OBSESSED WITH PORK PIES

It was a long well-written bitch-essay, with a lovely illustration featuring tannic red tea colours, yellow ochre shading into lemon yellow as well as canary yellow, and mango-flesh hued areas. It was vicious and unpleasant, so I'm glad it was only a vivid dream. Inspired, very largely, by a Filippino Chinese gentleman at the pharmacy whose wife was, justifiably, very upset with him. And told him "stop it". "Don't". "Shut up". And "get in the car".

An ancient auntie rolled past in a wheelchair and remarked that he could give people heart attacks with his berserk outbursts, it was very inconsiderate of him. But because she said it in Cantonese he absolutely ignored her. Not his language, and he was fed up with the Cantonese. They were disobedient. And he knew that if you shouted and behaved like a white American tourist anywhere in the world, it brought results. One hundred percent.

Yeah okay, sunny Jim, but this is the Chinese Hospital Pharmacy. Not anywhere in the world. Most people here who get what they want get that by being reasonable and courteous, and patience by the way is a virtue. You didn't get what you wanted because in addition to being a Sangley a-hole throwing a tantrum, is because your pharmacy of record is Walgreens at Westgate, your insurance does not cover that medication, and furthermore doesn't have any relationship with this institution, and your paperwork is both incomplete and incorrect. And you don't listen. Common problem for people like you.

In fact, almost everybody (99.9999%) will leave here happy that they got what they wanted, in a comparatively short period of time, expeditiously and efficiently. And, given the reasons for them being here in the first place -- not being in the absolute peak of health and youthful spryity -- that is absolutely amazing. If this place was staffed by my people (Netherlanders), security would have been called on you so fast and a sedative administered pdq. Or a cattleprod. Pepperspray. They really need pepperspray. Just in case.

Shouting. Does. Not. Make. Good. Things. Happen. You. Pig.
Just stop it. Shut up. Don't. And get in the car.

So instead of that painting with angry tannic reds, various intense shades of yellow as well as umber, ochre, and sienna, here is a lovely restful image of somewhere in England. Yorkshire. Once a gentleman of impeccable Chinese Filippino background (Fujianese ancestry and an intense knowledge of all the top designer brands) told me "you'd love England, everything is grey there". Indeed.

I've actually been to England several times. Once you get out of London, where there are Yobbos, it's a very nice place. Sure, the food is nothing to write home about, although they have some lovely pork pies, and the teatime offerings are splendid, but in the main no one shouts, there are few if any American or Americanized tourists, they have bookstores, and spicy condiments are available. A lovely place. And yes, they do speak English.

For some reason, the courtesy and professionalism of the staff at Chinese Hospital, and the pharmacy there, always reminds me of England. High standards, sheer competence, and equanamity when dealing with the occasional grouchy old pustule.



The time I spent in the ICU there years ago was, sadly, not alleviated by pork pies. Perhaps an oversight. Maybe I should suggest that to them. It is extremely likely that their Cantonese demographic would appreciate it. Those are the same people that enthusiastically dig into cheesy spaghetti porkchops (焗豬扒意粉 'guk jyu paa yi fan'), flaky barbecue pork turnovers (叉燒酥 'chaa siu sou'), and cheesy curry fresh seafood baked rice (芝士咖喱海鮮焗飯 'ji si kaa lei hoi sin guk faan').

There is also Portuguese Chicken Rice (焗葡國雞飯 'guk pou gwok gai faan'; a base of egg-fried rice with mild coconut curry chicken and cheese crusted under the broiler).
People would be dying to get into the ICU.
Oh wait......



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ANOTHER ERA

Seth posted an article about a seasonal exhibit of old-timey jello dishes. The picture actually looked edible until you realized that that was asparagus, and they had murdered it. The bed of crinkly lettuce and parsley underneath the fruit cocktail ring(?) was what made the whole appetizing. than another friend posted what may be the classicest sammich recipe ever: Take a quarter pound of liverwurst, mash it with a peeled banana and a cup of tomato ketchup or chili paste. Butter eight slices of bread, smear the liverwurst and banana mixture on eight other slices, and stick them together. Slice diagonally. Yum. boys, that sounds delish!

In the good old days women would stay at home all day and while away the lonely hours inventing festive old timey foods like this. I think we've lost a lot by becoming civilized.

