Becky Blows Smoke

Keep on Hookin' in the Free World

2011-06-13T21:10:00.000-07:00

DAMN I hope that works.
HI INTERNET! It's ME!
I have... drumroll... G.R.A.D.U.A.T.E.D. from college. So, like, emphasis on the "age" in "College age white girl." Weird as hell.

In case there's too many dysfunctions with my internet or yours and that video doesn't work, here's the gist of the review:

Starbuzz - Pomberry
DELICIOUS! A very berry flavor tempered with that hard-to-define attempt at Pomegranate that virtually every company has made. I can't argue. I love this flavor. Little tough to get wicked huge clouds though. Alas.
4.5/5 stars for Starbuzz Pomberry. Yay!

Missed you.
Kisses.

THINGY

2011-03-21T23:25:00.000-07:00

DOES WANT
The Hookah Flip

Catch-Up

2011-03-19T20:01:00.001-07:00

I will make no excuses or pretenses about my prolonged absence. I'll only say, it's good to be back. And hi, McLane.

Here's a butt-ton of recipes and reviews I thought I'd already posted but haven't apparently!

HookaH-HookaH - Acai Berry

In the box: Not overtly fruity on the nose. Much like white grape, it's kind of rocking a fermented feel. Very unique, I'll give it that!
In the bowl: It's actually very floral. Like a rose? I can actually tolerate? It makes me see what everyone likes about a good rose! Acai is mellow but present, fruity/berry-y but not fake. Tasty and wonderful. Also probably one of my favorite favorite mixers. I should get a gigantic tub of this, stat. And you. should. too.

star star star star star
5/5 stars for H-H ACAI!!!

Orange + Acai + Margarita = The Everything Fruit!
Blackberry + Acai + Hazelnut = Purple Haze!

Becky's Shisha Kitchen!
Recipies of Delicious Smoking

Ha7elnut

Another mild and delicious chill-out flavor from the kitchen, this one is. The seven spice, I'll reiterate, is much different than when I first opened it. The nuttiness is really complimented by the spice amalgamation. After a bit of burn time it actually started tasting like chai. Nudge nudge, H-H.

1/2 Hazelnut + 1/2 7-Spice = Ha7elnut!

This one's not worthy of a name

Having in mind that my H-H Chai is too licoricey, and mintyness is the perfect foil to licoriceyness, I thought that equal parts Chai and Spearmint would be great. This was a grievous miscalculation on my part. Chai is so overpowering, I didn't taste the mint at all... so there was no coolness or, I don't know... enjoyability? If you're into this kind of thing, I would recommend either saving your Spearmint or messing with ratios.

1/2 Chai + 1/2 Spearmint = Something Becky hates

Mint Paddy's Day

DESSERT HOOKAH DAY. Have I got a sweet after-dinner class act for you. Cappuccino with Irish cream mixed and packed, with mint sprinkled over top is the smoothest of the smooth. Rich, creamy,

1/2 Cappuccino + 1/2 Irish Cream + Mint (on top) = Mint Paddy's Day!

York

There's nothing much written on this page, except for a big banner at the top that says "Knee-Deep in Cooch Napkin." Basically, this choco-mint mix tastes exactly like you'd expect and want it to. Mix credit goes to Mike Frye! :)

1/2 Chocolate + 1/2 Spearmint = York!

Now get outta my kitchen.

See you later, Internets, I am at a party! <3

I'm Going on Vacation!

2010-08-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

"Where ya goin', Becky?" I can hear you asking. I can also hear you saying how cute and sexy and hilarious and smart I am, and I can only remind you that I am spoken for.

The answer to your query is Approximately, Nowhere. An intended visitation to our relatives in the Chicago area got flubbed and snubbed and re-dubbed and we are now heading to the thriving metropolis of Approximately, capital of Nowhere.

Actually we'll be be-bopping around Evansville, IN seeing the zoo and a minor league baseball game, and a mall or something, and then Indianapolis, IN seeing another zoo, and the Hard Rock Cafe, and a mall or something and then heading home.

So as though we could call the previous three posts a "hot streak" it has officially ended and I won't even be smoking hookah and not reporting on it like I have been... I'll just be not smoking hookah to begin with.

Love you though, and wish me luck,
Ta.

I Detest Thinking Up Puns for Blog Titles

2010-07-24T18:44:00.001-07:00

I know I did it a lot before. It was snappy. Gave you an idea of the flavor reviewed therein. But I hate puns. I fucking hate them.

Sigh.

I have a straight review of a real flavor of shisha! Doesn't that totally blow your mind? I can't believe it either.

Fantasia - Ace of Spades

In the box: *shredding guitar* Heh. So this is what I bought at Mezmerize in Bowling Green 2 days ago. Good on them for having Fantasia. I've heard only good things.
I know from the internet that Ace of Spades is supposed to be Fantasia's answer to Andes mints. However, at first whif, my friend and I got the smell of musky coffee. When I opened 'er up today, I guess it was kind of choco-minty. An Andes mint that splashed on some cologne for a hot sultry date, perhaps? Sounds sexy.
The cut is a medium, STICKY, Layalina-grade. Maybe finer than Layalina. I found a couple stems right off the bat. According to a recent forum on my new haunt HookahDomain.com, this really pisses some people off. But it's never been much of a thang for me. I just pitch 'em. *shrug* Fantasia doesn't just sit in syrup like my Laya does. The wetness is infused, thorough. Soooo gooooood. I dolled it out with my tongs, after trying to kind of scramble it in the baggie, because just dipping in and snagging some made for big goopy clumps - not desirable.
In the bowl: I definitely taste the mint more than I smell it. It's cool and refreshing on the inhale and the exhale. There's a smoky and mysterious aftertaste that is more burn than any flavor I know of. It's not harsh though.
I don't really get "Andes," or even chocolate really - a flavor which is kind of hard to distinguish even on its own in my experience - but by the same token I know I'm not smoking a mint flavor. It's mature and again, kind of musky. A hearty wood lodge mint off on a bear hunt with the boys. :D
I got buzzed on this! Right away and pretty nicely. I'm just not used to that, but it was pleasant. Clouds are fine, even with the wind in my face, and they were particularly swirly girly and pretty to look at. I was content to sit on my porch and read about Marie Antoinette and absorb the very nice day and puff puff puff puff puff...
My contentedness was a it short-lived however, because after about half the bowl a rather powerful headache came on. I don't blame the Fantasia for this entirely though - it was very hot, I was out of caffiene, it was HOT, and most of all I was smoking a whole bowl by myself which I basically never do. Just not an ideal smoking situation and not an ideal result. I can't fault the shisha for this reason. I am a scientist, and there were too many variables in the experiment.

star star star star star
Fantasia Ace of Spades: 5/5 stars
I can't fault this flavor for anything. The unfortunate circumstances surrounding my session can't scientifically be counted against the flavor, cut, and buzz. **Note: upon a second, indoor smoking I got all the good buzz and not of the headache. Proof that this flavor is solid gold.

If I Opened a Smoke Shop...

2010-07-23T10:21:00.001-07:00

It would be about the hookah.
_ . Sure, I would sell incense, and really cool blankets, and Alice in Wonderland posters...
_ . But I wouldn't sell bon-- excuse me, water pipes. I wouldn't sell pieces or papers or porn.
_ . I would sell ACCESSORIES. Do you know how many smoke shops have hookah bowls? 1/3 I've been to in the past few weeks. I would sell hookahs (of course), and I would stock SO MUCH SHISHA. And there would be COUCHES all over. And a lounge in the back. I would have a refrigerator with wine, and orange juice, and iced coffee JUST for putting in your vase water because WHY NOT.
_ . I wouldn't have to card anyone just for walking in (maybe). The windows would not be blacked out.

_ . The last shop I went into was Mezmerize in Bowling Green, OH. And all things considered, it was really really nice. It was very clean, bright, wide open. They had a lot of brands of shisha there and more flavors of Hookah-Hookah than I think I've even seen online. But there was a list on the wall of "words that would get you kicked out" because they would give the implication that that $10 highlighter in the case was, in fact, an item of PARAPHERNALIA, as is this beautiful crafted glass mouse, and this funny looking paperweight, and that lamp. There was also a shrouded-off corner of adult videos.
_ . You can look right over in my Dislikes and see that I am a pot vegetarian (in like as I don't partake), and stoner culture rather annoys me, no offense. I don't have a problem with people/my friends that do get high nor do I have a problem with them doing it really, but the stereotype - and the few individuals I've met that fit it - get my knickers in a knot. Where I was comfortable in Mezmerize, and in 90% of the smoke shops I've been in despite the overwhelming dominance of barely-passing pieces, I don't like how hookah is an ill-represented afterthought in such places, and I detest how hookah is lumped in with marijuana culture by those who don't know what it's about.
_ . Profiling like that is why I have 2 friends that who'd love to smoke with me all the live-long day, but their parents can't know I (or they) have a hookah. It's why my mom about flipped her shit when I said the word, and I'm not technically allowed to smoke while I'm under her roof. People that fancy themselves (or want their parents to think) they are clean, above-the-table, and even downright prudes can and should be allowed to investigate hookah because it is safe, tasty, classy, social, and legal if you're of age. I don't think that shisha and ganja should be inextricably linked, and definitely not synonymous. And let people like me be the reason why!
_ . If I opened a smoke shop, it would be about hookah and nothing but the hookah. It would give shisha a good reputation, a clear picture of the history, tradition, and products. My lounge would not pump gangster metal, sell chicken fingers, and peddle weed out the back. My establishment would not be sketchy, just smoky. A hookah bar and shop for hookah snobs like me.

And scene.

Also? I want to learn how to indent here. Would it have to be an Html trick? Baaaalls do I hate the _ . buisiness.

