SWAMP THING EATS

Among the hottest things this pending frenzy season are knee stuff. Three ads in a short scroll. Plus back massagers, neck massagers, hand massagers, and miracle wrinkle cream. The algorithms try to figure out youor age, and then try to show you stuff that pleases their advertisers. Based, probably, on key words that you mention when typing on the computer. So, being a typical Dutchman, and wishing to see more things pleasing to my actual demographic, I shall avoid certain words, and over-use others.

Tulips! Windmills! Bitterballen. Stroopwafels. Salty licorice.
Kroket, frinkandel, and heavy woolen underwear.

Well, that last is actually useless, having gone out of style since fire was invented, definitely central heating, and lord knows I do not want my social media littered with pictures of blousy blondes posing provocatively in granny panties, I'm not a Trump voting Christian pervert.


There just aren't enough illustrations of food.
Too many pictures of swamp things.
Oh wait, that's appropriate.
I'm Dutch.

What I had for lunch today was glorious. Rice noodle and meaty bits and fried chilies and mashed chili and peanuts and oil and cilantro, there was richness and tanginess and textural excitement, plus things that they never eat in Iowa, in a place where there were absolutely no people who looked like they were from Iowa.

Iowa, as everybody knows, is all about pounded fried murdered tasteless porkloin.
Nothing but porkloin. They worship their horrible porkloin.
Served in a little bitty bun.

Basically a lacy sheet of meat breaded and deepfried, wider than a plate and nearly paper-thin, no salt no pepper no garlic, the cardboard of meat preparations, made as taste-free as possible, with one lettuce leaf and maybe mayo if your lucky fries cost extra don't bother.

Time stood still in Iowa. They have Lutherans and sockhops.
And that everpresent nasty porkloin.



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AGED INFRASTRUCTURE

Statistical evidence shows that the nation’s deadliest cities are predominantly located in Red States. Which tells you everything you need to know when planning another family get away: avoid all the places where they voted for Trump and the KKK, those are hellzones. Which we knew already, and we do avoid them. Instead, think of Canada, which isn't our fifty first state. Nice people. Predominantly non-violent.

It isn't Idaho, where one bar proprietor has armed all of his staff (presumably because his patrons are psychopaths, it being Idaho) and has promised free beer for a month to whoever turns in foreigners to Ice (presumably psychopaths and likely natives of Idaho) resulting in deportations. And has, in consequence, received hatred on social media, because many normal people do not understand that Idaho is practically the Charlie Manson of states.

If you're dating someone from Idaho, knock it off.
Especially if he's your relative.


In other news, the painters who will do the airwell are here, and have requested that the windows be tightly shut, top and bottom. Which several of them cannot be, because the building is ancient, and there have been minor changes in the woodwork over the years. So at the crack of dawn (exxageration) I had to clamber onto the kitchen counter and tape over the slit at the top where that half won't fully slide up.

Please note that ALL of my praescriptions state "may cause dizziness". Which I've ignored, and never told work about, because they would worry, seeing as ladders are an essential part of the storage area there, and my boss doesn't want to get sued or have an employee falling and busting his fragile old ass. Quite natural, but ladders are a necessary part of living, and only one employee has a phobia of even stepping upwards barely one tread. The last time I fell from any height I was in the apple tree behind our house.
That was juvenile stupidity, not dizziness.

The medications also tell me "do not become pregnant if using this".

There is no need to worry about that either.
Perhaps in Idaho, but not here.
Magic happens there.

Along with beer-sodden brawls, ultra-violence, casual crime, moral offenses, drug deals gone wrong, plus wide-spread bigotry and very diverse family depravity. Idaho is the real America, where Jesus and the Klan rule, and people still make meth in their trailer parks. Pick-up trucks, hoe-downs, and cowboys growing potatoes everywhere.

It is a praedominantly Christian state. Many locals know him personally.

The phrase "how's your sister" should never be asked there.

Fried tuber with tomato compote is a passion.

They are big into processed cheese.

Literacy is not uncommon.

There is trout.



