IT'S ALL IN THE IMAGE

The picture of the modern-day pipe-smoker is a man with a big but well-maintained beard, perfectly coiffed hair (touch of gel), an assertive mustache (slightly waxed), contemplatively puffing a full bent pipe. He is wearing a heavy dark suit that is slightly retro, looking assertively darned hip. A serious man. Perhaps with a martini.
He is both posed and poised.

A man who spends fifty to a hundred bucks every fortnight at a place with old fashioned barber's chairs, a tile floor, and straight razors on the premises. Which smells like good leather oil because there is a shoe shiner on the premises.
Plus faint hints of lavender and sandal wood.
Oh, the masculinity!


The nineteen fifties pipe smoker was clean-shaven and had a straight pipe.
At six o'clock A.M. he was scooping coffee into the machine.
Already fully dressed for the office.
Crisp white shirt.
A tie.

At present I'm wearing dark slacks, a plaid shirt over a tee-shirt with an image of an angry office lady red panda (Aggretsuko), and a grey sweater. The apartment smells of coffee and aged Virginias. I trimmed my beard and mustache yesterday and look somewhat evil.

I am not posed and poised. I am rumpled.


The pipe is a straight billiard shape 60 sandblast ('shellbriar'), group 4. It does not look like anything Gandalf, a hobbit, or a serious author would puff. It's something an engineer for the defense industries, or a junior electrician, a race car driver, or Clark Gable might smoke.

My old draughting equipment -- drop bow pens, compasses, proportional dividers, French curves, etcetera -- is within reach in the bookshelf behind me, and I'm wondering where my architect's scale is. I know where the mechanical pencils are. None of these have been used in over thirty years because CAD took over. Instead of up to five blue print machines (that smell!), over a hundred draughtsmen and twenty plus experienced engineers, you can get everything done with one engineer, a couple of trained monkeys, and a computer.

White shirts and ties are also things of the past.


Later today, after my lunch, I will look like your disreputable uncle Bertie having a smoke in a quiet alley in Chinatown or North Beach, safely away from sensitive souls, earthmothers, and Karens, all objecting to the smell, or that hipster with the full beard and polished hair who wants to know the distinguished provenance of my wherewithalls.

I do not own hair creme or aftershave.

Might be scowling.



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UNEVENLY SPACED CLUSTERS

It's Valentine's Day, I am home alone, and my feet are uncomfortable. And you know, I'm okay with that. A friend is also at home, in bed with the flu. Could have been a floozie, but at his age the flu is by far a greater likelihood. He wasn't at the bakery today around teatime, and it was surprisingly quiet. Not because of his absence but because of the rain. Which really came thundering down for twenty minutes shortly after I had left and lit up my pipe.
Expect an angry letter to the editor about that.


"Dear Sir! What is this world coming to when old gits have to smoke their pipes outside in a downpour while young generation Xers are inside playing footsie-wootsie on their cell phones?!?
Hell in handbasket, sir, hell in a handbasket!"


This must be like that first Valentine's Day during World War One when soldiers forlornly waved roses at each other from the trenches at Ypres in the cold February rain.

There's tea in the kitchen, and the heating just kicked on.
Life is actually pretty darn good right now.

Earlier I had passed groups of people under the awning at a closed restaurant, at a shuttered jewelry store, at a bus stop, outside a bank, at another bus stop. Many of them were clearly anxious to get home because of the rain, bugger any romantic celebration, we are cold and wet and this is awful, waaaaa, why won't the jampacked bus stop so that we can get on board and benefit from the warmth generated by herds of fellow humans?


"Dear Sir! If we can't heat-vampirize each other something is wrong!
No standing room shall not stand!"


All over the city irate individuals are penning nasty letters while busloads of warm dry people thunder past. The lucky sods. This is the fault of those damned liberals.
Life is so unfair.


As an unmarried unattached man without a love interest or even a possible girlfriend, I have no objection at all to Valentine's Day being a cold wet miserable affair.
Not that I pay any attention to that.



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SLOW MOVING AND INCLEMENT

At this point it looks like the most romantic thing I'll do today is seek shelter under an awning in Chinatown after lunch with my pipe. The lovestarved masses are of course free to join me. I expect that that will be probably at most two or three people of delicate and refined sensibilities desperate to inch away from the horrid tobacco smell.
While nevertheless maintaining a decent dryness.

