THE LIZARD PEOPLE

Just wait for the next pandemic. Traffic will become less congested, and there will be plenty of parking. Almost a guarantee. And we'll finally be able to pave over Texas as a parking lot on the road to Guadalajara. Yes, you may call me an optimist.Sure, that may sound a bit negative, but I've spent two days hearing pustulent right wingers justifying and defending Trump's racism and turpitude and whiskey Pete's complete moral vacuum. So I have little love for my fellow Americans. The rot started when we let in all the trash from the British Isles. English, Irish, Scots, Scots-Irish, what have you. In fact, if we Dutch had sank the Mayflower when it was loaded, the world would be amuch better place.

Ichor, radioactive sludge, and toxic secretions.

Thank me for sharing.

Sure, the British Isles would now be overflowing with all the scum that couldn't leave unless deported to Australia, but that's actually a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.
I'd be okay with that. They would have been forced to deal with their whack-jobs at home.
Instead of foisting them on the world. Cold showers, boys, just have cold showers!
It will cure you of those depraved tendencies!


Yesterday afternoon the backroom with the old farts was a little slice of hell. Steaming rancid compost brained hell. Rottenness bubbling over, psychic slime globs, and ectoplasmic putty, splashing around and spattering like what happens when you dump a thirty two ounce soft drink into the deep-fryer at the cheese steak place.

In their next lives they should be reborn as gila monsters with painful infected jaw glands. It would be appropriate. Chronic starvation because of their inability to hunt effectively, the venom giving them constant acid and constipation. Long but incredibly unhappy lives.

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DREAM COOKING

The doorbell rang in the night, but that was probably a dream, as there was no one there when I checked. Sleep then brought me beef stew, happily quivering in a long dark hallway and humming to itself. Unappetizing beef stew. No spices, salt, or flavour. Fortunately that didn' last too long. I cannot find a way of blaming that on the weather.

Probably that last cup of coffee before going to sleep.

Beef stew normally does not shake and tremble in the hallway. It's often kind of emotionless. Perhaps in other parts of the country it's semi-sentient and expresses itself, lord only knows what food is like there and I've heard horror stories about chicken rice sludge with processed cheese melted over because the illiterates have banned cookbooks at the local library, but not here. Seldom. Rarely.

Our beef stew is a more literate product.
Often with French pretensions.
Boeuf Bourgignon.

The main difference being wide-spread cultural awareness, woke policies, and a more civilized way of living. We're just better than them. And wine. We have wine.


Food has featured in my dreams a lot lately.
That, I probably can blame on the weather.



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SOUNDING A BIT MORE SO

No meatballs. Very disappointing. But evenso. I had scoped out the menu when walking by the first time, and had seen lions head meatballs over rice (獅子頭飯 'si ji tau faan') as one of the offerings. So after some necessary purchases I went back and went in. Turns out that today they didn't have it. So I ordered something else and enjoyed my lunch anyhow. Not bad. Not exceptionally good. But above mediocre in a pleasant environment. The waitress was determined to understand my Cantonese even though she only spoke Toisanwaa.
My Toisanwaa, in case you hadn't noticed, is awful.
I can sort of understand it.
Sometimes.

There are four restaurants in Chinatown that offer Toisanese cuisine. I do not know how different that is from standard Hong Kong Canto, as I have never been in them. There's that dialect, you see. And usually native speakers of Toisanwaa take pains to explain that they don't speak Japanese or Mandarin or whatever that mispronounced gibberish is that I'm attempting to speak, please talk English.

My track record with speakers of that dialect is not very good.

About as bad as with Americans from the interior.


If I really wanted to be considered a foreigner I would have moved to the suburbs or beyond years ago. See, in standard Cantonese no one will say "you have an accent, where are you really from?" They can plainly see that I am not a local from their place. It stands out like a sore thumb. But at least I sound like a real human being.
I've never been sure of that in English.

The entire rest of the country beyond certain cities is like the America of the teevee series King Of The Hill. With folks who ask "so are you German or French" after I explain that I'm an American who grew up in the Netherlands (which I then have to clarify isn't Denmark or Norway, you dumb redneck). They're easily flummoxed. And they love pizza.
That's from Europe also, ain't it?

Some Toisanese assume that a white guy conversing in Cantonese is actually trying to speak Mandarin. That probably explains the "sheh sheh" (謝謝) of the waitress when I left.
Which was very cosmopolitan of her.
And courteous.



It's easy to understand why Toisan people are a bit "wary" of foreigners. Their experience with those people is that they're pirates or drug dealers, plus invaders, tax officials, and commissars. You know, the Dutch, English, and Mongols.



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AGAIN THE FRAGRANCE RISES

There's something about those first cups of coffee that just puts the mind on the right track. Before waking up the mind was obsessing (and I know this is weird) about Capstan tobacco, which when I was fourteen I did not particularly like, but of which now I'm rather fond, then after that dark musky jolt of mud I am instead thinking of sunlight, the scent of roses, and jasmine flowers. A study with a hidden staircase.

