HEAR THE NEENER IN MY VOICE

Yesterday, while the United States were having their glutaei maximi handed to them on a shiny platter, this blogger was enjoying a lovely repast down in Chinatown at a place where the few customers didn't have any interest in Yankee sportive galumphing. Further down the street, as I passed puffing my post prandial pipe, it was quite different. Loud hoots, outside screens, sweating despair. It was a lovely meal. A quiet place where they know me, good food, one or two familiar faces, and plenty of milk tea.

The world seemed very far away.
So did abject misery.


The pipe is an old Dunhill, bent billiard, shape 56.
Very hard briar. Excellent smoke.


Not the warmest of San Francisco summer days, less than sixty degrees, slight wind. A city with small pockets of sportsfans becoming more and more unhappy as the game progressed. An excellent flue-cured tobacco blend.
Something Simenon might have smoked.
Or Captain Haddock.

Good triumphed over evil, despite Trump and Infantino's dastardly meddling. Belgium won against the USA. Decisively. Romped all over the Yanks. It was 4 to 1. Kicked their ass. Beat them to a red, white, and blue pulp. Thoroughly and deservedly. Les frites ont triomphé des bâtonnets de pomme de terre ramollis. Cuisine sank junkfood. The sturdy Flemish peasantry defeated the force of ghouls, and golden trinkets will be hung in the church of our lady; the beauty and strength of that great army was turned into a refuse-pit, and the glory of the Trumpite rabble made dung and worms. Dung and worms.

Civilization over barbarism.

Neener neener neener. Neener neener neener. Neener neener neener. Neener neener neener. Neener neener neener. Neener neener neener. Neener neener neener. Neener.

Bitches.



FAIR PLAY
[Clarification added for the terminally dense at 8:38 AM.]

What really gets my goat is that the United States cheated to get Balogun back in the game, and the United States Soccer team didn't object at all. Which means that anybody with even a gramme of honesty and decency could not in good conscience support the team. What other examples of cheating will come to light? Is this going to be like that Lance Armstrong thing where it turns out that America's champion was a lying cheating dishonest p.o.s. for years? And what does this say about the president, his officials, inner circle, and FIFA?
Well, I already thought that they were human garbage.
I did not need anymore confirmation.




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PRECISELY THE WRONG STUFF

With Donald Trump interfering in the red card decision, and Infantino showing his true colours and acquiescing, there is no way in Gob's green hell that I will support the United States team. Furthermore, this should disqualify the United States from the rest of of the World Cup. If the United States wins today it will be because Trump and Fifa cheated.
So naturally I'm supporting Les Frites. As should all decent sportsfans.

Naturally I cannot support England for the rest of this stupid tournament (screw them, they've become the most bigoted racist failed state in Europe), and Argentina is an obvious 'no'. The place is filled with cheating wife-abusing Fascists and child molesters, much like Paraguay, and despite what I think of England, the Falklands must remain British.

So basically, it has to be Morocco and Belgium.
Places with lots of Dutch speakers.
And really good food.


Well, Norway too. Even though per John Cleese their food is brutal andd bizarre to the point of nightmares, and everyone knows Scandinavians don't really speak civilized tongues but mostly sound like the Swedish Chef anyway.

Hurra för Norge! Rad, rad, rad!

In other personal opinion based orneriness, I shall be voting for Scott Wiener. This is something I did not originally intend to do. I wasn't going to back him, but after what happened in Dolores Park (and a few other incidents, as well as the earlier support Chakrabarti got from the dark side), I damned well will.

You know something, San Francisco, some of you are real assholes.
Much like Dublin, Glasgow, London, and Manchester.
Or Argentina and Paraguay.

Kindly get stuffed.



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GOBLESS HEATHEN!

After reading everything that went wrong this past weekend there are a number of places where I'm glad I wasn't. Washington DC, huge parts of the centre and eastern areas, the Presidio and anywhere near the Golden Gate Bridge during fireworks hours, and, naturally, hospital emergency rooms on either side of the admissions desk. More than ever I know what can go wrong with hands and minds.

Heatwaves, freak storms, failing airconditioning units, crowds of Pete Hegseth's and Stephen Miller's fanboys marching with confederate flags, rowdy halfwits drinking too much beer, and, of course, Democratic Pinko weather control ruining Trump's grand celebration, which is why we need a ballroom. And an arch.

According to one Trump-worshipping Karen, liberal operatives used glowing green space cancer brought back from the moon a few months ago and secretely stored at a Pepsi Cola bottling plant in New Hampshire to poison the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Don't drink the water, it has nano-chips!


