IT'S A CELEBRATION!

In reaffirmation of the values and ideals that make us all mighty proud to be American, and demonstrating positive commitment to everything that unites us, we're celebrating 'National Underwear Day' today. Often, hounded Republicans rhetorically moan "why can't we all just get along?" Usually when someone with far more brainpower has pointed out that statements they had made were incorrect and not based on objective reality. Well, on this issue, we ARE getting along. Fabulously. We all agree that underwear is a darn good thing. Mostly because we have so very few people running around the continental United States wearing only penisgourds and 'asgras'. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

It's a dead certainty that at some point today I will encounter someone proudly displaying their underwear. In the past I may have complained that it was only strapping young men doing so, confidently stumbling down the street with their pants at thigh level, but in recent weeks there have been women showing off the scanty bodices and tasty lace above their belly pudge, and indeedy that is a fine thing. Be proud of your flabby tattooed body!
Let it all hang out. Blind people with your machismo or feminisma!

Amurricah!

I myself though, despite covering up my undergarments with a buttoned shirt and slacks, will also be wearing underwear, you may be sure of that. I am an American, and like probably many people I have underwear. Boxer shorts with stripes, a t-shirt gaily advertising something computer, toy, or tobacco related.

Unlike several other holidays, this festive observance does not require fratboys, yuppies, and tech bros getting drunk at Union and Fillmore streets on cheap shots.
Everybody can take part.

You know what you need to do. You probably have the costume augmentations somewhere in your abode. And if done right, the police will not be called. So join in.

Even our president is taking part. Three layers! One absorbent, one tight-sealing, one odour eating. They're all industrial strength and extra-large. Bariatric and comfy stretch.
They're waterproof and completely non-chafing.



For early access notice of any changes in them, there is a subscription service that offers faster, real-time access from himself and other high-profile accounts, providing direct, licensed, real-time feeds of the most movements, recently launched.
Expensive, but worth it. Better than a gold watch.



Make it the best National Underwear Day ever.
I think you should wear filly panties today.
Go ahead, be special. It's worth it.



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SCRUBBED, SCRUBBED

It was cute. A gentleman speaking Mandarin and his two sweet looking little grammar-school age boys stepping in for three hotdogs (actually garlic sausages on sourdough) to go. Quiet, well behaved, curious. The kids didn't venture near the fellow with metal facial studs mildly tweaking to himself, and the meth heads from the nearby clubs and SROs weren't in for late night dininng yet. An altogether wholesome all-American slice of the underbelly.

As for the bookseller and myself, one burger with fries, red wine, and a mixed soda (cola and orange). That last has enough caffeine to add to my alertness, plus sugar for energy and brain food.

One Eurotrash with a scrawny zoned girlfriend.
One tattooed thing just before we left.


When we passed the karaoke bar several Caucasians were singing something with simplistic lyrics and no recognizable tune, and it sounded quite vile, so we went directly to the usual bail-out bar for Guiness, Jameson's, and hot tea. I'm the tea drinker. The bartender was expecting us, and the water was already hot.

Anthony Bourdain on one of the screens eating Burgher food in Sri Lanka. During the preparation of which a huge mound of bright red chili powder had come into play, and banana leaves which were stuffed. Lomp-rys. Looked delicious.

For some reason we ended up talking about sports we had played in high school, and came to the conclusion that we both hate sports. I also separately came to the conclusion that all of my physical education teachers were unpleasant and intellectually deficient, but that was something that I've concluded many times over the years. It did not take the hot tea to spark that thought, merely seeing stuff with balls and obscenely overpaid people out of the corner of an eye on the other screens prompted it.

Kottu roti, by the way, looks like something that should really catch on here. Vegetables, curried meat, spices, paratha, all chopped together over high heat on a griddle with oil.
Add a dollop of sauce, scrambled egg, shallots, chilies. Sri Lankan street food.

I am surprised that the enterprising Mexicans who do the bacon-wrapped hot dogs haven't yet come up with something like that. San Francisco's late night drunks would love it.
Your choice hot, hotter, hottest.

Imagine a garlic sausage done like that, grill-fried with chilipaste, chopped veggies, pinch cumin, and toasty bread pieces. Great after beer, during beer, or even before beer.



