All right. I might be a tad compulsive. Even when I do shit in moderation I do a shit load of moderation. I collect things, I collect ideas, I collect personalities. I’m also a bit of a pack rat about it. The upside which has been heretofore neglected in the great dawg migration of Two Ought twelve is that I only took a Jeeps worth of shit with me. It was enough that the ex promised to send me my shit. I mean it was enough to salve my pack rat conscious, my rational brain (shut up, I do so have one of those. It’s around here somewhere.) knew good and god damned well I’d be more likely to see that shit if I floated it down the Columbia on a raft of driftwood and fructose.
I went a bit bat shit with the effusion lamps; I have enough to clean the entirety of Ingham County’s air and more than enough oil to change the county’s scent daily. I have twelve humidors, five of which hold enough cigars to make the surgeon Generals Dick hard even if, by some miracle, we get a female surgeon general. All of them are full. One of the giant Oak bookshelves up in this attic is packed with Oils, Lamps and humidors. Of the two giant Oak bookshelves on the Northern wall One and a half display pipes and various pipish accruements and a few unrelated things that pleased my sense of aesthetics. The other half has Parts of three different encyclopedia sets, all of which have nothing about the holocaust in them. I’m not suggesting that they are all conspiracy Elvis-is-alive-the-holocaust-never-happened; I’m outright saying they were pre-world war I. Before World War II world wars weren’t numbered. Before WWII there were different names for killing a bunch of Jews and Americans were all into other types of genocide and manifest destiny.
The built in some-kind-of-hard-wood-or-other book shelf, the southern one behind this gigantic oak desk I’m typing on after an almost anti-ergonomic fashion (like the Lilly tomlin skit where she was in a giant rocker) I have covered with a hippie sort of Hindi patterned tapestry. Ok, Hindi pattern with a kind of Celtic border and a tie-dyed tummy. Of the two more portable book cases, the one I use as an end table has more humidors and lamp stuff and the other is filled with stuff from my own library, not necessarily my favorite books, my collector books. My shack was stuffed with books. As much as I’ve bitched about it mostly the only way a book would leave was by theft or loan, and the thieves were people I would have loaned the book too. As everyone knows there is no such thing as a “loan” when it comes to books. You loan them with the idea that you will never see them again; it’s like bringing a lighter to a party. You’ll leave with either more or less lighters than you came with, but never the exact amount.
I could go on, but I’ve covered enough to get to my point. Oh, wait, there’s an auxiliary back up point; all these giant things in this attic just had to have been built up here. The original owner/architect was making an office/den. There’s one in the basement too. Besides weighing enough to give you a hernia just thinking about moving them, the clearance, hair pin turns and even windows would never allow the book cases or desk to make it up here in toto.
My point is that my cigar and pipe collections take up a lot of my living space. Other shelves have an unusual amount of musical instruments, Classic comics and doo-dads from my child hood that made it up here to collect dust until the master returned (I would have told them in 79 that the master was never coming back). I can’t smoke the cigars or pipes just yet (there are all kinds of tobacco tins in various nooks and crannies). I’m quitting the cigs with vaping and although the cigars and pipes might be healthier than the vapors they are way too much like smoking.
Yeah, so, I’ve been vaping for a couple of weeks and I have six e-cigs and two variable voltage e-cig mods, various stockpiles of atomizers heads and clearomizers with various ohm ratings. I have thirty different eliquids. On two different websites my apparently never to go away shopping carts are filled with fancier mods on the one and all the shit to make to make my own eliquids on the other. For the sake of cynicism and comedy; Cancer is the main theme of my current collections.
Vaping vapers who vape vapors are as dedicated a group of zealots as any other smokers. Soon enough I’m going to suggest they shut the hell up. Why? Because the FDA and ATF don’t know quite what to make of the shit yet and I’m sure the IRS is chomping at the fucking bit to gouge that industry with sin taxes. That’s the funny thing about tobacco products; now that they are absolutely proof positive going to kill me and everyone who breathes within a hundred yards of me, instead of outlawing my death they are charging me a premium for it. There is a logic, a pretzel logic, which says they will become too expensive and so people will quit. The other way of stating that would be that the government wants to profit off my death. Or perhaps, if you outlaw cigarettes only outlaws will have them (yeah, it doesn’t make any more or less sense than the NRA argument. The similarities being death and taxes and our inalienable right to death and taxes).
Just saying, vocal vapers bitching about all the rights they currently enjoy and going to find how much like a parent the federal government is, e.g. “I’ll give you something to bitch about”. If I had the proper light up in here I’d show you the recent clutter of compulsive vaping paraphernalia, lamps and ribbon wick candles that make this giant desk look too small for its task. Moderation. I have a butt load of moderation, a shit ton of moderation. I’ve got moderation up the ying yang; my moderation is spilling out over the sides. I’m the most moderate motherfucker up in here. If nicotine were outlawed tomorrow a raid on this attic would make the front page of … um, yahoo … guys in hazmet suits with badges pinned to the helmet would be holding up bio-hazard bags of the lethal stuff in every form except snuff or chewing tobacco.
I have noticed the old school e-cigs are everywhere now, I mean anywhere that sells cigarettes has at least one brand of disposable old school e-cig, Walgreens, for instance, seems to carry a selection. You never see anyone smoking those things and yet the advertising suggests you can smoke them anywhere. The fancy shit, even the cheap fancy shit (one of my vaping e-cigs was a whole kit, battery, atomizer, tank, usb charger and 10ml of 24mg nicotine solution, was 14 bucks, or, the cost of two disposable cigarettes --- equivalent of four packs, and yet for fourteen bucks this thing will, in theory, last for several cartons. It’s a lithium ion battery.)doesn’t look anything at all like a cigarette. It looks a bit like what head shops used to call a smokeless toker, the burning stuff being contained internally. Except for all the lights and odd looking tanks of colored liquids.
I was watching some YouTube video, a part of a video blog, where this chick with pink dyed hair and pierced bits was talking about people flicking her shit for smoking her high Mod vaporizer. One was at a hotdog stand where the vendor did that fake cough thingy (oh do I have a rant in general about passive aggressive shit, it seems to be a city ordinance around here --- I got a phone call from my daughters landlord, to cut to the chase “some of the neighbors were concerned for the dogs as they’ve been barking for two days” I assured her that the dogs were fine. If you want my participation you need to be direct. I know what she meant is “the racket is driving people nuts”). The other was at Wal-Mart where the person in line behind her was winking and nudging about smoking dope in public.
I haven’t really thought about it. When I started pipe collecting several years back there was this whole discussion about being self-conscious about how to look natural smoking a pipe in public. Seemed a bit dated to me, cigars and pipes were banned from most public areas long before cigs just for the sheer volume of smoke they produce. I guess I’ve smoked e-cigs outside the Thai restaurant waiting for my pad Thai wouldn’t have even considered smoking it inside. Nobody said anything to me except the casual “hi” while passing. Oh, wait, no, I thought this one guy was shouting mandarin at me (Chinese restaurant next to the Thai place) but he had a blue tooth head set under his parka hood. Though he might have been telling someone in mandarin “Occidental fellow smoking dope at Thai place. We should have fucking leveled Thailand, fucking hippies”.
Hmmm. I just ran out of steam. Heh, little pun.
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