DROP THOSE COCONUTS!

Confession: I have never watch Gilligan's Island, and until moments ago didn't even know that it starred Bob Denver. Both the show and Bob Denver are major cultural elements for modern American society, and I can sympathize with John Wayne taking random potshots across the valley at Bob Denver's secluded villa in Wyoming or wherever.

The premise of the show, apparently, is that half a dozen people on a small motorboat get hopelessly lost somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Aliens, or something.
And coconuts are involved.

Apparently the show broke televisomatic barriers.

Plus it propelled Bob Denver to stardom.

Also because of the aliens.

And coconuts.

Years ago I bought a coconut. Almost broke my kitchen counter trying to open the thing.
The only thing I need coconut for is certain Indonesian and Indian dishes.
Never did manage to open that coconut.

Most of my exposure to coconuts comes through canned coconut milk (santan used in cooking), coconut sweetmeats (onde onde), spiced toasted grated coconut shreds mixed with nuts, dry shrimp, or fried dried seaweed (serundeng), and coconut icing on cakes.


In some places in South East Asia the entire coastal village reeks of smoke-dried copra, stronger near the pier. It's an important commercial commodity.

Copra should never be stowed near coffee, tea, tobacco, tropical gums or resins.
Spontaneous combustion (static electricity, fat content) is always an issue.
Smoking on board or in the warehouse is strongly disadvised.


Sometimes there are no other vessels visiting that place for months.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

THE FATHER OF MUSTACHES

Years ago you could still buy both Gauloises and Gitanes, as well as many very fine Oriental leaf cigarettes made by English, European, Greek, Turkish, and Egyptian houses. You could also smoke indoors. Having once been thrown out of a fancy hotel-restaurant for puffing Sobranie straights (flat white tin, Yenidje leaf), I remember that. They would have let me stay and finish my meal if it had been Marlboros or Camels, but they thought I was huffing ganj or camel dung, and they weren't having it! No sir! We're a classy establishment!
No unwashed hippies allowed!

Relevant fact: I had shaved and showered three hours before. As I did everyday. And still do. And Oriental cigarettes (by which is meant Turkish and Balkan small-leaf tobacco smokes, non-filter) do NOT smell like Berkeleyite skunk.

And also by the way: Eggs benedict made with tofu is not exquisite. So I was kind of okay with being thrown out before the bill came. Pretentious damned dingbats.


I dreamed of Oriental cigarettes last night.


During my second cup of coffee this morning a friend on Facebook reminded me of the years I lived in North Beach as well as those cigarettes. And also lots of truly horrible wine.

The plan was that, in order to return to our 'shriner roots' (much like Laurel and Hardy, but with additional "traditions"), we'd wear fezzes, use cigarette holders, and speak tokpisin. As a result I have over a dozen ivory cigarette holders, there are still two or three people in North Beach who occasionally speak tokpisin, and I have as yet not found a decent fez.

Ceremonial greetings when in full mufti: Wanem rot i go long Mecca?
Response: Long dispela rot!
Question: Wanem rot?
Exclamatory: Hot dok!

Sadly I realize now that this would have been neo-Ottoman cultural appropriation, and would be severely frowned upon today. For which I sincerely apologize. Sincerely! Mmm, not.


Since the nineteen thirties or before finding a decent fez has been incredibly difficult, darn well impossible (I've looked), ivory cigarette holders have been banned and can't be used in public anymore because you'll probably be beaten to a bloody pulp by vegan whales wearing Greta Thunberg tee-shirts (size Xtra large), and neither French nor Oriental cigarettes are imported into the United States anymore because the paper that keeps on burning has been outlawed! Half a dozen elderly drunks set fire to their mattresses in the middle of the night and burned to death over a twenty year period or sumpin', which is a public heatlh crisis oh my word and we must do something about that good gracious. So action was taken, and the world is a better place, safer for the children and the dolphins and Greta Thunberg.
At least in the United States.

Kreteks instead? Who the hell wants to reek like bad Xmas ham?
That's for teenagers with skate boards.
We don't do that.

Little known fact: Whales despise cigarettes. They make their cardigans smell fusty. It was whales who organized the ban on cigarette paper that keeps on burning, because they hate America and American enterprise which invented it. Most whales are snobs and only smoke pre-transition Charatans filled with Sullivan & Powell's Gentlemans Mixture, James Fox's Bankers Mixture, or occasionally Dorisco.

Also, whales eat tofu.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

DON'T SHOW ME YOUR TATTOO

In the middle of a conversation about plastic to-go buckets such as soups, congee, tapioca and taro pudding, and sauces come in -- they are recyclable, sometimes they discolour, and they reproduce like mad -- Russell told me about a restaurant at Fourth and Geary where if I'm in the area I really should go eat. Very good! The conversation had touched upon steak, spaghetti, Hong Kong food, sago, and Italian food made by Cantonese line cooks.
And the Veterans Medical Facility to which all three of them go.
Russell more than the other two, because he's still recovering from pneumonia.
Which is slow when you're around ninety.


I am unlikely to be in that area. I regard most of the city as Viet Cong territory, where they attack you from the tall grass in which they're hiding. Those tattooed pudgy people of slovenly appearance who never wear masks gorhelpus.
It's very white out there.


