In the United States, at present, there is discussion of Islam and Muslims. Regrettably the loudest voices are also the most ignorant. Much is made of the role of women in Islamic society.
"Even a cursory student of Islamic history knows that all the trappings of gender inequality present in the Muslim society have socio-economic and cultural as opposed to religious roots."
-----Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Emir of Kano, Muslim scholar and Sharia expert, Sheikh of the Tijaniyyah Sufi order.
Years ago an acquaintance of mine -- by no means a friend, or by any stretch someone whom I would willingly socialize with again -- insisted that because genital mutilation was common among some Muslim peoples, it was normative and de rigueur among all, and that therefore all discussion of Islam had to focus first and foremost on the clitoris.
She disapproved of Islam.
I think she may have realized that we were at different points on the map when I indicated that while I would gladly go on at very great length about the clitoris, I preferred to do that in a lighthearted and perhaps affectionate way, rather than in the context of discussing religion. Any religion.
I also said at the time that while discussing clitorides was a indeed fond habit of mine, there was no way in hell I would allow her to mention hers.
It has been a long time since I discussed such things.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Sunday, September 18, 2016
Saturday, September 17, 2016
SMELL MY FINGERS
Yesterday I exchanged pleasantries with nine women and two men while doing errands. Which is NOT the proportion of either gender in the city, NOR does it reflect planning on my part. But I did smoke two pipefulls of something dark and stinky while I was out and about.
That WAS according to the plan.
Hours later, and after two or three handwashings, my fingers still smelled faintly of Latakia and resinous Turk. Yes, I had eaten various dimsum items, drank coffee, handled vegetables, enjoyed milk-tea and a pastry, went home and ate a dinner-time snack, and had some more coffee.
My nimble digits still smelled profoundly sexual.
The enticing aroma of Latakia adhering.
Suggestive, and erotic.
Okay, I'll admit it. I am a pervert. Anyone who associates the fragrance of Oriental leaf with naughty business is depraved. Good thing the women I encountered had NO idea what was going on in my nose. They would've been shocked, possibly too much to say 'howdy'.
And despite my inner rancifididity, I like saying 'howdy'.
I have very little else in the way of social life.
SLIGHT DETOUR
Years ago I used to make hotsauce as a side venture to my daytime job. This often involved several pounds of Habaneros. I never used gloves, because despite the burning one needs to feel what one is doing with the knife: cut off the stem, slice the pepper open, examine for rot or mold, chuck it in the blender, pick of the next fresh crisp washed pepper .....
Bathroom break: wash hands thoroughly, head down the hall. Go back to kitchen, turn around abruptly in mid-stride, and spend the next forty plus minutes curled up under a cold shower.
Then resume labour in kitchen.
La la la .....
Take care not to touch anyone, nor stroke any silken cheeks or chins, for at least a day following chilies. Don't pet dogs or cats.
My hands are weapons of mass destruction. These are the terrifying claws of nightmare, the world will never be the same. Life as you know it will end, this is the rising of the beast .....
The lingering oils of chilipeppers are not a problem if one is devouring an entire bag of potato chips. It adds to the experience, even completes it. On the other hand, a smell of Latakia tobacco is discordant under those circumstances. One does NOT expect potato chips to smell like naughty business with a hot smoking mama.
On a third hand, it is ALWAYS better to have Latakia digits when dealing with women. You do not need to know why.
Who knows, they might actually like it.
Women are kind of sensitive.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
That WAS according to the plan.
Hours later, and after two or three handwashings, my fingers still smelled faintly of Latakia and resinous Turk. Yes, I had eaten various dimsum items, drank coffee, handled vegetables, enjoyed milk-tea and a pastry, went home and ate a dinner-time snack, and had some more coffee.
My nimble digits still smelled profoundly sexual.
The enticing aroma of Latakia adhering.
Suggestive, and erotic.
Okay, I'll admit it. I am a pervert. Anyone who associates the fragrance of Oriental leaf with naughty business is depraved. Good thing the women I encountered had NO idea what was going on in my nose. They would've been shocked, possibly too much to say 'howdy'.
And despite my inner rancifididity, I like saying 'howdy'.
I have very little else in the way of social life.
SLIGHT DETOUR
Years ago I used to make hotsauce as a side venture to my daytime job. This often involved several pounds of Habaneros. I never used gloves, because despite the burning one needs to feel what one is doing with the knife: cut off the stem, slice the pepper open, examine for rot or mold, chuck it in the blender, pick of the next fresh crisp washed pepper .....
Bathroom break: wash hands thoroughly, head down the hall. Go back to kitchen, turn around abruptly in mid-stride, and spend the next forty plus minutes curled up under a cold shower.
Then resume labour in kitchen.
La la la .....
Take care not to touch anyone, nor stroke any silken cheeks or chins, for at least a day following chilies. Don't pet dogs or cats.
My hands are weapons of mass destruction. These are the terrifying claws of nightmare, the world will never be the same. Life as you know it will end, this is the rising of the beast .....
The lingering oils of chilipeppers are not a problem if one is devouring an entire bag of potato chips. It adds to the experience, even completes it. On the other hand, a smell of Latakia tobacco is discordant under those circumstances. One does NOT expect potato chips to smell like naughty business with a hot smoking mama.
On a third hand, it is ALWAYS better to have Latakia digits when dealing with women. You do not need to know why.
Who knows, they might actually like it.
Women are kind of sensitive.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Friday, September 16, 2016
DRUCQUERS: THE PAST SMELLS
Yesterday a friend wandered in, saw the reprehensibles congregated in the backroom, decided that they would not improve his mood, and wandered out again. But before leaving he offered me some John Cotton's No. 1 from a cutter tin he had recently opened. Whenever he stops by he always has an antique tobacco to share, which I appreciate enormously. It's like having a misguided tour of the past, revisiting old landmarks.
My tastes in many things were formed during my misspent youth, during which I worked at a tobacconist in Berkeley (Drucquer & Sons) that my father and my uncle had patronized when they were going to school. My father had introduced it to me when we visited The States by dryly remarking that it was a kind of snooty place, I might like it.
I did.
More than the offering of tobaccos, however, was the atmosphere (old world, colonial products, opinionated people), and the chance it gave me to wean myself of homesickness by stinking in the manner to which I had become accustomed (Latakia mixtures plus bizarre experiments with straight leaf), and develop my tastes under the benign tutelage of a short strong-minded Chinese woman who read a lot, discussed music with one of the patrons (Jack Gail), and held her own decisively in conversation, especially with the rather jovial collegiate men who drifted in on Saturday afternoon.
I may have partially repaid those lessons by introducing her to the finest Chinese teas, and advising her to visit Amsterdam and Brussels.
As well as teaching her about Indonesian coffee beans.
In those days I was a little eccentric.
Oh, plus pottery, Chinese seals, and I-Hsing teapots.
Eventually I floated out of Berkeley's orbit. Drucquers got sold, Greg Pease worked there a number of years, left, and finally the place closed. People hardly smoke pipes in this age, and though it was legendary, it was unhip in the extreme. Today, tobacco is a black sheep and a political hot potato.
Merchants like Drucquer & Sons aren't suited to the present age.
Tobacconists everywhere are disappearing.
Because of do-gooders.
"Will no one think about the children!?!"
Oh bugger the little brutes! If they smoked pipes and fine cigars, they'd be a lot better than playing video games all day and bullying their more geeky classmates! Besides, most children are little disease vectors, and unfit for civilized society until they've been vaccinated, spanked, taught some manners, and have started getting over their juvenile conceit!
The first step is weaning them away from vapors.
As well as fruity aromatics.
But enough about your loathsome offspring.
Berkeley was at one point the nexus of the universe. Bookstores, coffee, tobacco ... one did not see the pot, patchouli, and self-impressed intellectual failures with gluten allergies that are there now.
It was once a charming place.
Dunhill 965, Black Mallory, Robert McConnell, Constantinople, State Express London Mixture, John Cotton, Capstan ...
[And of course Balkan Sobranie; you knew I was going to mention it.]
The store was in an elongated space, narrow and deep. Main shop floor, humidor, office, blending room, and both miscellaneous storage as well as pipe restoration in the back. I spent hours working on pipes, wandering out occasionally for fresh air, or to talk with Cara and Alice over their bins of tobacco, to grab a cigar, to grab lunch. In the evening two or three of us would stay in the office, where the owner (Robert Rex) kept the hundreds of pipes that weren't on display in his home.
