BUT EXCELLENT LIGHTING

Any dream that features a restaurant in Holland winning a French culinary award is, ab initio and by definition, off-kilter. Especially if it's a vegan steak house. Now that part is believable, as the Dutch are goofy enough to think that that is a good idea. Dutch cooking is marked by unidentifiable fried objects, many of which are in fact delicious. Like the frikandel, various types of kroket, and things like bamischijven, nasiballen, and berenhappen.
Please don't ask.

There's also Indonesian Dutch food.
Which is also delicious.
Far less goofy.


And we have cheese and herring.


Sadly, none of any of that was on the menu at the restaurant this afternoon, so I ordered stirfried river noodles with chicken (雞炒米粉 'kai chaau mai fan, "bihun goreng ayam") instead, which I dolled-up with sambal and chili oil.

A swords, sorcery, and taoist sages with impossible facial hair series was on teevee, featuring a handsome young man, a pretty girl, and a green dumpling daemon.
Plus a well-lit library deep under the mountain top temple.

Lunch was good. A little too greasy. Probably to keep the broad rice sticks from sticking to the pan. There's a doggie bag in the refrigerator right now. I'll probably add a fried egg and some slivered ginger. I would add fresh Jalapeños, except that because our agribusiness is now operating on libertarian principles and policing itself, those are now unsafe.
Along with eggs, beef, blueberries, lettuce, and probably many more.
I'll take my chances on the damn' eggs.

Probably no eggs available locally are from the Midwest or Texas.

Basically, if your food doesn't come from California, you're playing Russian Roulette with your meals. The rest of the country is a filthy unclean toxic hazard zone where Mad Max runs the farm, with anything Texan probably guaranteed to send you to the crapper or a hospital.


The bookseller's bus was a little late, and I had already finished my pipe over twenty minutes before he showed up. Normally it's a bit earlier. The burger place was not crowded, his food arrived with speed, and the less said about the house wine the better.

The karaoke joint had people acting ugly white inside, and the former bail-out bar was doing last call as we passed. We went directly to the third bar. The bail-out from the bail-out, as it were. Where there was something mean but beautiful on teevee.

Almost unnoticed, an incident outside required three cop cars and an ambulance.
I rather wish I had seen much more of it than I did.
No clue what had happened.


Much like everything I saw on teevee.



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THE BONA FIDES

For the people who do not grasp colourful American expressions, I need to clarify that when one says "my piles bleed for" something or someone, it is not to be taken literally. It is meant as sarcastic fake commiseration. As in "he hasn't had a decent job in years". In repsonse to which, if one kind of doesn't give a damn', one might say "my piles bleed for him. Not so much a medical statement as a sneer. There might, in fact, be utterly no piles at all. This comes to mind because of yet another commercial on teevee for a medication for gastric distress or something gut related that afflicts people on a typical American garbage diet.

My piles bleed for them. Maybe they should consider abstaining from all the fried offerings at Uncle Bob's Chunk-O-Rama. Especially the Big Bucket Of Pork Nuggets covered in ranch dressing and crumbled bacon. Eight of those a week is really too much. At the very least, don't always order the combo, you really don't need that thirty two ounce soda.
Or a side of giant onion rings.

On the other hand, I sure am glad that they don't eat at the same places I do. Such as this afternoon, where other than eight Mandarin speakers and probably an equal number of Cantonese speaking individuals there was no one.

I finished eating before the African American Buddhist cum Taoist showed up, so that was icing on the cake. Unique individuals change the lighting on all of us, whereas normal behaviour makes us all seem much more bearable.

Had two good smokes in Chinatown today. First one in banded and blasted Peterson billiard, the second much later before the bookseller showed up, in a Dunhill Bruyere 55 (I think that's the shape number, but I struggle to discern it). Before lunch I ran some errands there which scarcely involved English, and on the bus across the hill I had listened in on an elderly lady explaining to her friend that she was seriously thinking of retiring in Amsterdam, where her sister lives. She looked like an Indo, so the next time I see her I really must ask "engkau bisa bitjara bahasa Belanda?" to which an affirmative answer will establish both. The question itself, if she understands it, will demonstrate that there are various points in common.

Ik ken Amsterdam erg goed. En ik heb vrienden die daar wonen.


In any case. The bookseller is at the beginning of a nine day vacation, in preparation for which he has mopped his front room. So he's in clean digs, which I applaud wholeheartedly, but cannot quite emulate. There is an entire reference library under my bed which I haven't visited in years, so I cannot quite remember what books are down there. See, if I did look, I'd have to get up again. To which I am slightly averse. The creaky joints, you know. I think The Marine Engineers Manual is down there, as well as a tome about map-making, and a thick encyclopedia of literary Chinese. Possibly also an Oxford Dictionary.

He doesn't have that problem. Even though nearly every week a different part of him is out of whack. Sometimes because of pinball-related injuries or bruises. It's a more active life.



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SCRUBBED, SCRUBBED

It was cute. A gentleman speaking Mandarin and his two sweet looking little grammar-school age boys stepping in for three hotdogs (actually garlic sausages on sourdough) to go. Quiet, well behaved, curious. The kids didn't venture near the fellow with metal facial studs mildly tweaking to himself, and the meth heads from the nearby clubs and SROs weren't in for late night dininng yet. An altogether wholesome all-American slice of the underbelly.

As for the bookseller and myself, one burger with fries, red wine, and a mixed soda (cola and orange). That last has enough caffeine to add to my alertness, plus sugar for energy and brain food.

