IT'S GREEN AND THERE ARE THINGS

Sometimes the internet is a horrid place. Recently it seemed to suggest that I would do well if I purchased a bulk bucket of mealworms and cooked it up, presumably not all at once, in an Analon X Hybrid 12" Non-Stick Skillet, or a Farberware Style 6 Quart Nonstick Stockpot with Tempered Glass Lid, which is both Dishwasher Safe and Oven Safe.

Possibly a Griswold No 6 Large Block Flat Bottom Skillet.

Some benighted influencer has probably done that.

Dude! I don't eat breakfast. Okay?

Yes, I know it's a prime ingredient in a high-protein shake which will help me lose weight. Sounds yummy and downright Southern. When cooked, indistinguishable from grits.
And goes great glopped over sliced avocado on toast.

All-natural. Non GMO.

No.

I did indeed purchase a new one quart Stainless Steel Farberware saucepan recently, which arrived in two days. So I can understand the algorithm in a fit of utter batshittery deciding that I was in the market for a full batterie de cuisine. The algorithm is berserkly obsessed, poor dear. But mealworms? Big bucket o'mealworms? I don't even have a lizard.

There are no skittery little clawed feet here.

They wouldn't survive a minute. There are things. In the night.


In addition to the weird sounds coming from both bedchambers. Small, animalian, conspiratorial. Creatures that wish to exploit or wallop other creatures.
All of them unique individuals. Little anarchists.


The less said about the horrid green nunnery soup, the better.
We shall not replace it with mealworm étouffée.
Un jambalaya de ténébrion meunier.


Ténébrion Meunier Meunière.




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NOBODY MENTION REPTILES

It seems like only yesterday iguanas were falling out of trees because of the cold. We miss those days! The trick to surviving when the temperature recalls Karachi and Tehran is to either get a job in a well-airconditioned office, OR to ponce around the house in one's underwear cussing sotto voce. Guess which one I'm doing. With a pipe in my mouth.
And I'm thinking of ice tea, despite not being Southern in the slightest.
Oh what perilous times are these!
Ice tea, forsooth.

Actually, it is too darn hot to ponce. There is no poncing.

I'll probably have to get dressed before she get's home.


Headed out for lunch at a reasonable time. Rice, stewed fatty pork, tofu. Loaded up a pipe and found a shady spot. After about ten minutes decided that my circulation wasn't up to it, back hurt like billie-O, caught a bus back across the hill. Upper back still feels like heck.

It's actually not insufferably hot, back in my hoary youth it would have felt quite decent, but the veins and arteries now object strongly to these conditions.

I shan't visit Karachi or Tehran anytime soon.
Not till the next ice age, I think.

The Deep South is also out of the question. Most of the time it's too warm there also, and dickheads are common year round. Plus the food gives you diabetes.

Besides, we have teabags, sugar, and ice cubes here.
We're pretty much self-sufficient.
Dickheads too.

A neighbor mentioned that she lives on the top floor of her building, apartment facing south. So for the past few days she's been hosed. The weather should be semi-normal again next week. I expect all the tourists will go away, they seem to sprout when it's warm.

Eighty degrees. 太熱嘅啦！

I'm sorry, we have no iguanas here, none at all.
That's the Midwest you're thinking of.
They're tasty, I know.



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TEETH WILL BE PROVIDED!

There are various words going through my head, randomly but repetitively. Among the obvious ones are 'interrogatory', 'transubstantion', 'antidisestablishmentarian', 'spoon', and 'heat dome'. More bafflingly, 'skeebeedee' and 'wendigo'. Plus 'shu' ('so'). Wendigo is more properly spelled 'windigo', and refers to a formerly human cannabilistic giant such as is common in the wilder areas of the red states.

Odd crap like this is fairly standard when caffeine hits.
I'm sure you've experienced something similar.


My apartment mate has left for the day, I have closed her bedroom door and lit up a delicious smuggled-in ciggie, and am enjoying the morning quiet. There's a small stuffed sheep sitting on my pile of clothing seriously demanding that I treat his sister right, and other than that it is calm and delightfully peaceful here.

