ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE

At this point all of us have seen videos, several videos, of ICE agents behaving violently and breaking laws. Which, if you are a conservative, probably thrill you, and if you are human nauseate you. All of this is applauded by Republican politicians and a great many True Christians. This is an unstable situation, and there might be pushback.
Which the government will neither expect nor respect.

A popular incendiary document encourages, supports, and predicts it.

And dammit, that's dangerous.


CITE:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
END CITE.


Nowhere in that document are Molotov Cocktails mentioned. So pre-emptively, the American people should be banned from owning Molotov Cocktails on the basis that we hold no truck with such Communist devices, which had been used to great effect in resisting the Nazis in hell-holes like Eastern Europe during World War Two, Delhi and Bombay during riots there, and Plaisance-du-Touch near Toulouse in France in March of this year against Elon Musk. Foreigners! Americans are NOT foreigners. We don't do such things. And we say 'baa'.

The ONLY legitimate use for flammable devices is to keep warm when it's forty two degrees Fahrenheit during the day, going down to mid-teens at night, snow on the ground, wind chill factor, and icy conditions. The human body does not survive long under those conditions. Individuals with higher body fat may retain heat longer, insulated or layered clothing provides some protection against hypothermia, and a person's fitness level and health affects survival time. Staying still leads to faster heat loss, movement may help maintain body temperature.

Fortunately there aren't many places in the civilized world with those precise conditions.

Here in San Francisco it's far from that. Temperate weather, and it's always sunny here. That famous mediterranean climate of ours, you know. Additionally, we would never use Molotov Cocktails ourselves (horrid foreign devices), because we are men of peace ("baa"), and, additionally, in California there is an ever-present fire danger. Which is bad.


Conditions right now are almost tropical! It's fifty plus degrees (twelve Celcius), and sunny! Beach weather! We run toward the surf in slow motion in our scanty red swimming togs, as David Hasselhoff and his girls have shown us. We are blessed.

We are suntanned pacifists. We often say 'baa'.
It is the mantra of happiness.
Christian!


Please never go postal, boys and girls.
Doing so is against the law.
Remember that.



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ALMOST MAMMALIAN, ISN'T IT?

According to my blog stats there are far more readers of my scribbles in Hong Kong than in the United States. Which is fine. Unlike Jonathan who lives in Israel, I have mostly given up on the United States, as many people in this country are illiterate neo-confederate bozos.
Who wouldn't know a text if it came up and bit them in the flabby grey rear end.

Here, I have a few pipe smokers and angry Dutch Americans.
There, it's probably the occupants of office blocks.
Desperate to look busy for a while.
After ten in the evening.
Boss still there.

The work culture in Tsim Sha Tsui (尖沙咀) is in some ways insane, dictating that while your boss, who doesn't want to go home to his wife and kids and dissatisfied mother in law just yet stays at his desk playing poker on his computer with the sound off looking grim, you stay at yours perhaps eating instant noodles (公仔麵) and shuffling stacks of paper occasionally.
All of you would far rather be at the karaoke lounge.
But that got you in trouble last time.

You're wired to the tits. Tea and instant coffee. Plus ginseng drinks.
And you miss that curvaceous lady at the karaoke place.

For some reason, you don't know why, you cannot remember if she sings well or not. It might be an awful screeching sound, but your mind is a complete blank in that regard.
Which is actually very American of you.
Almost redneck.

Please admire these curvaceous hills. Don't even think of what they may look like, try to continue looking like you're working on a spreadsheet. Serious. As if your mind is fully absorbed by the import-export numbers. Gently rolling hills.....

I'm off today, and while I too like looking at gently rolling things, I do not pursue it at karaoke bars, because I remain keenly aware of the horrid noises, and I'm probably too old anyway. So instead I will head into Chinatown (six blocks away) for lunch in a short while, perhaps the chachanteng with the Toishanese bint who seems to hold me in scant regard. Which I do not mind. She and I have little in common, and she probably thinks that I smell nasty because of my pipe-smoking. But the food is decent, and it's fairly comfortable there, plus it's located close to where I'll be puffing away afterwards. Quiet alleys. No out-of-town tourists.

No downtown office workers screaming that I'm ruining their lungs think of the children you horrid tobacco fiend it's people like you that ruined this country and you're probably a meat eater puppies kittens butterflies evil bastard! Cough cough cough.


You know, Americans.



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MICROWAVE IT ALL!

In between angry doomscrolling one can read about Italian food. Which is a good way of decompressing. It's the moral equivalent of going ultra-violent on Republicans, but a hell of a lot better for one's mental health. Think happy thoughts. Think pine nuts, olive oil, and Parmigiano Reggiano. Your mental arteries will like that.

Add more garlic.

