DOWNHILL IS FAR EASIER

At least yesterday wasn't an entire waste; after puddling around most of the day I went and did my laundry, then fixed myself an easy lunch (菜飯 'choi faan'; veggie rice) which turned out surprisingly delicious. A little gilded chopped sausage and parched mustard greens, also chopped, then rice and thin stock with a touch of chilipaste. Soupy, easy eating, slightly more cooked rice than vegetable. Very Shanghai, but also universal country village quick comfort food all the way into Vietnam.

Doing laundry was a hassle. Normally I take the bus up three blocks to the laundromat, but there is currently a detour because they're doing something needful on the street in that area, involving earthmoving equipement, a full crew wearing hardhats, and a big industrial digger. Which meant walking. Walking uphill is uncomfortable at the best of times -- legs no longer young -- but with a full load it's worse.

Walking downhill afterwords I kept muttering gloatingly to myself, "clean clothes, clean clothes, clean clothes!" "Yay! Clean clothes!"

Clean clothes are very good. Everyone should have clean clothes.
Away with all stinkies, we shall garb ourselves cleanly.
The journey back was easier than going up.

Actually, the best part was later, when I happily offered some new candy I had found in Chinatown to my apartment mate. Lemon and monkfruit (檸檬羅漢果糖 'ning mung lo hon gwo tong'), with a touch of sea salt. Now, I enjoy them. I had totally forgotten that while ethnically Chinese and having grown up in a household which was largely Chinese-speaking (Toishanese), her tastes were formed here. And include stuff that I won't touch with a ten foot pole, like goofy American breakfast cereals and crap like oatmeal. Ketchup on fries.

A moment after taking one, her reaction was priceless. Nastiest thing ever, should know not to trust the old toad when he offers candy, wow that's horribly horribly nasty, ain't nevah gonna try that again! Nasty nasty nasty! Bleaugh! And forsooth!
Tastes like tootpaste!

She didn't like it. Very operatically.

Yes, I'm sorry that I did that. And as I said, I like them.
But the dramatically vocalized distaste was lovely.



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DO YOU HAVE HOTSAUCE?

The good thing about speaking and reading Chinese after a fashion is that I can order at a restaurant and get the stuff I really want. If I can read it, surely I know what it is and won't be hideously upset at what is put in front of me? Speaking Chinese (Cantonese) means I have realistic expectations, and can be presumed to have at the very least a passing familiarity with norms and customs regarding food.

On my days off I do eat out a lot. Frequently at one of the C'town chachanteng restaurants.
A chachanteng (茶餐廳) is a restaurant that has hot Hong Kong milk tea (港式奶茶 'gong sik naai chaa') and caters to the no nonsense single diner, as well as serving Hong Kong style semi-western dishes and quick fairly simple to prepare familiar comfort food.

Oh, and almost all of them know by now about the hot sauce.
[I always ask for hot sauce.]

And often I eat by myself. Usually because there is no one to eat with, and eating with many of the white people I know might lead to situations where I'd be rather hesitant to go to that restaurant ever again. Having been asked to order in Chinese (Cantonese) for the giddy entertainment of my fellow diners and the undoubted flabbergasting of the waitstaff.

With the following hypothetical utterances:

嗰邊嘅臭腳佬要酸甜豬肉，紅頭渴望鍋貼，醜男問你哋有冇紐約式Tso宗棠雞。同埋五碟蝦炒飯，唔該。
['Go pin ge chau geuk lou yiu suen tim chü yiuk，hung tau hot mong wo tip，chau naam man nei tei yau mou nau yeuk sik Tso zung tong gai。tung maai ng dip haa caau faan, m koi.']
"Stinky foot fellow over there (pointing) wants sweet and sour pork, the red head (no pointing, because it's obvious who I mean) desires fried potstickers, the smelly man (pointing again) asks do you actually have New York style General Tso's chicken.
Oh, and five plates of shrimp fried rice, please."

Followed by:

佢哋全部都需要叉子。
['Keui tei chuen bou dou seui yiu chaa ji.']
"They all need forks."

Dudes, we're at Shantung Palace. I do not speak Mandarin. And I don't know beans about Northern food. Besides, this is all Americanized Chinese, and they don't even have mantou (饅頭). Which Northerners might want instead of rice. Plus there's ambiance. That costs extra. Flowers at the front, and soft lighting. Plus knick-knacks. And ethnic stuff. Art!

On second thought, what the heck, I will probably never want to come here again anyway, so I might as well give y'all the giddy (you're paying, right?) and I'll treat myself tomorrow in Chinatown at a real place.