I shall fondly imagine their velvety skin crawling.
There's a proximity of smoke, eek!
And slurping bubble tea.

As no doubt you realize, I am an extremely romantic man. I eat chocolates regularly. And furthermore I rarely resist the urge to pet cats. I utter the magic words "pss, pss, pss!"
As well as "c'mere you little rascal".

Years ago I told someone that "nothing says Valentine's Day like cigars".
I never saw her again since that time. Surprising.

My favourite fictional detective was a pipe smoker. A thoughtful man, who often had lunch at a Parisian brasserie when he didn't make it home. One remembers oysters, or skate in black butter. Lobster. Ham sandwich.

My lunch today will probably be a Hong Kong club sandwich, fries, and a cup of milk tea. Suitably fortified for braving the weather, I shall seek out a nearby closed storefront while contemplating the greyness.

Maigret (the detective) would approve. Though, as a typical Northern European of somewhat "Burgundian" tastes, he would have washed lunch down with a chilled beer, followed perhaps by strong coffee to refortify the senses. I have no idea what tobacco he smoked. Immaterial in any case, as common continental tobacco blends were altogether ghastly for a long time. His author, Simenon, liked Dunhill's Royal Yacht, but is known to have smoked Granger while in the United States. Neither of which I favour. My tobacco today will most likely be Cornell & Diehl's most recent version of Anthology, a remarkable romantic tobacco. Soft, sweet, with a delicate tin fragrance between fresh hay and over-ripe stone fruits. Will age well.

[Burgundian, in this case, means rather Brabantish. Simenon was Belgian, and hence tended toward a more northern over-indulgence. Belgians, as is well-known, have real beer. Unlike Americans who drink inferior chemicalized slop.]

Grocery shopping. Tea and an egg tart. Then another pipe.


As I understand it, most Americans will be blowing a fortune on chocolates, roses, and dinner at a small romantic and extremely high priced restaurant, as well as pink teddy bears. Possibly even proposing! Tomorrow, unsold bon bons will be on sale.
Save time and money; buy them then for next year.

I used to work part-time at a restaurant.
Holidays were always ghastly.
Bah humbug.



Nothing says Valentine's Day like fine flake tobacco.
And a Dunhill shellbriar pipe. To be sure.
Trust me. I'm an expert.
Romantic.



Two pipes. Post lunch. After tea.
A shellbriar. A bruyere.
For balance.



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SIX OF SVEN

Seeing as I cannot remember his name, let's just call him 'Sven'. Sven is Swedish. Sven is drunk. Sven is almost unintelligible. Not because he's Swedish. Nice chap. One of the less sentient extras from an Ingmar Bergman film. Sven is engaged upon a profound personal meditation into the struggles of the psyche and the soul. Because he is Swedish.

First time I've seen him since before the pandemic. My friend the bookseller confuses him with a Dutchman he sees around town who is also drunk. And quite possibly unintelligle in consequence, but I didn't ask.

I, too, am Dutch. But I am stone-cold sober.
I had four cups of tea tonight.
Hepped to the gills.

Also, as a sober Dutchman, I am reasonably good with languages.

Years ago I saw two stage performances at the Stadsschouwburg (now the "Parktheater Eindhoven") which I thoroughly enjoyed: The Taming Of The Shrew, and Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny. The first time I went back to the Netherlands after returning to the States, I went to see a Peking opera performed by a troupe from Shenyang (瀋陽 'sam yeung') in a suburb (Veldhoven) of Eindhoven.

Despite my linguistic flexibility -- Dutch, Shakespearean English, German, Chinese, Colonial Malay, and Tokpisin, et autres -- my ability to make sense out of drunken Swedanglish is rather low. Sorry. Almost bis punkt von nix farshtay. He's a decent fellow, though.

It's a failing, I know. My bad. Drunken Swedanglish is an important language. It's crucial to grasping both the Swedish Chef and Greta Thunberg, as well as why the Vikings invaded the British Isles (though the absence of surströmming may have been responsible for that).

We Dutch like seafood. Despite it's origin in fish, surströmming is not seafood. It is, on the tongue, precisely the same as drunken Swedanglish in the ear. Or Greta Thunberg.