I would use chilipaste instead of ketchup.
Sambal badjak, sambal oelek, either.

Toast the bread first.

Had a bowl of jook yesterday, first food since Sunday. Felt it was necessary, so that I wouldn't wankle or stumble when down at the pharmacy picking up a refil of latanoprost. That would have been bad.

Can't have random white dudes wankling and stumbling around pharmacies these days.
I feel that was a crucial part of movies back then.
Happened all the time.



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MURDEROUS STUPIDITY

Being hors de combat from a horrid case of the flu, it was with avid interest that I clicked on a link to an article detailing a virus currently surging in the Bay Area. And promptly noticed that the comments may have been written by idiots. Many of my fellow Americans, when it comes to medical matters, are dumber than a puddle of dog vomit. That's not just an opinion based on the exceptional morons who all felt a need to prove what idiots they are, but on the huge surge in infectious diseases which had been nearly eradicated, innoculations and vaccines falling in several areas of the country, and the just plain blithering idiocy of rightwing social media influencers.

Texas, the Carolinas, and Florida deserve what they're getting.
So do Southern California and parts of Marin County.
Colorado, Idaho, and Oklahoma also.

Of course I've known for years that the situation was dire. For nearly ten years some of the people with whom because of work I must regularely come in contact have been telling me that miracle manuka honey, apple cider vinegar, and turmeric are surefire guarantees of health, and that if only I would have listened to them I would not have needed a coronary stent. Or, most recently, an angioplasty in my right leg. Look, boyos, if you actually believe that nonsense and persist in propagandizing for it, you are murderous swine. The more so because you also claim not to believe that vaccines are in any way useful despite several of you having survived Covid. Kindly shut up.

The statement "if it's natural it has to be good for you" is absolute twaddle. It is because of natural things that the average lifespan during the middle ages was at rock bottom. The plague is natural. Rattlesnake venom is natural. Tetrodotoxin is natural.

That picture above is of something you can't even see, the name of which many of you have trouble reading, recognizing, or pronouncing, and which none of your damned miracle natural remedies will cure. You really need to shut the F up about your batshit medical theories.


That goes double for the idiot Trump put in charge of Health and Human Services.



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A LIGHTHEADEDNESS

Putting it into modern hippie terms, it's a 'cleanse'. Meaning that I haven't eaten since Sunday, and goldarn I feel spiritual. Wrecked by the flu too, but spiritual. And all this without the benefit of apple cider vinegar, turmeric, or that great therapeutic cure-all, marijuana.
I didn't go to my usual Tuesday lunch place yesterday, shan't be heading over to the chachanteng I go to every Wednesday either.


Yes, I did get all my shots.


Three of my coworkers didn't. All of them either got sick, or were in proximity to sick people for many hours. And they have goofy medical ideas, so I'm surprised they aren't dead yet.

I haven't smoked a pipe since the weekend either, and intellectually that bothers me more than realistically. It's something I just don't feel like doing at present.


PLus the temps outside right now are brutal.
Icebergs drifting perilously close.
Snowdrifts, frozen corpses.

I suppose I should shave today, my chin feels frowsty. Like a British living room after Old Roger has smoked all of his Havanas with the wife away. He really should have put on some sweaters and opened the window, the difference in temperatures would have gotten that pokey estate flat fresh in no time. Maybe she's in the hospital.
And not coming back this week.
Should have had her shots.
Flu, covid, distemper.


The weather at present is exactly the same as in England.
This does please me in the slightest.
Going back to bed now.



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THE SOUP THAT MATTERS

Wasted the entire day mostly in bed. Flu-ish. Achy. Cold. So altogether, write this one off. The chain of transmission probably runs directly from work, a coworker who was no longer quite symptomatic. If not, I probably passed it on myself before the fevered feeling had manifested itself. Food, today, is a bit iffy. I don't feel like cooking, and there is no restaurant conveniently nearby where I could get exactly what I want, which means that weak tea and perhaps a biscuit will be on the menu.

Exactly what I want is congee made with chicken stock and chicken shreds, with scallion and ginger strewn on top. Unfortunately this neighborhood caters mostly to younger generation white people who wouldn't know what that was if it came up and bit them in the rear.