One where they know about the hot sauce.

Remarkably, I hardly ever have plum vegetable pork belly (梅菜扣肉 'mui choi kau yiuk') and don't even know who has the best version, primarily because a serving would be too rich for just one person, and despite the name the vegetable quotient is rather small. Also, most of my fellow Caucasians would probably be horrified or aghast at the idea of so much fat.
Mmm. delicious stewed pork fat!


A few years ago I ordered stewed fatty pork belly slabs over tofu with black bean sauce at a well-known restaurant that caters to the downtown business crowd when I was having lunch with other people. I thought we could share. Sadly, all of those English speakers were too fastidious and healthy. But it was quite yummy.

And great with hot sauce.



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AWARDING MYSELF A PARTICIPATION TROPHY

Something I felt compelled to say under a post about the negativity and acerbity elsewhere: "I rarely comment, because I am a beacon of light, and filled with warm fuzzies." Also, I am awash with kind feelings toward my fellow humans, which by my reckoning is by far the minority of the ambling apes roaming the planet and cloggin up MY streets.

That second remained unsaid. No need to disturb them.

Often I am at my most social outside of work when on a crowded bus at rush hour hurtling across Nob Hill, positively butterfly-like, and gracious too, because that is the only time close proximity to hordes of people makes any sense to me. As you will understand, sporting events and rock concerts are out of the question. As are mass rallies. Quite.

Extroversion has limits, after which common sense should kick in.

Y'all dress funny, smell bad, and eat too much.

I shan't ask what is wrong with you lot.
Because I already laid it out.

There are too many frogs in this pond.



Actually, the folks who shop at my favourite grocery store in Chinatown are also fellow humans. They have purpose, they're on very personal quests, they are busy exploring with curiosity and happy discoveries, and when they speak they ask intelligent questions.
Sometimes they buy strange condiments and unusual noodles.
All of which is very admirable.



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ARE YOU STILL THERE?

Upon returning home and making myself comfortable I cussed at wires. Which were in the way. Hemming me in. Misdirected. Because I put the laptop on my lap and then got my feet entangled. Not a problem I normally have. Sometimes things are just "difficult", okay? Lunch, drugstore, lottery purchase, vegetables, grocery store, and finally bakery around teatime. The little girl who is often there with her daddy was sitting by herself scoping out a video on her cell-phone. When it rang she answered it first in Cantonese, then said in English "I don't know, I'll ask him when he comes back". I think she may speak English better than her daddy, who had left the tyke there while shopping at the markets nearby.
She's only about four, but seems more intelligent for her age.
And will probably grow up bilingual.
Smart kid.


Stephen and Robert showed up after I finished my pastry and got involved in a conversation that headed in strange directions before going nowhere at top speed. Someone Robert has known for over sixty years may have passed away, and he told his brother to write her a postcard because the phone is disconnected. Well if she's older than him it was inevitable that the phone would be disconnected. Even if she's still bounding with energy. My phone has been disconnected since the first month of the pandemic when I realized there was too much static on the line. I have a cell phone now. Her grandkids may have forced her to do something like that, worried that she wouldn't be able to communicate with anyone in an emergency. that is to say: anyone younger than antique.

One of the things I do every Wednesday is give the old lady downstairs some fresh fruit or produce which I picked up in Chinatown. Just to make certain she's still alive, because I don't know if members of her congregation do that often enough. It's one of those denominations not known for having very intelligent people.

Today it was some lovely yellow mangoes. I don't know if she likes mangoes. I've taken for granted that she does, because she's Chinese from Indonesia. I may be entirely wrong.
I've never asked, because conversation with her leads to Jesus.
Which I do not wish to hear about at all.


It's important to check up on the fossils in your life. Stick your head in and holler "yo, coot, you still kicking?" Or something like that. Especially if they don't use social media.
Or maybe they do, but you do not want to 'friend' them.
Because that, too, might lead to Jesus.
We don't need no stinking Jesus.
Thank you very much.


Yo yo yo!



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SHIMMER, MEMORY

In a passage suffused with deliberately loaded imagery, the hero and heroine of Ada, by Vladimir Nabokov, did things which were the inevitable culmination of the preceding chapters in the book. After it's over, she whispers that her nightie is trempé. Uncle Sihan-Lim (S. Van Leem) said that it brought back strong memories of the time when, near daybreak, they could see the sugar factory down the valley from where they lived in Java up in flames. There had been rumours about a lack of sufficient funds to pay the workers for weeks before.

Remarkably, he did not sense the depravity drenching Nabokov's prose.
Calculated, sodden, soaking the fabric of the text.
He was somewhat innocent.