For some reason I'm also thinking of a coworker headed to Asia soon, Manila and Bangkok. Where it is not too much warmer than here. Ten degrees. No, he's not going there for the brutal exploitation of younger members of the opposite gender as so many Americans do. He's too old for that, as well as being too gentlemanly despite being an asshole.
Dental surgery. Cheaper there than here after deductibles and co-pays.

I'm sure that at some point (several points) he'll say something stupid there that will offend the natives and might get him in trouble. Probably after drinks.

Shu ('so' in Cantonese) is a general term for vegetables, commonly called 蔬菜 ('so choi'), which is a somewhat formal usage often encountered on plastic bags advertising a grocery store, along with terms like 新鮮豬肉、雞、鴨、魚、急凍食品、雜貨 ('san sin jyu yiuk', 'gai', 'ngaap', 'yü', 'gap tung sik pan', 'jaap fo'); fresh pork, chicken, duck, fish, frozen food, mixed goods. Everything your heart (and stomach) desires might be in that bag of groceries.


It is more likely that stupid crap will come out of his mouth in Manila, where many people speak English and act American, which might fool him into thinking that it's safe. He's never learned to shut up. Let's hope he simply spouts antivax and space alien drivel rather than politics or religion. Those can be dangerous there.



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MMM, NAPALM

Heading into the third week of Donald Trump's florid wattle display in the Middle East, and powerful Republicans continue to betray the country. When this idiocy is all over, we'll need guillotines to deal with them. The Europeans have rightly told us to go fly a kite. And for those people complaining that it's so unfair, we helped the Euries in Worl War Two, they should stand by our side, two things: 1) It took us two and half years of kissing up to the Nazis before we got involved, and 2) The Euries have stood by us, several times. Remember Afghanistan and Iraq? The second mentioned was our stupidest war till this one.

[If we hadn't been attacked on December 7, 1941, we would have gladly stayed on the sidelines selling guns and ammo to both sides until one of them was bankrupt. As it is, we made sure both were by the time it ended.]

Do not confuse the interests of the United States with the interests of the Republican Party. United States and European interests largely coincide, whereas Republican interests are largely greed-driven, and often fuelled by religion.


Plus one shouldn't overlook the fact that large parts of the country are crazy, violent, and genetically narrow. Like Oklahoma and large parts of The South.

Bless their hearts.

By the way, have I recently mentioned that y'all eat too much, smell bad, and dress funny?
Should have, it's a crucial set of data. Y'all nasty!
It's your parents' fault.


These are all things which I don't quite know how to deal with. After all, I suppose I have tolerate y'all, despite my best instincts telling me to get out the DDT and spray like hell.

Fortunately the early morning joggers, bums, and dogwalkers do not act social. My walk around the neighborhood was undisturbed and peaceful, and at this hour the heat has not risen. Eighty plus degrees is NOT "balmy" despite what the media avers. It's absolutely frightful. And this week has been a real horror show in that regard.

There is nothing like that first pipe of the day.
It smells like ..... victory.



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IT'S FILLED WITH WOMEN PEOPLE

Lunch was at a place where the waitstaff are all female. And, during the busy period, going somewhat crazy. One of them has an extremely loud voice when she's yelling across the blasted heath that table so and so needs a check or be clearable. It is very very loud.
Those of us on the spectrum tend to start or cringe when huge loudness happens.

Other than that, lunch was splendid. The bank seems also to be staffed entirely by women, two of which are loud Mandarin speakers. The lottery place ... women. More soft-spoken. Both grocery stores. Women. The bakery. Women.

I spent an hour and a half at the bakery, because having done all my errands and grocery shopping, I didn't feel like stepping out into the blastfurnace. The day was insufferably hot, though not as bad as yesterday, which according to the 星島日報 ('sing tou yat pou') had been eighty six degrees Fahrenheit in the city. Today was just below eighty.

None of the old men showed up. The gentleman who comes there with his little daughter did. After greeting me she sat at their table entranced by something inane and child-oriented on her device, in English. She's maybe four or five. Very active, tonnes of energy. He speaks Cantonese, so does she. But she's probably rushing into bilingualism.

