AMBLE TIME

Two failures of people's mental spellcheck struck me today. The first one is on the coffee machine at work: "please disguard spent pods". Mmm, okay? The second is on a tin of tobacco. "The 2012 Flake blend celebrates our going to market with the 4th Generation products. This 100% pure Virginia blend delivers a medium strength sweet taste and slight tones of citrus aroma. The Flake tobacco blen hes been given amble time in the pressing process for a slow and enjoyable smoke." Amble time? Amble time?!?

Very well. Amble.

Indeed, ambling is precisely what I shall do when smoking it tomorrow morning. Because the first pipe-full of the day is after a cup of coffee, while my apartment mate is fixing herself breakfast. One cannot smoke indoors when a small fierce Cantonese American woman is in the house. So one ambles around a bit outside growling at random strangers.
Provided it isn't raining.

It's good stuff. But I would not automatically associate it with amblitude.
Still, I shall amble. I do it gladly.

After she has gone to work it's a different story. Close her bedroom door, open windows, and plonk oneself down in front of the computer for a few hours. News, Wikipedia, superpaint. And a pipe. Which may or may not be filled with ambling tobacco.

Today I had two bowls of amblesome and amblicious flake. So it was a good day. Cold, but sunlit, no rain. Six cups of tea. Presently on my third cup of coffee. I'm wired, babies!


Mmm, these corn chips are seaweed flavour!
Plus ten percent daily sodium.
Taste the ocean!


There are presently screaming men in the backroom at work. I left my coworker who likes football to deal with them, and bailed out when my shift ended. You couldn't pay me.



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MAD MAX ATE HERE

Some people from Latin America like to visit the United States over winter break. Well, California. Where there are enough Spanish speakers that one can easily navigate the wild areas outside the cities without having to worry much about rabid white Christian nationalist savages. They probably don't visit the Midwest or South. Where if you see white Americans it's best to run for your life. If I travelled over the holidays, I would do something similar.
New York. Canada. Seattle. Portland. The places Trumpites fear to go.

Bigfoot country, rather than Bubba-stan.

Places with food as well as liberals. And where you can be reasonably certain there aren't grits, but there is hot chili sauce. Not that it's my life's mission to avoid grits, but there have been entire years when grits weren't on the menu, and I've survived perfectly well without them. Cooked grits a few times, threw the bin away one day when I realized that the rest of the container was long past its prime. They're decent with cheese, chilies, and bacon.
Much like taco chips and all of Texan "cuisine".

There are probably several eateries in San Francisco where grits are on the menu, because we don't want visiting red staters to starve. But I don't know where they are.

We're good that way.

Plus of course there's polenta. We joined the polenta craze briefly when it happened, and then kind of lost interest. It tasted much too Mississippi, probably. Like something General Lee would eat. Possibly while slogging through Delaware. Dunno, wasn't he supposed to have battled the British at Valley Fork or sumpin'?
Possibly he fought Scarlett O'Hara.


Sometimes the entire rest of the country sounds like total culinary nightmare country. Fried chicken, cornmeal sludge, and kool-aid soaked pickled cucumbers in one area. Casseroles, greasy deep-dish pizza, and baked beans everywhere else. A long indigestion road trip.

You're welcome.



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THAT SHOW FROM THE OLD DAYS

Something new to me: You have to be at least in your thirties to discover dead bodies. That seems to be the logical thing I get from half-assedly listening to my apartment mate critiquing a teevee show from back in the stone age. Twenties just won't cut it. The heroine in that show was moronic and irritating, far too immature.

I'm inclined to agree. Juveniles should never discover or stumble over deceased people. That's something only adults should do. The older the better. Super-annuated old fossils have much more in common with cadavers.

Given that work brings me into contact with elderly Republican hosebags, naturally I would think that. And I'm still somewhat staggered by the young lady I encountered several months ago who was studying to be an embalmer. She seemed happy at the prospect of eventually squirting the recently departed full of preservatives and plastic, and I don't think she even knew any of the old boys in the back room. Just a naturally sunny disposition, I guess.

The young are often overly optimistic. Reality and a sober view of the world usually don't manifest themselves until after graduation, sometimes years, after which hysterics and existential angst may kick in.

"I trained to become an embalmer, and the only dang employment I could find was in a corporate marketing department. What gives?!?"

Well, in a way, that's close.

