The story: I was in the Hallmark store getting cards etc. for the kids today. There was an older man there - I’m guessing mid-70s - and he had in his mouth something that looked like a yellowish plastic cigarette holder, canted about 45 degrees down, and ending in / attached to a disk-shaped container. The container was maybe 3 inches in diameter and maybe 3/4 of an inch to an inch thick. It was down in front of his face / chin.
Honestly, the only thing I could think of was it was some strange device to allow him to smoke a cigarette without any of the smoke escaping. But there was no aroma clinging / wafting around him - even a smokeless-ashtray sort of thing wouldn’t get the smoke he exhaled.
Could it have been some sort of odd medical device? It didn’t appear to be connected to an oxygen source (which was my next thought).
Very strange.
I couldn’t look closely enough without staring which would have been rather rude.
Haven’t seen the movie, but doing a google image search gives me hits that look nothing like what I saw. The mouthpiece the man was using was perhaps a bit longer (though of similar shape), but it ended in a disk-like object.
Imagine a can of tuna (the thing was shorter than a tuna can), with a 4-inch straw sticking out the middle top. Tilt the straw to one side so that it’s maybe 60 degrees off of vertical. Then stick the far end of the straw in your mouth. (tuna milkshake - YUM).
I was kind of thinking e-cig, too, but I have no idea what the disk-shaped container could be. I’ve heard of some people modding their e-cigarettes (they have lousy batteries) with battery packs that have higher-quality rechargeable batteries, but consumer electronics modification doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a 70-year old guy would be into.
Interesting. I’d seen the e-cig thread and was amazed at the technology but didn’t read too much as it’s not a topic that affects me.
Looking at the photos on the wikipedia page on e-cigarettes, they show a couple of designs (one that looks like a regular cigarette, one that looks for all the world like a pen). Definitely not what the gentleman in question had in his mouth. Though I suppose they could be attached to the tuna-can thingy for added (not sure what).
My first inclination was to think he had some sort of medical device, though from my own knowledge of oxygen delivery systems it didn’t look terribly effective for that purpose; even if he required filtration - well a cigarette-holder mouthpiece wouldn’t work too well!
I suspect the “tuna can” had some sort of grille / vent on the bottom - that’s the very vague impression I got. I wish I’d been a bit less polite and stared!