Language acquisition is a stumblety bumblety business.
And sometimes blindfolded.

Dried tangerine peel (陳皮 'chan pei'), for instance, is a cultural marker which has almost none of the resonance in English that it does in Chinese. The best, of course, are from Xin Hui (新會區 'san wui keui'). More fragrant, more depth and softness of flavour, better for the membranes, quite expensive. You didn't know you needed it before, but now you do.

After I left I lit my pipe and headed over to a place where there is outdoor furniture, and watched a teenage woman person destroy her aunt and uncle at the pingpong table.
All three of them had way too much energy for this weather.

When my partment mate come home this evening, she announced that her brother is an imbecile. This is a possibility I will gladly entertain. He is not a woman person.
Simply a know-it-all pain in the tookus.



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SMELLS LIKE GRANDPA

Normally Wednesdays are rather enjoyable. Lunch at a favourite C'town haunt, smoke a pipe afterwards, shop for groceries including some fresh fruit or vegetables for the elderly Chinese Indonesian woman downstairs (basically checking that all is well with her without prying, and make sure she gets her vitamins), tea and a small snack at a bakery, while conversing with some deaf old coots, then a stroll down to the bus stop while smoking another pipeful.
Except that today it will be too warm for comfort.

Teatime will be the hottest period.

No matter what, I'll be overdressed. Normal white people will be waltzing around with their midriffs or chests bare, wearing Aussie style shorts or diaphanous garments better suited to sleazy nightclubs or the harem of a degenerate financier, this blogger will be dressed decently and thinking of cooling showers or sumpin'.

And I might be grumpy.


One of the deaf old coots will be wearing far too much. He will end up being immensely uncomfortable, all bundled up in gear more appropriate in the arctic or the outer Richmond District, and I expect he'll have something to say about all the other people on public transit today, what with being around ninety years old, stubborn, and opinionated. And wearing four or five layers of clothing, which won't improve his mood. I may get out of the house early and get everything done well before teatime, because conversation at the bakery might be on a distant planet. Deafness, strong opinions, and a whole bunch of grumps. Um.

Get home early, take a shower, then stumble around languorously in my underwear. Perhaps a glass of weak cold tea with some citrus, to stay hydrated. Try to avoid sweating. Doomscroll.


The pipe pictured above is an old Stanwell I restored years ago, which I think may have been made in the eighties or nineties. It's a pretty good smoker, rather elegant.
Looks wrigglesome.

No, I have never smoked Hobbit's Weed in it. One quarter Danish vanilla, one quarter cherry, half black vanilla cavendish. Beloved by men with tattoos and piercings living in their mom's basement who play role-playing games with themselves.

Spare and reserved old fashioned Virginia mixtures with a touch of Perique.
Nothing soaked in perfume or smelling like a bath house.
We are civilized. Not effete.
Damned hippies.



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WAKING GIANTS

For decades we relied on NATO to passively acquiesce. Now we've broken it. NATO stands united in their refusal to be our enabler and co-abuser, showing far more backbone than ever before. Which means that by our actions and stupidity we have lost our back. Membership in international bodies confers a degree of legitimacy in world affairs, we no longer have that. The Republicans have succeeded in isolating the United States.

We cannot blame this on one man. It's the entire upper echelon of the Republican Party and their henchmen in religion and commerce. Plus cheering red-hatted goobers.


NATO isn't behind us. Japan and Korea aren't behind us.
We've got El Salvador, Fiji, and Hungary.
Great going, guys.


Plus Erika Kirk and Lindsey Graham.
And Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana.

Meanwhile, our dearly beloved leader, adulated by millions, gives long talks about glorious ballrooms, how the evil windmills are out to get him, and how we are more respected than ever before, because of what we did in Venezuela and will do in Greenland, which we discovered, and where we'll build beautiful golf clubs.

All paid for by massive tarrifs.

Gaza too. Golf clubs.

Huge.



Dot dot dot.