I am surprised, given all the maladjusted people we have in this country -- military vets, self-important yuppies, drugged-out suburban moms, and dutch Americans in the Midwest who fled religious freedom because they were too constipated, whose grandchildren vote the solid fascist ticket in fond remembrance of relatives (uncle Hendrik, his wife auntie Elsie, great grandcousin Koos-Paul's kids) who were collaborators during the war -- that we have not, as a society, gone full postal. We should be shooting each other, instead of debating useless symbolic acts supporting the Iranian people by bombing low-value targets in Tehran as many right wing settler Israelis moistly think we should because of oh boy whatever goldarned stupid rationale is current.

Maybe they're all holding onto their hats and holding off because the fast food franchise near their gated community is closing down and jobs are vanishing. How will they survive if they can't go to Darkeez and have a fry-burger cooked by underpaid illegals? Oh no they'll starve! It will be canned liver pâté and Hormell's chili just like in college! Over spaghetti noodles. Which are difficult, but they mastered that by reading the instructions on the package.

At work, the old rightwing pro-Trump hosebags in the backroom, when they weren't wetting themselves over televised sports, spent the entire weekend justifying the killing of Renee Good by Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis. Because god hates Somalis. And by gum, there ought to be many more such shootings. Why, they'll cheer it on and morally support it!

Myself, I morally support the burning down to the ground of all of Tiburon and Kentfield. That doesn't mean it's any better, though given the current situation much more desirable and minutely more likely. But only minutely. Sad.


Guillotines, firing squads, stringing up Mussolini upside down by his balls and pummeling him to death with rotten eggplants ..... these are all beautiful things, and the sounds they make are lovely. Definitely more garlic.




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BUT LET US NOT SPEAK OF THAT

In addition to screaming rowdy pissants in one part of the building, there were a number of quite well-behaved gentlemen at the other end. Members of the local pipe club had a social get-together involving very moderate drinking and a selection of lovely meat products while discussing tobacco and an aortic stent which one of the members is having installed later in the month, among other things. On the whole we're all getting older. Even though we like to think of ourselves as vibrant and energetic exceptionally clean cut teenagers.

Spiritually I am young and hale and hearty.
Not past fifty in the slightest!


And I think I speak for the other members present in that respect.

Though we may not look it. I doubt that any of us ever resembled staggering he-men or highschool jocks, being more into textual athletics and fact-based studies than feel-good track and field nonsense. I was probably the most sporty person there, seeing as I was wearing a football sweatshirt for a yeshiva which I never attended with a college football squad that actually doesn't exist. And as far as I'm aware all nearly ten thousand current bocherim in the body are into Mishnah Gemarah Talmud Torah.
They probably wouldn't know a pigskin from Adam.
Imagine a library filled with people.

Difference between pipe club members and regular Americans when stepping into a library is that pipe club members would exclaim "oh hey, books" and happily scatter all over the place, whereas everybody else would groan "oh crap, books", then hold their heads down and run for the exit. Most yeshivot, as you can well imagine, have books coming out the hoo-hah.
Sfarim to the rafters. Megilas, megilatum, dixit Ecclesientes, omnia megilas.

There was charcuterie, and fromage. Distillates and hot coffee. Several open tins of tobacco. Lively conversation that never once reached the loudness level of the sports morons at the other end of the builing. They go up to eleven.


Among the subjects we touched upon: Legends (an excellent pipe mixture formerly available from McClellands, recipe by Fred Hanna), Scott in Mexico who smokes both good tobacco and something indescribably nasty in his Sasienis and Dunhills, John O. in Georgia whose selfies aften feature his bespectacled visage partially hidden behind a massive beard, a large Castello, and clouds of smoke (Doblone D'Oro), Neil's fondness for Comoy Blue Ribands, Adrian who used to use a Dunhill or Dupont lighter to obscure the fright-warning on tobacco tins in the photographs that he posted, and of course the good old days. When you could smoke everywhere, and doctors lit up after surgery.


So I would say it was a good meeting. Not disturbed too much by the people at the other end of the building, who were all senile Republican dunderheads, very loudly having orgasms and soiling their tight tight TIGHT diapers when the local team won.



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THE COMING OF SPRING

One of the regulars, a sane man who is certainly not an idiot, came wandering in wearing what he usually does -- a teeshirt and jeans -- and complained that it was cold yesterday morning. Umm, ya think?

At that time, in addition to pants and two socks on each foot, I was wearing an A-shirt, a teeshirt, a plaid shirt, and a thick sweater-like garment. So I tssk, tssked to sympathize.

Again, I stress his un-idiotic qualities.


Sometime later a younger fellow with shorts and a teeshirt came in. I cannot say whether he was a non-idiot. He may have rubbed himself all over with bearfat before garbing himself as he thought best. Most other people who came in remarked that it was way too cold, a few waffled fondly about their vacation in Bora Bora. Cold affects each person differently.

