I AM A FAG XXI

well i am now convinced that in a former life i must have been a seriously nasty piece of work (former life...?) I mean pond scum. I mean a robber-from-the-poor-giver-to-the-rich type character. And this negatively tainted karma has come back to bite me in my sloppy and lofty butt. Such is the only explanation i can give for some of the events which have plagued my daily life over the past few weeks. (oh my opptimism never seases to amaze..) First and foremost, i have been shocked rocked and rolled by a death in the family. No not a family member (i have few to spare really...) No, not even my long-abandoned guinea pig Sausage.

I'm talking technological tragedy. Cyber-homocide. By reasons unknown to me, my dear laptop Harry has taken his last breath. Now he left me at such an un-expected (and OF COURSE inconvenient) time that i have not been able to thoroughly grip the situation, and have only had the chance to mourne with a whinge/whine/complain and a few profanities thrown in for good measure. Because my computer-resucitaton abilities are limited and have miserably failed, i have been left with a stone-cold casualty. Thus i have found myself computerless.

Blessedly, ma phone allows for googling and facebook, therefore not causing a complete isolation from the cyber world (the real world?). However bloggin', which tops my list of "stuff that's coooool and fun to do" has nearly ceased over the past weeks. Oh and how many tears have been shed over this fact :|

So i am forced to slut it up big time with housemate's computers and mope away each day that my Harry lies reduntently in a lifeless heap on the floor. Sob. What a beautiful corpse.

The second and most disappointing tragedy occuring of late is my continued inability to source a cigarette that pushes my g-spo... i mean my buttons. Although many have been tried and tormented, given a good hard violent rape (at a rape-a-day rate, definitely contributing to my falling behind with blogging) there have been only a handful that make me go mm-mm and even fewer that make me ooh ooooh. Because i am in an oh-so-scarily good positive optimistic mood, i will start by thanking the bearer of my "Gudang Garam" cigarettes. They were gracefulyl gifted to me by my dearest Simmy, who brought back (as well as 2 strains of Malaria and numerous STDs) from his recent Bali trip an assortment of cigarettes as payment for me picking him up from the airport.

My frothing anticipation for a good foreign fag has been unsupressable since he told me (slash i winningly convinced him) he was to bring me back a very missy-appropriate souvenir. Bali-a monkey? Assorted scented soaps (ass) ? CHeap region-irrelevant DVDs? Genuine, hoo-haa, fairdinkm real deal Prada sunglasses? Nah, only the finest hand-rolled tabacco. Now let's begin, rather predictably, at the beginning. The name. "Gudang Garam". Well fuck me. If only my linguistic knowledge extended to Indonesian then maybe i would be able to decipher this foreign crazy-talk. And at risk of sounding brutally ignorant, i'll stop here. Marlboro and Winfiled and Dunhill 'dont mean nuffin' in our language now, do they?? hm.

SO, even before the shrink-wrap was stripped off, an overwhelming aroma of vanilla? cinammon? sickly-sweet-something filled the air. Which only made my already over-active tastebads salivate further with the possibility of a cigarette-and-dessert all wrapped into one. aooo.

Now Simon, in his haul, brought back a 12 pack and a 16 pack (like wtf honestly? Indonesians must therefore have to buy their cigarettes about 4 packs at a time...) But this had me thinking, maybe they're onto something..Less cigarettes per pack=less time exposed to nasty oxygen=freshness +++ ! Ah who ever thought we could possibly learn anything valuable from our dirty asian neighbours? (Suck that Pauline Xenephobe Hanson..)

Now upon lighting them, i am shockingly overwhelmed by their intensely sweet fragrance and full-bodied flavour. And the greatest part? The sugar-sweet residual taste left on my lips post-drag. It's almost like i could smoke these babies pre-kissing a boy and, rather than have him gag and recoil because i taste like an ashtray, dwell longingly with his lips pressed amorously against mine (well obviously this 'kissing' occurs only in my dreams or my fucking glorious Mills & Boon-esque fantasies...) But really. Boys. Ew.


With each drag you can see and hear the crackle and pop of the inards of this tabacco roll. (i can almost invision micro-particles of sucrose snap and smoulder, causing the above-mentioned taste sensation..)

