Some Clarifications On MRN’s Second Edition

After reading comments about my post on the second edition in boards, I’d like to set a few things straight and offer some “reading advice” to the, few cigar smokers commenting, or rather whining, on two issues.

While most of the comments have been supportive and positive of the hard labour and arduous tenacity by the author, the two issues misunderstood about the new edition are its supposedly high – make that : prohibitive – price and it’s low publication numbers.

I believe some people like to put things into my or the author’s mouth.

They have concluded that the retail price will be outrageous. And printing will be so very limited only the “elite” can afford it.

If people can still read, I have never quoted the retail price and I wrote  the priority is printing the first 2,000 books for the Frankfurt Book Fair. I never wrote, and MRN never confirmed, that the book will be limited to 2,000 copies.

Maybe their attention span was not long enough to finish the two last sentences of my blog post, so take your time – what is it you don’t exactly understand of them ?

” The intention of the book is to preserve information for posterity which will otherwise be lost. It is not a commercial project and monetary gain is not the motivation.

MRN has told me in person that he has not seriously thought of the final number of books printed, distribution channels and/or retail price. Getting the first 2000 books published in time for the Frankfurt Book Fair is his first priority for the moment. “

Let me quote two posts from another boards here of as an example – persons who obviously read the entire text and understood the concept :

Oliverdst : Re-reading the last paragraph of the article I assume there will more than one kind of book:

“MRN has told me in person that he has not seriously thought of the final number of books printed, distribution channels and/or retail price. Getting the first 2000 books published in time for the Frankfurt Book Fair is his first priority for the moment.”

Very expensive books – this is not a rule – usually have 2 or 3 different editions (kind of paper, signed or not, format…). I remember the following book as a rule: http://www.fahad.com/2006/11/p…books-available.html

I hope the one mentioned in the article will be the expensive one. Maybe there will be a “cheap” one with the 4 volums like the 1st edition.

Well observed, Oliver.

Sam a : I think its nice that the quality dictates the price rather than the price dictating its quality.

Precisely.

As to the book being “elitist and only for the wealthy, etc blah blah hot air” –  funny how people, or shall I say a “handful of Taliban-like egalitarian zealots” nowadays feel that the world owes them.

I can still remember when I first worked as a Bank officer at the Deutsche Bank in 1973, after graduating from a 3 year training, my monthly salary was DM 1.091.-, a pretty high salary at that time given the average clerk made only around DM 600.- per month.

The full set of the German equivalent of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Brockhaus, retailed for about DM 7.000 – 8.000, many months my salary.

Of course, not many people, except only the super well-off could afford a set of the Encyclopaedia. Very impressive looking for displaying purposes at home by the way.

Yet no one in Germany in 1973 said the Brockhaus/Encyclopaedia Britannica was produced exclusively for the elite and the wealthy, robbing ordinary folks of their natural born human rights to free knowledge.

How funny.

If you cannot even read, what good is a book for you, be it cheap or expensive or exclusive ?

Why bother ?

Or is it that you just do not want to miss the new vogue toy to brag to others that you have the very latest expensive looking MRN second edition book yet do not want to pay the proper production cost ?

Why smoke good cigars then ?

My Take On Comments in some forums on MRN & the II Edition.

Oil into the fire ??

Closing the door with a loud bang ??

If some or rather, the usual suspects, think that is the case, so be it.

Mind over matter – I don’t mind and they don’t matter.

Here’s my personal opinion on comments posted recently in some forums :

MRN ( and his work ) is a controversial  subject in the cigar world.

While the overwhelming majority respects his unique contribution to cigar research and literature as well as his pursuit of the highest quality possible in a book, he is perceived and criticized by a vocal minority for being “elitist” and “keeping a book away from the common cigar smoker” or more broadly : “the masses”.

The rumoured price of the II Edition or the bubble created by the price inflation of the I Edition have not helped calm the waters – it has had the opposite effect in some quarters.

A ripple effect I have felt myself, having been impersonated in forumsand viciously attacked with denigrating comments from “BOTL” referring to me personally and to my blog in some forums.

BTW : the word BOTL itself makes me want to puke in this context, so hollow and deceptive it is when referred to these Rat Of The Leaf scum.

BOTL my ass.

Being a friend of MRN and posting about his work has long placed me in the crosshairs of this vitriolic “ROTL” minority.

I’d like to document some of these more blatantly stupid, offensive, provocative and/or openly racist comments.

Let’s start with the easy & funnily stupid ones.
Last year I posted about the final update on the II Edition.

Please go to the comment section and check out “Bambini’s” comment and my reply to all his pestering :

http://flyingcigar.de/startseite/final-update-on-the-ii-edition-from-hong-kong/

Here’s his cigar bio credentials ( posted on UK CF by himself ) :

I’m Bambini and I work in a psycho. department (no, I can’t read your mind).
Started smoking cigars over the past few months after a holiday in Cuba. As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m looking to probably only smoke a cigar every month or so, for financial and health reasons.
I’m working on developing a (very) modest collection of around 15 cigars for now.
I’ll probably only smoke a cigar every couple of months or so.
The thing is that most of my cigars will probably be Chirstmas/birthday gifts that I won’t smoke immediately.

