NOT QUITE SYMMETRICAL

After the appointment with the cardiologist yesterday I suppose a fully rational adult would have pondered his wise words and introspected. We confirmed that indeed I do have a heart. And the blood pressure is now under control, so in that sense I have become normal again. But there are still circulatory issues in the legs, which may get worse over time, especially because I smoke, which we both realize probably isn't going to end anytime soon.

So the good news is that for the time being little nurse Mak will not swear under her breath when she takes my bloodpressure, which she did the first time, when it was sky high. The bad news is that I still may need a peripheral angioplasty on my lower extremities, eventually, which may solve all of my problems ranging from psychological (where DID those little green men come from?) through romance (briskly walking angular man attracts ladies world-wide and takes them to openings of art galleries) all the way to ambulating for wealth and profit (and gosh a pipe tastes good while strolling over the moors and soggy blasted heaths of Yorkshire!). Long walks, rainy weather, tweed coat, and all.

The bad news is that I think little nurse Mak no longer works at my hospital.
I haven't seen her there in sheer ages. Two years.
She was darn cute.

Not that my cardiologist would know that, as he works out of a different hospital.
And he speaks proper Cantonese instead of Toishanwa.
Different environment.

I am thinking of learning Toishanwa, by the way.
May take several months.

Not being a fully rational adult, I spent most of yesterday after returning home from lunch in Chinatown putsing around with briars. Redabbing the cake (carbon layer) inside one of my Dunhills with homemade "mud" (alcohol, sugar, ash, and finely ground reamings) because it still seems a little iffy in one spot) and going over the rims of a few other pipes with microfibre pads. All of which counts as Aspy neurotic. Not that all people with Aspergers do that.
But they have stuff like that going on in their lives.


"Another shrubbery! Then when you have found the shrubbery, you must place it here, beside this shrubbery. Only slightly higher, so you get a two layer effect."


The sugar is adhesive, which helps hold it together and keeps it from blistering. And because sugar becomes carbon after heat, it functions as an almost completely neutral substance in the cake, provided it isn't included in excess. The alcohol (whisky) acts as a preservative so that the little bottle of pipe-mud slurry doesn't go bad.

The picture above is what happens to your shrubberies over time. The Knights Who Used To Say Ni would know that. I'm fairly certain they were all on the spectrum.

If they existed today, instead of ten plus centuries ago, they'd probably all be pipesmokers with a tendency toward high blood pressure and neurotic fussing with their briars. This rim seems a little off, if you look at this Charatan from the front it is slightly unsymmetrical, the shank on that Savinelli is too ellypsoid, the draft hole is not quite centred, that bulldog is a damned cliché, this GBD apple is a little cutesy-poo.

Instead of modifying my diet and quitting smoking, I have resolved to walk a lot more and include more slopes. Good for the digestion and circulation, as well as fully lubricating all the tubing, and increasing stamina. I should be able to ace the stress-echo test in September and flabberghast both my regular care physician as well as the cardiologist.


"Good lord this antiquated fossil is fit!"


And by the way: contrary to what my apartment mate says, as well as two of the people I've seen nearly every weekend, I am NOT scrawny. There is pudge. Shan't tell you where, you do not need to know and I don't want you looking for it.



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EVEN ONE IS TOO MANY

If you see someone wearing a keffiyeh, it's very probably an Anglo-origin bigot embodying societally acceptable anti-Semitism, and might even be a Berkelyite (or a Hollander). Not someone from the British Isles ( that's England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Pakistan), because they dress funny and have no sense of style anyway. Berkeley. Or Holland.

Don't set fire to it, put away that Bic. It's probably made out of synthetic fabric, and you will poison everyone on the bus.


Admonitory phrase useful in so many different circumstances: "For god sake, Janet, get a grip on yourself!" Second best: "I'm here, so there's nothing to worry about".