A friend who lives in Singapore is presently visiting Amsterdam, where there is snow on the ground, people slipping on their ass on the street ice, and the little schoolkids are killing their taun tauns to shelted inside the cadaver surround by the warm wet pulsating flesh, like their ancestors did centuries ago. The Dutch normally wouldn't harm a fly, but this winter they are being driven to extremes.

He loves it. First visit. it's a fascinating place.

And there's cheese. He loves cheese.

Being a stoic phlegmatic type naturally I have nothing to say about current temperatures. It's all fine with me. I take it as it comes. Far be it from me to have any strong opinions positive or negative about weather patterns. I suspect that I've hardly ever said anything about the temperature either way.


Why, I hardly even noticed the piles of rigid frozen penguins on the way to the bus stop yesterday morning. Minor inconveniences! A man capable of gingerly stepping over streetpeople frozen solid would have no problem with stiff little tuxedo lumps.

Oh look, an addict perished in mid injection.
The needle is halfway to his lips!

There are no icebergs in SF Bay. None.
I don't care what you've heard.
Fox News falsehoods.



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THE FEET

Today somebody claimed that their medications were messing up their mind, too many pills. Three pills. Blood pressure pills. Three medications I take too, same dosages. In addition to three other pills I've been prescribed. None of this messes up my mind.
Possibly because I actually have one. A mind, that is.

But we're talking special people here. Entitled Republican hosebags in Marin County.
So anything is possible. It's a blank slate.

Also, as a white person, I'm supposed to know all about Christianity.


Sometimes conversations slide very perceptably into quicksand and wildfire territory. There is a giant anaconda slithering around in the rhetorical underbrush. Which, it turns out, is stunted gimpi gimpi trees with microscopic sharp hollow hair on the undersides of the leaves that can inject a toxin into your skin if you touch them. It will burn for weeks, and recurr months later, because those microscopic hollow hairs are embedded in the layer immediately under the dermis, all fiery fiery fiery. You are distracted from the giant anaconda.

You sometimes wish that you were a capybara.
I don't know nuttin' about Jesus.
Never met the dude.

Also, I discovered that Mandarin speakers are in some ways very similar to American tourists in Mexico. Analogous, sort of. Remember how Americans believed that if you just repeated something several times, louder each time, the man with the donkey would eventually understand? Where is the hotel, señor, the hotel? Ho. Tel! Ho. Tel!

So, if you just shout repeatedly into the translation app on your cell phone, eventually it will translate more clearly. There was an hour plus of that. I'm sorry, my dear loud analogous northern dude, but have you considered learning Cantonese? Or German?

Something about production codes, inventory control numbers, the customs (海關局) office at the port of entry somewhere in mainland China, postal declaration forms .....

Yeah, my lunch was interrupted. It was late and short.
I spent too much time on my feet.
Which now hurt.



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PUBLIC TRANSIT CONSIDERATIONS

Yesterday's bus rides were all about hands. Three lovely pairs of hands, belonging to women between twenty and thirty years of age, I think. The youngest pair of hands had elegant nails, deliciously tapering fingers. I've seen her before on the bus. On the way back I was looking at the soft white hands of the Financial District commutress next to me, rapidly tapping on her cell-phone, then switching my eye to the charming appendages holding on for dear life on the other side. A veritable digital smorgasbord as we rocketed across the hill.


In high school art class one year we were told to do a pencil drawing of our other hand. It is surprisingly difficult to make it realistic or accurate. That year I became aware of artists' sketches and etchings of hands as a direct consequence.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were also many representations of feet.
But I haven't looked for them. Feet are seldom in view.
Though I'll admit that they can be nice.


I also tend to notice foreheads. And eyebrows.


These and other bodily elements hardly ever feature in my dreams while I sleep. "Did you get a good look at the woman who assaulted you, sir?" Yes! "What did she look like?" Well, she had hands.

Need not have been an assault on my person, it could have been a miscreant robbing a bank or sideswiping an official vehicle. She had hands. I just know it.

You should seize the serpent just below the head, so that it cannot twist and bite you. Sound advice from a wilderness expert involving hands. It will struggle and curl around your arm in desperate attempts to get away. But keep holding on tightly.
By no means relinquish your grip.

There are, as you probably expect, no snakes on the bus from the Financial District.
Wrong climate, wrong environment, and no tickets or bus passes.
Small rodents may ride confidently.


Naturally I pride myself on knowing what to do if there is ever a snake on the bus.
Jump up, scream, and get the hell off, is what.



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YOUR OWN EYES AND EARS

By now every sentient being has probably seen all the videos, as also numerous current and former law enforcement officers analysing what happened. As well as the pandering bullshit from Texas Republican stooge Wesley Hunt, and the absolutely sickening spew emanating from notorious sofa-abuser J. D. Vance.

