THE STUFF OF NIGHTMARES IS AUSTRALIAN

The Australian government has released videos for sex ed in schools featuring milk shakes and pizza. This in relation to consent. From which we learn that Australian sex might be peculiar.

You'll be happy to know it does not involve wombats.

"One video, designed for students aged between 14 and 17, shows a teenage girl smearing milkshake on her boyfriend's face without his permission. The video then uses other examples of eating pizza and "touching your butt" as situations where permission would be required."

[Source: Young, Australian, and horny -- BBC.]


After viewing the milk shake video, the one thing that stands out is that we Americans invented a darn good thing -- the milkshake -- and those people down under having done something horrible with it. We never should have taught them English. Or two-legged walking.
It's traumatizing. I shall never think of milkshakes the same way again.

I refuse to watch the pizza clip.

Not being from Chicago or New York, I probably don't have enough of an emotional investment or intellectual curiosity, and in any case I now am determined to take off running if I hear an Australian accent in a pizza joint.

Probably explains Mad Max.
Milk shakes and pizza?
Don't want to know.



This is what happens when you feed people yeast extractives.
Crocodiles, spaggo sandwiches, ugg boots, and mayhem.




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DANCING WITH A CAN OF DOLE

Finally Spring is here. In the next few days, people will air out their houses, discard their winter clothes, and throw out the cadavers of their relatives and housemates who croaked during the freezing months, which they were storing in their basements till the cold was over or saving up to win valuable prizes. And the turkey vultures circling in the air over the triangle formed by gas stations, tidal flats, and the freeway will feast!

Because that is what people in the suburbs do.


Their teenage sons and daughters will dance gaily naked in the green fields behind Mount Tamalpais, twirling cleverly braided ropes of wildflowers, and imbibing the bibe of highschool graduation.

That, too, is what people in the suburbs do.


Based on a hyperbolic statement I made, someone blinkered on Facebook accused me of hating teenagers and being a violent man. I wish to strongly deny that; teenagers are probably just delightful with barbecue sauce (tomatoes, chilies, brown sugar), and the most belligerent thing I've ever done is attend meaningful cultural rallies armed with a pillow.
I am Christian gentleness and fluff personified.


Pineapple does NOT belong on pizza; it belongs on teenagers.
Sweating in the grass behind Mount Tamalpais.


I love suburbanites.




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MARIN COUNTY: THE BOIL ON THE ARSE OF THE UNIVERSE

Rhetorical question: how many jackasses does it take to make a place a sh8thole? Actually, it's not really rhetorical, even though I already know the answer. I absolutely hate Marin County and its dipsh8ts, apathetes, and entitled hosebags.

Years ago, when I worked down the peninsula, some of my coworkers asked me why I didn't move to be closer to work. My response was that I prefered to come home to a city, rather than be stuck in the burbelurbs on weekends. Even though my commute is now in the opposite direction that still holds.

Marin County is where self-satisfied priggism was born, flourished, and grew to overweight adulthood. The place festers.


Years ago, Marin solidly refused to join up with BART when it was still on the drawing board, because they were far too good to associate with the rest of us. That said a lot. This year, the burning season will start sooner because of record levels of dryness and strike further south, affecting parts of Marin. It could not happen to a more deserving place.

We will need to block the bridge and keep refugees from getting here.
Let them go to Oakland, Berkeley, and Antioch instead.



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GREASE GEL CULTURE

My apartment mate, who is on the spectrum, sometimes needs stuff repeated a few times before the meaning actually penetrates. And I myself, also on the spectrum, almost habitually do that. Before I'm convinced that the other person understood.
So I don't know if it's her or me.

Plus her mind gets on mental hamster wheels. She's watching Perry Mason nowadays, and obsessively analyzing the flaws and logical non-cohesiveness of each episode. In great detail. Which I am not interested in at all, but watching her mind work is fascinating. I'm fixated on the clothing that the characters are wearing. So very very period. Post-zoot-suitian. Slightly too roomy in the legs. Houndstooth, and subtle loudness in the check department.
Sports coats a tad too long.

It was the era when men had two hand brushes to polish their head hair, repeatedly stroking it after showering to make it conform to a particular coiffure style, then spending several minutes repeating that after getting dressed to ensure that it was perfect.
Hair cream would have been the easy way out.

