For oldwave...
Maybe I owe a longer story of how I stopped smoking (watch, I'm not saying „quit“, because I'm still on the fence). The sum total is this: in these nine months I smoked a whole one cigarette, some fisix weeks ago, just so, along with the drink, to see how it looks now that my nose woke up etc. Well it doesn't. Not that I'm disgusted, it even had some gusto in it, but it's a bit... insufficient to start again. I prefer to be around smokers at times, or if a wisp of a smoke of good aroma comes by.
The better story is how in Nina's company I became a subject of the tale telling, her boyfriend convinces another girl that „yes you can go cold turkey - her dad went cold turkey this fall and he's still clean, no problem! Wanna go and see the man? He's the living evidence. It can be done.“
And then... that one cigarette is now the ace in my sleeve. It means I can spend a day or two smoking then stop again, firing at will, as per my whim. Simply, not a problem. No, I don't intend to raise any amount of money on bets. The range of my aspirations is to, once I meet that Vanji, if he begins another turd storm against smokers, to play as if being so unnerved by him that I'd resume smoke in front of his exes, let him eat his balls out. Two days later I can stop again :).
Škrba: „...Drina. And I did love trash always; when I started, by end of 1981, I smoked Opatia, the black cigarette, and it stayed my favorite cigarette forever.“
Ditto... 1975. Though, having become a smoker at the sea, the third day some Dutches taught me to roll [my own]. And when I stopped, the last pack was a can of Samson (not a can anymore, it's now cardboard and plastic, and the Samson doesn't have that smack when lit, though it still smells of dry plums).
...
Can't find a decent sound equipment with a graphic equalizer here anymore, it has now becaome esoteria („exothermia“, (c) Panta Šiklja Nafta). And why is that? Because it's too complicated to the Amers, so it doesn't sell well.
Four days later:
...we bought the third pair of barbells already. The first was some toy of two pounds aphiece, that was just so, for stretching out. Then a few years ago we took a pair of 5lb, which is now somehow the mai pair (though, when wearing them weights, I do that mostly while lying on the floor, so I don't overdo it :). Now I do it a bit more regularly, ever sinc I don't smoke (though, okay, I smoke one a month, having skipped the first eight months before I came up with that idea; the next one is scheduled for the end of august) because I pushed on 88kg, which is much for me because it's distributed wrongly - all around the equator, and some of it is even supporting my jaw, which I specially dislike.
Nina bought the next pair, of 8lb apiece, which we use more sparingly, the neoprene it's sheathed in stinks of arigula. Arigula is used in salads, and has some special smell, my missus contracted them on the streetside lawn, in parallel with rest of the lettuce, radič, roses, dayandningths, turkish carnations and green onions :). The smell isn't that bad, but the wights simply overdose the palms with it. I even washed them and parked on Aladin (al' ladi - how it cools - i.e. the airconditioner), it evaporated partly but returned, still need to wash hands every time.
Which is why we went back to bicycles... Lena and I are conquering the neighborhood, we every sunset in widening circuits. I treated myself a normal seat (21$ for a bicycle which costs 80$ nowadays)(it's like the spitter printer - the printer is almost free, but they skin you on ink), and yestreday I pedaled some 3km (and as much back) to buy one for Lena as well, so she can stop thinking so much of the situation on Middle East* („well my butt hurts [for it]“).
On twonythird:
And we finally decided to buy a bottle of whiskey, after so many... and you have one shot at guessing the volume of the bottle.
(and they tried to guess - is it a quart, a gallon, can't be a barrel... nope, a liter)
About that whiskey... The story would stretch over several years, better [put it] all here. We started sipping it a couple of years ago, when we sort of understood we don't feel like drinking beer, specially not before hitting the hay, so we picked at random some Taylor cherry or some such, and would have a shot of it between the poor man's entertainment and sleep, i.e. once a week. Then I realized that after seven years and some in the US we never bought a bottle of whiskey, so let's. We bought a kentucky bourbon, original from the neighborhood. It was quite a mystery how could an irish-scottish drink be named after a french dynasty, but that's America. Later I found the recipe was named either after a street or a county (in Kentucky) named after the dynasty.
We bought it in the ABC. It's not the same ABC as in Hungary, where it was a supermarket chain (named in foreign, the hungarian alphabet begins with AÁB), but rather a state monopoly, Alcohol & Beverage Control, because by local laws only beer and wine can go sold in retail, apart from these places. This is when I was already smoking one a week, when we come down at night, to have a smoke in the fresh air. What the fuck, what kind of whiskey is this, this is as sour as the peruvian pisco. Not sour like lemon or vinegar, it's simply acidic, rather ugly. (just tried to find an answer to „why is american whiskey sour?“ and no can do - there's a cocktail „whiskey sour“, which has lemon, sorry I asked). counting on the south to believe the sour will quench thirst - why the pisco is sour, tequila being drunk with salt and lemon etc. Nope, the north kind was just as sour, they seem to change the recipe for this market. We drink that, it drinks us... Fuck this, this is all adjusted to the market, let's have a Ballantine. Ow shit that's sour too. Just like Mohan said, even indian beer gets americanized. So there's no cultural transfer, the poor devils never know how's life on the outside, because whatever they see of it gets adjusted to their liking, or else it wouldn't sell if it were different. We never bought whiskey again.
And the bottles I hid in 2004 I did find later. The bottom, tall drawer in one of the kitchen cabinets is shorter, and there's room for some three bottles behind it. Exactly the kind of place to hide it from yourself, two days after the fact you don't remember it.
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* it confused me to no end why do they call it middle when it's the nearest part of Asia... and eventually found on the wikipedia that it's us, the Balkan (and all other Balkans, if they can find them) who are the near east. For us, the area of Levant, Arabia up to Iran and Afghanistan is the near, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh are the middle, and from Burma to Japan it's far east.
12-VII-2024 - 5-VII-2026