FILLED WITH CHARITABLE THOUGHTS

A calm day. People happy that the heat wave seems to have ended. With a bit of luck, Autumn can now start. Dews. Damps. Fog. At least in San Francisco and nearby coastal areas. The smell of woodsmoke on the breeze.

Which probably means that everything to the north of here is on fire, and perhaps, as we were advised to do (by an "expert"), we should have raked the forest.

An elderly gentleman drifted by, smelling faintly of pooh.

Sometimes I am not fully vested in this.


The unpleasant news is that the Renaissance Fair is back, along with another one of San Francisco's Music Festivals for the people from the hippie generation. Traffice jams, probably the smell of pot, and stringy corpse-like fingers gyrating to the antiquated melodic stylings of graybeard wheezers who had their heyday years before I was even plotting high-seas piracy with my kindergarten classmates.

A two foot tall beardless Captain Blackbeard.

Let us enslave that bunch on the see saws!

And enjoy their pretty marbles for ourselves.

What do I remember of pre-school? Nutritious biscuits, milk, paints, and nuns. And the meanness of children. Which I see in strictly verbal form replayed by the senile Republican swine becoming vegetables in the backroom. Venomous old bastards. Paunches, shiny pates, and at least one of them smells ..... vaguely ..... disquieting.

Old age is wasted on them. As Patrick put it the other day, "they need to go back into the mines for twelve hours a day, that'll set 'em straight". I envision them pathetically pecking at the rock face with pickaxes too heavy to handle, weeping at their own ineffectiveness.
No watery gruel this evening unless they fill a barrow.

I can see myself, Indiana Jones-like, whipping the elderly miscreants.

Dammit, old fossil, did you forget to wipe?!?


I would have made a great nun. I am filled with very Christian disapproval.
Despite no iota of faith, or belief in the idiotic narrative.
These old fusspots need correcting.



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BIG SAINTLY ENERGY

Yesterday was a learning experience. I neglected to tell several deserving individuals to go congress themselves on the internet. Largely because I've reached the age where I do not wish to fight people who are rectums. I will simply ignore them until they either are wiser or have passed on. Let someone else rip their heads off.
After all, I can ghost them, while passive aggressively making fun of them on my blog or saying meanspirited things about them.

Or both. All of the above.

Basically my same response to the old intercoursers in Marin. With whom I must deal while at work. The gentlemen who use their spongy sit-upons more than their brains while huffing stogies in the backroom and pontificating ignorantly.

Right-wing cigar smokers.

AND INTERCOURSE THEIR STOGIES TOO

Today is a work day. I want you all to know that I am a ruddy saint, a goldarn fabulous solid gold diamond-tipped saint. With halo and bells and totes awesome saintliness.

Because I have not killed anyone yet.



I'm surprised no one has written a book about me.
Or lights candles and incense.
BSE, babies.



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RADIOACTIVE TERROR PIGS HAVE TAKEN OVER!

That title is unique. So I stole it from a doomsday article. And I feel we need to release the spider men to combat this menace. Because. For the sixth day in a row dammit the heat was a barrier. A high of 89 or 90 degrees, sapping appetite and energy, and leading to unruly scenes of nudity in one man's apartment where a single Dutch American disported himself grouchily in the buff while vociferating about inhumane conditions. In San Francisco.

Before going out to have a cup of Hong Kong milk tea tea and a pastry at a bakery, because after all why should I let a climatocaust derail my customary practices?

From the immortal corpus of German literature comes an apposite quote: "das ganze scheißhaus steht in flammen". Which, roughly translated, means 'vacate the premises and seek fresh air', or something. Very wise people, those Germans.
It is presently sixty degrees in Düsseldorf.
And raining.

Düsseldorf is a veritable paradise. I have just realized this.

AND, it's close to the Netherlands.


Due to the heat and circulatory issues, my calves and back are a pain in the gand. In fact, my entire rightleg is a pain. Probably shouldn't have left the house, but I enjoyed my tea time as well as a snack, and managed to dodge the tourists. Most of whom appear to be German, other than very big women who were obviously American. Big, BIG women.

