LINGUISTIC BAD ATTITUDE

Can all of you Anglos please stop complaining that you didn't understand? When I have to order my tacos and guacamole, or chow mein, or eisbein mit kartofln, pot au feu, vindaloo, bami goreng, chili con carne, jambalaya, spaghetti carbonara, gefilte fish, alfredo, or what have you in a language other than goddam yoghurt-speak, I do not feel offended. And by the way, learn Dutch, asshats, I'm tired of having to say "that's okay, we speak English". There are several bi-lingual, tri-lingual, and multi-lingual countries on the planet, ALL of whom more or less put up with Americans and their shitty half-assed semi-English only.

Also, lutefisk is NOT an English word. Neither are salami, frankfurter, and nachos.
Dig?

The Marseillaise was NOT written in English, but y'all understood it perfectly well in that famous scene in Casablanca.


How on earth do Americans travel to Europe, given that so many of them are quite unable to speak even decent English? Do they take remedial courses before they go?
I guess 'Mime' is unversally understood.

They probably walk all over Paris and London yelling "pizza, pizza", and eventually someone will point them in the right direction. Hard Rock Cafe and Starbucks.
The local menu at McDonalds probably baffles them.


Une Royale Wid-Chise, s'il vous plait.


That's a quarter-pounder avec fromage Americaine. For all of you monolinguals. Bon jower, mah-dumwasell, commang ally vew? Parlay vew Angleh? Shuh swee A merry cane, nuh compran pah luh dis coors see veel. Parlay ahnglay lan tuh mahn.


Or you could simply pack jars of pickled pigs feet ("the official snack of the South") in your bag along with the supermarket bread you prefer. The customs officials will understand that you aren't planning to sell it.



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THE OUTWARD APPEARANCES

On the first day off after working several days I am usually a bit frazzled. Consequently after a burst of activity yesterday, when I came back I didn't make any attempts at being a social creature till my apartment mate returned home. Because I'm not really a social creature.
That is to say, not socially adept, seldom socially inspired.

Some of my friends are equally apathetic about giddy whirling.


It also has a lot to do with the fact that we're smokers. In years past we could go to a coffee shop, like the Med in Berkeley or Caffe Trieste in North Beach, carrying a book to read while dawdling for hours over our beverages and briars. Good luck doing that now. The moment you light up at one of those places people start throwing soft tofu at you and whining about the little children and rampant colonial oppression you horrid monster.
The romance of indulging in poison in public is gone.

We hide under bridges now, and eat goats.


The other change is that our reading tastes have changed, our reference books to which we might require recourse are all at home (and usually under the bed or behind stacked tins of tobacco), and we don't carry a cellphone that would allow us to look stuff up with us when we leave the house. Because we don't wish to be reachable, have no intention of reaching, and actually rather wish that other people wouldn't reach in public either.

We're still wild animals in a way. We haven't gotten used to all of the modern age. Now more than ever subtitles on everything would be nice. With clickable links. Preferably to in-depth Wikipedia articles or technical journals.


So not so much what is being said, more like essential background information.

"Esmerelda, over there in the corner with the strident voice lecturing about the sanctity of animal life and asserting irritatingly in several repetitive ways about how humans should only eat or drink soy products and cauliflower, is a psychopath who thinks that she is special and gifted. Her best friend Starburst (real name: Betsy-Ruth Frunk) has accomplished nothing in life but shows off her meaningful tattoos and thinks that is more than enough.
They're both seeing junior techno-executives with mid-size dogs."

"One of them is destined to become an anti-vax PTA mom in a gated community in a few years. Click here to find out who."

(click) From Wikipedia: Psychopathy, or psychopathic personality, is a personality construct characterized by impaired empathy and remorse, persistent antisocial behavior, along with bold, disinhibited, and egocentric traits. These traits are often masked by superficial charm and immunity to stress, which create an outward appearance of normality.

Not very surprisingly they are drinking blueberry lattes.

They consider themselves enlightened.
And very spiritual.



