START OFF WITH "DEAR SIR"

One of them is hard of hearing, though testing out a new hearing aid, and the other one is capable of great miscomprehension. Both of them were born before the war and gibber a bit. But they're nice fellows. I enjoy chatting with them despite occasionally needing to roll my eyes. Which they have never seen because I am capable of subtlety.

Evenso, I did not need to hear at length about how his younger brother's homie passed away and the family is being cheap about the post-funeral meal (素餐 'sou chaan').

He's quite upset about that. Understandable.

Still, all that talk about the dead man qualifies as inviting bad luck, more or less. Can we find something more propritious to discuss? None of us are getting any younger, and this is, somewhat, affecting my keen enjoyment of the tea and pastry.
The tea and pastry are very important.

Of course I didn't indicate any of that. What with being a diplomatic sort.

Calmly I loaded my big-ass billiard about halfway (because it IS big-ass), finished my teatime snackipoo in a leisurely fashion, and bid them both adieu. Before heading out into the surprisingly cold day. It's supposed to be Spring now. It doesn't feel like it.

That's how I know I'm getting old. In my youth I would step gaily out into the blizzard stark naked and think nothing of it; now I kvetch when it gets barely into the mid-fifties.
When I'm wearing a flannel shirt and a sweater under my overcoat.

This is the kind of weather that demands a strongly worded letter to the editor.
Stressing that none of the retired military I know are cross-dressers.
Or, if they are, that they act like perfect ladies.
Because they are gentlemen.
Officers!


It really is a big ass billiard. If fully loaded it would take over an hour to smoke. Half-full it's about thirty five to forty minutes and quite delightful. That old and exceptionally well-dried briar from the post-war period. When there still seemed to be a plentiful supply.

I shall probably take it to work with me this weekend.

What a very great pity that there is no place to get cheung fan near work.
Or any other dim sum. Plus a pot of guk pou chaa.
菊普茶。



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THINKING INSIDE THE BOX

It struck me recently that when white people are dissatisfied with their genericness they start dressing funny. You know, uniquely colourful garb that expresses their inner spirituality and creative drang oh look at me I'm wearning Guatamalan hippie rags and I've got beads!
I'm one of a kind! Which is both very Marin and very North Beach.

Almost every unstable person you see at the bus stop with artsy free-spirit Gandalf rags is Caucasian, talks too loud, and says disturbingly off-kilter crap let me step discreetly further and further away from Miss Starburst Sunbeam over here, good lord I don't want to hear another lecture about apple cider vinegar and gluten free chakras.

The majority of Asian Americans very rarely do that.
They don't want to be seen as insane.
Or ecccentric and unstable.


Many white Americans are shiny bugs. Not only do they often wear their batty psycho auras on their sleeve, they feel that everyone must share in the wonderful experience and learn to appreciate it. Blissfully unaware of their unlikable qualities, they are absolute Karens of individuality. Nothing else going for them, but everyone has to smell the patchouli.

Which is why I'm quite looking forward to going to my regular Wednesday lunch place for a perfectly mundane and decent meal somewhere that my fellow Caucasians would probably sneer at, which is favoured by aunties and uncles. The service is brisk and to the point. To the best of my knowledge none of the waitstaff are aspiring artists or musicians.

Well, they could be. But they never mention it.

The only uniquely individualistic garb there will be the loud prints that some women from Hong Kong favour, but that's actually normal. I will also be dressed like a normal person, no one will suspect me of spirituality or artistic pretensions, or even know that I am a Dutch American or might have chakras, auras, or past-lives. Which is good, because I don't.

I don't even have meaningful tattoos. Any tattoos.

I am not a vegan, nor gluten-phobic.

You need not notice.



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THE RADIATING MAN

The karaoke joint was peaceful when we passed on the way to the hamburger place, but quite the opposite when we passed by afterwards. So we went to Miss Vivien's, where Ah Yee exclaimed that he hadn't see me in a long time (好耐冇見 'hou noi mou kin'). Which was correct. We've known each other since I first started carving seals. Which is why I exactly remember his name. And his surname (鄺 'kwong'). The sealscript version given in some dictionaries is, in fact, a later construct. Unfortunately there is no reliably attested original bone or bronze engraved, or Zhou dynasty (周) version.

