The question is: with whom or what do you feel at ease? A place where you can be yourself, even if not part of your own home, is a treasured location. So I am somewhat disturbed by one of the customers of an establishment in the downtown who both 'courts' the opposite gender there, as well as introduces them to the place if he found them elsewhere.
Once when he wasn't there one of them came looking for him.
He had already broken up with her by then.
It was... "uncomfortable".
Reasonable people should assume that there are boundaries as far as private, personal, and public space is concerned. And while people might be allowed into all of those compartments, it makes sense in the early or superficial stages to limit their access to just one of them.
For example, your psychotherapist or tax accountant may be a 'private space' person, because of the nature of the relationship. But it is private "nut space" or private "business space". Their presence is, quite logically, circumscribed, with boundaries shutting them off or out. You would rather not see them when you are in the public sphere, or taking a nice long bath.
Maybe you want your wife there instead.
Much more "comforting".
The people with whom you socialize can graduate to home-visit status, but that should take a while to happen, and is by no means a foregone conclusion. Similarly, your emotional involvements should be kept out of the public living room until there is a permanency about the relationship, and a level of trust has been established.
It's not whether they feel comfortable being there that matters so much as whether you feel comfortable with them there.
The same goes for them.
I've often wondered at people who have casual affairs, especially if nothing is kept private. What an extraordinarily low level of trust does there have to be for such a thing to be possible?
And how much alcohol was involved?
Or misplaced lust?
Sometimes I'm also baffled by people who have "committed" relationships.
Some of the men I know didn't really know their spouse till long after the marriage, when they finally realized that she did not share their grand passion for sports or cars, and that they themselves were ignorant of and had absolutely no interest in any of her obsessions.
That they met, started seeing each other, dated, and eventually tied themselves in knots had nothing at all to do with the peculiarities that made them unique, but with the general adherence to standards of expectation.
They wanted the other person to see in them those characteristics that spoke to the common pattern. And both of them struggled to make precisely that real to the other, though their editing may have been unconscious.
Please, no threatening weirdness! And no deviation from the norm!
I won't bother you with carburetors provided you don't.
If both of us act blond, no one will know.
Last of all, either of us.
Everyone I consider a friend is so because they have good character, and interesting facets to their personalities. Perhaps similar interests, more often admirable knowledge sets and a common language of the mind. We get along because we enjoy exploring each other's quirks.
Exposure to insight sharpens mental focus.
There are few among my friends that I would hesitate to have accompany me to my favourite places. Whether they would feel entirely at home there might be an issue.
It's all based on how well one knows someone. Casual acquaintance has a more limited realm, whereas someone who is a friend, a life-mate, a boon companion, a co-conspirator, or just proven to be a very decent person, whom one wishes to know better, is given fewer boundaries.
I would feel comfortable with them in a variety of environments. Whether they might feel as comfortable is not certain, but I would hope so.
At least comfortable enough.
Doors open over time.
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All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
SINGING BANANA BIG EYE SPROUTS!
I never saw the movie "Despicable Me", or anything in that franchise.
Yet I know what 'minions' are. They are 'banana big eye sprouts' (香蕉大眼萌 heung chiu taai ngaan mang).
Bananas are not, necessarily, evil.
They also sing.
These four sprouts in any case want you to have a truly stupendous Chinese New Year, and they bring all their musical talent into play in that regard. Please feel free to sing along, they'll appreciate that.
HAPPY YEAR OF THE HORSE!
[Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIRvCas0SpQ.]
Rock on, little dudes, rock on.
I too wish you to have a happy year of the horse, but I am far less talented, and shan't offend you with an attempt at being melodic.
Banana.
==========================================================================
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LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Yet I know what 'minions' are. They are 'banana big eye sprouts' (香蕉大眼萌 heung chiu taai ngaan mang).
Bananas are not, necessarily, evil.
They also sing.
These four sprouts in any case want you to have a truly stupendous Chinese New Year, and they bring all their musical talent into play in that regard. Please feel free to sing along, they'll appreciate that.
HAPPY YEAR OF THE HORSE!
[Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIRvCas0SpQ.]
Rock on, little dudes, rock on.
I too wish you to have a happy year of the horse, but I am far less talented, and shan't offend you with an attempt at being melodic.
Banana.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
AN ARGUMENT ABOUT LITERACY
San Franciscans have their frilly panties in a bunch because someone said his ex-wife Danielle Steel was our number one celebrity. And many are now voting on the site of the local newspaper, saying yea or nay to nearly three dozen famous people.
Nope, ain't gonna catch my vote.
My reaction to the whole thing?
Good lord, is that crappy novelist still among us?!?
Honestly, I thought she had disappeared years ago. Been dissolved when someone threw a bucket of water over her.
Or perhaps auto-combusted.
Whatever.
CHARACTERS IN CRISIS
"...often involving rich families facing a crisis, threatened by dark elements such as jail, fraud, blackmail and suicide..."
[Source: Wikipedia.]
I suppose that kind of stuff IS better than science fiction. Arguably also better than, or at least on par with, the Lord of the Rings stuff. But not as good, or as thrilling, as a decent cookbook.
Years ago one of my more "innocent" coworkers questioned me about a book I had on the shelf. Headhunting in the Solomon Islands (by Caroline Mytinger, of which I own two copies). It's about two women who travel in distant Pacific territories among ethnicities barely ever contacted, in the years before WWII. Mosquitoes, filthy or brackish drinking water, infections, and miserable food. With illustrations.
It's a fascinating book, although somewhat dated. Certainly far more interesting than crappy overly verbose fiction.
Killer title, in any case.
I told him it was self-help.
An in-depth how-to.
Two days later I asked him for his hat-size.
He avoided me for the last half year that he worked there. Which goes to show that books and literacy are valuable. They give those of us who have never stopped reading a toolbox against the troglodytes who barely read beyond Modern Bride Magazine, Monster Truck Monthly, or Sports Illustrated. And then only to pick up keltoid fairy-tale garbage, science fiction, and Danielle Steele.
Worst come to worst, we can always clobber them with a hardcover.
Soft craniums are no match for cloth-bound cardboard.
It's like batting a sponge around the sink.
I'm still catching up on my reading. One of these days I'll reread The Assassination of Lumumba, by Ludo De Witte. As well as both Stella and Thalassa, by Jan De Hartog.
Who knows, I might find someone who also wants to read such things.
In between clubbing sponge-brains over the head with hardcovers.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
My reaction to the whole thing?
Good lord, is that crappy novelist still among us?!?
Honestly, I thought she had disappeared years ago. Been dissolved when someone threw a bucket of water over her.
Or perhaps auto-combusted.
Whatever.
CHARACTERS IN CRISIS
"...often involving rich families facing a crisis, threatened by dark elements such as jail, fraud, blackmail and suicide..."
[Source: Wikipedia.]
I suppose that kind of stuff IS better than science fiction. Arguably also better than, or at least on par with, the Lord of the Rings stuff. But not as good, or as thrilling, as a decent cookbook.
Years ago one of my more "innocent" coworkers questioned me about a book I had on the shelf. Headhunting in the Solomon Islands (by Caroline Mytinger, of which I own two copies). It's about two women who travel in distant Pacific territories among ethnicities barely ever contacted, in the years before WWII. Mosquitoes, filthy or brackish drinking water, infections, and miserable food. With illustrations.
It's a fascinating book, although somewhat dated. Certainly far more interesting than crappy overly verbose fiction.
Killer title, in any case.
I told him it was self-help.
An in-depth how-to.
Two days later I asked him for his hat-size.
He avoided me for the last half year that he worked there. Which goes to show that books and literacy are valuable. They give those of us who have never stopped reading a toolbox against the troglodytes who barely read beyond Modern Bride Magazine, Monster Truck Monthly, or Sports Illustrated. And then only to pick up keltoid fairy-tale garbage, science fiction, and Danielle Steele.
Worst come to worst, we can always clobber them with a hardcover.
Soft craniums are no match for cloth-bound cardboard.
It's like batting a sponge around the sink.
I'm still catching up on my reading. One of these days I'll reread The Assassination of Lumumba, by Ludo De Witte. As well as both Stella and Thalassa, by Jan De Hartog.
Who knows, I might find someone who also wants to read such things.
In between clubbing sponge-brains over the head with hardcovers.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, February 10, 2014
WHEN GROWN MEN DREAM OF GOATS
Before going to bed I had way too much coffee, and consequently last night's sleep images were tactile and delicious. As well as detailed. This often happens; I spend too much time in Marin, and consequently wish to make the most of what remains of the day when I return to civilization.
Which means coffee.
Years ago a friend mentioned that she would like to have a goat ranch. To which my instinctive response was "them's good eating", which was mildly horrifying, as she was thinking of cheese, whereas I was fantasizing about meat.
GOAT CURRY
1½ LBS goat, chunk cut.
1 Onion, finely chopped.
1 Thumblength ginger, minced.
3 Cloves garlic, minced.
3 Large tomatoes; peeled, seeded, chopped.
3 TBS curry powder.
6 Whole green chilies; Serrano or jalapeno.
6 Green cardamom pods.
2 Whole cloves.
2 Bay leaves.
½ Cup coconut milk.
1½ Cup water or beer.
½ Tsp. sugar.
½ Tsp. garam masala.
Salt, pepper, oil.
Salt and pepper the meat.
Gild the onion in the pan with plenty oil, add the ginger and garlic halfway through, and add the sugar, which will facilitate browning.
Add the curry powder, cardamom pods, and whole cloves, stir to blend; add the meat, stir to coat. When the meat colours, but before the curry powder scorches, add the tomatoes. Mix.
Pour the liquids in, and add the whole chilies to float on top; their presence will contribute fragrance, but scant heat if left whole. Add the bay leaves. Raise to boil, turn low and simmer for two hours.
Add the garam masala and cook a few minutes longer.
Garnish with chopped cilantro.
Serve with rice.
COCONUT RICE
One onion, chopped.
3 Cups rice; rinsed, drained, aired.
3 Cloves garlic, minced.
A little fresh ginger, ditto.
3 Bay leaves.
1½ Cups coconut milk.
1½ Cups chicken stock.
1½ Cups water.
Pinch salt.
Gild the onions in oil. When starting to brown, stir in the rice and garlic. Cook thus till the fragrance of the garlic is very noticeable. Add the ginger, stir briefly, then add the liquids and the bay leaves, plus the salt. Bring to a simmer, turn heat low and cover. Cook for fifteen to twenty minutes.
Let it rest, covered, for about ten to fifteen minutes.
Fluff it up, and squeeze some lime juice over it.
Indians will object to both of these recipes, because their equivalents are not prepared in this fashion. They'll especially quibble as regards the use of curry powder. No real cook employs such a thing, ALL spices are measured and prepared fresh and individually for each dish!
Nonsense.
It is worth while keeping a small supply of curry powder on hand at all times, for when you need to wing it.
GOAT CURRY POWDER
3½ Tsp. ground coriander.
1½ Tsp. (½ TBS) turmeric.
1½ Tsp. (½ TBS) ground cumin.
1 Tsp. cayenne.
½ Tsp. ground black pepper.
½ Tsp. dry ginger.
½ Tsp. cinnamon powder.
Mix, and use as necessary. This equals the three tablespoons needed for the goat curry.
Finding goat is an issue. They're rare in San Francisco now, but the meat used to be available in my neighborhood, when there was still a Halal butcher shop on Polk Street. The big bearded Yemeni gentleman who hacked the flesh closed when he realized that his Arab customers weren't very finicky, and his Caucasian customers were predominantly Wasps who didn't know anything about cooking at all.
Did he have pizza, they wished to know, or fusion wraps?
I suspect that I was his major customer for goat.
The meat is denser than lamb, more intense.
Goats are huggable, and delicious.
Goat curry powder can also be used for pork.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Which means coffee.
Years ago a friend mentioned that she would like to have a goat ranch. To which my instinctive response was "them's good eating", which was mildly horrifying, as she was thinking of cheese, whereas I was fantasizing about meat.
GOAT CURRY
1½ LBS goat, chunk cut.