The first five or six times I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show were in Berkeley. At the same theatre on University Avenue where I fell asleep during some artistic and pretentious French porno flic. All I remember about that movie is that salad was involved. Fond memories.
Nowadays, of course, Berkeley is a ghastly hellhole filled with Oaklanders.
Terrorism supporting revolutionary Oaklanders.

21st. century puritans.

What I really wanted to have after returning from my cardiologists appoinment was pork liver congee with a fried breadstick and a strong cup of Hong Kong milk tea. The chachanteng was crowded, however, so I had lean pork and preserved egg congee and a breadstick at a place down the street. No milk tea. It was marvelous never-the-less. That eatery does not cater to white people, which is more of a language issue and problems recognizing the food than anything else, so not a single Berkeleyite was on the premises, nor, sadly, harmed. But for all I know there may have been piles of dead and groaning East Bay residents out back near the garbage cans. I didn't ask.

Gluten, corn sweetener, and non-ethnic fabrics were in evidence. Abundantly.
Along with plastic bags and deep-fried foods. Plus meat and peanuts.
So it would have been traumatic for them.

The only cloud on my ointment was the two Karens on the bus back over the hill. Who didn't listen to the detour announcement, objected when the detour started, loudly wondered where they were going, tried getting off while the vehicle was moving, and when it got back on the route and the bus driver went to reconnect the cables squawked "what on earth is it THIS time?!?"


"For god sake, Janet, get a grip on yourself!"


Instead of telling Janet to for gods sake get a grip on her damn' self, I informed them that the busdriver was reconnecting to the overhead cables. Despite having vocalized for six blocks in English, I don't think she understood that language when someone else was speaking.

Echt een irriterende zeurwijf.

Kvetchbitch.



You know, as I get older, I have less patience for my fellow Caucasians.
Far too many are highstrung petulant needy whiners.
Or from elsewhere in the country.
Often both.



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REMEMBER TO WEAR NEW SOCKS

At the two nearest gay bars they're having Oscar parties. Naturally, I am not there. Seeing as I do not drink nowadays (it might combine badly with medicines I'm on) and don't give a hill of beans about the Oscars. And, speaking of medication, I've noticed that now sometimes late at night there are hours at a stretch when my feet itch from the inside out. Which keeps me awake. I shall have to mention this to my cardiologist tomorrow during our visit.

Nothing says good luck during medical appointments than having something good to smoke afterwards. A pouch of a nice Virginia and Perique compound and two handsome briar pipes will, naturally, be in my coat pocket.

Distributed in different parts of my habiliments will be a tamper, matches, and pipe cleaners.
I'm like a boyscout. Always be prepared when heading into a medical appointment.
Professionals appreciate that. It makes life more exciting.



Among the preparations, as you would expect. Bath, clean clothes, respectable underwear, new socks. After morning coffee and a walk with a pipe. No, not breakfast -- eating anywhere near the crack of daylight savings time dawn is out of the question -- but the coffee will be accompanied by pills.

After I get back to this part of town I may require fortifying sustenance. Hong Kong milk tea and a bowl of pork liver congee with a fried dough stick. I rarely leave the house so early at this time of year for anything other than the early morning pipe-walk while dodging people pooing their dogs and the near-naked joggers one encounters in all weathers.

The new socks are extremely important. He will examine my feet for signs of poor circulation. New socks make that a more wholesome experience. The feet may be lousy old dogs and splotchy here and there, but the new socks add a stylish touch.
Grey, woolen, and plenty roomy.


There will be no pictures of either the feet or the socks.
I shan't encourage the non-cariologically inclined.



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THE ELEPHANT

The Academy Awards are tonight. To the best of my knowledge, my cousin's brilliant oldest doesn't have anything up for an Oscar this year, so I have no dog in the race. No intention of watching the ceremony. Precisely like the last dozen times or so. Or ever. In fact, the only two Oscar winners I can name are my relative and Hattie McDaniel.