Far too many college kids think that they should specialize in a field they love, like embalming, and end up bitterly disappointed in soul-crushing marketing jobs.
No cadavers, just zombies.


There are embalmers manqué coming out of the woodwork.
It's a dying field.


Kid, trust me, develop an affecting for marketing. Work at it, and eventually you'll find dead people all over the place, they just don't know it yet. Or go to the culinary academy.
We'll always need tattooed and pierced fry cooks.
Disillusioned, drunk, angry.
With knives.


Note: The illustration has nothing to do with this post. I drew it two days ago and I wanted to show it. The post itself was more or less inspired by listening to my apartment mate with half an ass, after a full day at work hearing someone detailing the sleazy hook-up attempts of a mutual acquaintance. Which could have been successful, if she hadn't been married and there with her husband, if he had not been surprised in mid-sleaze by his current crazy girlfriend (who is very possessive), if there had not been so many observers stirring up the cauldron, and if neither of them had been drunk. Yes, I was an unwilling witness. But the listener had not been there, and though quite uninterested somehow "needed" to hear all the dreary vulgar details.



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IT'S A BEAUTIFUL RIVER, BOB

Every year at this time on certain forums the plaintive cry is heard: "it's freezing out there, the heater in my garage is buggered, my wife won't let me smoke my pipe inside, I have relatives visiting for the holidays and I have to get away dammit how do you guys stand it?!?"

Indeed, I know how the poor fellow feels. Yesterday I smoked one pipe on the way back from the curry place, and another after teatime fully bundled up on the front steps mere inches away from the frigid downpour.

So I'm sympathetic to the suffering of that man.
Oh boy golly gee yes.


Naturally I do not show it. Instead, I respond with a statement much like the following: "yeah man, the wheather is unseasonable here too. Over eighty degrees. I usually have a pipe on the veranda of my bungalow looking out over the slow-moving Hooghly early in the morning. Distantly a peacock screeches. Probably on the river's opposite shore where the fields come down to the banks. The air-conditioning is out, electrical grid problems. Drongos and mynahs are foraging several feet away, they have gotten used to my presence. Lazily I lift the glass with sabja biji jala and take a sip. Mmm, quite refreshing. I am looking forward to mustard seed fish and rice for breakfast."

Hooghly river, river full of fish, and river of the eastern dream. Teeming with carp, and trout, and hilsa, and perch, and bream.
------ M. Python

It's a lovely fantasy. Warm weather, cooling drinkie, nice spicy shorshe ilish, a muddy tropical river. I'm sure that Bob in Michigan can sense my deep fellow-feeling for him stuck there in the horrible blizzard just south of the Canadian border. Where there's five feet of snow, the gas heater is on the fritz, and his relatives are super-swozzled on extra-strength egg-nog and holiday punch, setting fire to his comix collection to keep warm and yelling at him to stay the heck outside with his stinky dang tobacco, you heathen!

Today I'll be mostly smoking indoors. Admittedly in the same building as a bunch of odious Trump voters with stupid opinions, dammit, but inside, away from the rain, and reasonably warm. I'll ignore the senile gibbering. And the smells they generate.

Did I mention the drongos and mynahs?
Those are common there.
tropical birds.



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THE BESTIAL DINING PLEASURE

A popular tee-shirt reads "I got crabs at Fisherman's Wharf'. Humorously suggesting that the wearer enthusiastically performed unmentionable acts in a fit of touristic inebriation or wild abandon while away from his or her family at an event in San Francisco, with a human being, animal, or mutant, of either gender, dubious morals, and physical cleanliness. Which, having met numerous conventioneers and business visitors, I would definitely believe.

All of us here at Amalgamated Acme Crustacean Corporation are passionately committed to bringing you more arms, legs, claws, and carapaces than you can possibly consume. Which is why we wish to assure you that crabs, as such, are NOT sourced by misguided lascivious acts done while drunk, but bought at emporia on Stockton Street or out on Clement, using cold hard cash. Or cold hard credit cards. Either. Live at time of sale, it's up to you whether they perish on the block at time of purchase (whackity whack) or get slipped head first into a pot in the privacy and comfort of your home.


An acquaintance insists that suffering makes the flesh sweeter, and that therefore you need to rip off the legs to be added last. Personally I think that's utter balderdash and batshit crazy, as well as horribly cruel. The best is instant death in that pot of boiling water.