One Eurotrash with a scrawny zoned girlfriend.
One tattooed thing just before we left.


When we passed the karaoke bar several Caucasians were singing something with simplistic lyrics and no recognizable tune, and it sounded quite vile, so we went directly to the usual bail-out bar for Guiness, Jameson's, and hot tea. I'm the tea drinker. The bartender was expecting us, and the water was already hot.

Anthony Bourdain on one of the screens eating Burgher food in Sri Lanka. During the preparation of which a huge mound of bright red chili powder had come into play, and banana leaves which were stuffed. Lomp-rys. Looked delicious.

For some reason we ended up talking about sports we had played in high school, and came to the conclusion that we both hate sports. I also separately came to the conclusion that all of my physical education teachers were unpleasant and intellectually deficient, but that was something that I've concluded many times over the years. It did not take the hot tea to spark that thought, merely seeing stuff with balls and obscenely overpaid people out of the corner of an eye on the other screens prompted it.

Kottu roti, by the way, looks like something that should really catch on here. Vegetables, curried meat, spices, paratha, all chopped together over high heat on a griddle with oil.
Add a dollop of sauce, scrambled egg, shallots, chilies. Sri Lankan street food.

I am surprised that the enterprising Mexicans who do the bacon-wrapped hot dogs haven't yet come up with something like that. San Francisco's late night drunks would love it.
Your choice hot, hotter, hottest.

Imagine a garlic sausage done like that, grill-fried with chilipaste, chopped veggies, pinch cumin, and toasty bread pieces. Great after beer, during beer, or even before beer.



On the way to the bus two nearly identical blonde Asians trotted past, with a slight interval in between. Or maybe it was the same one who had circled at a trot on Waverly. Also a man arguing viciously and loudly with an invisible person, possibly his imaginary girlfriend. Methamphetamine is a hell of a drug.



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STOUT FELLOWS

The karaoke place was a big slice of steaming putrified hell, so we didn't go in. I don't even know what that song was, but it sounded willowy, blonde, and washed out. Which is precisely like MAGA imagines Helen of Troy, because it says so in the Bible. Life is too short to hear MAGAite screeching. Now, if it had been a whole bunch of hair-ribboned ladies cosplaying Japanese Anime French maids singing, I might have been tempted. My friend the bookseller would, despite his in this case likely far superior judgement, have been dragged in.
Imagine the Belles of Saint Trinians, but in Franco-Japanese. Oooh, zesty!

Sadly, karaoke does not fulfill even my most twisted old-geezer fantasies.
That's probably a good thing too.

I seriously doubt that the world is ready for shapely big-eyed misses in modest black dresses, white frilly aprons, and Catholic headmistress footwear, preparing lovely cups of royal milk tea while discussing the ins and outs of aged Virginia flake tobacco such as Sir Bertrand Russell smoked, Comoy briar pipes from the thirties through the sixties, and why it seems like every great Dutch poet from the sixteen hundreds through the early nineteen hundreds seemed to invent his or her own grammar, orthography, and even vocabulary.

Years ago an editor postulated that there ain't no such thing as a Limburgian language. Then sat back and waited. The resultant comment string, very sincere, proved him right. Several hundred screeds in Limburgic that collective showed such dialect diversity and fracturing that no one could possibly argue the case for Limburgian linguistic coherence. Or coherence, period.

There are several languages in the New Guinea highlands that have extremely limited vocabularies. And utterly lack any means of expressing 'weltanschauung' or 'existentialismus'. Antidisestablishmentarianism. Gestalt.

Almost all of them have a distinct word for 'penis-gourd'. Sometimes several. Whereas ALL versions of Limburgic use exactly the same word for that. Quod erat demonstrandum. And by the way, no one is interested in your penis-gourd. There is more to life than penis-gourds.

What is curious about the hilltribe languages is that there are either two or three words for all vegetables, which translate as "good to eat" versus "not so good to eat", or "nice veg", "not particularly good veg", and "crappy veg that those schmucks one valley over eat".
Which is remarkably like English cooking.


The burger joint was shortstaffed this evening. Despite that, service was prompt, efficient, and capable. Hardest working man in North Beach. Worth his weight in gold.
The former bail-out bar was closed. The current one nearly empty.
Tat Yee was the only customer when we got there.
American wrestling on teevee.
A very stupid sport.
Empty gourds.


I did manage to introduce the bookseller to the depravity of 'Little Bunny Foo Foo', which is a formative American cultural manifestation, illustrative of much in the contemporary welt anschauung, so at least there was that. A victory of sorts.



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BIRDLIKE APPETITES

When we left we lit up our smokes outside the place with THREE different styles of chicken feet. Where I have never eaten, because it does not really cater to my type (old geezer), and there would be a skeevy feel to going into a snackery with teenagers snarfing down boba drinkies, squealing, and sucking up some curry fish balls. What with being old enough to be their creepy older uncle. Not so much ah sook (啊叔) as sey lo kwai (死老鬼).

Besides, I've never been overly fond of chicken feet (鳳爪 'fung jaau'). They're not one of my family's favourite foods. We've never sat down to a scrumptious feast of 家式香蒜無骨鳳爪 ('gaa sik heung suen mou gwat fung jaau'; family style boneless garlicky "phoenix" claws). Good for you, lots of collagen, make you clear complexion!
Something is missing in my upbringing.

But I can't put my claw on it.

Mm, sorry!