So I'm likely to have a nice quiet evening.


I found out yesterday that my relative is married to a blonde. Which is remarkable primarily because that makes him the only one. I've made a helpful schematic in order to help me recognize her in case we ever meet.

Hi. I'm your granduncle-in-law's kid. The only surviving member of that side of the family.


Both of them are Hollywoodian, so I fully expect them to catch weird religion and develope peculiarities and strange dietary habits within the next decade or so. Which will be a pity, because I know that at least one of them comes from decent stock.
Statistical probability. It has to be so. Fifty percent.



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BEATINGS TO IMPROVE MORALE

Complaining is a valid form of communication. As the kvetchy old hosebags in the backroom demonstrated all day. It was, of course about Biden instead bowels. They can do something about their bowels (prunes, fibre, probiotics, kaopectate, etcetera), but they stolidly refuse. Biden gives them gas, constipation, and diarrhoea. Sweet potatoes! They should eat more sweet potatoes! And please stop thinking about Biden. Other things instead.

Perhaps you lot should obsess about panties, breasts, and curry?

Oh wait. Those are probably bad for your bloody bowels also.

Maybe stop thinking. You're doing it wrong in any case.

What should be clear by now is that I'm well on my way to sainthood. Or in fact becoming a modern-day Indiana Jones, whipping them all into shape with my ten foot long bullwhip, which for inexplicable reasons is one of my cinematic props, always within reach.

The only good thing about them is that they tolerate my pipe smoking.

They have no choice. I've got the bullwhip.

Over these past few years at this job I have become a very tolerant and forbearing man.

I am legendary in this regard. Damned well godlike.

And humble, too.



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THAT FEELING OF DREAD

Not having watched the State of the Union speech, I do not know quite what to expect when I'm at work today. I am certain the repulsive old lizards will have things to say -- they never effing shut up -- and they're probably going to blow it out their ass as usual. Republicans, closet Nazis, and Christians. A very tight Venn diagram.

Yeah, it's gonna be a crapshoot.

Mentally, they're from Ohio.



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THE POX UPON THIS LAND

Five states to avoid like the plague, because they are filled with dumbass inbred syphilitic hick Christians who wish, passionately, to destroy everything good and wholesome in this country: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, and West Virginia. I can probably say this in complete confidence that I will not be contradicted, because most people there don't know that if you don't plug in your computer, the internet won't work.

No, my ire is not excited by their food. That's the Midwest, particularly Iowa. And I give no credence to rumours of rampant cannibalism in the five states mentioned, they got spongiform encephalitis some other way.

Besides, there are far worse pockets of endophagy much closer to home: Placerville in El Dorado County, Stockton in San Joaquin, San Bernardino.

It still pisses me off that we named a national airport after a man whose grave we would have been better off pissing on, bombing with napalm, digging up and vapourizing, and dumping in a toxic waste dump.

The worst thing my generation did was vote for that repulsive man, twice, and empowering the accursed christians.


By the way: we never should have given immunity to Oliver North.
Cake and a signed bible. Good lord.
Whackjobs.



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THE TYRANNY OF JIN

One of the places I like to go for a spot of tea before smoking my pipe in Chinatown I actually do not like to go to. Not so much. The people who work there are fine. The customers quite frequently not. One youngish coarse mouthed harridan (curses like a fishwife) and a dozen antiquated Toishanese peasants who seem slightly crippled in the courtesy department.
Plus several old bags of both genders who scowl and grumble.

Country people are naturally paranoid and suspicious, and tend to be cold and offish toward outsiders such as myself. As, with skin that glows in the dark and horns growing out of my head (meaning that I'm Caucasian), I naturally am.

For all they know I work for the salt gabelle (鹽稅 'yim seui') and the tax office, and will demand that they fill out forms in a language they don't understand.


Or, even worse, start dancing while strewing mininimity.


