DEAR LITTLE PIGGY WIGGY

While waiting for the light to change, I heard the girl next to me scream "Tanya, hey Tanya!" It startled me (some of us don't deal well with sudden noises), and I was glad she didn't have a deeper less femmy voice, lest whomever think it was me. "Tanya, I love you Tanya, you hog!" Okayyyy, is "hog" the next teenage lesby term of endearment? Or can we all use it?

And if so, what are the permissible circumstances?

Personally, I would have thought "little piggy-wiggy" would have been sweeter, but I am not au courant. No longer 'up on juvenile love, lust, and hormonal idiocy. Sad, I know.

In any case, I did not know who among the Cantonese of various ages across the street might be Tanya, so I'm just guessing that "you hog" was affectionately meant. These things are obviously on a 'need-to-know' basis, and perhaps everyone in her school fondly considers her as a perfect 'hog'. The dear little piggy-wiggy.

I too am fond of hog. Particularly five flower meat, that being a cut of streaky pork from the belly flesh. Goes great with preserved vegetable (梅菜，雪菜) as well as rice wine, soy sauce, ginger, and black mushroom. Long simmered. Melt-in-your mouth tender.

Do you have a nickname for your significant other?
Is it "plum vegetable knock meat"?
梅菜扣肉。

With taro also can, (芋头扣肉 'wu tau kau yiuk'), but most often you'll encounter it on a bed of preserved brassica (梅菜), mui choi kau yiuk. Very Hakka, very Canto, universally loved.

Note that the illustration has nothing to do with either dish. A canal that could be almost anywhere. The Netherlands has lots of canals, so does China, and old town Jakarta too.

At it's simplest, the hunk of meat is browned in a hot pan skin side down after blanching briefly to firm it up, then drained, and put to simmer whole, or cut into large chunks or thick slices, with garlic, ginger, star anise, a hefty jigger of sherry or rice wine, a dash of soy sauce or dollop of oyster sauce, and water or broth, for an hour or two, or put in the steamer.
Rinsed snow vegetable, or taro chunks, or even potato wedges, can be added.

Not being fond of taro, I don't have any tips on how to prepare it.
Or how long to cook it either.



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BEFORE SHOES IN ANY CASE

A friend over on Facebook poses the question whether one should put on his socks before his pants, or after. And many of his readers responded with thoughtfulness and gravitas.
Only one of them (me) brought up the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch.
In passing reference, not as a source of authority.

I do not know if Rav Shlomo Ganzfried (1804 - 1886) applied his mental faculties (paskening skills) to the question, which seems like an appalling oversight, considering his opinion that one must put on the right shoe first without tying it, then the left. Tie the left.
And only then tie the right.

Most of us do not give the matter much thought, beyond doing shoes AFTER socks.

Which, of course, may be taken as a guide line for the entire proces.


*Ehem ... *


Mordechai asked: "I have a critical, vital, PRESSING question for the world: Should socks be put on BEFORE or AFTER pants?"

Put on your socks after your pants. Dress from the top down. And from the inside layer to the outside. Undershirt, then collared shirt. Boxers, then slacks. Socks, then shoes. The watch goes on after the shirt, but you can wait untill you're socked and shod to do that. Reading specs probably before the watch, though. Logic and order.

Regarding the specific order in which to tie your shoe laces, the smart person does not tie them too tightly, so that he can easily slip his feet in and out as needed, and might think that that is too much anyway.


It appears that under his readers, mostly East Coast people, there are a large number who opine that socks go on before pants. Which is absolutely ridiculous. Quite. This tells me that if I ever go to New York, I should watch out. Things aren't right there.

To say that I am appalled is putting it mildly.



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AND NOT A PAPER CUP IN SIGHT

All you are allowed to bring into Hong Kong is one open pack of cigarettes with one smoke missing, OR two cigars of any type, OR one opened tin of pipe tobacco. Obviously they have cigarettes because many Chinese smoke like chimneys, and there is a very well-developed trade in Havanas as well as commodious lounges wherein to partake thereof. Pipe tobacco might be an issue. More research is required. In any case, not planning to go there soon. Most of the year it's hot in Hong Kong. November through March is just about right.
From May through October it's rather beastly for an awd fossil with PAD.
And typhoon season as well. I don't mind typhoons.

I mind heat.

Here in San Francisco I frequently bellyache about the temperatures from summer through October. Although many people I know, ruddy deviants with poor judgement, will often say that they love warm days when it's over eighty degrees.

This came up conversationally because I'm thinking of visiting HK sometime next year. Especially if the trip to the plantation in Honduras falls through. As it did before.


Today it got into the low sixties in the city.
Which was just about perfect.

