A MATTER OF PREFERENCES

One of my best internet friends is a Modern Orthodox Jewish person working as a public defender in a city which I wish to never visit, though it has a stellar reputation, especially when compared to many other parts of the country. Reason being that the climate there is absolutely awful, with snow and ice and howling wind. Despite coming originally (generations ago) from a place where such nasty conditions were not at all unknown, and descended from people who had a reputation for their daring, adventurism, keen curiosity, and downright insanity, during the era of exploration.

Enthused by the shockingly new I am not. Tried and true. That's the ticket.

So yesterday for lunch I went to a familiar place. And ordered something which I never would have thought of making myself, and which I might now order again, despite still thinking it's a decidedly goofy idea and borderline ill-advised, possibly not something that should have seen the light of day.

Everything becomes a known quantity with globs of hot sauce.
Comfort food, in a way.

Especially when washed down with both regular Chinese restaurant tea and milk tea, in an environment where two old Cantonese women were arguing and three gentlemen discussed world affairs while not looking at each other and seated at seperate tables. As is a natural part of the modern Hong Kong social environment, even in San Francisco.

Personally I think I would have doubled or even tripled the amount of vegetable matter. And despite being listed as spicy-hot (麻辣 'maa laat'), it was anything but.
Which is where the globs of hot sauce came in.

It wouldn't have even been regarded as hot in the city where my Modern Orthodox Jewish friend lives. Possibly because the population of his city is culturally diverse, and includes people from hot places now freezing their butts off.

Were I to cook that dish, I would probably add sliced cucumber and plenty of cilantro, and call it a refreshing Summer salad, with meat in it. As well as dumping a fried egg on top.
Plus chopped jalapeños.

It would still need globs of hot sauce, though.
In my opinion.



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RATIONAL SLEEPER CELLS

Sometimes I like to ponce around looking like I know what everything is all about. Nothing says that better than smoking a pipe filled with a fine Virginia tobacco by Charles Rattray. Which doesn't actually exist anymore. That is to say, Rattray's farmed out manufacture of their products to McConnell ages ago, the entire McConnell portfolio of tobaccos ended up with Kohlhase & Kopp (founded by Michael Kohlhase in 1976, Berndt Kopp joined in 1979) in Germany (1989 or thereabouts, when McConnell closed), who have it made for them in Denmark by a different company.

[Note: Charles Rattray founded his tobacco Company in 1911. Upon his death in 1964 his son Charles Rattray took over. That gentleman retired in 1980, passed away in 1984. His daughters inherited the whole shebang.
Unfortunately I haven't a clue what happened to them or further descendants.]

Happiness and expertise all around, and I look supremely knowledgeable.
Which shows that desirable results can indeed be achieved.
A modicum of effort, almost no pretence.


Our present government can't even manage that. The justifications for the war against Iran change by the hour, and are shot down by the facts so often that it's kaleidoscopic. We have no end game, no actual plans beyond the moment, and despite the fascination of watching a sewage flinging fest in real time with stained and bedraggled officials and spokes-trolls, it has sofar failed to distract the United States and the world from the Epstein situation.

Marvelously, I look more like I know what everyting is all about than ever before.
As does every other rational person on the planet.
Especially non-officials

In the last two days everything the right-wing dingbats in the back room at work said about the war has been proven off the mark, several times, in different ways, quite staggeringly. One of them even proposed parachuting the pretender to the Pahlavi throne with a CIA escort and a film crew in to the Alborz Mountains. Which I think is a splendid idea.
He'll be welcomed with open arms, it will make for great reality teevee.

Some of it will have to be bleeped, of course.
Because of the little children.


Most of the Iranian exiles in the United States should also be dropped in. Parachutes will be provided. At cost. This will solve several problems and clear the air nicely.


The fine sandblasted pipe above really does look like an expert who knows what it's all about should be smoking it on a news show. How sad it is that none of the teevee talking heads or current United States government spokes models smoke a pipe!



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DRINK MORE COFFEE!