Yeah, I know. It's their own private world.
And in a way I represent invasion.
The other side of the wall.
The stench of other.

Bumpkin rebels. I am fully aware that it took tyrants to keep their country together. If it had been left to the salt of the earth, they would have fallen apart into several warring states.
Which, several times, they did.


As a whitey-white individual (鬼佬) semiliterate in Chinese and speaking Cantonese I am an anomaly, but despite the love of the odd and unusual which many Chinese have, that bunch of snooty country folk want more than that. And I'm just not entertaining or engaging.


It is significant that only in their ancestral district, (四邑 'sei yap', "four counties"), gun towers and heavily fortified farms (碉樓 'diu lau', "rock-hewn tower"; 砲樓 'paau lau', "cannon tower") were widespread, to ward off bandits and the outside world. Extreme local poverty alleviated by funds from overseas made them more paranoid of everything. So, massive multi-storey buildings with metres-thick walls, iron doors, and turrets. Basically, bunkers.
Common in rural Kaiping (開平 'hoi ping').

[Paraoia: 偏執狂 ('pin jaap kwong'); 妄想症 ('mong seung jing'); 仇外心 ('chaau ngoi sam').]

I have learned not to go there when it's busy during lunch time. Unfortunately the "Resist Foreign Imperialism & Pipe-smoking Dutchmen Revolutionary Association" (反外國帝國主義和抽煙斗的荷蘭人革命協會 'faan ngoi kwok tai kwok jyu yi wo chaau yin tau dik ho lan yan gaak ming hip wui') now gathers there most days, having bailed out from another place to which I go. Good, because there are now only two dingos who frequent that place, and usually I don't encounter them there anymore. But it is closed on Thursdays.
The number of bakery coffeeshops in Chinatown has decreased.


And I've already been to the other establishment run by the same fine people this week.


So where do I go today for tea-time?
係一個好嚴重嘅問題。



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LATE NIGHT WITH OCHRES

The bottom apartment across the street has finally been rented out again. During the first few months of the pandemic a resident there lay in his or her bed near the window looking at the street. Then it was empty for a while. The next tenant, over a year and half, developed a social life and eventually fled. After a while a younger fellow moved in, occasionally had friends over, then also moved out. And it was empty for several months after that.

All I know about the new occupant is that they have potted plants.
And a greater sense of privacy than previous residents.

They know how to use curtains.

Whenever I take a late night walk smoking my pipe, I note which windows show evidence of human habitation. Obsessively. There is a neurotic pleasure in seeing all floors of a building lit up, whether in an alternating pattern of lit versus darkened windows, or in a straight line all on one side of a building. Symmetries and recurring balance. And other details that mark me as obsessedly observant (seeing things because of oddity or regularity).

For the first time, that building was lit top to bottom on all floors on the right hand side, with curtains yellowing each window. It felt like victory.

Welcome, illuminating person.



No, I do not need help.
I think I'm normal.
Perfectly.



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STALKY THINGS AND CHILI PASTE

To many Cantonese, everything north of the Nanling mountain ranges (南嶺) might as well be Manchuria (or Mars). After finishing my pipe I went over to Walgreens on Stockton Street, where an American Chinese woman a year ago had tried to convince a Mandarin-speaking couple, in both Cantonese and English, that she. Did. Not. Speak. Mandarin. And. Didn't. Know. What. They. Were. On. About. I complimented her again on providing me with my best Walgreens experience to date. It had been very entertaining. If it weren't for an acquaintance who buys Esoterica Tobacciana products, I would hardly ever need any Mandarin myself. Sadly, he speaks neither English nor Cantonese (and no Dutch or German either, but those would be very long shots). Smoked two pipes in C'town today.

To one of the old gentlemen I see at the bakery every Wednesday, there are three languages in China. Cantonese (which he speaks), Teochew dialect (his girlfriend speaks that), and "good lord what is that horrible sound?!!?", which is spoken everywhere else.
All the way to the Korean and Russian frontiers.