Tay-kin care uh biz-ness

2010-07-06T22:19:00.000-07:00

I applied, if you can call it that, to be a field rep for Sahara Smoke Co. They're a downright respectable Co, there! They are the producers of dear dicro Zia, of This Blog acclaim. Basically I'll be pestering you to buy a hookah and hookah accesories. But I'll give you coupon codes to do it, so it's not so bad.

I'm a little shaky on the exact details but from my limited experience with ordering, and their super nice support team that logs onto Skype for business hours, I'm expecting nothing but a positive experience. A work-from-home sort of job will be really fantastic I think. I'll put away the very little money I make and it'll follow me to and from school. Plus I'll spread hookah around and that's great.

See? Look at me. I'm blogging even when I start off with something very well contemplated to say and wind up watching CSI and taking an inordinate amount of time to write what I did remember to say. Pats for Becky! Who's trying her damndest to work for a living or something. I don't know.

Oh, and if you didn't catch my drift before, GO CHECK OUT SAHARA SMOKE DOT COM! GO RIGHT NOW!

I Have Something to Salute, Besides America

2010-07-02T22:40:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong, America's great and all. But I wanted to take a moment and pay homage to the best li'l box of coals in the whole big hookah world... Chronic Hookah Instant-Light Coconut Charcoals! I found these beauties on thehookah.com . I ordered them with my first round of H-H tobacco and they have gotten me this far!! I know, I've had myriad hiatus...es... hiati? *shudder*... I know, I've had several periods of dormancy and so maybe to you cynical blogosphere types think that over 8 months of loyal hookah-heating doesn't sound that impressive? But it friggin' is!

Chronic provides the low eco-impact of using gathered coconut husks of all things to make up their squares. They are a low-ash, slow-heat, and flavor-neutral coal. Furthermore they come in a handy dandy quick light option which is DA BOMB. I've never had a bad experience with them in terms of longevity and heat. They're pretty caustic as they're lighting, but you need chemicals to make a quick light light, so, *shrug* I love you Chronic Hookah! You're the best and I'm never going back.

In the coming days (or weeks, ugh) when my big Box'o'108 actually runs out, I'm going to order some shisha with it, using whatever meager funds I can scratch together at this financially desolate time of year, and I am deliberately avoiding Hookah-Hookah shisha. Not because I don't love it, no, but because I realize it's basically all I've ever talked about.

And if you didn't come to a hookah blog to read about hookah talk, I want to go on the record and say that the next time I see a wedding dress with a see-through bodice I'm gonna flip my shit. I am a liberal feminist sex-liking artsy type and I STILL get sick to my stomach when I hear a bride talk about how "sexy" she wants to look on her wedding day and how naked she will try to be in a ump-teen thousand dollar dress.

TTFN!

Do you watch Hell's Kitchen?

2010-06-22T18:46:00.000-07:00

It's one of the shows that my family sits down and watches together. It's normally pretty entertaining and it's not as over-dramatized as some reality gameshows out there and... I dunno, watching people get yelled at is enjoyable sometimes.

This year it's really awful though. The red team (formerly the girl's team until they got a guy that was going to be eliminated from the blue team) just HATES each other and they're all real real incompetent. So, they don't win, which makes them mad at each other, so they yell at each other, and they lose challenges... on and on and on. I don't want that negativity in my life. Even the winning team is complainers. And yet I watch.

At first I had a very poignant series of rhetorical questions to finish that up with but I'll be damned if I can't formulate it anymore. Whatevs. Peace.

Hey dere! Whatcha been dooin l8ly? (Updated, now with links)

2010-06-21T23:21:00.001-07:00

_ Finding out that Blogger does that thing where if you hit "enter" in the subject line it publishes a blank post. I left many an e-mail account because of that inane business Blogger!
_ Lifetime Original Movies. Bad ones. I'm so sorry, brain cells.
_ Planning to get a Chinese Water Dragon! My rats are 2 years old and one has cancer. And I'm an over-organizer. You can't blame me for looking up prices & housing requirements, and sketching out the large enclosure I will build for a pet I don't have yet... especially when the critter's so darn pretty. Aaaand, I, uh, need the herpetology experience, yeah.
_ Making and varying cream cheese frosting... I'm so sorry, waist. I'm still trying to decide if it's better for me for it to be eaten with a food item vessel or consumed straight via tablespoon.
_ Trying my damndest to get out and about, fighting both restlessness and sloth. Walking is nice in the evenings, even during a Cincinnati summer.
_ Looking at Ecuador pictures constantly and missing that country like craaazy. Oh, you want to look at them too? Okay. Here's my Facebook albums un, deux, trois. Public links even!
_ Making a pretty complete list of commercials I can't stand and the inconruencies, annoyances, and frequency/timing issues that result in my distaste.
_ Inquiring after internship laces where I can play with big kitties, and/or slothes. (That's the British pronunciation, you know. "And the people did feast upon the lambs, and slothes, and carp... and fruit bats..." like.)
_ NOT WATCHING LEGEND OF THE SEEKER, THAT'S FOR DAMN SURE! *pout*
_ Not working, nor attending LCCC for chemistry, either, much to my chagrin. But it is what it is. I'm working the "Don't Panic" angle and it's going pretty swell, despite the pressure from my parents.
_ Not writing for the Nerdist empire, sadly. That makes my dream of befriending Chris Hardwick seem nigh impossible, but it does make me want to breathe new life into this anemic little blog of mine.
_ Not smoking hookah. Go figure.

ComFest is on my horizon, as is dog-sitting and other family-based money earnings. Whoo hoo!
You can bet your boots I'll bee hooking (hookah-ing?) in C-bus this weekend. Have faith in me, intarwubbians. I'll write to you when I'm not bleeding money on artsy things and booze.

You Are Reading This 2 Weeks Ago

2010-05-31T20:26:00.000-07:00

Gone to the Galapagos, see you in two weeks!

Hm? Oh, the asteriks didn't actually transport you back in time? That's odd.

So hey! I went to Ecuador for 2 weeks and spent half of that time in the Galapagos! I didn't tell you then because I was too busy frantically packing and you're just the internet. I can't tell you now because I've been up for 48 hours. Even with my massive influx of equatorial vitamin D I just don't have the energy to give you proper freakout. I've told my stories many times today.

Pictures will all go onto Photobucket and then Facebook and they will be mind-boggling. I also want to give on official poo-poo to Flickr for making me sign up for another Yahoo account after I'd just dropped my old one and THEN only letting me upload 100MB and 2 videos worth. I have almost 1,000 high-quality (i.e. 1 MB or more each) pics and videos to get off this lappy before it dies, man! Plus one of my friends backed up her stuff so she could delete and re-fill a memory card. Bo. Gus.

Goodnight, Internet, I love you!!!

Tedano, Ryukyu, Ohio, Oh My!

2010-05-02T20:36:00.000-07:00

I can add to my list of marketable skills: being sole run crew for a show with 5 hours practice time and a non-English speaking stage manager.
This weekend I made upwards of $90 pulling curtains for the Tedano Kai dance troupe from Okinawa. "Living Legend" dancers were part of this group man, and they were coming to where, Buttsquat, Ohio? I guess the Ohio-Okinawa Association was having their 15th anniversary or something and they got THESE GUYS. What an honor... for, you know, the people it meant something to.
The dances were, like techno music, all the exact same tempo and key. Unlike techno, however, the dances were [sometimes painfully] slow and often had many scenes.
What WAS cool were the elaborate costumes and makeup. It was incredibly theatrical and I was glad to be backstage for it. The quick-change from a princess to a demon? Bad. Ass. There was also a really neat dragon puppet who had basically a box for a head and ribbons for a body. I don't know much else of what was going on.

So, they brought their own stage manager and he's used to a.) having total control and b.) keying in a time and having the curtains fly in/out with the push of a button. I am not a button! And what with him changing his mind a lot there was, I think, no smooth runs of the show. In my original notes the instructions were to slowly close the curtain until the last dancer was off, or slowly raise the curtain to set the pace of the music. Well, that's all well and good until you're getting the small circles to speed it up EVERY time and eventually there was no point in doing it anything but full speed every time. *shrug*
The translator was a really nice guy, but he admitted to not speaking the Okinawan dialect and in terms of stagecraft he got in the way sometimes. I got pretty used to Mr. Stage Manager pointing at me and saying something equivalent to "go." Jim (translator) gave a lot of "wait" fingers that looked like "raise the curtains now" and thumbs-ups that meant, alternately, "you're fine" and "okay, go now." He also stood in my sight line more than once which is irksome. He gave me a hug when I left though so it's cool.
At the end of these meticulous, traditional, artistic dances, they did a free dance to "Hang On Sloopy" and all the people on headset died a little inside. Personally, it's like reason #4 that I didn't go to OSU. Why are you doing this to me, Grand Masters Chie Tamagusuku and Shizue Matayoshi? Why? Why are you allowing this to go on in your presence?
It was also one of those uncomfortably long jokes too. By which I mean the whole song. Songs are a joke for maybe the first chorus. Then people start to think you're insulting their intelligence. At least I did.

All in all they were very polite people. They bought us lunch, and gave me $10 to mostly sit around after paying their own way to get here. Hope they had a good time stateside!

Also, this is a curtain experience in which my hand were not ripped to bloody shreds. All in all I don't think it could have gotten much better.

Reviiiiiiieeeeeeew.

Becky's Shisha Kitchen!
Recipies of Delicious Smoking

Much like the last time we met in this kitchen, I made a good-faith effort to use up all the flavors that I'd originally slapped on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and said "No! Bad shisha! You are not licorice! Bad!" and shoved to the back of the drawer where all the rest of my broken dreams are held. Last time was a great repossession/success! This time was too. And it proved once and for all that

I am a better flavor tester than anyone currently working
for the Hookah-Hookah corporation.

