SPORTS-GASM!

Judging by the screams emanating from the room where the old fossils were huffing stogies and watching the game, the Forty Niners pulled off something stupendous in their contest against the other team (Southern California? South Carolina? Idaho?) today.
Either that or Geoffrey busted a haemorrhoid. I don't know.
Didn't watch.

Oh sure, I stuck my head in there periodically to remind them that if they needed to get past their swollen prostates, now is a good time, nobody is in there, but I didn't stick around.

Later on I explained to the Murt-man that I abolutely hate Marin.
Entitle, arrogant, oh so special people.

Gatvernondedju. Om te kotsen!

The reason why earlier I had expressed concern about their ability and chance to micturate is because I am a warm caring individual full of sympathy for the old farts and their physical wellbeing. As well as sweetness and light.

For a large part of the afternoon I puttered around out front, safely distant from the ruckus, smoking my pipe and swilling tea.

So whether the repulsive old toads in the back had a good time or not with their televised sporting displays was rather immaterial. I had a good time. I ended up quite buzzing on all the caffeine. There was stimulation all round.

And remarkable good cheer when it was all over.

So it's highly likely that Geoffrey busted a haemorrhoid.


Three bowls, three different pipes. Two tobaccos: the first being a queerish aromatic which is quite pleasant when dried to right degree, the third, enjoyed while the Forty Niners assaulted Geoffrey's hinter quarter purulence was a very pleasant flake tobacco with some strength and great complexity.

There are, apparently, reasons why the football is pointed.



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GIANT PILE OF LIZARDS

A meme I saw last night featured the face of some inbred syphilitc halfwit from Montana or Wyoming looking anticipatorily happy above the text: "when you see someone get out of a car with California plates and walk toward a buffalo..."

Okay, Jebediah, that's very funny.


You DO know that here in California we also have the internet, right? So we know what happens when you do that. Perhaps the originator of that meme isn' aware that California has the internet? As I understand it, they're kind stupid and iggerunt in some parts of the country.

BTW: you look like you should be drying out somewhere. Is that normal where you are?

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THE REPTILE PETTING ZOO

For my own mental equilibrium I tend to ignore the old fossils huffing stogies in the back. Not because of their horrid smells -- good lord, after the first hour or so at that place, I cannot smell worth diddly -- but because of the pre-World War One "ideas" that regularly filter through their drooly breathing orifices. They vocalize stridently, endless, repetitively.

They beat personal pronouns to death. They beat Kyle Rittenhouse and the freedom to shoot black people and liberals to death. They beat the pull-out from Afghanistan to death.
They beat Marjorie Taylor Green is a genius! to death.
And very much more.

Everything, you must understand, is Joe Biden's fault.

Oh, if only we still had Donald Trump!

He would save us!


As you would guess, I normally think that they took leave of their senses back when Reagan was still in charge. Even the retired member of the judicial branch, whom one might expect to have nuance and a grasp of complex concepts. As well as at least half a brain. But since he married the hard-core Vietnamese woman and retired, his brain has gone all slack.

[To refresh your memory of Viet-Am reactionaries, this 'zesty song'.]

Which is odd, because I find that women keep me on my toes. Of course, it does depend upon the women. I tend to hang out with intelligent women who often admit that they don't know all there is to know about certain things, aren't right about everything, and will ask intelligent questions when necessary. Like the men with whom I'd prefer to I hang out.

However. Work is an entirely different cup of tea.

Riffing off Raoul Duke in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas: we're right in the middle of a reptile zoo, and somebody is giving stimulants to these darned things.
They'll probably tear us to shreds soon.


I know from bitter experience that you don't give cigars to babies or bananas to old men. That's the cursed of both worlds.




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AVOID THAT PLACE, THERE ARE IDIOTS THERE

For several reasons humans are the dominant sentient creatures on this planet. What if we had evolved slower? Would there be other species that we would have to share primacy with? Perhaps fellow tool-users? And some species not so communal? Imagine if our greatest writers and philosophers were, for instance, whales and ferrets.