Kwong is a surname that originated with exiles in the south more than two thousand years ago, and still found mostly among Cantonese or Toisan speakers. I would not be surprised if there are more Kwongs in North American than, for instance, Peking. The Louie (雷), Fong (方) and Kwong (鄺) clans are related by reason of a common ancestor. In North America they are united in the Soo Yuen Benevolent Association (遡源堂), whose headquarters building is at the intersection of Grant Avenue (都板街) and Clay Street (企李街).

In Toishanese Kwong is pronounced as Fong, by the way.
Some dialects have it as Kong.

AH YEE OCASSIONALLY SMOKES A PIPE. HE DOES NOT LOOK LIKE THIS.

While I was smoking my pipe this evening in Chinatown a few people stopped to compliment me on how swell I looked. I must be radiating bonhomie or something, which is disturbing, because I am not bonhomous; I lack bonhomity. Or I prefer to think so.
Oscar The Grouch is my spirit animal.

It must be the enchanting aroma of Atalaya.
A very pleasant broken flake.


For the second week in a row the bookseller's dinner was actually his breakfast. The bakery where he gets his morning pastry on the way to work has become too hip and popular. So other than a coffee beverage bought elsewhere he had bupkes to nourish him all day. Which is not good; a man needs to keep his bloodsugar level up to deal with the querulent public, lest they run all over him. He cannot, like me, snap and growl at them all day.

For me that would be easy. I'd just regurgitate the phrase utilized by the subcontinental clerk at city hall years ago: "whatever you are wanting, we are NOT having!"
And then slam the window shut.


I'm just not a people frog.



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RACE THE RATS

It feels lovely to have off after several days of being in loco parentis at work due to the boss and his kin having headed to a trade show in a part of the country where there are too many drunk people. I presume they maintained their standards and kept their sanity while there. Surrounded by sinfulness and temptation.

Please imagine hordes of overweight Midwesterners falling off third floor balconies while taking selfies and yelling "look mah no hands". As I fondly believe that Americans do whenever they're away from home.

You've probably noticed that I have a low opinion and strange ideas about people in the rest of the country. They're all pudgy and rather uneducated, they snarf cheese pizza and grits all day, and they listen to accordion music. Which, until you get to New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, is largely true. The only jobs where heavy lifting and regular exercise are required seem to be manufacturing meth in trailer parks. All those bins and giant tubs of chemicals. After which they drink a couple of sixpacks and watch the ballgame.

No, I have no interest in visiting the United States. I live in San Francisco, where precisely like Greenland we're connected more to Europe than the rest of anywhere else.

Here I am sitting in my rattan chair looking very much like William Faulkner.


Who would have had a low opinion of the yokels currently destroying our institutions. Sadly, because so many of our fellow citizens don't read and are damned near illiterate, almost no one has even heard of him.

The slope brows start on the other side of the Oakland Hills.
And we wish they'd head east instead of coming here.
Run towards the processed cheese, boys.
It's yummy and tempting.



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MY FORE ARMS

As of a few hours ago it's my weekend and I am free from the bonds of Marin County, where walging and braakneigingen are a way of life. Along with very well justified resistance to Karenism, which is more prevalent there than in San Francisco, and like spandex-clad bicyclists more repulsive as a gloating popular majority social tendency.
Rather than a minority dodging rabid drivers as they should be.

Bicyclists and Karens have a lot in common.
Besides a love of spandex.

Even before I returned to this country as a a young college-bound tyke years ago, I already knew about Marin. Forewarned is forearmed. I still have braakneigingen when I go there.

Mill Valley, from the bus window in early evening as I get the heck out, is beautiful.

The retired member of the legal profession returned from Los Angeles without his balding degenerate friend. Maybe he pushed him out of the RV on the way back, or roared off after ditching him near mountain lions. In any case, without the vile troll, or the subcontinentals to bring out his worst side, he showed inklings of being human, like when he married his first wife, rather than being an Orc, such as when he married the second one.

So I abstained from poking him with a sharp stick.
I did not taunt him with the latest outrage.
And ask how he could stomach it.



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HE WHO IS WITHOUT CASTS THE FIRST MOLOTOV

Today should be a doozy. Fifth day of work (normal workweeks are fewer), and keeping an eye on things while the bosses are away. And I had a hell of a time falling asleep last night because of pains in my feet and mid right shoulder caused by ciculatory issues, as well as an itch-ache throbbing sensitivity in various parts from the same source. It may be time to finally admit that I am no longer a young man.

