MONDAY: LAUNDRY POSTPONEMENT

There were high hopes for today. What I had planned was laundry (highly necessary I assure you), visit my bank, and number of tasks around the house. Instead, I frittered away valuable time. No laundry. So I think I will stink a bit. Oh well, wasn't planning to meet anyone anyway. And I'm sure I can find something clean to wear. After I've had lunch I will light up a pipe and most fastidious people will avoid me anyhow.

Cleanish. Not precisely "clean" clean.

I don't feel like being virtuous.


This more or less repeats the pattern of most first days off every week. Then I get more and more anxious the nearer the end of my weekend becomes, finally panicking on the last day, getting off my duff and shlepping a bag of grubbies uphill, and at the laundromat wondering why the devil I didn't think of this before it's not so bad after all. Sometimes I actually do it ahead of that day and feel saintly and efficient for a while.


On Wednesdays, because the chachanteng to which I like to go closes after lunch, I usually don't do laundry. I have, in my adutlhood, found new and improved ways to procrastinate.
Like all efficient and intelligent people.

All advances in human civilization are the result of improvements in procrastinatory arts and sciences. Do something better, and consequently need to expend less time and effort.

Don't ask about non-human civilization. As yet we don't know about those.
Perhaps they're like insect hives with tonnes of mindless activity.
Ever-more old-fashioned drone tasks and rote busy work.
Striving for the ultimate in mind-numbing.
Alien space gulags.


If so, they'll never discover us or make contact.
There would be no percentage in that.
My heavens I'm good.



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THE LEGS, THE LEGS!

One of the most irritating things for someone who putzes with graphic programmes is to finish something, post it on his or her social media, then look it up in Google Images and discover that AI authoritatively identifies the work as a painting by someone one has never even heard of. "This is a gouache painting by noted artist Stephanie Zingbats, part of the Podunk Museum collection, gifted by Walther and Laura Derhooptie in 1997".

Part of the search results show other gouaches by Stephanie, as well as things that look even less likely. Yeah, okay, go hump yourself Google Images and AI. You're quite bonkers. This painting does not look anything like that. Four hues are identical. And on that basis.
As I said, very irritating. Especially as I have never even been near Podunk.
Who the heck are any of these people?!?


As it turns out, several of my recent works posted here are identical to, or very much like, in the style of, or derivative. Famous obscure geniuses of note. Whom no one has ever heard of, deservedly, in certain styles.

Utilizing light and depth for atmosphere or something.

I paint what I see, child.

EXISTENTIAL ANGST, ANGULAR BEEFSTEAK

The picture above, made using the paint programme on my computer, photorealisticly represents a rectangular beefsteak hippity-hopping with gay abandon across the great American prairie on Nob Hill right outside my garret window. Okay? Nothing else.
I saw it precisely so while outside smoking my pipe.


Now, according to Google Images (quote):

"The work is likely by artist William Stanisich, who is known for his watercolors of natural scenes such as Land's End and Yosemite, focusing on specific light and idiosyncratic forms.

The artist often paints close-up views of nature, under the canopy, creating ambiguities of scale.

The painting captures a dynamic interplay between light and shadow, suggesting a natural environment like a rushing stream or dense foliage."
[End cite]

That's certainly something. I'm sure you're right. Idiot.

Google Images additionally posted a link to ARTIST STATEMENT: Why a signature style? by William Stanisich, which is too long for me to casually read right now. But I'm sure it's very well-thought out and deeply felt, so I endorse it wholeheartedly. Wholeheartedly!


I am currently smoking flake in a Charatan from the pre-Lane period. Delicious. The legs in the title of this post refer to the meaty, meaty thighs so delightfully put down on canvas by Edgar Degas over a century ago in Paris as well as my own pedal appendages, which, having been on my feet all weekend, are making me rethink life, the universe, and everything. Particularly the right one. Which is possessed of an evil spirit.


Yesterday evening while taking public transit back to San Francisco after work it struck me, seeing the vacuous expressions on the faces of several other bus passengers, that many members of the modern generation are often ignorant, stupid, arrogant, and apathetic. And it reminded me of one of Edgar Degas' famous paintings, L'Absinthe, which shows a dreamily zotsed female with a vacant stare seated next to a dubious looking fellow smoking a pipe. And while I could perfectly visualize the image, particularly the hue of her drink, I for the life of me could not recall what that beverage OR the painting were called. A mental block.

