HOBBITS BANE

The reason why Gandalf smokes a long churchwarden pipe is two-fold: he's too darn vain to wear his reading specs except when he absolutely needs them, and he doesn't want to set his beard on fire. Entirely unlike him, my beard is neatly almost obsessively trimmed short, because I am more fastidious than him, and reading specs are my constant companion. Not only because of printed matter. There might be a coffee cup or fork on its way to my mouth. Or, hypothetically, a pipe. Either lit, or not yet. I like to see what I'm setting fire to.

Another point of difference: my stick is not absurdly long. Unlike Gandalf, I do not need to keep hobbitses in line. Nasty verminous hobbitses. We hates them.

Actually, we don't have hobbits here. We've got bums, streetpeople, and fentanyl freaks bent over in the zombie pose forming perfect toadstool shapes that one could very well leapfrog over if one was so inclined. Inadvisable. They'd topple over and take you to court.

Maybe those are the hobbits.

There were three very strange people who walked by as I was smoking my pipe while waiting in Chinatown tonight. Less than half a dozen neighborhood residents. Some stoners, and a score of tourists. And a man wearing a scungy wool coverlet and naught else.

I could have clobbered nasty hobbitses, had there been any.
That's always a possible use of the stick.
Hobbit control.

It ended up being an early evening. The karaoke place was filled with screeching orcs, and the place to which we usually bail out had a new person behind the counter who informed us that she was closing in ten minutes the very second we walked in. And I note that Tat Yee had already left. Another bar was filled with squiffed marketing types, and the last possibility was closed tonight. There is a fifth bar which we haven't visited, but it's relatively new and looks like it has designer cocktails for yuppies. Carefully curated.

So after we left the burger place, there was nothing.
Perhaps the hobbitses are taking over.
We disapproves of them!



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WE ARE NOT AT WAR!

You don't need to ask permission if it's not a war, so, as per our inspired leadership, we are officially not at war. Maybe Iran is, we don't know, but we aren't. It's time for a peace prize, as I think you will all agree. Congress certainly does. And by the end of his third term, we will have forgotten all about it. Which congress will also agree to do.

And, given the calibre and morals of his supporters, it is best to agree.
Because you do NOT want several million trailerparkers angry.
It might affect the quality of methamphetamine.
Which is proudly made right here.
It's all-American!


Like war.


By the way: He aced three cognitive tests. Absolutely blew everybody else taking it out of the water. And recognized the giraffe that bit him amost immediately. Yes, it was in the room with him. It was huge. Dangerous animals, giraffes. Lock them up. Everybody always says "lock up the giraffes, mr. President". USA! USA!

Congress agrees. They always do.

Several months ago I also aced a cognitive test -- banana chair sunrise -- but I seldom boast about it. Because entirely unlike our president I still have all my marbles -- banana chair sunrise -- and can take such things for granted.

In about five weeks there's another doctor's appointment.
I wonder what three words they'll have then.
Not banana chair sunrise.

Will giraffe be one of them? Apparently there are giraffes around every corner, waiting to bite the president. We've got to do something! Can't have wildlife trying to eat him, he's almost a god, second hand of Jesus, a divine being all aglow, it's just not done!


Bad giraffe, no president for you!

Go bite a trailerparker instead. We have tonnes of those. There's darn well millions of trailerparkers, they're a dime a dozen, but only one president.



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THE UNTRAVELING

Recently Bill and Raymond returned from Thailand and the Philippines. Where Mike had also been, as well as Bahrain. Tom went to Japan, T. went to New Orleans, a friend left for Tahiti, and Jingo has been to Italy. Three others have also been to Italy, and someone else is making plans to go, probably in Summer or Fall. Egypt is on the list.
Another person is heading to Bali to party fabulously.
B. and S. are going to Turkey soon.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting at home eating mangoes.
Tiny little baby mangoes.
Delicious.

Because I find it insufferable when the temperatures are above the seventies I'm actually glad that I'm not going anywhere. Several of the places mentioned are frequently warmer than that. Most of the time. There was a trip to Honduras planned, but that fell through.
It would have been much earlier in the year anyway. February, March.
It's currently ninety degrees Fahrenheit there now.

