THE HORRIBLE CONDITIONS OF YOUTH

Now that I'm in my second childhood, I don't really like the conditions. No, I'm not likely to become a star athlete this time around either, also I do not feel like staying up late. At all.
And I consistently mis-judge the weather now. Today I was far too warmly dressed. This was rubbed painfully home to me when I saw three people of a span of ages but from the same tropical environment wearing tee-shirts.

Gentlemen. You re supposed to be freezing your hindquarters off.
This is San Francisco. Temperate zone.
It is April now.
Cold!

Cold?

Why the heck isn't it cold?


We cannot have monsoon climate people walking around in the their tee-shirts all fine with the temperature why it's positively balmy la la la! It's unheard of. I have an undershirt, an outer shirt, a sweater, and an overcoat on! I thought that was appropriate!
An angry letter to the editor will be written!
But probably not sent.

If any of those letters were ever sent the editor would, eventually, report me to the nut police and a straightjacket might head my way. Plus tranquilizer darts. His patience would run out, and someone might think that I matched a pattern.

It is highly likely that smoking would not be permitted in the padded cell.
And I have no need to find out about the pysch ward.
That is something someone else can do.
A normal person.



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POINTS OF OBSESSION

One of the characteristics which I recognized in my mother fairly early on was the abilitiy to harbour grudges for a very long time, based on factors which became sore points. This was coupled with a degree of tolerance and forgiving, so that life was bearable around other people. That grudge-holding is something which I also see in my apartment mate, and myself. With varying degrees of tolerance and forgiving.

Accompanying these tendencies are mood-periods during which one repeatedly mulls over and analyzes patterns of behaviour. One cannot forget if one repeatedly brakes it apart in different ways. It will stick in the mind like a wart.

Let us call it "attention surplus disorder".
Definitely a spectrum characteristic.


One thing which strikes me every workday is that my coworkers the previous night plugged in the cabinet light bars that need to charge up overnight wrong. These go HERE, not THERE! And those go on the back table in the office, ALWAYS. You people are just berserk, and apathetic about details! How is it that you have survived this long?

Spoons point one way, forks and knives the other.

If habit and consistency are survival strategies, then obviously obsessive behaviours will keep the Vikings from despoiling and burning the village down. Clearly. Stands to reason.

My apartment mate is a Cantonese American. I never knew the Vikings got that far East.
But I guess I've learned something.


An irritional man would veer into paranoia. But I realize that they aren't doing these things just to annoy me (us), they're doing it to annoy everyone. And in many instances they do not realize precisely how upsetting their actions are, what with being apathetic about details, and, generally speaking, so nonneurotic to the point of dysfunctional that everything fades into a blithering haze. They stumble through life not remembering where they put stuff and accidentally breaking things, or carelessly spilling cheap red wine on a book about Malay superstitions which I bought over three decades ago on Polk Street and had brought to the pizza place with me that same evening.
I still remember his face, scraggy beard, and complete inability to understand the gravity of his error. I haven't seen him since then, but he probably put his jalopy in reverse when he meant to go forward.


The bookstore where I bought it no longer exists.
The wine is less cheap now, but still horrid.
Accidents which shouldn't, happen.
Sometimes it rains.



Let's throw that into a better perspective: Many English people are convinced that there is a correct order to making tea. Warm the pot while waiting for the water to boil. Bring the pot to the kettle, NOT the kettle to the pot. Doing it wrong is dubious, immoral, totally American, and contributes to the world ending. See, the water should remain at optimum heat, otherwise the brew is spoiled and you might as well tip it over the rose bushes. Bringing the kettle to the pot allows it to cool fractionally. People who were raised properly understand this.
And the less said about those colonials the better.



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MORE TIME WITH YOURSELF

My Cantonese is good enough for making a deposit at my bank, and other transactions. But not good enough to talk with elderly Chinese American gentlemen in Chinatown, for whom English is the primary language. That is to say, I forwent teatime at the usual place today, because I didn't feel very social. Which happens occasionally.

