MAINTAINING STANDARDS

It is quite possible to live as an Amsterdammer anywhere in the world. But there are limitations, and some compromises have to be made. No starched ruff collars. No herring. No universally available Lebanese Hashish. No smoked eel or inexpensive cheese. Indecent coffee.
No imported Dutch cigars, hardly any gin.

Better weather, though.

After a wholesome Netherlandish lunch of bami goreng, with a spiegel ei and lots of sambal, the thinking man lights his pipe and settles down to read the news.

Shoot. Should have made some coffee or tea before I did this. I'm comfortable and don't want to get up. It will be teatime soon though.

A proper teatime is, of course, at four in the afternoon. And involves sherry as well as parlour games. Plus crotchetty old relatives with gout. But this is far more civilized; pipe, reading material, silence. And no cucumber sandwiches, because one is not peckish.
Just in need of the cup that cheers.

My erstwhile Parsee colleague would insist on a particular way of making tea, as well as the absolute necessity of a cookie. But she was fighting the blonde barbarians in the Operations Department with their Starbucks frappuventis and healthnut protein pastries, and probably needed energy to maintain standards in the face of howling yuppiedom.

If she could have arranged a cricket match and smoking a pipe indoors, she would have. She must have despaired of ever having a cricket match thirteen floors above the hurley burley of the Financial District. Oh, the barbarism!


I hope my apartment mate does not come home soon.
It will take this place a while to air out.

TOBACCO INDEX


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IT'S A BEARABLE EXISTENCE

In a town just north of the Arctic circle, where a Norwegian friend lives, there is a Chinese restaurant. How sad! I am imagining a conversation that must take place there every single day: "you just had to leave Hong Kong, didn't you, sh*t it's cold, I want to go somewhere where they have typhoons (hint hint hint), typhoons! Sh*t it's cold, honey if only you actually knew how to cook we could live in Spain or Morocco, sh*t it's cold, steamed whale blubber does NOT taste like proper salt fish stop experimenting sh*t it's cold, I haven't seen my legs in three weeks, sh*t it's cold...... 該死的很冷！嘩，噉凜，啊！"

Meanwhile, the polar bears keep circling, circling, circling.

I couldn't do it. I bellyache when it's brisk here in San Francisco. And this is the time of year when I think of greasing myself up with bear fat and hibernating.


My friend harvests gravel and sand for the concrete industry. It grows there


The Chinese restaurant has been there for over two decades. The children of the family never knew a normal life. No offense to Scandinavians, but the only thing that makes life bearable there is when the gravel and sand are ripening, gloriously golden in the late Autumn sun before ten months of winter and darkness. Soon the fishing fleet will return with a fresh catch of salted blubber, and the town will reek of fish oil and seaweed again.

The most characteristic flavours of food in Norway are kjøtt, sauce Espagnole (brown stock, mirepoix, tomato paste, and roux), and a salted smoked sheepshead. Plus various compôtes made from offal. Mayonnaise is not significant; that's Denmark.

Plus rakfisk, lutefisk, and spekesild; their versions of canned tuna.


Central heating is an important industry in Norway.
Except for people who walk around naked.
As some of them constantly do.


It sounds like an impossibly exotic place.
One of these days I must visit.


I have no idea what they do with all that salted blubber.

Maybe they collect it. Like art.



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I TILT AGAINST WINDMILLS, SIDI HAMID

"Don't talk while playing against him, there are micophones in the golf balls recording everything you say. And please don't mention diapers; he's sore about that."

Retirement, for some people, is going to be very interesting. I can't wait for the tell-all books that will be coming out in the next year, and hope that the authors do not die prematurely.


One of my friends recently likened me to "Raskolnikov of Crime and Punishment, brooding in a small garret and imagining profoundly evil deeds".
Raskolnikov is, of course, a failure. He does not have the strength of character or the courage to carry through on his intentions, and thus never achieves the stature or reward that he feels are rightfully his. He is dangerous, but pathetic. A neurotic and a psychopath.

Also, Dostoyevsky was a shitty writer, and I do not have a sister.


If there is anybody who perfectly embodies Raskolnikov, it's the orange-faced cockwomble, who will soon be irrelevant. His ghastly offspring have no function in this tale, and if they weren't such loathesome creatures one could doubt their parentage. They lack Dostoyevskyan qualities, and are just ambulatory stage props in a way, expendable, repellent, but ultimately useless and undecorative. They are meatless, and seropurulence flows in their veins.

