GRITS AND TOFU

Like most Americans, I have a list of people who should be peacefully retired from public service and thereafter kept away from their desks, and possible Twitter. Extremely brutally. Naturally I shall not divulge who they are. But it substantially overlaps everyone else's list. Except for the soybean and cornfarmers who are being bankrupted by current government policies, which they voted for, as well as the bastards whom they staggeringly still support, cheer on, adulate, and of whom they slavishly lick body parts.

Cheers of 'America, America' proudly ring out over the Midwest, where in the next twelve months farms will be repossessed by faceless banks, rural hospitals will close, and many people will resort to cannibalism, church sanctioned.

Large parts of The South too.

Note to Mike Johnson: Louisiana has top notch numbers for crime, syphilis, and illiteracy. Kudos. You might want to avoid Thanksgiving dinner at home this year.
Stay in the swamp, it's safer.

Most states are shitholes. All of the red states are.

Fortunately, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where we have extremely low rates of inbreeding, outright stupidity, and drunken trailer park violence, compared to many other places in this country (see aforementioned red states). We're certainly not Texas.
We are also rather less likely to be hit by tornadoes and hurricanes.

In addition, we no longer have Elon Musk.

So we're ahead of the game.


As further icing on the cake, our public officials are far less likely to take RFK Jr. seriously, or advocate swimming in sewage (which might cure lice and pediculosis pubis, so Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Lousiana, Mississippi, and Texas, kindly take note), and have never recommended bleach enemas for autism or covid.



It drizzled here in SF a few times this week. The temperatures have been mellow, very pleasant. The food is excellent, we have many fine restaurants, no Fox News reporters infesting the place, and unlike New Orleans and Miami, no drug-addicted rapists from Arkansas puking their guts out in public places. Fortunately, hotel rates are sky-high.
So y'all can't come. Take a cruise in the Gulf of America instead.


NOTE: Norovirus, gangrene, polio, and measles, all benefit from apple cider vinegar.
Why, it's miraculous. Also cures covid. Try it, you'll be delighted.
And you will smell ever so much better!
No more hallitosis!



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IT WAS NOT MY WAY

This evening I realized that I now have more familiarity with the smooth water-based gel that makes the ultrasound doohickey glide around your dermis than most pregant women. I was scanned at Chinese Hospital last week, at my cardiologist office yesterday, and there are some scans scheduled for next week. Last week it was largely checking for any cancerous lumps. Yesterday it was "let's see if the old bastard still has a heart". Next week it's going to be "my heavens these legs are rotten, boy, we'll have to jam some balloons on long wires up there to make 'em float". In other words, preambulatory to the peripheral angioplasties.

'Preambulatory' is probably not quite an appropriate term here.
Seeing as ambulation is the problem precisely.
Hence the need for the tiny balloons.
And thin flexible wires.

My cardiologist has assured me that it's an in-and-out procedure, I'll be home the same day. Totally ignoring the undoubted need to give me Valium in order that I don't twitch on the table, which means that they can't release me on my own steam for at least six hours. So if they do it after lunch time I'll be there overnight watching the animal channel till dawn.

Last time I was there overnight it was hyenas hunting a zebra for their supper and lions opportunistically trying to steal the meat, which the hyenas did not appreciate.
I wonder who will end up eating what this time. And whom.

All of this came to mind more or less because Miss Vivian is getting ready to pop. Today was her last night before two months off to give birth. So of course the size of her tummy had me recalling the smooth water-based gel used to lubricate the head of the ultrasound device.

While smoking my pipe earlier I had from over a block away heard one of the four songs that should not be sung for dear life at karaoke bars, ever. Country Roads, Oakland Booty, Hotel California, and I Did It My Way. Any one of these is like hearing banjo music when canoeing down the Cahulawassee River.

The bookseller and I did not go to the karaoke bar tonight.
We decided there were too many hyenas there.
We are sadder and wiser men.