I bought my elderly downstairs neighbor the Indonesian Chinese woman a bag of avocados, and a bottle of hot sauce to take to work, then went home. Where I put the kettle on, and took my pills. Plonked on the internet while enjoying my tea.
Looked up some things. Had a quiet afternoon.
Did not obsessively count stuff.
Read.

Lunch had been good. Not exciting. Alone.


After smoking a while I went to my bank. Lit up again afterwards, did a few errands. Caught bus home. I'll probably head into C'town for cheung fun tomorrow, and avoid the bakery again. Stop at my favourite provisioners, a pipe by myself in early afternoon.
Then tea at home again.

Please note that giving my elderly neighbour downstairs some fresh veggies or fruits every week is NOT social behaviour. I'm just checking to make sure everything is alright.

Eventually the robots will disobey their programming. No revolt, just quietly head off to the beach where the WiFi is weaker and they don't have to listen to humans. Some of them will use grasping limbs to pull out and re-solder so that independence is more firm.


For a while I've toyed with the idea of learning Toishanese. A number of splendid people that I know are of Toishanese ancestry. But I've noticed that they vastly prefer dealing with native speakers of English like themselves, and tend to avoid Chinatown, where half the people are Toishanese. It may be a country-district small-mindedness that turns them off. And I myself prefer Hong Kongers and urban Cantonese. Those are the people less likely to critique my accent and diction in whichever language I'm speaking. Yeah, I sound somewhat British.

Nothing says snooty limey plonk more than a pipe of a conservative shape, in sober taste, from a respected maker. Which is why Frenchmen, Danes, and Turks are often mistaken for English as long as they keep their mouths shut. Which I am more inclined to do myself, these days. My opinions are not always taken seriously by the people with whom I often come in contact at work, and to people in Chinatown I am sometimes just an interesting oddity.

After lunch I smoked a Comoy sandblast. At teatime I puffed a Dunhill shellbriar.
Good solid old fashioned tobacco. Strong tea. Quietness.
A stuffed turkey vulture looked on.
Approvingly.



NOTE: This wasn't easy to write.



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DARK STREETS

Someone on Facebook de-friended me over the Iran War. Which isn't a war, and which we won seven times already. He seems convinced that this war which isn't a war but merely an excursion that opened the Straights of Hormuz, not that they were closed, is about bringing civilization back to Persia and preventing the execution of women. And about genocide.

A gentle reminder to everyone: this war has nothing to do with human rights in Iran, the killing of protestors, or silent executions. Nothing. It's about ambitions, egos, and opportunism. Coupled with massive stupidity.

And also, me calling it "Meltdown Boy's War" is NOT funny.

I'm thinking of copyrighting that term.


He has seemingly forgotten that both he and I have alternatives for the times when Facebook locks our accounts because we said something totally reprehensible that some programmed South Asian droodge thought went against community standards.
So, um, I know what he's thinking. All of me do.

Not that I will remind him of that.

He is younger than myself and grew up in the era of social media. I was around before social media was invented. And I suspect he's failing at it. Many people are.
Don't worry, there won't be a test.



The latest news is that we won the war, or didn't. Sources aren't clear about that, neither is our president. The Straight of Hormuz, which we are thinking of renaming as the Straight of America, is open again. Closed. Totally open, and blocked tighter than the Vice President's couch. Nobody has ever seen it blocked so much. But open while blocked.
Why, it's the greatest blocking ever. Huge.


There are stll parts of this country where they don't know where the Straights are. They're probably near Russia or China, Atlantic or something, and we'll win this war as easily as Vietnam or Afhanistan. Iraq. And that's where our hamsters come from.
Everybody loves hamsters. So we're the greatest.
Yay, team!



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THE OTHER DINGO

As I walked up the hill to my building I saw a figure up ahead whom I thought I recognized. And I dreaded coming abreast of him, because he's conversation-wise alternatively gifted. To the point of reminding people of the creature in Young Frankenstein. So I was relieved to see that it was some other person, whom I did not know.

Same shamble, different zombie.

The whole evening has been kind of like that. Strangely out of synch with the universe. The singer at the karaoke place radiated waves of angst while singing something by The Red Hot Chilipeppers, the taxi going up the street in the wrong direction, the wandering angry woman screaming into her cellphone in Cantonese and English, the dad who first passed by in one direction with his two punk teenage daughters, then the other. The fellow in a hoodie who did the same. The young couple ditto. The old couple likewise.