If you have them whacked at the store, you should sautée them with garlic, sweet tomatoes, and lots of chilipaste. Ketam tjabeh (辣椒蟹 'laat jiu haai''; chili crab), made with Dungeness crab (鄧杰內斯蟹 'tang kit noi si haai') instead of the usual mud crab (青蟹、鋸緣青蟹 'cheng haai', 'gui yü cheng haai'; scylla serrata) here in San Francisco, is intercoursing divine.

This is supposed to be a communal dish. A feast enjoyed with company. I would suggest that given how messy eating crab is, it would be far better to feast in private, alone, at the kitchen table under the brightly dangling light bulb, with lots of newspaper on the table, a roll of paper towels, and wash your face and hands at the sink afterwards. Eat all of it, leave no scraps. Those angry vegans you live with won't be home from their weird tofurky Christmas banquet followed by psychedelic mushrooms and ayahuasca for meaningfulness till much later, but they would be outraged and disgusted at the murder of an innocent animal for your bestial dining pleasure.


If your apartment mate or apartment mates are Cantonese American, they'll be perfectly fine with unaliving the crustacean. Just cook some of it with scallion, ginger, and black bean sauce, instead of so much chilipaste. That way they can have it too.


NOTE: after a lovely Pakistani lunch in a place filled with Muslims and various types and Chinese, we walked slowly home while I smoked a pipe. She then watched some drama teevee, and then retired to her room for a long nap.
It was a good Christmas.



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VICARIOUS CELEBRATORY PERCEPTIONS

Seeing as it's Christmas, it is fitting that for one day I do not angrily call for the slow agonizing dismemberment of certain people. And you know who you are. Enjoy it while it lasts. Here on the West Coast you still have fourteen hours. Of which less than seven will be light, the rest darkness. Gloom, the howling void, failing street lights, an unlit oncoming train barreling at you. The all-enveloping dank black of existential despair.


"If a little kid ever asks you just why the sky is blue, you look him or her right in the eye and say, "It's because of quantum effects involving Rayleigh scattering combined with a lack of violet photon receptors in our retinae."
------Philip Cary Plait


It's all about the little children, isn't it? The charming wee tykes that torment grown-ups and force them to wear talking fish hats at festive gatherings, one by one, so that those of us who see the handwriting on the wall will hide outside in the garden just beyond the field of vision through the plate glass windows of everybody else in the sun room where the feast was held nearly freezing our cojonus off while having two or three cigarillos until we see our chance and sneak back in to hide the damned piscine chapeau where she will never find it such as happened two decades ago. She's grown up now, at college on the East Coast, and the hat has undoubtedly been thrown out. I would still be traumatized if I were the type to harbour traumatization. Which I'm not.

Yesterday at some point my apartment mate heard a street person yelling up at a third floor window that the resident should get his or her raggedy ass down for the purpose of receiving something. Which sounds promising and Christmassy, doesn't it? Christmas is about gifts.
I wonder what the person with the raggedy ass was going to get.

That was, I believe, just after she left a Walgreens where a loud and monotously droning individual was showing off his stylish boxers and complete unfamiliarity with belts. The correct choice of male underwear can say "Christmas" like nothing else.

Like many men, I need to choose my undies better.
Pre-empt a raggedy ass invitation.


I pride myself, especially at this time of year, for not having a particularly raggedy ass.
Actually I have never thought about it, but now I can't get it out of my head.



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THE DEEPEST OCCIDENT

On Christmas Eve, the streets empty out and people head home. Which means that the few remaining pedestrians are either off their rocker or drunk. I observed a gentleman across the street arguing with a hypothetical person, while I was waiting for the bus. He was vehement, and strongly opinionated. And felt very much put upon. By the hypothetical person.

Two young ladies dressed scantily, like sexy dominatrix Santa, walked toward me, passed, and presumably kept on going, getting further and further away. I did not swivel my head to check. The Sfas Emes teaches that one has control over what one sees, or chooses to see, and what one hears or chooses to hear.

Consequently I can clearly remember the shade of red. All other details are hazy.
Maybe there were pom poms.
I'm not sure.


Sometime after I had left for Christmas eve dinner my apartment mate returned home from the graveyard, where she had gone to pay respects to certain relatives. I do not think that that is a firm part of Cantonese American Christmas tradition, just her personal innovation. It was raining. Her bus back had talkative crazy and smelly people on it; also not part of any Cantonese American tradition, just the luck of the draw on a cold wet Christmas Eve in San Francisco. My bus had two Muslim women passengers and their children, and a loud man dressed in glitter. A little earlier in the day I had seen 'Patches' (a raggedy angry local eccentric) on a different bus.

