Sunday, November 20, 2016

fags by spiros for a formally fifth time

heya


it has been, look you see, that people have been entertained by posts entitled a variation of Fags by Spiros on this blog for just north of half a decade now. wow. the years really do pass you by when you stop to consider it.

some of you would probably be troubled to read the fifth segment of a story without knowledge of the prior four. for you, then, i have obtained the links to the earlier episodes. here you go, one, two, three and of course four. happy reading. and, with all of you presumably that wish to be up to speed, on we go.



as you can sort of see with semi-clarity above, Spiros has only gone ahead and gotten me a packet of the most popular fags for the gentry available in the Ukraine, hasn't he just, to be sure. 

Davidoff Classic is what they are, should that image be a little bit too dark. sorry, it is only a month or so that i have had my new phone with a camera welded to it and i haven't quite worked out the intricacies of flash settings and so forth.

yes though i have worked out how to take Commodre 64 style pictures with it, although it is not like the Davidoff is any clearer in that superior format. here you go, a look at least, with some other fags what Spiros brought back for me from one of the most eastern parts of Eastern Europe.



indeed, as is the way of his infinite kindness and generosity, Spiros did as point of fact bring me back some lovely, lovely Marlboro Red as well as the Davidoff Classics. nice one man.

and what do Marlboro Red cost in the nation of Ukraine? are you ready for this - 75p a packet. that is not a mistake, seventy five pence a packet. that compares to the £9.70 (nine pounds and seventy pence) a packet of Marlboro Red costs here in the UK. oh no, we are not over taxed or ripped off here, are we?

in the above picture you can see the standard, stock warning (smoking is bad for you, it harms your health, it kills otherwise normal immortals, etc) in a language easily understood by the good people of the Ukraine. over on the back are the standard picture warnings, done to make it visibly clear to the illiterate that smoking is bad. 



what you thought looking at the above, if you are a fellow smoker, is exactly what i thought too. over in the Ukraine they have completely different pictures to the ones we get on packets. also, over in the Ukraine they seem to get much, much better picture warnings than we do.

do i have a favourite on the above set of images? yes of course. we will get to that now, but first if for some reason you wished to view a selfie of me enjoying one of them Marlboro, here you go.



yeah, i need to work on lighting, flash, etc. there's a bit of a Colonel Kurtz off of Apocalypse Now thing i have on the go there. which, now that i think on, is not so bad.

i'm not at all sure that "favourite" is the right word, but one of the more interesting things i have noted with these image warnings on cigarettes is the preoccupation they have with how smoking affects your sexual skills and ability to reproduce. for some reason they tend to hammer on about the idea of how cigarettes just might knack your sperm, make you infertile or give you some sort of erectile dysfunction syndrome.
 
here's a look at the latter two, in reverse order, with one pack from the UK and one pack from the Ukraine.



should smoking indeed make you infertile - and i have not read any evidence to say yes or so and thus will sit on the fence - then it's quite strange that they are not actively encouraging everyone to smoke, since we are supposedly overpopulating the planet with our proclivity to procreate. bring the tax down, this Hammond chap, and bring control to population numbers, then.

in respect of the Ukrainian image above, my (considerably) better half makes an interesting point. we assume the point of the image is to say that if that lady smokes then she will have broken ovaries and will not be able to have children, or if you like shall be infertile. if that's the case, then for what reason is it that she bought a pushchair, let alone ask why she walks around with it?

what warning image is on the pack of Davidoff Classic? some chap in hospital.



and yes, as usual whenever i do a post on the subject of cigarettes, whilst how bad they are is debatable i do know and appreciate that they are most decidedly not good for you. and so i would encourage each and every one of you reading this to not smoke, for what my social commentary is worth.

with that in place, onwards to me having a try of these Davidoff Classic.

i received some comment, advice and guidance from someone about Davidoff. details of this shall come next, but the important thing is that in respect of the information i got i felt obliged to open the packet of them up in the trendiest, most hip and with it and fashionable place i could find. so here's me opening up the packet in the doorway of the official Apple store down town.



i know someone who is presently engaged in some form of emissary work in one of the central to eastern regions of Europe. when i informed them of the fact that i had Davidoff Classics they were most excited. they told me that these were the number one brand of choice amongst the trendy, the fashionistas and the image conscious in central Europe. this, i am led to believe, is due to a rather mistaken idea that "Davidoff" is a truncated or if you like abridged version of "David Hasselhoff", which much of central Europe believing he to be the very personification of style.

my feeling is that those white filters on the cigarettes are ones which are normally only found on fags designed for the rather more female kind of lady market. i suspect, then, that Spiros went into a store and asked the proprietor to sell him a packet of fags for "men who like men and want to show other men that this is the case when they see them smoke one".

alas, no, i was not approached by any gentlemen as i had one, but if you want to see me smoking one of them, here you go.

 

i am indeed wearing the legendary Zama jacket in the above image. this is the jacket, for those of you not in the know, that young Zama procured for me from the back of Johannesburg's main taxi rank. it's a Levi's one, or at least that's what it says on the partially correct sewn on label. Zama assured me that it would withstand the ice and snow of England. i keep testing it and finding it to be short.

are Davidoff Classic fags any good? no, but yes. yes because they are free cigarettes, and here in England these are not to be overlooked. also they were a gift of love off of Spiros. no because they have a rather coarse and try taste. it's all that "feels like toilet paper" filter stuff they have on the go; a phenomenon one would normally associate with French fags.



the above is, presumably, the nicotine and tar levels of Davidoff Classic written in the format preferred by the people and indeed the authorities of the Ukraine. no, other than a rudimentary guess at the numbers, i have no idea what that all translates as.

many thanks once again, then, to Spiros for his exceeding kindness with his fags. i do rather look forward to his next international voyage and seeing what cigarettes he finds for me next.

remember - smoking is bad for you and those around you, don't do it, etc.


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



No comments: