GREAT BALLS OF FIRE

As I always do when I have a medical appointment, I showed up nearly half an hour early.
It sets the tone; relaxed rather than rushed. I don't know whether the medical professionals appreciate it, but I certainly do. This morning I saw the eye doctor. We did some tests, and it appears that the situation in the left eye is stable, though the Latanoprost eye-drops will continue for the foreseeable future. Meaning that if all goes well, I won't be blind in that eye until long after I'm dead. The unforeseeable future, so to speak.

Because of course everyone wants to have both their eyes open and fully functioning up to the very last minute. Which will at that time disconcert their remaining nearest and dearest.


"I thought he was staring at me fixedly. Turns out he had croaked several hours earlier. It wasn't  obsession, simply a nasty old codger."


Mmm, yeah. It may be more than thirty years hence, but it's never too early to plan.


Wandered off into Chinatown afterwards -- my eye doctor is located there, so her office is easy to get to -- and considered that it was far too early for any food, though I had been up for hours already. Two cups of coffee, a smoke while skirting the garbage truck which visits my block every Monday morning, argue with the turkey vulture sitting on my bed clutching my wallet and insisting that it was his baby and I the heartless man would tear it from his motherly breast over his dead body, shave and shower, throat lozenge, bus.

That least bears mentioning, because my transit card is in my wallet; so I had to take it back. Snatched it while he was dozing.

For totally neurotic reasons I had decided that it would be appropriate to bring the same pipe for smoking after the eye visit as last time; an apple shaped silver banded little number of probably the same bowl dimensions as an eye ball.

Which I loaded up while watching elderly grannies on the basket ball court at Willie "Woo Woo" Wong Playground (黃顯護球場) practicing their shots and dribbles.
Gotta watch out for those ladies. They're kick ass.


One has to wonder what they were like when they were still going out to dances and cocktail parties with gay bachelors. Probably sizzling.



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

MISSED IT, SORRY, APOLOGIES!

Apparently the most important event last week, which I missed entirely, happend at the other end of the country. It was eagerly anticipated, artistic types and intellectuals congregated, and the news media poofligated. It was fabulous!
The Met Gala.

Which I knew nothing about, and, I'm sorry to say, overlooked because I was doing other things.

I apologize for that. Let me make it up to you.

Here is an exclusive photo!

Creator: Eric Lafforgue

Copyright: www.ericlafforgue.com

All the people who counted, everyone in high society was there! The atmosphere was festive! It was meaningful! A ball!


Sorry, I mislaid my invite. Totally forgot about it.
Won't happen again.



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

STEWARDESS ON THE TRUMP BANDWAGON

Apparently watermelon and refried beans are a distinct thing at the University of Tennessee. According to a well-known crazy-ass Republican dingo. Tomi Lahren, part of the braintrust of the far-right, tweeted the following on April 24th.: "I spoke at University of Tennessee a few days ago and experienced a new leftist “tactic.” These liberal freaks on campuses are now gorging themselves on watermelon and refried beans in an attempt to barf on conservative speakers. Yes. You read that correctly. Good lord!"
[End cite.]

No Sweetie, that's just Southern cookin'. If they barfed, it was because of you.

Actually, that sounds like a low starch fad diet met chronic student poverty and the two of them had a threesome with veganism. Perhaps a Rosemary's baby resulted.
Like Tomi Lahren, it should have been drowned at birth.

It also sounds like Tomi Lahren really dislikes people who eat either watermelon or refried beans (or at least people she believes do so), and is scared of them because they might lessen her blonde white wholesome sanctity in some unholy voodoo manner.


Maybe she binge-watched the exorcist while drunk?


Must have been the night that the captain of the highschool football team rejected her impure advances in Rabid City, South Dakota. Which was named either after an ancestor of hers, or the signal characteristic her tribe is known for. Just guessing here. Could be any number of things. One imagines that something traumatic caused her dislike of both watermelons and refried beans. Maybe there was an ethnic person at her school more liked than her oh the injustice! One single ethnic person!
I'm guessing that Tomi Lahren never touches watermelon and refried beans. She wakes up screaming from nightmares in which watermelon and refried beans cause her pain. It takes several virgin sacrifices before she calms down. Sometimes she has to rip the legs off a puppy before her breathing returns to normal.

