THE BEST PART OF WAKING UP

There are clearly visible street signs indicating 'don't park here, motorcycles and mopeds only', as well as 'no parking between blip o'clock and blap o'clock on preebday for street cleaning'. Yet, evenso, and never-the-less. It's sheer anarchy, teel you what. Of which this blogger severely disapproves just after dawn more than any other time.

As I stumble up the dark early morning street smoking my post first cup of coffee pipeful.

At such an ungodly hour I am a sour disapproving old cuss.
In my day, people did NOT disobey no-parking signs.
What IS this world coming to?
Heretics!


The morning routine scarcely varies, irrespective of actual time. Pee. Coffee. Smoke outside. Today it's taking place earlier than normal on a Monday, because I have things to do.
Reading the news and grumbling about the state of things is part of it, but has no set place in the order of things, and is of flexible duration.


The world is going to hell in a handbasket, which is all the fault of the Christians / Republican Party / Australians. Or it could be the Russians and Hindu Nationalists. I'm not picky.

Those thoughts are mostly caused be body chemistry temporarily lording it over reality and common sense. It's a necessary part of waking up and becoming fully functional. Minor wisps of that attitude may resurface during the day. Dependent on blood sugar levels.


Oddly sour variations may randomly occur.

If cats normally throw up because they eat too fast, is not throwing up a sign of ill health?

Seeing as dogs instictively sniff butts and eat anything they find on the ground, how did their species survive so long? They should be extinct by now.

Surely little children's noises and racketing draws predators?

Historically, head choppping solved all the world's problems.



Good morning, I guess.



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DINOSAUR PETTING ZOO

Sportsday. Which excites the reprehensibles. And their hanging strings of poop. Fortunately the disturber wasn't in, given that there was a second attempt on the worthless life of the small handed rotten pumpkin that lost the election. Third time's a charm. and how hard is it to hit a large barely moving orange target at four hundred yards? Yes, he's hepped to the gills on Jesus and adderal, but he's also carrying the weight of a full adutlt diaper.

The disturber would have riled up the others. And the noise would have been beyond belief. They're already convinced that the Democrats want to kill him. Listen, boyo, if we really wanted to do him in, he'd be dead, buried, and grave pissed upon by now. Okay?


Oh, and the Forty Niners lost today. Good.
Screw them and their supporters.
Rightwing yobbos.

The boys in the backroom are repulsive and scarcely bearable. The kind of people on whom you instinctively wish ill. Damnation and calumny. Debilitation, disease.
Them, their kin, and their damned sports team.

There was also a dead rodent in the parking lot. I think one of the repulsive chaps dropped his lunch. Picked it up with a baggy and disposed of it. Deceased animals are sometimes (often) the nicest part of the job. And so much easier. A sheer joy.


Anyhow, stress-echo test tomorrow, after which a spot to eat in C'town and a smoke before returning home. The weather ought to be nice. Low to mid sixties, somewhat overcast, very un-Californian. Yes, I know you were expecting tropical, you've seen both Bay Watch and Columbo, and several other American television series. They weren't filmed here, this ain't there. Sorry. And you look perfectly ridiculous in those shorts.

Take them off.



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COME FOR THE MEAT

At the end of the day there are things at the edge of one's vision, especially here in San Francisco. It's either crazy people or fog. Or, worst case scenario, tourists turning blue with cold because they presumed that this was California and wore shorts and thin tee-shirts.
One of the local streetpeople said "hey man I thought it was supposed to be eighty degrees today!" as I passed, but he may have been tuning to the wrong station.
As a great many people do.

This morning heading to work, I could not see the bridge.
In the evening heading home, ditto.

It was dark and gloomy when I got home, though nightfall was still a bit away. The weather forecast for tomorrow is more fog, plus overcast, and gloom. The temperature will hover around low sixties Fahrenheit, fourteen degrees Celsius. Perfect.

It's 'work on your tan' weather.
Use your sunscreen.

As well as your LumberJack Premium Bearspray.
Applied liberally around your oxters.
Keeps J. D. Vance away.

As well as any creatures that resemble him. Of course I may be thinking of the bears on Polk Street. Most of whom are actually decent fellows, who will not try to eat your pets, what with not being Republicans and thinking longingly in those terms.

