IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY

My apartment mate stayed home yesterday, because after three weeks of dealing with her brother's passing, arranging the funeral, taking care of loose ends, family business, other emotionally draining stuff, as well as his grieving friends, she needs a few mental health days. She went out to have burgers with another brother and his wife, who had been speaking to a lawyer. Of course I wasn't included because I never am.
I am no one's actual family. Just a socially lopsided person.
This is standard, it's been that way for a long time.
It still affects me but I'm used to it.

So I went out to do some errands, and after visiting my bank, and the pharmacy for my refills, headed into a Vietnamese sandwich joint in Chinatown. Hadn't been there in a while. Eating out rather than always preparing food at home is my substitute for actually eating with others.

[Sometimes dining with groups of other people, while enjoyable on one level, leaves me feeling out of place and awkward. I don't deal very well with being a social butterfly. But I do miss it.]

It's something that started developing at my last office job in downtown, and has simply gotten more extreme since then.

While I was happily devouring my lunch and enjoying strong coffee with condensed milk (no ice), at various times couples or groups of white tourists entered, looked at the menu above the counter, and left without buying anything. Which irritated me. What the heck, dudes, our food isn't good enough for y'all? Too strange? Surely they have Vietnamese sandwich shops in Bun Le Fouck, Louisiana and Mudhole, Mississippi? Were you expecting something else? The name of the place tells you exactly what you'll find, dammit!
You wanted nuggets and fries perhaps?


This is also very common at all the Chinatown bakeries, because, apparently, flaky pastries and lovely cakes are quite utterly unknown to inhabitants of the primitive hinterland, where they only have Van De Kamps and Entenmans, poor sods.


Maybe it was the total absence of slop coffee.
They'd really be S.O.L. in North Beach.

Travel isn't good for Americans.
It confuses them so.


No ketchup.



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A CIVILIZED LUXURY

A friend's Facebook post for some reason which escapes me now reminded me of the old-style under the bed Chinese urine bottle. Several of which were on a shelf in a tourist shop in Chinatown, where the sales girl had no idea what they were and haphazardly guessed that they were some kind of teapot. I am charmed by the idea of a Midwestern family buying one of those for that purpose. Somewhat horrified too, but still charmed. It's a priceless artifact.
And so exotic!

POT PAINTED FROM A MUSEUM PIECE

Original photo taken by John Hill 2014

You will notice that the example above has a celadon glaze (青瓷 'cheng chi'; 青瓷琉璃 'cheng chi lau lei'). So it was fired at least at 1,260 °C (2,300 °F), probably somewhat higher. Iron oxide, reducing atmosphere kiln.

I've never actually seen the one in my illustration above (it's in a museum), and the ones in the Chinatown shop were simply coarse pottery, far more recently made. Exactly the type that occured in one short scene in a Hong Kong movie which I cannot remember.
But this version looks more elegant.

Still, what's obvious is that people have needed to get up in the middle of the night to obey nature's call for ages, and the central heating might be out, or there are ghosts between here and the loo, or the pressure is just too great ......

Chamber pots are a thing of the past in most of the developed world.
Perhaps not England, where the heating is alway out.
And the entire place is a haunted house.


Probably a result of all that tea.
It makes things happen.



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NOT EPIC, POSSIBLY DERIVATIVE

The list below was shamelessly stolen from the Facebook page of Writing About Writing, which I rather enthusiastically recommend. And in that vein, let me blurb my own blog, which upon reflection I only now realize is NOT enchanting, heart warming, moving, or heart rending. It's probably thoughtful, as well as provocative, spare and taut.
Not disturbing enough. Sadly, vintage from the pen of a master.

Quite possibly I need way more caffeine when I write this crap.



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A BRILLIANT VISION

There are plans to create an exclusive private club in the downtown area where the well-heeled can enjoy exquisite delicacies safely insulated from the common people. In an area which, because of several public protests over the decades, is well-known to everyone, and easily stormed by the peasants armed with pitchforks and torches. High enough above street level that simply pushing them over the parapet with a rope around their necks will serve in lieu of gibbets.

Sho restaurant, in Salesforce Park.

The artists rendering of what it looks like shows easy access by a mob, zero defensible positions, and so much plate glass that it will be a tempting target. This blogger, naturally, welcomes isolating the super wealthy in a central target area that they cannot escape.

