The apartment mate was in song when I arrived home. Something horrible from a musical. But, seeing as I had already heard white marketing types celebrate the season with karaoke, I was desensitized. Nineteen fifties musicals are bad; nineteen eighties rock and or roll is far, far worse.
If ever I fall in love again, it will likely be with someone who doesn't sing.
Instead, she'll offer me crumbly lemon cookies. Or something like that.
While we shelter in the darkened apartment from the rain.
THE IMAGINED TENSE
See, her auntie is off visiting that handsome sailor in Macau or Long Beach, she's been tasked with feeding the cat or watering the potted plants, and given how wet we were, she had no choice but to invite me in for a hot beverage. Saying goodbye with a kiss at the door just didn't seem right.
Auntie's apartment is kind of old-fashioned. That couch must date from the fifties. It's in remarkably good shape. The hallway mirror cabinet is probably pre-war. They made things better in those days.
The kitchen is a work of art. Glass-paned wall-cabinets, a four-burner older than either of us, and a smooth counter-top. Back steps and utility balconies that look out over rain-darkened gardens and an airwell open to the south-west, old paint, and that area where the cats fight.
And then, to my horror, she'll start humming some rock and roll.
Not The Eagles, man, I hate The Eagles!
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
SAN FRANCISCO CHINATOWN ALLEYWAYS
As you know, I head over to Chinatown regularly to have either a late lunch or an early tea, sometimes dinner. After which, because my apartment needs four hours of complete non-smoking with windows open to ventilate so that my apartment mate Savage Kitten does not kvetch, I will wander around for a bit with a pipe and a full load of tobacco.
Chinese people on the streets do not, for the most part, mind smoking. Many of the older men enjoy tobacco, as do a small number of the ladies. Their children, naturally, are modern Americans and probably loathe the habit, but they're still respectful towards their seniors and too polite to run around screaming about the looming anti-Christ or witchcraft while gathering faggots to burn the offender when someone lights up in their purely accidental vicinity, unlike the office-workers and suburbanites in the financial district.
Who are convinced that they have rights dammit, but no one else does.
Even if San Francisco downtown smells like pollution.
Sewer, pissoir, and freeway combined.
Scream, baby, my sidewalk!
Kill the heretic.
Grants Tobacconist (now out of business) on Market Street bent the scholars at the beauty academy three floors up permanently out of shape. There are now several hairdressers whose studies were put on hiatus because of the psychological trauma they endured there when the faintest whisps of tobacco sent them into panics oh the poor babies.
"Thank you SO much for RUINING my lungs!"
You're very welcome, ma'am.
It's a pleasure.
Did I mention three lanes of slow moving high exhaust traffic? Or the deranged people in every other doorway, some of whom haven't been medicated in years? How about the meth-freak twitching halfway down the block? Naked man under an old rug? Daytime drunk?
But me you bitch about.
I get it.
Anyhow, that's not a likely set of reactions in Chinatown, except from tourists, who usually stay on Grant Avenue because everything else scares them. Unless they visit the one alleyway that has a fortune cookie factory, where there is also a Christian mission in case they want some spiritual restoration: Ross Alley.
There are never any tourists in Trenton Street, around the corner from Y Ben Lau (now a "wellness" clinic and library, extension of the Chinese Hospital) between Jackson and Pacific, and you seldom see them in Beckett or Wentworth either, though there are some hip Caucasians who live in an SRO on the latter. You might spot one or two down on Commercial, because it is picturesque and easy to find, being between the Eastern Bakery on Grant and R & J Lounge on Kearny.
If I've had snackipoos at the dim sum counter on Stockton, I will often head over to Hang Ah, pause for a while watching whoever is playing Tennis at willie 'Woo Woo' Wong, then either head over to Spofford (mahjong parlours) or Waverly (not really an alley, and herds of Germans with informative guides tromp through during the season), before circuitously going further down hill and ending up watching rickety old people playing cards just outside the perimeter of Portsmouth Square (on Walter Lum, between Clay and Washington), within the boundaries of which smoking is not allowed in English.
INFORMATIONAL INTERSTICE
Grant Avenue: 都板街 'du baan gaai'; metropolitan plank street.
Ross Alley: 舊呂宋巷 'gau leui sung hong'; old Luzon lane.
Trenton Street: 登頓街 'dang duen gaai'; thresh-gather arrangement street, which slopes past Ping Yuen. Y Ben Lau: 會賓樓, a defunct restaurant, where in a yet earlier incarnation of that space I took three Shanghainese girls for dim sum. I cannot remember the name it had then, but my guests loved the food.
Chinese Hospital: 東華醫院 'dung waa yi yuen'; east China medical court. Beckett Street: 白話轉街 'baak-waa juen gaai'; vernacular turning street; formerly Bartlett Alley. Wentworth Place: 德和街 'dak wo gaai'; moral harmony street. Commercial Street: 襟美慎街 'kam mei san gaai'; lapel beauty caution street. Hang Ah Alley: 香亞街 'heung ya gaai'; fragrance street, after a parfumerie that once was located here. Willie 'Woo Woo' Wong Playground: 黃顯護球場 'wong hin wu kau cheung', named after a local sports hero. Spofford Alley: 新呂宋巷 'san leui sung hong'; new Luzon lane. Waverly Place: 天后廟街 'tin hau miu gaai'; heaven empress temple street, though the Matsu Temple on Beckett is more commonly known than the Tin Hau shrine nowadays. Tin Hau and Matsu (媽祖'maa jou'; maternal ancestor) are considered the same deity. Germans: 德國人 'dak gwok yan'; ethics country person. Eastern Bakery: 東亞餅食公司 'dung ya bing sik gung si'; east Asia biscuit food public manage. Public manage ('gung si') means company, biscuit foods obviously are baked products such as cookies and pastries. The Eastern Bakery is more commonly know as 東亞餅家 'dung ya bing kaa'; East Asia Cake Family (餅家 means bakery). R & J Lounge: 嶺南小館 'ling naam siu kwun'; southern China minor establishment, deservedly one of the best known restaurants in Chinatown, where you take your snooty out-of-town relatives who aren't easily impressed. Kearny Street: 乾尼街 'gan nei gaai'; dried nun street.
Stockton Street: 市德頓街 'si dak duen gaai'; market harmony arrangement street. Portsmouth Square: 花園角 'faa yuen gok'; flower garden corner. Walter U. Lum Place: 林華耀街 'lam waa yiu gaai'; forest (surname) China glory street, though 花園街 (flower garden street) is more common; it used to be Brenham Place. Clay Street: 企李街 'kei lei gaai'; tiptoe-standing plums street. Washington Street: 華盛頓街 'waa sing duen gaai'; illustrious abundance arranged street. English (language): 英文 'ying man'; brave writing.
- - - - -
There are good places for milk-tea on Waverly Place, Washington, and Pacific right where Beckett ends. They know me there because all three places are part of my ambit, usually before filling my pipe.
If I'm heading to the cigar bar of an evening, I will often pass by the dancing ladies in the park on my way. Middle-aged Chinese women dance somewhat better than young hipsters, but not remarkably so.
Unlike the hipsters, however, they enjoy doing it without petulantly seeming to demand that you watch. Which I don't.
Dancing Chinese women.
In a park.
WHAT'S THE POINT?
To conclude, here's a text that perfectly encapsulates my feelings about tourists and suburbanites:
1:1 "What's the point of visiting San Francisco if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea "Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home" and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling bacon cheese-burgers and Sierra Pale Ale and Red Bull and calamares plus two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they "overdid it on the first day." 1:2 "And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellevues and Continentals with their modern international luxury roomettes and draught Sierra Pale Ale and Red Bull and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they're acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into queues." 1:3 "And if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night the hotel has a bloody cabaret in the bar, featuring a tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners."
2:1 "And adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhoea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel and once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman ruins to buy Orange Fanta and melted ice cream and bleeding Sierra Pale Ale and Red Bull and one evening you visit the so called typical restaurant with local colour and atmosphere and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing "Torremolinos, Torremolinos" and complaining about the food, "It's so greasy isn't it?"" 2:2 "And you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and Dr. Scholl sandals and last Tuesday's Daily Express and he drones on and on about how Donald Trump should be running this country and how many languages Jeb Bush can speak and then he throws up Sierra Pale Ale over the Cuba Libres." 2:3 "And sending tinted postcards of places they don't realise they haven't even visited to "All at number 22, weather wonderful, our room is marked with an 'X'. Food very greasy but we've found a charming little local place hidden away in the back streets where they serve Sierra Pale Ale and Red Bull and cheese and onion crisps and the accordionist plays 'Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner'."
3:1 "And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried BEA-type sandwiches and you can't even get a drink of Sierra Pale Ale because you're still in England and the bloody bar closes every time you're thirsty and there's nowhere to sleep and the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ash-trays." 3:2 "And they keep telling you it'll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland and has to take some Swedes to Serbia before it can load you up at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning." 3:3 "And you sit on the tarmac till six because of "unforeseen difficulties", i.e. the permanent strike of Air Traffic Control in Paris, and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at 8, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody's swallowing enterovioform tablets and queuing for the toilets and queuing for the armed customs officers, and queuing for the bloody bus that isn't there to take you to the hotel that hasn't yet been finished."
4:1 "And when you finally get to the half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel Del Sol by paying half your holiday money to a licensed bandit in a taxi you find there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the taps, there's no water in the bog and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet." 4:2 "And half the rooms are double booked." 4:3 "And you can't sleep anyway because of the permanent twenty-four-hour drilling of the foundations of the hotel next door, and you're plagued by appalling apprentice chemists from Ealing pretending to be hipsters, and middle-class stockbrokers' wives busily buying identical holiday villas in suburban development plots just like Esher, in case the Democratic candidate wins the election, and fat American matrons with sloppy buttocks and Hawaiian-patterned ski pants looking for any mulatto male who can keep it up long enough when they finally let it all flop out."