Very much a pre-war gentleman. Somewhat baffled at how things had turned out. And he did not like the temperate climate and unexciting flatness of his mother country, and remembered the pre-war Indies with wistfulness. Things had been so different then.

At times he seemed drained and sad and small.

Modern readers of the book, used to more strong-flavoured prose, might also not see how risky that passage is, and find the entire thing far too innocent. Sihan had read it when the book first came out, before anyone had translated it into Dutch. I discovered it a few years later, and did not even think of needing a translation. But as a native English-speaker, I probably saw things there which he did not.

Plus as a teenager I was always alert to naughty bits.


Often when I read post-war Dutch-Indies literature I have to remember that that was a more innocent age, and the authors are describing things through the prism of their youthful mind. Everything is frozen, the fragments shimmer in the amber of the past.

For them, eating was almost a religious act. There was so little food in the camps, they had not thought much about food before then, but afterwards it was a deliberate revival of taste memories. The Netherlands in the fifties in that regard had been disappointing.
No chilies. No ketumbar or kunyit. No rice. No asem or ketjap manis.

Fortunately things were different when I was there.
I ate well. And I remember that.



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THE MONEY SUBSTANCES AND ... MINDERMASTS

The chocolate hazelnut cookies are all gone, I ate the last of them. As a post-pubcrawl snack upon returning home. There are none left, which is a cause for great sadness and existential despair. But I shall not grieve, for sometime soon more will be acquired, and there are other things to eat. Such as the prepackaged snackie from Chinatown: 雞肉鬆麵包吐司 ('gai yiuk sung min baau tou si'; "chicken meat floss bread toast"). Flossed meat is made by cooking the flesh till done, then pulling it apart into frazzles and heating it till absolutely dry. It's very popular as a garnish for congee (rice porridge), and the Indonesian versions are frequently made with meat cooked in coconut broth with spices. Very flavourful!

The Cantonese, bizarrely, like it with bread products. And have taken to toast big time.
But as a midnigth snack, um, perhaps not.
Not a proper biscuit.

Fortunately there is also walnut chocolate chip on the premises.

My friend the bookseller was boasting about a plethora of cheeses that awaited him when he got home. And he has nought planned for tomorrow, so he will sleep in and let his digestive system finish the labour in due time. But before then he will research "smoke Bollard, a man's cigarette" and other subjects on the internet. Because there weren't vests in mauve, one should go for the green, the Lincoln green. It shows off one's tanned navel.

[Source: Beyond The Fringe, by Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore.]

The criminal body is situated directly beneath the criminal mind. Usually
We have reason to believe it's the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Nasty bit of business, that. But no trains were lost.

A late lunch five hours before had been almost a Shanghai cliché. Snow vegetable meat shreds stew-fried sticky noodle (雪菜肉絲炆粗麵 'suet choi yiuk si man chou min') which was written on the white board. The snow vegetable and matchstick cut pork combo is very Shanghai auntie, and thick sticky noodles are the favourite noodle there.
It was very good. And followed by a pipe.

Another pipe was smoked waiting for the bookseller to get off work and listening to a young couple around the corner twittering and cooing at each other.

An appropriate soundtrack is either 上海の花売娘 (Shanhai No Hana Uri Musume; the flower girl of Shanghai) or 上海灘 (Shanghai Tan; the theme song of an immensely popular 1980 tv series, as sung by Francis Yip 葉麗儀).


The cheese discussion was on the way home while riding the bus. Which may have also been when I mentioned the Bollard Cigarette Sketch from Beyond The Fringe.



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LIKE BARCELONA BUT NOT

Discussion on the bus returning home from late lunch in Chinatown. A woman passenger had gotten into a conversation with a gentleman who had lived in London, and she mentioned that she was in Spain for a few years. Yes, she had visited Barcelona, but it didn't really feel like a Spanish city because of the Catalan separatist strömung. When you spoke to people in Spanish, they would respond in English.

Which reminded me of Amsterdam. Similar but different. When Americans try to speak Dutch (thanks, Berlitz), the inevitable response is "that's okay, we speak English". Das ist okay, wir sprechen Englisch / dat is oké, wij spreken Engels.


Which is not because of any separatist or irredentist tendencies, but because when native speakers of English attempt our language it sounds almighty painful to the ears.
Sometimes it's hard to believe that the two languages are relatives.
Although some dialects of Yorkshire are almost Flemish.
Albeit it considerably more gibberant.