Once upon a time I was a younger generation white person.
Okay?!?


Now I just want these kids to get off my imaginary lawn, and to take their cellphones and scooters with them. Just leave the to-go container by the door and scram. It's rather depressingly gloomy in here. and cold. The heater doesn't kick on till later.
And my arms and torso ache. Profoundly.

Congee is comfort food.

Chicken congee is chicken rice soup simmered and stirred till the rice grains are cloudy and falling apart, then shredded or cut chicken -- which may be from a roasted bird, or not -- are added, and then in this scenario chopped scallion and ginger over it. Maybe a drop of sesame oil. Decent stock is key. Hot, thereapeutic, simple.


Entirely unconnected to any of this, I'm looking at a tin of Chenet's Cake, by Cornell & Diehl. Which is a meaty Virginia and Perique blend I am quite keen to light up, probably in my older Peterson pipes. But I shan't open it till later in the week, when I've improved considerably.
It's been described as having an awful tin note, but a very good smoke.
Probably perfect for the icy weathere we're having.



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IT IS VERY NEARBY!

An internet discussion with a friend in Israel this morning, in which I mentioned that the languages of San Francisco are English, Spanish, Cantonese, and Tagalog. Pursuant ordering food in Antwerp, where if the waitress speaks really deep and unintelligible Flemish, her parents native tongue will come in handy. Cantonese, despite it not being a Chinese restaurant. One should never let language stand in the way of food, unlike for instance haemorroids (quiero comprar un tubo de tu mejor pomada para las hemorroides!), for which salves are, or used to be, as advertised on Mission Street buses. And you can imagine how chuffed I was to realize that I could make sense of every word on the colourful advertising poster.

At last! I can go to Mexico AND have haemorrhoids!

Some folks think just pointing will work. With food, that can lead to confusion and lectures, the subtext of which might be "that's bittermelon with shrimp paste, which is indeed delicious, but you're so white you glow in the dark, perhaps I should let you know that you will probably detest it". With piles, pointing is probably not recommended either. But feel free to try, and report back.

Imagine that you are visiting Beirut.

Afwan, ya mademoiselle, hadha biwasir!

Ayn Walghrizi? Where is a Walgreens?

One would hope 'qarib jidan'. Rather than ten miles away. So you thank her nicely ('shukran jazilan, ya mademoiselle'), then toddle off on your ten glowing tentacles, leaving her with memories of an experience she can't possibly tell her friends about.
"Hey Laila, did you know space aliens can have haemorrhoids?" At which point Laila thinks to herself "oh goodness, Fatima has been hitting the bottle again" and resolves to call the authorities.

One would hate for glowing green space alien haemorrhoids to be the reason for first contact. It would be undignified. Just saying.



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THE IRISH ARE NOT SOMALIS

Having woken from a nap dream featuring Somali food, I searched the internet for Somali restaurants in San Francisco. It looks like there aren't any. Ethiopean, yes, Sudanese also, but nothing Mogadishuesque. A tragic oversight. A lacuna. This more or less relates to the dumb Irishman infesting the back-room at work who insists that Somalis are low IQ people hellbent on destroying the United States, because he heard something that Trump said.

I'm not sure that my fellow Dutch American Ayaan Hirsi Ali would agree with either of them.

Which is neither here nor there. We Dutch Americans have more experience dealing with sub-standard Irish Americans and German Americans than Somalis (fellow spice merchants), and I'm on record as saying some perfectly shitty things about the Irish (especially around Saint Patrick's Day), which mostly reflect my experience with frat boys (not an ethnic group) and people from the Sunset and Richmond Districts (violent inbred drunks who support the IRA), none of which are representative of the Irish. For one thing, the mildew between their toes is due to bad hygiene, not the misfortune of living in a bog. But no matter.

The other thing is that sometimes my accent is mistaken for Irish or Boston, which I bitterly effing resent. Dumb-ass Americans! It's almost like the morons in this country have the only slimmest idea about the entire rest of the world.

Oh wait, that's actually correct.
They do. Quite slim.
Idiots.

As you can see from this photo, I look nothing at all like an Irishman. I am trimmer by far than the senile bastard in the backroom, plus there's that intelligent glint in my eye, instead of a potato sodden dullness. And I'm quite huggable. Rather than repulsive. Even if you don't factor in the obvious difference of brain (me) versus slab of blood pudding (him).