5:1 "And the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that the raging cholera epidemic is "merely a case of mild Spanish tummy", like the previous outbreak of Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half London and decimated Europe, and meanwhile the bloody Guardia Civil are busy arresting sixteen-year-olds for kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under nineteen who doesn't like Franco." 5:2 "And then on the last day in the airport lounge every one's comparing sunburns, drinking Asti Spumanti and Red Bull and buying cartons of duty free designer crap and using up their last Euros on horrid dolls in Spanish National costume and awful straw donkeys and bullfight posters with your name on "Ordoney, El Cordobes, and Brian Pooles of Norwich" 5:3 "And 3-D pictures of the Pope and Kennedy and Franco." 5:4 "And everybody's talking about coming again next year and you swear you never will although there you are tumbling bleary-eyed out of a sardine-packed antique Iberian airplane ..... "
Monty Python was right about so many things.
A profoundly formative influence.
And a philosophy.
Watneys Red Barrel is unavailable here.
Which is a good thing.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Who are convinced that they have rights dammit, but no one else does.
Even if San Francisco downtown smells like pollution.
Sewer, pissoir, and freeway combined.
Scream, baby, my sidewalk!
Kill the heretic.
Grants Tobacconist (now out of business) on Market Street bent the scholars at the beauty academy three floors up permanently out of shape. There are now several hairdressers whose studies were put on hiatus because of the psychological trauma they endured there when the faintest whisps of tobacco sent them into panics oh the poor babies.
"Thank you SO much for RUINING my lungs!"
You're very welcome, ma'am.
It's a pleasure.
Did I mention three lanes of slow moving high exhaust traffic? Or the deranged people in every other doorway, some of whom haven't been medicated in years? How about the meth-freak twitching halfway down the block? Naked man under an old rug? Daytime drunk?
But me you bitch about.
I get it.
Anyhow, that's not a likely set of reactions in Chinatown, except from tourists, who usually stay on Grant Avenue because everything else scares them. Unless they visit the one alleyway that has a fortune cookie factory, where there is also a Christian mission in case they want some spiritual restoration: Ross Alley.
There are never any tourists in Trenton Street, around the corner from Y Ben Lau (now a "wellness" clinic and library, extension of the Chinese Hospital) between Jackson and Pacific, and you seldom see them in Beckett or Wentworth either, though there are some hip Caucasians who live in an SRO on the latter. You might spot one or two down on Commercial, because it is picturesque and easy to find, being between the Eastern Bakery on Grant and R & J Lounge on Kearny.
If I've had snackipoos at the dim sum counter on Stockton, I will often head over to Hang Ah, pause for a while watching whoever is playing Tennis at willie 'Woo Woo' Wong, then either head over to Spofford (mahjong parlours) or Waverly (not really an alley, and herds of Germans with informative guides tromp through during the season), before circuitously going further down hill and ending up watching rickety old people playing cards just outside the perimeter of Portsmouth Square (on Walter Lum, between Clay and Washington), within the boundaries of which smoking is not allowed in English.
INFORMATIONAL INTERSTICE
Grant Avenue: 都板街 'du baan gaai'; metropolitan plank street.
Ross Alley: 舊呂宋巷 'gau leui sung hong'; old Luzon lane.
Trenton Street: 登頓街 'dang duen gaai'; thresh-gather arrangement street, which slopes past Ping Yuen. Y Ben Lau: 會賓樓, a defunct restaurant, where in a yet earlier incarnation of that space I took three Shanghainese girls for dim sum. I cannot remember the name it had then, but my guests loved the food.
Chinese Hospital: 東華醫院 'dung waa yi yuen'; east China medical court. Beckett Street: 白話轉街 'baak-waa juen gaai'; vernacular turning street; formerly Bartlett Alley. Wentworth Place: 德和街 'dak wo gaai'; moral harmony street. Commercial Street: 襟美慎街 'kam mei san gaai'; lapel beauty caution street. Hang Ah Alley: 香亞街 'heung ya gaai'; fragrance street, after a parfumerie that once was located here. Willie 'Woo Woo' Wong Playground: 黃顯護球場 'wong hin wu kau cheung', named after a local sports hero. Spofford Alley: 新呂宋巷 'san leui sung hong'; new Luzon lane. Waverly Place: 天后廟街 'tin hau miu gaai'; heaven empress temple street, though the Matsu Temple on Beckett is more commonly known than the Tin Hau shrine nowadays. Tin Hau and Matsu (媽祖'maa jou'; maternal ancestor) are considered the same deity. Germans: 德國人 'dak gwok yan'; ethics country person. Eastern Bakery: 東亞餅食公司 'dung ya bing sik gung si'; east Asia biscuit food public manage. Public manage ('gung si') means company, biscuit foods obviously are baked products such as cookies and pastries. The Eastern Bakery is more commonly know as 東亞餅家 'dung ya bing kaa'; East Asia Cake Family (餅家 means bakery). R & J Lounge: 嶺南小館 'ling naam siu kwun'; southern China minor establishment, deservedly one of the best known restaurants in Chinatown, where you take your snooty out-of-town relatives who aren't easily impressed. Kearny Street: 乾尼街 'gan nei gaai'; dried nun street.
Stockton Street: 市德頓街 'si dak duen gaai'; market harmony arrangement street. Portsmouth Square: 花園角 'faa yuen gok'; flower garden corner. Walter U. Lum Place: 林華耀街 'lam waa yiu gaai'; forest (surname) China glory street, though 花園街 (flower garden street) is more common; it used to be Brenham Place. Clay Street: 企李街 'kei lei gaai'; tiptoe-standing plums street. Washington Street: 華盛頓街 'waa sing duen gaai'; illustrious abundance arranged street. English (language): 英文 'ying man'; brave writing.
- - - - -
There are good places for milk-tea on Waverly Place, Washington, and Pacific right where Beckett ends. They know me there because all three places are part of my ambit, usually before filling my pipe.
If I'm heading to the cigar bar of an evening, I will often pass by the dancing ladies in the park on my way. Middle-aged Chinese women dance somewhat better than young hipsters, but not remarkably so.
Unlike the hipsters, however, they enjoy doing it without petulantly seeming to demand that you watch. Which I don't.
Dancing Chinese women.
In a park.
WHAT'S THE POINT?
To conclude, here's a text that perfectly encapsulates my feelings about tourists and suburbanites:
1:1 "What's the point of visiting San Francisco if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea "Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home" and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling bacon cheese-burgers and Sierra Pale Ale and Red Bull and calamares plus two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they "overdid it on the first day." 1:2 "And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellevues and Continentals with their modern international luxury roomettes and draught Sierra Pale Ale and Red Bull and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they're acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into queues." 1:3 "And if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night the hotel has a bloody cabaret in the bar, featuring a tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners."
2:1 "And adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhoea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel and once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman ruins to buy Orange Fanta and melted ice cream and bleeding Sierra Pale Ale and Red Bull and one evening you visit the so called typical restaurant with local colour and atmosphere and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing "Torremolinos, Torremolinos" and complaining about the food, "It's so greasy isn't it?"" 2:2 "And you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and Dr. Scholl sandals and last Tuesday's Daily Express and he drones on and on about how Donald Trump should be running this country and how many languages Jeb Bush can speak and then he throws up Sierra Pale Ale over the Cuba Libres." 2:3 "And sending tinted postcards of places they don't realise they haven't even visited to "All at number 22, weather wonderful, our room is marked with an 'X'. Food very greasy but we've found a charming little local place hidden away in the back streets where they serve Sierra Pale Ale and Red Bull and cheese and onion crisps and the accordionist plays 'Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner'."
3:1 "And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried BEA-type sandwiches and you can't even get a drink of Sierra Pale Ale because you're still in England and the bloody bar closes every time you're thirsty and there's nowhere to sleep and the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ash-trays." 3:2 "And they keep telling you it'll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland and has to take some Swedes to Serbia before it can load you up at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning." 3:3 "And you sit on the tarmac till six because of "unforeseen difficulties", i.e. the permanent strike of Air Traffic Control in Paris, and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at 8, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody's swallowing enterovioform tablets and queuing for the toilets and queuing for the armed customs officers, and queuing for the bloody bus that isn't there to take you to the hotel that hasn't yet been finished."
4:1 "And when you finally get to the half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel Del Sol by paying half your holiday money to a licensed bandit in a taxi you find there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the taps, there's no water in the bog and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet." 4:2 "And half the rooms are double booked." 4:3 "And you can't sleep anyway because of the permanent twenty-four-hour drilling of the foundations of the hotel next door, and you're plagued by appalling apprentice chemists from Ealing pretending to be hipsters, and middle-class stockbrokers' wives busily buying identical holiday villas in suburban development plots just like Esher, in case the Democratic candidate wins the election, and fat American matrons with sloppy buttocks and Hawaiian-patterned ski pants looking for any mulatto male who can keep it up long enough when they finally let it all flop out."
5:1 "And the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that the raging cholera epidemic is "merely a case of mild Spanish tummy", like the previous outbreak of Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half London and decimated Europe, and meanwhile the bloody Guardia Civil are busy arresting sixteen-year-olds for kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under nineteen who doesn't like Franco." 5:2 "And then on the last day in the airport lounge every one's comparing sunburns, drinking Asti Spumanti and Red Bull and buying cartons of duty free designer crap and using up their last Euros on horrid dolls in Spanish National costume and awful straw donkeys and bullfight posters with your name on "Ordoney, El Cordobes, and Brian Pooles of Norwich" 5:3 "And 3-D pictures of the Pope and Kennedy and Franco." 5:4 "And everybody's talking about coming again next year and you swear you never will although there you are tumbling bleary-eyed out of a sardine-packed antique Iberian airplane ..... "
Monty Python was right about so many things.
A profoundly formative influence.
And a philosophy.
Watneys Red Barrel is unavailable here.
Which is a good thing.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
SOMEBODY MISSED HER TRUE CALLING
Necessary background: Savage Kitten is my apartment mate. We are not romantically involved. We've been friends for a long time. Years ago I would come home to find her watching Valley of the Dolls', which is a very bad musical. It has several songs which are quite horrid. "I'll Plant My Own Tree" is one of those, but not the only one.