Do NOT think of that scene from Alien. That isn't normal childbirth.



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LIFE IS SWEET

Bizarly, it rained this morning. We're not supposed to have rain at this time of year, blazing heat is customary in the Bay area in September. Instead it's mid-sixties, cloudy, continuing chance of precipitation. Humid. Which reminded me of a person in Waalre (a small town in Noord Brabant near where we lived at the time) who was exceptionally proud of his large collection of sugar cubes. Hotels, restaurants, and cafés in Europe used to have their own paper-wrapped sugar for your cup of coffee. They had exercised choice and discernment over the exact dimensions, degree of crystalization and granulation, logo, and, if situated scenically, illustration. Old engraving style, simplification, water colour effect, contrast.

People would collect them. See, these are the sugar cubes we brought back from our trip to the sunny Zagtlozp Mountians in Outer Podjolskija. The Grand Hotel Pruderghast had an entire packaged set of six! Lovely colourized engravings. It's in mint condition!
A meaningful commemoration of the time that Graf Von Strudel slept there during the Strumplicz campaign. As is fondly remembered there. Es ist sehr meinungsvoll!

Seven years later, this contributed to the defeat of Napoleon.
So we cannot use this sugar. It has historic resonance.

You'll just have to visit Zagtlozpzamek yourselves.
And you will love the Grand Hotel Pruderghast!

BERGDORF AM SEE, GÄRENDER MÜLLGAU, NEVADA

People who live in very moist climates should probably not collect carefully packaged sugar cubes. It's attractive to the local wildlife. Ants and bees. I have this vision of Mr. Deeksen in Waalre eventually being consumed by ants as he tries to protect his precious collection from their massive invasion. House covered in black, vaguely twitching to the eye, as they take over the building in a dense moving layer of workers. And a day or two later, there's simply a pile of rubble there, under which his skull can be found, gleaming and polished. It's sort of silvery from the mandible scouring it received. Perhaps his death was mercifully fast from asphyxiation as the insects invaded his mouth and larynx. Followed by slow chomping, thousands of little jaws. Methodically.

Or perhaps he moved to the outskirts of Marrakech and rented a ramshackle abandoned French boarding school to house his collection, learned Arabic and Berber, and over the decades became a dessicated zombie that the locals told stories about in hushed tones. Sugar is a preservative.


The Netherlands is filled with Neurotic people who do obsessive things like learning foreign languages, preserving museum collections of mildews and slime molds, and establishing a long-lasting monopoly in sugar a couple of centuries ago. They also like hot sunny places which are dry, and disporting themselves in eccentric fashion, startling the natives.

Parts of California have weather patterns similar to Marrakech at this time of year. Do not be surprised if you run into Dutch tourists taking selfies with bears, mountain lions, and bikers. And asking if any of the local motels or fried food shacks have interesting sugar cubes.



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FUZZY AROUND THE EDGES

Up at a later hour today than yesterday. No appointments early, the only thing that needs to be done is laundry eventually. It will be mid to high sixties during most of the day. Perfect for wandering around with a pipe and tobacco, and a late lunch around teatime. Healthcare paid until the end of the year. Sufficient spending money left over. Coffee and chili sauce aplenty, enough pipe tobacco to last me till the government is violently overthrown and democracy returns. Mellow weather here, insufferable in the red areas. Where farmers are going bankrupt because of all the progams that DOGE axed.

So I'm ahead of the game, and doing better than many people in the heartland.

Some roofing business in the south lost a third of its trained staff to ice.
The proprietor supported Trump, so that's what he voted for.
A nearby business can't take on any new jobs.
Exactly the same reason.

This all counts entirely as "committing procreative acts in a circular fashion and subsequently discovering the surprising results". Bigly.

It's only a matter of time before large parts of the South (particularly Florida and Louisiana) are disaster zones, due to diseases, tanking economies, and climate changes.
For which any sympathy will be unwarranted, and unlikely.
They can go intercourse themselves.