The chemical compound thujone, active ingredient in absinthe, was no problem. It is also present in oregano, sage, and some members of the mint family. Knowing that was no help. Neither was knowing that it's distilled from wormwood, anise, and fennel.
The mind sometimes doesn't work in mysterious ways.



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IT'S CANADIAN!

At various points throughout the day holiday plans were discussed. "What are your plans for Thanksgiving?" people would brightly ask, and others would happily chirp about trips to the old family homestead, thirty or forty relatives all clustering together, aunt Agatha's famous parsnip soufflé, and needing to go outside to smoke. Which explains why no one goes to Minnesota or the Upper Peninsula for the holidays anymore. It's cold there. A cigar takes a good forty minutes of freezing your nethers off while Uncle Chadwick is comfortably inside watching the game and hooting for the team, cousin Joeboy is going back for seconds and thirds of the parsnips, and the sofa nearest the fire is filled with stuffed and snoring relatives.
Plus all the women folk have yelled "bye guys we're going shopping!" It's very cold.

Stationwagons, scarves, mufflers, woolen longjohns roaring off to the mall fifty miles away. The homestead is out in the countryside. No smoking in any of the vehicles.
You can sit on the tractor if you want.

Every year around this time pipesmokers go on the internet to write something along the lines of "can't smoke inside because of the wife and kids, heater in the garage on the fritz, and I can't feel my toes and finger tips anymore, how do you guys stand it?" The responses invariably run the gamut from "I'm a polar bear" to "I live in Hawaii". Along with one or two bastards who suggest divorce. And one guy saying "hey, your heater was busted last year, you've had ten months to have it repaired or get it replaced, what the heck is wrong with you?!?" I was the dude who mentioned Hawaii, by the way. I figured that he deserved it, and had no way of checking my location anyhow. I actually live in San Francisco where around the holidays we have typical SF summer weather. Freezing buggery rain. But he doesn't need to know that.

Among the pipes in my kit today were two Canadians. A Canadian has a long elegant oval shank and a spartan looking billiard bowl (tallish round). One smooth, Peterson Dublin and London. One a tan-coloured sandblast Savinelli DeLuxe.

Years ago I visited my uncle and aunt in Canada over the holidays. Midwinter. Calgary. No smoking inside. So yes, no, I shan't be visiting any kinfolk during the season.
At least not until Global Warming is much better.

But whenever I smoke any of my Canadians, I'll think about it.

They are very nice Canadians.



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IT'S LIKE A FROTHY LIZARD

There is always the chance that they actually were in stock. But sometimes you simply have to buy the substitute. These days more often than not. For some of the people I know life seems to have become a constant stream of discovering that something they enjoyed years ago, haven't bought in a decade or more, and fondly remembered last week, is no longer available.

Do you remember the whipped frothy lizard from Beauforts?

Yeah, well, it's no longer made. Very sorry.

Try this rat vest instead.

So John tries the rat vest, which is very good, but not quite like the whipped frothy lizard, and lacks the Parisian resonance from when he was still in college, back in the Fifties, before the floods, before the invention of cellular devices, when you could still trade a squatch for three or four frickets. Tell you what.

Life was very different then.

Yesterday someone shared with me that there used to be a product advertised during a soap opera on television back in the sixties which had a name that could not be used for marketing purposes today. Oh those good old days. He fondly remembered.

Sometimes life is not so much trying to not sound like Grampa Simpson talking about tying an onion to his belt, or his grandson Bart and not having a cow, as it is celebrating being the crazy cat lady living in a rundown gothic stand alone out near the cemetery. Go out onto the front porch and scream that all you damned kids need to get off the lawn.

And why does everything smell like a litterbox?

We all miss squatches and frickets.

Don't remind me.



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THE DASTARDS!

Per the internet, the assertion the RFK Jr was NOT bitten by a zombie is not supported be any evidence, so for the time being it would be wise to assume that in fact he WAS bitten by a zombie. And that there is a plot by the Republicans to cover up, for whatever dastardly reasons Republicans have to mislead the people.

Washington has been taken over by adrenochrome snorting lizards.
You always suspected that, but you read it here first.
Or you didn't. Okay. Then prove it.

Nano chips!


