So its hookah blog time! It used to be ONLY hookah blog time, but  I spend quite a lot of time on various  great hookah forums which in a a moment I’ll tell you about and link you up!  I had written in the last 2 years tons of posts here, but such are the rules of cyberspace that  WordPress wouldn’t allow an archive but only selected edited shortened posts .

Once there were only 2 main hookah forums , one run by a certain hookah selling company, and one indie. The indie became gigantic and became not only that but quite the authority and final word on hookah with many great members who know how  to fit a square even into a round hole! Many people who had or were learning engineering or had a great background in tool working especially metal working offered ideas on how to fix or create things to add on the hookah experience.

I am talking about “The Hookah Forum. com”

http://www.hookahforum.com/ They are totally independentof  any tobacco shisha producers or sellers or hookah sellers which is not the general case—most of the many hookah forums you find belong specifically to the online company site, not a bad idea at all, but they are prejudiced of course to their own. Not so “HookahForum.com”.

Along came” Hookah Domain” http://www.hookahdomain.com/ with great graphics and a very well set up site technically and blossomed overnight to a few hundred members and  then snowballed so fast their membership that  they have reached the same ammount of members as HookahForum.com. Now we must remember that many people sign up  and never post, just reading the site, or many stay for a while and stop comming back so as to total actual members we only have the numbers.

What I saw right away by “Hookah Domain” forum was the friendliness and togetherness of the members from the start. If I am not mistaken it MUST be since they have many more women members. That has to be the one and only reason, no?

Next in number with also a nice forum but less members is 

“Hookah Pro” forum http://www.hookahpro.com/forum/ . Very nice forum also as the previous 2 independent.

Now, rather than  give you the links to all the hookah forums which are dependent on their own home brand company and spend  a few hours doing so, just go to any search engine and type in “Hookah Shisha” or “Hookah products” etc, and a large list of companies will come up and many do have limited forums with sometimes no more than 5 posts or maybe  a hundred max.

So now you know why I haven’t been posting here so much for a matter of months, also my pc broke down and I was sans pc for a month.

The hookah forums are loads of fun, the discussions of various shisha flavours, opinions on them, and where to find etc, etc. Go see the 3 above.

Hookah table

“Where’s the hookah,blog?

“Poker” quick lighting coals are the new addition to Smoking-Hookah.com’s great line of charcoals.

http://www.smoking-hookah.com/product/15541001.asp

Please take a look at the rest of the site for some great buys!

Now if you got at least $650.00 in Xmas money, you can look on this link below and see the line of “Meduse hookah pipes”. Hand made and so thoroughly crafted they are said to be the Rolls Royce of Hookahs. I wonder how much does it cost to replace the glass if broken?

http://www.medusepipes.com/?c=craft&OpenMenu=1

I would imagine that the blokes who buy them take the price off of taxes for “business equipment”. Meduse backpack hookah!  

Even Joe the Plumber has his own specially designed pipe.

Or the more traditional real Iranian  hookah with attached shisha head of metal

I have a similar looking hookah with (probably) a decal of the same Sultan exactly, but  its an Egyptian style head!

Some “Night music ” 4U

The first song is Arabic style and Greek guitar called “Majnoun” Arabic for “crazy” First verse “I want to sit and smoke the nargilah with al my friends”.Words in Hebrew

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jkJo_zTeu_w

The rest of the songs are mainly in english and might suprise you.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=r1DcnS_hoRM

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zei4hJFnQGA

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-8ZxuMC7onM

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iv8p1AyDHfo

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=De1wNLEGQ30

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GV2vZZzh4Hk

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-eN-ScHMdC0

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=p028ShWNTLs

Yeah, my PC broke down. First I had to fight beurocracy to get the company who sold it new and genuine Explorer XP to take it, then ship it, wait, wait and wait, . Then have the PC shipped back.

I just recieved it 23 hours ago so expect me to be soon my regular  hookah smoking manic hookah blog blogger soon….

http://www.smoking-hookah.com/category/32001/

Check the above link to see and order the great new tee-shirts from smoking-Hookah.com

“Indian Chief Smoke-too-much”

There is a great sketch by Monty Python’s Flying Circus called
“The Travel Bureau ” Sketch :

Man enters travel bureau :

Travel agent : Hello, I’m “Bound-for-Adventure”.