On the way to the bus two nearly identical blonde Asians trotted past, with a slight interval in between. Or maybe it was the same one who had cirled at a trot on Waverly. Also a man arguing viciously and loudly with an invisible person, possibly his imaginary girlfriend. Methamphetamine is a hell of a drug.



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LATE LUNCH IN TOISHAN

Lunch was absolutely divine. Little yellow eels claypot rice (黃鱔煲仔飯 'wong sin pou jai faan'). The only other customers being two women occasionally holding hands. They had not been there when I entered, so I had timed it just right. As a Dutchman, naturally I love eel.
It's mother's milk to me.

That you can get yellow eel claypot rice makes San Francisco seem like you had never left Toishan (臺山), where of course you have never been. Neither have I, and I do not speak Toishanese, barely understand it. Yellow eel is a specialty of the place.


If you want good claypot rice, you must go to a place that specializes in precisely that, which is exactly what I did. Their claypot rice is superb. They speak Toishanese, Cantonese, and Mandarin. I do not know how good their English is.

Two Toishanese speaking women discreetly and affectionately holding hands is okay too.
I mean, where else might you see such a thing, and what better place for it?
And one of them looked to have very nice hands.
Well worth holding.


The phrase I am never going to say to a random person whose hands are exceedingly nice is "excuse me, miss, may I touch your hand" (唔好意思小姐，我可唔可以摸下你隻手 'm hou yi si, siu je， ngo ho m ho yi mo haa nei jek sau'). Things could get sticky, and quite probably NOT in a good way. Hands are for holding chopsticks, not clobbering a Dutchman.

Most of us Dutchmen are rather decent fellows, with whom you'd should rather share an eel than angry face slappeties. I mean.

Part of the crust broken loose, bit of rice, bit of eel, sploot of chili paste.
Contemplative, well-paced, savoured. Thoughtful enjoyment.


Pipe smoked strolling down to catch the bus.



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BLONDES EVERYWHERE!

One of my friends, someone whom I have known for many years, recently posted on Facebook, proving that she is still alive, which at her age is good and almost justifies being on Facebook, necessary because the garbage, fake news, and advertisements would make one think otherwise, but what she posted was born-again crap about Jesus, which you would necessarily think would send me into conniptions were it directed at me, but it was on her own page, so um whatever. Where she's from they do that.

She's been born-again since the Johnson administration.


Surely I mentioned that there are large parts of the country that I never hope to visit. and where the social and cultural norms might send a sane person screaming for the nearest international border.


In some deeper parts of our nation the border is several states over.
Those people are totally hosed. Poor bastards.

With diabetes, gout, and obesity, too.
Plus things in their heads.

Fat sick nuts.

But they've got four distinct seasons, and glorious fall colours. And in some areas there aren't any foreigners, everyone is lily white and meets regularly at Sunday church, the sit-down burger restaurant or chain diner out by the freeway, basement bingo, and the country-western bar on Saturday night, where Debbie takes your order on rollerskates.
Budweiser, Coors, or Michelob.


It's a different time and place, a kinder gentler America without melanin or homosexuality, where no one speaks foreignese languages or puts garlic in their apple pie.
Nachos are the most exotic thing on the menu.
Tuna fish sandwiches.


Why, even medical staff and people wielding leaf-blowers are white!
Oh gosh, it's altogether heavenly!



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CRUSTLESS AND THIN SLICED

There are enough fancy imported luxury cigarettes here that I could offer Hello Kitty a smoke, though I would prefer that she puff a pipe. And in any case, because my apartment mate is a non-smoker, we could not smoke here. Possibly somewhere near the bridge over Kearney Street that is being demolished. Which will intercourse up the traffic to a fare-thee-well.

There are an old Amphora straight bulldog and a Savinelli DeLuxe woodstock in my side pocket, along with plenty of pipe tobacco. A mixed blend, mostly red Virginia, with touches of condimentals. The woodstock can safely be described as 'piss-elegant', in the phrasing of an old pipesmoking friend whom I haven't seen in many years. It's a lovely brown sandblast.