The Germans at the next table decided to have seconds on the egg tarts, and also took a few of them to go. An admirable decision of which I approve. The egg tarts at that place are indeed superlative.

The big American women came in, looked around, and left.
Ain't nothing like this in Mississippi.
There's no bacon!



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JUST STUFF IT

Today Queen Elizabeth joined her ancestors. Which was not entirely unexpected. On Facebook a number of people are posting comments that, at the very least, can be considered opportunistic and snide.

They should shut up. Now is not the time. Stop being ungracious.

[Photo taken from newsfootage circa 1945. Copyright probably Pathé.]

The British monarchy is a symbol of continuity and endurance quite as much as it is a vestige of the middle ages, and as such represents much that is bright and good in modern England. And that is a lot.


Queen Elizabeth fulfilled her assigned roles admirably.
Britain and the Commonwealth were blessed.
As were their allies.



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BOXER TIME

Sometimes it is distinctly better to be a man than a woman. For instance, there are two people in this apartment, a male (me) and a female (her). We live in separate rooms. We share the teevee room, where both of our computers are. After she has gone to bed in her room, I can strip down to my boxers and laze about on the computer with much of my body mercifully cooling down from the hot weather. And without shocking my roommate by my immodesty.

Women never have boxers. Women rarely have boxers. Sometimes women do have boxers.
Whatever.

If she were to strip down to a hypothetical pair of boxers and ponce around the teevee room late at night it would be startling. Perhaps unseemly. Unladylike.

I have the liberty of being unladylike.

She, sadly, does not.

It's more something in her mind than anything else, because I have trained myself to look away unless a crazy person outside on the street at a safe distance so that there is no accidental eye-contact is making a public spectacle in this heat.

Such as poncing around bare except for boxers.



I shall be strutting around most of the time that I'm home today naked as a jaybird wearing boxers. Although I wonder why I have a compulsion to wear boxers when there is no one else here? It just seems right. Perhaps a question of self respect?


A young lady would of course have to wear bra and panties if she were wandering around the apartment naked. Even when at home. Especially at home. That's just what one does.


While at one's computer.



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MIRACULOUS BEANS

Food. It motivates. A club sandwich and fries followed two hours later with an old wife biscuit. Given what went into the club sandwich, that there were fries with it, there is lard in Chinese pastry dough, AND all of this was washed down with cups of milk tea (mmmm, sweetened condensed milk), it would have propably horrified my cardiologist. He was probably spinning in his office chair. It is a good thing that although he is Chinese American, he does not know what goes on in Chinatown. A very good thing.

Club sandwich: 公司三文治 ('gong si saam man ji'). Fries: 炸薯條: ('jaa syu tiu'). Old Wife Biscuit: 老婆餠 ('lo po bing'). Hong Kong Milk Tea: 港式奶茶 ('gong-sik naai-cha'). Condensed Milk: 煉奶 ('lin naai'). Office Chair: 辦公椅 ('baan gong yi'), 轉椅 ('juen yi').

[Note: while in this context 'gong si' (公司) means "club" or "association", an older meaning, usually it means "company". Fries are usually just called 'syu tiu', the "frying" (炸) is implied. Biscuit is as much a misnomer as cookie would be, it's a flaky pastry crust around a sweet filling. Condensed milk is usually a sweetened product, often not specified as such on the label in Asia. Office chair (辦公椅) almost looks like a task description in the classics; "manage public seat".]



豬油是很神奇的！

In a previous post I mentioned that pork grease is the soul of Shanghainese parched veggie rice (豬油是上海菜泡飯的靈魂 'jyu yau si seung hoi choi pou faan dik ling wan'). Which was incorrect and too specific; pork grease (豬油 'jyu yau') is almost certainly the soul of all Chinese food (豬油是中國菜的靈魂 'jyu yau si jung gwok choi dik ling wan'), period.
Not just vegetable rice soup(菜泡飯 'pou choi faan').

Jyu yau si han san gei di! Pork grease is amazing!


Questions: why is that infant staring at me in fascination? Is it because I'm white, or is it the fries? Why is that local born Chinese fellow at the table across the aisle talking to himself and repeating variations on the same five or six phrases in English? Mental? Why did that little girl wave at me in a friendly fashion? Do I look familiar? Why do most Americans put ketchup on their fries when everyone knows it should be hot sauce or peanut sauce?

