A chronicle of vile and pernicious truths.
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The right to keep and bear arms, occasional attempts at satire, frequent recourse to sarcasm, and anything else I can think of. Oh yeah, and pipe smoking. Sometimes H.P. Lovecraft. And obscure Monty Python references when applicable.

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Most recent update: 5 August 2007.
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View Article  Sunday Vintage Pipe Ad, Christmas 1920: William Demuth Company
View Article  Guess the ring tone
Been installing and trying to get Motorola Phone Tools to work.  It wasn't completely smooth.  It wouldn't detect the phone and I had to sort through all the installation guts and manually configure it.  But, it now works.  So grabbed the few test pix I had taken to make sure I could do that, and then I edited up a ring tone.

Click here if you want to hear it, it's just a small mp3.

It's from an old song, but one of my favorites.

I also spent about an hour working on another true story.  I'll have to finish it later.

UPDATE:  I know several people have viewed this post, but no one has attempted a guess.  It's the first few seconds of Burn Down the Malls by Mojo Nixon.
View Article  Hammer's pipe question
In comments, Hammer asked what the Santa pipes were called with the pointy bottom on the bowl.

This was and is a common feature of clay pipes.  Briar pipes could be made like this to give them a sort of antique appearance, but they usually aren't.

The pointy bit isn't actually part of the bowl, but is a sort of small knob or extension on the bottom of the bowl.  Briar dissipates heat very effectively and when smoking a briar pipe the bowl can be held in the hand.  If it gets too hot to hold, it's being smoked too hot.  Clay doesn't dissipate heat anywhere near as good as briar, and the bowl will always be too hot to hold with bare hands.  So you can either hold it by the stem, or just hold it by that tiny knob on the bottom of the bowl, which doesn't get quite as hot as the bowl walls.

I think another purpose of the pointy bit also had to do with heat.  If a clay pipe had a broad, round bowl bottom, it would still get very hot and if you happened to rest it on the table it could quite likely leave a scorch mark or even burn a tablecloth.  The tiny pointy bit that didn't get as hot probably wouldn't scorch wood if rested on the table.

This doesn't mean that clay pipes will smoke so hot that they are unpleasant to smoke, but in that aspect, they are inferior to briar.  They are also much more fragile and break easily, like my clay churchwarden did (sigh).  Clay imparts its own flavor to any tobacco smoked in it, a flavor I can best describe as earthy and sweet.

Another thing about clay is that the bit at the end of the stem which you put in your mouth will stick to your lips when it gets damp from saliva.  This is annoying, and it is why you might see a clay pipe with a layer of red sealing wax at the end of the stem.  The wax prevents direct contact with the clay so it doesn't get sticky.

UPDATE:  In comments, Hammer says he has a meerschaum.  I just wanted to point out that this isn't the same as clay.  A meer that is a regular-sized pipe can be held by the bowl just like a briar, although some anal-retentive types don't because they claim skin oils will cause uneven coloration (or they do hold it by the bowl but use a glove).  Unlike a briar, when smoking a meerschaum, the bowl should be wiped out after every smoke to prevent any cake build-up.  Cake in a meer will certainly interfere with coloration, and it can also crack the pipe.
View Article  The 25 Days of Santa #10: 1913
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