San Francisco is sixty. Overcast.
I'm fine with that.

I hope they still have those little mangoes when I go shopping.
The tropics can be eaten even if you don't visit.

Centuries ago wealthy people in Northern Europe built orangeries for precisely that purpose. This allowed periwigged notables to feast on luscious fruits, even if they were freezing their silken kneebreeches off. The empress dowager of China loved lychees, which were not native to anywhere even close to the capital. Brought in by fast horse relays.

She would have hated their native climate. Malarial, wild, exotic, hot weather, and there were allegedly even cannibals and run-away convicts in the hills! How ghastly!
My heavens, these are sweet. Mmmmm!

天哪，這些太甜了。嗯嗯！

Or, in a language spoken closer to lychees than Mandarin, and easier for everyone else, "waa, buah-buah ini manis sekali. Alamak!"

The poet and statesman Su Tung Po (Su Shi 蘇軾), who was exiled to the far south in hopes that he would die of something tropical and thus cease being a nuisance, wrote a poem about lychees that can only be considered eloquent gloating on his part:


食荔枝 ('sik lai ji')

羅浮山下四時春，盧橘楊梅次第新。日啖荔枝三百顆，不辭長作嶺南人。
['lo fau saan haa sei si chun, lou gwat yeung mui chi dai san, yat taam lai ji saam baak fo, bat chi cheung jok ling naam yan.']


"Below Luofo mountian it is Spring year round, the loquats and bayberries are ripe again, I've feasted on lychees three hundred times today, and do not wish to ever stop being a resident of Lingnan." One can almost hear the "neener neener neener' in his voice.

Longan and lychee are available nearly year-round on Stockton Street.
They are delicious and tropical.



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THEY ARE ALL EVIL!

Like everybody, I am thrilled that our three year old baby, oops sorry I meant our respected and revered president pardon me, can identify a girafe. Millions of people have never seen a giraffe and would not know one if it came up and bit them in the gand, but Donald J. Trump immediately recognized him through the power of Jesus and promptly ordered him to leave this country and return to Africa. Then he called Putin to tell him what he had done.

Truly, we are blessed. Paula White agrees.

So does Kash Patel. Hi Kash!


If you aren't thrilled, you are probably a sicko Democrat and should be thrown in jail.
Or deported.


Please do NOT from the foregoing think that I consider very much of this country a stinking hellhole filled with ignorant yokels who are happy to get ripped off by religious charlatans and always elect conmen and monsters. Far from it; I truly appreciate my fellow Americans in the vast interior as warrm charitable folks happy to treat their fellows kindly, welcome the foreigner, and radiate their intrinsic goodness to the rest of the world. And Putin.
There is NO sneering sarcasm here. None. Far from it. Bless you.

THIS IS A GIRAFFE

And Rudolhp Giuliani should live many long years. Till one hundred and twenty.


By the way, the Straight of Hormuz is open, through the grace of the lord and Donald 'The Blessed Virgin' Trump, and anyone who says otherwise is a stinking commie, and probably gay and a foreigner. And should be shot. Or in any case barred from office.

We're the greatest country on planet earth. Or any planet.

We will outlaw all giraffes.



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ENOUGH SAID NOW STOP

At work I babysit a backroom with elderly gentlemen of the insane rightwing persuasion. Who normally are too busy clenching to be much of a problem, except when a subcontinental riles them up. And while I realize that I will probably not leave that place for quite a while, despite being mere months away from full retirement age, largely because one must stay active in order to keep the joints, guts, and brain from seizing up like a block of concrete, such as for instance the retired former member of the judicial branch who has totally drunk the Kool-aid and is now een oude verkrampte stuk werk you wouldn't want sensitive OR sensible kinfolk to come near, I am mighty happy that I do not have to associate with those men on my days off. They are only incidentally part of my social universe, which is like a Venn diagram with several non-overlapping circles. And we're going to keep it that way. Because I do not want my friends to do time for murdering poisonous old farts. All of whom are residents of Marin County. Which is welcome to them.

