Key sentence overheard this evening: "it's food; screw Buddhism!" This was uttered by my apartment mate, twenty minutes after I told her about the can of Spam in the refrigerator. And that she should feel free to go help herself, because I cannot possibly finish it all alone. Spam, as everyone knows, is made from the most delightful part of the hog.
Spam has spiritual resonance for some people. Her in particular. There's something so comforting and rewarding about Spam. Our ancestors used to roam the veldt hunting the wild Spam. Spam was shared by Jesus and his freaks at the last supper, before his holiness Jerome Garcia croaked.
All emergency airdrops contain crates of Spam. Spam is what the Icelanders would consume if they weren't forced to eat whale.
It's a sign of enduring friendship in Japan.
Spam is the all-American sacrament; our glorious soccer team in Brazil practically lives off Spam, because there is nothing good to eat there.
Spam and scrambled eggs on toast smeared liberally with red curry paste, Sriracha hotsauce squooze over, plus capers and sliced Jalapeño chilies to garnish.
I didn't feel like cooking; that was just a snack.
Spamerrific, Spamalicious.
My apartment mate isn't always at home during the evening, she has her own life. Occassionally she stays overnight at her boyfriends place; just her, wheelie boy, and undoubtedly not a scrap of Spam anywhere!
He's a weird white food purist, and really sensitive to salt.
No soy sauce. No oyster sauce. No condiments.
And no Spam. Poor bastard.
But when she is home, she is welcome to my cans of Spam.
Spam is goodness and sunlight rolled into one.
Our boys in Brazil will win, because of it.
The astronauts took it to the moon.
Ronald Reagan breathed it.
It's potent JuJu.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Thursday, June 19, 2014
LIFE IN THE BICYCLE LANE
Since acquiring another computer, I now sit on the left side of the teevee room table. Which means my point of view is entirely different. For one thing, instead of looking at the tall bookcases with the anthropological stuff, foreign language dictionaries, and tins of McClelland tobaccos and Smoker's Haven, what I see is the two shorter bookcases with obscure Sinitica, Rashi's Torah commentary, pirates, Bernard Maybeck, and The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet, by Georgius Everhardus Rumphius. Plus MacBaren (various mixtures) and many of my own blends.
My apartment mate still uses the computer on the right side.
We are presently a five computer house-hold.
The internet changed everything.
Definitely better.
Personally, I don't like change that much. It's good, and gradual enough while it happens, but then you look at your most recent passport photo and go "oh sh*t I'm old! I look like a fart!"
The nightclub on the corner became a super-busy singles bar in the last month. Like the nearby grocery store, the Red Devil Lounge had been a fixture of the neighborhood for many years, then within a span of mere months of each other they closed. One possible conclusion: music fans like vegetables.
Either that or they buy insta-noodles before listening to garage bands.
The noise from the super-busy singles bar is staggering, and it's only insane chatter, no music. From half a block away you can follow idiot conversations word for word wether you want to or not.
It's called Harper & Rye, by the way.
Crowded, loud, designer-rustic.
I have not been inside.
Sure, I like drinking holes. I grew up in Northern Europe, where the neighborhood cafe is the public living room, and all classes end up visiting the local alehouse, except for the constipated arch-Calvinists who disapprove of pleasure and public cheerfulness.
Not going is for anti-social types.
I am VERY social!
Evenso, the places I prefer are generally peaceful. No loud music, no roaring mobs, no wild dancing or sports, and no public rutting. The only reason to visit a bar is to dawdle for an hour or two while enjoying a good conversation, or a book.
There were bars in Valkenswaard where one went specifically to read the newspapers or the novels along the wall. There was a long reading table, brightly lit, with a rack down the centre holding several issues of all the dailies including two or three German ones and a French feuilleton, plus magazines in Dutch, German, and English.
Tall ceilings and a fan, so the smoke could rise.
Coffee, shot of jenever, ashtray.
Stay a while; it's quiet.
Places like that could not possibly survive in San Francisco. The rent is too high, and all those shallow consumerite MidWestern e-yuppies would trash them in no time.
Often, after school, I would go to any one of the cafes that rimmed the market square, and wile away an hour or two reading on the terrace under the long deep awning. Even if it rained in summer, the lights that were then lit alleviated the darkness sufficiently, and the water never reached that far. One could observe the streets from one's shelter, grey-hazy through the downpour, with bicyclists calmly wheeling past, holding umbrellas over their heads with one hand.
A hint of smoke would drift out from the bowels of the cafe -- elderly farmers probably talking about goats -- and odours of grass and fresh green things would meld with the ever-present fragrance of the cigar-factories that, in that day, still dominated the town and its commerce.
Of course I drank coffee while sitting there.
No alcohol before evening.
Moderation.
I still like dawdling over warm beverages, some things just don't change. But white Americans are a very loud bunch, and coffee shops are barely any quieter than singles bars and yuppie dives. And out of the question besides; all the caffeinated beverages are hoity toity barrista specialties made with low-fat non-dairy milk-like health-product, vanilla-hazelnut syrup, and responsibly farmed free-trade beans from deep within a Guatamalan insane asylum. In tall, grande, venti, and trenta format.
Starry bunkum or its karmic equivalent.
Served by snooty pimplers.
Mega hip.
Pretentious Bohemian types with attitude get my goat.
As do beatniks and faux-intellectuals.
At present there's a small tray with a cup of regular coffee to the left of me, on a stack of books. An ashtray is on a shorter stack, kind of out of sight; it's in reserve for those days when I am in the house, and my apartment mate is at work.
This place is rather messy, but it's nice and peacefull.
There are no party blondes or programmers.
Nor boozy business majors.
No noise.
In another two hours I shall be on my way to Marin, where for the rest of the day cigar smoke will surround me. By the time I return to San Francisco, I will have drunk several cups of tea, and smoked three or four bowls of tobacco. I won't have been anywhere near tofu, e-yuppies, or designer beverages.
Tomorrow, in mid-afternoon, I'll have a snack in Chinatown.
I'll watch the chess players in Portsmouth Square.
Pigeons crapping from the eaves.
Plus wild parrots.
Crows.
I seldom look at my most recent passport photo.
Instead I prefer to think that nothing changed.
It happened so gradually I didn't notice.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
My apartment mate still uses the computer on the right side.
We are presently a five computer house-hold.
The internet changed everything.
Definitely better.
Personally, I don't like change that much. It's good, and gradual enough while it happens, but then you look at your most recent passport photo and go "oh sh*t I'm old! I look like a fart!"
The nightclub on the corner became a super-busy singles bar in the last month. Like the nearby grocery store, the Red Devil Lounge had been a fixture of the neighborhood for many years, then within a span of mere months of each other they closed. One possible conclusion: music fans like vegetables.
Either that or they buy insta-noodles before listening to garage bands.
The noise from the super-busy singles bar is staggering, and it's only insane chatter, no music. From half a block away you can follow idiot conversations word for word wether you want to or not.
It's called Harper & Rye, by the way.
Crowded, loud, designer-rustic.
I have not been inside.
Sure, I like drinking holes. I grew up in Northern Europe, where the neighborhood cafe is the public living room, and all classes end up visiting the local alehouse, except for the constipated arch-Calvinists who disapprove of pleasure and public cheerfulness.
Not going is for anti-social types.
I am VERY social!
Evenso, the places I prefer are generally peaceful. No loud music, no roaring mobs, no wild dancing or sports, and no public rutting. The only reason to visit a bar is to dawdle for an hour or two while enjoying a good conversation, or a book.
There were bars in Valkenswaard where one went specifically to read the newspapers or the novels along the wall. There was a long reading table, brightly lit, with a rack down the centre holding several issues of all the dailies including two or three German ones and a French feuilleton, plus magazines in Dutch, German, and English.
Tall ceilings and a fan, so the smoke could rise.
Coffee, shot of jenever, ashtray.
Stay a while; it's quiet.
Places like that could not possibly survive in San Francisco. The rent is too high, and all those shallow consumerite MidWestern e-yuppies would trash them in no time.
Often, after school, I would go to any one of the cafes that rimmed the market square, and wile away an hour or two reading on the terrace under the long deep awning. Even if it rained in summer, the lights that were then lit alleviated the darkness sufficiently, and the water never reached that far. One could observe the streets from one's shelter, grey-hazy through the downpour, with bicyclists calmly wheeling past, holding umbrellas over their heads with one hand.
A hint of smoke would drift out from the bowels of the cafe -- elderly farmers probably talking about goats -- and odours of grass and fresh green things would meld with the ever-present fragrance of the cigar-factories that, in that day, still dominated the town and its commerce.
Of course I drank coffee while sitting there.
No alcohol before evening.
Moderation.
Starry bunkum or its karmic equivalent.
Served by snooty pimplers.
Mega hip.
Pretentious Bohemian types with attitude get my goat.
As do beatniks and faux-intellectuals.
At present there's a small tray with a cup of regular coffee to the left of me, on a stack of books. An ashtray is on a shorter stack, kind of out of sight; it's in reserve for those days when I am in the house, and my apartment mate is at work.
This place is rather messy, but it's nice and peacefull.
There are no party blondes or programmers.
Nor boozy business majors.
No noise.
In another two hours I shall be on my way to Marin, where for the rest of the day cigar smoke will surround me. By the time I return to San Francisco, I will have drunk several cups of tea, and smoked three or four bowls of tobacco. I won't have been anywhere near tofu, e-yuppies, or designer beverages.
Tomorrow, in mid-afternoon, I'll have a snack in Chinatown.
I'll watch the chess players in Portsmouth Square.
Pigeons crapping from the eaves.
Plus wild parrots.
Crows.
I seldom look at my most recent passport photo.
Instead I prefer to think that nothing changed.
It happened so gradually I didn't notice.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
UNIDENTIFIABLE FRIED OBJECT
Over the years I've mentioned the Dutch fondness for deep-fried oddities often enough that some readers have built-up quite an appetite. So, not trusting my own recipes, I went in search of other sources.
Readers can be a querulous bunch.
Quote:
How do you make a kroket or bitterbal?
First you prepare a ragout. This ragout, can be varied upon in many ways. Not only can the main ingredient be different (meat, fish, shrimp, vegetables), but of course the herbs and spices, the used liquid (stock, wine, milk, even plain water), and added ingredients (fried onions, bacon or mushrooms) can be changed too. Then the kroket is breaded and deepfried.
Source: http://www.coquinaria.nl/english/recipes/Stock/Kroket.htm.
[Fried balls]
Yes, there are other recipes at the referenced site. But what you really want is the deepfried thingummajiggie.
The list of variations on a deep-fried theme is darn well infinite.
Kroketten, bamiballen, nasiballen, bitterballen, fondue schijf, kaas kroket, fried cheese soufflé, patatje open been (fries garnished like a leg-wound - with mayonnaise, peanut sauce, ketchup or barbecue sauce, and chopped onion), meatball on a stick, combat fries, lumpia, kibbeling, low-fat low-sodium vegetarian deep-fried monster, fried chicken, all meat breaded pocket, a Hungarian thing.......
For a fond detailing of the totally fried experience, read this article: http://blogs.transparent.com/dutch/patatdag-dutch-and-fried-food/.
[Patatdag]
So fond are the Dutch of their hot fat foods that even in the depths of Thailand they go in search of it. In fact, they are notorious for doing so.
I would think that even if you aren't a flaming degenerate, you might find sufficient reason to visit Thailand. Requiring your own fast-food while committing immoral acts, in a country where the local cuisine is actually rather fascinating, just seems perverse.
Evenso, I'm fairly sure that the German and French sex-tourists also insist upon dishes that only appeal to them while exploiting the locals.
Being a filthy brute is hard work, acceptable sustenance is required.
Disgusting behaviour and grease are a natural combination.
The English probably aren't like that, though. For one thing, they are all into little boys, and tend to go on holiday in SriLanka instead.
For another, they don't have any food to be fond of.
It's buggery sad.