I do not foresee meeting anybody who could in any way be described as Hello Kitty.
That's just not in the cards, and I never do in any case.
I would probably freak out if I did.
Five-inch mutant.


Per Sanrio, who market Hello Kitty, she is not a cat, but a perfectly normal English girl (Kitty White), who lives in an outskirt of London with her parents and twin sister Mimi. Delving into the whole Hello Kitty gestalt is sort of surreal, and I came up for air almost immediately. The Japanese idea about perfectly normal and English is perhaps more than a little askew.

It involves rabbit, penguins, and afternoon tea.

That last item is something with which I am quite okay.

In a short while I shall be heading out with something similar in mind. Not the delicate and high-fallutin' version, but actually a late lunch or early dinner, something satisfying with hot sauce dabbed on, followed by a pipe-smoke while wandering past the bridge which they're destroying into the Financial District. There will be no finger sandwiches, nor any refined little pastries, or scones with clotted cream and fruit preserves. I look forward to the day when those will be available in C'town, but Chinese Americans do not go for that. Alas.


There are no places where one can have a pot of piping Assam or Ceylon while happily munching crumbly snackies and sliced cucumber on buttered crustless white bread. While perusing a newspaper of a slant that tells everyone that one is a cultured fellow with some artistic and intellectual pretensions, yet possessed of a keen sense of humour.

It is very sad. San Francisco is no fit place for Hello Kitty.
We are utterly deficient as a metropolis.
And must reform.



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THE BEST OF IT

Learned this morning: Donald John Trump is nearly completely bald (and good lord that is an ugly "scalp"), Robert F. Kennedy Junior is a complete freak, John Wayne Mullin is actually a human being, and more Republicans have lip, buttock, and breast filler than is healthy. But they all stil act like rabid mutant dingoes. And Trump cheats at golf. Obsessively, habitually, and compulsively. And lies about it. Obsessively, habitually, and compulsively. Like he lies about everything. Obsessively, habitually, and compulsively. Which the MAGA faithful and FOX know, admit, admire, and fiercely deny. Obsessively, habitually, and compulsively.

Also, Canada caused massive airpollution in addition to your current financial difficulties, and are responsible for wildfires raging in Oregon and France. But they'll pay for that, oh boy will they pay, there's a plan, and Donald John will build a wall (that they will pay for) and we have won the war. Again.

What I also learned over the weekend is that Jeff has embraced and learned to love his worsening hearing impairment. It allows him to ignore the his harpy virago wife, the mad Irishman, various bald degenerates and the irritating subcontinental, and answer every question with a complete non-sequitur. So it's an asset, not a handicap.


Precisely like longer bathroom breaks, because of Benign Prostate Enlargement, give him much more quiet time. Which is a profound blessing.


See, getting old isn't that bad!

Sadly, when I reach full retirement age, in addition to turning on the pension tap, I realize that I should continue working, so that I don't sit around on my gluteus maximus all day and turn into a cabbage like so many people I know (and have to see when I'm at work), with little more than bile in my brain. Continued activity is good for circulation and digestion, prevents muscle and mental atrophy, and will keep both my dander and resistance to irritating pus-blisters spewing stupidity up and at a proper level.

Otherwise I'd become like Grampa Simpson. Angry and hugely intolerant. Or maybe even that chap in a wheelchair who sits at the corner all day long huffing pot and gibbering.

Yesterday while I waited for the bus to work there was a different fellow with a wheelchair nearby ranting into his cellphone for over fifteen minutes, about how he can buy a soda, he'll give you one, he'll bring his own soda, don't worry, there is soda, don't worry about anything because there is soda, whatever soda, and so-and-so can also have a soda, he doesn't like soda, but there will be soda and everything will be fine, no need to supply soda he'll bring his own, so-and-so can keep his soda.

The person on the other end of the line probably wondered why on earth they had ever given him their number and what they had done to deserve him ranting about soda at seven thirty in the morning. But it might have been his mom.

When I returned in the evening he had been replaced by a hugely bloated woman who was lying on the ground resting next to her double wide wheelchair, bedsores on her thighs, a veritable beached whale. Like a giant larva, pupating.

Possibly taking a break from the event at the Buddhist temple.
Saintly attendees occasionally glided past her.
Hotei in Venus of Willendorf form.
Perhaps too many sodas.