When I saw the price for milk tea at the place I thought of going to for the first time in half a decade, I was utterly aghast. Nearly twice what the bakery I no longer frequent charges.
Good nei ge lord, you folks have lost your minds!
我唔係個蠢嘅遊客！

Much later at the bar I had two cups of tea.
Significantly better company too.
It was almost empty.


The bookseller has backslid, and has fallen into his old passion again. Pinball. I would not be surprised if we eventually read about him habituating dark Tenderloin dives and rubbing elbows with hardened pinball sharks, perhaps even selling his priceless collection of taxidermied roadkill and vermin for rolls of quarter to sate his addiction.
Which would be sad, but what can you do?

He might even start hanging out with Texans and other lowlifes.
Trailer park denizens and Slavs in track suits.
I am again utterly aghast!



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A HURRICANE? HERE?

With rumours of a hurricane slimmish-possibly hitting California, because of weather deep out in the Pacific Ocean, the sensible man does not panic, but creates a checklist.
Neurotic, I know. But sadly necessary.

EMERGENCY AND DISASTER CHECKLIST

Bath Soap: Several bars.
Blood presssure pills: Enough.
Butter, Cooking Oil, Congealed Grease: Plenty.
Canned Luncheon Meat: A very great sufficiency.
Chili Pastes (sambal): Loads.
Cigarettes (imported and "grey" market): Good lord.
Coffee: You betcha.
Condiments: A great variety.
Condoms: No love life, ergo none.
Cookies: Several containers.
Crackers: Two or three packets.
Dish Soap. Loads.
Dried Tofu Stick: Two large bags.
Fish Sauce (魚露 'yü lou'): Large bottle, sixty percent full.
Kitchen Tissue: Three packs.
Lotion, Hydrating, for Old Geezer Skin: Extra bottle.
Medicated Foot Powder: Brand new bottle.
Oyster Sauce (蠔油 'hou yau'): Two bottles, one half full.
Pipe Tobacco, English-Balkan: I'll be dead before I finish it all.
Pipe Tobacco, Virginia and Virginia-Perique: Enough for several years.
Q-tips ("ear twiddlies"): Hmmm, might need to buy another box.
Roast Duck: Only a few pieces in the refrigerator, they'll be gone before the weekend.
Roast Pork: See duck.
Shampoo: Better buy some more.
Soy Sauce (豉油 'si yau'): A nearly full bottle.
Sriracha Hot Sauce: I'm good, thanks.
Tea (loose leaf & bags): yep.
Tins of Fried Dace (豆豉鯪魚 'dau si ling yü'): Plenty.
Toilet Paper: Two large packs of rolls.
White Cut Chicken (白切雞 'paak chit kai'): Same as the duck and pork situation.


So I think I'm more than adequately prepared.
Plus both I and my apartment mate recently did laundry, so that's okay too. If the hurricane hits this far north we'll simply sit it out going quietly insane from the isolation and tumult.

We're far enough uphill that even if the storm drains get blocked by piles of dead bodies we won't be washed out. And I've got enough matches and brand new Bic lighters that cleaning up detritus should be easy.


We're prepared for any eventuality. Everyone should have these things in their disaster kit, it's just common sense. If need be, some of it can be traded on the black market which will arise in the months before the Federal Government comes to our aid.


The chances of getting hit are infinitesimally slim.
Rather a pity when you think about it.



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RABBIT RABBIT SEPTEMBER 2026

Rabbit rabbit. Good luck, or good things. I keep thinking about the young lady scoping out the very good condition furniture that someone had left on the sidewalk near our front door. She was photographing it, and talking to the person on the other end of the line. "It might be my height, perfect for under the round window" This was about a white dresser, but then she modified her statement, saying that it just couldn't be her own height, five three, it seemed slightly shorter. At which I remarked that she herself was taller than five three.

My apartment mate is five four or five.

I know five somethings.

Trust me.

What she needed, if she was planning on re-homing a dresser, was a passing Dutchman or Texan. A trim Texan, not one of the usual ones. And while I am indeed a Dutchman, I am not one of the tall ones, though I was considered on the tall side in eastern North Brabant back in the day at five eight or nine. The Dutch have sprung up since then and are now the tallest people on the planet. Also, I'm older now, and did not feel like shlepping a dresser uphill, even though she was quite nice. She didn't ask, I didn't volunteer.

Heavy furniture uphill shleppery is something only the younger fellows do.
It's a gentlemanly act, admittedly, but non-arthritic.
Non-grumpy and non-middle aged.

White wooden dresser, might be five foot three in height. Probably perfect for a short slim woman who lives under a round window.

There were also chairs and a table.

I suspect someone has moved.


Rabbit rabbit.



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THAT LIKE BERGAMOT?

