My gift to insomniacs in Normal entries

So, I wrote this a few days ago (not that you’ve read this far, hell, I fell asleep trying to get this far) and have since purchased a new digital camera. Why? I was in a bad mood so I went into best buy. To make a long story short I fucked with this kid (not just diminishing his stature, his voice was cracking and he had the acne of a fifteen-year-old. In Michigan you can work at fifteen if you have a permit, it’s a throwback from the rollercoaster ride of the US Auto industry). You know what? Fuck it I’m leading with this and posting the other afterwards like so much flotsam and jetsam washed onto the shores of a southern delta after the lack of global warming has decimated it four weeks in a row.

There’s a slight learning curve to the camera I wasn’t expecting and perhaps if I didn’t have the poor child running this way and that he might have mentioned it to me. I probably should have told his manager how very hard he tried to sell me a warranty, he would have got a gold star or unicorn sticker. Of all the boring shit that I already knew that this kid spewed like he’d read the manual, neither of us asked what the hell wi-fi means. Setting that up isn’t much of a learning curve for me, the wi-fi in this house is all on me, though every few months xfinity tries charging me rent and I have to read off the serial number and someone asks if I set it up myself and would I like a technician to come check?

It’s the potentially proprietary nature of where it exactly uploads too, the manual never mentioned anything other than Canons website, though, I’m sure I can figure out how to just upload to a file on my computer, or, worse case, upload to phone and send pics to email or manually hook phone to computer, something this galaxy 7 has never done. Um, I just haven’t gotten around to anything more than charging the battery and sticking it and a SD card in.

I’m thinking of setting up a pipe blog, probably on prose box. Why prose box? Well, for starters it’s not in beta stage, and lastly, I don’t feel like finding a host and a domain name and, perish forbid, paying for the space. Betwixt the alpha and omega of reasons are several picayune reasons I’ll let the one poor sucker who is trying to read this happy horseshit fill in.

I’ve been dumbfucked by the beauty of these lip cancer contraptions (I’m ahead of the curve with dumbfucked, a natural progression for American vernacular from dumbstruck. Long about the turn of the millennia network TV started using the word bitch with the same frequency as rappers and now it’s a free for all. Fuck might be a more aggressive word than bitch, but it tickles my hackles a bit more, and I’m the kind of guy who likes word goulash — toss all the leftovers into a pot and simmer.). I’ve been cleaning them up and remembering their stories and getting all gushy and shit. I’m a bit ashamed to admit I can raise more nostalgia for them than either of my ex-wives, of course, I have more nostalgia for used tissue than the first one. Shame is the right word, I lived with the woman for ten years and, at best, I’m apathetic to even the worst of her conditions (most being her paranoid persecutions, but some being quality of life stuff. The second wife it’s easy to remember good times, most of which are overshadowed by the intensity of bad times. The pipes just sit there and look pretty or bring comfort when billowing foul smoke.

Heh. In pipe reviews room note is a standard descriptor, I mean a required field, the multiple-choice part of the essay. Most reviewers say something about a wife when discussing room note. It’s hard to believe some of these guys are married or even have talked to a woman. None of them discuss “partner” “Significant other” or any of those other phrases that guys who only have one foot out of the closet use. Statistically it seems improbable that there aren’t homosexual pipe smokers. Also, it’s not really uncommon for women to smoke a pipe, but, I’ve yet to come across a review written by a woman, though there are a few famous female artisans. Like cigars there seems to be a fetish for pictures of women smoking pipes, almost always beautiful women (models, I’m sure) without smoke coming from the pipe. I get cigars as a fetish, pipes? Nothing really inherently suggestive in that.

So, I got a cheap ass camera (the salesman was concerned that 20 mega pixels was too low fi and I should take a crow bar to my wallet) to take pictures of my particularly pretty pipes, objectively, well-turned wood with fine accents. Two main things have kept me from this project so far; 1) My general and pervasive laziness and 2) I need to do a bit of restoration work on some of the stems. I’m loathe to use home remedies like oxi-clean or other such poison, and I’m good and fucking damn loathe to send them to a restoration professional. So, I’m waiting on an anti-oxidant solution made exactly for sunsabitchs like me, it should be here tomorrow. Oh, yeah, there’s a whole website dedicated to USPS fuckups. I don’t know about y’all but I’ve been getting the white and blue screen of death (postal timed out) message for about two days now when I try to track. Although USPS is responsible for the decline of western civilization, global warming and Donald the fuck Trump, they have nothing to do with my laziness which will still be a factor when the anti-oxidant shit shows up. Sorry, I do know shit from shineola, but anti-oxidant shineola has the wrong meter.