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FRIGHTFUL CELEBRATIONS

Dear sir, I wish to register a complaint! Today on the seventeenth day of March of 2026 the temperature in downtown San Francisco after three o'clock was eighty five degrees. This is unheard of, and an outrage! I blame the Irish, the Trumpites, and the Lutherans! As well as everybody in the Eastern half of the country keeping all the delicious coolth for themselves, those poxy rotten selfish bastards!

In the past, temperatures on the feast day of Saint Gertrude of Nivelles (patron saint of cats) would be somewhere between fifty and sixty or so degrees Fahrenheit. Today it wasn't.
It was quite buggery awful.


I am currently sitting in the teeveeroom in my underwear (boxers and a wife beater) with no intention of going out to deal with drunken Irish Americans celebrating Saint Gertrude's Day.

And thanks to President Trump ranting pointlessly about windmills in answer to a question about something else entirely, I'm proposing that Saint Gertrude's Day should ALSO henceforth be Windmill Day.


During lunch while sweltering I got to hear several phone calls that Victor over at the next table in the chachanteng had to deal with. "hey, Kaufoo, what the heck did you tell Connie?" Judging by what followed, Kaufoo (舅父 'kau fu'; mother's brother, uncle) may have told her something about someone being real cheap and going through all the tinned pineapple. In any case, Connie should chill the F out, and the nephew should simply buy some more tinned pineapple. Now stop bugging me.

Then there was the call about an ex employee drinking on the job. Shipcanned while tipsy. Didn't even lock the door at night, or take care of business. Some other employee now no longer drinks at work, he's just an alocoholic when off duty at home.
I'm surprised to realize that Victor seems to think in English. Given that I've usually heard him holding forth in Cantonese, Mandarin, and something Min Nan which might be Teochew.

On Saint Gertrude of Nivelles Day many people in San Francisco get lacquered out of their gourds and dress in ichor green. It's a very strange custom, and civilized people stay home on that day and lock the doors. Going anywhere near bars would be madness. So the bookseller and I will not meet today, we'll have tea and cocktails next week.

But I did mark the day, in a manner. Smoked a pipeful after late lunch in a Peterson pipe. Nothing is more Irish AND more pipish than a Peterson 312 System Standard.
Shape 69 is also an option.

So I was more observant than all the yutzes wearing shades of green. You know the VC snipers can still see you, right? Y'all stand out a mile in the desert like a sore thumb.

How are you going to mark Windmill Day? We Dutch don't get disgustingly drunk.
That's something only English monolinguals do.
Habitually.

It's downright nasty, is what it is.
Bunch of fratboys!



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IT'S BIG. REAL BIG.

Say, how is that war which is not a war which we won two weeks ago but again it's not a war nothing to see here just move along going? Have we won yet?

I asked this on social media.

A friend who is actually very intelligent, but has a great capacity for being dense as a brick, commented: "We destroyed most of their arsenal, killed the ayatollah, forced the new one into hiding or dead and got almost every middle east nation on our side by forcing them to openly admit that they like us more than iran.
Only the silly leftists who think that rape and murder is cool are still carrying water for iran. Israel predicts another three weeks before the regime is so destabilized that the people themselves can take it back.
I mean we do have "Persian-royalist-propaganda-funded-by-the-Arabs-and-masquerading-as-legit" for actual news if you really want to know and aren't just engaging in boring ass virtue signaling." [end quote]

Dude. This aint about virtue signaling. Although there is plenty of scope for that. This is about your fat pedophile uncle's humongous ego. Now that he can't get his dick up anymore, and everyone is looking at him like a hawk so he can't rape schoolgirls in any case (although I'm sure the red states would make an exception as long as he claimed they were libs, woke, or foreign), he has to show off and swagger in the spotlight somehow. At a cost of billions. With lovely explosions, piles of dead people, and everyone paying attention to him. Because he can. Hey hey hey look at me. It's big. Real big.

We actually don't give a flying fornication about the Iranians.

So you can stuff the gaslighting up somewhere.

It's big. Real big.

