SYMPATHY FOR KAREN

It's something that has baffled the greatest minds of the modern age. What does Karen want? Why is she so frustrated? What will it take? This blogger thinks he has figured it out. Karen wants the forties back, when a well-bred white women could calmly shoot her lover or husband, then Hysterically explain to the cops "I... I... I... don't know what happened! It just exploded! It's an accident! I was just cleaning this old thing before dinner, and it went bang! Oh, I shall weep now!" And of course the police believed her, just a helpless woman. No one could have expected this. So sad, so sad, a tragedy, the best thing is for her to go on and extended vacation and remarry.

No one would swallow that these days. Karen is, understandably, peeved.

That was also the day and age when, if a man had trouble with his good lady wife, and couldn't have her committed to a loony bin, he'd simply go up to his cabin in the Sierras, shoot a couple of wild animals, and have some Bourbon over ice in the evening.
Four or five weeks of that, and he'd have his sanity back.

It was, of course, a golden age.
As you understand.

Sadly, this never worked for the economically lower class, who as everybody knows are coarse, vulgar, given to depravities uncounted, and kill each other all the time because they are inbred and mentally not up to snuff, sometimes downright vicious, and lack the proper refinement and moral fibre.


This epiphany came to me as a direct result of a pipe tobacco I tried today. The Beast. Inspired by Aleister Crowley. By Cornell & Diehl. 51% Perique, soaked in spiced rum for seven days, with Red Virginia Cavendish, Black Cavendish, and a touch of fire-cured Kentucky. It's a bit high on the nicotine levels, and some one once described it as tasting like a fart. Deep, rich, fruity even, on the whole a very pleasant smoke.

Not one I'll stockpile, because the tin note is funky, especially a few hours after opening, and this might well be something Edgar Allen Poe would smoke, or Ctulhu, or The Mouth Of Sauron, but I'll probably have several more bowls from the tin at work.

Goes well with a cup of tea.

Recommended.

The other pipe tobacco new to me was Anomalous, by Per George Jensen and Sutliff. Red Virginia crumble cake with nice condimentals. A few bowls over the past three days. Rather fun, very civilized. Katerini Perique seems to be something that Sutliff and Scandinavian have proprietarily. It's good.

The entire series 'Birds Of A Feather' sofar have been excellent.

Basically, I've swilled buckets of tea all at work these past few days, and was high as a kite by noon everyday on caffeine. Smoked too much, probably. So having good stuff to put in my pipes lying around was a blessing. Made putting up with the diseased old fossils in the back room bearable.

Being a sane well-balanced individual, of a calm disposition, I am a joy to have around. Unfortunately they cannot grasp this. No wonder Karen wants to off them and weep.



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ALLIGATORS ON NOB HILL

As a fashion statement, painting the exposed surfaces of your breasts green for Saint Patrick's Day is berserk. Probably. as well as cold. And good luck getting all of that off.
I pretended that I did not see it, because this is San Francisco, and I am very much accustomed to deliberately not seeing things.

Also, if you really want to show 'em off, do not wear a dress of the same general colour, even if it is tight and they pop. It took a second look. Which I really didn't want to do, due to not being personally acquainted with them. Which I didn't wish to be either.

As a personal philosophy I will happily make the acquaintance of a pair of mammary glands under the right circumstances, if the right person suddenly wishes to introduce them into the conversation. "Atboth," she will say, "these are my physical appurtenances, who desire your attention". Or something like that. Privately, and somewhere warm and cozy. She will not trot down the street flopping them at me while on the way to the next drinking hole.

I have not been on comfortable terms with mammaries in a long time, not even a nodding acquaintance, and this is sad because I remember a time when breasts and I got along.
Trust me; me and breasts were like that.

We enjoyed each other's presence.

Never-the-less, emerald-hued bosoms of a certain hugeness do not tempt me, and not that I've actually thought about it but I would wish to avoid being near them.
Flamboyant tit displays are a bad sign.

If you had a recent boob-job, and are pleased with the results, well bully for you. You do not need to show them off. If we're interested, we'll ask for the name and address of the plastic surgeon. If not, not.

I had left the house with a pipe for the last smoke of the evening. That's what I was intent upon. The breasts were not the focus. They could not have been. I do not actually know any breasts at present. And I'm sure I would have remembered these if I did.
Great green boobies, honey bun. Aren't they cold?