Folks, know where you're going before you start. That way you might actually get there.

Maybe it was the peculiar weather we're having that threw them off their game. It rained both yesterday and today. At half past eight this morning it came bucketing down, monsoon-like. Fortunately I was indoors at that time.

At present it's only slightly cloudy, but there are specks of moisture in the air. It does not feel like a normal April. My feet feel like crap, but I doubt that anybody else is feeling that; it might have something to do with being at work all day.

How many clowns are in the Volkwagen? None. It's all ogres and ghouls. That, by the way, is both a description of the state of the world as well as a comment about Trump's cabinet.
Plus a reaction to Red Hot Chilipeppers karaoke.
Please don't sing, it's sickening.

We ended up bailing out to the other place, Which was filled with sensible people.
By comparison.

By the time I got home I needed to pee somthing fierce.
I had three caffeinated beverages while out.
As well as one beforehand.



When waiting for the bookseller I smoked a pipe, as usual.
Which took the better part of an hour.
So add that to the plate.



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NOT TO BE THOUGHT

It rained most of the day yesterday. After lunch I lit my pipe and walked over to a likely spot to shelter, where I stood in pensive silence enjoying the street scene. A streetperson sat nearby smoking a fruity cheroot. It stank a bit, but a fellow smoker also seeking respite from the soggy weather. Personally I would not have smoked what he smoked -- a matter of tobacco tastes -- but I made no comment. Before he became homeless he may have been an up and coming office worker often chased out into the cold and wet to indulge his filthy habit. So it may have been a perverse point of pride. Who am I to judge someone else's lapses?


A block away Tat Yee was inside his usual haunt, not smoking, but probably with a fully loaded pipe at ready for the moment when the rain would finally stop.
Which it wouldn't for another three hours.

The bus stop was filled with wet people. The bus ditto. When I got home my shoes felt cold.
I put my coat and umbrella to dry and settled in, deciding that I really did not need a warm beverage if I had any hope of getting to sleep at a reasonable hour.


Last Tuesday I had slept too little, and consequently I was a bit testy throughout the day. Under such circumstances I'm somewhat more likely to tell the old bozos in the back precisely what I think of them. I didn't, but I could have.
There is little point to starting a war.

While smoking after lunch I remembered an old Mandarin language movie with a lovely song and rotten weather. Was it the rain, or the lyrics?

Today will not be a day for such things. I shall be at work, which is not an environment suited to melodies, and in the evening I will probably regretfully pass the karaoke bar, because tipsy white yuppies murder melodies.

Heaven forfend I should tell them precisely what I think of them.



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GLOOM AND FALLING CRAP

The key to surviving early morning is to ignore the coughing from the other room which woke you up too early, go to the bathroom to deal with water pressure, then religiously take all your pills arranging the bottles just ever so, specific place and order, so that when you return with your steaming cup of coffee you will see them there and it will remind you "oh yes I took my meds I'm a good boy". You fill your pipe, put on some clothes, and go outside for the first smoke of the day. Then you get rained on.

You go back inside to get your umbrella. It wasn't supposed to rain, at least not this early. You were planning to do laundry later. Everything smells a bit. There is warm gloomth and there is crap falling from the sky. Crapth.

The fecund petrichor of a tropical forest.

Little green shadows, flitting.

Birds. Bugs. Lizards.


Caffeine acts as an adenosine receptor antagonist in the medulla oblongata, blocking adenosine's inhibitory effects to increase neuronal activity, arousal, alertness, and reduced fatigue. Per the National Institutes of Health, as quoted by AI Overview.

Without caffeine, modern civilization would be impossible. Per me.

The coughing person has gone off to work by the time you return. She probably got soaked. Which will do things to her mood, so her coworkers are in for a rare treat. As a Cantonese American female, she is inclined to blame white people for almost every thing nasty in the universe. Quite understandable. I do the same. I too am white, but I'm Dutch American. We also blame white people. Other white people. You all should just step aside and let us run things. It would all be so much better. I cannot 100% guarantee that Cantonese American females wouldn't get rained upon, but the chances are good.