In the main, and quite despite their propensity to travel abroad every summer for cheap booze, sunburn, and anonymous couplings with younger people, it can honestly be assumed that most Western Europeans are home-bodies who don't really like to travel.
Despite sheer hundreds of thousands of them on the road at the same time, heading south with their own tea bags, tinned peas, and bottles of proper mayonnaise in the trailer behind the volvo.
It's an inexplicable migration.
Seasonal absurdity.
ATTACKED BY A BAT
I mean, what's the point of being treated like sheep, I mean I'm fed up going abroad and being treated like a sheep, what's the point of being carted around in busses, surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kittering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors complaining about the tea, "Oh they don't make it properly here do they not like at home" stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in cotton sun frocks squirting Timothy White suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cause they overdid it on the first day!
And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellevues and Continentals with their international luxury modern roomettes and their Watney's Red Barrel and their swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending to be acrobats and forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging in to the queues and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss your bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night there's bloody cabaret in the bar featuring some tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some big fat bloated tart with her hair Brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners.
And then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with diarrhoea and flabby white legs and hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel, and then, once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman ruins where you can buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleedin' Watney's Red Barrel, and then one night they take you to a local restaurant with local color and coloring and they show you there and you sit next to a party of people from Rhyl who keep singing 'Torremolinos, Torremolinos', and complaining about the food, 'Oh, it's so greasy isn't it?' and then you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Lutton with an Instamatic and Dr. Scholl sandals and Tuesday's Daily Express and he drones on and on about how Mr Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up all over the Cuba Libres!
And sending tinted postcards of places they don't know they haven't even visited, 'to all at number 22, weather wonderful our room is marked with an "X", wish you were here! Food very greasy but we have managed to find this marvellous little place hidden away in the back streets. Where you can even get Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and onion crisps and the accordionist plays "Maybe its because I'm a Londoner"' and spending four days on the tarmac at Lutton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried Watneys sandwiches and there's nowhere to sleep and the kids are vomiting and throwing up on the plastic flowers and they keep telling you it'll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland waiting to take some Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can pick you up on the tarmac at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning and you sit on the tarmac until six because of unforeseen difficulties, i.e. the permanent strike of the Air Traffic Control in Paris, and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at eight, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody's swallowing Enterovioform tablets and queuing for the toilets and when you finally get to the hotel there's no water in the taps, there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the bog and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet, and half the rooms are double-booked and you can't sleep anyway!"
[The above represents famous British world-traveller and food connoisseur Eric Idle delivering a succinct description of the pleasures of travel.]
Anyhow, instead of Spain for the sunbathers and Thailand for the filthy pricks, hordes of Western Europeans have descended on Brazil, where many of the pleasures they absolutely insist upon may also be found.
Kroket, frikandel, tinned peas, and decent patat frites.
Plus chicken tikka masala or vindaloo.
And Whatney's Red Barrel.
It's just like home.
This year is very different indeed. It's the World Cup.
There will be no exploiting the locals at all.
Instead, it's the other way around.
Would you like fries with that?
AFTER WORD
I am actually extraordinarily fond of Dutch fast-food.
Frikandel with hot mustard, for instance.
As well as frites with mayo.
Tinned peas, not.
Bugger the peas.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Readers can be a querulous bunch.
Quote:
How do you make a kroket or bitterbal?
First you prepare a ragout. This ragout, can be varied upon in many ways. Not only can the main ingredient be different (meat, fish, shrimp, vegetables), but of course the herbs and spices, the used liquid (stock, wine, milk, even plain water), and added ingredients (fried onions, bacon or mushrooms) can be changed too. Then the kroket is breaded and deepfried.
Source: http://www.coquinaria.nl/english/recipes/Stock/Kroket.htm.
[Fried balls]
Yes, there are other recipes at the referenced site. But what you really want is the deepfried thingummajiggie.
The list of variations on a deep-fried theme is darn well infinite.
Kroketten, bamiballen, nasiballen, bitterballen, fondue schijf, kaas kroket, fried cheese soufflé, patatje open been (fries garnished like a leg-wound - with mayonnaise, peanut sauce, ketchup or barbecue sauce, and chopped onion), meatball on a stick, combat fries, lumpia, kibbeling, low-fat low-sodium vegetarian deep-fried monster, fried chicken, all meat breaded pocket, a Hungarian thing.......
For a fond detailing of the totally fried experience, read this article: http://blogs.transparent.com/dutch/patatdag-dutch-and-fried-food/.
[Patatdag]
So fond are the Dutch of their hot fat foods that even in the depths of Thailand they go in search of it. In fact, they are notorious for doing so.
I would think that even if you aren't a flaming degenerate, you might find sufficient reason to visit Thailand. Requiring your own fast-food while committing immoral acts, in a country where the local cuisine is actually rather fascinating, just seems perverse.
Evenso, I'm fairly sure that the German and French sex-tourists also insist upon dishes that only appeal to them while exploiting the locals.
Being a filthy brute is hard work, acceptable sustenance is required.
Disgusting behaviour and grease are a natural combination.
The English probably aren't like that, though. For one thing, they are all into little boys, and tend to go on holiday in SriLanka instead.
For another, they don't have any food to be fond of.
It's buggery sad.
In the main, and quite despite their propensity to travel abroad every summer for cheap booze, sunburn, and anonymous couplings with younger people, it can honestly be assumed that most Western Europeans are home-bodies who don't really like to travel.
Despite sheer hundreds of thousands of them on the road at the same time, heading south with their own tea bags, tinned peas, and bottles of proper mayonnaise in the trailer behind the volvo.
It's an inexplicable migration.
Seasonal absurdity.
ATTACKED BY A BAT
I mean, what's the point of being treated like sheep, I mean I'm fed up going abroad and being treated like a sheep, what's the point of being carted around in busses, surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kittering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors complaining about the tea, "Oh they don't make it properly here do they not like at home" stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in cotton sun frocks squirting Timothy White suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cause they overdid it on the first day!
And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellevues and Continentals with their international luxury modern roomettes and their Watney's Red Barrel and their swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending to be acrobats and forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging in to the queues and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss your bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night there's bloody cabaret in the bar featuring some tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some big fat bloated tart with her hair Brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners.
And then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with diarrhoea and flabby white legs and hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel, and then, once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman ruins where you can buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleedin' Watney's Red Barrel, and then one night they take you to a local restaurant with local color and coloring and they show you there and you sit next to a party of people from Rhyl who keep singing 'Torremolinos, Torremolinos', and complaining about the food, 'Oh, it's so greasy isn't it?' and then you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Lutton with an Instamatic and Dr. Scholl sandals and Tuesday's Daily Express and he drones on and on about how Mr Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up all over the Cuba Libres!
And sending tinted postcards of places they don't know they haven't even visited, 'to all at number 22, weather wonderful our room is marked with an "X", wish you were here! Food very greasy but we have managed to find this marvellous little place hidden away in the back streets. Where you can even get Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and onion crisps and the accordionist plays "Maybe its because I'm a Londoner"' and spending four days on the tarmac at Lutton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried Watneys sandwiches and there's nowhere to sleep and the kids are vomiting and throwing up on the plastic flowers and they keep telling you it'll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland waiting to take some Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can pick you up on the tarmac at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning and you sit on the tarmac until six because of unforeseen difficulties, i.e. the permanent strike of the Air Traffic Control in Paris, and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at eight, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody's swallowing Enterovioform tablets and queuing for the toilets and when you finally get to the hotel there's no water in the taps, there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the bog and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet, and half the rooms are double-booked and you can't sleep anyway!"
[The above represents famous British world-traveller and food connoisseur Eric Idle delivering a succinct description of the pleasures of travel.]
Anyhow, instead of Spain for the sunbathers and Thailand for the filthy pricks, hordes of Western Europeans have descended on Brazil, where many of the pleasures they absolutely insist upon may also be found.
Kroket, frikandel, tinned peas, and decent patat frites.
Plus chicken tikka masala or vindaloo.
And Whatney's Red Barrel.
It's just like home.
This year is very different indeed. It's the World Cup.
There will be no exploiting the locals at all.
Instead, it's the other way around.
Would you like fries with that?
AFTER WORD
I am actually extraordinarily fond of Dutch fast-food.
Frikandel with hot mustard, for instance.
As well as frites with mayo.
Tinned peas, not.
Bugger the peas.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
IMPOSSIBLE TO WALK IN THIS MUCK; NO FOOTING AT ALL
Johnny Depp made Raoul Duke come alive. And, thanks to his noble effort, and reckless experimentation with illicit substances in rigorous pursuit of artistic verisimilitude, all of us can now quote bits and pieces from the greatest movie of the modern era.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is rather like Monty Python and The Big Lebowski in that regard; all three are the secret texts that make the world clear, and explain life.
Never empty a can-full of Donny if the wind isn't right.
You know why. It ruins the eulogy.
Not the Eagles, man.
THE REPTILE HOUSE
[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOmtVFQ3WF8.]
For those unaware of this film and it's cultural importance, here is how Wikipedia describes the events culminating in the scene above:
"The film opens with a montage of news clips of Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War protests while The Lennon Sisters cover of "My Favorite Things" plays over them, before cutting to Raoul Duke (Depp) and Dr. Gonzo (del Toro) speeding across the Nevada desert. Duke, under the influence of mescaline, complains of a swarm of giant bats, before going through the pair's inventory of psychoactive drugs. Shortly afterward, the duo stop to pick up a young hitchhiker (Maguire), and explain what they are doing. Duke has been assigned by an unnamed magazine to travel to Las Vegas and cover the Mint 400 motorcycle race. However, they have also decided to take advantage of the trip by purchasing a large number of drugs, and rent a red Chevrolet Impala convertible. The young man soon becomes terrified of the antics of the duo, and flees on foot. Trying to reach Vegas before the hitchhiker can go to the police, Gonzo gives Duke part of a sheet of "Sunshine Acid", then informs him that there is little chance of making it before the drug kicks in. By the time they reach the strip, Duke is in full throes of his trip, and barely makes it through the check-in; all the while hallucinating that the hotel clerk is a moray eel, and that his fellow bar patrons are lizards in the depths of an orgy."
End cite.
Life is rather like that. Your fellow bar (or restaurant) patrons are lizards, and there are moray eels in positions of power and influence.
The reason why there are trees on Broadway is so that the urchins from John Yehall Chin Elementary can walk in the shade while traversing the warzone between Chinatown and their school.
The Mabuhay Gardens closed down nearly twenty years ago (1986).
I drank chilled gin with angostura bitters there several times after it entered the downward slide, under a different name ("Josephine of the Islands"). Piano players and dance bands.
The Chi Chi Club ("Miss Keiko presents") hasn't been around nearly as long (1987); it eventually ceased operation in a haze of alcoholism and smoke damage.
Baby Destructo had delusions of heterosexuality whenever he combined different substances. Which he did far too often. Fortunately the young lady who worked at the cookie place never had the right angle to see what he was exposing below counter level.
He never realized that it was just his gay charm that made her smile.
Not that he had plans to do anything.
He was just happy to be there.
In all of his glory.
I think the gunfire on Broadway has stopped; there used to be four or five shootings a month.
On the other hand, I haven't lived there for years. It might be worse than ever.
I'm sure I would have heard something, though.
Maybe I need another gin pahit.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is rather like Monty Python and The Big Lebowski in that regard; all three are the secret texts that make the world clear, and explain life.
Never empty a can-full of Donny if the wind isn't right.
You know why. It ruins the eulogy.
Not the Eagles, man.
THE REPTILE HOUSE
[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOmtVFQ3WF8.]