I have also been told, authoritatively, that people in the entire world celebrated our two hundred and fiftieth anniversary EXCEPT for gobless communist heathens.
Which means, I guess, that I am a gobless communist heathen.

Sorry, I spent much of the past few days working. No time or inclination to celebrate bupkes.
I am off for the next few days, and will make myself happy with Chinese food and avoiding tourists from the rest of the country, as any grumpy Dutch American (gobless communist heathen) would naturally do. Also caffeinated beverages and pipe tobacco.

Because San Francisco has the best climate in the entire United States, I advise all grumpy Dutch Americans (i.e. gobless communist heathens) to move here as soon as they can. That way we can chase the Anglo thieves into the ocean and torch their settlements, much like we did in Ambon, Batavia, and Malacca four centuries ago. The food is excellent, the natives are friendly, and the water is drinkable. Yes, there are too many churches, and the Anchor Steam Beer factory closed down, plus there are bigots on the local ballteam, but these are minor issues, and probably easily rectified with blunderbusses, pikes, and halberds.


It will be a new golden age. Trust me.



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SPORTING INFANTS

As is traditional my friend the bookseller will have walked home from work all the way in the Hong Kong landlord section of the city to his spacious digs on Telegraph Hill yesterday, as he always does when public transit is filled with drunken twenty-something yutzes on Holidays. New Year, Saint Patrick's Day, Cinco De Mayo, July Fourth, Halloween, Santa Con.

I have also walked that entire distance, we have a beautiful city and it's well worth it, but now that I've had the angioplasty on the lower dexter extremity I am slightly more conscious of the arthritic state of leg joints on that side. So I don't.

Do you really want a Dutch American cussing in a multilingual bad-tempered mumble-stream on the San Francisco streets? Think of the children! No, I didn't think so.


According to the language maps one of my native languages is something very similar to the North Limburgian dialects. With some influences from Antwerpian Flemish, because many isoglosses run right through the area where I grew up.

[Wwhen I was two we went there from Southern California. So I grew up near where an ancestor (fellow named 'Gompert') lived in the twelfth century. Way before we went to New Amsterdam in the sixteen hundreds.]

Which probably explains why I'm currently rereading Gaius Julius Caesar and laboriously re-learning Latin. It's as good a common tongue as any. And persuading you all to learn Kempisch has sadly proven darn well impossible. And verdomme.

Y'all far too darn stubborn.
I hate that.

According to the guide books, the area in question is beautiful, with very gentle undulations, idyllic villages, and placid streams. Life is more Burgundian there, more in tune with culture, traditions, and good living. The guide books say nothing, not a darn thing, about the density and unintelligibility of Brabanders. Or that it resembles Yorkshire without any Engish.

Or the fact that most Netherlanders can drink Yanks under the table.
For which they've trained since childhood.
Single digits.


Think of them as being rather like the Scots, absorbent sponges also, but more cheerful and intelligent, and without that bagpipe racket.



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STILL HAVE THUMB

It is probably a dead certainty that the majority of patients in the Emergency Room today are men, and that the reason that they are there is because of accidents with combustibles and explosives. Much of which will have involved their dominant hand. Even as we speak, there are detonations ongoing. Which will probably continue for several hours. I shall not delve into the damage, suffice to say that I have seen enough MRI images of hands which have had their best days that I can very well picture what is presently going on in their heads.

[It probably ain't pretty, and anyway it's probably not much.]


Boys, if you're going to do stupid things with gunpowder, consider at least doing so with your feet. That way you'll probably still be able to fill out the admission form and write love letters to your nearest and dearest. Who may have advised you to do something else and are now thinking "jayzis, I married/gave birth to an idiot".

Perhaps, as a back-up, you should cross-train one or two of your other limbs. Just in case.
It will make knife and fork use so much easier. As well as chopsticks for when you eat dimsum or noodle soup. And we'll admire your talent and determination.
Persevere, little butterfly, persevere! Freedom!

Show gumption!

Not having to work today, I went down to Chinatown in the middle of the day for lunch. Best darn hotdog I've had in years. Real bread bun, toasted. Lettuce, sliced tomato, avocado, and cheddar. Some condimental stuff, and thick hot sauce. Quite excellent. Yes, in Chinatown. Hardworking people, limited English. I hope they prosper mightily.

Chinatown was jampacked. I'm sure they all appreciate the extra business, but that did mean there was nowhere to grab a cup of Hong Kong Milk Tea. Even the fresh dumpling place at which I was actually planning to eat was full-up. They don't have milk tea either, but Shanghainese are not, strictly speaking, a milk tea subculture.

