A COMMON SENSE APPROACH TO PLEASURE

People obsess over all kinds of things. And pipe smokers are, of course, more obsessive than most. I often tell people who are new to the field that if they weren't neurotic before, they will be soon. Minutiae such as packing, lighting, tamping, degree of moisture in the tobacco for optimum pleasure, company not to keep when enjoying the finest mixtures ......
Certainly my friend the bookseller has heard me gibber often enough about such subjects, which I have recompensed by patiently listening, Sigmund-Freud-like, to him talking on and on and on about baseball.
Lord knows baseball is boring and insane.
Hit ball, run around.
Yay.

Or NOT hit ball, run around anyway.
Yay also.


My apartment mate occasionally obsesses over cake. She recently bought a strawberry Swiss-roll. And was wondering what it would taste like with butter ice cream melting into it. Seriously, I worry about that girl.
Such excessive appetites!

I am far more Spartan (downright Puritanical) in my tastes, and consequently I am gloat over an entirely different thing.
A squat bulldog, Comoy shape 331.

Here is an illustration I lifted from Smokingpipes.com

Well gosh darn, isn't that just a gorgeous pipe shape? Comoy's always had the best designs. The one that has recently entered my collection does not have two-tone finish like the example pictured above, being more of a waxed dark-natural hue, and like many Comoy pipes it has someone else's shop-stamping (they did that a lot between the thirties and seventies), but it has not a single fill, and the briar is good old wood.

It is the second example I have acquired in the last decade or so. A rare and beautiful shape, pretty much the very piss-elegant paradigm of squat bulldogs. Yes, I had to re-cut the mouthpiece, because the previous repair dude did a piss-poor job of matching it to the bowl -- not unusual, but this was a particularly loathsome attempt -- and I've already smoked it a few times with a lovely Virginia-Perique blend of my own devising.
But I will continue to gloat over this shape.
Yay me, a Comoy shape 331.
Yay again.



Cake and baseball, good grief. Sometimes I just cannot understand other people. Shapes make sense. Shapes are what life is all about. Shapes are something you can hold. Whereas baseball and cake are far too soon exhausted, and do not lead to any lasting pleasure.
Or gloating. Gloat gloat gloat!




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