Show me on this turnip where watermelon and refried beans hurt you.


"I spoke at University of Tennessee a few days ago and experienced a new leftist “tactic.” These liberal freaks on campuses are now gorging themselves on watermelon and refried beans in an attempt to barf on conservative speakers. Yes. You read that correctly. Good lord!"


I don't know. Watermelon and refried beans?

Perhaps she's paranoid AND psychotic?

Her coworkers should be warned.



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

LETS NOT DO THAT TOGETHER!

My apartment mate decided earlier this week to not do her usual volunteer thing, notified them of that, and to the best of my knowledge spent most of the day lazing about, dozing in bed, enjoying the company of small creatures which include sheep, the senior teddy bear, and a turkey vulture who disturbingly calls me 'daddy', because effectively I adopted him.
No, the little fellow does not want to grow up to be just like me. He wants me to harvest fatty inner thighs from the old geezers I babysit at work. Just bash the best ones over the head, drag the bodies behind the building, and carve out some tasty collops. I have told him, as firmly as I am able, that that is just not done and probably will not happen.
And I am not your daddy.

Though I must say I'm tempted.

I can think of several of them who present a proper and nutritious balance between fat and lean. And, being a liberal, I am all about social justice and improving the world.
One conservative nutball axe-wipe at a time.

If I ever head to work wearing plastic protective gear over my clothes, to keep the juices from ruining my fine pressed pants, you'll know it's "Make Your Turkey Vulture Happy Day".
Probably also good for the environment.

One of them, apparently, is NOT treating his wife special this Sunday for Mothers' Day. As he very rightly pointed out, "she's not my mommy". They only got married three years ago, and although I know he has kids (adult children), I do not know if she does. I've only met her once. She married him, so it's not quite likely.

He used to be sort of semi-liberal, but since he met her he's gone over to the dark side. And retired, so he no longer has to deal with real people. It's sad.
A few years ago he was simply a bitter recently divorced government employee, since he's taken up with her he's a softer fluffier ultra-rightwing apologist for murderers and criminals.
All of whom are, remarkably, America's friends and allies.
Or our ruling classes.

It's amazing what a woman can turn some men into. One of my friends used to be fairly social, and decent company. Now we never see him anymore, and he swills much more wine than he used to. He's happy. Another one seldom shows up for pipe club meetings; he's moved to Modesto and bought a recreational vehicle.

Myself and a few of the people I know would probably not change. There would simply be two of us. So it isn't that surprising that we're single.


Sometimes I daydream about finding a woman with her own small creatures and an interest in tobacco pipes or surgical impliments, perhaps a collection of her own, who, although the idea of reading books together lying in the grass under the apple tree on a warm summer afternoon appeals to her on a purely intellectual level, actually is a city girl and would prefer staying indoors near the refrigerator and several jars and bottles of hot sauces. Because snacking is no fun unless it makes kissing an adventure afterwords.


"Hon, you have pastry crumbs in your hair."


After which some more tea might be in order.

It is, as you must understand, crucially important that a couple see eye to eye politically and religiously. What if he's Jewish and she's a neo-nazi buddhist? Or even worse, she likes a nice juicy steak or porkchop, and the man is a vegan anti-vax Qanon nutball?
You can just see the problems, can't you?

Couples who call each other 'mommy' and 'daddy' are just skating on the thinnest of egg shells. A man who feeds his wife breakfast in bed on Mothers Day probably wants to be spanked.

Don't need a wife for that. His friends can do it for him. Severely.



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

DIMENSIONALLY PERFECT

No, I do not know if there is any practical use for cube shaped wombat faeces. Not do I wish to research the matter. It's totally cool that it comes out as a cube, though. That's the sign of a practical and detail-oriented marsupial. Kudos, little cube dumper, kudos!

When everyone in Australia is dead from Covid, there will be cubic poo everywhere.

Nor do I intend to find out about booger museums, or artifacts made out of earwax.


Truly, conversations with someone getting their first caffeine in the morning can be unusual. The booger museum and the earwax art I had already heard about. But cubic marsupial poo, and whether that can be used as building blocks, is a new one. I would imagine that wombat poo is about as functional as Legos, and that Australians probably let their children play with it. Don't stumble over the wombat poo in the dark when you pad toward the kitchen barefoot in the middle of the night for some Fosters. Or, if you do, don't wake up your husband by swearing. Chin up, keep a stiff upper lip, and take it like a woman!