The subcontinental is a typical Punjabi. Likes stirring things up when he gets bored. Stirring the pot, so to speak. Which is very irritating, because I'd prefer ALL of them to be quiet.

Tomorrow is a day off. I shall unwind, and at some point eat at a place none of the bastards would be caught dead in, because the good stuff is all in Chinese and they would not like it anyway -- no kung pao or sweet'n sour, or eggrolls, or crab rangoon -- and where ninety nine point nine nine nine nine percent of the clientele do not habitually speak Karen, itch'n spritch, or right wing white dingus language.

Their wine list is non-existent. And there is no beer either.

I'm very much looking forward to this.

I need the break.




After three days of pit vipers and Marin County, Oh boy.




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THE TEMPTING PLACES

MSN Personal News seems to think that I am a sports fan. It is inconceivable to them that anyone wouldn't be. And I will concede that seeing someone doing something with skill that came from years of practice, dedication, verve, talent, and surplus energy channeled into non-destructive behaviour, can in its own way be quite fascinating. That said, I think I should prefer to watch an organ transplant and read the patient's medical casefile instead.
Why isn't that a thing?

Isn't there something that involves small nerdy brainiacs doing something not quite so extroverted that they could offer to bring to my attention instead? Clever tool use?


And no, I am not interested in adding gelatine to some mystery ingredient to lose several sizes, or any of the fabulous articles telling me about some substance consumed daily by seniors which inevitably leads to dementia. The substance shall remain a mystery, as I will not click any of those links, and the dementia item articles require the reader to be well on their way to fooldom to scope out the fabulous findings which an ever-changing array of snake-oil sites wish one to read and believe, and probably purchase a miracle purge that overturns or counters the effects. Consuming televised sports on a daily basis turns people into brain-dead fools. Don't bother looking for other excuses.

Again: small brainy extroverts. Something brilliant.

Imagine. At the end of a darkening street in the city bright lights beckon one in. A hospitable place where research scientists and graduate students of many genders congregate while remaining seperate -- group solitude -- to do various things by themselves that involve slide rules and beakers, sometimes looking at each other's equipment, and making admiring statements about "interesting reading, that", and "must be the sample size".

Do not interpret that in nasty ways! I know you people!
It's all about inflated balls and glutei maxima!
The crap that goes on in your brains.
I'm disappointed in you.



To prove that you are human, please click on every square that shows somewhere you might hide during an uprising by the machines.



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ALWAYS PACK YOUR OWN BAGS

It has been exhausting. There was a birthday party with very expensive liquor, cigars, lobster claws, and gummies. It was exceedingly noisy. Many people enjoyed themselves immensely. Did I mention that it was noisy? Several times I was the only one who noticed the phone and answered it. By the time I left I was all jangly.

Group events are not my thing. But with enough coffee and tea I can put up with them, for the duration. At halloween parties I'm the one dressed like the invisible man. Always.

You can't see me? Good, it's working.
I'll tell you later that it was wonderful, gosh, you wouldn't believe! Fabulous.


A splendid gathering, lots of very good booze, lobster claws, caviar, crudites and shrimp. Gummies. Cigars. The young Pakistani lady with expensive taste in cigarettes came in.
We chatted pleasantly for a while. Her relatives still don't know that she smokes.
I think she was somewhat taken aback by the hullabaloo. As was I.
And I had been in it for several hours.


Apparently that's the most expensive cognac in the world. And that champagne, I've heard, costs a fortune. The vodka was rare and award-winning. I stuck with tea.

When I left I was one of three cold sober individuals. The hullabaloo was heading into its seventh hour by that time. All I wanted to do by then was reread some poems from the Tang era which I had remembered about halfway through the racket. I could not quite recall the precise phrasing, but it seemed very important.


Tea is marvelous for staying properly hydrated, good for the digestion, and helps you keep several steps ahead of foaming mobs. I highly recommend it. There are several decent brands of Pu Erh tea bags, as well as things like Shui Xian and Oolong.
Stimulating beverages are the basis of civilized life.


