For the Sinophilic Bibliophile, courtesy of e-kvetcher, comes a link-direction to this blog: HAQUELEBAC.
There is more there than mere Sinology.
The author shows him or herself enamoured of numerous subjects, and discourses dryly about them.
Consider the very second item I found there:
Renaissance Wogs
The Problem of Unbelief in the 16th Century: The Religion of Rabelais (Lucien Febvre, 1942)
They were simple people who gave way to their feelings. We repress ours…. (p. 100)
Here, too, was the “underdevelopment of sight”. He was content to “feel” — like his whole age (p. 454).
Who was Febvre talking about? Martin Luther, and with him, the entire Renaissance: Erasmus, More, Montaigne, Pico, Rabelais, the whole shebang. This is the Annales school’s famous histoire des mentalités. Where did it come from?
[End cite]
There's a lot more Chinese, Russian, and French where that came from.
Mostly Chinese: Tao Te King, Shen Dao, and all that.
Familiarity with Bernhard Karlgren.
Good stuff.
Added it to blogroll for further browsing.
Shebang, shebang.
Shebang.
全涉幫
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
EVIDENCE OF CLEANLINESS
The regular reader of this blog realizes that I am often not at home, from sometime late afternoon till mid-evening. Due, largely, to the fact that there is someone else living in the apartment. The main reason for my absence is that I will wish to smoke, and therefore must find a place where that can be done in peace and quiet.
No, it isn't that she is incredibly noisy and interruptive -- she's mostly calm and a pleasure to live with, quite unlike the big Lesbian rowdies that so many other single men in San Francisco have ended up with as apartment mates, who scream and shout and assert their proud alternative womanhood with meaningful confrontation and tattoo parties -- but the various rooms need to thoroughly air out before she returns, and one cannot smoke a pipe or two or three while reading in the kitchen near the open window for several hours. When she is home the rest of our living quarters are off-limits for middle-aged badgers and specifically their finely functioning briars.
It's just one of the hazards of being a pipe-smoking badger.
Personally, I cannot imagine the exquisite aroma of Virginias, Latakia, or Smyrna leaf, being objectionable. Why, it's like incense!
But I have learned that many women do not smell this from the same point of fume.
Especially the non-smokers.
It is a sad handicap.
Unfortunately, she is not a smelly creature.
As one of my friends puts it, "men are from mars, women are from venus flytrap". I have no idea what exactly that means, but it does highlight that there may be insurmountable differences between the two species.
At the very least, smoking chases away the fruit flies.
Sometimes, when I come home, there will be audible splashing from the bathroom, to indicate that someone is in there, in a state of whole or partial nudity, engaged in the moist rituals of cleanliness.
There is, in fact, a small naked woman in the bath.
Keep your big bestial self the hell out.
This badger is, on the whole, supportively positive about women who bathe. It's a good thing, and I encourage it. Absolutely. I would love to actually see it, rather than merely inferring it from audible evidence, but I understand that most females object strongly to furry individuals with pipes in their mouths assuming a ring-side seat, and happily chatting about soap, washcloths, and fluffy towels, while they ablute. It's that aforementioned dislike of exceptional pipe tobaccos.
The perfume, while they are naked and wet, upsets them.
Women making themselves clean are beautiful.
Many more of them should do that.
Ideally, of course, one of them would invite the badger in, to be the impartial witness, who could sincerely affirm that indeed her objective has been achieved, she is sparkling, and smells good. Or instead discretely keep his mouth shut and look quizzical while puffing his pipe, especially if someone else were to raise inconvenient questions. "What soap did she use, was it fruity, and did you have to help her apply it?" You know, embarrassingly probing none of your business.
Things that no gentleman would even consider answering.
Bathing women tend to be secretive.
Badgers can respect that.
We bathe too.
Nicotine is a stimulant.
There is nothing here except a single middle-aged mustelid and his fine pipe tobacco -- Smyrna from Asia Minor, Latakia from the island of Cyprus, flue-cured Virginia -- as well as several briars. If you wish to read this post as a salacious proposition, that is up to you.
Do you bathe?
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
No, it isn't that she is incredibly noisy and interruptive -- she's mostly calm and a pleasure to live with, quite unlike the big Lesbian rowdies that so many other single men in San Francisco have ended up with as apartment mates, who scream and shout and assert their proud alternative womanhood with meaningful confrontation and tattoo parties -- but the various rooms need to thoroughly air out before she returns, and one cannot smoke a pipe or two or three while reading in the kitchen near the open window for several hours. When she is home the rest of our living quarters are off-limits for middle-aged badgers and specifically their finely functioning briars.
It's just one of the hazards of being a pipe-smoking badger.
But I have learned that many women do not smell this from the same point of fume.
Especially the non-smokers.
It is a sad handicap.
Unfortunately, she is not a smelly creature.
As one of my friends puts it, "men are from mars, women are from venus flytrap". I have no idea what exactly that means, but it does highlight that there may be insurmountable differences between the two species.
At the very least, smoking chases away the fruit flies.
Sometimes, when I come home, there will be audible splashing from the bathroom, to indicate that someone is in there, in a state of whole or partial nudity, engaged in the moist rituals of cleanliness.
There is, in fact, a small naked woman in the bath.
Keep your big bestial self the hell out.
This badger is, on the whole, supportively positive about women who bathe. It's a good thing, and I encourage it. Absolutely. I would love to actually see it, rather than merely inferring it from audible evidence, but I understand that most females object strongly to furry individuals with pipes in their mouths assuming a ring-side seat, and happily chatting about soap, washcloths, and fluffy towels, while they ablute. It's that aforementioned dislike of exceptional pipe tobaccos.
The perfume, while they are naked and wet, upsets them.
Women making themselves clean are beautiful.
Many more of them should do that.
Ideally, of course, one of them would invite the badger in, to be the impartial witness, who could sincerely affirm that indeed her objective has been achieved, she is sparkling, and smells good. Or instead discretely keep his mouth shut and look quizzical while puffing his pipe, especially if someone else were to raise inconvenient questions. "What soap did she use, was it fruity, and did you have to help her apply it?" You know, embarrassingly probing none of your business.
Things that no gentleman would even consider answering.
Bathing women tend to be secretive.
Badgers can respect that.
We bathe too.
Nicotine is a stimulant.
There is nothing here except a single middle-aged mustelid and his fine pipe tobacco -- Smyrna from Asia Minor, Latakia from the island of Cyprus, flue-cured Virginia -- as well as several briars. If you wish to read this post as a salacious proposition, that is up to you.
Do you bathe?
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, October 21, 2013
THE NICEST CUPS
Being single again is a bitch. Yes, you are thinking, it took the moron long enough to figure that out. Over three years already, good heavens, is he dense?
No, not dense. Gifted at considering other things. Many other things.
One can easily be distracted from reality in San Francisco.
And I'm very good at that.
Normally I do not think of the other gender at all.
Except that late this afternoon I went across the hill for a cup of tea and sweet bun. There's a new person at one of my favourite bakeries, who is absolutely useless, so no milk-tea. And I had to wait ten minutes for my coffee.
All the seats were occupied by bothersome and inconsiderate Thai ladies, far too busy enjoying their trip to San Francisco and being bossy to realize that the four of them taking ownership of the space and all the tables would leave any other patron flush up against the microwave in a corner, turning green from their cheap perfume and ghastly twittering.
[Thai sounds like a language I could easily grow to hate.]
With no room at all to lift the bun to my face.
Can't really enjoy it without biting.
It's a logistical problem.
So I waited.
Which gave me plenty of time to observe the extremely capable and intelligent woman who works there most often rush about doing everything that her completely useless countryside auntie-thing proved incapable of doing. Getting special pastries from the back. Making a pot of coffee. Restocking the shelves in the display cases.
Counting out change accurately.
And fetching tiramisu.
The gumby village idiot relative had three phone conversations, after which she apathetically cleaned up a bit, and resisted learning about the extra coins and bills. The intelligent young lady demonstrated extreme patience. Remonstrated gently with the woman, and with what must have been superhuman effort refrained from slapping some sense into her.
Black pants, form-fitting. A green sweater, and let us above all NOT forget what sweaters do to the attractive female figure. An expression on her face of amused yet tense resignation to the idiocy of the scrawny older woman. Lively eyes.
Let me repeat. Form-fitting black slacks. Green sweater. Eyes.
And a Dutch American hamsaplo in the corner.
With an uneaten bun, and a cup of coffee.
A man, naturally, observes.
She's got character. And always looks intelligent, and keenly aware. Because she is. But today, she also looked steamingly hot.
Which she...... is.
Unfortunately I have far too much self-control to say anything about that. Boundaries, gentlemanly behaviour, courtesy, and a sense of proper restraint. And loads of similar high-minded crap.
Being single can be a bitch.
Spent an hour over coffee.
Dawdle. Dawdle. Dawdle.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
No, not dense. Gifted at considering other things. Many other things.
One can easily be distracted from reality in San Francisco.
And I'm very good at that.
Normally I do not think of the other gender at all.
Except that late this afternoon I went across the hill for a cup of tea and sweet bun. There's a new person at one of my favourite bakeries, who is absolutely useless, so no milk-tea. And I had to wait ten minutes for my coffee.
All the seats were occupied by bothersome and inconsiderate Thai ladies, far too busy enjoying their trip to San Francisco and being bossy to realize that the four of them taking ownership of the space and all the tables would leave any other patron flush up against the microwave in a corner, turning green from their cheap perfume and ghastly twittering.
[Thai sounds like a language I could easily grow to hate.]
With no room at all to lift the bun to my face.
Can't really enjoy it without biting.
It's a logistical problem.
So I waited.
Which gave me plenty of time to observe the extremely capable and intelligent woman who works there most often rush about doing everything that her completely useless countryside auntie-thing proved incapable of doing. Getting special pastries from the back. Making a pot of coffee. Restocking the shelves in the display cases.
Counting out change accurately.
And fetching tiramisu.
The gumby village idiot relative had three phone conversations, after which she apathetically cleaned up a bit, and resisted learning about the extra coins and bills. The intelligent young lady demonstrated extreme patience. Remonstrated gently with the woman, and with what must have been superhuman effort refrained from slapping some sense into her.
Black pants, form-fitting. A green sweater, and let us above all NOT forget what sweaters do to the attractive female figure. An expression on her face of amused yet tense resignation to the idiocy of the scrawny older woman. Lively eyes.
Let me repeat. Form-fitting black slacks. Green sweater. Eyes.
And a Dutch American hamsaplo in the corner.
With an uneaten bun, and a cup of coffee.
A man, naturally, observes.
She's got character. And always looks intelligent, and keenly aware. Because she is. But today, she also looked steamingly hot.
Which she...... is.
Unfortunately I have far too much self-control to say anything about that. Boundaries, gentlemanly behaviour, courtesy, and a sense of proper restraint. And loads of similar high-minded crap.
Being single can be a bitch.
Spent an hour over coffee.
Dawdle. Dawdle. Dawdle.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
THE CHINESE ARE NOT RACIST -- SUAN LE, SUAN LE, SUAN LE!
In relation to the post in which I detailed all the truly horrid things that Chinese people call us honkies -- hurtful stuff like 'white', and 'large', and 'dude' -- it really must be stressed that the Chinese actually like us.
We're so interesting! And we do such wonderfully goofy things!
Chinese aren't racist, but they do love a good spectacle.
Chinese people are on this planet to be entertained.
Once that stops, they're calling the mother ship.
We're going home, this place is boring!
And that proves that they aren't bigots. They just expect foreigners to act completely different, and provide some shockingly absurd street theatre. And, entirely ignorant of the proper norms, we obligingly do precisely that. It's free cabaret, and who knows, we might even sing afterwards.
Or do our little dance!
But the Chinese largely make no distinctions. If their own people are willing to act completely ridiculous, there will be just as big a crowd around the delinquents, showing quite as much keen appreciation.
And they know it will happen. They're Chinese.
FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
[Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOWe6vbdNAs.]
Now why don't thing like that happen on Bay Area Rapid Transit?
Two goobers duking it out, and a whole bunch of happy commuters calmly looking on, giving the two men room. You will note that nobody is swearing, nobody is screaming even, and neither of the combatants is hurling imprecations.