We didn't win the war by crying over cubic scat.


My aparment mate's mind goes from zero to one hundred upon waking in the morning. Mine sadly only goes to eleven. It takes me awhile to be fully sparking. The machinery needs to warm up, the engine needs to idle for a while.

The bird isn't on the wing till I stumble out for that first pipe of the day, and even then. It's like stale pizza. Unappetizing when cold. Good lord wombat poo.

By the way, it doesn't matter that the large size coffee at Starbucks is twenty fluid ounces (venti=20), it's still garbage. An eight ounce cup of decent coffee would be infinitely more appealing. It's like wombat poo; they should strive for perfection.




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

VOICES FROM THE OUTER DARKNESS

Not everyone is dealing with reality very well, and quite a number (mostly in the banjo states) are entirely off their rocker. Years of Jesus, gun nuts, and the deletorious influence of tin foil on soft craniums have had their effect.

One of my friends alerts me to the following text, which is staggering in its sheer berserkety:


Quote:
TODAY'S EPIPHANY:
There are TWO SEPARATE, PARALLEL AND CONCURRENT TRUTHER TIMELINES HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.
First One---> THE DARK TIMELINE MEANING: TALK OF DOOM AND GLOOM. TALK OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION, CABAL IN CONTROL. NWO IN CONTROL. SECOND one----> THE LIGHT TIMELINE:
Meaning: Talk of Q. White Hats/Alliance/ Trump and the Boys (MILITARY) in control. WE ARE WATCHING A MOVIE. FAKE BIDEN. Quantum Financial System. MED BEDS. ETC..
IF YOU ARE A TRUTHER, PLEASE CONSIDER THIS..
WHICH ONE ARE YOU ON?
WE ARE MANIFESTING IN REAL TIME HERE.
COME OVER TO THE LIGHT.
DO SOME DIGGING INTO THE MOVEMENT CALLED Q.
Q IS THE HIGHEST LEVEL MILITARY INTELLIGENCE.
TRUMP ALWAYS DOES AN AIR Q AT ALL HIS RALLIES.
Q IS REAL
Q IS HOPE.
Q IS QUANTUM
DON'T BE Q-LESS.
WE NEED ALL HEARTS ON DECK.
End quote.


Look, I understand, many of you republicans need help, desperately, but there are pills; if you take them regularly you can very likely be released back into society. You probably should be monitored, at least for the first few months (years), and living in an assisted care facility (as well as a work program) is advised.

We'll keep you away from sharp objects.
As well as hospital lime Jell-O.
We promise.



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

UNHOLY WATERS

For several minutes I considered frustrating the big dog on the street outside who first avidly sniffed at all traces of other canines then assertively marked his territory. Three times. But that's MY hydrant, MY lamp post, MY parking meter! Gonna pee all over his signature!
Then I realized that I can no longer do that.

Too many cops in this neighborhood.

They enforce "adult" behaviour.

Still. Those things are all far more mine than his.
And I really wish he would stop acting like a damned conquistador.


All things considered it's probably a jolly good thing that humans no longer mark ownership or proprietary interest in things by pissing all over them. And please disregard the drunks in alleyways and doorways late at night, or the entire area south of Market Street.
As well as frat boys and many politicians.
Those are anomalies.

There were several dark corners in the peripheral brickwork of the church across the street from our old house in Valkenswaard. And over a dozen bars within easy walking distance. Many of the men who peed against the edifice on Saturday nights were part of the congregation Sunday morning. None of them were ever struck by lightening.



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

THE BANJO PLAYERS

There are two dozen states where your chances of being assaulted by a banjo player are sky-high: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Remarkably, they are all red states with many psychopaths.
Probably due to traditional incestuous behaviours.
Good Christians, you can be sure.

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

ROOSTER CLOCK

Thanks to a need, I now know what the Chinese terms for alarm clock is: 鬧鐘 ('naau jong'). A quarrelsome bell. That first character is also written as 閙 with the same meaning and pronunciation, which really makes no sense, as 鬥 ('dau') means to struggle, argue, fight, or contend, and is both the signifier as well as the phonetic. And how often does one mention one's alarm clock in daily conversation anyway?


"My alarm clock may be having an existential crisis."