Consolation here is that people I loathe are suffering worse.
And their stock portfolios are tanking.
Big time.


Das ganze scheißhaus geht, more or less, in flammen auf.


It's the end of the world as they know it, and I feel fine.

If the retired member of the legal profession is back from Los Angeles, where he and the balding degenerate went over the weekend, I shall be sure to wax lyrical and positive to him first thing about combustible cybertrucks and Luigi Mangione. Which should have him sputtering and spitting for several hours and might ruin his entire day.

He deserves the acid indigestion.

In buckets.



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FEVERED PIPE DREAMS

During the day I filled two bowls with a well-made tobacco that epitomizes rank perversion. Which I smoked. And thoroughly enjoyed. At one point Hecky demanded that I get the hell away from him with that nasty stuff. The refined urinal cake odour was, he opined, vile and nasty. Utterly repugnant, and I was a big meanie.

Well, I also convinced two of the members of the pipe club, which met today, to try the stuff.
So there was a constant almost subconscious hint of it at the edge of perception.
Hecky may have felt under siege.

Yeah, there is now a faint ghosting in both pipes. It will probably take half a dozen smokes each to remove that. It's worth the sacrifice, and I fondly remember the time when there was a faint whorehouse funk to one of my bowls (lasted for three more smokes), as well as the evening when Curtis was convinced that some criminal was huffing a fruity aromatic in his nice clean virginal cocktail lounge the horror the horror.

Also, I know that the gentler sex rather like the smell. Which is odd.
It's a product that seems to make strange things happen.
Almost a supernatural bane or curse.
Bad aura tobacco.

Bern reminisced about Spain, West Africa, and that Flamenco dancer. Charles went on and on about eating silkworms. Neil sat in his corner looking miserable and depressed, Christian gibbered about the sacred precinct, and almost as if by magic small bottles of Habanero chili hotsauce appeared on the table. Much fine liver pâté was consumed. Along with cheese. Prostates, cataracts, and thyroids were discussed. Along with surgical management.
Plus floods. Eruptions. Emergency barriers. Magma flows.

Someone confused Murphy with a taxi driver.

The Mallard was smoked too.

On the bus back to the city there were an awful lot of confused foreigners. Apparently you can urinate against the bus, but not on the bus. Irrespective of the vehicle's direction.
That perfumed pipe tobacco must have somehow caused all this.
I shall not mention that belief to Hecky.
Because he would agree.


It was a good meeting. Around a dozen members.
Most of them quite sober. Most of the time.



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REPUBLICAN EXPERTISE

At one point the other day the opinionated right wing hosebags in the back room were all single mindedly in agreement: the covid pandemic had been a Chinese / Democrat / Libtard conspiracy. And it had failed. Americans had seen through it, and voted the senile fool who had done it out of office. And there was much rejoicing.

All of which proved that the tarriffs were totally justified.

It often amazes me how expert they are in a wealth of fields. Medicine, economics, racial relations, constitutional law, and history. Plus, of course, baseball and football.

Mentally they're all wearing MAGA hats.

A few days ago I could hear the retired member of the legal profession whine-ranting for over three hours. He's reverting to his spoiled brat phase. But with worse habits and smells. Much worse. I can understand now why his wife sends him over nearly every day.
She married him (second wife), so she's also questionable.
But evenso. The poor bitch needs a break.
Sometime I'll suggest poison.
Instead of valium.

Booze also works. Unfortunately he likes Scotch whisky and fine cognac. So the next few months will be a drag. Not only for him, but for all of them. They'll probably eventually get used to Bourbon and never go back.

I am looking forward, very much, to the bird flu epidemic.

Which, though they haven't mentioned it yet, is probably also a democrat / libtard / Chinese plot. Ably assisted by Canadians and Penguins. And Biden's fault too. Damned foreigners!
In summation: surgical masks are commie, vaccines are bullpuckey.
Thank Jeebus for Alabama, Florida, and Texas.
No surrender! Football. Trump!
No wire hangers!
Ever.



