SEAWEED, TERPENEOLS, AND TWEED

Yesterday my paintings of crabs were mentioned. Including the three which featured crabs smoking pipes. What was NOT discussed was the tobacco crustaceans would enjoy. Now, what would be appropriate, given their surroundings, might be Navy Flake, but I feel that as nature's little contrarians and rebels, the carapaced critters would, if they smoked pipes, perhaps tend toward something far less predictable, more ironic. Hobbit's Weed.
That being a compound invented decades ago by Tewksbury in Denver.

Two parts BCA, one part Lane's Very Cherry, and one part Sutliff 1M. Respectively: black vanilla cavendish, cherry Virginia -burley - cavendish, and burley - Virginia - black vanilla cavendish.

Such a product would leave their pipes wet.
A tendency of aromatic concoctions.

The more mature individuals among them would eschew it, having learned over the years that hobbits have hairy calves, bad taste, and a horrid habit of playing D&D or other jejune role-playing games when more than two of them are gathered. Or talking nonsense about LotR, Startrek, and Anime. At great and sickening length.

Also, hobbits reek of rancid vanilla. Ick poo.

On second and third thought, they'd more likely smoke full English blends, and for all the world pretend they were college boys at Berkeley. A tweed coat, three pipes as the absolute minimum (including a Ropp cherrywood for those late nights swotting Virgil and Suetonius), and a tendency to hide a bottle of Port or Sherry behind the multivolume encyclopaedia on the third shelf over in the library.

They'd have a weakness for one of the librarians; a shy little moray eel with spectacles.
She's much more exciting than she realizes. Plus rather kittenish.


I remind my readers that I too have an old cherry wood.

Actually, I have more than one such item.
They're not made anymore.
That's sad.



Plus, as a specimen of something appropriately professorial looking, AND quite suitable for motoring down to the seashore at Sealthong Point on a summer Sunday, a rather lovely Ropp Montagnard.

You'll note that it has a cherrywood shank interstice.
It is dashing and gallavantish.


This is why college students really must take classics courses. It's essential for a developed mind, necessary perspectives and cultural depth, and it makes them more interesting and rewarding to be around. And there will be eels.



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TASTES LIKE FILTHY FARMER -- IT'S FESTIVE!

First thing I did upon returning home from the "office holiday party" was fix myself a cup of coffee. Which remarkably made my feet feel much better. I'm really not social enough to fully optimize enjoyment at parties, especially after a long day babysitting old men who whine a lot about how things are not the same. And, because it's the season, how in the old days you'd just give everybody a carton of smokes in the festive packaging that came out once a year, along with a bottle of Cutty Sark or Beefeater if they were dear to you, and be done with it.

The old days, back when more doctors smoked Camels than any other cigarette. Yes, in a repeated survey, doctors all across the country in all branches of medicine were asked "what cigarette do YOU smoke, doctor?" Not surprisingly, more doctors preferred the smooth rich taste of Camels. Why don't you try Camels for a month, to see what a good tasting cigarette can mean for your smoking enjoyment?

And by the way, I should point out that Camels are gluten-free, lactose-free, low cal, and made on machinery that has NOT been used to process peanuts or any other nut.
And they're vegetarian!

It's also the first night of Chanukah. Sadly, there is no Chanukah pipe tobacco. Nor any tobacco infused with the scent of greasy fried potatoes and onions. Chag sameach anyway.

There are some very nice products that smell like Limburger cheese, plus there's also grape flavoured pipe tobacco (not one iota of tobacco taste, just pure grape soda), key lime tobacco, custard, pumpkin pie, and also Lovecraft themed blends .......

One of the best pipe tobaccos was described years ago as having a tin note like flatulant unwashed peasant hanging in a mediaeval dungeon .......

The unwashed flatulant peasant is actually a stellar product. Still have a small amount of the opened tin left. Will probably finish it indoors after she's left for the day tomorrow.

And obviously the grape soda, key lime, custard, pumpkin pie, and a few of the Lovecraftian mixtures, will be impossible to get in California, because they appeal to kiddiewinkies and we've passed a law. The Limburger cheese and farting peasant are all natural, which according to our Karens means they cannot possibly appeal to the young.

