(Google 'Canute')
Friday, March 31, 2006
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
I'm smoking a fag . . . .
*Never really considered myself to be a smoker until always making sure l had some on me (otherwise end up tapping).
There are many things that make me want to stop - morning 'dog-breath' (nothing beats it more than another fag), being out of breath on the football pitch if l've overdone it too recently, the cost in my impoverished state (extradoubly guilty when monies are owed) but the kickback came when signing on at my new doctors' surgery.
Amongst other questions were - how many cigarettes do you smoke?
At a guess 50-100 a week, but l don't really count.
This was viewed with some alarm by the practice nurse who went on to inform me that l would be a burden, particularly as l got older.
I was mildly apoplectic with this. Considering my own injuries (l'll spare you a full blokeish account) then they are all through work, sport and misadventure but likely par for the course and significantly less than what older generations put up with. For instance, there are very few people walking around with couldn't-stop-a- pig-in-a-ginnel legs or bent double retired binmen of yore. Ergo despite all the gripe we are doing quite well.
ln our productive lives and fag taxes we contribute plenty and on the whole don't mind doing so.
Further - l actually enjoy a fag. Not always, but then do we always enjoy football, sex, food, work or the company of our friends or family?
Fags are a small but significant part of my life - night out, breaktime, when writing this stuff and as offering to the god of late buses. They are an icebreaker in social situations; in fact, the most sociable people l know tend to be smokers - in the smoking carriage on trains there was a genuine easy-going camaraderie; almost a bond. This particularly now as we stand (huddled outside stations, etc) enjoying a defiant puff or two with anyone from scabby youth to old ladies, and my favourites - healthworkers, catering staff and, actually, business types. All of 'em really, and now semi-united in tacit recognition that we may be a dying breed. FKoff!
Band of smokers.
Smoking performs a variety of small tasks, often it seems to do with connectivity -
a last request and penultimate act of humanity at the firing squad,
troops in squalor making tabs out of teabags,
a peace offering after a petty squabble or run-in with a perp,
a sole light for an ex-inmate from a long term institution.
The fagtapper, friend-in-need-pain-in-the-arse or easy going bonhomie, sharing yours with those who are closest to society's arse-end, merely asking someone for a light - 'you hev fire?' of the immigrant worker, 'thanks, love' from the doll uptown, the please and thankyou, cheers and ta of it all - Smoking! the musical, perhaps.
Other people aren't all that bothered either by the scourge of the smoker. Sure, some have taken on their privilege to play oneupmanship, others recognise its use as a disciplining tool and many go along with the prevailing climate and succumb but people on the ground and in many pubs and clubs aren't all that bothered about the smokers evil habit.
Actually, when asked, as is the polite thing to do these days, people are quite civil (maybe always are but never really noticed - could be a sign of the times) and don't mind. Especially, for instance, when bus stops are cold, cramped and uncomfortable. One lady told me that she has never smoked but likes the smell which brought some ironic cheer.
l'd be happier if we smokers didn't leave our detritus everywhere but in amongst the rest of the trash, poor facilities, boarded up and degenerated social fabric then it's nuisance and odd charm is lazy rebellion.
What is perhaps more annoying is the continual barrage of public service broadcasts - truly antisocial and a pet hate. Uncomfortable stations with piss-poor toilets (alright when new but inadequately ventilated and disgusting in summer and aged. See Dewsbury bus station for details of the 'old' and Wakefield ought take note for the coming years).
What about accepting that people who occasionally smoke are actually civilised and provide ventilated areas? And proper ashtrays.
Some of the hardest working, get-on-with-it type people l know are or have been smokers - no big deal.
Of course not all the best people are smokers and smokers themselves do other things - there is no community of smokers, it's just that smoking is the easy target in the ongoing health war.
Smoking is stupid, irresponsible, a waste.
Smoking leads to the big C . .
. . smokers are cunts.
You can't say that.
It wouldn't surprise me if some environmentalist fag-hag or govt thinktank linked cigarette smoke with climate change. Factor in all the industry involved, alleged co2 emissions from growing plants and transport, etc. then it's enough to create an industry around or at least commission an audit.
l'd wager though that could be more than offset by the cumulative effect of various health and safety concerns output - itself a runaway monster of self-fulfilling function, a gold mine for the legal and advisory professions and a brake on forward motion in the wrong hands.
l've said previouly that we generally don't go about life or work attempting to injure ourselves and in our normal activies encounter what could, if broken down, become a health and safety nightmare of Matrix proportions . Ooh, all those hazards!
Butt stupid as we are we to tend to make our way through them, indeed, oblivious to the harm, potential trauma and terror around us, absorbed in our selfish, consumerist fug.
See -
Hmm . . .
Smoked
The smoking ban is shit
Pfff . . .