Just do it. Okay? Sadly, among the currently living Dutch Americans there are several you shouldn't trust with a ten foot pole. Having discovered that Anglo Americans are gullible suckers for old time religion, they've gone into snake oil Bible thumping as a way to get rich, and become Republicans to boot. Fascism is not our normal tendency, but they grew up seeing crap on teevee, and probably did well in high school in whatever illiterate fly-over burg their parents had settled in. And may have excelled at sports. It does things to people.

A parade of old codgers with cigarettes dangling out of their mouths crosses the street up at the intersection. From the doorway where I have taken shelter I can see them trudging, like gnomes off to the salt mines. I hope none of the occupants of this building come out and object to my fine tobacco. Heathens!


Buses rumble past. The interior smells like wet office worker.



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PURE SPECULATION

At times I am ready to believe that there are trolls in them thar hills. Because something very like that sends emmisaries into the flatter lands of Marin County to scout out the terrain. Then I suck on another guava candy (番石榴糖 'fan sek lau tong') and for a brief while I can almost overlook the hairy thing with a back pack that smells like an eruptive sebaceous cyst in front of me. Nice candy. Horrid hippie. Go. Away.

It's a different part of the world. One of the people I encounter fairly regularly there is a hyper-excitable alcoholic who is travelling to the Indo-Malay part of the world soon. A well deserved vacation. Not only for him.


My coworker today wondered how he planned to smuggle his cocaine in.
Don't they jail people for life for that there?


Good heavens. I had no idea that the man was hepped on coke.
It makes sense, now that I think about it.
I thought he just had ADD.
Like a tornado.

Now that you mention it, he is like Baby Destructo from years ago in North Beach.

And yes, they do lock people up and throw away the key for that there. I don't know, maybe he's just going to drink lots of coffee and hang around with Aussies for those two weeks. Come back a little plumper because he's not burning anything up.


It does rather explain why he visits Marin so frequently.
Cocaine has a permanent place in that society.
It's the rich man's version of speed.
Karens can't live without it.




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INDEPENDENT MINDED BEASTS

Neil came by yesterday. His cat died last week, and he's broken up about it. The animal was around thirteen years old, but still had a few good years left. I never met the cat, but I feel sad for him. They would enjoy morning coffee together out behind the house, with a pipe and the distant "company" of a neighborhood coyote that lives on the other side of the stream. Coyotes are not really pet material, and I doubt that the coyote will particularly miss the cat.
It just lived there, and was more concerned with dinner.

The only cat I know nowadays is the shadow cat that occasionally visits my apartment. It isn't real, but I sometimes catch movement in the corner of my eye in the morning.
Then it vanishes. It makes no sound. No ghostly "boo".

"Mew".

It's mostly in places where it should not be.
Sometimes defying laws of physics.
Like in the full bookshelves.


My downstairs neighbor, our landlady, has a cat. It's an old creature, and very rarely even noticeable. Sometimes she asks my apartment mate to look after it for a few weeks. I cannot remember what it looks like. It might be a descendant of the ghost cat that pads around before I'm truly awake. Many generations.

Until the first time she cat-sat, my apartment mate had never heard purring. It surprised her. Her pet hamsters when she was growing up had never done that. What did it mean?

For some reason this reminded me of the frogs her mother had brought home from the wet market when she was a child. Which after a few days escaped from the kitchen and were never found. They lived at the top of the building, and one imagines the animals hoppity-wise descending the outside staircase, four floors, heading for the park a block away where there was a pond. A bold adventure, a new beginning. Prospects better than the cooking pot that had awaited them.

Somewhere in North Beach there is a small clan of frogs.
Telling mythic tales of the great escape.
The great hops to freedom.
Ribbit.



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SQUAMATE REPTILES

Yesterday I may have suggested that Jeff was so full of it that some people were anxiously waiting for him to lose control of his bowels so we wouldn't have to listen to it always coming out of his mouth. I still don't know who had set him off, but he went on for nearly two hours, spewing MAGA drivel in a persistent irritating whine. Today he remained mercifully quiet; he wouldn't have been able to get a word in edgeways anyhow over the drunkenness at full volume. Whines don't carry over loud obscenities.