Now that they've banned flavoured tobacco products, we can only give the children the natural stuff for Christmas. Because what else is there?



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THOUGHTS ABOUT PIZZA

The most beautiful sight in the world, late on a Saturday evening, is a winsome young lady with glasses walking up the street carrying a box of pizza. Firstly, she looks like an intelligent sort, and secondly, it means she wasn't out getting drunk with the party blondes, but is going home with dinner, and has someone to go home to. Maybe a boyfriend, maybe roommates.
And is not going far.

It's reassuring. It tells you there are still things in this world that are good and wholesome. And also, there are still people who believe in sweetness and light.
And not throwing up on a Saturday evening.

Unlike the chiropractor from years ago at the pizza place in North Beach, who leered at older women while waiting for his two boxes extra large, and probably woke up hungover the next day smeared with sauce in his underwear with the remnants of his dinner strewn about the bed in the residential hotel. A sour and bitter, but optimistic sort, strangely convinced of his own charm, sleazy and middle-aged, but still considering pepperoni extra cheese a tempting exchange for old maid whompities. He lived in the same establishment as Batshit Hellen, who believed that Willie Brown had had her thrown out of her mansion on Nob Hill and was wiretapping her room. Her psycho friend was the lady that pizza creep was trying to bed. We would watch in horror as he oozed around her, not realizing that she was precisely the type to shiv him in the elevator and yank his wallet before it got to the second floor.

His flabby corpse would slump against the wall, then slide down, leaving a red smear. He'd be noticed by a tenant heading out for the night, and not remarked upon, because passed-out drunks with pizza boxes leaving rusty trails in lifts or bathrooms are common in North Beach, not out of the ordinary at all. Probably tonnes of them in pizza joints every night.

As good a reason to eat pizza at home instead.
With, hypothetically, your boyfriend.
Formerly a seminarian.
Someone nice.
Sweet.


I like pizza.



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PUBLIC TRANSIT IS WASTED ON SOME FOLKS

From Caledonia Street onwards she was upset. And voluble about it. And I myself, being naturally the sympathetic and caring type of man that I am, maintained a soft running commentary on her utterances. "F**king innefficient bus system!" [Ooh, ain't life hard, sweetheart.] "I'm not gonna f**king make it to San Rafael by nine fifteen!" [Um, you knew that when you got on, sweetheart.] "F**king lazy busdriver!" [Should have planned better, much better, sweetheart.] "We're not going to f**king get there till nearly f**king ten!" [Uh huh.] "These people f**king suck!" [Yep, none of us want you to get there by 9:15, sweetheart.] "They've f**king ruined my whole f**king day!" [Life is hard, and then you die, sweetheart.] "Why does it f**king have to stop here?!?" [It's to make you miserable, sweetheart.] "I f**king hate California!" [And that's probably reciprocated abundantly.]. There was more, much more, but these were the main points she repeated on the phone from the back of the bus to the person she was going to meet at ten.

She had gotten up at five. Propably dawdled over coffee. I had gotten up at six. But unlike her, I was going to get where I was going well before I needed to be there.
And I too had dawdled over coffee. But I time-budget better.


The bus back was also wonderful.


"Get back and sit down. Sit. Down!"

"Get off my bus now. This ain't a city bus!"

"No. No. No, we do not go to Fishermen's Wharf."


Bus drivers are saints. They have to put up with Karen.


Things to remember when taking public transit:
1) If you get on the bus at 8:45, you will never get to San Rafael by 9:15.
2) In this life, most buses do not go to Fisherman's Wharf.
3) I'm a sympathetic man, my piles bleed for you.



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ONE SMALL STEP FOR CRABS ...

The apartment mate said all she wanted for her birthday was a whole crab. And one of the pictures I had drawn of a crab. So, crab picture done, whole crab purchased on Stockton Street, two stuffed animals (an emotional support octopus for the other one so Otto feels less like a freak, and a red panda, because when startled they stand up on their hind legs with their arms outstretched as if to say "I am a big creature!", which will confound the turkey vulture who insists that he isn't a little bird but a "big creature"). Plus two pottery items, charsiu pork, veggies, and rice to go along with the crab.
Plus garlic ginger dau si (豆豉) butter.
For the crab after cooking.
And cake.