Pomegranate, Really

Things I was keeping in mind: 7-Spice lost incredible degrees of anise with just time and air, I need a way to combat anise besides coolness (mint), FIE UPON YOU, ANISE.
The Mix: 1/2 Pomegranate, 1/2 Margarita
The Result: Oh man. Oh man oh man. This stuff is seriously delicious, y'all. It's flavorful, fruity, and somewhat sour. It's full bodied and a little sweet, but not candy sweet. You'd know this is a tobacco product, but it's so clearly a nice pomegranate taste too. Not overbearing, I mean to say. It's a rich flavor that speaks its flavor and its plant biology very eloquently. I held this smoke in for quite some time and wound up with a nice nicotine/O2-deprivation buzz. Whee!
Margarita, you and me are like this now, buddy. You're fruit's best friend. Here's to taking on Orange next.

Now get outta my kitchen.

TTFN, world!

Legend of Becky's Aneurysm

2010-04-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, listen. I have already written a mile-long post about how Legend of the Seeker is an awful awful show, but I can't stop watching because, I dunno, I like rage. BUT NOW THEY ARE JUST TOYING WITH ME. I feel sorry for the sold-out soulless writer that has to come into pitch meetings (er whatever) and have some 5-Hour-Energy-upped producer tell them who has been well established as many years dead and will be making an appearance this episode.

I have completed 2 writing workshops and I have a grasp of what a storyline means and someone over there at the WB does NOT. Someone somewhere is writing for LotS and crying themselves to sleep every night after it's aired. Someone somewhere is coughing while they say who they write for. Every minutely interesting character they introduce gets killed before the end credits, and every seemingly challenging plot twist gets unwound for them happenstancially and any remotely difficult choice they have make gets, again totally without their input, almost instantly made for them THANK GOODNESS. There is no character development among the main characters for these reasons. None. Even my favorite character, Cara, who is for all intents and purposes the voice of The Viewing Audience makes her points of contention several episodes after America has been wondering the same thing and goes along with whatever Richard, or Zed, or Kahlan who she doesn't even like says anyway.

Empty threat warning: if the next episode is as bad as this one, Seeker will have finally lost me and that means that even the ironic viewers will have abandoned them before the season finale. On my half-pipe of awfulness, it will have cruised past "So Bad It's Good" and gone straight for "I Honestly Can No Longer Bring Myself to Spend My Time This Way.

The whole world is drunkytown right now. Blackout Thursday and all. Last day of classes. *sigh* I have work tomorrow though. $10/hour to pull curtains. Not too shabby.
Speaking of work, I did NOT sort screws today, I instead added a marketable skill to my repertoire and that is staining wood like nobody's business. Score.

SHISHA. WE DO THAT HERE.

Al Fakher - Grape With Mint Flavor

In the box: Smells very sweet. Very sticky. Cut is virtually H-H caliber but the molasses is so abundant and so sticky that it's prone to clumping and could be an uneven burning hazard if you don't aerate it at any time.
In the bowl: Buh! Delicious! Deeeliiiiciooouus. Very sweet, kind of sour, smell stays intense through smoking. I did not think mint would go with grape at all, but it does and it has a cool flavor that really compliments the fruityness. It's not a mild or possibly fermented grape like White Grape is, it's very intense. Well, it's candy-ish frankly and that's bound to turn off some die-hard, in-it-for-the-tobacco people. Fair enough. But if your shisha drawer reminds you of Gumdrop Pass like mine does, Grape with Mint Flavor will feel right at home, and your hookah will be a happy one. I make another advisement to turn or aerate your bowl after your coals have made a pass around. There is viable shisha under there, y'all! I'm never in it for no 45-minute session. My hookah nights are 2 hours or more. Coals I'll go through a million of, but I'm pretty stingy with my tobacco. I take it as far as it will go, to say the least.

star star star star star
Al Fakher Grape with Mint Flavor: 4.75/5 stars.
If you want to be smoking a cigarette and all you have is a hookah, this is not what you pack. But I'll be damned if it's not one of the tastiest ones I've had.

Good job, self

2010-04-29T10:35:00.001-07:00

I've been a pretty decent absentee blogger lately. When I logged in today I even found a half-finished draft titled "Straight-to-the-Internet Post." HILARIOUS IRONY. Hilarirony.

I
am
done
with
classes
and I will be spending exponentially more time on the internet starting tonight after my dance show. That will be a video I can hopefully post!

Meanwhile, my foster dogs, who are totally lesbionic for each other, have stopped wrestling and are now currently on top of each other/the couch and silently biting at each others' open mouths. I didn't even think animals without lips could make out. I'm third-wheeling the hell out of this living room right now.

See you all tonight with the first actual shisha review in, what, months?
I have to go sort screws or something equivalently mundane at my drama dept. job, where I'm normally put to use playing with saws and telling other people how they are building it wrong. *gasp* A DOWNSIDE to the end of the academic year! Oh, Pessimism, I knew I could count on you.

Also, I applied to be a contributor to the website of the previously-extolled nerd, bloggist, and purveyor of sexytimes Chris Hardwick. Nerdist.com was once just a blog and will now soon be a blogging empire, the likes of which I would happily build pyramids for until the end of my malnourished, overworked days.
Wish me luck! Or, quite possibly, HI CHRIS.

Things That Mike Has Googled

2010-03-12T21:16:00.000-08:00

Here's to them showing up next time, honey.
A LIST OF THINGS MY BOYFRIEND HAS PUT ON MY SEARCH HISTORY:

Battletits Galactibutt
Legend of the Buttdick
Poostallion
Wangstallion
TiggleDickles
Becky hates fun, wah wah wah
UPDATE: "chunky butter crab nipple angular rotary tesseract sword buttstick"
UPDATE: "kronk-donkulous"

Have a good day. I've been having several, here on spring break. As a matter of awesome, my 21-ness allowed me to take advantage of a liter of Bailey's on sale for $9.99. The price was cut by more than I spent on it. *silent fist pump of victory*

As a matter of not much awesome, no real hookah news. Win some lose some.

Laaayla.... er, Laaaya.... Layna? Lanya?

2010-02-10T21:44:00.000-08:00

Oh. Well, I forgot that I reviewed my Layalina flavor already and so the title of this post was going to refer to it. But now I see that I've done Cappuccino already, but I like the title so darn much that I'm keeping it!
HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES, INTERBLAG?

Okay, plan B, *shuffle rifle shuffle* AHA! Here we go! A nice disappointing flavor to share with you all as a warning.

HookaH-HookaH - Orange

In the box: Really stuck my snoot in and got some mellow citrus. Orange citrus? I suppose sooo...
In the bowl: OH COME ON. This flavor was WEAK. I shouldn't use caps there because yelling is not what this flavor has anything to do with. I think the only distinct orange I was getting was the bit of orange juice I put in the vase (too many variables for a first try, I know, but whatevs). On the whole, it seems as though the tobacco content could be noticeably greater, but the flavor is so unforgivably less, and it burns to harshness pretty fast. Of course, that last qualm could have been because the smoke was so poor that I lit a whole other coal before the first one had burned down any.
I don't know what this flavor's problem is. Hookah-Hookah is clearly one of the most flavorful brands on the market, even sacrificing tobacco leaf cuts with any tobacco in them for cuts that are so neutral in flavor they can completely transform them into any magical concoction they can, well, concoct. Even in my limited yet rapidly growing experience I understand and have been led to believe that the fruits of H-H are the most rambunctious, true, and lip-smacking flavors on the market. So here we are faced with one of the most classic and traditional fruit flavors there is, and Hookah-Hookah's submission is a nonexistant, non-smoking, non-pleasing fluke of an embarrassment bowl? What gives, says I. What. Gives.
I guess I've been keeping in mind how mortified I was to sample 7-Spice right out of the bowl, and how enlivened I was to revisit it later and find that by some alchemy it had transformed into the shisha I thought I was buying. I've been keeping it in mind, but what I'm also keeping in mind is that fact that I opened up my Orange and mixed it with things quite a while ago. It's been exposed to air or whatever other transformative variable would have been working on 7-Spice and it's this drivel! And that's not to say "exposed to air" as in like "I lost the lid and it's been drying out for months," I just mean I broke the seal. I'm confused. Confused and sad. Blastula. (That's a developmental bio term, but it's also me making a curse word longer than it currently exists in common usage.)

Hookah-Hookah Orange: star star star star star
3/4 of a star for, I guess, the only buzz that one hit of H-H shisha has ever given me?
Chocolate + Orange = Slammer!
1/2 Orange + 1/4 Acai Berry + 1/4 Margarita = The Everything Fruit!

Actually Lazy Sunday

2010-02-07T12:42:00.000-08:00

I feel, dear readers, that I have not been making good on the part of my tagline what says "whatever else I have to say." Verily, posts have been few and far between, and compared to ow I normally talk they've been downright curt when they do come around.

If your one of those 4 people that reads this blog and just doesn't comment, I apologize to you. It has been this way because all of the interesting and colorful stuff I've had to say lately has been, well, a total downer. I've been having a shitty semester. Really shitty. For a number of reasons. Are my problems complex and therefore kind of interesting? I guess. Are the ways in which I'd go about relating them colorful? Most yes. But is this a freaking Livejournal where half the people that come across would think that I'm positively flooding my keyboard with wristblood while I write these rants and cut myself? Probably. And I don't want to present/propagate that image, and I don't want to bore or get you down, so online I try to keep it upbeat. And if upbeatedness is not to be had that day then I won't write much of anything.

WHICH brings me around to saying that this weekend has been pretty damn good, and very relaxing, and super freakin' snowy so I'm in the mood to charm the pants off you with a couple blend reviews.

Becky's Shisha Kitchen!
Recipies of Delicious Smoking

Had this one in the book for a while, actually. I'm starting my good-faith effort to use up flavors that I bought because they sounded like not-licorice and they turned out to be straight up licorice. Starting with the 7-Spice which may I make you aware, has changed drastically in smell from the first time I opened it, and it shows in these blends.

(a la Aladdin introducer [voiced by Robin Williams I bet you didn't know])
Arabian Iiiiice....