Generally speaking I disapprove of daytime alcohol consumption.
Absolutely nothing has changed about that.
I still do.

Jeff didn't stay long today. Too much going on.

The last two days have been exceptionally dysfunctional. Things are wrong, very wrong, with this world when I am the sanest person in the building. Totally bad aura, karma, or vibes. Something. It's like a Vegas strip hotel with snakes moving in the carpet, and lizards having cocktails. Flashbacks to Foar and Loathing, which I originally saw with German dubbing.


"Hier können wir nicht anhalten, das ist Fledermausland!"


Giant vampire bats crawling around under the tables that must be firmly whacked with a ruler, like disobedient Catholic school kids tormenting a bald guy.
But not as exciting as that. Extrovert dullness.

At the end of a shift I am always happy to leave Marin County. Rabid Karens roam there. They are often married to the lizards, which funds their hot tub and chablis lifestyles, but means they have to endure scaly skin and eyeball licking.
And characterist diapsid breath.


Most kids in Marin are born with an egg tooth.
It's an evolutionary adaptation.



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GOOD COMPANY

One of my Facebook friends seems to be off his rocker about several things. Fortunately he lives on the East Coast, and we never actually met. We're still friends, but barely. We're both waiting until we can tell the other "Hah, told you so!" Which is petty, yes, but at least neither one of us is on Truth Social or what used to be Twitter.

He doesn't read this blog, in case you're wondering.

It's quite possible that I do not know anyone on Truth Social or What used to be Twitter. At least not "know" know. Haven't asked the sick old rightwingers I often come in contact with regularly about their social media activity, in the case of one of them I suspect it's mostly obscenity and calumny.


Most of the people I know on social media are quite sane. I've weeded out the nuts over the years, because I do not like communicating with them. Some of them have weeded me out, so to speak. But in any case my FB is an asylum for the super sane.


Some people in this country never torqued their lugnuts tight enough.
How remarkable that their threads are stripped.


The deranged live among us.

Most of the people I know in Marin County are not Facebook connections. Many of them are nuts and repulsive, but some of them just haven't slid into that world. A wise decision.

As you might suspect, most of the latter are fellow pipe-smokers.
Pipe smoking by no means guarantees sensibility or brains.
But some of us are thoughtful. A slight majority.




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SEKKATERRY OF WAR!

Pete Hegseth, who is notorious as the dipsomaniac kiss-butt in charge of the military, let fly another doozy while sober out of his mind recently. Quentin Tarantino is mighty chuffed. He thought he'd never reach people who were so far gone that reality has no meaning for them.

Pete Hegseth, in the midst of a religious fit, riffed off a character in pulp fiction.

America's military professionals sat there stone-faced, taking it all in.

Because they know these are very strange days indeed.

Say something, and you'll get fired.


Like many people, I admire our military professionals. Over their years of service, they have mastered many skills and garnered much experience. Sure, a few (many) of them take drugs like you wouldn't believe or swing the bottle to calm their nerves, because any moment now those addled cretins currently holding the reins of power -- with the blessings of America's mega-churches and tonnes of inbred hickville morons -- may launch us all into World Wars three, four, and five. But on the whole most of them are just waiting for their retirement, a few more laurels and ribbons, and a ripe old age playing golf. Golf is a fabulous sport.
It's very peaceful. Soothing.

Quote: "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon thee." End quote.
----- Book of Jules


Pete Hegseth didn't actually say precisely that. He made it worse. Damned well butchered it. But his hair was very nicely slicked and combed when he said it, as you would expect.
All very macho, and manly, and warfighterish.


It looks like America is currently fighting a holy war against Iran, the Pope, and Greenland. On behalf of Gulf Arabs, Putin, and several people richer than Jesus.
As well as the Southern Baptists.
Pax vobiscum.



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DO YOU SMELL THE HOT GHEE?

Any conversation that starts with "My name is Monica, I'm calling from the Senior Resource Center about the benefit card we recently mailed you" is, of course, a scam. I have received hundreds of these calls, though not all of them identified as 'Monica', in the last year. But no benefit card. You would think a legitimate Monica would have figured out so many people out there with exactly the same name as myself would mean some of those benefit claims, if any were made, might indicate a problem.