She memorized the lyrics.
All of them.
Yesterday was Savage Kitten's birthday. She stayed home.
It was one of my days off. I didn't get to smoke.
Normally, on my days off (which fall on week days), as soon as she has toddled off to work, I sneck her door, throw open the windows, and light up. First pipe of the day, strong coffee, and I'm good to go.
Yesterday I did indeed have strong coffee.
She sings.
I got to hear several songs from Oklahoma, South Pacific, Guys and Dolls, Paint Your Wagon (feh!), and Annie Get Your Gun.
Plus something from The Pirates of Penzance.
And Valley of the Dolls.
The worst song yesterday was "Bloody Mary Is The Girl I Love".
Yes, Savage Kitten was in great high spirits. No, I've never wondered if the apartment mate might be just a little bit crazy. But suffice to say that South Pacific was hardly what the Badger wanted in the morning.
It is extremely likely that she will be borrowing a disc of South Pacific from the library soon.
I had to explain what betel nuts were.
Help. I am being threatened.
And I cannot smoke.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
She memorized the lyrics.
All of them.
Yesterday was Savage Kitten's birthday. She stayed home.
It was one of my days off. I didn't get to smoke.
Normally, on my days off (which fall on week days), as soon as she has toddled off to work, I sneck her door, throw open the windows, and light up. First pipe of the day, strong coffee, and I'm good to go.
Yesterday I did indeed have strong coffee.
She sings.
I got to hear several songs from Oklahoma, South Pacific, Guys and Dolls, Paint Your Wagon (feh!), and Annie Get Your Gun.
Plus something from The Pirates of Penzance.
And Valley of the Dolls.
The worst song yesterday was "Bloody Mary Is The Girl I Love".
Yes, Savage Kitten was in great high spirits. No, I've never wondered if the apartment mate might be just a little bit crazy. But suffice to say that South Pacific was hardly what the Badger wanted in the morning.
It is extremely likely that she will be borrowing a disc of South Pacific from the library soon.
I had to explain what betel nuts were.
Help. I am being threatened.
And I cannot smoke.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
A WONTON POINT OF VIEW
Two comments underneath a post about food, separated by years, disagree with each other and demonstrate several generations of enmity. They almost encapsulate the insurmountable differences between the two sides, and why irrational hatred frequently remains part of a culture.
The post was about wonton.
Wonton (雲吞) are, in their most perfect form, little poached shrimp and pork dumplings floating in a broth, sometimes with fresh wheat noodles added. And sometimes bakchoi and charsiu, for extra oomp.
There's a recipe here if you want to make them at home.
The key to a truly Cantonese broth is dried flounder (左口魚 'joh hau yü'), by the way. Dried seafood is a far more southern flavouring in Chinese cuisine than northern. And, by some standards, northern cooking is the poorer because of that.
OPPOSING SIDES
The two comments are below. The first was left nearly five years ago, the second was waiting for approval this morning.
Zheng Xie said…
Dried fish? Huh, typical. Probably stinky for words. I'll stick with steamed dumplings.
Mandarin people are insignificant said…
Not surprised that a Northern scum would say that. The only reason you cannot stand the nice smell of this is because you are too attached to your smog. No wonder China is going up shit creek.
[End cites.]
Other than giggling while gleefully hitting 'publish' on that second comment, other thoughts immediately came to mind.
Such as:
How very un-American! A controversial statement about the north-south divide among us Yanquis would engender a hundred-plus comment string filled with bile and vituperation within a day, not just two comments in five years.
My own sympathies are rather the opposite of what they would be about our own north-south divide, in that our deep south is comprised mostly of despicable monsters and subhumans, whose culture is vile and base, and whose political points of view are repulsively Fascist.
Whereas Chinese northerners are not as refined and broadminded as their countrymen in the south, and more rigid besides.
Southerners speak Cantonese, Northerners speak Mandarin. The areas where neither tongue is native are the wild and hairy boundary zones, although Shanghai is an anomaly and weird besides.
Shanghainese make the best steamed dumplings.
Please note that in this context steamed dumplings (蒸水餃 'jing suei gaau') are not dimsum (點心), which are strictly Cantonese and prove the superiority of the cuisine of Hong Kong and Canton, but the little dough pockets filled with minced pork, chives (or cabbage) and garlic often eaten as a snack or street food in northern China, especially when the weather is cold and something comforting is required.
Best with a generous dab of chili paste.
Anyhow, far be it from me as a Caucasian to take sides in what is clearly a regional and ethnic rivalry, despite the evident superiority of Cantonese food to almost anything Mandarin speakers can produce.
It wouldn't be fitting. Perhaps even considered rude or out of place, although many Mandarin speakers don't know what that is.
Nope. Stepping aside. I'm neutral.
Got no dog in this fight.
AFTERWORD
It's been rather beastly cold these past few days. Perhaps what a man needs on a day off is a plate of dumplings at the only Shanghainese restaurant in Chinatown. Perfect for this weather.
韭菜豬肉水餃 ('gau choi chyu yiuk suei gaau').
That, plus a pot of hot tea.
Mid afternoon.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
The post was about wonton.
Wonton (雲吞) are, in their most perfect form, little poached shrimp and pork dumplings floating in a broth, sometimes with fresh wheat noodles added. And sometimes bakchoi and charsiu, for extra oomp.
There's a recipe here if you want to make them at home.
The key to a truly Cantonese broth is dried flounder (左口魚 'joh hau yü'), by the way. Dried seafood is a far more southern flavouring in Chinese cuisine than northern. And, by some standards, northern cooking is the poorer because of that.
OPPOSING SIDES
The two comments are below. The first was left nearly five years ago, the second was waiting for approval this morning.
Zheng Xie said…
Dried fish? Huh, typical. Probably stinky for words. I'll stick with steamed dumplings.
Mandarin people are insignificant said…
Not surprised that a Northern scum would say that. The only reason you cannot stand the nice smell of this is because you are too attached to your smog. No wonder China is going up shit creek.
[End cites.]
Other than giggling while gleefully hitting 'publish' on that second comment, other thoughts immediately came to mind.
Such as:
How very un-American! A controversial statement about the north-south divide among us Yanquis would engender a hundred-plus comment string filled with bile and vituperation within a day, not just two comments in five years.
My own sympathies are rather the opposite of what they would be about our own north-south divide, in that our deep south is comprised mostly of despicable monsters and subhumans, whose culture is vile and base, and whose political points of view are repulsively Fascist.
Whereas Chinese northerners are not as refined and broadminded as their countrymen in the south, and more rigid besides.
Southerners speak Cantonese, Northerners speak Mandarin. The areas where neither tongue is native are the wild and hairy boundary zones, although Shanghai is an anomaly and weird besides.
Shanghainese make the best steamed dumplings.
Please note that in this context steamed dumplings (蒸水餃 'jing suei gaau') are not dimsum (點心), which are strictly Cantonese and prove the superiority of the cuisine of Hong Kong and Canton, but the little dough pockets filled with minced pork, chives (or cabbage) and garlic often eaten as a snack or street food in northern China, especially when the weather is cold and something comforting is required.
Best with a generous dab of chili paste.
Anyhow, far be it from me as a Caucasian to take sides in what is clearly a regional and ethnic rivalry, despite the evident superiority of Cantonese food to almost anything Mandarin speakers can produce.
It wouldn't be fitting. Perhaps even considered rude or out of place, although many Mandarin speakers don't know what that is.
Nope. Stepping aside. I'm neutral.
Got no dog in this fight.
AFTERWORD
It's been rather beastly cold these past few days. Perhaps what a man needs on a day off is a plate of dumplings at the only Shanghainese restaurant in Chinatown. Perfect for this weather.
韭菜豬肉水餃 ('gau choi chyu yiuk suei gaau').
That, plus a pot of hot tea.
Mid afternoon.
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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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CIVILIZATION REQUIRES HOT BEVERAGES
Much to the distress of cat-lovers everywhere, there is no such thing as kitty kibble with real lobster. Pure honest to goodness gmo-free no-gluten ORGANIC lobster. Feline American Princesses NEED lobster chunks in cream.
This thought came to me while I was preparing fermented black bean sauce meat-balls with mustard stalks yesterday. There wasn't an actual demand from any of the stuffed animals for wholesome organic lobster (non-vegan) at that moment, but I felt an aura of need.
This is a business opportunity for the astute entrepreneur. America's rich-bitches will leap at the opportunity of feeding their beloved pets the purest poached Maine lobster, for a truly happy pussy and glossy fur.
Why isn't there a gourmet aisle in the petfood section?
The spoiled wealthy must spoil their cats.
Not just the icky chihuahuas.
Another thought that came to me while cooking was that if either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz becomes president of the United States, we'll have to burn this mother down. We will have failed as a nation.
Our Christian xenophobes won't see it that way.
They're one step removed from the Klan.
A fervidly Christian organization.
Represented in Congress.
Most of the truly weird things in this blog are brought to you by caffeine.
I fixed myself a strong cup of coffee upon returning home last night, I'm already well into my second cup this morning.
Throughout the day I swill tea.
The industrial age could not have happened without caffeine.
Nor the entire twentieth century.
Keep the soy-hazelnut latte freaks away from me.
I spend way too much time in Marin.
People are special there.
Entitled.
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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
This thought came to me while I was preparing fermented black bean sauce meat-balls with mustard stalks yesterday. There wasn't an actual demand from any of the stuffed animals for wholesome organic lobster (non-vegan) at that moment, but I felt an aura of need.
This is a business opportunity for the astute entrepreneur. America's rich-bitches will leap at the opportunity of feeding their beloved pets the purest poached Maine lobster, for a truly happy pussy and glossy fur.
Why isn't there a gourmet aisle in the petfood section?
The spoiled wealthy must spoil their cats.
Not just the icky chihuahuas.
Another thought that came to me while cooking was that if either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz becomes president of the United States, we'll have to burn this mother down. We will have failed as a nation.
Our Christian xenophobes won't see it that way.
They're one step removed from the Klan.