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RABBIT RABBIT DECEMBER 2025

Rabbit rabbit. Said first thing in the morning on the first day of the month. It's good luck. Shortly after which I heard the turkey vulture complaining. He wants me to go out there and harvest some fatty inner thigh cutlets, and wonders querulously why I haven't cut up a random fat street person yet. He knows they out there, he's heard their noise.
All I have to do is look with more avid attention.

Um. Yeah, no. No can do, little fella.
The authorities would frown.

Unlike the feathered fluffball in my apartment mate's room, I myself am not vested in wild urban harvests. Random fat street people are a priceless resource in San Francisco, like tauntauns and Grateful Dead fans, and we cannot go out there to take their useful bits.

They used to thunder in vast herds across the prairies of this country.

Then the railways came and they were a nuisance.

Now we cannot hunt them anymore.

It's just not done.


The stuffed bird sulks when I tell him this, and weeps very theatrically into the shoulder of the octopus next to him on my apartment mate's bed. Why won't I listen? Why will I not feed a poor starving buzzard? Best bird ever! I am heartless!



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SALTY GREASY ARTIFICIAL CHICKENS

In the morning there were old men screeching at the teevee. The local team was doing something stellar. There was also rightwing ranting. In the afternoon elderly retired military men got blotto on expensive liquour and spouted foul language, obscenities, nonsense, and information I need not have heard. Throughout all of this someone whom I shall not name sucked on a stogie of 134 ring gauge, thirteen inches. Which looked like a horse's penis.
It took nearly seven hours to finish. He enjoyed it. Hungover, on an empty stomach.

There were actually two doctors on site.


There was no doctor on the bus back to the city, but perhaps there should have been. The customer in front either fell asleep or passed out from drugs and exhaustion. I could tell that his hands were swollen and oedematic, some of his knuckles showing bruises that indicated either bone breakage or severe contusion. I rather hope that he eventually got to where he was going, and if it was an emergency room that would be very good.


It has been hazy grey on recent mornings, bleak and cold both evenings.
Slate grey overcast days. The grumble time is upon us.
Temperature mid forties to fifties.

You know, I do not think that I could smoke a cigar of those dimensions (13 x 134). Anything bigger than a robusto loses my interest. Davidoff Gran Cru Robusto is, marginally, too much, given that it's slightly bigger than a standard robusto. A toro is right out.

My tastes are not extreme. Simple, at times simple minded. Tonight's dinner was a Korean made snack food. Just the right balance of greasy fried flavour and crunchy texture.
Artifcially flavoured. Brilliant.

Significantly more interesting than lunch had been.
Which was convenience store standard.
No thirty two ounce squishy.


The crunchy greasy stuff comes in a big bag. There's still plenty left. I have a sneaking suspicion that my apartment mate will have some for breakfast tomorrow.



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KEEP YOUR HEAD WARM

Ugly hat guy dropped by work yesterday, finally wearing headgear. It wasn't the ghastly chapeau for which he is notorious, but it did make his head look pointed. He said he's holding out on the other one till it get's really cold, so that he can keep me in suspense.
I informed him that the scant joy his ugly hat would give me wouldn't make up for the pleasure I get twitting him every time he comes in without it. It's the Hawaiian shirt of hats. One would suspect him of Texan aeasthetics.

In any case, it does make him visible when he's laying pavement on the streets and roads of the Bay Area, but it's a toss up whether it contributes to longevity or not. If I were a motorist I'd be transfixed, and possible keep my foot on the accelerator in a daze.

All in all, it's a miracle that some Americans remain alive. Yet.
In between the food poisoning and the ugly headgear.
One would have expected greater mortality.
Why does Texas still exist?


Are ugly Americans even human? Perhaps they're some supernatural daemon-like creature that you need special ammunition to kill. Silver bullets like we used on the juramentados in Mindanao when we were brutally taking over the Philippines and making them ready for civilization, which, by the way, killed nearly twenty percent of the population there.
But at least it kept the Dutch, English, and French out.
Which was basiclly the point.

Loud shirts and stupid toppers are a thing that only Americans do. Well, sometimes making necessary exception for bowler hats and horrid lapses of taste which are very British. As well as badly chosen coats for the Levantines, and track suits for Slavic gentlemen. Both of whom smoke Marlboros and do other things that say they're hip and with it, for sure, modernity is their watchword, and put on some Elvis we now must boogie to that roack and roll.
They've seen the movies, now they'll live the life. Groovy cats, daddy-o.