Many of the residents of San Francisco are Chinese or Latino. Most of the loonies here are painfully white. Little Asian and Hispanic kiddies must get a queer impression of American society, especially around the holidays.

"Mommy, why is that man talking loudly to no one?" "Hush, my precious, it is part of Anglo culture. Strange and mysterious indeed are the customs of Caucasians, particularly when they can see dead people!"

Whatever you do, don't pick sides in arguments involving people who aren't visible.
There is no right or wrong there, and nobody is a winner.
It isn't black or white. Just shades of grey.
Technicolour tie-dyed grey.

聖誕快樂，大家！




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GLAD IT DOESN'T SNOW HERE

It being the season for sugary pablum warm feelings, I suppose I should express tolerance and goodwill toward people. No. The category "people" would include individuals who, with the best intentions in the world, I wish all holy hell upon. And I sincerely hope this is the year their damned farm washes away in a flood, their plantation gets burned to the ground, their factory closes, and their kids get taken away by child protective services.

Oh, and I also hope they get sick from shitty cheese logs.


My message to most of the country is you eat too much, you smell bad, and your mom dresses you funny. And, speaking of your mom .....


One notable bright spot this year is that there are two British lads on the internet who make videos about American foods, some of them featuring their father, expressing delight and keen appreciation for many of our more berserk culinary items. Their dad is pleasantly surprised. That's the positive spin we need. It's entertaining, and heartwarming.

Nothing says Christmas, in a good way, better than British people eating.

Especially because they no longer eat what they used to.

Thank providence neither do we.

My apartment mate has suggested that if that Pakistani place is open we head over there on Christmas day for eaties. A splendid idea. No slaving over a steaming stove and a greasy flame, riding primitive conveyances to grandma's house over in the holler for rural jollification amids snow and ice and gloom and the fireplace being out and no running water or central heating, too much liquour, and various indigestibles prominantly featuring lard.
Simply good food, with plenty flavour, in a pleasing environment.

The last time we were there I paid. I excused myself as if to get some more garlic naan, and quickly forced the maître d'hôtel to accept my money. She saw what I was doing and rushed over to sabotage that effort, threatening violence to both of us if I didn't let her have her way. I'm somewhat larger, I was there first, and I pointed out that I was still convalescing from the medical procedure oh look there's a flying pink elephant!
So I won, barely, and I felt good about that.

I may have to gracefully acquiesce this time. Seeing as I have recovered from the leg thing as well as the flu (subclade K), she is a stubborn and strong-minded woman with belts and medals in martial arts, and I am, largely, a man of peace. Chicken, too.



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CHECKING THE LIST

The number of people who must be guillotined or firing-squadded on my list for when society breaks down keeps growing. Not surprisingly, it's mostly Republicans and Christians. And a few Jews. Not too many Muslims because in this country they're powerless and politically insignificant. Remarkably, it includes a few people who claim to be Hindus, which is a segment that has grown slightly over recent years.

There are also a few Dutch Americans on the list. Mostly from the areas where processed cheese is a thing. Christmas, as you know, is all about quantities of cheese. I may have mentioned that there is an excellent cheese shop three blocks from my dwelling.

I shall be going there very soon, while thinking kind thoughts about everyone who isn't rightwing, Christian, or reprehensible without necessarily being Christian. Quite a few Christians in the U.S., by the way, are anything but Christian.
Which is very Christian of them.

No, I shall not pray with you. We are enjoined by the Good Book, which surprisingly is filled with rapine, slaughter, incendiary events, and soft porn in the case of the Song Of Songs which is Solomon's (shir ha shirim asher lishlomo), to not participate in idolatrous rituals, superstition, witchcraft, and heretical behaviour.

That covers ninety percent plus of American religion. If there actually were a hell, much of the country would be going there. Probably right before or after an asteroid hit and wiped out the Midwest and the South. Which is devoutly to be wished.

I am looking forward to the cheese.

Sometime today, after participating selectively in the commercial frenzy traditional at this time of year, I shall enjoy a meal and a nice cup of milk tea away from seasonally insane people. Followed by a pipe filled with flue-cured leaf with smaller quantities of Perique and Kentucky fire-cured added. It will be very nice. It may trigger a few people who will wail from over half a block away "why are you doing this?" or "you're ruining my lungs!" or even in passionate fits of healthnut missionary fervor "that's BAD for you".