I always have extra tea bags in my coat pocket.
I'm a real boy scout in that regard.



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RABBIT RABBIT MAY 2026

Rabbit rabbit. For good luck. Why mentioning leporids is propitious on the first day of each month in the morning is quite beyond me, but far be it from me to contest a cherished ritual among very Waspy types. Especially as it's harmless. Which is unique for their cherished rituals. Or at least rather unusual and uncommon. We've got to encourage that.

Rabbit rabbit.

Four of my Facebook friends do the same. An Anglo, a Bengali, a Chinese person, and sometimes a Jewish Person. So like a beneficial disease it's spreading.

My apartment mate, a Cantonese American, is not quite sure if we're sane.
She's always had severe doubts about Wasp Americans.
Which is understandable.


I also have severe doubts about Wasp Americans. Y'all elected Trump.
That indicates a streak of insanity ten miles wide.
Have you considered straight jackets?

As a personal fashion statement?

One size fits all, and they're adjustable, so even those extra large people can wear them. Beer swilling jutzes, barbecue snarfing plus sized hick-bubbas, and every overweight diabetic dingo down in Dixie. Darn well everyone in the MAGA demographic.

Even bankers, marketing types, and billionaires.
Imagine cabinet members wearing them.
Every Republican you know.
Styling, dudes!
Zesty.


Rabbit rabbit.



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RATHER UNREAL TEA

Sometimes I'm a sucker for something new. Which means that today I tried beef dumplings. Specifically, something listed as "West Lake Beef Dumplings" (西湖牛肉水餃 'sai wu ngau yiuk suei gaau'). For which the internet turns up diddly-zip. So they might not actually exist. Still. Innovation. Good.

One must get out of the house and walk around a bit, lest one turn into a vegetable. Minor exercise is good for the guts, the circulation, and the mind. It gets the juices flowing and the synapses sparking. As well as alerting one to the weather and why certain alleyways in the Financial District need to be cleaned with high-powered water hoses.

The meal was enjoyable. Tender dumplings. Very few Chinese people. Odd.

I was reminded why I seldom go there. The milk tea was just okay, and a generous pour, but I have had much better. No silk stocking was involved. 唔係真正嘅港式奶茶。

Still, in the old days they didn't even have milk tea.
Or the same selection of dumplings.

Their menu is more interesting now.

The paradigm is constantly evolving.

Sadly, real Hong Kong Milk Tea is slowly losing the battle against that Taiwanese nightmare beverage with the fake flavours and indigestible humengous gummy balls. Probably because boobaliscious twitty-poos spend their money differently than old geezers, and are hipper to boot. The geezers mostly feel that milk tea of any kind is too new-fangled, and would be caught dead in any place with a young clientele.


This younger generation, bla bla bla, back in my day, kids, get off my lawn, and with an onion tied to my belt, as was the style at the time. A big yellow one.
Can't get white ones because of the war.



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LIGHT ON THE HILL

For years I have been ambivalent about breakfast. I've been told that it's the most important meal of the day, and I scoff at that statement. All one needs is strong coffee and a smoke. That, my friends, is the perfect preparation for doomscrolling, witnessing pet dogs defecating, and street people waking up. As well as householders rushing off to their dreary desk jobs at Amalgamated AI Incorporated for another day of senseless toil over images of the president stomping on the poor and downtrodden in his palatial ballroom.

There are reports that some psychopaths prefer the cheapest brands of pre-ground coffee, drunk black, with either a burley blend or a shitty codger aromatic from the fifties in their pipe. Others, excessively refined and probably yuppie snobs, contemplate life with beans flown in from Borneo and a load of rare McClelland's Frog in their exquisite Danish Artisan briar masterpiece while listening to Vivaldi and watching soothing yoga videos.


Balancing out both of those types, somewhere in this city an elfin woman in her thirties is energetically tucking in to a plate of red stewed fatty pork and rice, dollops of blistering chili paste, washed down with two cups of super strong Graffeo or Trieste, and mopped up with a croissant from La Boulangerie De SF, Tartine, or Arsico's. While looking forward to the latest test results from our wastewater which shows which diseases are currently trending. She has named her microscope 'Ishmael' because it sees monsters in the water. Dual lenses, 200x, plugs into computer. Suitable for both home hobbyist AND lab work.