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THOUGHTS ON EVERYONE BEING IRISH

Did you do your happy little dances yesterday, after supping too much green beer and eating your fill of heaven's own manna, corned beef and cabbage? It puts hair on your chest. Irrespective of gender. And America is addicted to it all.

I myself had grilled sausages, curried mustard greens, and chili paste eggplant yesterday, with rice stick noodles, and hot sauce. I just can't handle CB and C. Even with Sriracha.

No beer. Green or otherwise.

And Erse clog-dancing ain't my thing either.


I bet the folks in Dublin just love it when their American kin come to visit. Stupid behaviour, fake manifestations of Irishness, and too much drinking by folks who realistically shouldn't.
I am horribly glad that we Dutch Americans don't have anything remotely like that.
The only celebration of Dutch culture in the US is National Donut Day.

Can you imagine darling little Dutch girls in ethnic costume going down Market Street doing hippity hoppity dances? If you can, please stop. Get help.

Have some green beer with your donut.

This Dutch American is all about your stupid cultural celebration.
Warmly supportive of your silly dances.
And the drunkeness.



There are very intoxicated people at the intersection down the hill. They must be Irish, they're dressed in green.



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GREEN PISSANTS

This blogger is feeling feisty. Which is as good a way to start my work week as any, because although it's Friday, it's my Monday. As well as Saint Patrick's Day, which I do not celebrate, because usually some fifth generation droodge with a miniscule fragment of Irish ancestry will take offense at my accent (vaguely English, decent diction) and threaten violence.
So I've never gone out to get drunk with the frat boys.
Or whatever Neanderthals do today.

Erin, go braless!

Sorry, that's just a suggestion. I don't know anyone named Erin, and in this horrid climate she shouldn't do that, it's as good a way to catch peumonia or frostbite as any.
Every scrap of clothing counts.

Besides, if a man were to wear lime-green fluffy pompoms and absolutely nothing else over his sensitive bits, this might then "encourage" people, some of whom would be improved by severe clubbing with a walking stick, such as I suggested a year ago would be appropriate for law office employees traveling without masks on the number one California line during rush hour and infecting other people. And I still think that's a splendid idea.

Yes, you can work from home if you're in a body cast.
A lovely lime green body cast.


BTW, my turkey vulture often requests that, to provide him with proper nourishment, I should unselectively whack people over the head and harvest their body parts to feed him.
People without masks on crowded buses come to mind.

He also wishes a happy Saint Patrick's Day to all you naked people.


As is well known, I advocate nudity only in service of commercial enterprise, having once suggested, strongly suggested, that a proper English pipe tobacco blend (Virginias, Turkish, Latakia) would be best sold by advertisments with a naked lady playing an accordion.

It was one of my most brilliant marketing ideas, yet sadly no enterprising merchant of the fragrant leaf poison took me up on it.

Opportunity!

It's Saint Patrick's Day. What better way to celebrate that than with an English blend in a pipe manufactured by a quintessential British company?

Might actually smoke some of the celebratory product I mentioned on Monday in it, though.
The vicious irony appeals to me.



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MIGHT BE A PRINCE

Or, if you're unlucky, a toad. So kissing me is a crapshoot, like Russian Roulette. I came to this realization after stepping outside to check my mail and walk around the block smoking a late afternoon pipe. Right outside my front door a couple in a car demonstrated the early parts of a mating ritual, further up the block two young people were glued to each other. Of which I disapprove in public, where's a bucket of cold water when you need one? Kissing me might be the best thing you ever did, but the odds aren't good, and I advise against it. After all, I stink of tobacco and today's fastidious woman avoids such people.

Probably froglike, with toadish characteristics. Not quite toxic to the tongue, but very likely not the nicest amphibian in circulation.

There are risks.


For one thing, I m not a very social animal, and while I did spend far too much time today wondering if there were another bakery with milk tea to which I could go in the afternoon now that my usual place is on my do-not-visit list for a while (pissy Toishanese regulars, in case you were wondering), I am not desperate enough for human society that to have a cappuccino somewhere else instead.

So I stayed home all day and fixed myself an early dinner.
The turkey vulture and I enjoyed our meal.