I once outmanoeuvred him on a Comoy Blue Riband, which I still own. But he had some spectacular Dunhills just strewn higgledy-piggledy on the cluttered shelf above his desk; a veritable museum of briar.
By the time I had been there a few weeks I no longer noticed the smell of tobaccos nearly as much. Like with the wonderful aroma of the Indian Restaurant, it had faded into the odour-equivalent of white noise.
During the next few years I read books by Marguerite Yourcenar, Willa Cather, Edward H. Schafer, Herlee Glesner Creel, Wyndham Lewis, Evelyn Waugh, Faulkner, and Proust. My first introduction to O'Henry, and a very fond revisiting of De Spaanschen Brabander by Bredero, as well as finally learning to appreciate Vondel, occurred at that time, as well as a brief flurry of interest in noted literary man Suffridus Sixtinus.
It was an educational interlude.
[No, I shall not detail Donald's friend Elizabeth, who smoked cigars and occasionally a pipe. She collected guns and drank Old Grand Dad; altogether a very exciting girl.
Sparkling, vivacious, and commendably stubborn.]
Tea. Coffee. Scotch Whisky. Pipe tobacco. The office in the back of the shop. The stacks of the university library. Bookstores on Telegraph Avenue. Caffè Mediterraneum. Dwinelle Hall, Sather Gate, Moffit, and the campus redwoods.
I was a very blinkered person.
In the years since, I have lived in Berkeley, Oakland, Alhambra, Monterrey Park, and San Francisco. I have travelled a bit -- South East Asia, Canada, Europe -- and had a long-term relationship. Which ended. Dammit.
Yes, I am older. But I still read, smoke pipes, and drink tea.
Time has not weighed heavily upon me.
I've probably not matured very much. A bachelor again, I have become the still feisty and disreputable uncle you should never trust around your kids, as I will introduce them to tobacco and a well-rounded vocabulary, and may very well plant mind-worms in their impressionable little heads.
At the very least they'll end up with broader tastes in literature, putting hot sauce on everything, and turning into bright young ladies with a marked affection for gluten, roast duck, cigars, and fine pipe tobacco.
As well as the individuals who still enjoy those things.
They won't be safe for the suburbs.
Something Greg Pease said about bringing back the old Drucquers blends stimulated this revisiting of the past, and the years in between. As well as all the nose memories of that time. I wonder if he has found a replacement for the Black Virginia that went into the Arcadia mixture?
Levant, Trafalgar, Red Lion, Blend 805 ...
I used to smoke Royal Ransom a lot.
An over-indulgence in Latakia.
Deep reeky perfume.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
My tastes in many things were formed during my misspent youth, during which I worked at a tobacconist in Berkeley (Drucquer & Sons) that my father and my uncle had patronized when they were going to school. My father had introduced it to me when we visited The States by dryly remarking that it was a kind of snooty place, I might like it.
I did.
More than the offering of tobaccos, however, was the atmosphere (old world, colonial products, opinionated people), and the chance it gave me to wean myself of homesickness by stinking in the manner to which I had become accustomed (Latakia mixtures plus bizarre experiments with straight leaf), and develop my tastes under the benign tutelage of a short strong-minded Chinese woman who read a lot, discussed music with one of the patrons (Jack Gail), and held her own decisively in conversation, especially with the rather jovial collegiate men who drifted in on Saturday afternoon.
I may have partially repaid those lessons by introducing her to the finest Chinese teas, and advising her to visit Amsterdam and Brussels.
As well as teaching her about Indonesian coffee beans.
In those days I was a little eccentric.
Oh, plus pottery, Chinese seals, and I-Hsing teapots.
Eventually I floated out of Berkeley's orbit. Drucquers got sold, Greg Pease worked there a number of years, left, and finally the place closed. People hardly smoke pipes in this age, and though it was legendary, it was unhip in the extreme. Today, tobacco is a black sheep and a political hot potato.
Merchants like Drucquer & Sons aren't suited to the present age.
Tobacconists everywhere are disappearing.
Because of do-gooders.
"Will no one think about the children!?!"
Oh bugger the little brutes! If they smoked pipes and fine cigars, they'd be a lot better than playing video games all day and bullying their more geeky classmates! Besides, most children are little disease vectors, and unfit for civilized society until they've been vaccinated, spanked, taught some manners, and have started getting over their juvenile conceit!
The first step is weaning them away from vapors.
As well as fruity aromatics.
But enough about your loathsome offspring.
Berkeley was at one point the nexus of the universe. Bookstores, coffee, tobacco ... one did not see the pot, patchouli, and self-impressed intellectual failures with gluten allergies that are there now.
It was once a charming place.
Dunhill 965, Black Mallory, Robert McConnell, Constantinople, State Express London Mixture, John Cotton, Capstan ...
[And of course Balkan Sobranie; you knew I was going to mention it.]
The store was in an elongated space, narrow and deep. Main shop floor, humidor, office, blending room, and both miscellaneous storage as well as pipe restoration in the back. I spent hours working on pipes, wandering out occasionally for fresh air, or to talk with Cara and Alice over their bins of tobacco, to grab a cigar, to grab lunch. In the evening two or three of us would stay in the office, where the owner (Robert Rex) kept the hundreds of pipes that weren't on display in his home.
I once outmanoeuvred him on a Comoy Blue Riband, which I still own. But he had some spectacular Dunhills just strewn higgledy-piggledy on the cluttered shelf above his desk; a veritable museum of briar.
By the time I had been there a few weeks I no longer noticed the smell of tobaccos nearly as much. Like with the wonderful aroma of the Indian Restaurant, it had faded into the odour-equivalent of white noise.
During the next few years I read books by Marguerite Yourcenar, Willa Cather, Edward H. Schafer, Herlee Glesner Creel, Wyndham Lewis, Evelyn Waugh, Faulkner, and Proust. My first introduction to O'Henry, and a very fond revisiting of De Spaanschen Brabander by Bredero, as well as finally learning to appreciate Vondel, occurred at that time, as well as a brief flurry of interest in noted literary man Suffridus Sixtinus.
It was an educational interlude.
[No, I shall not detail Donald's friend Elizabeth, who smoked cigars and occasionally a pipe. She collected guns and drank Old Grand Dad; altogether a very exciting girl.
Sparkling, vivacious, and commendably stubborn.]
Tea. Coffee. Scotch Whisky. Pipe tobacco. The office in the back of the shop. The stacks of the university library. Bookstores on Telegraph Avenue. Caffè Mediterraneum. Dwinelle Hall, Sather Gate, Moffit, and the campus redwoods.
I was a very blinkered person.
In the years since, I have lived in Berkeley, Oakland, Alhambra, Monterrey Park, and San Francisco. I have travelled a bit -- South East Asia, Canada, Europe -- and had a long-term relationship. Which ended. Dammit.
Yes, I am older. But I still read, smoke pipes, and drink tea.
Time has not weighed heavily upon me.
I've probably not matured very much. A bachelor again, I have become the still feisty and disreputable uncle you should never trust around your kids, as I will introduce them to tobacco and a well-rounded vocabulary, and may very well plant mind-worms in their impressionable little heads.
At the very least they'll end up with broader tastes in literature, putting hot sauce on everything, and turning into bright young ladies with a marked affection for gluten, roast duck, cigars, and fine pipe tobacco.
As well as the individuals who still enjoy those things.
They won't be safe for the suburbs.
Something Greg Pease said about bringing back the old Drucquers blends stimulated this revisiting of the past, and the years in between. As well as all the nose memories of that time. I wonder if he has found a replacement for the Black Virginia that went into the Arcadia mixture?
Levant, Trafalgar, Red Lion, Blend 805 ...
I used to smoke Royal Ransom a lot.
An over-indulgence in Latakia.
Deep reeky perfume.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
EXPRESSING IT WITH INTERPRETIVE DANCE
Sometimes the mature man has to wait until the female person who lives in the room next door has finished using the bathroom. It is the gentlemanly thing to do, especially when you consider that she has to go to work today, and I don't.
Even though her dawdling is sheer torture.
A gentleman keeps it all inside.
Self-control, boyo.
A THOUGHTFUL HOP, SKIMP, AND JUMP
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7ZnO893hTs.]
I had great gobs of hot sauce yesterday.
Then a huge bowl of icecream.
But am I panicking?
Hoo hah!