What if the aliens are avoiding us because, as their wriggly, wriggly officers and scientists explain, our garbage is just not interesting enough. And we obviously never developed the ability to co-exist with other creatures.

Best wait another few million years before contact.
See if anything better turns up there.

A cross-species festival of psychedelics and heavy machine use.
Competitive. But highly social. There is food.

Fruit, carrion, and insects.



Space aliens probably watch our television broadcasts and think that we're dreadfully boring. Why didn't we ever create a long running series about the social aspects of trash disposal? Some of their races can sit and watch that on the telly for hours, and it's so fascinating! Humans seem to be obsessed with deodorant and handbags.
How uninspired.



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FACEBOOK: CHICKEN WEASELS

Mordechai posted: "My fridge has regular milk, oat milk, and goat milk. I’m so fancy."
And he clarified that there was no soy milk.
To which I reacted.

Facebook then informed me that this comment might conceivably be considered racist: "Regular milk, sweetened condensed milk for the other person, and congealed milk as well as milk fat (for both residents). The other person (Chinese American) tried soy milk once, then informed me that white people were crazy and threw it out."

It's an honest opinion. I have often thought that many white people were out of their goofy little subpar minds. As events in the last decade plus have abundantly shown.

To be frank, I'm getting a little tired of Facebook's puritanical slant. It's very damned white of them. Moralizing mush-mouth-standards-enforcing creeps. They probably eat gluten-free ethically sourced green pizza all the time and only play non-violent video games.
Mark Zuckerberg can blow it out of his stinking sanctimonious ear.

There is no artificial intelligence there.
It's all-organic stupidity.

Freaks.


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BRILLIANTLY NORMAL!

Out of the house before eight o'clock, reached my cardiologist's office at the clinic near the Panhandle at eight twenty. Indulged in a quick smoke before going in, twiddled my thumbs for a minute or so to let the reek of demon tobacco recede, then went in and discovered that there was no one there. Reason being that they don't open till nine. I was an hour early for my nine thirty appointment, but I had been gambling on them dealing with me right away (sometimes it happens) and dismissing me before I was even supposed to be there.

[Actually, I had vastly over-estimated how long it would take to get there.]

Of course what I had forgotten was that most of his patients are old wrecks who have nothing better to do since they retired than get up at the crack of dawn to be on time for their medical stuff. So there were actually two people ahead of me: 俞生 (Mr. Yu) and 龍女士 (Madam Lung), the latter accompanied by her daughter.

Obviously, more thumb twiddling. Thumbs getting a work out.
Circulation in my digits is fine. Legs, not so much.
So the treadmill test was a bitch.
Excuse my language.

Still. Done, out on the street and enjoying a post-medical appointment smoke shortly after ten, back in downtown having a light lunch before twelve. Finished a pipe at one thirty.

LUNCH: SHRIMP CONGEE, YAUTIU, AND HK MILK TEA

The two most beautiful phrases in the English language must be what the Interventional Cardiologist said last year "there's no ulceration, good!" Which meant that the peripheral angioplasty on the lower extremities could be postponed, probably indefinitely.
And what my chief cardiologist said this morning: "you're normal."

Yeah, I know he wasn't talking about my head in any way. Either statement would be a great title for an autobiography, and I might choose them as epitaphs one day. Just to reassure my nearest-and-dearest that, indeed, I had been a regular man.


You're normal. And there is no ulceration!


Did you hear that, gentlepersons? Normal!


Naturally I did not mention to my cardiologist an idea I came up with while in transit. Probably the most dangerous snack in the world if it ever gets made. Spicy salted egg yolk flavoured bacon strips. All the artery clogging cholesterol and salty umami that you want.

香辣鹹蛋黃味培根條。

See, this is why companies don't allow me anywhere near product development or marketing. I'd kill the world with my genius.