1 Onion, finely chopped.
1 Thumblength ginger, minced.
3 Cloves garlic, minced.
3 Large tomatoes; peeled, seeded, chopped.
3 TBS curry powder.
6 Whole green chilies; Serrano or jalapeno.
6 Green cardamom pods.
2 Whole cloves.
2 Bay leaves.
½ Cup coconut milk.
1½ Cup water or beer.
½ Tsp. sugar.
½ Tsp. garam masala.
Salt, pepper, oil.
Salt and pepper the meat.
Gild the onion in the pan with plenty oil, add the ginger and garlic halfway through, and add the sugar, which will facilitate browning.
Add the curry powder, cardamom pods, and whole cloves, stir to blend; add the meat, stir to coat. When the meat colours, but before the curry powder scorches, add the tomatoes. Mix.
Pour the liquids in, and add the whole chilies to float on top; their presence will contribute fragrance, but scant heat if left whole. Add the bay leaves. Raise to boil, turn low and simmer for two hours.
Add the garam masala and cook a few minutes longer.
Garnish with chopped cilantro.
Serve with rice.
COCONUT RICE
One onion, chopped.
3 Cups rice; rinsed, drained, aired.
3 Cloves garlic, minced.
A little fresh ginger, ditto.
3 Bay leaves.
1½ Cups coconut milk.
1½ Cups chicken stock.
1½ Cups water.
Pinch salt.
Gild the onions in oil. When starting to brown, stir in the rice and garlic. Cook thus till the fragrance of the garlic is very noticeable. Add the ginger, stir briefly, then add the liquids and the bay leaves, plus the salt. Bring to a simmer, turn heat low and cover. Cook for fifteen to twenty minutes.
Let it rest, covered, for about ten to fifteen minutes.
Fluff it up, and squeeze some lime juice over it.
Indians will object to both of these recipes, because their equivalents are not prepared in this fashion. They'll especially quibble as regards the use of curry powder. No real cook employs such a thing, ALL spices are measured and prepared fresh and individually for each dish!
Nonsense.
It is worth while keeping a small supply of curry powder on hand at all times, for when you need to wing it.
GOAT CURRY POWDER
3½ Tsp. ground coriander.
1½ Tsp. (½ TBS) turmeric.
1½ Tsp. (½ TBS) ground cumin.
1 Tsp. cayenne.
½ Tsp. ground black pepper.
½ Tsp. dry ginger.
½ Tsp. cinnamon powder.
Mix, and use as necessary. This equals the three tablespoons needed for the goat curry.
Finding goat is an issue. They're rare in San Francisco now, but the meat used to be available in my neighborhood, when there was still a Halal butcher shop on Polk Street. The big bearded Yemeni gentleman who hacked the flesh closed when he realized that his Arab customers weren't very finicky, and his Caucasian customers were predominantly Wasps who didn't know anything about cooking at all.
Did he have pizza, they wished to know, or fusion wraps?
I suspect that I was his major customer for goat.
The meat is denser than lamb, more intense.
Goats are huggable, and delicious.
Goat curry powder can also be used for pork.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Sunday, February 09, 2014
PARADE CAUSES PANIC AND DESPAIR
For some reason I had a mental blip about the date of the Chinese New Year Parade this year; I thought it was going to be on February 22. Turns out it's next week, on Saturday the fifteenth. Okay, I was wrong.
Looks like it's going to be a busy weekend for the restaurants.
Which, for the single pipe-smoking badger, is a problem.
The bus I take to get to Chinatown after getting back to the city at around seven P.M. is the Number 1 California, which whizzes down Clay Street, and lets me off right at Stockton, from whence it is only a few steps to the Capitol Restaurant (京都餐館), where some mighty tasty dishes can be found, or only a little bit further to several other pleasant eateries at the intersection of Waverly and Washington.
Some of them employ people I like chatting with, others also have either excellent Hong Kong Milk Tea (港式奶茶 ) or Vietnamese Coffee (咖啡奶), or even fried fish balls, heavenly with hot sauce.
All of them will be packed.
The quantity of sweet and sour pork that will be served is enormous. Suburban people LOVE sweet and sour pork. And they'll be all over, cramming into every restaurant, wailing that they need their fix.
Their horrid whelps will be riotous otherwise!
See, they're already revolting!
Plus transit will be somewhat interdicted; the bus crosses the parade route.
At present I do not know what I shall do. I enjoy dining in bustling places where there are other people to observe or interact with, but not when I have to fight tooth and nail to keep my seat or my sanity.
The sanity is already doubtful. I must have that seat.
Keep your brat away from me, I bite.
My chopsticks, bitch.
Ick poo.
I suspect I'll think of something, or that a solution will become manifest.
But I may have to resign myself to not having any bittermelon, jeet gwa, or gailan at all this coming Saturday.
Maybe just eggplant fish.
Or wonton soup.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Looks like it's going to be a busy weekend for the restaurants.
Which, for the single pipe-smoking badger, is a problem.
The bus I take to get to Chinatown after getting back to the city at around seven P.M. is the Number 1 California, which whizzes down Clay Street, and lets me off right at Stockton, from whence it is only a few steps to the Capitol Restaurant (京都餐館), where some mighty tasty dishes can be found, or only a little bit further to several other pleasant eateries at the intersection of Waverly and Washington.
Some of them employ people I like chatting with, others also have either excellent Hong Kong Milk Tea (港式奶茶 ) or Vietnamese Coffee (咖啡奶), or even fried fish balls, heavenly with hot sauce.
All of them will be packed.
The quantity of sweet and sour pork that will be served is enormous. Suburban people LOVE sweet and sour pork. And they'll be all over, cramming into every restaurant, wailing that they need their fix.
Their horrid whelps will be riotous otherwise!
See, they're already revolting!
Plus transit will be somewhat interdicted; the bus crosses the parade route.
At present I do not know what I shall do. I enjoy dining in bustling places where there are other people to observe or interact with, but not when I have to fight tooth and nail to keep my seat or my sanity.
The sanity is already doubtful. I must have that seat.
Keep your brat away from me, I bite.
My chopsticks, bitch.
Ick poo.
I suspect I'll think of something, or that a solution will become manifest.
But I may have to resign myself to not having any bittermelon, jeet gwa, or gailan at all this coming Saturday.
Maybe just eggplant fish.
Or wonton soup.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
IN PRAISE OF THE URSINE
Most of my Facebook friends are entirely reasonable. Some are quite insane. No, shan't list any names. Among my earliest Facebook friends are people who fly under cognomina that hide their identities; some of their writings may be found in the list of blogs and sites on the right-hand side of this page.
DOVBEAR
No, I have never met him in real life, and I do not know his real name. But I have read his blog fairly regularly since 2005, and his Facebook page is a good reflection of both his mind and his character as it has been revealed by his statements over time.
So it is with utmost respect that I wish to say this to him:
"Bad chossid! No streimel for you! There you go again, bear-bating the mashugonim in the heimishe velt, despite a great likelihood that some of them are so stark-raving bonkers that they'll NEVER accept rational arguments!"
I thoroughly enjoy his riling-up of those people, however, and it allows both him and many of his readers to exercise both reason and rhetoric.
Their doing so clarifies points that are worth clarifying.
And his more irrational readers probably had acid-reflux all through shabbes because of it; far better than any amount of cholent in that regard.
Healthier, too.
The near-certainty of their sourness gave me a warm feeling all the way through Saturday. It was far better than any amount of cholent, and healthier too.
Dov and pals normally disquisition here: DOVBEAR.
Think of it as rational and compassionate Jew-stuff, with a splash of vinegar added. Good for the heart, good for the head.
A cure for the philosophical hangover.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
DOVBEAR
No, I have never met him in real life, and I do not know his real name. But I have read his blog fairly regularly since 2005, and his Facebook page is a good reflection of both his mind and his character as it has been revealed by his statements over time.
So it is with utmost respect that I wish to say this to him:
"Bad chossid! No streimel for you! There you go again, bear-bating the mashugonim in the heimishe velt, despite a great likelihood that some of them are so stark-raving bonkers that they'll NEVER accept rational arguments!"
I thoroughly enjoy his riling-up of those people, however, and it allows both him and many of his readers to exercise both reason and rhetoric.
Their doing so clarifies points that are worth clarifying.
And his more irrational readers probably had acid-reflux all through shabbes because of it; far better than any amount of cholent in that regard.
Healthier, too.
The near-certainty of their sourness gave me a warm feeling all the way through Saturday. It was far better than any amount of cholent, and healthier too.
Dov and pals normally disquisition here: DOVBEAR.
Think of it as rational and compassionate Jew-stuff, with a splash of vinegar added. Good for the heart, good for the head.
A cure for the philosophical hangover.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, February 08, 2014
SWEET FRUIT COMPOTE, FLAKY CRUST, AND OTHER THINGS
Far be it from me to criticize my fellow tobacco-mavens in the local pipe-club, but this quarter's social event involves a jam-session. Not, as a rational person might expect, a celebration of fresh fruit preserves on scrumptious hot scones with clotted cream, or golden toast with melted butter, or wedged in between layers of angel-food cake, or folded into flaky pastry shells, or even simply sampled straight out of the jar with a clean spoon, but something involving instruments and attempts at melody.
I am not a musical person. Can't hold a tune or play any instruments. My very presence causes strange echoes, creaking noises, and off-key singing. Consequently I shall not be there.
Also, it's on a Saturday. My Saturday routine is set in stone. Return from Marin County, have dinner in Chinatown (mmmm, I can already mentally TASTE the bittermelon and pork over rice ...... wait, I actually had that this evening!), after which I join the conversation at a place where a few friends gather to relax while enjoying fine tobacco products in good company. Altogether a very civilized thing to do.
Which is extremely pleasant until it gets crowded.
Apparently tobacco attracts flies.
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
So no, not planning to be part of the quarterly event.
Scones, toast, melted butter, flaky pastry.
I might be there in spirit, but it is more likely that I will be dreaming of warm spring rain, in a grove of trees near verdant pasture, on a still and quiet night. There is a light breeze that slants the falling water slightly, and though I am underneath the leaves, some of the downpour is never the less noticeable.
Umbrella.
Pipe filled with a hearty English flake, something from Sam Gawith.
Book clenched under left arm. I was planning to read a bit later, but the serenity of this deserted rural location and the restfulness of the scene have distracted me.
In the village there is a café-restaurant with lots of books along the walls, and a rented apartment where there is soup, along with fresh clean sheets. The local library is open till twelve o'clock at night, and there are wooden benches underneath the oak trees on the green.
On dry nights one can read there, the streetlights provide enough light. Occasionally a middle-aged person wanders past with their dog, sometimes a bicyclist utters a salutation on their way home.
Did I already mention the delicious fruit preserves and lovely bakery products? Their existence is fundamental to this dream. One cannot sustain oneself solely with these items, but that they are so easily within one's grasp is comforting. And how nice that there also is a Cantonese restaurant here, which, miracle of miracles, has bittermelon, long beans, gai lan, miu choi, and other delicious snappy vegetables.
Yes, the local establishments now have signs that say smoking inside is no longer permitted -- the long arm of disapproving puritans is present even here -- but there are overhangs and awnings, and there is seating in the green areas. People honestly don't mind a whiff of tobacco; the air here is rich with the fragrance of forests and pastures, redolent of natural fermentation.
The library still has the standing ashtrays from long ago at the end of each bank of shelves. They'll open a window for the solitary reader.
There are no children or pregnant women there after nine anyway.
Coffee and tea at the aforementioned café-restaurant on the terrace, or a spot of sherry. There are usually no children or pregnant women there either, though they may wander past sniffing appreciatively.
Everyone remembers a wise family doctor who smoked, a retired sea captain, or a beloved schoolmaster and his cigars.
Even children and pregnant women.
Hot tea. Buns and cream. Fruit preserves.
Jam session.
A MEETING OF MINDS
While we were discussing upcoming events at our recent gathering, the retired surgeon read the cautionary text on a pouch of pipe tobacco.
"WARNING: This Product Contains/Produces Chemicals Known to the State of California To Cause Cancer, and Birth Defects Or Other Reproductive Harm."