Most Republicans I know are psychic vampires and alligators, however, lamenting how few golf courses and mangrove swamps there are around here. One of the bastards longs for the Malarial lowlands of North Carolina, where he imagines that more of his kind live, a massive infestation. He may be right. Chihuahua werewolves. I do not know how he came to be. I've heard of dobermans crossbreeding with goats and camels, but I find the idea of a werewolf deciding that a rat-dog was a perfect date hard to swallow, even though those vicious little ambulatory turd machines would be easy to dominate. The mental image is quite distressing. In any case, the Carolinas are his spiritual home, and they are welcome to him.
A balding nasty rabid swamp thing.

Republicans, as is well known, like red, white, and blue nailpolish.
On their talons. It's both patriotic and threatening.
So very very butch, you know.


As I undertand it, the Carolinas are also chock full of cougars.
Apparently they are all like Martha in Baby Reindeer.
And every one of them is named Karen.



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FAST-ACTING ENERGY

It's taken half a decade, but I'm finally rediscovering parts of San Francisco where I haven't been in a while. After two hospital stays and a list of several pills I take daily, my stamina has improved considerably. Yesterday I walked all over hell and gone. Which has changed.
The right leg hurt like blazes several times -- circulatory issues -- but it was fun.

It was not something I planned to do, but I had loaded up my pipe and did not feel like letting it go out to catch a bus further up the line. A few years back I told my regular care physician that I was walking more, and his face lit up. Because of my pipe. At which his face lit down. He went back to school four years ago, and my current regular care physician is more realistic about crusty old farts and their smoking and has not pushed the issue.

Speaking of crusty old farts: The bus driver who retired several years ago is now wilder than ever, and looks quite disreputable. His cantankerous companions ditto. The gentleman one table over, who is even older, has the mannerisms and appearance of an evil supernatural entity, possibly one that dwells under the cap of a giant amanita mushroom.
He probably evicted the toad that was there.

These are things that came to mind while I was eating a late lunch at a C-town chachanteng where I hadn't been in a while. Because I needed to get out of the house and smoke a pipe.
Also, I needed a cup of milk tea.

In all honesty, I also wanted to smoke a pipe I had put into one of the storage boxes among the many other briars not presently in the rotation. One which I fondly remembered from the last two years before my coronary stent, when walking for more than three or four blocks was tiring and often gave me a screaming headache. As well as more recent times. It's a pipe of which I am quite fond, and for regular lunch related reasons it reminds me of delicious pork chops at another chachanteng nearby.

If from this you conclude that insanity is common among Dutchmen, you may be right.
At least not very far of the mark.



I take immense pride in the idea that Dutch neurotics are high functioning, almost spectrum re-defining, and like a person with a mild bout of pneumonia, ambulatory.
Fueled by caffeine, nicotine, and highly refined sugar.

The pipe in question is more Dutch than I am.
Made for Amphora decades ago.



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EXTERIOR SCENE

When the apartment mate is at home, I must go outside to smoke. Which is problematic as there is no ashtray there. Where, as an example, do I dispose of my pipe cleaners? How about the ashes when I have finished the bowl? Where do I sit contemplatively while earthmothers scream that I'm ruining the planet and killing butterflies and kittens?

There is a bench across the street from a grammar school.
I can be an example to the little brutes.

If any Karens come to scream I will point out that I am more than the legally required distance away from operable doors, windows, air vents, ventilation systems, and screaming brats. I am, in fact, across the street entirely, a different time zone, another planet.
Near a restaurant, yes, but around the corner and down the street.
I am a rugged outdoorsman.

And I haven't had lunch yet. So, seeing as breakfast is not something I do, my bloodsugar level may be low and my mood not foul but fragile and near the border line. Could get foul at any moment if you karenize. Please don't be karenicious. My spirit animal is a grizzly bear.

Karenocity is not appreciated. Let this be a karen-free zone.
Save your karenating for the suburbs.
Boo!

Except for the pipe and smoke, the scene above could be an advertisement for hunting gear or tofu. And, in the fifties and sixties, it well might have been. Such scenes alternated with domestic interiors showing a clean cut man wearing a houndstooth sports coat relaxing in an easy chair after coming home from work with his pipe and his newspaper, bourbon on the side table, wife thing wearing a no-nonsense apron visible in the kitchen preparing meatloaf and a delicious canned mixed vegetables casserole, boy and girl child on the oval rug in front of the victrola playing with a toy train and a doll, dog and cat dozing, gold fish in bowl, stationwagon in the drive way that can be seen through the picture window.