No, he's not a drunken wreck. Abstains entirely.
He's seen what it does to his people.




By the way: Splendid Irish products of note are Guinness and whiskey, both of which make their cuisine palatable (it's a variation on general British Isles muck, slightly different from the utter dreadfulness of English cooking or horror of Scots). One of my favourite authors is J. P. Donleavy. And I'm also quite fond of my Peterson pipes. Someday I'll have to visit the factory in Dublin, if I can refrain from cogent remarks about the Irish long enough to keep from getting punched. No one in all those islands appreciates American honesty. Sad.

Can't say anything about their poetry. Sometimes I can't get their damned songs out of my head. It's a curse.



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A SLICE OF HEAVEN

The other day, when passing a Chevron station, I noticed the posters on the pumps put there by the company itself, asserting indignantly that California has the highest gas prices in the country, and I realized that it was a deliberate cynical ploy by them to fuel resentment toward the state government as well as sabotage regulation of their industry. And, naturally, I thought "shut up you hosebags, you make record profits in any case, why should you give a damn." Because in the most motorvehicle oriented state people will drive no matter what. California basically invented highways and the suburban strip mall, as well as American car culture. Chevron protesting any rules at all is blatant cynicism.

The other thought that came to mind is that Luigi Mangione is the wave of the future, with many more assassinations of big company executives. Not just the vicious bastards in charge of medical insurance, but a wider and more diverse target group. And remarkably, almost all the candidates for such action are Republicans and major contrigutors to the campaign finances of the robber baron party.

It's just a thought, of course. Far be it from me to advocate political violence. No. I am a bland pacifist more than happy with the splendid state of affairs in a country exploited and drained dry by the enlightened leadership of political whores. I am overjoyed.
It's the best of all possible worlds! Thank you Jesus!

And please don't get me started on the religious rightwing.
Om shanti shanti om, Jesus, om shanti shanti om.
Peace, love, butterflies, and baby angels.

Another thing that came to mind is that the combination of high health insurance costs, fast food chains, and our addiction to hyper-processed junkfoods, probably saves Social Security and Medicare piles of money. We die faster here than in the rest of the industrialized world, and more suddenly. So who cares that clinics and hospitals all over rural America are underfunded and closing down? The savings are enormous!

Things must be really wonderful in Texas.



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THE LIZARD PEOPLE

Just wait for the next pandemic. Traffic will become less congested, and there will be plenty of parking. Almost a guarantee. And we'll finally be able to pave over Texas as a parking lot on the road to Guadalajara. Yes, you may call me an optimist. And that may sound a little negative, but I've spent two days hearing pustulent right wingers justifying and defending Trump's racism and turpitude and Whiskey Pete's complete moral vacuum. So I have little love for my fellow Americans. The rot started when we let in all the trash from the British Isles. English, Irish, Scots, Scots-Irish, what have you. In fact, if we Dutch had sank the Mayflower when it was loaded, the world would be a much better place.

Ichor, radioactive sludge, and toxic secretions.

Thank me for sharing.

Sure, the British Isles would now be overflowing with all the scum that couldn't leave unless deported to Australia, but that's actually a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.
I'd be okay with that. They would have been forced to deal with their whack-jobs at home.
Instead of foisting them on the world. Cold showers, boys, just have cold showers!
It will cure you of those depraved tendencies!


Yesterday afternoon the backroom with the old farts was a little slice of hell. Steaming rancid compost brained hell. Rottenness bubbling over, psychic slime globs, and ectoplasmic putty, splashing around and spattering like what happens when you dump a thirty two ounce soft drink into the deep-fryer at the cheese steak place.

In their next lives they should be reborn as gila monsters with painful infected jaw glands. It would be appropriate. Chronic starvation because of their inability to hunt effectively, the venom giving them constant acid and constipation. Long but incredibly unhappy lives.

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DREAM COOKING

The doorbell rang in the night, but that was probably a dream, as there was no one there when I checked. Sleep then brought me beef stew, happily quivering in a long dark hallway and humming to itself. Unappetizing beef stew. No spices, salt, or flavour. Fortunately that didn' last too long. I cannot find a way of blaming that on the weather.