Now, something else which is irrelevant entirely to the foregoing, the ultra slim Hello Kitty ciggies with the dried tangerine peel fragrance flavour capsules (陳皮爆珠 'chan pei baau jyu') are, in my estimation, considerably better than the brand with the fritilary and loquat flavour capsules (川貝枇杷爆珠 'chuen pui pei paa baau jyu'). The latter are marginally slimmer, and the fritilary loquat combination frequently shows up in cough syrups and lozenges because it's rather soothing to the throat. But dried tangerine peel, which is beneficial to the mucous membranes, is a far more elegant perfume.

The smokes with the Maotai flavour capsules (茅臺爆珠 'maau toi baau jyu') remain quite unfindable. I'll have to ask the round faced intellectual about those when I see him again.


Obligatory health warning: Kids, don't smoke. Only bad people and pervs do that.



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THE JUNGLE OUT THERE

A day of doing nothing. Glorious. My workweek ended yesterday, and I unwinded. Which after babysitting gobbus old rightwing dingoes is just what the doctor ordered. And we do actually have doctors who are often on site there. There are at least four of them.
So there is pushback when the idiots try to blow antivax hard.

Some idiocy will not stand.

Unfortunately some will.

There's also a semi-missionary Christian. As I said, some idiocy will stand. Personally I think that all Christians should die of avoidable diseases and suffer on the way out, but I guess the fates have decreed otherwise. They are the pests sent to try us. Heck, true believers of any type, gob rot their souls. My famous Dutch tolerance has limits. Silence does not mean assent, it can often mean extreme loathing and distaste.

You know, Christianity often means stupidity, greed, viciousness, and vile ideas.

Some of those aged stinkers are adulatants of Trump or Charlie Kirk and his repulsive widow, some like Vance or Hegseth. Some are just blah. One of them is Irish. He is all of that.
Must be that extremely narrow gene pool in Dublin.
Sometimes it lays a rotten egg.

An argument can be made that we need to reintroduce snakes to Ireland. I suggest putting up a go fund me for that. Diversity is a blessing. Sentient Irishmen will thank us.

Don't worry about the non-sentient ones. They've been blotto since Saturday, when there were parades and celebrations. That's why there is that smell.



I am incredibly proud that my ancestors martyred Saint Boniface. Interfering meddlesome damned priest, whom the Batavians deservedly slew outside Dokkum.
They are a splendid example to later generations.


As I said, a splendid day. Late lunch at a chachanteng. Fried tofu & roast pork (葱燒肉豆腐). With rice. And hot milk tea. plus a cup regular tea. Sambal.



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IT IS TIME TO DANCE

It appears that our allies won't come to our aid in the war that we and Israel started. Their attitude seems to be that we began it, we broke it, we can jolly well deal with it. This thing which is not a war and which we won. The only countries benefitting from it are the United States, Israel, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. In a diplomatic communication, various other nations have politely told to us to geh und urinier nach oben an einem seil.
Which is a foreign way of saying "we don't think so, dude".
It's very subtle.

In another development, the gubmint has firmly let it be known that reporting facts in any way about the immensely successful total defeat of the Persians, which is complete, and ongoing, and imminent, and Jesus-guaranteed, and only heathens and idolators think otherwise, is inimical to the excursionary effort and will harm our troops who are not fighting a war.

Reporting in any way at all about the non-complete surrender of Iran is woke and DEI. Please be silent until we say you can talk.
Verstehst du?


Thousands of buxom Israeli and Saudi virgins stand cheering our victorious Christian troops with red, white, and blue pom poms as they boldly stride through the streets of Hormuz very manful and glorious as all-American warfighters waving crusader banners. Bibi Netanyahu drinks coffee to celebrate. There are horses everywhere and John Wayne rides into the sunset. The paynim have been swayed.

There are laurels all around. And shiny gold peace prizes.
Alabama and Mississippi erupt in joyous song.
Praise and adulation.


Basically, it's all about breasts and dicks.
The United States has the biggest.
Feel it in your guts.