Crustaceans often make Cantonese American females very happy. It's magic.

The consumption of the crab meant that the cake had to wait.
I had finished eating an hour before she did.
Crab necessarily takes time.

FRAMED CRAB

OTHER CRAB

Besides, I let her have all of it.

All I needed was the charsiu.
Plus rice and sambal.
I'm a simple man.


I like celebrating her birthday, because I already had the grim reminder that I'm older a few months ago. So that's over and done with for a while, and if I can just skoot through Christmas everything will be roses for a while.



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FISH AND RICE

Yesterday I listened to two Caucasian gentlemen talking about Chinese and Vietnamese food. They come from a position of some familiarity; one of them has travelled extensively, and is married to a Vietnamese woman, the other has spent a lot of time in China. It was interesting, but from my blinkered point of view, ignorant in many regards.
As such discussion frequently is.

I shall now proceed to make whitesplaining remarks about Chinese food. Based entirely on my own praeconceptions, as formed from exposure to Chinatown and Asia. Chinese food is hanging things and stuff that comes out of the sea and a pile of rice. Or wheat noodles, rice flour noodles, steamed bread-like substances, porridge, plus sludge.
Fermented stuffs and some spices come into play.

Without seafood, most of Vietnam, large parts of Southern China, Japan, Korea, and much of insular South East Asia would be bereft, in despair, and heartbroken.

Fish, rice, and a hefty dollop of sambal, are quintessential comfort food. As they should be.
Anyone with Netherlandish tendencies (I am Dutch American by heritage, environment, and language) cannot avoid fish; without the harvest from the seas we would never have burst out of our abysmal soggy coastal swamp to pillage the world and seize Portuguese colonial possessions in the tropics, our greedy merchants might not have been able to afford their lavish lifestyles which included fancy cloth, porcelain, and the paintings of our great artists, and our sourly disapproving churchmen could not have despaired over man's inhumanity to man (something at which we excelled) plus the sinfulness and decadence of modern society (from the sixteenth century onwards), or grown fat and complacent on the spoils of war and commerce flowing into the home country (a ghastly stretch of mud along the North Sea, which we own, and should kick the Brits, Scandinavians, and Latins out of with force, incendiary devices, and the sinking of English fleets in the Medway).

Without the influences from the East Indies, West Africa, and our cesspools of human misery in the New World, Dutch cuisine would be dismal. We'd never have discovered sambal!
It is too horrible to contemplate!

Without fish, there is no civilization.
No pizza, or nasi goreng.
Only snert.


Interior China, stretching northwards into Mongolia and Turkestan, is given over to pork, and lamb hot pot, and such peculiarities as biang biang noodles.

It's almost mediaeval.



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ANGRY NAKED WOMEN WITH MACHETES

Idea for a reality teevee show: Angry naked women with machetes. First episode: a Republican fund-raising dinner. This thing will pretty much write itself after that. Just take all the Gidget movies AND the Charlie's Angels episodes, and substitute Angry Naked Women With Machetes. Get Steven King to write it. Christmas fun for the entire family.

I've been avoiding seasonal music. Sadly, this also means that I have not yet heard Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah', which shows up in a lot of holiday music lists by mistake (the name suggests it's, errm, religious), one of the best songs about coldly unpleasant sexual intercourse ever, and given the smarm quotient, sensible people will do likewise.

Nothing is more excrutiating than little children singing Jingle Bells.


Oh wait, I forgot about Mariah Carey.


If "All I Want For Christmas Is You" isn't a good enough reason for angry naked women with machetes wreaking havoc in a crowded shopping mall, I don't know what is, and nothing is sacred anymore.

There's a rusty mockup of a reindeer where I work.
It sparkles with the promise of tetanus.
Seasonally appropriate.