Smoke Old Bag, drive a Houndbanger, eat delicious Splong.
And have a chilled Rancid Bogman cocktail!

Cheese in every mouthful.

Cheese, Karen, cheese! What could be more American than that? Your sneering disapproval of what I'm doing is un-patriotic! Are you a commie? This country was founded on cheese



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SHINY THINGS

The phrase "I feel like a baked potato" is not one that normally should come to mind. I am cognizant that in the morning, the mind doesn't function at an optimum level until coffee has been drunk. And for many people it doesn't until they've picked up their little teacup fluffball's excrement. Which is probably why Facebook is so fascinating at an early hour. People are preparing to go to work, and hurridly posting any old thought that comes to mind.
I am a parrot, see me roar.

My apartment mate, on the other hand, is wide awake and snarkily inclined at an impossible hour. She should have been a doctor. She has called in sick, which means that at today's meeting the defective person will be representing the entire department. About which I hear amused speculation upon my return from smoking a pipe outside while wandering around the neighborhood.

Because she has called in sick, I cannot fart around in slovenly fashion like I would normally be inclined to do. I shall have to make a pretense at being at least halfway human.


Which is hard. And requires more coffee.

The Australian magpie is a remarkable bird which lives happily in a place where the ten most dangerous things on the planet are native and move about freely. Among which are the blue ringed octopus, the Sydney funnel web spider, the estuarine stonefish (synanceia horrida), the saltwater crocodile, cricket players, spaghetti sandwiches, and vegemite.

It can fly away from all those things, but chooses not to.
The Australian magpie has not fled in droves.
As the only sentient creature.
You'd think.


Just you wait. Once it discovers coffee, the existential angst and paranoia will kick in, and it will start worrying about self-preservation. And also realize that neither vegemite nor spaghetti sandwiches are actually edible.



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PECKING AT THEIR LEGS

So my apartment mate has suggested that I bring the stuffed turkey vulture to my next medical appointment (cardiologist, on Monday in the morning), he'd have such fun there! Treats! Spare body parts! Random dead people lying abandoned in the hallways! It's two busrides away, and I'm not sure I'm ready to deal with a feathered ghoul for several hours that early. I'd have to explain to people in the waiting room that they shouldn't worry when he's pecking at their legs. If they can feel it, it means that they aren't dead yet.

See? It's a good thing!

Perhaps it's time for them to find religion.

I never knew that requiring the services of medical professionals would be so stressful and require so much effort. If I had, I would have stayed in my twenties or thirties longer.

On a different note, I've asked my apartment mate if she would like dinner at a nearby restaurant which we both like sometime next week. No reason, but she puts up with me and the turkey vulture, and lord knows it can't be easy dealing with Dutchmen. Which is why my ancestors came over here. We were surrounded by our kind over there, and it must have proven traumatic. The Belgians and Germans stayed, and look at them today.

There are no Dutchmen in Florida, and life there is splendid. Good food, simple normal people. That's why they're in the news all the time. Honestly, it's a total paradise.
The weather is nice too. And the best education on the planet.

No hurricanes, no flooding, no rising sea levels, no iguanas falling out of trees during horrid cold spells. Which happens in Holland all the time. Just look at their mediaeval art.
Pieter Brueghel is notorious for painting that stuff.


Florida does not need additional healthcare, nutritional programs, publishing safeguards, or any police oversight. People are just happy to be there.

It's an American kind of place.



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PUMPKINS AND RABIES

According to nativists within the paranoid party, foreign gangsters have taken over important parts of Colorado, and people of colour are eating pet cats, dogs, ducks, and mutated giant lizards in Ohio. And we must do something about that! Save opportunities for all-American gangsters! Only lily white people should eat pets! Send in Kyle Rittenhouse!
Unmuzzle the Marjorie Taylor Greene!

In an ideal world, instead of being Republican idols over which mothers in Florida wet their panties, both of those cretins would be facing each other naked in a mud-wrestling pit.

No, I didn't watch the debate last night between the decomposing pumpkin and the human being. Better things to do. I may have picked my nose briefly during that time.

At some point I smoked my pipe and had a cup of tea.
As rational well balanced people do.


Elsewhere people were having self-induced fits of mouth-foaming.
Them shiftless furriners are stealing our jobs!
Think of the cats, and Colorado!
We could be eating that!
Outrageous!

The picture above has nothing to do with pets in Ohio or irresponsible slum landlords in Colorado, or anything that gives the Republicans orgasms such as we're celebrating today (nine eleven), but shows typhoon Yagi on the waterfront somewhere in Asia.
Finished it a day ago. Might as well share.