For those unaware of this film and it's cultural importance, here is how Wikipedia describes the events culminating in the scene above:
"The film opens with a montage of news clips of Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War protests while The Lennon Sisters cover of "My Favorite Things" plays over them, before cutting to Raoul Duke (Depp) and Dr. Gonzo (del Toro) speeding across the Nevada desert. Duke, under the influence of mescaline, complains of a swarm of giant bats, before going through the pair's inventory of psychoactive drugs. Shortly afterward, the duo stop to pick up a young hitchhiker (Maguire), and explain what they are doing. Duke has been assigned by an unnamed magazine to travel to Las Vegas and cover the Mint 400 motorcycle race. However, they have also decided to take advantage of the trip by purchasing a large number of drugs, and rent a red Chevrolet Impala convertible. The young man soon becomes terrified of the antics of the duo, and flees on foot. Trying to reach Vegas before the hitchhiker can go to the police, Gonzo gives Duke part of a sheet of "Sunshine Acid", then informs him that there is little chance of making it before the drug kicks in. By the time they reach the strip, Duke is in full throes of his trip, and barely makes it through the check-in; all the while hallucinating that the hotel clerk is a moray eel, and that his fellow bar patrons are lizards in the depths of an orgy."
End cite.
Life is rather like that. Your fellow bar (or restaurant) patrons are lizards, and there are moray eels in positions of power and influence.
The reason why there are trees on Broadway is so that the urchins from John Yehall Chin Elementary can walk in the shade while traversing the warzone between Chinatown and their school.
The Mabuhay Gardens closed down nearly twenty years ago (1986).
I drank chilled gin with angostura bitters there several times after it entered the downward slide, under a different name ("Josephine of the Islands"). Piano players and dance bands.
The Chi Chi Club ("Miss Keiko presents") hasn't been around nearly as long (1987); it eventually ceased operation in a haze of alcoholism and smoke damage.
Baby Destructo had delusions of heterosexuality whenever he combined different substances. Which he did far too often. Fortunately the young lady who worked at the cookie place never had the right angle to see what he was exposing below counter level.
He never realized that it was just his gay charm that made her smile.
Not that he had plans to do anything.
He was just happy to be there.
In all of his glory.
I think the gunfire on Broadway has stopped; there used to be four or five shootings a month.
On the other hand, I haven't lived there for years. It might be worse than ever.
I'm sure I would have heard something, though.
Maybe I need another gin pahit.
==========================================================================
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LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
ASHES IN THE WIND
One of the greatest and most memorable speeches in all of moviedom was Walter's eulogy for Donny Karabatsos in The Big Lebowski.
It is positively the mother of all farewells.
Don't invite me to your funeral, because I'll deliver something very much like it. Because I think it's what your dying wishes might well be.
Or should have been.
"Donny was a good bowler, and a good man. He was, he was one of us. He was a man who loved the outdoors, and bowling. And as a surfer he explored the beaches of Southern California, from La Jolla to Leo Carillo, and up to Pismo. He died, he died as so many young men of his generation before his time, and in your wisdom, Lord, you took him. As you took so many bright flowering young men at Khe San, and Lon Doc, and Hill 364. Those young men gave their lives, and so did Donny. Donny who loved bowling. And so, Theodore Donald Karabatsos, in accordance with what we think your dying wishes might well have been, we commit your final mortal remains to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean, which you loved so well.
Goodnight, sweet prince!"
"Oh sh*t dude, I'm sorry. G*ddamned wind."
I likewise do not like the wind. Unless I'm careful, it blows embers out of my pipe. And in summer it gets very cold near sundown, because of that evil wind.
Last night was quite chilly.
I walked through streets where from distant corners the occasional chant of "USA, USA" resounded, as deliriously happy soccer fans celebrated our memorable victory over that country with an unpronounceable name.
Apparently it warmed the cockles of their drunken hearts.
All I cared about was that it was fairly beastly weather.
Bright and sunny during the afternoon, yes.
But turning cold around tea time.
And vile by dark.
After two or three o'clock I smoke outdoors, as my apartment mate, who returns home at around seven o'clock, doesn't like the smell of indulgence. She laid down the law years ago, when she informed me that all would be well as long as her Teddy Bear (her oldest friend in the whole wide world) did not end up smelling like tobacco smoke.
Because if she did, the gates of hell would open up.
I rather like the old girl (the ferocious bear), as well as her young lady (the apartment mate). Nah, nothing romantic. But in San Francisco, if you have a sane apartment mate who tolerates your peculiarities and whom you can trust around your crap, you try not to upset them.
Or their psycho teddy bear.
No, I didn't watch the game. I am not a sports-fan, and I have no fish in this fight. I am rather chuffed about what the Netherlands did to Spain, as the Iberians are rotten scoundrels who wiped out the population of Naarden over four centuries ago, aside from having an infamous record of committing ghastly atrocities a mile long, which should be sufficient to keep every Spaniard who ever was, and who ever will be, from being redeemed, in a just and merciful world -- even if the deity is a Roman Catholic, which is extremely doubtful -- but in the main what happens in Brazil over the next few weeks with balls does not interest me in the slightest.
Some bunch of Europussies will get a trophy.
Drunken louts will run amuck.
Hurrah.
Should've worn a sweater. Dang, it's cold.
Enfold me please and warm me up.
Summer in the city.
Miserable.
It would have been good to return home much sooner. But that was a splendid bowl of Samuel Gawith's Full Virginia Flake, over four years old, and it smoked like a slice of heaven. Gotta stay outside and enjoy the tobacco to the fullest extent. Even if snow weasels and polar bears are roaming the streets, eating homeless orphans and house pets.
Question of priorities.
At the end of every journey, a man might find a warm and cozy place with hot milk-tea and good company. As well as, perhaps, a couch and a comfortable throw rug.
Maybe even buttered toast!
Instead, we live in a world filled with rabid anti-smokers, sports fiends, and irritable teddy bears. And a bitter wind that drives men insane.
Pismo, dude. Pismo.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
It is positively the mother of all farewells.
Don't invite me to your funeral, because I'll deliver something very much like it. Because I think it's what your dying wishes might well be.
Or should have been.
"Donny was a good bowler, and a good man. He was, he was one of us. He was a man who loved the outdoors, and bowling. And as a surfer he explored the beaches of Southern California, from La Jolla to Leo Carillo, and up to Pismo. He died, he died as so many young men of his generation before his time, and in your wisdom, Lord, you took him. As you took so many bright flowering young men at Khe San, and Lon Doc, and Hill 364. Those young men gave their lives, and so did Donny. Donny who loved bowling. And so, Theodore Donald Karabatsos, in accordance with what we think your dying wishes might well have been, we commit your final mortal remains to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean, which you loved so well.
Goodnight, sweet prince!"
"Oh sh*t dude, I'm sorry. G*ddamned wind."
I likewise do not like the wind. Unless I'm careful, it blows embers out of my pipe. And in summer it gets very cold near sundown, because of that evil wind.
Last night was quite chilly.
I walked through streets where from distant corners the occasional chant of "USA, USA" resounded, as deliriously happy soccer fans celebrated our memorable victory over that country with an unpronounceable name.
Apparently it warmed the cockles of their drunken hearts.
All I cared about was that it was fairly beastly weather.
Bright and sunny during the afternoon, yes.
But turning cold around tea time.
And vile by dark.
After two or three o'clock I smoke outdoors, as my apartment mate, who returns home at around seven o'clock, doesn't like the smell of indulgence. She laid down the law years ago, when she informed me that all would be well as long as her Teddy Bear (her oldest friend in the whole wide world) did not end up smelling like tobacco smoke.
Because if she did, the gates of hell would open up.
I rather like the old girl (the ferocious bear), as well as her young lady (the apartment mate). Nah, nothing romantic. But in San Francisco, if you have a sane apartment mate who tolerates your peculiarities and whom you can trust around your crap, you try not to upset them.
Or their psycho teddy bear.
No, I didn't watch the game. I am not a sports-fan, and I have no fish in this fight. I am rather chuffed about what the Netherlands did to Spain, as the Iberians are rotten scoundrels who wiped out the population of Naarden over four centuries ago, aside from having an infamous record of committing ghastly atrocities a mile long, which should be sufficient to keep every Spaniard who ever was, and who ever will be, from being redeemed, in a just and merciful world -- even if the deity is a Roman Catholic, which is extremely doubtful -- but in the main what happens in Brazil over the next few weeks with balls does not interest me in the slightest.
Some bunch of Europussies will get a trophy.
Drunken louts will run amuck.
Hurrah.
Should've worn a sweater. Dang, it's cold.
Enfold me please and warm me up.
Summer in the city.
Miserable.
It would have been good to return home much sooner. But that was a splendid bowl of Samuel Gawith's Full Virginia Flake, over four years old, and it smoked like a slice of heaven. Gotta stay outside and enjoy the tobacco to the fullest extent. Even if snow weasels and polar bears are roaming the streets, eating homeless orphans and house pets.
Question of priorities.
At the end of every journey, a man might find a warm and cozy place with hot milk-tea and good company. As well as, perhaps, a couch and a comfortable throw rug.
Maybe even buttered toast!
Instead, we live in a world filled with rabid anti-smokers, sports fiends, and irritable teddy bears. And a bitter wind that drives men insane.
Pismo, dude. Pismo.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, June 16, 2014
EUROPEANS, ARABS, ISIS
The current crisis in Iraq is not entirely local. Funding for the takfiris comes from Saudi and Gulf businessmen, organizations, and royals, whereas many of the foreign fighters come from Russia and Europe, where socialist parties and Islamic charities operate as supporters and recruitment centra, with plausible deniability and legal cover provided by European governments, which is a situation dating back to the early years of the Bush-Blair alliance and before.
Many European socialist parties are re-branded Stalinists, Saudi and Gulf Arab potentates have a well-established history of funding and arming terrorists and gangsters to fight proxy wars.
That insidious Arab conspiring, by the way, has been entirely with the connivance of the aforementioned European "socialists", gladly provided because in their eyes anything that is anti-American is good and right.
Which is why in the seventies those same "socialists" enthusiastically cheered the Khmer Rouge and gave shelter to extremists among their own side, in the eighties they bemoaned the collapse of Stalinism, in the nineties they sent funds to Colombian rebels and African mercenaries, and in the last decade and a half have elected their clean representatives to the Euro parliament and every national government.
Is it not perhaps time to investigate our purported allies?
In addition to freezing assets to make a point?
You might think that this is a somewhat biased point of view, maybe even a typical paranoid over-reaction by another damned Yank. But European hatred of America has been boldly displayed on the internet since the very beginning, and not a single news source in Dutch, German, French, or Danish (*) has not evinced a profound and sneering superiorism. Literacy in other languages is illuminating.
European journalists and politicians are rather like Yasser Arafat; what they say in English to us is not what they say to their public in their own languages, as both sanctioned policy and political ideology.
Their hinterland, sheep-like, bleats similar ideas.
Because Europeans are always right.
(*) Maybe the Spaniards, Italians, and Slavs are better, but I doubt it, even though I do not read those languages.
Pigris balantibus aegror.
POST SCRIPTUM
The Arab world largely entertains itself by blaming everything that goes wrong on the Americans, one does not have to read their language or listen to their politicians to discover that. And the Europeans have fairly consistently tried to explain to their Arab friends and patrons that they are not Yanks, and entirely different besides.
Which is remarkable.
Please feel free to comment.
By the way, as a completely irrelevant and off-subject afterthought, all of the United States really is like what you've seen in Hollywood movies and American television series. We are all white, ignorant, and quite unable to speak any other language than Americanese. We drive pick-up trucks and shoot guns.
Golly yes, San Francisco and Oakland are EXACTLY like Bay Watch, Dallas, and The Oprah Winfrey show. Many of us, myself included, resemble Larry Hagman and wear ten-gallon hats. In between eating at MacDonalds, I repress Native Americans while playing a banjo.
I just thought you should know that.
Before you comment.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Many European socialist parties are re-branded Stalinists, Saudi and Gulf Arab potentates have a well-established history of funding and arming terrorists and gangsters to fight proxy wars.
That insidious Arab conspiring, by the way, has been entirely with the connivance of the aforementioned European "socialists", gladly provided because in their eyes anything that is anti-American is good and right.
Which is why in the seventies those same "socialists" enthusiastically cheered the Khmer Rouge and gave shelter to extremists among their own side, in the eighties they bemoaned the collapse of Stalinism, in the nineties they sent funds to Colombian rebels and African mercenaries, and in the last decade and a half have elected their clean representatives to the Euro parliament and every national government.