I can think of very many Republicans who, when this is all over, should be hanged.



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SOMETHING LIKE A DROID

There are times when I rather wish we had tunnels here where dwarves mined mithril. With entrances on Nob Hill. We could do with a good balrog now and then. I have this fantasy that the hippie android apparition bicycling up hill encountered one such just as she crossed the intersection. Underneath that unique space age garb she has meaningful tattoos.
I would rather not have known that.

Sometimes people have lightsabers at home.
You know that by their looks.
And they're spiritual.

All of that too needs to encounter a balrog.

Dicordant nuts, meet discordant notes.

"They have taken the bridge and the Second Hall. We have barred the gates but cannot hold them for long. The ground shakes; drums, drums in the deep. We cannot get out. A Shadow moves in the dark. We cannot get out. They are coming."

Best part of the book. Preceded by dullness, followed by interminable waffle.
I gave up part of the way through. I loathe disorganized religions.

Lunch today was excellent. Red fermented tofu pig knuckles gravy rice (南乳豬手飯 'naam yü jü sau faan'). Epic. One elderly uncle, two aunties, as the only other customers. Comfort food with no tourists.

Smoked my pipe down hill in an alleyway. Virginia flake.
A few bums, and a flock of pigeons. Peace.
Warmish weather, not hot.



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ARE MOLOTOV COCKTAILS OKAY?

Donald Trump and his bumpkin supporters wish to let prayer back into the schools. Never mind that they worship an entirely different deity, and the prayer-in-schools types would be doing that on the taxpayers dime.

The best reason for continuing to forbid prayer in schools is that doing otherwise would force children to aquiesce or participate in heathen practics, idolatrous rituals, damnable heresy, or witchcraft. At which point one would be justified both burning the edifice down and taking the administration to court. BTW: "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live". And by the standards of everyone else, faith healers and fundamentalist preachers are close enough to practitioners of witchcraft that incendiary devices become religiously required. Y'all want to bring prayer back into the schools? Fine. Some of us will bring some other religious traditions back.
We've been itching to do that since the Treaty of Westphalia.
And particularly the Peace of Münster.

I bitterly remember group prayer as an exclusionist practice.
So I do not think kindly of religious types.

An argument could also be made that "Christian" children should not ever be educated. It is a waste of public money to make them fit for any other role than hard manual labour in the coal mines of Apalachia, Mississippi's cotton fields, or farm work in the Central Valley.

Do you want them to become like Karoline Leavitt?
Well, do you? Heaven forfend!

STORM IMPACT

Anyhow, the cardiologist's appointment this morning went very well. My bloodpressure is excellent. And I now have an appointment for ultrasound imaging on my legs (next week) in preparation for a discussion (early October) about angioplasties on the lower extremities, sometime later this year. Probably after follow-up on the full physical with my regular care physician in a few weeks. So I'll be running marathons in no time!

Well, actually, that will very probably not be the case.
But possibly fleeing from the howling mobs.
The world had better be ready.


Better than I was.



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THE RARE DEMOGRAPHIC

The reason that I am up this early is because I have a cardiologists appointment at nine o'clock. "Why on earth", I hear you ask "would an arguably sane man agree to a nine o'clock appointment two buslines away from where he lives?" Crazy optimism several months ago is why. "Surely I can manage", I said to myself, "that is not undoable, I'll just do it and get it over with". Also, seeing as my cardiologist and my regular care physician both have a largely aged Chinese American clientele, there's every chance that if I show up early I will not have to wait at all, might even be out of there before I'm supposed to be in. It's happened.

Elderly Chinese folks have all the time in the world.
They're old. Things must wait for them.

Sorry, uncles and aunties, that isn't how this works.
The early white guy gets the worm.