But, you know, I count my blessings. There are many object lessons of what I do not want to become in the Bay Area, and at least I am not in New York, surrounded by high-strung high maintenance neurotics snarfing kosher vegan piza and snarling at everyone.
Man that would be horrible. Truly.



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THE BLESSED FEET

After a few days at work dealing with old white rightwing conspiracy paranoiacs in Marin I am perhaps not as perfectly tolerant as could be desired. And I wish that they feast abundantly upon explosive diarrhoea lettuce, and raw ground beef, and recalled bacon sold cheaply at supermarkets catering to nasty bougy scunge that doesn't read the news.

Fortunately, upon returning home I fixed myself a cup of strong coffee.
I feel more human (less violently inclined) now.
Except for my feet.


My feet feel severely walked in.


This is the time of year when circumstances aren't co-operating. It was far too warm in Marin during the day, throughout which people kept saying "isn't it lovely, oh I just love hot weather, don't you? I refrained manfully from telling them that they were awful human beings and needed to come to a bad end. My feet silently wished ill upon them all.

I am not "tolerant", but I am very patient and forebearing.
A restrained, polished, agreeable sort of person.
You will kindly stop laughing.

How does a transplanted Brabander become such a paragon of diplomatic and easy-going social behaviour around scunge people? Simple. I lived near Broadway and Columbus (SF) for almost ten years. Nightclubs, bars, porno palaces. Meth freaks, heroin junkies, druggie prostitutes, and at least one shooting every week. Mmm, yeah.

I am practically a saint at this point.


I love human beings!



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EXTREMITATION

Yesterday evening the neighborhood was full of naked legs. Some shapely and attractive, some ill-considered and better not dear. Of all genders. This blogger, as a crusty old fossil from the twentieth century, does not know what to think of that.

It is quite possible that hot pants may have come back. I remember the first time they were fashionable. With some distaste. Even then I wondered why on earth. I suspect that those things, more than anything else, caused the election of extreme rightwingers like Ronald Reagan, Bush and Bush, and Donald J. Trump. They did something to the redneck brain, constricted bloodvessels, encouraged fast food consumptio, or something. Goth clothing styles are a natural reaction. A protest against vulgar exhibitionism.
Onions should be tied to belts as was the style in those days.

Basically, the cold part of San Francisco summer is over.
The next two to three months will be vile.


In summer, Americans gain weight due to excessive consumption of sugary soft-drinks and syrupy ice-slush coffee bar concoctions, coupled with a near-complete lack of exercise.

Also sweet ice tea. Common in The South. One cup of sugar per teabag.
With more sugar added at the table when served.

During hurrican season, in large parts of the country, convoys carrying vats of co-cola and sweet ice tea concentrate for emergency shelters and Waffle House locations roll non-stop, to keep people who drawl habitually from rioting en-masse and looting the local strip mall. Hospital emergency rooms dispense it undiluted to folks who stumble in on a sugar-low.
Lest they crash limply and start wailing, incessantly, about Scarlett.

Herds of morbidly obese thirty year old grandmommas slowly wriggle toward overturned freezer trucks on the road between the cotton fields, desperate to feast upon the thawing ice cream leaking from its back, softly moaning 'whatever shall we do, whatever shall we do". They crawled out of their back porch hammock for this.

Oh, the humanity. Horrible, horrible.


Cletus has heat-stroke, there will be no trailer park methamphetamine for a while, let's hope that 'Messkins' with cocaine slip across the border to save us.

I should write a movie script about this.



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BUT THEIR PIZZA IS EXCELLENT

Yesterday evening when I got home I found comments that can be charitably described as insane, antisocial, manic behavior on my Facebook page. Normally I am rather too tolerant.
But I had finally had enough. I deleted all of his recent comments, unfriended and blocked him, then posted that I had done so, for the benefit of those people who actually are friends.
In 'The Black Cauldron' (written by Lloyd Alexander), one of the characters says that we mourn some people for what they once were, others for what they have become.

Over the past year I have unfriended three or four individuals.

I do not gladly see people become toxic waste.


