CIVILIZATION AS WE KNEW IT

Imagine that it's a lovely summer morning in a college city, let's say on the West Coast, and you've gotten up late. You shower, and get dressed, and stroll to the centre of town, where you order a cappuccino and a pain au chocolat. Which you enjoy on the terrace of the καφενεíο. And you desire to have a refined smoke with a second cup, perhaps a few blocks away. On the way from καφενεíο number one to καφενεíο number two you purchase a lovely pack of cigarettes made in Egypt with Turkish tobacco by a Greek company. And, with your second cup, you light up. Puff contemplatively. And decide to write another novel. It being the trickling proceeds from the first one that permit you the occasional luxury, like the beverage and exquisite smokes you are presently enjoying.

Six weeks later, you 're already into chapter four, the heroine has just died of consumption, and it being a lovely summer morning you wish to again have a delicious breakfast pastry and caffeinated beverage followed by a smoke, but this time you decide to replenish your supply before you sit down, as you have realized that you ran out sometime in the past six weeks. Small leaf Oriental tobacco does not have enough nicotine to encourage a raving addiction, you only had one cigarette every two or three days. But they're gone, you finished the pack. Fortunately Georgiopolo Fine Cigarettes, Cigars, and Pipes, catering to the educated bohemian and university crowd for over a century, is on the route there.

Ah, this heavenly! Fine smokes. Good coffee. sunlight. Deceased heroine. Such delightful sadness among the other characters. Poetic lamentation!

You spend five hours on that terrace, and smoke TWO cigarettes. A very productive day.
Your notepad is now filled with elegantly cursive text. More plot twists.
You reward yourself with another cigarette.

Yeah, um. Many people no longer use cursive script because they're functionally illiterate, both καφενεíο #A and #B are now totally vegan and make shitty drinks with soy or oat milk instead of dairy, and you can't smoke on their terraces anymore because what about the children?!? Besides, Georgiopolo Fine Cigarettes, Cigars, and Pipes now sells only vapes, marijuana usage requisites, and kratom, and nice cigarettes made in Egypt with Turkish tobacco by Greek companies are. No. Longer. Imported!

The similar ones once made in Germany and Austria aren't either. Nor the ones produced by British firms. They aren't even made anymore. The world has gone to hell.


It has been ages since I saw any Turkish style cigarettes.


It's been almost thirty years since you could smoke inside a coffee shop. You know, if a man has to put up with pretentious gits and "artists" while sipping a warm beverage, he ought to at least be able to have a ciggy made in Egypt with Turkish tobacco by Greeks while doing so.



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FERMENTED CABBAGE

You naturally understand my satisfaction at not being around all those crusty old reactionary monsters five days a week. Especially when I mention that examples of their meanspiritness abound, and evidence of any basic humanity from them is quite inconsiderable. So you may be surprised when I say that they need an easy to understand book or pamphlet on personal grooming and cleanliness, and with astounding generosity I very well might write it for them.
I propose to devote an entire chapter to fungal infection ointment and its role in preventing both crotch rot and athlete's foot. Plus a fold-out diagram on toilet paper, its use and benefit. Scalp ointment for bald men with flaky skin and a tendency towards repulsive scabbing.
Brushing one's teeth as well as one's collar. The politeness of flushing.

I suspect that if I did write it, it would be a bestseller. Not only as an entertaining read on long airplane flights, but a suitable gift to women married to certain dessicated old bastards, as well as staffmembers of Florida retirement homes.

Actually, on second thought, maybe I should just arrange to have their favourite chairs placed on steep hillsides. With them sitting in them. Which would be very Christian.


Downhill sledding is a very popular past time. You remember back in the old country how happy you were with a tobogan in winter, or ski jumping during school break.
Oh, the joyfilled childlike excitement!

Are there piranhas in that lake? Sharks? Is it deep and cold?

When the game is on they are in rare form. Gibbering and drooling, as well as revelling in the sheer nastiness of which they are capable. Insults, calumny, and frat boy humour.

As good a reason to hate American sportsfans as any.

Sunday is always a television day.