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NATIONAL PIZZA DAY

Today really should be a federal holiday. Not because it's immediately after the Superbowl, and we all have a hangover from celebrating our Puerto Rican heritage (not me, but I'm there in spirit) and got drunk out of our gourds (which that other performer, Bitch Rock, very likely did; he had one or two percent of the viewers and failed miserably), or because it's freezing cold in large parts of the country far from civilization (Northern California), or even because soon chocolate will be on sale (bachelor chocoholics are counting the days), but because it's National Pizza Day. And spiritually we're all fratboys one day of the year.

[It's like National Donut Day (Dutch American), but for everyone else.]

Plus pizza is the great American food.
It's what the pilgrims ate when they landed in Brooklyn.
It's good karma in a greasy easy form.

Feel the cheese. Be the cheese.
Let its goodness flow.
Melt into it.

Let the pizza salve your soul and bring comfort.

Om, santi santi, om.

Actually, I may have pizza later. For lunch I had family style lotus root fish cakes (家鄉蓮藕魚餅 'kaa heung lin ngau yü bing') which were delicious. The brand trademark is 鱻 ('sin'), which is a different way of writing 鮮 ('sin') meaning fresh, new, delicious, rare.
Indeed an appropriate appellation!

Bought the product on a whim last week. Yesterday evening, because my apartment mate had added more stuff to the household refrigerator, I couldn't find them. I mounted a more intense search this afternoon in the bowels of the ice box, and finally found 'em hidden underneath sausages and behind some polpette. And I'm very glad I did.

Most of the fish balls and similar products are hers. If I asked I'm sure she'd allow me to have some, seeing as she's worried that the 'Old Toad' (me) is a bit on the scrawny side.
But I specifically wanted to try these puppies out.

I shall recommend them to her.



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MARBLE HUMMING

It's amazing how much I accomplished today. I had gotten out of bed at nearly my usual working day time (way too early), and finished my first cup of coffee and a pipe smoke in record time. Ablutions followed (along with neurotic behaviours having specific numbers assigned), and was down at the bus stop well in time. Arrived at my eye doctor's appointment with forty minutes to spare. First one in when they opened the doors at eight thirty. At quarter past nine I was faced with a quandary: an errand had to wait till Ming opened his doors for business. Okay, let's go down to a place I've always wanted to try for breakfast. Inconveniently forgetting that they are closed on Monday.

Doubled back up and had some congee and an oil stick on Stockton.

Got the main errand and a few others done after that.

Second pipe of the day at eleven.

Then home again.


You know, normally I'm not even halfway human much before noon. I'm really not used to being well-oiled machinery this early. When I was still doing credit work I would call up my worst customers on the East Coast in the morning. Monday morning.
Get the unpleasant stuff out of the way first.
East Coast time.

So we've established that I have eyes. And she'll see me again in four months. Also, not in any way connected thereto, I'm also slightly deaf. That being because I gave an unexpected answer to a mis-understood question. Which, given the demographic I work with on my days on is not unusual or unexpected. Most of the people I normally deal with are dysfunctional old fossils, and I suspect that that also holds true for my eye doctor and her staff.


To put that in a way that has resonance for the elderly, a quote:

"I will not buy this tobacconist, it is scratched!"


If you are of a certain age, or a young afficionado of ancient literature, you will recognize the source of that statement immediately. It was first said in Aramaic, if I remember correctly.
The language of Bava Kamma, Bava Metzia, and Bava Batra.
Gue kagak bakal beli tukang tembakau ini!


It's not even one o'clock. I had nothing else on the programme for today.



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COMPETITIVE WATCHING

When I woke up I had a sense of dread, something was missing, and a feeling that there was something I absolutely should have done but didn't, and bad things might happen because of it. Then I remembered; I had not watched either half time show, and consequently couldn't be outraged. Missed an opportunity. No experience to back up my displeasure at either event. Popular music and stage dancing isn't part of my world. I assume that there had been stage dancing during Kid Rock's performance, but I can't be sure. No, I'm not going to research it.

During the day yesterday I couldn't quite remember Kid Rock's name, and refered to him as "Bitch Rock". which may very well describe him and his entire genre, but I don't know, because I don't think I've ever heard any of his songs. Or wanted to.

Sometime today, if I remember, I'll go on Youtube and look at some Bad Bunny.
I am one who delights in all manifestations of the terpsichorean muse.