Lunch today was pork purses (豬肉燒賣 'jü yiuk siu mai') and turnip cake (蘿蔔糕 'lo paak gou'). With sambal and a drizzle of soy sauce, very delicious. Eaten while watching white tourists getting mounds of fried rice, fried noodles, and fried meat and vegetable buns (生煎菜肉包 'saang jin choi yiuk baau'). Which last are very good there, and I thought of getting those myself. But there was only one of me and that would have been too much.

My lunch, unfortunately, is never with another person. I sometimes imagine what it would be like to have eaties with a young lady significantly younger than myself, quite imaginary, who has a keen appetite and no weird food hang ups. Someone who wields her chopsticks with gusto and verve. Seriously into good things to eat.

Given that I am tongue-tied when not being sarcastic or caustic, and have no clue how to go about inviting another person, even if there was one on the horizon, I don't pursue the matter.


My friend the bookseller has, to the best of my knowledge, not pursued the same or similar matters. Given that he is erudite, witty, and a decent man to boot, as well as a good cook, he probably should. Also, he's okay with vegetarians and tattood women, so I'm surprised that no one has tried to set him up yet. Don't look at me.


"Miss, may I offer you some garlic sauced boneless chicken wings? They're my family's prized recipe, passed down for generations!
It's good for the complexion!"


The karaoke dive was filled with bikers, the primary bail-out was on the point of closing. We ended up further down at the back-up bail out. Some seriously good movies on the teevee. Surprising.

One of these days I might just have to develop a family recipe for chicken feet. I am thinking ketjap manis, dash vinegar, rice wine, and sesame oil. Garnished with lightly gilded garlic, a little slivered ginger, and chopped scallion after cooking.



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THE BODY PARTS

We were somewhat dismayed when she got on the bus with her four-wheeled luggage cart, because late at night there are sometimes not-perfectly-sane fellow travelers. People who mentally vibrate. I noticed that her calves and ankles were oedematic, and the skin down there showed dryness verging on dermal ailment. But other than that she seemed okay.

Still. There have sometimes been screamers.
Municipal transit is an adventure.

The original bail-out bar had an actual bartender this evening, so we didn't end up further down. Unfortunately he was filling in for the apathetic person and won't be there next week. The bartender from the secondary bail-out was there, it turns out that his shifts have changed and consequently there is a new bartender at the bail-out from the bail-out, who should be more fully broken in by the time we get there again. Nice enough chap, but somewhat overwhelmed the last time.

The bookseller is still in pain from fighting with a pin-ball machine, which I kept assuring him was a "sports-related injury", because that sounds ever so much better than "lost an argument with a box of nuts and bolts" or however else you wish to put it.
But a ball was involved. So it's a sporting mishap or accident.

I'm still not entirely sure how it happened.
But it cost him a quarter at least.

Warm weather, such as we're having (mid to high sixties) brings out more nuts. I don't know how the rest of the country can stand it. Places like New York City, Washington DC, and the entire deep south must be awash with loonies.

Plus mosquitoes, murder hornets, and giant cockroaches.
As well as iguanas, pythons, and feral children.
So glad we live in civilization here.
A temperate zone.



NOTE: I shall NOT mention the oedema woman, nor the chubby Chinese girl with the very intelligent face who was also on the bus, to the turkey vulture currently dozing among the other roomies in my apartment mate's room. He would have insisted that I really should have harvested fatty body parts for him to feast upon. We've already argued with him over that. It's not going to happend, little dude. And step away from the little girl hamster who comes over during the day, she's not a meatball, and the large purple cat will wack you very severely if you try to eat her friend. There are some things one just doesn't do. Okay?



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HALF A DOZEN CUPS OR MORE

Do you want it crispy-crunchy or soft and chewy? These are questions which, as a pudgy non-Chinese teenage person, you might wish to ask yourself before placing your order. Or more likely not, seeing as the chicken feet are offered for sale in non-English. The tangy ones have a crisp coating, the savoury ones and the hot and spicy feet look like they have the regular stewy texture. But you went in for a nice cold matcha taro boba tea with sguiggly jellies added, or some such crap, and you really aren't interested in anything else there except the popcorn shrimp and chicken nuggets.

You really should try those chicken feet.
A good dietary source of collagen.
They're great for your skin.

I myself have never eaten there. Places filled with giddy teenagers hepped on sugar just don't appeal to me, but I read the foods mini-poster advertised in the window with great interest after we left a nearby drinking establishment. As one would. If the picture is appealing and one can read Chinese. As, naturally, one can.

The place where I had eaten lunch several hours before does not have boba drinkies. They have claypot rice. Which on a cold day like today precisely hit the spot. My yellow eel claypot rice (黃鱔煲仔飯 'wong sin pou jai faan') was divine. Dab of chilipaste each bite. Gorgeous.

It is mentioned in English on the menu, probably because there are a few local old-school Toishanese American-borns who don't really read Chinese, but I suspect that there are not a whole lot of non-Cantonese who order it. Almost certainly no Mandarin speakers.
Who, like most Caucasians, are missing out.

Drank an entire big pot of tea.
Ended up plenty wired.

A person from the Netherlands or Belgium who likes 'paling' would be well-advised to search it out. Might be the best meal you have in the United States. Change your whole impression of the place. There is good stuff to eat here after all!

Naturally I smoked my pipe afterwards while wandering down several blocks to a bus stop in the Financial District.


In the evening I was back in Chinatown waiting for the bookseller. This is the beginning of his weekend, and it doesn't sound like he has any pressing plans. He strained or bruised his leg playing pinball, it's going to be rather cold for the next week or so, and world cup matches very likely will keep him at home.

