Hehehe, I had to turn off the sound. Because I'm a german native speaker, listening to it was just too distracting...
But after that it was some seriously histerical stuff :D
I don't think that there's much to worry about. I think it was quite obvious what you were doing. I for my part appreciated it very much. I really like your attitude... and your cues :-)
This gallery (by "Simple") has two very interesting ferrule designes in it (spliced and ultra-short)
http://fotoalbum.web.de/gast/livchits/Russian_Cues
Unfortunately I don't know the materials :(