Well, many of them. A few.


Back in my day, sonny boy, we had bands like Kool And The Gang, Mitch Miller And His Orchestra, and the back-up musicians for Bandwagon. Now that was music! People wore poodle skirts and were seriously into composers. And it was sunny all the time!
Not like today. At all. Kids these days! Get off my lawn!

Apparently bad things happen during halftime. Twerking, loose boobs, and beer frogs. Goats. I only hear about this stuff days or weeks later, because I have never watched football.

You know, depending on how much paint is in the bucket, and the energy of the man (or woman) wielding the brush or roller, the first strokes will often be thicker and applied more smoothly than the last ones, when the painter is wondering whether the entire wall can be covered. You would think that the first portion would dry much earlier, but because of that emptying of the bucket over time the last section might be only thinly covered and dry considerably faster. Imagine the rising tension as every one watches to find out.
It's very exciting.

Paint rollers were invented in 1940 by Canadians Richard Croxton Adams and Norman Breakey, and things have never been the same. Within decades the field had changed entirely, and the diversity of methods and materials of the modern age is, all things considered, staggering.



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THE HELLO KITTY MIND

My apartment mate flew a suggestion by me that one of her late brother's friends had made. She did not sound very enthusiastic about it, and as you would expect, I did not sound very enthusiastic. Reason being that both of us barf at sentimental crap. Genuine feelings, okay. We can deal with that. Flowers, butterflies, and little fairies? Oh stuff it. Please.

Look, if you're going to suggest sappy stuff to people on the spectrum, you should expect a slap down. And no "let's all pray together" either.

As the father in Monty Python's 'Holy Grail' put it, succinctly, "and no singing!"


We don't deal well with imbeciles. That's why she is on antidepressents, and I'm a grumpy old bachelor.


On a different note, an East Asian female tourist got on the bus yesterday with not one but THREE Hello Kitty dolls. Larger than life size if Hello Kitty were a cat. She had a lovely face, but I couldn't help thinking that travelling halfway across the planet to buy Hello Kitty stuff as a souvenir is plenty bloody ridiculous. Says something bad about your sense and values.

Now, bear in mind that in the entire foregoing text I have strenuously avoided a certain term. Sentimental "shit". Hello Kitty "shit". Cottonwool. With butterflies. And widlflowers. And little fairies. And small animals dancing while having cups of tea! So touching, such sincerity.
Beauty beauty beauty!

Here's a picture of a frozen wasteland filled with snow. It's covering up all the precious feelings. And freezing them solid so that they cannot be expressed.
Feelings do not survive frostbite or hypothermia.


As I said, a lovely face. Very pretty! Probably an empty head behind it, and a softly bleating voice, but no brain to speak of. Probably not Japanese, because they've got so much Hello Kitty over there it's coming out their ears and they barf Hello Kitty in their sleep. So very likely Chinese (Hong Kong, Mainland, or Taiwan), or Korean. Beautiful kissy lips. So sad no brain!


So, what did you think about America? "There's Hello Kitty there! Weeeeeeee!"


Everywhere she goes she buys Hello Kitty shit.
Hello Kitty dances with sailors.
Didn't you know that?
A floozy!



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ENJOY THE PEACE

In what will probably not surprise anyone, I shall not be watching Kid Rock's alternative half-time show today. Shan't be watching Bad Bunny either. I'm sure it will be all-American as topsy, but in fact I shan't be watching teevee at all, all day. Even if the Forty Niners were playing, I wouldn't watch. Football isn't my thing. None of the popular sports are.

Well, long distance skating, perhaps.
Support your local leggy Frisians.
Sport of kings, bla bla bla.

The great thing about major sporting events is that the streets will be quiet and traffic fairly sparse. Only sane people will be out, with everyone else inside eating fatty snacks and losing their minds. During the Superbowl, even the rest of America seems sane for a change, provided you scupulously avoid the people.


By the way: The forty niners proved that the religious faith people had in them was entirely misplaced. As you expected. And given that the Magats in the backroom would have liked them to go all the way I am glad that they didn't. In particular Jeff. I am ordinately pleased that his enthusiasm came a cropper, his hopes have been deeper sixed than ever, his fond dreams have turned into sterile dessicated nightmares, and for this year at least his life is sour, bitter, less bearable, and deeply disappointing.