Is it not perhaps time to investigate our purported allies?
In addition to freezing assets to make a point?
You might think that this is a somewhat biased point of view, maybe even a typical paranoid over-reaction by another damned Yank. But European hatred of America has been boldly displayed on the internet since the very beginning, and not a single news source in Dutch, German, French, or Danish (*) has not evinced a profound and sneering superiorism. Literacy in other languages is illuminating.
European journalists and politicians are rather like Yasser Arafat; what they say in English to us is not what they say to their public in their own languages, as both sanctioned policy and political ideology.
Their hinterland, sheep-like, bleats similar ideas.
Because Europeans are always right.
(*) Maybe the Spaniards, Italians, and Slavs are better, but I doubt it, even though I do not read those languages.
Pigris balantibus aegror.
POST SCRIPTUM
The Arab world largely entertains itself by blaming everything that goes wrong on the Americans, one does not have to read their language or listen to their politicians to discover that. And the Europeans have fairly consistently tried to explain to their Arab friends and patrons that they are not Yanks, and entirely different besides.
Which is remarkable.
Please feel free to comment.
By the way, as a completely irrelevant and off-subject afterthought, all of the United States really is like what you've seen in Hollywood movies and American television series. We are all white, ignorant, and quite unable to speak any other language than Americanese. We drive pick-up trucks and shoot guns.
Golly yes, San Francisco and Oakland are EXACTLY like Bay Watch, Dallas, and The Oprah Winfrey show. Many of us, myself included, resemble Larry Hagman and wear ten-gallon hats. In between eating at MacDonalds, I repress Native Americans while playing a banjo.
I just thought you should know that.
Before you comment.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
IT'S TIME TO GET FUNKY!
Over the past few years you've seen several Chinese musical videos featured here. Four of them the past fortnight! Yet it strikes me that I've overlooked what is probably the greatest Chinese song ever.
So here it is! Finally!
It's an epiphany.
Epiphabbus.
THE ACADEMIC INVESTIGATION OF POLY-SCI
[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zulEMWj3sVA.]
Sweet, melodic, and, dare I say it, even romantic.
Ching chong. Ling long. Ting tong.
I can sense the angst.
It's in code.
For the heck of it, just cruise on over to Jimmy Wong's channel and tell him that he spoke to you. Touched your deepest heart strings. Had an impact. Because, of course, life is not all about Poly-Sci.
"Over here from somewhere....''
"I am not the most, uh, purritickery correct, person." "You so feisty." "All sexy!" "Ace." "Mother, brother, sister, grandmothers, grandpas, and cousins, showing me how to cook and dress."
"Underneath the pounds of make-up. And your baby-blue eyes."
"So when you reach that epiphany."
"Doing something wrong."
"Uh, senk you!"
NOTE: When I first saw this a few years ago, it didn't have subtitles in Chinese and English.
I can only hail this innovation, as it adds another warm fluffy layer of something between insanity and irony.
Bravo and kudos.
It's art.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
So here it is! Finally!
It's an epiphany.
Epiphabbus.
THE ACADEMIC INVESTIGATION OF POLY-SCI
[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zulEMWj3sVA.]
Sweet, melodic, and, dare I say it, even romantic.
Ching chong. Ling long. Ting tong.
I can sense the angst.
It's in code.
For the heck of it, just cruise on over to Jimmy Wong's channel and tell him that he spoke to you. Touched your deepest heart strings. Had an impact. Because, of course, life is not all about Poly-Sci.
"Over here from somewhere....''
"I am not the most, uh, purritickery correct, person." "You so feisty." "All sexy!" "Ace." "Mother, brother, sister, grandmothers, grandpas, and cousins, showing me how to cook and dress."
"Underneath the pounds of make-up. And your baby-blue eyes."
"So when you reach that epiphany."
"Doing something wrong."
"Uh, senk you!"
NOTE: When I first saw this a few years ago, it didn't have subtitles in Chinese and English.
I can only hail this innovation, as it adds another warm fluffy layer of something between insanity and irony.
Bravo and kudos.
It's art.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Sunday, June 15, 2014
CONFESSIONS OF A MONSTER
When I got home this evening there was a line of stuffed animals on my bed with protest signs. Apparently I stank up the apartment last night with my culinary experimentation after twelve o'clock. And by then smoking a delicious pipeful of Samuel Gawith's Full Virginia Flake in the teevee room, surreptitiously, while my apartment mate slumbered.
Heck, her door was closed. How was I to know?
That she smells through walls and wood.
It's just Virginia!
Mild.
"Save our environment!" "Stop burning leaves, you fossil!"
"Go outside to stink, white man!" "No more smoldering garbage!" "Throw it out, don't cook it!"
"Down with all Fume Fascists!"
"Save the Spotted Dick."
That last one was the head sheep. He's usually unclear on the concept. Besides having his own agenda. He feels that there should be parades in his honour, and we need to obey him.
Plus he wants suckies and ale.
Regime change!
This, more or less, explains why I'm somewhat hesitant about hunting for a woman to get all affectionate and loving with. She'd bring even more crazy furry critters into my life or my quarters, with their own peculiarities and demands, and without any doubt she'd side with my apartment mate and the furballs in the long-running battle to stop me stinking.
Especially if she was a Vegan; the meat odours would sicken her.
Or a spoiled blonde: all those strong flavours!
Or a fluffy twit: Barbie!
Possibly even a Hello Kitty freak. And there's only room for one Hello Kitty weirdo here, that being me. I've got a Hello Kitty backpack, which I refuse to share. It's the perfect size for half a dozen briar pipes, three or four tobaccos, Czech tools, and a really big thick stiff bundle of pipe cleaners. Not much, but all the fundamental necessities of life.
My Hello Kitty, my smoking requisites, my tobacco.
I'll happily share. But they're mine.
Remember that.
Anyway, when I questioned my apartment mate about the mini riot in my quarters, she was already in her room, reading in bed, with the door shut. She claimed complete ignorance of events.
It was, surely, a valid political movement?
Grass-roots democracy in action.
"I don't know what you mean, I've been reading in bed all evening, they're your roomies, you should listen to them, crazy round-eye.
I'm just a sweet little Cantonese girl..."
When I voiced doubts about her veracity, she snarled "I'm innocent!"
"That's the problem with you white people; all paranoid!"
"The bear thinks so too. Respect the bear."
Well. Can't argue with that.
[Actually, one CAN argue with that. I seriously doubt that the wily Russian dude with the wheeled contraption whom she's seeing respects the bear, or believes that she just a 'sweet little Cantonese girl'. Not if he hears that both the ursine and the evil green frog are conspiring to push him off a pier.]
Any woman I end up dating will probably have her own bear as well.
Good chance both of them hate smoke and food.
I shall be totally hosed.
Darned bears.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Heck, her door was closed. How was I to know?
That she smells through walls and wood.
It's just Virginia!
Mild.
"Save our environment!" "Stop burning leaves, you fossil!"
"Go outside to stink, white man!" "No more smoldering garbage!" "Throw it out, don't cook it!"
"Down with all Fume Fascists!"
"Save the Spotted Dick."
That last one was the head sheep. He's usually unclear on the concept. Besides having his own agenda. He feels that there should be parades in his honour, and we need to obey him.
Plus he wants suckies and ale.
Regime change!
This, more or less, explains why I'm somewhat hesitant about hunting for a woman to get all affectionate and loving with. She'd bring even more crazy furry critters into my life or my quarters, with their own peculiarities and demands, and without any doubt she'd side with my apartment mate and the furballs in the long-running battle to stop me stinking.
Especially if she was a Vegan; the meat odours would sicken her.
Or a spoiled blonde: all those strong flavours!
Or a fluffy twit: Barbie!
Possibly even a Hello Kitty freak. And there's only room for one Hello Kitty weirdo here, that being me. I've got a Hello Kitty backpack, which I refuse to share. It's the perfect size for half a dozen briar pipes, three or four tobaccos, Czech tools, and a really big thick stiff bundle of pipe cleaners. Not much, but all the fundamental necessities of life.
My Hello Kitty, my smoking requisites, my tobacco.
I'll happily share. But they're mine.
Remember that.
Anyway, when I questioned my apartment mate about the mini riot in my quarters, she was already in her room, reading in bed, with the door shut. She claimed complete ignorance of events.
It was, surely, a valid political movement?
Grass-roots democracy in action.
"I don't know what you mean, I've been reading in bed all evening, they're your roomies, you should listen to them, crazy round-eye.
I'm just a sweet little Cantonese girl..."
When I voiced doubts about her veracity, she snarled "I'm innocent!"
"That's the problem with you white people; all paranoid!"
"The bear thinks so too. Respect the bear."
Well. Can't argue with that.
[Actually, one CAN argue with that. I seriously doubt that the wily Russian dude with the wheeled contraption whom she's seeing respects the bear, or believes that she just a 'sweet little Cantonese girl'. Not if he hears that both the ursine and the evil green frog are conspiring to push him off a pier.]
Any woman I end up dating will probably have her own bear as well.
Good chance both of them hate smoke and food.
I shall be totally hosed.
Darned bears.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
CHOI POU FAAN: THE CAREFULLY CHOSEN TASTE
My bachelor versions of choi pou faan (菜泡飯) have grown ever more Byzantine. I think I may have invented a new cuisine.
Either that or a short-cut to compost.
Normal choi pou faan contains vegetables plus shredded ginger and minced garlic briefly parched in a hot pan (feel free to use bacon to grease it up), then seethed with stock and a splash rice wine, followed by adding water and cooked or soaked rice.
Once the rice is tender, bowl it up, and eat it with a spoon.
Basically a rice and vegetable soup.
Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner.
Midnight snack.
So far I've done Thai interpretations, versions with dried fish, bacon and egg, curry, pickled chilipeppers, and lap cheung. Capers have been used, plus sardines and pickled garlic.
As well as Habanero.
最近做的菜泡飯
Most recent version:
Gailan (芥蘭), chopped.
Scallion, minced.
Garlic, slivered.
Ginger, slivered.
Jalapeno chilies, chopped.
Thai red curry paste.
Tomato paste.
Sriracha hot sauce.
Shrimp paste.
Peanut butter.
Sliced hardboiled egg.
Dried shrimp.
Pork fat.
Fatty pork.
Crumbled peanuts.
Chicken stock.
Coconut milk.
Nutmeg.
Black pepper.
Habanero.
Lime juice.
Sugar.
Salt.
Plus parboiled white rice, rinsed, and water.
It was delicious.
Not something to eat before smoochies.
Smoochies weren't on the agenda. But they're important.
While I was growing up, I learned a song with this line: "when I was a little boy, this is what my mother told me, that if I did not kiss the girls, my lips would grow all moldy".
Yes, I learned it from my mom.
Good parenting.
As a sour middle-aged grumpus, I stave off moldy lips by upping the flavour ante of the food I eat. The alternative is kissing random strangers in the street, and I can imagine problems occurring if I were to do so.
I'm a firm believer in public harmony.
And world peace.
I'm also a very firm believer in the positive power of smoochies, but some applecarts need not be overturned hastily, and the key there is knowing a person whom it would be wise and good to smooch.
Choi pou faan is easier.
And delicious.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Either that or a short-cut to compost.
Normal choi pou faan contains vegetables plus shredded ginger and minced garlic briefly parched in a hot pan (feel free to use bacon to grease it up), then seethed with stock and a splash rice wine, followed by adding water and cooked or soaked rice.
Once the rice is tender, bowl it up, and eat it with a spoon.
Basically a rice and vegetable soup.
Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner.
Midnight snack.
So far I've done Thai interpretations, versions with dried fish, bacon and egg, curry, pickled chilipeppers, and lap cheung. Capers have been used, plus sardines and pickled garlic.
As well as Habanero.
最近做的菜泡飯
Most recent version:
Gailan (芥蘭), chopped.
Scallion, minced.
Garlic, slivered.