Just goes to show that the breakfast paradigm needs rethinking. That bowl of pressed sawdust flakes or the plate of farmhouse fried crap just doesn't cut it anymore.
Concoctions of berries, yogurt, and cottage cheese do not hit the spot.
Also can: fresh clam soup with garlic and bean thread.


The red stew pork could be prepared the previous day and put in the ice box overnight, as it benefits from reheating. The clam soup would be at ten or eleven at the earliest, or you would need to keep them chilled before hitting the pan. And living near the coast is, of course, essential.

Apropos of nothing at all, why are there no breakfast restaurants attached to seafood markets on Stockton Street? This is a grievous oversight! Shocking!



Today's first pipe was Carolina Red by Cornell & Diehl in an old Comoy, enjoyed after a strong cup of coffee. Early morning is lovely at the top of Nob Hill. Very few dogwalkers, almost no joggers, and not a single street person. I felt like heading down a few blocks to Chinatown, but then I remembered that I'm not particularly social this early and there is, sadly, absolutely no decent coffee before North Beach.

Walk back instead. Make more coffee.
Time to read about ballrooms.



NOTE: If they don't clean up the alley where Russell lives sometime soon, the rat population will explode. It's disgusting. Those mahjong-playing old disreputables with their greasy fastfood containers should be firmly spoken to. They're lowering the tone.
Which was already damned close to rock-bottom anyway.



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THE FREAK

As I usually do I went into Chinatown to have lunch at the restaurant to which I often go on Wednesdays, and do my grocery shopping. But I stayed away from the customary place for tea afterwards, because I'm kind of pissed at the old gentlemen who congregate there.
Don't need the aggro. I may not look it, but I am a sensitive man.

Instead, tea time at a different place, then hurried off the busstop to avoid the rush hour jam packs. No throngs of white yuppies, no elderly Chinese American men.
Both of those types irritate me.

一杯奶茶同一個芝士肉鬆蛋黃包。

At the place where I had a pastry the milk tea has improved immensely. Well worth drinking.
I think I will be going there more often henceforth. Probably going to avoid the other place at tea time for several weeks. I like the women who work there, but not all the regulars.
The atmosphere has become un-gemütlich.

If anything, chalk it up to a rut.

Still like a hot cuppa and a snackie in the afternoon.
But please just leave me the heck alone.
I am not a tamed wild animal.

See, if I can have a fine old time eating lunch by myself then obviously tea-time alone will be no problem. Kindly go ahead and enjoy your own company. You can do it, I'm sure.


And here's the thing: I don't have to be courteous if I avoid you folks.
It's easier for you too, don't you think?



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CHOADVILLE

By almost any standards large parts of this country are third world hell holes -- Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, et autres -- and other parts resemble Mussolini's Italy. And they're proud of it. Plus it's unsafe to travel through, and the "forces of law and order" there are either narrow-minded bigots or outright bastards. A road trip is out of the question.

So the World Cup will be interesting.
Anthropologically.


Also, FIFA is planning a grand ceremony in which they will award our president with the prize for most peaceloving beloved leader for ending the war in the Middle East. People will sing, there will be Civil War re-enactments in which the Confederate States finally win this time, and some dreary has-been like Kid Rock will perform a cheesy rendition of God Bless America.

I'm also predicting that a blonde White House spokesdebbie will make a speech about 'why can't we all be friends damned crazy democrats after all we are all Americans just obey the president', to mass cheering from the carefully selected audience. Any arrests will be swept under the rug and ignored unless you want your press passes revoked. Well do you?

The major broadcasters will declare it a grand success.
Auto-erotic back-patting all around.

See, it's only because of America and our great traditions that the World Cup can be done at all, the world should be grateful, we are the greatest, and it was bigger and better and more spectacular than any other sports competition ever, and totally splendid. Historic and epic.
A monumental achievement. A celebration of the glorious genius that is this country.
The Founding Fathers could be proud. Our faith in Jesus.

