SQUAWKS OF PROTEST

A certain amount of exhaustion is creeping in. Not from the lockdown, or the impossibility of eating at my favourite places, nor from the necessity of wearing masks when out in public. I'm okay with that. Life will eventually return to normal, or an approximation thereof. The tiredness is from constantly hearing half-baked opinions from people who have clearly not digested any information about Covid, or many other matters, well, half-assedly, or even at all.
Bluntly put, the public indigestion is giving me acid reflux.
Purely in a manner of speaking, of course.
People are idiots.


If I were a believing man, I'd thank the deity daily that I do not live in in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa. Or Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Utah. All of which are hotbeds of infection and public servant stupidity. As well as Florida, which but for the fact that it's in the First World could be a Third World Banana Republic Dictatorship -- it's filled with Republicans, Republican hicks, and elderly Republicans, so a pox on them in any case -- where public health has taken a backseat to political agendas and the deadly demands of business and religion.

Well hell. The deep south and all the red states.
And the camels they rode in on.
F them.


Oh, and a propos of almost nothing: Boris Johnson can go f*** himself too. That's not really relevant, but if England were an American state, it would be Alabama.
Possibly with much better food.


Just so y'all know, as long as my favourite businesses and favourite people survive, we can rebuild civilization once this is over. Marmalade manufacturers, tobacconists, Chinese grocery stores and vegetable markets, chachanteng-style restaurants, Chinese restaurants within twelve blocks, bakeries with egg-tarts and charsiu turnovers, florists, SF Chinese Hospital (東華醫院), the liquor stores in my neighborhood, the pubs a few blocks away where some of my friends congregate, a tobacco manufacturer formerly in North Carolina but relocated to South Carolina, various pipe artisans, a hairy outdoors poet in Wyoming, a Lao-American poet who may live in California, several pipe smokers (many with beards, some without), booksellers, Viet Huong (越香，三蟹嘜; makers of fish sauce), Lee Kum Kee condiments (李錦記), Huy Fong Foods Co. (滙豐食品公司; makers of Sriracha hot sauce), Koon Yick Wah Kee food products (冠益華記食品有限公司),Taylors of Harrowgate, an elderly gentleman in Texas with an unreasonable fondness for Royal Yacht, ceramic artists, the US Postal Service, UPS, and a variety of other people and enterprises with whom I come into contact regularly.

I may have forgotten a few mentions. But you get the idea.

Yeah, I'm somewhat self-centered about all of this. My world has shrunk enormously, very largely because of Republican stupidity and greed.





My sanity, such as it is at present, is maintained by smoking my pipe, making curry for dinner, and getting whacked to the eyebrows by noon every day on tea and coffee. And swearing under my breath at people who don't cover their damned breathing holes.

The duck in garlic and black bean sauce last night was delicious. New owners, hardworking, very decent people. I fervently hope they survive all this. If they do, it won't be because of the pestilential Republicans. They couldn't do so in the Red States in any case, because of bigotry, block-headed ignorance, and the sheer evil that thrives in those places.

There are presently forty six pipes in the rotation, including three briars which I added from the storage boxes this morning. Two of them haven't been smoked in over a year. First Gillingham Mixture, then 4th. Generation 2012 Anniversary Blend, and Solani 631 Virginia Flake, to 'recondition' the carbon layers, as it were. Following which the normal tobaccos.
Should keep me amused till long after Christmas.
New Year begins on February 12.
Can't wait.



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