How to Kill a Blog in 10 Days

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.

MORE EXPLOSIONS THAN A "B" MOVIE

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.