I work in Marin. Which leads, distressingly often, to interludes I wish had not happened. But as a consequence of one of those I now know all about a tunnel contructed several years ago bypassing a dangerous coastal highway which is out of synch. The shiny little mirrors engineers use had all been placed one inch higher than they should have been. This was relayed to me be a gentleman who owns one of the ugliest hats in all of new-agedom.
Who by his own admission is a native shaman.


Marin is a very mystical magic place.
With much that is meaningful.

While there, I have been told at various times to avoid gluten, meat, the colour red, dead people, and non-organic food. Because everything I eat is plastic.


What I have NOT been told there, but it's bound to happen, is that we're hanging on to outdated dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society.
What we should be is an anarcho-syndicalist collective.

Also, some clipboards are better built than other clipboards, and very unfortunately they don't make that kind anymore, probably because the demographic for that sort of thing has shrunk to the point that it cannot support manufacturing them. Which is sad.
There are certain desirable characteristics.
Some of the greatest minds.

It is worth thinking about.



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SEVEN PILLS

Normally when I get up early to get to work ahead of the boss, which is every work day, I swill some strong coffee and head out for a pipe while wandering around the block. Question of mental health. And getting the juices flowing. Today is my first day back after the angioplasty. But I'll wait till I get to work before lighting up, because A) it's quite frigid out there out there, and B) there's sort of a courtesy agreement with a medical person that I will smoke less after the angioplasty. It was to actually quit entirely for a few weeks, but um yeah that's not going to happen. And I work in a place with crusty old farts in the back room who spend their waking hours sodden with tobacco products, expensive liquour, and who knows what medications that keep them alive, functioning, and semi-calm.

I'm taking seven pills a day now, per prescription.
Five of them before the anglioplasty.
New one twice a day.


Getting older means more grumpiness. Fortunately none of them are, to the best of my knowledge, psychoactive. Unlike the fossilized old fellows I deal with regularly.
Who were largely borderline insane to begin with.

History tells us that Rome was built on seven pills.


Erm. Perhaps that joke fell flat? Leastways I don't hear anybody laughing.


I'll try that line on my apartment mate to see if she clouts me good for a horrid pun. She likes wordplay but I'm not sure she has much tolerance for what's actually a crappy dad joke.


Won't float it at work. The old bastards are too dense.



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THE SHIFT CHANGE

One restaurant to which I go was opened a few years ago by someone I knew, but I rarely go there much nowadays, though I do like her place. Reason being that she herself isn't there often anymore, but a waitress whom I do not particularly like is. Said waitress very much prefers to ignore me. While I'm used to being ignored -- and don't mind me, I'll just sit here quietly dreaming over my tea till the food comes -- this one takes it to an extreme that isn't quite pleasant. I stopped going to another chachanteng nearby entirely because I noticed that crotchety old geezers my age but Cantonese were getting far better service.
And considerably more respect.

Ya know, some of us aren't as dense or oblivious as you think we are.
Anyway, I had not gone there in several weeks.

Today I went there again, mid afternoon. Oh joy, the waitress who treats me like a human being was there! And I thoroughly enjoyed my string beans stirfried with chicken over rice (四季豆雞飯 'sei gwai tau kai faan'). After I was finished I listened in on three healthcare professionals talking, mixed Canto and English, while dawdling over my milk tea.

Then I noticed, blast it, that the good waitress was being replaced by miss thing.
I'll have to make sure I remember what time the shift change happens.

It's between lunch and dinner, there's few people there.
Why does it take twenty minutes to get my check?
I know you heard me the first time.

Yes, I know middle-aged Dutchmen who smoke a pipe and can read your language are quite the nastiest thing in the universe. You live in a very small world, don't you? That old geezer who used to subtly sneer may have influenced you, but he now locomotes with an oxygen tank, and doesn't come in at all. So you might as well drop that attitude.

Zulke Toisanezen met hun rotte kapsones.


Some people from the countryside treat Hong Kongers with deference, because they know the tahi will hit the kipas if they don't. Normal Anglos also get decent treatment; who knows what those Karens will do if not? Regular foreigners too, there's that unpredictability and if you keep them happy they won't complain, they're quick, they'll pay, and leave.
But eccentric locals who speak Cantonese?
Eh, the heck with it.



There are four restaurants that proudly state that they are Toishanese.
I am, as you would expect, hesitant to even try them.
Seeing as I'm one of those.
You know.