On the other hand, the Financial District was delightfully empty. And walking down there smoking my pipe was a slice of heaven. No angry non-smokers to dodge.


So it's been a lovely day. Gwan, blow your giddy selves up.
Enjoy Trump's speechiewheechie, if that's your thing.
You know it's going to be all about him, right?

Happy two hundred and fiftieth.



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MENTAL LAWNS

Dawn on Nob Hill is often not so much a burst of brightness from eastwards so much as a gradual shifting through successive shades of greeny grey blue, while in some trees birds twitter. A bus rolls past, interior lit, mostly empty. Before six o'clock there are few people about. In the utility passage of one building a bagman hunkers. Still asleep.
There is fresh air.

At this hour one can smoke on the street without anyone remarking that one is ruining their lungs and what about the children? Oh heartless beast! Yes, what about the children?
None of the precious little trolls are about.

Children and Karens are exceedingly rare before eight.
And more cautious when there are fewer witnesses.


The care and thoughtfulness required to pack and light a pipe mean that one has already had coffee, after enough sleep, to be a responsible human being, albeit not social. Quietness, and a sense of personal space. A thoughtful attitude, a chipper mood. Reflecting over last night's final pages before going to sleep much more than the workday ahead. Caesar's legions, as opposed to Marin's suburban dullards. Glittering breastplates and polished shields versus cargo pants and capris in solid pastels, and t-shirts advertising headbanger metal bands they last went to see in the nineties.

The world is just better at this hour. I haven't doomscrolled yet, nor been forced to nod and smile at people. The caffeine has started its journey through my cerebrum, aided by highly refined sugar and traces of nicotine, the only actual solids for the time being are Atorvastatin, Aspirin, Metoprolol, Losartan HCTZ, and Xarelto (Rivaroxaban). Plus B-complex, D3, and Magnesium. Yummy.

The pipe is a Hardcastle Royal Bruyere bent bulldog, the tobacco was the last of the Capstan from the open tin. Which last is becoming harder to buy locally, because there are far fewer tobacconists, far fewer pipesmokers. Stock might not be filled and reordered promptly, as cigars pay the rent and thus have precedence.

Besides, pipesmokers like myself complain about the prices.
As well as modernity, politics, and kids these days.
We wish everyone would get off our lawns.
Most of which are imaginary.


I haven't had a lawn since sometime in the last century.



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REVOLTING BENEFITS

The sun is streaming in through the east-window in the room where the television and the computers reside, and it looks like it might be a warmer day than usual for this time of year. Possibly as high as the very low sixties. which is quite tropical for the city. In some parts of the country, like Alabama, or, for instance, New York, it will be around one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, which I believe is considered "balmy" and I have no intention of finding out. In New York they at least have air-conditioning and emergency rooms that can deal with heat prostration, but still.

Looking forward to fog later. The evenings around July Fourth are always grey, and per hallowed tradition people gather on hill tops in SF to shiver in their warm blankets while admiring pale barely visible pastel puffballs in the clouds. No, we don't barbecue then.
Have you ever actually enjoyed a burnt burger while your system is shutting down?

The proper time to barbecue is about half an hour before noon. Sunlight, no wind yet, and live people. A late afternoon cooking session outdoors leads to frozen corpses standing around teeth chattering trying to make small talk over cocktails just a bit too strong.

Our ancestors did not grill weenies at Valley Forge.
That would be the Texans you're thinking of.
They're nuts. You know that.

The greatness of this country is that after the revolution my ancestors, solid hard-nosed New Amsterdam Dutch Calvinists, were forced to treat all those damned heathenish Scotch Irish, Anglo Saxons, and Germans, as if they were actually equals. Revolted, they did. If I were a religious man I would still choose to believe that Baptists, Born-Agains, layers-on-of-hands, snake-handlers, Methodists, Mormons, and a host of others, most particularely evangelicals, were all heading straight to hell, instead of as just considerably less intelligent fellow citizens. And because they were in New York, not Europe, the peace of Munster (1648) could not possibly apply to them.

The license to destroy Papists, Iberian outposts, et autres, would still stand.

Instead, we treat them all as being rather human.
We could change, you know.



It should not surprise you to know that I have a long list of heretics and idolaters holding public office who in a righteous universe would be burned at the stake.
It spans the entire rightwing gamut.