There's a slangy Dutch term that applies to many Americans: Buikaert.
Someone with guts. Pudgy wudgy floobily woobily guts.
What fatty snacks and indolence create.


I'm sorry, I'm being mean. I should demonstrate understanding. There are important nutrients in potato chips and fried chicken! And ignore all those ugly tattoos. They mean something!

Hot weather brings out the worst in me. And in society. I find it hard to move (circulatory issues), and society feels the need to swan about showing unseemely amounts of flesh.
And dammit, why do so many people have tattoos?
What were y'all thinking?
Vulgarians!


Tattoo ink has been found to include carcinogenic substances like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, primary aromatic amines, and metals. And further, tattoos are linked to an increased risk of malignant lymphomas. Which means a greater chance of very many meaningful creative and unique spiritual beings dying far younger than they should.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

CORK SNIFFERS

Some Facebook posts age like fine wine. Anger, calumny, bile, and snide vitupe rolled into a little turd pellet. The following was posted two or three years ago as a final goodbye to a group, and has resurfaced occasionally when circumstances called for it.
It is, truly, an evergreen.


"I joined this group thinking I had finally found some real pipesmokers but actually found a bunch of part time cork sniffers who like to show off their expensive pipes and tobacco. See ya, now you can comment on how glad you are to see me go and what a great pipe smoker you are."


A few people only smoke Captain Black in a cob, and everything else is pretentious.

"BYE, FELICIA"

Some poor bastard threw a huffy huf today, for which I am truly sorry. My piles bleed for him. I had nothing to do with his being traumatized, though, and I even offered words of support. Glibly haphazard dilletantish amateur psychoanalytic support, but support never-the-less.


I said that he would see Fluffy in heaven, and that it was all his mother's fault.


That covers all bases, I think.
Well, most of them.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

WAITING FOR THE IMPI OR NOT

What with being, as you would naturally suspect, a contrarian sort of person much given to rebeliousness, when I have any excuse at all I am likely to buy a pack of illegal ciggies in Chinatown just because I can. Which it will take me over a week to smoke. Today's cigarettes were Liqun filters (利群過濾嘴香煙 'lei kwan gwo leui cheui heung yin') purchased on my way to a late lunch. Which was also stubbornly contrarian, because salt fish is not recommended for men of my age, people with high blood pressure, or smokers. But it is delicious.

I am by ancestral heritage Dutch, from a part of the Netherlands where people habitually cheat the tax authorities, engage in smuggling, and break other laws that they think are berserk. Yes, the family has been in the New World for almost four centuries (since 1630), but until four generations ago was dense with Dutch speakers, and when I was two years of age we went over there, to that exact same region of the Netherlands, for several years.
At a time when being Americans in Europe was considered just not done.
Damned well uncivilized, and intolerably stubborn.

The Dutch are infamous for being stubborn.

[They just don't tolerate it very well from others. Naturally I remember my school years with some distaste.]

Which sort of explains why I like smuggled cigarettes.


When I went back after dark to wait for the bookseller to get off work (a once-a-week custom of ours going back many years) it was quieter there, but not very much cooler.
The temperature in this part of the city today was quite uncivilized.

In Chinatown it was probably still over eighty degrees Fahrenheit as I smoked my pipe. One should dress appropriately for the climate and the environment. Sadly, not in tropical whites with a sola topee, but in shirtsleeves instead of my usual pervert exhibitionist overcoat.

The Aggretsuko backpack in lieu of coat pockets for pipe and tobacco.
A cartoon design of a drunken red panda screaming is perfect.
Helps me blend in, and might scare off a Zulu impi.
Also, I don't have a sola topee.

[Aggretsuko: a small female red panda who works in the accounting department of a Japanese trading company. She often feels put-upon by coworkers and superiors, and gets drunk every night at a karaoke bar and sings death metal.]

And I doubt that an impi is anywhere near SF Chinatown, despite the tourist season.


Two bars, two cups of tea. At the first one karaoke country music was being screamed and an idiot harangued my friend about selling vile print propaganda, so we headed to the second one. Where it was quieter, with fewer Caucasians.
Still no impi on the horizon.


Tomorrow will be cooler.


And no impis.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

RED TURTLE CAKES

In the Indonesian and Malay part of the world one of the popular sweets is "red turtle cake".
It is auspicious, because of its shape, and little kiddies love it. It's also a more traditional Chinese type of pastry. Such things are generally called 'kueh' from the Chinese word 粿 (pronounced 'guo' in Mandarin, 'gwo' in Cantonese, 'kwe' in Hokkien). They are also very popular among Indo Dutch. In Java there is a humongous variety. One of the types which even non-Indo Dutch are frequently familar is 'spek koek' ("bacon cake"), named so because with multiple layers of light and dark batter it resembles streaky bacon. It's often trotted out at Christmas time, an elderly auntie having spent hours patiently making it. The dark layers are perfumed with real cinnamon, plus also nutmeg and cloves. It's a mixture similar to what is used for honing koeken (honey cakes) and several other almost mediaeval sweet baked products.