Given their own actions and conduct, DHS wouldn't know an act of domestic terrorism if it came up and bit them. And no one should trust Kristi Noem further than they can spit.

Panicking with your car isn't domestic terrorism. But shooting federal agents from ambush right in the nuts conceivably might be. However, that's just a thought.
And, given our insanely liberal gun laws, a possibility.

Which Pam Bondi probably welcomes.
Lubriciously.


Indeed, all right thinking Republicans and Fox News watchers keenly look forward to violence inflicted on American citizens. Especially the dastardly common folk.
With whom, like proper Christians, they cannot identify.

Understandably.

If, through some queer mischance, you find yourself shooting a federal agent right in the nuts from ambush, I sincerely hope that you do so while praying for his immortal soul and giving him candy. It is absolutely crucial that you make a positive impression.
Also, don't be a single mom or write poetry.
At that time.



Besides, anti-authoritarian vigilante tactics are a terrible and deadly idea, unless, like America's military thinkers advise, you use overwhelming force. Shock and awe.
Precisely like we're telling the protestors in Iran to do.

A four door sedan is just not a tank.


And always remember that Fox News welcomes your opinions.
Please express them in a "news-worthy" way.
Enunciate clearly while filming.


Please note that I am not adivising you to shoot anyone right in the nuts. It's unhealthy.
RFK Jr. says that it causes autism. Precisely like acetominophen.
And the meningitis vaccine.



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TACITURN GRUMBLING

It went below fifty degrees Fahrenheit during the night. Absolutely horrid. I know that I seem obsessive about this, especially compared to the situation in the rest of the world, where the weather is far worse. Africa and Amsterdam, for instance, where the streets are covered in snow, public transit is faltering, and children are starving. Thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Two good friends who moved there to get away from Trump's Americans and because they love Surinamese music though they don't know it yet, now have a lovely view of grachten and tall canalhouses underneath frigid blankets. Also, they've got the flu. Their boys have the run of the house, mom and dad aren't leaving the bed, but spend the whole day sniffling, hacking, and wheezing. Which I can assure you is the epitome of Amsterdammishness.

Here, because it's San Francisco, we don't need to do that. We manfully stride through frigid conditions hovering around fifty Fahrenheit with occasional freezing rain that closes four lanes at Lucky Drive in Marin with joy in our hearts and smiles on our faces. Rictus.

Because rictus is a way of life.


Sometimes we have great optimism about the weather. Which at this time of year is entirely misplaced. What with being colder than dammit Cleveland. For which I blame Republicans.

For the first pipe smoked today, after a strong cup of Java, one needed an A-shirt, a T-shirt, a plaid shirt, a heavy sweater-like garment, and a coat originally purchased for Canadian winter conditions. Plus two layers of sock. And pants, of course.

As well as a stalwart and resolute character.

Mild insanity.

This morning I strolled past the glue works on top of Nob Hill where the orphans labour, past the municipal poor house and the shelter for indigent migrants from the interior, and froze my wobbly parts off while enjoying some fine Virginia flake in my briar. Because my apartment mate is a complete non-smoker. If I weren't such a considerate man, I should be in the teevee room underneath my pile of leaves, all warm and toasty.

But that will be the second smoke of the day. After she has gone off to work, I've shut her bedroom door, opened a window or two for ventilation, and there's either a second cup of coffee or perhaps a spot if tea.


In Amsterdam it will get even colder than it presently is. The weather reports are end-of-times in their severity. Far fewer bicyclists on the roads, even more phlegmatic muttering about the temperatures, and because they're mostly Dutch over there, more cups of coffee and fried hot snacks. My friends who have moved over there are probably not yet fully accustomed to grease bombs as a survival strategy. They may even be sticking to a restrained American coffee schedule, not realizing that being wired to the tits makes everything better.

The Dutch, by the way, are not into frothy overly sweet American style coffee drinks with zero fat dairy, syrup, and sprinkles. Small shot of high octane with a tiny cookie on the edge of the saucer, and a ryo ciggie made with dark shag tobacco (a reminder of the days of colonial exploitation), in an oud bruin café that smells of damp clothing and various fumes.

The word for mildew, in Dutch, is 'gezellig'.
It's a national characteristic.
Like snert.



I think I need to stress again that I am a considerate man.




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THE COLDER BLOOD

Both of them eventually showed up at the bakery, and complained about the cold. With which I can understand and sympathise, as I am sure that in recent years it has gotten significantly colder. Despite what tee-shirted young people may lead you to believe. They're just commies who want to show off their piercings and tattoos. They also want you to freeze to death, but that's neither here nor there.