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NOT TO SPEAK ILL OF THE LIVING

Two of the most irritating people I know have gone to Los Angeles for the weekend: the cantankerous bigoted whining suburbanite and the rabid bald pit viper, who is also a bigot. They've gone together. I presume their spousal nasty halves also went. Both gentlemen are Jewish, but quite unobservant and ignorant. Amei ha aretz in gonzen. So the chance of them being in a pesach hotel for the duration are slim. But in consequence, the discussion among the turnips in the backroom has not been overloaded with venom, boruch Hashem.
They should go off on these little unholy get togethers more often.

Everyone else should have a zisn un gebentshte chag ha heruteinu.
Them? They probably don't even know it's pesach.

They stretch my ability to not engage in lashon hara to the max.
Like any Dutchman, lashon hara is my milk and honey.
Please imagine the torture of their presence.
And how heavenly this absence.

It is much more peaceful in that backroom than normal. The subcontinental gentleman has no one to fight with. Well, other than the crazy Hibernian, but without whiny man and rabid baldy there, there is little to set them off. That which might hit the fan is not being disturbed.

By the way: almost nothing serves so well as a reminder of the sojurn in Egypt as a nice pack of Camel Cigarettes.

More rabbis smoke Camels than any other cigarette. In a repeated nationwide survey, rabbis all over the country, in all denominations, were asked "so, what cigarette do YOU smoke, rebbi? Yes, not surprisingly, more rabbanim prefer the smooth rich taste of Camels to any other cigarette.

Why don't you try Camels for a month, to see what a good tasting cigarette means for your smoking enjoyment?


Truthfully, I esteem ALL my quarrelsome poxy bastard balding degenerate fellow Americans. As much as is humanly possible. I bear them nothing but "Christian" goodwill.

It takes all kinds to make a compost heap.



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DAWN OF THE UNDEPRAVED

While I was outside earlier, after pills and coffee, the moon was going down to the west giving a false silvery dawn, because of the fog and the dense trees at the top of the hill several blocks away. Birds were tweeting, very Spring-like. And Mila Kunis singing Pat Benatar's 'Love Is A Battlefield' in Russian was going through my head.

And I realized that the music of my generation is now further away than what my parents may have listened to when they were the age that I was then. So we're talking about some pretty antique stuff, which deservedly might not hit the airwaves now. As neither should what we favoured. Because in retrospect much of it was ghastly.

On the other hand, I now fondly click on Youtube's of singers from the thirties to the fifties famous for black and whites in foreign languages. Oh, that innocence. Even the faintly hinted borderline deparavity that glimmers at the edge of hearing is so much more fresh and sweet.
Our standards for depravity are more rigorous.

Punk, heavy metal, and tthe "easy listening"channel changed everything.
Personally, I blame Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher.
The Nineteen Eighties were truly horrible.

Still, I miss that time. Not because things were better -- mostly they were worse -- but because of the perspective I had on life back then. My vantage points have shifted.
Victrolas, tape players, typewriters, landlines.
Possibly less cholesterol in food.
Very innocent snacks.


They still hadn't invented vegan and gluten-free back then.
And had barely discovered oats. As just minor details.
We had less Protestant guilt over things.
And spicier frissonage.



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NOT COOL DEVIANTS

Let us not speak of the anunnaki. Those being ancient middle-eastern supernatural entities often in conspiracy theorizing identified as ancient aliens who brought mankind fire, religion, pyramid building technology, and yeast for making beer and bread. Which one of the people in Marin wishes to discuss in great boringly repetitive detail but thank heavens (!) didn't get very much chance to do today.

If I can get through the working day tomorrow without hearing about any of that my life will be complete. Well, nearly complete. Somewhat. A little bit complete. Okay, that's a low standard for completion, but it will still be rather good.

What this really means is that there are some people you don't want to go for a walk in the forest with. Not because they might do something unspeakable, but because they will open your virgin ears to a whole berserk world of madness that you didn't want to know about and instantly recognize as such Mill Valley hooey that even pot-smoking hippies would open their eyes and mutter "um bad trip man. So not far out".

This is fuelled by strong coffee plus Honduran and Nicaraguan cigars.

Also, obviously, apple cider vinegar.
Which the anunnnaki brought us.


So on my right I have someone talking about all the inspiring slaughter and rapine in the Old Testament, and to my left a roomful of petulant whiny farts castigating China while praising the orange dungboy and his pet freak Musk. In all honesty, either discussion would have been better or more tolerable if done in a fake Swedish or Subcontinental accent.

