. Our landlady seems to have an endless reference sheet for bakeries in the Bay Area that use lots of butter and whipped cream.
Unlike many people of East Asian ancestry, she does not have a lactose intolerance thing. Probably one major reason she gets along so well with my apartment mate.
Same fondness for dairy.

In any case, I have never been to San Antonio. Or even anywhere in Texas at all. So I wonder why in my dream I had an ID card from the San Antonio Water District which I had to show to a large female bus driver.
Apparently my face did not look honest enough.
I had to prove something.

Please understand, I have an intellectual dislike of Texas, because ever sine Anne Richards passed away they've been skeevy, and Molly Ivins is dead too. They've been trying to get over strongminded intelligent women for over a decade. Almost as if their precious feelings were hurt by the experience. Having someone talking back to men-folk wounded them.

It was a very vivid dream. Vibrant. Transport and water services related. Seeing as it took place in Texas, it could qualify as a nightmare, except there was no urgency, fear, or gothic element whatsoever. Heat and bordedom. Dust. Vehicles falling apart.
That has to be the banana talking.

There is still lots of cake left over.

I'll have some more this evening.



For the last quarter of a century, Texas has consistently voted for mental defectives and monumental jackasses. Which perfectly represents what they're all about down there.
Also explains Louis Gohmert's political career.
Baylor Law School's brightest.




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

WAITING FOR THE ZOMBIES

A comment string under an essay written eight years ago is infested with Dutch speaking zombies. My people. I'm touched. Well, except for the zombie part. The walking dead are not my people. They may have at one point been my people. But, as people, zombies leave something to be desired. One cannot invite them in for a cup of tea.

I, on the other hand, am fine with a cup of tea.


I drink more tea in Marin than in San Francisco, because I have hot cups of tea at work to stay hydrated, and remain alert to the skeevy shenanigans of the elderly Republicans I babysit.

None of whom are, to my knowledge, zombies.

Or as yet deceased.


I'm patient.


Thanks to my apartment mate, I now head to work with an Aggretsuko-themed backpack for my pipes and tobacco. The previous backpack was Minions-themed, the one before that Hello Kitty. Because, of course, a pipesmoker needs a stylish luggage for his stuff.
And a man-purse just looks silly.

From the Aggretsuko Wiki fandom page: "Aggretsuko centers around Retsuko's day-to-day life as an accountant at a Japanese trading firm. Dealing with everything from sexist superiors to obnoxious co-workers, Retsuko vents her emotions through death metal at the local karaoke bar she frequents.
After five years of being a corporate slave, she forms an unlikely friendship with the CEO's secretary and the company marketing director. Will this be the break she needs to finally better her work life?"

Despite the fact that I am a middle-aged Dutch American male, and fairly despise Karaoke, and in no way a female red panda office worker, Aggretsuko speaks for me. I too wish to scream death metal lyrics because of job-related emotional states.
Purely as an intellectual conceit, of course.


The great thing about death metal is that it doesn't matter what language it's in, it could be in Dutch, but it all sounds like Klingon anyway.




AFTER WORD

Once I got home, I had cake, courtesy of our downstairs neighbor and landlady. When you are waiting for the zombies, cake alleviates the tedium. Cake is good. Such a happy food. And it's great with the coffee you need for relaxation after a long day at the salt mine.

For some reason, Klingon screaming is no longer necessary.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

THAT SEEING THING

There are horizontal lines visible in my peripheral vision. Which is not a worrying thing, the mind is reinterpreting visual data more strongly than is often the case. It did so last night on its own after I went to bed, and the night before. Quite entrancing. Which, of course, is not the point when you're trying to sleep.

After using 'paint' on the computer for several hours, your eyes do strange things. Last smoke of the night, with glowing areas on the pavement outside from street lights, and strong tense curves instead of rectangles. Intense blood red from a pedestrian's flowing dress.
Dark areas, seemingly bottomless. It was good.


I've always liked the interpretations of pipe shapes that Comoy had. They often seem more well-thought out and elegantly proportioned than those of other manufacturers.