When I left the house I soon discovered that I was slightly underdressed.
A-shirt. Tee-shirt. Lumberjack shirt. Heavy winter coat.
Should have had a sweater on too.


Errand in Chinatown, lunch at a chachanteng where the small woman who refers to me as "older brother" was one of the waitstaff today. Well, I am indeed older than her. And the term she uses (大佬 'taai lou') can also mean boss man or the dude, depending on context, and also whether this is a Hong Kong gangster movie from the eighties.

Pipe. Groceries. Tea time. Old dudes.

If the door of a local business is wide open, that's warm and inviting, and signifies that they enthusiastically seek the business of people walking past. Who should keep their gloves and scarves on at all times, unless they are young people with bare stomach rolls showing, and tattoos or piercings that deserve everyone's avid attention.

Older gentlemen may become Karens.

It was still light when I got home. Ended up putting on another garment for the hour before the evening's heating kicked in. Posted a few meanspirited repsonses to an old friend who appears to have gone all rightwing conspiracist nutter. Also reminded him that the venomous dingbat who got shot on January sixth thoroughly deserved it, and good people should line up to piss on her grave.

This blogger is a firm believer in urinary pilgrimage.




On other news: ICE murdered someone today, Noem and Trump lied about it, and Trump's apologists are making 'baa' sounds. Our political leaders are utter scum.



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NUMBNUTS IN THE HALLS OF POWER

Our president, who can't dance worth diddly, has ugly little hands, and didn't get awarded the Nobel Peace prize (because he did nothing at all to deserve it), dominates the news. Over in one of the idiot red states several people believe he was sent by Jesus, as if there wasn't plenty wrong with this festering garbage dump of a country already.

The last presidential election was in a very great part influenced by rot and fermentation. See, grampa Dingo was sent outside with his cigar to go smoke near the compost pile and not stink up the house. In his loneliness and senility he thought that the curdled milk and pungent remains of last weeks teevee dinners started talking to him.

It is precisely because of that situation that I would advise letting him smoke inside, in the warm embrace of his family, where he can listen to rational people.

It gets cold out there near the spoiled cabbages around the end of October. That effects bloodflow to the brain. The poor old bastard started praying.


Actually, if you didn't want him voting for 'Orange Jabba', you should have left him outside to catch peumonia and die, instead of letting him back in.


For all of this I blame cigars. Over the years I have encountered hundreds of cigar smokers, and nineties of them are cavemen.

There are very good reasons why we don't allow cigar smoking in grammar schools.

Cigars started taking over when morons and bankers decided that pipe smoking was just too difficult, dammit, as Texans they had better things to do than fuss with a pipe tool every now and then. A cigar is easy; just blast if with a four burner torch (penis substitute) till the tip is incendiarized, and then act cool and hip. Like a rap star or cattle rancher. Puff puff.

Whereas pipe smoking leads to neurosis, attention to detail, and sometimes a scientific bent. Thoughtfulness, perspicacity, and intellectual rigour.


That's NOT what this country is about. Most Americans think with their sexual organs.
We've got entire states where the population hasn't used a brain in years.
The bloody Christians are piling out of the woodwork.
Mental defectives. Who voted.

Get rid of those putrid cigars.
Smoke a pipe instead.



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THERE ARE BEASTS ABOUT

Sometimes I wonder how my apartment mate puts up with me. It cannot be easy having a grumpy eccentric Dutchman in one's living space, even though she is Asperger enough to be oblivious to very much unless it is specifically spelled out, in clear unequivocal language. But that begs the question how she enjoys so many British shows, where sly insinuation and dry snootiness are key elements. Most of them are detective shows with a dead body, so there is that. Dead bodies are always interesting. How did they end up being that way? Who is the culprit? How will the little old lady amateur detective solve the case? Is it poetic justice?
Or a resolution that has a moral value? Was it the mushroom soup?

Personally, I tend to avoid mushroom soup. Not because I am suspicious of it, but because realistically there is so much more you can do with fungi besides simmering it till it falls apart.

British cooking is not known for a judicious treatment of mushrooms.
Speaking of which, Double Mushroom Chicken is very nice.
It's standard chachanteng fare. 雙菇雞飯。
Rather good with rice.


Don't know why that came to mind, as that wasn't what I had for lunch. Something with tofu and hot sauce, rice, Hong Kong milk tea, regular tea. I've gotten used to, and quite fond of, actually, the standard hot sauce they have there. It's rather precisely like sambal oelek. Which is mother's milk to some Dutchmen, and should always be in your pantry.

As usual I lit my pipe afterwards and strolled toward to bus stop near the place run by the Shanghainese woman. Which is also an excellent place for eaties. It's further down toward the Financial District, and not as crowded as the stops on Grant or Stockton. If you time it right, the bus won't be quite packed.