The folks I'm avoiding are often there, and of course I'm far too white, foreign, and damned lofanish to deal with, and though I'm passable in spoken Cantonese, I'm not at all conversant in Toishanese, which is the most perfect and expressive language on earth, used habitually by deities and supernatural beings in elevated conversations.

Oh, and I haven't forgotten the American born person who said "it almost sounds like you are speaking Chinese", or the seiyap waitress at a place I do not go to anymore who surmised that it was Mandarin coming out of my mouth.

該死！仆街。

All in all I am perfectly happy not being around people. I see enough humans on a weekly basis that there is no need for any additionals. Just me, my pipe and my lily pad.
And the ghosts of dead people.



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IT DOESN'T SMELL LIKE VEGETABLES

What my former girlfriend and present apartment mate fails to understand is that I do indeed eat enough. She thinks my frequent food-drawings/paintings using the graphics programme on this computer are indicative of a hunger, and a lack of sustenance. I shall not disabuse her of this misconception, because indeed they are. I am yearning to travel again (present funds preclude that), I wish for someone to eat with, and I am keenly appreciate of her efforts to supply me with cheese (and other dairy products), sausages, and meatballs.
It should be mentioned that the turkey vulture says I have fatty thighs.
So I must be eating enough, I feel him pecking me.
Exploratorily. Speculating.


"Is this wizened old geezer ready to harvest yet?"


I should mention in my defense that I do my part to feed the household; fresh vegetables, condiments, fun snacky things, noodles, and fish balls. All of which I purchase in Chinatown. The most recent fish balls are a new discovery, being made of shrimp and filled with salted egg yolk. They are very delicious. And also chockful of cholesterol, so I shan't mention them to my cardiologist, although he'd probably love 'em, being himself Cantonese American and therefore by instinct or inclination likely to love, even lust, for completely unhealthy yet delicious seafood AND cholesterol-rich items.

By the way, in case you are wondering about the cheese, she is convinced that unless there is cheese in the house the resident Dutch American (me) will pine away and eventually there will be disconsolate wailing. Something that must be prevented at all costs.
Also, Northern Europeans (me again) thrive on sausages.
As well as meatballs.

Cantonese Americans (like my apartment mate) have strange misconceptions about Dutchmen. We are fragile creatures, not good at taking care of ourselves.

We are also opportunists. And we like cheese.
And she is nice, and safe to live with.
So I ain't saying anything.

Nor shall I mention that we also like streaky pork belly meat, cooked in various different ways. In soy sauce and rice wine, or steamed with ginger, stewed with preserved winter cabbage (冬菜 'tung choi'), or, as in the picture above, with salt fish (鹹魚 'haam yü').


Quick-fry the salt fish after rehydrating, decant. Pre-fry the meat (which is sliced, but not too thick), then gild a little ginger and garlic with the meat pushed to one side, add the white ends of the scallions, mix everything and cook a little over high heat, stirring. Frazzle with rice wine and a drizzle of soy sauce, add water or stock, plus a tablespoon or two of starch water.
Add the salt fish and let all simmer for a minute or two.

Heat up a clay pot. Add a little oil and perhaps some coarsely cut shallot, swirl a bit and when nicely hot dump in the meat; it should sizzle nicely. Drizzle in a little rice wine or sherry, cover, and after a few minutes add the scallion green, recover, and put the claypot on a protective pad or plate on the table.

Serve with rice. Plus, of course, sambal (chilipaste).


Please note that cooking with salt fish or shrimp paste stinkifies the apartment, so keep the kitchen door closed and the window open.



Yeah, um. My apartment mate doesn't mind my cooking smells. Which is another great thing about living with her. If she was Anglo, there would be comments, even if she was male.
Plus I'd probably be forced to eat salad. How sad.



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TEXTURAL AND EVOCATIVE

When I woke up it was with the taste of your childhood in my mouth. Your hometown, and something your mom or an auntie made as comfort food, if your hometown has over a billion people. Pickled pressed mustard tuber and meat shreds noodle soup: 榨菜肉絲麵 ('jaa choi yiuk si min'). Which is very easy to make. The combination of the pressed mustard tuber and pork shreds is old fashioned and classic, and shows up stirfried and sauced over rice or chow mein, also with rice stick noodles, and sometimes as a filling for buns.
But soup is the more comforting version.