Probably that last cup of coffee before going to sleep.

Beef stew normally does not shake and tremble in the hallway. It's often kind of emotionless. Perhaps in other parts of the country it's semi-sentient and expresses itself, lord only knows what food is like there and I've heard horror stories about chicken rice sludge with processed cheese melted over because the illiterates have banned cookbooks at the local library, but not here. Seldom. Rarely.

Our beef stew is a more literate product.
Often with French pretensions.
Boeuf Bourgignon.

The main difference being wide-spread cultural awareness, woke policies, and a more civilized way of living. We're just better than them. And wine. We have wine.


Food has featured in my dreams a lot lately.
That, I probably can blame on the weather.



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SOUNDING A BIT MORE SO

No meatballs. Very disappointing. But evenso. I had scoped out the menu when walking by the first time, and had seen lions head meatballs over rice (獅子頭飯 'si ji tau faan') as one of the offerings. So after some necessary purchases I went back and went in. Turns out that today they didn't have it. So I ordered something else and enjoyed my lunch anyhow. Not bad. Not exceptionally good. But above mediocre in a pleasant environment. The waitress was determined to understand my Cantonese even though she only spoke Toisanwaa.
My Toisanwaa, in case you hadn't noticed, is awful.
I can sort of understand it.
Sometimes.

There are four restaurants in Chinatown that offer Toisanese cuisine. I do not know how different that is from standard Hong Kong Canto, as I have never been in them. There's that dialect, you see. And usually native speakers of Toisanwaa take pains to explain that they don't speak Japanese or Mandarin or whatever that mispronounced gibberish is that I'm attempting to speak, please talk English.

My track record with speakers of that dialect is not very good.

About as bad as with Americans from the interior.


If I really wanted to be considered a foreigner I would have moved to the suburbs or beyond years ago. See, in standard Cantonese no one will say "you have an accent, where are you really from?" They can plainly see that I am not a local from their place. It stands out like a sore thumb. But at least I sound like a real human being.
I've never been sure of that in English.

The entire rest of the country beyond certain cities is like the America of the teevee series King Of The Hill. With folks who ask "so are you German or French" after I explain that I'm an American who grew up in the Netherlands (which I then have to clarify isn't Denmark or Norway, you dumb redneck). They're easily flummoxed. And they love pizza.
That's from Europe also, ain't it?

Some Toisanese assume that a white guy conversing in Cantonese is actually trying to speak Mandarin. That probably explains the "sheh sheh" (謝謝) of the waitress when I left.
Which was very cosmopolitan of her.
And courteous.



It's easy to understand why Toisan people are a bit "wary" of foreigners. Their experience with those people is that they're pirates or drug dealers, plus invaders, tax officials, and commissars. You know, the Dutch, English, and Mongols.



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AGAIN THE FRAGRANCE RISES

There's something about those first cups of coffee that just puts the mind on the right track. Before waking up the mind was obsessing (and I know this is weird) about Capstan tobacco, which when I was fourteen I did not particularly like, but of which now I'm rather fond, then after that dark musky jolt of mud I am instead thinking of sunlight, the scent of roses, and jasmine flowers. A study with a hidden staircase.

Across the street in Naarden there was a house with a long garden filled with rose bushes. Various hues. Next to a canal which curved sharply to the left near the highway. The further neighbors in that stretch had tall old trees which I climbed, only the lower branches.
Sunlight, summer, insects. An attic window. Very lovely.

No, at that age I did not smoke a pipe or drink coffee.
But I remember the smells of those then.
A very summery aroma.


We moved to Valkenswaard the next year.
Tar, dust, and fermenting leaves.
A pine tree, resinous.
Low branches.

The painters in the air well outside the kitchen have finished, and the windows are open. The present does not resemble the past, the location has changed, and the sunlight is different.
Coffee and tobacco are a link; they smell the same.


It's quiet in the building, there are few people here.


The room where the computers sit is southfacing. Light is streaming in, but fragmented and diffused through the blinds. Second cup, tobacco in a Charatan Canadian shape briar, books, and wayang figures. A nobleman from Sunda, brought back from Holland years ago. Petruk on top of a bookshelf, behind a bulbous ceramic jar, Arjuna next shelf over. A tribal carving of a Dutch seacaptain with cowrie shells in the corner.
Alone. But not alone.