A members-only Sky Lounge on a series of connected rooftops half a dozen stories or so above homeless encampments and drug dealers, accessible by public transit. Brilliant.


No hoi polloi allowed!


Sadly, while the revolution may indeed be televised, viewer access will probably only be by special subscription. The enhanced package, with added features and films at a higher price. Available if you take advantage of one time offers sold only five times a year when key numbers have to be reached. Like a boxing match in Vegas.

Best viewed on a wide screen teevee. Have pizza delivered, and fix some popcorn.



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THE FUSSY DETAILS

Spent most of today finishing up a collection of about thirty pipes that had come in during the last week. The pipesmoker to whom they had belonged had taken very good care of them, so the bowls hardly needed any work. And he had been a gently clenching sort, so other than some oxidation the stems were is excellent shape. So I was at the buffing wheel most of the day, having soaked the stems yesterday and the day before. Some of the pipes were lovely pieces. Unique. I have no idea what kind of tobacco he had smoked.

While doing that, I enjoyed three bowls of tobacco in my own pipes. Almost zen-like state.
I'm in the zone, far out, like wow.

When I left the house an hour ago for an after dinner smoke, I could see across the street a Cantonese woman (fully dressed) in the same room as a nearly naked white guy.
Who is, I believe, significant. But needs to put some pants on.
That was not as zen-like state inducing.
I wasn't in the zone.


Briar, if not handled in a long time also oxidizes, and has a surface dullness. A touch-up with the buffer brings it back to life. His widow had left them in bubblewrap baggies, because he had loved them, and after several years finally decided to let go. Now other pipe smokers will be able to enjoy them, as they deserve to be. Some of the pipes I've cleaned up over the years have been so thoroughly abused that bringing them back is like saving the damned and there have been a few where I was tempted to call a priest so we could have an exorcism. A few of those are still being "enjoyed" by the original owners.

They often look dull and sodden. They need a rest.

Boys, your pipes are NOT supposed to be a toxic waste dump on a stalk sticking out of your face. Use pipe cleaners. Often. Rotate your smokers regularly so that they are fresh the next time you fill them. Avoid aromatics; decent tobacco does not smell like a French brothel, and surely you understand that cherry-watermelon-vanilla is not natural but unclean additions.
If you smoke English / Balkan blends, think in terms of a three or four days minimum airing after each smoke. Viginias and Virginia Periques leave less noticeable funk, but evenso, two or three days rest is good for the briar.

[This means that if you are a regular smoker you may need at least a dozen pipes. I have many more than that. So do many other pipe smokers. There's always one more that you didn't know you needed.]


Most of today's pipes glowed when I was finished.
My own pipes, of course, are spotless.
Because I'm neurotic.



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NEEDS PARMESAN!

Somewhere in this great country someone has a canopener which is the only kitchen tool that they know how to use. They probably wield it with great skill. And are proud of their ability. Creativity. Endurance. Brilliant good taste.

Fusion cuisine, as they see it, is a gift.

Also two words they can't spell.
Few-shon kweeseen.
Lordelpus.


To be honest, I can imagine a college kid having this for breakfast.


Please note: I stole this picture from the internet. I do not have the fixings for 'weenolis' in the house. But it's someone's favourite meal, more power to them.
They lead an exciting active life.



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CAFFEINE AND AN UPPED DANDER

According to my apartment mate, who came home after a funeral, our landlady's husband returned from the hospital with his lower leg in a plaster cast, an improved ability to swear, and desperate for coffee. So he's well on the way to recovery. No, I have no idea what caused this. He's older than I am, and, apparently, leads an interesting secret life.
I'm imagining athletic capering.

It is highly likely that as soon as he was able he was out in the airwell puffing on a ciggie. With that desperately needed cup of Java.

The other thing that comes to mind is that as a white dude he very likely doesn't know beans about swearing, cussing, or any type of really blistering language. Our landlady as well as my apartment mate are of Toishanese stock. And have a 'vocabulary'. At least, hereditarily they should have a 'vocabulary', although I had to explain to my apartment mate a while back what "ma ge hai" actually meant.

[Ma ge hai: think of it as punctuation which you should never use even though I've met several old fellows who can't stop punctuating everything they say with it and consequently blistering the nearest painted surfaces as fuses blow milk curdles glasses shatter and my virgin ears start oozing pus. Period, comma, semicolon, exclamation mark.]