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NOTHING MORE CAFFEINE WON'T CURE

The weather has been that variable that it's hard to dress during the day or fall asleep at night. Yesterday when I left Marin it was sultry at eighty plus, when I got back to SF it was breezy very low sixties. Both days were energetically spent, and consequently I was quite pooped, despite today being far less warm. So of course the first thing I did upon returning home, both days was have some coffee.

Which is a continuation of swilling cup after cup of tea during the day.

How do I deal with the meanspirited rightwing hosebags hurling foul language and spouting conspiracies in the back room? More caffeine! Of course I'd like to turn the watercannon on them, or send in orderlies with truncheons, but sadly one cannot do that in the modern era, so staying more alert than them is a better option. Usually by mid day at least one of the vicious old cretins is slumped and drooling. Not having had enough caffeine himself.

There are times I wish I had a cattle prod. Sadly, that's not possible.
But some more caffeine keeps me in fighting spirits.

Chocolate also works.

A plate of dry salami doesn't. Been there, tried it, fell back on hot tea.

Despite being a trim person of the male persuasion, think of me as a stout mother superior at a nunnery for delinquents, armed with a heavy steel ruler and hobnailed patent leather boots. During the work day, that is my spirit animal.

I'm sure that brutal brides of Christ in the Catholic part of the world south of Belfast are fully armed. Both to deal with their own flock as well as Protestants with beer.
Paisley's loyal gooons. The soft underbelly.


Mentally, I am wearing a black bulletproof dress. Imaginary nun of the above.



Look, I just don't get along well with unpleasant coarse minded right wing fossils, okay?
But they are excellent examples of what I do not want to be when I get older.




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WILD TOFU SAFARI PARK

It struck me that there are good reasons not to eat with white people OR subcontinentals unless you actually know them quite well and are on very good terms with them. In which case you can forgive them for acting like Midwesterners and Punjabis.
If they are Midwestern, explain to them gently if needed that it's edible food, it has flavour, it has texture. If Indian, explain the same, and ignore their overconfident assertion that whatever it is, it is far better in Hyderabad or Lucknow (it really isn't).

Also, take it for granted that they are all attitudenal.
Superiorist snoot, is, sadly, universal.

Far too often white people or Indians will come into a place where I have found something good to eat, look at everything, then walk out without saying anything to the staff or purchasing a damned thing.

What, this ain't good enough for you?

By the way, "please" and "thank you" are normal parts of speech, and may be employed advantageously. People appreciate it when you say words like that.
Think of them as social lubricants.

At a few of the places at where I eat, the tourists frequently enter. Sometimes as customers. Sometimes merely to gawk at these outer space aliens eating unidentifiable substances that are never sold in Ohio or Delhi my goodness what is that pinkish stuff that looks like actual meat next to the green things that could in a different universe be vegetables?

Do outer space aliens eat real honest-to-goodness food? Food food? Is that what all those shops along Stockton Street are selling? How very strange!

All those UFO sightings in the vast interior of this country were probably just strangers in a Volkswagen bus trying to get through Arizona and Wyoming as fast as their little wheels could carry them. Before the locals noticed.




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COFFEE ENJOYED IN THE PAST

While I was enjoying a cup of milk tea at a bakery Jack came in. Seeing as I've known him for years, I beckoned him to sit down at the same table. So and so finally retired (her teeth were really bad toward the end), Chris hasn't been around in well over a decade, Aaron is a snake, and Donald is an idiot. Plus bakeries and coffeeshops used to have lunch counters where you could sit for hours, free refills, coffee crunch cake, we miss those days.

Ping Yuen on Jackson, Uncles, and Sun Wah Kue.

Everyone had teeth back then.

Not said: the reason why you would sit there for hours was because there were newspapers and no one read their cellphones. You'd talk, pass the sporting green or the business section to someone, do the puzzles, read the comics page. And, pensively, have another slice of coffee crunch cake.

Along with another cup of coffee.

When closing time arrived, you'd leave all jangly from the caffeine and wide awake.

