WHERE ARTERIES EXPLODE

As I sometimes do, I scoped out the Dutch Newspapers on the internet. Nothing remarkable there. It's almost like the United States and our craziness are a foreign world. Much like they are here in San Francisco. Another similarity is that neither they nor we are enthusiastic about American tourists. They eat too much, they dress funny, and they smell bad.

This past week there were no American tourists at the places in Chinatown where I ate. Which is okay, the food would have confused them, and they're known to barely tip.

Heading to lunch along Grant Avenue the other day I counted elephantine people, reaching well over twenty in a mere three blocks. All of them were white. I've read that Alabama and Mississippi have the highest obesity numbers in the country, as well as the highest rates of diabetes. That might have been them right there, then.

But those could have been Texans too.
Everything is larger in Texas.


One of the nicest cities in the country is on the edge of The South, with rolling countryside, four seasons, a pleasant climate, two good research hospitals and a well-reputed university, culturally diverse, plus reasonably high standards of living. I found out about the place a few years ago when doing a credit check on a new customer who wished to retail our products. Obesity and diabetes rates there were through the roof, more people with mobility devices and regular dialysis than most European countries, and an organ transplant hotbed.

The local snack culture was heavily based on cheese. American cheese. And sugar.
So I regretfully decided not to visit, as I am not suicidal.

When I came back to the United States years ago, real cheese, good bread, decent coffee, and chili paste, sambal, and hot sauce were hard to find. Olives only came in jars, spices were rare. Large parts of the country are still like that. We sent in missionaries when we should have sent in cooks.

There is good reason to believe that much of the country still lives on chicken-fried steaks or frozen meat patties, served with cottage cheese, jello salad, and miracle wip potato salad on the side. And ketchup.

Or fried chicken, with all of the above.
Plus spaghettiOs.



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BEFORE ALL THE FRIED STUFF

Good food, nice people running the place. No wonder I've been there a score of times since it opened. But I suspect that this Saturday evening they may be in for madness. The reason being it's right close to the parade route, and when you have half a million plus suburbanites flocking into the neighborhood, you will be asked innumerable times for sweet and sour pork, eggrolls, and shrimp fried rice. Kung pao thingy, and General Tzo's whatchamacallit.


What do you mean, no kung pao or General Tzo?

And no sweet and sour at all?

Dumplings.


What they do is dumplings. White suburbanite family groups look askance at dumplings. Anything battered, deep-fried, and served with a sticky sweet and salty sauce is more in demand than dumplings. Little blond kiddiewinkies want the familiar taste of deep hinterland Chinese food that they're familiar with if they absolutely have to watch a cultural enriching parade. Plus a corn-syrup carbonated beverage.

People go nuts.

The dumplings where absolutely divine. Steamed pork and sour pickled cabbage dumplings (酸菜豬肉水餃 "suan cai zhu rou shui jiao"). Dee-licious! Lip-smackety!
Suan cai is rather like sauerkraut.


Pipe with flake aftewards, walking down through the financial district. One or two weirdos. An office woman having a cigarette around the corner from her building entryway. A late-lunching man at a table outside an eatery. No shoppers. A skateboarder.

Bus back across the hill before twilight.



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A CHOIR OF VILLAGE IDIOTS

According to some people, Iranian schoolgirls are better off dead than in a burka. The person who specifically said that is not someone whom you want to know. But he's a connoisseur of omelets. And at least the trains now run on time, and there are fabulous autobahns, plus there's lebensraum.

So okay, we had to give up the rule of law plus checks and balances to achieve this, but it's a small price to pay. The best of times, the worst of times, the end of times.

There are several people I am glad to have ceased associating with. Three of them are named Bob. But the Bobs are only a small percentage.


On the other hand, I notice that I have lost a few Facebook Friends in the last two hours, so that's even more people with whom I do not have to associate. I must be doing something right, and good riddance to them.


One person who has not defriended me is never-the-less gloating like heck over recent events, and proving that he may, at least temporarily, have a screw loose.
I shall assume that eventually he'll come to his senses.

He lives in New York. They aren't all on the same planet there.

One key factor in our survival as a social species is that most of us know how to modulate what we say, and consequently do not always spew what's actually going on in our heads. When meeting someone we haven't seen in a while, we don't exclaim "good lord, you're still alive, I thought pest control would've offed you long ago!", instead we murmur "how nice to see you again" and ask what they have been doing recently.

