TWILIGHT OF THE BLOBS

Many of the people with whom I must associate are older men who smoke cigars in the back of the business. Which means that they are, largely, self-entitled successful conservatives displeased by everything in modern society except for the orange toupeed potato they voted for, and the fact that they can include pornographic images in their text messages. So for them there has been commendable progress in the last two decades, because computers!
When they were still lads, e-mail still had to be written out with quills by hand and faxed over. No titty pictures.

Yesterday Arthur looked despondent. There was no outrage!

No possibility of anyone getting spitting mad.
The butt of everyone's offpissing wasn't there.

No, I did not sympathize with him. But I did express my commiseration, as it is obvious that only the prospect of someone else having apoplexy or an ulcer keeps the old cock alive.

Besides politics, and vicious slander of everyone to the left of Steve Bannon, the venerable gentlemen also talk ball games, fifties movies, and popular music from the stone age. I have had to explain to them that I know absolutely nothing about those last three totally fascinating subjects.

It is by association with them and the fossil record that I feel young.


I know some of them are on Facebook. All of them have cellular devices. Imagine a herd of lonely old relics staring at their screens, occasionally giggling moronically, while ashes from their stogies fall on their stained trousers and the flickering flames from the fireplace give an antique glow to their parchment-like skins. Dull eyes, bald heads, and wobbly quivering jowls. Here a paunch, there a paunch, everywhere a paunch.
A whelter of creaky limbs and liver spots.

The most exciting thing to happen in the last week was a screaming match between an Irish racist and a tightly strung gentleman over the "N" word, during which one of them bluntly requested that the other shut the intercourse up. That happened on a day when I was away.
All of them seemed vibrantly alive again.
I am sad that I missed it.

I likewise enjoy a bit of outrage.
Angry old farts are therapeutic.


I hope your digestions are all okay?
Too many of you need a good burping.
Or a lullaby from the booby sitter.





Plans today: porkchops at the Regency, milk tea, briar pipes and aged Virginia tobacco, aimless wandering through alleyways, umbrella, smoking under the awnings of abandoned stores, people watching, rain, small snackipoos, a nap, the 'Pipe for Watching Rats in Spofford Alley', then whiskey with the bookseller at a place where many can't sing but do.
Nothing productive.

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TOO MUCH TOAD

Here it is, more than two hours after they're gone, and I still feel like saying something nasty. The cigar smokers in the back were all loud and crude today, but the last four were NOT using their indoor voices, complete blisters, repetitive, and profoundly irritating.


Everyone should be grateful that I don't tell them all to shut the blazes up.

Years ago, in parts of Europe, infants were given a sugar cube dipped in brandy to quieten them down. It helped them sleep. That might not work on these boys. Alcohol has scant effect; they are the reason Xylazine and elephant tranquilizer darts were invented.

But I shan't say anything nasty. I am not that type.


Like Mr. Badger in Wind in the Willows, I am a calm unruffled sort, content to be left alone and leave others alone. I'll just drape a cloth over my face, put my feet up, and relax in the peace and quiet of my diggs.


"Badger had retired to his study and settled himself in an arm-chair with his legs up on another and a red cotton handkerchief over his face, and was being "busy" in the usual way ..."


There was far too much Toad today.

Them and their bluster.

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WHEN A BLUNT OBJECT MAY NOT BE ENOUGH

My job and my innate gentleness put me in contact with people who hold alternative opinions. Facts are not facts in their world, and their style of debate at times leaves unreasonably much to be desired.
They are mostly middle-aged cigar smokers.
Success and insulation form them.
Oh, and many are white.
Suburban pudge.


A collection of priggish middle-aged white men of a certain income level, who are blinkered and ignorant. Yeah, that's a slice.

I prefer not to talk to them too much, because it is destructive to the mind; braincells go bye-bye when they speak.


POLITICAL DISCOURSE


[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp0Bt2cbcc8.]


Life is too short to take these people seriously. Many of them still believe that Donald Trump is better than the alternative. They never understood the alternative, but at least Trump is a wealthy white male who is pro-Christian, pro-Israel, anti-Israel, unChristian, and not beholden to special interests, Jews, Masons, Bilderbergers, Bankers, Illuminati, and lizard people.
As well as entirely unconnected to 'pizza-gate'.
Beloved by video-gamers.
Plainspoken.

I may be the most mature person there at times. That's truly frightening.
When I say that I "baby sit", what I actually mean is that I would like to throw things at people, or jab them fiercely with a cattle prod.

Pipe smokers are altogether tolerant individuals.
Cigar smokers are a different breed.
Penis-brained folk.



I shall dine on pizza tonight, and think of goats.
The lizard people among us, and angry goats.
There are over 300 distinct breeds of goat.




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THE PROPER FEMALE TOUCH

As you know, I am not a cigar smoker. I do indulge occasionally, but given that most American cheroot-huffers are loathsome swine, vulgarians, right-wing bozos, and carry typhoid to boot, it just ain't my natural métier.
It is not something for individuals who appreciate subtlety.
Such as, opportune example, pipe smokers.
The detail oriented.

My apartment mate is such a person, but I have never been able to talk her into smoking a pipe. She has quite an eye. Incautiously I commented about a bauble on a television show, and promptly got the half hour disquisition on the finer points of gold smithery.
No, I did not take notes.

She's a jewel, but seriously Aspy.
I can't remember the show.
A sixties series.
Spy drama.


She paid keen attention to everything that showed up on screen, including the platinum thingy the actress wore around her neck, as well as the black dress of peculiar cut. Sodium pentothal, miss Brooks, and captain Kovicz. Oddly, what I noticed was a painting of a rabbi on the wall of the palace, probably chosen because it looked Eastern European.

I am a man, and as such a bit unconcerned with precious stones.
Paintings, however... Maybe the Alter Rebbe.
Strange prop department.