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
A gentleman keeps it all inside.
Self-control, boyo.
A THOUGHTFUL HOP, SKIMP, AND JUMP
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7ZnO893hTs.]
I had great gobs of hot sauce yesterday.
Then a huge bowl of icecream.
But am I panicking?
Hoo hah!
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Thursday, September 15, 2016
THE DANGER INHERENT IN SALAD
Only now do I realize that I have keenly honed Pavlovian reactions. On Facebook, Mister Pease mentioned an unfavourable review of one of his smoking mixtures by Pinko, and I automatically reached over to sniff deeply of an open tin of Abingdon. The label clarifies that it is a "full Balkan style blend with a generous measure of Cyprian Latakia, seasoned with fine red and yellow Virginia tobaccos, and enhanced with rich oriental leaf".
It smells assertive and sexy. And bold and stylish.
If a woman smelled like this, I'd melt.
Oh honey. Mmmmm.
Then I saw what Ms. Walters had written on a different page.
"I've had 3 salads this week dammit I should be as skinny as a toothpick by now!"
Without a moment's pause I headed into the kitchen to see if there was any bacon in the fridge. Honest truth, the mere mention of salad made me immediately desire bacon. Because there is NO other point to salad.
It's a lovely support for three rashers of hot bacon.
Crispy and just dripping savoury goodness.
And some of the pan grease.
Heck, you could use ALL of the pan grease if you put the green stuff and the bacon between two slices of sourdough. Just add a sploodge of Sriracha hotsauce, some mayo, and it's healthy, high in fibre.
There is no bacon! We are undone!
But there are FOUR tubs of icecream in the freezer. Four. My apartment mate had a menstrual episode recently, which explains that. From bitter experience I know that too much icecream -- especially on an empty stomach -- does funky things to the digestive system.
I should have something else to eat first.
I think I'll have a burrito at the Mexican place around the corner. Carnitas, guack, and extra queso. Plus gobs of the roasted hot chili salsa.
I shall not go to work tomorrow.
The apartment will be empty.
I can take the risk.
If anything happens, I'll blame Ms. Walters. I got a bacon vibe all the way from North Carolina. I'm in California. Powerful. It's her fault.
The first pipe of the day will be Abingdon (dating from 2013). Then a big bowlful of John Cotton's No. 1 from a cutter tin after that.
Lunch, and a Virginia Perique to go with my tea.
Maybe there will be bacon by then.
Salad. It's evil.
UPDATE AS OF 10:30 PM
It was delicious! Now I am biding my time patiently, till my apartment mate goes to sleep, and I may raid the icecream without hindrance. There's chocolate chip, dark chocolate, strawberry, and sea salt caramel.
Don't want to shock her. Or cause her to think that I am gluttonous and lack self-control. I am a man of restraint, got tonnes of self-control.
Just going to wait until she's asleep.
UPDATE AS OF 11:13 PM
She's switched channels, darn it. September is Diamonique® month! And she's giggling over really tacky jewelry. I think I'll have a cigarillo outside.
UPDATE AS OF 11:48 PM
Aaaargh! Now she's watching reality blondes and making evil comments!
UPDATE AS OF 11:56 PM
Channel surfing.
UPDATE AS OF 12:26 AM
Icecream is within reach!
UPDATE AS OF 12:33 AM
Some icecream fell in my shoe.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
It smells assertive and sexy. And bold and stylish.
If a woman smelled like this, I'd melt.
Oh honey. Mmmmm.
Then I saw what Ms. Walters had written on a different page.
"I've had 3 salads this week dammit I should be as skinny as a toothpick by now!"
Without a moment's pause I headed into the kitchen to see if there was any bacon in the fridge. Honest truth, the mere mention of salad made me immediately desire bacon. Because there is NO other point to salad.
It's a lovely support for three rashers of hot bacon.
Crispy and just dripping savoury goodness.
And some of the pan grease.
Heck, you could use ALL of the pan grease if you put the green stuff and the bacon between two slices of sourdough. Just add a sploodge of Sriracha hotsauce, some mayo, and it's healthy, high in fibre.
There is no bacon! We are undone!
But there are FOUR tubs of icecream in the freezer. Four. My apartment mate had a menstrual episode recently, which explains that. From bitter experience I know that too much icecream -- especially on an empty stomach -- does funky things to the digestive system.
I should have something else to eat first.
I think I'll have a burrito at the Mexican place around the corner. Carnitas, guack, and extra queso. Plus gobs of the roasted hot chili salsa.
I shall not go to work tomorrow.
The apartment will be empty.
I can take the risk.
If anything happens, I'll blame Ms. Walters. I got a bacon vibe all the way from North Carolina. I'm in California. Powerful. It's her fault.
The first pipe of the day will be Abingdon (dating from 2013). Then a big bowlful of John Cotton's No. 1 from a cutter tin after that.
Lunch, and a Virginia Perique to go with my tea.
Maybe there will be bacon by then.
Salad. It's evil.
UPDATE AS OF 10:30 PM
It was delicious! Now I am biding my time patiently, till my apartment mate goes to sleep, and I may raid the icecream without hindrance. There's chocolate chip, dark chocolate, strawberry, and sea salt caramel.
Don't want to shock her. Or cause her to think that I am gluttonous and lack self-control. I am a man of restraint, got tonnes of self-control.
Just going to wait until she's asleep.
UPDATE AS OF 11:13 PM
She's switched channels, darn it. September is Diamonique® month! And she's giggling over really tacky jewelry. I think I'll have a cigarillo outside.
UPDATE AS OF 11:48 PM
Aaaargh! Now she's watching reality blondes and making evil comments!
UPDATE AS OF 11:56 PM
Channel surfing.
UPDATE AS OF 12:26 AM
Icecream is within reach!
UPDATE AS OF 12:33 AM
Some icecream fell in my shoe.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
SEARCHING FOR YOUR IDEAL MATE
A while ago I closed down my account on a dating site, after no nibbles and a marked lack of interest by the women there, which I responded to in kind. Women on dating sites seem to be entirely interested in physically fit specimens who watch their diet, don't smoke, are financially more than comfortable, and willing to drop it all for a trip rafting down the Amazon.
How about a man with a leg that sometimes hurts, likes roast duck, smokes a pipe, and considers the Amazon overrated?
For whom 'adventure' is a new snackipoo?
Crunchy, crusty, flaky?
No?
I guess threatening to bulldoze the entire blooming Brazilian rain forest is right out then.
FORNICATION AND ASPHYXIATION
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xQyQnXrLb0.]
Cup of milk-tea and a snarky attitude?
Apparently not. An internet quiz produced this startling result: "Like a molten lava cake, you just ooze sex appeal". Which I am sure applies only and entirely to my evil twin, rather than to me.
The oozing part may be a sebaceous cyst.
As far as I know, there is not a single venue in the Amazonian Jungle that vends milk-tea of any kind, and all the nice women from San Francisco tromping around would probably object fiercely to any one smoking. It's foul! How many natives did you have to enslave for that bowl of Samuel Gawith St. James Flake, you horrid unspiritual person?!?
This blogger is perfectly happy spending his time with briar pipes and good tobacco, occasionally a snackipoo and some milk-tea, and exploring the Mato Grosso only in books and on you-tube.
Bugger the Amazon.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
How about a man with a leg that sometimes hurts, likes roast duck, smokes a pipe, and considers the Amazon overrated?
For whom 'adventure' is a new snackipoo?
Crunchy, crusty, flaky?
No?
I guess threatening to bulldoze the entire blooming Brazilian rain forest is right out then.
FORNICATION AND ASPHYXIATION
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xQyQnXrLb0.]
Cup of milk-tea and a snarky attitude?
Apparently not. An internet quiz produced this startling result: "Like a molten lava cake, you just ooze sex appeal". Which I am sure applies only and entirely to my evil twin, rather than to me.
The oozing part may be a sebaceous cyst.
As far as I know, there is not a single venue in the Amazonian Jungle that vends milk-tea of any kind, and all the nice women from San Francisco tromping around would probably object fiercely to any one smoking. It's foul! How many natives did you have to enslave for that bowl of Samuel Gawith St. James Flake, you horrid unspiritual person?!?
This blogger is perfectly happy spending his time with briar pipes and good tobacco, occasionally a snackipoo and some milk-tea, and exploring the Mato Grosso only in books and on you-tube.