Coarsely mince ginger and garlic. A little extra ginger is okay. Take about a cup of pickled mustard (榨菜 'jaa choi') and rinse once or twice. Then coarsely cut about half a pound of pork into matchsticks of a decent thickness. In a wok stirfry the pork with a little oil till the colour has changed, move it to the side of the pan and add the garlic and ginger, followed shortly afterwards by the pickled mustard. Mix everything over heat, add a dash of soy sauce and a jigger of cooking sherry or rice wine. Mix again while stirring, and pour in four or five cups of boiling water. Add ground pepper. Let simmer for five to ten minutes while preparing the noodles. I prefer broad rice stick noodles, which don't take much time at all to be ready. Drain the noodles and place in bowls. Divide the soup among them, garnish with minced scallion. Should be enough for two people.

Note that you do not really have to rinse the pickled mustard, but many people who are not accustomed to hot chilies will. It also removes some of the salt, which your doctor might advise. I never bother with rinsing the pickled vegetable.


In addition to using a bit much of ginger, I also go overboard on scallions, and often add chopped mustard green (芥菜 'gaai choi') to the soup while it is simmering.
It makes it more lovely.


You'll often find pork shreds and mustard tuber fried rice (榨菜肉絲炒飯 'jaa choi yiuk si chaau faan') at chachantengs and small restaurants.
It's a good quick lunch.



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INSPIRATION AND ENCOURAGEMENT

After purchasing groceries I recommended a bakery to visitors desolate because the famous egg tart place was, as usual, closed. The place I mentioned has superlative egg tarts, and I often go there because their offerings are uniformly excellent. But I myself shan't go there for several weeks, because the last time I went, when I uttered a greeting to several people, it was ignored. It may have been the weather, it might have been something said about me among the regulars, perhaps it was just all round bad temper or a mistake, or possibly a typical Toishanese pissy attitude. Whatever.
It's my turn to be grumpy about things.

I like the place very much. But I too have an attitude.
And they aren't the only game in town.


The egg tart I had with my cuppa at teatime today was not as good as the ones at the place I'm avoiding. But I had a much better time. A little friendly chit chat in a cheerful and bustling environment. And a lovely hot beverage too.


The milk tea was excellent.

It's been a remarkably busy day. Early lunch, shopping, chores, a visit to the pharmacy, teatime. The weather is considerably better than yesterday, the approaching end of the abysmally horrid weather and cold temperatures is in sight.

Chinatown has been quite enjoyable this week.
And there was sunlight today.

Pipe for smoking when one is generally not pleased

with other human beings and feels somewhat feisty.

There are of course too many people not wearing masks, on public transit, at Walgreens, or touristing in Chinatown. But by avoiding the main drags whenever possible one runs far less risk of bumping into infectious imbecils from elsewhere.

There's a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
That's not just miners with a dead canary.



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DEAR SIR!

Other than a table full of elderly men there was no one there when I walked in, though the scattered evidence showed that the lunch period had been relatively busy and long. Possibly the horrid weather had something to do with that emptiness. People were probably anxious to get home. It was raining a bit, more of a thick drizzle, but the wind was something awful. At times throughout the day the apartment building trembled because of it, and judging by the sirens lines and trees were down across the city. Things were going sideways.

The frightful weather has lasted longer this year, and been more extreme.
I feel like I should write an very angry letter to the editor.
Blaming the other party, and today's youth.

I'm sure that voters in Trumpland are blaming "them commies", as well as members of BLM, transgender people, and antifa. As well as windmill energy, which also causes cancer.
At least they're no longer obsessed with black helicopters and Fema camps.


This chachanteng's version of a club sandwich is not as good as the other Chinatown place where I have it, but it's still pretty darn enjoyable. Too many Hong Kong style restaurants barely toast the bread; it looks pale and anemic, though obviously a little crispier than cottonwool American loaf.

The key thing is a good combination of flavours and textures.
Plus decent fries, which are very important.
And Sriracha.

Naturally, a chachanteng must have good HK milk tea. I've grown slightly obsessive about having a cup of milk tea before going out into the howling gale with my pipe.
Especially if eating lunch late, as I usual do.


I rather like nearly empty restaurants, they seem so inviting!
And the people watching is better.