A fervidly Christian organization.
Represented in Congress.
Most of the truly weird things in this blog are brought to you by caffeine.
I fixed myself a strong cup of coffee upon returning home last night, I'm already well into my second cup this morning.
Throughout the day I swill tea.
The industrial age could not have happened without caffeine.
Nor the entire twentieth century.
Keep the soy-hazelnut latte freaks away from me.
I spend way too much time in Marin.
People are special there.
Entitled.
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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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Monday, December 14, 2015
FESTIVE BOB
Here's a tune appropriate for the season, and religious too! It is sure to appeal to the Christian element among my readers, as well as Fundies, Protestants, Muslims, Jews, and even many Musicians.
Eclectic, and eucumenical!
It's got it all.
HALLE-BUGGERY-LUJAH
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc5q142NFkA.]
I figure this ought to satisfy the religious types.
At least for the rest of the xmas season.
Because it mentions Jesus.
AND, huzzah, it's all about Bob.
Someone will be happy.
Oh, what fun.
By the way: if you're going to walk your dog at night, perhaps while smoking a cigar, there's a place behind his rosebushes where he can't see you. Just in case you want to spy on him (he's so paranoid he expects it), OR have no inclination to pick up after Rover.
Dog poo is good for roses.
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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Eclectic, and eucumenical!
It's got it all.
HALLE-BUGGERY-LUJAH
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc5q142NFkA.]
I figure this ought to satisfy the religious types.
At least for the rest of the xmas season.
Because it mentions Jesus.
AND, huzzah, it's all about Bob.
Someone will be happy.
Oh, what fun.
By the way: if you're going to walk your dog at night, perhaps while smoking a cigar, there's a place behind his rosebushes where he can't see you. Just in case you want to spy on him (he's so paranoid he expects it), OR have no inclination to pick up after Rover.
Dog poo is good for roses.
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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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CHICKEN IN CHINATOWN
One evening last week I was on Waverly Place when I saw something ahead of me. Slowly, pensively, and thoughtfully, a live rooster paced in the middle of the road, surveying the land. One does not expect to see a live rooster wandering on Waverly, and, in truth, it scarcely wandered, but did not deviate much beyond the middle of the road and the centre of the block. A helpful passerby shooed it to the sidewalk when a car approached. It then paced in a gravid and considered manner a step or two here, a step or two there, staying in front of same the shopfront.
Occasionally it would venture back into the street.
Only to be herded back to the sidewalk.
Passers-by, you understand.
I observed for about forty five minutes. When you meet a rooster who is in danger of being run over, morally he becomes your responsibility.
Can't just leave him there, what if something happens?
Being apathetic is NOT the answer.
On the other hand ....
It's a bird.
Poop.
I also had plans for the evening, and it was unlikely that the cigar-bar would welcome a random rooster, even a very well-behaved one.
It's not like an argument could be made that it was a seeing-eye bird, necessary for a heretofore unannounced physical impairment.
Really, one just cannot walk into a bar with a rooster.
Surely the animal rights folks would object if the bird was exposed to pipe smoke (mine) and cigar smoke (all other patrons).
I intended to enjoy at least two pipe-fulls.
Aged Virginia with a touch of Burley.
This presented a quandary.
So I watched.
Several people did a double take. One or two started up with an 'eep!' Waverly Place is smack-dab in the middle of the largest concentration of Toishanese in the country, and one can safely assume that almost every one of the older people had seen live fowl back in the old country, as Toishan is a country district. But one does not normally expect to encounter a strutting cock on Waverly Place.
Other folks gave the bird a wide birth, or stopped and stared.
A young couple took several cell-phone photos.
One girl started taking selfies with it.
Obviously, I had more entertainment from the reactions that people had to Mr. Feathers than his mere dignified presence could ever give. Almost everybody was flabberghasted by encountering a calm though clearly baffled farmyard creature in the middle of Chinatown.
Probably a lucky runaway.
DOES ANYONE WANT THIS BIRD?
Finally a white guy came up, asked "does anybody want him", and when we all demurred, he scooped the bird up and tucked him comfortably into the crook of an arm. I complimented him on his new companion.
Some of us stroked it, before he took his charge back to his single-room occupancy hotel one block over. He did mentioned that he hoped the rooster wouldn't wake up his fellow-tenants every morning.
He would keep his drapes closed all day.
His folks owned a farm near Stockton, and he knows all about roosters. He'll make sure that it's happy and well-fed. And he's a vegetarian, so there's no reason to worry about 'that'.
Chickens can live a very long time.
It's a heavy responsibility.
About six pounds.
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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Occasionally it would venture back into the street.
Only to be herded back to the sidewalk.
Passers-by, you understand.
I observed for about forty five minutes. When you meet a rooster who is in danger of being run over, morally he becomes your responsibility.
Can't just leave him there, what if something happens?
Being apathetic is NOT the answer.
On the other hand ....
It's a bird.
Poop.
I also had plans for the evening, and it was unlikely that the cigar-bar would welcome a random rooster, even a very well-behaved one.
It's not like an argument could be made that it was a seeing-eye bird, necessary for a heretofore unannounced physical impairment.
Really, one just cannot walk into a bar with a rooster.
Surely the animal rights folks would object if the bird was exposed to pipe smoke (mine) and cigar smoke (all other patrons).
I intended to enjoy at least two pipe-fulls.
Aged Virginia with a touch of Burley.
This presented a quandary.
So I watched.
Several people did a double take. One or two started up with an 'eep!' Waverly Place is smack-dab in the middle of the largest concentration of Toishanese in the country, and one can safely assume that almost every one of the older people had seen live fowl back in the old country, as Toishan is a country district. But one does not normally expect to encounter a strutting cock on Waverly Place.
Other folks gave the bird a wide birth, or stopped and stared.
A young couple took several cell-phone photos.
One girl started taking selfies with it.
Obviously, I had more entertainment from the reactions that people had to Mr. Feathers than his mere dignified presence could ever give. Almost everybody was flabberghasted by encountering a calm though clearly baffled farmyard creature in the middle of Chinatown.
Probably a lucky runaway.
DOES ANYONE WANT THIS BIRD?
Finally a white guy came up, asked "does anybody want him", and when we all demurred, he scooped the bird up and tucked him comfortably into the crook of an arm. I complimented him on his new companion.
Some of us stroked it, before he took his charge back to his single-room occupancy hotel one block over. He did mentioned that he hoped the rooster wouldn't wake up his fellow-tenants every morning.
He would keep his drapes closed all day.
His folks owned a farm near Stockton, and he knows all about roosters. He'll make sure that it's happy and well-fed. And he's a vegetarian, so there's no reason to worry about 'that'.
Chickens can live a very long time.
It's a heavy responsibility.
About six pounds.
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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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Sunday, December 13, 2015
WHAT HOLIDAYS MEAN
Little Martha LOVED the Christmas season. And Easter. And though she was only seven years old, she knew exactly why. It was because of chocolate. There was more chocolate riotously flung around during those two times than the entire rest of the year, enough for a little girl to score a supply which would keep her fairly happy during the dry season.
She couldn't wait until she was old enough for Valentine's Day.
More chocolate!
She also wanted other people to have chocolate, because she was a very considerate little girl, but she was very practical-minded. There's a limited amount of available chocolate at any given time, so it made sense to ensure one's own supply before worrying about someone else.
Chocolate, she was sure, was life.
Life and meaning.
And, if chocolate was life, it made sense to budget for street people.
A candy bar given to the local crazy man was clearly a very good thing, and she made sure that at least a few times a week she could contribute.
It was what morally justified her own consumption.
A necessary indulgence.
Many street people had benefited from her generosity, but she did such things quite naturally, and did not feel especially proud of it.
Everybody must have chocolate!
But it did mean that she required a bigger allowance.
And sometimes she made that suggestion.
It seldom worked, though.
LET US ALL THEOBROMINATE!
Sometimes she wished that all other holidays would be celebrated with chocolate. Martin Luther King, Saint Patrick's Day, Cinco De Mayo, Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Pentecost, July Fourth, Labor Day, Columbus, Halloween, and Thanksgiving.
She was sure that when she grew up, she'd become a marketer or politician, and make it happen.
That warm thought kept her happy when there was a scarcity of chocolate.
She could not imagine a world without chocolate.
That would be so sad!
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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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She couldn't wait until she was old enough for Valentine's Day.
More chocolate!
She also wanted other people to have chocolate, because she was a very considerate little girl, but she was very practical-minded. There's a limited amount of available chocolate at any given time, so it made sense to ensure one's own supply before worrying about someone else.
Chocolate, she was sure, was life.
Life and meaning.
And, if chocolate was life, it made sense to budget for street people.
A candy bar given to the local crazy man was clearly a very good thing, and she made sure that at least a few times a week she could contribute.
It was what morally justified her own consumption.
A necessary indulgence.
Many street people had benefited from her generosity, but she did such things quite naturally, and did not feel especially proud of it.
Everybody must have chocolate!
But it did mean that she required a bigger allowance.
And sometimes she made that suggestion.
It seldom worked, though.
LET US ALL THEOBROMINATE!
Sometimes she wished that all other holidays would be celebrated with chocolate. Martin Luther King, Saint Patrick's Day, Cinco De Mayo, Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Pentecost, July Fourth, Labor Day, Columbus, Halloween, and Thanksgiving.
She was sure that when she grew up, she'd become a marketer or politician, and make it happen.
That warm thought kept her happy when there was a scarcity of chocolate.
She could not imagine a world without chocolate.
That would be so sad!
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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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YOUR MODEST PROPOSALS
One or several readers think that I should date Liza Minnelli. Despite our not knowing each other, and living a thousand miles apart. For some reason they consider Ms. Minnelli perfect for me.
In lieu of the hypothetical twenty year old Cantonese girl someone else brashly suggested.
I do not know which of the two is more unsuitable. Liza Minnelli is nearly a generation older, and has a wealth of show business experience, as well as a social crowd in which someone like me would be out of water, and could have naught to contribute.
