FatsLeroy.com

Smoking may be bad for you, but researchers and biotech companies are quietly developing pharmaceuticals that are decidedly good for brains, bowels, blood vessels and even immune systems — and they’re inspired by tobacco’s deadly active ingredient: nicotine.

[ Wired ]

Technorati Tags: medicine, nicotine

I read a lot from the time I was a little kid, and I got so deeply into the worlds of the novels I was reading that it would be a lie if I said I never felt like writing anything. But I never believed I had the talent to write fiction. In my teens I loved writers like Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Balzac, but I never imagined I could write anything that would measure up to the works they left us. And so, at an early age, I simply gave up any hope of writing fiction. I would continue to read books as a hobby, I decided, and look elsewhere for a way to make a living.

The professional area I settled on was music. I worked hard, saved my money, borrowed a lot from friends and relatives, and shortly after leaving the university I opened a little jazz club in Tokyo. We served coffee in the daytime and drinks at night. We also served a few simple dishes. We had records playing constantly, and young musicians performing live jazz on weekends. I kept this up for seven years. Why? For one simple reason: It enabled me to listen to jazz from morning to night.

I had my first encounter with jazz in 1964 when I was 15. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers performed in Kobe in January that year, and I got a ticket for a birthday present. This was the first time I really listened to jazz, and it bowled me over. I was thunderstruck. The band was just great: Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone and Art Blakey in the lead with his solid, imaginative drumming. I think it was one of the strongest units in jazz history. I had never heard such amazing music, and I was hooked.

[ New York Times ]

Technorati Tags: Japan, jazz, writing

Focusing on all these images of Europeans’ puffed-out cheeks, it’s easy to forget that smoking is an American invention. As Michka, a co-founder of the museum, likes to say, it was the Native Americans who actually first smoked tobacco — an endeavor that didn’t really become a hit in Europe until more than a century after Columbus brought the stuff to these shores. The idea of ingesting smoke was originally a hard sell.

“Hell,” says Michka, “was very much on people’s minds. So when they saw someone taking something burning at the end to their mouth and blowing smoke, it really seemed to be for them a picture of hell.” Eventually, the odd practice caught on, and within a couple of centuries a huge smoke ring enveloped the world along with a burgeoning smoking “culture.”

[ WSJ ]

Technorati Tags: France, smoking, tobacco

Too bad. Not if he was driving under the influence. But tell me why again why the federal government has a right to make laws restricting personal freedom…

Al Gore III — whose father is a leading advocate of policies to fight global warming — was driving his environmentally friendly car at about 100 miles (160 km) per hour on a freeway south of Los Angeles when he was pulled over by an Orange County sheriff’s deputy at about 2:15 a.m.

The deputy smelled marijuana and searched the car, said sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino. The search turned up a small amount of marijuana, along with prescription drugs including Valium, Xanax, Vicodin, Adderall and Soma. There were no prescriptions found, he said.

[ Reuters ]

Technorati Tags: algore, OC, stash

Last night, like every night, I made myself a martini. I filled a glass with several cubes of ice, poured a little extra dry vermouth over the cubes, shook the glass a few times, poured out the vermouth, filled the glass with gin and added three green olives – a drink with a marvelous piney aroma and appearance.

But it seems to me that the martini, a rock solid American institution, is dying, and this is a sad thing. Oh, there are martini bars out there, but they don’t serve real martinis; they are pink and blue. I find it hard to believe there is such a thing as a chocolate martini.

The martini is an honest drink, tasting exactly like what it is and nothing else. There are no fruit juices or chocolate in a martini, and it’s not served in a pineapple shell. The martini is a clear, clean, cold, pure and honest drink – especially for people with established values and a liking for purity, even in their vices.

I regret the passing of this friend from our culture, just as I regret knowing that I’ll never again see a pretty woman in nylons, garter belt and spiked heels. Now I read they want to do away with high heels and swimsuits in the Miss America Pageant. I suppose next it will be brown paper bags over heads and every contestant clothed in XXL potato sacks.

I want my grand daughters to have a shot at winning scholarships too, but if they look like a dump truck, they should change their appearance or enter a spelling bee.
Martinis, garter belts, bathing suits and high heels – why do good things pass away? Tonight I’m going to pour myself a martini, light up my pipe, sit in my backyard and give this matter a lot more thought.

Bill Bollom
Oshkosh

Keep on rocking the free world brother! Seriously - there are few finer pleasures in life like a real martini made with a top shelf gin in a chilled glass, the light hint of dry vermouth, accompanied by a pipe with some real quality tobacco. I prefer bleu cheese or garlic stuffed olives, but either way, a good time was had by all.

[ Oshkosh Northwestern ]

Technorati Tags: pipes, martini, tobacco

Amen Brother!

Mr. Hitchens, 58 years old, is well-known in media and political circles as an erudite raconteur and essayist; his Vanity Fair columns and frequent TV appearances on political shows have raised his profile. More recently, his loud support for the Iraq war has infuriated many of his former compatriots. His unabashed affection for alcohol and tobacco has been widely chronicled — sometimes by himself. “I smoke, sure, and I can take a drink when offered,” he says. “It’s impolite to decline.”

Now he has turned his caustic gaze on God and organized religion. “A heavenly dictatorship would be like living in a celestial North Korea, except it would be worse because they could read your thoughts even when you were asleep,” said Mr. Hitchens in an interview. “At least when you die you get out of North Korea, which is the most religious state I’ve ever seen.”

[ Wall Street Journal ]

Technorati Tags: atheism

Over his impressive career, he has started several cults, and seen at least two through completion and Removal to other Planes of Existance.

Dr. Lazarus brings his unique pragmatic approach to help You, the beginning cult leader, make His vision a reality. Dr. Lazarus has graciously provided You with the following Transcriptions of Enlightenment that should help get You started on your Divine Quest.

[ Start Your Own Cult ]

Technorati Tags: cults, shalom motherfucker

Described in press materials at the time of its inaugural flight as “Hef’s sky-high hutch” and “a floating bachelor pad”, the “Big Bunny” was the ultimate in sexy jet-set fabulosity … and now you have a chance to own the actual fiberglass panels from the original model of Hef’s private quarters on the plane as well as a pile of ephemera related to the project (even if you’ll have to go to London to pick them up if you’re the lucky high bidder).

[ Boing Boing ]

Technorati Tags: Boing Boing, jet set, playboy, mile high

Nice slideshow from somebody who isn’t going to be swayed by popular opinion.

At 79, Alan Sillitoe, author of the ground-breaking 1950s novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, is an unrepentant smoker. He has smoked every day since he was a 14-year-old factory boy.

[ BBC ]

Technorati Tags: pipes, smoking, UK

On the unintended consequences of technology:
“It sounds to me like Anthony Jr. may have stumbled onto existentialism.”
“Fucking internet.”

Okay, advanced technology may have introduced the idea of a godless universe to the Soprano household. Designers, however, believe that advanced technology is our best proof that God exists — and that He lives in Cupertino, California.

[ Design Observer ]

Technorati Tags: Sopranos