Subconsciously that affects how they smoke. One enjoys smoking a handsome pipe more than something that looks badly designed. Shapes have emotional impact, good lines speak to something within, something underneath the surface.
Taughtness.

TOBACCO INDEX


==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

AND CAPTAIN HADDOCK

Courtesy of a friend, I have read a fun article with keen-o photographs about pipe smokers: Where Have All The Pipes Gone?. The main gist of which seems to be that calm rational cultured people used to smoke a pipe, and now they and their pipes have disappeared.
It used to be a common phenomenon among thoughtful and creative people.

I agree and I disagree. As a pipe smoker I feel flattered, but Joseph Stalin also smoked a pipe, and I detest the Hobbit phenomenon. Before the war, over eighty percent of all tobacco was smoked in pipes, but the entire generation that went in to combat as pipe smokers came out with a cigarette habit. And having survived the biggest conflagration in human history they were more jangly and excitable than they had ever been, they had more or less won the lottery by still being alive, and cigarettes were at that time advertised by medical men.
Cigarettes were convenient, no-nonsense, and cheap.


"More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette. Yes, in a repeated national survey, doctors in ALL branches of medicine, in ALL parts of the country, when asked "what cigarette do YOU smoke", answered..."


While I like the concept of calm rational cultured men smoking a pipe as a natural expression of their gravitas and intellect -- Simenon, Faulkner, Einstein, Weill -- there are also the hod carrier, rowdy young man at school, alcoholic village priest, and general all round ne'er do well in the mix. I ended up smoking pipes almost by accident. As a teenager, the idea of sitting quietly discussing literary things with thoughtful companions while we each puffed our pipes never even crossed my mind. Or theirs.


Yeah, Simenon and Kipling smoked pipes, as did characters in their writing. My father, my uncle, and several of their old college classmates smoked pipes, or had done so. Fighter pilots, ships captains, and generals smoked pipes. And several of my high school friends and acquaintences did too.

The categories of pipe smokers were so broad as to be nearly meaningless.

Men of action smoked pipes. Men of indolence. Men.
Very few women smoked pipes.
Still.


It isn't that pipes and good tobacco are necessarily masculine things, but I suspect that cigarettes are far easier to hide or indulge in out of sight. A more discreet way of dealing with tobacco. Also socially accepted.

Originally, both Lucky Strike and Marlboro were aimed at the female market. As a rational and slightly risqué alternative to bon bons or cake. Better for your girlish figure, and more sophisticated.

TOBACCO INDEX


==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
========================================================================== />

LIVING, WITH STINKY MAN

Both aunties were outside yesterday. Auntie with the cheerful pistachio-hued hat was doing her morning walkies the first time I went outside for a smoke, and at around the cocktail hour, surreptitious cigarette auntie was sitting on a ledge across the street having a puff. From those descriptive nicknames you may correctly assume that they are older Cantonese ladies.
Gay pistachio-hued hat auntie gets more exercise now than I do on my off days, traversing probably between ten and fifteen blocks in the neighborhood at the crack of dawn, and undoubtedly many more later in the day.

All together I did around twelve blocks. For a large part of the day I did not need to leave the building. It's only when my non-smoking apartment mate is home that I go outside to smoke.
Or if I need to purchase food supplies.

If I haven't smoked in the thirty minutes before she comes home, she won't notice it. Probably because the faint trace of a pipe is comforting, familiar, fuzzy and just like a teddy bear.

Also, she has a lousy sense of smell. Which probably explains why she lives here and puts up with me. My presence is not refined.

Normally, Asians think that white people stink a bit.


LATE NIGHT, AND TIME TO PANIC

The Chinese are coming! They're in the neighborhood! They're in the building! There's even one of them in my apartment! An old classmate from the third time I went to college, who occupies the other room here. And, because she is a non-smoker, I headed out to brave the wilds of Polk Street with my pipe. Caucasians were getting smashed there and skateboarding. Dodged the nuts successfully, but that was the last smoke of the day.
It gets much worse later.

White Americans drunk on fruit-flavoured cocktails skateboarding is plenty of reason to panick. Especially if they're not wearing masks. Fortunately they have a hard time coming up the hill, because they're originally from the flat states.