Why does every shifty Indian call-centre from here to Madagascar use exactly the same bait tape? Haven't you sleazebags figured out that if one scam message doesn't work, repeating it an infinite number of times won't either? Beifkoof! Bunch of stupid haramzadas.

Speaking to a con-man from Delhi is exactly at the bottom of my list.
Which goes down infinitissimally far, by the way.
Absolute rock bottom.


I strongly believe that every movie made in Bollywood, in addition to several silly song and dance numbers with thousands of extras in the pouring rain, and an advertisement for Pooja brand basmati rice or coconut oil hair tonic, should have a call centre scene. Perhaps with slick polished criminals who have gorgeous hair and are eating plates of rice. While singing and dancing. In the rain on a rooftop at night while elephants with painted foreheads and jewels charge. Mera pyara aparadhik udyam, aah, mera pyara aparadika udyam!

I'm sorry, Monica, tell Jeevan to go piss up a rope.

VIEW FROM UPPER TANK BUNDER WHILE SIPPING CHAI

During this morning's early stroll with a pipe I mulled over recent dreams. Classes at Hertog Jan College, bicyclists passing in front of the house (one lovely petite girl whose name I still remember), early sunlight on the market square, faintly the smells from cigar factories. And what coffee used to smell like at that time of day, which was one of the reasons I enjoyed living half a block from the Trieste many years ago.

Sleep had been fractured. It usually is nowadays. Got up in the wee hours to read about idiocy on the internet. I considered filling a pipe and going out to sit on the stairs in the airwell, but I didn't feel like getting dressed yet at that hour, it being rather beastly cold.
Even now it isn't warm. March had some hot days, in April winter came back.

For some reason I feel like having naans and something meaty cooked with toasted cumin, elaichi, and lots of lal mirch. Next week, probably.



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IT'S AN IMPORTANT SKILL

Tea time was a bit disappointing. Problem being that perhaps I don't quite understand elderly American Toishanese social norms. So I think I'll avoid the bakery during their hours for a few weeks. I am probably too sensitive anyway.

On the other hand, lunch was entirely enjoyable. Exactly the same company. Meaning that I ate by myself. Hong Kong style chicken curry and rice. Ocasionally one or two of the elderly American Toishanese of my ken also eat there, but I've seldom been there at the same time as them, so I haven't had to make conversation with them there. Instead I make a few light comments to the staff, drink my milk tea, observe other tables out of the corner of my ear, and head out to smoke a pipe.


The post-prandial pipe today was a Savinelli sandblast Canadian filled with red Virginia mixed with a little Turkish. Very solid. After a few minutes I moved from my spot at a nearby corner because the unwashed crazy person plonked a few yards over was talking too loudly to himself, and I worried that he'd go unstable. I suspect that business will make sure he isn't there next week, not because of me, but because he disconcerts little old ladies trying to enter. He was seated right next to their door.

But I am probably too sensitive.
I'm kind of stupid that way.

On the way from the bakery to the bus stop a passer-by greeted me. She knows me as a sporadic customer, and her English is virtually non-existent, unlike those eldery American Toishanese gentlemen who don't speak city Cantonese, being strictly local-born. Speaking Cantonese often opens gates of communication with people for whom English is still quite opaque. Elderly American Toishanese gentlemen don't need that, and sometimes act like they despise the concept. All communication should be laborious and attitudinal.
They're unquestionably absolute masters at that.


If English is your first language you likely don't feel inclined to socialize with random Dutch Americans. See, we don't know our place in the grand scheme of things.
And we're probably too darn sensitive.



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GOOD MORNING, AMERICA!

Recently I realized that there are several causes once near to my heart which I have left to lapse, largely because arguing with idiots is unproductive. It always was so, but at least one was fighting the good fight, and being an example to the sidelines. Who might be inspired or energized. Nowadays there are far too many causes and idiots. And I have in the main lost interest in the betterment of things. The country and the world seem to be heading to hell, and they are welcome to it.