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THAT RICHLY DARK SAUCE

Reading matter today included Malayo-Polynesian linguistics, articles about coronaviruses, Netherlandish history, and part of Commentarii de bello Gallico by Gaius Julius Caesar. From one of those: "E-Proteine bezeichnen in der Virologie Strukturproteine, die Bestandteil der Virushülle von Coronaviren sind" (E-proteins mean structural proteins which are components of the viral envelope of coronaviruses). Which is all super exciting stuff! Yes! Yet, remarkably, while napping I dreamed of a Shanghainese place which closed years ago, long before The Bund on Jackson Street shut down. The only Shanghainese foodery in Chinatown now is a dumpling place, of which I am very fond. But Jimmy O. Yang (歐陽萬成) would be disappointed in this city.

For some reason in my dream the Shanghainese place was closed and dark but both doors were unlocked. Which has nothing to do with what I ate recently. Yesterday was something everybody in Hong Kong would know, today it was stirfried beef rice noodles with shrimp sauce (蝦醬牛肉炒米粉 'haa jeung ngau yiuk chaau mai fan'), With dollops of chili paste. Can't get more Canto-Netherlandic-Indo than that. Mie goreng, San Francisco style.
Hah, take that, Gordon Ramsey and Uncle Roger!

Half a dozen years ago my Chinese Indonesian regular care physician tried to persuade me to eat healthier. Dude, I'm a single man with Breughellian food tastes living on the edge of Chinatown. Truly healthy eating might be an impossibility. At best. There's actual food here. Like, real food. It isn't as if I'm torn between deep-fried fast food garbage and a head of lettuce, which explains by the way why people out in the suburbs become vegans.
They're absolutely desperate. I've got choices.

But I no longer eat North Indian food three times a week. Which has the equivalent of a stick of butter in every serving, not counting the lovely tandoori breads which are well slathered to boot. And it has been years since steak-frites-Bearnaise.

Jimmy O. Yang would also find me rather wanting. I've had xiao long bao (小籠包 'siu lung baau') several times but do not regard them as the be-all and end-all of gustatory delights. More partial to lions head meatballs (獅子頭 'si ji tau') and red-stew pork (紅燒肉 'hung siu yiuk'). Soup noodles (苏式面 'sou sik min'with duck on top too.
Plus melty pork fat and soy.


And, of course, everything is better with sambal.



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RABBIT RABBIT JULY 2026

One says "rabbit rabbit" on the first day of the month, per ancient custom dating back oh at least two or three centuries, which is impossibly old by the standards of many barely literate peoples in the British Isles. Long time. My first post (early this morning) was waffling on after the customary late night jaunt through the lower depths with the bookseller last night, and because of stuff in my head I wrote about pig cultures in East Asia after returning from smoking my morning pipe around Nob Hill. So, belatedly, rabbit rabbit.

And here is an illustration of a rabbit to mark it.

Among the first tribes in what is now the Netherlands, where my acestors hail from, were the Kaninefaten, which word is per popular custom translated as "rabbit snatchers", becaause of the mistaken assumption that kanin is the same as konyn, rabbit. This is actually incorrect. It actually refers to leeks and onions as crops. They were a tribe very similar to the Batavi, but not as large a group. They may have enjoyed consuming rabbits, who knows, but that isn't certain. The etymological root of their name is as yet unclear to me.

For a great many years I assumed a connection to rabbits.
Which was totally incorrect.

Leeks and onions.

Inter allium.



Rabbit rabbit.



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THE MIGRATING PIG

So it turns out that Hawaiian and Maori originated somewhere in central southern China. That is to say that the ancestors of Austronesian language speakers migrated from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan, then eventually spread from there to maritime South East Asia and Oceania. Some elements of "protoprotoproto" Austronesian culture have been found in neolithic digs, including adzes and black pottery with a high charcoal content, as well as some tools such as bark beaters.

There is also evidence that considerably later, but still in the stone age, some minor spread back into the Chinese mainland occured. Linguistic traces remain in Southern Chinese languages. But the record is slim. By the time of the first Cham inscriptions that area was becoming Sinicised, and far further inland the Tai peoples were already trekking south through Yunnan. The Cham, of course, were in what is now Vietnam.

As an interesting item, here is the the Đông Yên Châu inscription from Simhapura (Trà Kiệu):

Siddham! Ni yang naga punya putauw.
Ya urang sepui di ko, kurun ko jema labuh nari swarggah.
Ya urang paribhu di ko, kurun saribu t'hun dawam di naraka, dengan tijuh kulo ko.

[Translation: "Blessing! This is the sacred serpent of the king. The person that respects it, jewels will fall from heaven. The person who insults it, will remain one thousand years in hell with seven generations of descendants."]