One must conclude that the ride was boring, and purely to liven things up our two husky friends started swinging at each other. Doing so made the time fly, and gave both men a feeling of accomplishment.
Points were made, and there was interpersonal contact.
Plus their fellow passengers were utterly delighted.
It was so considerate of those two to do that!
I can't wait to tell all my friends.
Please! Do it again, boys!
Trip ain't over yet.
This video comes courtesy of Bejing Cream, who often shows us the space alien aspect of the Chinese.
A NOTE OF CALCULATION
The word 'suàn', variously written as 算、筭、▯匴, and 祘, means to regard, consider, calculate, compute, sum up, add up. To do the math, to total, to finish.
In the phrase 'suan le' (算了) it means 'enough already', 'drop it', 'stop', 'ferchrissakes', 'let it go'. In milder circumstances it means that one has, or someone else should, let something slide; under more friable conditions, it is an imperative to stop whatever it is that one is doing or shouldn't do.
The gentleman with the crisp white shirt who attempts to separate our two heroes is clearly misguided -- because he is the only individual who wants them to stop -- and may very well be the person shouting "suan le, suan le, suan le" near the end of the clip. Idiot.
He's a busybody. Perhaps foreign.
An anti-social putz.
算了。
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
We're so interesting! And we do such wonderfully goofy things!
Chinese aren't racist, but they do love a good spectacle.
Chinese people are on this planet to be entertained.
Once that stops, they're calling the mother ship.
We're going home, this place is boring!
And that proves that they aren't bigots. They just expect foreigners to act completely different, and provide some shockingly absurd street theatre. And, entirely ignorant of the proper norms, we obligingly do precisely that. It's free cabaret, and who knows, we might even sing afterwards.
Or do our little dance!
But the Chinese largely make no distinctions. If their own people are willing to act completely ridiculous, there will be just as big a crowd around the delinquents, showing quite as much keen appreciation.
And they know it will happen. They're Chinese.
FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
[Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOWe6vbdNAs.]
Now why don't thing like that happen on Bay Area Rapid Transit?
Two goobers duking it out, and a whole bunch of happy commuters calmly looking on, giving the two men room. You will note that nobody is swearing, nobody is screaming even, and neither of the combatants is hurling imprecations.
One must conclude that the ride was boring, and purely to liven things up our two husky friends started swinging at each other. Doing so made the time fly, and gave both men a feeling of accomplishment.
Points were made, and there was interpersonal contact.
Plus their fellow passengers were utterly delighted.
It was so considerate of those two to do that!
I can't wait to tell all my friends.
Please! Do it again, boys!
Trip ain't over yet.
This video comes courtesy of Bejing Cream, who often shows us the space alien aspect of the Chinese.
A NOTE OF CALCULATION
The word 'suàn', variously written as 算、筭、▯匴, and 祘, means to regard, consider, calculate, compute, sum up, add up. To do the math, to total, to finish.
In the phrase 'suan le' (算了) it means 'enough already', 'drop it', 'stop', 'ferchrissakes', 'let it go'. In milder circumstances it means that one has, or someone else should, let something slide; under more friable conditions, it is an imperative to stop whatever it is that one is doing or shouldn't do.
The gentleman with the crisp white shirt who attempts to separate our two heroes is clearly misguided -- because he is the only individual who wants them to stop -- and may very well be the person shouting "suan le, suan le, suan le" near the end of the clip. Idiot.
He's a busybody. Perhaps foreign.
An anti-social putz.
算了。
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Sunday, October 20, 2013
FRENCH FRIES AND MAYONNAISE
A very dear friend, seeing me for the first time inundate my fried potatoes with mayonnaise, succinctly opined "that's frikkin disgusting, dude". This from a woman who scarfs down deep-fried tofu like there's no tomorrow. Honestly, can anyone even eat white folks tofu? It's a cross between dessicated sponge and a block of mahogany, and tastes like space alien.
American hippie vegans have NO business criticizing the Dutch for their culinary preferences. It ain't your damn horse we're eating, and it tastes fine. Horse is all lean meat, and bless it, it does NOT taste like chicken.
And neither do Thumper and Bambi.
They're delicious! Good solid food.
Not like that wheatgerm crap.
Perhaps vegan food would taste better with a heaping dollop of mayonnaise on top. Yeah, that might make it taste like chicken.
The Dutch like mayonnaise, fried stuff, and protein. Given the climate, and the nearby unpleasant presence of so many Germans, Frenchmen, and English, this is natural. A balanced diet makes it possible for you to fight off infections.
And, speaking of which, the best site for an overview of stuff that Dutch people like is appropriately entitled Stuff Dutch People Like.
It's not just skating. Skating. Skating. Skating. Traversing a frozen bog on little metal blades for hours upon hours. Skating. Skating. Skating.
Freezing toes. Skating. Skating Skating.
STUFF DUTCH PEOPLE LIKE
Gin. Waffles. English. Wetness. Tulips. Lumpy blended goo. Pants. Royalty. Midwives. Locutions. Yumminess. Mayonnaise. Stairs. Bicycles. Boo! Unfriendliness. Not working. Bad haircuts. Freezing tap water. Boogers. Skating. Mush. 2011. Clarity. Germans. Sinterklaas. Felicitation. Kissing. Tallness. Salmiak. Unmarriedness. Ugly pants. Gezelligheid. Dat kan niet en dat mag niet. Appointments. Diseases. Camping. Herring. Jape. Minds. Windmills. Singing. Queen. Cake. Lactation. Blackface. Milk. Orange. Licorice. Inoffensiveness. Décor. Embarrassment. Goop. Weather.
Well, that leaves out coffee, cigars, soccer, Belgians, being wrong, and a host of other things.
Personally, I am extremely fond of Indonesian food, long rainy twilights, ditches, streams, creeks, rivers, trickles, rivulets, canals, sloughs, morasses, marshes, bogs, moors, and estuarine swamps.
But that may just be me.
The last entry on that blog dates from December 2012.
I sincerely hope that the author resumes her work.
Most of those things I had sort of forgotten.
It was great fun revisiting them.
Fried tofu with mayonnaise.
Now there's a thought.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
American hippie vegans have NO business criticizing the Dutch for their culinary preferences. It ain't your damn horse we're eating, and it tastes fine. Horse is all lean meat, and bless it, it does NOT taste like chicken.
And neither do Thumper and Bambi.
They're delicious! Good solid food.
Not like that wheatgerm crap.
Perhaps vegan food would taste better with a heaping dollop of mayonnaise on top. Yeah, that might make it taste like chicken.
The Dutch like mayonnaise, fried stuff, and protein. Given the climate, and the nearby unpleasant presence of so many Germans, Frenchmen, and English, this is natural. A balanced diet makes it possible for you to fight off infections.
And, speaking of which, the best site for an overview of stuff that Dutch people like is appropriately entitled Stuff Dutch People Like.
It's not just skating. Skating. Skating. Skating. Traversing a frozen bog on little metal blades for hours upon hours. Skating. Skating. Skating.
Freezing toes. Skating. Skating Skating.
STUFF DUTCH PEOPLE LIKE
Gin. Waffles. English. Wetness. Tulips. Lumpy blended goo. Pants. Royalty. Midwives. Locutions. Yumminess. Mayonnaise. Stairs. Bicycles. Boo! Unfriendliness. Not working. Bad haircuts. Freezing tap water. Boogers. Skating. Mush. 2011. Clarity. Germans. Sinterklaas. Felicitation. Kissing. Tallness. Salmiak. Unmarriedness. Ugly pants. Gezelligheid. Dat kan niet en dat mag niet. Appointments. Diseases. Camping. Herring. Jape. Minds. Windmills. Singing. Queen. Cake. Lactation. Blackface. Milk. Orange. Licorice. Inoffensiveness. Décor. Embarrassment. Goop. Weather.
Well, that leaves out coffee, cigars, soccer, Belgians, being wrong, and a host of other things.
Personally, I am extremely fond of Indonesian food, long rainy twilights, ditches, streams, creeks, rivers, trickles, rivulets, canals, sloughs, morasses, marshes, bogs, moors, and estuarine swamps.
But that may just be me.
The last entry on that blog dates from December 2012.
I sincerely hope that the author resumes her work.
Most of those things I had sort of forgotten.
It was great fun revisiting them.
Fried tofu with mayonnaise.
Now there's a thought.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
GETTING ALL TOUCHY FEELY
Several of my favourite pipes have a delightful presence in the hand. As do many of my porcelain bowls, and several other objects in the apartment. Touch is probably the most comforting sense.
No, this isn't about naughty behaviour and stark-naked damsels, though it could be. No doubt you are already familiar with that subject, even though in your case it might be quite as hypothetical as it is for me.
Regrettably, I do not engage in naughty behaviour.
POTS AND PIPES
For over three decades I have collected ceramic objects. Many of them have glazes in the blue and green categories, and most of them are artisanal. Meaning that they were made by hand, in the Bay Area. Some of them are bowls with shapes and dimensions that suggest the Sung period (宋朝) and later dynasties, or in a few cases Korean ware from the eleven hundreds through the sixteen or seventeen hundreds.
In the case of the Hsin-chuen Lin (林新春) pieces, there are variations on Japanese and Sung through Ching (清朝) glazes that speak of an active and flexible mind experimenting creatively with more interesting vitreous effects than many other potters.
Many of his bowls are feely objects.
They demand the hand.
Sensual.
[Please note: his potting videos can be seen here: Hsinchuen Lin. Enjoy.]
GO AHEAD - FEEL IT
Much of the pleasure I get from restoring briar pipes derives directly from the touchy feely element that those objects share with exceptional pottery. It's a tactile presence that expands from their visual character.
The loveliest objects must be felt to be truly appreciated.
Museums, consequently, are sometimes unbearable.
If that guard ain't looking, I'm reaching in.
Mmmm, it's so smooth and cool!
A subtle pebblyness.
Fingertip.
Sandblast, shell briar, sea pebble, antique finish, natural, two-tone squat bulldog, author, taper-stem pot, prince, billiard, big semi-bent bull, trumpet, tusk, apple, deep blast stack.........
Tactile satori.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
No, this isn't about naughty behaviour and stark-naked damsels, though it could be. No doubt you are already familiar with that subject, even though in your case it might be quite as hypothetical as it is for me.
Regrettably, I do not engage in naughty behaviour.
POTS AND PIPES
For over three decades I have collected ceramic objects. Many of them have glazes in the blue and green categories, and most of them are artisanal. Meaning that they were made by hand, in the Bay Area. Some of them are bowls with shapes and dimensions that suggest the Sung period (宋朝) and later dynasties, or in a few cases Korean ware from the eleven hundreds through the sixteen or seventeen hundreds.
In the case of the Hsin-chuen Lin (林新春) pieces, there are variations on Japanese and Sung through Ching (清朝) glazes that speak of an active and flexible mind experimenting creatively with more interesting vitreous effects than many other potters.
Many of his bowls are feely objects.
They demand the hand.
Sensual.
[Please note: his potting videos can be seen here: Hsinchuen Lin. Enjoy.]
GO AHEAD - FEEL IT
Much of the pleasure I get from restoring briar pipes derives directly from the touchy feely element that those objects share with exceptional pottery. It's a tactile presence that expands from their visual character.
The loveliest objects must be felt to be truly appreciated.
Museums, consequently, are sometimes unbearable.
If that guard ain't looking, I'm reaching in.
Mmmm, it's so smooth and cool!
A subtle pebblyness.
Fingertip.
Sandblast, shell briar, sea pebble, antique finish, natural, two-tone squat bulldog, author, taper-stem pot, prince, billiard, big semi-bent bull, trumpet, tusk, apple, deep blast stack.........
Tactile satori.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, October 19, 2013
THE WILD BACHELOR IN HIS LAIR
This one I blame on women. You know I'm single, right? A bachelor. An unattached man. A masculine person without a sensible female to guide him away from ill-advised choices. Or instruct him in detail on the proper mode of behaviour and what a right-thinking well-adjusted social being should not do. Lectures to train the savage beast.
A fairly typical individual of the testosteronic persuasion.
Thick cut oxford marmalade. Deli-sliced Virginia ham. And a gâteau à la purée de marron, from the AA bakery. All on one plate. Cake is a bread-like substance, with air-pockets and a certain spongy softness, made from wheat. It is richer than bread, utilizing such things as butter, eggs, and cream. Pureed chestnut is, karmically speaking, a relative of both peanut butter and Indonesian saté sauce.
