NEJ, DET ER FISKEBRØD!

When the response to a simple, friendly, and casually meant question ("what are you smoking?") comes out as "a blend of sweet bright and red Virginias with just a touch of firecured leaf from Kentucky used as a spice, made in South Carolina, in a squat bulldog from the forties or early fifties that many years ago it took me three months to talk a coworker into selling", the listeners may be forgiven for a bug-eyed look.
But honestly, how else would you answer that?
All of those details are important!
An experiental gestalt.


Of course it also may be just a little too detailed. But the smell already told them that it was tobacco, and both logical deduction as well as their noses informed them further that it was pipe tobacco and non-aromatic. So simply telling them "tobacco" or "pipe tobacco" would have insulted their intelligence. Details were required. Clearly.


[INTERSTITIAL NOTES: Many of my conversations in the past three days have involved tobacco in some form or other. It's an occupational hazard, which sometimes infects private life. Yesterday evening's last casual chit-chat was a recommendation that a certain person look for Arturo Fuente's Hemingway 'Work of Art', 'Short Story', or 'Best Seller', as probably the most approachable representations of a perfecto cigar. The perfecto, by the way, is frequently called a figurado, but it is not the only type though the most well known. The Andalusian Bull, by La Flor Dominicana, is another good one; it was named Cigar of the Year in 2016. The Hemingway line is affordable, and the cigars are manageable sizes. The Davidoff Colorado Claro Short Perfecto is stellar, but for someone just experimenting it's a little expensive. Most cigars are parejos - straight sides, and a round end.]


The internet was invented for overly detailed dweezils. Specifically, one area of what is commonly referred to as "social media". Twitter, of course, was invented for idiots.


Real life sometimes naturally also needs detail. Differentiation and definition are important. "Is that lutefisk?" "No, it is fish bread!"

Some people on that forum may not have realized that the clarification was in Danish, not Yiddish. Most of them are Sephardi, and of non-European backgrounds.


It is only now, as I smoke the first cigar of the day (a smallish Ashton maduro), that I realize that the perfect answer to either interlocutor yesterday evening would have been "nay, det er fiskuh bruhd!"
It would have told them everything they needed to know.
And as an statement made them just as happy.
Just one short sweet sentence.
Not complicated.


Every thing is fiskebrød.



The first pipe of the day is a great victory; the first cigar of the day, no matter how excellent, always smells like low tide at Perth Amboy.




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================