Two things:

1) When I go to mail a bereavement card, I open up my waxen envelope from the Post Office where I keep my stamps, and the first thing I pull out is a bunch of FREEDOM stamps, so I go digging further until I find a few stamps with stylized elephants on them, which are much less objectionable.

2) During a puzzle craze at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, we start collectively doing this one puzzle where you copy-sketch a bunch of disassembled squares into a grid and create a picture, and the first time we do it, it's over the course of one shift, and it's me, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones.

And, I make them sign it in a blank space at the bottom, since I say that's what artists do.

And, when we go to say bye for the night, I say in (Thai) my standard good-night farewell, only I substitute out "Van Gogh" and "Picasso" for their names, respectively.

And, since in Thai you say "Nong" for someone younger than you and "Pi" for someone older than you, I joke whether I should say "Pi Picasso" or "Pi-casso" to my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones.

And, my one (older) (Thai) coworker says good night to me, and calls me "Da Vinci."

A day of mostly (Thai) restaurant happenings...

...also from a bit ago, at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) I open my fridge before I'm due to go to work that day and no light goes on, and I get worried that maybe the fridge failed and I'll have to deal with getting it repaired and stopping food from spoiling, but while I'm out in my living room after that, I hear the fridge kick on, and so I know that it's just the light that went out, and not the whole entire fridge that failed

2) When I ask my one (tall) (young) (Mexican-American) coworker about how some concerts that he went to were, he starts retelling me the story about how he got throw into a mike stand at one concert where his girlfriend was singing, only this time he says that he has a scar on his back from it.

3) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker is extremely tired, since she was up until 4am binging a (Korean) law drama on Netflix.

. . .

Ununsual bowel phenomenon.

When it was getting slim pickings at the farmer's market in the college town that I now live in right before the close of the season, I got like quite a number of sweet potatoes to cook because I needed something to buy and they were there, even though they're nothing that I usually cook with.

And so, one night when it was getting cold, I fired up the oven and baked some, and I ended up eating like three or four or maybe even five right away, with butter.

That night, then, I just found myself squatting on the toilet forever, and I felt a little full, but it wasn't explosive or painful, but it was like the shit just flowed out of me in a solid stream, where you could feel it moving through the pipes inside of me at an even pace and then out into the toilet bowl, only it wasn't liquid at all, it was solid, but not in a painful or obstructive way.

And, sometimes it would stop, and then it would start again.

Finally when it was done, I got up to wipe my ass and I looked, and it was one of the oddest shapes of shit that I've ever seen in my life, it was mildly orangish-brown though that wasn't what was abnormal, what was abnormal was how it was mostly flat and extending pretty much all across the bowl, but then in the middle, there was like this mound of shit going up like three or four inches high, just sitting out on the flat part of shit that I guess I had pushed out first.

And then, when I went to flush the toilet, the water shifted and bubbles came up around the edges, like as if it was a mat in a peat-bog.

Some Thai restaurant happenings...

 ...one day a bit ago, at the one (Thai) restaurant that I work at now:

1) After a (fatter) (middle-age) (short-haired) (white) (lesbian?) couple pay for their meal, my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones shows me the money they handed over to pay the bill.

"Forty-four dollars," she's like, "All singles."

"Maybe they're a waiter," I was like.

"Or stripper," she was like.

2) After the close of shift when I take the unused (miso) soup back to the kitchen with a towel around it to hold the hot metal pot, I deposit it by the dishwashing area and then turn around and the one (Guatemalan) cook who I started the diablo joke with is halfway across the room doing something, so I stop and stand there and in front of everyone I take the towel and kind of whip it so it just about snaps his ass, which he sees out of the corner of his eye, and without changing his pace or doing anything, he starts muttering something in (Spanish) about diablo...

3) After everything is finished and I get my tip money and it's time to go home, my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phone is like, "Time to go home," but I say, "What if I don't want to go home, what if I want to stay here," and she's like, "Fine, I go."

Then, she's like, "You can drink wine," and she points at the shelf that's above the work station where we keep this huge row of wine bottles like the opened reds and the whites before we chill them.

More British NHS politics.

After posting about British NHS politics -- everything that's covered is an issue, since everyone pays! -- I came across 2 more bits about this in 2 different places:

1) In this one new-ish memoir of a (British) (gay) (trans) man, he has a line about how "the NHS still refuses to fund trans fertility treatment, such as storing gametes (the freezing of eggs and sperm) before starting hormone treatment."

(I can see how this would set off a certain type of [British] person who questions hormone treatment -- not only do you have to fund that unnecessary treatment for kids, but then you have to go and fund fertility treatments for them too?! Madness, they'd say.)

(The memoir was okay, apart from a few bits like how his gay lover appreciated the spontaneity of his having a vagina, since it self-lubricates and since you don't have to plan time ahead of time to douche the sh*t out first before you go and f*ck it.)

2) In a hard copy of the Daily Mail that my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair) had brought for me from the UK, there was a major NHS outrage story right on page 2, setting up a "what would you rather have, more doctors or more DEI administrators" angle.

The end of the article presented competing perspectives --

A source close to Mr Barclay said: 'NHS cash should be spent on frontline patient care and not wasted on woke backroom bureaucracy. 'The Heath Secretary has got rid of dedicated diversity staff from the department – now the NHS should do the same.'

Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts, said: 'Equality, diversity, and inclusion can help create an NHS-wide culture where leaders feel equipped to deal with all forms of discrimination.'

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents healthcare organisations, added: 'We clearly need to do more to assist Mr Barclay's understanding of the contribution that a focus on equality and diversity makes to our staff and patients.'

-- but you can tell where their sympathies lie, even apart from how right next to it they had an accompanying story about declining maternal healthcare.

. . .

Somehow, no-one ever talks about this kind of thing as a consequence of setting up a national centrally-funded healthcare system.

Some restaurant drama.

When he leaves and passes me as I'm chaining up the patio furniture outside the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, a (young college-age) (pretty short) (Asian-American) guy who was part of a big (Asian immigrant family) group is like, "Hey, there's a note on my seat for the other server" -- i.e., my one (taller) (newer) (Thai) coworker -- and then when I go there next to go clean the table, there sitting out on his seat is a used paper napkin holder with writing on the inside, saying --

You're really pretty call me :)

[cell number removed]

. . .

(When I gave this to her back in the kitchen, she quickly read it and threw it out right away and said right away that she likes tall men, which made me tense up since she was speaking right in front of my [very short] [Pentecostal] [Guatemalan] coworker... She also said that he's too young for her, and when I asked her how old she is, she said she's 28.)

Two memories from this autumn:

1) One night I get home after work after dinner shift at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now to my one back cottage in the (college town) that I now live in, and it's dark, and at a sound from the big tree by my cottage patio, I turn, and there's a possum scurrying up onto a main overhanging branch.

2) One morning I open up my bedroom blinds, and the leaves on the tree outside my window have turned an extremely bright yellow overnight.