Seeing as when I'm at work I deal with a lot of old men, I have become very conscious of urination. For John's "benefit" about three months ago I started loudly ranting about narrow urethras, enlarged prostates, and bladder issues which you really must see a professional about dear man, about twenty minutes before I will firmly throw him the hell out and lock the door. Jeff gets to hear precisely how many minutes he took in there. Once or twice it has taken him up to ten minutes. On the plus side, unlike John, he doesn't wait until just before the end of the day.

The other gentlemen take variable times, but they often wish to go at the same time. I do not want to let them use the employees bathroom when theirs is occupied, because they're very much like tourists in that regard: messy. Many American men, while adeptly demonstrating that they think with that appendage, are not very good at using it.
Apparently they can't hit anything smaller than an elephant.

Plus the older they get, the more petulant as well as casual they become.
Apathetic urgency, and whiny emotion. Kvetchy. And sloppy.

Which is where coffee comes in. Boys, drink more coffee. Yes it will make you even more unbearable than you already are, but coffee is a diuretic, see, and the more encouragement it needs, either vocal or chemical, to make you go is a blessing.

I'm tired of being held hostage by your pissing.

If you drink a cup of strong coffee you will need to micturate within two hours. I know it works, because I have two cups in the morning before I get ready to work. With regularity!

Heck, boys, one cup before I go out to smoke my pipe, and I can barely wait to use the bog when I get back.

Tea, not so much. It's not nearly as effective.

Have some coffee instead of whiskey after lunch. It will be better for your mind, and better for your bladder. Probably better for your social life too. You won't be nearly so obnoxious.



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RABBIT RABBIT MARCH 2026

Rabbit rabbit. Supposed to be the first thing you say on the first day of the month. But I was preoccupied and mentally still in the last month. Twenty ninth day of, tomorrow would be the thirtieth. So belated rabbit rabbit. Rabbity rabbits.

The month has started off interestingly. I got to listen to the boys in the backroom talking about their drug experience with each other, which is probably a very Marin County thing. Dang y'all a bunch of crazed hippie freaks.

Despite the fact that y'all older than Jayzis.


Still, that's better than hearing how y'all wholeheartedly support the senile orange blowtoad. With every shred of your miserable stinking beings. Because he's hot and sexy in his dark blue suit.

Disgusting. Perverts.

What I also got to hear was that Jello salads are repulsive, quite nauseating, really. In detail. While I was eating my lunch.

You know, lunch?

Boys, I'm chowing down on pizza with lots of Sriracha, no we don't have any ranch dressing in the fridge none of us here are sicko pervs, so I don't need to know about your potlucks and church suppers in some Midwestern hellhole, okay? This is California. We have food here.

And I'll tolerate your drinking a bit too much. You're all old and decrepit. But the moment you start toking or snorting I'm calling both your families and the cops. We'll just see who is here first to pick you up. Because y'all have too little gourd to tolerate you getting stoned out of it.


Rabbit rabbit.



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FOLLOW THE BRAINS

Sometimes it's not a question of "follow the money" as simply putting the Lego blocks together until you can't help stumbling over them when you go to the kitchen in the middle of the night for a glass of water. Which is, more or less, a metaphor, please understand. No kid, no Legos, and for some of us a glass of water at three in the morning is not, strictly speaking, a good idea. Even though there is always a light on, on the small table in a corner of the hallway, so we can actually find our way to the bathroom to micturate later without stumbling into things and waking the neighbors with our cussing.

One way of looking at it is that Trump and his boys got played by Netanyahu. American goombas working for a foreign gangster. We all know who actually has the brains.
Hint: it ain't that bunch of reality teevee actors in Washington.

[Point of debate: do they actually have one brain among the lot of them? Or do they all simply think with their testicles? Maybe men are too emotional for important roles.]

I guess the main lesson here is that Khameini never should have called Netanyahu's momma ugly. Bad things were bound to happen after that.


Repeat: She ain't ugly. Don't you ever say that.

Another lesson is that the Europeans shouldn't ever rely on the United States for anything security-related, because Israel is really our only ally, as well as our biggest success, thank you fundamentalist Christian nutballs in the interior and Baptist end-of-times apocalyptic crazies, and we're unpredictable and often out of our tiny little minds. Too likely to stumble around drunkenly by the icemachine at four in the morning yelling for room service to come get those giant hairy bats out of our room and why is the carpet trying to strangle us?
Giant lizards! Never should have combined adenochrome with acid.