You will no doubt be pleased to know that what I had for lunch today did not include lettuce, or jalapeños, or beef, or frozen blueberries, or cheese, or radishes, prepackaged corn, salad mix, sprouts of any kind, or, for that matter, anything from Texas. So I am just not destined to loose weight fast and get down to my ideal pre-diabetic weight of less than three hundred pounds, the target for all Americans in the Deep South and Midwest.

Also, I am not in the Deep South or the Midwest.
Or Texas, where everyone is supersized.
Don't have diabetes either.

At night when I'm asleep I hear huge Texan behemoths lumbering past my window on the way to their mating grounds to die. The horror, the horror. Must be at least six hundred pounds of rabid bovine-weasel-karentype each, wearing deep grooves in the trail.


All the rest of you are blessed with good chances of getting salmonella, escherichia coli, or listeriosis, plus fluoxetine and 2,4-dinitrophenol, which will help y'all firm up, slim down, and shed the pounds. It's better than diet pills. You lucky bastards.
Gram‑positive, rod‑shaped bacteria.
Mmmmm.

Enjoy your lumps of charred flesh!

And don't forget to consume lots of liquids. Stomach flu and food poinsoning, while being all-American, can lead to serious dehydration. As well as miscarriages and electrolyte imbalances. You don't want to get sick on the way to a slimmer you.


Herr Doktor Hubert Goubert had descended to Dong Wu (東吳帝國 'tung 'ng tai gwok') with his capable assistant the witch Aunt Gwan (actually a graduate student at the Technische Universität Warschau), and both had a good breakfast of wheat noodles with red stew pork in broth, as well as dumplings (九菜湯餃 'gau choi tong gaau'). Not being proficient in Chinese, Goubert wondered why the numeral 'nine' was in the name of the latter dish, not realizing that it sounds the same as 'chives'.

Tomorrow, they would look for the linden tree, the larch, and the ancient mulberry.
In the meantime, because of the tropic downpour, perhaps a smoke.
Him: Flake in an old briar. Her: slim refined fags.
A faint hint of tangerine peel.
貴煙，陳皮爆珠。


After lunch I stepped out and lit up. It's a bit cold out there, but perfect weather for a pipe. Early company era Barling, script stamping and four digit shape number, possibly by Oppenheimer (1970 - 1977) rather than Nørding (after 1977, till 1980).
It was remarkably quiet at Portsmouth Square.
No locals, no tourists.



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HE'S OLD AND PERHAPS HE WON'T NOTICE

Having got up late I forewent the usual stroll around the neighborhood with an early morning pipe, figuring that with the resident non-smoker having already gone off to work there was no need to look at people bathroom walking their dogs or children out there in the grey bleakity of early Autumn on Nob Hill. The fog over the bridge had been dense yesterday evening, and late last night there were whisps of goth evident for two or three blocks away in any direction. Quite lovely. I've heard that the rest of the country where all the Magats live is experiencing higher than average temperatures, which probably accounts for a lot, but here in a narrow strip of civilization the weather is quite nice.

So. Sneck her bedroom door. Pop a few windows for ventilation. Make coffee and stroll into the teevee room with the first cup for some doomscrolling and a smoke to start the day.


Irrespective of when I get up, part of the morning routine is (in precise order) Atorvastatin 80 mg., Aspirin 81 mg., Metoprolol Succinate Extended Release 25 mg., Losartan HCTZ 100-25 mg., and Xarelto (Rivaroxaban) 2.5 mg., plus a few supplements.
This may be part of why when I asserted yesterday evening that I was still young and vibrant my apartment mate hooted, and counter-claimed that I was a gangled old fossil. But at this moment I can safely say, without fear of contradiction (because she is at work right now), that I am still young, vibrant, and amazingly buff oh my golly yes.
Quite springy and life-like!

The turkey vulture, whom I encountered sitting in the teevee room with two 50 gramme tins of G. L. Pease pipe tobacco which he "found" will not disagree. Probably because he hopes that I do not notice that he's sitting on my wallet. Which is his. Because it was lost, and crying out for its mommy. In the sheer kindness of his heart he adopted and comforted it. The bond between wallet and parent is sacred, dammit, will no one think about the children?


All over this country, proud American parents are sitting on their children, to keep them cool and properly hydrated in the awful commie heat they're having. Don't I know anything?

Our great president, to lower the price of carrion and to keep all the little Christian children from overheating, renamed that great body of water, which is ours, and people all over the country keep saying what a great inland sea it is they've never seen anything like it!
It will cool down loyal patriots for generations in a victory over cheating illegals.

Truly he's the greatest president that ever lived and ever will be.
Now we'll paint the bottom American-flag blue.
It will be much cooler then.

Covfefe!

No, the turkey vulture is not a stupid Trumpite or a thieving Republican. He's just an opportunist with no morals, and he wants my wallet.