Generically, Indo cakes and sweets are called 'kueh kueh'/'kwe kwe'.
Hokkien versions are often strikingly coloured.

Common flavourings are pandanus extract, palm sugar, coconut milk, shredded coconut, crumbled peanuts, pili nuts or kenari, cinnamon, lotus seed paste, sugar and mung bean paste, and such like. Even durian, but, errm, not my cup of tea.

Here's the contact info for a shop in Bellflower, Los Angeles area, from whom Dutch and Dutch Indo ingredients can be ordered:

Holland International Market
9835 Belmont Street
Bellflower, CA 90706
PH: 562-925-9444
FX: 562-925-5777
hollandinternationalmkt.com

I myself live in San Francisco, and there are shops where I can find everything I need locally. It helps that I'm somewhat multinlingual, inquisitive, and don't mind experimenting. But I have heard good things about them. The owner of Holland International Market (Maria Cervantes) is not a native speaker of Dutch, Indonesian, or Hokkien, but she knows her stuff and has a devoted customer base. Her business is highly regarded.

HOMEMADE ANG KU KWE

Sometimes I make kwe kwe at home. Not often. Red Turtle Cakes (紅龜粿) are made of red-dyed glutinous rice flour and sweet potato dough filled with dow sa or sweetened chopped peanuts, pressed in a mold or shaped by hand, and steamed. In Singapore, Java, and Malaya there is often a square of banana leaf underneath when that is done.
Here? Um, we don't have daun pisang in the Bay Area ....

And I don't own a turtle press.



PS: cake is usually rendered 糕 ('go') which is not the same as 粿 。



PPS: When it comes to food and other cultural elements, most Indos can and do cherry-pick. There is no defining culinary style, though there are some preparations everyone knows, and the places and cultures which shaped their earlier generations are so diverse as to be almost meaningless. And as far as ethnic derivations, there is little similarity; what does a pure bred of seven generations posted to the Indies have in common with someone whose grandmama was from Makasar, or the son of an Amboinese father and a woman of partially Portuguese descent? And sometimes someone who is so darn white that they glow in the dark speaks pure old-school Betawi Malay with his parents, while a descendant of minor nobility from Java might speak only Dutch and prefer erwten soep and gehaktballen.
The Indo group is, in the final analysis, much like a hutspot.

Albeit one with sa eutik eutik sambal.


BTW: Here's a nice video of Toine making, among other things, sambal oelek.
His ketjap manis recipe is far more complicated than mine.
His website: toineskitchen.com




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU

During the night I dreamed of some of the people I knew as a child, and their parents. Dutch Indonesian environments. The startlingly blonde girl in grammar school, for instance, who came over to the cluster of us on the street once, and in the middle of nothing admitted "sangat suka pedes, ako" (I really like spicy), whereupon the conversation veered into discussing foods everyone's family ate. I felt a little odd at that point, because although there were sambal, serundeng, and ketjap manis in the house, my father was the only one who used them at first, and while the number of Indonesian ingredients and substances increased over the years, my father and I kept them mostly in the cellar down the steep cement staircase where my mother would not go.

Also the bright youngsters from an extremely cultured background. Their parents, a number of uncles, aunties, and very many relatives and family friends had all been in the camps. Food was extremely important to them. "Do sit down and eat with us. That's klepon, those are kwe kwe, this is yellow curry chicken, and the soup has tamarind and ginger in it."

Something I did not realize until I came back to the United States was that in that part of the Netherlands if someone spoke excellent proper Dutch there was probably something Indo in the family woodwork. If the local dialect, it was far less likely.

Ex soldiers, bureaucrats, and graduates from the technical university in Bandung.
Sometimes long family connections to the Dutch East Indies going back centuries.

Dishes I first started cooking in the United States were rawon, semur, besengek, satay, rendang, sambal goreng, and telur pindang. Because much American food was quite flavourless, and both condiments and spices were so difficult to find, I lost a lot of weight in the first two years in Berkeley, before I knew the English names of things we had never spoken about in English at home. Ketjap manis is still hard to find. So I make my own. Sambal is now made by Huy Fong among others and easily found, and with a blender one can do that at home almost without thinking anyway. Keluak and kemiri nuts can now be found, as well as fresh sereh and lengkuas, and many fermented seafood products are available at Chinese or Vietnamese stores.
[Rawon: dishes made black with keluak nut, usually meat stews. Semur: brown gravy meat stews with sweet soy sauce (ketjap manis) as a very important component. Besengek: coconut sauce curry. Satay: grilled skewered meat usually served with peanut sauce. Not that sweet crap the Thais make, but real peanut sauce. Rendang: a coconut curry where chili is a decisive ingredient, cooked till the moisture is all taken up by the meat. Sambal Goreng: something stirfried with chilies and or chilipaste. Not necessarily very spicy, but someone from the Midwest might not think so. Telur pindang: soy eggs rather like Chinese tea eggs.]

As it turns out, however, typical Dutch things like frikandel, goene haring, and zoute drop, aren't so common in San Francisco. Apparently other Dutch speakers are desperate for those things when abroad.

My apartment mate, without a drop of Dutch blood in her (she's of Cantonese stock), is still quite upset about the unavailability of groene haring.