Seriously. I'm thinking Swedish Chef here.

Instead of a mutant fartbabble inferno.

Hurdy gurdy. Mørk mørk mørk!




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EXTROSPECTIVE REFLECTIONS

Yesterday's tariff news was bizarre. There is almost no other way to call it. And, if the crayon-eating cretin in the White House holds firm, a lot of the things I buy will be twice as expensive soon. For your information, I do not purchase crap from Alabama, Florida, and Texas if I can help it. Or most things with corn syrup and corn by-products.
I strenuously avoid shitty American-made goods.
Which mostly come from red states.

If it's from California it's probably okay.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

USA: 4% of the world's population. China: 16% of the world's population. The world outside the United States is twenty five times larger than us. I hope the Chinese tariff the crap out of American goods. They don't need us. And, considering that we've gone rogue, neither does anyone else.

Let's see, most vegetables including chilipeppers are grown in California, we make good cheese here, and excellent wine, sugar comes from Hawaii, I don't drive and will not buy an American car in any case, and I despise most of the country and do not want those hosebags moving here or even visiting for conventions or vacations.

During the pandemic we learned that they're diseased and ignorant about hygiene, medicine, and microbes, religious nuts as well, who will take dangerous chemicals to combat illness because some damned preacher or right wing dunderhead on teevee told them to.

In the intervening years they've just gotten worse. Much worse.

More stupid. More ignorant. More insane.

Cattle prod worthy.



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BIG GREEN MANGOES

Where ever they're imported from doesn't matter. They were cheap, at one point, but soon they'll probably be astronomical because the big orange sewage balloon keeps playing with tariffs. And no one will want to sell them to us, because they don't know at the time of shipment if we'll pay when they hit the port. We're quite unreliable.

Why trade with a bunch of flake-a-zoids?

Green mangoes as an accompaniment to fatty pork work very well. Especially with a bit of stinky shrimp paste or dried fish in the stew, plus chilies. There are three Chinese American women in this apartment building, only one of whom is, maybe, familiar with that concept.
I know that my apartment mate (one of the three) would not automatically jump to that combo. Never-the-less, I bought a big green mango for each of them.
They're as big as a baby's head.

Mmm, mangoes, chilies, fish sauce, streaky stewed pork!
Paradise on your plate!

They can be sourced from Latin America, South East Asia, Mainland China and Taiwan, and the Heard and Mc Donald Islands. All of which have been venomously intercoursed with Donald Trump's dingbat tariffs.

And why would anyone even bother to try selling imported goods in a market operating so erratically? One just cannot trade with erratic inconsistent morons.

The Indonesian Chinese woman downstairs front probably enjoys mangoes. My landlady, Toishanese born here, loves them. My apartment mate, also Toishanese born here (her daddy is from Texas), I don't know about. And as a Dutch American with some rather Indonesian tastes I'm a foregone conclusion on that score.

Might dish up that previously mentioned pork over spaghetti noodles.
With some anchovies to accentuate the flavours.

Thinly sliced Jalapeños to garnish.
And cilantro.



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THE PRICE OF EGGS

Tariffs will impact a very large percentage of the goods that everyone buys, and as you would expect not everyone is looking forward to that. Fortunately I have enough sambals and chili sauce to last until well after the harvest season. But today I think I will invest in a few other condimental substances. Particularly oyster sauce (蠔油 'ho yau'), shrimp sauce (鹹蝦醬 'haam haa jeung'), and abalone sauce (鮑魚汁 'baau yü jap').
As well as various curry pastes.

All I can say is that my favourite stockists picked a lousy time to go on break.
Not their fault; ching ming (清明節) waits for no man.

Fortunately, Chinese American klugheit & innovativität will probably start production of all those things in the States sometime this year, and just like with soy sauce we won't have to rely on international trade. Which has been torpedoed by the stupidest administration ever in any case. I just hope that America's shitty and deteriorating food safety doesn't sabotage us like it did, briefly, about two decades ago when the damned Texans would have happily given everyone an incurable disease as long as the money for those ridiculous ten gallon hats kept rolling in. Fortunately the FDA (still extant at that time) and the health authorities (still extant at that time) stepped in and put a stop to that.