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IT'S STUCK THERE

Upon waking I tried to clear my head of all the crap that had accumulated there while I slept. Not actual 'events', but memories of what I heard about them, as well as happy songs about ghastly things. The edge of sleep in the morning is a strange place. That first cup of coffee and opening up my browser usually sets me right.

In part the issue is the prescriptions I'm taking. In part it's simply that the world is a very weird place. Largely because of people. The internet comment that rocks is "we probably all need therapy at some point and so does this person but they need it more than most."
Which I discovered on someone else's page and promptly stole.

[By the way, seeing my cardiologist early in the morning today, and doing the stress test. We'll discuss those medications along with pipe tobacco, cigars, or coffee. Then maybe an early lunch with all of it afterwards. So there's that.]

It's a man, a method, a way of life.


It's all about happy discoveries.

Bugs too, but mostly the discoveries.

One of the things I found recently was "kulit salmon berisi telur masin" (salmon skin with salted egg yolk). Wasn't till I got home that I realized 'hey, no Chinese text!' Which would be 鹹蛋黃味三文魚皮 ('haam daan wong mei saam man yu pei'). Seeing as the store where I got it is in Chinatown, it may be a bit slow moving without the clear text saying what it is.

I am perfectly okay with most people shying away from it.


Stupendous.


After sampling it I felt like saying "OMG, OMG, OMG" on infinite loop like a teenager. It's very good. Delicious. Highly recommended. Probably increases the incidence of gout, heart attacks, and irritation from your idiot relatives, to a near certainty.
But it might make that worthwhile.


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IMPORTANT LIFESTYLE ADVICE

Okay, we're cool with the Italians and Germans. At least they're open minded and up for a good time when visiting the city. So, mostly, are many other Euries -- though the Dutch (my people) at times are snootily superior and get under my skin, and the French are quick to blame communication issues on our not speaking a more intelligible language because they overestimated their own abilities to communicate effectively -- but at present there are tonnes of ragamuffin tattooed trailer freaks from elsewhere in the country slowly ambling about ten abreast on crowded streets enacting a feeding frenzy called Dreamforce. Which is its own ecosystem, spiritual life-changing event, and pop-culture mating dance.

Generally speaking I do not like tourists in SF. Many of them haven't done their homework.
But I admit that if it weren't for them all that fried rice and all those eggrolls would never get eaten, and someone has to buy the sweatshirts and tees with witty slogans.
Which are the very foundation of our economy here.

My own teeshirts (underworn) are mostly related to the computer industry, a saddly defunct toy company, and cigar and pipe brands.

And you will be glad to know I do not wear them with shorts.
In fact, I never wear shorts. At all.

All over the country there are short-wearing pipesmokers with nasty burns on their thighs from spilling hot beverages, or embers falling from their pipes because they unwisely loaded their briar to the brim, not taking into account the natural expansion and curling up of tobacco when lit. It's a real health crisis! Both of these occurences are often linked, one following the other. The ember touching pasty white flesh startles the pipe man and makes him jump or twitch, whereupon tea is spilled. OR the hot tea gets spilled and in consequence he drops his freshly lit pipe right onto his clenched thighs, thus scorching his tender parts.
I grow sad just thinking about it.

It's worse if the pipesmoker is a woman. Skirts.

That's why you seldom see a properly dressed lady smoking a pipe.

So I have three bits of advice here.

1): Never wear shorts, they're dangerous. Besides not being a good look.
2): Don't load up to the brim of your pipe, leave some clearance.
3): Wait for your tea to cool before lifting the cup.

Skirts, however, I encourage. It's a problem. A sweet young woman wearing a skirt just looks so nice with a good pipe (Dunhill group 3, possibly 4, or maybe a Barling), especially if she's enjoying a fine Virginia flake or Virginia-Perique blend. Rattray's Old Gowrie or Marlin Flake, Elizabethan Mixture (now under the Peterson label, formerly Dunhill), or pretty much the entire Fog City Collection by Greg Pease. Also several Cornell & Diehl products.
Highly recommended.