Never thought I'd enjoy his petulant whine as much as I do.

Like many Americans he has passion and vigour when he talks politics and social affairs, while being remarkbly ignorant and one-sided. He has proven remarkably blinkered, and his moral foundation has been so eaten away by influencers and Fox News type dingbats and influencers to the point that he is not fit company for man or beast. Or nuclear mutants, dinosaurs, and even drooling troglodytes from Texas.

Also, after forty years of being a lawyer, he has eloquence and could defend the devil. Which he does. In petulant whining fits that tire whoever he's spewing at. No, I don't hate him. But yes, I would like to see him sulk and whimper from acid-indigestion and frustration when his heroes are dethroned. I sincerely wish him and his kind lasting ill. When I think of him at all, which when not at work I seldom do.

Cankles, veinous insufficiency, and bowel problems.
Plus a lifetime of football defeats.
And bad dinners.



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THOSE SPIKY THINGS

In a conversation recently I mentioned newly emergent viruses in addition to old classics. And I realized that somehow, I had in my internet browsing kind of ovelooked the spike proteins and their great diversity.

Per Wikipedia: In virology, a spike protein or peplomer protein is a protein that forms a large structure known as a spike or peplomer projecting from the surface of an enveloped virus.  The proteins are usually glycoproteins that form dimers or trimers.

[Dimers or trimers: a macromolecular multimer formed by two or three protein monomers (single proteins).]


Spike proteins function, usually, to access or bind to the host cell. They are the infectious tools of a virus. The articles on corona virus spike proteins are long and involved, and cannot be easily summarized without sacrificing crucial detail. Which is why I encourage you to read and reread them several times. Doing so is rewarding.

The flu-virus is also fasinating, also worth rereading about.
Two types of spike proteins, oh joy!


Becoming infected with either type far less so.

When a virus multiplies there will eventually be minor differences among the descendants, some of which make it easier for the virus to cross over into a different host organism. Those that thrive in that new environment naturally dominate. Several mutations like that may occur, so there may be several resultant strains that flourish simultaneously. Sometimes they recombine, sharing improved features from their mixed ancestry.

[Viral recombination: an exchange of genetic material from different strains, sometimes leading to new and improved diseases.]

To put it differently, infection may be by multiple strains simultaneously.

It is because of recombination and mutation that viruses can evade defenses or become vaccine-resistant. Or, to throw that into sharper perspective, treatment resistant strains have a far greater chance of thriving and becoming the dominant strain(s) in one or more hosts. Basically, the most effective diseases are ones wich do not disable or immobilize their host (or at least not quickly) and will therefore be able to spread faster and more widely.
Diseases which kill within hours are just not very good at that.


This entire field is riddled with fascinating rabbit holes.



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SUPERPOWERS

A few days ago I saw an internet query asking what superpowers the readers would like to have. One choice was total invisibilty, another was phenomenal speed-reading skills.
I didn't bother answering it, as largely I am already invisible most of the time.
And any sane person would love to speed read phenomenally.


So, keeping that thing about superpowers in mind, it somehow fits that a person in Chinatown asked me if I had ever thought of being a supervisor, as I spoke Cantonese quite well, and would probably be excellent in that position.


This illustrates THREE things:

My Cantonese is good enough under very limited conditions to fool some of the people some of the time. Other than that, nixt farshtay.

Somehow I come across as a sane and sensible invidual.

I look younger than I am.


My Cantonese is best when dealing with food and drink. Not answering questions about your shift, scheduled days off, or how you caught athletes foot from the floor in the store room. Athletes foot is often called "Hong Kong Foot" (香港腳 'heung gong keuk'), by the way.
It is best treated by clotrimazole, prevented by a good medicated foot powder.

Sane and sensible is not the image I normally think I have. Instead, twixt Hemmingway-esque and William Faulkner-ish. With a strong undertone of nuttier than a Texas fruitcake.
I'm a Brabander, for heaven's sake, we're supposed to get battier as we get older.
No less an authority than Erasmus said so.