And now that it's finally over and we've made millions, all of you can go home.
Go on, push off. Clear out.



We really want you to like us.
You should.



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THE HOO HA FILES

It's interesting listening with half an ear to what she watches on her computer, especially now that she has stopped looking at skin ailment videos. At one point she went to the kitchen to prepare herself a snack, and I became aware of an infomercial that may have been why she got up. Something about a medication or wondrous nostrum which if you stick it in your hoo ha is absorbed more effectively, and much better for you. It went on and on. Good lord, why won't they shut up about the hoo ha? Nearly ten minutes of hoo ha waffle! I didn't understand even half of it, because the sound was on too soft. But I can guarantee you that nothing on my playlist is ever interrupted for a disquisition on the hoo ha.
See, I am not the female audience.
Wrong demographic.

To the best of my knowledge, most men do not have a hoo ha.
Which may be why some men keep talking about it.
Others are startled and throw stones.


But enough about that. While I was smoking my pipe before meeting up with the bookseller for drinkies, a gentleman approached having a loud screaming match with invisible people. This was after the old codger trying to sweep the street with a dried-up discarded mop before nesting down in the entryway to a local bank. A clean bedroom is a happy bedroom, and it was, in his own way, an expression of civic responsibility.

Several German tourist families, a few familiar locals, and what was probably a marketing or sales department, passed by. Also some stoners and druggies from North Beach.

Lunch a few hours earlier had been rice stick noodles with salted black beans, garlic, ginger, bellpepper and celery, and sliced beef (豉椒牛河 'si jiu ngau ho'). Staggeringly delicious. With chilipaste. Washed down with milk tea and regular tea. I should have chau min and chau ho fan more often. Great cold weather food.

So you see we're back to the usual Tuesday schedule and don't need to stand in for New Teeth Boy. He's back. And threatening to bite people with his sparkling chompers.

Maybe screaming dude would be happier if he also had new teeth.
In any case they would put him under to install them.
With restraints possibly too.

One can but think.



By the way, entirely unconnected to any thing above, I was reading through the family tree this morning, and confirmed that indeed I do have a direct ancestor (five generations ago) named Ichabod. Born ten years before the revolution. I'm not sure how I feel about that.



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BAD CITY, NO PIZZA FOR YOU!

Some weird dreams involving a doctorate. Normally I don't even think about my failed attempt at academia, seeing as what I remember most fondly from that period of my life are cigars and pizza, which are not, strictly speaking serious subjects on which people write their theses. Perhaps a degree in history. "What would have been the effect on the Netherlandish struggle for freedom agains Philip of Spain IF pizza had been widely available at that time". A completely speculative analysis. Three possible results: Leiden and Leuven would have been much more Berkeleyite, pineapple would have become popular in Northern Europe ages ago, and cigars would have been handed round at children's birthday parties.

Not very good cigars. Italian preference. Firecured Kentucky.
Very popular among certain old geezers.
Rope-like cheroots.


The first time I had pizza while living in the Netherlands I found it interesting and tasty, but in retrospect it wasn't very good, and if that had been a true representation of the dish it would have not become something of which I was fond, not even close, and American college boy insanity regarding it should have been quite as baffling as their berserk fascination for football. Fortunately, Berkeley is not far from good pie.

Pizza is widely available and quite good in the urban part of the Bay Area. What is called "California Pizza", not so much. You have to go to suburban shopping malls for that, and rub shoulders with pudgy fembots. I've had it only once. During a company event. It was not repeated. We had many company events that involved pizza. Except for that time, the Marketing Department folks were shut out of the decision making process.

Someone should seriously do a study on the frequency of pizza deliveries to old folks homes. Front door deliveries lead to happier staff, back door deliveries quietly in the middle of the night to more lively, longer living, and more mentally alert residents.

The computer-paint illustration above had, sadly, very little connection to pizza.

I finished it late at night after needing to pee, and because I had already brushed my teeth and was wearing jammies I did not head out for a late snack. So I did it to get my mind off of pizza. A slice of which would have necessitated a taxi ride. I wasn't up to that.
And past three o'clock good pizza is rare.