On the other hand, if you're planning to eat Italian pasta dishes, fresh crabs, or curry, then shorts are in fact a good idea. Because of spillage and clothing stains. Perhaps best to eat those in private with only a bib and Speedos.



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IT'S AUTUMN

The customary pub crawl was different. Having picked something else than the usual rat-watching pipe, this was probably to be expected. While smoking where I usually wait for the book seller I was entertained by a balding nut case having a vituperative discussion with an overflowing garbage can -- truly urban America at its finest -- as well as visually intrigued by a cute Chinese woman with lovely legs walking up Grant Avenue with her boyfriend.
As you would guess, I cannot remember if he was Caucasian or Chinese.
He wasn't wearing a skirt. She was. Good gracious.

Skirts on women can be very nice.

On men, much less so.

Even Scots.

I cannot remember ever seeing a Scot poncing around in his woolen skirt and saying to myself "oh my how zesty!" Or even thinking that his knees had been crafted by a master. Some weird Caledonian Michelangelo, if such a being could exist. Instead, upon seeing Scotmen in their native garb I've often remembered the passage from Boswell describing the knee-length red hair of a Celtic woman's lower regions by which he and the good doctor were fascinated, which indicates that sight-seeing was taken far more seriously in that day and age, as well as the lovely partan bree that my ex occasionally made.

[Partan Bree: Scottish crab soup, made with crab meat, seafood broth, cream, rice, and sherry, plus the usual aromatics used in European cooking.]

It is far better to be reminded of delicious food than that Boswell and Johnson were a bunch of ruddy perverts.

Given that the weather is colder than we expected for this time of year, it looks like we've gone from Summer (freezing and foggy) straight into Fall without an intervening hot spell.
I hope it continues like this.

In Oracle Bone Script (甲骨文 'kaap gwat man'; current four thousand years ago), the word for autumn was 𥤚 of which 𪛁 is a variant. A millet stalk being harvested on one side, with a turtle standing in for a cricket or locust, over fire. The modern form 秋 preserves the millet stalk (禾) and fire (火).

甲骨文、大篆的秋字。

There is a muppetness to it which is quite charming, common among many old characters.

Autumn is the season of pumpkin spice and queer tobacco mixtures flavoured with candy, apples, spices, and whatever the berserk blender thought would appeal to big rig truckdrivers huffing cheap basket pipes or corncobs, such as the weirdo who unfriended me on Facebook seven years ago when he found out I despised Donald Trump. A stupid babboon (一個傻狒).

There was a seasonally appropriate bulk blend available years ago aggressively souped up with fermented pôhpukun and cloves, and enough propylene glycol to sink a battleship, that was popular in primitive parts of the country among the slope-browed huntn' shootn' fishn' types, which fortunately never became popular in this neck of the woods. Our Fall tastes run to lotus seed paste or red bean paste with sugar and shortening, and one or two salted egg yolks, baked in a pastry crust that rather resembles shortbread.
We're rather old fashioned that way.
Mooncakes.

[單黃蓮蓉 ('daan wong lin yung'): single yolk lotus seed. 雙黃蓮蓉 ('seung wong lin yung'): double yolk lotus seed. 單黃豆沙 ('daan wong dau saa'): single yolk red bean. 雙黃豆沙 ('seung wong dau saa'): double yolk red bean.]

Many people are grateful that those are NOT aromatic tobacco flavours.
As, selbstverständlich, am I as well.


It's only a matter of time before someone invents a smoking mixture that tastes like candy corn, maybe with Fireball added. Which would be a sign for the End of Times.
Joe, if you're reading this, do NOT suggest it to Jeremy!


No, I don't smoke queer shiznit like that even when Halloween looms. It only encourages people. Precisely the folks who should not be encouraged. A friend in Mississippi lives for pumpkins and boo-decorating. She's been known to stuff aromatics in her pipe, as well as wear pointy black hats. In another week or so her front yard will look like a charnell house, with bones, bloody sheets, and mock-up corpses everywhere.

It must be the heat. It affects people's brains.
Either that or tropical fevers.
It's hot there.