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THE PUBLIC NUISANCES

Becomes of the looming threat of rain it is incredibly gloomy out there. Which is perfect pipesmoking weather. So if you go outside, you will probably stumble over a throng of middle aged fellows with vaguely English accents -- or Dutch, intangible cultural heritage per the UN and all that -- wearing tweeds or thick prickly sweaters, perhaps sturdy workmen's corduroy, grumbling and sipping tea. That's guaranteed. Except for the Sherlock Holmes fanclub and the Tolkien-freaks. The latter will be searching for places to have second breakfast and puff their long churchwardens while acting cute and Hobbit-like. Of which there are none in San Francisco. We have Orcs instead. So within a few years we'll finally be rid of them.

The Hobbit crowd have been largely replaced by the vape crowd anyway. It was all those fruity flavours. The Hobbiters smoked Hello-Kitty aromatics, because they had no taste and didn't actually like tobacco, so they gradually shifted to Raspberry Eagle Essence or Mango Gandalf in electronic devices, and now lurk around the tenth floor boys bathroom surrepticiously exhaling bubble gum smells.

Blissfully unaware that Orcs are puritanical and have keen noses.
Plus flavoured tobacco is banned in California.
It appeals to small people.

JRR Tolkien smoked Capstan and similar flakes, sometimes Erinmore Flake or Gold Block, especially when slumming in Cambridge, and made Hobbits the butt of all of his jokes. He detested them. Deservedly. Felt that they spread disease and were immoral.

Real tobacco, stuff worth smoking, hints delicately of terpeneols, carotenoids, terpenes, and polyphenols. All of which should be present in the cured leaf without needing additions of liquour, vanilla, or cheap soapy essences.

Precisely like real coffee does not require hazelnut, chocolate, or caramel.
And good tea needs no mango hibiscus peach cobbler syrup.
Only Hobbits drink pumpkin spice matcha.


This post turned into a severely disapproving lecture.
Blame the weather we're having.
Sorry.


Damned hippies.



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WHAT DO THEY EAT THERE?

Why is there what appears to be a sheepshead in the garbage can at my barbers? And why does it appear to be simmering in porridge? And also, why am I here after hours, to his very great surprise? He seems to be genuinely baffled by the sheepshead. And the porridge.
And it turns out he isn't actually my barber. This isn't his salon.

The most crucial questions, I realize, are why have the police come, and are these new meds making my dreams weirder?

One of my bloodpressure medications was already making dreamtime vivid. These new pills (in addition to the others I'm taking), seem to be adding another layer to that. I can smell meaty fumes from what actually seems to be a large stainless steel cooking pot.


Yesterday while shopping on Stockton Street I passed the open front of the shop that sells newfangled gottahavits, where, upon a second look, I realized that the shopkeeper was using one of the devices to prepare a tasty dish for supper: steamed egg with large clams (大蜆蒸水蛋 'taai hin jing seui daan'). It looked delicious (香香滑滑啲 'heung heung waat waat di').
I couldn't tell, through the plexi lid, whether he had added some drops of sesame oil.
And I suspect that in the last minute he would strew some scallion over it.


It does not matter if it's sheepshead stew, Scottish style, or steamed eggs a la Cantonaise. What you need to prepare either dish is a sleek newfangled cooking vessel that looks precisely like a flying saucer over a Texas city after too much bad beer.

This new medication has been shown in a very small number of patients to have an adverse effect on the liver. And while one needs one's liver to handle beer, I'm saving it for better things, and will continue to avoid liquour of any type. I am not a resident of Texas.


In all likelihood, the space aliens will be lovers of fine cuisine rather than football fanatics. They'll judge Texas accordingly. Whether they are fine with shellfish remains to be seen.


Perhaps like a great many Wasps they shy away from hot sauce.
A sploodge of Sriracha will be optional.
But recommended.


Sometime next week I should go to a chachanteng and see if they still have steamed eggs. Easy enough to make at home, but I don't feel like doing that. Meanwhile, it's time for more coffee. I've already taken my pills this morning, and might have something to eat. The new medication is not quite comfortable in an empty stomach.




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FIRST DOUBLE SOCK DAY

As is usually the case, the final stop was the bakery for a spot of hot milk tea and a pastry. It was peculiarly empty there. Perhaps the overcast darkness had something to do with that; many Cantonese are deathly scared of rain. Which I don't quite understand. They have umbrellas, I've seen them. They know how to use the things, I've seen that too.