I'm partially deaf. So I shan't hear them.

Might even smile benevolently.

Which is deceptive.



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MANY LITERATE PEOPLE SMOKE PIPES

While at the bookstore one of the people there asked me where one could buy tobacco in this area. Well, there are extremely few places that have even halfway knowledgeable staff, as most "smoke shops" if they have anything tobacco-related at all specialize in cigars. Cigars are what pay the rent, salaries, and insurance. As well as special events.
I had put my pipe on the counter, which had prompted the question.

Note that about ten minutes before I entered the bookstore I had let the pipe go out, because one just doesn't step into a crowded business reeking of smoldering Virginia leaf.
It might offend a vegan.

So I told him. And also her. Because the woman next to him was curious too, and likewise indicated that she smoked a pipe occasionally. I also gave a short lecture, to the effect that Burley blends are soft but hit you in the jaw and gut because they have a tonne of nicotine. Virginias, like Tolkien and Sir Bertrand Russell prefered, are subtle and satisfying, if smoked slowly. Balkan blends -- think of William Faulkner and Clark Gable -- are complex and velvety, and trigger nearly every non-smoker for miles around.

[Virginias: largely pressed, and redolent of carotenoids. They should never be hot-boxed. Balkan blends: Latakia, which is smoke-cured, plus Turkish, on a basis of Virginia leaf. Rich and exciting. They smell like terpeneols. ]

And where can one smoke one's pipe?
Well, there's the problem.

William Cuthbert Faulkner (born September 25, 1897, passed away July 6, 1962) was one of America's most famous writers. He was often unnecessarily modest and self-effacing.
Among pipe-smokers he is lauded for being one of our most admirable fellows.

Sir Bertrand Russell was a Cambridge educated man, a well-known author and philosopher, and famous anti-imperialist enfant terrible, whose visage often graces an internet meme circulated by pipe-smokers; "I have a pipe therefore your argument is invalid."


Both men are Nobel laureates.


Good beans.



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SHORT GIRLS

Yesterday was 'National Short Girl Appreciation Day'. It was not a federal holiday, despite our president and his bestie having a well-known praedilection for a certain demographic, which is stubbornly denied by his enablers, but it really should have been. But if I were in charge, it certainly would be. Seeing as I myself am of average height for a male, you can understand that statistically half of the people I know are, in fact, shorter than me. And in the case of the distaff side, that proportion increases.

When I was fourteen my parents found out that I smoked. I got a long lecture from my mother about the evils of that pernicious habit, filled with medical fright terminology, and ending with the dire message that it would stunt my growth.

She chainsmoked Kent Filter Kings while giving me that lecture.
She had started smoking when she was in the Waves.
She had joined while in college.
She was four foot ten.

[Officially she was taller than that.]

My thought, after she told me about the growth thing, was, sarcastically, that it must have sabotaged her last growth spurt, huh. Naturally I kept my mouth shut, because you do not snark a woman capable of wrecking three jeeps and hitting a bullseye (not simultaneously), and it is best to listen gravidly with a blank potato face when your mother imparts staggeringly off-target "wisdom". Doing otherwise stunts your growth.

Photos of her in uniform show her looking stern, serious.
They do not illustrate her shortity.

In part, because of short girls, we won the war.

Sadly I had entirely overlooked the day yesterday. I had other things on my mind, and short girls were not part of the programme, did not feature significantly, were very largely not in view for most of that time. Perhaps because I tend to look straight ahead.


"We must look forward, not back, and upward, not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling, for freedom!"


Next year, unless something comes up, it will probably pass without me noticing again.

Note: both of my parents and all of their adult relatives served during the war. As did all their college classmates and friends. People of that generation did that, didn't puff themselves up or boast about it, just took it for granted. Bone spurs didn't exist.



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GLOOMTH

Woke up to the sound of rain. When I looked outside it was very moody, grey, half-lighted, and wet. Perfect for a day off, good weather for smoking a pipe, and quite acceptable in many ways, except that even though I despise the commercial frenzy of holidays I do have things to do in the lead-up to Jesusantagasm. Consequently I should probably rush out with a bag of laundry at the first sign of rain stopping. Nothing says "festive" like clean clothes, wine, and cheese.