Other languages heard tonight were Italian, Spanish, German, Cantonese, and English.
Mostly spoken by reasonably sober individuals.
Or "sober-ish".


My evening had started with me lighting up a pipeful of Virginia and heading into Spofford Alley, enjoying the quiet of Chinatown after dark. On Grant the gabble of foreign voices was occasionally audible -- and why is it that American English is brassily loud from over a block away? -- as well as sometimes Cantonese, sotto voce, normal speaking tones. Finished my smoke ten minutes before the bus dropped off the bookseller.

The Swerdlunkard was encountered at the final stop of the evening.
The owner gave me a very big glass of tea.
She's prescient.



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WHAT, ME PERKY?

Waking up is hard. Fortunately, you have a bladder that tells you how. This morning as usual I got up before my alarm clock went off. I have no friggin' clue how my bladder knows it's nearly to an hour before I've set the alarm, whether it's a work day or an off day.
But, like clockwork .....

Part of it doubtlessly is the imperative to take my pills. Which was drummed in by the habits of years. Earthquakes, fires, siege, and a car crash? No wakey wakey. But it's been a full day since that row of pills? Boy, it's time! Get your big posterior up! Now!

Yes, sadly my subconscious mind is a rude mo fo.
And works hand in glove with my bladder.
The paradigm of efficiency.

Unfortunately, like many hot coffee dependent people, it takes my sunny disposition a while longer to wake up. All body systems are running, yet my innate cheeriness and love for my fellows lags behind. I'm in a much better mood when I go to bed at night.
All humane and pallsey-wallsey by myself.
You'd like me then.

Yesterday my good nature did not surface until lunch time. Dumplings, hot sauce, Hong Kong milk tea, in a cheery comfortable clean place with alacritous service. I had become human again when I left. Lit up outside, and enjoyed a nice relaxed smoke for the next forty minutes in a pipe that may be much older than myself. A billiard shellbriar Dunhill patent.
Life is good. My feet hurt because of the cold, but life is darn good.


Perhaps life is indeed all about perky likable women bearing plates of goodies.
Or maybe I'm likable. That would account for it also.
Unlikely, but possible.



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BAY AREA YOUNG PEOPLE

The more I think about the mob that destroyed a riderless Waymo down on Jackson Street in Chinatown this past Saturday night, the more I want to destroy parts of Oakland, The Mission District, and the suburbs. Berkeley too. Dammit, you stupid dingoes, why can't you set fire to crap in your own neighborhoods?

Berkeley and Oakland, by the way, are the epicentres of syphilis and gonorrhea in California. And there are reasons why there are so many goats there.
And swine. Lots of swine.

Dammit. Most important day of the year. And outsiders decided they had nothing better to do than commit vandalism in Chinatown. Why the blazes could they not have stayed in Oakland for that?!?


The shopkeepers in this city need guns.
Baseball bats and bear spray.
Glocks.

Hell, if they had done that in downtown Berkeley, they could have circulated pictures on the internet captioned "this is what national liberation looks like". And people in London, Glasgow, and Dublin would have marched in support.

The videos show a crowd of overwhelmingly Caucasoid, young, baseball caps on backwards thugs. Not local people. The dipshits proudly videotaped themselves. This is why we need more police, and more riot sticks and teargas.


The proper venues for stupid destructive behaviour are, once again, Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and The Mission District. Plus probably Mill Valley and San Raphael.
As well as the further reaches of the BART system and AC Transit.

Please stay home, you effing morons.


Bridge and tunnel thugs.



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SPECIAL WHITE FOLKS BEVERAGE!

Until my apartment mate sneeringly discovered it on the internet this morning while enjoying her morning jolt of hot caffeine preparatory to going off to work and dealing with supercilious Filippinas and dingbat Hong Kong born spazbrains, I had no idea that my fellow Caucasians have invented a ghastliness of monumental proportions. Honestly, I thought we were normal.
I did not take into account the effects of suburban living and a cow-town college liberal arts education, plus the deleterious impact of spirituality and sensitivity.


Apparently, white people all over America are waking up to the bracing jolt of .... turmeric oatmilk lattes.

I can hear you rolling over in your graves upon reading this.