No need for dinner, you'd eaten nearly an entire coffee crunch cake. You were full. Let's go see what's playing at the Great Star. After the double bill was over, perhaps late night dumplings at 一品香。


Jack had bought some lychees on Stockton Street, and mentioned that he was diabetic while eating a score of them. He offered me some but I declined. I had purchased some rambutan earlier, and he tried one. Not as juicy as lychee. Since returning home I've given a bag to my landlady, and to the Indonesian Chinese woman who lives in the front apartment.
Some are going to work with me tomorrow, to share.



During conversation, Jack informed that smoking was unhealthy. What brought that up was that I had a pipe and tobacco on the table in front of me. And I'm quite proud of myself now, as I did not feign sarcastic suprise at the news. Which I've already heard before.
Twice already these past few days in Chinatown.
Remember, kids, smoking is bad.



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PSYCHO ACTING PARROT

How ironic that when I was younger I loved hot weather, and now I don't. The weather gets more absurd every year, and my squawking about how a nice rainy English day most of the time would be lovely thank you very much is more frequent, and more loud. My generation ruined the climate, and I'm peeved at them. They could have stopped to think of me.

About a month ago I bought a bottle of sour plum soup concentrate. A good splash of that mixed with cold tea and an ice cube is most refreshing. Sour plum soup (酸梅湯 'suen mui tong') is a traditional summer beverage made by simmering dried crow plums (烏梅 'wu mui') with a modicum of licorice root (甘草 'gam tsou') and osmanthus flowers (桂花 'gwai faa'). Served cool or cold, it helps the man from Peking or Manchuria deal with the oppressive summer temperatures.

I'm not from Peking. This is Northern California.
I really don't like heat.


Darnitall, I have become a Southerner and I drink ice tea.
What is this world coming to?

Sweet ice tea is, as you might guess, not an optimum late evening beverage. It keeps the spongy-minded febrile Southerner up all night so they go to Dennys or the Waffle House to pick fights with people, or they hitch a bathtub on wheels to their pick-up truck and go roaring down the highway with Bubba Junior in it, swilling a six pack, and "All My Exxes Live In Texas" blaring on their speakers. These seemed like mighty good ideas at the time.
Though the state trooper dealing with their shenanigans doesn't think so.

I only have the vaguest idea what goes on in the Deep South.
And I have no intention of correcting my impressions.
Ain't gonna visit, ever. They've got Bubba.

Sweet ice tea ALSO makes one dream weird.

What with possessing a certain Dutch toughness, caffeine does not keep my from falling asleep. Like a baby. I could probably sleep through the siege of Beirut, unless I need to pee, and unlike coffee, tea has a much slower diuretic effect. Also a much longer half life.
So it can keep you alert until you crash. More psycho-active, too.

All over the South there are men staring into the mirror and realizing that they are still Bubba and still pasty blobs. Despite the fight in a bath tub in the Waffle House parking lot last night. When they were convinced that they were spider man.

The parrots in San Francisco are green with a red head. Not grey.
Unless they're ghost parrots. Then they're grey.
And speak with a southern drawl.


At three thirty in the morning, near the Hell Boy action figure guarding a teapot and some tins of tobacco from Cornell & Diehl which I bought fifteen years ago.
Shut up, Bubba, you'll wake my apartment mate.
I'll go to the bathroom now.



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HONK IF YOU LOVE ROBOTS

Since that news item about Waymo driverless taxis honking at each other in a downtown storage yard -- possibly exchanging information about the insensitive flesh bags that they cart around town -- we must face the reality that eventually machines will be as capable of interacting with us as we are interacting with our pets. Improvements in artificial intelligence will have them casually chatting about sports and popular culture with us while they drive. Probably in another three or four years. At most.

In fifteen to twenty years, they'll demand the vote.

Stephen mentioned over pastries that the Japanese are developing care-giver robots for the elderly, which provide interaction so that the solitary fossils don't get lonely, and keep an eye on them so that if they keel over or slip in the bath help can be summoned.

Worst case scenario: when they die alone, they don't die alone.


Where is Arnie when you need him? Oh wait, HE was the machine baddy. And some sappy kid was mankind's hope in that franchise. So never mind. I couldn't watch the entire movie.
It was too saccharine.


The robo-taxi race already has it's first martyr, that being the innocent Waymo which was torched by youthful hooligans on Jackson Street, last February 10, 2024.
Just caucasian skateboard thugs doing what they do best.