Perhaps the sound of happy children filled with glee, for some people, but my work days are filled with grumpy senescent folks, and that's very similar, so I've satisfied whatever need that is, and look forward to having none of that for the next several days. Snow drifts, grandma's house, roaring fires, carolls? Meh. I live in San Francisco. We have rain, fog, a high wind advisory, and a warning of floods despite living so far up from the ocean that if I feel any wetness licking my toes everyone else is in serious trouble.


Grinchville is our happy place. Yesterday I saw some individuals dressed for a Dickens fest, tightly uncomfortable in antique clothing (with steam punk embellishments and frippery), and while I didn't sneer, because I enjoy all manner of goofty get-ups when other people do it, that isn't me, and those things are best enjoyed from a safe distance.
Bah, humbug, as they say.

Years ago, when I worked at the toy company, December was our quiet time. If retailers didn't have the final shipments of the season by the end of November, they were out of luck, and the last orders went out the warehouse doors first week of December or not at all. Sales reps would send gift baskets with Midwestern festive delicacies (cheeseballs covered with crumbled walnuts and pink and green sprinkles, dessert wine, sweet slabs of artificial maple sludge, etcetera), and the edible items would have been devoured, apathetically, by colleagues not flying to Alabama or Kansas till the last possible moment.

The design Department would roam the hallways with bottles of whiskey and strange items they had made that never hit production because they were too scary. The Christmas tree in the foyer would droop forlornly, someone would order pizza, and perhaps a troll in Marketing would be happily destroying a Santa Doll because there was, really, nothing else to do.

Nothing says Christmas season like rap music, bad candy, and a Parsee on the other side of the cubicle divider following cricket matches a world away where it's warm and summery. Let's have Indian food; I feel like samosas, paneer kofta, and cucumber sandwiches!



Over the past few days I've lit up several bowls of Greg L. Pease's Silver Jubilee, a mostly Virginia broken flake celebrating a quarter of a century of tobacco blending. It's a good first pipe of the day, medium strength, complex and velvety with a hint of creaminess from the soupçon of Fire Cured leaf. It's also great in the afternoon with a cup of tea while the yutzes in the back are yelling at the game. I heartily recommend it, but I don't want you to buy any because if you do there will be less for me, and that's what Christmas is all about: keeping me happy. Just remember that.



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PRAY FOR BRAIN

Okay, I'm off work for the next four days. Which is welcome. The weather is rainy and people are acting goofy. More so as it's so close to Christmas. Which, this year in San Francisco, is surreal because the electricity company has laid an egg. The Richmond district is without power till sometime tomorrow evening. No electricity means no lights or cold storage no ice or boba drinks no computers no recharging of cellular devices no wifi no mail order sales or purchases no internet no cashregisters no databases no functioning hotplates or autoclaves.

No sports on teevee. Not hot dogs. No cold beer.
Instead, desperation and madness.
No commerce.

Oh, and did I mention rain? Traffic doing goofy things at every intersection. Wild speeding, "we've gotta get outta her pah before law and order breaks down".
Gun the engine and head for the border.


Not that it personally effects me, as I live over on the other side of the city. Where we have a functioning civil society instead of grunting zombies roaming the darkened residental streets desperate for brains. Refugee bingo players hiding in church basements counting their few remaining bullets and wondering if they should boil the rain water.

But the gas lines still work, so coffee and tea are solid. Unless you have a modern kitchen. Then you're hosed. Join the grunting zombies.

The idea that the Richmond District has many zombies appeals to me.


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PREP SCHOOL JESUS FREAK

Apparently one of the old boys in the backroom is in the process of discovering Jesus. It's always disturbing when generic Wasp-Americans discover Jesus, because he almost always turns out to be a know-it-all asshole much like their inner-child. Can't these people be sanctimonious twits without being religious?

We Dutch have mostly mastered that skill. Why are we exceptional, and why can't the Anglos simply follow our splendid example? We can thoroughly disapprove of people entirely without being all religious about it. The martyrdom of Saint Boniface proves that; in a blessed event thoroughly backed by Radboud, king of the Frisians, we slaughtered Boniface and dozens of his followers, setting a relationship with snooty Anglo Saxons for eternity.


Not that I'm advocating that for John, but if he keeps getting preachy, there's no telling what might happen. WITHOUT. A. SINGLE. WITNESS.