Cornell & Diehl Steamworks in a favourite old briar. Which would have been followed by a stop at the burger place, but it was packed, so we headed over to a burrito joint, then to a friendly bar. Because the karaoke dive was insane, we strolled over to the bus afterwards with our cigarillos. An early-ish evening. Other than the noisy bits, it was quiet.



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MEATBALL

There are some people in politics whom one detests, both instinctively and rationally. People who are a nasty blot on the landscape, a festering syphilitic sore on the body politic.
Such as the representative of Ohio's Fourth Congressional District, Jim Jordan.
A thoroughly nauseating political opportunist.

AMBULATORY PUSTULE

Normally I like meatballs. Not when they're filled with pus.

Jordan is a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, a dangerous collection of mouthbreathing treasonous rightwing extremists, and served as its first chair.
He is currently chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.




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WHY FOOD COLOURING IS ESSENTIAL

Many countries have foods of which the locals are absurdly fond, and which visitors often find strange, even disturbing. One only has to think of Americans and breakfast cereals, for instance. Bizarre overly sweet pellets with no actual flavour, made soggy and depressing by the addition of milk. Or vegan food -- very popular all over Berkeley -- boasted about by outposts of raving socialist food-puritans in many urban areas except Texas.

Why?

[Let's not talk about the Netherlandish obsession with frikandel, which is absolutely logical, and makes life in tropical hell holes like Thailand or Southern Spain much more civilized. You'll fester. But you will eat. There's little else edible there.]

A correspondent speaks highly of mushy peas.
Which is basically a Brit version of refried beans, without salt, lard, cumin, onion, garlic, or toasted chillies, and if the food colouring is left out, a repulsive grey muck.
But otherwise quite unobjectionable.

Could be improved by cilantro and a squeeze of lime juice.
It's kind of like hummus without oil or garlic.
A very Protestant compound.

Often served with fish and chips, so probably excellent with lutefisk and surströmming, and I'm baffled as to why Scandinavia and the British Isles haven't combined their culinary ideas into one "cuisine". May have something to do with the deep fried Mars bars of which English speakers are inexplicably fond, and the love of Danes for everything with mayonnaise.


Come to think of it, there are only three cuisines in Europe worth bothering with anyway: Netherlandish, French, and Italian. All of which are better with sambal.


Without food colouring, Europeans might starve.



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PLEASE DON'T IMAGINE IT!

There are any number of bad jokes that can be made with the word 'duck'. Which is both a noun and a verb. And, if you're drawing a duck on the computer while your apartment mate is cruising through E-Bay laughing hysterically ("vintage 50s funeral home calendar", "fun with rubber belts, full instruction for the Cranston spool-belt driver home hobby kit 1967, with clear illustrations"), duck is intense reds, magentas, and earth tones. So there is no point in trying to be creative with the word. Much as one is tempted.

Usually when she's on E-Bay it's vintage costume jewelry. In the olden days the same skill, talent, and high-quality execution as went into classic pieces by famous jewelers was used, just lesser materials. She's quite the maven on that score.

Which, you will readily understand, doesn't interest me in the slightest.

Best settings for pyrites? Don't know. Not my thing.

Victorian pyrite jewelry.

The difference between marcasite and pyrite is one of brittleness and hardness, though in fact they look very similar. She can, if I'm crazy enough to ask questions, go one about it for hours and hours (she's on the spectrum), much like many pipe collectors myself included will about certain shapes and famous makers (one of my friends obsesses about a classic GBD shape of which there are thousands under different brand stamps all made in the period 1910 to 1960), and I often have to check myself lest I go off into a similar dazed state. It's very tempting. People with Asperger Syndrome are like that. Fortunately there is little about the Comoy three-part 'C' that can be said -- it's a simple enough detail, really -- and I am unlikely to bore you with that.