I mixed 1/4 Nakhla mint, 1/4 Hookah-Hookah Spearmint, and 1/2 extremely non-anise smelling H-H 7-Spice to synthesize what I hope will be the most exotic Popsicle ever.
THE RESULT: This mix is simultaneously cold and smoky. Dare I say it is perfect? I may darest. There's something so balanced and non-creepy crawly I get about the 7-Spice this time... do you know what I mean when I say creepy crawly? How licorice in any considerable amount just oozes over your tongue like asphalt on a hot day? Yeah, well, it's not there. Mint is, I suppose, the perfect foil for anise, though I may use a little less in the future. It's a powerful ally, you know?

1/4 Mint + 1/4 Spearmint + 1/2 7-Spice = Arabian Iiiice! (Like Arabian daaays...
more often than not, are hotter than hot, in a lot of good waaaaaaaays...) *sigh*

The Everything Fruit

You know how fruitcake is called fruitcake, and it kind of tastes like there's some fruit present, but if you're munching on a store bought one (god knows why) you realize that the only fruity thing about it are these Gummy Bear looking bits that don't even taste like fruit themselves but are closer to Spice Drops? Yeah, I guess this mix is like that. I wanted something fruity when I mixed 1/2 H-H orange, 1/4 Acai Berry, and 1/4 Margarita, and I can't say I didn't get it.
THE RESULT: It is well balanced if nondescript. I thought that the sour Margarita would actually be too much and it's not at all. It's a different kind of nondescript than the Slammer I wrote about a ways back, but this wishy-washiness is far superior. The likeness does bring me about to an observation, though, as I am a scientist, and that conclusion is: ORANGE IS A NOTHING FLAVOR. I haven't tried it alone, but I guess I should, because in a company so well versed in fruit flavors, I went on trust that H-H's Orange would knock me out of the park, but it's fairly nonexistant in both of these mixes. Nothing says, let alone screams, "orange" and it was half of the bowl, you know? The sour gets even a bit lost for my taste, but I'm kind of okay with that because I added Margarita in the hopes that it would be an assimilated accent. I'm getting mostly Acai Berry but that's fine, because I love that flavor.
I do really like this mix though. I mean, A LOT. But I couldn't say why I like it since typically I criticize blandiness. But I guess when you compare blandy fruit and blandy sour you get inexplicable good. *shrug*

1/2 Orange + 1/4 Acai Berry + 1/4 Margarita = The Everything Fruit!

Now get outta my kitchen.

Firsties and Lasties!

2010-01-31T19:45:00.000-08:00

Like, the first and last day of the month.

Is there any way to assure having "lasties" in a comments section? I would say invariably no. I guess it might happen by chance... but in terms of guaranteeing it? I'd say naw way.

Layalina - Cappuccino

In the box: This shisha actually does come in a box; a clever little matchbox with a bag of WOW. WET. THIS STUFF IS WET. This tobacco is packaged in copious amounts of crimson molasses. I am slightly dismayed that once open, there's no self-sustaining way to be air tight, but this smells exactly like its namesake and with the ridiculous amount of molasses I'm not too worried about it shriveling up anyway. The cut is, I'd say, somewhere between Hookah-Hookah and Nahkla, and it was admittedly kind of hard to spread around. I felt as though I was kind of lumping it into the bowl instead of the all-important "sprinkle" technique, and as I'll touch on later this showed in the uneven burning.
In the bowl: You know what the best idea I've ever had is? Drinking hot chocolate while smoking this shisha. This tobacco is incredibly true to taste and the flavor is strong! Like everything I've ever wanted out of a H-H blend! And so, holing up in my new common-area-turned-hookah-lounge sipping powdered hot cocoa was the best compliment this shisha could get. And though it was delicious, the lumpy cut and the super thick molasses made for a kind of half-and half burning in the bowl. Like, it tasted fine the first time the coal(s) went around, and on my H-H bowls I'm used to making a second pass, maybe with a little turning of the, if you will, soil. However, with this one, it got around once and there was this nearly instantaneous harsh ashiness. I took the foil of to turn it over and it was completely fried on the top and completely pristine on the bottom.
It's economical, in a way, to turn over the shisha in your bowl and effectively have another bowl to smoke without taking more from the box. I still don't like that very much though. I'm not a big fan of the consistency of this Layalina even though the flavor and smell are so top notch I can't even describe. It's just a thing that bothers me. Like, my H-H bowls go for a long time, and the tobacco isn't too wet and it's super fine and it dries out evenly and if I'm really scrounging or if I burned it a bit along the way, I can turn it over with the poker on my tongs. It is still "fluffy" at this stage. It's not cemented together and absolutely singed all around. Layalina came up in sticky globs with a black top and that bright red underside and I smoked what I could and added a pinch to be safe. It wasn't the best texture, but it was a total crowd pleaser. And Becky pleaser. Whoop whoop!

star star star star star
Layalina Cappuccino: 4.25/5 stars

My birthday is coming up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Does that mean I will have more time to smoke? Oh god no. But we'll see how the other variables treat me.
Tra la la...
Toodle-oo.

POIT

2010-01-01T19:36:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't noticed, I'm at home again and nobody wants to smoke with me. Poooooop.

I'm going to Oberlin tomorrow! I like it there a lot instead of hating it there! It's where my boyfriend lives! Whee!

This is basically just a shoutout to my lady McLane, who reads this blog very diligently but can never comment cause she's real real bad at the Internet. Pah ha! She's the best at other things though, so, I guess we don't have to make fun of her for too many days.

Also, I just don't care about the Bearcats and how they're failing. Everyone on my current Facebook feed does. Call me a bad Cincinnatian if you want to, I guess... But MY team is in the playoffs right now. WHO DEY. (That's another shoutout to McLane, whose "team" lost more games this season than they did in the previous two. And that's the real advantage to her not being able to comment here.)

Poit. You know. It's what Pinky says besides "Narf."

As the Prophecy Fortold

2009-12-15T19:06:00.000-08:00

ACK! I never reviewed that rawesome Hookah Freak flavor from the blendoff competition I said I would! SORRYHEREITIS:

Hookah Freak - Mad Hatter

In the box: Somewhat spicy. Somewhat stale. Spicy. Very strong. It smells very much like tea. Very familiar, but veeery hard to put my finger on. Nobody could, really. Put their finger on it that is.
In the bowl: Definitely tastes like it smells, if that helps, though I wouldn't say it does. Familiar, tea-like, sweet spice. Delicious! Happy I picked it. Here's the quote from the blender off of the H-H website - 1 1/2 Chai tea, Spiced Rum, 1 1/2 Orange, Cinnamon. Ever wonder what Tea was served to Alice in Wonderland? Well, now you know. Yeah I guess it's not much more than what I gave you, but hey, no one describes their creation like the creator, am I right?

star star star star star

Hookah Freak Mad Hatter: 5/5 stars
Wheeooo! What a winner. I'm rooting for it in the blend-off.

I am listening to chaotic Irish music (absolute love = where Pandora took my Flogging Molly obsession) and "studying geology." I want to blow off some steam by rattling off some borderline-psychotropic poetry/prose but I have less ammunition than I thought. Give it time, friends.

Actually, SPEAKING of prophecies, I have something I can rail on about: Legend of the Seeker. What a crock. I was all about being ironically devoted to a show whose cheesy action sequences, and overly hot chicks, and stubborn adherence to and simultaneous flirtatious likelihood to disobey abstinence between the two main characters, and the use of common nouns as Proper Nouns (i.e. Seeker, Keeper, Rift, Confessor) all combined in a glorious clusterfuck of the Surprisingly Enjoyable Yet Undoubtedly Bad. And I was actually pretty invested at the end of the first season. They accomplished their goal, the prophesized one, turned some foes into friends along the way (namely an extremely hot one), and it was pretty satisfying. Then the last lines were the most obnoxious incarnation of "AND WHO KNOWS WHAT ADVENTURES AWAIT US NEXT!" "YOU ARE RIGHT, COMPANION. OUR ADVENTURES ARE CERTAINLY NOT OVER. EVEN THOUGH EVERYTHING IS PERFECT AND ABSOLUTELY NO FORESHADOWING FOR WHAT COULD GO WRONG HAS BEEN PRESENTED!" "ADVENTURE!" reared its ugly - and I do mean ugly - head, and the writers that had just put their pens and pencils back in their fanny packs as they nodded their heads and started phoning their families were called back into the conference room and chained to uncomfortable machines that filled their already sub-competent brains with hackneyed and dare I say unbelievable "plot" twists.
So the second season starts with this prophecy mistress dropping in to deliver a surprisingly arbitrary "Oh, hey, the Seeker that I said was the real Seeker isn't the real Seeker anymore. You gonna... appoint a new one of those? Maybe this guy right here that I can totally manipulate maybe?" And ever since every choice and character that's been introduced has been exponentially more irritating than the last. I get so angry and yet, every Monday (or so) I'm back on Hulu watching it. The 45 minutes spend traipsing around the Midlands are just comprised of me yelling at the screen about how fucking unbearable and/or inconsistent the characters are; or how the events are clearly generated by a force as transparent as "the writers will it so" and not anything having to do with characterization, foreshadowing, or what is interesting or unexpected; or hitting and throwing things.
All that being said, the hot chicks in the show do make it kinda worth it, especially since they're both so damn good at killing fuckers. The first one, Kahlan, tries to be all virtuous about it, but the second one, Cara, is the only practical one on the show and she's ruthless. I love her. Her train of thought is always something like "Well, the only solution to our problem is if this person dies, right? We should kill them. No? Are you serious? If you won't kill him I will kill him. No, listen, we need to fucking kill him will you just grow a pair?" or "Ok, this person that we desperately need has run away twice since you won't let me torture and tie him up. PLEASE let me torture him and tie him up. GODDAMN IT, WHY DO I LISTEN TO YOU IDIOTS?!"
In summary, this show sucks, but I can't not watch.
Great.