Yeah, I wasn't thinking. First day off after a few days at work. Legs hurt. Need more coffee. Want to laze around most of the day. Perhaps a late lunch, smoke my pipe, putz around a bit, doomscroll and go on a voyage of discovery through Wikipedia and literature in dead languages. Not anwhere near worms.

Instead, I wander around the neighborhood with a pipe while it's still dark and gloomy.

Sadly, there isn't a nearby pizza place open at this hour.
I may be the only one here that thinks it's the breakfast of champions.

Well, other than fellow Americans of the corvid or fratboy persuasion.
I need more friends in the first mentioned category.
It would improve my social life.



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NEEDS A SHARPIE SCRAWL

The screaming of yutzes in the back room suggested that the football season has started. Which means little other than audible unpleasantness to me, because I do not thrill to the sight of manly buttocks in spandex. Not being all-American with a few homoerotic tendencies. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Y'all do you.
Homoerotic is therepeutic. Very red-blooded.

It's butch as all Jesus, yessir.


I'm sure that American wifehood loves the smell of sweat, beer, and pizza that their husbands and their friends impart to the couch and other furniture. Which precisely explains why I have those nasty fossils in the backroom; their wives, for those that have them, need to get them out of their hair for a few hours. They aren't vested in the masculine reek, and the buttocks that would rub the fragrance intot the fabric are too old and spongy. Plus seeing someone whose death-white calves look like something a zombie would wear, with liver-spotty male pattern baldness and a paunch well-past the drawing board stage bouncing up and down losing his shiznit probably isn't very high on their wishlist.

Which proves there is something wrong with them.
They might even be educated.

Didn't bother paying attention to the game on the telly, but I do know that the local team was playing, as I recognize their shiny gold nether-garbs. It's styling, dudes.
I have no doubt those duds also please our president.
He's likely to offer to autograph each bum.
Because gold shows off U.S. glory.




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MY FELLOW AMERICANS!

This blogger, early in the morning, is an antisocial old cuss. The only folks I want to see outside the building at an ungodly hour are big and black. And loud. Big and black and loud. And flappity. Big, black, loud, flappity crows. I like crows. And turkey vultures. There are crows here, no turkey vultures. One good thing about Marin County, where I work, is that there are both types of Avian Americans there. Crows along the berm and cawing on the streetlight braces, plus turkey vultures soaring over the freeway looking for deceased drunkdriven yutzes or smaller verminous creatures.

Here in San Francisco it is rare, pretty much unlikely, that you will ever see a turkey vulture. Crows, yes. There is a corvid couple in my neighborhood one or other of whom will occasionally caw from a roof edge or other vantage point.

Crows are extremely likeable creatures. They add character to a neighborhood.
So why is a car with Texas plates parked outside the building?
I do not want to see that at all.

Unless they have left-over pizza for the crows.

Perhaps the visiting Texans are actually refugees? Got tired of governor Abbott trying to tell them how many foetuses they're required to nurture in their loins, or representative Louis Gomert waffling on about how outer space should not be woke and modern or even have DEI because it would doom humanity if there weren't any fertile women in addition to red-blooded heterosexual men on the space station if we get hit by an asteroid and they have to repopulate the planet (yep, he actually speechified about that). Louis Gomert is probably still outraged that the gay un-Christians in the Forest Service would not change the orbits of the earth and the moon to fight climate change (June 2021).

That's quite understandable. All of us are tired of Texas twaddle.

Still, they should probably be driving through the great American outback with guns blazing running over space aliens and cartelistas, Mad Max style, instead of parked on my street. That's more their place. It feels wrong to have them here.

No doubt the crows think so too.

I don't see any pizza.

Useless!



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THERE IS A TIME AND PLACE FOR THAT. IT'S MARIN.

This evening the bus back from Marin smelled like Cheech and Chong. Dang. Surprised the busdriver managed to keep it on the road. It's that horrible lemony-skunk odour. The smell you associate with all the "hey man be cool" hippies and that fellow student who had majored in philosophy because it was supposed to be easy. This morning, the only other person at the bus stop in SF was someone crouched over in that fentakneeling pose, possibly inspecting her feet for ten minutes, but more likely entirely out of it just not keeled over yet.