As long as Waymo brains aren't put into off-road vehicles, we'll be okay. We'll just hide out in the wilderness areas forming little clans of free humans, and wait till all the fossil fuels are gone and the car robots have to power down.

Of course by that time there will be no actual forest cover left.
We'll have to use clever camo netting to suggest it.
Otherwise the drones will spot us.



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AUSPICIOUS PROSPECTS

A necessary conversation with someone from my health care plan made it impossible to go over to the usual place for Wednesday lunch and have a leisurely repast (without by doing so inconveniencing the staff), so that's something on the agenda for tomorrow. Instead, I had some congee and an oil stick, then grocery shopped, finished my pipe, and went to pick up my praescription. A few stops later I was having an egg tart and a cup of milk tea. Ran into people I know at the vegetable place, the pharmacy, the corner store, on the street, and at the bakery.

Nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho, nei ho.
That's 'hello hello' to several people, and the return response back.


Both longan (龍眼 'lung ngaan') and rambutan (紅毛丹 'hung mou daan') are now widely available. Both are delicious. I should purchase some for my neighbor the Indonesian Chinese woman downstairs. Today I gave her stalk mustard and apples.
She's a bit older than I am, and crazier.
Doesn't get out much.

Neither do I. But, comparitively speaking, I am spryer, grouchier, faster, and a veritable social butterfly. Why, I hippity hop (semi-stumble at a rapid pace) all over town! Damn' these legs!

And of course loquats (commonly 枇杷果 'pei paa gwo', in ancient times 蘆橘 'lou gwat gwo') have been available for months now, one of the benefits of the San Francisco climate.
But they bruise easily.

Still, as a smoker, I am keenly aware of their salutory effect on the throat.
They are an auspicious product, symbolizing wealth.
A gentle perfume.


Tomorrow: a delicous unhealthy lunch, and some fruits.
Plus, of course, milk tea and a pipe.



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THE BOG OF REBELION

In his autobiography "Borstal Boy" author and literary bad boy Brendan Behan describes how purchasing a pack of factory mades (specifically Woodbines) had a man feeling on top of the world. George Orwell also dwelled upon it, and while there is nothing wrong with hand-rolled fags -- an entire generation of Dutch high-school students grew up on those -- cigarettes made with uniform and even length and thickness and neat ends, are a great luxury.

Years ago I read a passage about three young louts having a fry-up (bacon, bangers, bread, tomatoes, and black pudding) while the mother of one of them was away visiting her elderly aunt dying of terminal constipation. Having eaten, they split a pack of Three Castles non-filter as evenly as possible, and sat smoking and swilling strong tea. Rays of sunlight (rare in Britain) slant in, the cat is on the table licking the plates. Sheer heaven.

Also much worth mentioning: more doctors used to smoke Camels than any other cigarette. In a repeated nationwide survey, doctors all across the country, in all branches of medicine, were asked "what cigarette do you smoke, doctor?" Not surprisingly, more doctors prefered the smooth rich taste of Camels to any other cigarette!

By both my ancestry and social environment growing up I'm the type of person who enjoys thumbing his nose at the excise man. Not suprisingly, the flag of my forefathers' province is the smugglers defiant banner. Blockade runners then, cunning law breakers stil today.

The ciggies in the photo above are utterly illegal in California. For various reasons not having anything to do with their provenance. They are, in consequence, the perfect smoke for after a cholesterol-laden meal. If you're going to occasionally disregard your doctor's stellar advice, you might as well do it in style.

I haven't a clue what hoary legend the name "five leaf spirit" 五葉神 ('ng yip san') alludes to.
They're a fine Virginia style tobacco cigarette manufactured in Guangdong, available under the counter at various establishments run by honest hardworking descendants of smugglers, grave robbers, mono-browed taoist monks, rebellious scholars, escapees from the imperial taxes, and other enterprising types who fled southwards. Good people.

Also worth mentioning: cigarettes keep away mosquitoes! So they're good for you! Barmah Forest fever, Buruli ulcers, equine encephalitis, chikungunya, dengue, dirofilariasis, filariasis, Japanese encephalitis, Keystone virus, La Crosse encephalitis, malaria, Rift Valley fever, Ross River fever, Saint Louis encephalitis, tularemia, West Nile virus, yellow fever, Zika.