For most of the bus ride I was reminded of the warning on my pills that they might affect my coordination and balance, but that was mostly because I had refused offered seats and the driver was in a hurry to bomb the Germans and return to the safety of British skies. Either that or clenching because the toilets at the beginning of the line were uncivilized.

Bomb the continent, then pee over England.
Valuable but useless advice.



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BATS IN THE LIBRARY

Per an article on the Smithsonian webpage, there are bat colonies in at least two Portuguese libraries which softly twitter on rainy afternoons, and emerge at dusk to feast on bugs which otherwise might damage the manuscripts. Which, if you ask me, is utterly charming.
All libraries, in my estimation, should have bats.

When I worked part-time at a second hand bookstore years ago we may have had bats in the building, but we definitely did have bums in the stacks. Which were not nearly so useful.

Of course, that was in the day and age when there also ashtrays on the premises, because the expectation was that for every book you actually bought, obsessively, you would likely read most of around a dozen more. And why do I have a gardening manual in Chinese for literati in Suzhou originally published during the Manchu dynasty, reprinted during the early nineties after China re-opened up? I would have to evict peasants and look up what those plant names actually are in English for it to be useful. Unless I simply assume that everything is pine (松 'chung'), cypress (柏 'paak'), bamboo (竹 'juk'), and chrysanthemum (菊 'guk').

松、柏、竹、菊花。

This city would indeed be more beautiful if there were more of those, and fewer peasants, techno yuppies, or bums. We must also have more bat-inhabited mediaeval libraries!

And particularly bats like the common pipstrelle (pipistrellus pipistrellus, 伏翼蝙蝠 'fuk yik pin fuk') and ashtrays at the end of shelf rows and in bookstore basements, like City Lights used to have. Alas, pipistrelles are not native to these parts. So I'll settle for the Mexican free-tailed bat (tadarida brasiliensis, 墨西哥犬吻蝠 'mak sai go huen man fuk'). They're larger, but the most common bat in these parts, and should thrive in a nice quiet library.



This morning, at around eight thirty, when I was certain that my apartment mate had left for the day and would not return suddenly because she might have forgotten something, I shut her bedroom door, made myself another cup of coffee, and settled down with books and a pipe for a nice quiet smoke. It is silent in the room at the back of the building, no heavy machinery, or noisy peasants, techno yuppies, and bums.

A pleasant visit with Stemmen in Steen - de ontcijfering der oude schriften, by Ernst Doblhofer (translated by W. van Lakwijk). Ably assisted by aged Red Virginia.
Which functions like bats to keep the bugs away.



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COLD WEATHER NOODLES

You cannot add hot sauce to noodle soup unless you are a white guy eating phở, and this wasn't that. White guy. Check. Eating. Check. Phở. No check. At around teatime I stepped out for a bite to eat, and seeing as I have a nose cold, hot soup seemed like the best idea. Pickled mustard and pork shreds with narrow rice noodles in broth (榨菜肉絲米粉 'jaa choi yiuk si mai fan').

Yes, there was hot sauce on the premises, and I often claim that everything no exceptions tastes better with sambal, but never-the-less.


I did not get where I am today by being a white guy adding Sriracha to his phở.
That is to say, I have indeed done so, fairly often.
But it did not contribute.


Afterwards I went outside to smoke my pipe for half an hour or so, and also gave directions to a Cantonese woman who was wondering where Temple Street (Waverly Place) was (天后廟街係嗰邊 'tin haau miu kaai hai go pin'), wandered around a bit, before heading home to putz on the computer and doomscroll for an hour.

The pipe in question is exactly the same shape as the one which Clark Gable was sporting in a number of publicity photos, looking pensive and intellectual because he also had a book.
I do not think it made me Gable-esque, but that was probably because I looked between grumpy and snarky, and lacked a book. A squat bulldog shape by Comoy.

So naturally a likely woman did not approach me and say something to the effect of "I think you look amazingly dashing AND intellectual, and I would like to drink tea while listening to you waffle on about stuff, I think that would be quite heavenly!"


我覺得你好氣派同埋有智慧，而我想一邊飲茶一邊聽你講事，我諗噉樣會幾天堂！
['Ngo gok dak nei hou hei paai tung maai yau ji wai，yi ngo seung yat bin yam chaa yat bin teng nei gong si，ngo lam gam yeung wui gei tin tong!']


Besides, I was smoking the wrong tobacco for that. Clark Gable liked medium Balkan blends, just like William Faulkner, whereas what I was puffing was a rubbed out flake much like Tolkien and Bertrand Russell, neither of whom were particularly hot or glamorous.
Very very not sexy. Darn.


It remains a fond fantasy. A man can dream.
But about as likely as pigs flying.