Across the street in Naarden there was a house with a long garden filled with rose bushes. Various hues. Next to a canal which curved sharply to the left near the highway. The further neighbors in that stretch had tall old trees which I climbed, only the lower branches.
Sunlight, summer, insects. An attic window. Very lovely.

No, at that age I did not smoke a pipe or drink coffee.
But I remember the smells of those then.
A very summery aroma.


We moved to Valkenswaard the next year.
Tar, dust, and fermenting leaves.
A pine tree, resinous.
Low branches.

The painters in the air well outside the kitchen have finished, and the windows are open. The present does not resemble the past, the location has changed, and the sunlight is different.
Coffee and tobacco are a link; they smell the same.


It's quiet in the building, there are few people here.


The room where the computers sit is southfacing. Light is streaming in, but fragmented and diffused through the blinds. Second cup, tobacco in a Charatan Canadian shape briar, books, and wayang figures. A nobleman from Sunda, brought back from Holland years ago. Petruk on top of a bookshelf, behind a bulbous ceramic jar, Arjuna next shelf over. A tribal carving of a Dutch seacaptain with cowrie shells in the corner.
Alone. But not alone.



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A WHOLE LOT WONG

At this point I am convinced that one of them simply likes to talk a lot. Not that he believes the data is earthshaking, or that anyone is necessarily listening, but the conversation makes him feel connected and expands his world. The other one is not very good at listening, and his contribution often boils down to asking for something to be repeated. There is a certain amount of deafness on each side. The third one doesn't come by very often, as he's still recovering from pneumonia quite a while back. But he likes to talk about food.

Old so-and-so (surnamed Wong) died last week. Who? You know, so and so. Wong. Oh, Dickie's friend. Dickie wong. Whose brother Raymond died four years ago. Yes, that one. Alfonse wanted me to let you know. I told him about my ankle. Alfonse? Yes, Alfonse Wong. Oh Alfie, I thought he had died. No, that was Betsie, they looked alike. I've been to Doctor Wong about it. Good thing I cancelled the trip to China this month. Weren't you going to go with Eric, Eric Wong? Yeah, I talked to him. He was shocked to hear that so-and-so passed away, he knew the whole family. Didn't he used to date Alice? Oh, Alice Lee! No, Alice Wong. Rupert's sister's classmate. Rupert Wong. He got killed in that accident. By the way, I hear that old whatsisface is in the hospital, had a stroke. Whatsisface? Yes, you know him! You mean Lum? Whatsisface Lum? No, I think his last name is Wong. Whatsisface Wong.

Yes, judging by that conversation, many members of the Wong clan are either sick, dead, or unknown. As well as their kinfolk and classmates. A whole lot of people named Wong. While that was going on, I was wondering what happened Jack. Whom I haven't seen in over a year. He used to go to the same Wednesday lunch place, always ordered the salmon.
His surname, à propos of nothing at all, rhymes with 'Wong'.

One of my mother's classmates at Mills was named 'Wong'.
Nice woman. Intelligent and talented.

Lunch was good. Fish. Not salmon. With broccolli, rice, soup, and milk tea. If you sprinkle a little salt on cooked broccoli it is sweeter and more tender. Smoked a stout Person sandblast afterwards before necessay grocery shopping (金紗魚豆腐), then going to the bakery and listening in on the discussion of gone Wongs. Where I packed the Loewe & Co billiard (beautifully grained piece) for after tea.

If you know someone's surname, it probably means that they are important to you. My regular care physician as well as both cardiologists are 陳 though spelled differently.
The doctor who supervised the treadmill five years ago was also thus appelled.

I should make it a practise to ask people's names. As a sign of consideration.
Too often I am blindly opaque to social niceties. It's a flaw.



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BEST SKIN BALM

In an effort to dissuade people from eating stuff I like, let me stress emphatically that crabs are very close relatives of spiders. Big hairy venomous spiders. Please stay away from them. They're space aliens. All mine.

Dungeness crab season looks to be a bust this year. Rock crabs, not as desireable, are available, but your heathen feeding fests basking in shells and crab goo may be on hold.

Cioppino, especially if it includes crabs, can actually kill you. It's those trace elements of spider-like DNA, along with faint deposits of green slime from the bottom where the raw sewage settles. Drug breakdown chemicals, forever plastics, pink radioactive sludge.
Leftovers from the fast-food diet of today's Americans.

Again, spiders. Close relatives.
Venomous, eight legs.


Here's an illustration:

All of this comes to mind because I've had crustacean on the mind for several weeks now. Nasty icky creatures, arriving here from outer space, scheming to take over our planet one coastal zone at a time. Subtly enslaving the stupid human bipeds to be an obedient source of therapeutic mayonnaise and melted butter and sesame oil and tomato pastes and ginger and salted black bean paste and chopped scallions and a splash of sherry or rice wine and garlic and red, red chili paste, and hot crusty sourdough bread.

Lots and lots of garlic and chili paste.

It's therapeutic!