There are some folks who are high strung, exceptionally neurotic and very high maintenance. After a while the glitter of their talent fades, and their tense senseless frustration and bitchiness grates on one. Far too often they are New Yorkers.

Several of them have unfiended me over the years.
In retrospect, I'm glad they did so.
Somebody had to.

Upon due consideration I don't think I should ever go to New York. Those people are much more tolerable on teevee, from three thousand miles away, than they might be in person.

Anyway, I shan't mention his name here, don't want to create enmity, but I will say that if he was female he would assuredly be named 'Chloe'. Regular perusers of Reddit will easily understand that you can't get more irritating bitch than that. Chloe.

Pretty much the quintessence of Karen.

It's up to eleven.


Chloe.



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RABBIT RABBIT AUGUST 2026

Rabbit, rabbit.

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IF NOTHING ELSE, GET A CAT

There is a cat downstairs. I have seen him only a few times in all those years. He does not resemble the ghost cat who lives in our apartment. My apartment mate has seen him more often than I have, because our landlady sometimes asks her to go and feed him for a few days when she is out of town. This brings up two things: 1) Cantonese American women like cats. 2) Sometimes Cantonese American women are amazingly energetic. My apartment mate, a Cantonese American woman, regularly walks all over the place, and our landlady, a Cantonese American woman, goes on trips, hikes across Nob and Russian Hill, and though around eighty years old looks timeless and acts like a vibrant much younger woman.


I am not a Cantonese American woman. Yesterday I dealt with several of them in the course of running my errands. The people in the clinic and pharmacy are Cantonese women.
Cantonese American women frequently staff C'town shops.


Cantonese women seldom overload on caffeinated beverages, because knowing how far away one is from a clean well-lighted place to pee is always an issue in this city.
Peeing is something women always would much rather do indoors.
Preferably behind a securely locked door.

I know from bitter observation that men will piss damned well anywhere.
Especially if they're Berkeley frat boys and intoxicated.
Or e-tech marketing dude-bros.

To the best of my knowledge, only one of the Cantonese American women I encountered yesterday has offspring. She may also have a cat, I don't know. There are several cats in Chinatown. At least eight of them are shop-cats at places where the staff is mostly female. Which rather presumes that there are cat-boxes somewhere.
Probably in a clean well-lighted area.


Men reading this would be well-advised to keep the bathroom clean and make sure the lightbulb hasn't burned out. Yes, I know you can do a lot of things in the dark, it's put-near miraculous what you can achieve under extreme circumstances, but that isn't the point.
Don't worry too much about how the toilet paper roll goes.
The key thing is that you have one.
Preferably several.



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THE FULLY MARBLED MAN

While I sat smoking my pipe I could hear noises behind me from the street person dozing in the doorway. Indistinct mumbling, the occasional recognizable word, nothing that could be strung together to make sense, which, one suspects, might be the root of his problem.
You cannot be fully compos mentes if your mens is missing.

Fortunately I still have all my marbles. Plus several extra.


Usually by mid to late afternoon I am whacked to the gills on caffeine, the substance without which civilization would be well-nigh impossible. Just look at your coworkers. If they weren't jazzed on coffee several of them would be tracing figures in the sand or scratching their armpits looking for tasty grubs.


Drugstore. Transit card augmentation. Groceries at my favourite overstocked provisioners. Smuggled-in cigarettes a few blocks over: good cat, emperor, little panda, and a sparkling new brand which looks bizarre, because it has menthol and a blueberry flavour capsule.

One of my coworkers smokes menthol, so she'll probably try one.
I also will try at least one of these freaks.
Always game for queer shiznit.

The spirit of oral adventure accounts for an overwhelming majority of the stuff I like to put in my mouth, although for some of it a sense of humour also helps. Among the latter, gefilte fish. Absolutely needs hot sauce. And a curry sauce.

Today's scrumptious lunch was in the former category: steamed pork patty with salt fish (鹹魚蒸肉餅 'haam yü jing yiuk beng'). Which is also splendid with hot sauce. Fortunately sambal equivalents are now common at Chinatown eateries.

Plus bokchoy, rice, and a pot of tea.

Did I mention caffeine?

Good.