She is, consequently, convinced there's something wrong with us Americans.
And she's probably right about that.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

INCENTIVES FOR LITTLE BROWN GIRLS

There are some lead sentences that just tell you that whatever that "news story" actually is, it both exemplifies and defies all expectations. It is totally Southern, White Trash, Poor White Fly-over, Inner City Rap Gangsta, Suburban, New Age Hippie, Artistic And Possibly Special Dietary Requirements Yuppie. Both Steinbeckian and post-Steinbeckian. American.
Good lord, can't get any more all-American than that.

"The groom's pregnant mistress ... "

Yeah, no. Don't want to read anymore. Ain't going there. Please give me newsfeed about civil wars in the third world instead. Anything is better than that. So I don't actually know what came after "the groom's pregnant mistress". If you want to know, good for you, please Google it. It's what the internet was invented for.

It's solidly Jerry Springer out there.

We can imagine that people all over the world deeply desire to come to the United States after seeing stuff like that, because life in their village is so boring and devoid of vulgarity, immoral shiznit, chaos, flamboyant bad taste ...

Or medication for syphilis, essential to life in Mississippi.

ARKANSAS TRAILER PARK

As it is, I am surprised that more Americans aren't in jail.


This, possibly, explains why middle class Americans are such workaholics, spending long hours at the office, burning themselves out on stupid projects the dicks in upper management think are important, demanding less time off less paid sickleave fewer holidays. They are all desperate to get away from Alabama and Iowa and wipe their minds clean in the privacy of the men's bathroom on the thirteenth floor with that bottle of Jim Beam that was in the boss's desk as well as his secret stash of coke generously razorbladed on a cistern lid snorted in between huffing the raspberry flavoured pcp and thc vape they bought in Oakland.


Happy Labor Day. You know Musk and the RNC resent you for having that, don't you?
To say nothing of the owners of the Triangle ShirtWaist Company.
And Henry Ford is turning over in his grave.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

COMBUSTIBLES

Some people require a cup of coffee to wake up. Others rely on a vicious argument with insults, sneers, and vituperative screaming. The latter group includes a lot of sportsfans. And one wonders how on earth they remained married. And why not even their dog leaves them. Of course retrievers are a bit stupid, much like blonde cheerleaders, and we are talking about prosperous self-important people in Marin who probably get encouragement to be like that, even the dumbass married to an ultra-rightwing Viet woman who adulates Trump, but ...

But ...

Male Karens and female Karens. Marin.

You know, in the old days, mediaeval times in Europe, they'd take one look at the elderly rightwing scunges I have to deal with and burn them for witchcraft and heresy.
We need to bring that back. Traditions!

Some of them are missing their beans.
Plus they smell bad and eat too much.

I am not allowed to use the firehose.

It's right there in the employee handbook: "no subduing of the scoundrels with the firehose under any circumstances, as we don't want them losing control of their bladders or bowels".

If there is a high enough proportion of body fat, it's like torches or candles.

I think we're covered.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

RABBIT RABBIT! SEPTEMBER 2024

Rabbit rabbit! And, as a note of caution, stay away from marriages in the South. Especially Florida or Mississippi. Alcohol and bad judgement are always involved. At least that's been my second hand experience. Hearsay. Mumbled hearsay. By someone not entirely sane. Who is a native of both of those places. Which, by the way, I have no intention of ever visiting.

Also, people there have daddy issues.

And by the way, a wedding is not supposed to be a barbecue orgy with buckets of beer. That's not how things are done. Though I hear the ribs were fabulous.
As well as the devilled eggs and the jello salad.

You know, here in the civilized world, when we hear the words "jello salad", we naturally think suburban supermarkets, and a fresh can of Spam. I'll take the Spam -- great with fried eggs, a heap of rice, and lots of hotsauce -- but instead of jello salad I'll have a side yauchoi or collard greens thank you.

I believe the usual term for jello salad in the South is "congealed salad".
And sweet Jesus, that doesn't sound appetizing at all.
It's what they do with cream cheese.

You know, sometimes I realize that my country is, strictly speaking, just a wee bit off-kilter. The sacred union of a man, a woman, and a plate of ribs washed down with beer, somehow doesn't sound like the wedding of the century. Memorable, yes. But people in the South fight over ribs. Especially when full of beer. Apparently when the men got back from smoking their cigars, the women were fighting, having been left quite alone with the beer. The jello salad had ended up everywhere. Why on earth do you have a mixture of cream cheese, strawberries, 7 Up, and gelatine at a wedding? Or any event?

The wedding photos, I've been told, are selfies.

Y'all nuts. You know that, right?

Rabbit rabbit.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

THINKING AHEAD

While hiding behind my computer, I heard my apartment mate exclaiming over what she was watching on youtube. "I think that's a cyst". Followed shortly by "wah, sonofabitch! Look at the size of that thing!" And: "whoa, damn' that's ugly! Daaaaamn'!"

Thank you for sharing. Please don't share anymore.

Somehow, I don't think she has ever wigged on to the fact that the Dutchman with whom she shares this apartment is a sensitive man. As indeed I am.