He found the all-knowing wisdom of the State of California (the most perspicacious of these united states) to be rather amusing. And we all agreed that pregnancy among pipe-smokers is a rarity. Nor is it likely that tobacco has been much employed in reproductive practises.
If you wish, you may rub it on yourself beforehand.
It's very spiritual. Rather like marijuana.
But better for the brain.
You will be pleased to hear there are no children or pregnant women who are members of our pipe-club. We've tried to include them, because we want them to feel happy too, but they demurred.
Flaky rolls. Keemun tea. Strawberry spread.
Lapsang Souchong. Devonshire cream.
Buttered bread. Peach preserves.
Possibly, a crumpet.
Darjeeling.
Rain.
AFTER WORD
One of our members gave a talk about the calabash pipe, which is popularly associated with the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.
But that is just one use of bottle gourds; in much of the world they are employed as vessels for liquids, dry storage, and, in northern China, to make small containers for pet crickets. A decorative lid with airholes keeps the beastie within, and you can tuck it into the folds of your clothing to keep it warm when Autumn turns to Winter. The friendly chirping during the cold will remind you of Spring and Summer. Perhaps your little friend will survive the season, and help you welcome the return of better weather.
Bottle gourd can also be eaten. You must peel it and remove the seeds before cooking.
BOTTLE GOURD PRESERVE
Two cups coarsely shredded bottle gourd.
One cup cane sugar.
Two TBS lime juice.
One TBS finely shredded ginger.
Miniscule pinch salt.
Put the shredded bottle gourd and the minute pinch of salt in an enamel saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, turn low, and simmer till translucent, about fifteen minutes. Drain, reserving about half a cup of the liquid.
Mix the reserved cooking liquid with the sugar and the lime juice. Cook while stirring till the sugar is fully dissolved. Now add the bottle gourd shreds and ginger, and simmer, stirring frequently to prevent scorching, for an hour or two. It is done when the syrup is thick and gluggy.
Decant into a glass jar and seal as you would any other home-made preserve, or store it in the refrigerator where it will keep for several months.
Many squashes and vegetable melons can be treated similarly. Winter melon makes a lovely subtle preparation, and so does pumpkin.
If instead of using lime juice, you add vinegar -- up to nearly as much as the other liquid -- you will have a chutney. In which case you can increase the quantity of ginger also, and add raisins and a little cayenne for interest. But a chutney is not as good on buttered toast.
Remember to simmer till thick and gluggy.
TOBACCO INDEX
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All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
I am not a musical person. Can't hold a tune or play any instruments. My very presence causes strange echoes, creaking noises, and off-key singing. Consequently I shall not be there.
Also, it's on a Saturday. My Saturday routine is set in stone. Return from Marin County, have dinner in Chinatown (mmmm, I can already mentally TASTE the bittermelon and pork over rice ...... wait, I actually had that this evening!), after which I join the conversation at a place where a few friends gather to relax while enjoying fine tobacco products in good company. Altogether a very civilized thing to do.
Which is extremely pleasant until it gets crowded.
Apparently tobacco attracts flies.
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
So no, not planning to be part of the quarterly event.
Scones, toast, melted butter, flaky pastry.
I might be there in spirit, but it is more likely that I will be dreaming of warm spring rain, in a grove of trees near verdant pasture, on a still and quiet night. There is a light breeze that slants the falling water slightly, and though I am underneath the leaves, some of the downpour is never the less noticeable.
Umbrella.
Pipe filled with a hearty English flake, something from Sam Gawith.
Book clenched under left arm. I was planning to read a bit later, but the serenity of this deserted rural location and the restfulness of the scene have distracted me.
In the village there is a café-restaurant with lots of books along the walls, and a rented apartment where there is soup, along with fresh clean sheets. The local library is open till twelve o'clock at night, and there are wooden benches underneath the oak trees on the green.
On dry nights one can read there, the streetlights provide enough light. Occasionally a middle-aged person wanders past with their dog, sometimes a bicyclist utters a salutation on their way home.
Did I already mention the delicious fruit preserves and lovely bakery products? Their existence is fundamental to this dream. One cannot sustain oneself solely with these items, but that they are so easily within one's grasp is comforting. And how nice that there also is a Cantonese restaurant here, which, miracle of miracles, has bittermelon, long beans, gai lan, miu choi, and other delicious snappy vegetables.
Yes, the local establishments now have signs that say smoking inside is no longer permitted -- the long arm of disapproving puritans is present even here -- but there are overhangs and awnings, and there is seating in the green areas. People honestly don't mind a whiff of tobacco; the air here is rich with the fragrance of forests and pastures, redolent of natural fermentation.
The library still has the standing ashtrays from long ago at the end of each bank of shelves. They'll open a window for the solitary reader.
There are no children or pregnant women there after nine anyway.
Coffee and tea at the aforementioned café-restaurant on the terrace, or a spot of sherry. There are usually no children or pregnant women there either, though they may wander past sniffing appreciatively.
Everyone remembers a wise family doctor who smoked, a retired sea captain, or a beloved schoolmaster and his cigars.
Even children and pregnant women.
Hot tea. Buns and cream. Fruit preserves.
Jam session.
A MEETING OF MINDS
While we were discussing upcoming events at our recent gathering, the retired surgeon read the cautionary text on a pouch of pipe tobacco.
"WARNING: This Product Contains/Produces Chemicals Known to the State of California To Cause Cancer, and Birth Defects Or Other Reproductive Harm."
He found the all-knowing wisdom of the State of California (the most perspicacious of these united states) to be rather amusing. And we all agreed that pregnancy among pipe-smokers is a rarity. Nor is it likely that tobacco has been much employed in reproductive practises.
If you wish, you may rub it on yourself beforehand.
It's very spiritual. Rather like marijuana.
But better for the brain.
You will be pleased to hear there are no children or pregnant women who are members of our pipe-club. We've tried to include them, because we want them to feel happy too, but they demurred.
Flaky rolls. Keemun tea. Strawberry spread.
Lapsang Souchong. Devonshire cream.
Buttered bread. Peach preserves.
Possibly, a crumpet.
Darjeeling.
Rain.
AFTER WORD
One of our members gave a talk about the calabash pipe, which is popularly associated with the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.
But that is just one use of bottle gourds; in much of the world they are employed as vessels for liquids, dry storage, and, in northern China, to make small containers for pet crickets. A decorative lid with airholes keeps the beastie within, and you can tuck it into the folds of your clothing to keep it warm when Autumn turns to Winter. The friendly chirping during the cold will remind you of Spring and Summer. Perhaps your little friend will survive the season, and help you welcome the return of better weather.
Bottle gourd can also be eaten. You must peel it and remove the seeds before cooking.
BOTTLE GOURD PRESERVE
Two cups coarsely shredded bottle gourd.
One cup cane sugar.
Two TBS lime juice.
One TBS finely shredded ginger.
Miniscule pinch salt.
Put the shredded bottle gourd and the minute pinch of salt in an enamel saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, turn low, and simmer till translucent, about fifteen minutes. Drain, reserving about half a cup of the liquid.
Mix the reserved cooking liquid with the sugar and the lime juice. Cook while stirring till the sugar is fully dissolved. Now add the bottle gourd shreds and ginger, and simmer, stirring frequently to prevent scorching, for an hour or two. It is done when the syrup is thick and gluggy.
Decant into a glass jar and seal as you would any other home-made preserve, or store it in the refrigerator where it will keep for several months.
Many squashes and vegetable melons can be treated similarly. Winter melon makes a lovely subtle preparation, and so does pumpkin.
If instead of using lime juice, you add vinegar -- up to nearly as much as the other liquid -- you will have a chutney. In which case you can increase the quantity of ginger also, and add raisins and a little cayenne for interest. But a chutney is not as good on buttered toast.
Remember to simmer till thick and gluggy.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Friday, February 07, 2014
NO DOG IN THIS FIGHT: FEBRUARY 14TH
In another week it will be Valentine's day. Which may mean something to you. You and the love of your life might go out to a good restaurant, after the gifting of flowers, chocolates, and baubles, to enjoy a quiet romantic dinner with champagne.
My advice, in a word: don't.
Good restaurants are busier than usual, many have overbooked, the service staff will probably have been augmented by one totally inexperienced eccentric who has never waited tables before, and the staff will be frazzled by five o'clock, with still six hours of frenetic chaos ahead of them.
There will be scant quiet and little romance there.
If you have to go to dinner, find a regular restaurant and enjoy some cheap spaghetti and chianti. Or kung pao shrimp and sweet and sour pork.
At the Indian restaurant where I worked for several years, Valentine's Day was our best and worst night. Everyone wanted the private booths with cushions, most of them ended up in the banquet room. Choice of three set dinners, all with a free glass of cheap champagne and a rose.
I am not proud of our standards of service on that day. We could've done better. Without the Hindi expletives or inexplicable delays.
The spilled sauces, dropped cutlery.
Broken glasses.
Or, one year, the tablecloth that caught fire.
Soot from burnt synthetics: VERY romantic!
Valentine's is not all bad; one of my esteemed colleagues from the company where I worked in the Financial District proposed to his sweetie at a fancy restaurant on that day several years ago, and they are still married. Their young son keenly desires that I quit smoking.
I myself am of two minds about the celebration. On the one hand, a long walk on Nob Hill, Russian Hill, and down around the outskirts of Chinatown and Northbeach with someone else sounds quite lovely, after a light supper at a quiet and distinctly UNromantic eatery.
Just two normal people, flying under the radar. Whatever is in their minds is not crassly advertised; no excessive behaviours, no vulgar display.
On the distinctly other hand, two matched delinquents of equal depravity huddling around a burning garbage can with a thermos of hot coffee, spiked with just enough rum for cheerfulness, not enough for tipsy.
Perhaps after fish tacos in a Mission District canteen.
Let us burn this puppy down, you and I.
We're young, we're wild.
Do it.
Actually, I am middle-aged. I just look better in the dark.
Being single, I have no plans for the event. But I know that across the city there will be frazzled nerves and filled restaurants, and tense people on the bus shall lug bouquettes and glare at the other passengers.
The next day, some might regret what they said.
Others will be nursing headaches.
I'm surprised no one riots.
Perhaps it's best to simply stay at home on the couch, watching rented horror movies till the wee hours with hot cocoa and a throw rug.
And the stuffed animals, for reassurance.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
My advice, in a word: don't.
Good restaurants are busier than usual, many have overbooked, the service staff will probably have been augmented by one totally inexperienced eccentric who has never waited tables before, and the staff will be frazzled by five o'clock, with still six hours of frenetic chaos ahead of them.
There will be scant quiet and little romance there.
If you have to go to dinner, find a regular restaurant and enjoy some cheap spaghetti and chianti. Or kung pao shrimp and sweet and sour pork.
At the Indian restaurant where I worked for several years, Valentine's Day was our best and worst night. Everyone wanted the private booths with cushions, most of them ended up in the banquet room. Choice of three set dinners, all with a free glass of cheap champagne and a rose.
I am not proud of our standards of service on that day. We could've done better. Without the Hindi expletives or inexplicable delays.
The spilled sauces, dropped cutlery.
Broken glasses.
Or, one year, the tablecloth that caught fire.
Soot from burnt synthetics: VERY romantic!
Valentine's is not all bad; one of my esteemed colleagues from the company where I worked in the Financial District proposed to his sweetie at a fancy restaurant on that day several years ago, and they are still married. Their young son keenly desires that I quit smoking.
I myself am of two minds about the celebration. On the one hand, a long walk on Nob Hill, Russian Hill, and down around the outskirts of Chinatown and Northbeach with someone else sounds quite lovely, after a light supper at a quiet and distinctly UNromantic eatery.
Just two normal people, flying under the radar. Whatever is in their minds is not crassly advertised; no excessive behaviours, no vulgar display.
On the distinctly other hand, two matched delinquents of equal depravity huddling around a burning garbage can with a thermos of hot coffee, spiked with just enough rum for cheerfulness, not enough for tipsy.
Perhaps after fish tacos in a Mission District canteen.
Let us burn this puppy down, you and I.