Visually, the cigarettes are umm attractive-ish.. While definitely never letting you forget that they are born from a possibly rat-infested, probably filthy back-alley factory in the slums of Indonesia. The stained and speckled paper screams un-hygienic and diseased. Their inadequate filter does leave me feeling a little dirty and contaminated with the thought of the unsanitary conditions they were no doubt created in.

BUT, the above criticisms cannot discount the fact that, all round, these cigarettes please me to no foreseeable end. AND uno due tre quattro cinque shall follow..

Attractiveness of Pack- A blood-red, deep mahogany, gold-striped pack screams "tacky" and overzealous. Like a fugly lass adorning flowers in her hair to attempt 'pretty'. Like souping-up a WRX. Like touching up crackled car paint with white-out. Beneath these meager attempts to jazz up a piece of shit, their unmistakable aura of cheap and tacky can not be escaped. Though at risk once more of sounding ignorant and boardering on racist, we havent really come to expect much of quality being churned out by our asian countries, have we? (maybe years of working at Crazy Clarks and dealing with near infinite shoddy products has left a rather bad taste in my mouth about asian imports.... )

Though a far cry from perfect, the pack does emminate a certain foreign appeal and acts a little like a micro-vacation-in-your-pocket. Nevertheless i believe a 3 out of 5 malignant tumours will suffice.

Smoothness and Flavour- As i have already alluded, the flavour burst erupting from these cigarettes is of gale-force and entirely unstoppable. I liken this flavour to the imagined sensation gained from smoking a lenght of ignited sugarcane wrapped in tabacco leaves. A surely kilojoule-dense carbo-loaded snack rather than a cigarette. Makes me feel like i can have my cake and eat it too. Never have i licked my lips so greedily as i do when i smoke these (well except maybe the first time i realised that aside from google and wikipedia, there are many rather arousing websites with un-censored content and a lot of flesh to be found on the world wide web. mmhmm)

The smoothness is non-existant however. The inhaled smoke seems to catch and snag on the battered and barbed lining of my respiratory tract. It's a very harsh exhale too, a lot of smoke (oh ze poor atmosphere. How i poison thee so..) Therefore it is appropriate that i alot 5 for flavour yet merely 2 for smoothness..

Burning Time- Blows freakin Longbeach and Marlboro Red clean out of the water. This really is a long-time-boyfriend-of-a-cigarette (*shudder) . Magically outlasts a stroll from Q st Station to commendably far down George St. I don't know how they do it, but they have a seemingly supernatural ability to outlast the irreversible force of time. 5 out of 5 mal tumours.

Lingering Taste- The sweet flavour and aroma clings on and does not release for a very.very.long.time. It's as if their essence impregnates every semi-porous organ in my body. The tabacco disappears like a tourist swimming foolishly in a rip however, but it is the pleasing honey-sweet aroma of these foreign babies that really continues to make its presence known. So aromatic are these dears that i keep 3 by my bedside to flavourfully and fragrantly lull me to sleep. My once tabacco-smell-drenched car interior temporarily smells fresh as a fucking daisy after smoking them. Lingering taste transforms into lingering presence, it's as if the scent of this marinates and fragrances the entire world (or maybe only the corrupt and naked world found only in my head..) 4.5 out of 5 m.t

Well for those mathamatically minded individuals, the sight of numbers has probably already sent your loins into a pleasure-filled flurry and your pulse a-racing. You have presumably done all the leg-work for me. Cheers. Owe you one.

Average Score for Gudang Garam- 4 out of 5
Not an entirely bad result if i do say so myself....

Well monday has reared it's ugly head once more (of course i wrote this yesterday. sorry.) however monday brings the promise of cheap tuesday to follow and the proceeding wonderful wednesday, where i allow myself to be swept away on a glorious tide of beer and trivia and the phenomenon of happiness. Therefore i welcome you, new week, and (attempt to) keep an optimistic and open mind about the delights that may be awaiting me in this december week.

I am living through this doomsday chem lecture with the thought of my petrol-wasting beach venture south this afternoon, which will no doubt get my melanomas writhing with glee and my already skin-damaged skin cursing me and wishing that i had even a slight sense of sun-sensibility.

Till next time fellassss (p.s thanks Simmy once again for the 'rettes)

Misssssssshhhy.