See, the problem is that she is on the spectrum. So am I, but I hide it better than her. And while I applaud the quest for knowledge, and scientific curiosity in general, I would rather read about the process in this case than hear adulatory voice-overs. I can appreciate both, including the visuals, if it's a nature channel documentary about meerkats, for instance, or river otters. Or weasels. The weasel war dance. Yeah baby.

And that entire miniseries about the hyenas and lions and the zebra?
That too was kind of cool. Saw that after midnight in the hospital.
They kept me overnight after they had given me valium.
Don't want the old fellow twitching.
It might rip something.

So, necessarily, what is often described as an in-and-out procedure, turned into a comatose human lump on a gurney wheeled upstairs and into a nice clean room to wake up. Next time I have that done, I'm packing an overnight bag with pipes and tobacco. As long as there's no intravenous drip I can make a clean get away, or scoot out for half an hour to have a smoke.

The pity is that unlike SF Chinese hospital, that other hospital is not surrounded by places to eat. Or have a nice cup of milk tea and a pastry. It's sort of a food desert out there in that part of the city. Getting to the sidewalk across the street, can do. But hiking a dozen blocks in a desperate search for caffeine in the middle of the night, maybe not.

Why DID they put that hospital there? So many medical facilities in this city are miles away from bakeries, restaurants, and bars. Why is that? It's a wasteland!


At least with SF Chinese Hospital there's fatty snacks and caffeine within one or two blocks in every direction. As well as alleyways in which a smoker can hide.


Any future endovascular procedure clearly requires careful advance planning.
經皮腔內血管成形術 ('ging pei hong noi huet kun sing ying suet').
A percutaneous transluminal angioplasty.
It's minimally invasive!
血管內。



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

YANKILY DANKILY, NEIGHBORINO

The approach to Labor Day always reminds me of syphilis-ridden trailerparks out in the hinterlands with all the meth labs and slope-brows, which, if memory serves, describes most of Washington State, plus Port St Lucie (FL), Levelland (TX), Cedar Park (TX), Cheyenne (WY), and several other places, including the rearview parts of California.
Entirely because of racist dingoes on Yelp.

Never been to any of those places. They're probably paragonic.

I fondly imagine the average resident of those places waking up to pee in the midlle of the night, and stumbling to the corner store for a six pack of crappy beer (as advertised on their favourite television station, affiliated with Fox News) so that they'll wake up again when it's daylight to pee, just in time to go to work.

Labor Day upsets their routine. And requires more beer.
Plus they'll have to spend it with their family.
Including the non-beer drinkers.
In daylight.

So I can sympathize with people who decide to see the real America, by going on a roadtrip. To Black Rock City in northwestern Nevada. Nothing is more real than stoned naked people in hundred degree heat eating tofu dogs.

This year, as always, I shan't be going. I'm not dressed for it, and I hate tofu dogs.

What you need for the journey is two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers. And a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Plus a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, and sunglasses.


The mind recoils in horror.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

THE REWARD

Seeing as I got down to the hospital much earlier than was required for checking in at the front desk for my thyroid and chest CT scans, I got both of those done in record time, and split from the radiology department well in advance of the time I was supposed to be there for the second one. Plus I got some necessary paperwork done in a different department as well. Why, I was the very model of outpatient efficiency! So I treated myself to a pack of smuggled mainland ciggies and an early lunch.

I have made it a point after leaving a hospital environment to light up.
Either my pipe, or some ciggies bought in Chinatown.
Today's reward: 利群香煙。

Lei kwan heung yin. Profitable clusters, made in Zhejiang Province (浙江省 'jit gong saang'). Virginia type.


After lunch (紅燒斑球飯同奶茶), which was very good, I headed into the alley and lit up my pipe. Shortly after that I spied the bookseller crossing the street, and hurried to catch up with him. He was taking care of errands on the second day of his weekend, and we walked down to Sansome Street together, where I caught the bus back to my neck of the woods.

As you probably guess, I have never been even close to the factory where my Virginia type cigarettes were made. Some of my tea and porcelain comes from there, as did people I knew years ago. But to me it's part of the Ling Nan hinterlands, the area to the north of Hong Kong and Kwangtung. Brigands, rebel armies, and salt smugglers. And, along the coast, pirates.
Mountains, rivers, lakes, estuaries, and rainforests.
Tigers, kingfishers, malaria.

For some bizarre reason the British wanted to trade there, for which Hong Kong would be their base of operations. Instead, the Cantonese took their ball and ran with it, turning Hong Kong into a brash and thriving commercial metropole despite the best British efforts to have a nice sleepy colonial outpost. The local people benefitted enormously from the absence of Manchurians and official corruption, created their own business houses, and did things the British never intended them to. Manufacturing, movies, publishing houses, an entire record industry, plastics, real estate speculation .....


The hospital is excellent. Top notch treatment, efficient and extremely capable staff, within two blocks in any direction of lunch and unhealthy snacks including many high cholesterol items which I love, as well as at least a dozen brands of cigarettes not legally imported into the United States. It has ties with the oldest hospital in Hong Kong, and, very important for a Dutch American, there is truly exquisite roast duck and roast pork in easy walking distance, even with these crappy poor circulation legs. Mostly downhill.