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HOW GRIM

For the record, it is the considered opinion of this blogger that young Caucasians should not choose to do karaoke, as they will inevitably select crappy songs to which they can read all the words. Oh ooh oh ooh yeah oh!. Baby! Then all their friends sing along to oh ooh oh ooh, very loudly, and there is much good cheer. They should not be cheerful. They are loud, and they smell bad. And their tattoos and piercings do not look any better. Instead, may I suggest voluminous cloaks to cover their ickiness as well as shrouds over their heads?

Yes, the concept of shrouded silent young people pleases me.
I would not mind a bar filled with precisely that.


The bookseller is back from Portland, and assures me that he has laid in a stock of cheese, having made sure that there was none to mold or mildew before he left last week. As well as a baguette. So upon his return to his abode tonight, he will have a nibble. We also discussed duck, steak, venison, and other gustatory matters. A burger, wine, fries, beer, Jameson's Irish Whiskey, and for myself two hot glasses of tea because I cannot indulge in liquor.

I also have cheese in my abode. My apartment mate makes sure of that.
Allegedly because we Dutch people need it to survive.
But that's just a convenient excuse.

I smoked a different pipe than usual tonight. Seeing as things were not the same as other bar-hop evenings. The evil looking bastard in the period drama on one of the teevees at the karaoke bar also smoked a pipe. Set during the Ching Dynasty, and featuring among others a gossipy matron, an innkeeper, and a maid servant, in addition to two conspiratorial-looking individuals. I have no idea what the series is, but judging by the clothing they wore and the subtitles it was set somewhere in Northern China.

I feel I must assure you that not everyone who smokes a pipe is bastardly evil; if all you saw was this show, and you had no other exposure to pipe smokers, you might form the wrong impression. Which, as a pipe smoker, would sadden me.
I myself am far from evil, believe me.
Though slightly wicked.



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SCRAMBLED EGGS AND TOMATOES

Sorry, if you came here for a recipe, I lied. There is no recipe for scrambled eggs and tomatoes here, it's too simple. In order, gild some minced garlic, add a chopped chili, add tomato chunks, stir, splash of water, small handful chopped basil, and glop it over eggs scrambled lightly in a wok with a little more oil than is judicious in your estimation.

Simple. Methodology, not fussy measures.


番茄炒蛋，好簡單。


If you are Asian, you'll have it with rice, if not, maybe some buttered toast. If you are British or Irish, you'll probably do chips and baked beans, and we'll feel sorry for you.

A Dutch American would add shallots to the pan at the same time as the garlic or before, as well as a dab of sambal alongside because everything goes with sambal, and a Cantonese American would probably have added chopped scallion, the green part minced for garnish. Plus, very likely, oyster sauce. Eggs with a dab of oyster sauce are heavenly.

All of this came to mind because I watched a woman with an English or Irish accent doing chicken fried rice on Youtube. Good gracious. No wonder those people have health issues.

Is salmonella endemic in the British Isles?


This afternoon on the way to lunch I'll swing by the hospital to remind them to have a refill of Amlodipine Besylate for me sometime this week. Then I'm having an omelette and a cup of milk tea at a chachanteng two blocks away. Followed by a smoke in an alleyway while trying to shield my pipe from the wind and rain we're having. The archtypical Cantonese speaking Dutch American living in San Francisco spends a lot of time outdoors, cursing the weather because his apartment mate does not appreciate the fragrances of tobacco. He also often eats in Chinatown, where he has never gotten food-poisoning, because they know how to cook. And they don't lose their sh*t when someone is smoking on the street.

They differ from most Anglos.


The lovely awning near the hospital is gone, the staff must have gotten wise to me.
That commercial space has been empty for about three years now.
Someone should open a chachanteng there.
With a new awning.



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ALL THINGS GOLDEN

It was an emotional moment. "For all the little boys and girls watching tonight ... a beacon of hope and possibilities -- dreams do come true." Well okay. A certain Dutch American Cantonese speaker in San Francisco was also quite chuffed, despite his super brilliant cousin's kid not winning bupkes this year (won previously). Largely because I grew up on Hong Kong movies, having watched several of them every week from my early-twenties till my mid-thirties. And it's about time that the sheer bucket of talent, creativity, and acting excellence in that world finds some acknowledgement.