We're young, we're wild.
Do it.
Actually, I am middle-aged. I just look better in the dark.
Being single, I have no plans for the event. But I know that across the city there will be frazzled nerves and filled restaurants, and tense people on the bus shall lug bouquettes and glare at the other passengers.
The next day, some might regret what they said.
Others will be nursing headaches.
I'm surprised no one riots.
Perhaps it's best to simply stay at home on the couch, watching rented horror movies till the wee hours with hot cocoa and a throw rug.
And the stuffed animals, for reassurance.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Thursday, February 06, 2014
IT"S SAFER!
As you might have guessed, there are often dubious messages of a commercial nature both in my letterbox (which is meant for private correspondence only) and in the actual comments field itself, awaiting my approval.
Feedback needs to meet certain standards, or it will not be published.
Private correspondence remains private if that is requested.
Normal comments will be read by others.
Anonymous stays anonymous.
The 'letterbox' attracts a fair amount of garbage, as spambots automatically go for the very first comment-type link that they find.
Some of it is extremely hopeful stuff.
Consider this doozy: "I like your website! Here is my weblog; safer colon review"
Wow.
I can only imagine.
An entire weblog by posteriors, for posteriors.
Safer colon review. Something which I've been waiting for all my life. Just like you, I have this deep-seated fear that the space aliens hide there.
If I bend over to investigate, they'll leap out and bite off my head.
Zombie space aliens. With werewolf or vampire tendencies.
Now someone who likes my website has volunteered.
Thank you, S.C.R.!
I am blessed.
Yeah, that was dumped in my letterbox. Naturally I circular-filed it.
Which is also why there is no embedded link in the quote above.
There is no reason to send my other visitors up sh*t creek.
YOUR SAFE COLONIC REVIEWS!
I love reader-feedback, and the fortuitous private message from readers is also something I welcome. Some people just don't want their ideas out on the net; I can understand that. And some readers may have misplaced my e-mail address, so the 'letterbox' gives them a confidential way to contact me, to which I will respond.
I really like hearing from people.
Real people.
After word, added at 10:57 A.M.:
Someone wrote "do not borrow another woman's toothbrush, even", plus a whole bunch of other stuff, underneath a post from several years ago in which I speculated that Jesus might have been gay, and would probably love the femmy drag queens at The Pump House. It did not contribute anything to the discussion, and seemed quite nonsequitorial.
I would not think of borrowing another woman's toothbrush.
There are just some things one does not do.
But thank you for the words.
Very kind.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Feedback needs to meet certain standards, or it will not be published.
Private correspondence remains private if that is requested.
Normal comments will be read by others.
Anonymous stays anonymous.
The 'letterbox' attracts a fair amount of garbage, as spambots automatically go for the very first comment-type link that they find.
Some of it is extremely hopeful stuff.
Consider this doozy: "I like your website! Here is my weblog; safer colon review"
Wow.
I can only imagine.
An entire weblog by posteriors, for posteriors.
Safer colon review. Something which I've been waiting for all my life. Just like you, I have this deep-seated fear that the space aliens hide there.
If I bend over to investigate, they'll leap out and bite off my head.
Zombie space aliens. With werewolf or vampire tendencies.
Now someone who likes my website has volunteered.
Thank you, S.C.R.!
I am blessed.
Yeah, that was dumped in my letterbox. Naturally I circular-filed it.
Which is also why there is no embedded link in the quote above.
There is no reason to send my other visitors up sh*t creek.
YOUR SAFE COLONIC REVIEWS!
I love reader-feedback, and the fortuitous private message from readers is also something I welcome. Some people just don't want their ideas out on the net; I can understand that. And some readers may have misplaced my e-mail address, so the 'letterbox' gives them a confidential way to contact me, to which I will respond.
I really like hearing from people.
Real people.
After word, added at 10:57 A.M.:
Someone wrote "do not borrow another woman's toothbrush, even", plus a whole bunch of other stuff, underneath a post from several years ago in which I speculated that Jesus might have been gay, and would probably love the femmy drag queens at The Pump House. It did not contribute anything to the discussion, and seemed quite nonsequitorial.
I would not think of borrowing another woman's toothbrush.
There are just some things one does not do.
But thank you for the words.
Very kind.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, February 05, 2014
A BADGER WITH A PIPE AND SPECTACLES
Three years ago I first placed a self-portrait as a badger on this blog. It was in a Friday afternoon post in which I wondered what I would do on Saturday. Until the middle of summer 2010 my Saturdays were quite predictable, then Savage Kitten and I broke up after a long wonderful relationship of over twenty years, and weekends lost all balance.
We stayed friends, and continued to live together. But we no longer involved ourselves in each others' lives very much. Within a few months she started seeing someone new, and I was still counting the wreckage. I have not dated anyone since then, primarily because I'm a bit peculiar about whom I associate with.
Savage Kitten was someone whom I loved being with. She entered my life after a romance-drought that had lasted nearly a decade.
I still like her company, but there is far less of it now.
This new drought has been three and a half years already.
You may have heard me say it before, but I'll say it again: life is too short to drink Starbucks.
There is NO point in dating someone if the two of you aren't well-matched to begin with. There ain't no such thing as "practice makes perfect" in love, and all real romances can only start off if there is enough there to form a solid friendship.
I'm hopeful that I'll meet someone like that.
But I am not unrealistically optimistic.
Lightening may not hit twice.
LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO DRINK STARBUCKS
The self-portrait as Mr. Badger represented a version of me that was developing at the time. Not so much a loner as an amiable and not particularly sociable fellow, comfortable with himself and a few other people. Goofy about food, and stable in his personal likes and dislikes.
[Source: facing the weekend like a man ... or not ]
Yes, the glasses are a relatively new thing. I did not need reading specs till 2004, when I smacked myself in the jaw with a rice bowl. Gotta see what's in the last crucial foot before the face. Since then I've also nearly brained myself with a filled coffee cup -- several times -- and almost poked out an eye with a pipe stem. I now put the glasses on the very moment I get up in the morning.
The pipe, however, has always been part of the person.
I bought my first briar when I was thirteen.
Mr. Badger is a beast without it.
The mental image of myself as a badger is in a large part due to my admiration for the stalwart mustelid in Kenneth Grahame's book 'Wind in the Willows', but also in a small way because there are streaks of white in my hair. To me, at the time, this expanded the badger-like visual.
Mr. Badger is a solitary person.
I'm still not seeing anyone. And, given that nice young ladies usually do not fall for middle-aged coots, it isn't very likely that I ever will. Entirely aside from which, there has to be plenty of evidence that she reads, and I fear that reading itself has become a lost art today. So many people do not venture past the textbooks they read in college, and the text and twitter messages that they receive on their cell phones.
Texting and twittering are au courant.
Essential to modern "communication".
And, if someone texts and twitters, the chances are that they don't talk. How many times has someone with whom you were speaking paused to thumb-dance over their keypad, or said "hold on, I gotta take this call"? In the latter case, despite only hearing one side of the conversation, you grasped that they really didn't gotta, and you also gained perspective about their speech-habits.
"Yeah, uh huh, I know, like, totes-maggoats!"
"Dude, a blast, hella, yeh-huh!"
"Ahcatchalayta."
Chances are that if you recognize any of the above, at some point you've realized that there was an idiot in the room.
Mr. Badger does not have a cell-phone.
None of this essay was "texted".
My thumbs are normal.
As important as reading is the ability to shut up. Someone who can read peacefully for hours is a pleasure to be with while one also reads for hours. How splendid if neither person brakes the silence, except to eventually ask whether the other one is hungry yet!
Whereupon food may be discussed at length. As well as the reading matter, on the way to the food, during the food, and after the food.
It sounds like a perfect Saturday to me.
And Sunday. Or any day.
For badgers.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
We stayed friends, and continued to live together. But we no longer involved ourselves in each others' lives very much. Within a few months she started seeing someone new, and I was still counting the wreckage. I have not dated anyone since then, primarily because I'm a bit peculiar about whom I associate with.
Savage Kitten was someone whom I loved being with. She entered my life after a romance-drought that had lasted nearly a decade.
I still like her company, but there is far less of it now.
This new drought has been three and a half years already.
You may have heard me say it before, but I'll say it again: life is too short to drink Starbucks.
There is NO point in dating someone if the two of you aren't well-matched to begin with. There ain't no such thing as "practice makes perfect" in love, and all real romances can only start off if there is enough there to form a solid friendship.
I'm hopeful that I'll meet someone like that.
But I am not unrealistically optimistic.
Lightening may not hit twice.
LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO DRINK STARBUCKS
The self-portrait as Mr. Badger represented a version of me that was developing at the time. Not so much a loner as an amiable and not particularly sociable fellow, comfortable with himself and a few other people. Goofy about food, and stable in his personal likes and dislikes.
[Source: facing the weekend like a man ... or not ]
Yes, the glasses are a relatively new thing. I did not need reading specs till 2004, when I smacked myself in the jaw with a rice bowl. Gotta see what's in the last crucial foot before the face. Since then I've also nearly brained myself with a filled coffee cup -- several times -- and almost poked out an eye with a pipe stem. I now put the glasses on the very moment I get up in the morning.
The pipe, however, has always been part of the person.
I bought my first briar when I was thirteen.
Mr. Badger is a beast without it.
The mental image of myself as a badger is in a large part due to my admiration for the stalwart mustelid in Kenneth Grahame's book 'Wind in the Willows', but also in a small way because there are streaks of white in my hair. To me, at the time, this expanded the badger-like visual.
Mr. Badger is a solitary person.
I'm still not seeing anyone. And, given that nice young ladies usually do not fall for middle-aged coots, it isn't very likely that I ever will. Entirely aside from which, there has to be plenty of evidence that she reads, and I fear that reading itself has become a lost art today. So many people do not venture past the textbooks they read in college, and the text and twitter messages that they receive on their cell phones.
Texting and twittering are au courant.
Essential to modern "communication".
And, if someone texts and twitters, the chances are that they don't talk. How many times has someone with whom you were speaking paused to thumb-dance over their keypad, or said "hold on, I gotta take this call"? In the latter case, despite only hearing one side of the conversation, you grasped that they really didn't gotta, and you also gained perspective about their speech-habits.
"Yeah, uh huh, I know, like, totes-maggoats!"
"Dude, a blast, hella, yeh-huh!"
"Ahcatchalayta."
Chances are that if you recognize any of the above, at some point you've realized that there was an idiot in the room.
Mr. Badger does not have a cell-phone.
None of this essay was "texted".
My thumbs are normal.
As important as reading is the ability to shut up. Someone who can read peacefully for hours is a pleasure to be with while one also reads for hours. How splendid if neither person brakes the silence, except to eventually ask whether the other one is hungry yet!
Whereupon food may be discussed at length. As well as the reading matter, on the way to the food, during the food, and after the food.
It sounds like a perfect Saturday to me.
And Sunday. Or any day.
For badgers.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
MONSTROUS LOVE CONCEPT
One of the first things I do when after fixing a cup of coffee is go on-line to read the news. Outrage or piqued interest is the natural corollary to a caffeine fix at that hour.
And sometimes, when the mind awakes, an article catches my eye.
"What", my eye seems to say, "is this?"
Sometimes I regret that. An article about Muammar El Qaddafi recently made me sick to my stomach and provoked nightmares. The man was a real s.o.b. and should have been shot much sooner.
But enough about Qaddafi.
Let us instead speak of wedding proposals.
There's an article on the BBC website which convinces me that I am not a romantic, and possibly far too sane to function in the modern world.
MY DAY: WEDDING PROPOSAL PLANNER ANN FONG
Well, just colour me flabberghasted, aghast, and more than a little nauseated. Apparently the proposal now has to be "planned".
Back in my day...... no, we didn't just club 'em over the head and shove a diamond ring on their hand, but as I understand it, most wedding proposals were fairly straightforward.
He would not watch team-sports on television that evening, she would gloat over her fancy new handbag or shoes while they went to have a beefsteak, and sometime between dessert and the cigar he would pull out a ring and say something inane. Whereupon she would cry, the restaurant staff would give them a free after dinner drink because they were so moved, and several months later both people would head over to city hall with some witnesses, have dinner at a steakhouse, and go on vacation to someplace dreary but sunny and private.