Trust me, the roast meats are very important.

They immensely benefit the soul.
And healing processes.
As you know.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

MONTANA EQUALS GREECE

During the first hour after the caffeine hits the brain, and the daily dosages of blood pressure pills start working, the mind is likely to do some very strange things. The synapses haven't assumed their regular routes, the hatches aren't battened down, the sails are flapping a bit. And for quite inexplicable reason I tried connecting a Fibonacci sequence to the wildfires in Montana and Greece. Which doesn't work, and there is no logical link.

Greece has numerous famous culturally significant sites.
Montana has beer, Billings, and grizzly bears.
It is the most Wyoming of states.
Other than Wyoming.

Billings is located where Clark's Fork Bottom once used to be. I found this out by reading Wikipedia. I don't need to read Wikipedia about Greece, naturally, because it cropped up in multiple contexts during grammar and high school classes. Montana didn't.
Which tells you that I went to school before the nineties.

The period between Fork Bottom and Billings was lawless, churchless, and liquour fuelled.
Things went downhill from there.

In recent years, a publication named Billings the best small city in which to start a business. Despite there being no resemblance whatsoever to any culturally significant urban centres anywhere else in the world. When you find an opening, fill it.

In fact, the only reason why it is even floating around on the surface of my mind is the recent wildfires. Last week Greece had wildfires. So did, and does, Northern California, but I haven't been thinking about the frontier zone locally, just noting that the frontier zone of both Greece and Montana are also burning up.

Combustibility. And panic.

Despite the remarkable similarity of San Francisco to Athens (good food, lots of wine, and eccentric philosophers everywhere), we do not need to worry about wildfires here. Unless they come roaring up the peninsula. But we look on in horror.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

NATURAL SAVAGERY

Having survived a bad bout of pneumonia five or six months ago, he's now having nose-bleeds. The tissues up there are thin and dried out. And he looks a little more fragile than before. But he's got his dander mostly back, and is feisty again. So, given that he's past eighty, he's made a miraculous recovery. Plus he mentioned some lovely chyü sau (豬手 "hog knuckles") he saw the other day, regretfully, because he didn't order a plate.
So I can probably guess where he's having dinner this evening.

All old men should sometimes have some pig's trotters. Good for skin and bones.
And it probably lubricates the dessicated nasal tissues too.
Also, they're good for puerperal women.
Per traditional belief.


My lunch today had nothing to do with any of that. It was, however good for the tissues. The heat yesterday having left me limp and drained. Imagine a sudden rain storm drenching the cracked soil of the desert, revitalizing the tinder-dry fibres of whatever trees and cacti dot the landscape. It hits at twilight, bringing coolness and welcome relief. The rattlesnakes and jack rabbits emerge from their holes and gambol joyously before devouring each other.

Look, I don't know what exactly goes on in nature, okay?
There could be carnivorous leporids.
It's their choice.

Once the juvenile jack rabbit erupts violently from the chest of the host human which its mother face-hugged, it must make a decision on whether it is vegetarianly inclined, will become a savage carnivore, or subsist entirely on minerals and tofu.

It's something intensely personal, you shouldn't judge.
Both a lifestyle, and survival of the fattest.
Not all leporids are strict vegans.
Don't force them.


Anyhow, I'm glad to see him back among the living, no longer a zombie seeking out a warm rock in the sunlight on which to rest and blink his eyes while sucking up the heat.


Tune in next week for more biology lessons: how chocolate soufflé is murder.
All those big-headed embryos encased in calcium carbonate!
Only some of them chocolate flavoured.
The others just spam.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

DOCTOR WHO?

The speaker at the burger joint was too loud. Bad Daddy rap is not improved by volume. Someone should tell them that. But they'll have to shout. Afterwards we took one look at the crowd at a place where often we go for beer and Earl Grey, and gave it a miss.
It was jampacked with Europeans and serious people.

The karaoke place had two lovely songs in Mandarin followed by Lady Gaga and something forgetable. Accompanied by a gentleman snoring at the bar. Afterwich we went up the street to another place. Where there were neither Europeans nor songbirds.

Shirtsleeve weather, even long after sundown. And I've recovered from the shots last week, so I could truly appreciate the sweltering heat during the day. Isn't it lovely? Gosh we've been looking forward to sunny weather oh my. It's liberating. I shan't make any snide comments about unseemingly clothing on people with or without the bodies for that, because I'm a diplomatic sort without an evil bone in my body.
And, truly, I believe in being nice.


Life is so much better when you regard everyone with kindness.
Despite all their obvious flaws.

Which are much more evident in hot weather.

It's time for yearly physicals. Which we talked about. What do they call that procedure where they send a snake up your rear to check for Jimma Hoffa and growths? My friend is almighty chuffed that no Mars probe is needed. I, on the other hand, was chuffed because of a briar pipe I re-finished, which I did not mention. When he started talking about enemas all I could think of is a possible scene in a Bollywood movie with hundreds of singing and dancing people dressed in lab coats and scrubs, a nice cheerful tune that would last ten or twenty minutes. As they do. On the roof top. In the rain. Where our heroine's thin nurse's sari is plastered to her body. I need to clarify that during our weekly pub crawl I drink tea, and consequently was zipped to the gills on overmuch caffeine, and a recent smoke.
Whereas he had Jameson's in his system and had just finished a cigar.