Why is that old man obsessively sucking the red bean fragments out of the bottom of the glass that his iced drinkie came in? Sense of personal acievement? Sheer deliciousness?
Pleasure in irritating the spit out of his haunted and now berserk looking wife?

Another question: Is there an actual character that means 'pyek' in the dialect of Toishan? The most likely candidates are: 迫 ('pek'; persecute, oppress, force), 擗 ('pik'; beat, break off, cast away), 劈 ('pik'; chop, hack, strike), 擊 ('gik'; attack, assault), 踢 ('tek'; kick, kick away). Pyek in Hoisan seems to imply all of those.

I am obsessed with the term 靈魂 。 The first word shows whirling and a shaman with flaring robes underneath a rain cloud and precipitation, the second has a phonetic on the left side with a daemon on the right. Spirit, soul, spiritual part of something.

Smoked afterwards, while painfully stumbling through the antique district with my groceries. In hot weather my feet from the mid-thigh down feel like they came out of a war I don't remember. Throbbing, painful. Softened with a mallet.

You know, I'm not that keen on red bean ice drinkies. It's a mental thing. One of these days I'm going to have to try it. That old man spent over half an hour making those bottom of the bucket sucking sounds with his straw.


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AND PLEASE DON'T SING

It cooled down to the seventies after dark, and I left the house feeling much more human than when I had stumbled in over six hours earlier. And it promises to be cooler during the day on Wednesday.
Though having been fooled once -- the internet assured me that it would be mid eighties at most, and it turned out to be ninety five -- it may be optimism to assume accuracy.

Now, for the record, my feet still hurt, I was born to bellyache, and I wish to hurl blame at Republicans, Yuppies, Tourists, and the Bilderbergers for this horrible state of affairs.
Pointless, because only three of those things are actually evil.
But at least we got that out of the way.


There is a discomfort in my legs from several days of excessive heat that knows no bounds. Almost like everything between my sit-upon and my toenails is sick to its stomachs. Tonight was the customary pub-crawl with my friend the bookseller. Neither of us are excessive drinkers, and I don't drink alcohol at all. I had tea.

But first, a smoke.

There were no rats in Spofford. It is more brightly lit than before, and the little beasts are shy.
I miss my small disease-carrying friends. Are they all right? Are they going hungry?
Should I perhaps pack a hunk of cheese in my pockets?


A white man reeking of cheese would exite comment in Chinatown.
Which is where Spofford Alley is.


One thing that speaks favourably of the rats is that they do not sing karaoke.
That shows immense good taste and common sense.
Breeding.



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HEADING POSTERO-MEDIALLY IN THE DIRECTION OF THE CHIASM

Popped out of the house this morning for my eye doctor appointment, and got there forty five minutes early. It's an airconditioned building. This is relevant. Eye pressure checked, vision checked, cataract checked. Everything as fine as can be expected. The pressure in the left orb has stabilized at a safe level, thanks to Latanoprost. My optic nerves are bigger than normal.  And I might need cataract surgery in several years.

From Wikipedia: "Cataracts are most commonly due to aging but may also occur due to trauma or radiation exposure ... "

Must have been the radioactive gorilla in the lab.

I think that what she may have meant when she referred to the optic nerve was the retinas. Big ass retinas. BRE. Big Retinal Energy. They're big. BIIIG. I never really though about it before, now I can't get it out of my head.

Sexiest text on Wikipedia: "The optic nerve -- is composed of retinal ganglion cell axons and glial cells; it extends from the optic disc to the optic chiasma and continues as the optic tract to the lateral geniculate nucleus, pretectal nuclei, and superior colliculus."