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FIRE IN THE MONKEY HOUSE

The day started with counting fentanyl addicts on Van Ness while waiting for the Golden Gate Transit bus. And their dogs. It ended chasing elderly delinquents out of the back room where they had loudly been discussing bestiality, gay pornography, and midgets. Matters about which they may have considerable knowledge and expertise.
Possibly hands-on experience.

Which brought the wise advise of an orthodox rabbi from the pre-war period to mind. The Sfas Emes advises that you yourself choose what enters your ears and eyes, and it is therefore up to you to ignore certain things.

So I still know next-to-nothing about those subject matters.
And I count myself extremely lucky in that regard.

I am too young for any of this.


There are times when I have to shout back there "hey you dumb nasty-asses, keep it clean, dammit, there are sensitive people on the premises!" Leaving it entirely up to them to guess what that might mean. Women? Children? Parish priests?

Sometimes it's like a frat house there.

So anyhow I'm off work for the next few days, which will help me regain or rebuild my sanity. Good food (either my own cooking or something across the hill in Chinatown), strictly rational company (San Francisco residents whom I know), a modicum of caffeinated beverages, and pipes smoked in quiet places without the noise of rancid old farts screaming filth and provable nonsense at each other.

And also, lots of reading. Herr Doktor Hubert Goubert traveling through the interior of Wan State (皖國 'wun kwok'; Anhui), charting certain deciduous trees and eating surprisingly well, though assiduously avoiding stinky tofu. Pork dumplings, roast geese and ducks. There are some dishes there which while unique are less than universally appealing. Often he spends several hours repairing his mosquito nets, because he is fastidious and neurotic.
Mosquito-borne ailments, eruptive fevers, as well as wasting diseases.


It must be hard to spend several months away from modern pharmacies, tobaconists, and cafés near universities and research institutes in the civilized part of the world: Warsaw.



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THERE ARE DUCKS!

In complete contrast to yesterday when I woke up with noodles in my head, this morning it was duck dreaming. Imagine a montane city along the sloping sides of a gorge, with ducks in the shallows just beyond the river's edge, as well as wandering along the lower streets. After the rice paddies have been semi-drained there is less for them to eat, but they are still young and plump and happy. And tender.

So naturally, roast duck. High heat after a little brining and marinating. Then chunk-chopped and arranged beautifully on a platter, or simply plonked on top of your bowl of warm rice with a splash of sweet-savoury-picante jus. If you are from the Wu speaking region you might prefer the chunks with wheat noodles in a savoury broth. Breakfast of champions.


Perhaps, if there are three or four of you meeting for breakfast before heading over to the archeologic survey offices for work, also a nice steamed fish with ginger shreds and slivered black mushroom briefly seethed in the hot duck fat, with a drizzle of black vinegar over the plated carp. It emphasizes the sweetness of the flesh.

After which you all head out to the veranda of the restaurant several stories above the river, to smoke your pipes under the deep overhanging roof. Professor Zhang smuggled in some nice tins in from Germany, quality Virginia flake.

Need to make sure that we have a pound or two Guangzhou's finest coffee.
And a supply of sambal. It's essential!
Locally made also good.

There are no restaurants overlooking the river which serve roast duck for breakfast in this neighborhood, it being San Francisco. Instead, there's a donut shop. Donuts, as everybody knows, are something we Dutch Americans invented to give all you Anglos early diabetes.
Because you lot have no self-control whatsoever.


It's a sore lack.


This morning on the way to work I passed three crack-smokers at one bus stop (auntie and uncle on their way to Chinatown waited safely several yards away from them), and over on Van Ness there were a few people opposite, in the inverted U fentanyl pose. You know, that stance where the body might topple forward, slump entirely down, or fall sideways in either direction. Drugs for breakfast. Very Trump-era.

Yes, I would far rather have an eatery on a slope.
It was nicely foggy, drifting mists.
Quack!



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LATE NIGHT NOODLES

Through quite explicable circumstance I ended up reading about Southwestern Mandarin, Commissioner Lin (林則徐 lam jak cheui), and life in small inland cities, during the middle of the night. I had woken up for the usual old man reason (bathroom), and before going back to sleep had gone onto the internet. A humid subtropical monsoon climate (not here), and a military and vivilian prefectoral administrative office beckoned.
As, naturally, they do. At two in the night.

No, there were no indications of malarial fever or poinsonous miasmas. This wasn't some thousand year old travel account by an official sent to die on the tropic frontiers among the headhunters and tattooed savages (today's Thais and Burmese), or rebellious Annamites.

Damned natives have attacked the out-posts again.
We must oranize a punitive expedition!
Settle them most firmly.


Still left to look-up: What do they eat? Are there any local gustatory specialties of note? Something interesting with noodles, pork, and spicy pickled vegetables?


Obviously, so far inland seafood dishes are NOT the thing.
Perhaps something with river fish.
Upstream crustacean.