So it requires sandwich meat.
Ham, having both a moistness that bready things lack, as well as a sweetness appropriate to cake, is perfect.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
The thick-cut marmalade was pure inspiration. Brilliant.
Why do I blame women for this combo?
Well, because a man in a relationship is ten times more likely to eat pizza instead. Pizza is butch and masculine, and a way of reasserting our machismo after diluting it for several hours in the presence of Tinkerbell and Hello Kitty. Cake is frou-frou; very wussy.
Got any anchovies?
As a completely unattached mature single man I have nothing to prove. Snarfing down cake in private late at night does not make me any less masculine, but is in fact a liberty which the fully-realized male in a stable relationship will never have.
There he'll be, at the icebox at two in the morning, with a glass of milk, speculatively opening up that oh so tempting cake box, when a voice will come floating in from elsewhere. It is a harsh and strident voice -- because it is burning with envy that ANYONE can eat cake without it going directly to the thundrous thighs -- insisting that he stop doing that, it's late, he has to get up early, they both do, and fergawdsakes DON'T litter crumbs in the bed!
Men eating pizza late at night are cute. Doing so is expected of them.
Men eating cake, however, are a source of envy, resentment, jealous rage, hateful rhetoric, and existential despair.
Ladies, it did not go to my thighs.
I possess a male metabolism.
Go ahead; be jealous.
I am single.
Instead of milk, I should have had it with strong coffee. But it would have been cruel to turn on the coffee maker at that hour; the smell would have woken up my apartment mate.
I'm not that mean.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
A fairly typical individual of the testosteronic persuasion.
Thick cut oxford marmalade. Deli-sliced Virginia ham. And a gâteau à la purée de marron, from the AA bakery. All on one plate. Cake is a bread-like substance, with air-pockets and a certain spongy softness, made from wheat. It is richer than bread, utilizing such things as butter, eggs, and cream. Pureed chestnut is, karmically speaking, a relative of both peanut butter and Indonesian saté sauce.
So it requires sandwich meat.
Ham, having both a moistness that bready things lack, as well as a sweetness appropriate to cake, is perfect.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
The thick-cut marmalade was pure inspiration. Brilliant.
Why do I blame women for this combo?
Well, because a man in a relationship is ten times more likely to eat pizza instead. Pizza is butch and masculine, and a way of reasserting our machismo after diluting it for several hours in the presence of Tinkerbell and Hello Kitty. Cake is frou-frou; very wussy.
Got any anchovies?
As a completely unattached mature single man I have nothing to prove. Snarfing down cake in private late at night does not make me any less masculine, but is in fact a liberty which the fully-realized male in a stable relationship will never have.
There he'll be, at the icebox at two in the morning, with a glass of milk, speculatively opening up that oh so tempting cake box, when a voice will come floating in from elsewhere. It is a harsh and strident voice -- because it is burning with envy that ANYONE can eat cake without it going directly to the thundrous thighs -- insisting that he stop doing that, it's late, he has to get up early, they both do, and fergawdsakes DON'T litter crumbs in the bed!
Men eating pizza late at night are cute. Doing so is expected of them.
Men eating cake, however, are a source of envy, resentment, jealous rage, hateful rhetoric, and existential despair.
Ladies, it did not go to my thighs.
I possess a male metabolism.
Go ahead; be jealous.
I am single.
Instead of milk, I should have had it with strong coffee. But it would have been cruel to turn on the coffee maker at that hour; the smell would have woken up my apartment mate.
I'm not that mean.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Friday, October 18, 2013
SAM WO 三和酒樓: IT"S WHAT YOUR DRUNKEN SELF CRAVES
As I often do, I was loafing with my pipe on the street in Chinatown when two fabulous gay guys came up, looked at the doorway behind me, and one of them wistfully remarked "oh, it's closed.... huh."
Yep. Since Saturday morning, third week of April, 2012.
I passed by with the Amphibian to look at the line.
Mostly young; the post-Edsel generation.
One last experience at an institution.
For old times. It was beloved.
A final meal at Sam Wo.
SAM WO RESTAURANT
813 Washington Street,
San Francisco, CA 94133.
The infamous Sam Wo restaurant closed down on April 20th. Or, if your persnickety, in the very early morning hours of the 21st.
The Amphibian and I went past it again later, after getting snockered at 寳寳; the line was still there. We decided not to eat.
We weren't hungry. Just drunk.
PORRIDGE, RICE STICK, NOODLES: 粥粉麵
What you really wanted was congee (粥 juk) with a yautiu (油條). During the life of Edsel Ford Fong, the irascible headwaiter, that might not be what you got. He knew better, and would tell you what you needed. Or suggest that you shouldn't eat so much, mister, you're fat. Then plonk something impossibly greasy in front of you, and stalk off without giving you utensils.
Enough has been written about the legendary rudest waiter in San Francisco that I needn't go into details; you can find him all over the web. He has attained mythic stature, and joined our culinary pantheon.
The restaurant itself, however, must be described. The downstairs was the kitchen, which was chaotic, cramped, crowded, and mediaeval.
A wooden chopping block bespattered with the juices of whatever had gotten whacked there most recently might make you quail, but enough boiling water was poured over it on a regular basis that your chance of food-poisoning was considerably less than at hospitals or fast-food joints. The floor, was, after a full day of slinging noodles, grimy and verging on swamp-like, but the foods that awaited slicing or cooking never touched it. Dining rooms were upstairs, you had to pass through the kitchen to get there.
Small, grim, Spartan. And often packed.
The chance of eating at the same table with intoxicated strangers was great. Especially if you were by yourself. "Here, sit!" You sat. "You there, say 'hi' to Charlie!" And the other people at the table would obediently mutter "hi Charlie". It did not matter that your name wasn't 'Charlie', when the waiter returned, he'd ask "Charlie, whatcha want?"
Errrrm, perhaps panfried charsiu noodles?
"No Charlie! Eat vegetables!"
The vegetables were actually pretty darn good. At the perfect state of crisp tender. It's where I fell in love with small cabbages (菜遠 choi yuen).
They were brilliantly green; sweet, juicy, and delicious.
The entire meal cost less than three bucks.
The functioning of the entire enterprise depended on an antiquated dumb-waiter, by means of which food was hoisted up to the second and third floors, new orders were sent down, and conversations were conducted by yelling into the shaft. Everything was antiquated.
There was no bureaucratically approved modern refrigeration, the fire-escapes looked rusted and rickety, the floors were uneven, and the walls were the buildings next door.
It worked.
The city government finally closed them down.
None of us can figure out why.
They still continue to exist in cyber space: Sam Wo Restaurant.
Drop by their site and say 'hi' to Julie and David.
Tell them Charlie sent you.
Last I heard, they're likely to open up again a different location. The old building will just take too much work to bring it up to code, and should probably be torn down instead.
There are a number of vacant spaces within two or three blocks of 813 Washington that might be perfect. The Chinatown neighborhood is a little depressed at present, and more rentals are opening up.
So I expect we'll see a new Sam Wo sometime soon.
I certainly hope so, we need late night eaties.
Not having 宵夜 is a hardship.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Yep. Since Saturday morning, third week of April, 2012.
I passed by with the Amphibian to look at the line.
Mostly young; the post-Edsel generation.
One last experience at an institution.
For old times. It was beloved.
A final meal at Sam Wo.
SAM WO RESTAURANT
813 Washington Street,
San Francisco, CA 94133.
The infamous Sam Wo restaurant closed down on April 20th. Or, if your persnickety, in the very early morning hours of the 21st.
The Amphibian and I went past it again later, after getting snockered at 寳寳; the line was still there. We decided not to eat.
We weren't hungry. Just drunk.
PORRIDGE, RICE STICK, NOODLES: 粥粉麵
What you really wanted was congee (粥 juk) with a yautiu (油條). During the life of Edsel Ford Fong, the irascible headwaiter, that might not be what you got. He knew better, and would tell you what you needed. Or suggest that you shouldn't eat so much, mister, you're fat. Then plonk something impossibly greasy in front of you, and stalk off without giving you utensils.
Enough has been written about the legendary rudest waiter in San Francisco that I needn't go into details; you can find him all over the web. He has attained mythic stature, and joined our culinary pantheon.
The restaurant itself, however, must be described. The downstairs was the kitchen, which was chaotic, cramped, crowded, and mediaeval.
A wooden chopping block bespattered with the juices of whatever had gotten whacked there most recently might make you quail, but enough boiling water was poured over it on a regular basis that your chance of food-poisoning was considerably less than at hospitals or fast-food joints. The floor, was, after a full day of slinging noodles, grimy and verging on swamp-like, but the foods that awaited slicing or cooking never touched it. Dining rooms were upstairs, you had to pass through the kitchen to get there.
Small, grim, Spartan. And often packed.
The chance of eating at the same table with intoxicated strangers was great. Especially if you were by yourself. "Here, sit!" You sat. "You there, say 'hi' to Charlie!" And the other people at the table would obediently mutter "hi Charlie". It did not matter that your name wasn't 'Charlie', when the waiter returned, he'd ask "Charlie, whatcha want?"
Errrrm, perhaps panfried charsiu noodles?
"No Charlie! Eat vegetables!"
The vegetables were actually pretty darn good. At the perfect state of crisp tender. It's where I fell in love with small cabbages (菜遠 choi yuen).
They were brilliantly green; sweet, juicy, and delicious.
The entire meal cost less than three bucks.
The functioning of the entire enterprise depended on an antiquated dumb-waiter, by means of which food was hoisted up to the second and third floors, new orders were sent down, and conversations were conducted by yelling into the shaft. Everything was antiquated.
There was no bureaucratically approved modern refrigeration, the fire-escapes looked rusted and rickety, the floors were uneven, and the walls were the buildings next door.
It worked.
The city government finally closed them down.
None of us can figure out why.
They still continue to exist in cyber space: Sam Wo Restaurant.
Drop by their site and say 'hi' to Julie and David.
Tell them Charlie sent you.
Last I heard, they're likely to open up again a different location. The old building will just take too much work to bring it up to code, and should probably be torn down instead.
There are a number of vacant spaces within two or three blocks of 813 Washington that might be perfect. The Chinatown neighborhood is a little depressed at present, and more rentals are opening up.
So I expect we'll see a new Sam Wo sometime soon.
I certainly hope so, we need late night eaties.
Not having 宵夜 is a hardship.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Thursday, October 17, 2013
THE MENTAL BLIP
A headline on the BBC website, which I noticed in passing while searching for news about the Laos plane crash, had me scratching my head in perplexity mere moments later: "Osborne agrees to China Nuclear deal".
Okay, why? What are his possible reasons and motivations?
How on earth is that fellow involved with power plants?
Some PR stunt to make them seem cute & huggable?
Of course that was not it. The infamous Headbanger in Chief has no interest in atomic energy. It would be quite disturbing if he did.
He's a member of the Church of England.
As well as a bat-eater.
The normal mind, as it absorbs the first jolt of caffeine in the morning, does strange things. The lurking Roseanne Roseannadanna that hides in every subconscious pops up its frizzy head before the ego and the super-ego have a chance to impose order. "There she goes again", they will say, "bringing up something with NO relevance whatsoever to the topic at hand".
I suspect that morning people don't have quite that problem, however. Their minds seem refreshingly alert from the very moment they wake up. Which is incredibly offensive. Many of them aren't even dependent on coffee to function.
Pretty much from the instant that coffee and tea were introduced to Europe, we started coming out of the Dark Ages. Over a millennium of slaughter, rapine, slavery, and barbarism came to an end, paper and the printing press made inroads, sciences were developed, great thinkers were inspired, and the arts entered a golden age.
Before that, it had been nothing but those morning people.
They were the ones seizing control while we slept.
Our natural grogginess gave them a chance.
They made a pig's breakfast of it.
Bloody-minded oafs.
Only Id.
Life without Caffeine is meaningless.
Vikings, crusades, popes, and vodka.
Morning man; how perfectly beastly.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Okay, why? What are his possible reasons and motivations?
How on earth is that fellow involved with power plants?
Some PR stunt to make them seem cute & huggable?
Of course that was not it. The infamous Headbanger in Chief has no interest in atomic energy. It would be quite disturbing if he did.