PLEASE NOTE: This essay is NOT about cigars, in case you haven't figured that out, but about women. And pipes. I've had quite enough of the cigar smokers this weekend; every time someone puffs a stogey now I see the loyal stormtrooper boots of a bloviating egomaniac in the smoke.
They were screaming in the lounge today, oafs cheering a cretin.



WOMEN AND PIPES

Red Panda. Sanrio's newest creature. "Aggressive Retsuko".

I felt that a binge-drinking death-metal karaoke singing office lady needed a quiet and civilized habit. So I led her into Aged Virginia territory.

Welcome to the dark side.

Two tobaccos come to mind: Dunhill Ready Rubbed, and Dunhill Dark Flake. Delightful, but not overstated. For some reason several reviewers of the first believe that there is Turkish in it, possibly because having read somewhere that some of the leaf comes from India, they jumped to conclusions about the type.

Conclusions are things to which one should not jump.

They are flue-cured, and quite good.

Personally I think that any well brought up red panda office lady would naturally appreciate both of these fine Dunhill products. The sensibility required is such that it does not tolerate charlatanry ('Trumpismo').

[The Dunhill pipe tobacco portfolio is presently held by Kohlhase & Kopp in Deutschland; the quality is better than when Murrays (known for sticks, twigs, crud) bollicksed up the blends.]

The pipe, as you might suspect, is a Comoy, Canadian shape. Perhaps a Grand Slam or a London Pride. A lovely design, and perfectly suited to a person of excellent taste, even if she does belt out hard pounding horror lyrics when swilling beer or sake after leaving the office.
That's just a passing phase. Youthful.
Or a reaction to yutzes.


Young women who take up pipe-smoking need to have more than one briar, of course. Six or seven if it is a daily pleasure, just two or three if an occasional indulgence. But preferably several.

[My own collection contains over a hundred and fifty exemplars, of which around forty or so show up regularly in the rotation. I have numerous Comoys.]

Nice women really should not smoke cigars.

Dangerous women enjoy pipes.

It's lovely.

TOBACCO INDEX


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THE SOUL-SHRINKING EFFECT OF ASSOCIATING WITH CIGAR SMOKERS

In my present engagement (second assistant steward in a cheroot fetichery, more or less) I am fairly constantly exposed to dingos and entitled people. Consequently I may come across in these blogposts as a sour old grumpus, quite unlike how you would imagine me if you took the profile description on the right hand side of this page seriously.

["Middle-aged, but younger looking than you. And hardly any arthritis. Really ..... "]


I fear that the only thing that might bring me back to my sunny self is the frequent presence of an alluring female half my age. Well, at least that will change people's impressions of my from "sour old grumpus" to "dirty old man" (with an arthritic leg), which would be altogether an improvement.

Certainly I think it would.
I may be biased.

I do not want my image of my fellow humans to be entirely dominated by ass-hat rightwingazoid cigar-chomping vulgarians.
I used to think better of mankind.


Eh, what, the cigar crowd?

Strong but very wrong opinions, bloviation, and approving citation of dark web fake news.


One of the bastards recently said that they were living in a bubble, what with being in the Bay Area, and consequently could not really grasp what the rest of the country felt.

He was right. But not quite in the way he thought.
He lives in a bubble of mental toxicity.
He's a despicable little man.
As are many of them.



Trust me, I am actually cheerful and devil-may-care when I'm not around them. Active, and keenly interested in the world. I've got books! I read!

It's not just the blasted cigar smokers, though.
There's also that Marin attitude.
That doesn't help.

It's like being around Sméagol.
All the damned time.




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SMELLY SOCIAL ANIMALS

It is with considerable surprise that I've realized that I do not like many cigar smokers. Please consider the type: Male, mostly white, probably middle-aged and opinionated in a wrong way, not particularly thoughtful or open-minded, and often of firmly held simplistic beliefs which they are seldom capable of testing or examining. This is only natural, as many of them may have gotten to the point where they can afford expensive cheroots on a regular basis by being single-minded and fairly successful, more often than not almost by accident. This they ascribe to their own rightness.
A fair number (perhaps not all) are flaming assholes.

No, I'm not just talking about Marinites.


I prefer pipe smokers, OR the never-smoked crowd. Sir Bertrand Russell was a pipe smoker, so was Simenon, and please do not bring up Stalin or Saddam Hussein, as those two were natural cigar smokers faking it big time. Stalin, in fact, chainsmoked cigarettes in private, like very many despots and psychopaths.

[Turkish dictator Erdogan is a crazed anti-smoker, fyi.]


I wish I could say that the pipe smoker is by nature a thoughtful man, with carefully considered opinions and broad-ranging tastes, who reads a lot and considers life a voyage of discovery. But that is not quite the case.
Some of them are foul-tempered grumpusses.
Some of them are Gandalfian.
With tattoos.

Pipe smokers are just easier to have a conversation with. And, largely, are capable of grudgingly changing their mind. That is marginally more likely among smokers of decent tobacco -- unsauced ribbons, Balkan blends, Baai Tabak, flakes, and VaPers -- than folks who smoke BCA or 1-Q (we'll ignore the Captain Black smoker, because he's usually a fool, a retard, a vulgarian, or even an absolute degenerate - shan't say anything at all about Prince Albert and Mixture 79), and aficionados of Mango Cavendish, or Peaches 'n Cream, might have dreams of being mass-murderers.
But they are more likable than the cigar-huffing dickwad.

A minority of cigar smokers are betrayed as all-right kinda people by their lovable pets or children. Or queer hobbies like sculling in the coastal inlets of the Bay and dating unsuitable people.


I particularly like people who can just quietly shut up and read for hours at a stretch, and don't mind the fragrance of good tobacco, but those are distinctly a rarity. More than likely pipe smokers in any case.

If they drink tea and hate football, so much the better.