Given what the rest of the world with some justification thinks Americans look and act like, it's easy to go undercover, fly under the radar, let them think one is actually a visitor from somewhere in their own part of the world. And not stoned or drunk.
I just wish more of us would do that here.



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KIND NOTES ABOUT REPULSIVE LIZARDS AND COLD WEATHER

Well, black Friday is over and nobody got killed. So why do they call it black Friday? Have we been cheated? Weren't we promised scenes of despondency and mayhem? Dead shoppers piled around the last doohickey in the store? It turns out they all order on line now, then come on over to get mildly blotto and gibber inanely in the backroom. If it were up to me, we would never turn the heat on in the morning to keep the place bearable during the day, and I would have the only taun taun for warmth. Bugger off, Luke, your dark father wants you to freeze to death. It builds character. Go crawl back into that trash compactor.

What that really means is that I have scant patience for idiot old rightwing men being offensively Republican. Their MRI scans came back showing nothing. Empty.

I do not need to be tortured.
There are no secrets.

Plus it's cold. Which I find harder to deal with now that I am no longer a springy young lad. Circulation. Koud kleumerij. My people overwintered on Nova Zembla, where it seldom gets above freezing. Poor bastards. Their suffering must have been immense, I should read that book again. No wonder we let the Russians have it. Lots of ice, no cozy cafes, no poffertjes, no oliebollen, no cuisine worth any note, and no central heating. Basically the windswept saltflats of Marin with Nazi walrusses for company. A zero-stars Yelp review.

Overwintering Op Nova Zembla: written by Hendrick Hamel, describes the horror endured by the expedition of Willem Barentsz and Jacob van Heemskerck in 1596 - 1597 while trying to discover a Northeast Passage through the Arctic. An epic. A moral tale filled with flawed and very human people, plus the threat of death in a ghastly frozen wasteland. Among the great works of Dutch literature.

Yeah, okay, this little essay is more about current seasonal weather in the SF Bay Area than anyhing else. One very good friend insists that this is nice and brisk, and it's glorious outside. But he's younger than myself, with better circulation, more body fat, and undoubtedly greater insanity or a mean streak.


Over a decade ago, when I told Mistribhain that it wasn't buggery cold, it was brisk, she opined that I was clearly out of my bally mind. She may have been on to something.



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THE GREATEST! TOTALLY!

Today is the day you've been waiting for. The most important celebratory event of the year. The day that you and hundreds of other people will stand in line at the mall in front of the big box, because you want the newest game controller. It's been two whole years! You didn't buy one last year, because you knew that after the coronation of Trump it would be cheaper, and last year you couldn't even afford eggs. But this year is different. You've given up on eggs, and you took public transit, but little Bobby needs a new controller.

So you wait. Around mid morning you realize that the line is only slowly moving. Twenty feet every hour. By lunch time you will still be half a block away. So you decide to have doordash deliver burgers, that way you will have enough energy and high blood sugar when you finally have to fight the Mexican family for the device. So you call up on your cell phone, and tell the dispatcher that the delivery immigrant on the scooter should look for the second person dressed as a giant turkey in line. You're the tall one on the left.


Biggest day of the year! The wait is over!
Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy!
It's tradition!

That casserole with all the tater tots you had yesterday combined badly with liquour and your medications, and consequently you are just a little bit constipated. Probably shouldn't have got diabetes in your twenties. Plus oedema.

Little Bobby was a mistake. That one time you and Clarice .....
Oh well. Accidents happen. And he looks like you.
Uncle Gordmund will remember him.
And pay for his college.
Trade school.



Good luck at the big box. I don't have diabetes or unsightly bloating, no stupid kids either, don't know anyone named Clarice, and I'll be at work today. But I'm there in spirit.

I morally support you.



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TERMS AND CONDITIONS MAY APPLY

In a comic strip years ago one of the characters suggested filling the elevator shafts at the Pentagon with zesty banana pudding as sabotage. Which I still think is a splendid idea, and I'm sad we never did it. Best use of bananas ever. And I'll admit that while I am quite fond of Bananas Foster, as well as bananas in flaky pastry boats -- with sugar syrup -- when it comes to banana bread I'm entirely on the fence.

