Black Lamb

Names for cigarettes

November 1st, 2006

Backwards, baccy (loose cut tobacco), bad boys, bay-bays, baynards, bines (shortened from Woodbines), blem, blemdem, browndizzle, browndem, boges, bogeys, burn, butt, cancer sticks, cancers, cats, cigs, ciggies, ciglers, ciggy wiggy dillies, chop chop, clove, club foot, coffin nails, cowboy killers (only for Marlboros), dangs, darts, deathsticks, digs, dings, dirt, drag, dugans, durries, fags, freedom sticks, gaspers, glory sticks, gorts, grants, grits, grout, gwan gwigs, hairy rags, hausersticks, jacks, jewport, joes, lamps, loosey, lung darts, magic dragons, nackles, nai, nic sticks, niggerette (a Menthol cigarette), pizza pops, rollies, ronnies, scallywags, scoogie, sin sticks, smigarette, smok, smokey yreats, smokes, smooth one, snouts, standard issue hairpiece, steeze, stoages, stick, stogies, stokes, stompies, sweet cancer, tabs, tailors (machine rolled), troggs…

Posted by: The Editors
Category: All Smoking & Drinking Issue | Link to this Entry

Ode to Tobacco

November 1st, 2006

Thou who, when fears attack,
Bid’st them avaunt, and Black
Care,1 at the horseman’s back
Perching, unseatest;
Sweet when the morn is grey;
Sweet, when they’ve cleared away
Lunch; and at close of day
Possibly sweetest:

I have a liking old
For thee, though manifold
Stories, I know, are told,
Not to thy credit;
How one (or two at most)
Drops make a cat a ghost —
Useless, except to roast —
Doctors have said it:

How they who use fusees2
All grow by slow degrees
Brainless as chimpanzees,
Meagre as lizards;
Go mad, and beat their wives;
Plunge (after shocking lives)
Razors and carving knives
Into their gizzards.

Confound such knavish tricks!
Yet know I five or six
Still with their neighbours;
Jones — (who, I’m glad to say,
Asked leave of Mrs. J.) —
Daily absorbs a clay3
After his labours.

Cats may have had their goose
Cooked by tobacco-juice;4
Still why deny its use
Thoughtfully taken?
We’re not as tabbies are:
Smith, take a fresh cigar!
Jones, the tobacco-jar!
Here’s to thee, Bacon!5

—Charles Stuart Calverley (1831-1884), in Verses and Translations, 1862

1 An echo of Horace: “Black care sits behind the horseman.”
2 Matches that stay alight even in strong wind.
3 A clay pipe.
4 Cats are repelled by tobacco juice.
5 A tobacconist in Cambridge, England.

Posted by: The Editors
Category: All Smoking & Drinking Issue | Link to this Entry

Childhood in Upstate New York

November 1st, 2006

Although the scale of living was not high, there was no dire poverty, and everybody could find work of some kind. In our community there were only a few servants, and we boys felt proud when mother engaged our first “hired girl,” named Maggie, at the wages of two dollars a week. Even after that my mother, unwilling to let any one else take over, did most of the cooking, leaving it to Maggie to make the beds, sweep the rooms, and watch out for us children. Each housewife was locally famous for some special dish, like chocolate cake or doughnuts, and regularly made that her contribution to church suppers and Grange parties. My mother’s was Saratoga Chips, and when these were being prepared, they took precedence over everything else in the home economy.

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Posted by: The Editors
Category: All Smoking & Drinking Issue | Link to this Entry

Come sirrah Jack ho

November 1st, 2006

Come sirrah Jack ho,
Fill some tobacco,
Bring a wire and some fire,
Haste haste away,
quick I say,
do not stay,
shun delay,
for I drank none good today.

I swear that this tobacco
Is perfect Trinidad-o;
By the very very Mass,
never never was
better gear
than is here,
by the rood,
for the blood,
it is very very good,
’tis very good.

—Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623)

Posted by: The Editors
Category: All Smoking & Drinking Issue | Link to this Entry

Names of cocktails

November 1st, 2006

Cocktails with beer
Black Velvet, Boilermaker or Jimmy & Guinney, Irish Carbomb (also known as Belfast Carbomb or just Carbomb), Depth Charge, Dr. Pepper, Dogs Bollocks, Flaming Dr. Pepper, Cerveza preparada, Michelada, Chavela, Mexican Piss, Red Eye, Skippy’s, Snakebite, Tom Bass, Yorsh

Cocktails with bourbon
Manhattan, Mint Julep, Missouri Mule, Old Fashioned

Cocktails with brandy or cognac
B&B, Brandy Alexander, Crunk Juice, Dirty Water, French Connection, Incredible Hulk, Sidecar, Sin, Stinger

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Posted by: The Editors
Category: All Smoking & Drinking Issue | Link to this Entry

Cigareets, Whuskey and Wild Wild Women

November 1st, 2006

Chorus
Cigareets, whuskey and wild wild women
They’ll drive you crazy, they’ll drive you insane;
Cigareets, whuskey and wild wild women
They’ll drive you crazy, they’ll drive you insane.