He's been trying to convert one of the senile old gits. We can't have that. We already banned cellphones in the backroom, if needed we'll also ban religion. Especially at Christmas.

Kindly lay your Jesus horsepucky elsewhere.
This isn't a damned church, okay?

It's remarkable how many conservatives are adherents of the traditional gender roles version of Christianity without ever landing themselves a spouse. Almost as if they're compensating for their failure in that regard by doubling down.

John, if you ever do land yourself a weak-headed blonde bimbette, I shall be the first to wish both of you well and goodbye. I've seen the type you like, and I've heard the horror stories about your dating life.

Don't invite me to your bachelor party, okay? I would drive that party bus off a cliff. Just because.



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WELL LUBRICATED

Too busy today to eat lunch, so I fondly relished the memory of lunch yesterday. Meanwhile, my legs hurt (they often do) and I put up with madness and chaos. I am a very tolerant man, practically a saint. As are all of us who put up with holiday season psychopaths during their "feeling" frenzy at this time of year. Visions of sugar plums. And stupid reindeer. Strange confections washed down with festive liquour. Gifts of American industrial cheese.

And, speaking of cheese, pretty much the only things I need to buy before celebrating the fictional birth of the mercantile deity are wine and cheese.


We have many fine cheeses here in California, both domestic and imported. None of them are suitable for shaping into a goo-ball and rolling in crushed nuts. That's more of a centre of the country thing. You know, Idaho, Kentucky, and Ohio. Places like that. States on par with Iowa. The cultural Detroits of America. Where wine and cheese parties mean Kraft on a triscuit, washed down with crackling rosé.

There is coincidentally, a lovely cheese shop three blocks away from my dwelling. A splendid selection. Curated by passionate professionals who can both spell and pronounce terms.
No need to mention their name, you probably have your own favourite curd emporium around the corner from where you live also, if you live in San Francisco.

If you don't live here, knowing the name won't do you any good.
Don't be sad. It's no use. Consider moving.

Lunch yesterday was a slice of pizza. With hot sauze splurted on top. It hit the spot. Not divine or exquisite, but good. Reminded me of my misspent youth when I was in college.
The right balance of salt, grease, and cheapness.

Effortless floating elegance, in a way.

Sometimes, just so-so pizza is a benison for the soul.



Today's food, in order: Mediocre breakfast pastry. A mealy cookie. A slice of cake with preservatives, artificial flavours, and something to give it a shelf life till mid-February.
And, once I got home, a beautiful French-style pear pastry.
Nine cups of caffeinated beverage since dawn.



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SMELLS LIKE SALT AND GINGER

One of the things on the programme for the week after Christmas is food that has nothing to do with the season. Comfort food. Unfestive and unpretentious. And something which I would have a hard time persuading any of my coworkers to eat. Steamed salt fish pork patty. My coworkers, some of whom are splendid people, are all rather Anglo. And salt fish is anything but Anglo. Southern Chinese. Indonesian, Malay, South East Asian, and Indo-Dutch.

There are a number of foods that with all the goodwill in the world are just not part of the Anglo foodworld. They'll try extreme things like durian and fried sambal dishes, plus adventurous things, unique exotic things. Delicacies and rare treats.

Steamed salt fish pork patty is none of those things. It's home cooking. What your auntie made when you stayed over for dinner, or what you had at that corner eatery where the cute girl worked. Something you made when it was raining outside and had been coming down in buckets for the past two or three days. The ingredients were at the convenience store next to the fridge with the Coca Cola, Vitasoy, and Watson's. The fatty pork was in the ice chest with the slide top. There was a time when every shop had hanging salt fish. Because it was, truly, both ubiquitous and essential. Plus Pearl River Bridge soy sauce. As well as Good Companion Cigarettes, Gold Leaf, and Winston ("real American taste").
Embassy and Craven A, for the Britishly inclined.

Steamed pork patty is not a period dish, not one of those things fondly remembered from the fifties and never eaten since then. It's timeless, accepted, easy to make, and can be made often. It just is. Side or main. 鹹魚蒸肉餅。Haahm yü jing yiuk beng.

Mostly Hong Kong and Quangzhou (香港同廣州). But that really is universal.

Dinner time is after dark, and it will be raining in SF.
It's twenty degrees warmer there than here.