"Have you talked about your alarm clock's feelings?"


The new alarm clock sounds like a rooster. Great comfort for people who remember the farm, or lived next door to neighbors who kept fowl in their back yard less than a block away from the main church in the centre of town (Valkenswaard).

Everyone needs a rooster in the morning.
It could be better than coffee.

Nothing wakes you up like a screaming feathered psychopath at the crack of dawn. And even better: he's two feet away from your ear. It's like a streetperson experience in the safety and warm comfort of your bed!

Honestly, I can't wait till the first time. And not only is this a new experience for me, it will also surprise my apartment mate. And there will be great and abiding joy! Possibly.

In other news: my regular grocery is now entirely out of cucumber flavoured potato chips (黃瓜味薯片 'wong gwaa mei syü pin'). Which will dismay a coworker.

I don't know when they'll have more.
The world is a dark place.



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

THAT'S MY JUNKFOOD!

An old friend has kept himself busy during pandemic enforced retirement by communing with nature out at the beach near his abode. That being seagulls and crows. With which he has a strange affinity. This has delighted many of his FB contacts.

One of the birds has personality.

As well as a streak of opportunism.

Seagulls of course are opportunism personified.

The bird above outclasses them.

More intelligence.



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

LOFANS OR CHINESE?

White people by and large should not do karaoke unless they are sober, discreet, and actual musicians. Because otherwise they are loud, drunk, and obnoxious. As was the case last night at our final stop. The Chinese patrons were clearing out, they couldn't stand it any longer. They can tolerate a lot -- music videos of Lau Tak Wah and his crazy shiznit filmed at that giant venue on the tip of Kowloon -- but screaming young white people is asking more than a sane person can or should bear.

College graduates from all over the United States come here so their mothers don't hear them do karaoke. That should tell them something, but they're remarkably dense.

Our profound sympathies are for the owner.
A very patient woman, and a saint.

We've been going there since before they had a karaoke machine, when the "entertainment" consisted of an alcoholic Chinese American hippy and the occasional drunken tantrum by the previous management team; a day and age when patrons weren't sh*tfaced, but "happy".
Meaning of course that they were in fact totally sh*tfaced, but diplomacy insisted that one pretend that everyone present still had all their faculties and marbles, nothing remarkable going on at all, merely nice churchgoing types gathered together.

Honest. Would we lie? Why are you so suspicious?

We're just choir boys!

Sine they've reopened there is much less slamming of dice cups.
And much more tasteless screaming white yuppiness.
We are tolerant men. Saintly.
Choir boys!

When I left my apartment for the weekly meet-up with the bookseller I grabbed the wrong smoking equipment. Not the "pipe for watching rats in Spofford Alley", as I usually do, but a pipe that looked similar. I wasn't aware of the error till I got to Chinatown.
It proved to be a stellar smoke.

Grant Avenue looks somewhat forlorn these days. For at least two decades it has been a mere addendum, rather than the main street. The locals shop and eat on Stockton, and other than banks many of the businesses on Grant cater to tourists.
A few butcher shops and clothing stores, a place where I buy another alarm clock every four or five years, and several souvenir shops whose owners wish to retire. There's a bakery. Some loose leaf tea places. A grocery store. Also icecream, boba, snacks.
Plus quite a number of empty store fronts.

It's rather beautiful at night, when there are no tourists wandering about.
It's quieter, and the lighting is pretty. It's more old San Francisco then.


I do not drink, and my friend the bookseller is a man of restraint.
So we headed our separate ways afterwards still fully functional.
Which cannot be said for anyone who sung karaoke at the bar.



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

CITY SCAPE WITH FISHBALLS

He was quite filthy, dressed in rags, and barefoot. And he had large bottle of beer. When I left for a mid-day walk he was singing about the neutron bomb. At the time I took the bus (at the stop where he reposed on his pile of garbage) he angrily started singing "kill the rabbit, KILL the RABBIT, kill the rabbit", and smashed his bottle by emphasizing his murderous intent toward the bunny. Several Cantonese oldsters gave him a wide berth on the way to the door of the vehicle. When I returned a few hours later, his feet were bleeding, probably from the beer bottle shards, and he was aria-ing from the opera Figaro.


Figaro figaro figaro FI! GA! ROOOO!