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A WHOLE LOT WONG

At this point I am convinced that one of them simply likes to talk a lot. Not that he believes the data is earthshaking, or that anyone is necessarily listening, but the conversation makes him feel connected and expands his world. The other one is not very good at listening, and his contribution often boils down to asking for something to be repeated. There is a certain amount of deafness on each side. The third one doesn't come by very often, as he's still recovering from pneumonia quite a while back. But he likes to talk about food.

Old so-and-so (surnamed Wong) died last week. Who? You know, so and so. Wong. Oh, Dickie's friend. Dickie wong. Whose brother Raymond died four years ago. Yes, that one. Alfonse wanted me to let you know. I told him about my ankle. Alfonse? Yes, Alfonse Wong. Oh Alfie, I thought he had died. No, that was Betsie, they looked alike. I've been to Doctor Wong about it. Good thing I cancelled the trip to China this month. Weren't you going to go with Eric, Eric Wong? Yeah, I talked to him. He was shocked to hear that so-and-so passed away, he knew the whole family. Didn't he used to date Alice? Oh, Alice Lee! No, Alice Wong. Rupert's sister's classmate. Rupert Wong. He got killed in that accident. By the way, I hear that old whatsisface is in the hospital, had a stroke. Whatsisface? Yes, you know him! You mean Lum? Whatsisface Lum? No, I think his last name is Wong. Whatsisface Wong.

Yes, judging by that conversation, many members of the Wong clan are either sick, dead, or unknown. As well as their kinfolk and classmates. A whole lot of people named Wong. While that was going on, I was wondering what happened Jack. Whom I haven't seen in over a year. He used to go to the same Wednesday lunch place, always ordered the salmon.
His surname, à propos of nothing at all, rhymes with 'Wong'.

One of my mother's classmates at Mills was named 'Wong'.
Nice woman. Intelligent and talented.

Lunch was good. Fish. Not salmon. With broccolli, rice, soup, and milk tea. If you sprinkle a little salt on cooked broccoli it is sweeter and more tender. Smoked a stout Person sandblast afterwards before necessay grocery shopping (金紗魚豆腐), then going to the bakery and listening in on the discussion of gone Wongs. Where I packed the Loewe & Co billiard (beautifully grained piece) for after tea.

If you know someone's surname, it probably means that they are important to you. My regular care physician as well as both cardiologists are 陳 though spelled differently.
The doctor who supervised the treadmill five years ago was also thus appelled.

I should make it a practise to ask people's names. As a sign of consideration.
Too often I am blindly opaque to social niceties. It's a flaw.



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BEST SKIN BALM

In an effort to dissuade people from eating stuff I like, let me stress emphatically that crabs are very close relatives of spiders. Big hairy venomous spiders. Please stay away from them. They're space aliens. All mine.

Dungeness crab season looks to be a bust this year. Rock crabs, not as desireable, are available, but your heathen feeding fests basking in shells and crab goo may be on hold.

Cioppino, especially if it includes crabs, can actually kill you. It's those trace elements of spider-like DNA, along with faint deposits of green slime from the bottom where the raw sewage settles. Drug breakdown chemicals, forever plastics, pink radioactive sludge.
Leftovers from the fast-food diet of today's Americans.

Again, spiders. Close relatives.
Venomous, eight legs.


Here's an illustration:

All of this comes to mind because I've had crustacean on the mind for several weeks now. Nasty icky creatures, arriving here from outer space, scheming to take over our planet one coastal zone at a time. Subtly enslaving the stupid human bipeds to be an obedient source of therapeutic mayonnaise and melted butter and sesame oil and tomato pastes and ginger and salted black bean paste and chopped scallions and a splash of sherry or rice wine and garlic and red, red chili paste, and hot crusty sourdough bread.

Lots and lots of garlic and chili paste.

It's therapeutic!

When doing the chili garlic picture I probably should have had more coffee. I kind of got lost in the swirly rubicund areas, and lost track of the shells and legs. And somehow I obliterated the claws. Each crab has two.

I'm not a food in the morning person. Three or four hours at least have to pass after that first cup of Java before I feel the least bit peckish. But crabs and shellfish are a good way to start the day. They sharpen mental focus, awaken all the the senses, and make crossword puzzles in the newspapers so much easier.