No caffeine. And non-inflammatory.

It's good for the bowels.

Mostly women.

Made with diluted almond milk as the base, plus ginger and cardamom.
Dusted with cinnamon and carob powder.
Add honey.


Goes great with yoga.


The supercilious Filippinas and dingbat Hong Kong born spazbrains are office staff. This is San Francisco, so there are an awful lot of those. I have worked with both types. As well as the spiritual white women cleansing their auras and their bowels by doing yoga and wearing colourful ethnic garb. It's self-expressive!

BTW: The whiter they are, the more likely it is that they have tattoos which mean something. And Tibetan jewelry.

Om shanti shanti shanti.



I'm on my second cup of strong coffee, by the way. Wide awake now. Enjoying a pipe filled with tobacco. Real tobacco. It puts me in touch with the native Americans that we taught all about scalping and alcohol use. And traded denim with. Beaver pelts and bison skulls. Lunch today will be cultural appropriative. Dumplings! Because it's Chinese New Year, at which time dumplings are traditional. And I love dumplings. If you stick around long enough, I may even white-splain the dumpling gestalt to you.

I have meaningfulness coming out of the wazzoo.



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SAVAGES! YOU ARE ALL SAVAGES!

Given my low level of confidence in my fellow citizens, I fully expect riots after the game, irrespective of whoever wins the Super Bowl. Possibly by the same bunch of high school dropouts that trashed a driverless car yesterday evening and torched it in Chinatown. On an entirely unrelated side note, it's high time we authorized the SFPD to use live ammo on skateboarders. And rioters. And people from the East Bay. Or the Mission District. Or Marin County. There are far too many of everyone listed above, and they misbehave. Vandalism, robbery, arson, and the torching of innocent driverless cars. It's shocking.
Plus they probably have tattoos and smoke weed.
I'm shocked. Shocked.

The Super Bowl, as you know, is about peace, love, and Taylor Swift.

It's also a stupid spectacle which I refuse to watch.

Most of my fellow citizens are idiots.


You know, I think I'm actually okay with shooting any vandals, grafitists, thuggish teenagers, skateboarders, and young folks from the East Bay on sight. It's better than putting up with their tagging buildings and torching cars. And maybe we should just board up all the entrances to BART stations.


I can hear the cannibals screaming from where I sit right now.
Did I ever mention that I hate team sports?

Let's just say that athletic frenzies bring out the worst in me.
And I'm not very Christian to begin with.



It think everyone else in this block is biting the skin of their teeth right now.
Remember, guys, peace, love, and Taylor Swift.
Shoot rioters.



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FESTIVE EVENTS, SAN FRANCISCO

Today is the Superbowl, which is far more important than any presidential election in the United States. Millions of people will be watching with bated breath as the San Francisco team beats the living daylights out of the Denver Broncos or Dallas Buckeyes, and restores balance to the universe. I shan't be watching. I'll be headed back to San Francisco in what promises to be the quietest commute this year. And I have no dog in this race.
Whoever wins, das ist mir scheißegal.

Tonight I shall go to bed early. All last night locals were setting off fireworks to chase away evil spirits, and welcome in the New Year. It must be working; not a redneck in sight. So we will win. And then we will feast! Lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and breakfast cereals and fruit bats.

In our giddy jollification, we may very well set fire to municipal buses and garbage bins.
And break bottles on Polk street between Union and Washington.
Because we are traditionalists.

And of course we will set off more fireworks.


Years ago, there were so many explosions at this time that some streets in Chinatown were a sea of red scraps, ankle deep. It would go on for nearly six weeks. Then there were a couple of mis-haps, and authorities cracked down. It's sad. I miss the old days. It sounded like the siege of Beirut for over a month. Lovely.


In any case, didn't sleep well. Should be catching up tonight.
No matter the racket and the sounds of rioting.
Have fun with the bottles, guys.
Remember, Bud Light.
Go team!



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YEAR YEAR, FISH!

You will be glad to know that walrusses do not eat penguins. After reading Bloom County, and sympathizing with Opus the Penguin and his fear or dislike of walrusses, which cropped up often, you worried about it. But penguins are antarctic, and walrusses are far north. The two species do not come in contact with each other except perhaps on social media.
You must conclude from this that penguins are neurotic.
Little smelly herring-snarfing nutballs.