When doing the chili garlic picture I probably should have had more coffee. I kind of got lost in the swirly rubicund areas, and lost track of the shells and legs. And somehow I obliterated the claws. Each crab has two.

I'm not a food in the morning person. Three or four hours at least have to pass after that first cup of Java before I feel the least bit peckish. But crabs and shellfish are a good way to start the day. They sharpen mental focus, awaken all the the senses, and make crossword puzzles in the newspapers so much easier.

Plus you're alone in the morning and no one can see you getting oil and sauce, juices and shell fragments all over your face.



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PLEASE DON'T ADD CHEESE

Apparently Monty Python is NOT timeless. A person born in this century didn't know about the Cheese Shop Sketch. On the other hand, the bookseller was unaware of Labubu. So we're at a standstill. On the bus heading uphill he worried about some Japanese thing of a sickeningly high cuteness quotient that both kids and adults just love -- currently in the back area of the store -- that for the life of him he couldn't remember. I'm of no help there.

I remember when My Neighbor Totoro came out. That was over three decades ago. Join me in feeling ancient. At the bar when I mentioned Monty Python he had said "you're old, man".


I'm not old, I'm just big boned. Okay?


That, of course, is Eric Cartman's response to everything. Anyway, we segued into cheese, this pursuant the angioplasty (血管成形術 'huet gun sing ying sut') of the right leg (右腳 'yau keuk') and it's a good thing Tat Yee wasn't there because to be perfectly frank I have no idea how to explain a peripheral angioplasty of the right lower extremity (右下肢嘅外周血管成形術 'yau haa ji ge ngoi chau hue kun sing jing sut') to his tiddly (醉酒嘅 'jeui jau ge') posterior (後便 'hau pin').

Perhaps by showing him how a pipe cleaner is used, and then explaining that the arteries sometimes are exactly like the interior channel of his pipe and completely gunked up.
Comparing arterial plaque to aged Parmesan would have baffled him.
Too many reference points that don't compute.
Old cheese, for instance.

It's not that Chinese are unfamiliar with cheese entirely. Certainly Hong Kong people know it, on porkchops or pizza. And if they aren't lactose intolerant they take to massive quantities like fish to water; imagine salmon swimming up stream in a procreative frenzy.

While I'm smoking my pipe Tuesday evenings I often see the younger generation carrying pizza boxes from the places just outside the neighborhood.
Sadly, there is no actual pizzeria IN Chinatown.


The place where I had a late lunch today doesn't have anything with cheese. Which is a pity. But I would rather not imagine what they would do with cheese, I've seen what Americans often do with it, and as a Netherlandish American I am horrified and appalled.
My fellow citizens are in that regard a horrid example.
Consumers of factory extrudite.


Somewhere there's a frat boy asking for a ma po tofu and pork fried rice burrito with extra queso. Probably in the Mid West. After a night of beer and drunken snow angels.



Final note: At the intersection where the most popular twenty four hour donut place in SF is located, three emergency medical vehicles are parked. Probably late night coffee and sugar for the crews. I approve wholeheartedly.



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YOUR PARTICIPATION TROPHY

Having just read several articles about what a complete waste of a human being our current secretary of warcrimes, Pete Hegseth, is, as well as a number of pieces highlighting Trump spouting balderdash, I headed over into social media to decompress. Where I saw that a religious student in Oklahoma was horribly upset that the grade she got for a paper was precisely what she deserved. Wait, what? There are universities in Oklahoma?
People can actually read there? You have got to be kidding me!

Well, I guess that's where they learned to do those tall buildings mentioned in the song. Three whole stories! Will ya just imagine that!


Unbidden, the words to that old song "Cotton-eyed Joe" passed through my head. Along with "Old MacDonald Had A Farm". Very briefly. Because I think fast.

By the way: the building I live in is also three stories.
Must have been an architect from Oklahoma.

By their standards, a witch.

On a cheerier, more upbeat note, a friend posted an account of a meal that she shared with her person of interest recently at a delightful restaurant in the Tenderloin. Where fine dining that tourists often do not ever discover can often be found. Unless they're from Oklahoma (or Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, etcetera.) and haven't read the map and all the idiot warnings posted by Fox News talking heads on social media.

Perhaps we should supply the tourist kiosks with informative pamphlets explaining that San Francisco is filled with liberals, ethnics, and transgenders, and that it would be best to turn around and go home. Maybe vacation in Florida where liberals, ethnics, and transgenders are banned?

It's dangerous here. We'll take your precious Sunday School honour student kiddies and turn them into black gay Jews! We'll sing show tunes! Our coffee is made with fresh grounds!
We often use words of more than one syllable!

I'm just trying to be helpful.


Anyhow, Carmen enjoyed her meal very much. She and her friend ate after a Mariachi concert at Davies Symphony Hall. Clams with sweet chili sauce, fresh fish curry, crispy chicken over garlic rice, curry puffs, and beverages.

Shan't mention the name of the restaurant, because I don't want them swamped with visitors, who would need help reading the menu, all those complicated terms.
Thus delaying the wait staff from serving real people.