Oh the sheer romance of it all.
"Marry me, bitch, I can't stand anyone else!"
Sniff, sniff.
Now, the proposal needs to be a fitting preamble to the most ridiculously overplanned event in both of their lives, which will take place in front of a thousand guests and a cinematographer.
Quote:
"I spend a lot of my day thinking up ideas and organising the event - we need to employ photographers, videographers, all sorts of people involved in the process.
---
I meet my clients in cafes and we scope out places with atmosphere - these meetings are when we brainstorm to come up with big ideas and talk about the role-play side of things. "
End quote.
Role-play side? Isn't that normally saved for meeting the in-laws?
Perhaps I'm just being a dreadful old cynic. It's been years since I proposed to anyone (Savage Kitten said "no" several times, and we are no longer a couple), and the chances of me ever being in a position to propose to another person again are slim to nil, getting worse with each passing year. Besides, they'd probably scream and hit me. With a fancy handbag.
Maybe I am just not sappy enough.
Or quite unromantic.
Quote:
"Once we created snow on a beach. We rented a snow machine, put LED candles to create a romantic atmosphere at night and got a friend to bring our client's girlfriend to the beach on a pretext. Once she was on the beach we began the snow. She was so surprised. We put up a dome with lots of flowers and her partner was waiting there to propose. She walked along a pathway lit up by LED lights. She said yes. "
End quote.
She said "yes". I would've said "holy crap".
The two people involved probably treasure that moment as one of the many fabulous highlights of their impossibly sweet, romantic, and over-the-top fairy-tale life.
I kind of wonder how my dad proposed to my mom. I should of asked them before they passed away. It was probably something amusing and very nineteen-fifties.
The wedding itself was small and matter-of-fact. About a dozen close friends and relatives, followed by dinner at a nice French restaurant somewhere in Beverly Hills. Or maybe up here in SF.
I think I saw a photograph of it once. Large round table, clean tablecloth, ashtrays at every setting. They were all smoking after the main course and before the dessert. All the men wore ties.
It looked very civilized.
Anyway, I didn't finish reading the BBC article. I've linked it here, so that maybe some day I can go back and absorb all of it. For when I'm feeling less like hysterical laughter and heaving.
Proposal planning.
Good lord.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
And sometimes, when the mind awakes, an article catches my eye.
"What", my eye seems to say, "is this?"
Sometimes I regret that. An article about Muammar El Qaddafi recently made me sick to my stomach and provoked nightmares. The man was a real s.o.b. and should have been shot much sooner.
But enough about Qaddafi.
Let us instead speak of wedding proposals.
There's an article on the BBC website which convinces me that I am not a romantic, and possibly far too sane to function in the modern world.
MY DAY: WEDDING PROPOSAL PLANNER ANN FONG
Well, just colour me flabberghasted, aghast, and more than a little nauseated. Apparently the proposal now has to be "planned".
Back in my day...... no, we didn't just club 'em over the head and shove a diamond ring on their hand, but as I understand it, most wedding proposals were fairly straightforward.
He would not watch team-sports on television that evening, she would gloat over her fancy new handbag or shoes while they went to have a beefsteak, and sometime between dessert and the cigar he would pull out a ring and say something inane. Whereupon she would cry, the restaurant staff would give them a free after dinner drink because they were so moved, and several months later both people would head over to city hall with some witnesses, have dinner at a steakhouse, and go on vacation to someplace dreary but sunny and private.
Oh the sheer romance of it all.
"Marry me, bitch, I can't stand anyone else!"
Sniff, sniff.
Now, the proposal needs to be a fitting preamble to the most ridiculously overplanned event in both of their lives, which will take place in front of a thousand guests and a cinematographer.
Quote:
"I spend a lot of my day thinking up ideas and organising the event - we need to employ photographers, videographers, all sorts of people involved in the process.
---
I meet my clients in cafes and we scope out places with atmosphere - these meetings are when we brainstorm to come up with big ideas and talk about the role-play side of things. "
End quote.
Role-play side? Isn't that normally saved for meeting the in-laws?
Perhaps I'm just being a dreadful old cynic. It's been years since I proposed to anyone (Savage Kitten said "no" several times, and we are no longer a couple), and the chances of me ever being in a position to propose to another person again are slim to nil, getting worse with each passing year. Besides, they'd probably scream and hit me. With a fancy handbag.
Maybe I am just not sappy enough.
Or quite unromantic.
Quote:
"Once we created snow on a beach. We rented a snow machine, put LED candles to create a romantic atmosphere at night and got a friend to bring our client's girlfriend to the beach on a pretext. Once she was on the beach we began the snow. She was so surprised. We put up a dome with lots of flowers and her partner was waiting there to propose. She walked along a pathway lit up by LED lights. She said yes. "
End quote.
She said "yes". I would've said "holy crap".
The two people involved probably treasure that moment as one of the many fabulous highlights of their impossibly sweet, romantic, and over-the-top fairy-tale life.
I kind of wonder how my dad proposed to my mom. I should of asked them before they passed away. It was probably something amusing and very nineteen-fifties.
The wedding itself was small and matter-of-fact. About a dozen close friends and relatives, followed by dinner at a nice French restaurant somewhere in Beverly Hills. Or maybe up here in SF.
I think I saw a photograph of it once. Large round table, clean tablecloth, ashtrays at every setting. They were all smoking after the main course and before the dessert. All the men wore ties.
It looked very civilized.
Anyway, I didn't finish reading the BBC article. I've linked it here, so that maybe some day I can go back and absorb all of it. For when I'm feeling less like hysterical laughter and heaving.
Proposal planning.
Good lord.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, February 04, 2014
CLIMATE CHANGE RE-BUNKED
At this time of year one should expect chill winds and freezing rain in San Francisco. In the thirty five years that I've been here, that was mostly the norm. From mid-December through March, even as late as April, coldness and wet. Presently California is experiencing a drought, San Francisco has had the warmest January that I can remember. Which is the culminative expression of a pattern that first manifested itself in the last decade.
We no longer have Indian Summer, by the way. Probably due to budgetary constraints. Because EVERYONE knows that Global Warming is just a myth, and unusual cold-spells, judging by the insane gibberish coming out of states far further east, conclusively prove that theories of the world warming up, along with evolution and the origin of species, are just so much hot air.
This afternoon, around tea-time...
Mobs of parrots getting drunk (or very happy indeed) on Purple Leaf Plum blossoms down at Sue Bierman park. Imagine, if you will, rowdy flights of bright green feathered delinquents swooping low over the ground, scattering pedestrians while screeching joyously, then shooting up into the trees to shower pale pink petals in swirling eddies over the grass.
Very beautiful. Nearly the first green I've seen this Spring. The Acacia trees on my block are already blooming, however, and the pale jadeite poof-clusters have opened the allergy season.
They smell faintly like anise.
Parrots, by the way, are not native to the city. But they are thriving most marvelously. That itself does not indicate climate change, but seeing a rain-storm of bright green bodies in the tall bare trees in the centre of the park strongly suggests that they will prosper, and early blooming trees themselves indicate that we're no longer getting the weather we used to have.
The Cherry Headed Conures were first documented on Telegraph Hill well over a decade ago. There are now at least three large flocks of them in the city, and regularly the noise of parrots flying overhead marks their transit across the hills.
I've never seen them so low, or so close-by. Several times they brushed my hair while flying today, and I had to duck aside at least once. There must be something in those blossoms; it can't just be the flower sugars.
* * * * *
So, how's that arctic convergence or polar vortex or whatever it is working out for you lot on the other side of the continent? Wanna borrow some of Australia's record heat-wave yet?
IN OTHER NEWS
The Chinatown granny who picks up her eight or nine year old kinswoman after school everyday showed up again at the dimsum place while I was scarfing down a choi-yiuk bao, some siumai, and a haahm sui gok.
The kid ALWAYS has the fresh shrimp cheung fan.
My heavens, that's quite an appetite.
It's a joy to watch.
Shrimp aggravate my gout.
I'm envious of the tyke.
Happy she-punk.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
We no longer have Indian Summer, by the way. Probably due to budgetary constraints. Because EVERYONE knows that Global Warming is just a myth, and unusual cold-spells, judging by the insane gibberish coming out of states far further east, conclusively prove that theories of the world warming up, along with evolution and the origin of species, are just so much hot air.
This afternoon, around tea-time...
Mobs of parrots getting drunk (or very happy indeed) on Purple Leaf Plum blossoms down at Sue Bierman park. Imagine, if you will, rowdy flights of bright green feathered delinquents swooping low over the ground, scattering pedestrians while screeching joyously, then shooting up into the trees to shower pale pink petals in swirling eddies over the grass.
Very beautiful. Nearly the first green I've seen this Spring. The Acacia trees on my block are already blooming, however, and the pale jadeite poof-clusters have opened the allergy season.
They smell faintly like anise.
Parrots, by the way, are not native to the city. But they are thriving most marvelously. That itself does not indicate climate change, but seeing a rain-storm of bright green bodies in the tall bare trees in the centre of the park strongly suggests that they will prosper, and early blooming trees themselves indicate that we're no longer getting the weather we used to have.
The Cherry Headed Conures were first documented on Telegraph Hill well over a decade ago. There are now at least three large flocks of them in the city, and regularly the noise of parrots flying overhead marks their transit across the hills.
I've never seen them so low, or so close-by. Several times they brushed my hair while flying today, and I had to duck aside at least once. There must be something in those blossoms; it can't just be the flower sugars.
* * * * *
So, how's that arctic convergence or polar vortex or whatever it is working out for you lot on the other side of the continent? Wanna borrow some of Australia's record heat-wave yet?
IN OTHER NEWS
The Chinatown granny who picks up her eight or nine year old kinswoman after school everyday showed up again at the dimsum place while I was scarfing down a choi-yiuk bao, some siumai, and a haahm sui gok.
The kid ALWAYS has the fresh shrimp cheung fan.
My heavens, that's quite an appetite.
It's a joy to watch.
Shrimp aggravate my gout.
I'm envious of the tyke.
Happy she-punk.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
DRUCQUER'S BLEND 805 AND CULTIVATING A FINE WHITE ASH
Years ago I knew a small Chinese woman who smoked a pipe. No, it wasn't a bold statement that she rejected her parents' heritage and value system, it was merely late-teen experimentation gone horribly right. She liked it.
But she didn't flaunt it brashly around the old-folks.
She introduced me to Drucquer & Sons most stellar product: Blend 805.
Drucquers, in that day and age, still did personalized blends for its customers, but the selection of standard mixtures that they made was excellent. Robert Rex had bought the store from Maurice Drucquer a few years before I started working there, and knew his tobacco inside and out. Much like today he knows wine; he's growing grapes somewhere in the foothills, east of here.
THE FULL ENGLISH MIXTURE
Blend 805 was fifty percent Latakia, twenty five percent Turkish ('Djubec'), and the remainder a balance of three different blending Virginias which are now entirely unavailable. Drucquers hasn't existed for two decades, and the proportions 50 - 25 - 25 are fairly standard, so this isn't a great trade secret being incautiously revealed. Besides which, the staff often informed customers of the proportions of Latakia and Turkish.
[I really wish I remembered more about those Virginias!]
If you liked the Balkan Sobranie Smoking Mixture or Dunhill 965, or even Dunhill Standard Mixture, Rattray's Black Mallory, or several of the oddballs that have long since been discontinued from small British companies, you would like Blend 805. Possibly to the exclusion of anything else.
It was the Virginias, you see. Just the right flavor-spectrum and strength to play well in so heady a barnyard.
The small Chinese woman mentioned earlier had started working at Drucquers while she was in college. By the time I got a job there, she knew more about pipes and tobacco than nearly than any other person. And she had excellent taste, a discerning palate, and extremely high standards.
I will gladly admit that working with her was an education, which, so many years later, I still appreciate.
She smoked 805. Rarely anything else.