The karaoke place sounded problematic as we passed. Some kind of yodeling. Painful, like a tortured marketing department female. Life is too short for such self-abuse.

On the route to the bus stop after drinks at the other place we became aware of a man yelling a play by play of his progress up the street on the opposite side.

Sometimes waiting for the bus at night is the longest ten minutes of your life.
Cold winds, skeevy blisters, and testimony about Jesus.



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PRAYING TO A CELL PHONE

The other night, having an impending sense of doom about the soccer match between the Netherlands and Morocco, I got up and listened to 'Sawt El Hassan Inadi' on youtube. It's a song every Maghrebi knows, very stirring. And indeed the Dutch are no longer in the cup. But several Dutch teams still have a horse in this race, as many of the Moroccan players come from their squads.

This is kind of like that World Cup a number of years ago when even though the Dutch didn't stand a Belgian's chance in hell of getting to the top there were five Dutch coaches involved. Russia, Korea, and three other countries.

We're good. Just not that good.


My interest in the event is over till four years from now.


The rest of you can loose your minds over it. The most noteworthy aspects were Scotland drinking Boston dry and people dressed in orange doing a little group dance.
That was fun, it is all over now, everybody go back to sleep.
Please stop playing bagpipes.

Lunch both yesterday and today was exceptional. I went to a restaurant I've started going to again after a hiatus of six years, since the pandemic, which has changed hands but kept substantially the same menu. They've expanded it somewhat, and I was pleased to see a very 'home-town home-cooking' dish offered as one of their lunch specials: salt fish meat patty with rice (咸魚肉餅飯 'haam yü yiuk beng faan').

Not my home town, nor my family -- it is unlikely that my mother would have even allowed any fermented fish into the house -- but never-the-less a favourite of mine.
Totally great with sambal. Dee-licious!


I was still mentally smacking my lips a few hours later waiting for the bookseller and smoking my pipe. There were disturbing howls from a bit further down where the karaoke joint we now seldom visit is located, and a fellow watching a religious broadcast on a pocket device and praying at a nearby corner, not one of the usual neighborhood unstables. Very few tourists or drunken fratboys. Probably too cold for them. It is typical San Francisco summer weather and there is a nasty wind.


You know, if getting all religious about a televised preacher on your cellphone is your thing, in this weather you might want to do that indoors. You can be warm, and much louder. There are no public benches anymore. We hate homeless people and old folks in this city.

I am not religious or homeless, and I won't say that I'm old.
But seating with a backrest would be very nice.
Still. You don't want to encourage me.
Somehow I can tell.



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THE GHEE TREATMENT

Young people can sometimes be utterly enchanting. This evening two chess mavens in their early twenties guessed that my friend the bookseller and myself were in our forties. So of course we agreed with them. Yes indeed, forties. Right on the nose. That's spot on. And how remarkably perspicacious of you! This was in a very brightly lit place, and they weren't drunk. So I shall go out on a limb and say that in normal daylight, which in San Francisco is overcast gloom at this time of year, I look like quite a dashing young fella.

You will kindly stop looking all bemused now. It was worth an attempt.

And I shall NOT be sharing that with my apartment mate, who once called me "geek old man". In which descriptive nomen I have never been able to find myself, by the way.


On the one hand, Ah Ming believes that I should get of my duff and go out there to "kau neui" ((溝女) because I am, apparently, still young and handsome and full of spark, and a sixty plus engineer with whom I had gotten into conversation at a chachanteng asked me what I used to do before I retired. So it's all a question of eyeballs. And age.

I 'm not retired, and still haven't decided what I want to be when I grow up.

Orange is the new black, crocodile green is the new American flag blue, sixty is the new forty, and dear leader Trump is so full of genius that his cabinet members are astounded. Astounded, I tell you. The brilliance!

Retirement (退休 'teui yau') is not something much on my mind. What has been occupying space there recently are pipes, tobacco, roast duck and roast goose, great boobies Honey Bun, events in Indonesia from the end of World War Two till the seventies, I really should make an effort to read Pramoedya Ananta Toer's books, coconut milk yellow curry, a nice oily sambal, and why are there so few places where a man can sit down and have a nice cup of naai chaa in a ceramic vessel, with or without a saucer?

As you can see, the attic is a bit messy. Roast duck and roast goose are much more reality-based than the great-bun stuff, pipes and tobacco are constant, and Chinatown used to have more cups and saucers than it does now. I often make naai chaa at home, where in addition to crockery I can often have a smoke alongside, provided her door is closed till she returns from work and some windows are open to provide ventilation. Which requires plotting.


By the way: I am pleasantly surprised that there used to be a product called 'Carnation Mush', plus very quirked by the bookseller not being able to consider a ham and cheese croissant extremely suited to breakfast. Protein! Energy! Butter! I mean, a nice greasy mutton curry is also perfect breakfast food, and why am I the only one who thinks so?



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SAFE AND SUPERVISED ACTIVITIES FOR OLD PEOPLE

Closing down Portsmouth Square is probably one of the stupidest things this city has ever done. Well-meaning people probably gave bad advice to the powers, and with undoubtedly the best of intentions came up with plans for civic improvement. Let's give those old people a clubhouse! Wherein they will find fun activities suitable for the dessicated old relics far far better than them wasting their time playing gin-rummy for nickel stakes! Warm, sterile, with institutional seating, and clean water! Treadmills! Educational talks to improve their minds!