There's a KFC in the Tenderloin they can go.



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THE IMAGINARY HOLIDAY TRIP

Over on a friend's page was a photo of a bookstore not far from another bookstore and around the corner from an antiquarian bookstore where I used to shop in Amsterdam, near two comfortable cafes and a square where there is a second hand book market every week. Which you can't have in the United States because the yuppies would take photos of each other standing in front of books and the suburban teenagers would set fire to and overturn everything. Tourists from the Red States would ask "whut iz thayet?" and attempt to ban everything. There would be Christians all over the place praying for your soul.

Whenever someone tells me he's praying for my soul I automatically think "nah man you're just thinking of tits". Because, of course, organized religion is largely a con-job.

Teevee preachers and that mega church in Texas.
Plus miracle pastors in the third world.


I've never understood the urge to take selfies that many yuppies have. No one wants to see a picture of you in front of the Eifel Tower, Parthenon, Golden Gate Bridge, Alexander Platz Berlin, random picturesque building in Moravia, or what the heck have you.
You're in the way. Get out of the damned photo, dingbat.

Here's a picture of me entirely outside the frame in front of Croissant Island in the Hebrides, where the famous Russian intellectual Ivan Sirnaya-Golobosky spent many happy years in exile away from his native Siberia. It's where he wrote the novel 'Deystvitel'no Skuchnyy Musor (Действительно скучный мусор), which was earthshaking and groundbreaking.
I read it in college.

The fact that you cannot see me in it is the best part of the picture.


Current temperature in sundrenched Croissant Island is thirty seven degrees Fahrenheit. Almost tropical. The Hawaii of the outer islands. It's mildly breezy, with gale force winds ripping the flesh off the local sheep. Book a holiday cottage now.
Enjoy the fabulous local cuisine! Mutton dishes!
And wind-dried elk jerky!
Kelp!


I would actually far rather be in Amsterdam, where there are bookstores, cafes, and Indonesian restaurants. Plus herring, mysterious fried foods, and museums.

Every time I was there I took photos of bridges and canals.
A huge number of of them. Enough to fill a book.



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SWAMP THING EATS

Among the hottest things this pending frenzy season are knee stuff. Three ads in a short scroll. Plus back massagers, neck massagers, hand massagers, and miracle wrinkle cream. The algorithms try to figure out your age, and then try to show you stuff that pleases their advertisers. Based, probably, on key words that you mention when typing on the computer. So, being a typical Dutchman, and wishing to see more things pleasing to my actual demographic, I shall avoid certain words, and over-use others.

Tulips! Windmills! Bitterballen. Stroopwafels. Salty licorice.
Kroket, frinkandel, and heavy woolen underwear.

Well, that last is actually useless, having gone out of style since fire was invented, definitely central heating, and lord knows I do not want my social media littered with pictures of blousy blondes posing provocatively in granny panties, I'm not a Trump voting Christian pervert.


There just aren't enough illustrations of food.
Too many pictures of swamp things.
Oh wait, that's appropriate.
I'm Dutch.

What I had for lunch today was glorious. Rice noodle and meaty bits and fried chilies and mashed chili and peanuts and oil and cilantro, there was richness and tanginess and textural excitement, plus things that they never eat in Iowa, in a place where there were absolutely no people who looked like they were from there.

Iowa, as everybody knows, is all about pounded fried murdered tasteless porkloin.
Nothing but porkloin. They worship their horrible porkloin.
Served in a little bitty bun.

Basically a lacy sheet of meat breaded and deepfried, wider than a plate and nearly paper-thin, no salt no pepper no garlic, the cardboard of meat preparations, made as taste-free as possible, with one lettuce leaf and maybe mayo if your lucky fries cost extra don't bother.

Time stood still in Iowa. They have Lutherans and sockhops.
And that ever-present nasty porkloin.



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AGED INFRASTRUCTURE

Statistical evidence shows that the nation’s deadliest cities are predominantly located in Red States. Which tells you everything you need to know when planning another family get away: avoid all the places where they voted for Trump and the KKK, those are hellzones. Which we knew already, and we do avoid them. Instead, think of Canada, which isn't our fifty first state. Nice people. Predominantly non-violent.

It isn't Idaho, where one bar proprietor has armed all of his staff (presumably because his patrons are psychopaths, it being Idaho) and has promised free beer for a month to whoever turns in foreigners to Ice (presumably psychopaths and likely natives of Idaho) resulting in deportations. And has, in consequence, received hatred on social media, because many normal people do not understand that Idaho is practically the Charlie Manson of states.

If you're dating someone from Idaho, knock it off.
Especially if he's your relative.


In other news, the painters who will do the airwell are here, and have requested that the windows be tightly shut, top and bottom. Which several of them cannot be, because the building is ancient, and there have been minor changes in the woodwork over the years. So at the crack of dawn (exxageration) I had to clamber onto the kitchen counter and tape over the slit at the top where that half won't fully slide up.