The accusation that some group that white people and Irish immigrants despise eats cats and dogs is a hoary trope that's been trotted out in every era, and used against everyone that allegedly civilized folks look down upon. And foreign criminals establishing little spheres of influence, that too. Why, here in san Francisco, in certain areas transplants from New York and Philadelphia have notoriously taken over pizza parlours, and I've heard that in some neighborhoods all you can get to eat is flavourless Midwestern and Southern food, with nothing but salt, pepper, and ranch dressing for spice. It's shocking, is what.

As a Dutch American, I am stupendously outraged at all those English speakers overrunning the place. Why, the Bowery and Staten Island are filled with them! Soon Michigan will have nothing but bangers, potatoes, and haggis! Personally, I blame Canada.

We should build a wall around California to keep Midwesterners, Southerners, and Canadians out. As well as Texans and the Irish. And anybody from Florida.
We've got our own problems. We don't need them bringing in more.
And we grow pumpkins here, so we don't need Trump.



No one here eats cats, dogs, or mutated giant lizards. You're thinking of frat boys.
They also eat babies. On a bet, when drunk.



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THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE EAGLE

Please. Don't allow John-boy anywhere near the microphone. Or any other white people. If you know what's good for me. White people doing karaoke is often worse than encountering loonies, such as the bozos with a giant pup tent in the alley, the pilgrim asking people if they had change for a hundred, or the two gentlemen arguing about car keys out on the street in front. Both of whom were plastered, but at least one of them was ready to admit that the other one was.

John-boy began to sing 'Hotel California' just as we sat down. While howling, he rubbed his big hairy hands (figure of speech) all over his chest, languorously and intently, taking joy in how his fingers felt through the thin cloth. Yeah, um. The next white guy singing did John Denver's Country Roads. We did not dawdle over our drinks.

One of the other patrons had told us outside that it was auntie's (the owner's) birthday. So we had to have at least one drink, and wish 姑媽 a happy happy. What with the infernal shrieking of karaoke patrons that proved well nigh impossible. So I wrote on my drinks napkin "有人說是你的生日。是了嗎？生日快樂！"Which proved instantly intelligible. Despite the screaming eagle and his nightmare hotel.

It still surprises me that no one there has ever done "Vor der kaserne, vor dem großen tor, steht 'ne laterne und steht sie noch davor, dort wollen wir uns wiedersehn, bei der laterne wollen wir stehn, wie einst Lilli Marleen, wie einst Lilli Marleen".
Male or female voice, kein unterschied.

Actually, I'm rather glad that Lili Marleen has never been sung at the karaoke joint. I like that song, and a drunken yuppie has no business killing it by screech. I had hummed it while smoking my pipe earlier down the street.

It's bad enough when they sometimes butcher Mackie Messer auf Englisch.

The bookseller remarked that he liked listening to some songs in foreign languages, because they sound better when you can't understand the lyrics. I can understand, but I still like them.


Fortunately no one sings at the other bar. Nor do they have big drunken egos.
And no one has ever tried to make us do a number there either.

But it was a good evening.



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OUT OF HAND

A crazed person was throwing bottles at a parked car down the block and shouting gibberish when I stepped out of the house with my pipe this morning. Good thing I lit up while still in the portico, as that shielded the sudden flare from his attention. One would not want to catch the attention of unstable fellows by standing out in the corners of their eyes when they're having a moment. As lighting up a full bowl of pipe tobacco inevitably might.

It's probably going to be hours before he has his coffee, smoke, and perhaps any necessary unprescribed medication. And I keenly wished him to head much further down the street towards the donut shop. Not trot uphill towards me.

As I headed up the street calmly puffing, a teenager listening to rap at a low volume on his cellular device passed me, probably on his way to school, judging by his weighty backpack.

Also, the somewhat snippy looking young lady whom I see on the same bus as myself every Friday. I am off today, she probably works the usual weekdays.


Where she works there probably aren't any unstable eccentrics with bottles.

Where I work, they're all unstable eccentrics with bottles.
But fortunately not very mobile, or physically active.

At the end of my workweek I am probably somewhat loopy. Partly because I've had far too much caffeine over several days, partly because I've listened to hours and hours of rightwing nonsense being whined, droned, shouted, bloviated, vituperated, and snarled, by a roomfull of incontinent mental defectives who are just full of themselves. Which is typical for older Caucasian Americans in the suburbs.