The caffeine gave me the mental fortitude to ignore the monotonous mumbling which droned on and on behind me where I sat enjoying my pipe. Steadfastly.

Sub-sane gibbering is fundamentally part and parcel of the San Francisco gestalt.
If you haven't experienced it, you haven't really been here.
It's like being at a one-man Trump rally.
With better merchandise.



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THE DEBAUCHERIES

Yesterday the U.S. proved that as a society we are morally bankrupt, and have long since ceased to be an example to the world. Which was actually evident for quite some time. Republicans grilling Fauci was a splendid example of our depravity.

This morning's doomscrolling, naturally, brought up a bucketful. Jesse Waters. Bari Weiss. Todd Blanche. Pete Hegseth. Karoline Leavitt. Netanyahu. Epstein. Zoe Garbett. Stephen Miller. Megyn Kelly. Paxton. Ted Cruz. Max Miller. Rand Paul. Tommy Tuberville.
That was just the first ten minutes.

All of them are thoroughly nasty specimens.
In a word: shitweasels.


Every one of the people I mentioned are far too close to President Donald Trump's ass, the most venal and degenerate leader the West has know since Emperor Nero, who came to a good end relatively speaking. They represent a mere sampling of the pond scum.
A fragmentary percentage. That's one monumental cesspool.
They are all more or less Christian.


And merely symptoms.
Like puss.

It would probably have been better for my mental state if I hadn't gone on the internet before setting off on my first pipe of the day. Somehow the Fribourg & Treyer flake did not satisfy as much. It wasn't the pipe, a jaunty collegian-evoking billiard blast made for Peretti in Boston decades ago. Sort of halfway between the "pip-pip fellows how's the squad?" and tweed jacket spot of sherry after tea in allure.

Should be around mid-sixties today. Not too particularly warm.
Only a few errands to run, then a light lunch.
Back to work tomorrow.



ADDENDUM as of 9:05 AM

If you read any of these "news sources" regularly, you too are a symptom:
The Hill, News Nation, US Magazine, The Western Journal, Daily Caller, GB News, USA Today, Al Jazeera, FOX News, Tampa Free Press, The Telegraph, The Washington Examiner, The NY Post, Newsmax, The White House.



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WHAT'S IN THE STORM

Sometimes words transcend their original meaning, and are so descriptive and evocative that they demand to be used for entirely new reasons. Their purpose changed, their resonance amplifies even the most mundane implications. In Dutch the word 'lul' is one such word. The bare-bones meaning is 'male regenerative organ'. but it now means so much more. The weather can be 'lul-like', a politican can be 'lul-ish', the mother superior at the local reformatory is a real 'lul'. Allemaal echte lullen.

In that vein: Our president is a lul. Rand Paul is a lul. Jim Jordan is a lul. Deceased Lindsey Graham and Mitch mcConnell are both 'luls'. Googly-eyed goobus Kash Patel is a 'lul'. Pam the bitch Bondi defines 'lul'. Paula second bitch religious nut White is a 'lul'. Karoline the third bitch Leavitt is a 'lul. Nikki number four bitch Haley is a 'lul'. Krist dog-killing bitch Noem is a lul. Laura Loomer, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and the Trump family's slimy friend Emory Andrew Tate are each and every one a 'lul'.
Tom Homan is a 'lul'. So is Greg Bovino.
Mike Johnson? Absolutely.
Stephen Miller too.
Etcetera.


Other Netherlandish words that apply to all the garbage individuals just mentioned are terms for the female regenerative organ, testicles, faeces, putrifaction, dung, and insect pests.

We Dutch speakers have a flexible language with a useful and wide-ranging vocabulary.


We are also keen observers of the human condition.
Including the rotting recyclables.
Politicians.



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A WORLD FILLED WITH FREAKS

There are times when doomscrolling leads to despair over our future, and then I remember that most of the Republicans in power are mortal. Several of them are older than me. One of them remains dead, and another is, allegedly alive, though that may be just an electrical blip. No actual communication other than statements released in an effort to not call a special election, because he is too valuable where he is.

And then there's Rand Paul.

Who is a poster-child for everything wrong with MAGA, the Republican Party, conservatives, conspiracy nutballs, and the entire miserable stinking state of Kentucky. Screw him, screw the people who voted for him, and screw his friends and supporters.