Ginger, slivered.
Jalapeno chilies, chopped.
Thai red curry paste.
Tomato paste.
Sriracha hot sauce.
Shrimp paste.
Peanut butter.
Sliced hardboiled egg.
Dried shrimp.
Pork fat.
Fatty pork.
Crumbled peanuts.
Chicken stock.
Coconut milk.
Nutmeg.
Black pepper.
Habanero.
Lime juice.
Sugar.
Salt.
Plus parboiled white rice, rinsed, and water.
It was delicious.
Not something to eat before smoochies.
Smoochies weren't on the agenda. But they're important.
While I was growing up, I learned a song with this line: "when I was a little boy, this is what my mother told me, that if I did not kiss the girls, my lips would grow all moldy".
Yes, I learned it from my mom.
Good parenting.
As a sour middle-aged grumpus, I stave off moldy lips by upping the flavour ante of the food I eat. The alternative is kissing random strangers in the street, and I can imagine problems occurring if I were to do so.
I'm a firm believer in public harmony.
And world peace.
I'm also a very firm believer in the positive power of smoochies, but some applecarts need not be overturned hastily, and the key there is knowing a person whom it would be wise and good to smooch.
Choi pou faan is easier.
And delicious.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, June 14, 2014
NOT SAFE FOR A CHINESE WORK ENVIRONMENT: THAT VERB!
First off, let me apologize for the word which will show up a few lines down in this post, which is a highly impolite term for a procreative act. Normally I do not use such words, and I do not wish to upset my more modest readers.
Who, being Chinese, could be a little fraught.
Upon seeing that word.
A SLIGHT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PEKING AND HONGKONG
If you are a Mandarin speaker, this post is not meant for you, especially if you are cruising the internet while at work. Please blip right on over it, ignore it entirely, go read something wholesome and uplifting. If, on the other hand, you are Cantonese, you've probably already seen worse today, and used a similar locution to forcefully express yourself.
And if you are one of my Saudi readers (wow, over six hundred visits in the last week alone!), you may not have the necessary software on your computer to show Chinese characters, in which case this entire essay will baffle you. Sorry.
[In actuality, this post is strictly meant for foreigners (老外) who are boundlessly fascinated by foul language (粗口). Of which there are innumerably many. Sometimes it's all they can think about.]
WARNING: UNWORKSAFE LOCUTION FOLLOWS!
The word in question does have other meanings, which are entirely clean.
To manage, to control, to conduct; to regulate.
操 CHOU
It shows a hand next to, or grasping, a tree (wooden object, plank, or tray) on which there are three boxes, likely comestibles or offerings, quite possibly even ceremonial implements. The concept to be expressed is neatly embodied by the representation.
手、扌('sau')，木 ('muk')，品 ('ban')。
The more common and colloquial meaning is better exemplified by the word for which 操 ('chou') often stands in: 肏 ('chaau'). Please note that unlike Cantonese, in Mandarin both are pronounced the same: tsau.
That second character (肏) also neatly represents the concept.
Enter or entry on top, flesh below.
入 ('yap'): to enter, to come in. To join.
肉 ('yiuk'): meat, flesh; a representation of strips of meat suspended from a frame to dry, like beef jerky or biltong.
唓，河蟹之社會？我操！
"Huh, rivercrab society? I regulate!"
[Cantonese: Che, ho-haai ji se-wui? Ngo chou! Mandarin: Chē, héxiè zhi shèhuì? Wǒ cào!]
Okay. I'll let you mull that over for a while. But I'll give you a hint: river-crab (河蟹) actually stands in for another term, just like 操 replaces the actual word which is meant.
Where the last word may get you in Dutch with your friends' parents, the term 'river crab' creatively combined with that verb will cause official eyebrows to lift in consternation.
And whatever you do, don't use the entire phrase carelessly.
The river crab society can be very disapproving.
You should fear their claws.
The word 之 ('ji') however is completely safe. It serves a grammatical function, much like possessive suffixes or the apostrophic S in English.
You'll encounter it a lot in classical literature, along with 也 ('ye'), which adds strength to assertions to which it is appended, as well as unifying two clauses stated sequentially.
Very useful.
Post scriptum: Anyone who is burning with curiosity about foul terms in Chinese should visit this Wikipedia article: Mandarin Chinese Profanity.
It is always good to learn something new.
Note: For an interesting excursus into how my own favourite language expresses itself unprintably, see the relevant Wikipedia file here: Dutch Profanity.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Upon seeing that word.
A SLIGHT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PEKING AND HONGKONG
If you are a Mandarin speaker, this post is not meant for you, especially if you are cruising the internet while at work. Please blip right on over it, ignore it entirely, go read something wholesome and uplifting. If, on the other hand, you are Cantonese, you've probably already seen worse today, and used a similar locution to forcefully express yourself.
And if you are one of my Saudi readers (wow, over six hundred visits in the last week alone!), you may not have the necessary software on your computer to show Chinese characters, in which case this entire essay will baffle you. Sorry.
[In actuality, this post is strictly meant for foreigners (老外) who are boundlessly fascinated by foul language (粗口). Of which there are innumerably many. Sometimes it's all they can think about.]
WARNING: UNWORKSAFE LOCUTION FOLLOWS!
The word in question does have other meanings, which are entirely clean.
To manage, to control, to conduct; to regulate.
操 CHOU
It shows a hand next to, or grasping, a tree (wooden object, plank, or tray) on which there are three boxes, likely comestibles or offerings, quite possibly even ceremonial implements. The concept to be expressed is neatly embodied by the representation.
手、扌('sau')，木 ('muk')，品 ('ban')。
The more common and colloquial meaning is better exemplified by the word for which 操 ('chou') often stands in: 肏 ('chaau'). Please note that unlike Cantonese, in Mandarin both are pronounced the same: tsau.
That second character (肏) also neatly represents the concept.
Enter or entry on top, flesh below.
入 ('yap'): to enter, to come in. To join.
肉 ('yiuk'): meat, flesh; a representation of strips of meat suspended from a frame to dry, like beef jerky or biltong.
唓，河蟹之社會？我操！
"Huh, rivercrab society? I regulate!"
[Cantonese: Che, ho-haai ji se-wui? Ngo chou! Mandarin: Chē, héxiè zhi shèhuì? Wǒ cào!]
Okay. I'll let you mull that over for a while. But I'll give you a hint: river-crab (河蟹) actually stands in for another term, just like 操 replaces the actual word which is meant.
Where the last word may get you in Dutch with your friends' parents, the term 'river crab' creatively combined with that verb will cause official eyebrows to lift in consternation.
And whatever you do, don't use the entire phrase carelessly.
The river crab society can be very disapproving.
You should fear their claws.
The word 之 ('ji') however is completely safe. It serves a grammatical function, much like possessive suffixes or the apostrophic S in English.
You'll encounter it a lot in classical literature, along with 也 ('ye'), which adds strength to assertions to which it is appended, as well as unifying two clauses stated sequentially.
Very useful.
Post scriptum: Anyone who is burning with curiosity about foul terms in Chinese should visit this Wikipedia article: Mandarin Chinese Profanity.
It is always good to learn something new.
Note: For an interesting excursus into how my own favourite language expresses itself unprintably, see the relevant Wikipedia file here: Dutch Profanity.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Friday, June 13, 2014
ROGER AND HIS PET
After viewing the umpty-ump thousandth cat video on the internet, which was invented specifically for the dissemination of cat pictures and videos, I realized a fundamental truth: representations of outer space aliens often look exactly like cats. Same eyes, facial expressions, and skull width. Coincidence?
We should probably distrust our cats.
IT SMELLS LIKE CRAP IN HERE
This also reminded me of an old friend, who lived alone with his cat. Together they occupied an ill-maintained house in Berkeley, a little bit uphill from Shattuck Avenue, and to the north of the campus. Not far, actually, from the apartment of the steamingly hot gun-nut I was all goo over in those days. Whenever I needed a break from her drunken rages after she had finished a bottle of Old Grand Dad, I'd stroll over to his house and let myself in with the key he had given me. He often wasn't home, but his cat was. After fixing myself some tea I'd sit on the couch in the messy backroom over the garage, smoking my pipe, stroking the cat, and reading. He had a fabulous collection of trashy paperbacks as well as all past issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which contained some of the stories my mom wrote when she was still single and living in the Bay Area.
My mom got married to my dad after a strange five-year courtship, moved down to Los Angeles, and eventually had kids (two). Children, like cats, tend to call a screeching halt to the creative process. Just look at your friends. Do they have children? Felines?
If they do, the closest they come to creativity is inventing new accounts about something cute or aggravating that one of those creatures did, and they've probably gotten rid of the bottle of Old Grand Dad.
Maybe even several bottles.
It's very annoying.
They used to be such fun!
One day, while rooting through the kitchen cupboard for a clean tea pot, I found a nearly empty whiskey bottle. The label was faded, and it looked like it was nearly twenty years old. Not the same typeface as the examples which my love-interest at the time kept dumping in the garbage. Was it still drinkable?
I was curious, but you never drink a man's bourbon when he isn't around to pour it for you. That's just not good manners. My dad had instilled that in me after I had emptied the liquor cabinet with a year's worth of depradations.
Besides, the cat would probably squeal on me.
For creatures whose sexual shenanigans are loud, public, and heard by the entire neighborhood at all hours of the night, cats are often the most frightful puritans. They can misbehave, but they disapprove completely of us doing so. Roger's cat always kept a very close eye on me to make sure that all I did was read, drink tea, and smoke my pipe. Nothing else. So I left the bottle where it was and went back to the room with all the books.
I didn't forget about it, though. Old Grand Dad. Disturbing. Why was it there? I had already started having bad mental associations because of that brand, perhaps due to the unhinged behaviour of the girl I was seeing whenever she had drunk a bit too much -- she kept her guns loaded at all times, by the way, and one of them was always under her pillow -- and in that day and age I hadn't yet discovered the noble Manhattan cocktail, which is one of the best things you can do to Bourbon. I preferred Irish whiskey. Sometimes Scotch. Despite not yet being of legal drinking age. Why on earth did he have Bourbon?
I had never seen him drink.
One should worry about, or distrust, people who sip in secret.
It's eccentric, and represents icebergs.
Rather like the maiden auntie who keeps a giant perfume bottle filled with gin on her dresser. You know it's gin, you smelled it one day when you were visiting. And you were very disappointed; you had expected something magical, something that would suggest a secret life.
Depravity and romance! Instead, vodka. How jejune!
And sneaky!
Far better they should have a bottle of Bourbon in plain view, like right next to the teevee, or on the kitchen counter at all times.
Even on the bedside table.
Solitary drinking is the path to ruin. There was nothing solitary about the gun toting girl's drinking, and she was often pissed that I was not yet old enough to go to bars. She liked getting high in bars, as there was always somebody to disagree with there. And as you might guess, I was a very agreeable sort of person, even then, besides being always right.
It just wasn't fun arguing with me.
It is hard to pick a fight with an equitably tempered man.
Frustrated, she sicced her cats on me.
They'd rub and purr.
Useless!
Time for more bourbon.
Eventually, I'd let myself out and head over to Roger's house. If he wasn't there, his cat would come over and keenly sniff the evidence of a previous feline's attention, then set about erasing it. The cat liked it when I read aloud. He seemed to prefer Isaac Asimov and Cordwainer Smith, and I suspect he thought Robert Heinlein rather splendidly silly. Especially everything after Stranger In A Strange Land (1961).
I often felt guilty about enjoying Roger's hospitality when he wasn't there, particularly the tea, and would occasionally consider bringing over a dead mouse for the cat, which would recompense him for his kindness.
Instead I just bought a few cans of Ralston Purina every week, and left them on the kitchen counter.
Still. Dead mice. Juicy. I'm sure the cat would have thought it fitting. Whereas moist protein goo sealed in a tin casket is, if anything, frustrating.
I myself would prefer dead mice if I didn't have opposable thumbs.