AFTER THOUGHT

Why isn't 'The Wreck Of The Old 97' a Christmas song? It's got memorable and easy to remember lyrics, it's cheerful, inspiring even, and it has that ding dang ding dang dirdle doodle ding ding ding sound going for it that people love in their seasonal music.



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SIREN SONGS

Having spent all day in Marin surrounded by icebergs, and having eaten some strange things including some red stuff, as is common in the depths of Marin, one naturally wants something else. The food of my people howls at me across the abyss, and I harken to its call.
Or, to put it differently, I ate suburban muck today. And a red velvet cookie.

You know, back in the fifties and sixties they mixed carrots into lime jello and served it on iceberg lettuce with some mayo on top. Salad, the most important course.

Now you know why some people are so twisted.

They are American Suburbanites.

This is the kind of thing that belongs in Ethnic Studies. Course name: Why your white neighbor is a psychopath. Somebody needs to write a doctoral thesis about this.


Dinner was something easily thrown together, using stuff I had on hand.

Frozen stock. Fish balls. An icecube of chopped mixed herbs (included a little salt, pepper, lemon juice). A spoonful of sambal. A little chopped garlic and ginger fried in olive oil.

I didn't feel like adding any vegetables (bokchoi or chopped celery), and I decided against rice stick noodles, which would have been customary also.

Coffee afterwards, plus five miligrams of Amlodipine Besylate (prescribed, not recreational), followed by a pipe outside in the cold while walking around the block. Then home again, to the comforting presence of a turkey vulture. Who asked whether I had harvested any fatty inner thighs or other choice cuts while out there, what else are humans good for?

After all day in Marin I think he has a point.



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PREPARED FOR IDIOTS

Song-wise it was mostly a disaster, because it seems all melodically afflicted white people are Kahn Souphanousinphone. California Dreaming, Don't Worry Be Happy, and Welcome To The Hotel California. The only light in the middle of the tunnel was Jenny doing a rather stellar rendition of the theme song for The Bund (上海灘 'seung hoi taan').
Of which everyone should know the lyrics.

We left just as more musically inclined folks came in.
Perfect timing, Watson.

It was probably seeing the Stupidest Waiter in Chinatown pose-dancing or whatever at the end of the bar that reminded us that we've not seen any of the Stevies in years. There were three of them, they were gibberingly crazy, and Mike at the burger place encouraged that on slow evenings. The two gentlemen working there now would probably not.

Mike liked a bit of "entertainment".
He is still sorely missed.

Today there will be no dearth of gibberant insanity. Because of the festive season I'll be in Marin, tending to smelly crazy people. Several of whom I cannot stand.

It has taken me many years to realize that "tolerance" is overrated.
There are some people one simply endures.
Teeth-grittingly.



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HIGHER STANDARDS

Gentlemen smoke pipes, race track touts and petty criminals huff cigars (as do shrunken old men who live in Florida, go forty miles in the fast lane, smell of tunafish sandwiches, and have their slacks cinched up the sternum), and Americans puff ciggies.
If you have been to Oxford or Cambridge, or Leiden if you're Dutch, you must smoke only a pipe. That's the law. The rebels in the jungle will string you up by your balls if you don't, and take turns whacking you with long bamboo poles.

This, of course, is not strictly true. But it's sort of the idea. It goes along with marmalade (educated British bachelor), gentleman's relish (an unreliable sort with too much money), strong tea (Scotsman, Hongkonger, Yorkshireman, and gorhelpus the Irish), and the full English breakfast (mostly Americans).

Most of the pilots I've known (many of them military service men) smoked pipes. And all of them were gentlemen.


I still have my father's pipes. Only two of which I smoke.


This one is not one of them.

Loaded it up with Old Gowrie and smoked it after lunch in Chinatown. Kind of cold today. Few tourists. Dropped by my favourite provisioners for snackipoos, happily noted that they still have tonnes of the brand of funglei sou I like, and I'm so glad their business is thriving, headed down to Grant Avenue for the bus. Home by tea time.

I've had the pipe since the days of the old company. Bought it shortly after we moved to the new building. A very pedestrian shape, but a good smoker.


