Happy New Year!

Biz News - To kick off the new year, one thing I'm going to try hard to do this month is actually put some pipes in stock on the website. First up are two new bamboo-shanked mortas and a sandblasted ring grain morta poker (Alas, as I type this, it looks like both bamboo-shanked pipes have sold already) and there's also a new green Ligne Bretagne Collector available.


It's hard (and easy) to believe I haven't updated this blog since late November! December was the usual explosion of chaos and psychosis that it is here every year, and I just didn't have the time for the blog. Plus, I was highly distracted by a new online forum that I've set up, into which I channeled what little spare time I had. It's a private forum, invite-only, where I can relax and talk to various friends in an exceedingly pub-like atmosphere without having to be "on my toes" as I must whenever I post to pipe forums (My forum does have some discussion of pipes, beer, whiskey, etc, but the main focus is on other subjects, mostly fantasy/SF/horror genre stuff and some adventures in an online MMORPG that many of us play in).

After posting in online forums for around 18 years now, it was an odd change to be the one setting the rules. I decided to take the simple route:

#1 - Don't be an asshole.

#2 - No posting of porn or porn links. This is against Proboards' terms of service.

#3 - No personal attacks. In fact, just try to be frickin' polite in general. If you disagree with someone, you'll get a lot further in life by arguing your viewpoint in a civil manner than by going batshit.

#4 - No sermonizing. We're all adults here and we all have our own views on topics like religion, politics, porn, abortion, and what have you. Thanks, but we really don't need long rants about how national health care leads to communism or at what point life really begins. Climbing onto soapboxes to preach is heavily frowned upon, with the sole exception being that Olde Fuckers are fully permitted to complain about how annoying young people are today. ;)

Violation of any of these rules is subject to immediate and capricious punishment by the mods, who rule like demented god-kings. (Jeff F ought to recognize this reference!) :D

If only more forums applied Rule #1, the intarwebs would be so much more enjoyable! Anyway, setting up this rather-complex project did manage to eat up way more time than ever intended, but at least it's up and running now and rapidly filling with such deep and incisive chatter as what the new Indiana Jones movie will be like, whether Heath Ledger will be a good Joker, where one can get good Ginger beer, and Darwin video award links. People in the pipe biz actually do talk about pipes in our spare time too, but after a day in the workshop and answering email, pipes usually aren't my main focus when I hop online to relax (Funnily enough, the only pipe people so far participating are other professional pipemakers, who are mostly talking about LOTR and why "Space Ape Lazer Rampage" is perhaps the greatest movie title ever imagined).

Today's pipe photo is one of the many Talbert Briar bulldogs that I've been working on all through December - I got buried under a pile of requests for bulldogs, and figured I'd see if I couldn't work on them all together for best efficiency. That's why virtually nothing has been appearing on the site - I've just been focused on special orders. I intend to try my best to at least get a few pipes into the website catalogs this month, though. I don't like it when everything is empty! And I'll also try hard to post more here in the blog, as it just isn't good to leave it sitting for so long, and I've got several topics I want to talk about (Next up will probably be an article on the value of dealers and distributors, and exactly what work and service they provide)

To close for now, here's another shot of that rather nice "Bulldog-Monster" - a huge, ODA-sized bulldog blast that's currently making its way across the ocean to a US collector.