Both times when I came home from the hospital I needed coffee and a smoke. One cannot smoke in a hospital setting, and the coffee is better outside the ICU.

I keep having this vision of making an escape the next time, while still hooked up to a drip device, so that I can enjoy the pipe and tobacco I cunningly hid in my pajamas.

There's an alleyway across from the hospital which would be perfect. Except that it slopes a bit. Do hospital wheelchairs brake easily? Don't want to go rolling and shoot out onto Pacific Avenue at the far end, crashing into a Muni bus, OR embedding myself in the concrete of low-income housing development. At least not before I've had a good smoke.

On the other hand, I can also imagine a petite nursey-wursey chasing after me demanding that I stop rolling and smoking forthwith ma ge hai.

Damn' these stubborn old kwailo! That wheelchair is expensive!
And we've lost several IV stands to smokers this week!

[An IV stand, depending on supplier, can range from $56.00 to $154.00. Same product, different prices. A really cheap one is $22.00, but it isn't easily height-adjustable, and would probably be wrecked before it got halfway down the block. Just in case I should mail order one, and be sure to pack it with the dictionary and a pipe for possible future needs.]

Another thing to keep in mind is that there is a splendid bakery with excellent milk tea about half a block from the hospital, for when I need some serious caffeine. I should jot down their number so that I can have them deliver.

I am a boyscout and a Dutchman. So I'm both prepared and trained to plan for all eventualities. We're kind of anal that way.

Meticulous.



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CHICKEN, SPARROW, SEAGULL

Dinner last night: chicken drumstick with sautéed mushrooms, hot sauce. I didn't feel like doing rice or noodles, so in lieu of rice a fried egg. Which is not really an adequate substitute.
My apartment mate had rice with her own meal, which she ate while watching Johnny Depp being a pirate of the Caribbean.

It would have been more appropriate if, instead of chicken, there had been dead seagull.
Nothing speaks of the ghastly uncertainty of a pirate life better than that.
Dead seagull is much like being married to Amber Heard.

Sort of smelly and unpleasant, but maybe better than nothing.


In any case, better than Amber at many things.
Acting, as just one example.



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RED BEAN PASTRY AND COFFEE

Two older gentlemen were discussing painting and Grant Avenue back in the seventies, as well as the pottery studio where one of them has usage privileges at all hours seven days. You could tell what era it was, look at the old cars. No, the kite shop wasn't there then.
Which got me recalling how I ended up in Chinese coffee shops many years ago.

Mid-eighties.

The Eastern Bakery had counter seating in those years, and as long as you were polite, not obviously barking mad, and reasonably quiet, the two counter ladies would keep refilling your coffee cup long after you had finished your snack when you were already devouring your third newspaper. I'd leave just before seven PM wired to the eyebrows.

It started with a red bean pastry (豆沙餅 'daau saa bing') and coffee. Within a short period of time I discovered lotus seed paste biscuits (蓮蓉餅 'lin yong bing'), mooncakes (月餅 'yuet bing'), steamed chicken buns (蒸雞包 'jeng gai baau'), coffee crunch cake, apple pie, and an abbreviated version of the American breakfast: fried eggs, sausages, hash browns, pile of rice, and hot sauce. All of which was washed down with endless coffee.

I was alone, not much used to American conversation, spoke with an accent (having spent from two till late teens abroad), and preferred the necessarily tenous and tightly formatted social environment of a coffee counter over the sports nonsense of the lounge at school.
Bluntly put, I wasn't very socially talented.

[It isn't that I'm particularly self-conscious of the accent, but a lot of 'Muricans will remark on it, and suggest that because of it I should not have opinions or even thoughts. It's sort of English-Bostonian-Continental. Very problematic for Midwesterners especially.]

At the bakery on Stockton Street today I had an egg tart and milk tea.

杯咖啡 豆沙餅

Over the years I've kind of drifted away from red bean pastries and coffee.

Grant Avenue is not the vibrant main drag it used to be, the Eastern Bakery did away with the lunch counter and the waitresses a long time ago, and because of the pandemic Chinatown is not exactly boomtown USA. But the neighborhood will survive.
That is to say, I hope it survives.
It's a refuge.


The rest of the city is filled with angry street people, crazed drug addicts, belligerent loonies, yuppie twats on their cellphones, entitled office drones (junior stockbrokers, marketing types, and law office serfs), and dingbats with yoga mats.



