COMPOSING MY MIND

While in principle I still like the place, in practise I've stopped visiting. Reason being that I have no need whatsoever to smoke a pipe in the company of cigar aficionados yowling about sports. I had thought that with the Football Season over, and the Baseball Season not yet started, there would be some respite.


Nope.


I forgot basketball and lawn bowling.


And Baseball is starting up again soon. Dammit.


The only reason to go to a bar in the evening is for good conversation. Given that ALL sports bore the crap out of me, that is no longer an option. Especially at a place with two television screens.

The company of cigar smokers is NOT a draw.
Many of them are unalloyed annoyances.
Teaparty Republicans or worse.

The last conversation I had with one of the regulars there, in short:
"I'm drinking Loch PhartinBugger, it's eighty dollars a glass, screw poor people, I'm voting for Trump."


The civilized man does not seek out the company of those individuals who plan to vote for Trump. Or drinkers of Loch PhartinBugger.

Again, let me stress that in principle I still like the place. Very much so.
The idea of a hospitable venue where smoking is permitted is charming. In reality, what with the Bay Area having become a hotbed of rapacious tech yuppies and sharklike venture capitalists, the chances of any sort of amicable conversation, especially while the damned televisions are on, have become painfully slim.


"I'm drinking Loch PhartinBugger, it's eighty dollars a glass, screw poor people, I'm voting for Trump."


The only two times that I went there since the end of February were with fellow pipesmokers. The conversations were far better than one could normally could expect there. Actual conversations. Not sports related, nor venomously reactionary.



A YELLOW SUBSTANCE

Of course, there are evenings when my apartment mate provides startlingly stimulating conversation .....

"I wonder if any one has ever seen the face of Jesus in earwax? I wonder if there's a museum of celebrity earwax? 
I wonder if there are miraculous healing powers to earwax? Maybe there's a small Carpathian monastery where they have the earwax of saints in special caskets ....."

Well, not all stimulating conversations are equal.

Despite her blandishments, I shall NOT go onto the internet and search for Jesus' earwax, OR earwax miracles. Whether anyone saved Elvis' earwax for future sales to fans is no concern of mine.

For some reason she doesn't want to switch on her own computer and enter the necessary search criteria. She says that I am much better at such berserk quests than she could ever possibly be, go on, do it.

I shall not give in. I've got better things to do.


"Cerumen est substantia flava, quae in ducto exteriori aurium mammalium a glandulis ceruminosis secernitur. Cerumen pulverem cepit et aurem a bacteriis, insectis ac fungis protegit."


-----Vicipædia


The only problem is that I can't smoke a pipe right now.
Perhaps I should take a stroll around the block.
While composing my mind, such as it is.

Peculiar Cantonese woman.



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