A twenty year old Cantonese girl comes from a milieu in which I am an oddity. Highschool!
Well, if she's Cantonese American, probably college already, but most people don't really grow up till a few years after getting their degree.
And though I speak Cantonese, it is not my first language, nor even my second or third. My pronunciation is atrocious, and I'm far better at listening in than at contributing bupkes to the conversation.
Which, upon further consideration, might be the motive that brings one party to suggest "Cantonese girl" and the other side to nominate Liza Minnelli. The prospect of me being tongue-tied may appeal to them.
No offense to Ms. Minnelli, but a Cantonese girl is far less likely to have arthritis or chronic vertigo. And "Cantonese girl" is a fairly large set of people, whereas the category "Liza Minnelli" contains only one person. Consequently, while the idea of me dating a Cantonese girl may be hugely inappropriate, it is more realistic than suggesting Ms. Minnelli.
I would venture that it should not be limited to just those two options. There should be more candidate profiles, and the idea of me NOT dating anyone at all is, unfortunately, an uncomfortable reality.
I need further input and more realistic choices from my readers.
I note, by the way, that neither Cantonese girls or Liza Minnelli have participated in the discussion. That might possibly be because they consider me beneath them, but more likely because they are quite unaware of the decisions being made on their behalf.
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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
In lieu of the hypothetical twenty year old Cantonese girl someone else brashly suggested.
I do not know which of the two is more unsuitable. Liza Minnelli is nearly a generation older, and has a wealth of show business experience, as well as a social crowd in which someone like me would be out of water, and could have naught to contribute.
A twenty year old Cantonese girl comes from a milieu in which I am an oddity. Highschool!
Well, if she's Cantonese American, probably college already, but most people don't really grow up till a few years after getting their degree.
And though I speak Cantonese, it is not my first language, nor even my second or third. My pronunciation is atrocious, and I'm far better at listening in than at contributing bupkes to the conversation.
Which, upon further consideration, might be the motive that brings one party to suggest "Cantonese girl" and the other side to nominate Liza Minnelli. The prospect of me being tongue-tied may appeal to them.
No offense to Ms. Minnelli, but a Cantonese girl is far less likely to have arthritis or chronic vertigo. And "Cantonese girl" is a fairly large set of people, whereas the category "Liza Minnelli" contains only one person. Consequently, while the idea of me dating a Cantonese girl may be hugely inappropriate, it is more realistic than suggesting Ms. Minnelli.
I would venture that it should not be limited to just those two options. There should be more candidate profiles, and the idea of me NOT dating anyone at all is, unfortunately, an uncomfortable reality.
I need further input and more realistic choices from my readers.
I note, by the way, that neither Cantonese girls or Liza Minnelli have participated in the discussion. That might possibly be because they consider me beneath them, but more likely because they are quite unaware of the decisions being made on their behalf.
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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, December 12, 2015
WHAT WERE YOU LOOKING FOR?
Looking at my blogstats it becomes apparent that readers of this blog are not a homogeneous blob, but can be differentiated into various demographics, not all of whom would be people I could get along with in real life. A blog, naturally, is at best merely a reflection of reality. At worst, it becomes a whelter of whiny voices disagreeing with previous statements, rather like a case of multiple personality disorder.
No multiple personality disorder here, boyos, I am stark raving sane.
How about you?
FISH
A while back I wrote an essay about the differences between herring and mackerel, which always pulls in readers from England. I cannot figure out why that is. Maybe they don't eat fish very often over there.
Cite:
"Like herring, mackerel is fine and fatty, but while the meat of herring is rather buttery, that of mackerel is oily. There is, consequently, a profound difference in mouth-feel, especially when raw. Because of this, and differences in texture and density, the fish can spoil quickly; it must be eaten soon after capture. For sushi, a mild cure to prolong edibility is common - which precisely explains why I am fond of mackerel sushi. To me, taste-wise, it strongly echoes Dutch-style herring, which is also lightly cured. There is even a similarity of appearance, though the flesh looks softer and less glistensome, and has a yellower hue. It is close enough, and hence very nice."
End cite.
I like both. Perhaps, if I were British, I would not like either.
[Fill in your own snarky comments about British cuisine here.]
They are single-subject readers.
Can't call them a demographic.
UNMENTIONABLES
At the meeting of the pipe club recently conversation strayed from flakes, vapers, Balkan blends, and briar objects to the subject of panties, whereupon one respected member confessed that whenever he was onstage he wore women's underwear under his costume, and inevitably good things happened. Potent juju!
The club president then asked me whether I had an extensive collection (which I don't, fyi), and in my response I mentioned that many people find this blog by asking the internet what the difference is between French cut and High cut.
Cite:
"Bikini briefs have a low waistband (in contrast to granny panties), French cuts have high leg openings canted forward, and high cuts have deep leg openings more in-tune with a natural design and a waistband slightly on the high side."
End cite.
I suspect that the curious pantie visitors are mostly female, and not native speakers of English. My blog stats show an increase in page-views from foreign climes at those times.
Men wearing feminine panties always win at mahjong.
I did not know this when last I played.
There is probably an overlap between pipe-smokers and pantie fans. Given the almost neurotic tendencies of most male pipe-smokers it would be hard to imagine it otherwise. And by and large I enjoy the meetings of the pipe-club, among whom I shall assume a fair amount of undie-aficionados.
Serious pantie-collectors, not so much.
Maybe one or two.
BTW: One should be careful about one says, as it may be quoted.
Two descriptives that got me verbally smacked years ago: "breasts like ripe mangoes", and "vicious flat-chested squeeze-bit". The first described a Punjabi friend's dim-bulb snookie-poo, the second was the wife of an excessively hairy-calved Calabrian gentleman.
Neither man objected.
Their ladies did.
Later.
YOU WANT A GOOD DUCK
A third category are people interested in food, specifically Cantonese cuisine of which roast duck is a representative masterpiece. I am very fond of roast duck, and I commend the person who wishes to know more about that fine product. Others are looking for dried oysters and black moss, rice porridge and its several varieties, dimsum names, various cured meats, or XO sauce, and a Hokkien dish.
Those too are fine quests.
SPAM SPAM SPAM
The most baffling category is represented by spam-bots, who for several months now have been attempting to seed a post about Jewish head-coverings with all manner of commercial messages. Most of their links and suggestions are quite irrelevant to yarmulkes. It would be hard to explain to them how unsuitable their attempted comments are -- they are programs on computers, and therefore have a hard time with the real word -- and there is no incentive to even try. I consign all their efforts to the dustbin.
Cruel and heartless of me, I know.
So flesh-person-centric.
ASPERGER
Some other visitors almost certainly have Asperger Syndrome, which is a spectrum of mental quirks that make social interaction problematic.
It is characterised by mild-to-major obsessiveness and repetitive conversational gambits, coupled with sometimes severely defficient interpersonal skills.
Per Wikipedia:
"The syndrome is named after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger who, in 1944, studied and described children in his practice who lacked nonverbal communication skills, demonstrated limited empathy with their peers, and were physically clumsy."
End cite.
Not all people with Asperger are clumsy, but almost all of them show the tendency to repeat the same data in slightly different ways, both to clarify it to themselves (it didn't sound right, let me say it again) and to make sure their listener understands. This can get old fast, as by the fifth time they say exactly the same thing you've already understood it.
Wikipedia again:
"As a pervasive developmental disorder, Asperger syndrome is distinguished by a pattern of symptoms rather than a single symptom. It is characterized by qualitative impairment in social interaction, by stereotyped and restricted patterns of behavior, activities and interests, and by no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or general delay in language. Intense preoccupation with a narrow subject, one-sided verbosity, restricted prosody, and physical clumsiness are typical of the condition ... "
End cite
That tendency to repeat, rephrase, reshape, and reitterate statements, and share the same information over and over is a major tip-off.
A few of the people I know do that, at times to excess, so that what should have been a simple formulaic answer to the greeting "how are you doing" becomes an exercise in super-human patience, as they proceed to describe in great detail an incident which somehow significantly affected how they are doing. Others will answer all questions in triplicate, quadruplicate, or further multiplicates, highlighting insignificant minutiae several times in scarcely different phrases.
But I already said that.
It will not have escaped the reader that some comments here are entirely off-topic, or conversational sidetracks, albeit often entertaining. Likewise, certain behaviours may get described (for instance, drinking milk-tea and having a flaky snack in Chinatown before enjoying a pipe filled with good tobacco) till you are sick of hearing about it.
Also from Wikipedia:
"People with Asperger syndrome display behavior, interests, and activities that are restricted and repetitive and are sometimes abnormally intense or focused. They may stick to inflexible routines, move in stereotyped and repetitive ways, or preoccupy themselves with parts of objects.
Pursuit of specific and narrow areas of interest is one of the most striking possible features of AS.
Individuals with AS may collect volumes of detailed information on a relatively narrow topic ... "
End cite.
Most people are somewhere on the spectrum.
Being there is actually normal.
So is deviance.
ET AUTRES
Other postings here have been rants, bad temper, cute little stories, cat pictures, and caffeine-induced rambling. Plus some discussion of things I've done, and stuff I've been involved in. Being a man, naturally some of the essays may have referenced sex (plus breasts, panties, shiny hair, brassieres, nudity, steam-heat, mangoes, and a wealth of other words opportunistically chosen to increase my ranking in google searches), though I pride myself that nothing here could be construed erotically.
Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails!
Just hints at typical male heterosexual conceptiva, without any pictures or video clips that would titillate. Although I did once tell my readers that I am a tall and incredibly stunning black woman with lovely gazongas. Tribal jewelry suits me very well, and I wear bold colours with grace and ease. Deeply plunging v-necks show off my lovely attributes nicely.
BUT WHAT WERE YOU LOOKING FOR?
A blog is not meant to be a mundane accounting of one's life, nor a true portrait of the person. Not unless one entitles it "I AM BOB, MY LIFE IS BORING". Which would be rather pointless, Bob, as only your mother would read it.