Y'all haven't actually dealt with many Cantonese seniors, have you? And no, your gonggong and porpor (grampa, granma) are NOT representative of the class in any way. They are on their best behaviour when you are around. But they need times and places to be on their worst behaviour. Cussing, playing cards, and snarfing down unhealthy snacks while gossiping. Okay?

You could have kept the old park, AND the trees. Just policed it a bit better to keep the kwailo bums from smoking pot and robbing people. And, if you really wanted to show concern and respect for your elders, made one corner of the park a smoking area. Grampa (gonggong) really wants to huff some of those cheap smuggled in illegal fags that keep his favourite bad habit affordable. Which he did surreptitiously anyhow.

Amateur social improvements that will take till 2028 will not help anybody. The public restrooms were fairly new and reasonably clean. You want grampa to piss in an alley?

Yehyeh, gunggung (爺爺、公公), maamaa, porpor (嫲嫲、婆婆) really want a comfy place to sit, near restrooms that are clean, safe, private, and can be locked. They might smoke and swear loudly while sitting. Or using the conveniences. If they do, that ain't your concern. They're off-duty, they're retired, and they're cognizant of limitations.

Dutch uncle (荷蘭叔叔) understands this better than you.
They're real around me because I'm invisible.
I am closer to them in age anyway.
And not a relative.

Meanwhile, because Portsmouth Square is fenced off, the old people are being a nuisance elsewhere. Getting in the way of mahjong players visiting the "social clubs" on some of the alleys, or quietly fainting somewhere because in addition to their doctor's prescribed pills they are also taking herbal remedies as well as various tonic supplements that do exactly the same thing for their ailments (double or triple treating whatever it is). If one medicine is good, two must be better. Neither their traditional doctor nor their western doctor know about the other, and could be either working at cross-purposes OR treating the same symptoms.
If you spoke better Cantonese or Toisanwaa, you would know this.

There are many ways you could improve Chinatown, especially for the elderly, but ripping out the biggest park there, their park, for two years or more, isn't one of them.

Dutch uncle will shut up now. Talk among yourselves.


The bookseller arrived about ten minutes after I finished my pipe. Aged red Virginia with a smidge of Perique in a fat Dunhill bruyere billiard. While smoking I had nodded and mumbled good evenings at a number of familiar faces that walked past. Including some of the unstable non-Chinese I've seen on pub-crawl evenings while waiting there. It was cold, but the wind had died down, and I was wearing a better coat than during the day. Someone had told me in the morning that it was likely going to get up to sixty nine or seventy degrees. It didn't.

At the burger place the Austria-Jordan match was on. As it was at the bail-out bar, which, remarkably, was still open. The karaoke place had been filled with blonde women attempting to Mongolian throat-sing and failing, so we gave it a miss.

The bookseller has no plans for his weekend. Which is splendid.
I've already done bucket loads during mine.
Lunch and shopping tomorrow.
Relax.



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HANGING LOOSE

For old times sake, seeing as they were still open when I got down to C'town in the evening to smoke a pipe and wait for the bookseller to get off work, I bought a pack of 555 ciggies at Waa Long Kong Si. They've gotten more expensive. Probably Trump's fault. Damned tarriffs. All prices have gone up. This may force us all into becoming vegetarians leading pure and abstemious lives. Which is un-American.

By the way: avoid Texas beef It's likely filled with maggots.
Always unclean, now probably worse than ever.
A poxy hellhole of a place.
In my opinion.


Yesterday's lunch was veggies and fatty preserved meats, delicious, while today was down at a familiar place, savoury chicken and tofu with rice and hot sauce, washed down copiously with tea. Followed by a smoke in a pipe that is older than I am. All of which was delightful.

As a side note: hot sauce, to Toishanese people, is still that vaguely toasty fried chili oil which adds a warmed pan taste but no appreciable heat. Discovered that at lunch yesterday, but it was tasty and enjoyable nevertheless.

At the burger place, the bookseller and I discussed the sports line-up this coming Sunday. White trash cage brawl on the south lawn, two important world cup matches (Netherlands-Japan and Curaçao-Germany), and the event to which people look forward all year, namely Hello Kitty At The Ballpark. It is entirely unlikely that the rancid rightwing scoundrels in the backroom will have any interest in the last three, so I suspect that we will have the white trash event on teevee.

Sadly, the Giants look to be the worst team in baseball right now. No amount of Hello Kitty's inspiring presence will change that. Rather, their dross will likely rub off on her, and she'll have to take a long hot shower afterwards. Unclean! Unclean!


That's okay. I've some cigarettes she might like. Ultra-thin little smokes from the mainland with lovely packaging, and a tangerine peel fragrance capsule in the filter.
Very elegant, and stylish. Tasteful.



The karaoke place when we passed was a steaming slice of hell with lots of dubious people, probably Financial District drooges, and what had once been our bail-out bar closed for the evening because the new girl doesn't care about tips or the regulars. The new bail out only had four people in it when we swaggered in. The bartender was happy to see us, and after about ten minutes Tat Yee showed up and greeted us. He too would have been up at the other place, but change is good.



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CREAKING NOISE

Both yesterday and today the Muni bus over the hill had eccentric-and-on-the-spectrum passengers. Besides myself, I mean. This may have something to do with under-the-surface goofiness in one particular ethnicity -- shan't mention which because I do not want to get lynched while eating lunch and enjoying a hot cup of milk tea in what is actually the safest neighborhood in San Francisco -- but I've noticed a fair amount of that over the years.