And now, naturally, I'm thinking about broad ribbon pasta with spicy bean sauce, dry shrimp, and chopped long beans, for breakfast. Jigger of hot broth to make it slurry-saucy.
Pinch sugar. Garnish with fresh chives and crumbled peanuts.


邊境麵 ('pin king min'): spicy frontier noodles. Broad wheatflour noodles cooked al dente, dressed with chopped long beans, douban jiang (豆瓣醬), rehumidified dry shrimp (蝦米 'haa mai'), a little garlic, splash of stock, small jigger dark vinegar, dash soy sauce. A little sugar added near the end of cooking. Chopped chives and crushed toasted peanuts.
Chili flakes strewn over for colour and flavour.


The chopped long beans are in there because I bought some recently on Stockton Street.

But as a non-breakfast eater, I'm not planning to cook anything.
Although I assure you that if needed I could.

Just coffee for the nonce.



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DRUCQUER'S RECOLLECTION

The other day, probably yesterday, a reader and fellow pipesmoker left a comment in my letterbox which probably would not interest anyone other than a pipesmoker. Sadly, they did not leave their name or any contact data, so I cannot respond to them directly. Mention was made of Drucquer's, a famous tobacco store which has been out of business for three decades.

CITE:
"Off topic blast from the past: I am just about finished with what may well be my last 8oz of 805 and reached into my cabinet for something else rare, special, and old and found a 4oz tin of Drucquer and Sons stamped “1265". Any idea what that might be? I think I bought it on Solano Avenue after Drucquer’s moved there from University where (pretty sure) you and I worked. Don’t know how to reach you directly but thought I would ask and also mention that I have enjoyed your BLOG on and off over the years."
END CITE

The easiest way to reach me directly is that letterbox. If you include your e-mail adress, it will never be published. I'll read and and note down the contact information, then trash the comment for your privacy. And I will respond to you.

Your writing had me going through a box underneath two other boxes, because I had several tins of Drucquer's tobacco in there, unopened for over four decades.

Including these three beauties:

TWO ITERATIONS OF BLEND 805, ONE OF ARCADIA

There is nothing in his note which tells me who it is. So I'm baffled. Did we work together? If so, let me very belatedly apologize for being a complete asshole in those years, as I was, as well as undiplomatic and uncouth. I am ashamed of being a rather unpleasant person back then. I do not like what I was. But I think I have improved. Although also gotten worse.

Again, leave your contact info, and please introduce yourself. I do not still know many people from that era, and any attempt to trace George Walter, for instance, whom you probably also remember, has come a cropper. It looks like he passed away over a decade ago. Don is still somewhere in the East Bay, Pauline may have moved to Seattle, Cara has dropped out of sight entirely, and Robert is somewhere in the foothills, having been a winemaker of some note for many years. And I heard he had a bout of cancer a while back.
I've lost pretty much all contact with them.


For other readers: Blend 805 was a full-strength English, fifty percent Latakia, twenty five percent Turkish (Djubec), and the rest three different blending Virginias which are almost certainly no longer available, though approximations can be found with some searching.
I suspect that one of those Virginias was aged or steam-treated.
All the hippest with-it people smoked 805.

Back when we stil had onions tied to our belt.
As was the style at the time.


Please drop me a line.



AFTER THOUGHTS:

Block Brothers, which provided a number of blending tobaccos, was sold to US Tobacco in 1980 or so, and their quality went down the tubes, so other suppliers necessarily had to be found. The choice of leaf, and kickstarting enzymatic, bacterial, and yeast conversion of starches to sugars is key, and takes more time, than simply doctoring the tobacco with chemicals and cooking. No. 1265 was one of the last blends Drucquer's developed.
I'm guessing that it may have been an English-Balkan.
Cook's No. 5 was in the vein 0f 805.


By that time many very interesting aromatics had come onto the market that smelled for all the world like a pharmacy and a candy shop had mated and produced a Rosemary's baby.
These all became undeservedly very popular.
Sick bastards.



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ENRICHED WITH HYDROCORTISONE

Whenever I get off the bus at Grant and Clay I start counting 'boolas' (a person from Hawaii will automatically know what I mean). There are things which have to be counted; robot-taxis, dogs, tykes, familiar faces, street people, markedly insane folks, and, in Chinatown, boolas. It's sort of an obsession with oversize Americans. Because I am a cruel person with very little sympathy for people who drown their sorrows in carbonated beverages, fatty snacks, and corn-derived sweeteners. Which is seemingly the entire South and Midwest.

It's entirely unjudgemental, though. Oh look, there goes a whale. Who will probably have a heart-attack before hitting fifty, and deplete the world's supply of injectable insulin as well as discount supermarket sheetcake before then.

Do not feed the whales.