My apartment mate is aware of this. She does not tell people to go intercourse themselves, or buy their own damned snacks. Instead she utters a polite nicety. She's further on the spectrum than I am by a fair-thee-well, and this hurts her.


I am in some ways a social man. If I meet any of the Bobs ever again, which I'm desperate to avoid, I will cheerfully greet them like long lost friends. Oh hey, how is it going?
Gatverdamme nondeju, verrekte klooi-ak.



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OLD GEEZER SMELLS

Excuse me, kid, uncle needs to get by. I wish to exit the building. I have paid for my milk tea and egg tart (奶茶同蛋撻 'naai chaa tong daan taat'), I'm holding my shopping bags and have a pipe clenched between my teeth, and as soon as I have successfully dealt with this moving obstruction (you) and am out the door, I shall light up, and be young and vibrant again. She's an adorable little tyke, but very small, and not quite adept at moving out of the way. What with being flabbergasted and agape-mouthed over the white devil uncle addressing her in Cantonese. Which I can understand. If I were her age I too would no doubt so be if anyone spoke to me in Cantonese. Seeing as back then I was only familiar with Dutch and English, and had not yet fully learned where the boundary between the two lay.


But in any case 白鬼叔叔 ('paak kwai suk suk) desires to smoke and ambulate gracefully toward a spot where he can catch the bus, which will be a few blocks further downhill, as by the time it gets to Chinatown it is filled with people who although conveniently crumple-zone material, quite crash-bag like, are hard to squeeze in among. That will take about five or six blocks, and I will have finished the pipe by then.

For the past two or three weeks I've experimented with a small pinch of something quite degenerate added to the tobacco in my pouch. It's too evil to be smoked straight.
But in a minute quantity it softens the smoke without radiating perversion.

Mmm, this is good. A faint hint of body spray.
Not urinal cake; that's Lakeland.

Several weeks ago I clicked on an article discussing old person smell. After which I got advertisements on my feed for ancient geezer soaps made with persimmon, as apparently that disolves the skin grease which causes fusty dinosaur reek, and, it was claimed, regular soap doesn't. Which has to be horse-pucky. Regular soap is, in fact, too good at that. Every old person I know complains of dry skin, and I must rub a thin layer of Aveeno lotion on my calves and feet after the bath so they don't end up itchy throughout the day.


Some old gentlemen from the Deep South smell like lilac aftershave at all times. With slight hints of vanilla, musk, and fresh garden herbs, sometimes traces of rose oil and mint.

William Faulkner whiffed a bit of Latakia, Turkish leaf, and flue-cured tobacco.
Terpeneols, incense-like resins, and carotenoids. Very civilized.



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REAL MEN, MANLY MEN

Somewhere in Iran a fellow pipesmoker is wandering around his city wondering what the heck happened, why, and what it will mean for his life. The good thing is that he received a care package from that mail-order house via a friend in Beirut recently, so he has enough tobacco to last till April. The bad thing is that the place where he habitually went for hot tea and nibbles after his evening smoke is now ruined, a no longer smouldering pile of rubble next to the agricultural office, and several of his medical colleagues are in the hospital. Which is also quite destroyed. They're underneath it. They were non pipe smokers, and were still inside the building when he left during the middle of the morning a few days ago for a surreptitious puff while fasting.

Things turned south really fast. Because some child-molester in the Big Satan was upset at his speechy-weechy being unwell received, bombers were dispatched. But the tulips are in glorious bloom in the Park For Remembering Our Martyrs.


Meanwhile, in Washington, the Secretary For Gladitorial Combat, is having the best orgasms ever looking at the news footage, oh it is delightful, and the head of the Frathouse For Blotto Investigations (as the orange pervert in chief commands) is equally aroused, though quite blitheringly drunk.

Here in San Francisco we are very distant from the insanity in Washington and Jerusalem. But alas, there are also few places to smoke one's pipe peacefully here. Instead of Trump's Christian end-of-times goombas, we have puritanical yuppie vegans patrolling the streets and snarling disapprovingly at anyone enjoying tobacco or just casually wandering about chomping on a juicy reindeer steak. It is sad.