Guten tag, Herr Verarbeitungsabteilung, wie ist ihr vorrat an seltenen tabaken?


My command of Mandarin is more than haphazard. There are murmurs in the ranks, and there might be a mutiny. Suffice to say my orders are seldom understood.
I may be relieved of my command if this persists.
Succintly put, it sucks eggs.


Good lord, what is that horrible sound? Nothing. It's just a Dutchman attempting to speak Mandarin, whatever that is. Pay it no mind. It will go away soon.

On a fairly regular basis I give my downstairs neighbor (Chinese from Indonesia) some vegetables which I got in Chinatown, because I am younger and more mobile, and, because she's spent the last thirty or forty years surrounded by fervent Christians she does not feel quite at home there. And can't speak Cantonese. No, the picture above is NOT what I bought today, which was fresh asparagus and a jar of sambal oelek, but a scrumptious pastry still warm from the oven.

It was wonderful with a spot of milk tea.

What she and I have in common, aside from the building where we live, is the Indonesian language and, I presume, a fondness for sambal.

Everything tastes better with sambal. Even hospital food. Always have an extra jar in your emergency overnight bag in case you suddenly need to spend a few days in the ICU.
Or the Midwest. Iowa, for instance.



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REAL MEN DRINK TEA

One thing that has become more noticeable is that the quotient of defective folks has gone up. Even a year ago it was rare to encounter loonies infesting Chinatown. This evening there were six such. Two of whom were clearly out of it, so far out that they might never have even known where the 'in' they were on the outside of might possibly be found.
Only one of the half dozen was Chinese American.

The others may have been Republicans or Berkeleyites. That's what I assume based on previous exposure to the insane element.

One of whom I encounter in Marin County. Can't spell worth diddly. Can't do simple math very well. Tends to overlook crucial details. Has done all his own research, so he won't get vaccinated, and believes that aliens control the world as well as the microchips inside us. Votes solidly Trump, because, you know, he's real. Whatever that means.

No, he isn't a Christian.


Tonight's jaunt into the slightly greasy underbelly of San Francisco was enjoyable, evenso.
A pipe (aged red Virginias) was smoked, a burger was eaten, there was whiskey. And tea.

Seeing as the bookseller is going on vacation, there won't be any giddy jollification for two weeks. Don't worry, he's staying in the civilized world, not visiting Alabama or Missississippippi. Nor Texas, heaven forfend.

After a drought of several months, the burger joint looks like it won't run out of Sriracha for a while. Our host has made damned sure of that. Sriracha is one of the fundaments of civilized life, which may account for the increase in crazy. People do strange things when there is no appropriate condiment at hand. In Iowa, for instance, they glop Ranch on their food like there's no tomorrow, and serve everything with a side of cottage cheese.
Apparently they still haven't gotten used to ketchup there.

It's like Southern cooking with no flavour.

Yes, they have grits.


I think of the entire Midwest as Napoleon Dynamite meets Bob and Doug McKenzie.
Except far less intellectual.



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MOIST AND SLIPPERY

This morning the humidity in Hong Kong was at 100%. Surfaces were dull and damp, with water droplets evident on walls, ceilings, and windows. The temperatures were, however, somewhat higher than here in San Francisco, where the humidity was considerably less. Some cigar smokers of my ken have been worried that their precious stogies might be drying out -- is my humidor working, and what percentage does it actually read? -- but we've been well above proper storage moisture levels for several weeks.

At least it isn't Manila, where people walk through hot jello pudding.
And mildew is a sad fact of daily life.
Hot mildew.


One of my friends, a right bastard, has headed to Palm Springs over the weekend, where it's always golfing weather and rich gay men ponce around wearing colourful baggy shorts and floral prints, swinging clubs over immaculate greens, every single day of the year.
Except for Christmas, when they wear scarlett togs. Possibly velvet.