What was it Trump said several times about war with Iran? Oh yeah, that when the poll numbers fell and the hounds were closing in, Barack Obama would start a war with Iran. Stephen Miller said that if we voted for Kamala we'd end up in a war with Iran.
I guess a war with Iran was inevitable, huh?

Benny Netanyahu has been in power for so many years.
Since before our stupid adventure in Iraq.
Don't worry about the Americans.
He'll deal with them.


This is what happens when you elect a man too stupid to think his way out of a paper bag. And he appoints a bunch of flattering egomaniac dunderheads to his cabinet.
You end up with a bag of flaming dog poo.
That's also a metaphor.



Maybe it's time now for another Trump dance.
Rythmic air punches and hip wiggles.
The crowd will love it.



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NOBEL MATERIAL

Our peaceloving supreme leader has launched air strikes on Iran in a peaceloving move that will assuredly get him nominated for the peace prize. Truly there is no one more peaceful. Peace out.

One perception seems to be that a corrupt leader (Netanyahu) roped a senile old fool who needed to distract his own people from a child molestation scandal into a stupedous act.
And that his opportunistic lackey saw nothing but positives going along with that.

The good news is that the Trump kids will never get drafted and sent over there; hereditary bonespurs.


The further good news: Everybody has forgotten about the Epstein affair, my heavens, why didn't we think of this method of shielding elderly predators and right wing perverts earlier it's genius. Guarantee nobody will talk about the Epsteing affair ever again. Turns out we didn't need Bondi and Patel scrubbing documents all that time after all. All we needed to do to get those wussy democrats from waffling on about the Epstein affair was a good solid illegal war which has the added benefit of helping Netanyahu hold onto power.
Hah! Epstein affair, forsooth!

No one will talk about it ever again. A good bombing totally buries Epstein.

Epstein? What Epstein? Boom, baby!

Certainly, all over Fox News World there were sighs of relief, as loyal patriotic talking heads happily prattled about bombing Iran and avoided any mention of the Epstein affair. True and loyal Christians everywhere rejoiced that they no longer had to deflect and obfuscate about the Epstein affair.

In San Francisco, Satan-worshipping homosexuals, as you would expect, protested. Per one notorious firebrand, "that does not justify the President of the United States engaging in an illegal, dangerous war that will risk the lives of our American service members and our friends without justification to the American people." And according to U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, "in the dead of night, President Trump started an unauthorized, unconstitutional war with Iran -- I am deeply opposed to any unprovoked strikes carried out without Congressional authorization, authorization that is explicitly required by our constitution."

Alex Padilla: "The Constitution is clear, and Republican members of Congress must join us in holding this administration accountable and restoring Congress's role in foreign policy."

Jimmy Panetta: "For the eighth time in his presidency, Donald Trump attacked a country without informing or getting buy-in from the American people."

Minor quibbles! And totally overlooking the benefits that burying the Epstein scandal brings. It's pretty much assured at this point that the Dow will go over 50,000!

And after all, who cares about the Epstein affair?
Over fifty thousand, man!
Patriotism!



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EVRYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT

Afghanistan and Pakistan are at war, as are the U.S. Government and the U.S. Government. So the incompetence and idiocy continue. With more to come as our corporate masters further their hold on policy and media. Plus we're involved in a drug war in a Southern neighbor, behind the scenes and incompetently, to stem the flow of narcotics to our addicts, as well as sending speedboats filled with radical Cubans south to be shot out of the water, and gibberantly making noise about New Yorkers, hockey teams being unreconstructed morons, and error-filled bible-based textbooks for grammar schools. Basically, the country has gone to hell in a handbasket.

And it's unseasonably warm.

Because, of course, global warming is a hoax. As every damn' ignorant chuckleheaded Jesus-freak in the great states of Florida and Texas knows.



How the hell can the most genetically diverse country in the modern world be so unbelievably inbred?

While the rest of us were evolving, everywhere between the Sierras and the East River did unspeakable things with close relatives for several generations. Now their moron offspring dominate the discourse.

But don't worry, my faith in humanity has not gotten any less.


Take all the time you need to think about that.