Wow. This nonsense just keeps getting longer. Ok, I’m going to rearrange this out of chronological order and put it somewhere that I can look back on in a few years and wonder what the fuck I was thinking.

So, I fell off the wagon some ways back. I know I typed this somewhere but can’t recall if it ever made if off my desktop. I tried going back to e-cigs, but there’s something just not right about them. I put the e-cigs in a box and dusted off my pipes, shifted the clutter around, waxed and polished and have been enjoying the hell out of them. When I touch each one and bring the beauty back it occurs to me that perhaps I went overboard with the collecting.

I’m overboard again.

I should take pictures but my phone doesn’t do them justice, I’m shitty with a real camera, and Digital cameras? I use them for about a week and then they sit around. I’m either too sentimental or not sentimental enough when it comes to photographs and seem fine, so far, without needing to look at photographs of places and people and things I’ve been, am or loved, or things. It’d just be more clutter I wouldn’t want to throw away or look at.

I’m damn near going overboard again. I’ve bought — several pipes in the last two months. There’s an old saw that remains mostly true about the relative cost of a pipe and its relative practical use, it goes something like “… over a hundred bucks and you’re paying for something other than smoking quality.” Granted the saying is old enough where a hundred bucks meant something different, but still, it’s mostly true. One reason that it’s a saying is that pipe smokers are cheap bastards, even the millionaires with 1500-dollar pipes.

I pulled the figure fifteen hundred out of my ass. Not saying there aren’t fifteen hundred-dollar pipes, there are, and they can go much higher. I don’t own a fifteen-hundred-dollar pipe, but, Christ, I have looked at a few with more than a bit of drool leaking out my pipe hole. Yes, pipe smokers are a congenial lot, and social, and will buy you a drink or give you a bowlful of tobacco, but they’ll try to fuck you on a pipe sale or argue over change.

My two best smoking pipes are well over a hundred bucks. The one, I acquired recently. The brand is legendary, when I think of a fifteen-hundred-dollar pipe it’s this brand I’m thinking of. It is by far the most beautiful and valuable pipe I’ve ever held in my hand. Cost wise, because I’ve built it up, I made a ridiculously low-ball offer, that also would seem ridiculously high to most people, and grudgingly won the auction. I didn’t expect it to also smoke so well, when I quit smoking again (I’d be ok with just pipes, but it’s never that, it’s like an alcoholic saying a beer is ok as long as I stay away from single malt scotch. Yeah, no.) I’m going to make a teak and glass box and hang it on the wall.

I’d really like to say the second pipe was some cheap ass knock around, but it’s not. It’s legendary too, but the lower end, meaning the brand and age might go up to twelve hundred. I paid considerably less, in part because I’m a nice guy, mainly because I’m a nice guy. It’s not objectively as pretty, might not even be considered pretty at all. It’s black sandblasted which is what pipe makers do when the wood grain is too flawed to make a pretty stained pipe, not saying all sandblasts are fucked up, just saying if the guy could make it pretty he could get 1200 for it. It’s asymmetrically and looks like it’d be awkward to smoke. It’s not, and the asymmetry gives it a perfect balance, and, honestly, no matter how badly I might pack the tobacco, or drunkenly light the rim, it’s a perfect smoke every time. Whether I clean it meticulously or not, there are ghost flavors, sourness, gurgle. And if I wanted to sell it it’s one of the few pipes I have that would be worth more than I paid for it. I think I’d frame it too and put it next to the other.

If you’re remotely interested, the first is a S. Bang and the second a Paulo Becker. I almostly accidentally won a fairly high bid on a Paul Becker pipe, and just when I was going to fight for it in the last few minutes, I realized Paul Becker and Paulo Becker are two different guys, wildly different. I don’t know why someone wanted a Paul Becker so bad, he overpaid.

eBay is funny, especially pipe wise. For pipes eBay is pretty dang multi-national. You’ve probably noticed that, for instance, the U.K. has it’s own eBay website; eBay.uk. Like America, a lot of eBayers don’t want to fuck with international shipping. You’ve probably seen something you’ve liked and thought it was a great price and then got down to the part where it says shipping from China and re-evaluated whether you really wanted it. Not because it’s Chinese, hell, half the shit you get at brick and mortar stores are Chinese, but, and it’s a big butt, they’ve already shipped to the store and all you have to do is hand over way too much cash and you can take them home.

Pipes are a little different. Anything that’s really collectable is. If Hong Kong is the only place selling that original Green Lantern #12 from the 60’s, you don’t have a second thought if you’re a comic book collector and like the green lantern. It’s not like reading it right the fuck now is why you want it. Same with coins and definitely with pipes.