* Don't think so - some of the smokingest people come across are shag merchants. Though by no means all.
Pfff!
Smoking makes little sense when analysed objectively. Obviously physically unhealthy and not pleasant for the non-smoker in a smokey environment - tears used to stream from my eyes on the odd occasion visiting my Dad's Navy social club, ameliorated only by the then rare treat of ice cold lemonade and crisps. My first ever puff on a cigarette, from an uncle at Christmas time, left me puking up and brought forth howls of laughter from assembled relatives - 'that'll learn 'im!'.
And so it did. Like olives, sprouts, sex, alcohol and many others the youthful mind meets many a stepping stone in progression to adulthood. Once you get to find out that your bits are for more than pissing out of and a source of crude humour then all manner of things fall by the wayside. Alcohol, no longer the liquid sustenance of necessity, became a socialising brew of choice. Initially distasteful but perhaps a preparation for all the other rites of passage to maturity and things that are alien to the youthful mind.
There are of course modern fixes to smokey or other 'poor air' environments -
www.purennatural.com
www.truveo.com
www.tornex.com
www.sharp.ca/products/ion/video.html
www.smokefreesystems.com
www.guardiantechnologies.com
Info provided by Bill Gibson of freedom2Choose
Rethinking Earth.
Bad Days?
Quite enjoyed BBC2s Meltdown and was encouraged most of the way through. l nearly even dropped my bacon sarnie when they brought on the Danes and all the talk of longer glaciers, ie. we've been here before, the climate changes for whatever reason and conflating the two our Viking forebears coped and part got us where we are today. What would a contemporary Viking do today? I'd say the cnutters anongst them would be eyeing up the planets. When you consider their technology and the conditions and then consider ours today then it ought make us wonder. There may have been some berserkers amongst them but l dare say the odd clever bastard.
Instead today we're incontinent with fear; the skies falling in and it's all our fault, we're in for some very stormy weather and can't go on as we are, etc.
The name should have given it away really - Meltdown; and l was expecting gloom. After what appeared an objective opening, the final third of the programe seemed to go slightly awol all of a sudden and take up a less optimistic view. It seemed to read too much into just 2000 years of human history, skipped over changes in how climate has been recorded, didn't allow for the fact that we are still developing our understanding of the world and superimposed the perceived effects of the industrial revolution into one hockey stick when there have been quite relatively sudden changes in the earth's climate over it's existence as much as the longer gradual ones and anomalies within them. Whole species and life forms have been wiped out and the conditions for others have arisen, continents have shifted and so what if the earth and indeed heavens move?
Maybe we should get back to calling the planet The World as it is far more than just 'earth'. And likewise the solar system - various other planets and things we don't even know about yet and couldn't possibly imagine with our current navel-gazing, backward looking and anal retentive outlook - liquids, solids, gases, detritus, maybe even other forms of life.
But then no real spirit of adventure anymore?
Not seemingly so amongst our western leaders. l hope the east does rise; if l could draw cartoons l'd have a Hyundai Moonweekender c/w bumpersticker saying 'the other pod's a Honda' flying past a clapped out spaceshuttle. One day spaceshuttles may even be the equivalents of Volkswagen camper vans and the preserve of doom-mongering, unwashed space-hippies - "No! stoppit - you'll destroy the universe!'
That's not to say that the The World is doomed and we need to get off it. It will likely resemble something different over the following millenia; whatever. Even at todays worst predictions of, l think, a 70 metre rise in sea level there would still be a huge amount of land available; and if it was warm as well then hello watersports and new environment. And if it gets cold we have the technology. . . .
That's assumed of course that any of these worse-case scenarios bear out. Given that these are various hypothesis based on unknown unknowns and a liberal splash of doom and gloom mongering then the outome is likely to be more of the same.
Others have said that these bleatings merely add to the catalogue of gloom and misery everywhere - SARS, birdflu, asteroids, obesity, smoking, pervs, paedos and other assorted weirdos and god only knows what else can be summonsed.
So what if our activities effect the planet? Part of discovery and enterprise is dealing with side effects and quantifying their importance and if necessary developing the means to deal with them. Usually we find that other innovations come as a result. Further than that though is the recognition that if we can effect such things as climate by accident then we can also do so by design.
If it really was the case that we are heading for a catastrophe of our own making then surely the most powerful people on earth, the great and the good, would hold a moratorium of sorts and discuss the most beneficial way to take things forwards.
Oh, they are trying/ Those who cry Kyoto . . .
They talk of leaving a legacy for future generations, a cleaner, more habitable environment and a vision of heaven on earth whilst all the time telling us that we're hellbound if we don't mend our ways. This is a time standing still argument and one that is not likely to arm our future generations with the capacities to deal with a world that has, is and will change and sometime may even die out.