[Also from that same Wikipedia article: "The optic nerve is composed of retinal ganglion cell axons and glia. Each human optic nerve contains between 770,000 and 1.7 million nerve fibers, which are axons of the retinal ganglion cells of one retina. In the fovea, which has high acuity, these ganglion cells connect to as few as 5 photoreceptor cells; in other areas of retina, they connect to many thousand photoreceptors. -- The optic nerve leaves the orbit (eye socket) via the optic canal, running postero-medially towards the optic chiasm, where there is a partial decussation (crossing) of fibers from the temporal visual fields (the nasal hemi-retina) of both eyes. The proportion of decussating fibers varies between species, and is correlated with the degree of binocular vision enjoyed by a species. Most of the axons of the optic nerve terminate in the lateral geniculate nucleus from where information is relayed to the visual cortex, while other axons terminate in the pretectal area ... "]

And now I know what Fundus Photography is.
眼底 ('ngaan dai'): Interior rear of the eye.
眼底张照 ('ngaan dai jeung jiu').
眼底照片 ('ngaan dai jiu pin').


TERMINOLOGY; THERE WILL BE A TEST:
Optic nerve: 視神經 ('si san king').
Optic chiasm: 視交叉 ('si gaau chaa').
Ganglion: 神經節 ('san king jit').
Optic tract: 視束 ('si chuk').
Photoreceptor cells: 感光細胞 ('gam gwong sai baau').
Eye socket (orbit): 眼眶 ('ngaan kwang');
* note that normally 眶 is pronuounced as 'hong'.



An hour and a half later I was at the hospital discussing results of the tests taken during the full physical (making sure I am not a zombie, daemon, or space alien ..... errm, blood, urine, tomography, sonography, and running uphill on a treadmill). Only two blocks away from my eye doctor's building, but I smoked the "pipe for visiting my eye doctor" in between.

The name is because I have it with me on every visit to the eye doctor.

It's round, and looks like an eye on a stalk.
I think it's appropriate.


Scarcely five minutes after I was supposed to be at my second appointmet, I was out for the day and heading to lunch. Showing up early often pays off, and I think many medical people appreciate it. It leaves time for kvetchy old folks who emphasize that they could have been doing something far more worth while why are they waiting good gracious why is everything so slow it's close to my nap time, and the crazy white people who want a horn installed in the middle of their forehead because they're channelling for a mythological beast that they were in a past life, or their most recent tattoo got infected.



Lunch was excellent, albeit much earlier than I normally eat.
By the time I left, the temperature was 95° Fahrenheit.
It was SUPPOSED to be barely over eighty! If that!
This is why air condition was relevant.
I'm blaming the yuppies.


Fahrenheit: 華氏溫標 ('waa si wan piu').



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TREASON CULT

In a truly righteous universe, Orange Squabbo would have been beaten to death by his parents or teachers before he even entered high school. Which conclusively proves that there is no god, and the Christian Fundamentalists are full of horsepuckey.
Further shown by their Mamon-like worship of the dude.

One sincerely wishes that he and they would shut up.

Just shutty.

Shut the motherloving F up.
Be silent, scumbags.
Hush already.



A polite reminder, in case you forgot: the treason states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.


By the way: Biden won.



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IT'S TEN DEGREES COOLER THERE

The plan was to hightail it out of here around mid-afternoon and have a snack and milk tea in Chinatown. And the plan vaguely circled around the concept of 春捲烤豬肉粉 -- Vietnamese spring rolls and grilled pork rice noodles, served cold -- with perhaps something cool and refreshing to drink, to fortify myself for a smoking session in a tourist free alley. The plan came to naught, because at that time the temperature outside was 95° Fahrenheit.

I like food, I like smoking a pipe afterwards, but I do not like heading out into an oven to wilt and pant far from my own front door. And although it would only be just across the hill, in this weather with high blood pressure meds coursing through my system AND arthritis in every joint or socket of my right leg, that's so far as to be a lifetime.

There's a Dutch song fondly reminiscing about burning sands in a lost country and a life filled with dangers. They are nuts, my people. I remember the countryside of North Brabant as green, verdant, wet. No burning sands. No scorpions. Seventy degrees during summer. Occasional rainstorms to add a note of welcome coolness.

I haven't seen a rainstorm in so long I would probably throw stones at it.

So I stayed home and made myself some 菜泡飯 ('choi pou faan'; Shanghai style vegetable and rice soup). Innovation: use a grilled sausage, chopped, as the meat element.
Plus some slivered green chili for the taste ante.