Now, perhaps more people need spectacles. The chap who spoke to me wears them, but maybe he needs a new praescription. Also, I take good care of my skin. Little bit of Aveeno. But I should try to figure out at what distance focus goes completely hazy and older skin looks fresh and vibrant.


In some way I already have superpowers.



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A BURST OF MADNESS

Chaos. When I walked into the bakery it was a scene of complete pandemonium. They were participating in the street party on Grant Avenue that evening, and rushing around doing the things that were necessary. How many Cantonese does it take to load up a handtruck? All of them. Four women who knew the owner lady because they used to work there. And an equal number of really old gentlemen who worked with exemplary efficiency. Plus seven or eight employees. A sister in law. An utterly adorable tyke (well, her task was sampling a slice of cake someone placed in front of her). The boss, his wife the boss lady, and my friend the bird-like old elf who used to work at a different place.

So after a few minutes I moved to a back table to be out of the way.


一個蛋撻同一杯港式奶茶。


In fairly short order, everything got done, and the now overloaded handtruck headed out. Things returned to normal. Ten minutes later one of the old gentlemen I meet at tea time some days arrived. then the other. By that time it was quiet again, and I had rearranged my groceries so that the pine skin oranges were on top. Those were for my downstairs neighbor the old Indonesian Chinese woman. Whom I'm not really friendly with, because Christians sometimes seriously irritate me, but who I do want to keep an eye on, because she's old, fragile, and has been a neighbor and part of my community for decades.

It's getting closer to New Year (春節 'chun jit'), and things are starting to happen. Two of the merchants I know are alread selling budding tree branches for decoration during the festival, three businesses have opened for business (good luck to do so before new Year), and the ingredients for new year cake (年糕 'nin gou') are abundant at the grocers.
Also, sugar cane is becoming available.


Pine skin oranges (松皮柑 'chung pei gam'), which I think are also called wrinkle skin orange or tangerine (皱皮柑 'jau pei gam') have a rather lovely fragrance. I have heard that they're a regional famous product in Hunan.

I'll probably buy some for myself sometime soon.



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CRISPY FLAKY TEMPTING

My apartment mate, a lovely woman eight years my junior, and far more physically active than myself, has this idea that I am actually an old tortoise and will eventually be sitting in a corner of the old folks home gumming my egg roll cookies and demanding a mug of warm milky-milk. It's sort of a fond fantasy. Or something. I have no clue how she came up with that image. For one thing, I look nothing like a tortoise, and for another, I am quite spry. But as long as she's known me, she's had weird opinions about me, as well as 'nicknames'.
Like 'Old Toad'. Or 'Geezerino'.

As I said, I'm quite spry. Since the angioplasty in November on the dexter side leg even spryer. And I walk several blocks a day.

Recently she's brought up the egg roll cookies again. Several times. I have pointed out that it's been years since I had three or four tins in the apartment, which we went through lickety-split by the way, and for the last three or four years there haven't been eggroll cookies here.
None. Not a single blessed eggroll cookie. Not even a stale one from the past.

No matter. She teases me with the intellectuall concept.
I am a tortoise, and therefore gum eggroll cookies.
It's a certainty in her world. No debate!
It manifestly must be so.

Egg roll cookies (蛋捲 'daan kuen') in large handsome red metal boxes are widely available around Chinese New Year. Sort of semi-traditional. There are numerous brands.


I'm waiting for her to discover the new box next to her chair.
Which I bought while shopping in C'town today.
Obviously, she needed them.
Hint taken.



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TRY SOME APPLE CIDER VINEGAR

In the middle of the night I woke up for a bathroom break, after wich I started drawing a haemorragic fever virus, one with darling little protein blobs on the outside. A pathogen which wasn't actually discovered till the late colonial period in the area where it occurs. And cute little warning pamphlets telling little children not to play with dead rats.
A beautiful deadly blob.

It isn't quite dangerous, as most infected people will not manifest symptoms or even a fever. Only a few are actually sick for one or two weeks, with the symptoms you'd expect.
And a very small percentage end up no longer alive.

Imagine spheres with tiny jewelled globe cacti erratically scattered across the surfaces catching the light under the microscope.