There were white women singing very loudly and badly at the karaoke place a few hours later, so the bookseller and myself headed directly somewhere else. As I get older I'm becoming more like Herbert's dad in the Holy Grail; no singing!
Guards, make sure of that!

Life, generally speaking, is too short to let anyone go full Herbert.


The bookseller is hosting "the broets" tomorrow evening. Think people somewhat like the Beat Generation, but with considerably more talent and brains. Seafood stew (cioppino), baguettes, salad, cheese. Bottles of wine. Coffee and dessert.

And probably cogent commentary about our leaders.
Delivered with educated diction.


Sadly, I neither drink wine nor poetize.
And I would frighten the youngsters.
As my self-portrait above shows.
Growls, thumps, and roaring.



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SOMETIMES IN TWILIGHT

It seems that for very much of my life I've been looking in rather than actually being there.
In Valkenswaard, as an American growing up in overseas, I never felt truly 'inside', though pre- and post high school was less so. Berkeley was a foreign place to me, and those first few months I was offensively home-sick and determined to hate the place. When I moved to North Beach, where everybody seems on the Asperger scale, we were all 'not in'.
So less outside. Peculiar, but one foot in the doorway.

In Chinatown, where I am by definition 'not in', being a Caucasian, I actually feel slightly more in. Seeing as I can sort of speak Chinese and read the menu. Cantonese people are in some ways very accepting of oddity, very much more so if you speak their language or even look like them. You've met them halfway (well, not at all on the 'look like them' page, though I am recognizably human), and although you may smell "different" (as a pipesmoking older white person that's a given), talk funny (no, really, where are you actually from?), and probably eat too much or not enough or something else, they'll treat you as an equal and sort of a recognizable quantity. At least you're not an idiot.

And in any case, over the years no one has made snide remarks about my accent and way of talking, unlike regular America, or suggested that I go back to where ever the heck I came from. They mind their own business. A recent conversation made that clear, which I belatedly realized. What was my name? And age? And did I come to Chinatown often?
How had I learned Cantonese? And what did I do?

Remarkably, my marital status didn't come up.
Neither did place of birth or whatever.

Usually, once they've seen me once or twice, people will automatically speak Cantonese, even though my fluency in that language is stumblesome most of the time.
Let's just say I often bang into conversational walls or furniture.

There are a number of places where I tend to go fairly often, in addition to Chinese Hospital and their pharmacy there (refills!), my bank (they recognize me at all of the locations) and my favourite provisioners. Restaurants and bakeries. It's a question of decent treatment, comfort, courtesy, a sense of privacy, and stuff which I like eat.

In no particular order:

牛麵王 UTOPIA CAFÉ
地址：139 Waverly Place, San Francisco CA 94108.
電話： 415-956-2902，

P0rk trotters with fermented tofu over rice (南乳豬手飯 'naam yü chü sau faan'), stewed beef with chu hou paste and rice (柱侯牛腩飯 'chü hau ngau naam faan').


荷里活茶餐廳 NEW HOLLYWOOD BAKERY & RESTAURANT
地址：652 Pacific Avenue,
San Francisco, CA 94133.
電話：415-397-9919.

Darn good porkchops and rice (豬扒飯 'chyu baa faan') . Also good dumplings in soup (韭菜豬肉水餃 'gau choi chyu yiuk suei gaau') .


六富餃子 TODAY FOOD
地址：601 Kearny Street,
San Francisco, CA 94108.
電話：415-994-1516.

Northern style dumplings (水餃 'sui gaau'), very good. And more. Mandarin speakers, btw.


金門腸粉 RICE ROLL EXPRESS
地址：1131 Stockton Street,
San Francisco, CA 94133.
電話：415-939-2753.

Excellent pork cheung fun (豬肉腸粉 'chyu yiuk cheung fan'), pork liver cheung fun (豬肝腸粉 'chyu gon cheung fan'):, and shrimp cheung fun (鮮蝦腸粉 'sin haa cheung fan').


森記糕點餐廳 MA'S DIMSUM & CAFE
地址：1315 Powell Street,
San Francisco, CA 94133.
電話：415-788-3532.

A large selection of claypot rice (煲仔飯 'pou chai faan').
I have not yet tried the eel (黃鱔 'wong sin').


港新寶燒腊小食 KAM PO (H.K.) K. - KAM PO KITCHEN
地址：801 Broadway,
San Francisco, CA 94133.
電話：415-982-3516.

Roast duck (燒鴨 'siu ngaap'), roast duck over rice (燒鴨飯 'siu ngaap faan'), roast pork (燒肉 'siu yiuk'), charsiu (叉燒), etcetera.


Yes, there are others. But these sort of stand out.
And of course once I leave I light my pipe.
As I think everyone should do.
Both genders, all ages.
It's natural.