Tissk, tissk, young people.

In my day we had to struggle for ten kilometres in howling rainstorms every day just to get to school in the morning. And it was colder than SF. For nearly seven hours we'd sit around the burning corpses of the least liked students, tightly clustered together, for warmth. We would weep copiously and cry for our mothers and free beer. Then slog again through the torrential downpour to get back home. Like it was the end of times. Every single day! Between the last week of October and the beginning of May. This younger generation is soft, I tell you.
Also, we didn't have umbrellas. We were men! We didn't need them!
And they were rare after the war.

Or at least that's how I fondly remember growing up overseas.
It rains a lot more over there. And it's wetter too.
Why, this weather is tropical!
By comparison.

It's low fifties F° out there right now. And the rain won't start till much later.

When I got to the bakery only two old geezers were there, within half an hour three more wandered in. Otherwise empty. Then the proprietress (called a 老闆娘 'lou paan neung' in Cantonese) came in, and spoke to one of them about a medical emergency previously, how does one hail a taxi here, he recommended three taxi drivers he knew, one of whom was a foreign ghost devil (鬼佬 'kwailo') at which point she expressed hesitation because how can one tell them where to go and in any case there were other reasons .....


Second time today that I'm more or less a fellow villager whose eccentricity is that I'm good with English. I guess the grey hair and long familiarity have softened that other weirdness (being Caucasian), and the fact that I write reasonably well further hides it.
Not entirely, of course. I have regrettable characteristics.
Which show no indication of disappearing.


It's probably like my being a smoker.
Some men, you know.


On the way over to the busstop I paused to admire a Heidelberger Degel-Automat (海德堡印刷機 'hoi dak pou yan chaat kei') which was visible through an open doorway of a print shop. Good machines. Still fully functional after half a century.


Anyhow, I know summer and the mellow part of Autumn are truly over, because it was necessary to put on two pairs of socks. Which makes a world of difference.
This will last for about four or five months.
Warm tootsies.



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HOW TO USE A RICE COOKER

From afar, the conversation of the workmen a few gardens over sounds like "kuhongina hamungina". Which I tried to recognize as meaningful till I realized that distance distorted things, and it was in a language I do not speak in any case. So, like my partment mate years ago watching a Taiwanese soap opera, I invented my own dialogue. And actually she wasn't watching so much as simply being in the same room as I was. I was watching. She noticed that the plump ayah and the little girl of the family wept an awful lot (there have to be several weeping jags in a Chinese soap opera otherewise it's not good) and invented some disaster involving cheese in the rice cooker as part of helpfully rendering it in English.

Dramatic exclamations, recrimination, and several well-known cheese names. The result was something of which I gladly would have watched all episodes. Monty Python's cheese shop sketch in a Chinese teevee drama format. Cheddar, mozzarella, and parmesan are widely known in Taiwan, and they have learned how to make cheesy poofs over there along the Japanese model. Which are sort of popular. Asians outside of Indonesia aren't really hep to Gouda, and I would imagine that Limburger is entirely out of the question.

The charcoal grilled bacon cheesburger with thick slices of still juicy apple-wood smoked bacon and oozy melted blue cheese is, probably, not a thing yet there.
Mmmm, also add a big scoop of sautéed mushrooms!

Sounds like an ideal breakfast.

AUTUMN MORNING IN BRABANT

By the way: the cardiologist who performed the angioplasty described the arterial buildup as being rather like parmesan. Really aged parmesan. Feel the Parmigiano Reggiano, little penguin, be the Parmigiano Reggiano, become one with the Parmigiano Reggiano!

What in Dutch we would refer to as an 'oude belegen kaas'.

There's a well-known theory, expressed best in Dutch, that we Netherlanders invented cheese ages ago and all those other Europeans merely imitated us. From which I could deduce that consequently angioplasties also must have been invented there.
Probably by doctor Goropius in the sixteenth century.


Trying to make cheesy poofs at home was undoubtedly what ruined that rice cooker. They're not built for that. Something my apartment mate instinctively knows (she's of Cantonese stock), but plump Minnanwa speaking maidservants in Taiwan probably wouldn't.
Cheese, ricecookers? Newfangled! Combine the two for better!

But I encourage you to experiment.