I know how it's done. I will not do that.
Comb briskly across the scalp a few time after bathing, that's it.
Two combs. One left, one right. Different.

You know that hair creams are cheating when you see the young men in those teenage bad boy films from that era. Young toughs smoking cigarettes, dating girls in bobby socks and poodle skirts, racing souped-up cars, and being deeply broodsome.
That greasy greasy hair. Vaseline.

A day and age when every one smoked cigarettes, drank weak sludge coffee, hot sauce was unavailable, food was thick, and gin was mother's milk for well-to-do people.




PS. Perry Mason smoked cigarettes.




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THE SIDESTREAM OF AMERICAN CULTURE

Depending on which side of the fence you are on, this is either extremely depressing, or immensely cheering: "National polling by NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist finds that rural, white Republicans — particularly supporters of Trump's — are among the least likely to get a vaccine. The issue is evident in state-by-state vaccination rates, with Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee trailing the rest of the country."

[Source: White, Rural Southerners Hesitant To Get COVID Vaccine - NPR.]


"Rural areas have a larger share of people in the most vaccine-resistant groups: Republicans and white evangelical Christians"


Elsewhere in that article it mentions that while ten percent of our urban population is vaccine resistant, it's over twenty percent out in the countryside.

What that means is that we won't achieve herd immunity this year. But as the Republicans and white evangelical Christians -- plus of course the hippies who believe in apple cider vinegar and crystal healing -- die off, at a much faster clip than those of us who have protection, we might by the time of the next presidential election. With added benefits.


Try to look on the bright side.




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IT SMELLS SO TEMPTING!

In Hong Kong, in Aberdeen Harvour on the south side of the island, is a large and well-known floating restaurant. In Amsterdam, on the other side of the world, is a restaurant precisely like that. I was amused when I went back years ago and saw it, because typhoon shelters and Tanka fishing craft are not exactly common anywhere in Europe.

I never ate there. One does not go back to the Netherlands to eat Chinese food, although one will happily enjoy dim sum in the inner city, because it's better and less pretentious than fake French fare. And one needs a break from unidentifiable fried objects.

Aberdeen Harbour is near Ap Lei Chau, where an old friend has an office. The entire area has changed, there are now skyscrapers all over Hong Kong, and all the malls are air-conditioned and have food courts. Even the sellers of lapsap noodles have moved indoors. That's become a trend all over the industrialized world, because merchants want you to stay nearby, spend time, make sudden unreasonable purchases prompted by boredom and temporary insanity.
Of course the available snacky-nibbly stuff is more interesting where there are a large number of Cantonese than in, for instance, the Westfield Center on Market Street, or Hoog Catharijne in Utrecht. Where the best food I remember was a smoked eel sandwich.


In Hong Kong, the only thing probably still outdoors is the seller of fried stinky tofu.


All the cigarette smokers seem to know where he is. Because they've outlawed smoking inside public places there.


I should know what stinky tofu tastes like, what with being fiercely "food curious". But I could never screw up the appetite for it. It's one of those things like Limburger cheese.
The far less you know about it, probably very much the better.
Cheesy, with an interesting surface texture.
Yeah, um. Okay.



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UNSPEAKABLE HORROR

My regular grocery store is entirely out of Meiji chocolates. Which is incredibly hurtful. Because right near the cash register there are numerous colourful packages and boxes filled with snacky-type items, and one is tempted. Except that the overwhelming majority of these appealing and appetizingly coloured things are durian-flavoured.
It's almost like they're trying to get rid of them.

榴蓮味

As a snack taste durian is nature's sadistic joke. It is incredibly vicious. The two countries which are the worst offenders are Vietnam and Malaysia, and that will be remembered when it's time to tally up achievements and compare nations.
It should be held against them.
For all time.

Even the brand of Japanese nougat I like has a durian-flavoured version.

Mango, strawberry, cranberry-yogurt. And durian.


Also multiple brands of hopiah (Hokkien style pastry cakes, great with tea). None of the traditional red bean paste, or wintermelon, or lotus-seed paste. Durian.