And I can understand how they get that way. Mmm, fatty snacks!
Say it slowly, languourously. Drawl it, oh sensuous word.
American civilization was built on fatty snacks.


As well as cynical advertising. "To maintain your girlish figure, reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet." The box of bon-bons in that picture was lovingly photographed. Luscious confection, or the acrid taste of burning leaves? Hard choice. The words "it's toasted" sealed the deal. You'd probably walk a mile for that yummalicious toasty flavour.

Waddle waddle waddle.

During the tourist months Chinatown is filled with people who did not retain their girlish figure but stole the box of bon-bons, ripping it savagely out of the trembling hands of an orphan to gobble it down post-haste with unseemly lip-smackety sounds. Somewhere some scrawny tyke on the cusp of death is weeping into her pillow over the loss. It was her last box! She had been saving it for her mommy who needed an operation! The heartache is palpable!

Did you know that if you put a sheetcake between two slices of bread it's a sandwich?
Here in San Francisco you can use sourdough. We're famous for that.
Bring some back for the folks in Podunk.


Over twenty boolas on the street yesterday in Chinatown. This is why you should avoid the main drag, one of them slows down an entire block of pedestrians. I walked in traffic on my way to the restaurant, because even though the blood circulation in the lower extremities is far from optimal, and I carry a blackthorn stick with me to gently poke at obstructions, there were slow-moving tourists everywhere gliding beatifically from one window display to the next. Even my legs are faster. A purposeful stride by comparison.

I like boolas. They make me feel good about myself.

Smoked a pipe afterwards filled with aged Virginias. Then did my shopping. Including a bunch of longans (龍眼 'lung ngaan'; dimocarpus longan, a tropical fruit) for my Indonesian Chinese downstairs neighbor. Plus substances preventative of Hong Kong foot (香港腳 'heung gong keuk'; tinea pedis), which, in hotter weather, takes out whole swathes of the country, leaving them bedbound with nothing but sheetcake sandwiches for sustenance in their suburban ranch houses with the two-car garage, from May till October. It's sad.

Here in San Francisco it is a mild risk from 'back to school' till Halloween (our Valentine's Day). And a good boy scout should always be prepared.
One must take care of one's health.


A tube of anti-itch cream for dry skin is also useful.
Especially when it gets near seventy degrees.
Moisturizers, and aloe.
66°F, sunny.


It's sweltering, man, sweltering.




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IT'S NOT JUST THE CHILDREN

There are MAGA-ites who propose banning all vaccines, because they are poison and there hasn't been a polio problem since, say, 1960 0r 1961. So why? This was right after the article discussing how our college students are testing at grammar school levels. Many Americans are damaging their health by taking supplements, having done their own research. Some people are outraged that Panda Express isn't real Chinese food. And a group of concerned parents have prayed for divine guidance over which books to ban for filth, immorality, and insuitability.

You know something? Americans are stupid as frog.
And when I say frog, I don't mean frog.
At least not actual frog.

That's something a Christian probably couldn't figure out.

I am one of the exceptionally few people I've met who can actually "do my own research", and is fully qualified to draw my own conclusions afterwards. Except that my people call that "reading". Which many Americans are incapable of doing at higher than a single-digit level.

We are surrounded by frogs. Mental frogs.
Real frogs are likable. Not these.

As a country, we are amplexed. Big time.

Book banning, Christianity, and "doing one's own research" are most widespread in the red states, as you would probably guess, along with diabetes, liver disease, obesity, and infant mortality. Basically, Mad Max with humidity, mosquitoes, and chiggers.

Unfortunately, those froggers vote. Which explains Greg Abbott, Ted Cruz, Mike Johnson, Ron De Santis, Lindsey Graham (rumoured to be deceased, not provably so), Mitch McConnell, Tommy Turberville, and a host of other ignorant incompetents.


Libraries are froggin' useless there.
Single-digit reading levels.
Bless their hearts.



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BUT EXCELLENT LIGHTING

Any dream that features a restaurant in Holland winning a French culinary award is, ab initio and by definition, off-kilter. Especially if it's a vegan steak house. Now that part is believable, as the Dutch are goofy enough to think that that is a good idea. Dutch cooking is marked by unidentifiable fried objects, many of which are in fact delicious. Like the frikandel, various types of kroket, and things like bamischijven, nasiballen, and berenhappen.
Please don't ask.

There's also Indonesian Dutch food.
Which is also delicious.
Far less goofy.


And we have cheese and herring.


Sadly, none of any of that was on the menu at the restaurant this afternoon, so I ordered stirfried river noodles with chicken (雞炒米粉 'kai chaau mai fan, "bihun goreng ayam") instead, which I dolled-up with sambal and chili oil.

A swords, sorcery, and taoist sages with impossible facial hair series was on teevee, featuring a handsome young man, a pretty girl, and a green dumpling daemon.
Plus a well-lit library deep under the mountain top temple.

