Drought has returned and brown is better

Drought has altered that calculus. Now, brown is back, with a vengeance. Local municipalities have formulated their own strict rules (again) for outdoor watering that, frankly, puts the kibosh on an old premise that declared, “Green is good.”

Lush lawns are out. In fact, they represent bad behavior, a sort of scarlet letter of the vegetation kind: “W” as in “waste.”

Even careful watering by hand two days a week can elicit the occasional evil eye from a passerby (or accusatory neighbor) if your lawn is too attractive. Brown is better.

Showering/shampooing on a daily basis is acceptable only if such a hygienic discipline is brief, as in three minutes. Use an egg-timer if you have one. But how does one really know when his or her flabby flesh is properly cleansed if the entire soaping exercise is barely a hiccup in time?

And car washing with potable water? Forget about it. That duty toward cleanliness is out of bounds, almost a sacrilege during the new normal. Let the old heap slump there and fester, covered in rampant seagull deposits and dust and grit.

Again, a jalopy that looks like a refugee from a cross-Death Valley trek is a badge of community goodwill.

All in all, it does appear that we are back to square one when it comes to water use. The bottom line: Less is best.

WHAT HAPPENED TO HERD IMMUNITY?: Does anyone else out there remember “herd immunity?” We’ve mentioned this before. That’s the buzz phrase touted as a much-anticipated Holy Grail as the pandemic accelerated well over two years ago.

Public health officials, grappling with a flu-like ailment with sometimes deadly consequences, held out the notion of herd immunity as an inevitable and longed-for solution to COVID and its dire effects.

It was widely predicted that something like 80% of the population needed to be protected from the virus (either through inoculation or actual infection) to declare the pandemic tamped down and under firm control. We are well past that figure.

But, rarely if ever, do we hear about that hoped-for communitywide immunity. It’s no longer mentioned as a magic bullet, a medical panacea if you will.

It has simply faded away from our collective consciousness as the virus continues to mutate relentlessly and resist the best efforts of the best minds devoted to combating the illness.

In the end, let’s face it, an individual’s wisest move to handle the onset of the illness is the old bromide: It’s every man for himself. And that includes women and any other pronoun you care to mention.

PARTY TIME FOR THE PALATE: It’s hardly a secret that downtown San Mateo has become a hotbed of ethnic dining spots.

It’s a well-documented metamorphosis that’s been ongoing for years. The days of that commercial area being focused on a wide variety of helpful retail outlets are long gone.

Food, some of it quite exotic and lots of it, is what’s on the bountiful menu there now. We can argue about whether this is a good thing or not in what was a lively business district; it simply is what it is.

Asian storefront restaurants, many of them of the mom-and-pop type, tend to proliferate. An enticing personal favorite on South San Mateo Drive near the Mills Health Center (the former Mills Memorial Hospital) is Sichuan Chong Qing Cuisine.

One of its specialties, advertised on its front window, is “Boiled pig blood/beef tripe spicy soup.” That’s a mouthful in more ways than one. Ladle it up, dude. It’s party time for the Peninsula palate.

John Horgan, with soup spoon and designer bib at the ready, can be reached by email at johnhorganmedia@gmail.com.