THE COMFORTING SOUND OF A LEAF BLOWER

Looking at the posts in one of my favourite groups, I am struck by the diversity of reading material displayed alongside the fine briars that the members will or have lit up. Jean Paul Sartre. Bertrand Russell. Isaac Asimov. The Plague, by Albert Camus. Something about Baroque music, with the title partially obscured by matches, an ashtray, and pipes.
Os Pensadores - Ryle, Strawson, Austin, Quine. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science; Rudolph Carnap, edited by Martin Gardner. Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, by Atul Gawande. Theory and Practice to Conserve Fresh Water Biodiversity in the Anthropocene, by Rebecca Flitcroft, Michael S. Cooperman, Ian J. Harrison, Diego Juffe‐Bignoli, and Philip J. Boon.


Gosh. I'm just an idiot.


My complex strategy for maintaining my equilibrium in these times is not nearly so wonderful. It does involve a lot of reading, though. News media, dictionaries, reference books, Wikipedia, manga, and cheap novels. In between going outside with my pipe and walking stick, and glowering at people who come too close to me with their gay devil-may-care germs.

Followed or preceded by a hot beverage and a cookie.

Put differently: day dreaming, time passing, a spot of exercise, and smoke. My work schedule is three days a week on, four days off. I worry about people I know, and how they are coping, both financially and sanity-wise, but there is not a damned thing I can do about that.

A lot of twiddling.


Oh, and I've made drawings of several of the pipes in the current rotation:



It's not very intellectual, I'm afraid. And rather unimaginative.

These are perilous times. One must continue as normally as possible, and keep the old aspidistra flying.

[NOTE: In fact, I do not have houseplants. No aspidistra. So that is a metaphor.]

Though I have my reading specs on almost all the time, that's primarily to keep from smacking myself in the face with a coffee cup or ricebowl, and to prevent the pipestem from accidentally going up a nostril on whichever side of my face I just switched my smoking to.

Some other pipe smokers are cooking a lot more, some are gardening, and a few are meticulously cleaning car engine parts with tooth brushes.
A minority are speculating about new products.
One or two are drinking.


In other news: people who choose to take large regular doses of insulin combined with hydroxychloroquine, especially in combination with disinfectant, will NEVER get windmill cancer.
So I recommend it.

TOBACCO INDEX


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