How to save a Pipe (hint: juicy fruit)

Recently I bought a pipe on eBay. It's a good pipe - a cool pipe. The kind of pipe not many people have, that you like to carry around because it's big and fun and looks weird and has that "I'm cool because I smoke something esoteric" vibe about it - sort of like the hooka before every high-schooler and their moms started smoking them (heyo!) It came in the mail a few weeks ago and I've been dying to try it. Here's the picture I bought it from on eBay:

my pipe, posed all sexy like against a faux-stucco wall

I found out from the not-very-friendly man working in the tobacco shop on 16th street that this pipe is actually called a "wine pipe", because the farmers used to put wine into that secondary small compartment on the bottom. This flavored and cooled the otherwise dry and harsh tobacco and made for a more pleasant smoking experience, sort of like a hooka you could carry around without you without having to worry about spilling it, or attracting a bunch of high-schoolers and their moms.

But the pipe doesn't make me cool. Not just because I'm a big nerd, not (just) because my next purchase on eBay will probably be a nintendo power glove. Not because I only know about this pipe because my brother's best friend has one, and not because the depths of my geekiness are beyond the redemption offered by so simple a tobaccania.
The pipe doesn't make me cool because the pipe is broken.
The beautiful birch stem is cracked, right down along it, and trying to smoke it is like trying to...um...breath through a straw that has holes in it.
A straw attached to a bowl full of burning tobacco, to be exact.

I should mention that I wasn't screwed - the listing said that the stem was cracked, but it made it sound like it wasn't such a big crack, and that the pipe was still smokable, which it might be if you've got the lung capacity of a good year blimp and the sucking power of a hoover sport utility z. What can I say - I was desperate for a cool smoking thing. You understand.

I know, right?

The solution has been to cover the crack in chewing gum (it wasn't actually juicy fruit - that was just a hint. It was orbit wintergreen or something like that.) I then wrapped a layer of toilet paper around the stem of the pipe, so as not to contaminate the birch wood, or something, and wrapped the whole thing in electrical tape. What's left is a pipe that looks exactly like the one above, except that the stem is now black and sort of plasticky looking. I'd show you a picture, but I don't have one - I probably should've documented the entire process, like a good blogger, but I didn't so I guess you'll just have to imagine it.

This pipe will probably smoke wonderfully - a preliminary sucking toking drawing on the pipe reveals that no excess air is getting in, so we should be good to go. I think all this goes to prove is that the gods of the pipe world won't let a nerd like me smoke a good vintage German pipe without making sure it's been thoroughly defiled and nerdified first. Maybe I'll call it Darth Pipage - more tape than birch now, twisted and evil.

But, regardless, I have a plan to get them back: just tonight, with the help of my minion, we purchased another pipe on eBay of the same sort. This way we're sure to have two whenever you come over to visit, whoever you may be, and we can both share in the great pipe smoking experience without having to pass the pipage betwixt us.

Sweet sidekick of smoking superbity!

So come on over, and we'll give it a try. But bring some gum, just in case.

And now for something so unrelated I can't possibly understand why I'm putting it in the same post: check out this cool reading speed tester thing called "Zap Reader!" I just read EAP's last post at an ambitious 675 wpm, and I have to confess it didn't make much sense that way. It was better (but less fun) around 500, but anyway try it out. Try it with something like the dictionary, or a phone book maybe, or a long entry in Wikipedia, or the morning news, or whatever. I don't even care. Just try it. All your friends, and everyone cool, are definitely doing it.
And smoking wine.