Please note that ALL of my praescriptions state "may cause dizziness". Which I've ignored, and never told work about, because they would worry, seeing as ladders are an essential part of the storage area there, and my boss doesn't want to get sued or have an employee falling and busting his fragile old ass. Quite natural, but ladders are a necessary part of living, and only one employee has a phobia of even stepping upwards barely one tread. The last time I fell from any height I was in the apple tree behind our house.
That was juvenile stupidity, not dizziness.

The medications also tell me "do not become pregnant if using this".

There is no need to worry about that either.
Perhaps in Idaho, but not here.
Magic happens there.

Along with beer-sodden brawls, ultra-violence, casual crime, moral offenses, drug deals gone wrong, plus wide-spread bigotry and very diverse family depravity. Idaho is the real America, where Jesus and the Klan rule, and people still make meth in their trailer parks. Pick-up trucks, hoe-downs, and cowboys growing potatoes everywhere.

It is a praedominantly Christian state. Many locals know him personally.

The phrase "how's your sister" should never be asked there.

Fried tuber with tomato compote is a passion.

They are big into processed cheese.

Literacy is not uncommon.

There is trout.



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RABBIT RABBIT DECEMBER 2025

Rabbit rabbit. Said first thing in the morning on the first day of the month. It's good luck. Shortly after which I heard the turkey vulture complaining. He wants me to go out there and harvest some fatty inner thigh cutlets, and wonders querulously why I haven't cut up a random fat street person yet. He knows they out there, he's heard their noise.
All I have to do is look with more avid attention.

Um. Yeah, no. No can do, little fella.
The authorities would frown.

Unlike the feathered fluffball in my apartment mate's room, I myself am not vested in wild urban harvests. Random fat street people are a priceless resource in San Francisco, like tauntauns and Grateful Dead fans, and we cannot go out there to take their useful bits.

They used to thunder in vast herds across the prairies of this country.

Then the railways came and they were a nuisance.

Now we cannot hunt them anymore.

It's just not done.


The stuffed bird sulks when I tell him this, and weeps very theatrically into the shoulder of the octopus next to him on my apartment mate's bed. Why won't I listen? Why will I not feed a poor starving buzzard? Best bird ever! I am heartless!



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SALTY GREASY ARTIFICIAL CHICKENS

In the morning there were old men screeching at the teevee. The local team was doing something stellar. There was also rightwing ranting. In the afternoon elderly retired military men got blotto on expensive liquour and spouted foul language, obscenities, nonsense, and information I need not have heard. Throughout all of this someone whom I shall not name sucked on a stogie of 134 ring gauge, thirteen inches. Which looked like a horse's penis.
It took nearly seven hours to finish. He enjoyed it. Hungover, on an empty stomach.

There were actually two doctors on site.


There was no doctor on the bus back to the city, but perhaps there should have been. The customer in front either fell asleep or passed out from drugs and exhaustion. I could tell that his hands were swollen and oedematic, some of his knuckles showing bruises that indicated either bone breakage or severe contusion. I rather hope that he eventually got to where he was going, and if it was an emergency room that would be very good.


It has been hazy grey on recent mornings, bleak and cold both evenings.
Slate grey overcast days. The grumble time is upon us.
Temperature mid forties to fifties.

You know, I do not think that I could smoke a cigar of those dimensions (13 x 134). Anything bigger than a robusto loses my interest. Davidoff Gran Cru Robusto is, marginally, too much, given that it's slightly bigger than a standard robusto. A toro is right out.

My tastes are not extreme. Simple, at times simple minded. Tonight's dinner was a Korean made snack food. Just the right balance of greasy fried flavour and crunchy texture.
Artifcially flavoured. Brilliant.

Significantly more interesting than lunch had been.
Which was convenience store standard.
No thirty two ounce squishy.


The crunchy greasy stuff comes in a big bag. There's still plenty left. I have a sneaking suspicion that my apartment mate will have some for breakfast tomorrow.



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KEEP YOUR HEAD WARM

Ugly hat guy dropped by work yesterday, finally wearing headgear. It wasn't the ghastly chapeau for which he is notorious, but it did make his head look pointed. He said he's holding out on the other one till it get's really cold, so that he can keep me in suspense.
I informed him that the scant joy his ugly hat would give me wouldn't make up for the pleasure I get twitting him every time he comes in without it. It's the Hawaiian shirt of hats. One would suspect him of Texan aeasthetics.

In any case, it does make him visible when he's laying pavement on the streets and roads of the Bay Area, but it's a toss up whether it contributes to longevity or not. If I were a motorist I'd be transfixed, and possible keep my foot on the accelerator in a daze.

All in all, it's a miracle that some Americans remain alive. Yet.
In between the food poisoning and the ugly headgear.
One would have expected greater mortality.
Why does Texas still exist?


Are ugly Americans even human? Perhaps they're some supernatural daemon-like creature that you need special ammunition to kill. Silver bullets like we used on the juramentados in Mindanao when we were brutally taking over the Philippines and making them ready for civilization, which, by the way, killed nearly twenty percent of the population there.
But at least it kept the Dutch, English, and French out.
Which was basiclly the point.