In both cases I didn't say anything in their language. I did not want to set them off or be recognized every time they saw me. Like that dude with whom I engaged in conversation one evening nearly ten years ago outside a karaoke bar, who has never forgotten.
Although his mind has finally grown dim.


One recent conversation that I wished I could have gotten out of was with the gentleman explaining that when colonic distress hit, as it did often, he wished that there were a ceiling mounted clock in his bathroom because sometimes he had to recline on the tiles in a cold sweat till things had eased, and he wished to time himself during those moments.
Also, an ashtray and cup rest at ankle level. Plus a space heater.

The space heater I can thoroughly understand. But I didn't tell him which make of same we have in the bathroom, because I did not want him assuming that I or anybody else was similarly afflicted, nor did I want to encourage him to say anymore. As public transit conversations go, that one was a doozy I could have done without.

While waiting for the bus uphill after visiting one of our usual haunts this evening the book seller mentioned that he sometimes is the abashed and dismayed recipient of senior citizen discounts. He is younger than I am, and doesn't yet qualify for the senior citizen transit pass. But I look young and spry, plus innocent. He sometimes has a knowing and world-weary look about him, the wise elder, whereas I often seem like an uncomplex middle-aged goobus.

Then we talked about arthritis, and joints. Comparing notes.
Picking things up off the ground means creaky noises.
An imagined chorus of laughter. Or clapping.

This was an unconscious segue from a comment I had muttered earlier, to the effect of blaming the deity for my legs, which hurt considerably because I had probably played too much soccer as a youth and the cold of the night affected hips, knees, and feet.

Also, that if it ever got below forty degrees in San Francisco I should purchase two extra woolen mufflers to wrap around my knees.



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AND NO SINGING!

The weather was less beastly than it had been earlier. Meaning that it was still quite cold, and I wished I had rubbed myself all over with bear fat, but I wasn't freezing my squidgy bits off. This has NOT been a warm May. More like the winter of my discontent. Which may explain why in the morning I had a fatty snack as a sort of breakfast with my coffee.

An instinctive drang to create insulation.

That's probably also why for late lunch early dinner I had beef and shrimp paste fried rice noodles (牛肉虾酱炒河粉 'ngau yiuk haa jeung chaau ho fan'). With tea, milk tea, sambal, and a good smoke in a comforting old pipe afterwards.


The only thing useful I did today was purchase some more of those delightful thin ciggies with the flavour capsule that I know Miss A.A. likes. Which are only sold to Cantonese speakers. Which is why I only ask for them in Cantonese.

貴煙

While waiting for the bookseller and smoking another bowl more people nodded in friendly fashion than I've experienced before. They've likely seen those ghastly videos of me talking about cigars in Cantonese which have circulated. My barber has seen them, and a customer of his also. So have a few people at my usual food stops. You know I hate my accent, right?
I sound precisely like a horrid stuck up pompous twat whenever I speak Chinese.
I thought I sounded like a Tsimshatsui goomba, like in the movies.
Nope. British colonial dickhead.

It was fairly quiet at the burger joint, but at the karaoke place the dulcet sounds of country western or some such crap were audible all the way down the street. The musical stylings of suburbanites and their menfolk, voices raised in song. Not good song. Song for which life is too short. That kind of song. The word "dulcet" and the phrase "musical stylings" are both used ironically. Also as a courtesy because I don't wish to offend anybody.
By swearing in a horrid pompous twat accent.

We've had a long day and we hate The Eagles.

At what had been the bail-out whenever the karaoke bar is unbearable the door was closed early so we ended up further down in a pleasantly sparsely populated establishment. Beer and a Jameson for the bookseller, two teas for me. In passing we mentioned the Venerable Bede, Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, people dressed like sheep, and one of two parrots that New Zealand is known for (the kea), which is a very smart bird that loves to irritate people but is protected so you cannot do anything back to get even.
And the evil bird knows that.



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FOOT AND MOUTH

My feet hurt enormously after being at work all day. Where I had heard all about gay sex among senile delinquents without intending to. It is not my favourite subject. Also paranoid conspiracy horse pucky. Also not a favourite subject. I would far rather put my ear to the ground and listen to the earthworms.


This evening there were too many people underfoot. So the karaoke bar was out of the question, what with being screamingly loud, and jampacked. Some crazy white woman's intended hook-up with a drunk hunk, which went kablooie, while I was on the last few minutes of my pipe, neither interested nor entertained me.

Apparently she proved too crazy. And though staggeringly blotto, he just wasn't drunk enough.

My role in life is to sometimes be an unwilling witness.

I am essentially a prude; people should be civilized in public. Even if the public is after sundown long after business hours and there is only one witness.

And above all, I should not be able to see a nipple and half plus nearly an entire boob. Warm weather brings out too much the slut in some people. Think of the children! For the love of gob, will no one think of the children?!?

It's been a rich full day. As a means of distracting myself from the energetic gay sex among senile deliquents we discussed sebaceous cysts in great detail, and in the evening over food, pink hair and eighteen boxes of books and a drag show were mentioned. Frat boys came in, were carded, and wandered out again. Tat Yee explained to someone that to learn Chinese he should have a girlfriend. An emergency face mask was proffered. The public bus is of course a rolling Petri dish, but tonight was nearly empty.

In a Chinatown doorway the biggest cat I've ever seen stared out at me.
No, it wasn't a mountain lion. Maybe a mutant.
A baleful entity.