Bananas may fail, even when used as directed. This is a legal disclaimer. It's hypothetical, not based on actual test results.

We Americans have an almost boundless love of bananas. We use them for everything. They're a valuable substitute for pumpkins in pies, lattes, baby food, toys.
Plus size comparisons, and things to scare cats.
They're even better than cucumbers.
You've seen the videos.


A banana is a measure equivalent to one fortieth of a giraffe. So it's easily understandable and scientific. In the United States. Where I live.

ONE TENTH OF A GIRAFFE LENGTH, END TO END

This blogger also recommends that in lieu of sage and stale bread with chestnuts, you could use bananas and spicy pork sausage to stuff that damned bird. It's better for you, and you'll have less gastric distress.

Oh, and that dish which uses lima beans? Just dump it.
That, too, leads to less gastric distress.
Heirloom cranberry sauce?
Just dump it.
Inedible.


By the way: a jolly good festive condiment can be made with bananas, caramelized onions, sugar, white vinegar, ginger shreds, and red pepper flakes. Simmer it down till it's a thick gloop like ketchup.


A football field is sixteen hundred bananas in length.
Which is forty giraffes.



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A BETTER CELEBRATION

Today is, I believe, the day when you express gratitude that you only see Uncle Gordmund once or twice a year. He's from the Red States. Beyond being barely literate and down rabbit holes, he's a non-smoker and consequently inside for the entire visit, spouting repulsive opinions he got from the blonde slut on Fox. No, he doesn't smell bad. But he stinks.

On the other hand, I merely have a ghost cat.

There's a faint whiff of tuna.

You've just been told that everything in the Macy's Thanksgiving parade is gay damned New Yorkers pushing their DEI agenda on everybody back in his day inflatables of Henry Ford and Huey Long ever since that effing effer changed his name to something Muslim damned kids they're all a bunch of commies and billions of illegals all over the world mumble grumble bellyache and whine.

I've just read that Alexander and his lovely wife are presently in Jakarta where it's slightly over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and too warm to do anything else than smoke a Cuban with a cup of coffee. After a small meal with lots of Makassar chilies.

The ghost cat thinks he probably had some tuna.
Which is superlative with hot chilies.
Just try it, you'll see.

Mary from the Deep South claims this cranberry sauce is the best she ever made, and uncle Gordmund, keen to deflate any and every balloon (as well as rain on parades, because) says that it isn't as good as his first wife's sister used to make. In the years before she headed into the Great North Swamp while zotsed on diet pills and was never seen again. All they found was her scarf and sunglasses. The liberals probably ate her. Kids those days!

Oh good, the game is on. He'll be quiet now.
While cheering for the Packers.
America's team!


Tuna. Tuna is a lovely canned item. It belongs in every jello mold. With chopped celery and pimentos, precisely one teaspoon of Tabasco. Parsley on top, as a nod to French cuisine, and paprika because of Gordmund, still the most Eastern European of the older generation. Paprika on everything. His first wife's sister used to do a lovely turkey with paprika.
Not this younger generation. Trump! Bondi! Noem and Patel! Go packers!

The younger cousins look at you with envy as you put on your scarf and boots to outside with your pipe. An entire hour of peace and quiet out by the compost heap, with nothing but marshbirds for company. The youngsters wish that they smoked.

Next year, Jakarta. Chicken with Makassar chilies.
It will be the best holiday ever.
Cheroot.



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THE GARDEN OF OTHERWORLDLY DELIGHTS

When I was still in grammar school I noticed that some of my fellow students, girls, were making drawings reminiscent of fashion illustrations. It was an art style I at that time could not quite understand. Angular stylizations, certain specific colour palettes. Now I find myself watching animations by someone on Facebook who probably started off that way.
And actually very much enjoying the catwalkish aspect.

Yes, I know that AI is involved. No matter.
Sometimes the visuals are striking.
A different universe.


Also, a very New Yorkish vibe.
[Though I think she's in So. Cal.]