Lap-Barf With Tea

2009-12-14T13:09:00.000-08:00

You know, how, sometimes, you study REAL REAL hard on just a couple of things for an exam? They're the things you know you don't know and you devote virtually all your time and attention to them and after a while you actually feel really confident about them? And then you go to actually take your final and the prof asks absolutely nothing about those things and has, say, 2.5 pages on things you forgot about entirely?
Yeah, that just happened to me.
Ordinarily, I call that and other forms of ridiculously bad performance "barfing in my lap" on an exam, but ever since my friend Nathan had to take his finals with some sort of stomach virus and actually projectile vomited all over his lap/desk/test I have to watch my words. In my context though, I barfed in my lap. It's too bad 'cause I didn't particularly like econ, but the teacher was great and very helpful and I was kicking ass and taking names at the beginning of the semester.

Shooort review today guys, I have other things on my mind.

HookaH-HookaH - Chai

In the box: Well, it doesn't smell like chai. It smells rich, spicy, pretty minty as a matter of fact. but not like chai which I thought they could have gotten spot on.
In the bowl: Nnnngggg... Not a fan. The only herb I'm getting out of this muddled flavor is anise, and we all know how I feel about that. It's just not chai. It might be pretty nice for those among us that like licoriceyness, because I will say that the mildewy, unavoidable, all-consumuing vibe that anise-heavy flavors rock like their favorite pair of cutoffs is surprisingly absent. So 1, it took me some time to realize what I was tasting and 2, it was the most enjoyable black licorice encounter I've ever had to date. Still not good. Why couldn't it just be, oh, chai?

star star star star star
Hookah-Hookah Chai: 1/5 stars
Because I mean come on, guys. It's chai. It's right there. This tobacco wasn't on par in smell nor taste and it was nasty to boot. At least the smell/taste is there if you're feeling it.

Tra la la. There'll be a lot more of me falling in a forest with no one around to hear it in the coming week since finals suck and all, but jeez louise does it leave me with a lot of free time. TTFN.

Jeeeez...

2009-12-11T11:44:00.000-08:00

Holy cow, non-readers, look how much shisha I've been reviewing. WOW.

Um, actually what's going on in my life has been FINALSFINALSFINALSFUCKMEINTHEASSWITHA40-FOOTFINALSPOLE. No good no good at all.

However, I have been whittling the time away by discovering my deep and potentially undying love for Chris Hardwick and his blog. And his comedy mans. And his show. And his scruffy little half-beard. He has the best links and humor guys. The best. Anywhoosles...

Through The Nerdist I have come across my own internet findings such as a toy for those kids comfortable with the risk of squirting pressurized Kool-aid or lemonade or ginger ale directly into their eyes. Does any of this have to do with hookah? Or my portfolio that's due in 2 hours? WHY NO! Oh, what a jolly adventure through the Blagosphere you have found yourself upon.

*sigh* On to finish "Cephalopod." I'll let you know how it goes.

I DON'T LIKE GRAVY. There. I said it.

2009-11-25T22:34:00.000-08:00

I don't like it, typically I think grey foods on the whole are gross. Gravy smells like brown and fat, and that's mostly what it is. Some of my favorite webcartoonists, bloggeurs, and family members live for the stuff but I don't. I made 5 pies today, you think I'm gonna fill up on animal drippings first? Yeah. No please.

All this comes to light because since being home I haven't smoked much - mom really looks down on it and my most recent friend hostess isn't too keen either - so I am behind in my journal.

Overall, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
I am thankful for my boyfriend, the many factors including family and schooling allowing me to go to the Galapagos in May, knowing the value of working for a living, DVR, and improv, and spirals.

Now to finish Ghost Hunters and resist falling asleep on the couch. Much love!!

Before the Fattening

2009-11-24T08:50:00.000-08:00

Takin' it easy at home, waiting for the day I will eat my weight in pies and such, playing Harvest Moon and watching The Soup! Such funny business. (Until a Lifetime Original Movie comes on, then it's all drama all the time.)

I also just got myself an interview at Toys 'R' Us. Yes, I could be working at Toys 'R' Us for the holiday season, sure to either fill me with enough magic to restart believing in Santa, or kill my soul so utterly I will become an unrecognizable coal-black shell of a carbon life form and not much more. And that's IF I get the job. So we shall see.

A word on boring-ass Wii games such as Harvest Moon:
_ I love them. Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, all you do is go about you life in a small town where you know everyone and, furthermore, can get something out of them. The problem with Animal Crossing: City Folks is that it is in real time. PAINSTAKING real time. So when I abandon it to go to school and come ome 4 months later, all the little big-nosed animals are all just screeching "WOAH! I haven't seen you in 4 MONTHS! Blah blah blah horrible horrible horrible..." for a couple days actually, and my house is full of cockroaches to boot.
_ So that (in a way) brings me back to Harvest Moon. Tree of Tranquility is the Wii version, and gameplay is something like 5 minutes:second, game:real. The goal? Run farm, build rainbows. THAT'S IT. You can go fishing, make nicey-nice with the locals, settle down and pop out a kid if you wish, but all of that comes with the freedom to completely subvert the designed plot and take time to, I dunno, learn every single recipe or something. I, however, am quite goal-oriented, and even in my relentless quest for rainbows, I am still left with copious amounts of free time.
Rainbows are "built" by completing "recipes" by bringing ingredients to a delightful little fairy. So if they need, say, some flax yarn (which I haven't found to buy), you can buy the seeds any time, but you have to wait until Spring to sow them. And if you don't already have a yarn maker or some shit you best be stashing that flax until you do. Overall the game is an exercise in both delightfulness and patience. Though by the same token, even with my horse (or ostrich. Yes.) to shuttle me around town, the time can really be a constraint. In my Gamecube version, It's a Wonderful Life, each second was only one minute and in my eyes, it was perfect. In Wonderful Life, really the only goal is to build your farm and raise your kid. In T.o.T you have more to do and less time to do it, leaving anyone with even a slight anxiety condition to get all tight in the chest as you watch the sun setting over Mt. Gelato. (Must be in bed with the hubby with time to re-energize for tomorrow!)
Anyway, what I mean to say is, I've got 3/5 rainbows and I'm about half there on the 4th's recipe and all my animals love me and I'm about to adopt a stray dog. I just need more winter crops.

I have digressed in such a way because my review is of a blend, one I mixed myself, and A.) I just talked about how reviews of blends can lean towards "GOOD" or "BAD" - i.e. SHORT and B.) This blend I had real high hopes for just kinda left me cold.

Becky's Shisha Kitchen!
Recipies of Delicious Smoking

Slammer

You know, those chocolate oranges that you bash on the table to break into slices. They're creamy but citrusy, thick but fruity, delicious any time of year, right?
I mixed equal parts Chocolate and Orange for this blend, and the smoke was nice but just so bland. I kind of forgot I was smoking it, or what I was smoking. My friend approved, and so did I I guess, but despite the elements of the listed flavors being there, neither popped. Neither made it exciting. It was the worst kind of balanced ever. Not that it wasn't unpleasant overall, just not what I expected.

Chocolate + Orange = Slammer!

Now get outta my kitchen.

Mwa ha ha. 3 bowls.

2009-11-20T21:01:00.000-08:00

I am good at this mixing thing. You should be peeing your pants to read and try the recipes coming up.
But you gotta wait!

I came to the realization that there are two keys to instant Youtube success: Be a hot girl, and have a schtick. And, well, I am/have those things, so I have planted the seeds in my nifty little brain that I might diversify and do video reviews too. But, like, only on mixy ones. Like Hookah Freak, Starbuzz, and my own creations. Not that plain flavors are boring, but they are easier to articulate in print. For blends me and my circlemates uuusually have a lot of "Bluuuh, well, it's, uuuhhh, good? There is, at times, geh?"
They'll still be here, though, too! I guess I'm just kind of thinking aloud. Which is what blogs are best for.

Anyway, that comes later. My blendventions come now!!!

Becky's Shisha Kitchen!
Recipies of Delicious Smoking

White Out

Whiteness. Delicate. Smooth. Floral. Gentle. It's not the blizzard imagery you might expect, but it's what you're gonna get out of this blend. One part H-H Rose, 2 parts H-H Spearmint, and 3 parts Nakhla Vanilla, and the product in your bowl is smooth and cool. I've said it before, Rose normally does not go down my hookah hose without a fight. But the tag-teaming Vanilla and Spearmint wrestled it into submission here. It is definitely present though! And as a white rose is far less garish than a red, the Rose in this blend just leaves us with a delicate floral feel. The Spearmint cools, the Vanilla rounds out the rough edges. Vunderbaugh. Light, but not because there's not much flavor.

3 Vanilla + 2 Spearmint + 1 Rose = White Out!

Purple Haze

Blackberries and acai berries - purple. Hazelnut. Get it? This mix is definitely fruity! (Go figure.) Round berryness prevails and then, all of a sudden and when you least expect it, there's the hazelnut hangin' around your tongue like a loitering teen. But this teen is clean-shaven. He doesn't ride skateboards or light trash cans on fire... His other interests are actually, like, community service and stuff. He also happens to loiter. You actually kind of like it. It provides a nice image. I like this mix because it's a different flavor on the inhale and the exhale, but overall I expected more of a punch from the berries. Needs some tweaking I think, before I really kiss the sky. (Ha ha, Jimi Hendrix is awesome haw.)

Blackberry + Acai Berry + Hazelnut = Purple Haze!

Now get outta my kitchen.

Breeeeaaak!

2009-11-20T13:45:00.000-08:00

Hi all! This moment marks the beginning of my Thanksgiving Break! And I will celebrate byyy... SMOKING AT LEAST 3 BOWLS OF SHISHA IN A ROW.
I just got my shipment from hookah-hookah and al of a sudden I had a bazillion more Shisha Kitchen ideas. Chiefly based off of the names and/or colors of the given names, admittedly. I did that before I even owned my hookah, when my only dabbling had been in cafes and the like. But now I can picture flavors together and be like "Hey! That could have a title resembling a pun AND it would be DELICIOUS!"
Iii'm excited.
First on the docket for this evening is the Mad Hatter from that competition I cited. Review later. Next will be something called "Purple Haze" and then "White Out," both official premier mixes.