Both my apartment mate and I get up shortly after six AM. She makes herself breakfast, I have coffee and head out for a smoke. She usually leaves just before eight, when it's time for my second cup. On my work days, rather than talking a walk with a pipe, I'll head into the bathroom shortly after seven o'clock. Ablutions, teeth, and a shave.

I'm not quite socially capable till mid morning anyway.


Oh yeah, lots of ventilation too.
Ventilation is important.

TOBACCO INDEX


==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

THE PRECIOUS AMERICAN FREEDOMS

Several a-holes in Chinatown without masks today. Yeah, they were White. How did you know? Other than that, shopping was a cinch. Shopkeepers recognize me as an inoffensive old guy, and people are used to me transacting my business in Cantonese when that is more convenient. And I mostly patronize the same merchants every week.
Partly because I want to know that they're all right.

I often find myself cursing out the mask-less cretins under my breath. Because this city is full of them. Hard to imagine that we had so many ignorant Republican swine here, but they'll probably be dead soon, problem solved.

They can always go to Florida, Mississippi, or Texas, if they find San Francisco too restrictive of their 'freedums'.



Didn't light up my pipe until I got to a nearly empty sidestreet, as I avoided one of my favourite alleys where last week there had been too many people. Mahjong parlours are, it seems, fully populated.
In the words of a Protestant preacher I used to know, such things lead to sin, dissipation, and mixed dancing. Of which he disapproved. Shortsighted of him, because without those things he would have been out of business.


And that, of course, explains why I do not mind having dumbass Republicans, mask-refusers, religious people, rightwing nutballs, people with a lousy sense of style and vulgar tastes, and rabid anti-smokers who do not appreciate fine briar around.

Without them, I should have no one to dispapprove of.
I'd be forced into an unnatural mellowness.

But I prefer the company of intelligent people.
Most of whom are heathen liberals.


The pipe shown above sings with red Virginias and flakes. Aromatized pipe tobaccos, such as Black Cavendish Aromatic (vanilla), RLP-6 (vanilla, toffee, chocolate, and honey), or Captain Black (various shades of pit deodorant plus sugar), are suited to wife beaters, tattooed freaks, sick individuals who torture puppies, and elderly conservatives with issues.

Because I smoke clean tobaccos, it is rare that anyone comes up to tell me I remind them of their father. Which tells you everything you need to know about the state of the world, what lived under the surface, and how we came to this present state.

Wife beaters, tattooed freaks, sick individuals who torture puppies, and elderly conservatives with issues. Plus dumbass Republicans, mask-refusers, religious people, rightwing nutballs, people with a lousy sense of style and vulgar tastes, and rabid anti-smokers.

As well as anti-vaxers and gluten-phobes.

TOBACCO INDEX


==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

WHICH GENDER BATHROOM?

Since the whole thing about genders started, I have realized that I know far too little to form an opinion. Two genders seemed okay to me, and I remain altogether unconcerned with whatever gender uses the stall next to me, as well as unaware. More to the point, it is not my business, nor anything I should care about. Apparently gender is more complex than that.

No, I shan't do the reading, follow the research, investigate the issue.

It is none of my beeswax.


I'm fine with whatever gender nouns you wish to use. If you are somewhere in-between the two extremes of gender, I have sympathy for the unclearly charted territory you find yourself in, but, actually, I'm far more interested in what you think about other issues.
I realize there's a lot more there than I'm familiar with.
But I'm not interested in all the details.

Same with people who fall into clearly defined and recognizable gender types and roles. Please don't tell me what you do with your privates. That is not why we are together in a public place enjoying beverages. I do not want to know what type you say is your type. Nor do I wish to share with you what my type is, you have no need to know me that well.

Your fetishes are in the same category.
That's your business.

My personal third person pronouns of choice are "he", "his", "him", and "his grace".

As in "he would indeed like a cup of tea, that would please him enormously, and his grace finds your children utterly repulsive".