The same goes for all those sites where one person obsessively recounts shopping for stylish clothing and shoes, and tells us in great detail about the latest dress she bought, scarf she knitted, or modelling photo-shoot in the park with her bestie. Each day more of the same.
There are many journals like that.
* * * * *
And then there's the paranoid blogs filled with strange statements and EVERY other WORD Capitalised or MISSPELlT, space ALIANS and barrack hussoin ABOAMA, alternating typefaces or underlines everywhere and assertions that boggle the mind
Chemtrails, vaccinations, fluoride, and Vicks Vaporub.
Liberals, illuminati, and lizards.
* * * * *
Instead, web-logs like this one express a personal mental world, and occasionally illuminate subjects which the author finds interesting. Often there is more than one theme that gets repeated, and sometimes it must seem that there are several speakers. There will be contradictions.
At random a bit of complete non-factuality.
Meta-realism.
Over time the personality of the pipe-smoking badger writing the blog may shine through, but not necessarily in a completely accurate way. Badgers are solitary creatures, though they do surface occasionally
for a spot of milk-tea and a cookie.
I'm actually quite lovable, and fond of head-scritchies.
No tummy rubs unless you know me.
I am not a cat.
I like herring and baked goods.
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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
No multiple personality disorder here, boyos, I am stark raving sane.
How about you?
FISH
A while back I wrote an essay about the differences between herring and mackerel, which always pulls in readers from England. I cannot figure out why that is. Maybe they don't eat fish very often over there.
Cite:
"Like herring, mackerel is fine and fatty, but while the meat of herring is rather buttery, that of mackerel is oily. There is, consequently, a profound difference in mouth-feel, especially when raw. Because of this, and differences in texture and density, the fish can spoil quickly; it must be eaten soon after capture. For sushi, a mild cure to prolong edibility is common - which precisely explains why I am fond of mackerel sushi. To me, taste-wise, it strongly echoes Dutch-style herring, which is also lightly cured. There is even a similarity of appearance, though the flesh looks softer and less glistensome, and has a yellower hue. It is close enough, and hence very nice."
End cite.
I like both. Perhaps, if I were British, I would not like either.
[Fill in your own snarky comments about British cuisine here.]
They are single-subject readers.
Can't call them a demographic.
UNMENTIONABLES
At the meeting of the pipe club recently conversation strayed from flakes, vapers, Balkan blends, and briar objects to the subject of panties, whereupon one respected member confessed that whenever he was onstage he wore women's underwear under his costume, and inevitably good things happened. Potent juju!
The club president then asked me whether I had an extensive collection (which I don't, fyi), and in my response I mentioned that many people find this blog by asking the internet what the difference is between French cut and High cut.
Cite:
"Bikini briefs have a low waistband (in contrast to granny panties), French cuts have high leg openings canted forward, and high cuts have deep leg openings more in-tune with a natural design and a waistband slightly on the high side."
End cite.
I suspect that the curious pantie visitors are mostly female, and not native speakers of English. My blog stats show an increase in page-views from foreign climes at those times.
Men wearing feminine panties always win at mahjong.
I did not know this when last I played.
There is probably an overlap between pipe-smokers and pantie fans. Given the almost neurotic tendencies of most male pipe-smokers it would be hard to imagine it otherwise. And by and large I enjoy the meetings of the pipe-club, among whom I shall assume a fair amount of undie-aficionados.
Serious pantie-collectors, not so much.
Maybe one or two.
BTW: One should be careful about one says, as it may be quoted.
Two descriptives that got me verbally smacked years ago: "breasts like ripe mangoes", and "vicious flat-chested squeeze-bit". The first described a Punjabi friend's dim-bulb snookie-poo, the second was the wife of an excessively hairy-calved Calabrian gentleman.
Neither man objected.
Their ladies did.
Later.
YOU WANT A GOOD DUCK
A third category are people interested in food, specifically Cantonese cuisine of which roast duck is a representative masterpiece. I am very fond of roast duck, and I commend the person who wishes to know more about that fine product. Others are looking for dried oysters and black moss, rice porridge and its several varieties, dimsum names, various cured meats, or XO sauce, and a Hokkien dish.
Those too are fine quests.
SPAM SPAM SPAM
The most baffling category is represented by spam-bots, who for several months now have been attempting to seed a post about Jewish head-coverings with all manner of commercial messages. Most of their links and suggestions are quite irrelevant to yarmulkes. It would be hard to explain to them how unsuitable their attempted comments are -- they are programs on computers, and therefore have a hard time with the real word -- and there is no incentive to even try. I consign all their efforts to the dustbin.
Cruel and heartless of me, I know.
So flesh-person-centric.
ASPERGER
Some other visitors almost certainly have Asperger Syndrome, which is a spectrum of mental quirks that make social interaction problematic.
It is characterised by mild-to-major obsessiveness and repetitive conversational gambits, coupled with sometimes severely defficient interpersonal skills.
Per Wikipedia:
"The syndrome is named after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger who, in 1944, studied and described children in his practice who lacked nonverbal communication skills, demonstrated limited empathy with their peers, and were physically clumsy."
End cite.
Not all people with Asperger are clumsy, but almost all of them show the tendency to repeat the same data in slightly different ways, both to clarify it to themselves (it didn't sound right, let me say it again) and to make sure their listener understands. This can get old fast, as by the fifth time they say exactly the same thing you've already understood it.
Wikipedia again:
"As a pervasive developmental disorder, Asperger syndrome is distinguished by a pattern of symptoms rather than a single symptom. It is characterized by qualitative impairment in social interaction, by stereotyped and restricted patterns of behavior, activities and interests, and by no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or general delay in language. Intense preoccupation with a narrow subject, one-sided verbosity, restricted prosody, and physical clumsiness are typical of the condition ... "
End cite
That tendency to repeat, rephrase, reshape, and reitterate statements, and share the same information over and over is a major tip-off.
A few of the people I know do that, at times to excess, so that what should have been a simple formulaic answer to the greeting "how are you doing" becomes an exercise in super-human patience, as they proceed to describe in great detail an incident which somehow significantly affected how they are doing. Others will answer all questions in triplicate, quadruplicate, or further multiplicates, highlighting insignificant minutiae several times in scarcely different phrases.
But I already said that.
It will not have escaped the reader that some comments here are entirely off-topic, or conversational sidetracks, albeit often entertaining. Likewise, certain behaviours may get described (for instance, drinking milk-tea and having a flaky snack in Chinatown before enjoying a pipe filled with good tobacco) till you are sick of hearing about it.
Also from Wikipedia:
"People with Asperger syndrome display behavior, interests, and activities that are restricted and repetitive and are sometimes abnormally intense or focused. They may stick to inflexible routines, move in stereotyped and repetitive ways, or preoccupy themselves with parts of objects.
Pursuit of specific and narrow areas of interest is one of the most striking possible features of AS.
Individuals with AS may collect volumes of detailed information on a relatively narrow topic ... "
End cite.
Most people are somewhere on the spectrum.
Being there is actually normal.
So is deviance.
ET AUTRES
Other postings here have been rants, bad temper, cute little stories, cat pictures, and caffeine-induced rambling. Plus some discussion of things I've done, and stuff I've been involved in. Being a man, naturally some of the essays may have referenced sex (plus breasts, panties, shiny hair, brassieres, nudity, steam-heat, mangoes, and a wealth of other words opportunistically chosen to increase my ranking in google searches), though I pride myself that nothing here could be construed erotically.
Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails! Nudity and cocktails!
Just hints at typical male heterosexual conceptiva, without any pictures or video clips that would titillate. Although I did once tell my readers that I am a tall and incredibly stunning black woman with lovely gazongas. Tribal jewelry suits me very well, and I wear bold colours with grace and ease. Deeply plunging v-necks show off my lovely attributes nicely.
BUT WHAT WERE YOU LOOKING FOR?
A blog is not meant to be a mundane accounting of one's life, nor a true portrait of the person. Not unless one entitles it "I AM BOB, MY LIFE IS BORING". Which would be rather pointless, Bob, as only your mother would read it.
The same goes for all those sites where one person obsessively recounts shopping for stylish clothing and shoes, and tells us in great detail about the latest dress she bought, scarf she knitted, or modelling photo-shoot in the park with her bestie. Each day more of the same.
There are many journals like that.
* * * * *
And then there's the paranoid blogs filled with strange statements and EVERY other WORD Capitalised or MISSPELlT, space ALIANS and barrack hussoin ABOAMA, alternating typefaces or underlines everywhere and assertions that boggle the mind
Chemtrails, vaccinations, fluoride, and Vicks Vaporub.
Liberals, illuminati, and lizards.
* * * * *
Instead, web-logs like this one express a personal mental world, and occasionally illuminate subjects which the author finds interesting. Often there is more than one theme that gets repeated, and sometimes it must seem that there are several speakers. There will be contradictions.
At random a bit of complete non-factuality.
Meta-realism.
Over time the personality of the pipe-smoking badger writing the blog may shine through, but not necessarily in a completely accurate way. Badgers are solitary creatures, though they do surface occasionally
for a spot of milk-tea and a cookie.
I'm actually quite lovable, and fond of head-scritchies.
No tummy rubs unless you know me.
I am not a cat.
I like herring and baked goods.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Friday, December 11, 2015
WHEN JEWS DIVORCE
A friend in the New York area gave his wife a get a few days ago. Which came as a shock to everyone except perhaps for a very few who were in the know. A get is a Jewish divorce, without which they would have still been married even if the civil separation was long over with. If she ever wanted to marry another person, the absence of a get would be a stumbling block of major proportion.
Now, the atheist, cynic, and casual agnostic may say "so what, all that matters is the civil marriage, even if she never gets a get, she can still marry someone else."
That's not how it works.
Family, friends, community, and the people who are directly involved all need that get. One doesn't chuck one's creed aside for convenience sake. She could get remarried without a get if she lost her faith, her morals, and her ethics, left her community and creed, cut off contact with her friends and family, and disappeared from every one's life.
Which would be terrible for her, her children, her friends, and everyone else.
Giving his wife a get is the most gentlemanly thing a chap can do.