Aged Gouda, I think.



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NOT REALLY A CHINATOWN THING

Screaming, shouting, wailing and the gnashing of teeth. A scene from the pit. Infernal noise. Three Cantonese gentlemen talking politics and money over cups of caffeinated beverages. Urban Cantonese are sometimes like American tourists, enchanted with the belief that if you just say it loud enough the other person will understand. And, if necessary, you repeat it.

我唔識玩錢，淨係識玩蛋撻。

One of them asserted at one point that he didn't know how to pursue money, he just knew how to pursue the egg tarts. And then spent the next fifteen minutes talking on point about finance. I, meanwhile, pretended that I didn't know a single word of Cantonese and calmly continued eating my 豆腐炒魚飯 and enjoying my milk tea. My assertion fell on deaf ears, largely because the three gentlemen weren't listening. I know all of them conversationally.
And we've had discussions with each other many times at the same place.
But I'm not fluent enough, or sufficiently glib, to talk politics.
All I know about is tofu and sautéed fish rice.
With a tasty brown sauce.

Usually I don't eat there, because the food is sort of pedestrian.
But if you choose wisely, it's okay 㗎啦。
Good with Sriracha.

Strictly chachanteng, but the milk tea is excellent.

There wasn't a visit to the usual Tuesday night haunts because the bookseller went to New York. So it was an early evening. Probably just as well; the weather has gotten much colder and I haven't pulled my wintercoat out of the closet yet. I'm still pretending it's movie California out there, not arctic blast California.


After dinner, while strolling toward Sacramento Street smoking my pipe, I saw Tat Yee on the opposite side heading toward the karaoke bar. It's quite likely that the dear man is spending all of his retirement having cocktails. Punctuated by crappy pipetobacco.

It would be pointless to introduce him to the good stuff. He's happy with the Captain, and would not know where to get real tobacco anyhow. He doesn't leave Chinatown much.
Everything is available in Chinatown. Just not pipe tobacco.



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THE UNRETICULATED MAN

No one in their right mind would want to see my groin. Even under the best of circumstances, but post-operation good heavens no. So it's probably a good thing that I am not involved with anyone, and not a member of a sauna club. I took a look down there today. Bald, black, and blue. Actually the bruising is more green, yellow, and purple. Please do not imagine this. Wipe your mind clean.

There was also horrid widespread bruising there six years ago after the coronary stent was put in. Which was intellectually interesting. A medical necessity made me freakish for two to three weeks, while improving my life immensely. This angioplasty should do likewise.
In the meantime I'm rather 'prickly' about that.
I was shaved before the incision.

Don't look. I'm hideous.


I'm always fascinated by the colours of nature. As you would probably expect after seeing the illustrations on this blog. Recently they've been landscapes and scenery, what the internet assures me are rather like en plein air painting. Despite not being outdoors but mentally interpreting being outdoors while sitting in the computer room at the back end of my apartment. Sometimes with sunlight streaming in through the blinds.
On the west-facing rump of Nob Hill.

My computer, always comforting, today yielded precisely the hues I did not want to see.
By the way, where they cut me appears to have healed nicely.
Thank you for absolutely not asking.

Lamproderma scintillans is a type of slime mold in the family Lamprodermataceae. Having a knobbled shiny appearance, many members of the genus lamproderma are purply- blueish, with greenish washed tints, often shiny and on a microscopic level almost metallic looking, like miniscule space alien landing craft.


AFTER WORD

The most recently discovered member of the group, Lamproderma vietnamense, is both fuzzy and shiny, with what look like both clusters and globby bits on the outer surface.
It has reticulate (having a net-like surface) spores.

I had fun illustrating lamproderma.
It reminded me of something.



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THE SWEATS

It seems like centuries ago maladies were more exciting as well as more dreadful. Back in Tudor times, England and subsequently the continent were tested by a sweating disease that was deadly in hours. Or not. On average, a resolution in either direction happened over a period of eight to ten hours. Sudor anglicus (the English sweats) was marked by a sudden onset of shivering, perspiration, and ague-like aches, two to three hours, followed by a hot stage with tremors, increased heart rate, dehydration, several other unpleasant symptoms, and profound tiredness. It might prove fatal. While some speculate that it was something like hanta virus, there is also the distinct possibility that it was a relative of something malarial, seeing as it was more frequent in rural areas and moist environments.

