Rainbow Smoke Asian Cigarettes?

one of my favorite things to do is research. people in my life know that if it exists on the internet, i can find it. and it's fun for me. i can spend hours looking for the most obscure things, and i find it very calming.

today i saw a post on a dear dear friend's facebook wall. my friend, pixi, is well known for being the queen of all things rainbow and her friend had shared a very cool image of some rainbow smoke, and a very beautiful cigarette pack. it seemed to be photoshopped, but it piqued my interest and it turned out i was far from the first person on the internet to rabidly search for this amazing product.

unfortunately, this image is, in fact, photoshopped. but wait! the smoke in the lower image is what's photoshopped. the top image? totally real. that is an actual pack of cigarettes. don't believe me? check these out:

yep. this is a real pack of cigarettes. and a real carton.

the cigarettes are from china, and they're called "08 pride" (pride is the english translation of the word 自豪 or "zìháo".) the barcode number is 6901028025607 and the packaging included the web url pride56.com, which is no longer an active site. they were manufactured by the chongqing tobacco industry co., ltd. in chengdu city, sichuan and include the customer service phone number 800-8866622. and yes, i said were.


from what i can gather (bearing in mind i don't speak chinese and things DO get lost in translation!) this particular design has been discontinued as the original company was overtaken. "08 pride" cigarettes are still manufactured by china tobacco chuanyu industrial corporation in chengdu city, sichuan. they seem to have retained the same phone number.

unfortunately, "08 pride" cigarettes don't look like that any more. the design is similar, but lacks the rainbow-y holographic-y accents.

and no, neither edition of this cigarette blows rainbow smoke. however, if blowing rainbow smoke is what you're after, there are about a billion filter tips and e cigs to sate that desire.

peace out and smoke 'em if you've got 'em!

parents and teachers and snow days oh my!

i've seen soooooooo many parents complaining about having their kids home cause of the snow days. think about all the stress and frustration you're feeling, and how much you'd simply like to throttle them every now and then.. and then picture there are 20 of your child (or children) in your house all day every day for 180 days a year, in five-day increments.

now, if you can afford it, go to hallmark and get a nice thank you card and a visa gift card (even if its only five bucks) and send it to your kids teacher, and write in your own words how much you appreciate the time, effort, money, and dedication they put in to raise your child for 7 hours a day 180 days a year.

if you can't afford it, make a card by hand. have your kid make a card and then you sign it. just say "thank you." i can assure you, that acknowledgement of the difficulty of nurturing and educating other peoples children, at a 25:1 ratio--the fact that you took two minutes of your day to appreciate them--will mean the WORLD to your kids teacher. a simple little thank you note.

trust me on this one. it means a lot. im engaged to a teacher--and when she gets a nice note from a student or parent, the first thing she does is text me a picture or read it to me or bring it over. because it means that much to her, that somebody thanked her for the very difficult job she does. please please show your kids teachers that you know what they sacrifice and how hard they work, and that you appreciate it. not just at christmas or the end of the year. a quick note now and then. a simple "thank you for making the year go so smoothly for [childs name]" or "thank you for having patience with [childs name]".. if you can't think of something specific, just a general "thank you for taking care of my child during the hours i can't be with him/her" will remind that teacher why they do what they do. and t when they finally are able to stop grading papers and writing lesson plans and planning class parties and documenting their teaching for the government and the million other things they do every day all day long, that little reminder will also make them much more pleasant towards their fiances.

trust me. do this simple thing, a tiny little note! the significant others of teachers around the world will thank you for it, and i know the teacher will appreciate it too.