Today's review is White Grape though. Nur.

HookaH-HookaH - White Grape

In the box: Tart smelling but definitely not sour like the Key Lime Pie. I'd say like grae juice but I'm a drinker of reds, m'self.
In the bowl: Definitely not a sweet flavor really. Well I mean it's kind of sweet but to me it leans towards the semi-fermented champagne type of grape. Not bad at all! A non-intense non-fruit fruit tobacco. I'm a big fan. Light on flavor, as was its smell but that suits it.

star star star star star
Hookah-Hookah White Grape: 4/5 stars

See you later tonight!

Wanted: Snappy Title for smooth, Thanksgiving-ripe blend

2009-11-16T14:14:00.000-08:00

TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESTSSSSSSSSSSS.
Last Tuesday: Made up a Chemistry exam
Last Friday: Geology exam, Chem quiz
Tomorrow (Tues.): Another Chem exam
Wednesday: Making up an Econ exam
Thursday: Gender & Identity quiz
Friday: Chem quiz
Jesus, it's as if I'm still catching up from having H1N1 or something. How gross.

Other than that things are good, and I've been spending time with lady friends instead of just the boys (and Stacey) in improv. It's surprisingly refreshing, given ow my entire childhood has led me to the conclusion that though boys are dumb, they're a lot easier to be around than girls, who are to varying degrees all batshit insane.

*rifles through notebook* Do I have any straight flavors for you today? Lessee... no! I've got some catching up to do it seems.

Becky's Shisha Kitchen!
Recipies of Delicious Smoking

I need a name for this one fellows! Yeah, you, the ones that leave ceaseless comments on every post. *sigh* I can dream, right?

_____?_____

Spiced. Chocolate. Rum. Is it a thing? No not really. But it's delicious in tobacco. Mix equal parts Chocolate, Irish Cream, and Pumpkin Pie and you're down for something Autumny, to be assured.
THE RESULT: Definite thickness to the taste. At first it's kind of like burnt chocolate or spiced chocolate which I'm a fan of. The Irish Cream is subtle, doing more for the texture than the flavor - and that is making it very creamy and even lightening it up. Chocolate and Pumpkin Pie kind of switch hit as the main component and that's okay.
It went over real well in my circle, if I do say so myself.

Chocolate + Pumpkin Pie + Irish Cream = ___Name me pls.___

Now get outta my kitchen.

Also! Just (i.e. while in the process of writing this) made an exciting purchase... snagged one of the finalists from the HookaH-HookaH [.com] Blend Off competition! Wasn't going to spring for the whole 10-pack of finalists (though by God you should if you have money I don't becuse they sound DELICIOUS every one) but I chose Mad Hatter for the sheer wet dreams factor of the ingredients/description. Also got a little 50g 5-er because they'd just sent me a 10% of coupon code. To include: Acai, Chai, Orange, Hazelnut and Spearmint. Whoo hoo! 6 guaranteed-to-be-perfect flavors for $25 including outrageous online shipping? I'll call it a win.

The Kitchen is Open

2009-11-12T13:23:00.000-08:00

It's funny, because, I took a longer hiatus after I got a NEW bowl than I did when my old one exploded. That's why it's funny.

I got swine flu. I went home and watched 5 Lifetime Original Movies in one day. I have been swamped ever since.

I went to an Alice in Wonderland birthday party upon my glorious return. I brought my hookah and it was a big hit, because the larger, in-house hookah was hitting like a cigarette. Like the burning end of a cigarette. That party was so drunk.

Shisha reviews!!! Remember how I do those?

HookaH-HookaH - Pumpkin Pie

In the box: Uber spicy! Mouthwatering actually. Like a pie. And the only pumpkin pie whose existence I acknowledge is my grandmother's so you know that this is good-smelling stuff.
In the bowl: NOTE - This will be my real-time reaction. Watch carefully: Tastes like nothing. Like musty nothing. I packed a small bowl, okay, bu where is the flavor? Where are the clouds? WHERE IN GOD'S NAME DID THE SMELL GO? -puff puff puff- Cut to several minutes later... Pumpkin Pie! You deceptive devil! After I was about ready to give up on you and shed nary a single tear, you pop up with this silky, spicy, delicate and true flavor. Like a fine, fine pumpkin bread, because it's not so sweet as pie. You were holding out on me Pumpkin Pie! And not everyone is going to be as generous.

star star star star star
Hookah-Hookah Pumpkin Pie: 4.5/5 stars.
And I stand by what I said in my Double-Apple post, that whatever H-H is putting in their pots to make shisha smell so good I wanna hit my mama, they better figure out how to make it taste at least half as good.
+ Chocolate + Irish Cream = _Unnamed Autumn mix_!

And now, what you may or may not have been waiting for depending on whether or not you knew about it... the debut of...

Becky's Shisha Kitchen!
Recipies of Delicious Smoking

First on the counter, we have my first-ever imagining, called "Date Night".

Date Night

What makes for a great date? Roses, champagne, a box of chocolates by the fire? EXACTLY. So what goes in to a bowl of Date Night blended shisha? I used all H-H flavors and mixed equal parts of Chocolate and what was intended to be Champagne, but since the company was out, I was left with White Grape. Put that in the bowl, and then sprinkle with an extremely light sprinkling of Rose. (Think rose petals not a 2-dozen bouquet).
THE RESULT: Rose is definitely a key player, now matter how moderately you use it. I think Rose tastes like soap and normally avoid it like the plague, but in this blend sweetness pops up like little bubbles on almost alternating puffs, and there's a creaminess overall that dosen't let Rose have its way with your tongue. A Champagne-style Date Night would definitely be less sweet, but the flavor it would bring wold be more prevalent. White Grape (which by my logic is just unfermented champagne, you know?) is fruity, which I like though, for a more even and again - less Rose-inclined blend.
Either way it's a very intimate smoke for an actual date night, and I hope that y'all try it and tell me what you think!

Chocolate + White Grape (or Champagne) + 1/16 Rose = Date Night!

Now get outta my kitchen.

Oh Hello There

2009-11-01T19:06:00.000-08:00

Wheeoo! By nothing but sheer divine providence, my last jaunt through Columbus landed me with AN EXACT REPLICA OF MY OLD VORTEX BOWL! Pretty neat, huh?

In celebration, I have smoked already, but this night I have to study for chemistry, and shouldn't spend any time at all on the internet really. I'll give you a hint though: Bailey's Chocolate and Sour Apple. Ye shall see.

ALSO last night (Halloween) my foster dog got hit by a car! He's fine. He just got struck by a van and then he ran all the way home at top speed and then let me clean all his wounds without even wimpering. He got hit head on and the only mark in or on him are cuts on his legs.
Basically, Tanner is made of adamantium.
We should put it on his page on the Canine Collective site: "Meet Tanner! He is an 8-month old shepherd/cattle dog mix with boundless energy and a love for cuddling and other dogs. Neutered, up-to-date vaccinations, indestructible."

How to Kill a Blog in 10 Days

2009-10-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, whatever I might have said before, DO NOT REPAIR A BOWL WITH RUBBER CEMENT AND THEN SMOKE FROM IT. From what I hear, if you heat it up, noxious fumes will kill you and you'll die.

I of course, have not actually smoked my repaired bowl, so I can't say I saw strawberries dancing with the Alice in Wonderland caterpillar after doing so. I can however say that when I returned to college from a break at home, my bowl had separated along the cracks. And as I sat applying more rubber cement my boyfriend and I pondered aloud, I wonder if there could be any adverse effects to heating this stuff. I turned to the label on my jar. It says:
WARNING: EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE. HARMFUL OR FATAL IF SWALLOWED. VAPOR HARMFUL. EXPOSURE MAY CAUSE ALLERGIC REACTIONS. CONTAINS: n-HEPTANE, NATURAL RUBBER LATEX. PRECAUTIONS: Avoid contact with heat, sparks, or open flame. Vapors can ignite explosively...

Now, the part of my brain that wasn't screaming "You are winning a Darwin Award as we speak" was considering this: All those awful facts are factual because of the n-Heptane. And once that evaporates out, i.e. the cement is dry, we should be in no trouble. To me, dried rubber cement, although not preferable, would also not give me screaming green scales or a horn growing in towards my brain.
However, as a writer whose medium is The Internets, a realm comprised entirely of total fact, I best keep my chemical ducks in a well-ventilated row and not even bother with the "I did this even though it could KILL me! Doesn't that win your affection?*" schtick.

So I suppose my famously long-winded point is: no bowl, no reviews, no blog. For now. I just got a paycheck though so I'll be ordering another soon. What I can do NOW is share with you some of the bowls I'm looking at!
What I have dubbed the "Tee-Hee Teacup" bowl.
Very pretty but only in black.
I can't live without another Vortex, or even it's little sister for a Genie hookah like mine. (Of course going for purple or that tempting "lime green" option.
Something just for Zia.
And something expensive but super cool (no pun intended since I hate puns).

Right now I'm just wishing the teacup and the replacement Vortex were on the same site. Paying more for shipping that for the actual item = mad bonerkill.

Made a full length post out of that! But bye for now guys. I'll miss you.

* Actually maybe don't try this at home.

Double your pleasure?

2009-10-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

Whenever I say "not much to say really..." I wind up going on a longer and longer tirade. But this time I mean it. I had a long weekend at home and I'm not in a spectacular mood and I have a review of a flavor that really made me pleased. So allow me to brief you on my lifespace and get to the thing that Google brought you here for:

- Catholic funerals: Dog-and-pony shows. Sit stand call response speak offer communion lather rinse repeat. Aye aye aye, can I just get to the mourning already?
- Tomboy blonde baby cousins: Freaking adorable. (Her mom: I told her it looks stringy. Cadan: It's not stringy it looks awesome.) She wants to play football. A million huzzahs.
- My current foster dog: Love him to pieces. Giving this one up will finally break my heart. But he deserves a great family and I know there's one for him.
- My ability to type: Dwindling by the day.