Didn't have any chives on the premises, so I omitted the chives. Salt, yes. And I added some dried dill. Also thinly sliced onion, just a little.

The procedure is simple. Parch some chopped vegetables with rendered porkfat in a hot pan (frequently from diced fatty pork sautéed with ginger till fragrant), seethe with ricewine or sherry, add stock and cooked rice, simmer a few minutes till it looks good. Eat.

豬油是上海菜泡飯的靈魂 ('jyu yau si Seung Hoi choi pou faan dik ling wan'): rendered pork fat/lard is the soul of Shanghai poached vegetable rice soup.
Quoted from the classics.



Walked around my own neighborhood for a while afterwards smoking my pipe. It had cooled down to eighty eight degrees by then. When I finished, my feet and calves felt like crap. Feverish and swollen.

As of this writing, it is ten degrees cooler in Shanghai.
It will get up to eighty eight later today.
It's still morning there.



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A DAY WITHOUT SPAM CALLS

Today is the perfect day for Chinese noodles and egg rolls for many Americans, because most of us live in crowded coastal urban environments and don't have back yards in which to barbecue and swill beer. And the nearest beaches are crowded and smell for all the world precisely like Grinder's Gym when the hulks are bulking.

A few Labor Day thoughts:

There is a great overlap between barbecue country and where the assholes live.

If it weren't for Mexicans and Chinese, Labor Day wouldn't exist.

We worship sugar with red food colouring.

Layers of fake cheese.



Sadly, none of my favourite places in Chinatown serve bacon cheeseburgers, and a number of them are closed on Mondays anyhow. The rest will probably be crowded around lunch time, packed at dinner. Because tourists and heat refugees are in town. I would really love a bacon cheeseburger, augmented by sugar with red food colouring and hot sauce today.

All of this is relevant because my apartment mate is off today, and I cannot smoke in the apartment. Like the heat refugees I will head to Chinatown, where I'll probably have a mid-afternoon meal somewhere quiet -- the nice thing about the regulars at a few places is that they thin out between lunch and tea time -- after which I'll find an alleyway for a nice pipeful of aged Virginias before desperately seeking a clean place to pee. In the evening it will still be pleasant outside in my neighborhood, and I'm far enough uphill that there should not be any holiday drunks clustering; they cannot stagger that far.


Tomorrow, everything returns to normal.
Well, except for the temperature.



And the spam calls. Dave from your friendly neighborhood airduct company, Shawn and Arthur with American Senior Benefits, Allison about my extended warranty, and others.
Mostly American Senior Benefits, about cheap burial insurance.
I'm on a list that seems to want me dead.
After I purchase.



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FLIES LAZILY BUZZING ABOUT

Sometime after midnight one wakes up to the sound of sirens, because in a heat wave some people don't sleep, and may drink too much. The street outside the apartment building isn't a war zone by any standard -- there's almost no one outside other than a rare dogwalker because Fluffy needed to poo -- but is more threatening than it should be. And one blesses the person who invented airconditioning, which allowed one to function normally at around seventy degrees for an entire day at around seventy degrees Fahrenheit while at work.

Until three years ago I didn't know we even had functioning air conditioning.

The two oldests coworkers are tough he-men who will happily put up with extreme conditions in summer and winter because they can take it unlike you pansies who wilt or freeze. Hah! They are not limp woossies! Manup, all of you!

Bloody Yorkshire men.


Proper hydration requires more tea, made weaker to compensate for the increased volume, and consequently more leakage. Along with air conditioning, good plumbing makes it possible to function normally for an entire day.

Years ago, for funsies, I would smoke the nastiest aromatic I could find just for the reaction of my purist coworker on Sunday, who would withdraw to the most distant part of the building with an anguished wail: "why are you DOING THIS to me?!!!" Howl, moan, whimper.


Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?


Because, Hector, it's hot, I'm bored, my feet hurt, and you have been far too gentle and humane to those senile Republican dickheads in the back room. I need entertainment.

Mmmm, delicious! Exquisite!


It actually tastes like a tropical swamp with a dead elephant fermenting in the mud, not too far off, but I'm really enjoying your tantrum.

Bleagh.