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I ALSO HAVE A WELL-KNOWN BIAS

One of the things that's now showing up on social media is videos of clergymen chasing government goons out of the church. Yes, I know that these are largely done using AI, but they're still lovely. The Italian American delicatessen owner shouting at them to vaffanculo is also nice. One gets the distinct impression that the tide is turning. Also, that the tiresome old rightwing pricks, when I'm at work tomorrow, might be "subdued". One rich techno-yuppie Persianate Turk puddingface, two alcoholics of whatever religious or ethnic origin, two episcopalians of low morals, a moron who used to be Irish and Catholic, two Jews of convenience, and a few others.

All of whom are also invited to vaffanculo.


'Tis the season for all of them to go vaffanculo. As well as drink themselves to death because they'll be off work and nobody loves them. Not even the women who married them.

Suburbanite white meal ticket types.

Marin County.

Tomorrow will be my first day back after having the flu for over a week. So I wonder how many of the elderly rightwing hosebags will be out sick, possibly hospitalized. Being myself just about filled to the gills with Christian love and forgiveness, I hope it hits them badly.
And that there is no room at the ICU for them or their horrid wives.

This season's flu variant is anomalous, and was unexpected. So the flu shot sensible people got earlier in the year is not as preventative as some previous years. Still, if you did get the vaccine, at least you're protected against that strain. Those gentlemen have in the past few years become typical far-right sceptics, and in addition to not getting a flue shot, have not gotten recent covid boosters, or RSV shots. Or even pneumonia vaccines PCV13 and PPSV23. Because after all, what the heck do doctors know?
Science has a well-known leftwing bias.



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LIKE A DUTCH UNCLE THIS MORNING

Ever since they banned indoor smoking in many places in Amsterdam, one of the joys of that city is that the café terraces are now open twelve months of the year, with windscreens, stout awnings, and space heaters at all four corners. You may enter and enjoy the entirely smoke-free interior by passing through a dense crowd of happy locals outside enjoying fresh air and cigars. Likely the only people inside are the people who work there and some tourists from California. Every else is outside. Reading. Talking. Drinking. Chatting. Caffeining it up to a fare-thee-well. Dark shag. Aromatic pipe tobacco. Cigars made from Besuki filler tobacco, Varinas for spice, and Sumatra wrapper leaves.

It is presently only three or four degrees colder over there than here. With far greater public sanity and general happiness. Oh, and they have health care, better education, and a much longer life-span, because they are a first world country. Top notch.

By comparison, the United States really is a shit hole.
Just thought you should know that.


What would really improve this place is far fewer Christians, greater literacy, no Texans or mental defectives from Idaho, Oklahoma, and Utah, plus better substance treatment programmes and religious cult deprogrammers for red staters.
Oh, and someone please shut that treasonous orange hosebag and his coconspirators and pandering obsequiant kiss-butts up. We really did not need half an hour of petulant whining from the oval office yesterday evening, or Mike Johnson sputtering indignantly that his own people hate his guts and no one wants to play with him. Yes, both of you are the children of the milkman, and your daddy never loved you. You neither, Don Jr. and J.D.

A café terrace with windscreens and space heaters, where a hypothetical Dutch American could sit and read the Eindhovens Dagblad or Gazet van Antwerpen while smoking and enjoying a hot beverage would be really ideal right now.
Perhaps an order of bitterballen.

You know, Don, your daddy really effing despises you. You're not half the man your sisters are. Damned coke fiend. Also, there is no discrimination against white men. Have you looked at the South? Proof positive that totally incompetent white men, all else being equal, still get the biggest slice of cake. The congressional delegation from that swamp proves it.
There is no other reason why Tommy Tuberville got elected.
The less said about Louis Gomert, the better.
Bunch of wankers.

Lindsey Graham? A pimp lackey.

Never should have let any of those heretics settle here. The place was fine with nothing but perfectly disagreeable Dutch Calvinists quarrelling among themselves, none of those blasted Baptists, Fundamentalists, Methodists, or snake worshipping idolatrous heathens speaking bad English trying to solve everything with the laying on of hands, damned prayer breakfasts, and weird Christian witchcraft. Should have burned everything from Charleston down to the Gulf of Mexico when we had the chance.

Complete exceptions, of course, for Morganton and Little River in South Carolina, as well as Saint Martin's Parrish, Louisiana. Some mighty fine pipe tobacco comes from there.
Yes, they still eat grits and crap, but nobody's perfect.
Currently puffing Chenet's Cake, by C&D.
Thank you, Jeremy. It's lovely.




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