HookaH-HookaH - Double Apple

In the box: Can't place the smell. Apple juice? At least I don't smell licorice. Could just be denial. Maybe red licorice as a matter of fact? But at least not anise black.
In the bowl: Pleasant surprise! Across the hookah nation, Double Apple of any brand has been synonymous with Black Licorice. I banked on one online reviewer that told me H-H wouldn't follow suit. Then all my other flavors started bowing to the Anisian god and I thought my lofe was ruined. But you were right, internet peon! Hookah-Hookah Double Apple is SWEET! Slightly apply and just barely Rose-like over the back of the palate. I've always thought Rose tastes mostly like Purel but it plays very nicely with the muted sweetness. It's not as sweet, as bold, as ostensibly fruity as I tend to prefer, but I'm thrilled to the point of pants-wetting that this thick, ring-able smoke is also so laid back and true to taste.

star star star star star

Hookah-Hookah Double Apple: 4/5 stars!

My only complaint, a blanket statement to the H-H firm: It's time for one of your flavors to really pack a wallop on its own. You have something in those little plastic containers that smells like Candy Land, or an orchard, or my freaking grandmother's kitchen. Then all of a sudden when it's time to smoke, flavor decreases five-fold from smell. Why, H-H? I implore you, get that shit on my tongue. Don't be so goddamn coy.

MORE EXPLOSIONS THAN A "B" MOVIE

2009-10-15T07:16:00.000-07:00

Ok ok, I'm taking a brief hiatus (not that my readership at this point is anything but one big gaping absence of internet, but we'll pretend, for posterity.) Here's why.

Uno: I am leaving college for some days to go home, go to a funeral, be a general stress ball what with family I can varying degrees of tolerate milling about. I will not be taking my hookah because my mom is of the opinion that anything you have to light to enjoy besides a candle is to be judged under the harshest of... judgment. I don't need the drama and it's not like I need the shisha, sooo...
Dos: MY HOOKAH EXPLODED! Not really, but, here's the elaborate action sequence that took place in my room last night:

It was rainy and drizzly and windy and fricken cold so we decided to smoke in my room instead of on my porch.
There is a smoke alarm in my room! So our setup is to place a fan on a chair blowing out the screen door. Just behind the fan, the hookah is set on the ground. Just behind the hookah, on the ground or in a low-slung chair, a limited number of smokers sit and puff puff puff away. Heat and smoke get dragged lazily but effectively out of the room so you can do cool tricks 'n' stuff even better than outside.
Near the end of our bowl, luckily the coals weren't much to shake a stick at, THE FAN FUCKING FALLS BACKWARDS STRAIGHT ONTO MY HOOKAH!
Since the fan was blowing outward, and it fell backward, it sent hot coals and ash blowing straight up into the air. I got ash in my eye.
I heard a crash! My feet were wet! My eye was in pain. Even my boyfriend yelled a litle bit. Paper goods were scattered with glowing red things. My carpet is forever scarred.
My bowl, my precious Vortex bowl, my first, my presently ONLY, my free-but-ordinarily-$10+ bowl smashed into [only 3, very clean-breaking] pieces.
OH, and my only pair of white underwear got a hole burned in them. They weren't on my body tough, fortunately.

Out of adversity though, friends, rises triumph. And out of an artist comes a solution for when your only bowl breaks apart. With some Elmer's glue and some rubber cement, it was air tight again, but it didn't look very snazzy. But I am an ARTIST as I told you, and so... behold the snazziness!!!

Polymer clay is the medium, and I apologize for the quality or lack thereof... my camera has been kaput for some time now and I'm working with a webcam or nothing. And this webcam, see, it tells me things are in focus and then makes them not in focus.

What's neat about polymer clay is how you can bake it right on the bowl in the oven (on a low setting.) The bowl will definitely be able to handle the heat. Upon cooling, the clay isn't really sticking anymore but my remedy is a few shots of Elmer's glue and a nice coat of spray fixative. Is zupa cool, no?

In short, though, I'm still weirded out about using it right away, something tells me that pushing it onto the stem will make all the glue come undone and all the clay break and all of my tears pour out my face.

So I'll see you on Monday or something. Blaaah.
Have a good weekend and if you're out there, would you leave a comment? You can even flame if that's your thing. This is just a test.

Buzz buzz buzz

2009-10-12T19:50:00.000-07:00

I just smoked 2 bowls in a row (of the stuff I talk about, I don't do the wacky tobaccy) and I feel fine 'n' dandy.
Not much to say really, other than Lady Gaga's talk at the Gay Pride March shot a bunch of holes in my "I Can't Fucking Stand Her But Her Videos Are Candy" argument, leaving me immersed in a state of "Well She's Pretty Much My Cup Of Tea It Seems But WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS HAPPENING IN THIS VIDEO I'VE BEEN WATCHING IT ON A LOOP FOR 9 HOURS AND I STILL DON'T KNOW." Cause man, I freaking love GLBT-ism. Funnily enough, Meghan McCain has made my favorite argument on the recent developments thus far. Damn do I love a liberal Republican. Sometimes.
She is the one that, while on the Colbert Report, admitted that the Republican party "wasn't doing itself any favors" with the candidates it keeps nudging. She went on to say that most college-age kids like me were staying away from the GOP like the plague (paraphrasing) because of the face these candidates make for the party. I was transfixed. I love that she blogs. I love that on the same site, the Daily Beast, Glen Beck is likened to a snake oil salesman. That's all the Reps need in my mind... more bloggers and an inherent disinclination to take Glen Beck seriously.

Furthermore, I know nothing of nothing about politics so let's talk about shisha instead, eh?

HookaH-HookaH - Key Lime Pie

In the box: It's amazing how sour something can smell. I've never really experienced and so never realy thought of it as an olifactory experience outside of bad dairy. First whif there's not much of anything then your nose is like "WOWZERS! That's a sour lime right there!" Exactly like key lime pie, though. Yummy. Super-fine H-H rip aaas always. Pretty soon I'll stop mentioning it.
In the bowl: Not a punch-in-the-face flavor, but after it's subtlety it tastes pretty true. The smell has more power than the taste. After a few passes of the hose it gets... candle-ish? Not soapy per se, but not especially key lime pie-y either. Mildly disappointing. I want to try it with chocolate because of a delicious confection I had once. (Freeze the pie, dip in chocolate, serve to drooling onlookers.) I was eating green apple Sour Punch Straws at the time and sadly for the shisha, that was what was doing it the most favors. Windy as hell, or else the clouds would have been something to shake a stick at.

+ chocolate = Fair Fare 1, Chocolate-dipped pie!
(And a hefty 5 stars. The key lime flavor explodes all of a sudden when you add chocolate and it's a smooth, desery smoke.)
star star star star star
Hookah-Hookah Key Lime Pie: boosted to 3/5 stars cause it's just so damn mixable.

Hey guys so I'm eating Spaghettios and going to bed. This week is a 2-day week at school, for mid-semester break. "Wingo" as Dale Gribble would happily exclaim.

P.S. Internet... here's me!

Requiem for a Pom

2009-10-10T16:24:00.000-07:00

Ho hum. As I promised, I will tell you what happened to my hands, but I've been telling this story a lot lately and it gets less impressive by the day. If you'd like a zestier version, I will provide one only by request.

I work in a theater, and in our theater there is a fly system (set of ropes and pulleys that let you raise and lower batons, which are what things such as curtains and stage lights hang on.) Well one baton was flown in and some of the crew took the curtain off of it. This meant that the system was out of weight, and we had to fly the curtain back up with a disproportionate amount of weight gaining momentum on its way down. This is, unfortunately, the only way to get the weight back off the system.
Anywhoosles, my boss assigned me and some greehorn dipshit to fly out the bound-to-be unruly baton. I started pulling downward and idiotface was holding onto the part of the rope that was moving up. Momentum started to kick in and jackoff began holding onto his part of the rope and riding on it like a fucking merry-go-round. He let his feet come off the ground. THAT SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN. YOU RIDE UP ON THAT SHIT, YOU FLY UP TO THE CEILING WITH THE CURTAIN ROD AND THEN, OR BEFORE THEN, YOU FALL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE BASEMENT AND YOU DIE FOREVER. I gave him a hurried lecture to this effect.
Well, not 10 seconds later, the rope starts taking of again, I cannot hold it myself and moronpants isn't touching it. "I lied," I say. "I lied, please hold onto it please help me please hold on." I tell him to lock it but he doesn't know what the locking mechanism is because he is incompetent. The rope is shooting through my hands at this point. Whatever happens, the system comes to a stop without crashing at the top and bottom, so I lock it and then go to examine my chewed up hands, littered with the 4 deepest rope/rug burns I've ever seen, for my refusal to Google image it.
In short, my hands were fucked to hell but are healing now, and I work with butts-for-brains.
ALSO! I was bitten by a ball python. Thing is like 2.5 feet long and it was munching all up on my thumb. That didn't incapacitate me, though, it just makes me feel badass.

Hokay, so, life-wise, pomegranates are my absolute favorite [raw] food and and I thought it would follow that it would be my favorite shisha-wise. Because of my adoration of them I was psyched as hell to break open this pot.