Once I was happy and had a good wife
I had enough money to last me for life
Then I met with a gal and we went on a spree
She taught me smokin’ and drinkin’ whiskee
Chorus

Cigareets are a blight on the whole human race
A man is a monkey with one in his face;
Take warning dear friend, take warning dear brother
A fire’s on one end, a fools on the t’other.
Chorus

And now good people, I’m broken with age
The lines on my face make a well written page
I’m weavin’ this story — how sadly but true
On women and whuskey and what they can do
Chorus

Write on the cross at the head of my grave
For women and whuskey here lies a poor slave.
Take warnin’ poor stranger, take warnin’ dear friend
In wide clear letters this tale of my end.
Chorus

—Tim Spencer, 1947, originally recorded by Red Ingles and the Natural Seven

Posted by: The Editors
Category: All Smoking & Drinking Issue | Link to this Entry

Popularity of cigarettes

November 1st, 2006

The idea that smoking cigarettes came popular because of the First World War is wildly beyond historical reality. A war did bring cigarettes into favor among western Europeans and Americans, but it was the Crimean War between Britain/France and Russia, 1853-56 that was responsible. Smoking tobacco in paper — cigarettes (small cigars) — was then the vogue among Ottoman Turks, Greeks, and other Levantines. British and French soldiers in the Crimea picked up the habit, brought it back, and cigarettes became all the rage soon afterwards in mid-nineteenth century Europe.

—Internet posting by “Sidney”

Posted by: The Editors
Category: All Smoking & Drinking Issue | Link to this Entry

Gimme That Wine

November 1st, 2006

My wife got tired a’ me runnin ’round,
so she tried to keep me home;
Well, she broke my nose and hid my clothes,
but I continued to roam.
Then she finally hit my weak spot —
threatened to throw my bottle out.
Well, from the basement to the rooftop,
everybody could hear me shout:

Chorus
Gimme that wine (Unhand that bottle) (3 times)
’Cause I can’t cut loose without my juice.
Gotta have hot lucy when I go walkin’ y’know.

Well, one day while crossin the avenue,
a big car knocked me down.
While I was stretched out tyin’ up traffic,
crowds came from blocks around
Now the po-lice were searchin’ my pockets,
before they sent me to the funeral parlor,
But when one o’ those cops took my bottle, Jack,
I jumped straight up and commenced to holler:

Chorus
Gimme that wine (Unhand that bottle) (3 times)
’Cause I can’t get well without Muskatel.
I only drink for medicinal purposes anyway.

Well, now, one real dark and dreary night
as I was staggerin’ home t’ bed,
Well, a bandit jumped from the shadows
and put a blackjack ’side my head.
That cat took my watch, my ring, my money,
and I didn’t make a sound,
but when he reached an’ got my bottle,
you could hear me for blocks around:

Chorus
Gimme that wine (Unhand that bottle) (3 times)
Beat m’ head outta shape, but leave my grape.
Watch, ring and money ain’t nothin’ but don mess with my wine, Jim.

Well one day my house caught fire
while I was layin’ down sleepin’ off a nap
An’ when I woke up everything was burnin’
with a pop an’ a crackle an’ a snap.
Now the fireman chopped up my TV set
and tore my apartment apart,
But when he raised his axe to my bottle,
I screamed with all my heart:

Chorus
Gimme that wine (Unhand that bottle) (3 times)
So I can drink one toast before I roast.
No sense goin’ out half baked, might as well be all tore up.

You can take all those Hollywood glamor girls —
Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth, Bridget Bardot, n’ Lucille Ball,
and all them chicks an’ line ’em upside the wall
Put a gigantic jug beside ’em,
an’ tell me to take my choice.
Well, there’d be no doubt which one I chose,
the minute I raised my voice.

Chorus
Gimme that wine (Unhand that bottle) (3 times)
Well those chicks look fine, but I love my wine.
Now some folks like money, some like to dance and dine,
But I’ll be happy if you give me that wine.