THOSE RICE FIELDS IN TEXAS WHERE REDNECK
PEASANTS SWEAT UNDER THE HOT TROPIC SUN

Sadly, when it comes to rice we're hosed. We'll have to depend on California, Texas, and the Carolinas for that. Where Uncle Ben holds sway. Most Americans know beans about rice.

Considerable less than about cuisine and acceptable headgear.

Fortunately the price of eggs will eventually go down. When the Red States get hit with the next pandemic, it will be several months before they panic because information will first not be divulged by RFK's henchmen, but then reassuringly incorrect in any case, and television hucksters will tell them to just take vitamin supplements, apple cider vinegar, fluoxetine and mebendazole. Buy the family pack, now conveniently priced. While supplies last.

[Very minor side effects at levels which are likely to supress virus-borne diseases: diarrhea, head aches, nausea, trouble sleeping, xerostomia, plus bone marrow suppression, vomiting, and sexual dysfunction. All of which are GOOD, and prove that they work better than masks.]

Then they will not be able to afford eggs, nor will they have an appetite.
And there will be a Jesus-man telling them eggs are evil.
All in all, you're better off not eating eggs.
They are the devil's food.
Canadian.



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SCREAMING FOR EDDY

None of us have actually met Eddy. But judging by the screaming from down the block while we were waiting for the bus, she has and blames him for a lot that is wrong with her life. Existential angst. Questions about the meaning of life. Bad hair days. Torpor.

From which I deduce that Eddy is a talented man.

Knowing Eddy is not high on my list of priorities. Nor is emulating him. The most I would wish a young lady to feel is kind of chuffed, and pleased to be eating cake with me. Black forest kirsch torte OR coffee crunch. Either or. Back in my early twenties, the phrase 'hip problems' suggested a weeklong adventure with a whiskey-swilling artistic type and an Underwood. Nowadays it's discombobulative creaking sounds upon getting up from a crouch.

In Chinese, "hip problems" are 臀部問題 ('tuen bou man tai'). After a certain age, those are amplified by circulatory (血液循環 'huet yik cheun waan') issues which you should probably discuss with your doctor, and which do not normally cause creaking.
Bad hair days, perhaps. No Eddies are involved.

I didn't have that adventure back then.
But I still own a typewriter.
Not an Underwood.

The idea of treating a nice person to a lovely slice of cake is charming, don't you think? Unfortunately there is no way of telling if a likely miss is suffering from a severe cake deficiency and amenable to the concept. One cannot trawl the waters at random.


As we have for many years, the bookseller and I met up after I had finished my pipe for our weekly pubcrawl, and, remarkably, his first sustenance of the day. The line outside the bakery this morning had apparently been too long. So he had had total bupkes in the way of nourishment, and a late night burger was breakfast. I had already eaten at tea-time and my blood sugar level was fine. The place to which I had gone is favoured by elderly Cantonese people, much like the place where I often have lunch on Wednesdays. So it's calm and good for people watching, as well as ideal for the single Dutch American grabbing a bite before heading out for a walk with a pipe.

For the last few days I've been filling my pipe with Atalaya.
A fine aged Virginia product from Cornell & Diehl.
It's excellent. I highly recommend it.


The beer place was filled with sparkling artistic types and Europäische Intellektuellen, the karaoke joint had people wailing in Country Western -- they sounded utterly miserable, as you would expect considering the ballads they had chosen -- so we headed directly to Miss Vivien's after his burger. He had stout and a whiskey, I had tea. We discussed 'Parks and Recreation', 'The Office', and Jimmy O. Yang, a comedian of great talent.

After which we listened to the female person hollering about Eddy.
Who must be a very bad person judging by her vehemence.
Quite the vile bastard. Heartless!
And somewhere else.



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THAT LOOK, YOU KNOW

When I returned from my walk around the neighborhood my apartment mate was on her computer listening to Zadok The Priest while typing. Zadok the Priest has been sung prior to the anointing of the sovereign at the coronation of every British monarch since it was written, and has become recognised as a British patriotic anthem. As you know, she is not English or British. But, being a San Francisco native (Chinese American), many of her tendencies and tastes are a bit Brit-like. Standards, boy! A person of whichever gender they identify with must have standards!

An idea with which I tend to agree.
Plus curry. Tea. And shaving daily.