Aspy people tend to be oblivious to the effects of their discourse on others. That's why the most recent pipe club meeting was so horrid. Imagine a room full of Asperger types happily blithering on about stuff they know about, and for various reasons I didn't get to participate. There was so much that I wanted to bore people about! It's important and fascinating stuff! Why did all of you obsessives get the chance? Have there been changes in the pecking order that no one told me about? Oh look, shiny!

So anyway.

Duck get's its colour from caramelization and soy sauce. Minor difference are due to variable effects of high temperature as will as different compositions of the liquids. Sugar, when melted, starts shading into beautiful intense reds, but can easily turn black and bitter.

When drawing a duck the intensity of the colour is very important, and leads to dramatic effects. Contrast, high lights, and warm glows. Even areas verging on dark umber, nearly black. You can have fun with colder reds and magentas versus warmer reds shading on orange. It's a very versatile animal. Besides being delicious. Which is actually why you're drawing it in the first place.

Ignore the head. You'll simply cut it off and throw it in the stock pot, where the partial caramelization will contribute marvelously. Also the neck.

Perfect with just sambal and rice.



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FOOD FANTASIES

This day should be bearable. It's not too hot, and slightly breezy. Gentle zephyrs. It would be a perfect day to go on a canal cruise through a verdant countryside, if San Francisco had canals. And then stop somewhere for dumplings. If Holland had dumplings.

Aftwards enjoying a pipe near an ancient pagoda or ramshackle sixteenth century windmill on a dyke encircling a polder.

These are fantasies, of course. They signify two things. The first is that I have gotten over yesterday, which was altogether kind of sucky, and also that it's getting close to lunch time, following which I will smoke a pipe, and revel in my distaste for humans.

Well, most humans.

A pretty woman with a PHD prattling on intelligently about nuclear physics OR functional chloroplasts in the genus Elysia and changes in photosynthetic light reactions (these are both hypothetical and fantasy subjects for her discourse), would, of course, enchant me. While in the shadow of the aforementioned ancient and decrepit buildings with my pipe.
Long words uttered by brilliant women can be absolutely and utterly delightful.
Even if I have a hard time grasping the concepts
I myself do not use photosynthesis.

[By the way: ALL intelligent women are pretty. It's because of that sentient look.]

After a while I will suggest a bite to eat. So that she can continue talking, and the waiters will think that I am a lucky fellow, and that we have a bright and lively thing going.

The truth is that if I wanted to share some red soup noodles with anybody, I would have to make it myself, as it's one of those things that sofar is unavailable in Chinatown, where I will probably end up later today having a late lunch or a teatime snack. There is, alas, no branch of the venerable 松鶴樓 anywhere in Northern California, nor a SF version of 鏖糟官. Long simmered refined soup broth, redddened with a brisk dash of dark soy sauce (老抽 'lou chau'), as the bath for thin handmade wheat noodles. With toppings.

[松鶴樓 ('sung hok lau'); fundada en 1757. 鏖糟館 (奧灶館 'ngou jou kun'); fundada en 1853. The latter was originally named 天香館 ('tin heung kun'), later changing the name to 顏復興 ('ngaan fuk heng').]

Braised pork, crackled pigskin, fried eel, smoked fish.
And a brined egg (滷水蛋 'lou seui daan').
Even krupuk.


紅燒肉
Red braised pork

One pound of nice streaky pork belly meat.
Four TBS sherry or Shaoxing wine.
Two TBS soy sauce.
One and a half TBS white sugar.

Cut the meat into thick chunks, blanch in boiling water for several minutes, take out and drain. Melt the sugar in a pan with a little oil, add the pork and slowly fry till nicely coloured. Then add the liquor and soy sauce, and a splash of water. Simmer for nearly an hour, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking, adding water as necessary to keep the meat from drying out. Then raise the heat and cook down while stirring to glaze the meat. Can be eaten as is, or as a side dish with other things.

Ideal for breakfast, with 蘇式湯麵. Serve on a separate plate so that it can be added to the noodles when eating.
Some people add shelled peanuts several minutes before the glazing stage to absorb flavour.
That is, frankly speaking ridiculous, as well as overkill.