One problem with durian is that it comes out through your skin. Three days later, you might catch a whiff of durian, and wonder where it's coming from. The answer is: you. For some reason your belly button lint or sweaty palms reek of the durian you ate last week.
It was only a little bit, but it's punishing you. You are a wicked man.
The laundry you did on Tuesday reeks of durian by Friday. You haven't seen your cat in days. Your mother-in-law started throwing things at you. You've been passed over for promotion. Your favourite pair of shoes makes little children cry. And your parrish priest has kicked you out of the confessional and excommunicated you.

Don't do that typical college student thing of smelling some of the clothes you've worn already to see if there's something that can be worn again because you have nothing clean.
It ALL smells like durian.


You know, many Asians say that Caucasians smell unbearably of cheese. The Japanese have mercifully fallen silent on that score, now that cheesy-poofs have become their favourite snack. In many different flavours, including Ementhaler, Gouda, Cheddar, and Havarti. Cheese and octopus crunchies. Cheese-salmon-curry sweet poofs. Cheese and horseradish crackle balls. Hello Kitty Cheese nibbles and Hello Kitty green tea and cheese pastry pillows. It's probably almost like eating a crunchy white person. A bizzare development.
But to the rest of them, it's that European smell.
Pallid skin? Must smell like cheese!
It could be worse .....


Somebody should tell the fastidious aunties that we could smell like durian. Durian and bacon. Flaming hot Texas-style durian. New England durian and clam crispies. Southwest green chili durian. Alabama sweet peanut durian brittle. Lime and salt durian. Salsa durian. Ballpark chili cheese durian. Durian white cheddar popcorn. Jalapeño bacon cheese durian.



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AND EVEN MORE JABBING!

Tomorrow morning I'll go to there again. This morning's visit to the clinic was somewhat of a waste, apparently blood tests are necessary before the doctor will see me. Which they didn't mention back in January. So, needles tomorrow morning (empty stomach!). Being only a block away from Gum Sing Market (金城平價市場), I restocked on curry pastes, and also bought cucumber flavoured potato chips for my apartment mate. Then loaded up on Lakeland Dark and avoided the suburban and tourist yutzes not wearing masks. Not to fat-shame in any way (meaning I'm going to do precisely that) ..... but they eat far too much where they are from.

Gum Sing is also where you can get Koon Yick Wah Kee Curry Powder (冠益華記咖喱粉), which, apparently, the Canadians love and can't find locally. Judging by desperate communication from correspondents up north.


It's a bright sunny day. But not warm. I didn't used to understand all those elderly people in Chinatown wearing multiple layers of clothing during "balmy" weather, but nowadays I can sympathise. They too are on blood pressure medication. It affects how your veins and arteries dilate or contract, which has a direct bearing on the body's response to warmer or colder weather.
Which explains why I am wearing TWO pairs of socks, and prefer not to go out again till after the winds have died down for the evening. See, this is why hospitable smoking lounges in every neighborhood are essential. Even if everyone there is on bloodpressure meds, the cumulative body heat will eventually build up to a comfortable level.

I've got one pipe prepped and ready to go.

But I'll wait till after I've had my tea.
When the wind has died down.

For comparison, temperatures:

SF 55°
Jakarta 78°
Manila 82°
HK 72°

And please note that even during the rainy season it's tee-shirt weather in all three of those cities. Here some people are wearing tee-shirts right now, but they're idiots.

TOBACCO INDEX


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OH CRAP!

Are Spaghetti Os™ suitable for Australian sandwiches? And do they taste any more exquisite if you cut off the crusts and present them on fine porcelain? These things have to be pondered, because the apartment mate is taking a British brand of canned spaghetti to work for lunch today. Seeing as she was born here, canned spaghetti is one of her native foods.

Well, that would make it also one of mine. But there wasn't an American store anywhere near where I grew up -- the nearest one would have been across the border in Germany at an army base -- and my parents were quite happy with what was locally available. Besides, everyone knows that the proper Australian sandwich can only be made with "supermarket" bread.
Which was also unavailable.

Sometime between when I came back to the States and the year 1990, the Dutch had developed a taste for it. Having by then discovered Anglo food culture.
So I expect they're now also eating spaghetti, and beans.


Other than donuts, there has not been any commensurate culinary cultural exchange. The Americans have still not learned about herring. And, truth be told, we don't want them to, because there isn't enough.