It's the wave of the future. In another ten years or so it will be nothing but long suffering Filippina nursing staff patiently pushing wheelchairs filled with crazy old white men around well manicured lawns with ear plugs in gated communities. They acquired the earplugs originally because Pablo would be doing the walkways with a leafblower before daybreak, but since then happily discovered that those things tune out the mobility impaired old Anglo fascists gibbering non-stop about liberals stealing elections and biting off Trump's right ear, they've seen the videos, it was a black boxer hired by Pelosi, what was the world coming to, and black helicopters spraying vaccines over the crowd. Aliens! Not only that rapist wielding a leafblower, but also Xercto-B from planet X. Can't even afford a burger anymore!

The thin band of textfeed on grandpa's technosunglasses scrolls an evenly spaced stream of paranoid disinformation from Florida, tailored specifically to his interest, the algorithm knows what he likes to read based on his previous searches. His gibbering is only a repitition of what he sees, there is no need to respond. Conversation is impossible anyway.


I suspect that the crazy man breaking bottles either wishes he could live like that, or is an escapee from Belvedere or Tiburon. And probably needs a burger.


We have no burgers here. Meat is murder.
Go on, have glazed donut.



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THE REAL DEAL

Right around tea time it struck me that what we need is at least one more mixed bakery and chachanteng in Chinatown. Well within easy walking distance of a bus stop. With a modest selection of pastries and cooked dishes -- baked Portuguese chicken rice, salt fish chicken fried rice, beef chow mein, porkchops, dumplings in soup with a few stalks of yauchoi, stuff like that -- clean tables and actual crockery. Where one could dawdle over a pastry and a hot cup of milk tea on and in real crockery. Rather than paper cups and plates. There are in fact a couple of places rather like that, but I need an extra one. So that, hypothetically, on a day when I had to be in Chinatown early in the day, I could have tea down there late in the afternoon preparatory to smoking my pipe while wandering around.

[Baked Portuguese chicken rice: 焗葡國雞飯 ('guk pou gwok kai faan'), salt fish chicken fried rice: 鹹魚雞粒炒飯 ('haam yü gai naap chaau faan'), beef chow mein: 牛肉炒麵 ('ngau yiuk chaau min'), porkchops: 豬扒 ('jyü paa'), dumplings in soup with a few stalks of yauchoi: 韭菜湯餃 ('gau choi tong gaau').同其他。]

I need to emphasize the real crockery aspect. Ever since places reopened after the height of the pandemic paper cups and plates have been widespread. Which makes me feel that I'm paying too much for milk tea, and I dislike the picnic office party drunken frat boy pizza night similarities. Crockery. A cup and saucer.


Yes, I know that with San Franciso's raised minimum wage it would drive up the cost of doing business, because it takes a team of a dozen people to get actual crockery from a table to the dishwasher good lord the labour involved will put us all out of business we can't afford to hire even one more person! But the places that do use real crockery are already on my list of places I will go to this week, and lord knows there must be hundreds of old folks at the two or three senescent fossil facilities who would appreciate a nice chachanteng within two blocks or less. Where they could have some refreshment and gather their strength before going out to play gin rummy at Portsmouth Square. Real crockery.

This morning after my eye doctor's appointment (眼科服務；眼科醫生預約 'ngaan fo fuk mou'；'ngaan fo yi sang yiu yuek') the place where I had breakfast and milk tea had real crockery. I had a smoke afterword. The place where I plan to have a late lunch tomorrow (followed by a smoke) has real crockery, same for wednesday. Real crockery.

And surely there are many crotchety white pipe smoking gentlemen who would also appreciate that right around tea time. The real crockery.

Oh wait; I might actually be the only one.


Still, think of your Chinese American fellow citizens, especially the older ones.
Real crockery is so much more inviting and gemütlich.
They'll appreciate it.



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FUZZY AROUND THE EDGES

Up before six, out of the house at eight. Eye doctor appointment at eight thirty. Forty five minutes later I wandered into an eatery for congee, a fried dough stick and a cup of milk tea (豬肝瘦肉粥、油條，同埋一杯熱香港奶茶 'jyu gon sau yiuk juk, yau tiu, tong maai yat pui yit heung gong naai chaa'). Remarkably, everyone spoke to me in Cantonese. I guess I have reached that age where if people don't look carefully they don't quite notice precisely how profoundly kwai lo I really am. It's hardly likely that they recognize me, because all Caucasians really do look alike.

