Welcome to Vape Nation. Illustration by Henry Chamberlain.
Editor’s Note: Comics Grinder strives to cover all aspects of our culture, including the rising trend in vaping. Well, we’ve come a long way in a few years. Here is a guest column by Collin DeSoto on some things to be mindful of regarding good care and maintenance of your vaping device.
Guest column by Collin DeSoto
Every vaper knows the hassle of their device breaking or not performing well, especially if they don’t have a spare at hand. But there are steps you can take to make your vaping device last longer, ensuring that it’s not only working correctly when you need it but saving you money too.
While vaping is cheaper than smoking traditional cigarettes, no one wants to be left out of pocket when their latest investment stops working before they’ve barely had a chance to enjoy it. With the cost of a single vaping device potentially being in the hundreds of dollars, it pays to take care of it, ensuring it continues to work for months or even years.
Try out these seven tips for making your vaping device last longer:
Avoid a burnt or dry hit
You’ll know if you’ve had a burnt or dry hit – it’ll cause a terrible taste. A burnt hit can lead to the coils heating the wicking material, which not only produces a taste you want to avoid but can damage your device too, severely reducing its lifespan.
A dry hit is usually caused by vaping when there’s either no juice or too little juice to heat. Make sure you keep an eye on the amount of e-juice that’s in your device before you switch it on and as you use it. A burnt hit can also happen if you hold down the power button for too long, causing the coil to overheat.
Regularly clean your coil
A coil that’s covered in gunk not only affects the flavor of the vape but how your device functions too. To really increase the lifespan of your device, take the time to keep it clean every few days, with a particular focus on the coil – you’ll get a consistently better taste too.
Most devices will come with cleaning instructions and you can even purchase a cleaning kit, ensuring your device remains fresh –as long as you remember to use it frequently.
User lower levels of VG
When you choose an e-liquid, the base will be a combination of propylene glycol (PG) and vegetable glycerine (VG). You can get varied combinations to suit exactly what you’re looking for. Liquids that have a higher content of VG will result in a vape that feels smoother and thicker and produces more vapor.
While some vapers prefer high levels of VG, it can damage your device, reducing its lifespan and clogging up coils quicker. If you really want your device to last longer, try e-liquids that have higher levels of PG. Or if you want to stick to your current combination increase how frequently you clean your coils and choose a device that has larger coils to prevent gunk gathering.
Vape in short bursts
Having your device constantly turned on will damage it and lead to it overheating. If your aim is to increase the length of time before you need to pay up for another device, short bursts are the way to go.
Inhaling deeply or several times close together means the coil gets too hot and doesn’t have enough time to cool between vapes. Try to give the device a chance to cool between hits and take your finger off the power button.
Store it correctly
If you’ve gone through a few devices and you don’t usually give a thought about how they’re stored, it could be time to change your habits. Ideally, your vaporizer should be stored within a dry case that’s kept out of direct sunlight. Through proper storage, you can increase how long your device will last for.
Recharge your battery
How often do you recharge the battery on your vaporizer? You shouldn’t let it drain completely but you also shouldn’t let it overcharge either, so you need to keep an eye on your battery power as you vape to boost how long the battery will last.
Try to get into the habit of charging your battery every time you store your device.
Disconnect your cartomizer and battery
If you’re not going to be using your e-cig for an extended period of time, such as when you’re asleep, disconnect your cartomizer, the section that contains the coil and e-liquid, from the battery. Even when not in use, it can continue to drain the battery a little and through disconnecting you can increase the time between necessary charge, helping to make your vaping device last longer.
Movie Review: ‘Get Out’
When I first saw the trailer for “Get Out,” I was hooked on the idea of a racially explicit horror movie. I had already written a script in my head of what I had expected to see. I took for granted that this would be a wry and revealing look at how African Americans can still be seen as the Other. And that is definitely there. We also have the opposite where it is those who are subjugating who are seen in the same way, as some menacing Other. And I expected some dark comedy mixed in. With all that in mind, I wondered, not if, but how far this movie would cross the line.
What “Get Out” does best is keeping to a true horror movie pace, gradually building up. Instead of a frog that is in a pot of water gradually set to boil, we’re all expecting a black man to be boiled alive, so to speak. No, there are no black men being boiled–just a metaphor. In fact, there are far more gruesome things up ahead. The remarkable thing is that there is a certain level of restraint that allows writer/director Jordan Peele to navigate deeper into our collective racial history than some of us out there are ready to go.
The opening scene alone is loaded with plenty of food for thought. An African American young man is walking through an upscale, and presumably white, neighborhood. He is talking on the phone and joking with his friend that he’s lost in what he calls with a whiny accent, “the suburbs.” As he proceeds down streets with tony- sounding names like “Peacock Street,” a white sports car pulls up blaring an old 1930’s song, “Run, Rabbit, Run,” a sly reference to the classic WASP novel, “Rabbit, Run,” by John Updike. The young man attempts to avoid the car by walking in the other direction. Ultimately, he can’t help walking towards the car whereupon he’s knocked out and thrown in the car’s trunk.
Chris (Daniel Kaluuya)
We next see an interracial couple preparing for a trip. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams), are about to meet Rose’s parents. Chris is hesitant and Rose asks him what’s the matter. Chris asks Rose if she mentioned to her parents that he’s black. Rose laughs it off and reassures him that’s it’s not an issue at all. It’s a tender moment. It shows that Chris is vulnerable while Rose is far more in control of the situation. The acting is quite believable. Rose seems clearly in love with Chris. But the focus leans towards Chris as we see events through his eyes. He’s convinced he’s entering the lion’s den and we easily sympathize.
The focus never leaves Chris and, once they arrive at the family estate nestled in the woods, the attention heaped upon Chris grows. It begins with the first meet-the-parents round. Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener make for deliciously out-of-touch parents attempting to be hip. If only that was all that lay in store for our hero. Red flags go up one by one. There’s a quick aside by the dad, “Oh, that room leads to the basement. We closed it up due to a buildup of black mold.” Yikes, in the context of a horror movie, that says it all.
Things are gonna keep steadily getting freaky from here on out. And so they do, some artful and some more in line with standard-issue tropes. One horror chestnut, the comedy relief sidekick buddy, is given new life and put to fine use here. Lil Rel Howery as Rod Williams, one of TSA’s finest, adds another dimension to the narrative. While he may rob the movie of some of its more provocative and scary potential, that seems to be the right approach for a project that is unleashing so many racial issues. Overall, we end up with a number of compelling scenes and images without resorting to a heavy hand.
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Filed under Horror, Horror Movies, Movie Reviews, movies, Race, Race Relations, Racism, Satire
Tagged as African American, Entertainment, Horror, Media, Movie Reviews, Movies, Pop Culture, Race, Race Relations, Racial Issues, Satire, Social Commentary