Plus you're alone in the morning and no one can see you getting oil and sauce, juices and shell fragments all over your face.



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PLEASE DON'T ADD CHEESE

Apparently Monty Python is NOT timeless. A person born in this century didn't know about the Cheese Shop Sketch. On the other hand, the bookseller was unaware of Labubu. So we're at a standstill. On the bus heading uphill he worried about some Japanese thing of a sickeningly high cuteness quotient that both kids and adults just love -- currently in the back area of the store -- that for the life of him he couldn't remember. I'm of no help there.

I remember when My Neighbor Totoro came out. That was over three decades ago. Join me in feeling ancient. At the bar when I mentioned Monty Python he had said "you're old, man".


I'm not old, I'm just big boned. Okay?


That, of course, is Eric Cartman's response to everything. Anyway, we segued into cheese, this pursuant the angioplasty (血管成形術 'huet gun sing ying sut') of the right leg (右腳 'yau keuk') and it's a good thing Tat Yee wasn't there because to be perfectly frank I have no idea how to explain a peripheral angioplasty of the right lower extremity (右下肢嘅外周血管成形術 'yau haa ji ge ngoi chau hue kun sing jing sut') to his tiddly (醉酒嘅 'jeui jau ge') posterior (後便 'hau pin').

Perhaps by showing him how a pipe cleaner is used, and then explaining that the arteries sometimes are exactly like the interior channel of his pipe and completely gunked up.
Comparing arterial plaque to aged Parmesan would have baffled him.
Too many reference points that don't compute.
Old cheese, for instance.

It's not that Chinese are unfamiliar with cheese entirely. Certainly Hong Kong people know it, on porkchops or pizza. And if they aren't lactose intolerant they take to massive quantities like fish to water; imagine salmon swimming up stream in a procreative frenzy.

While I'm smoking my pipe Tuesday evenings I often see the younger generation carrying pizza boxes from the places just outside the neighborhood.
Sadly, there is no actual pizzeria IN Chinatown.


The place where I had a late lunch today doesn't have anything with cheese. Which is a pity. But I would rather not imagine what they would do with cheese, I've seen what Americans often do with it, and as a Netherlandish American I am horrified and appalled.
My fellow citizens are in that regard a horrid example.
Consumers of factory extrudite.


Somewhere there's a frat boy asking for a ma po tofu and pork fried rice burrito with extra queso. Probably in the Mid West. After a night of beer and drunken snow angels.



Final note: At the intersection where the most popular twenty four hour donut place in SF is located, three emergency medical vehicles are parked. Probably late night coffee and sugar for the crews. I approve wholeheartedly.



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YOUR PARTICIPATION TROPHY

Having just read several articles about what a complete waste of a human being our current secretary of warcrimes, Pete Hegseth, is, as well as a number of pieces highlighting Trump spouting balderdash, I headed over into social media to decompress. Where I saw that a religious student in Oklahoma was horribly upset that the grade she got for a paper was precisely what she deserved. Wait, what? There are universities in Oklahoma?
People can actually read there? You have got to be kidding me!

Well, I guess that's where they learned to do those tall buildings mentioned in the song. Three whole stories! Will ya just imagine that!


Unbidden, the words to that old song "Cotton-eyed Joe" passed through my head. Along with "Old MacDonald Had A Farm". Very briefly. Because I think fast.

By the way: the building I live in is also three stories.
Must have been an architect from Oklahoma.

By their standards, a witch.

On a cheerier, more upbeat note, a friend posted an account of a meal that she shared with her person of interest recently at a delightful restaurant in the Tenderloin. Where fine dining that tourists often do not ever discover can often be found. Unless they're from Oklahoma (or Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, etcetera.) and haven't read the map and all the idiot warnings posted by Fox News talking heads on social media.

Perhaps we should supply the tourist kiosks with informative pamphlets explaining that San Francisco is filled with liberals, ethnics, and transgenders, and that it would be best to turn around and go home. Maybe vacation in Florida where liberals, ethnics, and transgenders are banned?

It's dangerous here. We'll take your precious Sunday School honour student kiddies and turn them into black gay Jews! We'll sing show tunes! Our coffee is made with fresh grounds!
We often use words of more than one syllable!

