Crystal Glass Night.

Note: The author is not in full control of his fingers while typing this post and has yet to decide how many of these fingers are actually his. Probably not the ones with octopus suckers on them, I don't remember seeing those before.


I am now 51. Nearly dead, Righteous, but not quite. Still here to make your lives difficult for a while yet.

Last night was also official launch night for my first (but hopefully not last) novel. There are others in the pipeline, and since I'm outed anyway I'll save myself the bother of repetition and let my psychopathic writer persona tell you about them. Yes, I go by many names, a phrase that will chill the Christian readers even though most of my writing could be said to have a basic Christian message in there somewhere. I might not be one any more but I was heavily brought up that way and the sensible parts stuck. The parts that say 'Be excellent to each other' still resonate but I also like 'Party on, dudes', which is pretty much the opposite to any religion's teachings.

The Righteous out there will be delighted to hear that my self-destructive tendencies have been in overdrive tonight, with whisky and non-electric cigars following a chicken Dopiaza with salt-laden chips instead of rice and a naan bread soaked in melted real butter. I'm still not dead though. Not even insensible. Not even a tad ill. I could sue the buggers for false advertising at this rate. I mean, salt, smoke, booze, butter, each guarantees a heart attack individually and yet a combination of all does nothing, yet again. Fifty-one years of trying and no result. Any other company would be pulverised for making such blatantly false claims.

I have one of the the good crystal glasses out tonight for the Penderyn which is on ration because I can't get it here and now Monkey Shoulder which is a pleasant blend of three malts but after the Penderyn it tastes like pop. It's still very nice and highly recommended. Just don't expect it to beat unfair competition.

So expect no sense tonight. I have none left to give. Instead I merely point out a dichotomy, wherein the antismokers believe that a mere trace of nicotine on a smoker's jacket will kill them, but simultaneously believe that the cure for smoking is a patch containing more nicotine than a whole case of Player's Navy Cut.

Nicotine, antismokers, is not a poison unless concentrated. It is, and does, much the same as caffeine. It fires up your brain. Take out the combustion products that are dangerous in tobacco - and they are exactly the same as those in any burning stuff - and the nicotine is nothing. It's inhaleable espresso. You know, antismokers, as a dedicated espresso drinker and smoker, I have to down an entire bottle of whisky to come down to your speed of thought. How do you manage to cope at that speed? You notice nothing, your peripheral vision is derisory, your decision-making capability makes me wonder how you get out of bed. And you always ask me to slow down when I talk. What do you think I'm using as a language, binary?

Antismoker drones like to pretend that smokers are stupid. If we are, why worry about us? Why are our current government so keen to wipe us out? Why was Hitler so keen to wipe us out? If we are stupid then we must, surely, soon wipe ourselves out. If we were as stupid as the drones claim then we're all dead already and there are no smokers. So why ban us? Pick the sense out of that.

Ah, but nicotine boosts the brain. Electrofag does it with no carcinogenic combustion by-products. So do the smokeless tobacco products such as snus. None of these cause any nasty side effects, they just deliver nicotine. So why are we to deny this thing? Why is third hand smoke more evil than suffocating a child with a plastic bag?

Captain Ranty has a clue.