Bugger the Amazon.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
WEAPONIZING FOOD
In San Francisco we pride ourselves on some of the most innovative and exquisite food in the planet. We boast about our fine dining, why, we've practically re-invented cuisine! Of course most of us can't afford it, and have no intention whatsoever of getting dressed up to spend two hundred dollars on three slices of barely grilled ox tenderloin with a raspberry vinegar and goji berry demiglaze, arrayed on a bed of the cutest little baby kale.
With three perfect nasturtiums accenting the elegant plate.
Three and three; it's an ironic gestalt.
Or something.
How about fresh shiitake and wild boar suimai with truffle oil.
Also on a bed of the cutest little baby kale.
"Artisanally" steamed.
We suspect that all of California Cuisine is just a very cleverly disguised attempt to get us to blow our salary on pretentious little baby vegetables. Because you can get twice as many crops out of a field if you never let the plants grow to adulthood. Let's face it; baby vegetables are the non-meat equivalent of veal.
Alice Waters has a lot to answer for.
Oh look! There's some cold-pressed coffee!
It's ethically sourced!
And green!
The rest of the world is not like that.
IT'S FOOD? THAT'S SOOO CONFUSING!
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elp0ur_qXoM.]
I'M SORRY, BALLS, I'M SORRY!
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEYHzSDWOeM.]
Yesterday I had a HK-style club sandwich at Wing Hing (a bakery and chachanteng in Chinatown). Behind me, several women were eating bittermelon and fish over rice. Three seats down a grumpy man slurped noodles. A mother at another table fed her kids cake and fried rice.
[What made it a Hong Kong style club? Lettuce, tomato, ham, bacon, cheese, and A FRIED EGG. It is not hoity-toity. The drink of choice is milk-tea, which is strong and sweet. Also not hoity. A lot of milk-tea was drunk by various people. One person was noshing on soy sauce chicken wings and grapes.]
At Sam's in the evening I bumped into Kurin and three friends celebrating the birthday of one of them, by having burgers after going out drinking. They left shortly after the bookseller arrived, and while he was enjoying his plate of fried food, Joe came in for a burger.
[Also mentioned were pizza, bratwurst, quesadillas, beer, and sauerkraut. Plus the 'Little Miss Mayhem Junior Chainsaw', which is a toy for girls in the eleven to thirteen range that never got off the ground. Non-competitive, encourages role-playing, and sparks the imagination. With butterfly decals. Sriracha hot sauce on everything.]
I do not know what I am going to have for lunch in a few hours. It might be roast duck, it might be something soupy or crunchy.
It will not contain baby vegetables.
It might be sarson da saag and makki di roti.
Maybe tapioca balls and fruit juice.
But it will be very real.
Screw kale.
Marinites, bankers, and rich people from the tech industry eat at our finest restaurants. The rest of us happily make do with the proletarian stuff that they won't touch. We wouldn't be caught dead spending so much for pretentious dickwad chow. Food is food; seeing how far you can push the envelope on ingredients and snob-appeal is not food.
One of these days we will shoot all of our star chefs.
As well as the people to whom they cater.
==========================================================================
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All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
With three perfect nasturtiums accenting the elegant plate.
Three and three; it's an ironic gestalt.
Or something.
How about fresh shiitake and wild boar suimai with truffle oil.
Also on a bed of the cutest little baby kale.
"Artisanally" steamed.
We suspect that all of California Cuisine is just a very cleverly disguised attempt to get us to blow our salary on pretentious little baby vegetables. Because you can get twice as many crops out of a field if you never let the plants grow to adulthood. Let's face it; baby vegetables are the non-meat equivalent of veal.
Alice Waters has a lot to answer for.
Oh look! There's some cold-pressed coffee!
It's ethically sourced!
And green!
The rest of the world is not like that.
IT'S FOOD? THAT'S SOOO CONFUSING!
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elp0ur_qXoM.]
I'M SORRY, BALLS, I'M SORRY!
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEYHzSDWOeM.]
Yesterday I had a HK-style club sandwich at Wing Hing (a bakery and chachanteng in Chinatown). Behind me, several women were eating bittermelon and fish over rice. Three seats down a grumpy man slurped noodles. A mother at another table fed her kids cake and fried rice.
[What made it a Hong Kong style club? Lettuce, tomato, ham, bacon, cheese, and A FRIED EGG. It is not hoity-toity. The drink of choice is milk-tea, which is strong and sweet. Also not hoity. A lot of milk-tea was drunk by various people. One person was noshing on soy sauce chicken wings and grapes.]
At Sam's in the evening I bumped into Kurin and three friends celebrating the birthday of one of them, by having burgers after going out drinking. They left shortly after the bookseller arrived, and while he was enjoying his plate of fried food, Joe came in for a burger.
[Also mentioned were pizza, bratwurst, quesadillas, beer, and sauerkraut. Plus the 'Little Miss Mayhem Junior Chainsaw', which is a toy for girls in the eleven to thirteen range that never got off the ground. Non-competitive, encourages role-playing, and sparks the imagination. With butterfly decals. Sriracha hot sauce on everything.]
I do not know what I am going to have for lunch in a few hours. It might be roast duck, it might be something soupy or crunchy.
It will not contain baby vegetables.
It might be sarson da saag and makki di roti.
Maybe tapioca balls and fruit juice.
But it will be very real.
Screw kale.
Marinites, bankers, and rich people from the tech industry eat at our finest restaurants. The rest of us happily make do with the proletarian stuff that they won't touch. We wouldn't be caught dead spending so much for pretentious dickwad chow. Food is food; seeing how far you can push the envelope on ingredients and snob-appeal is not food.
One of these days we will shoot all of our star chefs.
As well as the people to whom they cater.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
IT PROBABLY HAS A LIGHT FLORAL FRAGRANCE
While helping the woman replace her light bulbs -- because she's shorter than a white guy, and her arms don't go up as high -- something could be seen on the carpet in her room. Now, two things need to be mentioned:
1) we actually need a longer ladder, as three treads is barely better than a step-stool, which is why I am the designated light bulb in-screwer; and
2) we tried it yesterday evening when I came home, at which point we learned that not all bulbs are equal.
But it was after nightfall, so I didn't notice what was on the carpet.
Which is subtle enough that daylight is necessary.
Today it could clearly be seen.
Cootch powder.
That being what she calls it.
Which suggests that instant everything just add water has made great strides since my youth (back in the dark ages). The woman drops her bathrobe in one spot, then employs the miracle powder.
This is more than you wanted to know, I bet.
Dried cootch; more fibre, less gluten.
My mind is running rampant.
I've got ideas.
Insta.
==========================================================================
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LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
1) we actually need a longer ladder, as three treads is barely better than a step-stool, which is why I am the designated light bulb in-screwer; and
2) we tried it yesterday evening when I came home, at which point we learned that not all bulbs are equal.
But it was after nightfall, so I didn't notice what was on the carpet.
Which is subtle enough that daylight is necessary.
Today it could clearly be seen.
Cootch powder.
That being what she calls it.
Which suggests that instant everything just add water has made great strides since my youth (back in the dark ages). The woman drops her bathrobe in one spot, then employs the miracle powder.
This is more than you wanted to know, I bet.
Dried cootch; more fibre, less gluten.
My mind is running rampant.
I've got ideas.
Insta.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
BEGINNING THE DAY WITH HOT BLACK GOO
Mordechai posits that the American breakfast is sugar, cereal, and with the addition of dairy, damned close to dessert. Several readers throw variations on that theme into the mix. And, nutritionally, they are indeed on the right track.
Except, of course, for the pesky little fact that American cereals are absolutely disgusting, and the very idea of eating that crap would send me screaming out of the house into the rain storm.
Froooooooooooooooot. Loooooooooooooooops.
The ideal breakfast, as everyone knows, wakes you up without stressing you out, and renders you calm, rational, even keeled, and ready to courageously face the day.
Two cups of coffee, cigarillos, and bleakness.
The English, I believe (and it has also been my experience, so it is more than just a figment of faith) have various substances seethed in bacon fat, including sliced tomato, and the Dutch eat bread and cheese or smoked meats. The rest of Western Europe indulges in fresh rolls and Hero-brand jam, with your choice of coffee or chocolate. And maybe a hard-boiled egg, for the adventurous and lower class.
Two cups of coffee, cigarillos, and bleakness.