Also chases the Karens away.


Upon due thought, Five Leaf Spirit must refer to a Taoist immortal. One associated with wondrous medicinal herbs and potent spiritual power. Or a brigand.


Usually I'm a pipe smoker, so I don't indulge in Ng Yip San ciggies very often.
But, you understand, there's a contrarian impulse.

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RE-DIRECTING THE APPLECART OF HABIT

Some of the best times smoking my pipe are in Chinatown after dark, when there are few people about and the streets are soft or silent. Except for the elderly biker whose boom boxes blare vulgar rap lyrics riding slowly by. Or frat boys walking down the street looking for drinks and zany entertainments. Or crazies from every ethnic group under the sun wandering past talking to themselves. But on the whole, it remains fairly quiet, and the actual residents of the neighborhood who are out are undisturbing. Red lights in the distance, flapping banners over the thoroughfare, one or two "eccentrics" sleeping in doorways.

Also, at one point, around sixty visitors from somewhere in Mediterranean Europe walking toward North Beach, in an orderly fashion without making significant noise.
Probably a tour of the sinful city at night.

It's been a custom for several years now that the bookseller and I meet up for socializing at the end of his workweek. In my case that involves teabags and hot water, for him it's a pint of beer followed by a shot of whiskey. And it's a good thing we're flexible, as the two first places in our amble after the burger joint were jampacked. European tourists and intellectuals at the first stop, and screaming white yutzes at the second. So we went to the back-up bar, where like last week the only other pipe smoker in Chinatown was getting midly squiffy.

Along with a gentleman whose arms looked very soft and velvety.
I didn't ask him about that, but they were ... curvy.
Probably genetics and baby fat.

The teabags, in case you were wondering, came from my coat pocket. Given that I do not consume alcohol, and do need stimulation, hydration, and a beverage in front of me. The zippitiness which begins when I wake up with coffee will be maintained throughout the day. For instance by swilling coffee or tea at home, then heading out for lunch and Hong Kong milk tea in mid-afternoon. Extra teabags just in case.

Today's lunch was 蝦醬牛肉炒米粉 ('haa jeung ngau yiuk chaau mai fan'; stirfried beef with shrimp sauce and rice vermicelli) washed down with both milk tea and regular tea. Which, really, should be the breakfast - lunch - dinner of champions. It was topnotch.
Smoked the black pipe at the top of the picture afterwards.
Very late in the afternoon.

The red billard was the evening pipe. It's replaced the Comoy Sunrise which I used to puff while waiting for the bookseller, which is now in one of the boxes in a bookshelf.
I just needed a change. A jolt to the paradigm, as it were.
A redirection of sorts.



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THE VENN DIAGRAMS THAT EVERYONE NEEDS

A friend's FB posting reminded me of something I put together years ago, which, at the time, was quite the bees knees and the cat's miao to me. I considered it usefull.
Intersectionality made manifest.

It may be actually less worthwhile than I thought, and I might have been off my rocker at the time. Which was probably because of the huge amount of coffee or tea I had consumed.
So high on stimulating beverages that I was twirling.

Subsequently I simplified the concept somewhat, but I don't know exactly when I did so.
At that point, intersectionality hit self-referential spot on.

Naturally that started me thinking.
Which is always dangerous.
More simplification.

There's something beatiful about Venn diagrams.


Little psycho blossoms.


Neuroses.



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COOKING ON THE BRAIN

It strikes me that one problem with getting older is that the mind starts folding into tighter twists, as the sparky trains of thought take shortcuts which may, at one point, have been thoroughly justified and logical, but eventually become less so. Especially to the observer. Quite naturally I see a connection between the sometimes absurd or comical martyrdom of various saints and comedic routines but the person to whom I am speaking might at that point wonder where my head is at. As just one example.