Lunch was good. A little too greasy. Probably to keep the broad rice sticks from sticking to the pan. There's a doggie bag in the refrigerator right now. I'll probably add a fried egg and some slivered ginger. I would add fresh Jalapeños, except that because our agribusiness is now operating on libertarian principles and policing itself, those are now unsafe.
Along with eggs, beef, blueberries, lettuce, and probably many more.
I'll take my chances on the damn' eggs.

Probably no eggs available locally are from the Midwest or Texas.

Basically, if your food doesn't come from California, you're playing Russian Roulette with your meals. The rest of the country is a filthy unclean toxic hazard zone where Mad Max runs the farm, with anything Texan probably guaranteed to send you to the crapper or a hospital.


The bookseller's bus was a little late, and I had already finished my pipe over twenty minutes before he showed up. Normally it's a bit earlier. The burger place was not crowded, his food arrived with speed, and the less said about the house wine the better.

The karaoke joint had people acting ugly white inside, and the former bail-out bar was doing last call as we passed. We went directly to the third bar. The bail-out from the bail-out, as it were. Where there was something mean but beautiful on teevee.

Almost unnoticed, an incident outside required three cop cars and an ambulance.
I rather wish I had seen much more of it than I did.
No clue what had happened.


Much like everything I saw on teevee.



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THE HEART OF THE BEATING CITY

If I don't watch myself I will spend the entire morning wasting time by cleaning up the rim of this Sutliff briar pipe (an elegant billiard that has seen much abuse), just frittering away the hours with sandpaper and microfibre pads. Which, as you understand, is inimical to actually getting things done. This is one reason why when I start collecting my Social Security old-geezer payments every month I shall not actually retire, just work one day less. One must stay active. Lest one become a cabbage, as so many of the fellows I babysit over in Marin have done. Mental garbage dumps unable to accept change, incapable of dealing with the modern world.

Beware the lurking of changes. They are out there.
I am not fond of change. Don't much mind either.

This essay was penned on a device which could not have existed decades earlier, when we still did all of our computations on our thumbs and communicated by throwing rocks at each other. Carrier pigeons had not been invented yet.


Without change, many of us would be dead. More than there already are.
In about three weeks I'm having an MRI scan.
Medical routine.

That Sutliff was made back in the forties or fifties at the latest. Unlike a few of my other Sutliff pipes I cannot discern any flaws, fills, or defects. The previous owner just didn't respect his smoking equipment very much, and like many men in that era treated his pipes worse than his shoes or family members. Your great grandfather is still paying off an enormous debt for years of psychological counseling necessitated by that kinder gentler age. They're the people who elected Ronald Reagan, which is one reason why you cannot afford to buy a house now. Defective individuals.


Their descendants are currently doing the fentanyl inverted 'U' pose over on Van Ness at the far ends of the bus stop platforms where they won't be disturbed (or tipped over) in their comatose state. Equally flawed, but with a different approach to "dealing with it".

There were three of them there this morning. Unlike the tweaking speed freaks of a previous generation they're quiet and don't bother anyone. If the drug stupour is good, they'll be there for nearly an hour, occasionally swaying a bit, mostly motionless. Sometimes one of them does not wake up and has to be carted off. Change is good.


Old briar. New man.



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MENTAL ATTIC SPACE

They are not related. But they occupied thought room at the same time. Tonnes of Argentine beef of extremely dubious quality allowed into the country as a Trump publicity stunt (it was rejected by the PRC over half a year earlier as horribly unfit for human consumption), the French language (having flunked French in high school, I now think that I should learn it), post-transition Barling pipes (script stamping, no apostrophe s), and Pok Fu Lam Reservoir (薄扶林水塘, built in 1863). You can see that there is nothing that logically ties these thing together. Other than the head they were in.

It's a perfectly normal head.

The beef situation: Argentine beef (which probably goes well with ketchup) is widely known to be heavily contaminated with the antibiotic chloramphenicol, which can cause bone marrow failure, aplastic anemia, gray baby syndrome, nerve damage, leukemia, digestive issues, and diarrhea, plus several other medical problems. It's basically a sweetheart deal to boost Trump's ally Milei at the expense of American consumers. And by the way, the meat in question might have been slaughtered a year ago, or more. Bon appétit, dummies.


For a number of years I did not do well at French, which was a required subject. Had I known it would piss off the rightwing hosebags, I would have studied harder. "Ces produits de bœuf ne doit pas être consommé par personne mais à part les résidents du parc de maisons mobiles aux États-Unis."

Of course there's no way in hell that beef has a reliable hechsher.
And it sure ain't halal either. Just saying.