I do not need to imagine any profoundly evil deeds.
The past four years were more than enough.
I'll imagine what tomorrow brings.




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FISH GRUEL

If you were to ask a communist agent what their favourite book was, the answer might be Das Kapital, and Lenin: The Iskra Period. No surprises there. For me, while I concede that both of those are loveable and fascinating oh by golly yes, it would be The Wind In The Willows, almost anything by Vladimir Nabokov, Indian Food: A Historical Companion, by K. T. Achaya, and probably something by Johan Wigmore Fabricius or Maria Dermoût.
From time to time it varies.

A person whom I know very well has A Tree Grows In Brooklyn on her list.
Ahead of Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.


Probably no one I know has À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu by Marcel Proust.

Sad.


Boring people have the Bible. Which can be entertaining. Remind them of the rape of Dinah, the vow of Jephthah, and the charmingly innocent pornographic quality of the Song of Songs sometime. In detail. Then poke them with even more juicy tidbits as they recoil.



"Fascinated as usual she watched his stubby fingers deftly rub out the flake tobacco for his pipe, after his nourishing repast of gruel with boiled beans (the only thing the nearly toothless old man ate). No trace of arthritis. She knew that once he had lit up, he would slowly stumble out the door and take a half block walk. For his health, he said. No matter how bitter the winds in Aalesund most of the year, he did this. He prided himself on his knowledge of Art Nouveau architecture -- for which the town was famous -- even though at his advanced age he could barely write the term correctly anymore. He only vaguely remembered that it meant "stone navels", a term for dried fish. The town's fishing fleet was the most modern in Europe; notorious for stealing every one else's herring. And cod. And sturgeon, shad, salmon."

Thus far our introduction to our hero, Bjørn Trøllsen, elderly resident of a city on the edge of a Scandinavian wasteland. Who was once covered with hair, but is now over forty years old. Northern winters age a man.

While turning the pages of The Year We Lost Our Eels, a famous novel by a man whose name is quite unpronounceable (winner of the Nørske Kritikerprisen, nøta bene!), I likewise rub out some flake. Though intrigued by Margit's developing relationship with the man she has been tasked with taking care of, who sofar has manfully resisted her pleading that he use a wheelchair to get about -- just avoid sloping streets, the harbour is only one uncontrolled roll away -- as well as her urging that he bathe, I intend to sample this literary masterpiece in sips, instead of great gulps. The brilliant director Odd Einarsen didn't do that, and in consequence his epic film 'Fiskegrøt' inspired by the book, while critically acclaimed was considered too dark and depressing for an American movie audience, and did not receive mass distribution or much exposure. North Americans are not ready for a cinematographic paean to existenzangst.

Tried watching it once. Couldn't hack it.

The scene with the harpoon gun and all the orphans at the tannpirkerfabrikk is particularly hard to swallow.

And unlike the protagonist in the novel, I am not obsessively fond of Død Hval Virginia Tobakk Skiver. I do not prefer it over all other flake tobaccos.
Today I'm smoking something Danish.


'When in the middle of his walk he expectorated, he unexpectedly spat out a tooth. "Well, there goes one more", he thought'.


This essay fondly inspired by two people of Norwegian ancestry, the strange shiznit considered meaningful literature by intellectuals in the Netherlands, and recollection of Phillip in Switzerland's comment that early Scandinavian literature was something along the lines of a man saying to his wife to keep his dinner warm, he'd be back soon, then going across the island to bash in his neighbor's brains with a dried fish. Something like that. I read many sagas, I cannot disagree. There's just something about the North Sea climate that inspires.
And surely everyone loves dried fish?

TOBACCO INDEX


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GETTING INTO THE HABITS

Every week I would head over to the bookstore to read for hours in the stacks. There was a tobacconist right next door, in front of which I'd park my bicycle. At one point a lovely polished wood item in the window caugt my eye, and for several weeks I'd look at it with ever-increasing appreciation. Then I bought it, because no one else should have it, and I didn't want it to disappear. A few months later, after my fourteenth birthday, I finally purchased some tobacco. Because a smoking tool with nothing to put in it is rather pointless.

Eventually a tamper and cleaners were added to the growing kit of delicious sin. And more tobacco.