This isn't too very far from modern Malay, sort of intelligible, though a number of words are a stretch. One of the reasons why there is almost nothing like this traceable to their point of presumed origin (coastal central southern China) is the span of time (over four millenia), enormous cultural developments since then, and the erasure of the landbridge to Taiwan by rising seas. One suspects that much evidence has been obscured by the water. Add to that the absorption of other cultural elements, plus ethnic mixing with resident populations along the path of spread, and everything fades to mist. Stone records require social organization and stable rule, leaf and bark manuscrifts turn to dust within a few generations.

Taiwan is where linguistically there are more linguistic strains of the entire language family than anywhere else. Early settlement existed there in neolithic time per the archeologic evidence, indicating ten millenia of prehistory. By the time of the Dapengkeng culture (大坌坑文化 4000 - 3000 BCE) they were cultivating rice and millet, and creating fine pottery. The outward migrations in subsequent centuries from here eventually spread cultural elements and languages over a vast area. It makes for some fascinating reading.


Tentatively influences and commonalities have been noted with cultures in the lower Yangtze region, as well as coastal Guangdong. But it's all still very unclear.



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PRAYING TO A CELL PHONE

The other night, having an impending sense of doom about the soccer match between the Netherlands and Morocco, I got up and listened to 'Sawt El Hassan Inadi' on youtube. It's a song every Maghrebi knows, very stirring. And indeed the Dutch are no longer in the cup. But several Dutch teams still have a horse in this race, as many of the Moroccan players come from their squads.

This is kind of like that World Cup a number of years ago when even though the Dutch didn't stand a Belgian's chance in hell of getting to the top there were five Dutch coaches involved. Russia, Korea, and three other countries.

We're good. Just not that good.


My interest in the event is over till four years from now.


The rest of you can loose your minds over it. The most noteworthy aspects were Scotland drinking Boston dry and people dressed in orange doing a little group dance.
That was fun, it is all over now, everybody go back to sleep.
Please stop playing bagpipes.

Lunch both yesterday and today was exceptional. I went to a restaurant I've started going to again after a hiatus of six years, since the pandemic, which has changed hands but kept substantially the same menu. They've expanded it somewhat, and I was pleased to see a very 'home-town home-cooking' dish offered as one of their lunch specials: salt fish meat patty with rice (咸魚肉餅飯 'haam yü yiuk beng faan').

Not my home town, nor my family -- it is unlikely that my mother would have even allowed any fermented fish into the house -- but never-the-less a favourite of mine.
Totally great with sambal. Dee-licious!


I was still mentally smacking my lips a few hours later waiting for the bookseller and smoking my pipe. There were disturbing howls from a bit further down where the karaoke joint we now seldom visit is located, and a fellow watching a religious broadcast on a pocket device and praying at a nearby corner, not one of the usual neighborhood unstables. Very few tourists or drunken fratboys. Probably too cold for them. It is typical San Francisco summer weather and there is a nasty wind.


You know, if getting all religious about a televised preacher on your cellphone is your thing, in this weather you might want to do that indoors. You can be warm, and much louder. There are no public benches anymore. We hate homeless people and old folks in this city.

I am not religious or homeless, and I won't say that I'm old.
But seating with a backrest would be very nice.
Still. You don't want to encourage me.
Somehow I can tell.



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A MEANINGLESS ARCHIVE

Yesterday's lunch was kind of like being at an old boys club with a heavily pregnant woman drifting about serving hot plates of food. And one sympathized with her, because pregnancy is like having a tumorous growth in your nether regions for eight or nine months, increasingly problematic which you get used to because it's gradual, but everything always tastes off and apparently you throw up rather frequently.

And then over a several hour period you pass a cinder block.

At this point, many men in the audience are looking green.


My involvement in pregnancy was a one-time experience which I don't remember, and consequently I do not have any younger siblings.

This was in the day when nobody videotaped those things. Years from now the space aliens will discover compact discs and computer files which indicate that for inexplicable reasons our extinct species was "obsessive". They will be baffled. Sports episodes next to childbirth. Documentaries of shapeless little blobs in episodes all the way to highschool graduation, along with things involving balls and grass. Stuff recorded when someone was intoxicated. Very long events with females in hugely uncomfortable swathes of white. Accompanied by a pompous tune, flowers, and dull speeches. They will wonder how gestation fit into all of this, and why are there no pictures of an egg? Nor, remarkably, any funerals or cremations.

Fortunately, I do not figure in any of these. My generation was not significantly home-movied. Some childhood photos, the nicest of which shows a large foreheaded tyke trotting in the sunlight on a Southern California lawn. As a two year-old I was presentable.
The next two decades were not so good.