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REST FOR THE WICKED

Seeing as I got up at five A.M., and have been up for nineteen hours more or less, you can probably imagine that I feel somewhat pooped right now. And I need my beauty rest. Despite the two women considerably younger than myself who seemed to rather like conversing with me at work today. This was obviously well before I started bringing up urethras, prostates, and bladded issues in an effort to get some of the backroom to leave on time. You're welcome, John. All of the above.

It must be my sophisticated good looks.
Rather than my conversational gifts.

You'll be glad to know that I ate a salad for lunch today. As a nod to healthy living. And now that we've got that out of the way the rest of the year will be esy sailing.

Convenience store salad. The one without carrots and shredded cabbage.
Even with Sriracha it was still salad.
None the less.


My feet feel like crap.
I blame the salad.

The bookseller's feet also feel like crap. New boots, still breaking in. No salad.

It's almost axiomatic that one does not talk about urethras, prostates, or bladder issues in the presence of young ladies of the opposite gender. It might make the conversation go entirely sideways. No need to remind them that grandpa's problems might not be entirely in his head. John, you're welcome.

At several times during the day I listened to crackpot conspiracy theories. So if it weren't for caffeine I would not be able to pretend I'm human. My orc personality would surface. Savagely ripping flesh from my quivering victims with poison-dripping fangs.
You only wish it were the Pope who killed the Kennedys, you crazy dingo.

Because of caffeine I spent most of the day high as a kite. Had some more before I left for Chinatown to wait for the bookseller in the evening. I was wired to the tits.


A deep red Virginia with a touch of Perique in the Dunhill bruyere this evening while waiting. Superlative smoke. Only a few pavement "eccentrics" floating by.
Including "coverlet man" two or three times.
I mentioned him last week.
He's worse.



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HOBBITS BANE

The reason why Gandalf smokes a long churchwarden pipe is two-fold: he's too darn vain to wear his reading specs except when he absolutely needs them, and he doesn't want to set his beard on fire. Entirely unlike him, my beard is neatly almost obsessively trimmed short, because I am more fastidious than him, and reading specs are my constant companion. Not only because of printed matter. There might be a coffee cup or fork on its way to my mouth. Or, hypothetically, a pipe. Either lit, or not yet. I like to see what I'm setting fire to.

Another point of difference: my stick is not absurdly long. Unlike Gandalf, I do not need to keep hobbitses in line. Nasty verminous hobbitses. We hates them.

Actually, we don't have hobbits here. We've got bums, streetpeople, and fentanyl freaks bent over in the zombie pose forming perfect toadstool shapes that one could very well leapfrog over if one was so inclined. Inadvisable. They'd topple over and take you to court.

Maybe those are the hobbits.

There were three very strange people who walked by as I was smoking my pipe while waiting in Chinatown tonight. Less than half a dozen neighborhood residents. Some stoners, and a score of tourists. And a man wearing a scungy wool coverlet and naught else.

I could have clobbered nasty hobbitses, had there been any.
That's always a possible use of the stick.
Hobbit control.

It ended up being an early evening. The karaoke place was filled with screeching orcs, and the place to which we usually bail out had a new person behind the counter who informed us that she was closing in ten minutes the very second we walked in. And I note that Tat Yee had already left. Another bar was filled with squiffed marketing types, and the last possibility was closed tonight. There is a fifth bar which we haven't visited, but it's relatively new and looks like it has designer cocktails for yuppies. Carefully curated.

So after we left the burger place, there was nothing.
Perhaps the hobbitses are taking over.
We disapproves of them!



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THE HOO HA FILES

It's interesting listening with half an ear to what she watches on her computer, especially now that she has stopped looking at skin ailment videos. At one point she went to the kitchen to prepare herself a snack, and I became aware of an infomercial that may have been why she got up. Something about a medication or wondrous nostrum which if you stick it in your hoo ha is absorbed more effectively, and much better for you. It went on and on. Good lord, why won't they shut up about the hoo ha? Nearly ten minutes of hoo ha waffle! I didn't understand even half of it, because the sound was on too soft. But I can guarantee you that nothing on my playlist is ever interrupted for a disquisition on the hoo ha.
See, I am not the female audience.
Wrong demographic.

To the best of my knowledge, most men do not have a hoo ha.
Which may be why some men keep talking about it.
Others are startled and throw stones.


But enough about that. While I was smoking my pipe before meeting up with the bookseller for drinkies, a gentleman approached having a loud screaming match with invisible people. This was after the old codger trying to sweep the street with a dried-up discarded mop before nesting down in the entryway to a local bank. A clean bedroom is a happy bedroom, and it was, in his own way, an expression of civic responsibility.

Several German tourist families, a few familiar locals, and what was probably a marketing or sales department, passed by. Also some stoners and druggies from North Beach.

Lunch a few hours earlier had been rice stick noodles with salted black beans, garlic, ginger, bellpepper and celery, and sliced beef (豉椒牛河 'si jiu ngau ho'). Staggeringly delicious. With chilipaste. Washed down with milk tea and regular tea. I should have chau min and chau ho fan more often. Great cold weather food.

So you see we're back to the usual Tuesday schedule and don't need to stand in for New Teeth Boy. He's back. And threatening to bite people with his sparkling chompers.

Maybe screaming dude would be happier if he also had new teeth.
In any case they would put him under to install them.
With restraints possibly too.

One can but think.



By the way, entirely unconnected to any thing above, I was reading through the family tree this morning, and confirmed that indeed I do have a direct ancestor (five generations ago) named Ichabod. Born ten years before the revolution. I'm not sure how I feel about that.