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RIFFING OFF THE PILLS

Barely ten days ago it was bitterly cold. Today it was run around naked weather. Stroll around naked. Ambulate in a lazy languorous fashion. Naked. That is to say I avoided one public bench after lunch because there was a chap wearing too little there soaking up the sun.
And I felt distinctly overdressed for the occasion.

I enjoyed smoking my pipe on a different bench, which had been empty when I sat down, but was soon crowded with Cantonese-speaking old people obviously also flummoxed by the heat and the suntanning man across the street. Obviously the semi-neatly dressed person with a pipe is far less invasive and uninviting than the barely garbed glowing sweaty dude.

[The pipe is a very collegiate looking black sandblast billiard from L.J. Peretti in Boston. Kind of a tweedy young man, who would tutor sweet young things in Latin and algebra, because it pays for his sherry and expands the dating pool.]

Imagine that you are in your suite, relaxing, when soundlessly a nearly naked Caucasian with a scruffy beard swans past, languorously and lazily, getting in your field of vision while you focus on the foot traffic going by at a safe distance. It would disconcert you. Indeed.

We live in a foetid tropical swamp here.
There are bigfoots about.
Dang.


Nearly seventy degrees. Monday and Tuesday a week ago it was mid-forties.

Yes, there will be an angry letter to the editor soon. Complaining in the strongest terms. In my day this did not happen! Many of my best friends are lumberjacks.
And only a few of them are partially nude.

Yours faithfully, Brigadier Sir Charles Arthur Strong, Mrs.


When I got back home I felt like a stumbling corpse, and hurt all over. Especially the upper shoulders and legs. The heat affected me badly. My blood is too thick for San Francisco, I've never been able to properly explain myself here. I couldn't concentrate. Terrible things were happening all around me. Put on some golf shoes! Otherwise I'll never make it out of this place alive. Impossible to walk in this muck. No footing at all!


By teatime I was still in pain. I had taken a Tylenol, and totally forgot about the Amlodipine Besylate and Rivaroxaban which were on my schedule. Only an hour or so after the hot restorative beverage did I remember them.



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I NEED A STICK!

One of the people out there on the web lives with three corvids. One of whom has a nice stick. Which he (or she) likes to show off and ponce around with. The other two are kind of jealous. Why does HE (or SHE) have a nice stick? It's so unfair! So occasionally the stick gets "borrowed". My stick! Neener neener neener! I found it! Mine!

This is a very nice stick. It is mine. Why won't you acknowledge that I have total hegemony over this stick (which is mine). And I shall have it back!

Winged pursuit. And taunting flaunting.
Flamboyant taunting flaunting.

Ponce, ponce, ponce.
Hop hop hop.


Very much like Johnny Depp, in several roles, but mostly like Captain Jack Sparrow proudly boasting "I have a jar of di-i-irt, I have a jar of dirt". Also a little bit like Raoul Duke.

"I have my attorney with me. and I realize that his name is not on that list, but we must have a stick, must have a stick! What's the score here?"

Paraphrasing Johnny, drenched in sweat, though forceful and decisive at a check-in desk in Las Vegas, as the terrible drugs were starting to take effect. Whereupon he and Dr. Gonzo head into the hotel bar for cocktails and giant lizards.

I find it very hard to recognize the gender of covids, as they do not show much difference in size, shape, and colouration. And unless it's breeding season, their behaviours do not adhere to any recognizable gender roles. So it could be either sex proudly showing off their very fine stick. Which was probably stolen, because it's quite unclear which of three birds that look identical is the original owner.


Hop hop hop.



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DISCOMBOBULATION

Sometimes I wish women were more like men. Without the tendency to waffle on about sports, of course. As just one example, the old lady at the bakery who kept talking for forty five minutes, early on in her discourse mentioning a man with an impossible number of wives, at which point I realized that while she was there it would be best for me to act as white ghost devil as possible, because if I showed that I understood Cantonese I'd be roped into a conversation that several other men were trying to rope themselves out of.

So I just smiled idiotically, as we white people are known to do.