This apartment does not have air conditioning. It's in San Francisco, and most of the time that isn't necessary. Today is going to be extremely hot elsewhere, and many folks will visit the city for a respite from the temperatures.
I do not like crowds.



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DEEP THOUGHTS IN A HEAT WAVE

In discussing men who "go commando" -- meaning that they forego undies -- the roommate speculated on burning, chafing, skin wearing through, raw, painful, and severely damaged privates. And we both agreed that some men need that; it would help them control their bestial urges.

What I didn't mention is that for my people (Dutch Americans with a common sense bent, of solid upstanding severe Calvinist antecedents), that would be unnecessary.
We may be murderous, but we are not bestial.

NOTE: This holds even when the Calvinism as a religious pattern had waned to the point of non-existence four or five generations ago; it's a lifestyle and behavioural aesthetic. We are the cold fish at the orgy who remain fully dressed, and say stern things like "what's all this then", and "this is most unseemely", and "you are all going to hell".

I, personally, would not be caught dead at an orgy. Largely because if I were dead I could not drink in the shockingly Brueghelian or Goyaesque scenes of depravity for future reference or possibly blackmail.


Never having been invited to an orgy, this remains an intellectual conceit, of course.


No one organizes orgies based on cups of tea and pipe smoking. That is to say, when pipe smokers gather, there will be tobacco and very likely cups of tea, but there is no disrobing or unseemly behaviour. Provided that they are fond of clean tobacco, not aromatics.
If you smell rancid vanilla and raspberries, run away.
Ignore any proffered cups of tea.

The sixties and seventies may have been a wonderful time to be alive. Well, if we're ignoring patchouli, a world wide shortage of soap, laundry detergent, and carbolic, and the looming threat of the eighties, Ronald Wilson Reagan, and America's moronic fundamentalists.

As well as the proliferation of aromatics and herbal teas.
Polyester, skin tight bell bottoms, bad hair.


Actually, upon sober reflection, the sixties and seventies, AND the eighties, were an absolutely gawd-awful time.



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A OFF-PUTTING MILKY HUE

What really staggered me yesterday was that I did not see many more people poncing around wearing a tee-shirt and boxers. Of course, I do not know whether they had any underpants on at all under their shorts. I am glad I did not view them sitting down.

Some people are fishbelly white on all their previously unexposed parts. We white people probably do glow in the dark, as a few of my friends (who are of a pleasing hue between ivory and old meerschaum themselves) keep insisting.

Jeffy, who needs to be deprogrammed because he's drunk the Maggot kool-aid, has legs that are frighteningly dairy coloured. I've seen far too much of him these past few weeks, most especially his calves. Now that he's retired he keeps showing up indecently dressed. Which is a very white Marinite thing to do, and I wish he wouldn't, more than I wish he'd shut up about the outrage of the FBI executing a search warrant on the mansion of the fat oaf.

For reference, these two illustrations of meerschaum pipes:

Now, don't you agree that these would look better in boxers?
Plaid or paisley, whatever, I'm quite okay with either.
And that raid on Mar-A-Lago was justified.
The man remains a liability.
Cretinous fool.



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THE HELPFUL DIAGRAM

This blogger is a firm believer in visual aids. Many people benefit from a visual component to an explanatory text that helps throw everything into sharp relief and provides clarity. Newspapers and textbook publishers discovered this along time ago.

Even "narrative", such as might be the chosen format for billable hours on a lawyer's invoice for simple people -- work performed for a governmental agency, for instance -- is made much clearer with a helfpful graphic.

There is probably not a single subject on earth that does not benefit from a helpful illustration or a diagram.


As the example below clearly shows.

This is something I should print out, fold, and insert into my passport. It will streamline things at international airports, and make customs and immigration a breeze.

I recommend that you do the same, although if you are NOT a Dutchman (or Dutch American), you should probably insert the correct ethno-cultural identity for yourself.

Avoid the word 'Hobbit'. Some officials are Orcs.



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BLACK BEAUTIES

A product that looks like a bowling ball is available now. And I'm tempted, after seeing it at a market in Chinatown; the black beauty watermelon. I was initially taken aback by the name sign: 美黑人西瓜 ('mei haak yan sai gwaa'). The fruit itself lurked darkly in the bin.
A Satanic presence among the vegetable matter.