For myself, I don't do AI. Not because I necessarily oppose it, but I'm clumsy in that regard. And old fuddy duddy. My own intelligence is artificial enough, and partly fuelled by caffeine. Mental data sets get cocktail mixed together. But I can't manage palette coordination or a look that is both unified and stylistically hangs together.

To put it bluntly, I don't have the eye.
But actually, here it is.

The eye.

BORG CLAMDROID

This was inspired by the work of Kelly Eldridge Boesch. An ambulatory robot mollusc looking directly at you, as if to ask "what are you doing on my planet?" It reminds me simultaneously of science fiction magazine covers and seafood banquets. I did some tweaking.
The fractured sky is very derivative.

Altogether something Pieter Brueghel would appreciate.

Years ago, after a four and half hour trainjourney from Amsterdam to Antwerp, my apartment mate was pooped. Extremely low blood sugar, and very grumpy. So I dragged her into a likely restaurant and for the next two hours we feasted on fresh seafoods. On the journey back to Amsterdam, she just would not shut up about how superior the Belgians were to us Dutch, absolute geniuses, masters of the table, hah, the Dutch were in comparison a bunch of punters, rank amateurs, good lord the Belgians were fine people, the absolute apex of civilization! It made slogging around Europe finally worth while!

There are no scary shellfish in Antwerp.



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MASTERPIECE BY LIU ZIFENG

A scholar and artist in Liaoning recently posted a picture of a recent work of art on Facebook. It is stellar. I have never met him, and the likelyhood of ever doing so is unfortunately slim. But I appreciate his skill, and the aesthetic reflected in his pictures.

So I wish to show it here.

Kudos.




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TWO STEPS AT A TIME

An article on the internet mentioned a seven floor walk up apartment. Which automatically got me thinking oh good lordie no. Although given that I live on the second floor, up one set of stairs, and regularly traverse that when I need to go out for groceries, pipe smoking, mail call, laundry, what have you, and self-delusionally regard myself as a young man (hah!), that doesn't seem bad. The average temperatures in the place where that seven floor walk up is located are in the eighties Fahrenheit (around thirty Celsius).
I quail at anything over mid-seventies.
Legs won't function.


By the way: the Fahrenheit scale was invented by a long-time resident of Amsterdam. Which adds lustre to a city long known for free-thinking, eccentricity, and psycho-active drugs. And surely you can see why? Also, Amsterdam buildings are known for having brutal staircases.


In my actual youth, I'd take those stairs two at a time, at speed. Even when I was living four up. Hop hop hop ooh vimful vigour! Now, after a day at the salt mines, I'm slower. I like to be the stairs, feel the stairs, become one with the stairs, dig the groovy gestalt of the stairs.

Seven floors of them would be a bitch.

A further by the way: recently I've been getting spam calls concerning my "end of life financial planning". Based on being on a list of presumably old farts on the cusp of shuffling off. Gee thanks, bitches. At the end of my life I wish to be lowered from a strong hook at the apex of the building, front side, like they have in Amsterdam, which is there so that moving furniture in and out, considering the narrowness and steepness of their stairs, can be expeditely done.
It strikes me that a coffin or a brancard, even an entire hospital bed, fully loaded, may be thus lifted with minimal wear and tear on the joints of the people tasked with doing so.
At least without dinging the plaster. Life means concern for plaster. Or it should be.
Perfect plaster is a sign of civilization.

Oh, and I also wish to have an onion tied to my belt.
Like grampa Abe Simpson. It's the style.

Seven floors. Heavens.



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BRAINS ON FIRE

There's always a crowd at some places around dinner time. Which in this case was actually a very late lunch. Dumplings and hot sauce, hot milk tea. A generous tip because they didn't even attempt to seat me at a small table and I like the people who work there. Bright, young, efficient. In addition to dumplings they also do electric hued dishes that visiting New Yorkers and Midwesterners would like, but three of the nearby tables were Mandarin-speaking, and had ordered real food, so I couldn't identify any steaming plates with reds and greens.
Not that I wanted to. Probably sweet and sour this, gung pao that.
Plus the general. Always the general.

