BAD TOAD! BAD! BAD!

Twice today I startled the heck out of my apartment mate. Who accused me of lying in wait for her just to do that. Which is incorrect, as the first time she had simply not heard me come back in after being out for a while having a bit to eat and a pipe to smoke in Chinatown, the second time I was lying, on my couch, to rest a bit before going out again. So I was lying. But just incidentally. She passed by when I made a squawky turkey vulture sound, which in the darkened room badly startled her. Again. Which is quite horrid of me to have done.
She claims that because she has a cold her resistance is down.
That's why she was startled both times.
And I knew that.

I am, in her words, a bad toad. Bad. Bad.

You know, as people get older, sometimes their hearing isn't as good, and sometimes they're too daydreamy to be fully aware of everything around them.
They are rarely near toads.

Or any amphibians.

Three passers-by recognized me while I was smoking in Chinatown after dark fell, and I feel fortunate that none of them was a street person or one of the wandering lunatics of which SF has an abundance. The bar where the bookseller and myself ended up only had one familiar face -- because of a substitute for the regular bartender, many regulars were absent -- but he ended up boozily informing his companion that I was an old friend whom he had known for decades. Unlike my apartment mate earlier, he did not accuse me of being a bad toad (衰蟾蜍 'seui sim cheui'), so I guess I'm an all-right kind of chap. Albeit regretably too sober, too often. There is no word I can think of for temperance in Cantonese.

衰蟾蜍！壞，壞！

There are numerous words for frogs and toads in Cantonese. Because they do not feature in my regular conversations, I am at a loss regarding which of several possible terms is most common or appropriate. I must discuss amphibians more often, I guess, so that they will easily hop off my tongue. The term I have chosen is a more literary usage.

The most common term for frog with which I'm familiar is 'tin-gai' (田雞 "rice paddy chicken"), but that's purely in a culinary context. Great with 'dau si' (豆豉) and garlic.

Kermit The Frog is 大青蛙科米 ('taai ching waa fo mai').
And that's absolutely not culinarily.
He's a person.



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