Years ago there was a pipe tobacco which I liked occasionally; medium Virginia flake with a bizarre topping like the aftershave lotion sold to wannabee playboys in the eighties. Quite good. Very degenerate. It would have been lovely today. It's not made anymore.
It was a church interior kind of fragrance.


While aromatic blends are often derided as ladies tobaccos, almost none of the women pipe smokers I've ever met liked them. So it's almost entirely men of very doubtful tastes who end up smelling like grandad, that sickly sweet vanilla caramel aroma which hides the reek of formaldehyde and urinary incontinence. As well as young men who haven't a clue.


Decent people, of whichever gender, will smoke good quality pipe tobacco that whifs of terpeneols (Latakia mixtures) or carotenoids and bread (Virginias and Virginia Perique mixtures), and has only the slightest of toppings if any. Their coffee is not flavoured with syrup or sprinkles, their tea is real tea, not one of those herbal concoctions, and contains no balls, pearls, squiggles, chunks, or fruit fragments. If they reek about of vanilla, it's because of their perfume; maybe their nose was plugged up that day, or they were half asleep when they applied it. It splashed. They'll do better tomorrow.

And it goes without saying that there is marmalade and sambal on the premises.
As well as at least one large teapot ready for use.
And they own lots of books.



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TRAITORS AND NUTBALLS

In the days after the last presidential election, Republican scumsuckers angrily plotted and schemed to overturn the results and counter the will of the American people. As one would expect, because for the past generation the Republican Party has consisted of sharks and opportunists who make Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro look sane and balanced.
Some of the slimiest are, predictably, from Texas.
Texas equals BS with capital letters.

Mark, in seeing what’s happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of no return in saving our Republic !! Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!
------Rep. Ralph Norman, Texas

Guys, if there was ever a time to stand with our leader who has strengthened our military, stood for life for the unborn, supported Israel, built the wall , appointed conservative judges ect. And we lay down and abandon him JUST BECAUSE THE BIASED MEDIA HAS CALL THE ELECTION?? Now is the time to fight and ADVOCATE for a recount in GA, AZ, Pennsylvania!! What our delegation is doing in SC is gathering on the statehouse steps on Tuesday to advocate for standing with our president and other arguments/options that are at our disposal. For anyone willing to discuss our game plan let me or anyone else know and let’s get on a conference call with concrete plans of action. I will go anywhere anytime to help our cause. Bottom line, it’s time we FIGHT FOR THE ONE PERSON WHO HAS CHANGED THIS COUNTRY!! WAY TOO SOON TO GIVE IN NOW!!
------Rep. Ralph Norman, Texas

Mark, Club for Growth wanted me to help in GA Dec 11& 12 on their bus tour, I’ve also been asked to help this wkend (while I’m still trying to spur people to get REAL winner of Pres recognized since without the Pres OFFICIALLY re-elected, we’re done). Would it be possible to ride AF One to GA Saturday? I’d only need a ride down since I’d stay there longer. Also if Pres had anytime I could drop by today, would love to see u both. -Thanks.
------Rep. Louie Gohmert, Texas

Mark, When we lose Trump we lose our Republic. Fight like hell and find a way. We’re with you down here in Texas and refuse to live under a corrupt Marxist dictatorship. Liberty!
------Rep. Brian Babin, Texas

We’re in Philadelphia suing Pa. Sec. of State for her illegal meddling in this election and will continue to expose fraudulent actions. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to fight these MF’ers in Pa.? Our President is heroic !! Thank you for all you’ve done and please let the President know just how much he’s loved and appreciated in Pennsylvania!
------Rep. Mike Kelly, Pennsylvania

When is the 45 days up? What date starts the clock ?? Nov 3rd? If it is, then that is December 18!!! China bought Dominion in October for $400 million. If that’s not interference, then should have a report with details and specifics that would validate that either way. And if they didn’t…… Call me I have some fireworks coming out of AZ early tomorrow. Call me anytime, I’m up.
------Rep. Paul Gosar, Arizona


Please note: Louie Gohmert, America's craziest and dumbest congressman, and proponent of the terror baby theory, is the tea party dunderhead who famously insisted that homosexual astronauts would doom us all, because if an asteriod hit while they were up in space they could not possibly repopulate the earth.