My parents found out that I was smoking within half a year. My mother's lecture anent the evils of tobacco was stern and filled with all kinds of frightening medical terminology, including the data that it inevitably led to incontinence, hairy palms, and a slack jaw. She huffed three Kent Filter Kings while delivering the speech. My dad said "son, good pipe tobacco does NOT smell like a Parisian bath house. Please smoke good tobacco", and returned to his paper.

The next week I asked for an increase in my allowance. Because good tobacco costs more.

Within two years of that, my father's hand would snake across the table after dinner to fill his own pipe from my tin of Balkan Sobranie.


I like to think I had a fine upstanding adolescence. At an age when other boys in Valkenswaard (located in North Brabant province) were discovering soccer, sex, beer, and hashish, I was reading Suetonius' De vita Caesarum, Voltaire's Candide, and Isaac Asimov's short scientific articles for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

[Of course I really must confess that the Romans excelled in naughty business, and the copy of Candide had a lovely breast on the cover. And knowledge is profoundly exciting, even erotic. This probably added much to the experience.]

It was a life filled with coffee, tea, smoky Syrian Latakia tobacco, sambal (chilipaste), and mountains of the printed page. Rather splendid.


In so far as discovering the other gender was concerned, they were the classmates and the companions of classmates, or unrealistic amazons on the covers of cheap paperbacks.

One imagined them. But they were peripheral and figmentary.

Although some of them did read, or smoke.

The teenage years shaded into adulthood. More tobacco. Buckets of coffee and tea. Cooking interesting dishes, learning what other people ate. And familiarity with many more bookstores and libraries. When visiting other people I usually scope out their bookshelves to see what they read. It's much more important than admiring their taste in pictures on their walls. Or their vast collections of Pink Floyd, David Bowie, and The Rolling Stones.

Some of them have interesting dislikes in food.

Nowadays, many do not own ashtrays.

Coffee beverages are common.

Sambal is rather rare.

TOBACCO INDEX


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BONJOUR MADEMOISELLE

The coffee and tea at the Hertog Jan College were frightful, student smoking was only permitted off the grounds or in the courtyard for the upper forms, and many of my first-year classmates were blinkered puritans in too many ways. But this morning I woke up from a dream featuring two exceptions: Bertje Klerk and Babs De Waard. Attractive young ladies; bright, likeable, charming. No, it wasn't what you might think. It involved lunch, sunlight, and softly speaking in German.

At more academic Dutch high schools learning languages was part of the programme. English, French, German. Plus at the Atheneum and Gymnasium, Latin and Greek.

The Hertog Jan College was more academic. At the very least, graduates could expect to go on to further studies, the top nerds could look forward to old respected universities in the north of the country, boven de rivieren ("above the rivers"), as until the twentieth century the idea of educating those southerners was "iffy". Very many of them eventually ended up in Utrecht or Nijmeghen.

I remember the frightfulness of the coffee and tea perhaps somewhat better than any Latin to which I was exposed. The Dutch like caffeinated beverages. Coffee is a social lubricant and study aid. Tea can be a delightful beverage, conducive to mental activity. So there must have been something perverse and cruel about supplying high school students with such horrible swamp water.



I had first noticed both of the young ladies mentioned in French class. So it is both peculiar and inexplicable that we spoke German at lunch in my dream. No, I can't remember what we talked about -- in actual life I did not have many conversations with either of them, because my social life at the Hertog Jan College was somewhat stunted -- but it was very nice. Sunlight from the restaurant windows giving a glow to their hair, the aromas of excellent coffee and tea mixed with girlish perfumes, and the ever-present sharpness of dark shag cigarettes which everyone in the Netherlands smoked. In deference to their delicate sensitivities I had not lit my pipe.

As I said, it was a dream. But a very civilized one.



My German was excellent at one point.
My French, um, not so much.




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TREAT THE CLINIC STAFF RIGHT

It was the sweetest thing: a healthcare worker buying himself an excellent cigar to celebrate getting vaccinated against Covid. And surely you can understand why I approve; the more frontliners get protection, the better off all of us will be. Firstly it moves all of us up, secondly it means fewer patients and elderly people at risk of being infected by the people who take care of them, and thirdly if we end up in the ICU, there is a much smaller chance of essential staff being unavailable due to Covid.
Plus he's a decent fellow, and one does not want good people to be at risk.
There aren't enough of them in the world.