Which is very regrettable.



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HAPPY AND POSITIVE!

All over the public school boy environment people with good diction and plummy accents are in despair that Gentlemen's Relish is no longer being made. And they are experimenting with concocting tasty replacements at home. Which, as you would expect, feature butter, tinned salty anchovies, plus pinches of mace, allspice, powdered ginger, cinnamon and maybe clove. Minute quantities of spices only, because they're British. And usually no garlic.
All gently cooked to darken a bit, then stuffed into ramekins and refigerated.

Perfect for smearing on toast at teatime.


What with being substantially Dutch, and despairing over American Anglo tastes, the concept somewhat excites me. Years ago at the computer company we would sometimes go out for a departmental lunch at restaurants like the Olive Garden, where the Anglo love for bland muck found a bountiful expression. Even "Italian food" got sucked into its orbit. Good lord, haven't you folks ever heard of flavour? Waiter, bring me some anchovies! And I hope you don't mind, but I brought some Jalapeños, I have a dozen in a bag in my coat pocket.

Or mirasol chilies. A friend grew them to survive the blandness out in the suburbs, surrounded by pale churchgoing people.

This grew eventually into a sambal for chain restaurant kibble.

Not quite "bush paste", which you take upriver in Borneo when visiting hill countr tribes who are far from spices, trade ports, variety, and cook freshly killed lizards with leaves into soup, serving it with broken rice and fermented what-the-living-blazes-is-that for flavour, or when you're going to England and know that you'll be so far from actual food that the appetite quails. But close.

[Bush paste: dried Habaneros or birdseye chilies ground to powder, mixed with equal volumes of salt, oil, and vinegar to an oily goo. Keeps for weeks unrefrigerated, and the British natives won't notice when you slip a little onto your plate.]

It's been years since I always had a bottle of a homemade hotsauce in my coat pocket when stuck in the suburbs. For one thing, I seldom eat with the white-bread-people nowadays. For another, both at work and at the places where I dine when off, there are bottles of Sriracha. One should probably not develop a taste for anything much hotter than that.
Habaneros and Scotch Bonnets are not common in the interior.



Currently smoking the pipe I had filled on Saturday with 4th. Gen. Black Dot.

Apartment mate has left for work. Sunlight streaming in.
Fresh cup of coffee on a stack of books nearby.
It is quiet in the building.
Peace.



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EARLY MORNING COFFEE

Perhaps it's a double underwear day. It does not look like it's going to go over sixty, very much like yesterday, and yesterday because of the chill I felt sluggish and slightly irritable. Years ago I would not have noticed, but I am an older and more finely attuned being now. Though less sensitive to hippie auras and the karmic beauty of natural people and their meaningful stuffs.

Probably one of the many reasons I could never live in Mill Valley or the Haight-Ashbury. Plus I'm allergic to apple cider vinegar, to say nothing of manuka honey and ayahuasca.
And the subtle smell of patchouli from antique free-spirits.
Roaming around being very spiritual.


Also, I'm incredibly jealous of people who can wear tee-shirts in this weather. I personally am not comfortable so lightly dressed. Which is why I bundle up like an eskimo for the first pipe of the day, when it's even colder and more bitter outside, and the folks pooing their dogs are too frozen and gloomy to object to the smell of tobacco and haven't started walking their kids to school and demonstrating how one is supposed to act by persecuting smokers, meat eaters, and capitalist stooges. So that junior grows up saintly and pure.

What junior really needs is a nice juicy porkchop.

Instead of the gluten-free shredded wheat with tofu milk that you're feeding him. He's looking a bit peaky. Washed out. He needs some animal protein. Feed him a can of tuna stat to put some colour in his cheeks! Tuna salad, croutons, and a generous layer of fried dead animal bits. Then hand him a toy pistol and send him out to play icegoon and minorities, like other kids his age. He's not a hot house flower, stop treating him a fragile little genius.
He'll never grow up to be a shaman or an artist anyhow.
And some people smoke. Get over it.