Santa swills Mai Tais. Did you know that?
One hundred degrees humidity.
Good lord.

Palm Springs is not my kind of environment -- you have to be gay and Republican to like the place -- so I have never been there. Besides, being rich helps, and I am none of the above. Hong Kong does not demand any of that. Well, except rich.
That's considered useful there too.


Heavy moisture is, not surprisingly, good pipe smoking weather.
Caffeinated beverages taste better too.
So does salt fish.



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THE SMELL OF ...

As the big guns roared the smell of thin extruded strandlike explosive material remarkably resembling spaghetti used up till roughly the insurgency in Malaya hung heavy in the air. It smelled like victory. Well, mostly of nail polish remover (acetone), but victory none-the-less. Cordite, invented by the British shortly before the turn of the last century (circa 1889), was used commonly used by them for rifles and artillery during roughly six decades.

It is still used by authors when trying to imagine what crime smells like.

What they probably mean is nitrocellulose and sawdust.

A somewhat different odour.


In a previous life I may have been on the North West Frontier fighting howling savages trying to overrun the outpost. A horrible smelly place with food poisoning, diseases, crappy tobacco, and insects, all of which were probably more deadly than the screaming raggedy banshees brandishing long knives who showed up periodically to kill us infidels.
Ah, a splendid time! It was good to be alive!

My hypothetical earlier self probably died young. Cholera or malaria.

As the yallahyallah shouting heathens get smacked by the light cannon, a passage from Sir Henry Newbolt comes to mind, unbidden, recited with upper-class diction by an Eton man. How stirring it is! "The sand of the desert is sodden red, red with the wreck of a square that broke; the gatling's jammed and the colonel dead. And the regiment blind with dust and smoke. The river of death has brimmed its banks, and England's far, and honour a name; but the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks, 'play up! play up! and play the game'."
Sir Henry Newbolt was the Victorian Era's answer to Lucretius.
It brings a tear to the eye, and fortifies the liver.
One is ready for combat.

The entire place smells like shit. Can't smell the cordite.

As we all know, that builds character.



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SMELLING LIKE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Spent a good hour futsing with two Dunhill pipes that both need a little work. So of course the first thing after finishing that is contemplating doing my laundry while the sun is out, heading down to my bank and Chinatown, where I will have lunch or a snack later, and thinking about debonair actors in 1930's Hollywood reading a book (posing for publicity stills) while happily smoking a Comoy pipe loaded with a fine stinky Latakia blend.

As people did in those days.

Somehow I suspect that many famous Americans started the day with whiskey.
Baristas didn't wake up until noon, as it would be pointless.
Cappuccinos likely were a dinner drink.


In the midst of this wild hurley burley, I had time to wonder if Daniel (!) with American Solar could hear my arrogant somewhat British accent when I answered his spam call in Cantonese. Hong Kong snappish.

"Wai, nei man pin ko-ah?"

I think not. Sumbitch hung up.

There are a few lovely black and whites of Clark Gable relaxing with a pipe exactly like the one above. It's a Comoy Squat Bulldog. The one pictured is a pipe I've had since working at the nasty law office in the Embarcadero Center over two decades ago. I remember that firm with great distaste; the head of my department knew the names of all of her damned Beanie Babies (over two hundred) but could not remember who I was if her life depended on it.

Comoy made very many pipes for tobacco stores all up and down the coasts, under a variety of names. You can track pipesmoking by the shop brands made by them, and its gradual fade-out by the disappearance of those enterprises over the last forty years or so.

The entire generation of confirmed pipesmokers that went into World War Two came out as converts to Camels and Luckies. They were so convenient! You could quickly huff a fag while Jerry and Yamada were shooting at you instead of standing erect and calmy scoping out the trenches as gun smoke and whisps of poison gas drift over the battlefield for half an hour or so while puffing a bowl of Father Dempsey from Kramers in Beverly Hills.

