Sunday, November 25, 2007

"This is Barbecue"

It is an open secret that my other blog has been more active recently. However, because I also want to entertain those for whom finding my other blog remains too daunting a challenge, I will now proceed to sharing a completely random anecdote.

When I was in Regensburg, there was an intern from Belgium, (let's just call him Mr. G...) who loved to smoke good pot. As much as he liked to indulge himself in aforementioned (in-)activity, Geoffrey had admittedly a more difficult time in actually getting the pot:

In Prague, at four-thirty in the morning, a dealer had cut him in on four centimetres of supposed premium hash compressed in a saran-wrap tube; for twenty euros, each five euro'd centimetre would actually have seemed somewhat a bargain, at least when high at five-thirty in the hostel; alas, fate would have it that the there-puffing Geoffrey went quite fast from the declaration, "mmm good shit" to "strange shit" to "this is not shit!" as the first one-millimeter layer of shit wore through to the tobacco filling.

Alas for Geoffrey, this would not be his last close call with Mary Jane; an even closer one indeed is what motivated this entry and its clou, which has since become a kind of redewendung for me. (It was no doubt partly this final adventure that sent Geoffrey packing back to Belgium, somewhat closer to the centre of European weedendom):

I also had a friend called P... (this time omitted because I actually have forgotten his name) who was considerably more successful at finding sources than poor old Geoffrey. My adventures with P... also form the butt (or shall we say, blunt) of several anecdotes, but alas, these cannot be the topic of today's post. It suffices to say that on one evening, when Geoffrey and I were again forced to face the quality (or lack thereof) of our navigation skills by not finding a certain party, which is a complicated way of saying 'one evening when we were lost in Regensburg', we randomly met P... . Now, not only did this radically increase our chances of actually getting to the club before the party was over; it also put tender, teary hope in Geoffrey's eyes of finally, as he put it, "connecting to the Galileo satellite" (evidently, besides being a fan of substance, Geoffrey was also a great fan of the European Union). Indeed, no sooner did I share with P... Geoffrey's preferences, than P... nodded understandingly and pulled out a small satchel and some papes, and proceeded to roll one. Though Geoffrey's vision was obscured by joyous, expectant tears, I saw clearly that what P... was rolling looked more like dried carrots, onion and ginger root than some of that real "sticky-icky". When confronted by my nagging doubts , P... shot back: "ja, es handelt sich hierbei um die beste Imitation, aus Indien. Fast so gut wie echt, und zehnmal so billig." "Fuer deinen Kolleg ist das eh gesunder", he added with a smirk, while handing the roll to Geoffrey. (Oh! And shall we mention, that as fitting of a tragic hero, Geoffrey had skipped most German classes that he had been offered by the university). Poor Geoffrey was thus left with his tears of joy and a hand greedily patting down his coat for a lighter. Soon, it was lit and the first expectant tokes were taken; we all eyed him questioningly, foreboding the final, tragic fall of our hero. Mouth agape, we were not dissappointed.

Said Geoffrey:

"This is not shit!... This is barbecue!"

So I leave you with this post tonight, which was not really brilliant, but also, I hope, not completely barbecue.

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