A long dawdle with my pipe and some fine tobacco afterwards in the darkness beyond the edge of the square, far from the crazy man screaming and the card players clustered in the light. From a distance I could tell that they were smoking. Smoking! That's illegal in San Francisco city parks. Was I the only incorrigible obeying the law?

Unlike them, I hesitate to risk a fine. I would be far less believable if I tried glib-talking my way out of trouble. 冇意思，我唔識講英文，唔知你講乜嘢，阿sir。"I'm sorry, I don't speak English, I don't know what you're saying, officer" ('mou yi si, ngo m sik gong ying man, ngo m ji nei gong mat ye, ah-sir'). Your honour, the accused swore at us in some goofy European gobbledygook when we cited him for smoking. So we gave him a citation for that, too.

And we're convinced that he sik gong ying man very well.

Yesterday it had been the vocalizing man on Waverly, this evening howling outrage from the street person collective near the pedestrian walkway. This city, in some areas, just cannot be quiet. For peace you need to walk up hill two or three blocks. And there are always people who see the pipe and think you have a spare cigarette, after all, you're not smoking it.

And actually, I did have a pack on me; a lovely luxury product that cost one third of the price of regulars. 五葉神香煙。 Support your local circumlegal businesses.

Didn't we make that point once in Boston Harbour?
And what would whiskey be without it?
Tradition!


That, in essence, is what we will be celebrating two days hence. Despite turkeys being actually very much like puppies, feathered puppies, capable of love and affection, and the severely discounted merchandise at the big box representing corporate greed and shoddy production standards because none of those people fighting each other for the very last electronic nostril twiddler have any self-control or standards.

If you used the fingers of your opposite hands to jank the hairs, which gives you a better angle, you wouldn't need the fancy device. Just like the depression boy, when we did it entirely by hand. And during the war! Self-reliance!

I watched the rats in the bushes struggle over a spent fast-food wrapper. I imagine the victor happily sounding like captain Jack Sparrow boasting "I've got a greasy paper, I've got a greasy paper" before losing it to some other rat.
Little swaggering rodents.


We need to return to simpler times, when America's consumer whores fought each other over jars of dirt and greasy papers. Not nostril twiddlers. Values, man, a return to values!


Like many pipe smokers, I contemplate the deeper things.
We're nature's intellectuals, tell you what.



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A SPLENDID HOLIDAY IDEA

Back in the old days Ronald Reagan advertised Chesterfields, especially at Christmas time. The carton came with festive printing AND a handy to-from card. All of your friends, young and old, of every possible gender, needed a carton of America's finest cigarettes!

Doctors, of course, disagreed. More doctors smoked Camels than any other cigarette! In a repeated survey, doctors all across the country, in all branches of medicine, were asked "what cigarette do you smoke, doctor?" And, not surprisingly, more doctors preferred the smooth rich taste of Camels.

Santa himself often smoked Murad Cigarettes, the Metropolitan Standard, made with the finest Turkish tobacco. That product does not exist anymore, and Santa probably didn't survive the hippie era either. It's sad.


Still, what would the holidays be without fine tobacco? Perhaps it's time to revive an old tradition: the entire family sitting in front of the fire after dinner happily puffing away. Who cares that the heater in the garage is on the fritz, we're smoking inside this year! No need to send uncle Gunther out into the cold -- invite the old bugger inside where he belongs!
Let us all enjoy his sparkling grouchy wit.

PRINT ADVERTISEMENT CIRCA 1932

Those lovely Willem II figurados, what in Dutch we call a 'bolknak', are no longer available. In the late nineties the splendid office building on the Eindhovensche Weg was demolished, and the beloved brand sadly disappeared. The other main cigar factory in Valkenswaard, Hofnar NV, closed down in 1990. The era when fine cigars paved roads, provided running water and electricity, fuel for central heating, funds for schools, hopitals, and lodgements for the elderly, had come to an end.

PRINT ADVERTISEMENT FROM 1938

It's cold outside. Let the old bastards in, you horrible puritans.
There are icicles on the edges of the compost heap.
A parade of frozen forest creatures.
Dead cats and dogs.



Note: both images from the Facebook page 'Valkeswird'.