In case you were wondering, I am a considerate and thoughtful person, tolerant of a truly vast spectrum of humanity. At times I like having people around me, and can be quite gregarious, though often I prefer quiet.

TOBACCO INDEX


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IT AIN'T THE CIGARS MAKING YOU STUPID

As a necessary change of subject, I shall talk about boxer shorts. Which are, as many men know, a stylish and attractive garment quite unlike "tidy-whities". The problem with "tidy-whities" is that they make you look like you just stepped out of a nineteen-seventies Sears Roebuck or JC Penney catalogue, besides constricting your scrotal details and leading directly to crotch-rot, a fungus affliction which eventually affects the brains of mature cigar-smoking gentlemen in Marin, to whom I have had to listen recently for three solid days.

The infection has made many of them fevered and irrational, and they believe that they are qualified to speak about politics. I've had to hear them pontificate during the entire period leading up to the election, and they have not become one whit more intelligent or convincing.

It's worse, far worse, post-election.

Dunning-Kruger effect.


Marin also suffers from a sickening sense of entitlement, but because that applies to both genders there, it cannot be ascribed to "tidy-whities". Still, it would be best if the women there also wore baggier garments, perhaps for entirely different reasons.


The only problem with boxer shorts, from this blogger's perspective, is that one may not be automatically aware of how they open up in front at a crucial moment. The overlapping fabric fools the panicked fingers, and one fumbles around. And if one of one's coworkers has irritable bowel, and another is cursed with a microscopically-sized nervous bladder, one dare not stay too long in the bathroom. It leads to a strained situation.

Related to that, one may in one's haste to leave the house in the morning (in San Francisco) have rushed the process of dressing a bit, and therefore at the moment one wishes to get rid of that first Marin cup of tea worry that perhaps one put the darned thing on backwards.
Can't feel the opening.

Where is it? Dammital, why does this ALWAYS happen?!?

Shan't mention how often I did put them on wrong way around, but suffice to say those were not my best days, and blue cotton fabric had a lot to do with that. Smooth, comfy, blue cotton.


The more I think about it, the more I am absolutely convinced that women, most particularly the charming ones, need to wear boxer shorts.
Whether they wear them correctly is immaterial.

Perhaps they'd enjoy the feeling of "otherness" at times?
The frisson of ventilation, or its suggestion.
Who knows?

I shall not speculate any further about the clothing of charming women.
Boxer shorts, backwards or not, are enough.
No need for anything else.




I am NOT a dirty old man, by the way.
Nor particularly a cigar smoker.
And I don't live in Marin.

I smoke a pipe.




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ON BEING THE LAST SANE MAN STANDING

Because I am a grown-up, I can tolerate a wide span of peculiarity around me. Which naturally accounts for my almost Christ-like patience with the cigar-huffing pickleheads of Marin County, as well as the once-a-week jaunt to North Beach for a late night cocktail. North Beach at night is where conversations go south, and people play in traffic.

I myself do not play in traffic, of course.
Nor do I particularly encourage that.
But it's your life. Go ahead.


There is no more art in the alleyway between Vesuvio and City Lights. It has been replaced by an encampamentu civil por la paz (miniature hobo jungle) the frowsty occupants of which keenly appreciate Olde English Eight Hundred, instead of playing guitars, singing off-key, and selling colourful oil paintings of the capitalized word "f*ck" (without an asterisk).
It still smells of medical grade marijuana, though.
Which San Francisco thinks is therapeutic.
All-natural, green, gmo-free.

At this point you may have detected a slight note of weary cynicism. Pay it no mind. This writer is middle-aged, and keenly desirous that the damned kids get off my lawn.

In another quarter of a century I'll probably be off my rocker, too.
And angrily waving a cane.


My Thursday co-worker is infected by base-line earworms.


Throughout the day, at the most unexpected moments, I would hear "dew dew dew, dew" at random, and discover him nearby restocking a shelf or wiping down a surface. In the storeroom he was humming it among the boxes of cigars. When I walked past the bathroom at one point I swear I heard "dew dew dew, dew", followed by "thumpa thumpa thumpa". When he used the microwave in the kitchen to heat up his lunch, it was "ga-dunga dunga dunga". But mostly "dew dew dew, dew".

"Ba da dung dung dung, ba da dung dung dung."

Given that I have no peculiarities whatsoever, I am unable to understand where someone so grievously afflicted is coming from, or the hardships he faces.

It is a form of neurosis I cannot possibly grasp.
I am a pipe-smoker; I am normal.
He smokes cigars.
Poor guy.


Almost everybody in the lounge is a cigar-smoker, and consequently manifests symptoms of some form of insanity, nervous tic, or complete disassociation from reality. It's like working in a hobo jungle amidst the dysfunctional elements. There is no value judgment here, just an objective statement of fact.

I am so glad none of my stuffed animals smokes cigars.
They are mostly pipe-smokers.
Normal.

I hardly ever go to the Oxxy anymore. The patrons are all cigar-smokers, and I suspect that not a single one of them has a Teddy Bear.

An animal companion would benefit their sanity.
Far more than stogies or booze.




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BEYOND THE TENERAL PHASE

This blogger is obscenely delighted to discover that the ideal woman that many of his acquaintances among the cigar-huffing crowd pretty much swooned over a year-and-a-half ago has, in the estimation of many of them, turned out to be an ethically deficient gold-digger.

This blogger, being a pipe-smoker who hardly ever even experiments with the dark side that is the stomping ground of yutzes and expense-account yuppies as well as rapacious investment bankers and e-commerce hosebags, always found their opinions suspect.
And knows that a fair number of these folks will vote for Trump.
Because they can identify with his struggles.
And have piss-poor judgment.
Cigar-smokers.


Pipe-smoking inculcates a balanced and equitable worldview, as well as kindness and empathy towards one's fellows; cigar-smoking leads directly to syphilis and moral failings of horrendous magnitude.


