A GOOD CLEAN LIFE

In a Facebook group for pipesmokers, someone posted a still from some anime series showing a saucy female smoking a pipe. No, I did not ask whether our two dimensional heroine was smoking an aromatic; I will just take that for granted. Schoolgirls love fruit-flavoured tobacco. Adults will have a preference for Balkan Blends or Virginia-Perique mixtures.

Much flavoured stuff is loathsome. Good coffee should not be bollicksed-up with hazelnut-chocolate-vanilla syrup, a decent cup of tea is not improved by mango-melon essences and large gummy tapioca pearls.

It's like adding sex to a detective novel.


And on that note, this is why I hate the popularity of vapes. There you are, just quietly contemplating a developing pimple or pustule on your face in front of the bathroom mirror, when the fragrance of raspberry-musk wafts from a nearby stall. With a touch of burnt sugar. This is very discordant!

No one expects passion fruit in the loo.


It's as bad as someone talking on a cell-phone in there. But at least then he might drop the damned device.

[The follow-up conversation will be interesting.]


Years ago, when the company for which I worked was in its last months of existence we moved to tighter quarters in the heathen wilds of Hayward, and were encouraged to work from home at least two days a week. To that end, they provided me with a cell-phone. One time when I really needed to go, a client called. And kept me on the phone for half an hour.

Once we finally closed our doors, I got rid of the damned thing. Don't need it. "But what if there's an emergency?" Yeah, no. The rescue crews will not find my corpse any faster under the rubble if I have a phone. Batteries dead in any case. My car isn't stalled on a dirt road near a meth lab.
Fleeing a burning building shan't involve a phone.
It won't stop raining when I call.

In fact, the only emergency I can even imagine that might involve a cellular device is desperately needing to leak. Been there, and done that.


"Hi, I'm on the bus with a lot of ugly people!"


Vapes and aromatic pipe tobaccos are for children.

Cell-phones are for people who can't let go.

THESE ARE THE RULES

Adults smoke good straight tobacco, drink coffee and tea entirely without weird syrups or sprinkles, have a land line and a lap-top, eschew vapes, avoid fruity cocktails, and e-mail each other in complete sentences with proper punctuation and capitalization.




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