Real men, as you know, do not smoke pipes. Because it is girlish. Instead they huff big cigars while getting another crusader tattoo, like proper warfighters keen to apocalyptize for Jayzus and Mary Beth at home, plus apple pie, liberty, and the flag.
Pipe smoking is foreign and poofty.

It wasn't very warm earlier when I was outside with my pipe being foreign and poofty, instead, a little chilly, slight breeze. I kept thinking about the finely sculpted lips of that young lady on the bus yesterday afternoon. When glancing at the fairer sex I tend to observe face and hands more than anything else. A face has to reflect character, intelligence, and thoughtfulness for it to be memorable.

Her face was memorable.



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SALT RICE

The bookseller usually has a cheeseburger and fries with a glass of putrid rotgut red, I will always have a mixture of Fanta Orange and Coca Cola with icecubes. Years ago I also would drink the putrid rotgut red, but it finally got so ghastly that I just couldn't do it anymore and switched to soda. When we leave, if all goes well, we'll end up someplace where he can have a Guinness followed by a Jameson's straight up, and I have two glasses of tea.

This, you will understand, is a pubcrawl we have been doing regularely for many years. There were times when both of us ended up unintentionally consuming much liquor.
Due to the malign influence of a Taiwanese woman who kept on pouring.

She retired a few years ago.


I had stopped consuming alcohol some years before that. My abstinence was not to discourage her, and I doubt that she even really noticed.


The bookseller frequently has cheese waiting for him when he gets home. I don't, but there are usually come cookies in the teevee room, which actually would have gone well with the tea I had earlier, but very few bars offer bicuits with your hot beverage. And actually, I have teabags in my coat pocket because most bars do not have acceptable tea either.

Before I headed over to C'town to smoke a pipe while waiting I had already been there earlier for a late lunch. Fujian Fried Rice (福建炒飯 'fuk gin chaau faan'), which is NOT what you'd expect, kaimpeng (鹹飯) such as Fujianese in the Philippines do, but actually a typical Cantonese preparation including chicken, ham, chopped mustard greens, conpoy, and shrimp, somewhat gravied, on top of egg fried rice. Chachanteng food.

A preamble to a pipe filled with a red Virginia mixture smoked while wandering down Battery to catch the bus home at a point where it isn't rush-hourcrowded yet. Spent most of the ride back surreptitiously scoping out a woman's extremely pretty mouth and face from my seat. Yeah, um.


At the place where the beverages were consumed I noted the dissonance of the bar tender's tattoos versus the maidenly jade bracelet she wore. Her aunties and other kin have probably criticized the tattoos (such a 'white' thing!) while praising her for being a proper Chinese girl with her bracelet; it shows off fine bones and an elegant wrist.

You'll never catch a decent man with those tattoos!
Which is probably precisely the point.
Good men can be boring.



NOTE: Kiampeng (鹹飯 'haam faan', Fujianese pronunciation "kiam-png") is usually pork, lap cheung (臘腸) and dried shrimp (蝦米 'haa mai'; ebi) with other things sauteed with garlic and vinegar, sugar, ground pepper and soy and/or rice wine splashed in, mixed with glutinous rice, mustard greens (which can be either 芥菜 'gaai choi' or 油菜 'yau choi', both cultivars of the same vegetable), chopped scallion, and cooked till the rice is done. Add peanuts before serving.




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A MATTER OF PREFERENCES

One of my best internet friends is a Modern Orthodox Jewish person working as a public defender in a city which I wish to never visit, though it has a stellar reputation, especially when compared to many other parts of the country. Reason being that the climate there is absolutely awful, with snow and ice and howling wind. Despite coming originally (generations ago) from a place where such nasty conditions were not at all unknown, and descended from people who had a reputation for their daring, adventurism, keen curiosity, and downright insanity, during the era of exploration.

Enthused by the shockingly new I am not. Tried and true. That's the ticket.

So yesterday for lunch I went to a familiar place. And ordered something which I never would have thought of making myself, and which I might now order again, despite still thinking it's a decidedly goofy idea and borderline ill-advised, possibly not something that should have seen the light of day.

Everything becomes a known quantity with globs of hot sauce.
Comfort food, in a way.

Especially when washed down with both regular Chinese restaurant tea and milk tea, in an environment where two old Cantonese women were arguing and three gentlemen discussed world affairs while not looking at each other and seated at seperate tables. As is a natural part of the modern Hong Kong social environment, even in San Francisco.