Yes, I know, some readers may now raise objections, having noted that it appears to be one-sided, HE gets to give the get, the validity of their divorce is dependent upon his granting her her freedom, what if he's an asshole, and why can't she be the one granting the get? Why is it only by the agency of the male in the equation that the separation is finalized?
Sorry, those issues are immaterial.
Valid, but not relevant.
Al pi halacha.
Punkt.
One tangential issue IS germane, however, and has not one whit to do with any halachic ramifications. Which is that couples who split are frequently subjected to the well-meaning but awful advice of friends. Sometimes some of those friends make suggestions that are frankly horrifying, revelling in the idea that so-and-so is now free as a bird and can drink and smoke and bang everything in sight without consequence.
"Huzzah! Oh happy singlehood! You're hot, you're young again, and you should swing!"
Not all human beings are natural orgiasts and fornicators.
And those suggestions cheapen what had once been.
Besides revealing a streak of idiocy.
So, while I sympathize with my friend, I shall not ask any probing questions or suggest anything at all, nor make any judgments about him or his ex, and refrain from any guesses about them and their issues at all. They're both decent people, and everybody will just have to deal with the situation without protesting that things have gotten "difficult" and without biases.
That's part of being a social animal. None of us are participants in that discussion. We are not entitled to speak, nor is that required.
They're still the same people they were before.
Sh*t happens.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Now, the atheist, cynic, and casual agnostic may say "so what, all that matters is the civil marriage, even if she never gets a get, she can still marry someone else."
That's not how it works.
Family, friends, community, and the people who are directly involved all need that get. One doesn't chuck one's creed aside for convenience sake. She could get remarried without a get if she lost her faith, her morals, and her ethics, left her community and creed, cut off contact with her friends and family, and disappeared from every one's life.
Which would be terrible for her, her children, her friends, and everyone else.
Giving his wife a get is the most gentlemanly thing a chap can do.
Yes, I know, some readers may now raise objections, having noted that it appears to be one-sided, HE gets to give the get, the validity of their divorce is dependent upon his granting her her freedom, what if he's an asshole, and why can't she be the one granting the get? Why is it only by the agency of the male in the equation that the separation is finalized?
Sorry, those issues are immaterial.
Valid, but not relevant.
Al pi halacha.
Punkt.
One tangential issue IS germane, however, and has not one whit to do with any halachic ramifications. Which is that couples who split are frequently subjected to the well-meaning but awful advice of friends. Sometimes some of those friends make suggestions that are frankly horrifying, revelling in the idea that so-and-so is now free as a bird and can drink and smoke and bang everything in sight without consequence.
"Huzzah! Oh happy singlehood! You're hot, you're young again, and you should swing!"
Not all human beings are natural orgiasts and fornicators.
And those suggestions cheapen what had once been.
Besides revealing a streak of idiocy.
So, while I sympathize with my friend, I shall not ask any probing questions or suggest anything at all, nor make any judgments about him or his ex, and refrain from any guesses about them and their issues at all. They're both decent people, and everybody will just have to deal with the situation without protesting that things have gotten "difficult" and without biases.
That's part of being a social animal. None of us are participants in that discussion. We are not entitled to speak, nor is that required.
They're still the same people they were before.
Sh*t happens.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Thursday, December 10, 2015
SUCH FUN
There were three social celebrations I did not find out about till they were past. They weren't grand conspiracies of silence, or weird cultural within-the-group only celebrations. They were merely "don't bother inviting him, he probably won't come and they're not his kind of thing" events.
You could have asked.
And I would have been very flattered if you did.
No, you're right; I would most likely have declined; I'm that much an aspie that I would have politely found any excuse not to socialize. Go, enjoy the fabulous companionship and food, I'll just have a hot beverage in C-town.
But it feels suspect when you make my assumptions for me.
As if you're afraid that I might have said 'yes'.
That's less likely each time.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
You could have asked.
And I would have been very flattered if you did.
No, you're right; I would most likely have declined; I'm that much an aspie that I would have politely found any excuse not to socialize. Go, enjoy the fabulous companionship and food, I'll just have a hot beverage in C-town.
But it feels suspect when you make my assumptions for me.
As if you're afraid that I might have said 'yes'.
That's less likely each time.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, December 09, 2015
RUSSIA SPEAKING TURKISH, VERY CLEARLY
Sometimes there is wisdom in stepping aside. Not moral or legal rightness, just wisdom. Suppose, for instance, that the heavy metal couple two doors up are attacking each other with electric guitars while naked in the middle of the street late at night. It might be morally correct to intercede on behalf of the smaller weaker one (him), who really does appear to be getting the worst of it -- he's bleeding badly from several headwounds, and is losing the battle as well as several teeth -- but common sense should tell you that getting in between the two mad people is not a good idea.
It's a domestic quarrel between a behemoth and a shrimp.
They listen to Slayer, for craps sake!
Just step aside, and let 'em fight.
Slayer! Good lord almighty!
Besides, she's the original five hundred pound Samoan werewolf, AND she's got a spiked chain coming out of her rectum.
Two weeks ago, Turkey shot down a Russian plane on behalf of their kinfolks and proxies the Turkmen militia in Syria. Then the Turkmen killed one of the Russian pilots.
It was predictable that that entire set of actions would upset Russia.
It was, in fact, entirely predictable that while showing their hairy balls admirably, possibly well within their rights because the Russian plane had briefly violated Turkish airspace, and even the epitome of manliness, the action and its end result would not be good.
Obviously Russia is not going to militarily attack Turkey.
But exterminating those uppity Turkmen is "do-able".
The past two weeks have been an experience.
For the militant Turkmen in Syria.
Who soon may not exist.
Clearly, Russia is the original five hundred pound Samoan werewolf, and someone yanked her spiked chain.
Turkey, in this analogy, is a shrimp of a man with a dislocated jaw. Or maybe it's their proxy, the Turkmeni militia, but my point is that shooting down a Russian plane wasn't a sensible thing to do, and Putin is making sure that the silly Turkic types will remember to think first.
Per the BBC, Turkey's prime minister has accused Russia of attempting "ethnic cleansing" with its air strikes in northern Syria.
I don't think that's an "attempt"; it looks real.
And it was completely predictable.
Don't touch that chain.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
It's a domestic quarrel between a behemoth and a shrimp.
They listen to Slayer, for craps sake!
Just step aside, and let 'em fight.
Slayer! Good lord almighty!
Besides, she's the original five hundred pound Samoan werewolf, AND she's got a spiked chain coming out of her rectum.
Two weeks ago, Turkey shot down a Russian plane on behalf of their kinfolks and proxies the Turkmen militia in Syria. Then the Turkmen killed one of the Russian pilots.
It was predictable that that entire set of actions would upset Russia.
It was, in fact, entirely predictable that while showing their hairy balls admirably, possibly well within their rights because the Russian plane had briefly violated Turkish airspace, and even the epitome of manliness, the action and its end result would not be good.
Obviously Russia is not going to militarily attack Turkey.
But exterminating those uppity Turkmen is "do-able".
The past two weeks have been an experience.
For the militant Turkmen in Syria.
Who soon may not exist.
Clearly, Russia is the original five hundred pound Samoan werewolf, and someone yanked her spiked chain.
Turkey, in this analogy, is a shrimp of a man with a dislocated jaw. Or maybe it's their proxy, the Turkmeni militia, but my point is that shooting down a Russian plane wasn't a sensible thing to do, and Putin is making sure that the silly Turkic types will remember to think first.
Per the BBC, Turkey's prime minister has accused Russia of attempting "ethnic cleansing" with its air strikes in northern Syria.
I don't think that's an "attempt"; it looks real.
And it was completely predictable.
Don't touch that chain.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
A MOMENT OF INTROSPECTION
Had too much ginger and chilipaste last night.
The steamed spareribs were delicious.
This morning has been surreal.
I'm fairly certain I should not repeat that recipe. Naturally I shall do so anyway. There has to be a safe middle-ground.
Sometime after mid-day I shall be able to consider food.
Not before then.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
The steamed spareribs were delicious.
This morning has been surreal.
I'm fairly certain I should not repeat that recipe. Naturally I shall do so anyway. There has to be a safe middle-ground.
Sometime after mid-day I shall be able to consider food.
Not before then.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, December 08, 2015
WHAT PLANET DID YOU SAY YOU WERE FROM?
In a comment string that went off into left-field very fast, a reader posed the following question: "Would you consider dating Liza Minnelli, now that she's moved back to California? Very intelligent, very creative, was able to quote Oscar Wilde at age 5. Whaddaya think?"
I think not.
Before I even had time to respond, someone else (anonymous) interjected "No, she would need to be 20 years old and Cantonese".
I suggested that neither was suitable, and instead something in the middle might be better.
"Liza Minnelli was born in 1946. A twenty year old Cantonese girl would have been born in 1995. How about we average that out to "born sometime between Carter and Clinton", of a lively intelligence, and speaks English as a first language?"
This did NOT satisfy my readers, who sensed an opportunity to let their imaginations run riot.
I shan't bore you with the rest of that comment string, but wish instead to remark that three issues come to mind.
1) My readers have only the scariest idea what I am like romantically.
[Keen somewhat insensitive non-professional, likes animals, hates walks on the beach.]
2) My love life appears more fascinating to them than it actually is.
[There is no love life. They are dreaming.]
3) None of my readers is Liza Minnelli or a twenty-year old Cantonese girl.
[Scoring either as reader of my blog would be top-notch. Dating either would cause doubts about my sanity.]
Logic dictates that I should ignore all the fine ideas forwarded by my readers, who are boundlessly enthusiastic about seeing me settle down and become "normal", albeit without any likelihood of the pitter-pat of tiny little feet -- assuming that they do not envision me as the step-father of anybody else's kids -- except, of course, for the reader who thought that I would prefer a twenty-year old.
Who probably thinks that I am a sex-starved elderly pervert, and who would derive great entertainment from my travails with a flibberty-gibbet.
Quite unlike the others, wishing me to squire around an older woman.
And who admire Liza Minnelli, a very talented individual.