The illustration isn't finished yet. It's going to be a casual project, which will progress slowly as I fill in the blanks, on both the picture and my knowledge. More reading is required.


In effect, I have a virus on my computer. There are others, because of previous explorations in the wonderful world of infections and pathogens, discovering stuff in the rabbit hole.
It's kind of like tourism in distant parts, if you will.

This is in no way connected to an appointment with my eye doctor before Chinese New Year, nor a scheduled visit to my cardiologist next month. The chances of me dying of something frightful are minimal to non-existent. It's an abstract fascination which may have it's origins in finally getting some medical attention when I got insurance. At that time I started reading up on medical matters, initially on the conditions for which praescription were quickly written.

Then the pandemic started. Which was a veritable goldmine of reading suggestions and mountains of misinformation. You might say I was "doing my own research", and getting mighty distracted by blinky things along the way.


Caffeine is one hell of a drug.



By the way: I already knew that bleach, ivermectin, aquarium cleanser, avoiding gluten, and swilling apple cider vinegar didn't work. I am more than ever flabbergasted by some people being able to draw completely wrong conclusions, ignore facts, science, and common sense, and enthusiastically swim in oceans of horsefeathers. That 'doing your own research" often seems to mean credulously believing utter nonsense which supports their own theories.

There is absolutely no nanochip in the vaccine.
People who believe there is are nuts.




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THE MOON AND SPRAYED PAVEMENT

The old fellow was surprised that I ate that kind of stuff, the waitress was still surprised, even though I've done so before. Bitter melon is, apparently, something that white people don't order in Chinese restaurants. The good thing about reading it off the specials in Chinese on the white board, and asking for it in Cantonese, is that waitstaff will not question your order, and will not try to explain that maybe you should reconsider, you might not like it, perhaps you'd like the kung pao cauliflower instead.

Not that they have kung pao cauliflower. That sounds like something the folks in Marin would go for. It's both "Chinese" and cauliflower! Probably great with emperor Ming's Tofu surprise (for which the sauce is red food colouring, chili flakes, minced garlic, cornstarch slurry, plus sugar and vinegar - it's yummaliscious). And fried brown rice. Healthier than fried white rice.

The last time I had fried rice it was salt fish and chicken fried rice (鹹魚雞粒炒飯 'haam yü gai naap chaau faan'). Which is also something not sold in furthest Marin, and no part of that can be replaced by Cauliflower. There is no brown rice version. The restaurants that have that do not have brown rice. Guaranteed.

The Chinese have not gone all ape over replacing everything with cauliflower. That's still strictly a white folks thing. Pizza crust? Mashed cauliflower! Pasta? Mashed cauliflower! Pancakes? Cauliflower! Croutons? Cauliflower! Wheatgrass smoothies? Cauliflower, cauliflower, cauliflower!

I think you should have a soymilk and hazelnut frappucino with that.
It will make you feel spiritual and and healthy.
Add protein powder.

When I got back down to Chinatown again a few hours later the moon was out. A splendid night. Warmish, few loons, and Silver Jubilee by Greg Pease in my pipe. A good forty five minutes of peacefulness. The bookseller's bus was delayed, though, and when he arrived things had started to change. When we left the burger place the karaoke joint was filled with visitors from someplace where singing is the newest art. So we went directly elsewhere, where things were quiet and restrained. Where besides the Jameson's, there is also Guinness on tap. In the middle of Chinatown. Anthony Bourdain on the telly. Okay?

The bars we passed later were also rather slow. Only the karaoke place had been packed. Karaoke is kind of like fly-paper in a way. Or a fresh thing deposited on the pavement.

There were street cleaners hosing the chewing gum and "karaoke" off the sidewalks at the busstop. And hardly anyone on the bus.


Nice.



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IS IT PIZZA WEATHER YET?

Sometimes a ground-dwelling rodent wants a change of career. I mean, what qualifications do you need? And perhaps you weren't qualified to be a weather man. Weather rat. Predictor of winter and person who ruins lives. As per hatemail you're now getting from various horrible idiots in red states who say that because you gave them six more weeks of winter, which was so woke man, and they can't afford their fuel bill, they're going to blow up your burrow and make sure you never work in the climate industry again. They've seen you at the liquour store, and they know where your children go to school.