He perfectly represents his constituency.



Paranoia, treason, and exclamation marks, run rife in the Republican ranks.
Will no one think about the exclamation marks?!?!?!!!!



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IT'S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

Lunch yesterday, quickly cooked at home, was sambal goreng terong over broad rice stick noodles: eggplant cooked with chilipaste and curry paste, tossed over heat in the fry pan with saa ho fan (沙河粉), egg stifried in. It was very nice and took little time. There was some ginger in there too, as well as a little fish sauce.

Lunch today will be at the place I usually go on Wednesday, because I'm working tomorrow. The constant, both yesterday and today, naturally is Hong Kong milk tea.
Milk tea should be strong enough to shiver your timbers.
Or whatever the phrase is.

On the way to lunch I'm swinging by the pharmacy to pick up refills. When I called to renew the praescriptions the conversation switched to Cantonese as soon as she knew who I was. A person like me who can speak Canto no matter how badly, is still sufficiently anomalous that they stand out. Kind of like the old white lady who showed up as a nun in several Hong Kong movies, speaking slowly but intelligibly. I'm slightly better than that; on the phone, if you did not know I was a Caucasian you'd suspect me of being a Northerner, maybe exiled Shanghainese or some farmer from darkest Shantung. Maybe a Yorkshire man.

There are people who have only conversed with me in Cantonese.

They'd probably be flabbergasted to know that my native language is Dutch. Of which there are approximately a dozen speakers in C'town. One Chinese fellow from Sumatra, one or two elderly Javanese Chinese, a whole bunch of Hakka from Suriname, and an elderly Shanghainese woman.

Yes naturally we all gravitate toward Chinatown. Where else can you find sambal, diverse noodles for your bami or soto bihoon, and all your other ingredients? As well as 'kousband' (豆角 'dau gok'), pareya (涼瓜 'leung gwaa'), and fresh belatjan (鹹蝦醬 'haam haa jeung')?


You know, if decent haring and frikandel are EVER going to hit the United States, it will probably be right here in Chinatown. One can but hope.

Especially haring. Cantonese love fish.
Mr. Scott, make it so.



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EASY TO MANAGE

There is now a woman in Chinatown who knows, KNOWS, that I have son with a little girl, a granddaughter. Because of what I bought in her business, and the ensuing conversation.
This being an easier explanation than that I was purchasing something for my apartment mate's birthday, and that both of us like certain childish things.

Elsewhere I also bought a colourful Christmas card for the turkey vulture who shares our apartment, who is somewhat hesitant about moving to the salt flats to join all the other turkey vultures -- he is their long lost prince -- because he's heard from reliable sources that they'll rough him up a bit, steal his lunch money, and tear his pretty Christmas card to pieces and share it among themselves. It's HIS card! His! So pretty!

Actually having a card will, we hope, reinforce his resolve in the other direction. We feel sure the other turkey vultures will consider him a candy-ass, totally unsuited to the rough Marlboro-man life style of carrion eaters in the wild. He's basically a city dude.
And barely a foot tall. Quite immature, a child still.
With a very rich inner life.
Still young.

Per a tradition of a few years standing, I get her another stuffed critter at this time of year. So that she adds one more voice to her repertoire of mouthy alternates.
The illustration above is a hypothetical.
Doesn't actually exist.


Had tea afterwards at a nearby place. Old codgers, plus an Indian and his grandkids, and a little girl and her mommy who ordered 焗番茄豬扒飯 ('guk fan ke chyu-baa faan'; baked tomto porkchop rice). Because little children after school must be fed. The waitress recognizes me by know, and knows that I'm having hot milk tea and something.


I am NOT a grandpa! I just look like one.


It's cold today. Something bunged into the microwave at a bakery hits the spot.
And clearly I am not the only one who thinks so.



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WHEN THE COLD HITS YOUR EYE

What use are days off when it's cold? A man cannot spend all day in bed with his stuffed creatures because it's warm there. And, apparently, there was snow on hill tops in some parts of the Bay Area, where little kiddie winkies shouted with glee as they slid downhil before shattering on the rocks below, and pet iguanas fell out of trees due to torpor.

