Now That's One Big Stogie

Bro bought me this for Christmas some years back.  I decided it's time to smoke it since I can't afford to buy fresher cigars right now.  Here's to you Bro.  (The cigar is a "Gigante" made in Manila, Philippines.)

Now THAT's a Cigar!

Cold Weather Saturday: Cigars, News, Views and Blues

Hmm, it's Saturday. It's cold (48 degrees) outside. I have a good stash of cigars.  So I will go outside, light one up and study my tax course, which I really need to finish.

There is no breaking news that requires my expert opinions today.  However, you may find my discussion with reader Wyandotte interesting, at this article regarding Robert Stacy McCain.  I thought we were approaching a healthy meeting of the minds when Wyandotte suddenly went hostile after I asked her if she were associated with the blog Little Green Footballs.  I assume that I must have stepped on the truth, otherwise, a simple denial would have been sufficient.

My son Dooj is in the area to attend a funeral of one of his cousins, a wife and mother who died in Indiana last week of the H1N1 virus.  Of course, her husband's brutality may have been a contributing factor, as the coroner reported that, besides the flu, the woman had a broken arm, two chipped teeth and multiple bruises throughout her body.  She went to sleep on her living room couch and died during the night.  Her body was shipped to Gilroy, California so her parents could bury it in her hometown.  The funeral is next Tuesday.

I haven't seen my niece by my first marriage in many years so I won't be going to the funeral -- it's complicated, with all of those former in-laws and my ex-wife.  However, I have prayed for my niece and will continue to do so.

I am still trying to become the next great jazz bassist.  I'd be satisfied with a Blue Brothers style gig playing Rawhide in some dangerous honky-tonk, safe from thrown beer bottles behind a mesh screen.

Maybe I will take a Zen approach:  to learn the bass, be the bass.  If that doesn't work I may have to resort to actual practice.  Just kidding.  I have been practicing.

I've had a good week with my upright bass.  My playing fingers have grown strong and dexterous and I feel my confidence growing.  That big long ebony neck has become a familiar place.

I am learning to read notes with a play-along book.  I also challenge my ear by playing along to Diana Krall jazz.  I tried it with Norah Jones but after my third suicide attempt in 20 minutes, decided that Jones' music is too damned sad and depressing for me.

Well I have coffee to drink, cigars to smoke and naps to take, and I'm way behind schedule.  Have a great Saturday.

Blogging Slows as the World Waits for Obama

All of my favorite blogs are slow to report anything this week. There's nothing much going on worth blogging about (which explains my last post). People are taking the opportunity to wash their pajamas and go outside and see the strange bright ball in the sky -- what is that thing? Why does it hurt to look at it straight-on?

Yes, there is a serious world shortage of good blogger material today. However, Real Clear Politics has a fascinating article on how the Global Warming scientists have branded October 2008 as "the hottest October on record." This, in spite of the fact that it was one of the coldest, with snow flurries in London, rapidly growing sea ice and snowstorms worldwide. It appears the GW brainiacs published false data and drew bogus conclusions. They used a number of temperature readings from September in their calculations, instead of using October temperatures. Can you spell "Bovine Excrement"? The article is called "The World Has Never Seen Such Freezing Heat," by Christopher Booker in the U.K. Telegraph.

Now we have something new to blog about. Were the misreported temperatures the result of incompetence, fraud or another world-wide conspiracy? I'm betting it was the latter. Karl Rove will stop at nothing, I tell you, in his efforts to make a laughing stock of the liberal scientific community. Oh yeah, you'll laugh my friends, when the continents become totally submerged and we are floating around on what is left of the Exxon Valdez.

Okay, I milked it as best I could, but there's just not that much blogger-stuff around right now and we are all doing the best we can with what we have. Be patient. Obama takes office in another nine weeks. He will, I suspect, supply us with lots of new material.

For now, I am going to sit here in my back yard in the cool of evening, basking in the glow of anthropomorphic global warming, smoking a cigar and watching another "Alfred Hitchcock Hour" episode from Hulu television. (I can watch it on my laptop out here in the gazebo. My neighbors don't know I'm not blogging and I am not going to tell them.)

Cigars and Beer at Stogie's Place

I really felt sorry for making my cat, Inky, pose in that picture with Michelle Obama. As soon as I snapped the photo for Newsweak magazine, Michelle climbed on her broom and flew off into the night sky, cackling loudly. I knew I had better mollify my cat before he decided to shred my shins again.

So I invited him over for beer and cigars. He asked if he could bring a friend, and said he was bringing a little kitty -- at least that's what I thought he said. In any case, that's her enjoying a cigar on the other side of the table.

Inky is enjoying his beer while his cigar burns in the ash tray. He still looks mighty pissed off, but he was purring loudly when I snapped this photo. A good cigar will do that for you.

..

Good thing Mrs. Chomper was out of town. She gets upset when we don't use coasters. 

It Was My Last Cigar

I'm all out of cigars. Whenever that happens I think of a poem I learned in sophomore English in high school. It was called "My Last Cigar." I haven't seen that poem in 40+ years, but sure enough, I found it on the internet.

Here it is.

My Last Cigar

‘Twas off the blue Canary Isles, a glorious summer day,
I sat upon the quarter deck and wiff’d my cares away
And as the volumed smoke arose, like incense in the air,
I breath’d a sigh to think in sooth, it was my last cigar

I lean’d against the quarter rail, and look’d down in the sea,
E’en there the purple wreath of smoke was curling gracefully;
Oh, what had I at such a time to do with wasting care?
Alas the trembling tear proclaim’d it was my last cigar.

I watch’d the ashes, as it came fast drawing t’ward the end,
I watch’d it as a friend would watch beside a dying friend;
But still the flame crept slowly on, it vanish’d into air,
I threw it from me – spare the tale – it was my last cigar.

I’ve seen the land of all I love fade in the distance dim,
I’ve watch’d above the blighted heart where once proud hope hath been;
But I’ve never known a sorrow that could with that compare,
When off the blue Canary Isles I smoked my last cigar.

****
This poem was composed by a naval officer on duty off the coast of Africa before the Civil War, when the United States kept a patrol there to guard against the slave trade.