A new thing. I am curious. Crow-like.
But I don't really like melons.
And it's big.

Random thoughts while outside smoking, as a lagniappe: welcome to Fogtember. Now piss off you dogs and yakkity dingoes. Oh look, a silly person. Allergies. Dog poo. Beer bottle.

It must be really blazing inland.
The season of discontent.



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IT'S A BALLOONING ADVENTURE

Cholesterol? Good. Bloodpressure? Excellent. Treadmill test? Aced it, because I am a ruddy he-man and can grin stoically during the worst leg pain, gosh I'm butch. Arrived fifty minutes before my appointment, got dealt with thirty five minutes before I was due, and rolled out in time for an early lunch in Chinatown, followed by a pipe, early tea, and another pipe.

The treadmill test, also called a stress test, necessarily involves the leg. The right leg delights in presenting a whole variety of painful sensations, and will be dealt with.
It is a needy spoiled brat.

Got two more medical appointments before I can call it a day for the year. Eye doctor in the morning sometime next week, regular care physician around noon same day.

Cardiologist: 心臟科醫生 ('sam jong fo yi sang').
Optometrist: 眼醫 、眼科博士 ('ngaan yi', 'ngaan fo bok si').
Family care physican: 家庭科醫生 ('gaa ting fo yi sang').

These are abbreviated terms, though commonly understood.

Barring any unlikely bad news -- "sorry to tell you this old boy but a ten-thousand year old tree daemon has taken up residence in your arse and is devouring your liver, we have to operate immediately" -- the rest of the year should be an easy slide, apart that is from the peripheral angioplasty of the lower extremities, which is a simple in-and-out procedure.

Ten thousand year old liver-eating tree daemon: probably 萬年古(萬歲的)樹妖 ('maan nin gu (maan seui dik) sik gon syu yiu'), but an image search for that simply brings up health food, mooncakes, and the Cincinatti Bengals. Devouring the liver: 食肝 ('sik gon').

Angioplasty: 血管再成形術 ('huet gun joi cheng ying sut'); basically shoving a balloon on a flexible stick up the old artery and shouting boo to make stuff go away.
A ream and clean, as it were.

A catheter with a balloon at the tip goes into the artery in the groin or leg and wiggles around playfully, while the patient is immobilized and possibly wide awake.
The procedure might take all of forty five minutes.
Recovery as much as six weeks or so.
Probably far less.


經皮腔內周圍動脈成形術
['Ging pei hong noi jau wai dong mak cheng ying suet']
"Skin pass-through internal arterial-environment fix-dimensions procedure"


Am I looking forward to this? In a way yes, because the alternative is walking painfully and swearing under my breath in Dutch (my other native language) augmented by terms from various linguistic sources. Because after one or two blocks the damned right leg hurts. And I'd like full bouncy vibrant mobility back. On the other hand, the prospect of more medical intervention, which this is, does not thrill me. And neither does the inevitable lecture about the evils of smoking etcetera wich will come with it.



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CLEAN PANTS!

Later today I have an appointment to see my cardiologist. As part of the regular routine of proving that I am neither a zombie nor a hopping vampire. The full scale check-up happens once a year and is split between two clinics, the stress test (running on a machine with wires attached to my tits) takes place at the cardiologist's office. I'm seeing my regular doctor for discussion of the results of this, blood and urine tests, tomography, and ultra sound scans, sometime next week.


"Run, it's alive, it's alive!"


Naturally I expect to hear that I am not an evil supernatural entity.

I think I have been succesfully mimicking normal behaviour and facial expressions all these years, and silver doesn't turns black when I am near. And I put clothes on, frequently.

Reports that I am an evil undead bunny rabbit are false.

Or any case an outrageous exaggeration.


Naturally I will be wearing clean pants, I made sure of that. And I won't have lettuce stuck between my teeth. I often have clean pants, because I remember when I was little being told that if a nuclear holocaust happened and they found my radioactive corpse among the rubble wearing dirty trousers it would be horribly embarassing and I would never live it down.


Rabbit rabbit.



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