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ABSTRACT CONCEPTS

A friend writes on Facebook "there was a shooting outside our house last night. There's been a shirtless crazy man walking around our block screaming for a few days. Every day, I pick up a vast amount of trash from the yard, including syringes, liquor bottles, and burned pieces of tinfoil. I love my house and I love the area, but I am really glad we're moving in a few months."

Sounds like you have imagined San Francisco, right?
He's nearly two thousand miles away.
In the Mid-West.

My neighborhood, and much of SF, is considerably safer than that, and less problem-prone. But there are swathes of the city where I will not go. For reasons. Society has become stranger than we thought it could. Dystopian to a far greater degree.
That's not including the red states where the bad juju reigns.
Ominous banjo music is obligatory there.
The bad lands.

Over the past few days at work I saw all of the problem cases. Regulars who have issues and "needs". They are reasonably safe here in the Bay Area, but the rest of the country would probably chew them up, spit them out, dance on their brutally tortured corpses.
And burn them while chanting "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus".

Because that's what Texas do.

[Texas here is a metaphor for all of the smaller insignificant red states.]


Out there in the red states, there are well-trained little kiddies singing hymns of obsequium for the president, blue-haired grandmas dressed from sternum to swollen feet in red, white, and blue, and pick-up truck driving yutzes roaring around drunk at night without lights looking for transgendered Mexicans to work over. Very likely while chanting "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus".

They're also cheering the president's tariff victory.
The trade war is won. He blinked.
Stupendous, huuuge!
He blinked.


Loud chants of "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus".


Addendum at 11:22 added for local colour: ten guys in Alabama cruising down a dirt road in their pickup trucks shooting deer from the side of the road. A Walmart in Kentucky. Do you A) Love and adore president Trump's hard work to make our country great, or B) Hate our country and its people and everything in it because you’re a crazy socialist?
Strange filaments, and Karoline Leavitt.



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OH MY LEGS!

When I arrived home my legs ached immensely, as did my upper back and shoulders. This being the effect of a full days work, poor circulation, the burst of activity at the end of the work day, and amlodipine besylate. That last has positive effect, though sometimes I am hard put to grasp that.

Not in so much discomfort, however, that I neglected to count those several things which must, neurotically, be counted. Three dogs (one of which is a handsome easy-going Irish wolfhound), one Waymo, one tyke, one complete loony, two familiar faces from a distance, and two Chinese young ladies, one of whom because of her height (or rather, less of that), and the modesty and elegance of her clothing, was extremely nice to observe going on up ahead with her suitor. Propertion, dimension, general neatness of appearance.

No idea what her legs looked or felt like. As I said, modesty and elegance.
My own legs, though possibly decent looking, felt quite like crap.
Almost as if someone I can't stand died in them.
Painfullly and screaming.

A HYPOTHETICAL SET OF LEGS

Yeah, um, no my legs do NOT look like the illustration. And I have too much sense to wear high heels, besides the fact that I am none of the genders that do that.
Nor do I actually know anyone who does wear stilettos.
They're very bad for the back.


Years ago my mother returned from an evening do at the company, took off her heels, and flung them with great force into a corner. She never wore such footwear again. She came from an era in which decent women had several pairs of such footgear, but she hated them thoroughly. A sentiment with which I agree. Did I mention that they're bad for the back?

The only practical use they possibly have is defensive. You can take one of them off and strike someone fiercely with it, inflicting damage. If needed. I suspect that that is why proper ladies had several pairs. You never know when you will need to clobber someone.

They're not good for running (which you should never do anyway, it's undignified and there will always be another bus) or using the escalators in BART stations.


If you're cosplaying a famous moviestar, then maybe.
Many of them suffered for their art.
And because of it.



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A RICH INNER LIFE

One of the sporadic show-ups at my work is a chap with a wide spectrum of life experiences and a plethora of skillsets. He's been an astronaut, nuclear physicist, jet fighter pilot, shaolin monk, podiatrist, brain surgeon, chemical engineer, race car driver, and kung fu fighter. Pilots his own helicopter, and has a mansion with a helipad in Tiburon. Also, he has a daughter who seven years ago was fourteen, and probably still is.

Naturally I stand in awe.

He showed up twice yesterday, and thus made up for the scarcity of the senile old right wing toads who normally infest the back room. Who also have rich inner lives, bless them, but are far more problematic presences. I like to think that I myself have one or two things I do well, and am a very tolerant patient man in the running for sainthood.

