THE GATES OF HELL

The first pumpkin spice lattes have arrived, soon they'll be thundering across the wide plains devouring everything in sight. For the next two months our lives will be miserable, we'll spend all our waking hours quaking in fear. Debbies and Jennifers everywhere will squeal giddily as they celebrate their season. It's Autumn! Goth time. Fabulous shopping!

Avoid all coffee chains for the duration.

In previous years all tobacco stores would whiff evocatively of cinnamon and clove scented seasonal concoctions as merchants strove to please the wives, girlfriends, and concubines of hobbits, beguiling them with promises of something that smelled better than the smoldering sweatsocks that their chosen Gandalf habitually burned. Perhaps they could finally tolerate the diseased old sod indoors!

Sadly (for them) this is now a thing of the past. MacBarens/Sutliff have been swallowed up by Scandinavian Tobacco Group, which took one look at the four hundred plus Skus and said "oh Jayzus not!" Then promptly discontinued ninety plus percent of the line-up.

As a devoted aficionado of Smoldering Sweatsock™, I am glad.
I loathe the seasonal smell of pumpkin spice blends.
And I strenuously avoid coffee chains.

As far as I'm concerned, pumpkin spice lattes are an abomination. More than anything else, including deep-fried cheese-bacon steak and beans, they prove that America is headed down the slippery slope, may already be terminal. Anathema!

And I have no sympathy for the pipe smokers who in previous years rejoiced in huffing Autumn Extravaganza or Jolly Old Pumpkin in the warm bosom of their family, instead of heading out to the frozen comost heap at the end of the yard during howling gales and snow storms. If Smoldering Sweatsock™ was good enough for the colonel, it's jolly well good enough for them too. That's how we won the war!

Odious festering heathens!



At present I am enjoying Doblone D'Oro in a bent Peterson. It's one of John Offerdahl's favourite blends. Stellar product. Vague reek of old sweatsock. CLosest thing to Three Nuns. Second cup of coffee, happily doomscrolling (what staggering thing has the orange dingo done today?) and twiddling my toes in comfy slippers. Life is good.


My apartment mate, a sensible woman who does not consume pumpkin spice lattes ever, has gone off to work. I have firmly shut her bedroom door so that her teddy bear does not smell the smoke. Because that would open up the gates of hell.



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