He's a member of the Church of England.
As well as a bat-eater.
The normal mind, as it absorbs the first jolt of caffeine in the morning, does strange things. The lurking Roseanne Roseannadanna that hides in every subconscious pops up its frizzy head before the ego and the super-ego have a chance to impose order. "There she goes again", they will say, "bringing up something with NO relevance whatsoever to the topic at hand".
I suspect that morning people don't have quite that problem, however. Their minds seem refreshingly alert from the very moment they wake up. Which is incredibly offensive. Many of them aren't even dependent on coffee to function.
Pretty much from the instant that coffee and tea were introduced to Europe, we started coming out of the Dark Ages. Over a millennium of slaughter, rapine, slavery, and barbarism came to an end, paper and the printing press made inroads, sciences were developed, great thinkers were inspired, and the arts entered a golden age.
Before that, it had been nothing but those morning people.
They were the ones seizing control while we slept.
Our natural grogginess gave them a chance.
They made a pig's breakfast of it.
Bloody-minded oafs.
Only Id.
Life without Caffeine is meaningless.
Vikings, crusades, popes, and vodka.
Morning man; how perfectly beastly.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
CHINESE AND WESTERNERS
The Chinese are not fascinated by your nose. This, I'm sure, comes as a complete surprise. Because EVERYONE knows that Chinese people are 'peculiar', and given to obsessing about the physical attributes of white people.
It's a well known fact!
Several days ago I was in a conversation with a blonde woman who had spent a year in Taipei after three years of studying Mandarin. Obviously her Mandarin was sheer buckets better than mine, given that Mandarin is well-nigh useless anywhere near San Francisco Chinatown.
In Mandarin, the denigrating term for white folks is 高鼻子 (gao bi ze = high nosed thing).
高鼻子!
She herself had been called a gaobize. And she was married to one.
And I too was a gaobize. We all were. Everyone!
She seemed amused by the concept.
So naturally I have spent several hours reading in Chinese about noses recently. My first search on the internet was for the words 'high nose' (高鼻). This was not productive, because in addition to Japanese sites about rhinoplasty, many of the search-results were scientific articles about horned grass-eaters with big snouts. Antelope, Elk, and variants on a Wildebeest.
Image-search for 高鼻 was no better. Most of the results showed Japanese celebrities before and after, several Japanese or Chinese bikini babes, Anita Mui, and Maggie Cheung.
Image-searching for 高鼻子 brought up hundreds of beautiful Chinese and Japanese women, a few Russian hunks, and Jackie Chan.
Plus plastic surgery diagrams.
Turning off safe search increased the amount of smut by approximately one percent. Instead of three cleavage pictures, there were four.
Japanese, I believe.
According to Wikipedia:
鼻，又称鼻子，是陸上動物呼吸的器官，屬呼吸系統一部份，也是哺乳類動物感應嗅覺的器官。
"Nose, also called 'nasal thing', is a land mammal respiratory organ, and that part of the respiratory system which is capable of olfactory experience."
鼻一般在動物的頭部，可能是隆起，鼻對體外的開口叫作鼻孔，鼻孔讓空氣進入鼻腔內，兩孔氣流速度不同，且每隔幾小時就會交換一次。鼻有兩腔，被鼻中隔隔開，哺乳類動物的鼻腔內通常長有鼻毛，作用是過濾及吸收空氣中飄浮的塵埃及雜質，鼻腔壁有黏膜，有助於溼潤吸入的空氣，並附著雜質。鼻腔內後部則是鼻竇，位於鼻兩側的顱骨下，是感應嗅覺的神經，鼻腔連接咽喉，並與消化系統共用管道，再分支進入呼吸系統至肺部。
"The nose in some creatures is raised up on the head, the nose's corporeal openings are called 'nostrils'; nostrils permit air into the nasal cavity, (albeit) not necessarily similar volume, and will vary once in a while. A nose has two cavities, each cavity separated by septum, the category of nose mammals have nasal hairs, to filter crap in the air; noses also have mucous, which moistens the entering breath, thus making the crap stick. The sinuses are behind the nose under the cerebral cavity -- there are olfactory nerves, and the tubing is shared with the digestive system (before) splitting off into the pulmonary department."
Dang, still no mention of white people.
The photo in the chapter on 流鼻血 ("flowing nose blood") is rather grim, and I'm fairly certain that's a white woman. But there is no mention of the size or height of her ruptured proboscis, and I'll assume that both dimension and ethnicity are medically immaterial in any case.
Epistaxis, also called 鼻出血 ("nose-departing blood") may have a variety of causes.
Again, an image-search (for both 鼻出血 and 流鼻血) produced mostly Asian people, a number of them toddlers. Only one white person, and he additionally had a black eye. Very many colour diagrams and schematic illustrations with arrows and text. No smut whatsoever, despite the Japanese having weird ideas about nose-bleeds.
高鼻鬼
Searching for "high nose" (高鼻 gao bi) plus "daemon' (鬼 gui: a common opprobrius nomen for foreigners) in the logical construction 高鼻鬼, brought me several hot-looking women (all Asian), plus zany antics (also Asian), an ibex, two baboons, adorable pugs, a kitten, a raccoon, a mandril, some girl rinsing her mouth, and a Chihuahua. Then more of the same. Along with a picture of an I-Hsing (宜興) teapot (茶壺), with bamboo motif and mouse finial (紫砂竹鼠執壺).
Plus, remarkably, a lovely photo of spaghetti with sauce.
No white people. Not a honky to be found.
Soup, a cactus, a soulful looking doggie, Shang (商) and Zhou (周) bronze axe heads and daggers, a cute little pig-tailed girl, a moist lump of rye bread, a harbor in Taiwan, various cocktails, and a volcano.
No white people.
鼻屎咁!
I am forced to conclude that Chinese people are NOT fascinated by our fabulous noses. This is something I always suspected, but it is never-the-less ego-shattering to have it proven. Somehow I feel diminished, unimportant even. I had here-to-fore been rather pleased with my handsome nasal appendage, and fondly imagined it loved and admired.
A complete fantasy, I know, but extremely comforting.
Woe is me, I now need to reconsider.
It ain't that great.
後附件
So what do Chinese people call Caucasians?
BAI TOU (白頭 'paak tau': white head); this yields several hundred entries about bald eagles, numerous storks and sparrows, and a few pictures of Superman.
BAI GUI (白鬼 'paak gwai': white daemon); mostly drawings and photos of Japanese girls dressed like a small Asian manga child vampire or daemon, sometimes with cat ears. Very cute.
DA BI ZE (大鼻子 'taai bei ji': big nose thing); a search shows Asian hotties, Bill Clinton, Gerard Depardieu, and pure-bred hounds.
Plus mules, a kitty cat, and funny cartoons of noses.
DA GUI (大鬼 'taai gwai': big daemon); ghouls, vampires, zombies (殭屍 'Keung si'; "immobile corpse"), cartoon characters, and stellar hotties (both bikini babes and Japanese manga characters).
But mostly the living dead.
DAN (蛋 'daan': egg); disparaging term for Caucasians who try to act Chinese; white outside, yellow within.
Here's a useful link for egg lovers: 吃蛋吧 - - - 愛蛋人的天堂.
FAN GUI (番鬼 'faan gwai': barbaric/barbarian daemon); many pictures of lychees (荔枝 'lai ji'), custard apples (番荔枝 'faan lai ji'), manga characters, and 劉永福 (mr. Lau Wing-fook).
GUI LAO (鬼佬 'gwai lo': daemon dude), or gui po (鬼婆 'gwai po': daemon old woman), both mostly Cantonese usage; frothy drinks, Latin lovers, cookies, crabs, cars, beads and bracelets, horned Japanese devil dolls and theatre characters.
HONG MAO GUI (紅毛鬼 'hung mo gwai': red furred daemon), this is primarily a Hokkien (閩南語) usage, and rather dated; pictures of cute Japanese schoolgirls in manga costumes, much food, some rambutans (红毛丹 or 毛荔枝) and a few hotties from Hong Kong, Tokyo, or Taipei.
LAO WAI (老外 'lo ngoi': old outside/foreign), a Northern term; many white people, some of them extremely hot.
LAU FAN (佬番 'lo faan': dude barbaric/barbarian), Cantonese usage; more custard apples, manga characters, hotties, and white folks.
YANG GUI ZE (洋鬼子 'yeung gwai ji': oceanic daemon thing); bicycles, Bud's Ice Cream, bikinis. Hotties, and elderly white dudes.
YI (夷 'yi': non-Chinese, tribalist, barbaric, heathen); as in the phrase 以夷制夷 ('yi yi jai yi'): use barbarians to regulate barbarians, let the foreigners fight among themselves. The search for 夷 yields lots of flowers and Chinese girls. Which is remarkable.
The normal term for white people is bai ren (白人 'paak yan': white person).
An image search produced mostly gorgeous women, only a scant few of whom were less than fully dressed. Knowing what I know about the internet, I dared not turn safe-search off for this one.
Xi fang ren (西方人 'sai fong yan') and xi ren (西人 'sai yan') are also used; both mean western person ("occidental").
It's a dry and rather un-inspiring expression, and pictures brought up by a web quest are all across the board, including not only people, but also food, wine, architecture, maps, paintings, the Dutch flag, a cabbage, sushi, Zhou Enlai, statuary, Rembrandt, and grilled tomatoes.
Plus Santa, tattoos, and soap.
Nothing about noses.
終
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
It's a well known fact!
Several days ago I was in a conversation with a blonde woman who had spent a year in Taipei after three years of studying Mandarin. Obviously her Mandarin was sheer buckets better than mine, given that Mandarin is well-nigh useless anywhere near San Francisco Chinatown.
In Mandarin, the denigrating term for white folks is 高鼻子 (gao bi ze = high nosed thing).
高鼻子!
She herself had been called a gaobize. And she was married to one.
And I too was a gaobize. We all were. Everyone!
She seemed amused by the concept.
So naturally I have spent several hours reading in Chinese about noses recently. My first search on the internet was for the words 'high nose' (高鼻). This was not productive, because in addition to Japanese sites about rhinoplasty, many of the search-results were scientific articles about horned grass-eaters with big snouts. Antelope, Elk, and variants on a Wildebeest.
Image-search for 高鼻 was no better. Most of the results showed Japanese celebrities before and after, several Japanese or Chinese bikini babes, Anita Mui, and Maggie Cheung.
Image-searching for 高鼻子 brought up hundreds of beautiful Chinese and Japanese women, a few Russian hunks, and Jackie Chan.
Plus plastic surgery diagrams.
Turning off safe search increased the amount of smut by approximately one percent. Instead of three cleavage pictures, there were four.
Japanese, I believe.
According to Wikipedia:
鼻，又称鼻子，是陸上動物呼吸的器官，屬呼吸系統一部份，也是哺乳類動物感應嗅覺的器官。
"Nose, also called 'nasal thing', is a land mammal respiratory organ, and that part of the respiratory system which is capable of olfactory experience."
鼻一般在動物的頭部，可能是隆起，鼻對體外的開口叫作鼻孔，鼻孔讓空氣進入鼻腔內，兩孔氣流速度不同，且每隔幾小時就會交換一次。鼻有兩腔，被鼻中隔隔開，哺乳類動物的鼻腔內通常長有鼻毛，作用是過濾及吸收空氣中飄浮的塵埃及雜質，鼻腔壁有黏膜，有助於溼潤吸入的空氣，並附著雜質。鼻腔內後部則是鼻竇，位於鼻兩側的顱骨下，是感應嗅覺的神經，鼻腔連接咽喉，並與消化系統共用管道，再分支進入呼吸系統至肺部。
"The nose in some creatures is raised up on the head, the nose's corporeal openings are called 'nostrils'; nostrils permit air into the nasal cavity, (albeit) not necessarily similar volume, and will vary once in a while. A nose has two cavities, each cavity separated by septum, the category of nose mammals have nasal hairs, to filter crap in the air; noses also have mucous, which moistens the entering breath, thus making the crap stick. The sinuses are behind the nose under the cerebral cavity -- there are olfactory nerves, and the tubing is shared with the digestive system (before) splitting off into the pulmonary department."
Dang, still no mention of white people.