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ANSWERS TO WEIGHTY QUESTIONS

So the big question today is 'are my refills ready for pick-up?' Yesterday was three months since the last visit to the pharmacy at Chinese Hospital, and there's enough to last barely another week. So I expect they are. That is the only question I have.
For readers of my blog there may be some other questions. Like "does my mother love me?" "Is the world going to end?" "Why are we here? "Will he still say he loves me afterwards?" "What happened on Real Housewives?" "Is this what existential despair feels like?"
And "what is there to snack upon?"

The answers to all of that: 1) Not really, but she's kind of okay with how you turned out. 2) Not in the foreseeable future. 3) Who the heck knows, kid, who the heck knows. 4) Ditch him, he's young and shallow, and his friends are probably problem drinkers. 5) They fought, they screamed, and there were cocktails. 6) You're probably too young to have existential despair, that's the coffee wearing off, plus your brassiere is constricting your chest and interfering with your breathing. Consult a professional, not the dingbats at Victoria's Secret.
7) I'm hoping it's an oven-hot egg tart and a charsiu turnover.

Shortly after I've visited the pharmacy.


Another key question is 'which briar pipe should I be conspicuously twiddling when I drop by the pharmacy to ellicit cheerful protestation from whoever assists me there that smoking is very bad I should stop if I do I might live to be a hundred plus children animals elderly civilians will all like me and not recoil shrieking in terror.

For maximum effect -- the shrieking in terror and recoiling -- it is probably best to light up in the most crowded part of Chinatown, four or five blocks from the pharmacy, so that there are plenty of white tourist kiddie winkies animals old dumptrucks around. Yesterday afternoon a small person stared at me and my pipe in consternation and wonder. There probably aren't any pipe smokers left in Iowa, Kansas, or Ohio. Sad.


We'll find out the answers to both of those questions shortly.

I'm looking forward to it all.



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CAFFEINATED BEVERAGE

When I still lived in North Beach every morning I'd head to the Caffe Trieste for my wake-up jolt. Their latte has always been the latte wich other lattes sadly wish they were, and their cappuccino says cappuccino like no other cappuccino can even come close to being. Early in the morning there are serious people there. Later in the day the neighborhood pot heads and meth freaks may make an appearance, and there's always the danger in North Beach, wherever you are, that an intellectual may randomly strike up a conversation.

Some of those people will remember you for years afterwards and continue where they left off, not realizing that their proximity is cringable, their insights shallow, their breath gagnasty, and also that you had forgotten the berserk discussion from five years earlier because it wasn't worth listening to in the first place.

During my last Financial District employment, before I started working in Fringebottom near the saltflats over in Marin County tending to obnoxious old geezers and their smells, some of my coworkers discovered espresso drinks. And, consequently, could not shut up in the hours before lunch about the Real Housewives, Fluffy the Zombie Whisperer, Five Naked men On A Coral Reef, or whatever idiotic show they had watched last night. Having by that time dealt with meth freaks for several years, I could tolerate their inane chatter. Even ignore it.

Seeing as I nowadays have my morning jolt at home, I very often do not go to North Beach. In the middle of the day it's too intellectual there for me, and I do not wish to ponder man's inhumanity to man, how to save the planet, or any meaningful symbolisms in the oeuvres of David Lynch, Jordan Peele, and Bong Joon-ho.


In mid-afternoon, the man within wants a caffeinated beverage. And a pastry that does not have a French or Italian name. With sane people around one, instead of the labile souls and potential for rancorous disagreement that a hipster joint presents, and without people writing great literature on their laptops with scowls on their faces. And please, no tourists.

The absence of pot heads, meth freaks, serious artists, and tourists, is a primary reason for heading into Chinatown for my afternoon tea. It's safer and saner than even the wifi-spots and bohemian coffee shops in my own neck of the woods. No idiots, no bums, no artistic profound dudes, no fascinating tattoos.

Tea time, on my days off, is very pleasant.
Quiet time, surrounded by real people.
Something to soothe the mind.



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VERY PINK WILDLIFE

One thing wich I still find unbelievable is that the Mormons have a mission in Chinatown. "If you believe what we believe -- which is some really crazy shiznit -- eventually God will make you beautiful and just like us!" "Oh please no, you lot smell bad and look rather corpse-like, anthing but that!" And grannie scurries away determined to get as far as possible from the daemonic creatures and their zombie wizard king.