Many Chinese have jook (rice porridge), with or without fried dough, and soy milk. The soy milk upsets the stomach, the jook (which only the Cantonese know how to make properly) then soothes the aggravated membranes.
Jook is light lunch or midnight snack food anyhow.
Sometimes the Cantonese have lots of little snackies and a huge amount of tea. Which shows that they aren't committed to morning suffering, and explains why a dim sum teahouse is, at the best of times, bedlam.
They're wired to the gills, and in flavour country!
There you are, stumbling about after your two cups of coffee, cigarillos, and bleakness, when you come across a popping establishment filled with many excited people in the middle of Ngau Tau Kok (牛頭角).
You decide what the heck why not baptism by fire.
Perhaps an hour later you leave, belching, and contemplating the first pipe of the day. You are happier than you have been since dawn, your ears are ringing, you have had a vibrant discussion with four complete strangers about Hollywood movies that provided startling insights, and now some Rattray's Old Gowrie, fully rubbed out, in the Peterson bent bulldog, seems like a dang good idea. You light up behind a row of bins (yellow for drink cans, red for glass and plastic bottles, and blue for paper).
You wonder what's for lunch, in about six hours.
Life is good.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Froooooooooooooooot. Loooooooooooooooops.
The ideal breakfast, as everyone knows, wakes you up without stressing you out, and renders you calm, rational, even keeled, and ready to courageously face the day.
Two cups of coffee, cigarillos, and bleakness.
The English, I believe (and it has also been my experience, so it is more than just a figment of faith) have various substances seethed in bacon fat, including sliced tomato, and the Dutch eat bread and cheese or smoked meats. The rest of Western Europe indulges in fresh rolls and Hero-brand jam, with your choice of coffee or chocolate. And maybe a hard-boiled egg, for the adventurous and lower class.
Two cups of coffee, cigarillos, and bleakness.
Many Chinese have jook (rice porridge), with or without fried dough, and soy milk. The soy milk upsets the stomach, the jook (which only the Cantonese know how to make properly) then soothes the aggravated membranes.
Jook is light lunch or midnight snack food anyhow.
Sometimes the Cantonese have lots of little snackies and a huge amount of tea. Which shows that they aren't committed to morning suffering, and explains why a dim sum teahouse is, at the best of times, bedlam.
They're wired to the gills, and in flavour country!
There you are, stumbling about after your two cups of coffee, cigarillos, and bleakness, when you come across a popping establishment filled with many excited people in the middle of Ngau Tau Kok (牛頭角).
You decide what the heck why not baptism by fire.
Perhaps an hour later you leave, belching, and contemplating the first pipe of the day. You are happier than you have been since dawn, your ears are ringing, you have had a vibrant discussion with four complete strangers about Hollywood movies that provided startling insights, and now some Rattray's Old Gowrie, fully rubbed out, in the Peterson bent bulldog, seems like a dang good idea. You light up behind a row of bins (yellow for drink cans, red for glass and plastic bottles, and blue for paper).
You wonder what's for lunch, in about six hours.
Life is good.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, September 12, 2016
A FIERCE GIRLISH FROWN
While waiting for the bus this morning I imagined myself as a woman. Not with a view towards gender-shifting, you will understand, but as a different consciousness become flesh under other circumstances. It's a mental exercise. Spending quality time with the speculative soul within.
What would I have been like had I been born a woman?
Oh heck, what if I were younger too?
Barely post doctorate?
I think I should have majored in geology. Something scientific and real, but without too many opinionated men of the oafish persuasion.
I'd probably be short and somewhat scowly, like a pugnacious raccoon. On a day like today I would have left the house wearing a navy-blue skirt, and a sportscoat over an oxford cloth shirt (not a blouse). After a hearty breakfast, and strong coffee. And I would be bitterly resentful of the need to NOT smell like cigars, much as I would have preferred to indulge in a short perfecto. Perhaps an 'Arturo Fuente Hemingway Signature Maduro', with a second cup of coffee.
Dawdle, dawdle, dawdle.
I like skirts; they're more feminine and less butt-revealing than pants, and quite frankly, I hate blue jeans. I need something that clarifies that I am a woman, seeing as I f*cking well refuse to smear make-up all over my face. None of that femmy sh*t for me.
A cigar, slowly smoked while admiring the dust motes dancing in a beam of sunlight, at the kitchen table with the New York Times. Ah, heaven!
The Perfecto vitola: so piss-elegant, but so very very real.
Instead, I'm probably heading toward the weekly meeting with the noodgy cow who heads the department, the one with pictures of little babies in Hello Kitty frames on her desk, and the plastic angel statue.
And those odious suburban women in the front office.
Painted superficial dimwits.
If I had a pet, it would probably be a cat. As an ironic counter point to all those women who have dogs. Especially chihuahua-types, AND also the women who choose big dogs like retrievers or German shepherds, because they desperately want to be taken seriously.
An angry black tomcat named 'Boris'.
Who scratches strangers.
Not cuddly.
The bus to Marin came just as I got to the good part; explaining that eating salad for lunch was a p*ss-poor substitute for real food.
To someone who was actually eating salad.
And feigning enjoyment.
If I were a woman, I might imagine myself as a man.
Or not.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
What would I have been like had I been born a woman?
Oh heck, what if I were younger too?
Barely post doctorate?
I think I should have majored in geology. Something scientific and real, but without too many opinionated men of the oafish persuasion.
I'd probably be short and somewhat scowly, like a pugnacious raccoon. On a day like today I would have left the house wearing a navy-blue skirt, and a sportscoat over an oxford cloth shirt (not a blouse). After a hearty breakfast, and strong coffee. And I would be bitterly resentful of the need to NOT smell like cigars, much as I would have preferred to indulge in a short perfecto. Perhaps an 'Arturo Fuente Hemingway Signature Maduro', with a second cup of coffee.
Dawdle, dawdle, dawdle.
I like skirts; they're more feminine and less butt-revealing than pants, and quite frankly, I hate blue jeans. I need something that clarifies that I am a woman, seeing as I f*cking well refuse to smear make-up all over my face. None of that femmy sh*t for me.
A cigar, slowly smoked while admiring the dust motes dancing in a beam of sunlight, at the kitchen table with the New York Times. Ah, heaven!
The Perfecto vitola: so piss-elegant, but so very very real.
Instead, I'm probably heading toward the weekly meeting with the noodgy cow who heads the department, the one with pictures of little babies in Hello Kitty frames on her desk, and the plastic angel statue.
And those odious suburban women in the front office.
Painted superficial dimwits.
If I had a pet, it would probably be a cat. As an ironic counter point to all those women who have dogs. Especially chihuahua-types, AND also the women who choose big dogs like retrievers or German shepherds, because they desperately want to be taken seriously.
An angry black tomcat named 'Boris'.
Who scratches strangers.
Not cuddly.
The bus to Marin came just as I got to the good part; explaining that eating salad for lunch was a p*ss-poor substitute for real food.
To someone who was actually eating salad.
And feigning enjoyment.
If I were a woman, I might imagine myself as a man.
Or not.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
HOW TO "ITALIAN"
The fog never left the ridge-line above Marin City, and the sky remained leaden throughout the day. It was cold and windy when I caught the bus back to city, and once home I hardly ventured out at all. Except for two bowls of tobacco. One before dinner, while scurrying around the neighborhood, once after while digesting fried noodles with hot sauce, shrimp paste, crunchy sliced bitter vegetables, and a grilled bockwurst, plus a cup of coffee.
Call it "fusion cuisine" if you will. The hotsauce stood in for tomatoes, the shrimp paste for anchovies, and the crunchy vegetables could have been freshly picked garden greens but weren't. So it was Italian. An Italian would've recognized it as food. Possible Roman.
The bockwurst is another matter. I'm not sure that Italians recognize anything German as edible. Germans go south to enjoy life .....
But Italians seldom go north for any reason.
I was recovering from Mill Valley.
Putting it out of my mind.
OH JESUS, MARIN!
There is nothing near the Marin City bus stop that anybody would identify as food. Boo-King and Panda Xpress.
The Strawberry Village area is equally depressing, but largely without a place for a chilled 72 ounce softdrink, because they're up-scale. In between those two locales is Pickleweed Slough. Gas station convenience stores, Mickey D's, and Seven-Eleven.
Plus a generic sushi restaurant.
Sub-urban.
There is an Italian restaurant near a bus stop in Sausalito, which blazoons that it has gluten-free pasta and pizza. With that assertion, they loose every shred of Apennine street-cred they ever had.