I have still not eaten canned spaghetti products. Many of the convenient comestibles at corner liquor stores open late at night have not crossed my plate, because, in all honesty, I am wondering if you lot are all right? What traumas did you suffer to make you do that?

I did once snarf onion dip scooped up with sliced baloney with some colleagues late at night after cocktails in a disreputable joint, which was spur-of-the-moment cultural enrichment, and like any college student I've dumped a can of Vienna sausages into a can of chili-no-beans for dinner. So I'm not entirely culturally illiterate. But I've even without thinking managed to not have any chef bo yard ee, ever.
I suppose if I go to the Midwest, or Montana, it will be inescapable.
Sold in the specialty aisles and at fine restaurants.
Along with tuna salad toast points.
Microwavable.


I keenly await her feedback on the experiment.




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THERE ARE SWEATERS!

Medications interfere with my ability to handle extremes of heat and cold. Which means that at this time of year the weather is only marginally less a pain in the achterend than it was from the middle of December through the first three months of the year. It is therefore with considerably irritation that while I'm outside smoking my pipe I see younger and plumper people casually strolling about in shorts and shirtsleeves, as if there is no frigid arctic wind at all.
And all is well with the world. Spring!

Bah humbug.

At times like this I long for a warmer climate. Someplace where it's comfortably room temperature outdoors year round.

Because, as you understand, one cannot smoke indoors. For one thing, one has the comfort of one's tobacco-loathing apartment mate to consider, and for another thing if one stays inside all the time one ferments and goes to seed. The joints seize up, digestive processes and mental functions slow down, and one forgets to trim one's beard.

One becomes a hairy vegetable. Covered in dust and cobwebs. Fusty!

Monsoon

Things get overheated in the tropics. Then it rains, and diseases spread. From the end of April through September, downpours. If there are no hard roads raised above the fields, and decent drainage, invasions and wars cannot be fought. The pack-animals sink into the ooze, the European arquebusiers get cranky and rebellious, and liquor for the troops gives out.
Tempers wear thin in the royal pavilions


"For the good of the realm, it has been decided to stifle your consort while she sleeps. She will never recover, you know. And the alliance with Dampukhet is at an end anyway!"

"But Mama, I love her!"

"Silly boy!"


At a suitable point in the narrative, the old bitch royal mother dies of a plague, the prime minister moves swiftly to have the throats of her courtiers cut, and peace returns. And to everyone's relief the rains stop. Soon it will be time to collect taxes and impoverish the peasants again.


In another month it will start getting too warm. And people will say "what lovely weather we're having today!" While waltzing about improperly dressed in cargo pants and tee-shirts, and wearing their gay sun-bonnets.

It's not that I'm a grumpy old fart. I'm just uncomfortable.


"You should have married me, not my idiot sister! I can't put myself on the market again! Just because of that, I'm joining a convent and becoming a lesbian nun! Up your ass!"


Historical romances need more interesting writing. I may very well be the next Barbara Cartland. Central heating and air-conditioning will feature prominently.
Almost as if comfort is a dominant theme.

Heroes and heroines smoke pipes.

If necessary, warmly dressed.

Everyone in sweaters.




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THIRTY PERCENT

According to some polls, up to thirty percent of Americans say they will refuse to get vaccinated against Covid. Which means that eventually they will get sick. Their recovery will be long, and expensive, which will burden everyone. It's an economic time bomb.

To be honest, though, that's only if we let them recover.

The majority of the vaccine refusers are Christians or Republicans. And all of them are idiots.
A large number of them supported Trump.

Surely I do not need to spell out the upside?

And all-American idiots are the world's most renewable resource.
So we'll never run out of them.


Their very timely demises will do wonders for herd immunity.


Republicans and Christians are so public spirited I am sure they'll 'take one for the team'.




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THOSE DAMNED DUTCH! AGAIN

It always irritates me when a Dutchman falls on his ass by putting his foot in his mouth. Because I expect better of them. Of us.

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The Netherlands’ foremost philosopher called the dispersal of Jews in the Diaspora a “blessing” because it prevented them from achieving the power they have in Israel today that has resulted in “religiously motivated violence.”