Death rates were often over fifty percent of the population.

After four outbreaks, it disappeared.

Bad beer has also been mentioned. That's not entirely unlikely, as wine-swilling Europe was largely unaffected. In those days you did not want to drink ditch or stream water because of water-borne pestilences, so you started the day with beer or wine, had it with your mid-day meal, and continued with those beverages till you collapsed drunk after dark. Repeating the same pattern the next day. It's a miracle that those people accomplished anything at all considering how addled they must have been.

At this point I could mention that many people in the Southern United States adhere to the same pattern. With sixpacks of horrid watery beer. Which is probably safer that the tapwater down there. Alternated with oversweetened ice tea (well, at least the water is boiled to make that). Being constantly scrambled from what they drink may account for their voting patterns.
It would certainly account for Mike Johnson, Tommy Turberville, Louis Gomert, Marjorie Taylor Green, and the governor of Florida.

Personally, I find oversweetened ice tea undrinkable. I don't live in The South, and heck will freeze over before I root for Alabama or Ole Miss. There are better things to do on the weekend, and I don't watch American Football if I can help it.

Vegging in front of the teevee is a fasttrack to diabetes, alcoholism, obesity, and probably several unclean diseases besides becoming a frat boy or a member of a Christian cult.


It's miraculous that they accomplish anything at all considering their addlement.



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MIST ON THE MOORS

It seems like only a week ago that it was the tail end of summer. Warmish. Shirtsleeves. This week it's not like that at all. Might be kind of warm later in the week, Saturday or Sunday.
This morning, however.

Dress thicker. More troll-like and frumpy. It's Autumn.

For most of the morning I'll putz around and have hot beverages. Occasionally retire to my bed with the animals. Who as I imagine it will talk back and tell me to leave those damned frigid feet outside the blanket.

My usual Tuesday lunch place is on vacation for the entire month. Boy will they be surprised when they return ten days hence. When they left it was good weather. It's ten degrees warmer in Hong Kong and Guangzhou.


Warm and wet.
Not here.

The bookseller is heading to New York (more than ten degrees colder), so the usual routine will be out of whack in that regard. Milk tea, snackies, early evening. Fortunately no rain.

Meanwhile, coffee. Sunlight.

Soy sauce. Hot sauce.

A pipe after my apartment mate has left for the day. Another pipe later.



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ADVICE FOR SICK PEOPLE

Got to the follow-up on time, well on time. And spent nearly twenty five minutes meditating before the cardiologist came in. He's a busy man, and as the population gets older and more decrepit, he will be busier. Went over the recent procedure, looked at the incisions, discussed my future as a continuing smoker. Was given a praescription for a fourth medicine, one which helps prevents strokes and thrombosis after an angioplasty, and reduces the risk of major cardiovascular events. It inhibits the clotting protein.
And is classified as a blood thinner.

I shan't mention what it is on Facebook, because the last time I listed one of my medications there (six years ago) I got unwanted medical advice from someone who "knows a doctor".
I also know a doctor. I know five of them. Two of them are in the cardiovascular field. I want their advice more than random words of wisdom from the ginger and turmeric crowd.

Of course that does not mean that I am obedient. After picking up my new pills I went and had a pastry and a cup of milk tea, then lit up a pipe for a slow quiet stroll to the bus stop.
So it's been a good afternoon.

Just in case I needed to explain why I wasn't there last week, I memorized the term 血管成形術 ('huet gun sing ying sut'). Which isn't one that normally crops up in civilian conversations, and most folks won't have a clue anyway. I could've just said 病咗嘅老鬼 ('peng jo ge lou gwai'), but one seeks to be precise. Even if it baffles.

The above illustration (done between my appointment and the pharmacy) is a view of a canal in Utrecht. Autumnal. Haven't been there in years. It's one of my favourite cities in the Netherlands. Note the subtle value shift in the blue of the sky.


Besides Utrecht, other cities well-worth visiting are Amsterdam, Den Haag, 'sHertogenbosch, and Maastricht. Dutch cuisine is odd and not exceptional, but the Indonesian food in both A'dam and the Hague is stellar and infinitely varied.
The Chinese food is okay, lah.


Tilburg and Eindhoven, though I have a fondness for them, are not particularly exciting. That last has a good football team (PSV), and one can have an enjoyable time there, but really, they're a little provincial. Except for their drug scene. World-class.
If that's your bag, you are probably American.
Go for it.