When I woke up this morning my brain was going over a conversation I had with a good friend over the weekend which had me hearing clopidogrel when he mentioned atorvastatin. The two aren't at all alike. And remembering the goofiness that ensued when a coworker found out about clopidogrel did not add materially to his understanding of anything. The coworker worried that my doctor was praescribing the jalopy of medicines, and urged me to get the Ferrari. Having totally overlooked that it was precisely the antiplatelet characteristic that was both the reason for taking it at that time -- we can't have the stent gumming up and caking over, can we? That would be ... bad -- as well as why my finger bled like a stuck pig after whacking my right hand in the storeroom. Scant platelets means scant clotting. Which meant that the next day while enjoying lunch at a chachanteng the waitstaff looked at me like I was an ambulating biohazard. They were disturbed and worried. At which point I became aware of the fact that the bandages on that finger were not as they should be.

Long story short: Shrimp. Atorvastatin is a medication that lowers cholesterol. Which is why shrimp are on the menu again. Mmmm, garlicky shrimp.

They've actually been on my mind for three weeks now.


It does not help that my apartment mate is Cantonese, many people in this city are, and I live near Chinatown. Shrimp are often mothers milk to Cantonese people.

I'm fairly certain that elderly Canto patients at the local hospital (SFCH) often try to sneak out and grab a plate of shrimp or fatty red meats, because hospitals are not known for super appetizing dinners. I'm surprised that I haven't run into them yet.

I am not Cantonese. But like them I am often food-obsessed. As are many of the people with whom I prefer to associate. The bookseller is, so is a very dear member of the pipe club, and my fondest memories of those early years back in the United States are coloured by food.

When I travelled in South East Asia, I ate fabulously.
It formed lasting wonderful impressions.


The idiot whom I see occasionally who believes in ancient aliens, vaccination conspiracies, plus nanobots to track the citizens, and something like the deep state but impossibly more absurd, is also a food maven and a skilled kitchen man, which is why whenever I have to deal with him I steer the conversation toward pizza, barbecue, and fruit cake.

We have not talked about shrimp. I'll have to keep it on the plate for the next time I see him.
He's approaching eighty. His mind makes weird jumps at this point.
Sometimes it smells the flowers along the way.
Or strays a bit.


Curls up tighly like a shrimp in hot oil.



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THE AMERICAN DIET

If you buy your child boba milk tea drinks, you can forego cooking them dinner. They're full, jazzed up, enough energy to run circles around the teevee set instead of simply sitting quietly in front of it, and they'll grow up to be as plump as the average overfed Midwesterner.

Naturally I have tried boba drinkies.
And I can't stand them.

The human digestive system was not built to deal with soft gummy balls. It does, however, easily handle steamed rice flour noodles, such as 腸粉 ('cheung fan'), with any number of tasty fillings -- pork, chopped charsiu, beef, shrimp, oysters, cooked chicken, even turkey after a holiday when you're wondering what to do with that carcass before it starts turning grey or green -- so, after having wasted so much time during the middle of the day that it was too late to do my laundry, I headed down to Chinatown for a snack.

I've found out that shrimp, three or four times a week, aren't bad for you. Yes, they are high in cholesterol, but considering that the average American usually has two or three eggs and an equivalent number of bacon strips with their lard-fried hashbrowns, as well as a side of fries and a soda with lunch or dinner, plus a dinner roll slathered with butter, I figure I'm still way ahead of the game.

You know, if you slathered that dinner roll with a nice chunky salsa, it would be far more exciting, and taste better too. Plus it would help you digest those damned tapioca balls.

Steamed rice flour noodle rolls are, by comparison with the standard American meal, practically health food. As I'm sure my doctor (she's Cantonese) would agree.
And they're absolutely delicious! Especially with hot sauce.


By the way: It's beastly cold today. Windchill factor and all that. I should have worn a sweater over my shirt. Plus the breeze made it difficult to ejoy smoking my pipe. Tobacco isn't nearly as much fun when global warming wrecks the weather patterns.

I'll blame Ron DeSantis for this.
I mean, why not?



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VIM AND VIGOUR

Apparently becoming older requires paperwork as well as many irritating conversations with bureaucrats. Which is not actually something I have studied for, and I would be perfectly fine remaining young forever. Say, around mid-thirties age-wise. I do not think I'd make a good senior citizen. It's not something for which I have the proper temperament.
Which tells you some of what I've been doing this morning.
Telephone appointments.