Personally I think I would have doubled or even tripled the amount of vegetable matter. And despite being listed as spicy-hot (麻辣 'maa laat'), it was anything but.
Which is where the globs of hot sauce came in.

It wouldn't have even been regarded as hot in the city where my Modern Orthodox Jewish friend lives. Possibly because the population of his city is culturally diverse, and includes people from hot places now freezing their butts off.

Were I to cook that dish, I would probably add sliced cucumber and plenty of cilantro, and call it a refreshing Summer salad, with meat in it. As well as dumping a fried egg on top.
Plus chopped jalapeños.

It would still need globs of hot sauce, though.
In my opinion.



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RATIONAL SLEEPER CELLS

Sometimes I like to ponce around looking like I know what everything is all about. Nothing says that better than smoking a pipe filled with a fine Virginia tobacco by Charles Rattray. Which doesn't actually exist anymore. That is to say, Rattray's farmed out manufacture of their products to McConnell ages ago, the entire McConnell portfolio of tobaccos ended up with Kohlhase & Kopp (founded by Michael Kohlhase in 1976, Berndt Kopp joined in 1979) in Germany (1989 or thereabouts, when McConnell closed), who have it made for them in Denmark by a different company.

[Note: Charles Rattray founded his tobacco Company in 1911. Upon his death in 1964 his son Charles Rattray took over. That gentleman retired in 1980, passed away in 1984. His daughters inherited the whole shebang.
Unfortunately I haven't a clue what happened to them or further descendants.]

Happiness and expertise all around, and I look supremely knowledgeable.
Which shows that desirable results can indeed be achieved.
A modicum of effort, almost no pretence.


Our present government can't even manage that. The justifications for the war against Iran change by the hour, and are shot down by the facts so often that it's kaleidoscopic. We have no end game, no actual plans beyond the moment, and despite the fascination of watching a sewage flinging fest in real time with stained and bedraggled officials and spokes-trolls, it has sofar failed to distract the United States and the world from the Epstein situation.

Marvelously, I look more like I know what everyting is all about than ever before.
As does every other rational person on the planet.
Especially non-officials

In the last two days everything the right-wing dingbats in the back room at work said about the war has been proven off the mark, several times, in different ways, quite staggeringly. One of them even proposed parachuting the pretender to the Pahlavi throne with a CIA escort and a film crew in to the Alborz Mountains. Which I think is a splendid idea.
He'll be welcomed with open arms, it will make for great reality teevee.

Some of it will have to be bleeped, of course.
Because of the little children.


Most of the Iranian exiles in the United States should also be dropped in. Parachutes will be provided. At cost. This will solve several problems and clear the air nicely.


The fine sandblasted pipe above really does look like an expert who knows what it's all about should be smoking it on a news show. How sad it is that none of the teevee talking heads or current United States government spokes models smoke a pipe!



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DRINK MORE COFFEE!

Seeing as when I'm at work I deal with a lot of old men, I have become very conscious of urination. For John's "benefit" about three months ago I started loudly ranting about narrow urethras, enlarged prostates, and bladder issues which you really must see a professional about dear man, about twenty minutes before I will firmly throw him the hell out and lock the door. Jeff gets to hear precisely how many minutes he took in there. Once or twice it has taken him up to ten minutes. On the plus side, unlike John, he doesn't wait until just before the end of the day.

The other gentlemen take variable times, but they often wish to go at the same time. I do not want to let them use the employees bathroom when theirs is occupied, because they're very much like tourists in that regard: messy. Many American men, while adeptly demonstrating that they think with that appendage, are not very good at using it.
Apparently they can't hit anything smaller than an elephant.

Plus the older they get, the more petulant as well as casual they become.
Apathetic urgency, and whiny emotion. Kvetchy. And sloppy.

Which is where coffee comes in. Boys, drink more coffee. Yes it will make you even more unbearable than you already are, but coffee is a diuretic, see, and the more encouragement it needs, either vocal or chemical, to make you go is a blessing.

I'm tired of being held hostage by your pissing.

If you drink a cup of strong coffee you will need to micturate within two hours. I know it works, because I have two cups in the morning before I get ready to work. With regularity!

