HAVING MET THE ENEMY

Today is, as everybody knows, International Pipe Smoking Day. Which for some of us ranks right up there with July Fourth and Bastille Day (equivalent of Saint Patrick's Day for drunks, frat boys, and rapists) and deserves our observance and estimation. And as you might expect I am smoking a pipe right now. Not because I pay any attention at all to it -- being on the spectrum I hate crowds and despise group gropes -- nor cynically as a snide and ironic comment, or even sneeringly -- but because it is sunny and my apartment mate is at work.
Plus I have the windows open, and it's what I do.

International Pipe Smoking Day on February 20th was started in 2008 by Smokers Forums. It's meant to bring pipe smokers together.

What's this together bit? I'm alone in here. Accompanied only by my stuffed critters in lieu of a cat, and the ghosts of Clark Gable, William Faulkner, and Sir Bertrand Russell.
Oh, and Georges Simenon. But there is no together.
Pipesmoking is solitary.

The pipe shown above is a Comoy squat bulldog exactly like the one Clark Gable is often pictured with, currently filled with a mellow aged Virginia with slight Perique added, that smells very old-fashioned and like the nineteen fifties. Clark Gable and William Faulkner smoked Latakia blends, which during the first years that I owned this piece I did too.
But for the last decade plus I've been on a flue-cured kick.
It coincides with my HK milk tea kick.


Unlike cigars, pipes are seldom a penis symbol representing uncertainty about our manhood or a defiant assertion of feminity, such as the blustery fascists cheering on the current regime wield. Well, I suppose if you have doubts about how manly others perceive you, you might cheer wrecking education, kicking millions off medicare, and threatening other countries, in addition to letting Vladimir Putin fist you, but pipesmokers seldom think about their gender and mostly don't have issues about it as it isn't their be all and end all.

And did I already mention the solitariness?

There are cigar bars and "gentlemen's clubs" for those other people. The only times we go there is when it's much too cold outside. We'll endure the shouting, braggadocio, over the top sexism and sportsfandom (a teevee is always tuned to the game), and sheer stupid vulgarity. Patient tolerance. They're idiots, and we've seen the animal channel. The carnivores will now rip apart the buffalo. The lions opportunistically chase hyenas away from their kill. Fire ants consume the howling beast. Anistopheles mosquitoes cunningly disguise themselves as blonde republicans to infect their willing victims. Yes yes. Fascinating. Heck!

Several of the cigar smokers with whom I regrettably come in contact are outright Nazis. Three of those Gentlemen are Jewish.

Among the pipe smokers are several academics and individuals with fascinating interests.
A few are writers or scientists.



People who vape are precisely the kind that you want to keep away from your kid sister.
They might go for adderall or lines of cocaine later.
Or become antivaxxers.




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