Of course, there's always a linguistic barrier. Several excellent actors and actresses do not speak fluent English. It rather handicaps an attempt at breaking through.
And unlike, say, Rutger Hauer, they can't fake it.


So seeing someone whose Canto language movies I've watched, all of them, multiple times, win a well-deserved Oscar, felt like a personal victory. As it did for my apartment mate, who is of Cantonese heritage, and probably a bucket load of Chinatown people as well.

楊紫瓊

'yeung ji king'

Michelle Yeoh

This was probably the best Academy Awards event of which I've been aware, though the times when my brilliant cousin's kid's movies won were pretty good too.


Of course, Jamie Lee Curtis should also have won several years ago. Her stellar performance in A Fish Called Wanda is timeless and classic.


Congratulations to both of them.
Heartfelt.



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WORLD'S MOST PERFECT SNACK

This not a paid advertisement. It is, however, an enthusiastic recommendation.

There are many things I like. Hoppity bunny rabbits, kittens, little girls, turkey vultures, crows strutting down the sidewalk, escaped pandas, disastrous weather hitting the red states, drag queen story hour, murder hornets, and fuzzy creatures.
Plus fabulous pastries.

Only one of those things can be stuck in your mouth and nom-nom-nommed.
Which is especially nice with a cup of tea in mid-afternoon.
Like sometime after lunch and pipe in C'town.
Which I did two hours ago.

Xúfú jì • hòu qiè • fènglí sū • màn yuè méi

Just made myself a cup of strong tea. And I've had TWO of the pastries. I had bought the box on a whim, seeing as I like this brand of fung lei sou (鳳梨酥), and was rather curious about cranberry flavour added to the pineapple confit. I've had the mango flavour, quite fond of them in fact. Left a box at work yesterday for the other staff to enjoy.


Hong Kong style milk tea should be brewed strong enough to grow socks off your chest.
It's a pick-me-upper that sends you back up twenty stories of bamboo scaffolding.
In the middle of a howling typhoon, for another eight hours.

You belong up there. You're a dragon.

You stud panda you.



Xufu ji is an excellent brand which I am glad I discovered. Perfectly crumbly and fresh. They have definitely become my favourite makers of Taiwanese pineapple cakes. Superlative.

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A SEASONALLY APPROPRIATE THING

A few of my kinfolk are of distant Ulster stock, but most of the family tree is soldly Dutch and Anglo-Dutch Calvinist. So as a matter of heritage as well as my own arrogantly disapproving personal inclinations, I normally sneer at very many things. Ketchup. Hazelnut coffee drinks. Christian fundamentalists. Immoral behaviour in public. The Deep South, and grits.
Saint Patrick's Day. Flavoured pipe tobacco. Eastern Europe.

Saint Patrick's Day is coming up (end of this week).
And froo-froo tobacco is the devil's spaghnum.
Bubblegum flavours. Very European.

Celebratory offerings in the pipe world (Saint Paddy pipes, pipe tools, and aromatic mixtures) are anathema in my view, deserving of hell fire, the pit, and a mediocre flute band playing "the sash my father wore" ad nauseum outside an Irish bar in the Richmond District.
These are all cursed things.


Having recently smoked an aromatic mixture , several times, and spoken well of it (meaning that I didn't sneer and describe it as repulsive shite), some members of the Golden Gate Pipe Club were horrified yesterday and wondering what is this world coming to?!?
It has an Irish Cream Liqueur topping.

Hill of Slane. A few short pulses in the microwave or one or two hours on a saucer and it's dry enough to smoke. Be careful when microwaving, you don't want it to start smoldering.

Three or four bursts of eight seconds, or six or seven at four seconds.
Aromatics always have humectants and stabilizers.
It all depends on your machine.

Fine Virginias with a little Burley, yielding a pleasant smoke with sufficient character to keep you interested all the way down. The added flavouring does not offend, and other people will remark that it smells nice. I've bought two tins, and shall have to purchases a third so that it can be enjoyed at home without opening them, while the fit lasts.
There's an open tin at work I've been sampling.

I own only one Peterson Saint Patrick's Day pipe. It was made before they were fully vested in whoring themselves out to the Irish American contingent, who will buy anything with a bloody shamrock, or Keltic designs, especially if it's green or hobbit-like.
Ohh-aargh, theeere's a leprechaun, the precious!
A nice pipe. Well-made.