Most of the time the young lady avoided me, and I was fine with that.
No, I did not growl when she was around, but it was quite clear that she regarded me as the scholarly old grumpus of the group, precisely like a fondly remembered grammar school teacher or village curate with a passion for cultivating prize rosebushes instead of his flock, rather than a sufficiently well-to-do vulgarian exemplar worth cozying up to, who might advance her career or enable her exploitation of prime status-resources.
Being neither recognizable prey nor obstacle, we got along fine.
It was only in the presence of others that we met.
Superficially, socially, and briefly.


Perhaps acting with reserve may make one seem old.
I am not antique, but probably saner.
That staggers me.


I shan't identify the woman in question, nor give sufficient details that would allow anyone to recognize her. In life everyone has their own choices to make, and their paths may go in strange directions.
That is their business.

That also holds for those cigar-huffing gentlemen.
There will be no names or "indescriptives".
You know what to expect.


I am somewhat more likely to end up surrounded with prize rosebushes.



AFTER THOUGHT

In a short while I will head off to lunch in Chinatown. The places where I eat are not high-fallutin', nor likely to impress the cigar smokers in any way.
I get the overwhelming impression most of them sneer at such lowly dives, and only grasp that what they eat tastes good if the ambiance and price accord with their idea of value. Their value. Strictly Chinatown ain't it.

I have never broken bread with many of the cigar crowd.

Chinatown: Real food, served by real people.
Prepared by and for real people.

It's about values.




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IT STINKS OF CIGARS AND CORPULENT RUMPS HERE

Yesterday evening became enjoyable once I found the decent folks.
Who, unfortunately, weren't present when first I ambled in.

There were several small clusters in the place where I went for a smoke, many of which consisted partly or entirely of people I knew.

One can, surprisingly, be alone in crowd.


At this point I think I'll avoid the place for a while. Apparently I am not up to snuff as far as one group is concerned, although they did happily invite a crazy person to join them. Another group vastly preferred to spend their time while huffing cigars by playing Pokemon Go and making snide comments.


During my second pipe I ended up next to secular humanists and skeptics.
That conversation was enjoyable.


I still find it remarkable that the first group I mentioned clearly found a crazy person preferable. It diminishes the respect I had for some of the people involved, and I now suspect them of superficialist value judgments.
I am just default company, for when fewer people are around.
Strange crazy gentlemen are quite palatable.
If they smoke cigars.

Good luck with that, boys.




The weather is quite bearable at this time of year, and although parks are off limits to anyone enjoying a pipe, it is very well possible to find places to sit in the evening where no screaming anti-smoking fiends will harass one.
A little uphill from either Polk or Powell is good; the party butterflies, drunks, and bums, will not venture there.

I seriously doubt that I'll run into cigar aficionados while wandering around Nob Hill and Chinatown. Which is a damned good thing.


The 'Oxxy' always leaves me depressed now.




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SUCH A HORRID CHOCOLATE STENCH!

Some pipe tobaccos make people romantically ooze out the words "that reminds me of my father ..... ooh!" Of course, if they are less than thirty years of age, they may instead lithp the thententhe "yowza, old fossil, that reminds me of my great great great grandfather!"

Then there are the tobaccos that will make some individuals scream: "cheezus aitch, that stinks like a sewer you rancid old perv, I am going to die!"

If you are in Berkeley across the bay, that could be any pipe tobacco, really, because Berkeley finds tobacco to be incredibly offensive and imperialist, as well as an extremely old dead white man thing.

Oppressive fascist, this is a safe zone!

The heck with Berkeley.


Anywhere else it might just be the reek of Lane's Dark Red, a spanking new product from the same outfit that brought you the propylene glycol cocktail and all of its variants.


Cite:

Lane Dark Red​​

From the company that makes the largest-selling bulk aromatic blends in the US comes an all-new black Cavendish that we're sure is going to become one of their most popular pipe tobaccos - Lane Dark Red. 
Using the same Green River black Cavendish base as their ever-popular BCA, Lane's Dark Red is one of the most flavorful and fragrant tobaccos they've ever made. The soft, rich leaf is imbued with a deep, robust combination of cherry and confectionery flavors that will more than satisfy the pipester with a sweet tooth, and will delight anyone in the area. If you're looking for an all-day blend with an amazing room note, look no further than Dark Red.

End cite.

[SOURCE: http://www.pipesandcigars.com/pipe-tobacco/104120/lane-dark-red/.]

My esteemed colleague puffed this all day on Thursday, consequently by the time I attended the pipe club meeting, I was in a foul mood and desperately needed some cheese.

My esteemed colleague will smoke damned well anything.

I suspect him of degeneracy.


He also smokes other fruity-cake tobaccos (I have spoken to him about that), and listens to Italian operas.


The "amazing room note", mentioned above, is not entirely gagsome, but nevertheless incredibly offensive, and quite utterly baffling, as rather than having a wholesome aroma of tobacco, or a reek of rotten stone fruit, it reminds one of nothing so much as hippie incense and unwashed bodies.

I'm sure it will be a phenomenal success.

Kudos, Lane Limited, kudos.

Hello Kitty sh*t.


DARK STRONG FLAKE

After the meeting three of us ended up at a local dive where the refined cigar smokers hold sway, and, as per longstanding intelligence, we refrained from enjoying anything as loathsome as the Dark Red. Aromatics are verboten there, along with perversions, because cigar smokers are sensitive souls who will not abide such outrages.
Acid Cigars are not allowed either, by the way.

Three pipe smokers, in a downtown bar...

Ten Russians mixed with a blonde flake in one pipe.

Eighty percent Virginia plus four percent Perique in another.

Then William pulled out a brier, and loaded up a bowl of Peter Heinrich's Dark Strong Flake. Which is described so: "Aged cakes of red Virginia and fire-cured dark Kentucky tobaccos give this full-bodied, flavorful flake an unusually rich and naturally spicy taste. Not for neophytes, this one satisfies with old-fashioned deep taste. Good outdoors."