My apartment mate, a brutal realist at times, describes herself as "a rude-ass mofo, up yours boy". And says about her own kind that if they were chickens, they'd be the first to be thrown into the deepfryer. This pursuant a significant characteristic of Asian Americans which I shall not mention. I rely on her for frequent exposure to sober realism. It keeps me grounded.

Sadly, I do not have a rich inner life, unlike the first mentioned person, nor the archtypical Cantonese ultra-Hibernian eloquence of my apartment mate. We Dutch Americans are a dour lot, given to Calvinistic disapproval of a great many things even if we haven't been anywhere near a church in several generations. Nor would I describe us as particularly spiritual.

Regarding that dull and academic landscape painting above, please understand that in the far distance near the lake there are naked sprites engaged in a lively dance, both male and female as well as transgender, of several different appealing skin hues. They are extremely sexy. Unfortunately they are too far away to actually see them. That's very Dutch painterly of me. There is miniature naughtiness in my illustrations. Sorry you can't see it, because of perspective. But I want you to know that it is there.


Think of it as le sacre du printemps.



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SHAGGY MUTANTS AT THE OOZE FACTORY

Some of the people I deal with regularly believe that there are nanochips in vaccines and also I have recently been told that the new pope is either a crossdresser or a trangendered person (his skull shape is, apparently, a dead give-away). So sometimes just plain stupid would be a breath of fresh air.

If they field test the giant combat-lobsters in Marin County, I am ready for that. I will gladly help them herd the local population into the fryer-baskets. Here, this one is nice and fatty. Especially the head!

Fifteen tonne spider dump right over Mill Valley? Cool!


Of course, I am probably the perfect person for my job. Neurotic. In the morning while heading toward the bus stop there are five kinds of things I obsessively count: crazies - druggies - streetpeople, dogs, familiar faces, tykes, and robo-taxis. In the evening walking back from the bus I do the same thing. There were three crazies, three tykes, and three Waymos this evening. No more, no less. Not four, that would be too many. Three.
Two of the tykes are Randall and Brenda.
They are active and adorable.


The first category is a Venn diagram, naturally. Overlapping circles. Some crazies are street people or druggies and in either of the latter categories there are plenty of crazy folks.
Some people are a triple whammy.

Pursuant daily activities at the ooze factory, I noticed that when Jeff was talking about politics he was petulantly whining in a very MAGA fashion, and when he spoke of lady boys he sounded totally giddy. I did not ask him about his experiences in that field.
And I absolutely do not want to know.

Nor do I wish to hear about painful blisters, digestive bloating, or purulence.
These are no doubt fascinating subjects, but save them for the nurse.


I did get to smoke several bowls of Greg Pease's latest (Ellipsis) while at work, however. Quoting from Tobacco Reviews dot com: "The fourth entry in master blender Greg Pease's Zeitgeist Collection, Ellipsis Flake is a flake-cut, pressed mixture of Virginias, Orientals, and a bit of Perique, resulting in a blend that is medium-bodied, subtle in aroma, and complex in flavor. Naturally rich with sweetness, spice, and a bit of nuttiness, Ellipsis Flake, by being pressed, allows the mixture's flavors to be amplified and is fit to satisfy Virginia lovers and Oriental enthusiasts alike."

Yeah. It's good. Smooth medium, with a savoury quality reminiscent of a good Havana.
I shan't recommend it to the pipe club, because everytime I do that the bastards buy it all and I don't get to start a hoard. When stockpiling, shoot for the following perfect quantities (which represent lovely numbers. Three tins, for the unobtainables. Five, because it's luck, as is eight, and both six and nine let you also have an open tin. Ten, eleven, twelve, sixteen, eighteen, twenty, and twenty one. This is the correct way.


A good reason to give some people Valium is so they don't twitch on the table.
There are great differences between an anal probe and a brain probe.
But for the fellows in the backroom, ignore all that.
The results will be very much the same.




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THE UNSOCIAL FEAST

Yesterday's lunch was fried rice with chopped bacon, juicy sausage chunks, bitter melon, shrimp paste, and sambal added generously during cooking. Nigel Ng (aka Uncle Roger) might not have approved. Jamie Oliver wouldn't have know what to make of it. And my Parsee friend, had I served her that, would cuss, look aghast, and accuse me of offending everybody's ancestors including my own. Because she is very unfond of bitter melon. Traumatized during childhood, I expect.

Years ago I sent a question to a Dutchman about the very tasty meat-stuffed vegetables his wife cooked that he had described in detail on his food page. What, I wished to know, was 'sopropo' in English? He responded that he had no clue. He didn't know what many foods were called in English. I few days later, while eating bitter melon beef (苦瓜炒牛肉 'fu gwaa chaau ngau yiuk') for dinner I decided to consult my dictionary of Dutch as it is used in Suriname (Dutch Guiana). Um. Turns out that sopropo is bitter melon.