The people one does want to run the risk of Covid are the rightwingers: religious types and gun nuts. And fortunately, most of them live in Texas, Florida, or Alabama. The fewer of them who are still living a year from now, the better. Them and their dysfunctional families.

Yeah, I suppose that ain't very Christian of me.


Unfortunately I know too many cigar smokers who are morally bankrupt, in addition to being outright assholes.

Karmically there's a whiff of day old tuna salad sandwich about them.

Not enough healthcare workers smoke cigars.

That needs to change.

I can just imagine what little nurse Mak would look like enjoying a fine Oliva Series V Melanio. Especially a figurado. Delicate Ecuadorian Sumatra over a ligero-rich filler composed of Esteli and Condega, and a touch of Jalapa leaf. And I can picture Joanne with a double robusto while handling medical files. My dentist from years ago, as well as the pharmacists, would probably all like coronas, except for the tall woman I thought was a Mandarin speaker.
She would almost certainly go for a churchill during lunch or after work.
But no doubt all of them would find the experience therapeutic.
Infinitely beneficial to their mental well-being.
Especially in these stressful times.


I hope they all get vaccinated.



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TRIGGER WARNING: STEPHEN COLBERT WITH A PIPE

Someone thoughtlessly posted a picture of Stephen Colbert with a pipe sticking out of his mouth on a pipe group page. Which prompted a number of people to spew bile. Because, apparently, Stephen Colbert sets off the rightwing snowflakes. Most of whom probably smoke drecky aromatic pouch blends and use antifungal cream on their private parts.

Please, dear readers, do NOT post a picture of Stephen Colbert in public places. His image traumatizes the poor suffering nazis. It hurts them.

If a representation of Stephen Colbert upsets your inner Trumpite, you might not be fit for human society. You're probably also peeved at Arnold Schwarzenegger right now.
Whether or not he's clenching a pipe.
Heck, anybody to the left of Hermann Goering might set you off.
With or whithout a tobacco pipe.


My piles bleed for you.


The expression "my piles bleed for you" should NOT be taken literally. It is meant as an ironic, snide, snarky, or rude expression of feigned sympathy. Because, honestly, I don't give a damn about your rightwing hosebag opionions or feelings. Suck it up, pancake.

I sincerely hope the National Guard troops shoot your ass when you're out there in front of your state capitol with your "stop the steal" or "hang Mike Pence signs.


Other people who might get triggered by a picture of Stephen Colbert with a pipe are probably vegans and anti-smokers. Who feel that it sets a bad example for the children how could he how horrible oh the humanity!


My piles bleed for them too.




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TEA FOR THE HECTIC LIFESTYLE

When I came out of the hospital a year and a half ago after appendicitis, I purchased a box of tea bags on the recommendation of one of the staff there. Who, upon hearing that I liked Hong Kong Milk tea, recommended Rickshaw brand (車仔紅茶包 'che jai hung chaa baau').


"The Rickshaw Black Tea is a refreshing and strong aromatic cup of tea which is ideal for your hectic lifestyle, as it clears and calms your mind leaving you feeling composed."


SF Chinese Hospital, mostly Chinese staff.
Top notch medical attention.

I have another box of it under the chair in my room, bought a few weeks ago. I have no idea how my apartment mate thinks about it, given that she is Chinese American. She probably thinks there's a slight touch of unreconstructed white imperialist about it, what with rickshaws being a relic from the bad old days of colonialism and oppression. And me being a Dutchman who speaks Indonesian, and knows far too much about Asia.

But it's made by a Chinese company in Hong Kong.
So it's a lot safer than it could've been.

She drinks Yorkshire Tea, and various other very British teas. That nice strong bracing black brew, perfect for inclement freezing mornings, slogging through the peat bog out back in your tweeds clouting wild sheep, or something.


As a Dutchman (Dutch American) I am naturally an excitable type, all hectic by golly, and often feel like I require mental clearing that calms and composes me.


I must commend the SF Chinese Hospital staff.
They know what soothes the savage beast.
A wild Kaaskop in San Francisco.
Hong Kong Milk Tea.

港式奶茶



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SHAPED LIKE AN EGG PLANT

When you think of turkey vultures, quite naturally you think of feeding. Fresh corpses, carrion, cadavers. What you might not think about are tofu, chicken wings, vegetables, and ice cream.

I have it on GOOD authority that the tofu peoples, cluck things, Irish, and Dairy Goos all taste delicious. As do tangy Americans (oranges), tubular Americans (sausages), and egg peoples.