Some middle-aged hippie was keen to tell me all about the therapeutic and good-timey qualities of weed yesterday, and I was keen to not hear a word of it. I used to live in the Netherlands, so I know all about the wondrous effects of tetrahydrocannabinol etcetera.
I thoroughly despise potheads. And other druggies.

The only psychoactive substances of which I approve are caffeine, nicotine, highly refined sugar, cooking sherry, and kitten pictures.

In the past I also approved of acohol within reason, but one of my prescribed medications in combination with liquour might destroy my liver. Not a huge risk, but I'm not taken any chances. The liver is absolutely essential. Single malt Scotch isn't.

If you, however, want a drinkie, please go right ahead. Don't swill the cooking sherry, have some whisky. Within reason. It goes great with a bowful of aged flake in your pipe. I would suggest Fribourg & Treyer (multiple possibles), or something from the Cornell & Diehl or Greg Pease categories. Or Rattrays. Always a solid choice.

The same tobaccos are also a good way to start the day. But with coffee, not whisky. One or two cups of coffee at the crack of dawn, then tea every two hours or so till teatime (four o'clock), then either Scotch or Sherry followed by dinner and some coffee afterwards.

Pot, fentanyl, and other drugs are purely for submentals.

It's always time for kitten pictures.
Which is good clean living.



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THE BUZZING, THE BUZZING

Sometimes I miss the area where I grew up. Which, when I think about, I realize was much more bog-like than I always remember. A fertile wet area warmly supportive of a mosquito population. Which probably explains why netting around beds (klamboe) have become not uncommon.
Here, when there are mosquitoes (somewhat rare), I can rely on the critters vastly prefering my apartment mate instead of myself. And desperately trying to get into her net.
Which she has hanging around her bed twelve months of the year.

The thing is she's Asian American and a non-smoker.
plus women are, naturally, much tastier.
Even non-mosquitoes know this.


A friend moved over there with her family fairly recently. There is a near-complete absence of MAGA there, but, they have discovered, a large mosquito presence. Still better than here.

In the Deep South there are both. And they deserve that.

Dengue fever is increasing in the United States.
So are West Nile cases.


As yet there are no vaccines for West Nile, so Bobby Kennedy Jr. need not fulminate, but there is one for dengue. Though it's only really available in Puerto Rico. Where there are fewer idiots than in the continental United States.
Malaria is not common yet.



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BOOK DEPOSITORY

If nothing else Robert F. Kennedy Junior proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that he's an irresponsible and quite possibly demented and depraved hack today, along with his skeevy enablers Mehmet Oz and Joseph Ladapo. And the entire stinking Republican party plus many democrats. Plus, of course, our president.

You will be glad to know that even though I live in a book depository, I will not be shooting any Kennedys or presidents if they come to this city. For one thing, they ain't likely to come anywhere near here, and for another thing, that's Texas' job, and we fully expect them to do their duty.

Oh wait, I forgot. Texas is also enabling them all.
Texas was the centre of maskless crazy.
Sadly, it still is.

Apparently a new Covid variant is spiking in Texas, probably because you need to not wear your mask when swilling Lone Star Beer or slaving away at a mega-polluting car factory owned by an apartheid-era nazi. Besides, it's their freezums!
Buncha dumb peckers fown there.

Texas got rid of common sense, books, and much of modern medicine.
All of those were deemed unnecessary. In Texas.

During the pandemic, Texas was a blank slate. They probably listed all deaths there as due to syphilis, old age, or witchcraft. Or all three, plus drinking real beer.

Once Abbot is no longer governor, they're getting rid of wheelchair ramps.
Because real Texans don't use wheelchairs.
Wheelchairs are woke, man.