Far be it from me to say anything negative about this war which is not a war, not officially, and in no way demonstrates that we have insane people at the helm who might be desperate to show off their manlihood and distract from the Epstein files or rising prices or the Epstein files or RFK being a total dingbat or the Epstein files or the increasingly clear bigotry and racism of the Republican Party or the Epstein files or Tommy Tuperville being too stupid to tie his own shoes or the Epstein files or the continuing grift and corruption of the most Christian government this country has ever had or the Epstein files or Pam Bondi's Justice Department being a revenge tool for an orange blobbo wearing incontinence pants and spewing bile late at night when his drugs wear off or the Epstein files and the imperial gift of ill-fitting shoes.
Or the Epstein files.

No sir. Shan't say a word.
Warfighters. Far.
Victory!



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WARM FEELINGS

Today was spent at the buffing wheel working on several Charatan pipes, as well as a lovely Wilmer, and a few Savinellis. The hands led the thought process. Some stems were a bit too chewed. Either a man with a vicious set of chompers, or maybe a dog pipe smoker. About halfway through my lunch I started paying attention to the news. Blizzard conditions expected in the Midwest and a few other areas. Storms elsewhere, with rain, snow, cold, fierce winds. A severe dust storm, in Texas I think. And blithering idiocy in our nations capitol.

Boys, we've got nice sunny weather here in California, as well as intelligence. Neener neener neener. Enjoy your horrid weather and Republican foolishness.


The amount of attractive bare legs, of all genders, on the streets here is fairly staggering. Y'all don't have that, seeing as y'all have more morbid obesity, diabetes, and Litte Rascal Personal Mobility Scooters than is reasonable. Plus y'all have whole hordes of tightly clenched Karens who would be traumatised and offended by presentable gams.

A number of your fellow citizens need fork lifts.

There's Eric Cartman all over the place.

I feel for you. Really, I do.

You've seen Baywatch, so you know that we spend all of our time running in slo-mo into the surf wearing scanty red swim gear, while the sun strokes us with light and gentle rays. Why heck, most of us look like Pamela Anderson. Whereas many of you look like Big Momma Heffalump, and can't find swim togs that don't have a Hefty Compactor label. They're tough. Hefty ® reliably strong trash bags can tackle every task on your to-do list. Even fit your Texas-sized kinfolk. They are by no means overkill.


I love my fellow Americans. Oh gosh golly yes indeedy.
I just don't want to meet many of them, though.




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THE HALF LIGHT

My apartment mate has an imaginary hamster that visits her room when she's out for the day, I have an early morning cat that probably doesn't exist which occasionally flits through the corners of my eyes when I'm half asleep. Obviously, if I were to get a pet, it would be a cat.
This morning it was pawing a pipe I had put on one of the shelves of the bookcase opposite my bed. No, it didn't push it off. It was very considerate. Obviously a better cat than some people have. Thoughtful.

The other day I was thinking about pets. There is a man in the centre of the country somewhere who has three honey badgers he's raised from infancy. They are playful, charming, rambunctious, affectionate, and awesomely destructive. Teeth and long claws. They've shredded tires and durable pet toys in mere minutes. They wrestle, and occasionally draw blood. Verging on hyper-active. Super intelligent and extremely likable agents of mayhem.

I would like a honey badger. She, as previously mentioned, is a hamster person. The compromise would be a ferret (more hyper, not nearly so destructive, limitation of size).
Zoomies, weasel war dance, wrigglies.


But I have a ghost cat.
That's ... okay.

It pads arund silently, does not push things off high surfaces onto the floor, and then disappears.

It probably lived here years ago and revisits its old home.

And that's fine too. Perhaps better than a ferret, and in all honesty who could mind a clean animal occasionally wandering about, not destroying things, just curious and careful, and largely ignoring the living occupant? Which is what I will probably do a few decades hence when I have ceased living and the robots have taken over. A large grey box on the table will wake up and notice through a sensor that there is a human shadow near where the easy chair stood, then go back to sleep.

It may remember once in a while to put out a bowl of warm caffeine.
Because that is, as everyone knows, what humans like.
Mmm, caffeine!



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EVERYONE LOVES FIREWORKS!

Pete Hegseth's pastor, Doug Wilson, says that in an ideal society, processions in honor of the blessed virgin Mary would be banned, along with eucharistic processions.