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OFFENDING THE ANCESTORS

Yesterday, because it was cold and beastly outside, I stayed in for lunch. Roast duck chunks on fried rice with a little pork fat, and vegetable matter. Pear is vegetable matter, and actually has a nice texture when cooked properly. And I can tell the Nigel Ng and all of his ancestors are totally horrified. Aduh, banget sekali, lah! Oh by the way, chilipaste too.
Triple tablespoonsful, hot sambals, for flavour.
Plus a hefty squeeze citrus.

It was quite delicious, and did not adversely affect my digestive system.
That latter is of critical importance, you know.
After all, we have Texans.

See, the dominant culture in the United States is Anglo-Irish, with the predictable effect on food in this country. Nigel Ng thinks they can still be taught, because he's naturally an optimist with a sunny outlook, but he's wrong. Give up already, dude. It's hopeless.

Indeed, there are other cultures that have contributed to our culinary melting pot. Mexican (bacon-wrapped grilled hot dogs), Chinese (sweet and sour everything), Italian (thoroughly awful college town pizza), and German (Oscar Mayer). But that's minor.

Sadly, lutefisk did not catch on. Ever.
Not even the sandwiches.

Personally, I feel that it can't really be called "fusion" unless it includes lutefisk. It's either just pretentious or peculiar otherwise. And, if cooked by culinary academy graduates, probably mediocre and over-priced. Tattoos cost money after all.

The weather should be semi-passable today. Very minor precipitation if any, and low to mid fifties. So at some poiny I'll head over to Chinatown for the bank, followed by lunch at the regular Tuesday chachanteng, after which a pipe smoked while wandering around.

Maybe laundry in the morning, maybe an executive decision to smell mildly funky.

That mysterious air of mustiness may have been a contributing factor in my lack of a love life for over a decade, but those years have been filled with sambals, pipe tobacco, books, and copious dollops of sambal. Far better for the equilibrium than a hairy situation with another person who would want to reform me and correct my evil ways. And honestly, the stuffed animals don't seem to mind.


Also, there has been tea.

Lots of it.



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SUN-DRENCHED PARADISE

It seems like I must admit defeat. It's far too cold outside to smoke my pipe in comfort while taking a walk, at least if I'm not dressed like an igloo, and someone proudly identifying him or herself as 'Anonymous' commented under a previous post "You are a foul progressive troll. Enjoy the high taxes and crime in sunny Cali." I do not know what hurts more. The fact that it's close to fifty degrees with the windchill factor making it seem like Autumn in Nova Zembla, OR that some dingus representing the entire South and Midwest wishes to impugn my humanity while expressing envy at our climate.

I'm sorry, it's just not particularly sunny at the moment.
At least not here. Where you are, it probably is.
Texas is a far sunnier place right now.
Also, filled with morons.

And idiots, goombas, and inbred Jed.
But undoubtedly sunnier.

Trolls, by the way, are valiant and productive individuals. Admittedly not Christian, and quite opposed to those fiends, but as you noted "progressive". So likely to believe in evolution, science, and vaccination. As well as the equality of all. Excepting Christians.

One of the reasons that I am more down on Christians recently than usual is that one of the senescent dingoes in the backroom has recently discovered Jayzus, which does not in any way add value to his already pretty effing repulsive personality.

He is, of course, a rightwing conservative.
Not progressive but the opposite.

Perhaps I should mention that the cities with the highest crime rates are all in Red States? Fits in with the flourishing of disease and religion there, I guess. Along with that worship of penis substitutes like guns and pick-up trucks.


Also worth mentioning in that regard: venereal diseases, diabetes, and alcoholism.
Plus greasy junkfood that makes pepto-bismol sales sky-rocket.
Acid indigestion is a fact of life there.


It's been raining most of the day. I went out only once and was miserable. Darkness, gloom, cold, and wetness. There was a gibbering street person in the next block over. She spoke with an accent. Probably a transient red stater. Filthy and diseased.
Probably darn well illiterate too.


I'm looking forward to February.



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GETTING THINGS OFF CHESTS

Shortly after midnight, our president and leader for life took a massive dose of Adderal, and spent forty five minutes on the internet demonstrating calm, precise, executive thinking.
His good Christian god-fearing followers rejoiced in response.

At work, over the last three days, I heard the Maga boys in the backroom in even-tempered and logical fashion demolish every argument the liberal faction there brought forth, with balanced argument and well-founded viewpoints.

They and our beloved commander in chief are credits to the conservative cause.


Please pretend that I have a straight face when I say this.


Which I don't, but for rhetorical purposes that's neither here nor there. I just hope that when all this is finally over we can put a lot of rightwingers and alleged Christians in front of firing squads and blow them off the planet.