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AND GENERALLY SPEAKING ...

It turns out the Florida's surgeon general is an insane psychopath. But, for those people who do not live in Florida, that isn't news. And Florida Man is quite happy with officials who are as loopy as he is. It makes living in a sinking hurricane-slammed swamp more entertaining. We must sympathise with Florida Man. It's not easy being an idiot in a world of literate people.


Whenever you see a vehicle with a Florida license plate, please be kind and tolerant; that's a refugee desperate to join mankind. Possibly en-route to the neared public library to get some reading done. He and his family are very probably scared.

Feel free to offer them beer and vaccinations.


Actually, the only Florida resident I've ever met in person was a batshit crazy Trump supporter who had come to California for medical care, seeing as a particular cancer treatment they needed was unavailable in the South. That was nearly a year ago.
They may be dead now. If so, the national average intelligence went up.

Over the years I've known several people living in Florida. Three. A person from Texas (religious), a Californian (also religious), and a Dutchman (probably irreligious).
Nice people. Sadly, I've lost contact with all of them.

WHAT FLORIDA DOES NOT LOOK LIKE

Florida, as everyone knows, is where the bad juju lives. Insane religious preachers, racist cops, fascist politicans, book-banning hardcore Christians, and antivaxxers. In a swamp with alligators and mosquito-borne ailments, plus beer that causes brainrot. It is the epitome of the American South, more soft in the head than even its nearest neighbors Alabama and Georgia. Idiot good ole boys and bad football.

Sourgum trees, tupelos, pythons, greasy sandwiches, and conch.
And everywhere the smell of rotting vegetation.
Not to be confused with the food.

Honestly, what can one say about a state where the biggest high society social event of the year was opening a prison camp for foreigners (other than the Latino narcotraficantes who run Miami)? They had the cheering squad out, pom poms, glee clubs, and chapters of the John Birch society, all celebrating and heading into mating frenzies.

I love my fellow Americans.
Except for most of them.
Particularly Florida.



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THE DODDERING

How prescient! I mentioned seeing things out of the corner of one's eye due to lack of sleep (myself) or ancient drug deposits in the sewer system (street up-diggers in my neighborhood recently). And I should mention that when the late afternoon sun hits parked vehicles just right, there is a blinding glare from multiple surfaces that is quite inconvenient.

That row of Cat earthmovers look just like prehistoric beasts.
I think they're grazing. Slowly masticating gravel.
And look, fresh deposits of asfalt.
Still steaming.

At tea time I ended up at the usual bakery where the two old gentlemen were already at the back table. The combination of ninety-plus year old hearing and typical Canto stubborness inevitably caused some interesting conversational bits. One of them is kind of pissed off at young men on the bus, who fail to understand that they cannot sit there that seat is for old people and the handicapped. It turns out that there were plenty of vacant seats for that category anyway, but it's still not right. That's OUR seat, you mannerless person!

This truly is the end of civilization, society is crumbling.
Good heavens, what is this world coming to?
Young people these days, I mean!

He's seriously considering starting to drive again. Instead of taking public transit. If the idea of a deaf old gentleman with a cane and a hearing defect on the road doesn't frighten you, it should. You have too much faith in AI providing safeguards and a benevolent deity looking out for all of us.

He lives out near the beach. Chinatown is near the Financial District, entirely the other side of town. There are miles and miles of traffic in between those two areas, and absolutely nowhere to park here. Which may lead to frustration and circling likely downtown blocks increasingly carelessly, as well as cursing everybody younger than let's say eighty years old who in their manifest selfishness parked where he needs to park. Don't they realize that they can indeed walk a dozen blocks to get to the same bakery?

The next step is dedicated parking spots everywhere for the aged and mobility impaired.

Myself, I walked over two dozen blocks today.
We need bakeries in every block.
If anything.