—Jon Hendricks, recorded by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, 1959

Posted by: The Editors
Category: All Smoking & Drinking Issue | Link to this Entry

Terms for inebriation

November 1st, 2006

Ampin’, amped, bachin, bagged, bashed, basted, belted, bent out of shape, blasted, blitzed, blotto, bombed, boxed, buzzed, canned, cocked, corked, cranked up, crocked, faced, feelin’ shitty, floating, foiled, fried, gagged, gakked, ganoobies, gassed, geeked, geekin’, gone Borneo, gooned, gone, grogged, gurped, gurning, hammered, heated, hooted, jacked, juiced, langered, lashed, lit, loaded, muddled, mullered, pickled, pissed, plastered, plowed, polluted, potted, primed, pumped, ring dang doo, ripped, rollin’ or rollin’ hard, sauced, scattered, scuppered, shellacked, shit-faced, sketching, skunked, slaughtered, sloshed, smashed, snockered, soaked, sopped, soused, sparked, speeding, spracked, spun, squashed, staggering, steamed, stiffed, stinko, stoked, swamped, swinging, tanked, toasted, totalled, trashed, tuned-out, twacked, tweeked, twisted, walloped, wankered, wasted, wide open or awake, wiped-out, wired, worked, wracked, zoomin’ •

Posted by: The Editors
Category: All Smoking & Drinking Issue | Link to this Entry

Consumerism run amok

November 1st, 2006

BY BLACK LAMB

Again we present an unparalelled opportunity for Black Lamb readers and would-be consumers: exclusive access to a superb gift cornucopia, the Whole Whog Catalog, first published in 1980. Take advantage of the original catalog prices by ordering today.

For this special issue, we offer an elaborate gift suggestion.

Heavenly No-Host Bar
After a day of hell, unwind and transcend it all with this unusual home bar ensemble which is an ecclesiastical extravaganza. Rest on fun-fur kneeling pads in front of a low “altar rail” bar and have your drinks served in a “holy grail” goblet by a bartender in real bishop’s robes and mitre while you enjoy the stained glass “cathedral window” light show, with its pulsating rays straight out of Michelangelo. Accent the scene with fun and functional accessories like the “Quaker” shaker, the Episco-Pail™ ice bucket, “shepherd’s staff” swizzle sticks, “Holy Roller” coasters, “swaddling clothes” drink cozies, a “serpent of Eden” corkscrew, “crown of thorns” party hats, or the amazing talking Bar-Nun™, which is really a miniature breath analyzer — just exhale on the vent in her habit and she’ll tell you when to stop by discreetly whispering “Don’t be a martyr.” Choose from a staggering assortment of drinks and premixed cocktails: have a Bloody Mary, a Saint Thomas of Quinine, or a Christian Brothers with a holy water back; or for something more exotic try a Tabernacle Daiquiri, a Mormon Nailer, a San Franciscan Friar, a Solomon’s Temple, an Easter Sunrise, a Last Stupor, an Immaculate Concoction, a Vodka Stigmata, or a Rusty Nail. For novices, there’s the nonalcoholic Saint Francis the Sissy and Juice for Jesus. There are plenty of bar-top snacks, so if the spirit moves you, reach for handful of cheese-flavored Circumsnaps™, high fiber Holy Wheats™, double-cross-shaped Crucifixion Thins™, or zesty Jesus Crisps™ congregation-tested communion wafers. Use our recipes to make your own festive treats, like Baptismal Fondue, Blood Sausage Hors d’Oeuvres, or Pontius Pilaf. For musical inspiration you’ve got the Rock of Ages™ bar-mounted compact jukebox with 36 favorite secular selections including Sins You Went Away by The Temptations, Halo Goodbye by the Satan Dolls, Behind Her Pew by Peter, Paul and Mary, The Lone Manger by Joltin’ Joe and the Magi, He Laid Me on the Altar of the Lord by The Singing Nun, and It Ain’t the Meat It’s the Methodist by the Original Sins. For those who get too much into the spirit, there’s our Born Again™ morning-after tablets to ease the pain of penance. And don’t let your guests take it all for granted. After all, there’s no host. Once they’ve been served, just pass the collection plate for tax-deductible contributions. They’ll be talking in tongues.

Bar, kneeling pad, bishop’s outfit, light show, 12 goblets, accessory set, 48 assorted premixed cocktails, snack sampler and recipes, jukebox, 36 morning-after tablets:
Only $498.95

Order today, with check enclosed (shipping is free!), through Black Lamb, P.O. Box 4531, Portland OR 97208-4531, USA. Please allow six to eight weeks for delivery.

All entries are from the Whole Whog Catalog, by Victor Langer, Leslie Anderson, and Bob Ross, with a preface by Chevy Chase (New York, Times Books, 1980). •

Posted by: The Editors
Category: Wretched Excess, All Smoking & Drinking Issue | Link to this Entry