Loud shirts and stupid toppers are a thing that only Americans do. Well, sometimes making necessary exception for bowler hats and horrid lapses of taste which are very British. As well as badly chosen coats for the Levantines, and track suits for Slavic gentlemen. Both of whom smoke Marlboros and do other things that say they're hip and with it, for sure, modernity is their watchword, and put on some Elvis we now must boogie to that roack and roll.
They've seen the movies, now they'll live the life. Groovy cats, daddy-o.

Given what the rest of the world with some justification thinks Americans look and act like, it's easy to go undercover, fly under the radar, let them think one is actually a visitor from somewhere in their own part of the world. And not stoned or drunk.
I just wish more of us would do that here.



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KIND NOTES ABOUT REPULSIVE LIZARDS AND COLD WEATHER

Well, black Friday is over and nobody got killed. So why do they call it black Friday? Have we been cheated? Weren't we promised scenes of despondency and mayhem? Dead shoppers piled around the last doohickey in the store? It turns out they all order on line now, then come on over to get mildly blotto and gibber inanely in the backroom. If it were up to me, we would never turn the heat on in the morning to keep the place bearable during the day, and I would have the only taun taun for warmth. Bugger off, Luke, your dark father wants you to freeze to death. It builds character. Go crawl back into that trash compactor.

What that really means is that I have scant patience for idiot old rightwing men being offensively Republican. Their MRI scans came back showing nothing. Empty.

I do not need to be tortured.
There are no secrets.

Plus it's cold. Which I find harder to deal with now that I am no longer a springy young lad. Circulation. Koud kleumerij. My people overwintered on Nova Zembla, where it seldom gets above freezing. Poor bastards. Their suffering must have been immense, I should read that book again. No wonder we let the Russians have it. Lots of ice, no cozy cafes, no poffertjes, no oliebollen, no cuisine worth any note, and no central heating. Basically the windswept saltflats of Marin with Nazi walrusses for company. A zero-stars Yelp review.

Overwintering Op Nova Zembla: written by Hendrick Hamel, describes the horror endured by the expedition of Willem Barentsz and Jacob van Heemskerck in 1596 - 1597 while trying to discover a Northeast Passage through the Arctic. An epic. A moral tale filled with flawed and very human people, plus the threat of death in a ghastly frozen wasteland. Among the great works of Dutch literature.

Yeah, okay, this little essay is more about current seasonal weather in the SF Bay Area than anyhing else. One very good friend insists that this is nice and brisk, and it's glorious outside. But he's younger than myself, with better circulation, more body fat, and undoubtedly greater insanity or a mean streak.


Over a decade ago, when I told Mistribhain that it wasn't buggery cold, it was brisk, she opined that I was clearly out of my bally mind. She may have been on to something.



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THE GREATEST! TOTALLY!

Today is the day you've been waiting for. The most important celebratory event of the year. The day that you and hundreds of other people will stand in line at the mall in front of the big box, because you want the newest game controller. It's been two whole years! You didn't buy one last year, because you knew that after the coronation of Trump it would be cheaper, and last year you couldn't even afford eggs. But this year is different. You've given up on eggs, and you took public transit, but little Bobby needs a new controller.

So you wait. Around mid morning you realize that the line is only slowly moving. Twenty feet every hour. By lunch time you will still be half a block away. So you decide to have doordash deliver burgers, that way you will have enough energy and high blood sugar when you finally have to fight the Mexican family for the device. So you call up on your cell phone, and tell the dispatcher that the delivery immigrant on the scooter should look for the second person dressed as a giant turkey in line. You're the tall one on the left.


Biggest day of the year! The wait is over!
Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy!
It's tradition!

That casserole with all the tater tots you had yesterday combined badly with liquour and your medications, and consequently you are just a little bit constipated. Probably shouldn't have got diabetes in your twenties. Plus oedema.

Little Bobby was a mistake. That one time you and Clarice .....
Oh well. Accidents happen. And he looks like you.
Uncle Gordmund will remember him.
And pay for his college.
Trade school.



Good luck at the big box. I don't have diabetes or unsightly bloating, no stupid kids either, don't know anyone named Clarice, and I'll be at work today. But I'm there in spirit.

I morally support you.



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TERMS AND CONDITIONS MAY APPLY

In a comic strip years ago one of the characters suggested filling the elevator shafts at the Pentagon with zesty banana pudding as sabotage. Which I still think is a splendid idea, and I'm sad we never did it. Best use of bananas ever. And I'll admit that while I am quite fond of Bananas Foster, as well as bananas in flaky pastry boats -- with sugar syrup -- when it comes to banana bread I'm entirely on the fence.

Bananas may fail, even when used as directed. This is a legal disclaimer. It's hypothetical, not based on actual test results.

We Americans have an almost boundless love of bananas. We use them for everything. They're a valuable substitute for pumpkins in pies, lattes, baby food, toys.
Plus size comparisons, and things to scare cats.
They're even better than cucumbers.
You've seen the videos.