Mormons are extraordinarily optimistic and innocent. They have a ping pong table. Surely that will convince the locals of their good will. And some of them have learned Mandarin, totally ignorant of the fact that the only conceivable use for that language is to transact business or converse with Northern Chinese, who, sadly, aren't able to learn a civilized tongue. Like Toishanese.

Two blocks away from the old Sam Wo, where the Mormons have established their sacred pied-à-terre in Tong Yan Fao -- bulwark, beachhead, voodoo lounge, whatever -- is a place where I often have dragon tongue fish with garlic butter over rice, but today ate the paradigm of Hong Kong Western chow: a club sandwich with fries. And a cup of milk tea.

公司三文治

The 'gong si saam man ji'. Or "company three literature administer". In wich the last three characters are used purely phonetically, and the first two are used like they often are in a South East Asian Sinitic context, meaning variously company, clan association, gang, social club, common interest society, or even a group of people with something that ties them together. That set of meanings got borrowed by Indies Chinese Malay dialect, and subsequently glided effortlessly into Indies Dutch speech.

[Indies Dutch: Indo. Indonesian descent Netherlander, Netherlander whose ancestors spent time in the East Indies, Dutchman with some Indies blood, Indonesian culturally influenced Dutchman, Dutchman whose social circle often speaks Malay and whose food is almost always hybridized Indonesian. It's a flexible term. Indies Dutch (Petjoh) is a version of the language with a debrided grammar and pronunciation and many Malay Indonesian Javanese locutions, reduplicatives, and simplified sentence structure. Almost a creole language. The situation is fluid and complex.]

In standard Cantonese and Mandarin, gong si (公司) means a company.
It's a legal and business term.

The Hong Kong Club Sandwich has luncheon meat, fried egg, lettuce, and tomato, contained within three slices of toasted bread, diagonally cut into quarters, each quarter held together with toothpicks.

SAM WO RESTAURANT, GREAT WALL RESTAURANT

This was the nicest version of the club sandwich I've had in Chinatown. I had seen it pass by a few times while eating there, and finally remembered to order it. Suprising the bejazus out of three waitresses, who are used to me ordering one of the lunch sets, usually nowadays dragon tongue fish rice soup milktea.


Afterwards: Pipe smoking, grocery shopping, followed by a slice of lemon Swiss roll and another cup of milk tea. Then dodging a herd of blond walrusses who came out of nowhere when I was lighting my second bowl. The city is awash with wildlife.

That and tattooed loonies.



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AN OLD-FASHIONED SUMMER EVENING

The pipe for watching rats in Spofford Alley was duly smoked. No rats were seen, but at the far end of Ross Alley a screaming white woman could be clearly heard. Who angrily wanted someone to get out of her life. To stop ruining things. Be gone! At first I presumed the voice to come from one of the buildings opposite. Then I realized it was a crazy person in Duncombe Court, about halfway down. Incensed at what some imaginary person was doing.

Don't catch their eyes, avoid getting their attention, just walk away quietly.

Two of the businesses on Jackson Street were still open. At the all-day dim sum place the staff was busy cleaning, the lights were brightly lit, and undoubtedly they were thrilled that the door was closed and the crazy white lady would not be able to come in if she ventured down that far. They deal with crazy white people all the time.

As does the owner of our favourite Chinatown bar, which is why we curtailed our pubcrawl. Too many kwailo inside the karaoke joint. Which is a guarantee of horrible music and extreme yuppie loudness and misbehaviour.

Both the bookseller and myself have gotten too old to deal with our fellow Caucasians acting up. Especially if they're tech-bros. 'Hey look guys, two old dudes who don't sing!'


With age comes wisdom. We know to not argue with firetrucks or garbage vehicles, both of which were in evidence abundantly. Those things can do whatever they want, including driving at high speed down one-way streets in the opposite direction.

We also know to avoid tech bros and other cocaine snorters.

As well as artistic types and their conversations.

And Bigfoot staggering across Broadway.



The current tobacco is matured red Virginia with the merest touch of condimentals. It is rich, but very subtle. Redolent of a previous era, when men were men and wore fedoras. That was of course the time when everyone huffed Camels and Luckies, except if they were at home in their Nob Hill aleyway apartment overlooking the Bay, reading the Saturday Review or The New Yorker with a cocktail on the side table, and Bing Crosby on the radio.
At home, a pipe. Like a responsible adult.
Out on the town: ciggies.