My girlfriend would have approved too. She would have even volunteered to shoot the little beasts for me, and I'm sure she could have hit them dead on even when drunk. She was a very good shot.
Problem is, there would have been nothing left to bring the cat. A heavy bore blast kind of wreaks havoc on the tender rodent, you must understand.
She looked remarkably like a vengeful goddess when she suggested shooting things.
After a relationship that lasted a year, the gun nut and I split up, and she eventually started seeing a fancy-pants lawyer from New York, who was also a fire-arms fanatic.
I rather missed our days of making ammo together.
And cleaning gun barrels; it's romantic!
Besides, residue smells nice.
I still headed over to Roger's house two or three times a week. The cat would welcome me, and sniff my pants to check if I had been seeing any other felines. Upon encountering the odour of my Grandmother's three neurotic toms, he would nuzzle and rub and do his damndest to remove their foul stench.
Roger was still rarely in; as a retired academic and a bachelor, he tended to be elsewhere in the country at any given moment. The sleekness of the cat was the only thing that indicated that he did, in fact, regularly descend on Berkeley. No, that wasn't because I brought over cans of Ralston Purina, because I never opened them. It must have been him.
Occasionally I'd check the old bottle in the kitchen cupboard. The fluid level never went down. I'll confess that I was somewhat obsessed with that bottle. Even if it was Old Grand Dad, it seemed such a waste that it never got enjoyed. And, several months after the break-up with the gun nut, I was starting to miss the smell of Bourbon.
You know, there's nothing quite like whiskey-drenched cuddling.
It's warm and sleek and wriggly. Sweet!
Just hold me tight.
Guns, bourbon, and a sexy beast.
That's a recipe right there!
I recall that her cats always tried to interrupt. The damned furballs never understood that some things are exclusionary, and would eventually end-up yowling behind a locked closet door.
They keenly resented not being part of whatever was going on.
Like all felines, they had a sense of entitlement.
And attention-hog sensibilities.
Politicians.
The first bottle of liquor I bought once I turned twenty-one and could legally do so was Old Grand Dad. That was over a year after my re-ascent back into bachelorhood.
I had to hide the bottle from my Grandmother. Not per se because she disapproved of Bourbon, or even of cheap hooch, but she had never entirely cottoned to my crazy girlfriend's lifestyle, and worried that in some ways I resembled my ancestors a bit too much.
Guns and whiskey have a history in some branches of the family.
So do dead mice and cats, but I never said anything.
I've always distrusted cats.
After a while the gun nut and her husband moved back east. I heard she was looking for someone to take the cats, so I diplomatically suggested through the grape-vine that a previous boy friend (who also collected guns) was perfect and made myself rather mysteriously unavailable for several weeks so that no one could dump them on me. I knew he hated them; the only animalistic thing that he liked was the girl herself. He was the person who first told me that she growled when asleep.
Yes, she was amazingly bestial at those times.
Drowsing wolverine. A fierce beast.
Do NOT awaken her.
She's feral
No, I haven't a clue what any of those people are doing now.
I lost touch with most of the Berkeley crowd.
After my Grandmother passed away, I tried taking care of her neurotic toms, but they despised me, and I eventually persuaded some of her friends to adopt the little creeps. I'm afraid my Grandmother was far too tolerant of unbalanced males.
Many women are.
A HORRID DEN BEHIND THE OPERA
Roger ended up in the hospital by the time I moved to San Francisco. He asked me to take care of the cat -- "let him live with you, so he has a home" -- and also told me to 'adopt' the bottle of Bourbon in the kitchen cupboard, as it really needed to be enjoyed before it was too late.
He also gravely informed me that he hadn't ever appreciated the smell of pipe tobacco in the house. It always reminded him of cheap hotels and low dives. But the cat liked it. Which made it okay.
And I should NEVER ask the cat about the past.
There were embarrassing things there.
Connected with pipes.
And pussies.
The landlord of my Ivy Street digs had specifically forbidden any pets, but he was far more worried about what the drugdealer who lived above me was doing to bother about the beast. During that year the upstairs tenant resisted any attempt to evict him, and managed to sell all the furniture that was stored in the basement.
The cat "guarded" the apartment while I was out during the day, and then spent all night loudly courting the wild pussies in the neighborhood.
That cat had a more active love life than I did by a mile.
Entirely without the help of liquor.
I rather resented that.
At present, I do not own a bottle of Old Grand Dad.
And I do not have a pussycat.
AFTERTHOUGHT
After all these years I'd like to meet the gun nut again sometime. She was a warm and creative person, and she's probably grown up to be a fabulous woman by now. No, I wouldn't want to rekindle anything, but it would be fun to have cocktails with her and speak sneeringly of what Berkeley has become.
I hope she's happy.
APPENDIX: THE MANHATTAN COCKTAIL
Purists will insist that a Manhattan be made with rye whiskey. Which is both ridiculous and a snobbish affectation. Most Manhattans are made by experienced bar tenders serving a clientele that knows precisely what they want, and would scream if the mixologist deviated from the tried and true. Which is decent basic Bourbon, cheap vermouth, a dash of bitters, and a maraschino cherry or twist of lemon peel to garnish.
What you will need:
Three ounces of Old Grand Dad.
Half an ounce sweet vermouth.
Dash of Pechaud's Bitters.
One cherry, or one twist of peel.
A cocktail shaker, and ice cubes.
Fill the shaker half full with ice cubes. Pour in the whiskey and vermouth and add the bitters. Lid it, and shake fiercely and briefly. Decant into a wine glass or tumbler, then garnish.
Repeat.
Do not use standard cocktail glasses; they're silly.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
We should probably distrust our cats.
IT SMELLS LIKE CRAP IN HERE
This also reminded me of an old friend, who lived alone with his cat. Together they occupied an ill-maintained house in Berkeley, a little bit uphill from Shattuck Avenue, and to the north of the campus. Not far, actually, from the apartment of the steamingly hot gun-nut I was all goo over in those days. Whenever I needed a break from her drunken rages after she had finished a bottle of Old Grand Dad, I'd stroll over to his house and let myself in with the key he had given me. He often wasn't home, but his cat was. After fixing myself some tea I'd sit on the couch in the messy backroom over the garage, smoking my pipe, stroking the cat, and reading. He had a fabulous collection of trashy paperbacks as well as all past issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which contained some of the stories my mom wrote when she was still single and living in the Bay Area.
My mom got married to my dad after a strange five-year courtship, moved down to Los Angeles, and eventually had kids (two). Children, like cats, tend to call a screeching halt to the creative process. Just look at your friends. Do they have children? Felines?
If they do, the closest they come to creativity is inventing new accounts about something cute or aggravating that one of those creatures did, and they've probably gotten rid of the bottle of Old Grand Dad.
Maybe even several bottles.
It's very annoying.
They used to be such fun!
One day, while rooting through the kitchen cupboard for a clean tea pot, I found a nearly empty whiskey bottle. The label was faded, and it looked like it was nearly twenty years old. Not the same typeface as the examples which my love-interest at the time kept dumping in the garbage. Was it still drinkable?
I was curious, but you never drink a man's bourbon when he isn't around to pour it for you. That's just not good manners. My dad had instilled that in me after I had emptied the liquor cabinet with a year's worth of depradations.
Besides, the cat would probably squeal on me.
For creatures whose sexual shenanigans are loud, public, and heard by the entire neighborhood at all hours of the night, cats are often the most frightful puritans. They can misbehave, but they disapprove completely of us doing so. Roger's cat always kept a very close eye on me to make sure that all I did was read, drink tea, and smoke my pipe. Nothing else. So I left the bottle where it was and went back to the room with all the books.
I didn't forget about it, though. Old Grand Dad. Disturbing. Why was it there? I had already started having bad mental associations because of that brand, perhaps due to the unhinged behaviour of the girl I was seeing whenever she had drunk a bit too much -- she kept her guns loaded at all times, by the way, and one of them was always under her pillow -- and in that day and age I hadn't yet discovered the noble Manhattan cocktail, which is one of the best things you can do to Bourbon. I preferred Irish whiskey. Sometimes Scotch. Despite not yet being of legal drinking age. Why on earth did he have Bourbon?
I had never seen him drink.
One should worry about, or distrust, people who sip in secret.
It's eccentric, and represents icebergs.
Rather like the maiden auntie who keeps a giant perfume bottle filled with gin on her dresser. You know it's gin, you smelled it one day when you were visiting. And you were very disappointed; you had expected something magical, something that would suggest a secret life.
Depravity and romance! Instead, vodka. How jejune!
And sneaky!
Far better they should have a bottle of Bourbon in plain view, like right next to the teevee, or on the kitchen counter at all times.
Even on the bedside table.
Solitary drinking is the path to ruin. There was nothing solitary about the gun toting girl's drinking, and she was often pissed that I was not yet old enough to go to bars. She liked getting high in bars, as there was always somebody to disagree with there. And as you might guess, I was a very agreeable sort of person, even then, besides being always right.
It just wasn't fun arguing with me.
It is hard to pick a fight with an equitably tempered man.
Frustrated, she sicced her cats on me.
They'd rub and purr.
Useless!
Time for more bourbon.
Eventually, I'd let myself out and head over to Roger's house. If he wasn't there, his cat would come over and keenly sniff the evidence of a previous feline's attention, then set about erasing it. The cat liked it when I read aloud. He seemed to prefer Isaac Asimov and Cordwainer Smith, and I suspect he thought Robert Heinlein rather splendidly silly. Especially everything after Stranger In A Strange Land (1961).
I often felt guilty about enjoying Roger's hospitality when he wasn't there, particularly the tea, and would occasionally consider bringing over a dead mouse for the cat, which would recompense him for his kindness.
Instead I just bought a few cans of Ralston Purina every week, and left them on the kitchen counter.
Still. Dead mice. Juicy. I'm sure the cat would have thought it fitting. Whereas moist protein goo sealed in a tin casket is, if anything, frustrating.
I myself would prefer dead mice if I didn't have opposable thumbs.
My girlfriend would have approved too. She would have even volunteered to shoot the little beasts for me, and I'm sure she could have hit them dead on even when drunk. She was a very good shot.
Problem is, there would have been nothing left to bring the cat. A heavy bore blast kind of wreaks havoc on the tender rodent, you must understand.
She looked remarkably like a vengeful goddess when she suggested shooting things.
After a relationship that lasted a year, the gun nut and I split up, and she eventually started seeing a fancy-pants lawyer from New York, who was also a fire-arms fanatic.
I rather missed our days of making ammo together.
And cleaning gun barrels; it's romantic!
Besides, residue smells nice.
I still headed over to Roger's house two or three times a week. The cat would welcome me, and sniff my pants to check if I had been seeing any other felines. Upon encountering the odour of my Grandmother's three neurotic toms, he would nuzzle and rub and do his damndest to remove their foul stench.
Roger was still rarely in; as a retired academic and a bachelor, he tended to be elsewhere in the country at any given moment. The sleekness of the cat was the only thing that indicated that he did, in fact, regularly descend on Berkeley. No, that wasn't because I brought over cans of Ralston Purina, because I never opened them. It must have been him.
Occasionally I'd check the old bottle in the kitchen cupboard. The fluid level never went down. I'll confess that I was somewhat obsessed with that bottle. Even if it was Old Grand Dad, it seemed such a waste that it never got enjoyed. And, several months after the break-up with the gun nut, I was starting to miss the smell of Bourbon.
You know, there's nothing quite like whiskey-drenched cuddling.
It's warm and sleek and wriggly. Sweet!
Just hold me tight.
Guns, bourbon, and a sexy beast.
That's a recipe right there!
I recall that her cats always tried to interrupt. The damned furballs never understood that some things are exclusionary, and would eventually end-up yowling behind a locked closet door.
They keenly resented not being part of whatever was going on.
Like all felines, they had a sense of entitlement.
And attention-hog sensibilities.
Politicians.
The first bottle of liquor I bought once I turned twenty-one and could legally do so was Old Grand Dad. That was over a year after my re-ascent back into bachelorhood.