Generalizations: women seem slightly more aware of, or concerned about, this issue than men. Older people are more likely to be confused by it. And Republicans are obsessed beyond all reason. Religious people, especially Christians, think that their opinions on the subject are important; they are wrong.

From which it logically follows that middle-aged Republican Christian women are a pain in the gand, and are possibly far too interested in eliminative functions.




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

THE KEY DEMOGRAPHIC

At the clinic, my doctor has probably prescribed the same blood pressure meds to many other patients, most of whom are probably a lot older than myself. And given that their full functional literacy is in Chinese, it must all look like letter salad to them. I cannot imagine trying to remember the difference between Amlodipine-Besylate and Losartan-hctz when your entire life everything you've read is one or two syllables, rarely three or four, clearly put down in distinct and recognizable patterns consisting of a collection of brush or pen strokes representing one of 214 searchable graphic elements with or without a recognizable phonetic element of up to forty strokes but usually considerably less, around a dozen strokes or so, of which there are around two thousand or more out of which around five hundred are quite common and seen everyday, and are therefore quite easy to recall over time.

English, in comparison, can be a bit tricky. Amlodipine is FOUR syllables (not five), Besylate is three. Which cannot be found in the dictionary, or at least not in a meaningful framework. It's like Western medicine decided to name everything "thingummy". "Hon, did you remember to take 'thingummy', 'thingummy', and 'thingummy' this morning after you got up?"

"You know I never do puzzles that early!"

Several native speakers of English that I know also have problems with words consisting of multiple syllables and consants clustered together in a non-strictly Anglo-Saxon order, and persistently misread the names of their favourite unpronounceable consumer goods.

In the case of some of them, single malt Scotch.

The names of which are in Klingon.

Variations on thingummy.

With hairballs.

Everything would be so much better if everyone spoke Dutch. It's easy and logical. "Afsluitdijk". "Scheveningen". "'sHertogenbosch". "Zelfgewaarwording's fenomeen".
"Volksvertegenwoordiging".

And it's rewarding! Tulips, gingerbread, and stroopwafels!



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

THERE ARE BUMPS

Getting up in the middle of the night to have a cup of tea may not be a trend waiting to happen. But in an ideal world, it's always time for tea. One o'clock in the morning in SF is ten o'clock in the Netherlands, and, coincidentally, exactly tea time in Manila and Hong Kong. Where it's warm, a little breezy, and there may be scattered showers throughout the day.

It's about sixty degrees Fahrenheit in Cairo.
Perfect for a cup of tea.

You might think that I didn't get much sleep last night, and you would be only partially right. The hiatus from bed rest took about two hours, during which I read the latest Covid numbers, mentally got ready to welcome our new cephalopodic overlords (apparently they've passed tests designed for the average Republican, so they're smarter than a six-year old), fought with the blankets at the foot of the bed, continued working on a drawing of some classic Chinese architecture, and smoked half a bowl on the front steps contemplatively.

And I drank some tea.

So I've already had a fairly busy day, even thought it was during the night, and I went back to bed afterwards.

The pipe illustrated above shows the light through the blinds in summer, early morning, because it was drawn several months ago.



Back in the day when I was still in a relationship, getting up in the middle of the night meant that one of us had to go to the bathroom. But the only creature in my bed other than myself is the turkey vulture, who managed to piss-off the creatures in my apartment mate's room and sought sanctuary on my side. Both the monkey and the head sheep are furious at him, and Otto the octopus despairs of ever being treated with any respect and decency by that bird.
No, the turkey vulture didn't need to use the facilities; he waits until day light.
There are "things" in the bathroom. And hallway.
And he's actually rather timid.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

YOU PEOPLE!

In three incidents one can see that the white bread is not only loosing it, but showing their ass. Item One: Buddhist temple in Los Angeles vandilized and set on fire; Item Two: violent criminal stabs Chinese person for no reason, victim loses kidney;
Item Three: Bus driver in New York killed.


The election of Trump four years ago liberated the moldy white bread from all their previous constraints. It not only became acceptable to be an idiot, but in some circles, fashionable.


One of my customers recently told me he could never buy anything Chinese, because his uncle fought in Korea at the Chosin Reservoir.