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WHAT DO THEY CALL THIS WHERE YOU COME FROM?

Chiu Chou dumplings (潮州韭菜餃) in soup; a lovely presentation. In an environment where Cantonese was understood. Which means that the waitress speaks at least four languages: English, Cantonese, Teochiuhwaa, and Mandarin. Plus, probably, Vietnamese, seeing as the people who run that restaurant had to bail out from Vietnam over a generation ago. And yes, their menu reflects that.

It's a place I had not been to in a long time. I'm glad that they are still around and surviving the pandemic depression in chinatown. It's become a lot harder. The locals are on a thin financial edge, and the tourists are really not a blessing.


"What's that? Does it come with free eggrolls? Do you have a gluten free vegan version?"

"In New York / Iowa there's sweet 'n sour sauce on it, why not here?"

"Oh, we're not going to buy anything."


It really does not take six people to buy one can of Sprite. But I can understand that doing so is more excitement than they've had in a month. Anyhow, the dumplings were delicious, the only other customers in the place spoke Mandarin, and I only heard Iowese on the street.

Similar situation where I went for tea time a few hours later. An animated Toishanese conversation at one table, abundant evidence that other customers also spoke that dialect ('hoisunwa'), plus Cantonese, and no English necessary. Tourists would occasionally stick their heads in then decide that that was more excitement than they could deal with.

Nice cup of tea. Egg tart. A pleasant hour.
Followed by a pipeful of red Virginia.
Slow amble over to bus stop.



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SHAKESPEARE AND GAGABOUL THE CAJUN

A few years ago British American Tobacco decided that as the association with tobacco was bad public relations for luxury goods -- imagine all the screaming vegetarians and Christian mothers if they found out -- they would stop production of Dunhill cigars and pipe tobacco. Henceforth the line would be exclusively nice leather wallets and belts, sundry expensive doodads, and designer upscale snooty clothing. The cigarettes remained in production because of various contracts that they couldn't weasel out of, and being immensely profitable, they felt that it was okay.

Since then, the pipe tobacco reappeared under the Scandinavian Tobacco impremature, relabelled Peterson. Because that brand name for tobacco had been bought when Laudisi purchased the pipe factory and name. So, Peterson pipes (Laudisi) and Peterson Tobacco (STG) continued as seperate lines, with Orlik manufacturing the tobacco under the well-known blend names. As they had since the late nineties when the Dunhill portfolio had ended up in the hands of British American, and since the early teens when BAT farmed it out to Kohlhase & Kopp who used Orlik as their jobber for such things, having had splendid results doing so for many years with the entire McConnell portfolio (that being McConnell, Astleys, Fribourg & Treyer, Rattrays, and a few other brands).

Naturally the same crusty old farts who decades ago screamed "it's not the same, it's not the same, they fornicated with the recipe" when the Dunhill factories in England were shut down and everything moved to Northern Ireland, and then again when everything moved to Orlik, and once more when Kohlhase & Kopp became involved, are now doing it again.


"It's not the same, they fornicated with the recipe!"


Sorry, boys, it is the same. Blubber into your stale beer all you want. Silly buggers.

Scandinavian, for some reason, did not pick up one or two blends. Just the core of the old brand: My Mixture 965, Standard Mixture, Nightcap, EMP, and the classic flake. Kohlhase & Kopp, who also produce copies under the Robert McConnell Heritage blends subline, have for a few years now shipped a clone of 'Ye Olde Signe', named 'Shakespeare'.

Ye Olde Signe and Shakespeare are the same product. Yes, there has been slight blend shift over the years, as is inevitable. Some blending components will change slightly over time, because tobacco leaf is a natural product, growers and processors change their production processes, sources wax and wane. Wise blending houses make allowances for that, and over time the crusty old farts who smoke it should not really notice.

At least, in theory. The fact is that what you bought a year ago might have been sitting on the shelf for ages, and what your shop has now is an entirely new supply made two years later. The bright flue-cured leaf might be a little more tangy, the red Virginias not as sweet and slightly darker in taste and hue, etcetera, etcetera.

Plus your nose and taste memories are more selective and narrower than you think.


SHAKESPEARE
McConnell Heritage blends.