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HOURS WELL-SPENT

Young adulthood was not a particularly good period. Life has gotten better. And my choices, while more limited by age, are often more sensible and balanced than then. Especially as regards aesthetics, oh lordy yes. When it comes to clothing it's no longer Sears Roebucks finest, and there is a complete absence of tie-dye, bellbottoms, and corduroy. Books? More mature tastes than then. Some authors whom back then I thought were the cat's pajamas, are not in my shelves in any great number now, and some not at all.

Should have kept all my science textbooks, though.
And bought more art books. Definitely.

One thing to which really wish I still had access is the multi-volume hard sciences and engineering encyclopedia my father kept in the small room behind the upstairs living room.
I had hours of fun with that. He probably acquired it when he was still in college, and had probably had hours of fun with it too.

A term which came unbidden into my head early this morning, seemingly at random, no discernible reason whatsoever, was paramecium. Paramecia are single celled organisms often found in still waters, which are microscopically covered with fuzz. Related terms, historically, are the words cillia (the fuzzy bits), animalcule (microscopic beastie), pellicle (a thin membrane or cell-lining), and Dutch scientist from the Golden Age (roughly 1588 to 1672) Christiaan Huyghens (1629 to 1695), Lord of Zeelhem (Haelen), which is approximately forty five miles southwest of where I grew up.

Minor boasting: We Dutch discovered tiny fuzzy bits!

Yay, fuzzy bits!

Of course I'm still unclear why or how an aeronautical engineer from Southern California ended up working for Philips Electronics. It's quite a mystery. Where they developing something there we just don't know about?

Most of his department were mushmouthed Englishmen and Scots, Dutch engineers who were convinced that an American could neither speak nor write decent English, and several graduates of the Technische Hoogeschool in Bandoeng (now named the 'Institut Teknologi Bandung'; Bandung Institute of Technology). Who as semi-native speakers of Sundanese, Colonial era Malay and Indonesian, Dutch, German, and English, had no opinion on the matter of language. Tak apa apa semua mungkin punya.


Also the cookbooks too. I really miss those cookbooks.
I've always been kind of a food slut.
Crêpes Suzette!
Mmm.



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A VERY BIG SLICE OF CAKE

Sometimes I get the idea that I'm actually a rather likable old coot. That, certainly, is the reaction I got from four twenty-sometings recently -- three men and one woman, plus a middleaged pipesmoker, as well as three Chinese women of various ages. One Toisanese, one Hong Kong, one from Shanghai. But I do not understand why this is.
Perhaps mature Dutch Americans are a thing.
Which is utterly baffling.

Maybe it's my aura. Which is golden and rather cheese-like.
Or my manly aroma of aged Virginia pipe tobacco.
With a hint of something naughty.
That being Perique.


In any case, the waitress from whom I requested 柱侯牛腩飯 ('chü hau ngau naam fan') and a cup of hot milk tea was bowled over by my ordering it in her language. I'll grant you that's a bit unusual, because white guys being able to sound like an office worker on Mody Road aren't, strictly speaking, standard away from Kowloon.

I know how she feels.
Boy howdy.

When I got home, my apartment mate, a woman of pure Cantonese ancestry who lives in the other bedroom, was happily singing vaudeville stripper tunes while fixing herself a snackipoo, plus a wedge of chocolate banana cake and a big glass of milk. Women, very often, tend to shy away from high fat and cholesterol stuff. If they're of East Asian genetic stock they also usually have a measure of lactose intolerance. And most women haven't a clue what ecdysiastics are and do, or what songs are natural to the field.

She also does show tunes. Happily and horribly.
Do not ask about Valley Of The Dolls.
Good Gouda almighty!

[By the way: There is no Book of Ecdysiastes in the Bible. Perhaps there should be.]

Sweet little Asian flower, quiet and shy? Hoohah! Yeah, that is not the case. Yes, she is of delicate build. Fine boned, not tall. In a previous life she was probably a grave robber or a gangster queen dealing ferociously with opponents. Of course when I threatened to inform her Teddy Bear (oldest friend in the world) about the unseemly singing, she blanched.
There are some proprieties which must eternally be maintained.
Ms Bruin still thinks she's sweet and innocent.

I dread the day she discovers karaoke.

The world ain't ready for that.


She isn't, strictly speaking, standard.



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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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