Not once in his description had he mentioned its most marked characteristic, one which would scare off most Anglos, many children, and some Parsees: it is bitter.

The top illustration shows it after cooking with salted black bean (豆豉 'dau si'), the lower picture is what it looks like whole and fresh.


The people I work with would probably find it utterly repulsive. My mother could have been ambivalent; on the one hand she'd have considered it virtually inedible, but on the other hand it is bitter and rather like the severe Protestant uncle of vegetables, so perhaps it is healthy. The parsee says it's nasty. The bookseller might be amused by the boldness and chutzpah.

I am fortunate that my apartment mate rather likes it. Imagine how horrid it would be if I lived with someone who had psychosomatic food allergies (self diagnosed "gluten intolerance", for instance) or the usual dietary neuroses so common among us white Americans.

Of course I'd very probably be dead by now.
Gustatory dullness would have done me in.

Sopropo is delicious.


I rarely eat with other people.
For ... reasons.



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SOMETHING CHEERILY DARK

Naturally I followed the news reports since the first puff of white smoke. While also doing stuff on other open tabs. Reading overseas reports, commenting, studying early mediaeval folklore after watching a Monty Python piece, and casually drawing. We've got a new vicar. Habemus papam. This was followed by a flaky egg tart from the snackies gifted by our landlady yesterday. Why is the new pope never a Cantonese American woman? They are notorious for providing food gifties. My apartment mate tends to do the same thing.

When shopping she buys me meat products or cheese.
Erroneously, she believes I'm too scrawny.
It's high time. Make it happen.

She shops at Trader Joe's, I shop in Chinatown.

So if you see fruits and vegetable here, that was me. I distrust white folks supermarkets, and know for a fact that none of the green things we both like are available at such places. Which is why there is an entire aisle at chaindrugstores devoted to American digestive ailments.

I suspect that if there were more than two Cantonese women living in this building I might be obese, which is the natural state of white people in America. Both of them are slender, btw.

Unlike most Caucasians in North America, I tend to eat with restraint. So while I do like things like pizza and potato chips, and am intellectually very fond of bacon cheese burgers, cheesie poofs, and fried sticks of butter on a stick (Midwestern fair food), I do not snack obsessively on those things while plonked in front of the teevee vicariously participating in sports.

Neither do the Cantonese women in this building. One would suspect that many Americans have Cantonese women in their families encouraging them to have another bite, but obviously that's quite impossible. Sad, really.

For one thing, most kwailo just aren't interesting enough to merrit that attention.
Dutchmen somewhere on the spectrum are unpredictable, however.
Poke him with a pastry, and see what he will do.
Oh look, he painted a herring!
Give him cookies!


Yeah, no, I have no idea why so many Americans are overweight. All I can do is voice mad theories about bacon making everything better and cheesie poofs being a mother substitute. As well as trying to guess which of the passers-by is most likely to die of a heart attack before they're in their thirties.


By the way: we Dutch Americans invented the donut. If we had known what the rest of you are like, we wouldn't have, and instead would have worked on diet pills back in New Amsterdam. Or something with broccoli. Bacon-wrapped ozempic.


A further by the way: what little I have seen of televised sports indicate that the products most advertised are beer, junk food feasts for the whole family, big bags of salty greasy snacks, diet pills, and insurance for your house, car, and mobility scooter.
Plus carbonated beverages, video games, and medications.
Mmm. Perhaps there is a message there.
Besides 'Go Warriors!'



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ITALIAN RENAISSANCE DEGENERATE

Someone asked me recently if there were painters who did lovely flesh. Which is precisely why I woke up with a glistening and pudgy spoiled man-brat in my mind's eyes this morning, painted by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Who was an Italian renaissance degenerate famous for shadow work, creamy light drenched flesh tones, as well as a violent quarrelsome dude likely to stab people in bar fights. Not someone you should emulate.
Also a fellow of very dubious sexuality.

Myself, I am not of dubious sexuality. Just thought I'd let you know. Not that it's anybody's business. At all. Let's not discuss it. Not being an Italian renaissance degenerate.

We twentieth century Dutch Americans are normal and straightlaced.
And I really don't understand why that isn't widely known.
Mmm, cover your supine form in chocolate!

Breasteses! Breasteses!

Um, never mind.

We Dutch Americans love tropical environments, the jungle is in our blood.


It's currently below fifty degrees in SF right now. Which is VERY un-Dutch.