That love letter from the Californian overjoyed that those dingbats are going to suffer for six more weeks thank you thank you thank you is nice, but it doesn't quite balance out the hate from places like Tennessee and Michigan. Which are filled with idiots.
And let's not even mention Pennsylvania.

Bad apples aren't born.
They're made.

Perhaps you should have become a mortician, like your cousin Larry. Dead people seldom write hatemail. Larry got a bomb threat only once. He has a house now. Real living quarters.


You live in what is basically a hole in the ground.
You're mother is very disappointed!
Bad son!

It is baffling to me why East Coasters, like those people in Pennsylvania, are so convinced that a large rodent that doesn't even eat bananas can accurately predict the weather, and then act all depressed and suicidal when six more weeks are "predicted".
Like, their pizza isn't bad enough?

They will eat the crappy pizza and not doubt the meaning of existence or want to drink lye, not even a shred of regret, but the weather rat destroyed everything they lived for?
What, are they completely and staggeringly insane?



By the way, it's over sixty degrees Fahrenheit outside here. Do I wear shortsleeves, or just man up, and roll the sleeves up if needed? It's a quandary.



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LISTEN TO THE TALKING HEADS

Now that it's light earlier I no longer have to stumble over frozen corpses in the dark when having the first pipe smoke of the day. I can step around them like a civilized person. Or, if necessary, walk down the centre of the street avoiding the living dead flaked out along the sidewalk with needles in their arms, who in summer will be photogenic for tourists from the fly-overs. Who are prepared to be appalled.

This early in the day and the year there aren't very many middle-of-the-country tourists avidly snapping pictures to show the folks back in Honkpatoma what horrors they witnessed in San Francisco among the drug-addicted liberals from Venezuela.


But this week we have more people in town. I've already seen the first few pods of very broad sportsfans visiting for the Superbowl waddling down streets gawking.
And I've had to cross the street to get around them.

Welcome, strangers. There's a Mickey Dees on Market Street. It might have what you're looking for. Which is what exactly? Water rodent gumbo? Lutefisk and grits?

There are also a few places with watery coffee if you want that.
Ignore the immigrant commies selling drugs.

Seeing as the New York Post and Fox News have over the last decade painted San Francisco as something out of Dante's Inferno, and we now have travellers from the rest of America fully prepped to see the depths of subhuman misery on the streets here and be deliciously shocked and horrified -- there are no foreign radicals with vials of fentanyl or kidnapping white teenagers where they came from -- we might as well embrace that. Let them know that alien sin, politics, and drugs are rife here. The coffee is too strong, there's no bacon on anything, and I swear there's idolatry and devil worship going on in every other alleyway. The streets are paved with garbage. Sourdough and soymilk everywhere!
Oh, the horror the horror!

Thank you for visiting.

Now go home.



First pipe of the day was very nice. Aged red Virginia and a little Turkish in a Peterson stamped "made in London". Their London establishment closed down in 1969, so it was manufactured over half a century ago. Obviously before I was a smoker.
I found it new, at a very good price, and promptly jumped on it. I have to wonder about the man or woman who went on a trip, bought a pipe as a memento, and never got around to smoking it. It's a classic piece, straight billiard military mount, smooth finish.
It's quite a groovy smoker.

Sadly, there were no fozen corpses with needles in their arms.
Maybe the idiots at Fox weren't telling the truth.
But please keep on watching.



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SOMETHING NASTY IN THE DISTANCE

Like many people I am fascinated by repulsive things: pineapple on pizza, drunken fratboys, exudates of several different kinds, tourists from the fly-overs, junk food, and diseases. You will often find us outside hospital emergency rooms, abattoirs, and restaurant garbage.
Or grammar schools, which are notorious hotbeds of loathsomeness.

Actually, if I really were so entranced by such stuff, I should eat salad more often and then gaze at my teeth in the mirror. And pineapple on pizza is sometimes splendid. Truly.

So let's not talk about the president and his confidants.


A few recent news articles have mentioned a disease in the tropics with an enormous fatality rate when it infects humanss. Which is mostly found among about half a dozen species of tropical fruitbats, though that might be an underestimate. Pigs are quite possibly also subject to it. A nurse in Bengal who caught the disease from a patient is still in a coma because of it.
There have been dozens of human deaths in three decades.