Heck, boys, one cup before I go out to smoke my pipe, and I can barely wait to use the bog when I get back.

Tea, not so much. It's not nearly as effective.

Have some coffee instead of whiskey after lunch. It will be better for your mind, and better for your bladder. Probably better for your social life too. You won't be nearly so obnoxious.



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RABBIT RABBIT MARCH 2026

Rabbit rabbit. Supposed to be the first thing you say on the first day of the month. But I was preoccupied and mentally still in the last month. Twenty ninth day of, tomorrow would be the thirtieth. So belated rabbit rabbit. Rabbity rabbits.

The month has started off interestingly. I got to listen to the boys in the backroom talking about their drug experience with each other, which is probably a very Marin County thing. Dang y'all a bunch of crazed hippie freaks.

Despite the fact that y'all older than Jayzis.


Still, that's better than hearing how y'all wholeheartedly support the senile orange blowtoad. With every shred of your miserable stinking beings. Because he's hot and sexy in his dark blue suit.

Disgusting. Perverts.

What I also got to hear was that Jello salads are repulsive, quite nauseating, really. In detail. While I was eating my lunch.

You know, lunch?

Boys, I'm chowing down on pizza with lots of Sriracha, no we don't have any ranch dressing in the fridge none of us here are sicko pervs, so I don't need to know about your potlucks and church suppers in some Midwestern hellhole, okay? This is California. We have food here.

And I'll tolerate your drinking a bit too much. You're all old and decrepit. But the moment you start toking or snorting I'm calling both your families and the cops. We'll just see who is here first to pick you up. Because y'all have too little gourd to tolerate you getting stoned out of it.


Rabbit rabbit.



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FOLLOW THE BRAINS

Sometimes it's not a question of "follow the money" as simply putting the Lego blocks together until you can't help stumbling over them when you go to the kitchen in the middle of the night for a glass of water. Which is, more or less, a metaphor, please understand. No kid, no Legos, and for some of us a glass of water at three in the morning is not, strictly speaking, a good idea. Even though there is always a light on, on the small table in a corner of the hallway, so we can actually find our way to the bathroom to micturate later without stumbling into things and waking the neighbors with our cussing.

One way of looking at it is that Trump and his boys got played by Netanyahu. American goombas working for a foreign gangster. We all know who actually has the brains.
Hint: it ain't that bunch of reality teevee actors in Washington.

[Point of debate: do they actually have one brain among the lot of them? Or do they all simply think with their testicles? Maybe men are too emotional for important roles.]

I guess the main lesson here is that Khameini never should have called Netanyahu's momma ugly. Bad things were bound to happen after that.


Repeat: She ain't ugly. Don't you ever say that.

Another lesson is that the Europeans shouldn't ever rely on the United States for anything security-related, because Israel is really our only ally, as well as our biggest success, thank you fundamentalist Christian nutballs in the interior and Baptist end-of-times apocalyptic crazies, and we're unpredictable and often out of our tiny little minds. Too likely to stumble around drunkenly by the icemachine at four in the morning yelling for room service to come get those giant hairy bats out of our room and why is the carpet trying to strangle us?
Giant lizards! Never should have combined adenochrome with acid.


What was it Trump said several times about war with Iran? Oh yeah, that when the poll numbers fell and the hounds were closing in, Barack Obama would start a war with Iran. Stephen Miller said that if we voted for Kamala we'd end up in a war with Iran.
I guess a war with Iran was inevitable, huh?

Benny Netanyahu has been in power for so many years.
Since before our stupid adventure in Iraq.
Don't worry about the Americans.
He'll deal with them.


This is what happens when you elect a man too stupid to think his way out of a paper bag. And he appoints a bunch of flattering egomaniac dunderheads to his cabinet.
You end up with a bag of flaming dog poo.
That's also a metaphor.



Maybe it's time now for another Trump dance.
Rythmic air punches and hip wiggles.
The crowd will love it.



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NOBEL MATERIAL

Our peaceloving supreme leader has launched air strikes on Iran in a peaceloving move that will assuredly get him nominated for the peace prize. Truly there is no one more peaceful. Peace out.

One perception seems to be that a corrupt leader (Netanyahu) roped a senile old fool who needed to distract his own people from a child molestation scandal into a stupedous act.
And that his opportunistic lackey saw nothing but positives going along with that.