One would have liked snow in downtown San Francisco during Santacon (an annual drunken orgy for the younger generation), so that naughty Santas would not climb up the palm trees along the Embarcadero with her absence of panties showing. It's a mental image bound to give little kiddies trauma. And she looks silly. Plus palmfronds scratch the sensitive parts! This is a health warning.

The grown man does not like cold weather, particularly.

Naturally I'm blaming the Republicans.
Also, I do not have a cat.
Cats are warm.


Quote from a black female security guard: "please come down, dear, you look stupid!"


Crap. Things to do. Necessary tasks.
Blains to chill.


AFTERWORD

It was forty Fahrenheit when I went out for the first pipe of the day. This is inhuman!
Elon Musk probably had a hand in this! The bastard!

NOTE: A well-reputed home remedy for chilblains (a condition much mentioned in Victorian childrens' stories; redness, itching, and inflammation, caused by excessive cold) includes a poultice composed of fennel, port wine, and garlic. Which sounds great for marinating lamb shanks. Incidence of chilblains has gone down considerably since the spread of indoor environments and socks.



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NON INTRUSIVE SEXINESS

While waiting for the bus that takes me to the salt mines several days a week I count the dogs, street people, crazies, little tykes, and morons riding public transit without masks. There have been a few days recently when there were no street people, so I counted crows instead. Till the moment I got on the bus where I was one of the very few passengers with a mask. Because of course people are naturally carefree, tired of precautions, bored, and would rather play Russian Roulette. And who can blame them?

I like dogs, tykes, and crows.

I am always thrilled and overjoyed with the number of non-Chinese Americans* who consider their kids expendable, and happily waltz around with no member of the family masked at all, blithely exposing junior to any number of pathogens and diseases, including Covid. One or two people less around the holdiday table surely won't be missed?

[Just look at your uncle Walther. He's always been a Jesus-bore, AND he keeps yacking about 'freedums' and microchips. Last year he wouldn't shut up about how everybody is assigned a bar-code at birth.
You wouldn't want little Bertie or Amber to grow up like him, would you?]

And good for you! Masks are SO expensive!
As well as instrusive and unsexy.
Noses should range free.
Like germs.



*Local Chinese Americans inexplicably want to keep their kids alive. We can't understand that. There must be something wrong there. It's suspicious, is what. It's just not normal!


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CHEESE, SCOTSMEN, AND QUININE

Today was a meeting of the local pipe club, and my friend who had an operation and is under doctor's orders to pee a lot -- excessively, for several weeks -- was there. He does not like to pee so much, especially because it's hard to wake up in the middle of the night to do so.
I offered that waking up to yank out nostril hairs works for me. He's older, and has more nostril hair (at least I think he does, because he's older), but that doesn't work for him.

Much of the conversation at the meeting revolved around old Charatan pipes, and cheese. There was cheese. Brie or Camembert should be runny, even deliquescent, as you know.

What with the inclement weather, the sports game on teevee, and the approach of Christmas, it was a sparsely attended meeting. With, consequently, too much wine.

So really, it was a splendid success.

Over the weekend I've been smoking Rattray's Old Gowrie in some of my Petersons a lot. It's a good all day tobacco that used to be found wherever Englishmen went; the Burmese jungle, outlying districts in Assam and Bengal, Peiping during the warlord period or Chekiang if they worked for China Customs, Kenya and or the Tanganyika territory, rubber plantations in Perak and Selangor ..... Uppercrustian British bachelors posted to distant hellholes are hard to find nowadays. The last such I know stopped smoking a pipe five or six years ago, having gotten married, and one of them passed away locally two years ago, also no longer single. Must be something in the water. Sadly, a tobacconist or general provisioner who carries a full stock of Scots tobaco blends is also harder to find.


The chap who survived the camps in Hong Kong died suddenly several years ago, his lovingly tended garden gone to weed alerted us that something had happened.
His pipe tobacco preferences were a little eccentric. Irish even.