My apartment mate is good at staying out of off-kilter conversations. Like two days ago when she answered the door, said "no" firmly to the Indonesian Chinese downstairs neighbor, and shut it again. Today I found out what the woman was anxious about. Apparently, per the rent board, rents can be raised as much as 1.6% this year, on March first. That's ONE. POINT. SIX. PERCENT. Which spells the end of times, and our landlady is keeping our fellow tenant in unbearable suspense by so far not indicating that the rent will go up. ONE. POINT. SIX. PERCENT.

Maybe the Indonesians have absorbed more of Dutch neuroses during those three and a half centuries of colonial exploitation than they are willing to admit. A bookkeeping nation, or people with an accounting ledger always in the back of their heads, would understandably be in a tizzy over this. It realligns the applecart, and slightly shifts the balance of the universe. My heavens, man, it throws everything into question!

As a calm sober Dutch American, I think she's daft.

Sometimes I miss the bleak and blasty landscape of North Brabant, with its extensive bogs and fens, inhabited by wild animals and bipedal agents of chaos. If the sign says "don't walk here", you walk. If it says "no swimming, aligators", you promptly strip down to your skivvies and dive in. If it says "verboden toegang", and cites the 'Wetboek Van Strafrecht', including specific paragraphs verbatim, well, then you gang-toe it defiantly.

My apartment mate gave me the Readers Digest version of her interior monoologue down at the clinic waiting to see a medical professional. If there were any way of making her extorize that monologue while it was happening, I would accompany her next time. Both for my own entertainment AND to provide moral support. Yes, that's it. Moral support. Yes.

Both the old lady at the bakery and the Indonesian Chinese neighbor would be happier and calmer women if they smoked a pipe. Like I do. Instead of gibbering dementedly for forty five minutes, they would be calmly puffing away, enjoying the delicate building of flavour and attendant satisfaction so characteristic of fine Virginia flakes.

Probably by themselves. Or in private in any case. Because you cannot smoke in most public spaces anymore. Which is why the world is less peaceful than it used to be.
Greg Pease's Embarcadero. Red Virginia and Izmir leaf.
Soothes the savage beast.



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RELIGIOUS NUTTERY

No, I didn't watch the state of the union last night. If I want to listen to old white guys spewing hate I can do that at work over in Marin. Senility? At work. Gross venality? Work. Praise for the rich? Work. Intense dislike of poor people? Work. Repression and taking away rights? Ridiculous ideas about the way the world needs to be run and what's wrong with other people? All of that at work.

So watching Trump gibber was never on the programme.

But the folks in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas probably lapped it up. Those are places that I have resolved to never visit, for a whole variety of reasons. In fact there is much of the country that does not feature on any travel plans.


If you cannot find real coffee, Cantonese food, olive oil, chilipaste, a fabulous cheese shop, and a well-stocked bookstore there, plus a library with no restrictions, it's not a place worth spending any time in. Most of this country is so white it's practically grey in that regard.

I left Dutch speakers off that list, because of the wave of collaborators and religious bigots that mass immigrated in the last century and now vote for the solid Christian Fascist ticket. As a Dutch American I wish that weren't so. Damn them. Anywhere with Dutch American religious people is probably awash with assholes.

Fortunately we have access to the markers of civilization here in San Francisco, and to the best of my knowledge the only dangerous religious nuts here are fairly quiescent, and mostly harmless. Although one or two of them did travel to Washington for January sixth. The Jesus-freak of whom I am particularly aware hasn't posted anything on social media in a while, and does not appear to be currently running for office. No, she isn't a Baptist, Jehovah's Witness, Mormon, or Seventh Day Adventist, not even a severe and twizzel-brained Calvinist, although it would have been reasonable to suspect so.


Now if only we could do something about the bloody vegans and anti-tobacco fiends, life here would be quite perfect.



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A QUIET PLACE AT THE END OF AN ALLEY

Russell mentioned last week that the pavement in his alley was red and slimey. Red from the new year's firecrackers, slimey because the rain had gooified the scraps. This week it is still red and slimey. But considerably less so. Faintly speckled pink, here and there. And only slightly slimey. This is important because in rainy weather these shoes have a tendency to slip. So I walked there in a calm and unhurried manner, thinking with my feet.