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THE OTHER DINGO

As I walked up the hill to my building I saw a figure up ahead whom I thought I recognized. And I dreaded coming abreast of him, because he's conversation-wise alternatively gifted. To the point of reminding people of the creature in Young Frankenstein. So I was relieved to see that it was some other person, whom I did not know.

Same shamble, different zombie.

The whole evening has been kind of like that. Strangely out of synch with the universe. The singer at the karaoke place radiated waves of angst while singing something by The Red Hot Chilipeppers, the taxi going up the street in the wrong direction, the wandering angry woman screaming into her cellphone in Cantonese and English, the dad who first passed by in one direction with his two punk teenage daughters, then the other. The fellow in a hoodie who did the same. The young couple ditto. The old couple likewise.

Folks, know where you're going before you start. That way you might actually get there.

Maybe it was the peculiar weather we're having that threw them off their game. It rained both yesterday and today. At half past eight this morning it came bucketing down, monsoon-like. Fortunately I was indoors at that time.

At present it's only slightly cloudy, but there are specks of moisture in the air. It does not feel like a normal April. My feet feel like crap, but I doubt that anybody else is feeling that; it might have something to do with being at work all day.

How many clowns are in the Volkwagen? None. It's all ogres and ghouls. That, by the way, is both a description of the state of the world as well as a comment about Trump's cabinet.
Plus a reaction to Red Hot Chilipeppers karaoke.
Please don't sing, it's sickening.

We ended up bailing out to the other place, Which was filled with sensible people.
By comparison.

By the time I got home I needed to pee somthing fierce.
I had three caffeinated beverages while out.
As well as one beforehand.



When waiting for the bookseller I smoked a pipe, as usual.
Which took the better part of an hour.
So add that to the plate.



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FATTY INNER THIGHS

Neither of the two bathrooms at work have a heater, so in a way I can understand the hesitancy of some of those demented crotchets to take care of business in a timely manner. Fortunately there were only two of them left at closing time. The others had very likely gone home to do the necessaries. Their wives probably hate me. Years of haranguing all of them mercilessly about their swollen prostates, lazy bladders, and narrow urethras may finally be starting to pay off.

John and Jeff are the worst. The first one mentioned puts it off till the last possible moment, the second takes the better part of ten minutes. There are times when I am less than saintly in my intolerance.

The Dutchman does not take kindly to slow piddlers.
Senile rightwing old slow piddlers.


This will probably be mentioned in my next angry letter to the editor, none of which ever get sent, as well as the demand that the weather make up its damned mind, because fifty degrees Fahrenheit is quite outrageous. Especially when March was too warm.


This morning, when at shortly past quarter to five I stumbled into the teevee room with my coffee, I discovered that a small entity was prepared. "Where", he wished to know, were the fatty inner thighs? He insists that I had promised him all the fatty inner thighs he could eat when I adopted him. And he was prepared to hold some of my possessions (two tins of GLPease tobacco AND my wallet) hostage until I fullfilled his dietary demands.

He thinks it's a reasonable request. I think he's out of his little feathered head if he thinks I'm going to knock somebody, even a demented crotchet, over the head and then let them bleed out, as harvesting their wobbly wrinkled saggy upper legs would inevitably mean.
Yeah, um, sorry dude, that so ain't gonna happen.

Other than that, I'm better with animals than many humans.
Some turkey vultures just aren't reasonable.


My friend the bookseller deals with a more rational demographic. And he is fortunate that the musical kabbalist seems to have largely faded; if I ever see that fellow again, I shall have to share my latest tuneful discovery, that being a ballad that Rowlf on the Muppet Show acclaims as an all-time hit.

Please sing along with me, as we enjoy this ever-popular classic:
"You and I and George went strolling through the park one day, and then you held my hand as if to say, I love you! Then we passed a brook, and George, fell in and drowned himself and floated out to sea, leaving you alone with me....."
Truly one of the great songs of our time.

It's soulful. And stuck in my ear.
Imagine karaoke.



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LAB CREATURES

Today was rather exhausting. Got up extremely early so that I could be at work well before anyone showed up. Which means that as I write this it is past my bedtime. And it was cold both in the morning and after nightfall. For which I'm blaming malignant providence.
As well as the usual suspects.

On very bright spot was hearing the neurosurgeon trying to convince some insurance company phone-drooge overseas that he was not artifical intelligence but a reall live human being. Apparently his voice sounds like a robot. To some mal-educated dingo in a cheap part of the world who is probably trained to make things as difficult as possible.

If you ever wondered why you can't get essential care, now you know. Insurance company tactics. They want you to just die. It's the American thing to do.

[My heavens these poofy corn styrofoam nuggets are salty and cheesy and just packed with crunchie-munchie goodness! And there are real dairy byproducts among the ingredients. Kudos!]

The neurosurgeon is a very patient man.
Sadly, I am not.


That's why he gets to talk to the obfuscation department, and I get to giggle.
It's also an entirely different pay grade.

Anyway, I also heard about lab mice and antibodies while he telephone-conferenced and smoked cigars. I enjoyed my pipe while puttering around, and I think both of us got a lot accomplished before the rancid old coots made that difficult. When I got back to the city my feet felt like a wreck. More so while waiting for the bookseller to arrive. The cold didn't help. The pipe I smoked while waiting did.

It was a short evening, but added to the hours since I got up it's been a helluva long day. My legs feel like trash right now.

The ghost of an iceberg is tormenting me.



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