Sad. We had often talked about Stanley Fort.


There are not many people with whom I can discuss Hong Kong. One I see often when I'm in Marin smokes cigars, as does the sporadic visitor who usually stays over there (Kowloon), but he's more of a decent weather visitor because his long suffering Cantonese wife prefers sitting outside. The first mentioned is still a bachelor. It's not really a life-style choice.


To the best of my knowledge I am the only bachelor among the attendees of our little get-together. But not English. The chap who mentioned Hong Kong, Singapore, and Rangoon much earlier in the day is both, but a cigar smoker. We had spoken briefly about blackwater fever (a haemolytic ailment caused by malaria and triggered by overmuch use of quinine as prophylaxis over the years), which is why habitual consumption of gin and tonics might not be such a good idea. Probably best stick with Scotch and water.

By the way: I am probably the only one us who knows how to make a gin pahit.


I swilled tea all day. It helps against the weather.



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THE SOUND OF BANJOS

Nowadays I avoid talking to the gentlemen in the lounge as much as possible. I remember growing up in Europe as an American citizen, when quite regularly I would hear poisonous anti-American nonsense spewed venomously forth on with conviction. This is worse. Since Trump lost the election -- probably because even with massive Republican cheating, threats, lies, and district gerrymandering, the majority of Americans were fed up -- those boys have gotten more and more unrealistic and ideological in their hatred of this country, to the point where if we were invaded they'd cheer it on, revelling in each new disaster and setback.

Unsurprisingly, they support Elon Musk lock stock and barrell.
That pandering hysteric on Fox is their hero.
MJG a beauty and a saint.

Myself, I am resolved to avoid everything between the spot on the map labelled 'wine and cheese' and the heartland of 'bad pizza'.

Jonathan in Israel wrote: "I am emotionally moved by your concern for the denizens of Texas, Florida and the flyover states" in response to my recent comments about the continued Covid pandemic. He may have misinterpreted my concern. It's considerably closer to meanspirited apathy than any fellow feeling.

The main reason I have been far less bilious about Western Europe is because they are further away, less of a threat, and less a concern. NOT because I value them any more.

It isn't a case of viewing the breakdown of civilization with disinterest. More a situation where the amateurish and haphazard onward stumbling of the beast irritates considerably. We can do better, we could have done better, but we keep sloshing forth like drunken football fans.


Speaking of which, with Holland and England both out, Japan too, the World Cup is now in the hands of the yobbos. Not worth watching, nothing left but ambulating turds.
Everything beyond 'wine and cheese' and 'bad pizza' is a toilet.
No wonder there are vampire zombies!



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THE REAL MEANING OF CHRISTMAS

It would be a lie if I were to assert a fondness for SantaCon, the yearly festival of inebriation and puking celebrated by men and women dresses as Santa or elves. Or reindeer.
Or undressed as Santa, elves, and reindeer.

Never-the-less, I have an intellectual affection for it. I love the idea of empty headed yuppies and tech-bros getting so drunk that they need to have their stomachs pumped, and losing control at both ends.

It makes the season special.

I'd rather they not do it in my neighborhood, however.
Soggy vomit Santas in gutters do not appeal.
Even if some of them have .....
Covered in tinsel.

The streets are filled with disgusting drunks in stained red velvet.

On the other hand, that berserk story of a virgin giving birth and three men visiting with gifts while sheep and other farmyard animals sing could ONLY have been invented by drunkards.

It is highly suspect that there was no midwife, and no details of labour or parturition were passed on. Tells you that no women were part of the tale-spinning. And, remarkably, other than the teenage mother herself, no women were present at all. Which isn't likely.

In the words of my apartment mate, "they didn't have women at that time, they'd been eaten by the dinosaurs".


The whole thing smells of drunken frat-boy to me.

"They didn't have women at that time, they'd been eaten by the dinosaurs!"

No women at all, not even a village midwife or the local taxidriver, to assist in the birth. Nothing but farm animals and three hippies. As good a reason to get blotto as any.

Afterwards, a magic fat man flies overhead with Gameboys and socks!

Par-tay!



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