After pestering me some more with several obnoxious & stupid comments plus follow-ups by mail contact on price & MRN, Bambini didn’t think twice about making a complete fool of himself by begging me to delete his … first name :

I’m not trying to be narky, but kindly remove the comment you wrote which includes my first name. As you’ve established, I work in a mental health setting and this means that I largely have to be careful what personal information I put online – I have quite an uncommon first name, so I do try and be cautious about what I put out there under my real name Leixx

So while this is more or less par for the course and a fine sample of a nut posting away in public & then wanting the toothpaste back into the tube, the last post on the II Edition has really shaken the proverbial rats out of their holes so to speak.

All of the virulent comments and mails I received went straight to the trash bin, which I don’t mind.

What I do mind, however, is the deliberate obstruction/destruction of public threads by these nut cases using unwarranted, offensive, provocative and racist tones.

An informative thread on FoH was rudely invaded by “athome” a clown intelligent enough to compare Beethoven to Hitler to MRN – a guy with 30 posts there and no cigar history other than belligerent BS. Or so I thought then.

Here his “intellectual contribution” to a, so far, balanced thread :

I seem to remember the same sort of comments were made by Hitler …. but I doubt anything he accomplished could be termed a masterpiece.

Reply by a member : Totally awesome that you managed to bring Hitler into this discussion.  Godwin’s law.  Took 5 pages though.

athome : If he’s tabboo on here I’m sorry …. I didn’t know.

Me :  If it would have been Wagner … at least I’d have understood – but poor old Ludwig van … WTF come on you humourless joker …
Mods please delete the comments and/or lock this thread – Thanks.

athome : Learn to read through threads trolly-boy!

Me : Naw, you’re just another ” Proud member of the International Brotherhood of People who Contributed Nothing but Wasted Our Whole Lifetime Grumbling and Criticizing on Things We Do Not Remotely Understand.” society.
Too dumb to read, too quick to post and too stupid to stop digging the hole – the shoe fits you and your brotherhood well …
Go ahead, make me laugh some more while I enjoy a cigar or two …

So what had been an informative thread for the large majority was closed/deleted due to these repugnant, offensive and deliberate remarks by one loony clown.

On the UK Cigar Forum the discussion was also dominated by abusive, racist and demeaning language.

See : http://www.ukcigarforums.com/showthread.php?15440-MRN-2nd-Edition

Being a ( passive ) member there I posted two replies, one with an original text from MRN to cheap fuckers whining about the bamboo case and explaining MRN’s support for the earth-quake victims in Sichuan where it is produced ) and a last one cancelling my membership due to comments like these :

What an Arrogant fucker…

And I couldn’t care if they were made from Gopher wood re-cycled from Noah’s Arc, they’re still fucking ugly!

Say he is making a 100% markup at £3000, he will be making much more than that I can assure you

how long until the Chinese black market is selling Nim Nom Nee book that look identical but are £50 at donington market.

just emailed a guy on alibaba says he can get me as many as i need for a fiver!!!!

So, as I suspected old Ronie boy is keeping a chunk…

And then expecting people he couldn’t give two hoots about to cover the cost of his inner circle and to subsidise his outer circle.

At least he’s actually admitting it now.
WHAT A CROCK!

All above comments copied from a CA thread mentioned below.

One particularly aggressive poster, among many, at UK CF happens to be “Tippexx”.

What can you say about such a thoughtful contribution :

Which from the test pages I’ve seen so far has the same artistic qualities as a 1950s edition of the Radio Times and support texts which read like they were put together by a Chinese waiter …. but as long as you’re willing to swear that the Emperor is wearing his clothes, you can have one.

He also posts on Cigar Aficionado’s forum ( Language Warning no longer required as that thread has been deleted by now. )

“Tippexx” became involved in a discussion there with another poster who exposed those racist and offensive comments and called him out as being the same “athome” clown who provoked the deletion of the thread at FoH.

No coincidence and no mystery to me when both “athome” and “Tippexx” use not only the same signature on both forums but such idiomatic pearls like trolly-boy – he used it with me on FoH and again at the UK CF :

What I do object to however is the pre-launch braggadocio delivered by the trolly-boy that’s trying to convince me that something I haven’t seen is already a masterpiece of photography, print production and scholarship.

I’m a design professional, and so far the Hansel and Gretel furniture and the pdf test pages haven’t passed the Tippexx ‘So what?’ test.

Hopefully the real book pages will be cleaner, brighter and the layouts better put together and the support texts not written by someone fresh out of the Benny Hill Chinese Menu School of English.

His reasons at Cigar Aficionado for being such a ROTL have been deleted by now, but  were worthy of a dirtbucket scumbag.
Not bad for a self-professed “design professional”.

Let me finish with the real joke of having a UKCF Moderator asking ( or rather : requesting  – no please or thank you of course ) for an invitation to purchase the II Edition – he doesn’t have the balls to intervene there but has the cheek to ask me for the invite elsewhere. Here’s my reply :

Fuck off Stevieboy.

So let the little people continue to talk through their asses by all means and let them drown in their own cesspit of jingoism.

Success, after all, is the best revenge!

Nino