Which surprised me. I had thought him entirely illiterate.
I had actually enjoyed the Bugs Bunny bit.
Good voice. And verve!

Lunch was, of course, in Chinatown. Because it is close by, and nearly everyone except the tourists wears masks. And they hardly ever set foot in any of my favourite eateries, so the chances of catching a Covid strain running riot in Oklahoma or Italy is rather slim.
Also, no kiddiewinkies from deepest Mississippi.
Or suburbanites.

No, I didn't have a bowl of fish balls in noodle soup. That would've been nice. Instead, something with tofu and gravy over rice, hot sauce, milk tea, and a pipe afterwards.

Fish ball noodle soup is, like so many Hong Kong edibles, perfect breakfast food. Such as one might have after stumbling into the plastic company offices just before eight and sitting through meetings with the local staff, who are actually much more capable than oneself, though they're exceptionally diplomatic about that.

Lunch at eleven. But actually, breakfast.
Extra strong milk tea. Two cups.

In the last year of the old company we sent some real dingbats over there. I never quite figured out why. My next long-term employ was for a marginally better enterprise, years after Kai Tak had closed down and the new airport (Chek Lap Kok) had gone into operation.
Same pattern of uselessly sending over Bay Area staff.
A complete waste of time.


Fish ball noodle soup.
It's very Hong Kong.



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

YOUNG BLACK LESBIANS

When I was a tyke the world and the American language were quite different. And the concept of shielding every sensitive soul with trigger warnings, obliqueity, and circumspect terminology had not yet crossed the threshold. The language was old, white, and male.
The opposite of that, by the way, is NOT young black and lesbian.
Though such a person might well lead the charge.

As a sprightly young barely post teenage years masculine goofus, I once spent several hours dancing with precisely such a person. She was charming. She was out on bail for shooting her lover. Absolutely the best time I ever had at a dance hall (disco) ever!

I sincerely hope that since then her life has only gotten better.

I approve of young black lesbians.


The correct way to refer to a young black lesbian nowadays should probably be either as "realized person" or "non-white unmale-gendered individual with certain preferences and possibly pronouns".
Sorry, " danced with a non-white unmale possibly pronouned" does not sound nearly as clear or interesting. It doesn't capture the frisson of dancing with someone who for undoubtedly very good reasons put six bullets into a similar human being who was cheating on them with another unmale of whatever age and melaninosity.
The opposition to "high-handed, fatphobic healthist rhetoric which is larded in ableism, and/or historical and ongoing racism and sexism" needs some work to make it more inclusive.
I suggest "co-understanding co-existence based inclusional crystal healing spiritual beingness" instead. Plus karma, om, and green.
Also: whales and dolphins.

Sadly, I am no longer a young male goofus. At present I am a 'youth-deprived individual of indeterminate social and intellectual abledness' (old white male). I'd still dance with a young black lesbian given half a chance, but the creaking from my arthritic knee and hip would drown out Michael Jackson. They'd ask if I was having an episode.
Let's put you to bed old man.


Midle-aged, Caucasoid, standard pronouns.
Call me God-emperor of Dune.
Thank you.



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

EXCEPT THE PORK AND SALTY EGG

For some reason I got hung up yesterday reading a Wikipedia article about polyphenols. Fascinating stuff, needs revisiting, and it made me hungry. As you would understand immediately upon seeing this passage:

"The term polyphenol is not well defined, but it is generally agreed that they are natural products "having a polyphenol structure (i.e., several hydroxyl groups on aromatic rings)" including four principal classes: "phenolic acids, flavonoids, stilbenes, and lignans".

• Flavonoids include flavones, flavonols, flavanols, flavanones, isoflavones, proanthocyanidins, and anthocyanins. Particularly abundant flavanoids in foods are catechin (tea, fruits), hesperetin (citrus fruits), cyanidin (red fruits and berries), daidzein (soybean), proanthocyanidins (apple, grape, cocoa), and quercetin (onion, tea, apples).
• Phenolic acid include caffeic acid
• Lignans are polyphenols derived from phenylalanine found in Flax seed and other cereals.

[Source: Polyphenol - Wikipedia]

Fruits and vegetables, caffeinated beverages, chocolate, olives, etc.