He may have tunnel vision of sorts.
But he's extremely well fed.
Pudgy, even.


Let's hope he never finds out about junkfood, or he'll end up like a typical American kid. Out of shape, overweight, heading into glandular imbalance and juvenile diabetes.

I did not discover junkfood until I returned to the States.


It's the dominant ethnic cuisine here.

Exotic, and delicious.




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TRIGGERING PODUNKUM

I headed over to Chinatown recently for some essential groceries. It remains my favourite neighborhood, because it's small, tight, and home-like. It has everything I need except cheese and yoghurt. Also, it's long-time familiar, there are fewer stupid white people without masks, and no one makes fun of my accent.

But it's changing. The pandemic has forced many businesses to close.

After my purchases, I filled a pipe and headed down to Montgomery Street in the Financial Disctrict. Which is also changing, except that I like that. If any neighborhood used to be filled with suburbanite yutzes, it was there, and their absence improves it immensely.

Some of the businesses in C'town which I hope will survive are old familiar places, such as several on Jackson Street. Pictured below is where, in perhaps six months time, I shall meet John O. for a porkchop. Reason being that he hates the word "lunting". A lunt, he maintains, is a slow fuse, wick, or taper, perhaps used on occasion to light a pipe or cigar. As a verb (for ambling about with a smoke) he loathes it. I myself think it quite unnecessary also.
While wandering, I smoke.

THE NEW LUN TING CAFÉ

When I "lunt", it might on occasion be when heading toward a pork chop with sauce over rice, with a bowl of old fire soup, and a hot cup of Hong Kong Milk Tea.
After which I may take a walk with my pipe.
Which triggers suburbanites.

A woman at the New Lun Ting once marveled at my excellent Mandarin. Because what I spoke was NOT her language, Toishanese, but was never-the-less intelligible. In fact my Mandarin is bloody awful, and what I was speaking at the time was Cantonese.
My native language, Dutch, sounds much like Mandarin.
All those difficult sounds, man.

Surely a Caucasian trying to speak Chinese must be speaking Mandarin, yes?
Because it is inconceivable that intelligible language should erupt from his face.
Maybe he's just mush-mouthed clenching that pipe? Yes, that's probably it.

I'm always pleased as punch that people actually understand me there. It makes shopping and associating so much easier. And again, no one has ever commented on my accent in English, or told me I should go the hell back where I came from. Or bellyached vociferously about my pipe, which is icing on the cake.

You know, it's just not nice when inbred Jed from Podunkum Arkansas says something snotty about how I speak. Doesn't he have a Capitol Building somewhere to storm or something?
I'm probably not a nice person. Too harshly critical of my fellow citizens.
Probably because of my foreigness.


Lunch today was nasi goreng, a grilled sausage, and Gouda cheese.
My own private Amsterdam on a plate
With lots of sambal.

Now, tea, and a pipeful of a new tobacco.
Juno, for Savinelli by MacBaren.
Smells plummy.

TOBACCO INDEX


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DERANGED A-SOCIAL SCHIZOIDS

A friend who recently lost his mother objects to attempts at comfort from Jehova's Witnesses. Understandably, as everything, EVERYTHING, becomes an opportunity to corrupt hearts and minds for those people. An Indonesian woman whom I know is also a Jovy. Over the years, whenever she's brought up religion, I've thrown (verbally) the documentary hypothesis, textual contradictions, Rashi and Ramban, Ibn Ezra, RambaN, Sforno, and archeological evidence (or lack thereof) at her. She's still Jovy, but now convinced that I am a wife-beating drunkard and a Heretic and the main reason we Dutch lost control over the archipelago.

I am, for the record, not married. The "wife" is my apartment mate, who has a black belt in martial arts and could whup my ass. And I avoid alcohol.


That Jovy rarely speaks to me now. I am blessed.


And yes, people like me are the reason.



Word to the wise: NEVER invite Jehovah's Witnesses to your marriage or your funeral.




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SO THAT'S WHY

On a pipesmokers FB page someone commented "those of you who have posted pictures of your pipe with a book in the background - wow some great books there. I have expanded my reading significantly. Do pipe smokers just have better taste in books?"
I too have posted pictures there with books in the frame.
But he cannot be talking about me.