This is not so much disturbing as it is baffling.

Perhaps it's the complete absence of tattoos, piercings, and eccentric clothing (both artistic AND "ethnic") that expresses how unique, creative, and spiritual I think I am. Which is how many (probably most) Caucasians make sure people recognize that they are deeply unique, creative, and spiritual beings surrounded by butterflies and powerful auras.

Yes, that must be it; I have a bland aura.

Also, I am fuzzy around the edges.


Either that or it's the lack of a man bun and a goth or heavy metal tee-shirt.

It turns out that the left eye is marginally more glaucomatic than it was. Still, the likelihood that I will be able to look someone straight in the eyes when I finally croak a quarter century hence, and exclaim "hey, I know you, you still owe me twenty bucks" is pretty good. This will be because of good clean living, the therapeutic value of smoking Virginia pipe tobaccos, and latanoprost eye drops to relieve the intraocular pressure.


眼壓係眼球內容物對眼球內壁嘅壓力。呢個係青光眼嘅危險。
['Ngaan ngaat hai ngaan kau noi yung mat deui ngaan kau noi bik ge ngaat lik. Ni go hai jing gwong ngaan ge ngai him.']


I think part of the reason for going to eat congee was a notice from Mui Kee in Hong Kong on my Facebook feed about being closed because of a typhoon last week. In San Francisco we usually don't have storms that necessitate closure. Anyway, it probably put the idea of congee after my appointment into my head.

[Mui Kee: 妹記生滾粥品，旺角花園街市政大廈3樓熟食中心11-12舖。Shop11-12, 3/F, Fa Yuen Street Market, Mong Kok, Hong Kong, Hong Kong.]

Chinatown is lovely in the morning. Some old gentlemen puttering about having their first cup of coffee and a smoke, plus old ladies out grocery shopping, or having breakfast with friends. The usual San Francisco bums and crazies are still asleep, and very few tourists out at that hour, probably because of bad hangovers and their addiction to fried food and acid indigestion first thing in the day. Only locals at the congee place.

My next eye doctor appointment is two months hence at nine in the morning.

下次去眼科醫生預約，係兩個月後朝早九點。

Which means more congee.



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COMPLETELY!

One thing that struck me over the work week (which includes Saturday and Sunday) was that A) there are good sound reasons for not associating with many Republicans, cigar smokers, and Marinites during my days off, and B) if I had listened to the medical opinions of the delusional old bastards in the back room I would be dead now, and going blind.

Let's just say that cayenne-ginger water, manuka honey, apple cider vinegar, special vitamins for eyes, sitting yoga, and avoiding vaccination, are complete and utter horsefeathers.
Same goes for glutenphobia, kombucha, and most, almost all, popular diets.

Most days there are repulsive people on the premises.


I am completely normal.


Okay, I used that phrase ("I am completely normal") in conversation with my apartment mate, who expressed undiplomatic surprise at the intensity of my reaction to the box of cookies falling over, whereupon she said (paraphrased) "the heck you are, you are completely Aspy, no one acts like it's a horrid car crash with fatalities when cookies fall". Which is just wrong. If they don't, they should. Crumbs! Imperfection! And if anyone here is on the spectrum it is her. Whereas I am completely normal.

Today was the meeting of the local pipe club. Who are all normal people. Meanwhile the cigar-huffing rabid old swine in the back room were drooling over tight football buns and spewing loud and venomous disagreement over politics, economics, the medical profession, the media, everybody who disagrees with Trump, modern society, young people these days, climate change, various minorities, and milk bottle white calves visible because the retired member of the judicial branch was present, wearing shorts.

They're basically all on the same page, but instinctively they snarl, snap, and growl. Being foul tempered is their natural state. Which is why their surviving relatives of much younger generations drive them in and push them out of the car with pitchforks and cattle prods.

Because I am completely normal, I do not wear shorts.
I value other people's sensitivities.
And I'm very kind.

The pipe smokers, being creatures of sweetness and light, much like myself, were patiently tolerant of the stinking distemper on the other side of the building. As usual we had cheese, preserved meats, and pâté. Plus sundry bottles. Being an abstemious man I had no liquour, but took satisfaction with the pâté. Of which I had more than anyone else.
Yes, I even toasted with it.