A banana is a measure equivalent to one fortieth of a giraffe. So it's easily understandable and scientific. In the United States. Where I live.

ONE TENTH OF A GIRAFFE LENGTH, END TO END

This blogger also recommends that in lieu of sage and stale bread with chestnuts, you could use bananas and spicy pork sausage to stuff that damned bird. It's better for you, and you'll have less gastric distress.

Oh, and that dish which uses lima beans? Just dump it.
That, too, leads to less gastric distress.
Heirloom cranberry sauce?
Just dump it.
Inedible.


By the way: a jolly good festive condiment can be made with bananas, caramelized onions, sugar, white vinegar, ginger shreds, and red pepper flakes. Simmer it down till it's a thick gloop like ketchup.


A football field is sixteen hundred bananas in length.
Which is forty giraffes.



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A BETTER CELEBRATION

Today is, I believe, the day when you express gratitude that you only see Uncle Gordmund once or twice a year. He's from the Red States. Beyond being barely literate and down rabbit holes, he's a non-smoker and consequently inside for the entire visit, spouting repulsive opinions he got from the blonde slut on Fox. No, he doesn't smell bad. But he stinks.

On the other hand, I merely have a ghost cat.

There's a faint whiff of tuna.

You've just been told that everything in the Macy's Thanksgiving parade is gay damned New Yorkers pushing their DEI agenda on everybody back in his day inflatables of Henry Ford and Huey Long ever since that effing effer changed his name to something Muslim damned kids they're all a bunch of commies and billions of illegals all over the world mumble grumble bellyache and whine.

I've just read that Alexander and his lovely wife are presently in Jakarta where it's slightly over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and too warm to do anything else than smoke a Cuban with a cup of coffee. After a small meal with lots of Makassar chilies.

The ghost cat thinks he probably had some tuna.
Which is superlative with hot chilies.
Just try it, you'll see.

Mary from the Deep South claims this cranberry sauce is the best she ever made, and uncle Gordmund, keen to deflate any and every balloon (as well as rain on parades, because) says that it isn't as good as his first wife's sister used to make. In the years before she headed into the Great North Swamp while zotsed on diet pills and was never seen again. All they found was her scarf and sunglasses. The liberals probably ate her. Kids those days!

Oh good, the game is on. He'll be quiet now.
While cheering for the Packers.
America's team!


Tuna. Tuna is a lovely canned item. It belongs in every jello mold. With chopped celery and pimentos, precisely one teaspoon of Tabasco. Parsley on top, as a nod to French cuisine, and paprika because of Gordmund, still the most Eastern European of the older generation. Paprika on everything. His first wife's sister used to do a lovely turkey with paprika.
Not this younger generation. Trump! Bondi! Noem and Patel! Go packers!

The younger cousins look at you with envy as you put on your scarf and boots to outside with your pipe. An entire hour of peace and quiet out by the compost heap, with nothing but marshbirds for company. The youngsters wish that they smoked.

Next year, Jakarta. Chicken with Makassar chilies.
It will be the best holiday ever.
Cheroot.



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THE GARDEN OF OTHERWORLDLY DELIGHTS

When I was still in grammar school I noticed that some of my fellow students, girls, were making drawings reminiscent of fashion illustrations. It was an art style I at that time could not quite understand. Angular stylizations, certain specific colour palettes. Now I find myself watching animations by someone on Facebook who probably started off that way.
And actually very much enjoying the catwalkish aspect.

Yes, I know that AI is involved. No matter.
Sometimes the visuals are striking.
A different universe.


Also, a very New Yorkish vibe.
[Though I think she's in So. Cal.]


For myself, I don't do AI. Not because I necessarily oppose it, but I'm clumsy in that regard. And old fuddy duddy. My own intelligence is artificial enough, and partly fuelled by caffeine. Mental data sets get cocktail mixed together. But I can't manage palette coordination or a look that is both unified and stylistically hangs together.

To put it bluntly, I don't have the eye.
But actually, here it is.

The eye.

BORG CLAMDROID

This was inspired by the work of Kelly Eldridge Boesch. An ambulatory robot mollusc looking directly at you, as if to ask "what are you doing on my planet?" It reminds me simultaneously of science fiction magazine covers and seafood banquets. I did some tweaking.
The fractured sky is very derivative.

Altogether something Pieter Brueghel would appreciate.

Years ago, after a four and half hour trainjourney from Amsterdam to Antwerp, my apartment mate was pooped. Extremely low blood sugar, and very grumpy. So I dragged her into a likely restaurant and for the next two hours we feasted on fresh seafoods. On the journey back to Amsterdam, she just would not shut up about how superior the Belgians were to us Dutch, absolute geniuses, masters of the table, hah, the Dutch were in comparison a bunch of punters, rank amateurs, good lord the Belgians were fine people, the absolute apex of civilization! It made slogging around Europe finally worth while!

There are no scary shellfish in Antwerp.