According to the faith of my ancestors (which was hard core Dutch Calvinism) all other forms of Christianity are accursed heathendom or witchcraft and should be absolutely forbidden. So whenever anyone tries to get me to accept or find Jesus, I revert to my ancestral intolerance and turn the conversation into a slice of hell. Where Doug Wilson will undoubtedly burn.

If there is a hell. The jury is still out on that one.
Pete Hegseth too. Tattoos are verboten.
Repulsive damned frat boy.
Burn, heretic.


There, I'm glad we got that out of the way.


In other news, on my way home I passed throngs of people wearing green celebrating Saint Pudnick casting potatoes out of Ireland by getting blotto. As I have no doubt Pete Hegseth is probably doing right now too. There are four whole days of this drunken misbehaviour and puking this year, which seems like a perfect way to celebrate. After all, we bombed Iran, whereupon there was mass celebration in the streets there and they promptly built a democratic society. Right?

DANCING! SONGS! GIDDY CELEBRATIONS!

Gasoline prices must have dropped, and we're a lot safer now.


American military intervention ALWAYS brings freedom and prosperity.
Donald Trump DESERVED the FIFA Peace Prize.
More than anyone else.

America! America!



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DEATH TONGUE

Mr. Manz, from a small town in Germany, visited New York and tried Mexican food for the first time. And promptly took the restaurant to court because their salsa traumatized him. Horribly. Painfully. He had added it to his food himself, chomped, and was floored by the results. Oh, the heartache. They obviously had tried to kill him. Those evil new worlders. The salsa was by his never having eaten spicy in his entire life standards too insufferably darn hot and someone should do something!

The judge disagreed. Common sense also disagrees, as, in all honesty, IF in this modern world you do not understand that salsa might be spicier than anything in small town Germany, you may have been living under a rock.


Several years ago my family moved to the Netherlands. Where there is Indonesian food. Which I ate before I was even grammar school age. Take-out food often came with a little packet of sambal. Many homes had sambal on the premises.
We also had sambal on the premises.

When I returned to the United States, at eighteen years of age, I was dismayed that there was no sambal on the premises. Anywhere. The entire countrywide premises. Or at least Berkeleywide. How, I wondered, could these people survive?

Was civilization even possible here?

Things have changed. There has been immense improvement. And civiliation may very well be possible here. Now. At least in some parts. There are sambal equivalents.

Every single one of the eateries I have frequented in the last several weeks has had either sambal or hot sauce (Sriracha). The staff at one place takes it for granted I will want the Sriracha, and at another place the waitress is both flabbergasted and not surprised.


I contend that people who never touch hot stuff are some of the most violent warlike individuals on the planet. Modern world events demonstrate that. Prove me wrong.



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POISON MOUTH

Little did I suspect when I started learning Cantonese that on the one hand it would show me lyric hyperbole, on the other hand the heights to which cursing and foul language could rise. While eating lunch today I got to listen to a cheerfully foul-mouthed old blister using certain words as both punctuation and exclammatories. Sometimes both simultaneously, sometimes very much not. Always in the same sentence. Many sentences. I was there for an entire hour, during which he dominated the conversation with two other people, did not shut up, and delivered curse upon curse matter-of-factly, eloquently, and with both confidence and pointless dreary repetition.

Nah, I shan't tell you what those words and expressions were. This is a clean blog, and you can find all of that by browsing the internet and visiting Wikipedia.

Other than the extremely loud background noise, lunch was quite enjoyable.
They know me there. The food is decent. There is hot sauce.


And the HK milk tea is excellent.


Some of the regulars are unvarnished old reptiles.
Lizards with social issues made worse by age.

So yes, I enjoy the place, but usually I avoid conversation there, as my abilities in Cantonese do not extend to poetic exaggeration. At least not quite that much. I do not think I'm social enough to cuss up a storm.

And really, all I want to do is eat my meal, drink my cup of tea, and pack a pipe preparatory to a long stroll down to where I will catch a bus back over the hill.
That smoke was excellent, by the way.


Indignant geckoes, skinks, and water monitors are purely icing on the cake.