[Reviews and lots of praise-poofle about Peter Heinrich's Dark Strong Flake here:
sex tobacco non-pareil.]

It's a cult favourite, and has numerous aficionados.


WHAT SMOKING PH-DSF IS VERY MUCH LIKE

[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1teoC2aMVtY.]

I've enjoyed it, but I wouldn't particularly search for it. It's not quite my style, as I am a more restrained and balanced individual than most other pipe smokers, many of whom are tattooed freaks and Gandalf wannabees.
I am rather an old-fashioned British-type smoker, tea and sherry and all that, and prefer tobaccos that evoke a different time and place.

But William likes DSF, and puffed happily.

All hell promptly burst loose.

Because, you see, fire-cured Kentucky which has been steampressed with red Virginia smells remarkably like chocolate with a smidgeon of plums.
Not sure about the chemistry, but it sure does rile up cigar smokers.
One particular cigar smoker.

Who is one of the owners.

No aromatics allowed!

It is certifiably not an aromatic, even though being a Danish product it does have anethone as well as a dark sugary essence in the top dressing, but no matter! You will not smoke THAT in my pristine temple! Ick poo!


William looked crestfallen, but I gently persuaded him to have a bowl of my Virginia and Perique mixture instead. One of these days I may have to start manufacturing it for commercial distribution, as it is an enjoyable all day & all tobacco smoke, inoffensive to purists though unacceptable in Berkeley despite its very collegiate composition, with just enough tanginess to satisfy. It soothes the savage beast.

[The other person by this time had switched to a flake from a colourful tin. Perhaps Solani, but I do not know. It did not offend the proprietor, praise the fates and boruch haShem. It is quite likely that any (all) of the following products will make cigar purists have conniptions: HH Old Dark Fired, an extremely  lovely steampressed fire-cured Kentucky, deeply rich and perfumy; HH Dark Strong Kentucky, which smells butch and masculine, and puts me on the floor; Gawith Hoggarth Rum Flake OR Gawith Hogarth Ennerdale Flake, both of which are Lakeland style products with a certain quotient of degeneracy (the latter smells like urinal cake); Samuel Gawith 1792 Flake, that being a tonquin-oil dressed dark steamed product, very old fashioned and lady-like; MacBarens Vanilla Cream, which I shan't even try; and probably also the Peterson's Irish Flake, which has a divine reek and also tends to put me on the floor like the Dark Strong Kentucky. You will note that all of these have either a pronounced dollop of firecured Kentucky (ooh, that strange suggestion of chocolate!), or an added flavouring that will offend vampires.]

This blogger has profound sympathy for the bar proprietor's life-journey.


Sometime very soon, just to push the envelope, I shall march into the Oxxy smoking a full bowl of Dark Red.


Now, about young master Thingbottom von Shproink, he's still a dingus.
Totally. Tweeds and everything.

TOBACCO INDEX


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COMPOSING MY MIND

While in principle I still like the place, in practise I've stopped visiting. Reason being that I have no need whatsoever to smoke a pipe in the company of cigar aficionados yowling about sports. I had thought that with the Football Season over, and the Baseball Season not yet started, there would be some respite.


Nope.


I forgot basketball and lawn bowling.


And Baseball is starting up again soon. Dammit.


The only reason to go to a bar in the evening is for good conversation. Given that ALL sports bore the crap out of me, that is no longer an option. Especially at a place with two television screens.

The company of cigar smokers is NOT a draw.
Many of them are unalloyed annoyances.
Teaparty Republicans or worse.

The last conversation I had with one of the regulars there, in short:
"I'm drinking Loch PhartinBugger, it's eighty dollars a glass, screw poor people, I'm voting for Trump."


The civilized man does not seek out the company of those individuals who plan to vote for Trump. Or drinkers of Loch PhartinBugger.

Again, let me stress that in principle I still like the place. Very much so.
The idea of a hospitable venue where smoking is permitted is charming. In reality, what with the Bay Area having become a hotbed of rapacious tech yuppies and sharklike venture capitalists, the chances of any sort of amicable conversation, especially while the damned televisions are on, have become painfully slim.


"I'm drinking Loch PhartinBugger, it's eighty dollars a glass, screw poor people, I'm voting for Trump."


The only two times that I went there since the end of February were with fellow pipesmokers. The conversations were far better than one could normally could expect there. Actual conversations. Not sports related, nor venomously reactionary.



A YELLOW SUBSTANCE

Of course, there are evenings when my apartment mate provides startlingly stimulating conversation .....

"I wonder if any one has ever seen the face of Jesus in earwax? I wonder if there's a museum of celebrity earwax? 
I wonder if there are miraculous healing powers to earwax? Maybe there's a small Carpathian monastery where they have the earwax of saints in special caskets ....."

Well, not all stimulating conversations are equal.

Despite her blandishments, I shall NOT go onto the internet and search for Jesus' earwax, OR earwax miracles. Whether anyone saved Elvis' earwax for future sales to fans is no concern of mine.

For some reason she doesn't want to switch on her own computer and enter the necessary search criteria. She says that I am much better at such berserk quests than she could ever possibly be, go on, do it.

I shall not give in. I've got better things to do.


"Cerumen est substantia flava, quae in ducto exteriori aurium mammalium a glandulis ceruminosis secernitur. Cerumen pulverem cepit et aurem a bacteriis, insectis ac fungis protegit."


-----Vicipædia


The only problem is that I can't smoke a pipe right now.
Perhaps I should take a stroll around the block.
While composing my mind, such as it is.

Peculiar Cantonese woman.



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CIGAR SMOKERS BEFOULING THEMSELVES

There are times when social chit-chat goes decisively south.