The town is filled with Germans and French. Allmost makes me wish I spoke better German, so that I could find out what they think of a place with none of Karl May's picturesque Indians.
We have no noble savages here. Lots of ignoble civilizados, however.
We are two hours away from any indigeneous casino.
It's a spiritual failing.


By the way: I am not fond of Lady Gaga.
Maybe there's something wrong with me.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

WHERE THICKNESS SWIRLS

My arm still hurts from the RSV vaccine a week ago. Which is odd, because for the first twelve hours I didn't feel a darned thing. Then it proceded to wreck an entire night, day, and night. But by the time I get my flu shot and yet another covid booster I should be fine. Wow, that's THREE nanochips, if an acquainance from a certain faith community (the batshit paranoid crazies) can be believed. THREE!
Five G and everything.

I'm not quite sure if that means they can see me or I can see them.
He has not ellucidated, and I haven't asked.
Did I mention batshit crazy?
Him. And his.

He is in several ways so goofy I fear his chocolate has all melted.
The landing lights along his runway have burned out.
The fog is thick along his off ramp.

Manuka honey, wheat grass, and apple cider vinegar.
Plus space aliens. Ancient space aliens.
Taught human beings religion.
And pyramids.

Because I am an easy-going man and do not like to argue with elderly crazy people, I have patiently listened to him expound wondrously about scientific matters, ancient aliens, vaccine nano-chips, miraculous medical knowledge of tribals who according to Wikipedia have very low life-expectancies, orders of druids, and the deep state which is delaying the second coming of something connected to all of the above and keeping mankind ignorant.
He's done his own research. And he knows the truth. He knows!
His off ramp seems to stop short of the ground.
Besides being always foggy.

All in all I am happy I haven't seen him in months.
Dealing with enlightened people drains one.
Even under ideal conditions.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

IMPROVING THE MIND

Sometimes people have lovely smiles. I noticed that on the bus (the driver), at the jewelers where I was looking at watches, at the hospital pharmacy when I was picking up refills, and later at the place where I went to have a bite to eat. A late lunch, more like dinner. But it was also breakfast, because I had wasted the entire day putzing about. As happens too often on my first day off after being at work. Fermented tofu pig's knuckle rice (南乳豬手飯 'naam yü chyü sau faan'). First time in a long time I had that. Delicious. Great juices!

I was looking at watches because I couldn't find the watch I usually wear. Having looked all over the place, I concluded I must have lost it on the way home, and sought a replacement. Just in case they didn't have one I took the watch I haven't worn in ages over too so that the battery could be replaced. They did not have a replacement (I'm very particular, and do not want a vulgar shiny metal banded watch, or a big thick flashy clunker), the older watch now works again and I'll probably wear it henceforth, and this evening I again looked in a place where I should have looked better before (behind a large box that contains Nicaraguan cigars, don't ask) and consequently I now have two perfectly functional watches on my bedside table. Nice old fashioned conservative timepieces.

I had spent much of the day fussing with a briar pipe I'm restoring.
Neurotic about certain details. I probably need help.
And I quite lost track of time.

It's not done yet, and will take a while longer. A very common problem with Petersons is that many of their finishes are perfectly dreadful, and over the years their eyes have sometimes faded in the factory to the point of uselessness. I suspect that it's probably like an old folks social club there, poor dears, because who the heck wants to go work in a factory making dusty old pipes if they've graduated college and can sit behind a desk in an air-conditioned brightly lit office cruising the internet all day while they're supposed to be working at a far greater rate of pay?

Plus I don't have a buffing wheel or drills here, so what should take minutes must take much longer. And often gets interrupted by my computer nearby.


I suspect that when I finally left the apartment late in the day I may not have been quite as sane or composed as I should like to have been. When I returned three hours later I was a different individual. Getting out, and eating something that restores the blood sugar levels, have a great effect in that regard.

So does juicy, fatty, gelatinous, tender meat.
With hot sauce and cold milk tea.
Capped by a smoke.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

A REALM OF MENTAL DESICCATION

It strikes me that one of the main reasons that I do not associate much with cigar smokers is that far too many of them are mildly bigoted snobs. That bunch of old fossils I babysit during my workweek being exceptions; most of them are extraordinarily bigoted classist garbage. Better than thou because of age, mental rigidity, and lots of money. They've insulated themselves from their fellow humans.

One good example is the retired member of the judicial branch who underneath a veneer of liberal humanist culture and literacy is a sour old conservative intellectual hack who prefers not to even speak to people below him. Another is a man of bohemian appearance making more than is good for him with purist nature points of view who loves talking to people with money and some similar tastes and sneers at everybody else. He's superficially aware of other things, but feels that they are of much less worth than everything he represents.

Shan't even mention the ex-cop racist bordline nazi.
Wrong border. It's the other side.


There are fine people in Marin, but far less than appearances suggest.
The level of sewage is absolutely staggering.
Pervasive rot.