Fortunately the area where I usually wait for the bookseller to get off work has an awning, which this time I shared with two sleepy street people. There were very few tourists about, and as Chinese people are often hideously opposed to getting wet because of the weather (unlike my own tribe, who because of the climate of Holland and Flanders regard sog, fust, and mildew as natural things), very few of the locals.

Chinese people also don't like what weather wetness does to how one smells. Dutch people don't mind a bit of a stink, it's natural. Cheese. Dried fish. Dark shag tobacco. Cowdung in nearby pastures. Hot tar. That kind of thing.

I may have added a little too much tobacco with a trailer slag perfume in it to my pouched blend recently. I could smell it when I unfolded the calfskin to load my pipe. Fortunately it doesn't spoil the smoke, and is, when burning, not an issue. The Virginias dominate.
When I open the pouch there is a faint whiff of degeneracy or perversion.

Being a refined man, I couldn't help noticing the smell.
I doubt that many other people would.
Faintly floral.

Tat yee was smoking his pipe right outside the bar once we got there, the drizzle having stopped. I couldn't smell what he was smoking in the new pipe with which he is very tickled. But I doubt he has gone beyond cheap drugstore blends. I had not seen him there several hours ago when I headed over to the place at the end of the alley for braised brisket over rice (牛腩飯 'ngau naam faan'). But I may have just missed him. He probably can't smoke in his digs, and so must go out regularly. And he likes to drink.

Chinatown is actually beautiful during rainy nights. Quiet and glowing.
Peaceful. Clean. Rather soothing to the senses.


Basketball on one screen, Anthony Bourdain on another.
Only four other people in the bar.
Murmering.



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CHICKEN THOUGHTS

A few pieces of excellent white cooked chicken (白切雞 'paak chit kai') with some ginger dip, soy sauce, and chili paste. Altogether an excellent breakfast. And, if yu think about it, totally San Francisco. Because you cannot do this in Denver, Miami, or Podunk. Where the rest of this country lives. Benighted, and devoid of good things to eat. Chicken so old that the only decent thing to do besides burying it is to deep-fry the living intercourse out of it.

My apartment mate picked it up in Chinatown after visiting the doctor. She is a Cantonese woman, and consequently, no matter how sick she is, matters gustatory are important.
Such as an excellent chicken.

My friend rabbi Bxxxxx is stuck in three feet of snow in some ghastly place back east where paak chit kai may probably not be obtained, another friend has two feet of snow on her lawn furniture (it's underneath there somewhere), and a third is thinking about exquisite Chinese teas (obtained by mail order) and exotic foods (not to be found in his state without hours of driving through snow drifts) while stuck indoors.

Here, it's shirtsleeve weather. C'town is barely six blocks away. The weather was supposed to be mildly inclement, but we wait upon the arrival of rain.

Mid sixties. Good food. Condimentals. Mmm.

It hardly feels like the same country.

Truly we are blessed in one of the few civilized parts of this country.
Hard to believe that many others are our fellow citizens.

In some parts of this nation superstition and stupidity reign supreme, and howling savages, outcastes, and reddish necked fellows hold sway, governing as if by the dameonic right of kings. Libraries and universities suffer under their misrule, and Christian Nationalists force everyone to worship their Mammon. The country has become Springfield and Quahog.

We have met the enemy and he is us.


We must count upon greasy junkfood, 32 ounce carbonated beverages, horrible weather, bad beer, and congenital, persistent idiocy to defeat them. Hail diabetes and obesity!


My heavens that chicken was tasty.



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ASS-COVETING IDOLATERS

There is no way in hell I will watch tonight's State Of The Union speech by a venal orange pedophile wearig adult diapers. Instead, I will read about it later. I do not need to see Mike Johnson performing the closest thing to fellatio that teevee will allow. Or rows of applauding monkeys. The best thing we can hope for is that he sharts himself on live television.

Which later Karoline Leavitt will spin as a decisive and appropriate executive act that counters the evil represented by Obama, Biden, and Kamala. If those crooks hadn't destroyed the country he wouldn't have to do that. In Jesus name.

It's genius. Proves he was sent to save us.

The Dow is over fifty thousand! That's what we should be talking about!


This is probably the decade in which America discovers a love for guillotines.


And maybe by the time that finally happens, several failed states of the union will have been reabsorbed into Mexico. Like Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma. Plus Arkansas. Utah too, but it's actually too far north, and filled with weird cultist freaks, so they may not want it back.