Anyway, your chances of food poisoning, after a year and a half of la nouvelle régime, are pretty much astronomical now. Congratulations, my fellow Americans.
Sudden hospitalizations may be your future.

And good luck trying to sue.


The post transition Barling needed some serious clean-up work, but other than rim-scorching and gunk it was in excellent condition. The shape was too conservative for the original owner to be seriously buggered-up by over use and abuse over the years. It has a slightly Danish look to it. Good briar.

Shape number 4189, a Lovatt.
Elegant.


Yeah, I can't explain Pok Fu Lam. Just something stuck in my head on the Western side of Hong Kong Island. Typhoons, rain, lush greenery.



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DOES IT GLOW?

Every time I look out to the right in the teevee room in the morning, it appears that there is fog at the tops of tall buildings on the hill, probably more so because of the slanted blinds. The silvery white-grey of the sky as filtered through thin lines of light. That, combined with the current temperature outside make it perfect pipe-smoking weather. So naturally I waited with bated breath for my non-smoking apartment mate to leave for the office, anxiously listening for the apartment door to close and lock ... then padding over to the front hall to hear the front door of our building click shut behind her.

I have snecked her bedroom door. There are open windows.
I am ready, but I'm holding off for a while.
Can't decide which pipe to load.

All of which contributes to my happiness about living in San Francisco and sneering apathy about the suffering in vast areas of the rest of the country. Everytime I read news items that mention places like Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, or Texas, it is crystal clear to me that those regions and their semi-sentient denizens suck bollocks big time, AND they're experiencing horrible weather. Deservedly.

We are not all in this together. Those guys voted for Trump.
So we can never trust the bastards again.
Let them burn.

And eat tainted beef, blueberries, and lettuce. Like they're living in a post-apocalyptic future set in a Chipotle franchise. Mad Max snarfing barf burritos. And their little dogs too.


Today, I think, I shall drink tea and dance among the wildflowers.


Drought conditions persist across Texas, along with elevated heat, and no relief in sight. The situation is dire. So I imagine that yokels wearing ten gallon hats are holding revival meetings where evolution and liberalism are loudly excoriated and minorities hanged in effigy, in vain hopes that a merciful loving all-white Jesus will accept their sincere prayers and save them. Really, I have no idea what goes on down there, and all I get are snippets of news that indicate that they're all idiots in Texas. Brain-dead syphilitic inbreds.

Nothing even suggests that I might be wrong.

Abbott, Cruz, Paxton.



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NAMELESS CANADIAN

When I returned home she was in her room reading. She asked, as I passed by her doorway, if I knew anything about futures trading. Nope. "I'm reading this book about it, and somebody just got murdered." Oh. While I was in the kitchen putting on the kettle, she hollered "now there's a second dead person". It doesn't sound, to me, that there's much future there.
I mean, neither stiff will have much of one.

It also sounds like futures trading may not be what that book is really about.

Although it may be all about Wall Street. Accurately so.

People get whacked there all the time.


Yesterday after coming home I got to hear about the church where she, a complete atheist, volunteers. Good cause and all that, defective people, and dead mice, very small corpses.
I hope she mentions all that to her brothers the next time there's a family luncheon.
I'm sure they'll love it. "See, our little sister has a rich full life, so lucky!"

I myself have never been to any of those get-togethers, but I believe that all of her siblings are engineers, so I'm guessing everyone is somewhere on the spectrum. As are several people with whom I deal at work, but those folks are almost all from the era when no one actually knew what a spectrum was. And they all used to have an onion tied to their belt.
As was the style at the time.

One of them passed away recently. So he wasn't there today.
Baruch dayan ha emes. A very decent fellow.
Still had all of his marbles.

All in all it was a remarkably peaceful day, no not because the decendent was justifiably absent. The bald degenerate who lost most of his marbles decades ago wasn't there. The insane Irish Turmpite wasn't there. The retired member of the judicial branch who always complains in a strident whiney tone wasn't there. John who takes much too long to pee right when I need to kick him out (I always harangue him about his narrow urethra, slow bladder, and benign prostate enlargement), the coke-snorting fiend, the snooty religious nut, and the crusty old New York rightwinger weren't there. Just a smoothpated real-estate broker, and a former restaurant supplier long since retired. So the Punjabi troublemaker had no one to argue with, and didn't say much.

I'm guessing they didn't want to watch the losingest team in sports.
Richard said to me that one must support the home team.
Knowing full well that I would sneer at that.
Bah humbug, y'all, bah humbug.



Started off the day at work smoking a nicely sized sandblast Canadian filled with Cornell & Diehl tobacco. The stamping has worn to the point that it's illegible, darn well invisible. English made, old piece, damned fine smoker. Had it restemmed recently.
It's a very handsome pipe. Something an engineer would love.
Looks practical and no nonsense. Sober proportions.
Something a responsible man would own.



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