I'm just not a very positive person when it's cold and dark. And I tend to be negatively inclined. Please don't imagine what I would be like if I were stuck in the ghastly barbaric states. Might even have saw blades fixed to the front of my armoured pick-up truck for running down rednecks and fat slobbos wearing MAGA hats. You folks are so lucky.


By the way: Everyone in Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas is defective.
And they should come to terms with that.
I'm just saying.



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HEY BIRD, HEY!

Conversational scraps: "Come the revolution, there will be an ooping and an aacking and a gnashing of beaks!" "But what if you have no beak?" "Beaks will be mandatory!" The fluffy condor looks baffled, but the turkey vulture heads off in a different direction, asking "say, where is that communist frog?"

Wisely, I decide to remain silent.


Most of the time I do not provide the voices of the various roomies. My apartment mate, on the other hand, makes sure that they express themselves. Some of them do so only when protesting something egregious that one of the more rambunctious critters had said.

I have no idea why the turkey vulture is asking about the communist frog.
They can't be plotting something. The oligarch hates him.
And thinks that Siberia is too good.

Salt mines, boy, salt mines!

Out of the blue, she wonders aloud whether there are people who can waggle and flap their armpits to make musical sounds. I suggest that this would be an splendid project for scientific investigation, probably flabby old people, and perhaps she should head over to the nearest retirement facility with a questionaire and equipment. She responds that she has no interest at all in spending any time with those people. And then also disagrees with my opinion that they would make a great replacement for the tuba section in a marching band.


"Ooomp, oump, ooomp, oump, ooomp ... "


There is silence from the other side of the computer table.
But I can hear her typing away furiously.

Someone is going to get an eyeful.



UPDATE AS OF 10:05 AM

Now she's reading about white people's families and their breeding. Apparently in some parts of the country they're at the Ptolomeic range, or three generations have the same father. She mutters about the Habsburgs and Cleopatra. Good gracious, some of those folks should only marry space-aliens to keep their kids from having recessive genes! Bottom dwellers on heroin and crack cocaine!

"Say, do you have any cousins in West Virginia?

Sometimes the whole country from Oakland to the East River seems like a giant trailer park where everyone eats grits, cheezboogars, and grape slushies, and has moonshine-swilling kerosene-reek kinfolk they don't talk to anymore in every holler.

It's likely that I have distant relatives out there.
I'm not planning to find out.



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SUCH SANCTITY!

Bus-stop Uncle and Auntie were at the usual spot waiting for their transport over the hill to Chinatown when I stepped out for the first pipe of the morning, having filled a bowl with 4th. Gen Black Dot Bullseye before I left yesterday. Because we had scheduled an extra day off, New Teeth Man will be taking my place. I wish the boys good luck with him. And as I had had no chance to warn the neurosurgeon, I hope he doesn't come early, or he'll be waiting ten or fifteen minutes on the lawn to get in.

Unlike myself, New Teeth Man does not arrive any earlier than he's supposed to be there.

Anyway. Off. And I mentally calculated how many times I've crossed the bridge. While also remembering that Blue Velvet Backpack Dude has only been doing it for two years.

About five thousand times. More or less.
Never once walking.


There are people who make it a habit to jog across a few mornings every week, allegedly for their health. Which to me is almost unimaginable. It takes all kinds.

Actually, it does not. But you already know that. And many people are a little too irritating to take in any case. Especially as one gets older and the types have become recognized and predictable. "Oh lord, there we go again", one will say to oneself, as another dense passle of Marin bicyclists comes into view, filling the street ahead and devouring everything before them. Old ladies shriek in terror. Children whimper. Dogs yelp.

Unbothered, the runty-arsed athletes saving the planet on their Puritan bean mulch diets and Spartan regimens soldier on, skankgams pumping rythmically. Tofu! Wheatgrass! Protein powder! Salvation awaits.

In their minds they hear adulatory chanting. Worshipful crowds.

The roadway trembles before their onslaught.

Kids want to be like them.


So yeah, today ought to be quite enjoyable.
Not heading to Marin for several more days.



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