I'm just trying to be helpful.


Anyhow, Carmen enjoyed her meal very much. She and her friend ate after a Mariachi concert at Davies Symphony Hall. Clams with sweet chili sauce, fresh fish curry, crispy chicken over garlic rice, curry puffs, and beverages.

Shan't mention the name of the restaurant, because I don't want them swamped with visitors, who would need help reading the menu, all those complicated terms.
Thus delaying the wait staff from serving real people.


There's a KFC in the Tenderloin they can go.



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THE IMAGINARY HOLIDAY TRIP

Over on a friend's page was a photo of a bookstore not far from another bookstore and around the corner from an antiquarian bookstore where I used to shop in Amsterdam, near two comfortable cafes and a square where there is a second hand book market every week. Which you can't have in the United States because the yuppies would take photos of each other standing in front of books and the suburban teenagers would set fire to and overturn everything. Tourists from the Red States would ask "whut iz thayet?" and attempt to ban everything. There would be Christians all over the place praying for your soul.

Whenever someone tells me he's praying for my soul I automatically think "nah man you're just thinking of tits". Because, of course, organized religion is largely a con-job.

Teevee preachers and that mega church in Texas.
Plus miracle pastors in the third world.


I've never understood the urge to take selfies that many yuppies have. No one wants to see a picture of you in front of the Eifel Tower, Parthenon, Golden Gate Bridge, Alexander Platz Berlin, random picturesque building in Moravia, or what the heck have you.
You're in the way. Get out of the damned photo, dingbat.

Here's a picture of me entirely outside the frame in front of Croissant Island in the Hebrides, where the famous Russian intellectual Ivan Sirnaya-Golobosky spent many happy years in exile away from his native Siberia. It's where he wrote the novel 'Deystvitel'no Skuchnyy Musor (Действительно скучный мусор), which was earthshaking and groundbreaking.
I read it in college.

The fact that you cannot see me in it is the best part of the picture.


Current temperature in sundrenched Croissant Island is thirty seven degrees Fahrenheit. Almost tropical. The Hawaii of the outer islands. It's mildly breezy, with gale force winds ripping the flesh off the local sheep. Book a holiday cottage now.
Enjoy the fabulous local cuisine! Mutton dishes!
And wind-dried elk jerky!
Kelp!


I would actually far rather be in Amsterdam, where there are bookstores, cafes, and Indonesian restaurants. Plus herring, mysterious fried foods, and museums.

Every time I was there I took photos of bridges and canals.
A huge number of of them. Enough to fill a book.



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SWAMP THING EATS

Among the hottest things this pending frenzy season are knee stuff. Three ads in a short scroll. Plus back massagers, neck massagers, hand massagers, and miracle wrinkle cream. The algorithms try to figure out your age, and then try to show you stuff that pleases their advertisers. Based, probably, on key words that you mention when typing on the computer. So, being a typical Dutchman, and wishing to see more things pleasing to my actual demographic, I shall avoid certain words, and over-use others.

Tulips! Windmills! Bitterballen. Stroopwafels. Salty licorice.
Kroket, frinkandel, and heavy woolen underwear.

Well, that last is actually useless, having gone out of style since fire was invented, definitely central heating, and lord knows I do not want my social media littered with pictures of blousy blondes posing provocatively in granny panties, I'm not a Trump voting Christian pervert.


There just aren't enough illustrations of food.
Too many pictures of swamp things.
Oh wait, that's appropriate.
I'm Dutch.

What I had for lunch today was glorious. Rice noodle and meaty bits and fried chilies and mashed chili and peanuts and oil and cilantro, there was richness and tanginess and textural excitement, plus things that they never eat in Iowa, in a place where there were absolutely no people who looked like they were from there.

Iowa, as everybody knows, is all about pounded fried murdered tasteless porkloin.
Nothing but porkloin. They worship their horrible porkloin.
Served in a little bitty bun.

Basically a lacy sheet of meat breaded and deepfried, wider than a plate and nearly paper-thin, no salt no pepper no garlic, the cardboard of meat preparations, made as taste-free as possible, with one lettuce leaf and maybe mayo if your lucky fries cost extra don't bother.

Time stood still in Iowa. They have Lutherans and sockhops.
And that ever-present nasty porkloin.



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