"California was colonized by settlers coming down the Oregon trail with vast herds of pigs, after crossing that big thing in the middle of the country, what's it called, The Great Sahara? Yeah man, lots of dry sand and those things like Jawas.
I seen the movies."

We were discussing what we did on Easter.


"That's why we ate ham Sunday; because, California."


I should really know better by now than to engage seemingly likable cigar smokers whom I have never met before in conversation, as their world views are, necessarily, in permanent conflict with the weltanschauung of almost any pipe smoker, excepting the aficionados of aromatics.

Sometimes they seem like badly educated teenagers.

Sometimes, simple and trusting kindergartners.

Their 'on, off' switches need calibrating.


Evil hamsters. Evil!


Tomorrow is a day off. Consequently almost all conversations are likely to be completely sane and normal. No creative re-interpretations of reality, no paranoid suggestions of world-takeover by aliens, no sneering remarks about ethnic cooking, no boastful burbling about their hot tubs, bicycling gear, water bottles, and suburban car ports.

Hamsters are easily overstimulated.

They go all giddy.




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TECH BROS, MORTGAGE BROS, AND HEDGE FUND BROS

Yesterday evening ended with well-to-do cigar smokers ranting crap about the poor, the old, the homeless, liberals, and the Democratic candidates. Not surprisingly, one of them asserted that he was going to vote for Trump.
All of this while simultaneously singing the praises of a private club in San Francisco that insulates them from the poor, the old, the homeless, liberals, and Democratic candidates, all of whom they despise.



If this country is, as some aver, more divided than ever, it is because of people like them.



Just one more reason why we need the second amendment.
A well-regulated Jacquerie must also be well-armed.
Torches and pitchforks are so old-fashioned.




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ENJOYING THE SUPERBOWL

We closed at three today so that the cigar smokers in the lounge could enjoy the Superbowl in quiet undisturbed comfort, screaming and yelling, with no incriminating cellphone photos, nor reports of their unseemly hi-jincks reaching their wives.

These are people whom I see nearly everyday. We get along well.
They brought a tonne of food. Arranged a veritable feast.
All spread out, buffet style, where I was working.

They invited my co-worker to eat with them.


They and their food started arriving before two o'clock, serious eating began shortly thereafter. And some of that food smelled absolutely wonderful, even over the cigar fumes. I had to pass by frequently while working.

The fragrance permeated my working area.

I left at five o'clock, having cleaned up nine fine briars after we closed, for a customer who is moving across country.


They were still noshing at that time, there was that much food.


TASTES LIKE ASHES, WITH HOTSAUCE ON TOP

I'm home, and I finally had lunch, moments ago. It was just a convenient microwaveable item purchased from a shop around the corner from my apartment. The uninspiring sandwich I brought to work in the morning from 7-eleven will be still in the refrigerator tomorrow when I get in.


[Here are a few phrases that were never uttered by the organizers of the ad-hoc picnic:
"Have you had lunch yet?" "Would you like a bit to eat?" "Have some of this!"
"Surely you'll enjoy a bite?" "Have some food!" "Please, take a plate!"
"Say, it's right around your lunchtime, why don't you join us!"
"Please eat something!" "Are you hungry?"]


It is NOT that I necessarily wished to be included, but what happened was completely and clearly the opposite.
Done deliberately.

By the time the football game had started, an invite would have been politely demurred with either one of two face-saving lies: "no thank you, I've already eaten", or "no thank you, I'm too busy right now".

If at such a moment I said that I wasn't hungry it would have been the truth.
I had lost my appetite, and wouldn't have enjoyed eating at all.


[In any case, no grudging leftovers were proffered, so that is a moot point.]


Consuming my 7-eleven sandwich anytime between two and five o'clock might likely have been seen as "the insult and exclusion of the individual has been registered and understood", or maybe "what the hell is wrong with him?" It could also have been taken as pissing on every one else's parade. Whatever; avidly interpreted or mis-interpreted, and one should rather not have one's humble crust subjected to analysis and undue interest.

Especially when it cannot compare to the exquisite and varied dainties that every single other person present is having.


[Hypothetical conversation that did not, and will never take place: "Did you have some of the food?" "No." "Why not?" "Because I was not offered any." "Then why didn't you say something!?!" "Hell will effing freeze over before I whine to please be included!" "Don't be so stupid! You could have eaten!" "Am I a beggar?!?" ('And screw all of you cocksure oafs.')]


My coworker, who is staying until the game is over, is welcome to their company.




No, I actually can't stand football, and sportsfans get on my nerves.
They tend to be a crude and graceless lot.
Complete swine.

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WHO WON THE GAME? PEOPLE WITH SHINY ARSES, THAT'S WHO!

Actually, I don't have a clue who won today's game, nor am I at all curious.
The only reason why it's even an issue to bring up is that I was far too close to a lounge filled with cigar-huffing pickleheads screaming like a lynch mob during the last three hours before closing.
I may have been the only sane and sober individual in the place when we finally chased all of them out into the cold. They got the abbreviated version of my well-known lecture on why I do not want to spend an extra forty minutes in the ghastly self-absorbed wastelands of Marin county because one of the retrogrades will have overstayed his welcome for five seconds,
and I shall have missed the bus back to civilization.
Very narrow window of opportunity.
Get the hell out.


Sudden noises disconcert me. Yowling middle-aged men too.


On the other hand, four or five pipe-smokers came in during the day, and acted very civilized altogether.

Subjects discussed: Carotenoids (flavour and aroma constituent of stone fruits, wild grasses, and Virginia tobacco), terpeneols (pine resins, Scotch whisky, lapsang souchong tea, and Latakia), norambreinolide (an organic compound present in ambergris, various spices, sage, salvia types, cedar, Havana and Turkish tobacco), amberlike resins ("labdanoid terpenes") and sugar esters (Turkish tobacco, again), anaerobic fermentation yielding methyl acetate, isoamyl alcohol, limonene, and several other compounds of a chocolate-like or fruit-like aroma (Perique tobacco, from Louisiana).