That doesn't mean humanity has to though, which arguably it would if the current argument was taken to its logical conclusion.
Many others have said todays pessimistic outlook likely originates from the elite (?) running out of steam. Yet seeing as how it's business as normal and there are bills to pay and all of the rest of it this doom-mongering effects all of our actions, how business operates or not and represents a pitiful legacy.
Our future generations may look back on this period as one when the western world entered a dark age of its own choice rather than one that put humanity at the forefront and heralded a brighter future. As such climate change represents an apt metaphor for the ever decreasing circles that our leadership set out for us but also themselves.
Meltdown? Read on -
(1)http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/programmes1.shtml
(2)http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4753876.stm
Quite enjoyed BBC2s Meltdown and was encouraged most of the way through. l nearly even dropped my bacon sarnie when they brought on the Danes and all the talk of longer glaciers, ie. we've been here before, the climate changes for whatever reason and conflating the two our Viking forebears coped and part got us where we are today. What would a contemporary Viking do today? I'd say the cnutters anongst them would be eyeing up the planets. When you consider their technology and the conditions and then consider ours today then it ought make us wonder. There may have been some berserkers amongst them but l dare say the odd clever bastard.
Instead today we're incontinent with fear; the skies falling in and it's all our fault, we're in for some very stormy weather and can't go on as we are, etc.
The name should have given it away really - Meltdown; and l was expecting gloom. After what appeared an objective opening, the final third of the programe seemed to go slightly awol all of a sudden and take up a less optimistic view. It seemed to read too much into just 2000 years of human history, skipped over changes in how climate has been recorded, didn't allow for the fact that we are still developing our understanding of the world and superimposed the perceived effects of the industrial revolution into one hockey stick when there have been quite relatively sudden changes in the earth's climate over it's existence as much as the longer gradual ones and anomalies within them. Whole species and life forms have been wiped out and the conditions for others have arisen, continents have shifted and so what if the earth and indeed heavens move?
Maybe we should get back to calling the planet The World as it is far more than just 'earth'. And likewise the solar system - various other planets and things we don't even know about yet and couldn't possibly imagine with our current navel-gazing, backward looking and anal retentive outlook - liquids, solids, gases, detritus, maybe even other forms of life.
But then no real spirit of adventure anymore?
Not seemingly so amongst our western leaders. l hope the east does rise; if l could draw cartoons l'd have a Hyundai Moonweekender c/w bumpersticker saying 'the other pod's a Honda' flying past a clapped out spaceshuttle. One day spaceshuttles may even be the equivalents of Volkswagen camper vans and the preserve of doom-mongering, unwashed space-hippies - "No! stoppit - you'll destroy the universe!'
That's not to say that the The World is doomed and we need to get off it. It will likely resemble something different over the following millenia; whatever. Even at todays worst predictions of, l think, a 70 metre rise in sea level there would still be a huge amount of land available; and if it was warm as well then hello watersports and new environment. And if it gets cold we have the technology. . . .
That's assumed of course that any of these worse-case scenarios bear out. Given that these are various hypothesis based on unknown unknowns and a liberal splash of doom and gloom mongering then the outome is likely to be more of the same.
Others have said that these bleatings merely add to the catalogue of gloom and misery everywhere - SARS, birdflu, asteroids, obesity, smoking, pervs, paedos and other assorted weirdos and god only knows what else can be summonsed.
So what if our activities effect the planet? Part of discovery and enterprise is dealing with side effects and quantifying their importance and if necessary developing the means to deal with them. Usually we find that other innovations come as a result. Further than that though is the recognition that if we can effect such things as climate by accident then we can also do so by design.
If it really was the case that we are heading for a catastrophe of our own making then surely the most powerful people on earth, the great and the good, would hold a moratorium of sorts and discuss the most beneficial way to take things forwards.
Oh, they are trying/ Those who cry Kyoto . . .
They talk of leaving a legacy for future generations, a cleaner, more habitable environment and a vision of heaven on earth whilst all the time telling us that we're hellbound if we don't mend our ways. This is a time standing still argument and one that is not likely to arm our future generations with the capacities to deal with a world that has, is and will change and sometime may even die out.
That doesn't mean humanity has to though, which arguably it would if the current argument was taken to its logical conclusion.
Many others have said todays pessimistic outlook likely originates from the elite (?) running out of steam. Yet seeing as how it's business as normal and there are bills to pay and all of the rest of it this doom-mongering effects all of our actions, how business operates or not and represents a pitiful legacy.
Our future generations may look back on this period as one when the western world entered a dark age of its own choice rather than one that put humanity at the forefront and heralded a brighter future. As such climate change represents an apt metaphor for the ever decreasing circles that our leadership set out for us but also themselves.
Meltdown? Read on -
(1)http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/programmes1.shtml
(2)http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4753876.stm
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