IT'S AUTUMN

The customary pub crawl was different. Having picked something else than the usual rat-watching pipe, this was probably to be expected. While smoking where I usually wait for the book seller I was entertained by a balding nut case having a vituperative discussion with an overflowing garbage can -- truly urban America at its finest -- as well as visually intrigued by a cute Chinese woman with lovely legs walking up Grant Avenue with her boyfriend.
As you would guess, I cannot remember if he was Caucasian or Chinese.
He wasn't wearing a skirt. She was. Good gracious.

Skirts on women can be very nice.

On men, much less so.

Even Scots.

I cannot remember ever seeing a Scot poncing around in his woolen skirt and saying to myself "oh my how zesty!" Or even thinking that his knees had been crafted by a master. Some weird Caledonian Michelangelo, if such a being could exist. Instead, upon seeing Scotmen in their native garb I've often remembered the passage from Boswell describing the knee-length red hair of a Celtic woman's lower regions by which he and the good doctor were fascinated, which indicates that sight-seeing was taken far more seriously in that day and age, as well as the lovely partan bree that my ex occasionally made.

[Partan Bree: Scottish crab soup, made with crab meat, seafood broth, cream, rice, and sherry, plus the usual aromatics used in European cooking.]

It is far better to be reminded of delicious food than that Boswell and Johnson were a bunch of ruddy perverts.

Given that the weather is colder than we expected for this time of year, it looks like we've gone from Summer (freezing and foggy) straight into Fall without an intervening hot spell.
I hope it continues like this.

In Oracle Bone Script (甲骨文 'kaap gwat man'; current four thousand years ago), the word for autumn was 𥤚 of which 𪛁 is a variant. A millet stalk being harvested on one side, with a turtle standing in for a cricket or locust, over fire. The modern form 秋 preserves the millet stalk (禾) and fire (火).

甲骨文、大篆的秋字。

There is a muppetness to it which is quite charming, common among many old characters.

Autumn is the season of pumpkin spice and queer tobacco mixtures flavoured with candy, apples, spices, and whatever the berserk blender thought would appeal to big rig truckdrivers huffing cheap basket pipes or corncobs, such as the weirdo who unfriended me on Facebook seven years ago when he found out I despised Donald Trump. A stupid babboon (一個傻狒).

There was a seasonally appropriate bulk blend available years ago aggressively souped up with fermented pôhpukun and cloves, and enough propylene glycol to sink a battleship, that was popular in primitive parts of the country among the slope-browed huntn' shootn' fishn' types, which fortunately never became popular in this neck of the woods. Our Fall tastes run to lotus seed paste or red bean paste with sugar and shortening, and one or two salted egg yolks, baked in a pastry crust that rather resembles shortbread.
We're rather old fashioned that way.
Mooncakes.

[單黃蓮蓉 ('daan wong lin yung'): single yolk lotus seed. 雙黃蓮蓉 ('seung wong lin yung'): double yolk lotus seed. 單黃豆沙 ('daan wong dau saa'): single yolk red bean. 雙黃豆沙 ('seung wong dau saa'): double yolk red bean.]

Many people are grateful that those are NOT aromatic tobacco flavours.
As, selbstverständlich, am I as well.


It's only a matter of time before someone invents a smoking mixture that tastes like candy corn, maybe with Fireball added. Which would be a sign for the End of Times.
Joe, if you're reading this, do NOT suggest it to Jeremy!


No, I don't smoke queer shiznit like that even when Halloween looms. It only encourages people. Precisely the folks who should not be encouraged. A friend in Mississippi lives for pumpkins and boo-decorating. She's been known to stuff aromatics in her pipe, as well as wear pointy black hats. In another week or so her front yard will look like a charnell house, with bones, bloody sheets, and mock-up corpses everywhere.

It must be the heat. It affects people's brains.
Either that or tropical fevers.
It's hot there.

Cornell & Diehl Steamworks in a favourite old briar. Which would have been followed by a stop at the burger place, but it was packed, so we headed over to a burrito joint, then to a friendly bar. Because the karaoke dive was insane, we strolled over to the bus afterwards with our cigarillos. An early-ish evening. Other than the noisy bits, it was quiet.



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