SEETHED CRUSTIES

At the recent pipe club meeting I had to mention certain crucial truths to a friend regarding cleaning up used pipes. Among others, do NOT erase or diminish the brand stamping, what had been a rather nice Dunhill is now merely a good bang-arounder and cannot be admired. Same for that sandblast which now has a smooth rim, the GBD with a lovely new stain job, and a few others. Also, unless the interior is thoroughly messed-up, 're-caking' with carbon goo, while perhaps aesthetically pleasing, is not necessary nor desireable.
Plus pâté is gob's gift to a Dutchman I saw it first bitch.

Actually, I believe I was the only one who actually saw it. I drank in its visual totality, and appreciated its gestalt. It was delicious. Yeah, okay, it looked like a log of supermarket Braunschweiger, and was unprepossessing, but pâté, man, good.

Bernard, Neil, and Joel were also there, Mike showed up briefly, and a few others.

Conversations were animated and pipes were smoked.
Shallow philosophical questions got discussed.
The world's problems weren't solved.


One of the pipes I had with me was a lovely squatty Comoy bent bulldog which a friend had given me nearly a year ago. I'm fortunate that a few of my friends recognize certain shapes as ones that I will cream in my scanty lace panties over and generously part with. Now get that image out of your head, it's unseemly. Think crows and blinky things instead.

It is uncertain, and actually not at all likely, that we're all on the same page regarding pâté, Italian meat products, or smoked fishy substances. But I think we can all agree on cheese. Just as we can all agree that certain aromatic tobacco mixtures are good gob almighty what is that ghastly dreck and why am I now thinking of tattooed and pierced gentlemen who live in their mom's basement outside in her yard smoking their extrovert cheap Danish freehands and reading Kierkegaard? Precisely like the goobers from Spinal Tap? Or making ten page long comments on the staggering imagery of Gandalf and Frodo, and speculating that Smaug was a pipe smoker too?

Boys, if Smaug was a pipesmoker, he favoured classic products like MM 965, Balkan Sobranie, or Marcovitch. Not that horrid fruity garbage that, apparently, Gandalf and Frodo liked. So in a way he's actually the hero of the tale. Very likely not a hoarder of gold, but a book collector. He's been horribly misrepresented. Tolkien was a criminal.


There was an entire bottle of wine left over, which will probably be sipped a little and used in cooking, because a pork stew with anchovies frazzled at the bottom of the pan then seethed with wine is very good. Great over rice stick noodles. I'm just saying. Garlic and ginger.

What's left of the pâté is breakfast.




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