Seeing as she is a woman, I do not expect her to shave daily. However if I don't shave every day I feel grungy. It's what an adult does. Along with teeth and a shower. Apparently having a five o'clock shadow is a sexy look, much striven for, which tells you something about modern society. Inexplicable. And anyway, it doesn't work in combination with a beard and mustache. Everywhere where the beard and mustache aren't should be clean and smooth, the actual B and M neatly trimmed.

Justifiably, not being presentable may elicit stern looks from a whole range of people.

And I'm sure that crow is wondering why I left the house without shaving too. That scruffy look is mildly upsetting, do I not have standards? What is wrong with me?

Corvids sneer at the skeevy look.
Somehow I am not suprised.

He doesn't understand the imperative to have the first smoke of the day BEFORE the second cup of coffee, only after which one will shower. It's not even fully light out, and people walking their dogs or jogging haven't shaved either. Please stop looking at me with stern disapproval, bird, at this hour very few people are fully presentable.

It's getting light out. And I've finished that pipe.
Time for a second cup and some doomscrolling.
And then go have a shave and a shower.



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LET'S NOT DO LUNCH

My next scheduled shift involves people whom I have not "friended" on Facebook and who don't have my contact data. Which is excellent. Precisely like the Republican schnucks with whom I come into regular and regretted contact while in Marin, I do not want them to see either my blog or my Facebook page and 'likes'. Casual conversation is good enough.
That forces me to develop a stronger resistance to idiots.
But news and social interaction, no.


What on earth gives people the idea that I'm social?


Do they not realize that there is a difference between being diplomatic or tactful and friendly? Please think of me as a rabid animal, likely to snap at you, drawing blood. So unless I have good reasons to think that we'll get along and that we have similar world views, casual chit chat will stay at that. It's different if you present solid evidence of critical thinking skills and being able to read, as well as perspective and a sense of humour.

Which very many ambulatory bipeds don't.

What people watch on the television kind of proves that.


The detestable cavemen in the backroom where I work spend an inordinate amount of time watching sports and whining about the Democratic party. I do not watch sports at all if I can help it (a pox on the Forty Niners, the Giants, the Raiders, and Warriors, et autres of those ilks) and don't waste a lot of time belly-aching about the pandering quislings in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party.

All in all, I think I would prefer the company of penguins.
We could talk about food. Seafood. Herring.

Herring is good.



Penguins are the most likable bipeds.



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THE FIRE SEASON

My feet still ache from work yesterday. Which is probably good. With the crappy circulation in my legs, staying active is essential. Finally scheduling those peripheral angioplasties in the lower extremities would alleviate that; leading probably to more activity, but I am somewhat hesitant. Six years ago when they installed the stent, which according to the literature should have simply been an in-and-out procedure, they knocked me out because they did not want the patient twitching on the table. When I woke up it was ten o'clock at night in a comfy clean room, with periodic moaning coming from the room next door. I turned on the animal channel to pass the time. Hyenas hunting down a zebra for breakfast. Moaning from next door.
It was kind of a heartrending Greek chorus. Pitiful misery, very audible.

An hour later the hyenas were fighting lions for the kill.
Still that moaning from the room next door.
Lions, it turns out, are lazy.
Opportunists.

Throughout the night the juicy zebra changed hands. Paws.
And there was constant moaning from next door.

A nurse came by at six o'clock offering coffee. So I asked what was with that moaning from next door. "Oh, that's just a demented woman. There's nothing at all wrong with her."
"Well why the devil is she moaning so?" "She doesn't like being here."

See, I have recovered remarkably in the last six years. Her dementia has probably gotten worse, and I bet she's still next door. And that's why I hesitate.

And she probably has no interest in watching hyenas eat. Whereas I'm merely on this planet to be entertained. Which is why I'm still chortling over Jeffy-poo ranting hysterically yesterday over us libtards pissing on his parade with our protests and wanton destruction of property. So I'm very much looking forward to his petulant kvetching the next time I go in to work.

Apparently we libtards are also blowing up the stockmarket, and what we're saying about the chosen one in the White House (unclear whether we mean Musk or Trump) is so unfair!

Suck it up, cupcake, class war is going to get a hell of a lot worse before this ends.

This what you and the other chuckleheads voted for.




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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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