That Gangnam style dance-off in a cigar-smoking environment was mercifully not recorded.
It was the stuff of nightmares. I won it, but at what cost?


My apartment mate has also not been video-taped. Rather a pity, because she has always been cuter than me. There is a rather lovely photo I took of her warmly tucked into bed -- it was freezing in Amsterdam by mid-October -- barely waking up but already looking fierce, which she kind of hates. Cute Cantonese woman angry at dawn. Only the upper part of the face showing, everything else is a lump under the covers. One day I will show it to her nephews if I ever meet them. See, this is what auntie looked like then.

We'll have to keep it secret, because she'd clobber me.
I'm too pretty to die of blunt object.
Oh, the humanity.



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SOMETHING SMELLY

It was smokey when I got on the bus, so I wasn't too worried about the young fellow reacting badly opposite. Dude, it ain't me. Yeah smells like fire and brimstone, and I'm a devilish old cuss, but I swear I had nothing to do with it. Neither did the old lady next to you. We're innocent.

One of my problems is that I just cannot look simple-mindedly innocent. That's one reason why I'm okay wearing a surgical mask on public transit. It covers up some of my less than innocent looking facial bits. Another reason is that the bus is a rolling petri dish with horribly diseased and disfigured mutants on it, and I don't know where they've been. Schools, old folks homes, or secret haemorrhagic disease labs next to open sewers.

Or Berkeley. So there's no telling what.

The municipal goat repository.


In any case it wasn't me that stank of smoke, but a church going up in flames about a mile away. Which I found out way later. After lunch in C'town I smoked a pie and wandered down to the Financial District, where upon finishing the bowl I got on a bus heading back over the hill. Which was jampacked, and reeked like someone had lost control of their bowels AFTER leaving their law OFFICE at EXACTLY the time they boarded.

Okay, can't blame the church for that. I'd like to. But. Dang.

You know, there will ALWAYS be another bus.
Show some consideration for others.
Maybe don't rush next time?

One should wander toward the bus stop in a calm and thoughtful manner, not dash like a madman. Especially if one has eaten dangerous things recently, or there are warnings on the page and a half of small print that come with one's medications stating that these pills may cause diarhoea, constipation, digestive issues, palpitations, or psychotic episodes and hallucinations. Don't operate machinery, stay off ladders, avoid stress.

In the early evening the busses on that route come every five minutes, more or less. So staying at the office a little bit longer would have not been a great sacrifice. Unless they had a date. In which case they're now going to be late anyhow, and will have to think of an excuse that justifies another forty five minutes or so, that prevents angy words.
Without letting the cat out of the bag so to speak.

Speaking the truth isn't alway the best policy.

It was still smokey when I got home.

Though far less so.



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EGGS IN A BOX

While some women nearby chatted about boxes and eggs I sipped my tea and half-earedly listened. Not knowing anything about those subjects in any great detail, nor having strong opinions about either, and being quite unacquainted with the participants anyway, there was no reason for me to jump in and interject words of wisdom. Far be it from me to mansplain very pedestrian subjects. Now, had they been talking about GBD from before the war till the seventies, I might have been tempted. Some truly lovely pipes, manufactured during a veritable golden age.

That is, unfortunately, a subject that will bore ninety nine out of ten people to tears. And, like many such things, me too when someone else is going on about it.

Fortunately this was an early morning dream and there was an escape.
Wake up, make coffee, go outside for a smoke.
In a different pipe brand.

The weather seems to be warming up. This is something predictable, and I don't like it. When it starts heading significantly toward the eighties (°F) my upper back hurts more (because of circulation issues) and I become more unpleasant than normal. There are huge parts of the year when I am not a likeable person. Those peak in Marin County during work.

I commend my colleagues for putting up with me.

A friend in Central Java will have temperatures around ninety for most of the week during daytime. Where I spent my childhood and teenage years in the Netherlands will be mostly mid to high seventies. London seems to be cooling down, it will be very pleasant there.
It is always time for tea followed by a pipe in all three places. Though still too warm.


My friend in Java is a pipesmoker, though he indulges in cigars socially. One can get good cigars there, but pipe tobacco is I suspect a little harder to come by. Cigars are just much more available worldwide.


Besides, pipe smoking isn't a very social thing.
Despite the LOTR movies and Gandalf.
We are not fond of Hobbits.

Also, despite your grandfather of whom we remind you, we have almost nothing in common with him or other old geezers that crop up in your mind, besides a piece of polished wood sticking out of our faces. Trust me on this. And we'd probably hate his chosen tobacco.