The photo in the chapter on 流鼻血 ("flowing nose blood") is rather grim, and I'm fairly certain that's a white woman. But there is no mention of the size or height of her ruptured proboscis, and I'll assume that both dimension and ethnicity are medically immaterial in any case.
Epistaxis, also called 鼻出血 ("nose-departing blood") may have a variety of causes.
Again, an image-search (for both 鼻出血 and 流鼻血) produced mostly Asian people, a number of them toddlers. Only one white person, and he additionally had a black eye. Very many colour diagrams and schematic illustrations with arrows and text. No smut whatsoever, despite the Japanese having weird ideas about nose-bleeds.
高鼻鬼
Searching for "high nose" (高鼻 gao bi) plus "daemon' (鬼 gui: a common opprobrius nomen for foreigners) in the logical construction 高鼻鬼, brought me several hot-looking women (all Asian), plus zany antics (also Asian), an ibex, two baboons, adorable pugs, a kitten, a raccoon, a mandril, some girl rinsing her mouth, and a Chihuahua. Then more of the same. Along with a picture of an I-Hsing (宜興) teapot (茶壺), with bamboo motif and mouse finial (紫砂竹鼠執壺).
Plus, remarkably, a lovely photo of spaghetti with sauce.
No white people. Not a honky to be found.
Soup, a cactus, a soulful looking doggie, Shang (商) and Zhou (周) bronze axe heads and daggers, a cute little pig-tailed girl, a moist lump of rye bread, a harbor in Taiwan, various cocktails, and a volcano.
No white people.
鼻屎咁!
I am forced to conclude that Chinese people are NOT fascinated by our fabulous noses. This is something I always suspected, but it is never-the-less ego-shattering to have it proven. Somehow I feel diminished, unimportant even. I had here-to-fore been rather pleased with my handsome nasal appendage, and fondly imagined it loved and admired.
A complete fantasy, I know, but extremely comforting.
Woe is me, I now need to reconsider.
It ain't that great.
後附件
So what do Chinese people call Caucasians?
BAI TOU (白頭 'paak tau': white head); this yields several hundred entries about bald eagles, numerous storks and sparrows, and a few pictures of Superman.
BAI GUI (白鬼 'paak gwai': white daemon); mostly drawings and photos of Japanese girls dressed like a small Asian manga child vampire or daemon, sometimes with cat ears. Very cute.
DA BI ZE (大鼻子 'taai bei ji': big nose thing); a search shows Asian hotties, Bill Clinton, Gerard Depardieu, and pure-bred hounds.
Plus mules, a kitty cat, and funny cartoons of noses.
DA GUI (大鬼 'taai gwai': big daemon); ghouls, vampires, zombies (殭屍 'Keung si'; "immobile corpse"), cartoon characters, and stellar hotties (both bikini babes and Japanese manga characters).
But mostly the living dead.
DAN (蛋 'daan': egg); disparaging term for Caucasians who try to act Chinese; white outside, yellow within.
Here's a useful link for egg lovers: 吃蛋吧 - - - 愛蛋人的天堂.
FAN GUI (番鬼 'faan gwai': barbaric/barbarian daemon); many pictures of lychees (荔枝 'lai ji'), custard apples (番荔枝 'faan lai ji'), manga characters, and 劉永福 (mr. Lau Wing-fook).
GUI LAO (鬼佬 'gwai lo': daemon dude), or gui po (鬼婆 'gwai po': daemon old woman), both mostly Cantonese usage; frothy drinks, Latin lovers, cookies, crabs, cars, beads and bracelets, horned Japanese devil dolls and theatre characters.
HONG MAO GUI (紅毛鬼 'hung mo gwai': red furred daemon), this is primarily a Hokkien (閩南語) usage, and rather dated; pictures of cute Japanese schoolgirls in manga costumes, much food, some rambutans (红毛丹 or 毛荔枝) and a few hotties from Hong Kong, Tokyo, or Taipei.
LAO WAI (老外 'lo ngoi': old outside/foreign), a Northern term; many white people, some of them extremely hot.
LAU FAN (佬番 'lo faan': dude barbaric/barbarian), Cantonese usage; more custard apples, manga characters, hotties, and white folks.
YANG GUI ZE (洋鬼子 'yeung gwai ji': oceanic daemon thing); bicycles, Bud's Ice Cream, bikinis. Hotties, and elderly white dudes.
YI (夷 'yi': non-Chinese, tribalist, barbaric, heathen); as in the phrase 以夷制夷 ('yi yi jai yi'): use barbarians to regulate barbarians, let the foreigners fight among themselves. The search for 夷 yields lots of flowers and Chinese girls. Which is remarkable.
The normal term for white people is bai ren (白人 'paak yan': white person).
An image search produced mostly gorgeous women, only a scant few of whom were less than fully dressed. Knowing what I know about the internet, I dared not turn safe-search off for this one.
Xi fang ren (西方人 'sai fong yan') and xi ren (西人 'sai yan') are also used; both mean western person ("occidental").
It's a dry and rather un-inspiring expression, and pictures brought up by a web quest are all across the board, including not only people, but also food, wine, architecture, maps, paintings, the Dutch flag, a cabbage, sushi, Zhou Enlai, statuary, Rembrandt, and grilled tomatoes.
Plus Santa, tattoos, and soap.
Nothing about noses.
終
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
SNARLING ABOUT THE DEBT CEILING DEAL
I note that in the few hours since a deal was announced to reopen the government and raise the debt limit, the internet has been foaming.
On the far-right websites, and on social media, all the praedictable bile is being vented in tank loads, while over in the Netherlands the usual chorus of hatefilled ignorant anti-American pig-arses is sneering, yelling, and calling people names.
Yes, there is good reason for ire.
"Het schuim der aarde, dat Amerikaanse volk"
Never-the-less, reasonable discussion would consider that calling the American people the syphilitic inbred outcasts of Europe and damning us all as criminal vulgarians sans pareil et sans exception is a bit much.
There are reasons I have not visited the Netherlands in several years.
One of them is the inevitability of encountering an opinionated and poorly educated example of Dutchness with an unvarnished and unwarranted opinion concerning matters about which he knows utterly nothing.
Such as the United States.
Not all of them are like that. The overwhelming majority aren't.
But one out of ten or twenty is een door en door verrot eigenwijs stuk poldervuil wiens grote bek vrijwel alles binnen zijn sociale kring verpest and verdoemd. Iemand waar werkelijk niets mee to discussiëren valt.
Of het is een rechtse etter (PVV), of een linkse vod (SP).
Een typisch Nederlandsche kankeraar.
Grof schorem.
It's not the majority that makes one avoid certain groups.
But the unpleasant exceptions can ruin the entire day.
As well as affect one's opinion of their caste & kin.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
On the far-right websites, and on social media, all the praedictable bile is being vented in tank loads, while over in the Netherlands the usual chorus of hatefilled ignorant anti-American pig-arses is sneering, yelling, and calling people names.
Yes, there is good reason for ire.
"Het schuim der aarde, dat Amerikaanse volk"
Never-the-less, reasonable discussion would consider that calling the American people the syphilitic inbred outcasts of Europe and damning us all as criminal vulgarians sans pareil et sans exception is a bit much.
There are reasons I have not visited the Netherlands in several years.
One of them is the inevitability of encountering an opinionated and poorly educated example of Dutchness with an unvarnished and unwarranted opinion concerning matters about which he knows utterly nothing.
Such as the United States.
Not all of them are like that. The overwhelming majority aren't.
But one out of ten or twenty is een door en door verrot eigenwijs stuk poldervuil wiens grote bek vrijwel alles binnen zijn sociale kring verpest and verdoemd. Iemand waar werkelijk niets mee to discussiëren valt.
Of het is een rechtse etter (PVV), of een linkse vod (SP).
Een typisch Nederlandsche kankeraar.
Grof schorem.
It's not the majority that makes one avoid certain groups.
But the unpleasant exceptions can ruin the entire day.
As well as affect one's opinion of their caste & kin.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
I EAT TOO MUCH
The other day my former girl-friend took me out to dinner to celebrate my birthday. Even after we separated a few years ago, we still do that; have a birthday meal together. It highlights that there is no rancor, though that is not the reason to do it. She's always felt neglected around her birthday, being several years younger than her siblings and having been born so close to Christmas -- and as a girl she just didn't rank very high in the family hierarchy -- and I tend to avoid festive fuss and bother in October, because I still remember the meanness of classmates that the increased attention of that day brought forth.
Besides, the older I get, the less interesting a birthday seems.
One year older, what on earth is the big deal?
Not antique, but getting closer.
Did a joint just creak?
But she likes taking me out for dinner when that time rolls around, and I enjoy eating with her. We have similar tastes, and a similar curiosity about stuff to put in our mouths.
[Steamed pork patty with preserved egg (鹹蛋猪肉餅 haahm daan chu yiuk beng), oyster sauce Chinese broccoli (蠔油蘭遠 ho-yau lan yuen), and Chef's Special Chicken (can't remember what the characters were, it was a spur of the moment inclusion). Plus rice. And watercress soup (西洋菜湯 sai yeung choi tong). And lots of tea. There are several relevant posts: Cantonese Home Cooking, what Hyde Street is like, and sik baau lah.]
The place we went to is owned by someone I knew from many years ago. She and her husband opened the restaurant back in the early nineties. I did not have a beard back then, and I look somewhat more mature. As this was the first time she's seen me in over two decades, she didn't recognize me. She's also changed a bit. She's softer and mellowed, and there's a hint of tiredness in her face. And, of course, she no longer looks like the wiry young woman she was back then.
My ex, however, looks late twenties at most. The restaurant owner had an expression on her face that plainly said: "wow, crusty old fart with a sweet young thing, how delicious!" Her face also said "good for you, old man!"
The restaurant owner and my ex are only four or five years apart.
But Savage Kitten still possesses that girlish quality.
I must seem a pervert walking next to her.
The despoiler of innocents.
How very awful!
Heh. Heh. Heh.
Three dishes plus soup is really far too much for two people, particularly when neither of them eat immodestly. Savage Kitten is only one hundred pounds, more or less, and in the months after our break-up I lost a lot of weight. My stomach has shrunk by several belt notches. Both of us are more casual about meals than we once were.
We were stuffed when we left. The food was simple Cantonese fare, and very good.
We both ate much more than we should have.
Waddle waddle waddle waddle waddle.
I had no room for cake afterwards.
I feel younger than I should.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Besides, the older I get, the less interesting a birthday seems.
One year older, what on earth is the big deal?
Not antique, but getting closer.
Did a joint just creak?
But she likes taking me out for dinner when that time rolls around, and I enjoy eating with her. We have similar tastes, and a similar curiosity about stuff to put in our mouths.
[Steamed pork patty with preserved egg (鹹蛋猪肉餅 haahm daan chu yiuk beng), oyster sauce Chinese broccoli (蠔油蘭遠 ho-yau lan yuen), and Chef's Special Chicken (can't remember what the characters were, it was a spur of the moment inclusion). Plus rice. And watercress soup (西洋菜湯 sai yeung choi tong). And lots of tea. There are several relevant posts: Cantonese Home Cooking, what Hyde Street is like, and sik baau lah.]
The place we went to is owned by someone I knew from many years ago. She and her husband opened the restaurant back in the early nineties. I did not have a beard back then, and I look somewhat more mature. As this was the first time she's seen me in over two decades, she didn't recognize me. She's also changed a bit. She's softer and mellowed, and there's a hint of tiredness in her face. And, of course, she no longer looks like the wiry young woman she was back then.
My ex, however, looks late twenties at most. The restaurant owner had an expression on her face that plainly said: "wow, crusty old fart with a sweet young thing, how delicious!" Her face also said "good for you, old man!"
The restaurant owner and my ex are only four or five years apart.
But Savage Kitten still possesses that girlish quality.
I must seem a pervert walking next to her.
The despoiler of innocents.
How very awful!
Heh. Heh. Heh.
Three dishes plus soup is really far too much for two people, particularly when neither of them eat immodestly. Savage Kitten is only one hundred pounds, more or less, and in the months after our break-up I lost a lot of weight. My stomach has shrunk by several belt notches. Both of us are more casual about meals than we once were.
We were stuffed when we left. The food was simple Cantonese fare, and very good.
We both ate much more than we should have.
Waddle waddle waddle waddle waddle.