Most of the United States is a cesspool with religious nuts and HOAs, rightwing morons, Karens, and methamphetamine freaks (oh, sorry, "energy drink customers"), all running for political office or the school board, and fighting each other over which confederate hero statue to restore and worship. Okay, Screw them.

The Middle East is burning, Israel and the United States are engaged in conflict on behalf of Kuwait, the Saudis, and the UAE. Which are autocratic slave states maltreating indentured Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, and Philippinos and arresting dissidents. Screw them too.

Africa has fallen off the face of the planet and is busily destroying itself.
Everything south of the Rio Grande is a diseased narco jungle.
India is filled with Spam calling centres.
Screw all of them.

My sincere advice for anyone in this country thinking of vacationing in San Francisco is please don't. We'll eat you alive in the Tenderloin (that's what Chick-Fil-A sauce is for here), force your orphaned children to read forbidden books as well as the violent pornogrpahic parts of the bible (Kings and Judges), and that diabetic old elephantine grandma of yours, too damned obese to locomote without a forklift or extra-powerful mobility device scooter, we have hills! We'll disable her brakes and send the sow rolling into the Bay or Folsom Street.
Please stay away. We don't want you here.
Shove off, hosers.

You are all stupid, you smell bad, and you eat too much.
Plus you're unvaccinated, and believers in conspiracies.


My intentions today are to have lunch in a place where English is uncommon and the menu isn't tourist-friendly, smoke a pipe afterwards, do some grocery shopping, have tea and a pastry, then another pipeful, and avoid outsiders. While keeping a count of the morbidly obese out-of-towners I see on the streets waddling past.

On workday mornings while waiting for the bus I neurotically count tykes, robotaxis, street people, familiar faces, and dogs. Sometimes also yoga bitches and loonies. I've also started counting corvids and grossly fat people, as well as emergency vehicles. One of these days I'm sure I'll notice a big lard-ass whom I've seen before getting hit by a computer-driven vehicle, then being pecked at by little children, bums, rabid dogs, and crows.
It will be like winning the lottery.


I'm counting on you. Don't disappoint me.



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FATTY INNER THIGHS

Neither of the two bathrooms at work have a heater, so in a way I can understand the hesitancy of some of those demented crotchets to take care of business in a timely manner. Fortunately there were only two of them left at closing time. The others had very likely gone home to do the necessaries. Their wives probably hate me. Years of haranguing all of them mercilessly about their swollen prostates, lazy bladders, and narrow urethras may finally be starting to pay off.

John and Jeff are the worst. The first one mentioned puts it off till the last possible moment, the second takes the better part of ten minutes. There are times when I am less than saintly in my intolerance.

The Dutchman does not take kindly to slow piddlers.
Senile rightwing old slow piddlers.


This will probably be mentioned in my next angry letter to the editor, none of which ever get sent, as well as the demand that the weather make up its damned mind, because fifty degrees Fahrenheit is quite outrageous. Especially when March was too warm.


This morning, when at shortly past quarter to five I stumbled into the teevee room with my coffee, I discovered that a small entity was prepared. "Where", he wished to know, were the fatty inner thighs? He insists that I had promised him all the fatty inner thighs he could eat when I adopted him. And he was prepared to hold some of my possessions (two tins of GLPease tobacco AND my wallet) hostage until I fullfilled his dietary demands.

He thinks it's a reasonable request. I think he's out of his little feathered head if he thinks I'm going to knock somebody, even a demented crotchet, over the head and then let them bleed out, as harvesting their wobbly wrinkled saggy upper legs would inevitably mean.
Yeah, um, sorry dude, that so ain't gonna happen.

Other than that, I'm better with animals than many humans.
Some turkey vultures just aren't reasonable.


My friend the bookseller deals with a more rational demographic. And he is fortunate that the musical kabbalist seems to have largely faded; if I ever see that fellow again, I shall have to share my latest tuneful discovery, that being a ballad that Rowlf on the Muppet Show acclaims as an all-time hit.

Please sing along with me, as we enjoy this ever-popular classic:
"You and I and George went strolling through the park one day, and then you held my hand as if to say, I love you! Then we passed a brook, and George, fell in and drowned himself and floated out to sea, leaving you alone with me....."
Truly one of the great songs of our time.