The State Of The Union Speech is, very likely, the closest thing to a Kid Rock halftime show that many people will see. Bloviation, and Adderall fueled insanity. Glitter. Adulatory excess. Hero worship. Outright lies and ambiguous statements. Oh, it will be fabulous!

Passionate applause and later lines of cocaine on toilet seats.
Kash Patel will fly in on an FBI jet, with his girlfriend.
Kristi Noem displays her puffed-up lips.
Christianity triumphs.

It will be very white.


A new wave of righteous persecution of disagreeable foreign elements in the ice-tea drinking belt will be announced by preachers, foxmouths, and conservative blowhards in the usual parts of the country, and influencers will announce the second coming.

The men's hockey team will offer Trump their medals.
Which he will graciously accept.



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MAN UP, WOMAN!

My apartment mate is in her jammies, reading in bed in her own room, after coming into my digs to rant about the medications that the hospital sent her home with after she had gone to the clinic there to see a doctor, having suffered from the flu for twelve days now. Four prescriptions! Nasal spray, cough syrup, and two pills. The cough syrup tastes like fake cherries, the nasal spray has camphor, eucalyptus, and menthol. One of the pills is even more nasty. And the Chinese Indonesian woman from downstairs rang our doorbell twice while I was out galavanting about (having dumplings down in Chinatown). The second time she opened up, told the woman "no" before she even had much chance to speak, and she now wants me to go downstairs and see what she wants.

No. You're obviously much easier to deal with than I am. You are fellow Chinese, and female. Whereas I am a Dutchman, representative of the nation that pillaged and despoiled her natal place for three hundred and fifty years. A cruel savage. The chances of pillage and despoilating are virtually nil, so there is no reason for me to even ask.

You, on the other hand .....

And as far as the horrid medicines are concerned, they want you to get better. Just pipe down and man up. Woman up. Whatever. You've faced worse. We had durian in the apartment once. And you're Chinese. Creative, mystical, and flexible.

I, on the other hand, have dealt with multiple crazies today.
As a calm and rapacious 'Ollander, I'm long suffering.
My phlegmatic self has suffered enough.

There was that fellow in the park who had lost it and was at the end of his tether. Probably a combination of a horrid life spiralling out of control, unbalanced body chemistry going totally haywire, and several missing screws since childhood. Plus substances and low blood sugar due to malnutrition. Very ambulatory and loud. Because of his fits I moved several times and kept him in view. Other people simply skedaddled.

A happy clam down on Montgomery Street mostly naked. Much too energetic.

And a rather putrid fellow on the bus picking his nose, and wiping his face with sweatshirt. Other passengers on the overcrowded rush-hour conveyance gave him a wide berth.
At least two body spaces.


And there was the goofball who saw me and came over to get the usual two dollars I give him because he's part of the neighborhood and not really functional. He made some reference to American Graffiti as he left afterwards.



Anyhow, I sincerely hope she gets well soon. When she coughs she sounds like a horse. Horking up hairballs. It's painful. And I can't smoke inside when she doesn't go to work. She needs to get out so she doesn't go stircrazy. If I have to, I'll lurk in the airwell with my pipe.
While daydreaming of pillaging and conquering.



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LOST IN THE UNDERGROWTH

One of the older fellows celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the first date with his wife by taking flowers and icecream to the assisted care facility where she now lives. She can no longer quite recognize who he is, or when he was there last, and needs to be supervised lest she wander off into the woods, but she was never-the-less very happy to see him.
He still remembers who she is and visits her every day.

Fifty years. That's a long time. When he stops by where I work we are happy to see him too.

Because I think it's a sign of basic human respect for one's fellow, I try to remember who everyone I see more than once or twice is. Learned that while working for Indians, to whom every Mexican in the kitchen was "hey amigo", almost like it was a caste designation.

[Of course I should mention that many of them were simply J.Singh. Jabbargan Singh. Jagbir Singh. Jagdish Sing. Jagman Singh. Jagtar Sing. Jit Singh. Jeevan Singh. Jodh Sing. Joginder Singh. Joshvir Sing. Jot Singh. ..... ]


Never having met his wife, I have no idea who she is. But judging by the man, she is probably a wonderful woman, still, and would be nice to meet.

