Sometimes I don't know what to think. This blog is probably not the best display of sanity on the interbets, but this blogger is possibly saner than he ever assumed himself to be. Despite at times speaking of himself in the third person, so as to avoid having the first personal pronoun (capitalized, singular nominative) show up at the end of a line of text, where it just looks discordant and out-of-place, and may easily be overlooked because the subconscious eye will read it as a slash or an exclamation mark.
I am not a slash OR an exclamation mark.
Rarely does she write of herself in the third person singular feminine, whether subjective or objective, or even possessive. Most of her readers by now must have wigged that she is not female, and would consider such a phraseological affectation disturbing.
I have a feminine side.
I just never touch it.
This is all preambular to mentioning a comment left underneath an essay eleven days ago.
Bernie or Bust said…
"Aren't there some Dutch possessions, or former possessions, in Africa?
On another topic, you've mentioned on this blog that you quit smoking cigarettes in the 1990s. Was it difficult? I'm contemplating quitting now, or at least cutting down (I currently smoke 6 to 7 packs a day), and I was wondering if you could share your quitting story and help me with any helpful advice? In a post, please, because my browser has difficulty displaying blog-comments; I'm using a friend's computer to type this.
[Here: EVERYTHING SOUTH OF TEXAS.]
Six to seven packs a day?
It turns out that I am quite staggeringly sane.
The reason for taking up cigarettes was fellow office workers objecting to pipes and cigars, but enthusiastically hunting down ashtrays and lavishing praise on me if I lit up cigarettes instead. Then it became illegal to smoke in a work environment, and during a visit to Holland in 1997, I happily re-discovered fine Dutch cigars. Once I had exhausted the supply I smuggled in, I switched back to pipes entirely, save for the bus-summoning cigarillo or the early morning ship-shave-shower smoke.
I would advise you to visit Holland. You will find it salubrious.
Good cigars, both the long filler handrolled type and the Dutch-preference local product, can be found in the cities and even most towns. Good pipe tobacco is less easily available, however, because the Dutch customarily smoke rancid overly perfumed crap like Clan, Sail Aromatic, Amphora Chocolate, and several other "mixtures" now mostly made by Scandinavians.
It is sad. They used to smoke nice demure Maryland leaf.
Taste-wise they lost their mind after the war.
I blame the Canadians for that.
A bad influence.
But please enjoy the cigars.
Seriously good stuff.
Yes, we were in Ghana and South Africa.
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Wait, so during your Cigarette Years, you didn't also smoke pipes and cigars? Just cigarettes? Did you use to smoke them with Savage Kitten?
Maybe at most one pipe a day, one cigar every three or four weeks.
Savage Kitten was not around me when I smoked.
A man becomes adept at washing his face upon returning to the apartment.
There's also snuff. A pinch up the nose, and nobody knows.
"I have a feminine side.
I just never touch it."
Please tell us what would happen if you did.
It sounds fascinating, we are curious.
Why are you so interested in my feminine side?
Are you a pervert?
My feminine side is a rather shy person, un-attached, who likes nothing better than retiring to her own room, grabbing the murder novel that she is currently reading, and after rummaging around in her pantie drawer pulling out the Charatan Pipe and the Old Gowrie (Rattrays tobacco, now made by Orlik for Kohlhase & Kopp, who hold the entire McConnel Portfolio since that estimable company closed), filling up her bowl and settling in for a long quiet afternoon.
She likes the personalities of the portly or middle-aged detectives about whom she reads, but suspects that they would be a bit much in person, and their tobacco tastes might not synch with hers.
And, like the wife and daughter of the phantasmatist mentioned in an unpleasant reek of fancid vanillin, she is wholly imaginary.
But, contrary to those to lovely ladies, she could exist. What with being more down to earth, and having an actual personality.
The idea that you have a feminene side defies belief. That she likes pipe tobacco, while depraved, is unspurprising.
"The idea that you have a feminene side defies belief. That she likes pipe tobacco, while depraved, is unspurprising."
Depraved?!? But no! My feminine side is a very nice person! Precisely the kind of girl who should NEVER associate with anyone calling themselves 'Shitsophrantic'.
See here: recommended reading material.
If she existed, I would keep her away from you.
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