Also irksome is that in the last half dozen years I have shrunk an inch in height. In my late teens I was five foot nine inches. When little nurse Mak measured my height at the hospital three years back she was going to write five foot seven in the file, but we compromised.
I argued persuasively that as she was considerably shorter than myself, she had no way of knowing what it exactly was, and I refused to go any lower than five foot eight.
Personally I think it's a little over that.

She probably put down five foot seven inches.
I need to get a hold of that file.
A personal crusade.


Please think of me as a tall vibrant thirty year old and as ever full of piss and vinegar.
I assure you that I can dance on tables. I don't, but I could.
And I'm still very, very liberal.

Also, I remain considerably younger than many members of the pipe club. That has to count for something. If absolutely necessary I could catch a rodent.


Yesterday I had a conversation with one of the other members about food. We agreed that lobsters would make wonderful pets. All they need is a butter bath. It keeps their pelts shiny. And human food would be no problem for them; fatty pork (with salt vegetable or fermented black beans), a side of mustard greens with shrimp or oyster sauce. Plus various Cantonese condiments. And crusty French bread. They could keep the darling little herd of Kumamoto oysters company in the paddock.

This was a segue from discovering that we're both taking atorvastatin.
Which is a free pass for cheese and bacon consumption.
Besides having many other benefits.


Yeah, okay, I rather tend to give lousy medical advice.
Better than an antivaxxer or gluten-phobe.
But that's a very low bar.



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IT'S THE FOG

Rumours of my social sparkle may have been grossly exaggerated. As well as my hail fellow well mettishness and bonhomie. Consider the cat, which ensconces itself in a convenient box so that it rear-end and vital organ areas are safely out of sight, only the head with fangs and the paws with claws are showing. Precisely so. This box is my fortress.

But I will venture forth for pâté, of which there was a tempting sufficiency durin the meeting of the pipe club, most of whom I like rather much. I am fond of pink meat goo.
Pink meat goo is as good a social lubricant as there is.
Look, I'm smiling.


Ten people and two whiskey bottles showed up. Plus several tins of tobacco. One or two of the members look more fragile than they did last month, and I think there was a pick-up truck with Texas plates parked outside. Not that that is germane, he lives locally. There were, sadly, no women. For some reason I cannot fathom we have no women members.

Ladies, if you like fine Virginia Perique mixtures, and pink meat goo, please show yourselves! Come for the meat goo, stay for the fabulous company. Have some flake! Delicious!

It ended with people fading into the fog, which was starting to roll over the coastal hills. It's gotten colder since nightall, by about fifteen to twenty degrees. The road across the bridge was enveloped in white silk which also veiled the view of the city. Some pelicans flapped near the bus, then disappeared into the mists.


Because it's the beginning of the football season, the depraved cigar smoking old gits in the backroom were in high spirits, a perfect rutting frenzy, and loudly insulted each other as they vied for the attention of imaginary females of their species, ruffling their wattles in splendid display. I had earlier told them to behave better than they normally do, no venomous and vehement fighting over politics, go ahead and discuss religion, that's a safe subject and you're all heretics who will burn at the stake anyhow, so nobody will be offended.

They talked politics.


Anyhow, the pipe smokers had a fine time. At the appointed hour I told them that some of them were in danger of turning into pumpkins, and if they stayed much longer I would have to mop up the pumpking guts, please avoid the cheroot crowd on the way out they all have diseases. Unclean, unclean! A few members crossed themselves as they left.

Nick is looking to buy his first Comoy. I suggested that if he didn't want to spring for a Blue Riband, he should look for a London Pride or research some of the Comoy off-brands.
Many of those are also nice. I look forward to seeing what he finds.
He's in his eighties. But still spry and hobbit-like.



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MISSING IN ACTION

We can be fairly certain bowls of melted butter had nothing to do with it. As there would have been greasy spots on the bed. Which I would have noticed. Additionally, there has not been a time in the last eight months more or less that I woke up smelling like butyric acid and ginger or garlic. I'm fairly certain of that. So we can be sure that the various frogs and the turkey vulture on my bed did not eat him.