His comment led me to recall that I have two hardback copies oh "Headhunting In The Solomon Islands" by Caroline Mytinger. Sadly, it is not instructional, and did not advance my career in Credit and Collections. I bought the second one because I couldn't find the first (it was under my bed). Also a really fun book about kuru (human spongiform encephalitis) in upland New Guinea, caused (in a manner of speaking) by dietary protein deficiencies among the women and elderly in a particular tribal society. Also of considerably less relevance than you would think in the Accounts Receivable field.


A few moments later I was happily eating cake with icecream while reading about Kuru (Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease) among the Fore People in the Eastern Highlands. Turns out that my memory of the book was slightly off; not women and elderly, but women and children.

At first the Fore believed kuru to be caused by sorcery or witchcraft. Their medicine to cure it was pork and casuarina bark -- most probably, that's casuarina equisetifolia, which has many uses -- but other than gustatory pleasure, this had no effect. Kuru was, invariably, fatal.


The chocolate cake with icecream was delicious, by the way.


Kuru was a theme in the Arkansas Chicken Ranch episode of the X-files.
Which was supposedly based on real events.
Arkansas.



Kuru is no longer an issue.
Except among republicans.



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HAWAIIAN CHICKEN?

An article in Mishpacha magazine gives a recipe for 'Hawaiian Chicken', which is a beloved Ashkenazi staple that originates with Moses coming down from Mount Sinai, or with the crowd of idol worshippers at the foot of the mountain. Or the Erev Rav. Or even the Egyptians, gottenyu. In any case it's ancient. Nineteen seventies or something.


HAWAIIAN CHICKEN
Recipe by Rivky Kleiman

1 medium onion, sliced
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 yellow pepper, cut into large chunks
1 red pepper, cut into large chunks
1 14-oz (400-g) can jellied or whole-berry cranberry sauce
1 20-oz (570-g) can pineapple chunks
1 cup orange juice
¼ cup brown sugar
6 chicken thighs
salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, and paprika, to taste
¼ cup water
2 Tbsp cornstarch

Place onion, garlic, and peppers on the bottom of the slow cooker. Whisk together cranberry sauce, pineapple chunks with liquid, orange juice, and brown sugar. Pour mixture over the vegetables and mix well.

If you can, brown the chicken thighs on both sides for 3–5 minutes in a frying pan set over high heat. (This step is optional but recommended, as it will yield less oil accumulation.) Lay the chicken thighs over the vegetable mixture. Season to taste with salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, and paprika. Baste with the cranberry-pineapple mixture. Cover and cook on low for 5 hours or on high for 3 hours.

Combine the water and cornstarch in a small cup and mix well. Add to the slow cooker and cook an additional 30 minutes.


[SOURCE: SLOW COOKER HAWAIIAN CHICKEN - MISHPACHA]


I am not a fan of cranberry sauce, and pineapple chunks have their place in Vietnamese soup, or on late night pizza for drunkards (though frequently served at office get-togethers when many suburbanites work for the company), and also in Ananas Ka Muzaffar.
And nowhere else.

But I do have an abiding love for freaky food from the past. So I am torn. Much like with 'Flygande Jacob', a Swedish casserole dish that also dates from the long-haired period (featuring bananas, chicken, bacon, and peanuts), I am fascinated.

The sheer amount of sweetness included in the recipe above is cause for worry, though. Diabetes much?


Confession: Often I add a generous splash of orange juice to stews and braised dishes when a touch of citrus seems called for. It's easier than stocking lemon or lime.

Traditional Ashkenazic cuisine, like Swedish and other Scandinavian food, is somewhat frightening. What they do to herring is sheer heresy. About which we shall not speak.



Cranberry sauce, like sugar and bellpepper, is a traditional Hawaiian ingredient.
It belongs on pizza.




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AN OFFER OF CHEESE

A meme going around on the internet lists several incantations, spells, amulets, and lures for the female gender, for men to use when they are desperate to attract a mate. Item three is cheese. Apparently one can "fascinate" the feminine gender with cheese.

I'm not quite sure how this would work. It seems bizarre. And I refuse to walk around with a lump of cheese just to test it out.


"Hello, miss, can I tempt you with some cheese?"


I'd probably end up with the female equivalent of John Cleese. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Peckish. Esurient. Engaged in Walpoling activity.

Or I might get arrested.