Dumb a-hole.


All of my relatives of that generation served in uniform. Several in combat roles. Not a single one of them was a racist.

Many of my parents friends and colleagues experience war. From far too close for comfort.

One of my uncles was crazier than a bedbug for a few years after Korea.


I'm not even going to ask what the hell is wrong with you lot, because I know. You're inbred, stupid, ignorant, and uncivilized. You piled into this country fleeing starvation and horrendous conditions in Scandinavia, Ireland, and England, and brought illiteracy, congenital syphilis, and rigid blinkered fundamentalist Christianity with you. Some of you came here from Germany or Poland fleeing responsibility for the horrible things you were up to during one or other savage war (or peacetime - quite a few of you didn't need an excuse to be barbaric). You fled Cuba because the revolution deprived you of your privileges. And since then, you and your hairy palmed mal-educated brood have seen no reason to better yourselves.

But you are letting the side down.

You are bigots.


Your food sucks, your women are ugly, and your society is diseased.
You are an example to the rest of the world of devolution.
May your lives become nasty, brutish, and short.

You want fries with that?



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

WEAK TEA AND SUNLIGHT

The approach to Kai Tak Airport was north over the Kowloon Peninsula till you spotted the checkerboard painted on a hillside, then bank sharp right and descend while reducing speed. If done correctly, it put you in line with runway 13. Done in bad weather it was more exciting. But even under perfect conditions it could be dramatic. Kai Tak is right next to Kwun Tong.
Laundry and billboards were visible at eye level, and so close.

My dad, a bomber pilot for three years, never flew commercially. After the war he went to college, then worked on tankers for a few years, and became an aeronautical engineer.

But as an unflappable man he might have found landing at Kai Tak interesting.

He was the only person who was calm and at ease when I drove.

He recognized defensive manoeuvres.

The pipe above slightly reminds me of him, but more strongly makes me think of Hong Kong. Along with staved teak boxes in the bookshelves, dried fish, and snow pear incense (雪梨檀香 'suet lei taan heung'), which keeps the mosquitoes out of my quarters entirely and drives them into the rest of the apartment, where another person lives.
Who has a mosquito net.

There's a lidded tea bowl nearby filled with Jasmine. Astringent.
In hot weather warm weak tea will keep one alert.
When it's cold outside, it soothes.
Helps you work.

One of the few ways in which I am much like my father is that we both did mechanical and architectural drafting. So if you saw me at work, with a pipe in my mouth, you might think you were seeing a younger version of him. Same face. It's a different pipe, but most people don't have that eye.


At one point in my life, almost all of the pilots I knew who flew into and out of Hong Kong were ex-military, many had had combat experience. But even in that day, they were more or less screened for stability and clear-headedness. Because, if you think about it, a full compliment of passengers is rather like a load of bombs. Somewhat explosive and unpredictable. Someone has to have his wits about him, and the American businessman in the smoking section probably isn't it, and none of the people next to him are either.

When you are young you have great confidence, and a sense that you will live forever. It's brutal when you realize that some of your companions won't.

This would be the place for some deep insight about maturity and getting older.
But I'm not the right person for that.



Can I offer you some shallow insights instead?

TOBACCO INDEX


==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

IT'S CRUNCHY!

Given my age, which I'll describe as "middle", it isn't surprising that I have a number of friends and acquaintances who lament their single state and are still (or again) avidly searchking for companionship of the gender most appropriate for them. Which in theory I am too. But I'm far more realistic about it. And not planning to visit the produce section of the Marina District Safeway, the local churches, or a ballroom dance class. Under any circumstances.
As several years ago I was advised to do.


The problem with any of those three options is the vegetables there.


But it's fun watching from a distance as my single friends and acquaintances discover that rutabaga, really, is the most delightful salad ingredient, and pairs so well with turnips.

I'm not social enough to engage in the hunt for root vegetables.