Medium and dark Virginias, thin ribbon cut. Very slightly topped (which is tempting to do with Virginias). Smells grassy, fruity (plums!), dense. On the edge of floral. Less topped than Pipe Stud's favourite (Royal Yacht), and less overt weirdness than some iterations of Three Year Matured (raspberry?! Good grief). A straightforward middle of the road Virginia, which can be very satisfying, especially on slow afternoons, but unfortunately the nicotine content is enough to turn me into a right bastard the rest of the day after only two bowls.
Products like this darken with age and develop far greater character.
This is worth setting aside to be opened when you are an adult.

Earthiness, breads, fruit.


AFTER WORD

Blending tobaccos are very much standardized products, albeit with variations within each type. A tobacco mixture that depended on unique leaf made magical by a secret fermenting process developed by Gagaboul The Syphilitic Mad Cajun deep in the hills of Tennessee for its mysterious flavour would survive maybe five or six years maximum before he and his inbred mutant sons were locked up for poisoning the local water supply, and will never reach mass distribution in any case. The spiritual dancing natives who grew the shaman leaf for another legendary product are now working for a lumber company, earning far more, and snarfing junkfood; they've forgotton the sacred chants that changed the leaf.

These things are standardized to a fare-thee-well.
Can't have consistent products without that.

Change is rare, and brings risks.

Crusty old farts complain.
It's their nature.

TOBACCO INDEX


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WE ARE ALL JUST PACKED WITH FLAVOUR!

Latinos are not like tacos. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are not like sushi or egg rolls. African Americans are not like Louisiana hot links. Whites are not like tuna salad on wonderbread. Jill Biden is not like running her analogies past eagle-eyed proofreaders.


"The diversity of this community, as distinct as the bogedas of the Bronx, as beautiful as the blossoms of Miami, and as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio, is your strength."
-------First Lady Jill Biden, July 11 2022


Yeah, um. Please sit down, ma'am.

Should we guess what you had for breakfast after landing?
And what on earth is a Bronx bogeda?
Is it edible?

For the purposes of this discussion we'll just assume that German Americans are indeed like curry-wurst, exactly, but that's the only exception to our rejection of dingo analogies and comparisons. Curry-wurst would be great in a breakfast taco.


And probably stupendous with some Sriracha.
As well as thinly sliced jalapeño.
Major Grey's chutney.

Darn it, I'm hungry.
Thanks a lot, Jill.



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WHERE IT'S ALWAY DIFFERENT

There's a sign in a Chinatown shopwindow that says, as an explanation for the extremely reduced prices, "I want to go home". 要回家。Which is one of the saddest things I've seen. Came to this country. Worked hard. Saved up, opened a shop. And now feels: 'bugger it all, this isn't the place for me, must get out'. Personally I would want him to stay, because even though I've been back here for decades, I feel outnumbered at times, and want allies.

The news. The bullpuckey from the rightwing. The maskless idiots on the bus. The people who accusatorily ask me where my accent is from, or say that I don't sound American (enough). The sense of being an outsider, a freak, a strange natural wonder.
The sheer damned whitebreadness of it all.


Someone asked me the other day why Tabasco wasn't good enough. He probably thought that if McIlhenny's fine product was good enough for Jesus Christ, then I had no business choosing something else.


Mmm, okay dude. You can have it all.
I'm generous that way.

Elsewhere.

The headmaster of the grammar school to which I went taught us geography, which also meant other people's history, customs, and culture. There were huge maps on rollers above the blackboard -- countries, continents, world trade and climates -- and by the time I went on to middle school I could name all of those blobs. Many American educated people have a hard time finding some of their own states, and couldn't tell Vietnam from Ghana.

Following WWII we Americans had inherited the world that used to be English, Dutch, and French. Most of my fellow Americans don't even know where all of it is, or even what the significant differences are.

Surely ketchup and fries are everywhere?

And why do they all talk funny?



There's a warung not far from Green Robe Island, wich has skewered meats, bakso, cendol, and rojak. They have sambal. They speak five languages there. They don't make a fuss about accents. Or condimental preferences.




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I'VE HEARD OF THOSE PEOPLE!

A friend posted a meme: "This may shock some of you but there are women who are kickass drivers, love sex, hate talking during movies, don't want your money, and always say exactly what they mean."
Indeed, I am surprised. I did not realize that there were still fans of silent films out there.
The acting was, generally speaking, horrible and exaggerated, because they had to communicate without sound.


They probably also appreciate street mimes in Central Park.

As well as vegan hotdogs.

Weirdoes.




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All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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