The Real Smoking Thread

Arthur

Honorary Master
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This is a home for casual, amateur and professional tobacco smokers.

Prospective smokers are also welcome.

There are only Three Rules:
1. No proselytising against smoking and smokers. (We know all that stuff anyway.)
2. Girls always welcome. Especially pretty ones.
3. Posters must be above the Age of Twelve.

Smokers of other weeds, barks, roots, fibres, potions, dorsiventrally flattened non-tobacco plant organs, and sundry apothecarian formulations, may read this thread in the privacy of their own home, but may not post textual or graphical content of any type or form.

This is a place where smokers can be safe from Puritans, Health Fanatics, Medical Moralists, Moral Reformers, Environmentalists, Do-Gooders, Socialists, and other sundry crusaders laying waste our civilisation.

Lady Bracknell: Do you smoke?
Jack Worthing: Well yes, I must admit I smoke.
Lady Bracknell: I'm glad to hear it. A man should have an occupation of some kind.

-- The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde

This is a place for fellowship, where fellow smoking artists can share experiences and find support.

(Edit on 17 Sept 2021: Please ignore the following line in the OP - the referenced site has been captured by the Enemy.
"Tip of the Day: Visit www.smokingfeelsgood.com/ for some encouragement.")

--

Let me start my story with a confession: From birth until the age of eighteen, my life had been squandered as an Unreformed Non-Smoker. The Fates had conspired to place me in a home with parents who were not only non-smokers but anti-smokers. On one occasion, I recall my father asking his dinner guests, which included senior Silks, judges, and even a cabinet minister, to refrain from smoking at the dinner table, and to step outside. Such manifest insolicitude for the comfort of his guests was embarrassing to this tender and impressionable youth.

My own Journey to Smoking began unpropitiously with a roof ride on the first day of my conscription into the SADF. Within days I was being chased by foul-mouthed Non-Commissioned Officers through the Potch veld, clad in browns, staaldak and webbing, clutching a geweer. This was not an immediately pleasurable experience, especially not after my unsolicited suggestions for improvements to conscript training were shared with a certain Cmdt Constand Viljoen, Officer Commanding Third South African Infantry Battalion.

I have always had a great love of Science, especially Physics. Graced with keen powers of observation, and informed by a new appreciation of the term afkak, it didn't take long for me to observe that some conscripts did more than sweat, pant and stare wistfully into the marula bushes during a frequently-called "Smoke Break". They both steamed and smoked. And, very plainly, they took great pleasure in the atmospherics of Smoking.

Every young man at eighteen is not only a scientist but also a philosopher, as this forum amply demonstrates. Within days of the first roofieafkaksessies I had come to the deep insight that, philologically and teleologically speaking, Smoke Breaks are designed for, well, smoking. So, in the interest of Science, I determined to experimentally verify what had heretofore been only an observation in others.

I smoked.

Initial reticence rapidly receded (along with my inner parent), and soon heady delight turned into relish. Within weeks I had become hooked on this new and intoxicating pleasure. Especially when it was embellished with beer. By the end of my military service I had become a real aficionado, and some years later, when my student days ended and I had discovered wine, I took up smoking professionally. Since then I've enjoyed countless hours of pleasurable smoking around the world, from the top of Alpine peaks to the crags of the Grand Canyon, at countless memorable and forgettable sunrises and sunsets, on rivers and seas, in planes, boats, bikes and trucks, traversing valleys and mountains, from the Pampas to the Steppes. Alone or with others, at work or at play, smoking has not only banished boredom but been a consolation.

I have never regretted it for one picosecond.

Smoking is a uniquely human activity that can be indulged in both leisure and work. It gives rest to the weary and a boost to the busy. But it is more than that. It is also an art form that titillates both senses and mind. I have found that a great many of its practitioners manifest an uncommon aesthetic sensibility and a proclivity for rational choice. Like fine wine and good music and beautiful women, it is at the same time an expression of, and a garnish for, our love of life.

But sadly, under pressure from Caesar and his minions, smoking is a dying art. Caesar is the perennial enemy of liberty and thus humanity. His decades-long warfare against Smokers has added a political dimension. So, I smoke not just professionally or for leisure and pleasure, but also as a political statement. It is a puffing protest against the imperialist encroachments of Caesar and the New Puritans, and a silent stand for liberty.

Viva, Smokers! Viva! A luta continua!
 
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My relationship with tobacco has been long and unhealthy. Back in the day, you did not need to be 18 to buy a pack - as a six year old I could wrap my hands around a pack of 10 Gold Dollar. They sucked.