If you didn't shop at Kramers, or Richardson (where Dudleigh pipes were made), you might have gone to John's Pipe Shop in Hollywood. I fondly imagine a whole swarm of young men from Beverly Hills High there every day. My father patronized them as a young fellow. No, the lovely billiard pictured above is not one of his but something I picked up several years ago and seldom smoked until the first months of the pandemic.
Since which time it is a favourite.


My father still smoked a pipe for many years after the war. I can remember him and the smell of his tobaccos in Bussum and Naarden, even in Valkenswaard when I was in high school myself. Where the only decent tobacco mixture available seemed to be Balkan Sobranie Original, as I discovered by fortunate accident when I was fifteen and had grown tired of straight Maryland ribbon (so called "Baai Tabak") and crappy Dutch Cavendishes.

That's roughly the same time that I started swilling tea morning noon and night. Which I still do. It's fun being hepped to the gills. That may have influenced my irritation when I snapped at the Hindustani phone-wallahs who have called since I got up. As they do everyday.
Wai, nei hai pin ko? Tim kai nei taa din waa pei ngo ah, paak chi!?!


喂，你係邊個？點解你打電話畀我呀，白癡？


It's very effective. I suppose I could put myself on the do-not-call list, but I like being a disappointment to them. Their lives are pointless and empty.
I hope they feel that keenly after they hang up.
Frustration is important.

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OOLONG AND CHOCOLATES

My working days are marked by an excess of tea, and sometimes chocolates. I now have oolong tea at work. Because of which by twelve noon I am usually high as a kite. The little chocolates are excellent palate refreshers if you smoke, which I do. Four pipefulls while at work today.

The boys in the backroom rely in whiskey most of the time. And some of them really shouldn't drive before they get there. Mental stability anf sound judgement are not their strong suits.

You would think that if I'm whacked outta my gourd on caffeine and theobromine, and they are not sane to begin with, it would be perfect. But that would be overlooking sentience.
I have bucketloads of it, they, mmm, not so much. I am sapient.
They are mutant outer space slime beings.
Slithery mold cultures.

By tea time I could have dealt with scones, clotted cream, and fruit preserves, properly Devonshirian, to go with my cups of tea. Saddly, it was tuna fish on American bread.
So although I alleviated it with copious squirts of Sriracha, it just wasn't the same.

I would love to blame them specifically for that situation.
However it's just Marin County, a hellscape.
Also, very few taco trucks.

Still, that's infinitely better than the German tourist who sat near me on the bus in Sausalito. Who must have been subsisting entirely on beans during their visit to America. Maybe they were vegetarians, or our bean lard mulch is so exquisite that they demanded it for breakfast lunch and dinner. The touristisches gästehaus where they are staying surely must be wondering about that.

Wie schmecken unsere bohnen ihnen?
Gefallen sie dir?

America is an unusual place. We have plenty of beans. In most of Europe, as is well known, they only have Heinz baked beans in a can, the British preference (as well as an alternative to mushy peas). The entire place is paved with baked beans on toast.

I like tourists. They have interesting points of view, and I can listen in on them talking without showing anything, because most of us Americans don't understand a single word of their languages. Plus I'm good at studiously looking like a plank-faced uber goober.
But I am not looking forward to the height of the tourist season.
At least not on the busses across the bridge.
See, there's bean lard mulch.
A perfect food.



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CRISPLY FROZEN UNDERWEAR

Because of our recent freezing weather, conditions are so bad up in the mountains that Ted Cruz has fled to Can Cun and parties of Anglo immigrants from back east are reenacting the Donner Party. Blizzard conditions, which make your pee freeze on your fur coat when you go to the bathroom, and your runny nose render icicles that crash tinkle to the floor. People are exhausting their emergency supplies of Spam and canned stringbeans. It is horrid.

Well, maybe not that bad. But I'm fairly certain Ted Cruz isn't there.
He probably hasn't been spotted there in ages!