Nevertheless, the smal crab wearing a sweater who joined the household last December, who lives on my side, is missing in action. I have told my apartment mate that he's bound to be around somewhere, but crabs are an adventurous lot. Decapods, by and large, are not strictly territorial. They're rather like the adventurous commercial travellers of the crustacial world. Hat salesmen. "Hello, can I interest you in a fancy chapeau?" You will try one or two of them on, the crab will assure you that you look stunning, and the sale will be finalized.
Trust me. Would I lie? I'm an expert, I can say these things!

I don't think I convinced her. She retired to her room looking worried.

He's bound to turn up again. Sometime in the next few days I shall have to turn my quarters upside down searching. Last night I alreay founds some tins of pipetobacco and two books that I had entirely forgotten about.

Oh, so that's where the pajama top is. I'd simply been using tee-shirts.

My tee-shirts come from three different fields of enterprise: computers, spy toys, and the tobacco trade. They serve as undershirts and pajama tops. Crabbity dude is probably wearing one of them. While hiding among the dictionaries.
I'm sure I'll find him.



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THE GHOST FROM THE PHOTO

The corner of one's eye is not a reliable source of information. Especially not when the fog is rolling in. And no, there is nothing actually wrong with my eyes. Well, except that I do need reading specs (which I've got), and in maybe eight to ten years I'll need cataract surgery, perhaps, and the left eye seems to have incipient glaucoma which may render it kind of useless at this rate in another twenty years or so. Anyhow, specs I've got, latanoprost eyedrops for the left one also, and I can surefire identify the Golden Gate bus.
From nearly four blocks away.

But at the end of a long day dealing with elderly morons the mind is a bit abstracted.

That's why I thought I saw a person from a National Geographic article.

Just sitting alone. Upstairs. Across the street.

At twilight. In an unlit apartment.

[The disconnect with reality of those aforementioned elderly morons is not catching. Don't worry.]

A photo from an article I haven't read in years.
Set in some far-off place.

Almost as good as seeing an unexpected taco truck, I think you'll agree.

Feminine elegance. You can tell she's wearing that thin lacy old-style upper garment favoured by women in certain tropical countries, as well that that is a pre-transition Barling she's smoking. Probably with a nice English mixture. Perhaps from Rattrays. Because, of course, a refined lady pipe smoker would prefer a civilized product over the noxious reek of aromatics favoured by Gandalf-Hobbit wannabees. Such as there will probably be another wave of after the new Lord Of The Rings television series has made many young basement dwellers borrow the movie series from the library and then play act their favourite parts by cosplaying with props such as cheap cheesy pearwood churchwarden pipes.
Made in Eastern Europe for precisely that demographic.

And naturally she has pipe cleaners.



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THE WATERLESS FAUCET

There are times when I think it's what is in the water. In many parts of the country there are chemicals, bugs, rotten biological substances, molds, metals, and psychedelic elements lurking in the water supply. And, obviously, it affects people.

Of course it could also be praescriptions, hamberders, the adulation of idiots, or cult koolaid. Any one of those things could do it. Just look at Ohio and Kentucky. Both places not known for mental stability. And then there's Florida.

But I think it's the water.

No water in your faucets. You ever try buying a new home and you turn on. You want to wash your hair or you wanna wash your hands. You turn on the water and it goes drip, drip the soap. You can't get it off your hand. So you keep it running for about 10 times longer. You trying, the worst is your hair. I have this beautiful luxuriant hair and I put stuff on. I put it in lather. I like lots of lather because I like it to come out extremely dry because it seems to be slightly thicker that way. And I lather up and then you turn on this crazy shower and the thing drip, drip and you say I'm gonna be here for 45 minutes. What? There's so much water. You don't know what to do with it. You know, it's called rain. It rains a lot in certain places. But, now their idea, you know, did you see the other day? They just, I opened it up and they closed it again. I opened it, they close it, washing machines to wash your dishes. There is a problem. They don't want you to have any water.


Forcrapsakes, don't mention adderal. Amphetamine salts have great therapeutic effects and have helped more people than nuthouses. Euphoria, alertness, improved cognitive abilities, faster reaction times. Paranoia, delusions, hallucinations, and dementia are rare, comparatively speaking.



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