The paragraph above in short: tobaccos have various flavours and aromas in common with certain fruits, evergreen trees and shrubs, numerous spices, plus coffee, tea, vanilla, and chocolate.


Key considerata: primary fermentation, secondary fermentation, aging. These are processes that improve tobacco, and give it character.


Related thereto, many things benefit from maturation: wines, cheeses, tobaccos, and pipe smokers.

Young ladies (defined as human females from the age of twenty years on up, though not to far) benefit from the proximity of things that have matured: wines, cheeses, tobaccos, and pipe smokers.

Unfortunately, because matured tobaccos are often associated with cigars, the presence of yowling middle-aged stogie-sucking yobbos is likely, if not necessarily implicit.

Pipe smokers do NOT benefit from shrieking football-obsessed old grunts with cheroots, and keenly resent their behaviour scaring away the young ladies as well as most other civilized folk.


We are deeply concerned about the young ladies.


Maturity: it's the fountain of youth.

TOBACCO INDEX


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DOWNTOWN GOAT MEN

Over four years ago I made one of our number immortal. Admittedly, that wasn't my intent, as the fellow in question is a modest man and does not seek the limelight. Wisely he avoids publicity and the press.
For fear that men in white coats may find him.
There's a padded cell with his name.

Soft rubbery walls.

Which would be more comforting than he could bear. He prefers to roam free in the wilds of downtown, eschewing such pansy things as restraints, ball gags, the absence of tools with which he could hurt himself, and upholstered walls.

Men Who Stare At Goats

It was a kinder gentler age. San Francisco was a different place then. We all had flowers in our hair, and the venerable Agent Left Testicle spoke kind words to the adoring crowd, sharing ancient Eastern wisdom with them.
Several of whom were bankers, and desperate for answers.
Among whom many considered him a wizard.
Or at least an oracle.

In real life, he does something with Real Estate.
I asked him once, but forgot what.

His conversational abilities are legendary, and leave one gasping for air. No, he is not a degenerate, despite his enthusiastic fondness for Pigeon Man, disturbing knowledge of gents with lacy underwear, and sheer goatness.


You might like him.


An earlier mention of Agent Left Testicle is here:

Cigar smoker brain scramble.

The man. The myth.
Legend.





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DOUBTFUL MEATS

Last night I arrived home with a packet of chicken and pork Frankfurters in my coat pocket. Which, when you think about it, is a piss-poor refection on both culinary life in these United States, as well as my non-existent dating game. I had two, with pickle relish, Sriracha, and ketchup.
Fry-pan grilled, on toasted sour-dough bread.
Not the best mid-night snack.
I've done better.


Very much a mixed crowd at the cigar bar. Interesting people, nice people, dumbasses, and crazy people. As well as the world's cutest cigar smoker. With a bald guy. Whose name I do not remember.

Obviously I like the world's cutest cigar smoker. It's hard not to. She's just so lovable. So, like any rational human being, I worried about the bald guy. And suspected him of being a dangerous type.

That is entirely unjustified, I know. It's just that one cannot help feeling protective. Because most male-cigar smokers tend, more or less, to be dubious persons. Even if they are watching the game (Stanford won) and have trouble focusing on other human beings.


Further cause for worry was that the bartender tried to talk her into something new that was six-and-a-half inches long.
Which is at least an hour commitment.


She stayed for another cigar. Padron, a maduro of modest dimension.



I am presently regretting the chicken and pork franks.




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SMOKING IS VERY BAD FOR YOU, OKAY?

Despite my virulent distaste for the company of cigar-chomping grossly overweight rednecks and ultra right wing conspiracy theorists, I spent several hours in precisely such an environment the other evening.
Most cigar smokers are crude, opinionated, and wrong.
As a pipe-smoker, I am above all that.
But not always.

I was planning to have only one drink, and consequently had only a little Virginia tobacco and two pipes with me when I entered. One of which was already lit, having been filled while I waited for my roast duck and rice at New Moon Restaurant in Chinatown.

[Roast duck and rice, roast duck rice plate: 燒鴨飯 'siu ngaap fan'; Cantonese style roast duck with a mound of rice. Usually this is served with the nicely arranged chunks of hot duck exuding juices onto a layer of chopped lettuce (生菜 'saang choi'). New Moon Restaurant: 新月燒臘小館 ('san yueh siu-laap siu-gwun') on Stockton Street near Broadway, where they also serve a bowl of old fire soup (老火湯 'lou fo tong') with the meal. Chinatown: 唐人街 ('tong yan kai'); an economically depressed mixed residential and business neighborhood adjacent to the Financial District, where some people of Chinese extraction reside. Most Chinese Americans, having reached an economic level that allowed them to move the hell out, have moved the hell out.]


While I was on my second pipe, a Singaporean couple walked in, ordered expensive single malts, and lit up Havanas. They were good conversationalists, and despite the huge age gap between the him and the her, they seemed like a great match. Both were no longer starry-eyed adolescents filled with idealistic ideas about love and marriage.

Then a suave smooth-pated Puerto Rican gentleman entered.
I know him, and he is also a good conversationalist.

By this time I was on my third pipeful.
I go there for the conversation.

After earlier sneering privately about the Havanas ("hah, not nearly as good as Padron cigars"), the host was now selling the Singaporean gentleman, who had strongly opined that non-Cubans were virtually unsmokeable, a very fine Padron 1926 maduro.

Both he and his companion admitted to me that it was good tobacco.
They took turns puffing at it. Altogether, a decent cigar.