Whereupon I would remember her name.

There is one chap whose surname I remembered because it translates as "little hammer".
I'm rather embarassed because his first name totally escapes me, and I haven't taken the time to look it up in the system.

I really should. I know what subject he's studying, and even the cigars that he thinks are the bees knees and cat's whiskers. And I've learned to ignore his grouchy appearance, as that's just the way his eyebrows twist. But his primary appellation has fled me.


Because several years ago I worked temp jobs I still encounter people who remember me while wandering in downtown San Francisco, whose names and peculiarities are totally lost. Often they are delighted to see me. As I am. But I keep the conversations short because otherwise I might hurt their feelings, what with having absolutely no clue who they are.

Sadly, I remember the exact glaze of a coffee mug I broke way back when while doing an assignment at dotdotdot bank on Montgomery Street precisely and exactly. It was a modern rendition of the same effect on one of my favourite antique ricebowls (also broken years ago). Very nice. Mottled rusty autumnal reds from iron oxide glaze.



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PUTTING IT DELICATELY

The Netherlands got 20 medals, the United States 33. But the Netherlands is one twentieth the size of the US, and doesn't have an adult diaper wearing pedophile as its head of government. And they're respected internationally. So in real terms, they're doing quite well, thank you.

A friend moved to the Netherlands last year to get far away from our devolutionary return to feudalism. She and her husband are still learning Dutch, but sometime soon I expect her to start reading Brederode and Vondel, and belatedly realizing that they're in the catbird seat, culture-wise.

That probably explains the absence of an adult diaper wearing pedo over there, and why we do have one in Washington. Apparently the White House has an odour of busted toilet most of the time now.

But do please keep shouting that we're the greatest country on earth.
You ess ay! You ess ay! You ess ay!


The United States is indeed the greatest country in Texas.

In other news, I think I may have found a pipe tobacco that has been aromatized which is actually unnoticeable to my coworker Hecky. Samuel Gawith's Kendal Cream, which whiffs in the tin like rootbeer with slight hints of distant urinal cake and old lady's lingerie drawers. It's subtle, and a pleasing smoke, which surprised me. He didn't run away screaming that I was killing the planet and for heavens sake think of the children (!), or act in any way like I was viciously torturing him and trying to give him nightmares. I don't think he even noticed.

He may wake up screaming in the middle of the night now, but that won't be my problem.

Filled a GBD bulldog with it and slowly smoked it over a slightly more than hour and a half stretch, while dealing with some truly lovely old pipes. Somebody should do a serious study on the briar that Peterson used during the fifties and sixties. It had a particular look.
I don't think they have the same source nowadays.
Rather a pity.

I think I'll have another bowl of it after dumplings tomorrow.



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DEEPLY MEANINGFUL, OH!

The egg roll cookies mentioned in a previous post were crumbleome and delicious. I had three of them. The technique for eating them is to extend your lips in a tube shape around them and bite, in order to minimize crumbs and fragments going all over your clothes. The name of the brand roughly tranlates as "East Gazes at the Ocean", and there is a cute drawing on one side of a manga type person warmly dressed riding a fish.

No, I do not know what the back-story there is. I bought the tin on a whim a few weeks ago, because it is red and colourful and the Chinese text on one side wished me a happy new year. You would have done the same.

Probably also without noticing the smilling fish-riding munchkin.

We did not open the tin till yesterday evening.
Which was an oversight.



It is traditional to purchase a supply of egg roll cookies around the time of Chinese New Year. I have no idea why this is so. There's probably some deep spiritual significance. Invented especially to impress the white people. Who are unwilling to accept that sometimes something will be done because it's fun.

Just like the manga type person riding the fish. Cute illustration. Let's put it on the box! Why? Because it's fun, dude. What's the connection to the product? There isn't any, but who cares?


Which is why there's a picture of a stone bridge across a jungle ravine in England above. No connection to the egg roll cookies. None whatsoever. But it's kind of pretty, if you like green stuff and scenery, and I thought placing it here without any logical connection or context would be fun to do. And I had nowhere else to put it after creating it.



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