* * * * * *

Friends have asked me, encouraged me even, to attend the shows in Chicago and Vegas that take place every year. Surely someone like myself would enjoy those events? So much to see, so many excellent specimens, passionate hobbyists, experts in the minutiae of our field, wondrous displays and informative seminars .....

Totally overlooking the fact that I hate crowds, and they cannot imagine the sheer torture of a rutting frenzy involving thousands of people with whom I have only one thing in common, and a great number of those people are wrong about very many things as well as being borderline psychopaths. And I don't deal well with sweaty enthusiasm at all.
I attended MacWorld several times when the world was young.
And I've been at many political demonstrations.
So yeah no. Heck no.

It would probably be better if I spent more time with my figmentive cat, who is probably entirely in my head, what with being a half-light ghost that occasionally shows up in the corners of my eye when I'm waking up, than visit any of the shows. Do I really need to meet and greet large numbers of smelly bald men with beards? I don't think so. Yes, some of them are more like William Faulkner, Sir Bertand Russell, Albert Einstein, C.S. Lewis, as well as President Gerald Ford. Status of top of the head hair variable across the spectrum.

But some of them are like Hugh Heffner, General Douglas MacArthur, or Stalin.
And quite a number are sad-sack hobbit wannabees and putzes.


In the normal course of events I deal with a sufficient number of fellow pipe-smokers already. That is plenty. There are a few artist pipe carvers whom I might like to meet, because of the absolute stellar excellence of their work, Martin Romijn and Liu Zifeng come to mind, and also some collectors, but what on earth would we talk about besides briars?


One cannot assume any similarity of philosophies because of a singular commonality.




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STOUT FELLOWS

The karaoke place was a big slice of steaming putrified hell, so we didn't go in. I don't even know what that song was, but it sounded willowy, blonde, and washed out. Which is precisely like MAGA imagines Helen of Troy, because it says so in the Bible. Life is too short to hear MAGAite screeching. Now, if it had been a whole bunch of hair-ribboned ladies cosplaying Japanese Anime French maids singing, I might have been tempted. My friend the bookseller would, despite his in this case likely far superior judgement, have been dragged in.
Imagine the Belles of Saint Trinians, but in Franco-Japanese. Oooh, zesty!

Sadly, karaoke does not fulfill even my most twisted old-geezer fantasies.
That's probably a good thing too.

I seriously doubt that the world is ready for shapely big-eyed misses in modest black dresses, white frilly aprons, and Catholic headmistress footwear, preparing lovely cups of royal milk tea while discussing the ins and outs of aged Virginia flake tobacco such as Sir Bertrand Russell smoked, Comoy briar pipes from the thirties through the sixties, and why it seems like every great Dutch poet from the sixteen hundreds through the early nineteen hundreds seemed to invent his or her own grammar, orthography, and even vocabulary.

Years ago an editor postulated that there ain't no such thing as a Limburgian language. Then sat back and waited. The resultant comment string, very sincere, proved him right. Several hundred screeds in Limburgic that collective showed such dialect diversity and fracturing that no one could possibly argue the case for Limburgian linguistic coherence. Or coherence, period.

There are several languages in the New Guinea highlands that have extremely limited vocabularies. And utterly lack any means of expressing 'weltanschauung' or 'existentialismus'. Antidisestablishmentarianism. Gestalt.

Almost all of them have a distinct word for 'penis-gourd'. Sometimes several. Whereas ALL versions of Limburgic use exactly the same word for that. Quod erat demonstrandum. And by the way, no one is interested in your penis-gourd. There is more to life than penis-gourds.

What is curious about the hilltribe languages is that there are either two or three words for all vegetables, which translate as "good to eat" versus "not so good to eat", or "nice veg", "not particularly good veg", and "crappy veg that those schmucks one valley over eat".
Which is remarkably like English cooking.


The burger joint was shortstaffed this evening. Despite that, service was prompt, efficient, and capable. Hardest working man in North Beach. Worth his weight in gold.
The former bail-out bar was closed. The current one nearly empty.
Tat Yee was the only customer when we got there.
American wrestling on teevee.
A very stupid sport.
Empty gourds.


