Skruf Cranberry Snus

Like a craisin dipped in salt. This is why Swedish people never smile with their eyes.

RATING: 20%


(Image from www.snustopia.com.)

Escudo Navy Deluxe

Smoking a bowl of Escudo is like sticking a delicious blowtorch in your mouth and holding it there for 50 minutes. Cigar aficionados will sometimes talk about a cigar’s “finish,” i.e. the duration and quality of its flavour as it lingers on the palate. Escudo doesn’t have a finish per se—it’s more of a plum-and-pepper tattoo on the inside of your face. Those who enjoy a full-bodied smoke will undoubtedly find it quite satisfying, while those who wish to taste or smell anything other than Escudo for the rest of their lives will be disappointed.

RATING: 92%, but there’s no going back.

(Image from tobacco-club.net.)

A Month of Stuff That Will Kill You Now or Eventually #1: Ettan Snus

Ettan is pretty much my go-to brand. It has a toasty flavour rather than a lemony one, so it goes well with coffee, beer and all kinds of other things that I have to cut back on if I want to avoid type 2 diabetes for a few more years. Some snus users prefer the citrous, salty bitch-slap of General Snus, while non-snus users tend to simply claw at their gums crying, "It burns! It burns!" followed by a bout of weeping into their delicate, coffee-coloured hands.

RATING: 89%

(Image from schweden-snus.com.)

A Month of Ill-Fated Consumer Products #4: The Smokeless Cigarette

Back in the 80's, medical science confirmed what everyone who wasn't a complete moron should've known all along: secondhand smoke is bad. Around that time, Camel introduced Premier Lights, which worked by "heating and aeresolizing" the tobacco rather than burning it, and purported to reduce "biological activity." I've never tried one personally, but I'd bet a Canadian twenty that Premier Lights did indeed reduce "biological activity," since a smokeless cigarette sounds about as stimulating as a fuckless porno movie.

RATING: Gimme%

(Image from tobaccoproducts.org.)

General Onyx Snus

General Onyx comes in a fancy can and the little snus packets inside are arranged in the shape of a star. It's a "white portion" snus, meaning the little "teabags" are made out of a slightly less porous material so they (supposedly) leak less and keep longer. It also has 50% more nicotine than General Regular. Pretty much everything about this snus is fantastic except the taste--it's got the notes of pepper, citrus and salt common to most General products, but it has an underlying soupçon of burnt rubber or road tar that I don't like at all. Since there are only about 5 snus users in the whole world who don't live in Sweden, and none of them read this blog, I guess I might as well be writing this post on a sticky note, sealing it in a bottle and throwing it into the bay, except Dallas doesn't have a bay. Fucking Dallas.

RATING: Fancy 90%, Taste 20%

(Image from www.snuffexpress.com. They also make a General Onyx Carbon edition, which is like $40 a can and is packaged by the same people who make parts for Porsche. I think this is appropriate, since it tastes strongly of something you'd scrape off the underside of a car.)

Marlboro Snus

Snus is a little teabag-shaped, tobacco-filled object that goes between your upper lip and gums in order to give you oral cancer along with the lung cancer you're already going to get because you can't stop smoking cigarettes. It's a must-have for men who want to not be able to breathe through a toothless mouth in 10-50 years. Unlike Swedish snus, which exudes the manly flavours of smoked fish and pain, Marlboro snus is cloyingly sweet, offering testimony to the perpetual adolescence of American taste.

RATING: An unsurprisingly addictive 20%

(Image from http://klotband.files.wordpress.com.)

Jesus Camp

This documentary is filled with so much Evangelical Christian irony I felt physically ill at least three times. I don't think this should have lost the Academy Award to An Inconvenient Truth, because Al Gore is like a billionaire now, and making his money off the same suckers who are appalled by Jesus Camp (except me). Capitalism! In the end, Christianity is war without science. Well, I mean, who actually believes in global warming or evolution anyway?

RATING: 90%

Hiccuping While Smoking

Hiccuping while smoking is God's way of telling you that smoking and drinking are both cool and really good for you. If you're a real champ, you can fast track your way to your inevitable Darwin Award by eating the cigarette butt when you're done. As usual, by "you," I mean "me."

RATING: 8%

(Image from here. Did you know that hiccup is also spelled hiccough? Go figure.)

Weight Watchers Giant Latté Ice Cream Bar

"Hey, fatty, I got a movie for ya--A Fridge Too Far."

Weight Watchers Giant Latté Ice Cream Bars (or, as I like to call them, WWGLICB's) only have 90 calories each, so you can basically eat 3 of them at a time. Also, they contain an adorable little linear sulphated polysaccharide called carrageenan, which promotes long term weight loss by possibly giving you intestinal cancer. Funnily enough, it may also prevent herpes. Go figure.

RATING: 75%

(Image from s3.amazonaws.com.)

Cheap Smokes

The good? Four packs for eight bucks. The bad? Filters whose job it seems is to facilitate cancer. The ugly? Looking totally desperate for nicotine. Once, when I was in a hard place and smoking Pilots, He Who Looks Good in Jeans bought me a pack of Parliaments just so he didn’t have to watch me suffer.

Rating: 45%