I had to hide the bottle from my Grandmother. Not per se because she disapproved of Bourbon, or even of cheap hooch, but she had never entirely cottoned to my crazy girlfriend's lifestyle, and worried that in some ways I resembled my ancestors a bit too much.
Guns and whiskey have a history in some branches of the family.
So do dead mice and cats, but I never said anything.
I've always distrusted cats.
After a while the gun nut and her husband moved back east. I heard she was looking for someone to take the cats, so I diplomatically suggested through the grape-vine that a previous boy friend (who also collected guns) was perfect and made myself rather mysteriously unavailable for several weeks so that no one could dump them on me. I knew he hated them; the only animalistic thing that he liked was the girl herself. He was the person who first told me that she growled when asleep.
Yes, she was amazingly bestial at those times.
Drowsing wolverine. A fierce beast.
Do NOT awaken her.
She's feral
No, I haven't a clue what any of those people are doing now.
I lost touch with most of the Berkeley crowd.
After my Grandmother passed away, I tried taking care of her neurotic toms, but they despised me, and I eventually persuaded some of her friends to adopt the little creeps. I'm afraid my Grandmother was far too tolerant of unbalanced males.
Many women are.
A HORRID DEN BEHIND THE OPERA
Roger ended up in the hospital by the time I moved to San Francisco. He asked me to take care of the cat -- "let him live with you, so he has a home" -- and also told me to 'adopt' the bottle of Bourbon in the kitchen cupboard, as it really needed to be enjoyed before it was too late.
He also gravely informed me that he hadn't ever appreciated the smell of pipe tobacco in the house. It always reminded him of cheap hotels and low dives. But the cat liked it. Which made it okay.
And I should NEVER ask the cat about the past.
There were embarrassing things there.
Connected with pipes.
And pussies.
The landlord of my Ivy Street digs had specifically forbidden any pets, but he was far more worried about what the drugdealer who lived above me was doing to bother about the beast. During that year the upstairs tenant resisted any attempt to evict him, and managed to sell all the furniture that was stored in the basement.
The cat "guarded" the apartment while I was out during the day, and then spent all night loudly courting the wild pussies in the neighborhood.
That cat had a more active love life than I did by a mile.
Entirely without the help of liquor.
I rather resented that.
At present, I do not own a bottle of Old Grand Dad.
And I do not have a pussycat.
AFTERTHOUGHT
After all these years I'd like to meet the gun nut again sometime. She was a warm and creative person, and she's probably grown up to be a fabulous woman by now. No, I wouldn't want to rekindle anything, but it would be fun to have cocktails with her and speak sneeringly of what Berkeley has become.
I hope she's happy.
APPENDIX: THE MANHATTAN COCKTAIL
Purists will insist that a Manhattan be made with rye whiskey. Which is both ridiculous and a snobbish affectation. Most Manhattans are made by experienced bar tenders serving a clientele that knows precisely what they want, and would scream if the mixologist deviated from the tried and true. Which is decent basic Bourbon, cheap vermouth, a dash of bitters, and a maraschino cherry or twist of lemon peel to garnish.
What you will need:
Three ounces of Old Grand Dad.
Half an ounce sweet vermouth.
Dash of Pechaud's Bitters.
One cherry, or one twist of peel.
A cocktail shaker, and ice cubes.
Fill the shaker half full with ice cubes. Pour in the whiskey and vermouth and add the bitters. Lid it, and shake fiercely and briefly. Decant into a wine glass or tumbler, then garnish.
Repeat.
Do not use standard cocktail glasses; they're silly.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Thursday, June 12, 2014
ANC SLOGAN
Over a month ago a Facebook friend posted a picture of an election billboard in South Africa. Which conclusively establishes that no matter what those folks think of Jews -- taking into account Bishop Tutu's ignorant and damned well venomous crusade on behalf of an unkosher people whose singular achievement in the nearly six decades of their existence seems to be the invention of airplane hi-jacking, and by no means overlooking the rabid neo-Stalinist anti-Semitism of the South-African trade unions -- the nation of South-Africa and it's dominant majority are sincerely welcoming of all cultural elements, and the participation of all ethnicities in the public discourse.
Especially cultural elements and ethnicities which are 'advantageous'.
Very large and important cultural elements and ethnicities.
Newly ascendant; significant trading partners.
携手并进, 共创繁荣, 參政促选, 投票非国大党。
'kwai sou bing jeun, gong chon faan wing, chaam jing chuk suen, tau piu fei kwok daai tong.'
"Hand in hand advance together, create increasing prosperity, participate politically, (and ) cast your vote for the African national great party."
The ANC is nothing if not profligately opportunistic.
I would caution the Chinese to be somewhat hesitant about trusting the ANC, however. Certain strata within that party are far too close to supporters of separatists in places like Turkestan to ever be acceptable. Plus if it can be said that the whites, when they were in power, showed signs of racism, it cannot be denied that now that the various Bantu groups have the upper hand, a separate but equivalent sensibility is growing.
A version that is just as exclusive as what had been there before.
But has a much angrier base of support.
Note: The slogan above is in simplified characters. The correct way to write it is: 攜手並進, 共創繁榮, 參政促選, 投票非國大黨。
Plaasmoorde in South Africa bear a remarkable resemblance to what the Indonesians and Vietnamese did to their Chinese citizens. Boer-farmers are a limited resource, and there is little reason to believe that the targets will always only be members of one ethnicity.
Just ask the people who have already left.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Especially cultural elements and ethnicities which are 'advantageous'.
Very large and important cultural elements and ethnicities.
Newly ascendant; significant trading partners.
携手并进, 共创繁荣, 參政促选, 投票非国大党。
'kwai sou bing jeun, gong chon faan wing, chaam jing chuk suen, tau piu fei kwok daai tong.'
"Hand in hand advance together, create increasing prosperity, participate politically, (and ) cast your vote for the African national great party."
The ANC is nothing if not profligately opportunistic.
I would caution the Chinese to be somewhat hesitant about trusting the ANC, however. Certain strata within that party are far too close to supporters of separatists in places like Turkestan to ever be acceptable. Plus if it can be said that the whites, when they were in power, showed signs of racism, it cannot be denied that now that the various Bantu groups have the upper hand, a separate but equivalent sensibility is growing.
A version that is just as exclusive as what had been there before.
But has a much angrier base of support.
Note: The slogan above is in simplified characters. The correct way to write it is: 攜手並進, 共創繁榮, 參政促選, 投票非國大黨。
Plaasmoorde in South Africa bear a remarkable resemblance to what the Indonesians and Vietnamese did to their Chinese citizens. Boer-farmers are a limited resource, and there is little reason to believe that the targets will always only be members of one ethnicity.
Just ask the people who have already left.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
AN EVIL CHARACTER
A friend asked me about a Chinese word which he had recently seen.
What made it slightly more confusing than it should have been -- and bear in mind, for those people who do not read Chinese, it's plenty confusing anyway -- was the calligraphic nature of the character; it had been written with flourishes.
Turns out it's a standard and fairly common character.
The heart radical underneath an eight stroke phonetic.
惡
Evil: In the dictionary heading for ideoglyphs with 'heart' (心 'sam') as the signific, plus eight additional strokes. The little jug-like character on top (亞 'ngaa') is a phonetic element that used to mean a building of four corners, then also 'constructed obstacle, burden, road blockage', and hence 'ugly, bad, evil, mean'.
Or, in a slightly looser form, either of these two:
Just to make it even more confusing, over two thousand years ago, when the Chinese still wrote slowly and deliberately with a wick-pen on split bamboo, the forms of all characters were much different. More "pictographic, and more 'rounded'.
Such as these:
Over the centuries, writing styles varied, with tweaks of line and form that made visual sense.
From the Greater and Lesser Seal Scripts, such as the variants above, to Chancellery Script and Banner Script, along with 'short' forms of the characters, through Walking Script, Running Script, and Grass Script.
The change from an early version of a felt-tip to a bundle of flexible hairs allowed greater speed of writing, but reduced many curvilinear forms to blocks or slashes. The brush has advantages, but also limitations, and consequently the norms of recognizability necessarily shifted.
Which leads us to this striking image:
Now THAT is an evil ink blob. Neither Running Script nor Grass Script, yet nevertheless it may be called elegant. I'm actually rather tickled that it turned out so well.
Given the propensity of Caucasians to have Chinese words and phrases, no matter how goofy, inappropriate, or just plain wrong, tattooed upon their dermis -- often in prominent places where it makes one ask what the devil they were thinking -- it will NOT surprise me if that last version ends up on a glowing white rump.
In fact, anyone who wishes to do that is welcome to it.
Go ahead; knock yourselves out.
Tramp stamp.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
What made it slightly more confusing than it should have been -- and bear in mind, for those people who do not read Chinese, it's plenty confusing anyway -- was the calligraphic nature of the character; it had been written with flourishes.
Turns out it's a standard and fairly common character.
The heart radical underneath an eight stroke phonetic.
惡
Evil: In the dictionary heading for ideoglyphs with 'heart' (心 'sam') as the signific, plus eight additional strokes. The little jug-like character on top (亞 'ngaa') is a phonetic element that used to mean a building of four corners, then also 'constructed obstacle, burden, road blockage', and hence 'ugly, bad, evil, mean'.
Or, in a slightly looser form, either of these two:
Just to make it even more confusing, over two thousand years ago, when the Chinese still wrote slowly and deliberately with a wick-pen on split bamboo, the forms of all characters were much different. More "pictographic, and more 'rounded'.
Such as these:
Over the centuries, writing styles varied, with tweaks of line and form that made visual sense.From the Greater and Lesser Seal Scripts, such as the variants above, to Chancellery Script and Banner Script, along with 'short' forms of the characters, through Walking Script, Running Script, and Grass Script.
The change from an early version of a felt-tip to a bundle of flexible hairs allowed greater speed of writing, but reduced many curvilinear forms to blocks or slashes. The brush has advantages, but also limitations, and consequently the norms of recognizability necessarily shifted.
Which leads us to this striking image:
Now THAT is an evil ink blob. Neither Running Script nor Grass Script, yet nevertheless it may be called elegant. I'm actually rather tickled that it turned out so well.
Given the propensity of Caucasians to have Chinese words and phrases, no matter how goofy, inappropriate, or just plain wrong, tattooed upon their dermis -- often in prominent places where it makes one ask what the devil they were thinking -- it will NOT surprise me if that last version ends up on a glowing white rump.
In fact, anyone who wishes to do that is welcome to it.
Go ahead; knock yourselves out.
Tramp stamp.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
WHILE MY PIPA GENTLY WEEPS
While looking up songs on youtube, I remembered my two favourite unhappy women ballads. The first one is entitled 'green mansion sadness' (青樓恨 'ching lou hen'), which also means something you probably don't need to know, as it would take miles of explaining context to make it innocent again. The second is called 'seeing off older brother' (送哥行 'song ge hsing'), by which is actually meant a socially familiar man of the same generation but a few years older, and consequently suitable for marriage. The singer cannot bring herself to speak to him, and is torn-up within, knowing that when he goes to the big city he will be exposed to the blandishments and charms of those painted urban hussies.
青樓恨 ～ 周璇
[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga7VDTy0dFA .]
雨聲兒潺潺，風兒送著炊煙，
獨自懷抱琵琶彈著哀怨。
人頭兒攢攢，笑聲兒聽著心煩，
睜眼顧盼，只覺得一片黑暗。
尋不到，知音的人，
找不見，找不見，同情的良伴。
只歎懦弱的人兒，在曲中時還要，
還要，還要，還要裝笑臉。
送哥行 ～ 劉韻
[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPEpo74ZxA8 .]
摘一支楊柳條，走到那獨木橋，
心裡頭捨不得他，還要裝著笑，
小妹的心事千萬條，哥哥你可知道，
要想說時難出口，說了哪句好。
上木橋，下木橋，
走進那土地廟，
雙雙同把香來燒，
願我倆同到老。
過一橋，又一橋，
不得不把哥來叫，
城裡的女人好的少，
可別去打交道。
The stringed instrument used by the songstress lamenting her fate in the first aire is known in English as the Chinese Lute, in its native tongue as 琵琶 (pi pa), and in Japanese as the biwa.