Plus apparently precocious and intelligent.
Just like Liza Minnelli, the twenty-year old contingent is nice to observe and entertaining, provided there is enough distance, but associating with either is bound to be trying. Operatic, even. Buster Bluth was obviously a very troubled soul, and his shoes are far too big for me to step into.
Shan't even consider it.
Most of the women my own age are either married or nuts.
A lot of them are both.
I've met far too many pipe or cigar smokers, whose companions have banished them to the sidewalk or the backyard when they light up, to be unabashedly optimistic.
I TWITCH IN MY SLEEP
Does anybody actually think there's ANY chance that Liza Minnelli or a twenty-year old Cantonese woman, or anything in between those two extremes, would put up with me, my smoking and my tobacco, my books, my smells, and my cooking?
Pipes, cigarillos, milk-tea, and spicy food.
Fatty pork, shrimp paste, ginger.
Arrested Development.
Daily Show.
BBC.
Are you medicated?
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
I think not.
Before I even had time to respond, someone else (anonymous) interjected "No, she would need to be 20 years old and Cantonese".
I suggested that neither was suitable, and instead something in the middle might be better.
"Liza Minnelli was born in 1946. A twenty year old Cantonese girl would have been born in 1995. How about we average that out to "born sometime between Carter and Clinton", of a lively intelligence, and speaks English as a first language?"
This did NOT satisfy my readers, who sensed an opportunity to let their imaginations run riot.
I shan't bore you with the rest of that comment string, but wish instead to remark that three issues come to mind.
1) My readers have only the scariest idea what I am like romantically.
[Keen somewhat insensitive non-professional, likes animals, hates walks on the beach.]
2) My love life appears more fascinating to them than it actually is.
[There is no love life. They are dreaming.]
3) None of my readers is Liza Minnelli or a twenty-year old Cantonese girl.
[Scoring either as reader of my blog would be top-notch. Dating either would cause doubts about my sanity.]
Logic dictates that I should ignore all the fine ideas forwarded by my readers, who are boundlessly enthusiastic about seeing me settle down and become "normal", albeit without any likelihood of the pitter-pat of tiny little feet -- assuming that they do not envision me as the step-father of anybody else's kids -- except, of course, for the reader who thought that I would prefer a twenty-year old.
Who probably thinks that I am a sex-starved elderly pervert, and who would derive great entertainment from my travails with a flibberty-gibbet.
Quite unlike the others, wishing me to squire around an older woman.
And who admire Liza Minnelli, a very talented individual.
Plus apparently precocious and intelligent.
Just like Liza Minnelli, the twenty-year old contingent is nice to observe and entertaining, provided there is enough distance, but associating with either is bound to be trying. Operatic, even. Buster Bluth was obviously a very troubled soul, and his shoes are far too big for me to step into.
Shan't even consider it.
Most of the women my own age are either married or nuts.
A lot of them are both.
I've met far too many pipe or cigar smokers, whose companions have banished them to the sidewalk or the backyard when they light up, to be unabashedly optimistic.
I TWITCH IN MY SLEEP
Does anybody actually think there's ANY chance that Liza Minnelli or a twenty-year old Cantonese woman, or anything in between those two extremes, would put up with me, my smoking and my tobacco, my books, my smells, and my cooking?
Pipes, cigarillos, milk-tea, and spicy food.
Fatty pork, shrimp paste, ginger.
Arrested Development.
Daily Show.
BBC.
Are you medicated?
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
PLANNING MY DEPRAVITY
Many years ago, when I was working for a tobacconist on Piedmont Avenue, a curvy blonde teenage sexpot sweetly asked me to get her some clove cigarettes, because she was not yet old enough to buy them herself. When I demurred, she pouted fiercely, and snarled.
I am glad I refused; teenagers who smoke clove cigarettes are on a slippery slope, and undoubtedly she'd be a batshit crazy old slag by now, angry, with four kids by five different men, and a drug problem to boot.
That's what clove cigarettes do to fragile little minds.
Intelligent women should smoke pipes in any case.
It shows a keenness of intellect.
And good taste.
Today I will keep an eye peeled for women who are between late teens and mid thirties, who look like a pipe full of a fine Virginia blend would be just what the doctor ordered.
It's a day off, and consequently life is to be enjoyed.
Four out of five Englishmen recommend flake.
The fifth one is probably dead.
Or a philosopher.
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly."
[-----Albert Einstein (coincidentally also a pipesmoker).]
Bertrand Russel (a famous British philosopher, deceased) once credited pipe-smoking with saving his life. His favourite tobacco was Fribourg & Treyer's 'Golden Mixture', which is described as a ribbony blend of blonde Virginia. And though I've never tried it, I like it already.
Because of the famous association.
What I'll carry with me as I wander around the downtown will be a blend of my own devising, about fifty percent rubbed flake with some other tobaccos added for complexity. Mostly Virginias. Very nice.
It goes very well with strong tea, and has a lovely reek.
I'll have an extra pipe in my pocket.
You know, there's a lovely place for milk-tea, with excellent pastries, at the edge of Chinatown. Even if it doesn't rain, it will be good to shelter from the elements there at the end of a longish walk.
Late afternoon, right around four.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
I am glad I refused; teenagers who smoke clove cigarettes are on a slippery slope, and undoubtedly she'd be a batshit crazy old slag by now, angry, with four kids by five different men, and a drug problem to boot.
That's what clove cigarettes do to fragile little minds.
Intelligent women should smoke pipes in any case.
It shows a keenness of intellect.
And good taste.
Today I will keep an eye peeled for women who are between late teens and mid thirties, who look like a pipe full of a fine Virginia blend would be just what the doctor ordered.
It's a day off, and consequently life is to be enjoyed.
Four out of five Englishmen recommend flake.
The fifth one is probably dead.
Or a philosopher.
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly."
[-----Albert Einstein (coincidentally also a pipesmoker).]
Bertrand Russel (a famous British philosopher, deceased) once credited pipe-smoking with saving his life. His favourite tobacco was Fribourg & Treyer's 'Golden Mixture', which is described as a ribbony blend of blonde Virginia. And though I've never tried it, I like it already.
Because of the famous association.
What I'll carry with me as I wander around the downtown will be a blend of my own devising, about fifty percent rubbed flake with some other tobaccos added for complexity. Mostly Virginias. Very nice.
It goes very well with strong tea, and has a lovely reek.
I'll have an extra pipe in my pocket.
You know, there's a lovely place for milk-tea, with excellent pastries, at the edge of Chinatown. Even if it doesn't rain, it will be good to shelter from the elements there at the end of a longish walk.
Late afternoon, right around four.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, December 07, 2015
DONALD TRUMP WANTS TO BAN MUSLIMS
The esteemed political gentleman from New York, who like so many prominent Republicans avoided being sent to Vietnam (the term is "dodged"), wishes to ban Muslims from entering the United States.
Per a clarification from a spokesman, that includes American citizens of the Muslim faith currently outside the country.
This following his call for special identification and registration for Americans who happen to be Muslim.
Here are pictures of three American Muslims.
Ayman Abdelrahman Taha
Humayun Saqib Muazzam Khan
Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan
I note that after Donald Trump made that call at a campaign rally, the stalwart Republicans of South Carolina loudly cheered. Clearly the idea met with their approval. The stalwart Republicans of South Carolina are a bunch of un-American scum-sucking morons.
We should ban draft dodgers from running for office, if we're going to ban anything.
Especially if they're hate-filled cretins.
Trump is unhinged.
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Per a clarification from a spokesman, that includes American citizens of the Muslim faith currently outside the country.
This following his call for special identification and registration for Americans who happen to be Muslim.
Here are pictures of three American Muslims.
Ayman Abdelrahman Taha
Humayun Saqib Muazzam Khan
Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan
I note that after Donald Trump made that call at a campaign rally, the stalwart Republicans of South Carolina loudly cheered. Clearly the idea met with their approval. The stalwart Republicans of South Carolina are a bunch of un-American scum-sucking morons.
We should ban draft dodgers from running for office, if we're going to ban anything.
Especially if they're hate-filled cretins.
Trump is unhinged.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
CLOSER TO ALASKA
It rained most of the day yesterday. Perhaps it will rain again today. Which would be nice. No, not because California needs the rain -- we do, but that isn't anywhere near a primary reason for enjoying inclement weather -- nor because of my fond fantasy of a lazy afternoon with romance in a warm dark room, the sounds and lights from the street filtered through bamboo slat or matchstick blinds, but because a wall of rain shortens the middle-distance and mutes the world.
That fond fantasy isn't likely to happen in any case.
But a velvety encompassment by rain is possible.
It's a work day, so I'll be in Marin, where everyone is nuts and entitled. Rainy weather dampens their spirits, and keeps them from going out for fear of melting, or because acid rain is a plot even worse than the chemtrails the vaccination industry spreads through the atmosphere. Rain is bad for their karma as well as their fabulous hair.
An afternoon without many Marinites, and those that come soggy and subdued, with dampened spirits, strikes me as being as near to heaven as one can get in Mill Valley.
One day of wet suburbanites, then two days off.
Followed by Marin again on Thursday.
Marin surely has a purpose.
Don't know what.
Marin probably needs to be rained on more.
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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
That fond fantasy isn't likely to happen in any case.
But a velvety encompassment by rain is possible.
It's a work day, so I'll be in Marin, where everyone is nuts and entitled. Rainy weather dampens their spirits, and keeps them from going out for fear of melting, or because acid rain is a plot even worse than the chemtrails the vaccination industry spreads through the atmosphere. Rain is bad for their karma as well as their fabulous hair.
An afternoon without many Marinites, and those that come soggy and subdued, with dampened spirits, strikes me as being as near to heaven as one can get in Mill Valley.
One day of wet suburbanites, then two days off.
Followed by Marin again on Thursday.
Marin surely has a purpose.
Don't know what.
Marin probably needs to be rained on more.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
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GRITS AND TOFU
Like most Americans, I have a list of people who should be peacefully retired from public service and thereafter kept away from their desks,...