In Caravaggio's natal city it is presently fifteen degrees Fahrenheit warmer than here, the sun is shining, and someone is singing an aria. How much more tropical and exotic can you get? There are huge swarms of pudgy degenerates everywhere.

No wonder they have so many Dutchmen.

Breasteses.



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TWO CUPS OF MILK TEA

All good things come in pairs. Milk tea. Pastries. Packs of Camel non-filter cigarettes bought in Chinatown. Fruits, fresh vegetables, and snackies. This afternoon I gave my neighbor the Indonesian Chinese lady who lives downstairs two bitter melons (and some yauchoi). This morning our landlady gave us some pastries and snacky things.

Two cups of Hong Kong Milk Tea (港式奶茶 'gong sik naai chaa'). One with lunch, then after shopping one at tea-time with a wedge of Japanese style cheesecake (日式芝士蛋糕 'yat sik ji si daan gou') before the two older local gentlemen arrived. With their hearing issues. One of them is planning a trip to Guangdong near the Fujian border to see his girlfriend soon. Flying on what I heard as "Café Pacific", which would be a good name for a chachanteng.

I have never been anywhere near the Guangdong-Fujian border. I should go sometime. Malaria country; tigers and gibbons to the south, oyster omelettes and pirates to the north. Exiled literati expected to die of tropical diseases either side. Sounds like a fun place.

And somewhere there in any direction there is the girl from Viet (越) with the lovely forehead washing her silk on the banks of a stream (誰憐越女顏如玉，貧賤江頭自浣紗 'seui lin yuet neui ngaan yü yiuk, pan jin gong tau ji wun saa'). At least, I imagine so.
That's probably as good a reason to go as any.

The two older gentlemen, by the way, are English speakers. Their hearing defects probably also extend to their mothertongue (Toisanwa 臺山話), but they are best at mishearing in English, which they've spoken since infancy. I do not speak Toisan.
So I mumble at them in English.

I have learned to never address Toisanese in Hong Kong Cantonese if they were born here, because the result is that they look at me funny and say something like "it sounds almost like you are trying to speak Chinese", or "I'm sorry, I'm not Japanese but Chinese".
Wich is hurtful. I thought I was saying it right.

[FYI: The line cited above is from a poem by Wang Wei (王維) written over a thousand years ago during the Tang Dynasty period about the young ladies in Luoyang (洛陽女兒行), a place where I have also never been.
Neither Dutch Americans nor pipe tobacco existed at the time, so life was hard.]

Smoked two bowlfuls in C'town. Cornell & Diehl red Virginia in first a Dunhill bent bulldog Shellbriar, then a Comoy Sunrise apple with a walnut stain. Good things come in pairs.



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EFFECTIVE COPING MECHANISMS

Over the years I have become less social, to the point where I shut down receptive parts of my personality to avoid dealing with people and situations. It's sort of a conscious tunnel-visioning. Your mom died and space aliens stole your children? Have you considered changing your diet? Said in a reasuring and non-confrontational manner, of course.
Because really, I do not wish to deal with the data you have decided to impart.

My people are stoic and taciturn. Your people are emotive and like to show their hairy traumatized intestines to the world. Mine grit their teeth.
You hit yourselves with a hammer.

The other day at the bus stop waiting for the Golden Gate Transit bus a Mexican gentleman was wailing and quite unhappy. So I gave him a cigarette from the pack of Camels that is in my pocket when I head to work, and advised him to have that achy tooth dealt with. If you don't, and an infection occurs, that's too near your brain for comfort. Given that my Spanish is fragmentary and his English almost non-existent, communication may not have been optimal. Or even achieved.

Really, I am of no help at times like that.

Naturally I am better at interacting with the stuffed animals in my life. Not only my apartment mates 'roomies', but also the eccentrics and psychopaths on my bed. Such as the large sloth (Beauregard), the vulture (Imhotep), and the three asperger teddy bears, as well as the control monkey (Arabello Oyster). Who has lost a couple of screws.

He used to be quite sane.
Then he fell in love.
Disappointed.


Mentally we're all on that peak in Marin County (Mount Tamalpais) watching the fog fade away in the morning. Some of us are calmly smoking our pipes, other folks are hepped-up swilling energy drinks, and contemplating navels, wondering if the sweat from the hike that got us here will provide enough wetness that the lint will start to rot and smell putrid.
I took a mental escalator, so I'm fine in that regard.
Some of you whiff a bit.


You should have that dealt with. If it gets infected, it's too near your brain for comfort.
Perhaps you need a cigarette? I always have some with me here.
And stop wailing. Keep it inside you.



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