There are several Petersons in my pipe collection. They are damned good pipes. Despite the sneers of a snobbish git whom I haven't seen in years that their shapes were pedestrian and working class. I wonder what's become of that fool since then.

They are not suitable for Saint Patrick's Day.
Nothing is. Go naked. Get drunk.

TOBACCO INDEX


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PATAY. IT'S PRONOUNCED 'PA TAY'!

The mad dingo spoke mightily about the glories of South Carolina compared to California, specifically Marin County where he now lives. He can sell his house in San Rafael and buy a mansion, a frikkkin' mansion boy, in South Carolina plus have enought to retire on! Naturally, as his departure will improve the moral tone of both places, I am encouraging him to do so.
He and the natives can trash our wokeness when he does.
I suspect he'll love the summer humidity.
Lording it over the flies.

If he does, I'll actually be rather sad. The backroom will seem empty without him to slag. Cleaner, quieter, more sane and balanced; no old bald guy manufacturing spitwads and calling random people a moron. No spandex booties from the football game on teevee reflecting off his smooth and shiny pate because he sits too close to the set.
Boy, you run a risk of skin cancer looking like that.
Here, wear this Coors baseball cap.
Stay on the veranda.
In the shade.

Best thing about South Carolina: no drag shows. So he'll be in the limelight.
Come see the short balding Jewish redneck! He's fabulous!
Rub his sparkling dome for luck!
Pate!


Sorry for the bald shaming. Truly. Some of my best friends are bald.


Some of them smoke pipes, and gathered yesterday for the March pipe club meeting.
In consequence of which there is some pâté sitting in my fridge now, which I look forward to snacking on later with the crispy scallion crackers I picked up in Chinatown last week. Not everyone, it turns out, associates pâté and cheese with pipe smoking. How odd. On the other hand, almost all of them do connect it with Scotch whisky, port wine, and a bottle of good red wine. I was probably the only person there high as a kite on caffeine, what with avoiding alcohol because it might interact with my pills.

[By the way: a good friend refered to me as an old fart recently, which another good friend agreed was 'spot on'. Both of them are wrong. But in MY day, a pack of Camels only cost fifty cents! What is this world coming to when they've raised the price to FIFTEEN DOLLARS?!!? Sign of the end times, tell you what. I also want those damned kids off my lawn. Twenty miles in the snow, all twelve months. Kids these days. Bet they don't know how to operate a rotary phone!]

Relevant sidetrack: my most recent conversation with a medical person about tobacco included details about growing seasons, fertilizer, the effect of micro-climates, plus the marvelous stuff coming out of Nicaragua these days.

Normally I abjure aromatics, speaking scornfully of them and their fans, in harsh terms and opprobriously. So one of the pipe club members is now horrified, because I admitted that there were two which I had actually enjoyed recently, one of which I recommended as a pleasant smoke with a topping that did not shock or conflict. And which was seasonally appropriate. No, not corned beef and cabbage, or mildew, which are the other superb aromas one associates with the old sod, but Irish Cream Liqueur.

Illegal in the great state of California, of course, because a recent state ban on flavoured smokeables, which appeal to children and teenagers raiding dad's liquor cabinet. Let's take this one, he'll never notice because he obviously never drinks it, it's dusty and nearly full. Ooh, sweet dessert plonk! Lovely! They sit on the neighbor's lawn while getting stinko.

Remarkably, it's made by the same folks who brought you Molto Dolce.

I've smoked several bowls of it, and bought two tins.
May need to acquire a third for home use.
There's an open tin at work.
Which I've sampled.


It was a good meeting.



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BARBECUE FANTASIES

Over on the East Coast, in the Carolinas, a friend laments daylight savings time. His misery is compounded this year because he spent yesterday in New Hampshire surrounded by freaks and wiccans or something. Today, as you know, daylight savings started. The clock is ticking, time we'll never get back! It's an evil communist plot, tell you what.

It's all a conspiracy by the fake news media.

Pimp-style nineteen seventies.

Cool glasses.


Yeah, I went to bed early. I need my beauty sleep.
After a strong cup of coffee, some humanely raised tubular American (spicy pork sausage) grilled, eggplant and zuchini, and hot sauce. Followed by a prescribed medication. All of which came on the heels of a full day baby-sitting repulsive people when there were no sports on teevee. So my dreams were vivid and unbalanced.
As good a start to summer time as any.
Spring is here.