No, they are NOT Dutchmen.
Don't even think it.

Sadly, herring is not part of the Chinese festive spread to close out the year with family and friends. Reason being that unlike Dutch people and Dutch Americans, Chinese people do not recognize any auspicious connotations to the herring. We Netherlanders used it to conquer vast territories and fuel our imperialist expansions, Chinese folk look at it and go "hah, fish, huh", and think no more about it.

As a Dutchman, this makes me sad.

Happy too, because there really isn't enough for everybody, and I would like to blow all the other Euries out of the water on this matter, sink their fishing boats and factory ships and hang the crews, because herring stocks are seriously depleted due to competition from those hosebags muscling in on what should be rightfully ours in our traditional fishing grounds (the entire North Sea, and the Atlantic up to the territorial water limits of Canada and the United States), and it's quite unfair. So it's a darn good thing that other than my apartment mate, the Chinese have not developed a fondness for herring. She's Cantonese, and they are known for peculiarities. Fortunately the rest of them don't know about herring yet.

This illustration does not represent a Dutchman gaily disporting himself with tridents or other pescatory equipment near a barrel for packing fish, but a seal script version of the character for Spring, of which this is the first day in the Chinese calendar. Happy New Year.

Last night families all over the city sat down to a feast to close out the year. This morning they put on new clothes and exchanged cheerful greetings to start the year off right. There is, of course, more to eat. Little snacky things that are traditional. Red envelopes with money were given to the younger members of the family. They may be smiling so much (to keep everything positive) that rictus is developing. The self control needed to avoid saying something snarky and so wreck the first day of the Spring Festival is immense!
Say nice things! Think nice things! Be nice! Dammit!


Anyhow, happy New Year, and please stay away from herring. You won't like it. Trust me.
It's kind of fishy. 年年有魚。



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WHAT KEEPS ME WARM IS MY HEAD

On the way to the West, there is no province named Gun Ferret (槍鼬 'cheung yau'), named perhaps after a furry small brigand that roamed that area. But there should be. It's just past Oklahoma. For some reason my dream conflated the pioneer trail, Chinese Turkestan, and the bus up Pacific Avenue. Which was packed with villagers standing in the aisles.
And white people. Too many white people.

Can't figure out if this is the Losartan, the Metoprolol, or the Amlodipine Besylate. Or just the brain fermenting in the middle of the night. Perhaps from the salt fish in what I had for lunch.


In late afternoon, deciding that despite the frightful cold it was not good to sit at home and stew, I needed to get out and exercise the legs, I had gone down to Chinatown for a cup of hot milk tea and a dan taat. After which I smoked my pipe and listened to a local woman buying dried shrimp after the shopkeeper had been reamed by an officious dickwad.
Which he took with relatively good grace.
Might be a relative.

Sometime Chinese people are remarkably patient with each other.
That usually happens when you've got no clue what's going on.

There used to be more places where one could get a cup of milk tea and decide upon a delicious pastry in Chinatown, as well as nearly twice as many chachantengs. But local demographics have changed a bit. Bubble tea places have multiplied. Which is a truly ghastly state of affairs. Artificial fruit flavours, matcha, and rubbery globs of tapioca.
Not, strictly speaking, an adult choice.


It mirrors the proliferation in the wider society of "coffee" joints that add vanilla or strawberry syrup, soy milk, sprinkles, and wipped cream to blender beverages. Protein powder and wheat grass extractives upon request. Where the counter staff can't spell, consider themselves incredibly sensitive, artistic, or gifted, and are uber entitled.

A few of those in the Financial District have closed down.
There is thirty percent less busines down there.
Many people work from home.


The number of gyms and yoga studios seems to have stablized.
That probably means something. There are none in C'town.
At some point things will have to change.
We need more caffeine.



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OH MISS, OH MISS!

And on second thought, I'm not going to say a damned thing. It may be the warmest garment she has. But I still think there is something mighty odd about it. Baggy pink sweat pants with the word 'grease' all across the buttock end, possibly in misguided reference to American culture, just ain't right. Mighty interesting. Not right.

But I am too discreet to mention to her that, um, this is eyebrow raising.