Shortly afterward, the world's cutest cigar smoker came in. No, I shall not describe her or mention what kind of person she is -- because I would like her company all to myself, and do not wish fat rednecks and rightwing Republican asshats to go all fetishist batshit and flock to the cigar-bar in hopes of finding their fifth wife there -- but I will merely say that I have presently forgotten what she was smoking. It's an important datum.
There is a strong possibility that, like what the Singaporean gentleman and his lady were enjoying, it was a Nicaraguan.
She joined our conversation, and she and the Singaporean woman had quite a talk. To which I was a keen but mostly silent witness.
At least, that is how I remember it.

Meanwhile, a Panjabi gentleman, who insisted that he was merely a humble San Francisco barber, nope nothing else -- "see that shiny pate over there? My handiwork, he looks much more human now!" -- had entered and shown off his big BIG 96 ring-gauge eight incher ("it's big, 'coz I'm Panjabi, moddah f*gg*rrs"). After smoking barely an inch of this monstrosity he switched to something else, and when I asked about it, he said the big Panjabi penis substitute had tasted like sh*t.

Precisely and exactly.

I did not remark upon the breadth of his experience.

A cheerful Egyptian now also joined the party.
The Panjabi accused him of being Jewish.
More Nicaruaguan cigars were lit.

By the time I switched to cigarillos, because I'd had too many pipefuls, the world's cutest cigar smoker had bidden farewell and left.
Yes, I had thoroughly enjoyed her company.
But she had to leave; long drive home.

The Singaporean woman, who was now smoking a Liga Privada ("much better than the Padron") then spent half an hour or more strongly urging me to court the world's cutest cigar smoker, because obviously we're so perfectly matched. And from one point of view, that would be indeed be a damned nice thing, but if I were an outsider I should probably think otherwise, because I am a financially-depressed middle-aged Dutchman, with strange habits and a life-time of peculiarities saved up.
Hardly a dreamboat, and likely far too goofy.
Things become more complicated as one gets older, and there's a very great chance I'd say the wrong things, and ruin a very fine friendship.
Plus I can well imagine that if I were the world's cutest cigar smoker's brother, I would likely growl "mister, stay away from my sister".
No, I do not know if she has siblings.
I'll have to ask.

Yes, I spent till closing time there. And please remember, I had intended to have only one drink. But the camaraderie of good people can make one change plans rapidly, and I enjoy intelligent conversation.
Plus the company of cigar smokers is appealing.
It makes one feel alive again.
Five drinks.

I was a bit slow the next morning.
Possibly not enough sleep.
Or too much smoke.



SMOKING IS VERY BAD FOR YOU OKAY?

Please note that the title of this essay is a direct quote from Pepe The King Prawn. It's what that lovable crustacean said to two mafiosi in the most recent muppet movie.

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BIG BREASTS ARE UPON US!

Twice within twenty four hours I have been confronted with humongous tatas. Gazongas that make one scream "good gracious!". No, I haven't been hanging out at strip clubs or the Playboy Mansion. Those are by no means environments I find conducive. The problem is average Joe cigar smokers; many of them are attracted to large-bosomed women.
It must be the pheromones exuded by oily skin.
That, plus a simplicity of intellect.

Large bosomed women appreciate all that. Much more than they could possibly ever value the inherent subtlety and wit of men who smoke fine Virginias or Medium Latakia Mixtures in their pipes. Which is all far too impossibly finicky and complicated for women of huge bazoomb and unexercised mind.

Four days a week I come in contact with cigars during the course of the working day. It is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is high-quality tobacco, the curse is the armpit-scratching cavemen of Marin.

As well as the bazoombacious monsters for whom they fall.


Okay, now that I've got the obligatory sneering and insulting of stogie-chompers out of the way .....


Even though I am a pipe smoker, I actually like cigars. I can't help it.
I grew up in a town which at one point had over two dozen cigar factories (Valkenswaard), although by the latter part of the twentieth century the number had been reduced to two (Hofnar and Willem II), then one. When I last visited, Hofnar was long gone, and the once brand-new office building of Willem II was being torn down.

Eindhoven, the nearest metropolis (yes, that's what it seemed like at the time), had been "The City That Smokes" ('La Ville Fumée') well before old Fritz established his light-bulb factory there.

Cigars are part of a balanced life.


More germane to this essay, however, are all the elegant ladies and lovely women who smoke cigars.

At the present time I know of several, including 'The World's Cutest Cigar Smoker', who really should copyright that nickname.

It speaks of a strong mind when a woman knows her cigars, and has discriminating taste in that area. Stubbornness, yes, but tempered by confidence and sound intelligence.
Such a person is not easily swayed by common praeconceptions, and chooses to ignore the unknowing judgementalism of the herd.

In Valkenswaard there were quite a few women who liked cigars -- not all of them limited themselves to the local product; some of them had a fondness for Cubans -- and most of these exemplary persons had an independent streak that was praiseworthy indeed.
One of them had smuggled guns and ammo during the war, and lots of other things in the years since. Another was a notoriously toughminded and capable local politician, whom one would rather not cross.
A third was a schoolteacher, very inspiring!
And so on. You get the idea.


The perfect cigar for a woman is, probably, a robusto (one of the most popular shapes in America), or a toro. Either Nicaraguan tobacco from Esteli and Jalapa, or something in the Arturo Fuente range.
Padrons, Perdomos, Olivas.

Nothing small and effete. Nor a big whomping Salomon or gordo that screams "I have a very tiny penis". The 6x60 and the 7x70 are, of course, quite ridiculous. The cigar-smoking woman need not prove her manhood, and should naturally sneer at the problem cases who do.
Smokers of enormous cigars have issues.
And are probably very small.
Almost all are men.
Wee men.


I actually prefer a toro, because the pointy end makes it easier for me to hold it in my mouth while working, whereas some other vitolas cause unfortunate drooling, rather like a slobbery blood hound.
Perfectos too. The perfecto is a classic shape.
Many of the finest brands do a perfecto.
Including Dutch companies.


The World's Cutest Cigar Smoker prefers something between five and seven inches. Remember that. It's an important bit of information.


The best things in life come in likable dimensions.

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