"This pipe can blow your head clean off, are you feeling lucky punk?"

I don't smoke a lot of weed, at least not a lot compared to most of the pot smokers I know. I'm much more of a drunk when it comes to 'frowned upon' vices.

I do smoke weed, and enjoy it, but on average probably not much more than once or twice a month. And that tends to be socially smoked as well, when hanging out with friends who offer it to me, for example. I can't remember the last time I actually bought weed of my own, since one or two hits usually floors me well enough & for long enough (plus I tend to be drinking when/if I do get around to smoking it, those one or two hits add a nice edge to the drinking).

Recently, however, I purchased a used XBOX from an old friend and by some strange coincidence my weed consumption has gone up.

Which led me to notice the paraphernalia I have laying about; for somebody who doesn't smoke that often I have a surprising number of ways to smoke. Besides a small-size hookah that breaks down into it's own carry case I have a decent acrylic bong, an inflatable backpacking bong, a pocket water pipe/bubbler that looks like a small travel mug, and a couple of 'one-hitters' that are made to look like average cigarettes. I also have a small bubbler made from a Jack Daniels bottle that I've never used, but had to buy since 'Off The Wall' was going out of business and I wanted a souvenir. And a small collection of clips (hemostats, oversize tweezers, etc.) for smoking joints, though I can't recall the last time I even saw somebody with a joint.

But normally I tend to use a pipe, and have two that I use the most.

This first little combo (the wood pipe & embroidered hippy-bag) my sister Nadja gave me as a B'day present over a decade ago. The wood pipe has brass fittings, and though you can't tell from the picture, the windscreen is actually a button from a French Foreign Legionnaire's uniform. The wood makes for a nice smooth hit, and it resins up nicely, allowing for some powerful scrapes when you run out of pot. The little bag is just big enough for the pipe and a Bic (and rolling papers and some screens, if you're of a mind).

And secondly, I have the 'bender pipe'; so called because after going on a particularly blinding pub-crawl (by myself) I awoke to find I'd stumbled into (among many other places) 'Still Smoking' on the Ave. at some point and bought myself a pipe.

I couldn't really be too mad at myself for buying it, it is a nice pipe. It's Pyrex, or some other sort of tempered lab-glass, so it's fairly sturdy. It's got a nice clean carb on the side, a solid flat base, and it hits very smoothly. And the glass will change color nicely over time.


But the pipe I'm enjoying the most right now I just bought from a dealer in England:

It's called 'The Revolver Pipe' for obvious reasons, besides which that's the name carved into the side of the bowl, along with 'Made in France'. It's a tobacco pipe, but with a bit of H2O2 cleaning and a small brass screen in the bowl it's been repurposed nicely for smoking the illegal marijuana.

When I first saw this pipe I thought "What a stupid design." There's very little that cops spot more quickly than paraphernalia; one of which is A HANDGUN. Why in the world would I want to get a pipe for smoking weed that looks like a handgun? This could only end in me getting shot by some cop & winning this year's Darwin Award.

But almost in an instant my perception of this pipe swung around 180° and I knew I had to have it. Why? Because it occured to me what it would look like to use this thing.

Think about it; every time you take a hit you look like you're about to blow your own brains out. Besides being a fairly hardcore image, it's also a great metaphor for what smoking is actually doing to you every time you pick up the pipe.

Poetry.