Quick Hitts

It had been one of those days. I came home from work tired, wanting nothing more to flop down in my recliner and watch something mindless on the Tivo. Sammy, though, wouldn’t allow it. He had been alone all day and he demanded a walk. Right now, dammit! (Sammy is a hundred pounds of fur and gristle, half black lab, half retriever and half crazy.)

I knew exactly what I needed to perk me up. I grabbed a Comancho from the humidor, snapped the leash on Sammy, and headed out for our walk.

If a regular cigar is a cup of coffee, the Comancho is a triple shot of double espresso. Some cigars are well suited for relaxing; this is a better choice to Wake You Up, immediately.

My buddy Brent sent me a box to celebrate finding a decent job after too many years of being underemployed. I usually smoke medium to strong cigars – Punch/Hoyo, La Gloria, EDRM and the like. But when I need a real kick in the pants this cigar does the job.

Sitting in the box, they look plain, unassuming. Even the label is unpretentious – just a small brown band dwarfed by the fat double corona. But there’s an intense surprise hiding under that plain brown wrapper. When you fire it up your taste buds scream at your brain, “Hey, you are smoking a cigar, buddy.” The first few puffs are incredibly spicy, and the smoke is thick and rich. (As an added bonus, the draw is effortless.) You get a powerful blast of flavor that really makes you sit up and take notice. After the first half inch or so it calms down just a bit, but the flavor never fades.

Far too many strong cigars are bitter, unpleasant affairs that almost dare you to finish them. Some start out tasty but then turn nasty half way down. Not this one. It never gets harsh or bitter. I only smoke these when I’m going to have enough time to nub the thing. It would be a shame to waste any of a cigar this good.

Thanks, Brent. I’m really enjoying these.

A few years ago I saw a distinguished British actor expressing concern over Muslim the birth rates in the UK. The general population is having fewer and fewer children, to the point where they’re not even replacing their own population. The fundamentalist Muslims, however, are breeding at a prodigious rate – three times as fast as other Europeans.

I more or less forgot about it until I saw this link on the excellent Nobody’s Business blog. The most popular name for newborn boys in England is John. The second most popular – Mohamed. It is expected to be #1 next year.

This is happening all over Europe. Think of the implications if Muslims succeed in becoming a majority. Anti-Semitism is rampant in Europe, especially in France, another country where Fundy Muslims are breeding their way toward being a majority. Does anyone hate the Jews more than Muslims? While they deny the holocaust, isn’t likely that they’d stage another one? And while Europe’s military power has been on the wane for a long time, what would happen if Muslims were to take control of just a few European governments?

Just a few years ago the Taliban destroyed two 2000 year old giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan, because any depiction of humans is sinful. Imagine if they gain enough power to do the same thing to the great art throughout Europe, the cradle of western civilzation.

No wonder they feel the need to breed so voraciously. When your culture demands that you blow up your sons and murder your daughters you need a steady supply of replacements.

Most immigrants assimilate to their new country within a generation or two. Here in America, even if the parents don’t speak English, their children do, usually without an accent. Their grandchildren not only speak English perfectly, they usually loose any fluency in their grandparent’s native tongue. In other words, they become Americans.

This seldom happens with fundamentalist Muslims. The cloister themselves in their own little (but continually expanding) communities. They insulate their children from the “evil” outside influences of the country they’re infesting. And if the kids wise up, leave, and decide to become reasonable human beings, they murder them. It’s an honor thing.

We’ve seen the results first hand with the London bombings. It wasn’t carried out by outside forces, but by home-grown Muslim terrorists.

In other news of the “Religion of Peace:”

Hamas said they’ve stopped broadcasting a children’s show where an ersatz Mickey Mouse teaches kids to drink their milk, say their prayers, and hate Jews. They lied; it’s still being broadcast.

In England, a Muslim man was shown a photo of his daughter kissing an unbeliever. The boyfriend was a Muslim too, but the wrong flavor of Muslim, so when beating her for two weeks didn’t work he hired a gang of thugs to murder her. Father’s day must be a blast at their house.

This is a well written account of a western reporter spending time in Saudi Arabia covered from head to foot. (Requires a free registration.)

Iran has declared that porn stars should be killed.

An group of Iranian thugs went on a murder spree, killing people they decided weren’t Muslim enough. They killed 18 people but were only tried for five murders. Some were convicted by lower courts, but repeatedly exonerated by Iran’s supreme court on the grounds that their victims were all morally corrupt.

In Germany, a Muslim woman tried to live life as a normal person, so her brothers killed her. This is not an isolated incident; it’s happened six times in the past four months in Germany.

Pew did a comprehensive survey of Muslim attitudes and beliefs. In the US only 40% believed that Arabs had anything to do with 9/11. Only 58% have an unfavorable view of Al-Qaeda; over a quarter of those surveyed refused to answer the question. Among the Muslim males of prime terrorist age – 18-30 – 26% said terrorism was just fine and dandy with them. Here’s an article that analyzes the results. You can probably find a few thousand more, spinning the information in various directions.

Aren’t we lucky they’re a peaceful religion? Imagine what would happen if they were to get violent.