Rehydrated black mushroom cooked similarly is excellent.
Just mentioning that in passing.




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THAT DISTANT HOWLING

So far, I seem to be the only one buying Steamworks at the local tobacco emporium. Which is fine by me. I know there are smokers who would certainly like it, but what with California's discriminatory tobacco taxes, coupled with their natural cheapskateness and fear of new things, it looks like over the next few months I'll end up with most of what's available.
Which is fine by me. It's mighty good stuff. And it grows on you.
It's also a limited edition. There won't be any more.


As you would expect, I am selfish and selective about the people with whom I share tobacco. Having similar preferences in certain smokeables indicates a like mind, and a likeable set of tastes and standards. Especially when it comes to such specialized categories. Anyone who habitually huffs aromatic blends, for instance, is probably not someone with whom I would associate much, nor a person whom I would ask for tobacco recommendations or about nearly anything else.


"Which books are you reading nowadays, oh person who smells like fairy dust bubble bath?"


Probably romance authors. There is an entire series of swoony love books set in the last days, in which a shy young Christian virgin is waiting for her man to come home from the war during the tribulations while fire is raining from the sky and the river is running blood. Imagine the sound of trumpets. Smells like cherries jubilee with an undertone of watermelon. I'm not surprised they banned flavoured tobacco in California, it leads to weird perversions

Hairy tattooed frat boys with strap-on fairie wings.

While John-boy is prancing through the wildflowers enjoying his strawberry melba 'Legends' Cavendish by 'House of Paine, Inc', Priscilla and I will go through the tin of C&D Steamworks in the abandoned library with the collected Faulkner plus the Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet by Georg Eberhard Rumphius. We take turns bringing in a thermos of tea. This will take several days. We've disabled the smoke detector, just in case, and made sure the doors are locked, so that that *&%$ing fruitloop aficionado can't come in and we won't be disturbed.

You know, there's just something about the smell of candied tobaccos that remind me of low-tide in Perth Amboy. Where I've never been.

Unfortunately, I don't know a woman named Priscilla with unique good taste, and there is no abandoned library in whose half-lit recesses we smoke our pipes while ignoring the zombie outside howling because he ran out of bubble gum shreds to burn.
No, it doesn't keep away mosquitoes, John-boy.
It attracts vermin.

TOBACCO INDEX


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GIBBERING, LITTLE FELLAH, GIBBERING!

My right leg hurts like billy-o and someone hijacked the chair I use during meetings of pipe club. It raises up so that I can see over the display case, instead of not being visible. So I simply didn't bother attending during my lunch break. Sat where I usually sit when eating, near the cabinet with all the dead things in it. And as far as I'm concerned, today was the worst damned pipe club meeting ever. It turns out I am neither as socially bendable OR socially engaging as I often pretend to be.

Sometimes I sulk. Enjoy a jolly good a snitfit.

My right leg still hurts like topsy.



On the way home I realized that most people are dense. It's the natural human condition. Neurotypical. It explains a lot. The damned bipeds are defective. No wonder the aliens keep avoiding this planet. They'd prefer a race that happily read textbooks about geology while drinking tea and smoking their pipes, enjoying each others company in relative silence all afternoon, over gibbering social maniacs and any conversation at all about the ballgame.

Apparently we won the game. The local team. Stupendous. The course of human history has been firmly changed, huzzah, rejoice. This was the most significant thing all year.
The pandemic is over, you can all go home now.


It happened while I was smoking the pipe above. Which I calmly finished. Without whooping it up or pouring gatorade over anyone. I always worry when the local team is playing that one or two of the old fossils in the back haven't had their requisite dose of kaopectate, and in the excitement will lose control.

You know what they're filled with most of the time anyhow, don't you?



Dinner: Two stroopwafels, a piece of maple fudge.
Plus coffee, and Amlodipine Besylate.