I had no room for cake afterwards.
I feel younger than I should.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
MONKEYS CURE GOUT
Alas, my readers may have screws loose. My new and recent readers, that is. My regular readers need not worry, as most of the people who discover this site seldom stay very long, and will never even associate with anyone.
Once they've found what they were looking for (which they won't, because it isn't here), they disappear with nary a comment. Were it not for the blog stats betraying them, I wouldn't even know they existed.
And neither will you, given their narrow focus.
They have a bee in their bonnets.
As their searches show.
Today's top searches indicate that the average random visitor here is a sensitive degenerate who is keenly interested in food. More interested in food than his or her chosen perversion, and possibly middle-aged.
Or even elderly. An antique. Mid-fifties, at least.
This blog is all about youthful vibrancy.
No wonder they find nothing.
Their searches:
"Sex on the back of a horse"
Comment: This isn't something that has ever been discussed here, but if you send me pictures and diagrams, I might be able to cobble an essay together. Not that it's one of my fancies, but I'm sure some of my readers will evince aghast fascination. We are an inquisitive and scientific-minded lot, and the mechanics of the matter may prove interesting. Leverage, balance, and the effects of motion, gravity, and a startled animal.
Have you considered station wagons instead?
Horses are SO last century!
"Buses to flower market Mongkok"
Comment: Horses seldom eat flowers.
"Preserve pumpkins with limes and vinegar"
Comment: Why?
"Monkey poorly fitting"
Comment: What?!?
"Mui choy kau yuk recipe"
Comment: Delicious, but likely to give you gout.
"Night sweats with gout"
Comment: Oh I see, you've already discovered that.
"Pumpkin preserve vinegar"
Comment: Again, why?
"Roasted duck in Bowrington Road"
Comment: That may also give you gout, but it's delicious.
"Peking urinary"
Comment: Your gout must be horrible!
"Dim sum dishes Chinese names"
Comment: Did I already mention gout?
"Pipe smoking fetish"
Comment: Along with the monkey and the horse?
"Cantonese women"
Comment: Not likely to give you gout. I'm still not sure about your peculiar fascination with pumpkins, but I'm starting to understand why you need flowers, mui choi kau yuk, roast duck, and dim sum. Stick with the food, and she may think you're a rather interesting fellow.
Despite your perfectly beastly peculiarity.
Do NOT mention the horse!
This blogger has no peculiarities. Reference to any of the above on this blog was merely in passing, as I am a normal person.
I never think of sex or food, and only rarely consider Bowrington Road or pumpkins. I do ponder monkeys, however.
* * * * *
Just for the hell of it, I typed "do pumpkins cause gout" into my browser. Spirit of scientific inquiry and all that.
Apparently they don't, being actually sort of beneficial.
They cause monkeys.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Once they've found what they were looking for (which they won't, because it isn't here), they disappear with nary a comment. Were it not for the blog stats betraying them, I wouldn't even know they existed.
And neither will you, given their narrow focus.
They have a bee in their bonnets.
As their searches show.
Today's top searches indicate that the average random visitor here is a sensitive degenerate who is keenly interested in food. More interested in food than his or her chosen perversion, and possibly middle-aged.
Or even elderly. An antique. Mid-fifties, at least.
This blog is all about youthful vibrancy.
No wonder they find nothing.
Their searches:
"Sex on the back of a horse"
Comment: This isn't something that has ever been discussed here, but if you send me pictures and diagrams, I might be able to cobble an essay together. Not that it's one of my fancies, but I'm sure some of my readers will evince aghast fascination. We are an inquisitive and scientific-minded lot, and the mechanics of the matter may prove interesting. Leverage, balance, and the effects of motion, gravity, and a startled animal.
Have you considered station wagons instead?
Horses are SO last century!
"Buses to flower market Mongkok"
Comment: Horses seldom eat flowers.
"Preserve pumpkins with limes and vinegar"
Comment: Why?
"Monkey poorly fitting"
Comment: What?!?
"Mui choy kau yuk recipe"
Comment: Delicious, but likely to give you gout.
"Night sweats with gout"
Comment: Oh I see, you've already discovered that.
"Pumpkin preserve vinegar"
Comment: Again, why?
"Roasted duck in Bowrington Road"
Comment: That may also give you gout, but it's delicious.
"Peking urinary"
Comment: Your gout must be horrible!
"Dim sum dishes Chinese names"
Comment: Did I already mention gout?
"Pipe smoking fetish"
Comment: Along with the monkey and the horse?
"Cantonese women"
Comment: Not likely to give you gout. I'm still not sure about your peculiar fascination with pumpkins, but I'm starting to understand why you need flowers, mui choi kau yuk, roast duck, and dim sum. Stick with the food, and she may think you're a rather interesting fellow.
Despite your perfectly beastly peculiarity.
Do NOT mention the horse!
This blogger has no peculiarities. Reference to any of the above on this blog was merely in passing, as I am a normal person.
I never think of sex or food, and only rarely consider Bowrington Road or pumpkins. I do ponder monkeys, however.
* * * * *
Just for the hell of it, I typed "do pumpkins cause gout" into my browser. Spirit of scientific inquiry and all that.
Apparently they don't, being actually sort of beneficial.
They cause monkeys.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
SHOCKINGLY PINK
A friend who signs himself "Hero Kitty" forwarded a video clip which is somewhat disturbing. And honestly, I do not know what to make of it.
Given that it combines elements which sanity normally separates.
Several elements.
My mother, as you perhaps know, served during both WWII and the Korean War. One photo in my bookshelf shows her as a young woman in her uniform. Small, trim, and intelligently resolute. Not fierce, but extremely composed. Despite barely being in her early twenties, she was already mature and aware of the complexity of a world which had gone entirely off the deep end.
She was, if you will, a perfect representative of her social class, that being the families whose men served as United States military officers in the old army. Getting women involved in war was a new concept at the time, nevertheless a huge number joined up. Many of her friends and colleagues in the Waves initially came from similar backgrounds.
It's a black and white photo. The uniform is a dark colour.
It was, I happen to know, a severe Navy blue.
That service was a significant influence. It played in the background throughout the rest of her life.
One suspects that a similar military experience will be a dominant factor in the lives of the young ladies in the video below.
One might quail at the prospect.
DANGEROUS WOMEN
[Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO1DxO9BhSw.]
If I had to guess, I would venture that their uniforms were designed by a man. Very likely one with a foetid Hello Kitty fetish. However, they seem quite ferocious despite their zesty pink and white stewardess get-ups, and perhaps they slaughtered the cretin who stuck them in martial nursey-wursey rags on the gun range one day, when testing out the cute little heavy duty machine guns.
One can only hope.
The scenes above look like something out of a fevered teenage manga fan boy's unclean fantasies. Those pink skirts are just a wee bit too short for gravitas. Following that up with kicky Prussian go-go boots was a capstone of insanity that drives it over the edge into howling dementia.
It's epic. It's foaming. It's terrifying.
Hello Kitty Stewardess uniforms.
With snappy belts and holsters.
And totally darling white caps.
You will hear their tromp tromp tromp in your dreams.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Given that it combines elements which sanity normally separates.
Several elements.
My mother, as you perhaps know, served during both WWII and the Korean War. One photo in my bookshelf shows her as a young woman in her uniform. Small, trim, and intelligently resolute. Not fierce, but extremely composed. Despite barely being in her early twenties, she was already mature and aware of the complexity of a world which had gone entirely off the deep end.
She was, if you will, a perfect representative of her social class, that being the families whose men served as United States military officers in the old army. Getting women involved in war was a new concept at the time, nevertheless a huge number joined up. Many of her friends and colleagues in the Waves initially came from similar backgrounds.
It's a black and white photo. The uniform is a dark colour.
It was, I happen to know, a severe Navy blue.
That service was a significant influence. It played in the background throughout the rest of her life.
One suspects that a similar military experience will be a dominant factor in the lives of the young ladies in the video below.
One might quail at the prospect.
DANGEROUS WOMEN
[Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO1DxO9BhSw.]
If I had to guess, I would venture that their uniforms were designed by a man. Very likely one with a foetid Hello Kitty fetish. However, they seem quite ferocious despite their zesty pink and white stewardess get-ups, and perhaps they slaughtered the cretin who stuck them in martial nursey-wursey rags on the gun range one day, when testing out the cute little heavy duty machine guns.
One can only hope.
The scenes above look like something out of a fevered teenage manga fan boy's unclean fantasies. Those pink skirts are just a wee bit too short for gravitas. Following that up with kicky Prussian go-go boots was a capstone of insanity that drives it over the edge into howling dementia.
It's epic. It's foaming. It's terrifying.
Hello Kitty Stewardess uniforms.
With snappy belts and holsters.
And totally darling white caps.
You will hear their tromp tromp tromp in your dreams.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, October 14, 2013
AUTUMN FRAGRANCE
For the past few weeks, summery September has faded into a brisk and brittle October, and lately it is chilly from dusk till dawn in the city. No, there will not be many crunchy leaves underfoot; this is the Bay Area, we do not have the classic four seasons, and we are far from a forest in any case.
The ginkgo trees will turn yellow in a few weeks, though, gilding those streets lucky enough to have them -- down near Battery on Sacramento, or up between Leavenworth and Jones on Clay, as well as in front of the projects in Chinatown on Pacific. There may still be quite a few warm days, but they will be punctuated by sweater weather, till at last the rain comes.
Whereupon people will say stupid things.
"I don't mind; we really need the rain"
"It's not the cold, it's the humidity"
As well as:
"Why does everyone smell like wet dog?"
Truth be told, San Franciscans always bellyache about the weather.
Just shut up and be glad we have some.
This isn't New York.
From late summer all the way to early winter is the perfect time to enjoy certain Virginia compounds from our friend the Lat Bomber.
Otherwise known as Greg Pease.
And, unresisting, I have fallen into open tins of two of his blends.
There is immense pleasure among the leaves.
Life is very good.
TELEGRAPH HILL
Virginia and Perique
Spicy, bold even, but not a tobacco that will bash you around on the school yard. It's a mostly flue-cured ribbony mixture that makes itself known without bullying, and might in some ways remind you of Dunbar by Esoterica. There is Perique in here, behaving gracefully rather than thug-like as it so often does. From personal experience I know that several bowls of this can be smoked in quick succession while high as a kite on caffeine, and amidst a social crowd of cigar smokers. We dare not get up and go to the bathroom, because there are vulgarians behind us who will steal our seats. So we light another bowl, and wait for them to eventually leave.
Oh Thomas, one more whisky please! Thank you.
Grassy in the tin -- that's the lighter Virginias -- but I suspect that there is also more than a touch of fire-cured leaf. It hints of toast.
UNION SQUARE
Virginia Flake
Oh yes! This is a classic. The grassy notes shade into a tangy fruitiness, and if this were aged a couple of years you would never share it with anyone, but hide in your basement far away from other pipe smokers.
Go away, I am not home! You don't hear me! I am invisible!
But there is no need to wait. It smokes fine without prolonged maturity, providing a rich soothing medium flake experience, brights and browns with a touch of red. Mid-afternoons wandering around Chinatown are made lovely by this, the time spent lost in thought near the back-end of the Four Seas on Waverly was remarkably productive in consequence. This tobacco is perfect and sweet and enchanting and just dreamy after a charsiu turnover and a hot cup of Hong Kong milk-tea at Hang Fook.
I wonder if that rowdy teenage girl is a delinquent.
Or just likes hanging out with the boys.
She's got a laughing eye.
秋香
It's been a good weekend. I restored several Dunhills and Charatans, plus a Barling Ye Olde Wood Canadian and a Becker & Musico black sandblast military mount. Dinner on Saturday was chicken and vegetable over rice (菜遠雞球飯 'choi yuen gai kau fan') and a tall glass Vietnamese ice-coffee (凍咖啡 'tong ka fe'), on Sunday night I had a petite baguette with Italian meats and peperoncinis, and a latte.
BTW, the title of this post rendered into Chinese to caption the afterthought, is also the name of the bright young missy (秋香 'chau heung') courted by China's most famous middle-aged perv: 唐伯虎 ('tong paak fu' - old uncle Tang). There's a sprightly and entertaining comic opera about that. This is neither here nor there, being absolutely irrelevant to the subject at hand.
Just a happy coincidence.