Hans Achterhuis, the first recipient of the prestigious and royally recognized title of “thinker of the Fatherland,” made the remarks in an interview on the role of religion in the modern state for Trouw, which the paper published on Thursday, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial day.
[SOURCE: Leading Dutch philosopher: Diaspora a ‘blessing’ because it kept Jews from power -- JTA.]


“Hoe vreselijk het verhaal van de Joden ook was, toch was het in zekere zin een zegen dat ze verspreid werden in de diaspora. Ze hadden geen macht, en daarmee ook geen mogelijkheid om religieus gemotiveerd geweld uit te oefenen. En je ziet ook hoe het mis kan gaan als die macht er wel is, in de staat Israël."
-----Hans Achterhuis, in Trouw


As a Dutchman (Dutch American; the Amsterdammers sold my ancestors and their territory to the English in 1664), I'd like to remind Mr. Achterhuis that the Calvinist 'Ollanders ruled Catholic North Brabant and Limburg like conquered territories, the Catholics (Spain) wiped out the city of Naarden and salted the earth, and the Dutch imperium in the East Indies was absolutely not remarkable for the absence of violence. Albeit admittedly for "business reasons", such as the building of the Great Post Road (Djalan Raya Pos) across Java, and the extermination of the natives of Banda. We Dutch should, perhaps, not bring up organized violence for any reasons, especially not when our business acumen went hand in hand with savage religiously motivated ruthlessness. Nor are we particularly "tolerant"; that's just pragmatic apathy about the heresy and heathendom of non-Calvinists who, we know, are not of the "select". Our capacity for blithering arrogance is, at times, stupendous.

Then there's the term "Dutch philosopher"; I find this a contradiction.

The last and only "Dutch Philosopher" was Baruch De Spinoza.

By the way, it's high time that we Dutch, in our own language, learn to think before we speak, as well as carefully nuance our public statements. Nuancering, da's toch iets waar wij attent op moesten zijn, daar wij zo vaak anderen (de Amerikanen) verwijten dat zij dat niet doen. En dan daarbij vergeten dat in de moderne tijd wij niet meer kunnen schuilen achter de ondoorzichtigheid onzer taal is een stupiditeit van jewelste.
Opacité bestaat echt niet meer.



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BAD DUTCHMAN, NO BANANA!

A friend recently posted about stuffed peppers, a Hungarian dish. Which I know as dolmeh filfil or tultut paprika, and that naturally got me thinking about golubtsi (sarmaki), chicken paprikash, and purkult. This is especially gripping, because I'm seeing my doctor in a few days (a regular appointment), gotta see if the old Dutchman (me) is still kicking (I am), and besides which "old" is a relative term meaning crusty and middle-aged, with only a few bad habits.

During the first year, the doctor thought it was a good idea to have me talk to a nutritionist.  Bear in mind that most of his patients are elderly Chinese who smoke like maniacs and love fatty pork, salt fish, roast duck, little egg tarts at the nearby bakeries ......
I ended up depressing the poor lady, because the appointment was before lunch, at Chinese Hospital, and we discussed all the delicious things within two blocks of the hospital. Fatty pork with salted veg, salt fish with ginger shreds, charsiu pork and roast duck less than one block away in three directions, steamed pork patty with salted fish and ginger (one block), baked porkchop over rice with cheese (seven different restaurants nearby), as well as lovely things at all the bakeries (seven in walking distance). She was nearly weeping when I left (NOT my intention), and we agreed on "baby steps" (cut down on cookies with my afternoon tea). The doctor is from Indonesia, I am a Dutch-speaker, so of course we often talk about Indo food. Much of which we have in common. Delicious greasy bami goreng, guleh ayam, bebek tjabe hijau ...... which sidetracks him from the obligatory lecture about how smoking is bad.


CHICKEN PAPRIKASH, CSIRKE PAPRIKAS

A whole chicken (about 3 pounds), cut into 8 pieces.
Two or plenty more garlic cloves, minced.
Two onions, thinly sliced.
Two to four TBS sweet Hungarian paprika.
Half cup chicken stock.
Quarter cup sour cream.
A very generous pinch of ground caraway seed.
Olive oil, or butter, or bacon grease.
Salt and pepper.