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STRONGLY SUPPORTIVE

Facebook (the corporate entity) panders to slime. I 'never-show-this-ad-agained' several "suggested for you" posters yesterday because they are clickbait and vile: Money Awaits Business, Motor Searches, Good to Know, Lynsey Queen Of Clean, Big Global Travel, Casual Christian Comedy 2, Dete Meserve, Lessons Learned In Life, and Tender Disposals Springwood. That last one is Brisbane's biggest bollocks or something.
I am nowhere near Australia. And I detest Vegemite.

Vegemite is a reformatory sermon in a jar. There is no better way to ruin a perfectly good piece of hot buttered toast and feel 'saintly' at the same time.
It's what 'santimonious tastes like.


I also made a nasty comment about an elderly lesbian thespian because she said something incredibly mean about a gentleman I admire. No, nothing about her looks, no body or face shaming. Just a sneer at her career.

BTW: She went full Vegemite a few years ago.
Obviously mistakes were made.

Stupid kangaroo.


On the other hand, I hit "like" under several red panda posts. I have a great fondness for red pandas, and strongly believe they should be encouraged. Otherwise they might turn to drink and start singing death-metal karaoke.

As sensitive creatures often do.


Sometimes there is a smarmy racism about Australians that is incredibly distasteful.


Vegemite.



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THE MOST DANGEROUS FOOD IN THE WORLD

According to Marjorie Taylor Greene, an idiot who is much loved in inbredistan, it's gazpacho.
No, I shan't put a recipe for hick bitch roach poison here, because of course you have your own. Which is probably far better than mine.

The best recipe is Nancy Pelosi's.
Trust me on this.

[Bread crumbs, tomato, cucumbers, onion, bell peppers, garlic, olive oil, wine vinegar, water, and salt. Pinch of cumin.]

From what I hear, she's a fabulous cook.


I also hear that the reason MTG and her husband divorced is because she kept serving up possum and taters. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's a very popular dish in that neck of the woods. Swamp. Generations of local kids have grown up big and strong (and hairy) on that. Washed down with SweetWater 420 Extra Pale Ale. Ooh yum baby.
Problem was she kept serving it to other men. All he got was stale leftovers.

A major issue with possum is that it's kind of greasy.
Especially when it's stale leftovers.
Bit of an off smell.

Should have stuck with the gazpacho.
Far healthier. Cleaner too.



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PANDEMIC OF IDIOTS

Last night while outside smoking my pipe I saw three people stumble across busy streets against traffic. How sad that some people are so out of it that they don't even recognize a don't walk light, and cannot understand that motor cars moving at them if they don't stop will win the confrontation. One of the vehicles was a city bus, which had to halt in the middle of the intersection.

One wonders, at times, how it is that many human beings have survived so long.
Or by what mischance that level of idiocy contributed to the gene pool.

Must be congenitally inbred voters from Tennessee.

Where hairy knuckles are common.

I've always thought that the more Republican states in this country deliberately bus their least effective people out west to California after election season is over, so that they don't have to house or feed them, or provided any medical coverage when the poor blasted bigfoots start dying of malnutrition, neglect, chronic stupid behaviour, exposure to the elements, or mis-information fueled conspiracy theory paranoia.

We dare not ship them back; they might vote again.
And we've seen what hell that leads to.
January Sixth.

Unfortunately, I don't speak hick. A language of mostly monosyllabic grunts. Common in the vast interior (and in Fox News broadcasts). Human civilization has not penetrated that far.

Earlier I had gone out for a late tea in C'town, avoiding streets with high foot traffic. Because tourists are in town, many of whom do not understand about masks OR even letting faster pedestrians pass them. Maybe 'mask' is an unknown concept in Mississippi or Arkansas.
And clearly they aren't used to using the sidewalk. It must get very lonely out in the hinterlands; so few other hominids ambulating in broad daylight.
Beyond the parking lot in front of Piggly Wiggly.
Or, perhaps, Dunkin' Donuts.
Walking is hard.


How on earth did mankind make it this far?
And why are they on my sidewalk?
Or the middle of the street?



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