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A DREAM COME TRUE

Years ago two colleagues went down to Central America on an industry-related jaunt. About which I found out far too late to sign up on, so I spent the two weeks before they left looking up every darn tropical parasite and disease they ran any risk of catching and describing these in great glowing detail to them. They came back completely healthy.
They had had a great time. It had been wonderful.

They ate like kings, smoked like chimneys, drank like fish.
Oh, I should have gone, they said.
Bastards.

This morning I read about trypanosoma cruzi (chagas disease, trypanosomiasis), which the medical establishment alerts us is now endemic in parts of the United States, mostly places where I would not go with a ten foot pole. So I don't even need to visit Central America.

As a total aficionado of the ickinesses, I am of course overjoyed.

Heck, I could go to Texas. Or catch it in my backyard.

Meanwhile, there is the sound of heavy machinery from the street in front of my building. On behalf of the city, workmen are digging up an ancient evil. The pipes of our sewer system are being uncovered and replaced or something, which will improve San Francisco, eradicate drug use and pavement dwellers, and make us beautiful for the tourists again.

So far they haven't found Jimmy Hoffa. But they will.

We've flushed down so many things over the years that they're bound to find King Arthur's sword and the Ark of the Covenant. We live in interesting times.

Remember the seventies when any knock on the door was the cops and people promptly dumped their stash of narcotics in the crapper? There are encrustations in the tubes below the surface that will induce hallucinations and possibly seizures. Imagine men with hardhats seeing strobe lights and strange creatures, foaming at the mouth and eyes rolling back in their sockets. Soon they'll start screaming, like that floating head in Apocalypse Now, the horror, the horror! Rosebud.


Yeah, okay, I woke up far too early. It's doing things.
The second cup of coffee is taking effect.
Bath, lunch, bank, shopping.
Need to get out.



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THAT UNMISTAKABLE LOOK

Okay. My feet hurt. I would like to blame the Republicans. But it is doubtful that they could do anything about that, though they would not if they could. Bastards. It's probably because I've been up too long today, having risen at five thirty in the morning more or less for the jaunt to the radiology department for yearly up-check stuff. I've been down to Chinatown three times today. The second time was to purchase illegal ciggies, a lottery ticket, and a light dinner (韭菜湯餃'gau choi tong gaau') at around tea time.

Third time was for very temperate misbehaviour. That being the regular pub crawl with the bookseller, which involves his dinner (hamburger, fries, Sriracha), then cups of tea, plus a pint of Guinness, and a shot of Jameson's Irish whiskey.
I'm the tea drinker.

In this scenario Sriracha fills the role of both the vegetable with the meat and potatoes, as well as soup and salad. Because there must be balance. That's key to a healthy lifestyle.

All three times I was down there I smoked a pipe.

An elegant smaller Parker bruyere billiard, Charatan London made De Luxe prince, and a Dunhill bruyere billiard. Tomorrow it will probably be a Dunhill shellbriar hallmark banded billiard and a Peterson straight grain silver banded bent bulldog.

I'm sure I looked both dignified and dashing doing so.
Altogether exceedingly waspy.

A bit earlier I had noticed Tat Yee (達意) sitting with his pipe by the curb at Jackson Street (昃臣街 'jak san gaai') and Beckett (白話轉街 'paak waa chuen gaai'), having a smoke. He didn't see me, so I continued along Wentworth (德和街 'tak wo gaai') on toward Portsmouth Square (花園角 'faa yuen gok'). By the time the bookseller and myself passed through Tat Yee was probably at the karaoke place slamming the dice cups. We didn't go to the karaoke place. Much too noisy and full. A very loud Mandarin paean to the great war was playing.
It's been eighty years since the bandy-legged pirates were defeated.


For a while there had been a reek of marijuana toward Broadway; evidence of self-indulgent white bourgeois jugend enjoying their privilege. It had entirely dissipated by the time we headed down the street after the burger joint. Mercifully.
I do not like pot smoking. It's depraved.
And smells like it.