Yesterday's lunch included cruciferous vegetables and chilies. And there were caffeinated beverages before and after. The main component, however, was steamed pork patty with preserved egg yolk (鹹蛋蒸肉餅 'haam daan jing yiuk beng'), over rice.
The punctuation between first reading and second reading.
It was soulwarmingly delicious!

And there were cookies later. Cookies are a particularly rich source of polyphenols.



Today will probably be like yesterday, except for lunch.
Don't know what yet.



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

IT'S CLIMACTIC

One cold bitter wind! I often complain about the weather in this city, because it isn't entirely conducive to smoking my pipe outdoors, and I would rather smoke indoors -- being a social man means avoiding people, especially the person one lives with, at certain times -- which under current circumstances is impossible from around two-thirty onwards. That means that errands and tasks will be planned around a very late lunch time, so that I can be out of the house for a while during the period when smoking will be impossible.
It also means that I must dress appropriately.
And pay attention to the weather.

[From 2:30 onwards: my apartment mate doesn't come home until after five, but the smell must air out for a few hours.]

Which today I did imperfectly today, and consequently froze my rear end off with a pipe in my mouth. Didn't need to worry about other pedestrians; the wind was that biting. Other than a young lady who decided to go jogging on the most foottraffic congested thoroughfare in SF (Stockton Street), most people were in a hurry to get home to their tropically heated apartments, away from the Sarah Palin frigidity of the outside world.

Could have been worse. Could have been Kansas.

How does one dress for a tornado?

Another problem is that under such extreme conditions, lighting is slightly problematic. And there might be other issues, like staying upright. Or keeping one's composure while local conditions try one's patience. Slight chance of rain.

Socks. What socks does one wear?

Anything's better than Kansas.



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

BEHAVIOURAL CORRECTIONS

The sherry is hidden behind volumes of the Encyclopaedia in the library. Along with the tin of pipe tobacco. The housekeeper, Mrs Beedle, has been asked to bring tea at 4:30, but not to disturb otherwise. The sporty idiot relatives are off shooting wild animals forty miles away, the sun is shining, and the busybody parish priest who clims trees and spies on the manor house with binoculars and telephoto lenses is bed-bound with gout (confirmed by doctor Whutnot) and the farmworkers are away on a day trip, visiting the old soapworks at East Thumping, where so many orphans died in that accident a century ago, which is considered both educational and morally instructive.

Or, to put it all slightly differently, I've got a fresh tin of McConnell's Folded Flake, my second cup of coffee is on a stack of books off to the side, it's a cold bright morning in San Francisco, and I'm off work today. The only things that need to be considered are bank and lunch.

Tea later.


I should probably seriously consider getting the ball rolling this week on the peripheral angioplasty of the lower extremities which my cardiologist and I discussed several months ago. Which I've been putting off. Primarily because I know that they'll give me drugs including valium to keep me from twitching on the table, which will probably mean an overnight stay at the hospital. The last time I was there overnight -- also theoretically a walk in and then walk out situation -- the drugs wore off by mid-evening, and I spent the rest of the night watching violent nature videos on the telly listening to the person in the room next door moaning and sometimes wailing. At six o'clock in the morning a visiting nurse informed me that it was a demented woman upset at her surroundings.

Hyena fighting off lions for her kill. Loud moaning in the background.
Zebra being slaughtered by predator. More loud moaning.
Bees ganging up on a lizard. Moaning.
Morning cup of coffee.
Moaning.

I would rather spend the day smoking my pipes.

The periph-o-plasty is looming more necessary because being on my feet all day at work is painful after several hours. And a number of people have told me that their old man (I'm not old, dammit) was much more lively and energetic after he had had it done. Oh boy! Couldn't strap the old blister down, just bursting with energy, beans, hiked up Mount Aetna afterwards and recovered the bodies of the sherpas who had perished on the flanks! The eastern side (康雄壁 'hong hung bik') is particularly notorious. Rock slides and yeti.

One just cannot venture out into the malarial wilds of Calabria and Sicily without hiring native bearers and cancelling one's subscription to the Financial Times for six months.
If I'm not back by Guy Fawkes Day, send a search party.
And you may have to use dynamite.


You can probably understand my dilly dallying, and escapist dreaming. Unless they do the procedure first thing on a Monday morning, it will be an inconvenience. And my apartment mate has promised that she will pick me up, ferry me home, not to worry about recoupe time. I would far rather wake up from the drugs around tea-time and stumble out on my own steam by the cocktail hour, gaily singing, and fill up a bowl as soon as I'm out of sight of nurses.