It was from her that I got my distaste for aromatics, and learned to pack and smoke properly, as well as how to take care of my pipes so that they remained sweet and clean.
We lost touch during the nineties. No, I shall not mention her name, as there is reason to believe that she is a very private person, and would not wish a spotlight.
But no doubt her taste is still excellent, and her standards as high as ever.
She'd probably be somewhat shocked -- startled, at the very least -- to find out that nowadays I smoke mostly Virginias, VaPers, and flakes. But she always suspected me of strange vices anyway, so it might not be too big a surprise.
Still, in retrospect, Blend 805 was truly one of the very best mixtures on the planet, and it is sad that it can no longer be found. I still have some left, sealed for thirty years. Probably aged nearly beyond recognition, but never-the-less very likely wonderful; a Levantine haze.
Until three years ago my own blending experiments veered between medium English -- like Drucquer's Red Lion, and some of the milder Rattray's Scots mixtures -- and full English, which would be represented by 805, Trafalgar, Levant Drucquers) and the Dunhills already mentioned. Plus, of course, Balkan Sobranie, which went out of production in the early nineties.
[The new Balkan Sobranie, made for Arango by Germain and Son in the Channel Islands, is not the same, not quite. Their product is thinner, stringier, and wetter, and I suspect that the exact blending leaves once used can no longer be found. Plus the recipe they are using may be one of the later Gallagher modifications. Still, whenever I find it, I buy it, as I have a great fondness for it. It brings back memories, because in many ways it is somewhat close.
The nose tingles awake in recollection, the mind replays the past.]
Since 2011 my blending has been variations on the VaPer (Virginias plus Perique) theme; some of the results have been extraordinarily enjoyable. The mind required for such products is different, as is the pleasure of smoking them. They're very old-fashioned. Strong tea, books, throw rugs, and long walks across the blasted heath in foul weather, that last being represented in San Francisco by the urban densities of Nob Hill, Chinatown, and Russian Hill. In lieu of scones and clotted cream afterwards, Hong Kong style milk-tea and red bean pastries or charsiu turnovers.
Like Balkan Sobranie, I am the same as I was, but not the same.
I've changed. There's a possibility that I am more mature.
I don't miss Berkeley; the place has become a priggish hell-hole. But I miss some of the people I got to know through the tobacconist on University Avenue there, as well as their insights. Most particularly do I miss a small Chinese woman who smoked a pipe and had high standards. She was a formative influence; I still read the books she recommended.
Please note: It took slightly less than one pipe-full to write this essay.
Afterwards, I stirred up the ash to coat the inside of the bowl.
Which promotes an even cake formation.
As well as drying.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
But she didn't flaunt it brashly around the old-folks.
She introduced me to Drucquer & Sons most stellar product: Blend 805.
Drucquers, in that day and age, still did personalized blends for its customers, but the selection of standard mixtures that they made was excellent. Robert Rex had bought the store from Maurice Drucquer a few years before I started working there, and knew his tobacco inside and out. Much like today he knows wine; he's growing grapes somewhere in the foothills, east of here.
THE FULL ENGLISH MIXTURE
Blend 805 was fifty percent Latakia, twenty five percent Turkish ('Djubec'), and the remainder a balance of three different blending Virginias which are now entirely unavailable. Drucquers hasn't existed for two decades, and the proportions 50 - 25 - 25 are fairly standard, so this isn't a great trade secret being incautiously revealed. Besides which, the staff often informed customers of the proportions of Latakia and Turkish.
[I really wish I remembered more about those Virginias!]
If you liked the Balkan Sobranie Smoking Mixture or Dunhill 965, or even Dunhill Standard Mixture, Rattray's Black Mallory, or several of the oddballs that have long since been discontinued from small British companies, you would like Blend 805. Possibly to the exclusion of anything else.
It was the Virginias, you see. Just the right flavor-spectrum and strength to play well in so heady a barnyard.
The small Chinese woman mentioned earlier had started working at Drucquers while she was in college. By the time I got a job there, she knew more about pipes and tobacco than nearly than any other person. And she had excellent taste, a discerning palate, and extremely high standards.
I will gladly admit that working with her was an education, which, so many years later, I still appreciate.
She smoked 805. Rarely anything else.
It was from her that I got my distaste for aromatics, and learned to pack and smoke properly, as well as how to take care of my pipes so that they remained sweet and clean.
We lost touch during the nineties. No, I shall not mention her name, as there is reason to believe that she is a very private person, and would not wish a spotlight.
But no doubt her taste is still excellent, and her standards as high as ever.
She'd probably be somewhat shocked -- startled, at the very least -- to find out that nowadays I smoke mostly Virginias, VaPers, and flakes. But she always suspected me of strange vices anyway, so it might not be too big a surprise.
Still, in retrospect, Blend 805 was truly one of the very best mixtures on the planet, and it is sad that it can no longer be found. I still have some left, sealed for thirty years. Probably aged nearly beyond recognition, but never-the-less very likely wonderful; a Levantine haze.
Until three years ago my own blending experiments veered between medium English -- like Drucquer's Red Lion, and some of the milder Rattray's Scots mixtures -- and full English, which would be represented by 805, Trafalgar, Levant Drucquers) and the Dunhills already mentioned. Plus, of course, Balkan Sobranie, which went out of production in the early nineties.
[The new Balkan Sobranie, made for Arango by Germain and Son in the Channel Islands, is not the same, not quite. Their product is thinner, stringier, and wetter, and I suspect that the exact blending leaves once used can no longer be found. Plus the recipe they are using may be one of the later Gallagher modifications. Still, whenever I find it, I buy it, as I have a great fondness for it. It brings back memories, because in many ways it is somewhat close.
The nose tingles awake in recollection, the mind replays the past.]
Since 2011 my blending has been variations on the VaPer (Virginias plus Perique) theme; some of the results have been extraordinarily enjoyable. The mind required for such products is different, as is the pleasure of smoking them. They're very old-fashioned. Strong tea, books, throw rugs, and long walks across the blasted heath in foul weather, that last being represented in San Francisco by the urban densities of Nob Hill, Chinatown, and Russian Hill. In lieu of scones and clotted cream afterwards, Hong Kong style milk-tea and red bean pastries or charsiu turnovers.
Like Balkan Sobranie, I am the same as I was, but not the same.
I've changed. There's a possibility that I am more mature.
I don't miss Berkeley; the place has become a priggish hell-hole. But I miss some of the people I got to know through the tobacconist on University Avenue there, as well as their insights. Most particularly do I miss a small Chinese woman who smoked a pipe and had high standards. She was a formative influence; I still read the books she recommended.
Please note: It took slightly less than one pipe-full to write this essay.
Afterwards, I stirred up the ash to coat the inside of the bowl.
Which promotes an even cake formation.
As well as drying.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, February 03, 2014
THE SILENCE OF THE NERDS
Someone asked me how much of the game I watched. The only part of it that I saw was Queen Latifah singing America the Beautiful with a bunch of pink-faced teenagers, after which I fled.
No, it wasn't her singing. And yes, it's a sappy song.
It rained yesterday, and consequently there were far better things to do than sit inside watching a foregone conclusion. Denver, as everyone now knows, passed around a bong with some recently legalized green stuff before coming out for the anthem -- a ritual about communing with nature and our great warrior spirit ancestors, or something -- and romped on to total defeat. Which, naturally, I found out from Facebook mere moments ago.
I've never played football. American football. I've been forced to play soccer, but that was when I was much younger. The one sport which I truly and vividly remember is field-hockey.
Field-hockey is epic.
FIELD HOCKEY
As I understand it, the males from two or three high-school classes are given curved pieces of wood, along with a small wooden ball, and told go get sweaty over at the furthest end of the sportsfields, where they won't bother the girls doing calisthenics in teeshirts and bloomers, who are very closely supervised. Hedged-in, like prisoners.
The boys aren't supervised; it is assumed that they will behave.
As long as they are nowhere near the girls.
They'll be energetic.
So. Forty or more teenage boys and wooden implements.
A big soggy expanse of grass.
Mayhem.
I have avoided team-sports ever since.
Actually, all sports.
Yesterday I got back to San Francisco by late afternoon (tea-time), and had a cup of tea. The apartment was completely empty except for myself, as my apartment mate was spending all weekend with her boyfriend; she didn't return till around ten o'clock.
Around dinner time I took a long walk with a pipe-full of pressed Virginias, then had some more tea, and a cookie.
Not once did I turn on the telly.
I'm not a fan of team-sports. And the whole idea of spending several hours watching a game with a crowd is quite unappealing. Yowling and hooting in concert with others has precisely nothing to offer.
I'm not good with crowds; I interact best one on one.
Cheerful discussions, and sparks of humour.
Occasionally, howling at the moon.
Actually, the howling part is rare. There has been no howling in years.
Tandem howling takes a person with just the right attitude.
One must be selective about one's co-howler.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
No, it wasn't her singing. And yes, it's a sappy song.
It rained yesterday, and consequently there were far better things to do than sit inside watching a foregone conclusion. Denver, as everyone now knows, passed around a bong with some recently legalized green stuff before coming out for the anthem -- a ritual about communing with nature and our great warrior spirit ancestors, or something -- and romped on to total defeat. Which, naturally, I found out from Facebook mere moments ago.
I've never played football. American football. I've been forced to play soccer, but that was when I was much younger. The one sport which I truly and vividly remember is field-hockey.
Field-hockey is epic.
FIELD HOCKEY
As I understand it, the males from two or three high-school classes are given curved pieces of wood, along with a small wooden ball, and told go get sweaty over at the furthest end of the sportsfields, where they won't bother the girls doing calisthenics in teeshirts and bloomers, who are very closely supervised. Hedged-in, like prisoners.
The boys aren't supervised; it is assumed that they will behave.
As long as they are nowhere near the girls.
They'll be energetic.
So. Forty or more teenage boys and wooden implements.
A big soggy expanse of grass.
Mayhem.
I have avoided team-sports ever since.
Actually, all sports.
Yesterday I got back to San Francisco by late afternoon (tea-time), and had a cup of tea. The apartment was completely empty except for myself, as my apartment mate was spending all weekend with her boyfriend; she didn't return till around ten o'clock.
Around dinner time I took a long walk with a pipe-full of pressed Virginias, then had some more tea, and a cookie.
Not once did I turn on the telly.
I'm not a fan of team-sports. And the whole idea of spending several hours watching a game with a crowd is quite unappealing. Yowling and hooting in concert with others has precisely nothing to offer.
I'm not good with crowds; I interact best one on one.
Cheerful discussions, and sparks of humour.
Occasionally, howling at the moon.
Actually, the howling part is rare. There has been no howling in years.
Tandem howling takes a person with just the right attitude.
One must be selective about one's co-howler.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Sunday, February 02, 2014
INSTEAD OF WATCHING FOOTBALL
There's nothing wrong with me, I just don't like sports. No, it's not some weird Eury anti-American thing, it's just that beefy men wearing spandex don't roil my kettle, no matter the hue of their tastefully tight booty-garb.
And I cannot understand what the rest of you see in them.
Given a choice between watching the Superbowl and playing with a discarded Barbie doll, I would unhesitatingly choose the doll.
"What's that, headless Barbie, you really like the smell of my manly tobacco?
"Why yes, strange perverted adult, it reminds me of Old Spice!"
"You have excellent taste, little biologically inaccurate plastic figurine. Here, let me put you up on the fifth shelf, next to the tins of Brown Clunee and Hall O'The Wynd, which are both very fine aged Virginia tobacco products from Rattray's, manufactured in the present age by Kohlhase & Kopp in Germany. I think you'll like it there."
Then, while she inspects the finely matured flue-cured ("mmm, such restrained label art!"), I would fix myself a cup of strong tea and grab a cookie. Unlike rampaging male sports-fiends, I can trust her in the teevee room. There will be no loud F bombs with her present.
Nor jumping up and down, or screaming.
No overturned chips and dips.
Or spilled beer.
In reality, I do not have a Barbie Doll, headless or otherwise. But I do have two creepy clay and straw voodoo dolls, that hang from a peg close to the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini. A book in eight chapters of which not a single paragraph expounds upon the 'Great American Past-time'. It's on the sixth shelf of the previously referenced bookcase, above an impressive selection of pipe-tobacco in sealed tins.