Plus the pipes I'm smoking today aren't polished, they're sandblasted and have somewhat rough exteriors. A severe straight billiard by Peretti in Boston, which is something a college man might smoke striding off to Latin in his toga, a Peterson silver banded black blast billiard (think of a crusty Parish priest who really doesn't want to hear confessions by run-of-the-mill teenage degenerates, just leave him alone in his little booth in the church to puff by himself, it is cool and quiet there), and an awesome bent Dunhill shellbriar, nicely craggy, for after a late lunch in Chinatown. Might even have another bowl durng the darkness of the evening.
Possibly in a bent billard from the stone age. Thinking of Leiden University.
Where I would have gone if I had stayed in the Netherlands.



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WHAT MUSTARD IS GOOD FOR

So my apartment mate was wondering whether one could market a candy called "green mucus"? She also mentioned "sick ass arse", and then happily speculated that her siblings would pretend not to have any idea how their little sister got rich. She also, in passing, wondered how many zits per square inch was the record for popping.

Now, I've had a long day. This is what I came home for?

As a totally Aspy Lowell High School graduate, she considers such things very scientifically exciting and worthwhile. As an Aspy graduate of the Hertog Jan College, I acknowledge the worthwhileness of the curiosity, but will not pursue it in any way at all. Being much more interested in a sportscaster play by play of a hotdog eating contest done in Latin.
Have to put classical studies to use somehow.


Ad quintum farcimen est, progreditur!


And the crowd goes wild. In Roman fashion. Cheering, loudly chanting the name of the champion, soiling their togas. Magna turba admiratorum! Exultatio maxima!
I'm rather fond of farcimina carnis. It's why Rome invaded Germany.

Naturally I flunked Latin, but got top grades in German.
Sausages.

In Germany, as everybody knows, the streets are paved with sausages. It's why the English invaded them during the war. They had endured rationing for five years, and English food is bloody awful to begin with, so you can well imagine what they had faced for so long.

This was years before the English had started importing people from India who knew how to cook. They were quite desperate. Which is logical and understandable.

On work days I eat lunch from the nearby Kwik-E Mart.
Trust me, I am familiar with desperation.
Hoffnungslosigkeit.



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AND NO CUSSING!

Having gone to bed early because I was exhausted yesterday evening, naturally I was up far too early this morning. Neither the sun nor the street people were up yet when I stepped out after coffee wearing a sweater. San Francisco on June mornings can be cold. Heat requires daylight. Sun, bright rays, bums and loonies freshly awake. Well, maybe not so much the latter. The first definitely.

There really should be a place where one can get a hot frikandel or kroket at this hour along with a decent cup of coffee. While smoking one's pipe. I'm thinking of brighly lit coffee shops on railway platforms in minor Netherlandish industrial towns, ages ago. Brilliant places of succour and respite. The whole world should be like that. Windows on all four sides, and pleasantly smelling of, among other things, the perfume of dark Dutch shag tobacco.


The world seemed like a wonderful place early in the morning then.
It was probably raining, and gloomy outside the station.
But there were lights, smells, and coffee.

The railway station coffee shop on the platform seemed a gateway to a different universe, and one supected that if one suddenly turned around, reality would shift and show something and somewhere else. A different plane, scifi planet, an alternate dimension, a dreamtime vista of strange buildings and unknown creatures. Birds with exotic plumage.

Yesterday a tightly hotpantsed freakazoid wandered into my work, seriously hungover and desperate for cheap ciggies. His eye shadow was sloppily applied and his ear rings askew. His morning had been filled with strife. A truck driver had honked at him, and there had been altercation. What is this world coming to when rightwing redneck yutzes with huge American flags on their small-dick vehicles have such bad attitudes? Horrible. He needed a drink!

The backroom crowd wasn't in yet. They would have set him right. They have bourbon.

Personally, I do not approve of bourbon much before the cocktail hour, and it wasn't even lunchtime yet. As I understand it, bourbon and grits is a thing. Bourbon and the remains of the morning's bowl of oatmeal, as I imagine many of those senile old gits who are regularly back there to habitually do before they come in, is not something to which I cotton.


Also, I'm not fond of bourbon in any case. It's good for late nights on a sidewalk in the Tenderloin. Where I wouldn't be at that hour in any case. Not being a junior executive.


Really, we need a glass on four sides Netherlandish trainstation coffee shop at the top of Nob Hill to beckon us warmly in the early morning fog. With factory workers swilling strong coffee and smoking dark shag in the wee hours. Pan handlers strictly advised to sit up straight!



