FRESH AIR PLEASURES

One thing that convinces me that all is not lost, humankind is redeemable, is the people who thought also of their Smelly Uncle Ed this holiday season. Ed might not be his real name, it could be Marvin or Mike, or, if it's in Marin, Starburst Wonderboy Karma, but they remembered him. Ed is the relative pushed out of the house to smoke his cigars down at the bottom of the yard near the compost heap, in the blustery gale, because of the smell.

They willingly spent money to make his odoriferous exile and misery less burdensome. They bought him fine cheroots.

Petite Corona: four and a half inches, barely an hour of lonesome misery.
Robusto: five inches, slightly over an hour to an hour and a quarter.
Corona: a definite hour and a quarter of soggy outcasteness.
Toro: six inches, roughly an hour and a half of exile.
Churchill: seven inches, nearly two hours.

Smelly Uncle Ed will have been properly impressed. Yes, he's chilled to the bone, and running a fever -- and he may need hospitalization, which he will resist because hospitals no longer allow smoking on the premises, or even anywhere on the grounds, what with not having compost heaps and toxic waste dumps -- but he knows that his kin still love him.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.


Nothing (!) says 'Christmas' like everyone cheerfully clustered inside near the tree and the fireplace, and one person with pneumonia freezing his nuts off one hundred yards away, with the local raccoons harassing him.


The Bay Area is ninety nine percent tofu-eating healthnuts thinking about the children, and one percent Smelly Uncle Ed trying to give the little blighters lung cancer.



Later today I will head on down to Chinatown with my pipe and tobacco. Everyone there has multiple relatives who smoke -- many of them in fact are the relative who smokes -- and there are awnings under which one can shelter when it rains.

There are still no places to smoke inside. But far fewer tofu snarfing suburban healthnuts worried about the blasted little kiddies.

Milk tea. Fried noodles or congee with a yautiu.
Samuel Gawith's Saint James Flake.
An old Comoy, shape 110 B.
Peace and quiet.

Might even try to find some smuggled-in ciggies from China.
Ng-Yip-San brand. Wuye Shen.

Flue-cured leaf, in an elegant festive pack.
Filter smokes made in Guangzhou.
Yeah, I edited the picture.
That healthwarning.

"Don't smoke around White People"

Or tofu.




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