The seventh shelf contains bulbous ceramic jars and two Sek Wan incense burners of identical shape but different glazes.
Plus cowrie shells and a goat.
The ceramics are one more reason to permit a Barbie Doll entry to the apartment, but NOT a rabid sportsfiend. Truth be told though, I have my doubts about Barbie. She looks too suburban and bourgeois. She probably has a Louis Vuitton purse, drools over Jimmy Choo shoes, and if she smokes at all, chains-huffs Virginia Slims. In between chewing gum to hide her addiction, because good young ladies who aim to marry prosperous business men do not smoke.
Untill after the marriage, when the stress of being pregnant with his mutant broodling finally gets to them.
I think I'd prefer a small snarky intellectual, instead of Barbie. Not, necessarily, a smoker -- though having been surrounded by tobacco products all my life that obviously isn't an issue -- but certainly not a shoe-fetishist, purse collector, Hello Kitty creepazoidette, or fashionable consumerite.
There is no beer in the apartment at all. Nor flavoured vodka.
Just the fixings for coffee, tea, and cocoa.
Quietness, peace, and warmth.
No football.
I don't think a small snarky intellectual could fit on the fifth shelf. She wouldn't be comfortable. But I'm sure I can come up with something.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
And I cannot understand what the rest of you see in them.
Given a choice between watching the Superbowl and playing with a discarded Barbie doll, I would unhesitatingly choose the doll.
"What's that, headless Barbie, you really like the smell of my manly tobacco?
"Why yes, strange perverted adult, it reminds me of Old Spice!"
"You have excellent taste, little biologically inaccurate plastic figurine. Here, let me put you up on the fifth shelf, next to the tins of Brown Clunee and Hall O'The Wynd, which are both very fine aged Virginia tobacco products from Rattray's, manufactured in the present age by Kohlhase & Kopp in Germany. I think you'll like it there."
Then, while she inspects the finely matured flue-cured ("mmm, such restrained label art!"), I would fix myself a cup of strong tea and grab a cookie. Unlike rampaging male sports-fiends, I can trust her in the teevee room. There will be no loud F bombs with her present.
Nor jumping up and down, or screaming.
No overturned chips and dips.
Or spilled beer.
In reality, I do not have a Barbie Doll, headless or otherwise. But I do have two creepy clay and straw voodoo dolls, that hang from a peg close to the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini. A book in eight chapters of which not a single paragraph expounds upon the 'Great American Past-time'. It's on the sixth shelf of the previously referenced bookcase, above an impressive selection of pipe-tobacco in sealed tins.
The seventh shelf contains bulbous ceramic jars and two Sek Wan incense burners of identical shape but different glazes.
Plus cowrie shells and a goat.
The ceramics are one more reason to permit a Barbie Doll entry to the apartment, but NOT a rabid sportsfiend. Truth be told though, I have my doubts about Barbie. She looks too suburban and bourgeois. She probably has a Louis Vuitton purse, drools over Jimmy Choo shoes, and if she smokes at all, chains-huffs Virginia Slims. In between chewing gum to hide her addiction, because good young ladies who aim to marry prosperous business men do not smoke.
Untill after the marriage, when the stress of being pregnant with his mutant broodling finally gets to them.
I think I'd prefer a small snarky intellectual, instead of Barbie. Not, necessarily, a smoker -- though having been surrounded by tobacco products all my life that obviously isn't an issue -- but certainly not a shoe-fetishist, purse collector, Hello Kitty creepazoidette, or fashionable consumerite.
There is no beer in the apartment at all. Nor flavoured vodka.
Just the fixings for coffee, tea, and cocoa.
Quietness, peace, and warmth.
No football.
I don't think a small snarky intellectual could fit on the fifth shelf. She wouldn't be comfortable. But I'm sure I can come up with something.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
WHY WEARING GLASSES IS IMPORTANT
In a discussion several days ago with a friend, we agreed that given a choice between a brainiac and a total bombe, the brainiac was by far the better choice. My friend did indicate that perhaps, for a short-time fling, the bombe would be more desirable. But it would have to be out of town, no real names, in a place you would never visit again.
The brainiac won out, hands down.
For relationship purposes, even if no children ensued, the bombe just didn't cut it. Likely to be dull after a while, and looks would fade.
A brainiac would remain far better company, and you would never be embarrassed to be seen with her. Your friends would respect you for making a wise decision, and no one would ever accuse you of trophy blonde syndrome.
Personally, I have always been of the opinion that the brainiac is by far the better choice, no matter what. But my requirements for a date include conversational ability and a personality that can stubbornly hold its own.
Also, my personal definition of a total bombe would not match the popular image.
I've always thought that Audrey Hepburn was the cat's miao, rather than Marilyn. Ingrid Bergman, instead of Pamela Anderson.
A woman who has bucket-loads of intelligence and mental activity pouring out of her face is, always, much more appealing than a train-load of breasts and bovine lowing. That's just the way it is. Same goes double for men. Even though I am not that way inclined, I find men who can articulate their opinions -- even if all they are talking about is why the twelve egg omelet is not as good as the two egg omelette times six, with the amount of smoked ham, aged cheddar cheese, and chopped chives remaining equal -- much more interesting and sociable than hunks who keep repeating "hey, what about those Seahawks?"
"Hey man, whadda team, huh!"
Given that sports-related chatter often reflects redigested opinions of televised talking heads, and team-sports are by definition probably the stupidest spectacle a thinking person can watch, a discussion about the latest game is more than likely to put me to sleep.
Given my druthers, I would love to have dinner with someone wearing spectacles whose conversation included polysyllabic words, some of which likely derived from Norman French or mediaeval Latin, and opinions which she was willing to defend.
Imagine this third and fourth party conversation:
"Why on earth is he seeing her?"
"Because she makes him think."
"What? What do you mean?"
"She's very bright."
That sounds much better than explaining that the man in question is actually a dreary old sex maniac who found a young blonde bimbo to make all of his golfing buddies jealous, and is spending a fortune on diamonds, a charm-school, and a private tutor to teach her proper diction and when to keep her mouth shut.
Obviously, the conversation above would also need to work if the genders were reversed. Her friends would have to be able to say that she appreciates his insight, and the fact that he admits it when he was wrong and she knew more about something.
This doesn't work for sports. I know nothing about sports.
Ask me about the twelve-egg omelette sometime.
The glasses are essential, in case you were wondering. The eyes have it.
Nice people have glasses.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
The brainiac won out, hands down.
For relationship purposes, even if no children ensued, the bombe just didn't cut it. Likely to be dull after a while, and looks would fade.
A brainiac would remain far better company, and you would never be embarrassed to be seen with her. Your friends would respect you for making a wise decision, and no one would ever accuse you of trophy blonde syndrome.
Personally, I have always been of the opinion that the brainiac is by far the better choice, no matter what. But my requirements for a date include conversational ability and a personality that can stubbornly hold its own.
Also, my personal definition of a total bombe would not match the popular image.
I've always thought that Audrey Hepburn was the cat's miao, rather than Marilyn. Ingrid Bergman, instead of Pamela Anderson.
A woman who has bucket-loads of intelligence and mental activity pouring out of her face is, always, much more appealing than a train-load of breasts and bovine lowing. That's just the way it is. Same goes double for men. Even though I am not that way inclined, I find men who can articulate their opinions -- even if all they are talking about is why the twelve egg omelet is not as good as the two egg omelette times six, with the amount of smoked ham, aged cheddar cheese, and chopped chives remaining equal -- much more interesting and sociable than hunks who keep repeating "hey, what about those Seahawks?"
"Hey man, whadda team, huh!"
Given that sports-related chatter often reflects redigested opinions of televised talking heads, and team-sports are by definition probably the stupidest spectacle a thinking person can watch, a discussion about the latest game is more than likely to put me to sleep.
Given my druthers, I would love to have dinner with someone wearing spectacles whose conversation included polysyllabic words, some of which likely derived from Norman French or mediaeval Latin, and opinions which she was willing to defend.
Imagine this third and fourth party conversation:
"Why on earth is he seeing her?"
"Because she makes him think."
"What? What do you mean?"
"She's very bright."
That sounds much better than explaining that the man in question is actually a dreary old sex maniac who found a young blonde bimbo to make all of his golfing buddies jealous, and is spending a fortune on diamonds, a charm-school, and a private tutor to teach her proper diction and when to keep her mouth shut.
Obviously, the conversation above would also need to work if the genders were reversed. Her friends would have to be able to say that she appreciates his insight, and the fact that he admits it when he was wrong and she knew more about something.
This doesn't work for sports. I know nothing about sports.
Ask me about the twelve-egg omelette sometime.
The glasses are essential, in case you were wondering. The eyes have it.
Nice people have glasses.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, February 01, 2014
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST!
When I first started this blog it was meant primarily as a link-dump for the stuff I liked to read myself. I had begun corresponding with a rabbi in New York, and in researching his material, found several blogs that I ended up visiting regularly. Among the very first were the Gadol Hador, Mar Gavriel, and Dovbear. You will note that only one of them has a link; the other two went away when both writers suffered crises of communication. All three gentlemen are intensely literate.
Very soon afterwards I discovered Steg, ekvetcher, and Tzipporah, who were also exceptionally and enjoyably readable.
Steg has graduated to other things -- and he may have translated the Song of Songs (which is Solomon's) into Klingon by now -- ekvetcher occasionally posts interesting stuff (quite recently he had a two-parter about a gassy World War One battle: Osowiec I and Osowiec II), and Midianite Manna (Tzipporah) seems to be experiencing a dry-spell that has lasted nine months and counting.
Other blogs and links got added gradually, as I discovered them, or found fascinating tidbits.
My own posts in the early years were mostly about Judaic matters, leavened with Dutch subjects, food, tobacco, South-East Asia, and herring, plus ranting, vociferating, and mental calisthenics.
At the time I had no idea that anyone read my stuff, other than a few treasured correspondents and commenters.
Apparently they did. Still do.
A few years ago I discovered 'blog stats'. Which tell me how many visitors come here, what posts they read, and what they were looking for.
And, crucially, where they are from.
Fascinating!
My readers consist of foodies, talmudists, sporstfiends, and pornofans. That last category always leaves disappointed, because while I will sometimes title my posts in a way that suggests much, I never deliver any of it. There has not been a single post here, out of three thousand plus, that satisfies a depraved soul or a filthy beast.
Not even the two essays about herring.
[I'm not sorry, and I'm not apologizing.]
The all-time most-visited posts at this point paint a fairly good portrait of the average reader.
He or she likes to eat, and wants to know how to cook certain things, or at least where they can be found. One or two of them are intensely curious people, and a minority smokes a pipe.
They live all over the world. Many are in Asia, though the largest number are in the United States and Europe. Some of them vote.
The accidental readers who discovered my more political essays are often angry and illiterate (and Dutch), but they don't visit me often.
I suspect that most visitors are between twenty and fifty years old, but there is no way of telling. I'm just guessing that several of them are rather like myself: male, youngish middle-aged, semi-solitary, and collectors of books as well as perhaps pottery or pipes.
And, forgive the terms, mildly perverse.
Full of life, if you prefer.
ALL TIME MOST POPULAR POSTS
Top ten.
1. HO SI FAT CHOI 好事發財 DRIED OYSTERS WITH BLACK MOSS
Feb 1, 2011.
Describes a very popular Cantonese new-year and special occasion preparation that combines dried oyster, which has an intense seafood saveur, with a type of hair-like plant of no nutritional use whatsoever. It's a very good dish, and there is no reason why you couldn't eat it throughout the year. Especially if you substitute fake hair-vegetable instead; the real stuff may have deleterious health effects.
I'm very fond of dried oysters, by the way.
2. SEA CUCUMBER - SOAKING AND BRAISING A DELICIOUS SLUG
Oct 1, 2011.
Another food item much loved by Chinese people. Which, because of its mildness and ability to absorb flavours, is well worth your time. Pairs nicely with meat, and provides a pleasing textural quality.