My best thought while sojourning in Marin was "Broccoli Pineapple Tofulato Frozen Non-Diary Dessert", for the crowd that drinks kale shakes and hates lactose, gluten, highly refined sugar, and everything else. I should write a business plan, then sell the whole idea to a group of investors.
It will probably do fabulously well in Marin County.
But I wouldn't want to meet the customers.
Icky spiritual vegan freaks.
"Gourmet 'bro-napple' non-dairy treat! Made deep in the Amazon! Part of the proceeds go to dolphins!"
The best Marin restaurants are in San Francisco.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Call it "fusion cuisine" if you will. The hotsauce stood in for tomatoes, the shrimp paste for anchovies, and the crunchy vegetables could have been freshly picked garden greens but weren't. So it was Italian. An Italian would've recognized it as food. Possible Roman.
The bockwurst is another matter. I'm not sure that Italians recognize anything German as edible. Germans go south to enjoy life .....
But Italians seldom go north for any reason.
I was recovering from Mill Valley.
Putting it out of my mind.
OH JESUS, MARIN!
There is nothing near the Marin City bus stop that anybody would identify as food. Boo-King and Panda Xpress.
The Strawberry Village area is equally depressing, but largely without a place for a chilled 72 ounce softdrink, because they're up-scale. In between those two locales is Pickleweed Slough. Gas station convenience stores, Mickey D's, and Seven-Eleven.
Plus a generic sushi restaurant.
Sub-urban.
There is an Italian restaurant near a bus stop in Sausalito, which blazoons that it has gluten-free pasta and pizza. With that assertion, they loose every shred of Apennine street-cred they ever had.
My best thought while sojourning in Marin was "Broccoli Pineapple Tofulato Frozen Non-Diary Dessert", for the crowd that drinks kale shakes and hates lactose, gluten, highly refined sugar, and everything else. I should write a business plan, then sell the whole idea to a group of investors.
It will probably do fabulously well in Marin County.
But I wouldn't want to meet the customers.
Icky spiritual vegan freaks.
"Gourmet 'bro-napple' non-dairy treat! Made deep in the Amazon! Part of the proceeds go to dolphins!"
The best Marin restaurants are in San Francisco.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Sunday, September 11, 2016
AND THAT IS PROBABLY A GOOD THING
Sometimes you really have to wonder what Big Brother was thinking. And, specifically, IF they thought. No, this isn't about raising the age of tobacco to twenty-one, or open carry laws, or even about laws still on the books that allow a man to whip his slave (or indentured servant) if said slave (or indentured servant) uses church as an excuse to shirk.
Big Brother in The South is moronic.
As well as conservative.
Sometimes.
Cite:
"Between 2004 and 2013, around 4,500 children under the age of 18 got married in the state of Virginia. Of these girls, more than 200 of them were aged 15 or under."
"Last week, the authorities in the state introduced new legislation that updated rules that had until then made it legal for girls aged 12 or 13 to get married if they had parental consent and were pregnant."
End cite.
[SOURCE: Virginia introduces law to stop 12-year-old girls getting married.]
Let that sink in for a moment.
Now think of the conversational abilities of the average teenage girl.
What kind of marriage is it if one of them is a rancid degenerate and the other a complete idiot? And why on earth would Big Brother, even in the deepest gorhalpus South, think that those two getting hitched could possibly be a good idea?
Why was this legal up till now?
Okay, I can understand back in the Stone Age, when folks in Virginia ran around in bear skin loincloths, and immense poverty drove them to find a suitable adult who would support their daughter, rather than selling her to the parish priest for sacrifice, but surely that law could have and should have been changed over a hundred years ago? Two hundred years ago?
Were y'all really that desperate to get the little twit out of the house so you wouldn't have to hear her squealing "OMG", or "gag me with a spoon, fershure"?
It's probably worse in one of those buttery drawls.
Anyhoooo, welcome and congratulations on finally joining the Twentieth Century (don't look now, but there's another one right behind it), and thank you for finally biting that bullet.
The great state of Virginia will doubtless be a better place for it.
Next: Indentured servitude - bad for the economy?
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Big Brother in The South is moronic.
As well as conservative.
Sometimes.
Cite:
"Between 2004 and 2013, around 4,500 children under the age of 18 got married in the state of Virginia. Of these girls, more than 200 of them were aged 15 or under."
"Last week, the authorities in the state introduced new legislation that updated rules that had until then made it legal for girls aged 12 or 13 to get married if they had parental consent and were pregnant."
End cite.
[SOURCE: Virginia introduces law to stop 12-year-old girls getting married.]
Let that sink in for a moment.
Now think of the conversational abilities of the average teenage girl.
What kind of marriage is it if one of them is a rancid degenerate and the other a complete idiot? And why on earth would Big Brother, even in the deepest gorhalpus South, think that those two getting hitched could possibly be a good idea?
Why was this legal up till now?
Okay, I can understand back in the Stone Age, when folks in Virginia ran around in bear skin loincloths, and immense poverty drove them to find a suitable adult who would support their daughter, rather than selling her to the parish priest for sacrifice, but surely that law could have and should have been changed over a hundred years ago? Two hundred years ago?
Were y'all really that desperate to get the little twit out of the house so you wouldn't have to hear her squealing "OMG", or "gag me with a spoon, fershure"?
It's probably worse in one of those buttery drawls.
Anyhoooo, welcome and congratulations on finally joining the Twentieth Century (don't look now, but there's another one right behind it), and thank you for finally biting that bullet.
The great state of Virginia will doubtless be a better place for it.
Next: Indentured servitude - bad for the economy?
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
GOOD FOR YOUR SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT!
There are preachers in this great country of ours who search the internet for Sunday Sermon material. They are desperate to compete with today's Christian Luminaries like Trump and Bachman. They have to come up with something. Their parishioners are demanding e-phone ports and rechargers in the pews.
Rest assured, fierce kindly men of God.
THIS BLOG HAS TWENTY TWO PERCENT MORE JESUS!
What that actually means is that I have mentioned the founder of your faith far more than the second coming, which is Trump (Michele Bachmann stands in for Mary Magdalene).
I love Christians, I really do. And they improve the real estate values, why, they benefit almost any neighborhood. Just think of what they'd do for the Midwest and The Deep South!
Except Texas. Texas has oil.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Rest assured, fierce kindly men of God.
THIS BLOG HAS TWENTY TWO PERCENT MORE JESUS!
What that actually means is that I have mentioned the founder of your faith far more than the second coming, which is Trump (Michele Bachmann stands in for Mary Magdalene).
I love Christians, I really do. And they improve the real estate values, why, they benefit almost any neighborhood. Just think of what they'd do for the Midwest and The Deep South!
Except Texas. Texas has oil.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, September 10, 2016
OH LAY OFF OF FACEBOOK
The most popular social media platform in the world got slammed the other day because in a fit of prudery they took down a post by a reporter for a Scandinavian newspaper that featured Napalm Girl. Which, as I'm sure you will recall, is the iconic photo from the Vietnam War showing a naked tyke grievously wounded by flammatory substances used by the United States Armed Forces running down the road screaming in agony and terror.
It was the nudity.
But apparently removing that picture was censorship run amuck.
In consequence, right thinking people everywhere are dumping on Mark Zuckerbook massively, incensed that part of their childhood has been destroyed, why the nerve of that man! Please note that I do not have to reproduce the picture here, because you have already seen it.
I rely on Facebook for contact with the world and links to news as much as any one, and probably more than many of my friends, real or virtual.
Aleppo, Kaepernick, Nice, massive Indian strike, the idiocy of cleansing diets, Netanyahu, Star Trek, basselopes ...
The Squirrel of Judgment wondering why you aren't creating art ...
Plus Trump, and Irfan's courageous quest to eat photogenic treats at every hour of the day; there may be drag queens in either picture.
If it weren't for Facebook, I would probably have less of a social life than you can imagine -- because abso everybody else is tweeting or texting or sharing kitten pictures -- and also be far less exposed to news articles, history, art, music, cogent analyses of politics and events world-wide.
I have come to rely on Facebook as an essential Fourth Estate.
And Fifth Column.
I knew about Aleppo for a long time, of course. But thanks to Facebook, now almost everybody else knows too. Admit it, some of you thought it was a racehorse.