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NAVEL ENVY

Oh crap! She's called in sick again. Despite not coughing up hairballs. She's curled up in her room with a turkey vulture and a good book, and I cannot close her door, open the windows, and light up my pipe. I shall have to go outside and act like I'm human. While skulking around the neighborhood avoiding dogs, old people, and little children.

Are there any dark corners around here? Someplace where, if I accidentally shape-shift, no one will notice? If there are, they're probably all occupied by violent street people shooting up for the benefit of tourists from the red states, who expect that when they come to civilization.

There's something nauseating about being human. Sometimes I just don't feel like it.
And often I speak in tongues. Murmuring.
No one understands me.
Tongues.

[For an explanation of which kindly see "Confusion of Tongues", delivered by one of Freud's colleagues at the 12th International Psycho-Analytic Congress in Wiesbaden, Germany, on 4 September 1932.]

No, there is nothing growing in my navel. Lizards don't have navels, remember? We come from a giant egg. Brutally we used a temporary projection on the upper jaw that developed from the premaxilla which lets us penetrate and break the eggshell from inside.
So I contemplate where my navel might have been.

As Doctor Sigmund Freud defined it, we squamates frequently manifest profound navel envy. In Freudian theory, the navel envy stage begins the young lizard's transition from attachment to the ovipositor to avoiding hungry free-ranging velociraptors. This results in anxiety, we do not wish to become dinner.

On the other hand, there is no eternal yearning to return to the egg either. As Ferenczi (born Sándor Eibenschütz Fraenkel) recognized, one must more actively engage with the young lizard, encouraging him to freely associate and engage with his fears.

The forest floor, the humidity of the wild, the moist and comforting bed of moss, and the dark flitty insects presenting tempting protein in flight. The many Peterson  pipe shapes which are reassuringly egglike, so smooth, so polished, so elegantly and robustly ovoid.


Laundry. Lunch. Wandering about a bit.
Do not engage with Karens.



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I LIVE AMONG US!

My apartment mate has started going to work again after three weeks of hacking, coughing, spitting, and sounding like hairballs. A respiratory infection which flummoxed her, seeing as by her own boast she is of hardy peasant stock and can withstand a damned sight more than you silly effete white men, White Man! Yeah, okay. But I didn't catch it. And now that she leaves the house in the morning again I can finally close her bedroom door, open the windows, and positively revel in a smoke-filled existence.
As is natural on my home planet.

And I can revert to my true form.

These past three weeks have been tough. I've had to brave the elements with my pipe clenched in my manly jaw, dodging joggers, people walking their dogs, and little children. While she was comfortably ensconced in our apartment coughing up a lung or two and grumpily watching documentaries about Rome, ancient Egypt, and such like.
I have suffered enough.

My home planet is filled with the fragrant fumes of flue-cured leaf. It wafts from room to room on gentle indoor zephyrs. Happy blue lizard beings ponce around enjoying fine products like Southern Capitol, Big Front Gate, Yellow Crane Tower, Noble Smoke, and Five Leaf God (南京 'naam king'，大前門 'daai chin mun'，黃鶴樓 'wong hok lau'，貴煙 'gwai yin'，五葉神 'ng yip san'). Which are all tubular, of varied dimension, and packed with combustible goodness.

We would rather not do that outside, because it's a bad example for the kiddie winkies. When they see a mature blue space lizard puffing away, they think it looks cool and stylish, and they want to ooze cerulean and indigo slime too when they grow up.


For the past three weeks I have tended to pop outside for a quick inhalation of compact tubes of shredded leaf, flickering in and out of this dimension, instead of contenmplatively reaching for my briars and the pouch while reading about war, pestilence, and famine.
It's thrown me off my game. There has been heartache and suffering.


Oh! Despair.

Great sadness.


Anyhow, I shall have a second pipe as soon as she leaves, which will be in about an hour and a half. Probably red Virginia flake in an old Peterson stamped 'Dublin and London', of which I have several. As well as another strong cup of coffee.
It's going to be a productive day, I can tell.

Hairball free.



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All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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