Gild the onions and garlic. Rub the chicken bits with oil, plus salt, pepper, and some of the paprika. Add to the pan and brown slightly. Now add the remaining paprika and the ground caraway, stir to mix, and add the chicken stock and enough water to barely cover.
Simmer for about half an hour, then stir in the sour cream.
Garnish with plenty of chopped parsley.

If I make this soon, I'll have a pipe filled with Lakeland Dark by Samuel Gawith afterwards; a full bodied steamed pressed tobacco containing fire-cured Kentucky and Virginia, not mild in the nicotine department, but very old-fashioned, with an aroma reminiscent both of elderly college men wearing tweed as well as Dutch-style dark shag rolling tobacco.
So it spurs multiple memories. Great with sherry.

Don't smoke in front of a doctor.


Other Hungarische tasty stuff: Holishkes (stuffed cabbage, golubtsi), delkelech (cheese pastries), shlishkes (small potato dumplings), nokrln (little boiled dumplings similar to spaetzle, served with many dishes; nokerly), kokkos (a rolled risen dough chocolate cake with walnuts or poppy seed filling), and a casserole of potato layers, sliced onion, speck, and hardboiled eggs baked in butter and smetana (rakot krumpli). Makkos and diyusz, gulyasz and lekvar.
Plus letsho (sautéed onions, peppers, and tomatoes, with eggs or sausage).
Purkult is a paprika flavoured meat stew.




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A LOCAL UNIVERSE

These past two days, for inexplicable reasons, I've been remembering the town where I spent my youth. Perhaps it's because the weather here in San Francisco has improved, and both the temperatures and the light coincide with some of what's stuck in my head from that period.

We moved to Valkenswaard when I was five. We had left Southern California when I was two.
I came back to the United States at age eighteen.

Though I've been back on visits a few times, it wasn't during Spring, but in Autumn. Valkenswaard in Autumn is lovely.

No, I have no idea during what season of the year the photo below was taken.

[Copied from 'Valkenswird' on Facebook.]

Our house was quite near that church.

As I now recall, almost everything was within easy walking distance. The drugstore, pharmacy, liquor store, general grocery stores, bakeries, and the old post office barely one or two blocks.
A tobaconist and bookstore just a little bit further, as well as a bicycle repair shop in the other direction. Dutch fast food and herring, plus bars and cafes, much closer.


In Valkenswaard I first learned about coffee, tea, chilipeppers (sambal!) and tobacco. Oh, and the opposite gender. With whom one could enjoy the other four things, supposedly, but drinks, hot stuff, and smokables were much more immediate and realistic.



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PORTRAITS OF SOMEWHERE: IT OOZES

What do Albuquerque, Philadelphia, Raleigh, Forth Worth, and Orange County have in common? White nationalists and their little demonstrations yesterday. Which, if I wasted time watching teevee news, I might have known about earlier. An underwhelming show of "white lives matter". Instead I spent the entire weekend in blissful blithering ignorance of racists wishing to riot, and their being outnumbered at the time by actual humans.

Not even the rightwingers in the backroom knew about it. Seeing as they are classist snobs who don't associate with people making so little money, they wouldn't have gone if they did.

I knew Orange County was an outpost of the Confederate mindset, but I always assumed that it was so mainly for the benefit of Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and his Cia drug running cohorts.

[From Wikipedia: "Kỳ did not value democratic ideals. In 1965, Kỳ told the journalist Brian Moynahan: "People ask me who my heroes are. I have only one: Hitler". Kỳ's comment that Hitler was his hero caused much controversy, and in a clumsy attempt at damage control, the administration of President Johnson denied to the American media that Kỳ had made the remark, claiming that Moynahan had fabricated the remark, only to have the air marshal defiantly repeat the statement that Hitler was his only hero."]

The attempted white riots gathered no steam, as the rightwingers were outnumbered, and basically fizzled ingloriously.

The only one of those places that anyone might ever want to visit is Philadelphia, which has some historical importance. It is best known for once supporting Herbert Hoover, a nonentity. Culinarily its only claim to fame is beef scraps fried with onion and canned yellow gloop in a bun. Which can actually be quite satisfying. Late at night. When it's cold.
And you have imbibed.


Cheese-substance, grease, and "meat".
A metaphor for something.