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A LOVELY GRID PATTERN

When the Dutch burgers of New Amsterdam started planning the settlement they laid out a lovely grid pattern, because they were logical and being Dutch, had both strong rectalinear instincts, accountant sensibilities, and an anal obsession with minutiae. My ancestors. Even though generations have passed since we did that, AND bought the entire damn continent for a little over twenty dollars all of the Anglos need to pay rent dammit seeing as it's probably too late to kick y'all out, as well as making a lovely contractual deal with a local tribe of one shiny coin for the scalp of one of those hosers over that hill yonder (superceding the previous lovely deal of a shiny coin for an ear, because who knows where that ear came from and each person normally has two of those things), were part of that group.

And seeing as for centuries marriages were substantially within the same creed and culture, until five generations ago we all still spoke Dutch, by four generations many members of the tribe could still read it -- old State Bible translation Dutch and either Datteen or Marnix van Sint Aldegonde -- and although we're now substantially Anglicised, we fondly remember that, technically, we still own the entire shebang all the way to the Pacific Ocean. A deal is a deal.

All of which partly explains why I was dreaming in spreadsheets. Sort by bill dates and open amount, with a formula calculating what that percentage that is of the original invoice figure (in case an easy deduction becomes apparent, defective allowances, agreed upon charges, testing fees, etcetera), and make sure that the notes field text wraps around in the allotted width so that pertinent facts about collection efforts are visible.

International sales, though huge, were the easiest. Prepayment by wire transfer before the goods were released for loading. East coast customers were largely a mess. No, I have no idea whatsoever what product we were manufacturing. But I knew that our English and Indonesian correspondents were in town, so it all had to be done by a certain time this morning, when I have an appointment with the physician who did the angioplasty.

At which point, if I'm on the ball, I shall seek confirmation of the names of the entire team in the operating room, so that I can send a thank you card. I had a lovely time, thank you, you were all very nice. Even though for three hours I was out of it.

[The astute reader will remember that Lotus 1-2-3 was followed by Lotus Symphony, both of which were the greatest thing since sliced bread until Excel came along, which was originally a Macintosh programme, before Windows were introduced. Since then Excel has brutally wiped the floor with its predecessors.]

Slight panic mode: could I get it all done before the CEO and his team met the heads of the foreign companies? Especially as the Indonesians kept interrupting to talk Betawi flavoured Bahasa with me (about food, and eating possibilities in SF), and the English had questions concerning curry places in the city (years ago I was connected to an Indian food enterprise, AND apparently I "speak like a civilised person").


Somehow this was all linked with and prompted by the rain during the night. A constant geroesemoes from beyond the window pane and distant-sounding drumming.



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HIGH CHOLESTEROL EATIES

A dream involving toasted tortillas, roasted chiles, grilled meats, pan juices, fresh herbs, crunchy bits, balsamic vinegar, red wine, good company, over at the country place of a friend whom I haven't seen in years. Happy people. Sunlight. Everybody having a fine time.
It was a remarkable experience.

No, I have no idea how I ended up there. Dreams can't really be exlained. Especially great food dreams. And kitchens that seem to involve several rooms, most of the ground floor.


It was a culturally and culinary diverse and broadminded group of people, so no people from you know where, or you know what backround. No snooty rich Anglos, no Ivy league Wasps.


I don't know about you, but my medication related dreams (from blood pressure pills) often involve food, and never involve Wasps. Unless you categorize Frenchmen, Italians, Greeks, and Dutchmen as Wasps. Which the last mentioned marginally are, but they speak foreignese, much foreignese, so they're kind of deviant in that regard.
Latinos, East Asians, the occasional Indian.
Plus Indonesians and Malays.
Regular California.

I'm trying to remember if I associate with any actual Wasps. Three I think. In Marin County. They're liberal, presently angry, and at odds with their surroundings and its dense populace. They would have enjoyed the party. I'll have to remember to introduce them to my friend. Whom I haven't seen in years. They're very much his kind of people.

All three are retired and intellectually vibrant.

Seeing as I'm recovering from a minor surgical experience, I haven't been in Marin this week. The hiatus has proven enjoyable. And I may have finally caught up on my sleep.

Haven't smoked my pipes in days.
This bothers me.



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