The good news is that the Trump kids will never get drafted and sent over there; hereditary bonespurs.


The further good news: Everybody has forgotten about the Epstein affair, my heavens, why didn't we think of this method of shielding elderly predators and right wing perverts earlier it's genius. Guarantee nobody will talk about the Epsteing affair ever again. Turns out we didn't need Bondi and Patel scrubbing documents all that time after all. All we needed to do to get those wussy democrats from waffling on about the Epstein affair was a good solid illegal war which has the added benefit of helping Netanyahu hold onto power.
Hah! Epstein affair, forsooth!

No one will talk about it ever again. A good bombing totally buries Epstein.

Epstein? What Epstein? Boom, baby!

Certainly, all over Fox News World there were sighs of relief, as loyal patriotic talking heads happily prattled about bombing Iran and avoided any mention of the Epstein affair. True and loyal Christians everywhere rejoiced that they no longer had to deflect and obfuscate about the Epstein affair.

In San Francisco, Satan-worshipping homosexuals, as you would expect, protested. Per one notorious firebrand, "that does not justify the President of the United States engaging in an illegal, dangerous war that will risk the lives of our American service members and our friends without justification to the American people." And according to U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, "in the dead of night, President Trump started an unauthorized, unconstitutional war with Iran -- I am deeply opposed to any unprovoked strikes carried out without Congressional authorization, authorization that is explicitly required by our constitution."

Alex Padilla: "The Constitution is clear, and Republican members of Congress must join us in holding this administration accountable and restoring Congress's role in foreign policy."

Jimmy Panetta: "For the eighth time in his presidency, Donald Trump attacked a country without informing or getting buy-in from the American people."

Minor quibbles! And totally overlooking the benefits that burying the Epstein scandal brings. It's pretty much assured at this point that the Dow will go over 50,000!

And after all, who cares about the Epstein affair?
Over fifty thousand, man!
Patriotism!



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EVRYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT

Afghanistan and Pakistan are at war, as are the U.S. Government and the U.S. Government. So the incompetence and idiocy continue. With more to come as our corporate masters further their hold on policy and media. Plus we're involved in a drug war in a Southern neighbor, behind the scenes and incompetently, to stem the flow of narcotics to our addicts, as well as sending speedboats filled with radical Cubans south to be shot out of the water, and gibberantly making noise about New Yorkers, hockey teams being unreconstructed morons, and error-filled bible-based textbooks for grammar schools. Basically, the country has gone to hell in a handbasket.

And it's unseasonably warm.

Because, of course, global warming is a hoax. As every damn' ignorant chuckleheaded Jesus-freak in the great states of Florida and Texas knows.



How the hell can the most genetically diverse country in the modern world be so unbelievably inbred?

While the rest of us were evolving, everywhere between the Sierras and the East River did unspeakable things with close relatives for several generations. Now their moron offspring dominate the discourse.

But don't worry, my faith in humanity has not gotten any less.


Take all the time you need to think about that.



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RIFFING OFF THE PILLS

Barely ten days ago it was bitterly cold. Today it was run around naked weather. Stroll around naked. Ambulate in a lazy languorous fashion. Naked. That is to say I avoided one public bench after lunch because there was a chap wearing too little there soaking up the sun.
And I felt distinctly overdressed for the occasion.

I enjoyed smoking my pipe on a different bench, which had been empty when I sat down, but was soon crowded with Cantonese-speaking old people obviously also flummoxed by the heat and the suntanning man across the street. Obviously the semi-neatly dressed person with a pipe is far less invasive and uninviting than the barely garbed glowing sweaty dude.

[The pipe is a very collegiate looking black sandblast billiard from L.J. Peretti in Boston. Kind of a tweedy young man, who would tutor sweet young things in Latin and algebra, because it pays for his sherry and expands the dating pool.]

Imagine that you are in your suite, relaxing, when soundlessly a nearly naked Caucasian with a scruffy beard swans past, languorously and lazily, getting in your field of vision while you focus on the foot traffic going by at a safe distance. It would disconcert you. Indeed.

We live in a foetid tropical swamp here.
There are bigfoots about.
Dang.


Nearly seventy degrees. Monday and Tuesday a week ago it was mid-forties.