A fortuity, if you will.
Despite what you may have heard, I am not a middle-aged pervert.
I am, in fact, still quite young.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
The ginkgo trees will turn yellow in a few weeks, though, gilding those streets lucky enough to have them -- down near Battery on Sacramento, or up between Leavenworth and Jones on Clay, as well as in front of the projects in Chinatown on Pacific. There may still be quite a few warm days, but they will be punctuated by sweater weather, till at last the rain comes.
Whereupon people will say stupid things.
"I don't mind; we really need the rain"
"It's not the cold, it's the humidity"
As well as:
"Why does everyone smell like wet dog?"
Truth be told, San Franciscans always bellyache about the weather.
Just shut up and be glad we have some.
This isn't New York.
From late summer all the way to early winter is the perfect time to enjoy certain Virginia compounds from our friend the Lat Bomber.
Otherwise known as Greg Pease.
And, unresisting, I have fallen into open tins of two of his blends.
There is immense pleasure among the leaves.
Life is very good.
TELEGRAPH HILL
Virginia and Perique
Spicy, bold even, but not a tobacco that will bash you around on the school yard. It's a mostly flue-cured ribbony mixture that makes itself known without bullying, and might in some ways remind you of Dunbar by Esoterica. There is Perique in here, behaving gracefully rather than thug-like as it so often does. From personal experience I know that several bowls of this can be smoked in quick succession while high as a kite on caffeine, and amidst a social crowd of cigar smokers. We dare not get up and go to the bathroom, because there are vulgarians behind us who will steal our seats. So we light another bowl, and wait for them to eventually leave.
Oh Thomas, one more whisky please! Thank you.
Grassy in the tin -- that's the lighter Virginias -- but I suspect that there is also more than a touch of fire-cured leaf. It hints of toast.
UNION SQUARE
Virginia Flake
Oh yes! This is a classic. The grassy notes shade into a tangy fruitiness, and if this were aged a couple of years you would never share it with anyone, but hide in your basement far away from other pipe smokers.
Go away, I am not home! You don't hear me! I am invisible!
But there is no need to wait. It smokes fine without prolonged maturity, providing a rich soothing medium flake experience, brights and browns with a touch of red. Mid-afternoons wandering around Chinatown are made lovely by this, the time spent lost in thought near the back-end of the Four Seas on Waverly was remarkably productive in consequence. This tobacco is perfect and sweet and enchanting and just dreamy after a charsiu turnover and a hot cup of Hong Kong milk-tea at Hang Fook.
I wonder if that rowdy teenage girl is a delinquent.
Or just likes hanging out with the boys.
She's got a laughing eye.
秋香
It's been a good weekend. I restored several Dunhills and Charatans, plus a Barling Ye Olde Wood Canadian and a Becker & Musico black sandblast military mount. Dinner on Saturday was chicken and vegetable over rice (菜遠雞球飯 'choi yuen gai kau fan') and a tall glass Vietnamese ice-coffee (凍咖啡 'tong ka fe'), on Sunday night I had a petite baguette with Italian meats and peperoncinis, and a latte.
BTW, the title of this post rendered into Chinese to caption the afterthought, is also the name of the bright young missy (秋香 'chau heung') courted by China's most famous middle-aged perv: 唐伯虎 ('tong paak fu' - old uncle Tang). There's a sprightly and entertaining comic opera about that. This is neither here nor there, being absolutely irrelevant to the subject at hand.
Just a happy coincidence.
A fortuity, if you will.
Despite what you may have heard, I am not a middle-aged pervert.
I am, in fact, still quite young.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Sunday, October 13, 2013
LITTLE FRIES, LITTLE FRIES
There are no Dutch restaurants in the Bay Area. This might be a good thing. While the Dutch have hearty appetites and eat well, their cuisine is idiosyncratic, and might not appeal to many people. Eccentricity on a plate is not commonly accepted; we Americans tend towards plain predictability and the commonplace.
Which can be seen in our Chinese, Japanese, and Thai Restaurants.
To say nothing of the faux inventivity of nouvelle cuisine.
Repetitious, stodgy, but with clean tablecloths.
You get what you ALWAYS order.
Okay, maybe they do that in Holland too. But they're likely to order some plenty strange stuff.
Two examples.
FRIETJE KAPSALON
The literal translation is 'hair parlour fries'. So named, because it was ordered regularly by the patron of a Rotterdam fast-food joint who ran a fancy barber shop.
On the bottom are the fries.
The second layer is grilled meat.
The next layer is a lettuce salad.
The fourth layer is melted cheese.
Add a hefty sploodge of what the Dutch call 'knooflook saus' (garlic mayonnaise), plus some hot sauce, and your meal is done.
Yes, your life is not complete without it.
The grilled meat is shoarma, that most commonly being vertically roasted spiced pork -- pork is the preferred substitute for lamb or goat in the Netherlands -- shaved off in thin strips when just done. It's like many Turkish and Middle-Eastern preparations, but in its Ollando-Levantine incarnation extremely popular for late night crime.
The melted cheese is Gouda.
FRIETJE ZUURVLEES
French fries.
Stewed horse meat.
Brown gravy.
The horse meat is first marinated in vinegar, with cloves, other spices, and sugar (in the south they use 'stroop', that being either apple or beet molasses). It is cut into small cubes, browned, and then stewed for two hours. The gravy is finished by the addition of 'peperkoek', that being a sweet spiced (rye) bread that thickens the sauce. Many people also added peperkoek to the marinade. Horse meat is traditional, and as "paarde-vlees" is rather lean, it benefits from this treatment.
In the case of the frietje kapsalon, the fastidious diner might prefer the components arranged separately on a plate, but salads in a friet kot (fry hutch) or shoarma tent (Mediterranean grill room) are not always interestingly composed or crisp. Plus given that the entire dish is a spur of the moment mistake, eaten either when the weather is freezing or the diner drunk, you can see that it makes sense to just jumble it all together exactly like chili cheese fries and hope for the best.
The frietje zuurvlees is more common in the south-eastern regions of the country, especially close to Belgium. Where the late night crowd also indulges in friet met zult.
And the less said about zult, the better.
[Vreet nooit zult; geen mens weet wat er in zit.]
Dutch food can actually be quite good, of course. The scary things mentioned above are strictly fast-food, and very much like what the rest of the first world often eats but rarely boasts about.
In Sweden they mix pickles (or Bostongurka), mashed potato, bland hot sauce, mayonnaise and boiled sausage, and roll it in a pita bread, in England thick-sliced Spam is often battered, fried, and served cold, and in Canada the national truck-stop dish is poutine -- fries, brown gravy, fresh cheese curd -- which is rather nice.
Of course it was freezing all the times that I was in Canada.
That may have had a lot to do with it.
It's fall weather in San Francisco now. The nights are cold, and in some parts of the city a bitter wind drives people indoors. We need warmth.
Now would be perfect for some deepfried mystery.
NOTES
Frietje: little fry. The 'tje' (chuh) ending is a diminutive, used affectionately.
Mayo is essential; life in Northern Europe without it is utterly grim.
Bostongurka: Finhackad gurka med paprika och kryddor.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Which can be seen in our Chinese, Japanese, and Thai Restaurants.
To say nothing of the faux inventivity of nouvelle cuisine.
Repetitious, stodgy, but with clean tablecloths.
You get what you ALWAYS order.
Okay, maybe they do that in Holland too. But they're likely to order some plenty strange stuff.
Two examples.
FRIETJE KAPSALON
The literal translation is 'hair parlour fries'. So named, because it was ordered regularly by the patron of a Rotterdam fast-food joint who ran a fancy barber shop.
On the bottom are the fries.
The second layer is grilled meat.
The next layer is a lettuce salad.
The fourth layer is melted cheese.
Add a hefty sploodge of what the Dutch call 'knooflook saus' (garlic mayonnaise), plus some hot sauce, and your meal is done.
Yes, your life is not complete without it.
The grilled meat is shoarma, that most commonly being vertically roasted spiced pork -- pork is the preferred substitute for lamb or goat in the Netherlands -- shaved off in thin strips when just done. It's like many Turkish and Middle-Eastern preparations, but in its Ollando-Levantine incarnation extremely popular for late night crime.
The melted cheese is Gouda.
FRIETJE ZUURVLEES
French fries.
Stewed horse meat.
Brown gravy.
The horse meat is first marinated in vinegar, with cloves, other spices, and sugar (in the south they use 'stroop', that being either apple or beet molasses). It is cut into small cubes, browned, and then stewed for two hours. The gravy is finished by the addition of 'peperkoek', that being a sweet spiced (rye) bread that thickens the sauce. Many people also added peperkoek to the marinade. Horse meat is traditional, and as "paarde-vlees" is rather lean, it benefits from this treatment.
In the case of the frietje kapsalon, the fastidious diner might prefer the components arranged separately on a plate, but salads in a friet kot (fry hutch) or shoarma tent (Mediterranean grill room) are not always interestingly composed or crisp. Plus given that the entire dish is a spur of the moment mistake, eaten either when the weather is freezing or the diner drunk, you can see that it makes sense to just jumble it all together exactly like chili cheese fries and hope for the best.
The frietje zuurvlees is more common in the south-eastern regions of the country, especially close to Belgium. Where the late night crowd also indulges in friet met zult.
And the less said about zult, the better.
[Vreet nooit zult; geen mens weet wat er in zit.]
Dutch food can actually be quite good, of course. The scary things mentioned above are strictly fast-food, and very much like what the rest of the first world often eats but rarely boasts about.
In Sweden they mix pickles (or Bostongurka), mashed potato, bland hot sauce, mayonnaise and boiled sausage, and roll it in a pita bread, in England thick-sliced Spam is often battered, fried, and served cold, and in Canada the national truck-stop dish is poutine -- fries, brown gravy, fresh cheese curd -- which is rather nice.
Of course it was freezing all the times that I was in Canada.
That may have had a lot to do with it.
It's fall weather in San Francisco now. The nights are cold, and in some parts of the city a bitter wind drives people indoors. We need warmth.
Now would be perfect for some deepfried mystery.
NOTES
Frietje: little fry. The 'tje' (chuh) ending is a diminutive, used affectionately.
Mayo is essential; life in Northern Europe without it is utterly grim.
Bostongurka: Finhackad gurka med paprika och kryddor.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
MIDNIGHT SNACK
I missed the last bus, so I took a zig-zaggy way home. The direct route would have had me huffing up a steep slope, and there was plenty of time. So instead of heading directly up Sacramento or California Street, I wandered from Kearney Street to Grant Avenue, cut up to Waverly at Clay, then traversed Portola ("Old Chinatown Lane") from Washington to Jackson, crossed Stockton, and turned right into Trenton Street.
Right outside the eastern side of the Ping Yuen West housing project, there were two orbs at waist level.
[Sacramento Street: 唐人街 (or 沙加緬度街 past 美臣街). California Street: 加利福尼亞街. Kearney Street: 乾尼街. Grant Avenue: 都板街. Waverly: 天后廟街. Clay Street: 企李街. Portola Alley: 舊華埠巷. Washington Street: 華盛頓街. Jackson Street: 積臣街. Stockton Street: 市德頓街, Trenton Street: 登頓街. Ping Yuen West: 西平原.]
Two glowing orbs.
Curious.
浣熊!
I looked at the raccoon. The raccoon looked at me. I stepped back a few paces, and filled a pipe. The raccoon observed. I lit the pipe. The raccoon was alarmed at the flare, then calmed down when the flame died. Just in case the animal was still disconcerted, I took another step backward. The raccoon cautiously resumed wrestling with the lid of the refuse disposal unit, occasionally glancing over in my direction.
Don't worry, small furry person, I have a pipe! You can enjoy all of that yourself, there is no need to share. Honestly.
My oral fixation is satisfied.
Eat!
I have no idea what the creature found in there. But whatever it was, it smelled fecund. Rich, robust, and fruity. Rather like a good Virginia flake tobacco. Perhaps I should offer to share my smoke?
Fish heads; that accounts for the aroma of Perique.
There should be a late-night eatery in Chinatown, run by a Cantonese relative of Gandalf, so that a middle-aged Dutch American and a young raccoon might have a bite together.
Something with noodles.