It is possibly of non-Chinese origin, and often features as the accompanying dulcetry for songs of longing, sadness, exile.
Painted urban hussies.
Blandishments.
Oh my.
How sad.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
青樓恨 ～ 周璇
[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga7VDTy0dFA .]
雨聲兒潺潺，風兒送著炊煙，
獨自懷抱琵琶彈著哀怨。
人頭兒攢攢，笑聲兒聽著心煩，
睜眼顧盼，只覺得一片黑暗。
尋不到，知音的人，
找不見，找不見，同情的良伴。
只歎懦弱的人兒，在曲中時還要，
還要，還要，還要裝笑臉。
送哥行 ～ 劉韻
[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPEpo74ZxA8 .]
摘一支楊柳條，走到那獨木橋，
心裡頭捨不得他，還要裝著笑，
小妹的心事千萬條，哥哥你可知道，
要想說時難出口，說了哪句好。
上木橋，下木橋，
走進那土地廟，
雙雙同把香來燒，
願我倆同到老。
過一橋，又一橋，
不得不把哥來叫，
城裡的女人好的少，
可別去打交道。
The stringed instrument used by the songstress lamenting her fate in the first aire is known in English as the Chinese Lute, in its native tongue as 琵琶 (pi pa), and in Japanese as the biwa.
It is possibly of non-Chinese origin, and often features as the accompanying dulcetry for songs of longing, sadness, exile.
Painted urban hussies.
Blandishments.
Oh my.
How sad.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
OOH, LICK ME AGAIN!
It's larger than your average rat, more intelligent than a guinea pig or teapartier, extremely social, and furry to the touch. As well as being remarkably and deliciously edible, if you are a black-footed ferret.
And, judging by the video below, prairie dogs are also capable of co-opting cats into their scheme to rule the universe.
The cats have a key role.
FUZZ BALL TONGUE SLAVE
[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWbxTLIBrRY.]
That's over three minutes of cat licking prairie dogs.
Three minutes! That cat must really like the taste of fur.
Crap, I can't even get someone to lick me for ONE second.
Not that that was ever my intent.
No, I don't lurk around the washrooms in shopping malls extending a shapely fur-covered leg for curious people to lick. Nor do I go door to door asking folks if they can spare a moment to kiss my calves.
I am not a prairie dog trolling for cat.
Trust me.
Stupid animals.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
And, judging by the video below, prairie dogs are also capable of co-opting cats into their scheme to rule the universe.
The cats have a key role.
FUZZ BALL TONGUE SLAVE
[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWbxTLIBrRY.]
That's over three minutes of cat licking prairie dogs.
Three minutes! That cat must really like the taste of fur.
Crap, I can't even get someone to lick me for ONE second.
Not that that was ever my intent.
No, I don't lurk around the washrooms in shopping malls extending a shapely fur-covered leg for curious people to lick. Nor do I go door to door asking folks if they can spare a moment to kiss my calves.
I am not a prairie dog trolling for cat.
Trust me.
Stupid animals.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, June 09, 2014
KINDLY SNEERING AT PAKISTAN
Over the weekend, militants from groups founded, trained, and armed, by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (I.S.I.), graduated at the top of their class, and demonstrated heartfelt appreciation for their tutors, by attacking Karachi's international airport.
Oh sure, you could argue that there is little present evidence of ISI being in any way directly responsible for this attack; unlike the assault on Bombay a few years ago, when it turned out the fanatics had been prepped for months by elements of Pakistan's security establishment.
But the tactics and weaponry clearly indicate that it is so. All the known hallmarks of previous ISI-sponsored or implicated actions were there. And the ISI has, for over a generation, been involved in every reprehensible occurrence in that poxy hellhole of a country.
As well as the purportedly Islamicist insurrections in Afghanistan, the former Soviet Central Asia, and Chinese Turkestan.
Now the devil has come home to roost.
TALIBAN PEACE TALKS
One might think that this spells the end of the peace talks with the nutballs (whether that term applies to the jihadis OR the vakils and babus of the civilian government is a matter of interpretation), but reason dictates that in fact this changes nothing.
A nation that standardly imprisons people for not paying protection money to powerful politicians and Sindhi landlords, blows up leaders of political parties who have the temerity to challenge the status quo, lauds assassins as heroes, lynches religious dissidents, and sponsors training camps for murderers and psychopaths, is without a doubt both reality-blind enough and insane enough to continue sitting across a conference table with drug-dealers, rapists, and blinkered retrogrades.
And in truth, those Talibanis are their brothers.
Spiritual and moral kinfolk in every way.
[Link to article about treatment of religious dissidents: Shia pilgrims killed in Pakistan. Link to Wikipedia entry for assasinated defender of the right to religiously dissent: Salman Taseer. Link to a Wikipedic detailing of training for murder and psychopathy: Lal Masjid. Genug.]
Pakistan is a failed state and a terminally sick society. The individuals who while knowing that it is so continue to do the right thing, and fight against the rot -- soldiers, civilians, journalists, intellectuals, and good people among the masses -- are, perhaps, the true crazies. To hold out any hope of improvement despite the overwhelming drang nach unten, to think that the ansturm von wahnsinn can be reversed, is to be completely divorced from any sense of reality.
There is no hope of that repulsive place ever getting better.
Or becoming a civilized democratic country.
Nor even any reason for it to exist.
Except as a playground for foreign royals.
I hear that the falconry is stellar.
Also the camel races.
Pakistan, sacha-me dalala aur chura ke rashtra hai.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Oh sure, you could argue that there is little present evidence of ISI being in any way directly responsible for this attack; unlike the assault on Bombay a few years ago, when it turned out the fanatics had been prepped for months by elements of Pakistan's security establishment.
But the tactics and weaponry clearly indicate that it is so. All the known hallmarks of previous ISI-sponsored or implicated actions were there. And the ISI has, for over a generation, been involved in every reprehensible occurrence in that poxy hellhole of a country.
As well as the purportedly Islamicist insurrections in Afghanistan, the former Soviet Central Asia, and Chinese Turkestan.
Now the devil has come home to roost.
TALIBAN PEACE TALKS
One might think that this spells the end of the peace talks with the nutballs (whether that term applies to the jihadis OR the vakils and babus of the civilian government is a matter of interpretation), but reason dictates that in fact this changes nothing.
A nation that standardly imprisons people for not paying protection money to powerful politicians and Sindhi landlords, blows up leaders of political parties who have the temerity to challenge the status quo, lauds assassins as heroes, lynches religious dissidents, and sponsors training camps for murderers and psychopaths, is without a doubt both reality-blind enough and insane enough to continue sitting across a conference table with drug-dealers, rapists, and blinkered retrogrades.
And in truth, those Talibanis are their brothers.
Spiritual and moral kinfolk in every way.
[Link to article about treatment of religious dissidents: Shia pilgrims killed in Pakistan. Link to Wikipedia entry for assasinated defender of the right to religiously dissent: Salman Taseer. Link to a Wikipedic detailing of training for murder and psychopathy: Lal Masjid. Genug.]
Pakistan is a failed state and a terminally sick society. The individuals who while knowing that it is so continue to do the right thing, and fight against the rot -- soldiers, civilians, journalists, intellectuals, and good people among the masses -- are, perhaps, the true crazies. To hold out any hope of improvement despite the overwhelming drang nach unten, to think that the ansturm von wahnsinn can be reversed, is to be completely divorced from any sense of reality.
There is no hope of that repulsive place ever getting better.
Or becoming a civilized democratic country.
Nor even any reason for it to exist.
Except as a playground for foreign royals.
I hear that the falconry is stellar.
Also the camel races.
Pakistan, sacha-me dalala aur chura ke rashtra hai.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
ROAMING PACKS OF VELOCIRAPTORS
One of my all-time favourite cigar-smokers showed up at the Last Man Standing yesterday. What makes her one of my favourites is that she is cute, intelligent, and has exceptional taste in cheroots.
That, gentlepersons, is a killer combo right there.
Cute, intelligent, exceptional taste.
Let's call her 'Suzy'.
[Last Man Standing: an affectionate nickname for the only commercial enterprise left in the West Bay zone where you can still get good advice on smokeable rods, such as Padron, Lafd, Arturo Fuente, Partagas, Matilde, Eric Bradley, Liga Privada, Flor De Las Antilles, Davidoff, et mult altres, as well as substances by Rattrays, MacBaren, G. L. Pease, McClelland, Orlik, Esoterica, Germain & Son, et alii, quod commemorare longum est. There were once over a dozen such in San Francisco alone. All gone now.]
A woman who knows what she likes, why she likes it, and who can both intelligently explain and justify that liking, without being defensive, patronizing, or apologetic.
I admire such people.
An individual quite unlike the three silly young ladies at the cigar bar recently, who radiated a sense of entitlement, kept misplacing their lighters, purses, and drinks, and letting their cigars go out. Which necessitated a search for lighters, purses, and drinks, as well as an insistent imposing on the three gentlemen in conversation nearby.
Speaking as just one of those, I would have preferred no twitty interruptions.
I feel confident that the other two felt the same.
Silliness, bling, and tits, can only go so far.
If Suzy, whom I mentioned in my first paragraph, had interrupted, all three of us would have welcomed it; she is intelligent, without being defensive, snooty, or apologetic.
But she and her young man live in Marin County. The trip to the Oxxy might be too far of an evening. And I think he is only an occasional smoker, so it might stress him out to be surrounded by middle-aged dudes who are suddenly keen to chat.
That wouldn't be my first choice of date either.
A room filled with smoke and smokers.
It just isn't particularly romantic.
Too many carnivores.
It would have to be a slow night, early on a weekend, after noodles or fish in Chinatown, and only if M. and R. were there to run interference.
R. can hold her own, and is very good at chasing away the unsuitable element. Especially when she feels protective.
It's a concept.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
That, gentlepersons, is a killer combo right there.
Cute, intelligent, exceptional taste.
Let's call her 'Suzy'.
[Last Man Standing: an affectionate nickname for the only commercial enterprise left in the West Bay zone where you can still get good advice on smokeable rods, such as Padron, Lafd, Arturo Fuente, Partagas, Matilde, Eric Bradley, Liga Privada, Flor De Las Antilles, Davidoff, et mult altres, as well as substances by Rattrays, MacBaren, G. L. Pease, McClelland, Orlik, Esoterica, Germain & Son, et alii, quod commemorare longum est. There were once over a dozen such in San Francisco alone. All gone now.]
A woman who knows what she likes, why she likes it, and who can both intelligently explain and justify that liking, without being defensive, patronizing, or apologetic.
I admire such people.
An individual quite unlike the three silly young ladies at the cigar bar recently, who radiated a sense of entitlement, kept misplacing their lighters, purses, and drinks, and letting their cigars go out. Which necessitated a search for lighters, purses, and drinks, as well as an insistent imposing on the three gentlemen in conversation nearby.
Speaking as just one of those, I would have preferred no twitty interruptions.
I feel confident that the other two felt the same.
Silliness, bling, and tits, can only go so far.
If Suzy, whom I mentioned in my first paragraph, had interrupted, all three of us would have welcomed it; she is intelligent, without being defensive, snooty, or apologetic.
But she and her young man live in Marin County. The trip to the Oxxy might be too far of an evening. And I think he is only an occasional smoker, so it might stress him out to be surrounded by middle-aged dudes who are suddenly keen to chat.
That wouldn't be my first choice of date either.
A room filled with smoke and smokers.
It just isn't particularly romantic.
Too many carnivores.
It would have to be a slow night, early on a weekend, after noodles or fish in Chinatown, and only if M. and R. were there to run interference.
R. can hold her own, and is very good at chasing away the unsuitable element. Especially when she feels protective.
It's a concept.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
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GRITS AND TOFU
Like most Americans, I have a list of people who should be peacefully retired from public service and thereafter kept away from their desks,...