Although I realize it's magic.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

THERE WAS SOMETHING THERE

It was probably inevitable that smoking one of my dad's old pipes would bring back memories. Him. Valkenswaard and Eindhoven. Berkeley. Southern California. My grandmother. And Mr. McClanahan. Watercolours, and a piano. Bittersweet. It's colder outside after dark than during the day. And I thought I was smoking a Comoy sandblast until I came back inside and saw the Comoy on the tea tray, untouched. What I had been smoking was a Parker that my grandmother gave to my Dad after the war.

The Comoy is very similar. The tobacco blend was something that hadn't even been invented yet when he came back from overseas -- Esoterica's Tilbury -- but he would quite likely not have disapproved. It isn't one of those ghastly aromatics, but an extra mature Virginia mixture. Quite suitable for teatime puffing. Having just finished a cup of tea, I went outside to smoke, as my apartment mate had come home.

There was a day and age when one would light up a pipe during one's tea, not afterwards. But those days belong to a hoary past. And I am very glad that my apartment mate doesn't smoke. Because in all honesty I am not fond of the odour of cigarettes.

No, I don't think that she would smoke a pipe. Too fussy, and old-man-peculiar. While I think she'd look right at home with a jaunty pipe in her mouth, with fags she'd probably go for Lucky Strike non-filters. They're an honest unpretentious ciggy.
But she's never smoked, and hates tobacco.
She tolerates my being a smoker.
As long as I'm outside.


My father looked quite dashing with that pipe. Suave. The bright young man back from the war. Even in later years he had that engaging adventurer look about him.
And the wiryness of an active man.

I look somewhat like him. Not enough.



And I strongly doubt that I could have flown over Germany for three and half years with a full load of bombs. An admirable man.

TOBACCO INDEX


==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

READING: A LOST ART

Two car-owners this morning got a ticket outside for not driving. The sign clearly says "no parking between 7 and 9 AM Monday because of street cleaning", and just minutes before the rotating broom vehicle turbulating the pavement dust came up the block, the meter maids cruised past, and noted down the offenders. That sign occurs several times. It is large. It looks like the sign in front of your building with different hours. The streetlighting works, so even in the dark of night it is visible, and legible, wherever you park. The other side is Tuesday.
The same routine will be repeated tomorrow. These are predictable events.

Not that I am particularly gifted with a capacity for schadenfreude, but there is a certain satisfaction in seeing this. Especially because I gave up driving many years ago. I am not a suburbanite at heart. A car is useful if you're outrunning the law, or moving to Modesto.
There is no convenient parking in the city.

I can read the signs. My imaginary vehicle does not park there.
Between the clearly stated hours for streetcleaning.

The inability to read and understand is widespread.

Two internet comments of note:


1): "Yet more proof that American "Christians" are in fact a cult of hatred and dominion over women, the LBTQ, and people of color."

2): "You're right. I live in San Francisco. Many pill popping sex tourists are arguably human."


These were part of the same comment string (about MAGA morons), and are somewhat connected, but I shall not bore you with demonstrating how the stream of consciousness there made both comments appropriate and sequentially logical. I approve of both messages.

I've always despised much of Christianity. Which, given that my family heritage was/is Dutch Calvinist (although many of us in the recent generations have been lax Anglicans), is not surprising. We know scripture, can sarcastically quote it when it's completely inappropriate to do so, are sneeringly cynical about the goo-faced faithful, and can recognize heresy from a mile away in the dark with one eye tied behind our backs. And boy do we disapprove.

Plus we're used to living among the heathens.

All of this leads, more or less, to my taking joy in deliberately smoking my pipe in front of signs on buildings that inform me that there is no smoking within twenty five feet. Clearly the sign is wrong. I am standing here, I am smoking. Quod erat demonstradum. The sign lied.
There IS smoking within that distance.

There has been smoking there in the past. I see cigarette butts.
There will be smoking there in the near future.
I may be there tomorrow too.


The last time someone asked me what my sign was, I told them "end roadwork". Which is a sentiment that I can fully get behind. And should be at every protest or demonstration. Especially when some idiot has a placard saying "stop the steel".
Though I might carry one saying "no smoking".
Go ahead, prove me wrong.


Most of this country is dumb as a fence post.
The "red states" especially.
Christian territory.

TOBACCO INDEX


==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================