3. HONG KONG ROAST GOOSE IN SHAM TSENG
Oct 5, 2011.
Most readers of this particular post are tourists from Malaysia heading to Hong Kong, and doing the necessary research on famous local food. Roast goose is very much a Hong Kong thing, and three restaurants are listed here, including the most famous one of all, Yung Kee (鏞記酒家) in Central (中環). The other two are located out in Deep Well (深井) in the New Territories (新界).
If you want to make Cantonese Roast Goose at home, here's a recipe: 燒鵝.
4. DIM SUM: KINDS, NAMES, PRONUNCIATION, DESCRIPTION
Mar 28, 2012.
You can't find all of these items in the Bay Area. But they are available in Hong Kong. Most of them, however, especially the more common and beloved ones, are offered at several places in our city. There's a short list of good tea houses in this post: dim sum restaurants in San Francisco.
If you don't eat dim sum several times a month, your life is too grim. Something is missing.
5. CHINESE NEW YEAR - LUCKY WISHES, LUCKY FOODS
Jan 30, 2011.
Precisely what it says. Good stuff to eat, much of which is named propitiously. The article is more about terminology than food, however, and no actual recipes are provided.
You'll just have to wing it.
Ask an auntie.
6. HAM SAP LO - THE CANTONESE PERVERT
Apr 27, 2011.
Well, what does that term mean? If you're not Cantonese, you've heard it used way before you knew what it actually was.
It's a good thing to know.
7. THIS SHOP DOES NOT RECEIVE THE JAPANESE, THE PHILIPPINES, THE VIETNAMESE OR DOG
Mar 2, 2013.
Mr. Wang in Peking puts a sign in his restaurant window: 本店不接待日本人，菲律宾人，越南人，和狗。
Many Philippinos are aghast.
How sad.
8. THE TOBACCO THAT HELLO KITTY WOULD SMOKE
Aug 12, 2012.
Some pipe tobaccos indicate that the smoker has questionable values, and should not be allowed anywhere near your relatives.
Not me, I'm totally safe.
9. OVERWHELMINGLY PUTRID
May 18, 2011.
Some pipe tobaccos are just vile.
10. DISAPPEARING RESTAURANTS ON STOCKTON STREET IN SAN FRANCISCO
Nov 7, 2011.
The neighborhood is changing. Some of your favourite places to eat are gone now, and there's a big hole in the ground where four of them used to be.
But they are still around.
AFTER WORD
I no longer write much about Talmud-Torah, seeing as others who are equally agnosto-skeptical but come from a more suitable background for that subject do so much better. And I haven't said a lot about the Dutch in recent times; now that the wars are winding down, and maybe they've finally started understanding that they really aren't much better than us, pointing out their flaws has lost its charm. Besides, translating their great poets is not easy, much gets lost.
Their prose, ditto.
Most of the posts listed above are about food.
Predictable, given where I live.
Perhaps it's a niche.
In any case, I write about things that interest me, and you will note that this blog is very San-Fran referentialist.
I would probably describe it as "Samuel Pepys visits SF Chinatown", except that Samuel Pepys was monumentally boring and I cannot possibly meet that high standard.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Very soon afterwards I discovered Steg, ekvetcher, and Tzipporah, who were also exceptionally and enjoyably readable.
Steg has graduated to other things -- and he may have translated the Song of Songs (which is Solomon's) into Klingon by now -- ekvetcher occasionally posts interesting stuff (quite recently he had a two-parter about a gassy World War One battle: Osowiec I and Osowiec II), and Midianite Manna (Tzipporah) seems to be experiencing a dry-spell that has lasted nine months and counting.
Other blogs and links got added gradually, as I discovered them, or found fascinating tidbits.
My own posts in the early years were mostly about Judaic matters, leavened with Dutch subjects, food, tobacco, South-East Asia, and herring, plus ranting, vociferating, and mental calisthenics.
At the time I had no idea that anyone read my stuff, other than a few treasured correspondents and commenters.
Apparently they did. Still do.
A few years ago I discovered 'blog stats'. Which tell me how many visitors come here, what posts they read, and what they were looking for.
And, crucially, where they are from.
Fascinating!
My readers consist of foodies, talmudists, sporstfiends, and pornofans. That last category always leaves disappointed, because while I will sometimes title my posts in a way that suggests much, I never deliver any of it. There has not been a single post here, out of three thousand plus, that satisfies a depraved soul or a filthy beast.
Not even the two essays about herring.
[I'm not sorry, and I'm not apologizing.]
The all-time most-visited posts at this point paint a fairly good portrait of the average reader.
He or she likes to eat, and wants to know how to cook certain things, or at least where they can be found. One or two of them are intensely curious people, and a minority smokes a pipe.
They live all over the world. Many are in Asia, though the largest number are in the United States and Europe. Some of them vote.
The accidental readers who discovered my more political essays are often angry and illiterate (and Dutch), but they don't visit me often.
I suspect that most visitors are between twenty and fifty years old, but there is no way of telling. I'm just guessing that several of them are rather like myself: male, youngish middle-aged, semi-solitary, and collectors of books as well as perhaps pottery or pipes.
And, forgive the terms, mildly perverse.
Full of life, if you prefer.
ALL TIME MOST POPULAR POSTS
Top ten.
1. HO SI FAT CHOI 好事發財 DRIED OYSTERS WITH BLACK MOSS
Feb 1, 2011.
Describes a very popular Cantonese new-year and special occasion preparation that combines dried oyster, which has an intense seafood saveur, with a type of hair-like plant of no nutritional use whatsoever. It's a very good dish, and there is no reason why you couldn't eat it throughout the year. Especially if you substitute fake hair-vegetable instead; the real stuff may have deleterious health effects.
I'm very fond of dried oysters, by the way.
2. SEA CUCUMBER - SOAKING AND BRAISING A DELICIOUS SLUG
Oct 1, 2011.
Another food item much loved by Chinese people. Which, because of its mildness and ability to absorb flavours, is well worth your time. Pairs nicely with meat, and provides a pleasing textural quality.
3. HONG KONG ROAST GOOSE IN SHAM TSENG
Oct 5, 2011.
Most readers of this particular post are tourists from Malaysia heading to Hong Kong, and doing the necessary research on famous local food. Roast goose is very much a Hong Kong thing, and three restaurants are listed here, including the most famous one of all, Yung Kee (鏞記酒家) in Central (中環). The other two are located out in Deep Well (深井) in the New Territories (新界).
If you want to make Cantonese Roast Goose at home, here's a recipe: 燒鵝.
4. DIM SUM: KINDS, NAMES, PRONUNCIATION, DESCRIPTION
Mar 28, 2012.
You can't find all of these items in the Bay Area. But they are available in Hong Kong. Most of them, however, especially the more common and beloved ones, are offered at several places in our city. There's a short list of good tea houses in this post: dim sum restaurants in San Francisco.
If you don't eat dim sum several times a month, your life is too grim. Something is missing.
5. CHINESE NEW YEAR - LUCKY WISHES, LUCKY FOODS
Jan 30, 2011.
Precisely what it says. Good stuff to eat, much of which is named propitiously. The article is more about terminology than food, however, and no actual recipes are provided.
You'll just have to wing it.
Ask an auntie.
6. HAM SAP LO - THE CANTONESE PERVERT
Apr 27, 2011.
Well, what does that term mean? If you're not Cantonese, you've heard it used way before you knew what it actually was.
It's a good thing to know.
7. THIS SHOP DOES NOT RECEIVE THE JAPANESE, THE PHILIPPINES, THE VIETNAMESE OR DOG
Mar 2, 2013.
Mr. Wang in Peking puts a sign in his restaurant window: 本店不接待日本人，菲律宾人，越南人，和狗。
Many Philippinos are aghast.
How sad.
8. THE TOBACCO THAT HELLO KITTY WOULD SMOKE
Aug 12, 2012.
Some pipe tobaccos indicate that the smoker has questionable values, and should not be allowed anywhere near your relatives.
Not me, I'm totally safe.
9. OVERWHELMINGLY PUTRID
May 18, 2011.
Some pipe tobaccos are just vile.
10. DISAPPEARING RESTAURANTS ON STOCKTON STREET IN SAN FRANCISCO
Nov 7, 2011.
The neighborhood is changing. Some of your favourite places to eat are gone now, and there's a big hole in the ground where four of them used to be.
But they are still around.
AFTER WORD
I no longer write much about Talmud-Torah, seeing as others who are equally agnosto-skeptical but come from a more suitable background for that subject do so much better. And I haven't said a lot about the Dutch in recent times; now that the wars are winding down, and maybe they've finally started understanding that they really aren't much better than us, pointing out their flaws has lost its charm. Besides, translating their great poets is not easy, much gets lost.
Their prose, ditto.
Most of the posts listed above are about food.
Predictable, given where I live.
Perhaps it's a niche.
In any case, I write about things that interest me, and you will note that this blog is very San-Fran referentialist.
I would probably describe it as "Samuel Pepys visits SF Chinatown", except that Samuel Pepys was monumentally boring and I cannot possibly meet that high standard.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Friday, January 31, 2014
ASIAN WOMAN EAT
Yesterday, a long-time reader sent me the following message:
"Thought you would get a kick out of this. Apparently, paying to watch a pretty Asian woman eat with gusto is quite the trend in Korea:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/29/world/asia/korea-eating-room/index.html?hpt=hp_c3 "
Well now! I too could easily find myself paying to see a pretty Asian woman eat. It sounds delightful!
I had noticed mention of that subject elsewhere, but this time I decided to actually read about it.
Koreans hate eating alone.
Quote:
"For Koreans, eating is an extremely social, communal activity, which is why even the Korean word 'family' means 'those who eat together,'" says Professor Sung-hee Park of Ewha University's Division of Media Studies. "
End quote.
The two dining parameters for human society are the urge to eat in a group -- our early Cro-Magnon ancestors became social animals because hunting is a co-operative enterprise, which inevitably must result in a division of food -- and the urge to scream: "mine, all mine, dammit, get yer own!"
All societies exist somewhere between these two extremes.
Some cultures stress the communal aspect much more than others.
When you share, greater variety is possible on the table.
Plus there's a sense of commonality.
Safety and good cheer.
The single male (the "rogue elephant") eats alone, though not usually by choice. But the urge to do so gregariously probably explains the plethora of public dining options in this city; we are very much a bachelor (and spinster) society.
Were he to have company, there's a good chance the single male would eat more privately. And actually take up cooking. Again.
Not sure about the single female. It's been far too long since I was near the type, so I couldn't possibly state any conclusion about them.
No observational data.
Perhaps I need binoculars.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
"Thought you would get a kick out of this. Apparently, paying to watch a pretty Asian woman eat with gusto is quite the trend in Korea:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/29/world/asia/korea-eating-room/index.html?hpt=hp_c3 "
Well now! I too could easily find myself paying to see a pretty Asian woman eat. It sounds delightful!
I had noticed mention of that subject elsewhere, but this time I decided to actually read about it.
Koreans hate eating alone.
Quote:
"For Koreans, eating is an extremely social, communal activity, which is why even the Korean word 'family' means 'those who eat together,'" says Professor Sung-hee Park of Ewha University's Division of Media Studies. "
End quote.
The two dining parameters for human society are the urge to eat in a group -- our early Cro-Magnon ancestors became social animals because hunting is a co-operative enterprise, which inevitably must result in a division of food -- and the urge to scream: "mine, all mine, dammit, get yer own!"
All societies exist somewhere between these two extremes.
Some cultures stress the communal aspect much more than others.
When you share, greater variety is possible on the table.
Plus there's a sense of commonality.
Safety and good cheer.
The single male (the "rogue elephant") eats alone, though not usually by choice. But the urge to do so gregariously probably explains the plethora of public dining options in this city; we are very much a bachelor (and spinster) society.
Were he to have company, there's a good chance the single male would eat more privately. And actually take up cooking. Again.
Not sure about the single female. It's been far too long since I was near the type, so I couldn't possibly state any conclusion about them.
No observational data.
Perhaps I need binoculars.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
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