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GALEN WAS AMONG THE FIRST

About four or five years ago my regular personal care physician with a name people found difficult (Indonesian Chinese, ergo more Indonesian-looking than Chinese, although his cards had a regular Chinese surname) quit and went back to school. He was a nice fellow, and as you would expect we had a number of things in common. Indo food. Peculiarities of post colonial culture. Language stuff. Tobacco (him in opposition to, me indulging in).

Given that like many good medical men he kept bring up the subject of tobacco, obsessively, please shut up about it, oh look they have fresh kangkung at the grocers opposite how do you like to prepare it, I would NOT be surprised if he becomes an oncologist.

Every year as part of my physical I have two scans down in the radiology department. Upper torso and thyroid. Because I smoke a pipe. Which I explained to him a number of times is a memory device. Essential for mental well-being.

Precisely like sambal and salt fish.

That is something I think my current regular care physician understands. And in any case, given that the demographic at the hospital includes crusty old codgers who swear in foreign languages (of which I have several, one of which is native to me and another I have spoken since childhood), and who stubbornly reject certain wise words of advice, she doesn't insistently push the matter. It would be somewhat unproductive.

But anyway, I know what they are screening for.
And, being a curious sort, have read about it.

Illustration inspired by an internet search for "cancerous tumors" which
yielded some lovely pictures of various growths viewed microscopically.

And, per Wikipedia thrown into google translate, this pertinent text: 腫瘤學係醫學嘅一個分支，處理癌症嘅研究、治療、診斷同預防。做腫瘤科嘅醫療專業人士就係腫瘤科醫生 ('Jung lau hok hai yi hok ge yat go fan ji, chyu lei ngaam jing ge yin gau, tsi liu, chan tuen tung yiu fong. Jou jung lau fo ge yi liu juen yip yan si jau hai jung lau fo yi sang'). Also, an oncologist is a 'pakar onkologi' or an 'ahli onkologi'.

Basically, 腫瘤學係醫學上面專係研究腫瘤嘅學科 ('jung lau hok hai yi hok seung min juen hai yin gau jung lau ge hok fo').

Oncology: 腫瘤學 ('jung lau hok'). Oncology is the study, treatment, diagnosis, and prevention of cancer.


Don't worry, I've also read several articles in standard English and Dutch about this branch of medicine over the years. And any medical specialist I encounter will, obviously, be able to explain it all completely in English. Dutch, Cantonese, or Malay, probably not.


Whatever the results, it means more interesting stuff to read.
And I am looking forward to my appointments.
So there is definitely that.



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THE 24 HOUR BUFFET

Last night I finally realized why I should live in either New York or Hong Kong. Or subscribe to a food-delivery service with horrible surcharges. Reason being that here in San Francisco a decent meal at around midnight is far away, difficult to get to, and probably in the company of drunken marketing executives. And the distance between there and here is filled with cold weather. Mid fifties. It would have required a fur coat and mukluks.

This blogger doesn't do mukluks.

And I'm too ornery to settle for pizza.

In the old days, San Francisco never slept. Which is remarkable, considering decent coffee was rare. As was good food. I have a cookbook with recipes by local society hostesses from that era with some truly frightening things in it. Combinations of several cans in a saucepan, dash of sherry, and iceberg lettuce leaves. No wonder so many of them died in their forties, they needed gallons of plonk just to stomach dinner.

Many people slept till noon and woke up hung-over.


This was followed by the Hippie years, canned spaghetti, fruit salad with kool wip, teevee dinners, chafing dish cookery, and an eruption of fast food. So it was still a gustatory dark age, and while the city is nowadays no longer a disaster zone in that regard, good luck finding something decent to eat in the night time fog. Let alone appealing.
Most restaurants are closed after nine.

Paris is out of the question, of course, because my French is fragmentary. New York uses English as a common tongue, I've heard, and I practically food-dream in Hong Kong Cantonese. Hence those two metropoles being mentioned.


Surely, you will say, a man with a kitchen and a microwave is not helpless about food at odd hours? Well, yes. My apartment mate was asleep, and banging pots and pans at two o'clock in the morning would have been rather inconsiderate, and the microwave is in the hallway (because it's convenient there) right outside her bedroom door. The only opening or closing microwave noises after her bed time are her warming up a slurf (microwavable heating pad) in the middle of the night. And while there is a tonne of stuff in the deepfreeze, I didn't wish to root through there to find the gourmet stuff at that time. It would not have been practical.


When I woke up long after nightfall to visit the powder room, I realized that for some queer reason I had forgotten to eat anything since lunch time. Must have been too busy.



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