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THE ABSENCE OF A PATTERN IS NOT A PATTERN

One of my friends in a distant part of the world is planning to alleviate his Ramadan fasting with a dozen bottles of expensive Scotch. Far be it from me to tell him that he might be missing the point of the exercise. Same goes for my Jewish friends who eat pork. I am an unbeliever from a Christian cultural background, and therefore not in a position to judgementalize how their unbelief for their side manifests itself. Or how they choose to celebrate it.

One of my friends describes himself as a skeptical and disbelieving Vegan. Has to have meat regularly to test his belief system. By his logic, we are all lapsed recovering chocoholics.
Though some of us are in deep denial about that.

He rejects my interpretation that there degrees of non-observance in play.
That, he feels, implies a commitment which he does not have.

He did not appreciate my advice to not overthink it.


There are people who are far further on the Autistic Spectrum Disorder spectrum than myself, but normally I will not notice that. Unless they explain things to me in detail, repeatedly, to make sure I understand what they're thinking. Then I start to see a pattern.

A circulating meme-type thing on Facebook asks "what's your advice to the person secretely crushing on you?"

[Chortle.]

Yeah, um. What's your evidence that that is actually a thing?


I am secretely a Japanese troll. I plant magic acorns.
It isn't any more complicated than that.



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STOP RUBBING YOUR EYES!

The boys across the street throw too many parties. And someone should tell the leather-clad Amazon that a ball-gag is NOT a CDC-approved face mask in the middle of a pandemic. Not me, I don't communicate well with people who look like they have cannibal fantasies.

People who behave in ways of which I do not approve during a pandemic should be glad I do not use my cell-phone to photograph them. Or go around spanking folks.


If I were in charge of this pandemic, there would be a lot of spanking.


I would delegate.



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A FLYING PANDA!

Courtesy of the apartment mate, to whom I forwarded the data that bumblebees are not vicious (more like flying miniature pandas, really), and that therefore Sydney Fylbert's evil plan to hire a bumblebee to do in the little girl hamster, so that, as a turkey vulture and therefore a "waste disposal expert", he would be called upon to deal with the cadaver ("let's see, Béarnaise, or mustard-caper sauce?"), will come to naught, the following account.

[And bear in mind that Sydney Fylbert is a turkey vulture, the bumblebee is named 'Habsburg', and we've been told that the little girl hamster ('Clarissa') is shaped like a delicious meatball, but to Sydney Fylbert's dismay has had training in martial arts, and knows exactly where a turkey vulture's "hurty places" are located. Hence the need for a hired goon.]

CITE:

I imagine Sydny Fylbyrt making a fatty "narp!" sound of self-satisfaction when his Craigslist ad is answered by Habsburg.

Telling the drone to go forth and do in the Little Girl Hamster.
"How so?" asks the striped one.

"Just do it!" squawks back the turkey vulture, flapping his wings in agitation. Did he have to think of everything?
What was the matter with the Help you got nowadays?! No damned initiative!

Habsburg returns, looking depressed.
"Well, Little Girl Hamsters don't scare easily. I thought I'd sneak behind her and yell, 'BOO!' and she'd at least faint. Instead she asks, shouldn't I be busy, making honey? I told her that I wasn't One of Those.
So she asked what did I do all day? I told her I was fond of gin rummy.
And gin.
Say, you got any? I'm thirsty."

Sydny Fylbyrt scowled mightily.
Stupid assassin!
"Why didn't you just STING her to death?!"

"But, look. I'm not One of Those."
Habsburg turns around and waggles his BEE-hind in Sydny Fylbyrt's face.
The bee-hind is as harmless as a baby's bottom.

"Well, here! Take this! Stab her with it!!!!!," Sydny Fylbyrt hisses, thrusting a makeshift weapon into two of Habsburg's appendages.

Habsburg wobble-flies off, fantasying himself as a 1930s gangster.
"You dirty rat! Youse gonna eat hot lead, see?"
The drone wishes that the pencil stub weren't so big and heavy, but a rent-a-thug has got to make do.

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Hapsburg later limps backs to Sydny Fylbyrt.
Both of his eyes are black and he has a bandage around his noggin, and an appendage in a sling.

END CITE

Male bumblebees, as you should know, normally spend all day in gin joints, sipping cocktails, playing cards, and occasionally checking Craig's List on their cell-phones for employment.

The internet age has been a blessing.



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