Actually, the weather is downright crappy, and not even remotely spring-like. Yesterday was exceptionally grey and rainy, there were floods, many people went down Market Street doing hippity hoppy dances prancing gaily in the horrid damp just like they would have done back in Eire while playing bagpipes and eating fabulous ethnic street food (plain boiled potatoes, cabbage corndogs, and mint ice cream), and my apartment mate did a fabulous rendition of the theme song from Shaft while plonking on her computer in the evening having spent all day since morning warm and dry arguing with a turkey vulture who keeps pissing off the teddy bear and the head sheep.

It is at times like these that I wish the gentlemen I deal with in the backroom at work would go up to the Sierras to ski and snowboard. I bet they'd be killers at re-enacting the Donner Party.

Festive!




I'm not really fully awake. Before midnight I had an argument with the turkey vulture, who insists that I should take him to work so that he can importune the old geezers for charitable contributions to the carrion-eaters cultural fund, and also feel them out for fatty thighs to harvest. As food. For carrion eaters. The most important thing.

Beaty sleep: unsuccesful.



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DISCUSSIONS OVER CONDIMENTS

Something that often happens when I open my mouth speaking Cantonese to someone who has never encountered me before is that they immediately assume that my wife must be Chinese. Because, and this is not put so bluntly most of the time, we white people are too damned stupid to learn how to speak Cantonese unless some desperate woman who fixated upon us as her most promising meal ticket (maybe whitey has a degree from a prestigious university or lots of money) spent aeons hammering it into our thick smelly skulls.

Or, as my barber a while back jokingly explained to another customer, my being able to speak Cantonese was so I could go to Hong Kong to kau neui (溝女 "pick up chicks").

[Note: homophonously also 勼女 or 沟女 with exactly the same pronunciation ('kau niu') and meaning.]


Cantonese people have a lousy opinion about white men, and their own womenfolk. I mean, why else would a girl date or marry a white dude, unless he has money or prospects?
Possibly she's absolutely desperate, or completely sex-crazed?

And, like all white men, he's probably an absolute wolf, and he smells bad too.
So she ONLY hooked up with him because he was trainable.
And he could be manipulated with food.
Plus culture and wiggles.


No, I never bother mentioning that my ex girlfriend is Cantonese American, or explaining that I already spoke Cantonese before we started seeing each other, and that the only Chinese she knows is an unintelligible version of Toisanese (her parents first language), and that we've always spoken English with each other ...... Because it's her native language.

No need for a Chinese male chauvenist of whichever gender to know that.


我未結婚 ...
['ngo mei git fan']


Five men I know are married to Cantonese women. None of them can speak even half-assed Cantonese. They didn't watch hundreds of Hong Kong movies, and I bet they don't collect dictionaries either. And their knowledge of Brederode and Vondel is probably zilch.
As far as I know their wives didn't run a credit report on them.
Maybe their in-laws did. But I haven't asked.

Succesful relationships take flexibility, tact, and selective deafness.

And ignoring all those neighbors and acquaintances.

With their big honking noses.




The title of this essay? Well, I was browsing the well-stocked condiment wall and reading the labels. We white people normally can't cook worth diddly. Everyone knows that.




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CULINARY NOTES FOR KARENS

The key to unhealthy eating is to have something good and tasty. One does not go against doctor's recommendations purely because one can. Sadly, everything near work is garbage. So willy nilly there will be uninspired eating for lunch. With profound distaste.
Americans, as is well known, have the tastebuds of raccoons.


Marin County, one of the wokest and hippest places in the country, wants the unwealthy to eat crap, live in crap, wear crap, and think crap. Because they can, most of them are white, and the unwealthy aren't.

Marinites are liberal versions of Tucker Carlson.


Note: I say this at the beginning of my workweek, when I'm still rather rational and sane. At the end of my workweek I am no longer so calm, and will call down plagues and a nuclear winter on the place, as well as advocating that the Jacquerie burn it down and slaughter everybody in Tiburon and San Rafael with pitchforks and torches.

Club them all like baby harp seals.
Then cook 'em Canadian style.
A Port Wine reduction.
Bitches.



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