POOR DEAD PUMPKIN

Yesterday was all about 木紋理 ('muk man lei'), or 木材紋理 ('muk choi man lei'). You might have thought it was all about a popular cult figure and a virus, but you were wrong. Trust me, muk choi man lei was discussed a whole lot more. Wood grain.

It is a considerably more important subject.
More intellectually stimulating too.

If you really want to know my thoughts about Trump and Covid, there's always Facebook. The people there who are still friends are not likely to take offense when I show my non-Christian side. As I often do.

I'd like to think that all pipesmokers think like me, but I know that isn't so. Many of them smoke aromatics, proving that they can have dreadful lapses of taste and common sense. And I too sometimes drop the torch of taste; I have been known (in the last twenty four hours) to rather like pumpkin spice ice cream, especially mixed with chocolate. It's deliciously decadent.

Horrifying too -- pumpkin spice is a disgusting heresy that must be fiercely fought with fire, its depraved adherents deprogrammed with force if necessary, and the less said about pumpkin spice coffee and pumpkin spice pipe tobacco the better. Mrs. Walters might disagree.
Many tobacconists sell pumpkin spice mixtures every autumn.
It's a popular product that some men love.
I despair over man kind.

Mr. and Mrs. Walter live in South Carolina, where people do queer things.
Like Linus Van Pelt, she worships the great pumpkin.
Hallowe'en is her favourite holiday.]

My apartment mate bought a pound of pumpkin spice coffee.

I dread the rest of the month.



The subject of woodgrain came up because a pipesmoker was looking at Charatans, Astleys, and Danish pipes. Charatans were in a way a precursor to the Danish idea about pipe carving, in that the direction of the grain was extremely important to that brand, much more so than for instance Comoy, Sasieni, or Peterson, where the classic pipe designs played a significant role. Naturally aromatics were also mentioned. Persuant which, note that smokers of flavoured pipe tobaccos far too often hot-box their pipes. It's the nature of the beast.

Good briar wood may be wasted on aromatic smokers.
They might appreciate it, but ruin it also.
As several of them indeed do.

There's a pipe I have at home that the smoker cracked in three places because of his tobacco and how it burns. I've promised I'll try to repair it -- it's one of his favourite smokers -- but in all honesty I dread attempting to do so, and am still looking at it.
Fortunately he's patient, and realistic.
It might be a goner.




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