Yes, there will be an angry letter to the editor soon. Complaining in the strongest terms. In my day this did not happen! Many of my best friends are lumberjacks.
And only a few of them are partially nude.

Yours faithfully, Brigadier Sir Charles Arthur Strong, Mrs.


When I got back home I felt like a stumbling corpse, and hurt all over. Especially the upper shoulders and legs. The heat affected me badly. My blood is too thick for San Francisco, I've never been able to properly explain myself here. I couldn't concentrate. Terrible things were happening all around me. Put on some golf shoes! Otherwise I'll never make it out of this place alive. Impossible to walk in this muck. No footing at all!


By teatime I was still in pain. I had taken a Tylenol, and totally forgot about the Amlodipine Besylate and Rivaroxaban which were on my schedule. Only an hour or so after the hot restorative beverage did I remember them.



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I NEED A STICK!

One of the people out there on the web lives with three corvids. One of whom has a nice stick. Which he (or she) likes to show off and ponce around with. The other two are kind of jealous. Why does HE (or SHE) have a nice stick? It's so unfair! So occasionally the stick gets "borrowed". My stick! Neener neener neener! I found it! Mine!

This is a very nice stick. It is mine. Why won't you acknowledge that I have total hegemony over this stick (which is mine). And I shall have it back!

Winged pursuit. And taunting flaunting.
Flamboyant taunting flaunting.

Ponce, ponce, ponce.
Hop hop hop.


Very much like Johnny Depp, in several roles, but mostly like Captain Jack Sparrow proudly boasting "I have a jar of di-i-irt, I have a jar of dirt". Also a little bit like Raoul Duke.

"I have my attorney with me. and I realize that his name is not on that list, but we must have a stick, must have a stick! What's the score here?"

Paraphrasing Johnny, drenched in sweat, though forceful and decisive at a check-in desk in Las Vegas, as the terrible drugs were starting to take effect. Whereupon he and Dr. Gonzo head into the hotel bar for cocktails and giant lizards.

I find it very hard to recognize the gender of covids, as they do not show much difference in size, shape, and colouration. And unless it's breeding season, their behaviours do not adhere to any recognizable gender roles. So it could be either sex proudly showing off their very fine stick. Which was probably stolen, because it's quite unclear which of three birds that look identical is the original owner.


Hop hop hop.



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DISCOMBOBULATION

Sometimes I wish women were more like men. Without the tendency to waffle on about sports, of course. As just one example, the old lady at the bakery who kept talking for forty five minutes, early on in her discourse mentioning a man with an impossible number of wives, at which point I realized that while she was there it would be best for me to act as white ghost devil as possible, because if I showed that I understood Cantonese I'd be roped into a conversation that several other men were trying to rope themselves out of.

So I just smiled idiotically, as we white people are known to do.

My apartment mate is good at staying out of off-kilter conversations. Like two days ago when she answered the door, said "no" firmly to the Indonesian Chinese downstairs neighbor, and shut it again. Today I found out what the woman was anxious about. Apparently, per the rent board, rents can be raised as much as 1.6% this year, on March first. That's ONE. POINT. SIX. PERCENT. Which spells the end of times, and our landlady is keeping our fellow tenant in unbearable suspense by so far not indicating that the rent will go up. ONE. POINT. SIX. PERCENT.

Maybe the Indonesians have absorbed more of Dutch neuroses during those three and a half centuries of colonial exploitation than they are willing to admit. A bookkeeping nation, or people with an accounting ledger always in the back of their heads, would understandably be in a tizzy over this. It realligns the applecart, and slightly shifts the balance of the universe. My heavens, man, it throws everything into question!

As a calm sober Dutch American, I think she's daft.

Sometimes I miss the bleak and blasty landscape of North Brabant, with its extensive bogs and fens, inhabited by wild animals and bipedal agents of chaos. If the sign says "don't walk here", you walk. If it says "no swimming, aligators", you promptly strip down to your skivvies and dive in. If it says "verboden toegang", and cites the 'Wetboek Van Strafrecht', including specific paragraphs verbatim, well, then you gang-toe it defiantly.

My apartment mate gave me the Readers Digest version of her interior monoologue down at the clinic waiting to see a medical professional. If there were any way of making her extorize that monologue while it was happening, I would accompany her next time. Both for my own entertainment AND to provide moral support. Yes, that's it. Moral support. Yes.