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LUMPS AND SQUIDGY BITS

What we've determined this morning is that coffee is not, strictly speaking, necessary to act like a sentient adult. Highly desired by the test subject, yes. Essential, no. The test subject (me) got up at around five o'clock, shaved and showered, went outside for a smoke, and got on the bus over the hill entirely without a hot cuppa. Strolled into the lobby of the hospital and registered, then went down to the basement second level and checked in at the radiology department (放射實驗室 'fong se sat yim sat') fifty minutes before my appointment.


One old fellow dozing. One other looking barely awake. Two old ladies with slightly worried expressions. After a while one anxious gentleman, then another. I'm guessing the men were there because they were smokers, the old ladies because they had finally detected a lump.
All of them elderly Chinese.

Despite my not being Cantonese, I was there because I smoke.
Heaven forefend that I should find a lump.
Even someone else's.

Thoughts while a technician is moving a device over my front upper torso with one hand (thin layer of warmed gel for smooth sliding) and causing a machine to make jackpot sounds with the other: 1) Those ceiling tiles look exactly the same as the ones you see in horror movies. 2) Relevant line from the Rocky Horror Picture Show: 'come up to the lab and see what's on the slab'. 3) I wonder if anyone has ever exclaimed "good lord what the hell is that?" while doing this scan? 4) She apologized for having short arms. Well, they're fine.
Those are nicely shaped arms. Do NOT tell her that.

The liver artery (hepatic artery). The gall bladder. Presumably also the area where the appendix exploded six years ago. Plus other internal squidgy bits.

Then into a different room for the lung and upper torso (胴體 ' tung tai') x-rays (X 光 'ek si gwong'). An infernal machine. Do not look at the laser. Different technician, no warm gel. Buzz, buzz, buzz.

Outside and having my first coffee of the day well before this was supposed to be done with. Caffeine tends to lower the body temperature, which means that as I was lighting my pipe it did not feel as cold as it had moments before.

That pipe is older than I am. I got it from Marty Pulvers at Sherlock's Haven decades ago. The tobacco is considerably younger, tinned by Cornell & Diehl in 2023.
The coffee is fresh. It's sunny outside.
I am not a zombie.

That last needed to be said, because some people have expressed doubts.
They are predominantly young, and not in healthcare.
Zombies are not scanned, silly.


It is way too early.



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DECAFFEINATED OLD PEOPLE

As a matter of principle, you do not want auntie or uncle to have to micturate while waiting for their scan in the radiology department. It's mutable rather than im, but if they do it would be disruptive. At the very least they would want their seats in the waiting area back afterwards. Because they're old, dammit, and their legs hurt! Which I can understand. Mine do too.
So no coffee. It's a diuretic. Auntie and uncle have weak bladders.

This morning I have an appointment for a CT scan (胸部電腦斷層掃描 'hung pou din nou duen chang sou miu') and a thyroid nodule (甲狀腺結節 'gaap jong sin git jit') scan (甲狀腺節結影像掃描 'gaap jong sin jit git ying jeung sou miu'). Did I already mention the 'no coffee' stipulation? It's a new one on me.

Need to sign in half an hour before my appointment. The staff at the front desk will have had their coffee. So will the people operating the equipment and doing necessary paperwork down in the Radiology Department (影像掃描室 'ying jeung sou miu sat').

After all, imaging diagnostic services (影像診斷服務 'ying cheung chan duen fuk mou') needs their fully alert detail-attention. Bright sparkly eyes! Glowing faces.

You can bet your bippy that I'll be off to the nearest place with hot mud immediately after it's over. Which will be followed by a pipe. Because in addition to caffeine, I will also need carotenoids, various flavonoids, and several harmful chemicals.
Which are naturally occuring in tobacco smoke.
Mmm, it's flavour country!



I always have fun down at the hospital. There are interesting things there, and the people watching is excellent. Plus coffee and pastries nearby.



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