It's far too chilly, and people up there would probably cut him open to crawl inside for warmth, like a taun taun, all pudgy and fully fleshed. Blubber is great insulation.
Every Northern European knows that!

Down here in the civilized zone temperature hit low forties during the night.
The kind of weather that demands an angry letter to the editor.
I'll get on it when my fingers recover.

As you have probably guessed, I do not like this time of year. This isn't why the last three generations of my family came out to California. We could've stayed in Holland or Scotland near the arctic circle if this is what we wanted. Or even in New York city, where we lived between leaving the frozen wastes of late mediaeval Europe in 1630 and WW1.

Where is the tropical hothouse I was promised?
At present it's too buggery cold!
Polar bears!



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PERSISTENT TORRENTS OF "LIGHT RAIN"

He gazed somberly out past the deep veranda to the hills beyond. There was a tiger out there, and sadly no more goats. The beast had also, it was rumoured, eaten a stray tyke, or pehaps a hermit. If the latter, then the repetitive sutra chanting had not helped. He supposed he'd have to deal with it. His superiors did not like unrest, and a tiger scaring the tax base was sure to excite questions. It was still three weeks until he could expect a package from the civilized world with marmalade and tobacco, and he was running low on both of those.

The enduring rainy season had delayed the mail. It would not come upriver while there were torrents. Mayby there would also be a letter from his aunt in Devon. Penelope. And her cousin Gwendolyn. A drippy girl. Whom, he had been told, he ought to marry.

He refused to smoke the local cigars. They tasted like straw and buffalo dung, and he wasn't American, he did not have any great tolerance for that kind of thing.

He'd heard that those wild west savages prided themselves on enduring harsh circumstances, manfully boasting about it even.

Seeing as they were well-known for smoking horrible tobaccos, he believed it.

After all, they always drank boiled coffee and bourbon.
Pensively he took another sip of tea.

Sometimes, especially when it rains, I feel that my place of work is on the edge of a jungle, with nothing but tattooed headhunters in the backroom, enjoying draughts from the vats of rice wine through long reed tubes that leave the spent slush and yeast at the bottom. As the afternoon progresses, they become more and more unbearable. They remember the feats of their distant youths. The songs. The black and white movies. The great shot playing golf with departed comrades during hangovers from drinking too many bottles of Thunderbird or Lancers Sparkling Rosé on Friday Night at that hot hot hot beatnick bar in San Rafael.
With the big-breasted hipster chicks. And the poet who was just back from Korea.

That, of course, was several decades before recurring diaper rash.
Which I imagine several of them now chronically suffer.

It has rained too much in recent days.

Far out, man. Like wow.
It's totally groovy.



It is raining again.
And quite cold.




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RABBIT, RABBIT, RED RABBIT, BLUE RABBIT ...

Rabbit rabbit is the customary first sentence to other people by traditionalists on the first day of the month. It's supposed to bring good luck or something. Keep the space weasels from wiping out earth. Make the Forty Niners victorious. Nuke Berkeley.

By the way: apparently I am a sickening neo-colonialist. I did not know that. I now revel in my new-found status. Kneel down and let me walk on your hands, lowly serfs, my sacred body should not touch the ground.

It was one of my more recent posts that won me this status.
Not a suprise, really.


See, when the Dutch people stumbled off the ark, we set out to rule the world and whup it into shape. Seven couples, as it says in the good book, but only one pair of Republicans. The clean versus the unclean. We're still horribly offended that there are now so many of you.

This could be me being superior and supercilious. A picture of. Feel free to print it out and worship it like an icon, especially if you are a lesser being. I shan't mind.
Offering lettuce in front of it would not be out of place.
Fresh every day please.


When I become emperor of the world, I shall turn the entire East Bay into a giant lettuce plantation and put all of you drooges to work in it, for the betterment of rabbit kind.


Rabit rabbit.



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