Plus why is that white guy staring at my bottom!?!

Nor will I mention it to my apartment mate; she does not need to know that her people's clothing choices have once again staggered all expectations. She has despaired over Chinese American habilimentary style since she outgrew it herself, in her early teens.
When she started buying her own garments instead of relying on her mother.

Baggy pink sweatpants. Grease.

Besides, it was cold -- under fifty degrees -- and wet. The main concern was hypothermia rather than fashion eccentricity. As a man wearing two sets of underwear and two pairs of socks I should shut up. In some parts of this country long johns and excess body fat are a survival strategy. It explains our fast food and why we are dying of morbid obesity, heart disease, and diabetes at a staggering rate. Baby, it's cold outside.
Two hundred excess pounds keep you alive.
Have some more fries.

The cold also extends to the Deep South. One of my friends is happy his heating oil got delivered so quickly, and we are glad for him, because unlike his neighbors to the left and right, heck, the average person in his entire state, he is not carrying two hundred plus pounds. He can't cut off parts of his own or his kinfolks bodies to burn for extra fuel.
His grits ain't swimming in a bucket of pig fat.

Grease.

Butter, lard, tallow, blubber. Drippings. Fry goo.

This is fatty pork weather. With ginger garlic and scallion, rice wine or sherry plus soy sauce, and both dried black mushrooms and salt vegetable to soak up the juices and cut the grease. Pinch of five spice, grinding of white pepper, a little sugar. Or a broiled chicken with lots of scallion, plus shredded ginger and black wood ears, and a little dried tangerine peel for a subtle fragrance. Either dish should be made wet, so that there is plenty sop for the rice.


Personally I can't wait for this cold spell to end. It promises to be mid to high fifties over the weekend, and speaking of fatty pork, possibly Ted Cruz will finally fly back from Cancun.
I hear that there are taco trucks on every corner. He ate well. And needs to lose weight. Damn I hate the cold.

Grease.



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UP DATING PROFILE

Several years ago, after my break-up, I joined a dating site. It was depressing, and it didn't lead to anything. I am much happier now since I deleted my profile there, and gave up hope. And admitted to myself that I would never enjoy rafting down the Amazon, taking moonlight walks on the beach with a golden retriever, or even think of getting meaningful tattoos.
Any tattoos, really. I thoroughly despise tattoos.

It's raining, life is dark, I am a sour young bachelor.

Also, I do not like sunglasses. They hide the eyes.
Eyes can betray so much about a person.
Sunglasses hide psychopaths.

Plus I've realized that many people have neuroses which eventually make their company fraught. Today I shall go have lunch in Chinatown and shop for foods, quite unencumbered by discussions of the vegan lifestyle, meaningfulness, recyclables, saving the planet, how precious little kiddies are, plans to get a golden retriever (or daemonic French bulldog), and how pink is the most flattering colour, or going to Las Vegas for the food and shows.
I shall be armed with two pipes. One of which may be a Dunhill or Charatan.
And a small pouch of aged Virginia tobacco.
And I'll have a pastry.

This train of thought is pursuant Valentine's Day, which approaches. The swamp is alive with alligators. Nothing says "romance" better than booking a seat at a famous restaurant and spending a fortune on roses. Plus a precious little gift. The reptiles are awake.

Women all over Northern California are wondering what to get him.
A power saw? Tickets to the Super Bowl? Havana cigars?

Cigar-flavoured icecream and lederhosen!



A friend spends his Sunday mornings having a cup of tea in his garden, with a pipe, his cat, and the coyote across the stream eyeing the feline, as it's just the right size for breakfast. It sounds ideal. I have suggested that seeing as they all live in Marin, he should talk to the predator about the vegan lifestyle and tofu. I'm sure it will be receptive.

Men of any age, if they have survived past their twenties, enjoy nothing more than a cup of tea, a smoke, early mornings, and the presence of a ravenous predator.
Either the cat or the coyote. Both types have plus points.

By the way: the twenties, for some men, last till they are sixty or seventy.



I have a ghost cat, over one hundred briar pipes, and nice pottery items.
The pottery items are a fun collecting hobby. Glazes and shapes.
Any walks I take are not on the beach or in moonlight.
And there is no Amazon to raft in SF.
I don't want power tools.