Several members were sadly missing. One of them is currently in Africa, another had sent word that he couldn't attend, and a third may be off in the wilderness shooting or drawing ducks. Two others were simply not there. A pity. Maybe next month.


Did I already mention how normal I am?



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A CONNECTION WITH CHOCOLATE

When I was nine or ten years old I drew the entire human urinary system for some of my classmates, minus the final foot or so of the urethra. Which disturbed them, and their parents even more. I was gently told a day or two later by the headmaster to please not do that again. Because it upset the public order. Simple peasants and all that. Thereafter I would occasionally describe for them what dying of the plague or various diseases was like, and point out while doing so that they were so lucky to live in the modern era when the ships barber would not dose them or attempt to cure their symptoms with hot irons or leeches.

A boy with good reading skils and access to the Merck Manual plus a scientific encyclopedia is, manifestly, a joy to be around. It makes you entirely overlook the fact that his social and conversational skills may be somewhat lacking. If you are grammar school age.

It is no wonder that I bought my first pipe when I was thirteen.
A thoughtful young man or woman naturally needs a pipe.

Especially when said pipe winks at him or her from the shopwindow of the tobacconist next to the bookstore where he spends several hours a week reading in the stacks. Historical comics, mostly, set in the middle ages. But also Suske & Wiske (Belgian zaniness) and Asterix and Obelix. The latter set in the Roman period.

One of the scenes that kept spoofily cropping up in many of those comics series was a famous painting (The Raft Of The Medusa/ Le Radeau de la Méduse) by the French painter Théodore Géricault. Anytime, in fact, that a shipwreck was part of the story in the comic, even if only a minor detail. It was an image with which I was already familiar since I was eight or so, when I was starting to explore reading material in English, having utterly exhausted the selection of Dutch books in our house and my school reading material in that language being small in comparison.

The painting that illustrates this essay does not relate to that at all. It shows coastal flooding in a tropical country. The aftermath of a storm. Imagine the shipwreck far in the distance, several dozen miles offshore, and too small to be seen.
Desperate men below the horizon.

I don't think I would have liked Géricault if I met him. Too much an obsessed and neurotic oddball. Plus he was confrontational and peculiar. But I like his painting. The Raft Of The Medusa would have made a great illustration for a chocolate bon bon box cover.

Very many paintings would make stellar bon bon box covers.
The majority of the illustrated western canon, in fact.

Much of Rembrandt and Caravaggio looks like chocolate.
In the case of the latter, filled with fruit purée.

I am extremely fond of chocolate.



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NOT AMERICAN CAPITALISM

Approximately a year ago someone mentioned chartreuse green anti-fungal ointment. Which one might usefully employ in a hot climate where it's very humid. Such as all the places where it might typhoon. Where, thank heavens, this blogger presently isn't.


My coworker suffered from a power outage in her neighborhood all day yesterday. She had put icebags in her fridge to keep things cold. The power company alerted her late in the afternoon that the power was back on. Last week the water was out.


Yes, she lives in the third world. Marin County. The part where people who make less than 250K per year dwell. There are no storms there at present, the fire season is still in full swing, but once the rainy season hits I expect flooding, plus wound infections, skin rashes, fungal infections, cholera, typhoid, and leptospirosis. Because in Marin the poor don't count for much, but they are a warning sign for when situations might get out of hand. It helps the authorities cope with things possibly going wrong in more prosperous areas, and the desperate need to raise property taxes.

If any trailer parks or slums are washed away, that's opportunity!
Real estate speculators will have a tizzy!


Years ago at the computer company several coworkers asked why I didn't move down the peninsula to live closer to work. I had to explain that the only purpose of work was to afford time away from work. Weekends, evenings, vacation days. Which could be enjoyed perfectly well in the city (SF), and would be absolutely intolerable in the damned suburbs. Did I really want to live anywhere that drinking a sixpack of Coors at the old folks sock hop in between watching the Real Housewives with a big bag of Cheetos is the epitome of high living?
And where a decent cup of coffee is nearly impossible to find?
And people exchange cat food tips?


There's a typhoon hitting Southern China and Northern Vietnam at present. It's hot, wet, and muggy, and nearly a million people have sought shelter. No, WASP yuppie profiteers are not moving in and scouting out the place. So most people will be okay. Discomfitted, yes.

I don't think anyone is price-gouging on chocolate, tinned luncheon meat, or catfood.

And there's probably plenty of penicillin at the pharmacies.



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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.



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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.



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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.



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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.



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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.



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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




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