Tourist to be : Hello I’m “Smoke-Too-Much”.

Travel Agent : Well….You’d better cut down a little then.

Tourist : What?

Travel Agent : I said, “Smoke-too-much so you’d better cut down a little then. I’ll bet you have people saying that to you all the time”.

Tourist : “Actually I never noticed it”.

Travel Agent : “Well, have you come to sign up for one of our adventure tours then?”

Tourist : (Goes into a 4 minute long monologue rant about typical British Tourists overseas).
Classic —————— ————–

Author Mark Twain quote on extreme smoking :

“Excessive smoking is when you smoke 2 cigars at the same time.

Lord Byron on hookah :

“Divine in hookah,
sublime in pipe,
When trimmed and tapered,
Sweet and ripe….”

The problem with Lord Byron was that he stuck everything and anything into any pipe he could find.

I found him to be so Upper-Class indulgent that I could not finish the biography.

Smoking-Hookah.com the large international online company can fill all your hookah needs. Look at this link and see them at their new site!

http://www.smoking-hookah.com/category/1205001/

Check these realy big Iranian hookahs out on the video at 8:04

<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/oA6ThJTE290&hl=en&fs=1″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/oA6ThJTE290&hl=en&fs=1” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

________________________________________

You Tube downloads of the film which can be played as a list

The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

 Find the whole movie on YouTube

the first link is a smaller screen   and the second link much better and larger

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CjjoDiMdI_E 

or

<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/CjjoDiMdI_E&hl=en&fs=1″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/CjjoDiMdI_E&hl=en&fs=1” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

 (Permission granted by author) :

I was reading a book this week about various first hand personnal stories and views on Calcutta,India from the time it was first built by a private British citizen 200 plus years ago until the squallor of today.
One short chapter was written by Fanny Parkes in 1824 and she has a mention on hookahs. No copyright infrigements here as the editor of the book states that short portions can be used for reviews. looking online, I found many searches available for this “white english woman” who became Indian in culture after many years.
http://www.google.com/search?q=fanny+parkes&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1
The illustrations she drew of her travels were amazing.
Quote : author Fanny Parkes

“Begums,Thugs, and White Mughals” 1824 (”Thug” originally a Bengali word)
“To a person fresh from england, the number of servants attending at a table is remarkable. We had only a small party of eight to dinner yesterday, including ourselves;
three-and-twenty servants were in attendance! Each gentleman takes his own servants in number from one to six , and each lady her attendant or attendants ,as pleases her fancy.

The HUQQA was very commanly smoked,at that time in Calcutta : before dinner was finished , each man’s pipe was behind his chair.The tobacco was generally so well prepared that the odour was not unpleasant, unless by chance you sat next to a man from the “mofusill” {(suburbs) unlike American suburbs etc, those were what would be called”the sticks” where “hillbillies “of India! lived}, when the fume of the spices used by the up -country HUQQA “Bardars” (Huqqa Bardar is the private servant tending each hookah) preparring the tobacco ,rendered it oppresive and disagreeable.”
Images by Fanny Parkes :
note :
shisha was preparred by the hookah bardar using dry leaves of tobacco, rinsing and sometimes soaking with water, squeezing out most of the water leaving the tobacco clump moist, spreading out the clump and adding the “Sahib”’s (Master’s)favourite spices or tastes and adding honey in rare cases since the tobacco was wet and required no addition of gycerine like we use.
Wouldn’t be suprised if there are many accounts of hookah use from the 17th or 18th century first hand.
I remember around 4 pages of a Rudyard Kipling short story where he wrote in long and great detail about the preparrations, the hookah bardar made, and how people were smoking. I think the Sultan in the group if I remember ground up a large pearl and it was added to his shisha!!! Look online , it could get interesting.
“If you don’t know where you came from, you won’t know where you are going to”.

Hookah 1 Shisha Bubbly Man of many Faces