HookaH-HookaH - Pomegranate

In the box: Smells about right! Very juicy, very fine, smells like a pomegranate tea blend more than just juice but it smells very real and I'm happy of the absence of any outrageous purple colors.
In the bowl: GODDAMMIT. For the first few puffs I get nothing on the inhale and LICORICE on the exhale. No secret pomegranateyness is revealed while blowing the smoke out my nose and over my palate, as is the case with some shishas. The licorice isn't as strong as in 7-Spice but that lingering anise taste always spreads like roofing tar over the back of my tongue no matter how strong. After some time I started imagining some sweetness on the inhale, but anise still wiped it out completely. I extinguish the essentially whole coal and dump out my bowl, really glad I'd only packed half of it. It starts to rain (really). I dream of the coming weeks when my precious pomegranates will be popping up in produce sections in my nick of the woods. I contemplate actually putting seeds in my bowl when next I want to bother with smoking this.

star star star star star
Hookah-Hookah Pomegranate: 2/5 stars.

I'm willing to try wine in the water (or directly in my vortex bowl) or dousing my shisha with pomegranate limeade or SOMETHING. I don't want to give up on this otherwise smooth, cloudy tobacco, but I want to know why the scrumptious authentic pomegranate tea smell runs and hides when it comes time to stop sniffing and start smoking.

_ P.S.: HEY H-H! I know I might be new to this, but enough is enough! You're supposed to be the new-agey, flavor-rich shisha! You are not made in Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, you use fancy plastic containers that are specially designed to be air-tight for me, and you use no semblance of traditional art. That's okay! I am a college-age white girl, and I make purchases based on what I like, not on what has the most authenticity or "cred."
_ And hell, have you searched "shisha reviews" on Youtube lately? Those people are predominately other white people, usually overweight, and acting like thugs or wannabe badasses. They're the patrons of the hookah bars I can't stand - the ones playing oppressively loud rap and serving chicken wings they may or may not have bothered to remove from the KFC bucket. You think they could locate Jordan on a map? I assure you, they don't care about authenticity either. I'd imagine half of them smoke ganja out of their hookahs when they're not broadcasting on the intarwubs.
_ PUT DOWN THE ANISE, H-H. Pick up an ingredient that's on the back of my Sour Punch Straws or my fruit snacks. I'll come right out and say it: the buzz is also not what I bought my hookah for. So just go with what tastes good. Round peg --> round hole time, agreed? Come out with a "black licorice" flavor if you must but if you do, make sure that NONE OF THAT MOLASSES TOUCHES ANY SHISHA BUT YOUR LICORICE SHISHA!
Sincerely,
~ Becky

Sigh. 8 flavors to go, 8 dreams to be broken or made. And god help me, I have a Double Apple on the way.

7 Spites

2009-10-07T12:31:00.000-07:00

Sigh. Let me iterate my feelings on Hookah-Hookah 7-Spice with a haiku.

My disappointment
Seven spice, full of anise
Where's the other 6?

I elaborate:
I hate black licorice. I hate it. Ever watch me stumble across a licorice Jelly Belly? I spit profusely regardless of whether or not there's a napkin on hand. I had heard a review that said H-H 7-Spice was balanced and cinnamony. "Like a more herbal red hot." The reviewer said he was expecting a lot of anise but there was surprisingly little. I was so excited. Alas...

HookaH-HookaH - 7-Spice

In the box: Initial cinnamon, then almost immediate licorice. Neither is too face-melting though. Ultra fine shred, ultra wet, funny little nuggets.
In the bowl: Mellow, fine, almost sweet at first but not spicy. LICORICY. Anisey. The three people I was smoking with were all about it, but I couldn't finish the bowl. On a few hits it was a bit cinnamony going in, but only vaguely. Then on the exhale it was all licorice, getting more intense on subsequent exhales after passing the hose. I had to call it quits. I took half of the bowl out (the coal hadn't been anywhere near that half yet) and mixed in some of my Nakhla mint and was able to finish in relative peace, though the clouds made a sacrifice. The mint's flat out coldness, the "winter in my throat" effect as my one friend put it, countered pretty nicely the relentless, crawling, sticks-around-like-mold effect of the becursed anise.

+ mint = Tolerable!
hypothesis: +cinnamon +chai = Actual 7-Spice?
star star star star star
Hookah-Hookah 7-Spice: 1.5/5 stars,
because I need to mix it but haven't mixed it much yet.

The Era of the H-H 10-pack

2009-10-06T16:23:00.000-07:00

IJUSTGOTAHUGE10-PACKOFSHISHAINTHEMAIL.
It wasn't unexpected or anything, I mean, I'd bought it days prior, BUT I am excited about it nonetheless. It means that despite my ripped apart fingertips and my ever dirtening room and my, oh, schoolwork, I will be ceasing all human function to smoke my hookah at the drop of a hat.

In this package of 10 Hookah-Hookah 50g pots there was: Pomegranate, Blackberry, Rose, White Grape, 7-Spice, Pumpkin Pie, Key Lime Pie, Margarita, Chocolate, and Double Apple. I also purchased a little 50 of Irish Cream when I was doing Gallery Hop in Columbus the other night. Let's light that one up, shall we?

HookaH-HookaH - Irish Cream

In the box: Juicy! I made the mistake of popping it open just to smell it before I got it home, and when I did get it home, I discovered it had leaked out all into my pocket. At least my coat smells delicious now. The smell, when you put your nose to the stuff, is very strong, almost too strong. But it is what it is, I could tell it was an Irish Cream. Originally it came in little nuggets of the finest-shredded shisha you'll ever come across. Broke those up and got excited.
In the bowl: Yum! Not nearly as strong as the smell and I think I'm glad. Clouds are fantastic. In-going and aftertaste both very creamy and true-to-flavor. At a point, it tasted kind of soapy and less full-bodied but I think that's because I had leftover Nakhla from the night/smoke before (like I said! Half of it doesn't even dry out!) and I had pushed all that into a corner of my bowl. Very satisfied on the whole. This juicy, runny shisha made me glad I have a vortex bowl to let me forgo rigorous stem brushing and get off with a simple rinse. ALSO, the benefit of the fine rip on this and reportedly all H-H flavors is that with even preliminary temperature control, you get equal heating top-to-bottom and minimal burning. Nooo more wasted or incinerated shisha, huzzah!

star star star star star
Hookah Hookah Irish Cream: 4/5 stars
+ Chocolate + Pumpkin Pie = _Unnamed Autumn mix_!

You know what we should all do now? Watch more Lady Gaga Videos. I mean homework and room cleaning.
But I mean look how crazy she is!!! So... many... leotards...

Nakhla and Hello

2009-10-06T13:36:00.000-07:00

First review and first we meet! I'm not being very loquacious with my keystrokes because my hand are littered with horrible ropeburns. It's a fun story! I'll tell you when I can type properly.

Anyway, here's a quick-n-dirty rundown of the first boxes of shisha I ever received.

Nakhla - Mint

In the box: Thick cut. Pretty sticky. Lots of stems though. Aromatic but not overtly minty unless you put your snoot right in there. Mildly sweet if you're just whiffing.
In the bowl: Cold! Minty but not devastatingly minty but again, super cold and refreshing. Haven't smoked it alone and don't think I should. I've been happy to just give it half the bowl.

+ vanilla = Ice Cream!
+ vanilla + strawberry = Different Ice Cream!

Nakhla - Strawberry

In the box: Same cut, sadly. Not the juiciest, but smells scrumptious! A bit candyish but I don't mind.
In the bowl: Splendid, sweet but not too strong at all. Probably the only one I'd smoke alone because it's the right blend of interesting and underwhelming. A bit more candy-y than true to taste but I love it. I definitely ran out of it the fastest!

+ vanilla = Strawberries & Cream!
+ vanilla + mint = Different Ice Cream!

Nakhla - Vanilla

In the box: Same huge stemmy cut. Pretty sticky and smells of a very serene vanilla. Not like opening a bottle of extract or anything. Dee-lightful.
In the bowl: Smooth and extra-creamy. Gentle and lovely to mix, smooths out anyone whose path it crosses. Not too bad by itself just not to exhilarating. Pleasant. Smile times. Arguably the most mixable flavor ever.

+ mint = Ice Cream!
+ strawberry = Strawberries and Cream!
+ strawberry + mint = Different Ice Cream!

Overall Nakhla is moderate. Smoke/clouds is moderate, smell is moderate, buzz (which was only there for the first few days I noticed...?) is moderate. I don't like the cut. Lots of gnarly stems and it burns on the top of the bowl while shielding the bottom of the bowl from heat and leaving it untouched. Not a bad starter pack, mainly because it's as if those flavors were born to be together. Not a repeat buy unless I see a unique flavor that I tell myself I can't live without. Or boredom. Boredom could bring me back. For now I'll just file Nakhla under "Ol' Reliable" and move onto something zestier. Something that actually comes in a resealable package maybe!

star star star star star
Nakhla in general: 2.5/5 stars

Becky Blows Smoke

Keep on Hookin' in the Free World

THINGY

Catch-Up

I'm Going on Vacation!

I Detest Thinking Up Puns for Blog Titles

If I Opened a Smoke Shop...

Tay-kin care uh biz-ness

I Have Something to Salute, Besides America

Do you watch Hell's Kitchen?

Hey dere! Whatcha been dooin l8ly? (Updated, now with links)

**You Are Reading This 2 Weeks Ago**

Tedano, Ryukyu, Ohio, Oh My!

Legend of Becky's Aneurysm

Good job, self

Things That Mike Has Googled

Laaayla.... er, Laaaya.... Layna? Lanya?

Actually Lazy Sunday

Firsties and Lasties!

POIT

As the Prophecy Fortold

Lap-Barf With Tea

Jeeeez...

I DON'T LIKE GRAVY. There. I said it.

Before the Fattening

Mwa ha ha. 3 bowls.

Breeeeaaak!

Wanted: Snappy Title for smooth, Thanksgiving-ripe blend

The Kitchen is Open

Oh Hello There

How to Kill a Blog in 10 Days

Double your pleasure?

MORE EXPLOSIONS THAN A "B" MOVIE

Buzz buzz buzz

Requiem for a Pom

7 Spites

The Era of the H-H 10-pack

Nakhla and Hello

You Are Reading This 2 Weeks Ago