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MASTERPIECE BY LIU ZIFENG

A scholar and artist in Liaoning recently posted a picture of a recent work of art on Facebook. It is stellar. I have never met him, and the likelyhood of ever doing so is unfortunately slim. But I appreciate his skill, and the aesthetic reflected in his pictures.

So I wish to show it here.

Kudos.




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TWO STEPS AT A TIME

An article on the internet mentioned a seven floor walk up apartment. Which automatically got me thinking oh good lordie no. Although given that I live on the second floor, up one set of stairs, and regularly traverse that when I need to go out for groceries, pipe smoking, mail call, laundry, what have you, and self-delusionally regard myself as a young man (hah!), that doesn't seem bad. The average temperatures in the place where that seven floor walk up is located are in the eighties Fahrenheit (around thirty Celsius).
I quail at anything over mid-seventies.
Legs won't function.


By the way: the Fahrenheit scale was invented by a long-time resident of Amsterdam. Which adds lustre to a city long known for free-thinking, eccentricity, and psycho-active drugs. And surely you can see why? Also, Amsterdam buildings are known for having brutal staircases.


In my actual youth, I'd take those stairs two at a time, at speed. Even when I was living four up. Hop hop hop ooh vimful vigour! Now, after a day at the salt mines, I'm slower. I like to be the stairs, feel the stairs, become one with the stairs, dig the groovy gestalt of the stairs.

Seven floors of them would be a bitch.

A further by the way: recently I've been getting spam calls concerning my "end of life financial planning". Based on being on a list of presumably old farts on the cusp of shuffling off. Gee thanks, bitches. At the end of my life I wish to be lowered from a strong hook at the apex of the building, front side, like they have in Amsterdam, which is there so that moving furniture in and out, considering the narrowness and steepness of their stairs, can be expeditely done.
It strikes me that a coffin or a brancard, even an entire hospital bed, fully loaded, may be thus lifted with minimal wear and tear on the joints of the people tasked with doing so.
At least without dinging the plaster. Life means concern for plaster. Or it should be.
Perfect plaster is a sign of civilization.

Oh, and I also wish to have an onion tied to my belt.
Like grampa Abe Simpson. It's the style.

Seven floors. Heavens.



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BRAINS ON FIRE

There's always a crowd at some places around dinner time. Which in this case was actually a very late lunch. Dumplings and hot sauce, hot milk tea. A generous tip because they didn't even attempt to seat me at a small table and I like the people who work there. Bright, young, efficient. In addition to dumplings they also do electric hued dishes that visiting New Yorkers and Midwesterners would like, but three of the nearby tables were Mandarin-speaking, and had ordered real food, so I couldn't identify any steaming plates with reds and greens.
Not that I wanted to. Probably sweet and sour this, gung pao that.
Plus the general. Always the general.

A long dawdle with my pipe and some fine tobacco afterwards in the darkness beyond the edge of the square, far from the crazy man screaming and the card players clustered in the light. From a distance I could tell that they were smoking. Smoking! That's illegal in San Francisco city parks. Was I the only incorrigible obeying the law?

Unlike them, I hesitate to risk a fine. I would be far less believable if I tried glib-talking my way out of trouble. 冇意思，我唔識講英文，唔知你講乜嘢，阿sir。"I'm sorry, I don't speak English, I don't know what you're saying, officer" ('mou yi si, ngo m sik gong ying man, ngo m ji nei gong mat ye, ah-sir'). Your honour, the accused swore at us in some goofy European gobbledygook when we cited him for smoking. So we gave him a citation for that, too.

And we're convinced that he sik gong ying man very well.

Yesterday it had been the vocalizing man on Waverly, this evening howling outrage from the street person collective near the pedestrian walkway. This city, in some areas, just cannot be quiet. For peace you need to walk up hill two or three blocks. And there are always people who see the pipe and think you have a spare cigarette, after all, you're not smoking it.

And actually, I did have a pack on me; a lovely luxury product that cost one third of the price of regulars. 五葉神香煙。 Support your local circumlegal businesses.

Didn't we make that point once in Boston Harbour?
And what would whiskey be without it?
Tradition!


That, in essence, is what we will be celebrating two days hence. Despite turkeys being actually very much like puppies, feathered puppies, capable of love and affection, and the severely discounted merchandise at the big box representing corporate greed and shoddy production standards because none of those people fighting each other for the very last electronic nostril twiddler have any self-control or standards.

If you used the fingers of your opposite hands to jank the hairs, which gives you a better angle, you wouldn't need the fancy device. Just like the depression boy, when we did it entirely by hand. And during the war! Self-reliance!

I watched the rats in the bushes struggle over a spent fast-food wrapper. I imagine the victor happily sounding like captain Jack Sparrow boasting "I've got a greasy paper, I've got a greasy paper" before losing it to some other rat.
Little swaggering rodents.


We need to return to simpler times, when America's consumer whores fought each other over jars of dirt and greasy papers. Not nostril twiddlers. Values, man, a return to values!


Like many pipe smokers, I contemplate the deeper things.
We're nature's intellectuals, tell you what.



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