I did manage to introduce the bookseller to the depravity of 'Little Bunny Foo Foo', which is a formative American cultural manifestation, illustrative of much in the contemporary welt anschauung, so at least there was that. A victory of sorts.



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BUBBA AND COUSIN BOB

What happens when an urban area in the centre of the country gets cut off from the internet for several hours? Within moments there is civil discord, irate cell-phone users who can't hear me now storm police lines, hordes of fentanyl-addicted Karens burn down trailer parks, and children who have escaped from infant and childcare facilities while their minders are distracted run around biting the ankles of innocent people, infecting them with rabies and fetal syphilis.

Or to put it differently, having seen plenty of news articles and commentary from zombie heads on teevee, I ain't ever planning to visit the rest of the country.
I know what most of America is like.


Between the Oakland Hills and Martha's Vineyard, there's nothing but run-down Detroit neighborhoods, methamphetamine factory trailer parks, moonshine stills in towns where every vehicle is up on cinder blocks, pizza places where they put squares of bright yellow rubber processed cheese on spongy dough before selling it to the business or cosmetology students at their state colleges, alligator-infested municipal golf courses, and gated communities guarded by mercenaries and ex-cons paid in blood money.
Plastic doodads, bubblegum-snapping illiterates.
The Real Housewives of Podunk.

I am avoiding the "Christian Heartland."
It's horrid, Texan, and diseased.

Comcast, which is hands-down the worst internet provider in San Francisco, seeing as they are a monopoly, had a service outage in my neighborhood for nearly an hour. So instead of doomscrolling with a cup of coffee I used the paint program on my computer and drew an idealized version of the city.

The cup of coffee was there. Just not accompanied by news about the latest in Trump spew or MAGA outrage. Or Texans losing it over an invasion of Islamic preachers and real-estate speculators. Much like two years ago they had their panties in a bunch over Asians buying up suburban properties near nuclear power plants and chasing all those Mexican illegals from their million dollar mansions which is why Bubba and cousin Bob where living on the mean streets of Houston in their rusty pick-up truck and couldn't get a job.
Them migrants done bought up all the housing!
No wonder the price of eggs is high!



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THE AVOIDANCE ART

The old black fellow who hangs out at the intersection does not seem to be there today. He's been there four days in a row (it used to be every day), and every time I see him I give him two dollars. It used to be only one dollar, but during Covid he was there far less, and after two plus decades it was time to raise that; one dollar in the nineties was a lot more than two dollars in the twenties. But he comes up when he sees me because he knows that two dollars will result. Sometimes he mumbles 'thank you', but he's not conversational.

Anyhow, yesterday evening I did not have single dollars on my person, so I took the long way around, walking twice as far, and uphill besides, which with my lower extremities is a pain in the precisely. This morning I had not rectified the dollar bill situation, so I skulked and slithered in the shadows when I went out to do my laundry, though I did have two extra dollars in quarters just in case. When I took the bus downtown, more gingerly surreptition.

Then after a late lunch in Chinatown, now having spare dollar bills, I strode confidently homewards from the bus stop, expecting him to alacritously come trotting up.
Nope. Not in sight. He may have gone home early.

No, he's never going to pull himself up by his own bootstraps.
He never had the instruction manual for doing so.
Bootstraps, man. Complicated.
Please be real.

The other thing is that the elderly Chinese Indonesian lady came up to me on the street and thanked me for bringing her fruits and veggies regularly. Glad she likes it. Told her it was no problem, I'm down in Chinatown often. What I am never going to tell her is that it's an easy way to check up on her and make sure that everything is more less okay. Without prying. Here, have a bag of mangoes!

But, you know, I am not particularly social, so skulking around quietly not bumping into people is second nature for me. Mother's milk, so to speak.



Lunch today was beef and shrimp sauce fried rice noodles (蝦醬牛肉炒米粉 'haa jeung ngau yiuk chaau mai fan') at a place where toward the end of the day it is quieter, and the tourists seldom go. Followed by a smoke, a red Virginia blend in a shape 56 Dunhill shellbriar.
All perfectly lovely. The light there is good. You could bring a book.



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All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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