McConnell's Folden Flake is composed of medium Virginias, with minor touches of fire-cured Kentucky and Perique. Pressed and thinly sliced, no longer one long strip of flake as it had once been, but never-the-less an easy all-day tobacco suited to small and medium bowls. Not topped, but profoundly carotenoid-rich; it smells plummy in the tin.

TOBACCO INDEX


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

IT'S NOODLICIOUS!

A restaurant in Hong Kong that I feared might be on thin ice because of the pandemic appears to be surviving, thanks to loyal customers ordering delivery food. Which is good news. They've updated their webpage on deliveroo, so I'm presently looking at beautiful pictures of sheer scrumptiousness.

I am tasting it all vicariously.


上海榮華川菜館
Shanghai Wing Wah (Sze Chuen) Restaurant
Ground Floor, 15 Shung Yan Street, Kwun Tong.
[觀塘, 崇仁街 15號, 地下]


Unfortunately, where I work is outside of their delivery zone. Seeing as that does not extend as far as Northern California. The tung po pork or the pork chop dan dan noodles would be particularly nice. So would the mui choi kau yiuk. Here it is, one o'clock in the morning, and I'm salivating. Of course that's four in the afternoon in Kwun Tong, which would be a good time to start salivating..... the proper time to do so reaches it's apogee in the next two hours there, but really lasts all twenty four. With several peaks.

It's not that I'm hungry. I'm just salivating.

Fried noodles with porkchop.
豬扒粗炒 HK$105,00
Mmmmm.......




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

A GOOD PLACE

At the place where my apartment mate volunteers regularely there is someone who is so far out on the spectrum that the sun doesn't shine there, it's a bleak windswept waste land. But that individual is a self-confessed "good person" and a firm Christian. That last is important; it gives her a code of conduct and a righteousness that are well nigh impossible to deal with.

My apartment mate is on the spectrum. She cannot handle this person's behaviour.
I likewise am on the spectrum. I cannot advise her on how.
Neither of us are Christians.


Besides, many Christians give me the heebie-jeebies. I think in the case of my apartment mate, though she is further on the spectrum, she is better with Christians than I am.
She hasn't been told that she is going to hell nearly as often.

Hell, as everyone must realize, is filled with Christians.
It's one of their favourite places.



Hell is probably somewhere in the Deep South, but has a lot in common with deepest whitest Sausalito. And there are tourists there, both foreign and domestic. Who cannot spell the word "mask", and never wear those things anyhow. Because travelling is magic (they don't realize yet that they are never getting out) and makes you impervious, almost immortal.

[There were 21 of the mask-free blighters on the bus to and from Marin yesterday.]

Obsessively, I count maskless people, dog walkers, offspring walkers, dog walkers and offspring walkers without masks, people carrying yoga mats, people dragging sheets or blankets, people acting erratic. Except for the mats and bedclothes, these people also infest where I work. There's always a mechanical sound in my mental background that goes "ding" and a new number in whichever category flashes. I might be talking to you when off in a corner of my mind, having registered a human turning a corner, there's a "ding", two hundred and forty nine TODAY! In neon. For someone not on the same spectrum, that might be hell. For me, because I recognize certain numbers as being inherently beautiful because of their colours and aesthetic appeal -- 249 is an elegant number, much prettier than 250, which is sterile, and also better that 248, which lacks interest and is too perfect -- this presents a tweaky interest and punctuation.

I suspect that if I had a surfeit of good people and Christians to deal with, eventually they would sort themselves into several categories, I would start counting them, and they would also have buzzers or bells.

Things must be counted, tasks must be performed in the same order, items must be placed exactly here or there, and certain things should be done regularly for no logical reason at all. Otherwise everything is just wrong. As just one example, on the first day of the month, you say "rabbit rabbit" early in the morning. Preferably before anything else.
It's the correct thing to do. Und daß muß so sein.

Look, I don't know why that is customary, it just is, okay? If it is not done, you might as well forget about everything else, you started the month on a bad foot, perhaps irritating "good people" or "Christians" will pop out of the woodwark, and your mental bells won't ding in the same perky charming manner as without quite realizing it you count the men with brightly coloured jogging shoes.



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