Both the old lady at the bakery and the Indonesian Chinese neighbor would be happier and calmer women if they smoked a pipe. Like I do. Instead of gibbering dementedly for forty five minutes, they would be calmly puffing away, enjoying the delicate building of flavour and attendant satisfaction so characteristic of fine Virginia flakes.

Probably by themselves. Or in private in any case. Because you cannot smoke in most public spaces anymore. Which is why the world is less peaceful than it used to be.
Greg Pease's Embarcadero. Red Virginia and Izmir leaf.
Soothes the savage beast.



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RELIGIOUS NUTTERY

No, I didn't watch the state of the union last night. If I want to listen to old white guys spewing hate I can do that at work over in Marin. Senility? At work. Gross venality? Work. Praise for the rich? Work. Intense dislike of poor people? Work. Repression and taking away rights? Ridiculous ideas about the way the world needs to be run and what's wrong with other people? All of that at work.

So watching Trump gibber was never on the programme.

But the folks in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas probably lapped it up. Those are places that I have resolved to never visit, for a whole variety of reasons. In fact there is much of the country that does not feature on any travel plans.


If you cannot find real coffee, Cantonese food, olive oil, chilipaste, a fabulous cheese shop, and a well-stocked bookstore there, plus a library with no restrictions, it's not a place worth spending any time in. Most of this country is so white it's practically grey in that regard.

I left Dutch speakers off that list, because of the wave of collaborators and religious bigots that mass immigrated in the last century and now vote for the solid Christian Fascist ticket. As a Dutch American I wish that weren't so. Damn them. Anywhere with Dutch American religious people is probably awash with assholes.

Fortunately we have access to the markers of civilization here in San Francisco, and to the best of my knowledge the only dangerous religious nuts here are fairly quiescent, and mostly harmless. Although one or two of them did travel to Washington for January sixth. The Jesus-freak of whom I am particularly aware hasn't posted anything on social media in a while, and does not appear to be currently running for office. No, she isn't a Baptist, Jehovah's Witness, Mormon, or Seventh Day Adventist, not even a severe and twizzel-brained Calvinist, although it would have been reasonable to suspect so.


Now if only we could do something about the bloody vegans and anti-tobacco fiends, life here would be quite perfect.



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A QUIET PLACE AT THE END OF AN ALLEY

Russell mentioned last week that the pavement in his alley was red and slimey. Red from the new year's firecrackers, slimey because the rain had gooified the scraps. This week it is still red and slimey. But considerably less so. Faintly speckled pink, here and there. And only slightly slimey. This is important because in rainy weather these shoes have a tendency to slip. So I walked there in a calm and unhurried manner, thinking with my feet.

Fortunately the area where I usually wait for the bookseller to get off work has an awning, which this time I shared with two sleepy street people. There were very few tourists about, and as Chinese people are often hideously opposed to getting wet because of the weather (unlike my own tribe, who because of the climate of Holland and Flanders regard sog, fust, and mildew as natural things), very few of the locals.

Chinese people also don't like what weather wetness does to how one smells. Dutch people don't mind a bit of a stink, it's natural. Cheese. Dried fish. Dark shag tobacco. Cowdung in nearby pastures. Hot tar. That kind of thing.

I may have added a little too much tobacco with a trailer slag perfume in it to my pouched blend recently. I could smell it when I unfolded the calfskin to load my pipe. Fortunately it doesn't spoil the smoke, and is, when burning, not an issue. The Virginias dominate.
When I open the pouch there is a faint whiff of degeneracy or perversion.

Being a refined man, I couldn't help noticing the smell.
I doubt that many other people would.
Faintly floral.

Tat yee was smoking his pipe right outside the bar once we got there, the drizzle having stopped. I couldn't smell what he was smoking in the new pipe with which he is very tickled. But I doubt he has gone beyond cheap drugstore blends. I had not seen him there several hours ago when I headed over to the place at the end of the alley for braised brisket over rice (牛腩飯 'ngau naam faan'). But I may have just missed him. He probably can't smoke in his digs, and so must go out regularly. And he likes to drink.

Chinatown is actually beautiful during rainy nights. Quiet and glowing.
Peaceful. Clean. Rather soothing to the senses.


Basketball on one screen, Anthony Bourdain on another.
Only four other people in the bar.
Murmering.



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