Ei aleppo. Tu aleppas. El / Ella aleppa. Ei aleppé. Tu aleppe. El / Ella aleppó. Ei aleppado. Tu / El / Ella aleppado. ...
Facebook has come to be the rational and informed person's interface with the world. We use it for information and selective outrage, and it's so cute that advertisers pay for it, imagining that we actually read their blurble.
Oh yeah. Kitten pictures. If only the New York Times or the Süddeutsche Zeitung interspersed their dense blocks of text with kitten pictures, their readership would skyrocket.
The only other site I use as much is Wikipedia.
Knowledge literally at my finger tips.
Sometimes regurged here.
Actually, I sometimes miss the STRONGLY worded letters to the editor, but the audible mumbling more than makes up for that.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
It was the nudity.
But apparently removing that picture was censorship run amuck.
In consequence, right thinking people everywhere are dumping on Mark Zuckerbook massively, incensed that part of their childhood has been destroyed, why the nerve of that man! Please note that I do not have to reproduce the picture here, because you have already seen it.
I rely on Facebook for contact with the world and links to news as much as any one, and probably more than many of my friends, real or virtual.
Aleppo, Kaepernick, Nice, massive Indian strike, the idiocy of cleansing diets, Netanyahu, Star Trek, basselopes ...
The Squirrel of Judgment wondering why you aren't creating art ...
Plus Trump, and Irfan's courageous quest to eat photogenic treats at every hour of the day; there may be drag queens in either picture.
If it weren't for Facebook, I would probably have less of a social life than you can imagine -- because abso everybody else is tweeting or texting or sharing kitten pictures -- and also be far less exposed to news articles, history, art, music, cogent analyses of politics and events world-wide.
I have come to rely on Facebook as an essential Fourth Estate.
And Fifth Column.
I knew about Aleppo for a long time, of course. But thanks to Facebook, now almost everybody else knows too. Admit it, some of you thought it was a racehorse.
Ei aleppo. Tu aleppas. El / Ella aleppa. Ei aleppé. Tu aleppe. El / Ella aleppó. Ei aleppado. Tu / El / Ella aleppado. ...
Facebook has come to be the rational and informed person's interface with the world. We use it for information and selective outrage, and it's so cute that advertisers pay for it, imagining that we actually read their blurble.
Oh yeah. Kitten pictures. If only the New York Times or the Süddeutsche Zeitung interspersed their dense blocks of text with kitten pictures, their readership would skyrocket.
The only other site I use as much is Wikipedia.
Knowledge literally at my finger tips.
Sometimes regurged here.
Actually, I sometimes miss the STRONGLY worded letters to the editor, but the audible mumbling more than makes up for that.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Friday, September 09, 2016
MOONCAKES, SAN FRANCISCO
The moon festival is a Chinese celebration on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. This year it will be September 15. There's a whole bucket load of meaning and symbolism to the event, most of which you do not need to know, and would not pay any heed to whatsoever anyway.
So, in short, here are the most important things to keep in mind:
THE MOON FESTIVAL
中秋節 ('jung chau jit')
Over three thousand years of tradition, worship in gratitude for the harvest.
Full moon.
There are stories.
Family togetherness.
Revolt against the foreigners.
Lanterns.
Eat mooncakes.
MOONCAKES
月餅 ('yuet bing')
Mooncakes can be made with any number of fillings. Often they will contain a salted duck egg yolk, which makes them richer and adds complexity to the sweetness. Very delicious!
There are four kinds that in my mind you should consider:
單黃蓮蓉 ('daan wong lin yung'): single yolk lotus seed paste.
雙黃蓮蓉 ('seung wong lin yung'): double yolk lotus seed paste.
單黃豆沙 ('daan wong dau saa'): single yolk red bean paste.
雙黃豆沙 ('seung wong dau saa'): double yolk red bean paste.
Yes there are many others. And regional variations. But start with these.
Where might you buy them?
BAKERIES
餅家 ('bing kaa')
THE AA BAKERY & CAFÉ
永興餅家茶餐廳 ('wing hing bing ka tsa tsan teng')
1068 Stockton Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
(415) 981-0123
EASTERN BAKERY
東亞餅家 ('tung ah bing ka')
720 Grant Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94108
(415) 433-7973
Both bakeries are famous for their mooncakes. The AA also has Hong Kong style milk-tea (港式奶茶 'gong sik naai chaa'), the Eastern is, additionally, famous for their coffee crunch cake.
Every bakery in Chinatown will have mooncakes.
Don't worry, you won't be left yearning.
If you do not have a chance to head into Chinatown, you can also purchase tins with four cakes apiece, made by several companies, available at many Chinese grocery stores out in the Richmond or Sunset.
A well-know imported brand is Wing Wah (榮華 、榮華餅家), from a company located in Yuen Long (元朗) in the New Territories.
Many people look forward to a tin.
It's a celebration.
I myself will NOT be buying a tin of mooncakes this year, as I am single, not particularly festive, and I feel fat.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
So, in short, here are the most important things to keep in mind:
THE MOON FESTIVAL
中秋節 ('jung chau jit')
Over three thousand years of tradition, worship in gratitude for the harvest.
Full moon.
There are stories.
Family togetherness.
Revolt against the foreigners.
Lanterns.
Eat mooncakes.
MOONCAKES
月餅 ('yuet bing')
Mooncakes can be made with any number of fillings. Often they will contain a salted duck egg yolk, which makes them richer and adds complexity to the sweetness. Very delicious!
There are four kinds that in my mind you should consider:
單黃蓮蓉 ('daan wong lin yung'): single yolk lotus seed paste.
雙黃蓮蓉 ('seung wong lin yung'): double yolk lotus seed paste.
單黃豆沙 ('daan wong dau saa'): single yolk red bean paste.
雙黃豆沙 ('seung wong dau saa'): double yolk red bean paste.
Yes there are many others. And regional variations. But start with these.
Where might you buy them?
BAKERIES
餅家 ('bing kaa')
THE AA BAKERY & CAFÉ
永興餅家茶餐廳 ('wing hing bing ka tsa tsan teng')
1068 Stockton Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
(415) 981-0123
EASTERN BAKERY
東亞餅家 ('tung ah bing ka')
720 Grant Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94108
(415) 433-7973
Both bakeries are famous for their mooncakes. The AA also has Hong Kong style milk-tea (港式奶茶 'gong sik naai chaa'), the Eastern is, additionally, famous for their coffee crunch cake.
Every bakery in Chinatown will have mooncakes.
Don't worry, you won't be left yearning.
If you do not have a chance to head into Chinatown, you can also purchase tins with four cakes apiece, made by several companies, available at many Chinese grocery stores out in the Richmond or Sunset.
A well-know imported brand is Wing Wah (榮華 、榮華餅家), from a company located in Yuen Long (元朗) in the New Territories.
Many people look forward to a tin.
It's a celebration.
I myself will NOT be buying a tin of mooncakes this year, as I am single, not particularly festive, and I feel fat.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
BLATNOY
My apartment mate likes to eat with her boyfriend Wheelie Boy. And to that end, she cooks frequently. Which means that I have to stay out of the kitchen. This should not be a problem, except that there are occasions when I also would like to eat, and do NOT wish to go out for a burrito, no matter how scrumptious.
She cooked last night. I have NO idea when Wheelie Boy will enjoy the Tarragon Chicken, the fire-roasted vegetables, the pasta with pesto, or the mushroom whatever that dish is (his micro wave will let him know).
By the time I was ravenous the kitchen was still occupied.
The whole apartment smelled utterly delicious.
The Mexican place was closed.
I am not the kind of person who lets hunger dominate his life. Hah! Food means nothing to me! At my age I've tasted it all before. Far, I say far, be it from me to grouchily sit in front of my computer endlessly playing food videos. Ich habe keine existenzangst.
Did I already mention that I have superhuman tolerance, and am saintly and calm? At all times?
NEW YORKSKIE TAKSIST
[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEZfCv3Ko1Q.]
This song has NO connection to the hunger, or the realization that eating alone is altogether miserable and unappealing.
Nor do I have any clue what the lyrics mean.
The song is a Russian criminal-type chanson, and sounds evocative of struggle and frustration. Plus it has a catchy beat.
Tarragon Chicken, fire-roasted vegetables, pasta with pesto.
And a mushroom whatever that was.