"You may fascinate a woman by giving her a piece of cheese"


As an icebreaker in a singles bar (do those even still exist?) the phrase "can I tempt you with some cheese" is perhaps not perfect. "Let's blow this joint, the boutique des fromages is still open" might be better, but we're still talking about a woman in a singles bar. If she couldn't figure out where to get some cheese when the fancy struck her, she might not fulfill all the requirements intellectually.
And I can assure you that not a single person has ever come up to me and sorrowfully or in distraught fashion implored for directions to the nearest fromagerie pronto please.
Maybe it's my scowly face. I do not radiate cheese joy.

Red Leicester, Tilsit, Caerphilly, Bel Paese, Red Windsor, Stilton, Gruyère, Emmental, Norwegian Jarlsberg, Liptauer, Lancashire, White Stilton, Danish Blue, Double Gloucester, Cheshire, Dorset Blue Vinney, Brie, Roquefort, Pont l'Evêque, Port Salut, Savoyard, Saint-Paulin, Carré de l'Est, Boursin, Bresse-Bleu, Perle de Champagne, Camembert; Gouda, Edam, Caithness, Smoked Austrian, Sage Derby, Wensleydale; Greek Feta, Gorgonzola, Parmesan, Mozzarella, PipoCrem', Fynbo, Czechoslovakian sheep's milk cheese, Cheddar; Ilchester, Limburger.....

A woman who does not automatically think of The Cheese Shop sketch is probably not an ideal help meet. As a Netherlander (though 100% American), cheese for me has an importance in the grand scheme of things that can scarce be exaggerated. Though dietarily it's more an intellectual fancy than something I frequently put into practice.

My apartment mate keeps the cheese supply well-stocked.
Which is odd, because she's of Chinese ancestry.
Chinese are not very great cheese eaters.
Maybe fromage fascinates her.

Understandable.



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NEITHER AFTERSHAVE NOR BODY SPRAY

A woman of Philippine ancestry who I knew years ago believed that after every time I visited the doorknobs stank of Latakia, and once after I had used the phone proceeded to scrub it to remove the odour. Her apartment mate, of Chinese ancestry, opined that Caucasians -- which was a well known fact -- whiffed a bit. But didn't mind the Latakia scent, as she herself smoked a pipe, and favoured Drucquers 805, a blend now long gone.
It was rich with Latakia.

The idea that white people stink is more Philipine illustrado and Japanese than commonly held among East Asians, and sometimes a strange sign of refinement. My apartment mate, also ethnically Chinese, tends to not be aware of our smell. But has vociferated furiously about a reek of dried fish she has encountered among the Filippino ladies who mob certain clothing stores downtown. Which is probably just a trace whisp of bagoong, often used to give their cooking a characteristic saveur.

Female fastidiousness takes different forms. White women, as is well known, will faint at the merest suspicion that someone is smoking nearby. Such as I frequently am.

Kaywoodie Flame Grain, drawn January 12, 2012.

These days I favour Virginia tobacco or Virginia and Perique blends almost exclusively. A woman visiting where I work the other day commented that the place smelled nice. Such a refreshing change from her significant other's cigars. I did not say anything, but smiled internally. And I have to point out that two years ago when the nurse at the clinic was asking questions to fill out my case file she had to ask if I smoked, because either she assumed that men most men did had an incense-like perfume in consequence, or she may have thought that most WHITE men didn't any longer. She seemed surprised at the information that I smoked a pipe, and mimed in wonderment the characteristic shape and body posture of an old peasant huffing a Chinese waterpipe. She had never seen a typical briar. All the data I provided surprised her, and she's still not certain that cigarettes aren't my preferred poison.


Today I do not stink. I'm washed, shaved, got clean clothes on. And have nowhere to go. There may be a faint hint of my evil habit about me, but I do not smell of dried fish, bagoong, or curry, and unless you saw the pipe you would not suspect my depravities.
My hands have a lingering scent of ginger.

You would have to look real close to spot the pipe. Seeing as it's not a large bamboo culm bong for smoking rough shreds. Instead, a rather elegant number acquired from the aforementioned Chinese woman who liked 805. It's one of my favourite pieces.


Kaywoodies are not known for quality nowadays. But in the period from the war to the mid-fifties, they were well regarded and their higher ranges were often considered the equals of Dunhills, Sasienis, and Comoys. They were products that set the standard.
There are quite a few of them of which I am very fond.
Good smokers, regularly in the rotation.