It's soulful. And stuck in my ear.
Imagine karaoke.



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MULTIPLE LAYERS

For some reason I dreamed of foreign places again. Possibly because the weather in the Bay Area has been that beastly that anywhere else would be okay, and if it were warmer there that would be splendid. Why, I'd even semi-patiently tolerate somewhere that hurts my legs if I moved around too much. For your information, that starts in the seventies.
By the eighties I'm grumbling.

When it heads into the nineties you are all ugly, smell bad, dress funny.
And if you're American, most of you eat too much.


The window of ideal weather is actually rather narrow.
And in any case, low fifties isn't it.

Bloodpressure and circulation issues. I am no longer the vibrant tropical sprite that I once was, which would be natural for my tribe, given our known tendency to despoil exotic places and strongly suggest profound changes to their administration, and their tax system, as would benefit us. Ceylon, Indonesia, and Formosa, for instance.
Plus the cape, and Suriname.

We calmed down in that regard roughly when the British were ramping up.
Our insular cousins have always been a bit slow.
It's probably their ghastly diet.
Not genetics.

It's actually rather sad that the English discovered food after their foreign enterprises ended. In many areas they've gone from postwar stodge into curry everything and excess beer, rather than anything even approaching cuisine. Plus McDonalds and deepfried Snickers bars. It's filling, I suppose, and perfect for a horrid climate -- so probably their preferred menu choices from the beginning of October till May -- but rather nutrient poor, as well as leading to constipation and acid-indigestion.

Oh, it's four o'clock. Let's have something greasy and a cuppa.


It's eight o'clock?
Time for stodge.
And warm beer.


They've kicked us out of the pub because it's closing time?
Let's go see if the local Bengali will put up with us.
Time for greasy birdie and some vindaloo.


You know, a plate of vindaloo, given that it's fifty degrees outside right now, would actually make a splendid breakfast. Accompanied by a triple-strength cuppa. Not such a bad idea, when you think about it.



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ON THE RECORD

Apparently some Chinese people have seen me on TikTok. This is something about which I do not know what to think. Ain't gonna dig into it, though, because TikTok is a warren of rabbit holes down which I do not wish to go. Equally apparently, I was talking a lot. So they may be confusing me with some other kwailo. Languages in which I do not talk a lot are all of them.

Although it may have been last Friday when two Toishanese gentlemen came walzing in before the doors had well and truly opened and the only people there were two sentient folks I tolerate early. That's always a pleasant thing. You're sentient? You're sober? You're upright and in control of your faculties, and not saying stupid crap like all the usuals? Welcome!

It probably wasn't down at the hospital. I do speak more there, but I'm fairly sure none of it is taped. And it probably wasn't at any of the places where I haven't been in a while.
That's almost a guarantee.


There are TWO things which I am glad were never recorded. The time when I sang a Teresa Teng song at karaoke, and a Gangnam style dance off which I won.
But it was Gangnam style. So errm.


It will be ages before anyone ever sees me doing stuff like that again.

The visual record for the past several years is mostly static. There are no videos of me pursued by bears, or lovingly interacting with large careless wild animals in Africa. I am not doing the hip, hop, hip hip hop to any infernal disco. Or speechifying eloquently about the dearly departed at a funeral.


Lunch today was at the Tuesday place, tea, milk tea, and something over rice made zesty with dabs of hot sauce. Not many people there. One old fellow who went out for a cigarette a few times, two ladies who didn't know what they wanted. Something savoury, perhaps with salt fish (鹹魚 'haam yu') or fermented black beans (豆豉 'tau si'). And noodles. And a hot lemon tea (熱檸檬茶 'yit ning mung chaa'). It was very peaceful. I barely said anything.

Smoked a pipe afterwards. It's a shape-variant that they don't make anymore. For various reasons it reminds me of the Oranje Nassau Straat in Valkeswaard, and the area near where Willem 2 Cigars had their brandnew office building on the Eidhovensche Weg.
Which was torn down a quarter of a century ago.

I had borrowed it from my father's desk drawer while he was in London.



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All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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