I have never had Tarragon Chicken.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
She cooked last night. I have NO idea when Wheelie Boy will enjoy the Tarragon Chicken, the fire-roasted vegetables, the pasta with pesto, or the mushroom whatever that dish is (his micro wave will let him know).
By the time I was ravenous the kitchen was still occupied.
The whole apartment smelled utterly delicious.
The Mexican place was closed.
I am not the kind of person who lets hunger dominate his life. Hah! Food means nothing to me! At my age I've tasted it all before. Far, I say far, be it from me to grouchily sit in front of my computer endlessly playing food videos. Ich habe keine existenzangst.
Did I already mention that I have superhuman tolerance, and am saintly and calm? At all times?
NEW YORKSKIE TAKSIST
[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEZfCv3Ko1Q.]
This song has NO connection to the hunger, or the realization that eating alone is altogether miserable and unappealing.
Nor do I have any clue what the lyrics mean.
The song is a Russian criminal-type chanson, and sounds evocative of struggle and frustration. Plus it has a catchy beat.
Tarragon Chicken, fire-roasted vegetables, pasta with pesto.
And a mushroom whatever that was.
I have never had Tarragon Chicken.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Thursday, September 08, 2016
I HAVE NO IDEA
You probably had to be there. I was. And I am a very patient man. It also helped that the song "Bringing In The Sheaves" was going through my head during most of it.
"It" being lunch while the banker talked. In consequence of which I have NO idea how the amount of money in circulation ties in to the war in Irak and Afghanistan, or the startling similarities between Michael Jackson and Hillary Clinton. Perhaps I should have listened.
Church music, like "Bringing In The Sheaves" is not part of my background. But my apartment mate is convinced that such things are included in the heritage of all white people. She's Chinese, and has a mighty queer view of 'whitey'.
Surely the all-white part of the country is filled with wholesome bland people singing that kind of sh*t?
And aren't they all constipated?
A HUMONGOUS LOAD OF 'SHEAVES'
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u67Lb1RyXTU.]
I wonder why she thinks they're all constipated?
The first I ever heard about the sheaves may have been in a movie. At that time I was already an adult. White folks Jesus songs aren't a thing in my world. There is one exception, though.
Mahalia Jackson.
My mother had her records.
A STIRRING WAR SONG
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63yBpl6Oixo.]
There is a civil rights struggle connection.
It's inspiring.
My lunch was taken up by the banker, who came in just as I sat down. After I finished eating, he went out and found someone on the veranda, where he stayed for nearly an entire hour before coming back inside for another victim.
He's harmless, and very intelligent. But his mind makes strange poetic connections between facts that likely have no link, and after he's been reading he needs a brick wall to bounce his ideas off of. It's a way of reformulating things in his mind, and because he puts it back into words, understanding the material better.
Most of us don't have a clue what he's on about.
Or, for that matter, what on earth he's on.
I wasn't expecting that for lunch.
But actually I do not mind.
He's a likable man.
And harmless.
Bringing In The Sheaves was an earworm because of things my apartment mate had said. Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves; we shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
She got up at five thirty. At which time I had already been up for an hour, and was on my second cup of coffee. Couldn't sleep.
Morning is the best time.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
"It" being lunch while the banker talked. In consequence of which I have NO idea how the amount of money in circulation ties in to the war in Irak and Afghanistan, or the startling similarities between Michael Jackson and Hillary Clinton. Perhaps I should have listened.
Church music, like "Bringing In The Sheaves" is not part of my background. But my apartment mate is convinced that such things are included in the heritage of all white people. She's Chinese, and has a mighty queer view of 'whitey'.
Surely the all-white part of the country is filled with wholesome bland people singing that kind of sh*t?
And aren't they all constipated?
A HUMONGOUS LOAD OF 'SHEAVES'
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u67Lb1RyXTU.]
I wonder why she thinks they're all constipated?
The first I ever heard about the sheaves may have been in a movie. At that time I was already an adult. White folks Jesus songs aren't a thing in my world. There is one exception, though.
Mahalia Jackson.
My mother had her records.
A STIRRING WAR SONG
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63yBpl6Oixo.]
There is a civil rights struggle connection.
It's inspiring.
My lunch was taken up by the banker, who came in just as I sat down. After I finished eating, he went out and found someone on the veranda, where he stayed for nearly an entire hour before coming back inside for another victim.
He's harmless, and very intelligent. But his mind makes strange poetic connections between facts that likely have no link, and after he's been reading he needs a brick wall to bounce his ideas off of. It's a way of reformulating things in his mind, and because he puts it back into words, understanding the material better.
Most of us don't have a clue what he's on about.
Or, for that matter, what on earth he's on.
I wasn't expecting that for lunch.
But actually I do not mind.
He's a likable man.
And harmless.
Bringing In The Sheaves was an earworm because of things my apartment mate had said. Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves; we shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
She got up at five thirty. At which time I had already been up for an hour, and was on my second cup of coffee. Couldn't sleep.
Morning is the best time.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
GANESH BEER -- DRINK OF THE GODS
In a move sure to offend some Hindus (while amusing others), a Belgian brewery has started making an India Pale Ale with Ganesha on the label.
No, I have no idea how it tastes. I stopped experimenting with beer years ago, and now drink it only occassionaly, and only Anchor Steam Beer.
I am reasonably certain it is a splendid product, well worth drinking.
The Universal Society For Hinduism, a bunch of religious nuts founded by and seemingly consisting only of Gujarati busybody Rajan Zed (now based in Nevada) has strongly protested. The use of Lord Ganesha for commercial purposes is, apparently, appalling! Ranjan Zed demands that Musketeer Brewery cease forthwith! He demands apologies!
Man, the nerve of those Belgians!
Mercantile scum!
Rajan Zed should go fly a kite.
Ganesh Brand Ghee, and Ganesh Brand Agmark Ghee
Ganesh Super Fine Atta Flour
Ganesh Beedies
Shree Ganesh Saffron Half cut, And Shree Ganesh Pure Saffron
Ganesh Mustard Oil
Ganesh Holi Colour
Ganesh Papad
Ganesh Channa Masala Papad
Ganesh Jeera Masala Papad
Ganesh Chora Fali
Ganesh Matiya
Ganesh Brand Deluxe Mono Filament Twine
Health Cha Shree Ganesh
Sri Ganesha Glass & Sanitary Wares
Extra White Sri Ganpati Gypsum Building Plaster
Ganpati Plasfab Ltd.
Ganpati Brand Moth Polish
Sorry, I have no clue what Moth Polish is.
I found all these products with a quick image-search for 'Ganesh Brand'.
There's also Ganesh Industries in Ahmedabad (Gujarat), as well as Shree Ganesh Industries (jeep and tractor body parts), Sri Ganesh Industries (halwa making machines) ......
Don't poo your dhoti, Rajan.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
No, I have no idea how it tastes. I stopped experimenting with beer years ago, and now drink it only occassionaly, and only Anchor Steam Beer.
I am reasonably certain it is a splendid product, well worth drinking.
The Universal Society For Hinduism, a bunch of religious nuts founded by and seemingly consisting only of Gujarati busybody Rajan Zed (now based in Nevada) has strongly protested. The use of Lord Ganesha for commercial purposes is, apparently, appalling! Ranjan Zed demands that Musketeer Brewery cease forthwith! He demands apologies!
Man, the nerve of those Belgians!
Mercantile scum!
Rajan Zed should go fly a kite.
Ganesh Brand Ghee, and Ganesh Brand Agmark Ghee
Ganesh Super Fine Atta Flour
Ganesh Beedies
Shree Ganesh Saffron Half cut, And Shree Ganesh Pure Saffron
Ganesh Mustard Oil
Ganesh Holi Colour
Ganesh Papad
Ganesh Channa Masala Papad
Ganesh Jeera Masala Papad
Ganesh Chora Fali
Ganesh Matiya
Ganesh Brand Deluxe Mono Filament Twine
Health Cha Shree Ganesh
Sri Ganesha Glass & Sanitary Wares
Extra White Sri Ganpati Gypsum Building Plaster
Ganpati Plasfab Ltd.
Ganpati Brand Moth Polish
Sorry, I have no clue what Moth Polish is.
I found all these products with a quick image-search for 'Ganesh Brand'.
There's also Ganesh Industries in Ahmedabad (Gujarat), as well as Shree Ganesh Industries (jeep and tractor body parts), Sri Ganesh Industries (halwa making machines) ......
Don't poo your dhoti, Rajan.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
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