Star Trek - "Obsession"

Kirk encounters a living smoke that clouded his early twenties into a haze of bad decisions. Hey, I completely understand!

RATING: 68%

Saw VI

These movies aren't even really horror movies - they're just thrillers with a whole lotta gore. I mean, a horror movie is supposed to about fear, and these are just badly structured police procedurals. No other horror movie spends so much time on cops trying to catch the killer (or secretly be the killer several times) as the Saw movies do, and the victims in these traps are basically props. Anyway, in this one an insurance executive must pay the price for his sins, since he invented insurance and whatever I guess,. but maybe the cop is actually the one being tested (he is)! Wait, am I repeating myself?

RATING: 28%

Colored* Cigarettes

Sorry your mint mojito cigarettes were outlawed, kids, but have no fear! Now there are cigarettes that look like colored pencils that no grown adult would be caught dead smoking. I guess cigarette companies have stopped even trying to pretend they're not marketing to kids, what with the pastel pink cigarette brand named after a Disney movie, so let's all heave a sigh of relief and buy a pack for a kid you love. I guess in theory I didn't think anyone over the age of 14 and/or born with a dick would want to smoke these, but Facebook proved me wrong -- a friend's 17-year-old sibling staged a nice little photo shoot with friends, each of whom looked elated to be smoking these. I was upset; not because they were smoking, but because Nat Sherman had so publicly pwned them all. There was a guy with a piercing in his face, a guy who had paid money to have someone puncture his face with a needle, sucking on what appeared to be a CoverGirl eyeliner from the 80's. Nat Sherman: 1, Pierced Dude: 0.

*you know I didn't mean it like that... my boyfriend's black!

RATING: 8% (the green one looks pretty)

Natural American Spirit Perique Cigarettes

Most pipe tobacco blends that claim to have "perique" in them actually contain anaerobically fermented green river burley, and the reason there isn't enough real perique to go around is because somebody's been putting it all in cigarettes. The good news is, they're the best cigarettes money can buy. You have to kind of smoke these like a pipe or cigar to get the full effect of the perique--if you haul on it like a sailor, it just tastes like a strong cigarette. But all the classic perique notes are there: cracked pepper, plum, cream, and that weird "silver" taste that's impossible to describe non-synesthetically. I wish I loved broccoli and exercise as much as I love tobacco. Damn.

RATING: 95%

(Image from www.sweetmedicineshoppe.com, but don't let the name fool you, kids, it's not medicine.)

Natural American Spirit Cigarettes

Natural American Spirit cigarettes supposedly have no additives. I doubt this makes them any better for you in the long run, but it certainly helps with hangovers. I smoke when I drink (usually about 5-15 cigarettes), and I used to get horrible hangovers, but I after I switched to this brand I noticed next-day headaches and nausea became about 70% less harsh. I've heard people say that cigarette smoke contributes equally or more to a bad hangover than booze itself (research suggests that both vices produce scary levels of acetaldehyde in the human body), and I believe it. Be that as it may, there's something about these cigarettes, even if they don't actually taste so great. If you like to drink and you're dumb enough to smoke you should give them a try, or just quit altogether before you get cancer or arteriosclerosis.

RATING: 90% if you're going to smoke anyway, 0% if you aren't.

(Image from www.ethicalshopping.com.)

Reiner's Long Golden Flake

Reiner's Long Golden Flake is one of the most expensive tinned tobaccos in production. It looks fantastic, sort of like a leather belt coiled inside a gold-coloured paint can. LGF is made of various virginia tobaccos, louisiana perique (that's French for "prick"), and a little bit of white burley. Its flavour is predominantly grassy and a little bit citrous, while the perique stays in the background with a salsa-and-pine-sawdust kind of thing going on. It's also quite sweet, even for a virginia blend, which makes me wonder if the burley isn't flavoured ("cased," in pipe lingo) with something. It won't bite your tongue, even if you puff hard. Basically, it's so gentle that even a 15-year-old could smoke it. Worth every penny.

RATING: 90%

(Just kidding--15-year-olds aren't cool enough to smoke! Image from www.smokingpipes.com, which is also where I bought the tobacco.)