Nipah virus.

The primary host animal is the flying fox.
There is no vaccine yet.

Symptoms among humans are respiratory and encephalitic. Fatality is very likely. Recovery is often accompanied by neurological and personality changes, plus convulsive fits.

The most recent outbreak happened in West Bengal, this year.


While eating a late lunch I rolled what I had read about Nipah virus over in my mind. My meal was actually quite enjoyable, ma po tofu (麻婆豆腐 "pockmarked auntie soy bean curd") at a local chachanteng (茶餐廳 "tea dining hall"), with two hot beverages over which I dawdled.
Nipah virus is called 立百病毒 ('lap paak beng duk') or 尼帕病毒 ('nei paak ben duk').

So far no cases have been reported in China.
But it's on the radar.



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LET'S SPIN THIS!

Thanks to a public defender (attorney for a civic entity), I visited a Reddit stream where people were discussing our dear leader performing an act usually not considered, strictly speaking, political. Or normal. No, I am not talking about the well-founded allegations that he had congress with underage and unwilling persons of a different gender (it would have been equally reprehensible if they had been the same gender, whatever that is, if it had happened, which the highest government agencies and functionaries angrily dispute). But the purported fact that the president in a dignified manner very presidentially released control of his bowels at a presser recently, necessitating the temporary clearing of the oval office of all willing and enthusiastic witnesses and random fake news reporters honoured to be there.

Let us immediately squash ALL rumours that whatever he did was involuntary. The president ALWAYS knows exactly what he's doing, it's kind of like three dimensional chess.
Intentful. Brilliant. Huge.

It was, of course, an enormous succes.

It proves, diplomatically but forcefully, that we are better than the Europeans.

A key phrase stands out from a Wikipedia article which I read this morning: "Management may be achieved through an individualized mix of dietary, pharmacologic, and surgical measures.

Our president and his extremely talented team of serious professionals taking care of the nation are all about 'management', and additionally have great expertise in dietary and pharmacologic skill sets. They can think outside the box.

Especially if this becomes more common.

Meanwhile, the criminal Democrats, in an attempt to distract the public from any presidential victories like this stupendous clearing of the lower intestinal tract, just natter on about lists and ice, and keep dropping torpid lizards from palm trees in Florida! It'so unfair!

Iguanas are a great national resource. In order to safeguard iguanas, the United States must have control of Greenland. Will no one think about the children?

It's because of Obama and Biden.

A grand ballroom!



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FELLOW FEELINGS FOR THE FROZEN

If you fry the chopped meatballs with oily chilipaste and add plenty of hot sauce for the gravy, that meatball sandwich is a balanced meal; there's plenty of vegetable in it. Heck, it's good for you. Sound nutrition is very important. I also added some chopped ginger.

In solidarity with my fellow American's in the snow belt (everything from Reno to Greenland), I ate what I had, rather than putting on my parka and mukluks for the long trek to the corner store for a box of microwave pizza.

My friend Mordechai, a New Yorker living in New Jersey, had a meal so good it made him openly weep. Here's a partial quote: Butternut Squash Carpaccio, Dubai shake, lemonana, mushroom ravioli, linguini pomodoro, tiramisu. He probably had a triple espresso after all that, because he's a major coffee head.


It was low twenties during the day where he lives. We had low sixties.
We ponced around wearing our brilliant beachwear.
And sang happy songs.

There are upsides to not living in New Jersey.

Still, I'm slightly jealous.

He went out for lunch, obviously quite uncaring about snowmageddon.

In some parts of the country the snowpocalypse has brought normal life to a standstill. There's ice on the breakfast grits, ohmahgerd! the pipes are frozen, the minnesota hotdish is solid, I can't find my car, there's a mailcarrier's frozen corpse on the lawn, the shelves at the liquour store are entirely bare, they've boarded up the piggly wiggly, we're going to starve.
Not in New Jersey. They're used to a bit of cold. They'll simply wear undergarments.

And did I already mention the balmy low sixties in the Bay Area?

Such colourful beach clothing, festive!



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