Years later, I tried smoking for real. Liked it but my taste was refined. When I was 16, my old lady had a friend who was an estate agent and she was doing a show day in Constantia. My mother popped in to visit on her way back from the shops - a mission which saw me accompanying her. While she caught up whatever nonsense required her visiting this friend at work, I viewed the show house. In the rec room, I found gold: CUBANS!

From then onwards, I smoked cigars. Well, what I could afford in cigars anyways.

Cigarette brands have been Gitanes (wish I could still get those) right up until my daughter was born. Then I stopped. Started again when she was older. After Gitanes were pulled, I stopped again. Then one day Cohiba released a cigarette. Started again. RIP laws saw Cohibas disappear so I stopped again. They're back, but they're over-priced.

As a teenager, my cigar was Havatampa sweet. But you never got those in Potchefstroom so I changed to King Edwards. Once I started working, Romeo and Juliet all the way, although I would enjoy a Cohiba, Upmann or Bolivar from time to time. Partegas were nice but harsh. Cigars are just way too expensive these days so they've become a birthday treat.

At present, I mix Black Bob's Rum and Cherry and roll my own.

I tried a pipe in the army and back in the 90s. It sucked.


Who rolls their own?
 
does being a joyful second hand smoker count?

can't see the economic justification for smoking, with so many other vices to choose from
 
Very unArthur-like behaviour today. or maybe I don't know faceless beings on the Internet as well as I thought.
 
Arthur has never pretended to be a saint and smoking doesn't meet any premise of being a sin (unless one regards it as horrendously indulgent)
Arthur is a libertarian
The South African governments war on smoking is fundamentally fascist

the threads come together
 
He said this thread should be safe from socialists. :)

except that most smokers are with respect to smoking socialists
sharing matches, cigs and delivering each according to his available pack to the other according to their nicotine need
 
except that most smokers are with respect to smoking socialists
sharing matches, cigs and delivering each according to his available pack to the other according to their nicotine need
Except Arthur sends you a bill the next day?

One of my colleagues in Angola is a Cuban lady. She says the only thing you can buy there of value is cigars. So once every 2 years she goes on holiday there, and comes back to Angola with a boatload of cigars. Normally Cohibas Or Montecristos. She hands them out as presents, and am waiting for the next consignment
 
Except Arthur sends you a bill the next day?

One of my colleagues in Angola is a Cuban lady. She says the only thing you can buy there of value is cigars. So once every 2 years she goes on holiday there, and comes back to Angola with a boatload of cigars. Normally Cohibas Or Montecristos. She hands them out as presents, and am waiting for the next consignment

DIBS - you owe me one :D


Never was a big fan of the Montes - probably because my ex-boss was. We'd go cigar shopping and he'd grab the MCs while I went for the R+Js. I'd love to wrap my hands around an Opus but I never seem to be in that kind of a financial position.

Davidoffs never appealed either...
 
You're clearly a man with a developed smoking palate, GreGorGy.

My son gave me a book on cigars some years ago, but I have not yet crossed the threshold from theory to praxis. My bereted friend Pete says my ignorance of cigars is irrefutable evidence that Nature does indeed support a vacuum. I usually parry that jab by pointing out that his proclivity for Caribbean cigars, French berets and Montagu muscadel bespeaks an incorrigibly confused aesthetic that is irreconcilable with his Hegelian metaphysics and Trotskyist politics.

When I am more at leisure next year, perhaps we can meet so that I can learn from you, GreGorGy?
 
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You're clearly a man with a developed smoking palate, GreGorGy.

My son gave me a book on cigars some years ago, but I have not yet crossed the threshold from theory to praxis. My bereted friend Pete says my ignorance of cigars is irrefutable evidence that Nature does indeed support a vacuum. I usually parry that jab by pointing out that his proclivity for Caribbean cigars, French berets and Montagu muscadel bespeaks an incorrigibly confused aesthetic that is irreconcilable with his Hegelian metaphysics and Trotskyist politics.

When I am more at leisure next year, perhaps we can meet so that I can learn from you, GreGorGy?

Carribean cigars - mmmmmm. The berets and muscadel I can do without. A decent port or sherry though, sans headgear, and we can indeed meet.
 
In my smoking days I had a preference for Gauloises Caporal, otherwise Camel filterless and sometimes Lucky Strike, with the occasional pipe tobacco, either home rolled or in a pipe.
 
A shame the OP didn't start this thread sooner. I quit smoking last week.
 
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