Yeah, I'm probably going to have curry with some bagoong in it later today. Might even have some dried fish. But I'll disguise myself with more ginger, strong tea, and Virginia.
Unless you're a white woman, you won't notice.

TOBACCO INDEX


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JACOB SCHMIDT'S RESIGNATION FROM HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE STAFF

GOP aide resigns while lashing 'congressional enablers of this mob'
Top staffer at the House Armed Services Committee ripped lawmakers who backed Donald Trump's challenge to Joe Biden's win
[Source: GOP aide resigns - Politico]

[Begin cite]

Ranking Member Rogers and Members of the House Armed Services Committee,

All who serve this nation swear an oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same. Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee have led Congressional efforts to defend the nation and its Constitutional principles from foreign enemies since the establishment of the committee. Year after year, under Republican and Democratic Chairs, the committee has set aside factious contemporary events in the name of national defense. This is a legacy that I am extremely proud to have supported.

The sad, incontrovertible truth is that the people who laid siege to the Capitol were and continue to be domestic enemies of the Constitution of the United States. A poisonous lie that the election was illegitimate and should be overturned inspired so called “patriots” to share common cause with white supremacists, neo-Nazis and conspiracy theorists to attack the seat of American government. Anyone who watched those horrible hours unfold should have been galvanized to rebuke these insurrectionists in the strongest terms. Instead, some members whom I believed to be leaders in the defense of the nation chose to put political theater ahead of the defense of the Constitution and the Republic.

The decision to vote to set aside legitimate electors harmed the ability of every service member, intelligence officer, and diplomat to defend the nation and advance American interests. How are they to effectively defend American democratic ideals when the entire world saw so many members disregard those same ideals for cynical political purposes? Regardless of the motivations behind the vote, these members bear the consequences that the men and women in harm’s way will face for many years to come. I cannot imagine any series of events more damaging to the already fragile US led post-World War II order that has brought more peace and prosperity to the world than at any other time in history. These self-inflicted wounds are a gift to autocrats who seek a diminished America and are fundamentally inconsistent with the responsibility to provide for the common defense. Foreign intelligence services were likely on the scene and will certainly capitalize on the crisis it has caused – our people will pay a steep price. Congressional enablers of this mob have made future foreign conflict more likely, not less.

Going forward, the Committee must play a role in the accounting of this horrible chapter in our history. It is very disturbing that currently serving members of the armed forces participated in this. It is vitally important that the Committee hold the Department of Defense accountable for bringing any participants to justice. These extremist influences are a grave threat to our ability to defend the nation, and they must be expelled from the force immediately. I deeply regret some members may no longer have the credibility needed to accomplish this work.

All of our words and actions in the coming weeks and days will reveal those who believe in defending the Constitution, and those who stand only for self-interest and sectarianism. There can be no reconciliation and healing without accountability. While it is my hope the Committee finds a way yet again to legislate in a bipartisan way for the men and women in uniform in the 117th Congress and beyond, the failure of so many Republican members of the Committee to put the nation ahead of electoral politics compels my resignation from the staff. It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve the men and women in uniform, their families, and the civilians who also serve the Nation. I am proud of the things we have accomplished on their behalf, and the work we have done to strengthen national defense.

In Service,
Jason Schmid


[End cite]


The treasonous behaviour of top Republican lawmakers makes them unfit to serve under.




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PARASITIC WASPS

A news article recently discussed the crypt keeper wasp, mentioning that it apparently can control the minds of seven other species of wasps. Do not now think of a vast wasp army planning to take over the planet; instead consider a wasp larva directing another wasp larva inside an oak or pine gall to grow, tunnel to the outside, and stop moving thereafter, thus keeping the gall sealed until the smaller larva burrows through the cadaver and emerges fullgrown, much like Lindsay Graham or Mitch McConnell, wriggling and venomous.

The most Waspy food is Spam® inside a donut with a layer of Kraft Miracle Whip.

It is a tasty and yummalicious sandwich native to parts of the South.

What does the soul of such a creature look like?

I confess that I am fond of both Spam® and donuts. But I have never had them at the same meal. That's just a little too "white". And I can share from experience that only ONE of those benefits from a squidge of Sriracha chili sauce. Though either can be part of a delicious breakfast or a scrumptious snack.

Spam®, sautéed mustard greens, fried egg, and a pile of rice.
Sounds like a plan I can get behind sometime soon.
I'll need to buy another tin.



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