And furthermore, a pox on all the goddamned red states.
Go bugger yourselves. And your family members.
You are all stupid, depraved, and insane.
Especially Florida and Texas.

One thing that keeps me cheerful is the ever-increasing likelihood of people dying of food poisoning at Cracker Barrel or violent brawls at Wafflehouse. Or getting shot when malnourished corn and soybean farmers try to rob the Piggly Wiggly.
Also, choking on a mega-fatty hamberder.


On an entirely unrelated matter, the tariffs have not made us all rich, and the Republicans are still breaking the law and being enablers and apologists for a senile chronic fecal flow in his absorbent, disposable undergarments egomaniac, degenerate, and pedophile.
Which is what they would clearly like to be when they finally grow up.
Release the Epstein files, you scum-sucking gangsters.


By the way: American Whiskey is garbage.
Trash made by trash for trash.



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FLOODS ON THE FREEWAY

Overheard recently, from an old broadcast show: "the gun was in the glove compartment". Which tells you exactly what era we're talking about; from the early forties till the the early seventies, the gun was ALWAYS in the glove compartment. What a charming conceit, naming the stash bin for the Saturday Night Special a "glove compartment".
Never any gloves. Frequently guns.

But a car company cannot call it "the gun compartment". It just doesn't sound right. Driving is supposed to be luxurious, passing time in a nice way or getting somewhere in smooth safe comfort. Not a dash down a dangerous road ending in murder.


I'll have to ask Little White Nipple Dude about all this the next time I see him. I bet in addition to his many other talents (fighter pilot, astronaut in training, nuclear physicist, chaplain in the Marines, AND podiatrist / brain surgeon) he's also a detective and marketing genius. He was in today. For three hours. My life is reasonably complete. And I am a very tolerant man.
Good lord, I'm a friggin' saint.

He smoked two pipefulls in that time. I filled up a sandblasted Charatan Canadian and smoked it while I worked. To calm my nerves, seeing as I was in the presence of awful genius. Which would stagger a normal person, oh my golly yes.

Most of the old senile codswallopers were in at that time too.

Including John who knows everything plus Jesus. At the end of the day I started speaking to him about his narrow urethra, benign prostate enlargement, lazy bladder, and how I should stick a finger up there to check if it's gotten worse unless you go to the loo right now so that we can lock up on time instead of waiting for you to leisurely tinkle for ten minutes precisely when we want to get the hell out of here for crapsakes man go. One of the other gentlemen present uttered the phrase "too much information", whereupon I pointed out that precisely because everybody heard it, none of them would need their fingers, would they?
Don't thank me, I'm a giver. And honestly, I don't give a ratsass.

[John is in the process of being born again. It's probably a breech birth. Quite likely there will be complications. I would call a doctor, just in case. As well as child protective services and an intervention, bloody cultist.]

If y'all leave now you won't be stuck in slow traffic up near Corte Madera where the road dips. I've heard all about that. From many different people. And I've acted suprised and staggered every time some tiresome incontinence pants wetter opened his pie hole.



Anyhow, damned glad to be off work for a few days.
The old bastards will keep till I return.
Or maybe they won't.



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THE BATTERY IS ALIVE! ALIVE!

Thanks to my apartment mate I know that there was a radio series named "suspense", sponsored by Roma Wines. The finest wines California shipped world wide, and enjoyed even by Europeans. She listens to old episodes. In the evening.

Yesterday early she went off to the place where she volunteers on Saturday, and over the course of the morning prepared several large urns of coffee because the other volunteers are zombies at that hour and need their wake-up jolt. She sampled each batch, to see if the brew was strong enough, pleasingly full bodied, and when I got home last night she was still wired to the eyebrows.

Sometimes she's so far up the spectrum that time and space have lost all meaning. Consequently I got to hear "I'll Plant My Own Tree" from Valley Of The Dolls several times. Plus a voiced mimicry of the sabre dance from Aram Katchaturian's ballet Gayane.

Her Aspergers puts my Aspergers to shame.
Hands down. I shiver and quake.
No questions asked.
I'm in awe.


Mmm, when I get home from dealing with delinquent old farts, I need a cup of coffee and a bit of quiet time. A buzzing and flitting hummingbird isn't it. Conversationally, I am spent for while. Same reason I get to work early. That way there's a full hour and twenty minutes before there's any chance of oddity. Doctor Sam might show up shortly after nine, but he's rational, liberal, and has a ready wit, besides not being inclined to saying much while enjoying coffee and a cigar, so no bigggie, no sweat.

My apartment mate has never gotten fully acquainted with fully blasted caffeinated drinks, and because of that, several cups of decent coffee may have jangled her up. Precisely like a restaurant full of Cantonese people having dim sum and several pots of tea. They leave wreathed in smiles and so totally zotsed that all of them are vibrating. Weeeeeee!




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