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THE ROARING OF WASPS

Having left for Chinatown late in the day, I ended up not having rice porridge and a fried bread stick as I had originally intended, but went for an old favourite: Salt fish and chicken bits fried rice (鹹魚雞粒炒飯 '.haam yü gai naap chaau faan'). Which you will readily grasp is not a common social eating plate. Leastways, I cannot imagine a tableful of Caucasians agreeing that what would go splendidly with the sweet and sour pork and general Joe's chicken would be a big plate of salt fish chicken fried rice.

"Hey guys, ask them to put in extra salt fish!"

Goes great with dollops of sambal. In case you didn't know. Maybe if you tell them it's macrobiotic and meaningful, naturally sourced, and a percentage of the profit goes to recycling, then yes. Could one actually do quinoa with salt fish and chicken?
Would one want to? Brown rice?

It is immensely comforting. The Dutchman within was happy.

My apartment mate might like it, maybe even the bookseller. These are the only two people with whom I eat socially nowadays. I'm not sure how either of them are on salted fish, but they are open minded. One of them is of Cantonese derivation, the other has an Italian background. Both of them are food people. So neither of them qualify as wasp.

When we first walked past the karaoke joint almost no one was there, after the burger joint there were four Wasps inside singing Albino spirituals. The Japanese version of 'take me home country roads' is much better than John Denver's Ozark clog dancing rendition.
To the best of my knowledge there is no Canto-pop version. Nor should there be.


Two Cantonese gentlemen, entirely unbecomered by the shrill caterwauling, were pensively engaged in a chess game at the bar. Which was probably the best way of maintaining their sanity while those people were singing.

It's heading into Chinese New Year. I expect business will boom for the next two weeks, and the owner may be insane from the singing after this is all over. I extend my commiserative thoughts and prayers (which are white folks spirituality) in advance.

There had been only a few rats in Spofford Alley earlier when I walked by with my pipe.
The cold is keeping them in. And the singing.



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FLUFFY COVFEFE

As you know, the weird scramble in my head combines with bloodpressure pills to make my dreams more intense and vivid. Never-the-less, I am convinced that there is a ghost cat in this apartment. I've seen him or her several times now while half-asleep. Ghosts, of course, haunt places where they have unfinished business which obsessed them when they were still living.

Cats are known for obsessions.

Usually it's something comfort related. A warm shaft of sunlight, that rubber band under the bed, or, sometimes that ghost in the corner which you cannot see. Which begs the question whether a foreshadowing of me living here is what the cat saw decades ago. Perhaps she liked the hint of pipe tobacco from my apparition then, like catnip for a thoughtful human.

There's a faint odour somewhat reminiscent of a litter box right in front of the centre of the main bookcase. Might be from books, might not. A faint pong of decomposing leaves.
Near a folder of documents.

Nothing peed there in living memory. Neither I nor my apartment mate absent mindedly took a leak there. I'm fairly certain of that. Yes, she is on the eccentric spectrum, but she is quite fastidious (shan't say anything about my re-washing the forks and sometimes the crockery after she's done the dishes; she doesn't always wear her glasses).

Evenso. Slightly peeish. Odd.


Life is filled with baffling things. Odours. Berserk internet statements. Fluffy appartitions. Cat girls. White folks cuisine from the early atomic age, which combines stuff like canned sweet potato, Vienna sausages, and instant gelatine. Which you combine, place on some lettuce, and garnish with sliced pimento olives.


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MOSTLY CLOUDY LIKE PORRIDGE

Perhaps I should go over to Chinatown for a bowl of congee today. The weather of this past week suggests comfort food. The storminess of the last few days, unusual in its intensity, appears to have subsided. Which, given the discomfort my feet felt, is quite welcome.

Eyebrows would definitely shoot up if I soaked my feet in hot porridge in public. So instead, I'll soak a yautiu. While ingesting the porridge in the accepted fashion.

My feet, which do not like cold, have been acting angry lately.
If they suffer, they will scheme to make me suffer.
They have succeeded. Quite well.

My feet are determined to have a confrontational relationship with me. The circulation down there is not optimum, and they resent that. I attempt to placate them with two pairs of socks between sometime in December and the end of March, but they still object. "Put us in hot water, you capitalist bastard" they scream, while rioting podally in front of my consulate.