See, you hold the chopsticks like so; use your first digit for leverage, because you do not actually have opposable thumbs, what with being a raccoon and all. That's just the way it is. Then angle your second and third digits against the pieces of bamboo, and with deft pinching motions you can lift the morsels to your mouth.
Have you ever had charsiu? I really think you'll like it.
Be cautious with the Sriracha hotsauce.
Unless you've had it before.
It's... peppy.
The raccoon would likely need at least three(!) telephone books on the seat to reach up to the table. But it would probably love the lights, and shiny surfaces. Along with the quietness, and the fact that Gandalf understands the existential hunger furry creatures feel.
As well as their liking for noodles.
After our snack, we'll share some tobacco.
The raccoon finished rooting around, came down from the garbage can and stared up at me for a few seconds, then turned around and slipped through the fencing into the courtyard of Ping Yuen.
I tapped out my pipe, and continued up Pacific.
Not now, but one of these days.
Noodles.
*浣熊 (woon hong): the wash bear.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Right outside the eastern side of the Ping Yuen West housing project, there were two orbs at waist level.
[Sacramento Street: 唐人街 (or 沙加緬度街 past 美臣街). California Street: 加利福尼亞街. Kearney Street: 乾尼街. Grant Avenue: 都板街. Waverly: 天后廟街. Clay Street: 企李街. Portola Alley: 舊華埠巷. Washington Street: 華盛頓街. Jackson Street: 積臣街. Stockton Street: 市德頓街, Trenton Street: 登頓街. Ping Yuen West: 西平原.]
Two glowing orbs.
Curious.
浣熊!
I looked at the raccoon. The raccoon looked at me. I stepped back a few paces, and filled a pipe. The raccoon observed. I lit the pipe. The raccoon was alarmed at the flare, then calmed down when the flame died. Just in case the animal was still disconcerted, I took another step backward. The raccoon cautiously resumed wrestling with the lid of the refuse disposal unit, occasionally glancing over in my direction.
Don't worry, small furry person, I have a pipe! You can enjoy all of that yourself, there is no need to share. Honestly.
My oral fixation is satisfied.
Eat!
I have no idea what the creature found in there. But whatever it was, it smelled fecund. Rich, robust, and fruity. Rather like a good Virginia flake tobacco. Perhaps I should offer to share my smoke?
Fish heads; that accounts for the aroma of Perique.
There should be a late-night eatery in Chinatown, run by a Cantonese relative of Gandalf, so that a middle-aged Dutch American and a young raccoon might have a bite together.
Something with noodles.
See, you hold the chopsticks like so; use your first digit for leverage, because you do not actually have opposable thumbs, what with being a raccoon and all. That's just the way it is. Then angle your second and third digits against the pieces of bamboo, and with deft pinching motions you can lift the morsels to your mouth.
Have you ever had charsiu? I really think you'll like it.
Be cautious with the Sriracha hotsauce.
Unless you've had it before.
It's... peppy.
The raccoon would likely need at least three(!) telephone books on the seat to reach up to the table. But it would probably love the lights, and shiny surfaces. Along with the quietness, and the fact that Gandalf understands the existential hunger furry creatures feel.
As well as their liking for noodles.
After our snack, we'll share some tobacco.
The raccoon finished rooting around, came down from the garbage can and stared up at me for a few seconds, then turned around and slipped through the fencing into the courtyard of Ping Yuen.
I tapped out my pipe, and continued up Pacific.
Not now, but one of these days.
Noodles.
*浣熊 (woon hong): the wash bear.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, October 12, 2013
POTTED PLANTS
Two minor occurrences recently indicate that there is overmuch wrong with the world. Or at least, the world within San Francisco Chinatown.
Both involve plants in pots.
新呂宋巷嘅件事
The first one is the surreptitious removal of two large concrete planters installed in Spofford Alley as part of a civic beautification programme a few years ago. Possibly put there an attempt to make a narrow stretch with lively mahjong cockpits and small businesses on both sides more inviting. Seeing as surely both tourists and residents would be intimidated by a noisy tunnel with rackety social clubs, a hair salon, and a flower shop. And there are indeed residents there, lots of them. Installing planters might bring the shy creatures out into the open.
The planters are no longer there. Some one probably decided that they needed to park a car occasionally. Or that there needed to be space for parking, so that one could pass non-moving vehicles. Which the presence of the planters prevented.
No, I don't think that the city dis-installed them.
Instead, I have this vision of a somewhat timid looking gentleman from Hong Kong armed with dynamite and a jackhammer quietly destroying both concrete items in the middle of the night, while no one noticed.
Dammit, there's NO space to make deliveries in this alley.
Rank rebellion against the civic beautifiers.
An insubordinate citizen.
Miscreance.
It was actually high time someone did so, as almost all the planters in that alleyway are disused, abandoned, void of any trees that may have originally been in them. They function as spittoons, garbage bins, pissoirs for white people, and irritating obstructions. As urban improvement projects went, they were a pointless failure.
Installed during a fit of patronizing benevolence.
I doubt that residents were consulted.
Here are your planters!
We know best!
Quiet!
Civic "improvement" that serves to make a neighborhood cutesypoo and cuddly despite the rowdy local residents, is both irritating and hypocritical.
A couple of dying trees and several other concrete obstructions do not improve the life of anyone except those who know better, and are relatively cheap window dressing besides. If you really want to benefit the neighborhood, how about spending some real money? Given the enrichment brought by tourists, who rupture their wallets while gawking at all the fascinating Chinese people, there should be plenty of funds available. Perhaps computer learning centres? Benches for the old folks to sit and enjoy the autumn sun? More police foot patrols?
I don't know. Dumping ugly concrete planters that no one likes or wants in a narrow alley seems rather haphazard, stifling, and cluttersome.
Nicely repaving that alley could be a far better idea.
The residents need more jackhammers.
Kindly see to it.
花園街嘅件事
The other 'plant in pot' related offense is that someone complained about a local business putting out two tables, three chairs, and several potted plants every day, in order to make the sidewalk in front of their café more inviting. The potted plants that were clustered around the two trees in front, as well as the warmth of a little oasis where one could enjoy a beverage while watching the world go by, added considerable charm to an alleyway which normally attracts people with the shakes. Someone, probably a jealous nearby merchant, set up a squawk, and the city sprung into action. The health department ferociously shook their finger at the offending business owner, and several agencies came down on his enterprise like a ton of bricks.
Drinking coffee in the open air is not a health problem.
There was no litter, and no garbage issue.
It was clean and inviting.
The city still hasn't done anything about the smelly dumpsters of a nearby emporium. Or the potholes and refuse in the street. Or the crazies that lurk all round that area, and make it both rank and skeevy at night. Two clean tables, three non-rickety chairs, and some nice greenery, however, are an opportunity for bureaucrats to show that they care, and are avidly concerned. The garbage cans at both ends of that alleyway are eternally overflowing, and together with the streetpeople attract vermin. Did I mention the potholes? If you look straight down, you might see Australia. Provided you don't fall in, of course. I'm fairly certain we've lost several adorable little black-haired moppets already. You probably don't care, because doing something about that might actually require effort.
The form for reporting "child down pothole" probably hasn't been translated into Chinese either, and a small missing relative is not a health code violation.
Two tables. Three chairs. Several lovely potted plants.
All taken in in the evening, and taken care of.
Warmth which was not there before.
Yeah, that's a problem.
* * * * * *
Well, at least I don't smell medicinal pot all over the place. Which is quite a bit different from other areas in the downtown. And there are fewer, far fewer, aggressive panhandlers and uncontrollable crazies in Chinatown than on Market Street and in Union Square. It's a cleaner and more inviting place than San Francisco Civic Center.
Public drunkenness in the neighborhood is almost unknown, except for young white people passing through late at night and overturning garbage cans or in an excess of high spirits shouting and banging the metal shutters of shops along Grant Avenue.
Other than the rude out-of-towners, folks are fairly pleasant.
The food and the atmosphere are pretty good.
And it's family friendly.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Both involve plants in pots.
新呂宋巷嘅件事
The first one is the surreptitious removal of two large concrete planters installed in Spofford Alley as part of a civic beautification programme a few years ago. Possibly put there an attempt to make a narrow stretch with lively mahjong cockpits and small businesses on both sides more inviting. Seeing as surely both tourists and residents would be intimidated by a noisy tunnel with rackety social clubs, a hair salon, and a flower shop. And there are indeed residents there, lots of them. Installing planters might bring the shy creatures out into the open.
The planters are no longer there. Some one probably decided that they needed to park a car occasionally. Or that there needed to be space for parking, so that one could pass non-moving vehicles. Which the presence of the planters prevented.
No, I don't think that the city dis-installed them.
Instead, I have this vision of a somewhat timid looking gentleman from Hong Kong armed with dynamite and a jackhammer quietly destroying both concrete items in the middle of the night, while no one noticed.
Dammit, there's NO space to make deliveries in this alley.
Rank rebellion against the civic beautifiers.
An insubordinate citizen.
Miscreance.
It was actually high time someone did so, as almost all the planters in that alleyway are disused, abandoned, void of any trees that may have originally been in them. They function as spittoons, garbage bins, pissoirs for white people, and irritating obstructions. As urban improvement projects went, they were a pointless failure.
Installed during a fit of patronizing benevolence.
I doubt that residents were consulted.
Here are your planters!
We know best!
Quiet!
Civic "improvement" that serves to make a neighborhood cutesypoo and cuddly despite the rowdy local residents, is both irritating and hypocritical.
A couple of dying trees and several other concrete obstructions do not improve the life of anyone except those who know better, and are relatively cheap window dressing besides. If you really want to benefit the neighborhood, how about spending some real money? Given the enrichment brought by tourists, who rupture their wallets while gawking at all the fascinating Chinese people, there should be plenty of funds available. Perhaps computer learning centres? Benches for the old folks to sit and enjoy the autumn sun? More police foot patrols?
I don't know. Dumping ugly concrete planters that no one likes or wants in a narrow alley seems rather haphazard, stifling, and cluttersome.
Nicely repaving that alley could be a far better idea.
The residents need more jackhammers.
Kindly see to it.
花園街嘅件事
The other 'plant in pot' related offense is that someone complained about a local business putting out two tables, three chairs, and several potted plants every day, in order to make the sidewalk in front of their café more inviting. The potted plants that were clustered around the two trees in front, as well as the warmth of a little oasis where one could enjoy a beverage while watching the world go by, added considerable charm to an alleyway which normally attracts people with the shakes. Someone, probably a jealous nearby merchant, set up a squawk, and the city sprung into action. The health department ferociously shook their finger at the offending business owner, and several agencies came down on his enterprise like a ton of bricks.
Drinking coffee in the open air is not a health problem.
There was no litter, and no garbage issue.
It was clean and inviting.
The city still hasn't done anything about the smelly dumpsters of a nearby emporium. Or the potholes and refuse in the street. Or the crazies that lurk all round that area, and make it both rank and skeevy at night. Two clean tables, three non-rickety chairs, and some nice greenery, however, are an opportunity for bureaucrats to show that they care, and are avidly concerned. The garbage cans at both ends of that alleyway are eternally overflowing, and together with the streetpeople attract vermin. Did I mention the potholes? If you look straight down, you might see Australia. Provided you don't fall in, of course. I'm fairly certain we've lost several adorable little black-haired moppets already. You probably don't care, because doing something about that might actually require effort.
The form for reporting "child down pothole" probably hasn't been translated into Chinese either, and a small missing relative is not a health code violation.
Two tables. Three chairs. Several lovely potted plants.
All taken in in the evening, and taken care of.
Warmth which was not there before.
Yeah, that's a problem.
* * * * * *
Well, at least I don't smell medicinal pot all over the place. Which is quite a bit different from other areas in the downtown. And there are fewer, far fewer, aggressive panhandlers and uncontrollable crazies in Chinatown than on Market Street and in Union Square. It's a cleaner and more inviting place than San Francisco Civic Center.
Public drunkenness in the neighborhood is almost unknown, except for young white people passing through late at night and overturning garbage cans or in an excess of high spirits shouting and banging the metal shutters of shops along Grant Avenue.
Other than the rude out-of-towners, folks are fairly pleasant.
The food and the atmosphere are pretty good.
And it's family friendly.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
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GRITS AND TOFU
Like most Americans, I have a list of people who should be peacefully retired from public service and thereafter kept away from their desks,...