The amount of vomitous opinionation I hear during my working hours about limited edition cigars, rare Scotch, sports teams, what's wrong with the common man, and how Trump and his con-conspirators will save civilization when the rotten evil libtards and that black witch are finally defeated, is absolutely unbelievable. They are firm believers in that last, by the way, they've drunk the Koolaid. Like liquour and nerve pills, they swallow it by the bucket.
It's so reassuring, so social pretenses affirming. So nice warm blankyish.
They are all mental Red-Staters and emotionally crippled.
It was probably their parents.

I have reason to believe that almost none of them read beyond a fourth grade level, and the old git who swans in after lunch never finishes any of the books he flaunts.

His mind is already full.


Often the only decent man there is a member of the medical profession just quietly trying to get things done, and mind his own business. Not suprisingly, he too has lost his cool once or twice when the others spout drivel. Yet he is, fundamentally, more tolerant of them and their blithering, than I am. I am not a nice man.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

MICROELECTRONIC WOMBAT

Tourists! Please be aware that busses that go through Sausalito do NOT take Apple Pay, credit cards, or money orders. Cash, or transit card. Do not point your cellphone at the driver, there is no processor in their body, they do not accept Microelectronic Wombat like they do in Italy and France. Also, the bus that picks you up in Sausalito, or anywhere in Marin, does not go to Fishermans Wharf, Chinatown, or North Beach. It is NOT a tourist bus.
Some of us use it to go to or from work.

In the morning, in Sausalito, there are usually a whole host of people loudly speaking gabble-gabble who get off. When they boarded in San Francisco they delayed the bus for up to ten minutes before they grasped that credit cards, Apple Pay, or even Microelectronic Wombat (accepted by civilized countries like Italy, France, and North Vestibule) were not going to get them on board. And arguing with the bus driver would not make it so.

In the evening, arguing with the bus driver will not make it so either.
Cash, or transit card. Not Microelectronic Wombat.

By the way: Sausalito is an ancient Phoenician phrase that translates to: "blimey, this place is an effing hellhole!" Quite likely Sausalito is exactly why the aliens haven't contacted us.
Also, let me tell you what you can do with Microelectric Wombat.
Which they use universally where you come from.
Or so we've been told.

FUTURE SALES KIOSK FOR MICROELECTRONIC WOMBAT

Why is it that only the Japanese and Chinese have done some research and don't insist on Microelectric Wombat? Or Euros? Or green stamps? Also, they do not dress like sluts and beachbums, and have attended to personal hygiene recently. That can't be said for people from Europe or elsewhere in the United States. Good lord!

And as far as the Europeans go, the French, with ditchwater that could give you diseases, and a nasty habit of eating frogs and snails, developed a monumental wine industry. Wine with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The English, having British cuisine and being outrageous alcoholics, became their major customers. The Germans, for similar reasons, brewed an ocean of beer. The Dutch and Scottish, lacking even the rudiments of cooking, went straight for distilates. Shan't even mention the Irish. Scandinavians of course have lutefisk and surströmming.

[The US West Coast has all the above except the two angst-inducing maritime products. Plus coffee, because we also suffer from hipness and an urge to talk. And Isaac informs me that San Diego is one of the top exporters of uni, which is of course the genitals of sea urchins so that counts for something.]

Also, some of us here understand your languages. You have no privacy.
We're good at straight faces.


One other thing: Hawaiian Pizza was invented in Canada. It has no connection with Hawaii or anywhere in the United States. Canada. We don't know where you can find the best version of it in SF, and kindly stop blaming the United States for it.
It is hugely popular across the Atlantic.
Not so much here.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

COFFEE HITS THE CEREBRAL CORTEX

As we all know, when they tell you that the call came from within the building, always look behind you. Worst case scenario: the monster who was supposed to be dead is rising up. Best case: Nadia the old Russian woman is gnawing a cucumber. Or maybe that's also a worst case scenario. My experience with elderly Russians says it could be either.
If it's a Russian of either gender, the conversation may turn to turnips.


"In old country, turnips are glorious! American turnip, no good!"


It's not just me. I think everyone has issues with Eastern European social skills.
And Americans. on the whole, are not so heavily into turnips.

An internet search of turnip recipes turned up caramelized turnips, cheese crusted turnips with bacon, and creamy Southern turnip suprise.
What's commonly refered to as a 'turnip' in Chinese style recipes is actually daikon, a radish (raphanus sativus), whereas the actual turnip is a cabbage root (brassica rapa). Scotsmen and Slavic types will be bitterly disappointed if you give them a daikon instead. They had so hoped for real turnips! They will probably weep. I'm just guessing here. Their cuisines are remarkably similar. Boiled onions, boiled turnips, boiled groats, boiled sheep stomach.

In what is sure to be a blow to Scots and Slavs everywhere, turnip season, normally from October through the winter, is going to be delayed a bit this year. Global climate change.
And the crop may not be up to par. Kind of watery.


I feel the pain.


Perhaps I shouldn't read internet news articles at five thirty in the morning. The mind is all jangly at this hour. Caffeine, nicotine, highly refined sugar. Buzz, buzz, buzz.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================