Yesterday I had various errands to do. The pavement is cement. It transmits cold admirably. Which envelopes the feet, despite their covering, and travels about halfway up the legs.
And then sits there and lasts for several hours even after I am indoors again.

Godverdomme.

Naturally I blame generation X for this. In my day, sunny boy, it never got so thickly frigid. Why, the streets seemed heated from beneath! We would skip gaily as clouds of steam from the recent rains wreathed us romantically in warm foggy swirls! It was delightful.

Now take out your ear-buds and turn off your damned cellphone.
Listen attentively while I whine and gibber.
Show some respect!



A nice hot bowl of congee (生滾猪肝粥 'sang gwan chü gon juk', fresh poached pork liver rice porridge), a fried bread stick (油條 'yau tiu', "oil strip") for dipping, and a hot cup of Hong Kong milk tea (港式奶茶 'gong sik naai cha').



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ALL THE ANSWERS

Someone asked, several years ago, "what are Cantonese women like in bed?" To which the complete answer is as follows: Anywhere between eighty and one hundred and fifty pounds (36 - 64 Kg), depending on height or length, physical build, and percent body fat, 98 degrees or slightly more, and probably wearing comfy pajamas unless it's in the subtropics (like Hong Kong, for instance), in which case it might be a thin tee-shirt and panties. Given the weather in San Francisco at present, it's more likely to be jammies.
Smells like good soap. Faintly.

"What are Cantonese women like in bed?"

Based on actual research (I took a peek into my apartment mate's room last night), they are ensconced among stuffed creatures, and reading trashy fiction. True crime, I think.

Average age probably anywhere in their forties or fifties.

As a lagniappe, I should mention that there is a pair of pale blue panties, women's size small or petite, hanging in the bathroom, that she washed in the little plastic basin. The panties are a periwinkle or pale light blue colour. Thin white edging.

Cantonese women have small hands.

It is still incredibly hurtful that no one ever asked the question "what are middle-aged Dutch American men like in bed?" Which seems a lot more interesting, or in any case much more germaine to me. Middle-aged Dutch American men wear warm pajama pants and a tee-shirt, and have a few fuzzy friends and a tonne of books to the right of them in the unused portion of the bed. Including dictionaries. There are also a few unopened tins of pipe tobacco there, for which I haven't made room on the bookshelves yet. As well as a magnifying glass, because sometimes one needs to see the exact strokes of a Chinese character in a volume whose publishers (idiots!) incorrectly assumed that everyone had the eye sight of a teenager, damned small print (turned out to be twenty seven strokes, listed under the meat radical in the dictionary). Body tempereture probably fractionally less than a Cantonese woman, the weight somewhat more. Smells a bit like aged Virginia flakes.


Dutch American men are utterly exceptional and fascinating in bed. Often asleep. See how peaceful he looks! Like a little angel. Well, a fully mature angel. The claws, the teeth, the spiny ridge along the back. That bewitching irridescence!

The eyes that follow you around the room.

Sorry, what was the question?



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THE NEUROTIC ONES

In this weather I am not a comfort to be around. This morning I saw a woman losing her mind at the opposite bus stop, because of the rain, the early hour, the wind, and her umbrella. If she had been on my side of the street, I might have approached her and said "there there, little wombat, if it makes you feel any better, it is lovely sunshining weather elsewhere. Peru, for instance. Just stop screaming and think od Peru. Sunshine!"
Quite possibly this would not have improved matters.

The thing that decisively prevented me from crossing the street to comfort the poor woman was that my own umbrella was being turned inside out, and I had to struggle to hold on to it. Oh, and strangers screaming on the street in San Francisco early in the day may be batshit crazy and potentially violent. These are practical considerations.

Plus I am not a warm caring individual.

The last time a woman screamed at me on the street in San Francisco was down in the Financial District. Her loud assertion was that I was deliberately ruining her lungs.
Because I was smoking at the time.
It was very good.

And given how shrill and loud she was, there was nothing wrong with her lungs.
I knew I had to make more effort, as so far it had had scant effect.
She may have been an earthmother from Berkeley.
That type, that look, you know.


I don't think I'm good with women.



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