Most architectural drawings show people in the picture. It’s the easiest way to show scale, show the building in use, and make it look more real.The people in such drawings are either drawn by artists or Photoshoped in, using stock images. Simple. Harmless. No big deal, right?

Wrong. Now the PC crowd is whining about pictures that don’t show enough minorities wandering around the place.

And it gets worse. According to HUD drone Bryan Greene, “. . . if there’s a series of ads and they seem to communicate that a place is limited to persons of one background, it could potentially violate the Fair Housing Act.” No complaint has been filed in this case, but if you read between the lines he seems to be inviting someone to file one. Our nanny government is looking to protect us from the horrors of drawings that aren’t politically correct.

Isn’t it nice to know that Big Brother’s drones have enough free time on their hands to worry about something this stupid and trivial?

In Denver a 22 foot statue of Jesus was struck by lightening. The bolt from heaven blew off its right arm and, for good measure, its left hand.

“Don’t look for any religious symbolism here – it was only a freak act of Mother Nature, says Sister Ilaria.”

Really? I’d be willing to bet a life size milk chocolate Jesus that if the lightening had missed the statue she’s be crowing about how it proves the mercy of God, or some other such nonsense.

Which, like many news stories, reminds me of a Very Old Joke.

A golfer is about eight feet from the hole, and takes his shot. For some unexplained reason, there is a nun on the green with him. He overshoots the hole by four feet and says “Jesus Christ, I Missed.”

The nun is appalled and says “It is a sin to use the name of The Lord in vain. Please do not do that again.

Ignoring her, the golfer makes his putt and the ball stops two inches from the hole. “Jesus Christ, I missed!”

Now the nun is getting angry. “I’ve warned you. Now I’m going to pray for God to strike you dead on this spot if you use his name in vain again.”

The man, also fuming, ignores the nun and taps the ball toward the cup. It hits the rim, rolls around it once, twice, then out.

Now the golfer is furious! He slams down his putter and screams “Jesus H. Christ on a bike, I don’t believe I missed that! Jesus Christ, I missed!”

Suddenly a dark cloud forms over his head. He hears a rumble of thunder and looks up. A bolt of lightening flashes to earth, hitting the nun and killing her instantly.

From the heavens he hears a deep voice: “Jesus Christ, I missed.”

Too bad no one was around when the lightening hit the statue. They might have heard the same thing.

Step 1: Spend $1200 to convert your car to run on clean burring, ecologically friendly vegetable oil.

Step 2: Buy soybean oil from the Cosco, paying 30% more than you would for diesel.

Step 3: Pay a $2,000 fine to Big Brother for daring to go outside the system.

When government drone tax collector Reggie Little was questioned about this he used that favorite phrase of tyrants everywhere: “We’re not here to hurt the small guy, we’re just trying to make sure that the playing field is level.”

Every well stocked humidor contains a few surprises – cigars bought on a whim, just waiting to be tried out.  Sometimes you discover something great.  More often you’ll find something that’s OK, but not as good as your favorites.

An Oliveros XL For Men corona had been sitting in my humidor long enough, so I poured a fresh cup of coffee, grabbed a magazine, and fired it up.  The flavor was not “nutty” or “spicy” or “leathery.”  It was . . .”skanky.”

Most cigar smokers have made the mistake of relighting a cigar that went out a few hours ago.  No matter how good the cigar was, relighting results in a foul, nasty flavor that resembles chewing on newspaper ashes.  That’s roughly the flavor of the Oliveros XL.

After the first inch or so it mellowed slightly, becoming slightly less skanky.  Just slightly.  I gave up on it a little less than half way through.

Given the choice between the Oliveros XL and a cheap White Owl, I’d have a piece of gum instead.

I received a very sad e-mail a few weeks ago. Archie McPhee, who sells some of the most fun and useless stuff on the planet, informed everyone on their mailing list that the original plastic pink flamingos, the epitome of tastelessness and kitsch, were going out of production. The company that made them was closing down, and they had bought the last of them.

The birds have been around since the 50s, when pink was a popular color and Florida was a popular state. They’ve come to symbolize. . . well, whatever you want them to symbolize. They can be a statement to the world that you have no taste. Or that you’re making fun of bad taste. Or that you’re a John Waters fan. They’ve even been used for protesting. Residents of the Disney planned community “Celebration,” which has rules for everything, right down to the color of window curtains, protested by decorating their property with the garish creatures. The birds migrated from property to property in the middle of the night, and then, magically learned how to reproduce on the impeccably manicured lawns.

Like any successful product, the birds spawned plenty of cheap imitations. But they’re crap. They don’t come in the classic pose (one standing, one bending down) and are missing the signature of the sculptor, Don Featherstone, on their ass. The originals are a cheap imitation of real birds. A cheap imitation of a cheap imitation is just wrong.

But just as it all seemed hopeless, just as we were about to lament the demise of an American institution and watch the few remaining real fake birds fade in the sun while their wire legs rusted, HMC International, a company in Westmoreland, New York, announced that they had bought the original molds and all the rights to produce them. They’ll be authentic right down to the Featherstone signature.

Tacky comes and tacky goes, but it’s oddly comforting to know that at least one piece of tackiness, perhaps the tackiest of them all, simply refuses to die.