I remember school milk. In winter it had lumps of ice in it and in summer it was warm and revolting. There were a few weeks in spring and autumn when it was okay, but these were few. It wasn't 'a gift', it was compulsory. We were ordered to down the tepid proto-cheese or the white ice, no matter what.
Well, Maggie the Thatch took a lot of stick for getting rid of it over age 11 (I think) but I bet she didn't get many complaints from the poor sods who were expected to drink it. She wasn't the first milk cutter, there was one before her but that's going too far back for my ageing brain cells.
So it's not too surprising that the Cameroid didn't want to gain the reputation of The Milk Reaper or whatever Labour had in line for him. Even so, what's the big thing with milk?
The Telegraph has an article that debunks most of the 'milk is the wonder food' crap. It's cow juice, nothing more. It is not an essential part of the human diet and can't possibly be because it's produced by an entirely unrelated species. For an entirely non-human-related purpose.
I don't drink much milk. Once in a while in tea or coffee but I don't drink much of either of those. I like butter, sometimes cheese. So I'm not anti-milk and the following applies to me too. Yes, like most of you, I am a perv.
How else could you describe drinking the bodily secretions of another animal? When you get right down to it, it's no different to licking the slime off a fish or fellating a goat. I expect it tastes different though.
When you force children, by law, to drink the bodily secretions of another species, that's not just unnatural. That's really, really twisted. "Swallow it all, it's good for you" takes on a rather more sinister note when you think of it that way.
We have compulsory calorie labelling on lots of things now, but not on 'natural' foods. Apples and pears are natural foods. They are actually intended to be eaten. In the wild, we'd eat the whole thing, pips and all (some of us still do). The pips pass through and get deposited somewhere else in a pile of fertiliser, then grow into another tree and produce more food. It's a good system. It doesn't work so well with sewage processing but that's why we have garden centres to produce new trees.
It's natural for an animal (such as humans) to eat other animals if they are equipped to do it. Chimpanzees hunt smaller monkeys and eat them. Tigers will eat a chimpanzee if they can catch one. Is it unnatural for a human to eat a much larger animal, like a cow? Only if it's also unnatural for a hyena or a piranha fish to do that. We aren't the only species capable of co-ordinated hunting in groups.
However, sucking a cow's tits is just not natural, no matter which way you look at it. Since milk isn't natural, why then doesn't it have calories on it?
It contains a hell of a lot of calories. Watch a calf grow up fast, on nothing but milk. It contains a tremendous amount of energy. If humans were to take in that much energy, they'd... get fat.
While we hear all the lamenting over childhood obesity and allergies and diabetes, we simultaneously hear that children must be given milk every single day. A suspension of fat globules with dissolved sugars and a selection of proteins from a different species - that's good for children?
I don't drink enough milk to get the required amount of calcium. I get most of mine from red meat and black pudding.
Yes, humans do things that could be considered 'unnatural' all the time, like speaking and typing on keyboards and drilling holes in the sea bed and building funny-shaped places to live, miles above the surface of the planet. I'm sure all those woodland creatures, when they first saw a man with a plough, thought to themselves 'What the hell is that weirdo species up to now?' They must shake their heads in despair at those massive propellers all over the countryside. How windy do we want it to get?
Drinking milk is pretty low down the scale of human weirdness, really. Even so, it certainly can't be considered 'natural' and I suspect that if all those children were shown where it comes from, many of them would never touch it again.
There is nothing essential about cow's milk unless your child has four legs and says 'moo'. It's nice, it can be turned into a fantastic array of cheeses, it can be made into butter, frothed up to make cappuccino or flavoured with all sorts of weirdness but it is not an essential dietary component. Not like, say, whisky.
Now there's an idea. Free school whisky.
That would get the attendance figures up. Hell, I'd go back too.
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
Smokophobia database.
Dick Puddlecote has a cracking idea.
A collection of those sayings the smokophobes like to regard as fair and level argument (I'm not going to call them antismokers any more. They are sufficiently deranged to warrant a 'phobe' term. They've invented enough of their own).
Things like 'kill all smokers' and other sayings that can only come from dangerously unbalanced minds. Things that, if applied to any other group at all, would get them arrested.
Such a collection could be published and sent to all those politicians who support the ban, with a note to the effect of 'These are your supporters. This is how they think and you approve of this. Can you explain why, or should we start sewing on the yellow badges now?'
The smokophobes demand that we stop buying from Man with a Van and pay that duty so the NHS won't have to be cut. The NHS already treats smokers like lepers, they have decided that none of their staff will be allowed to smoke even in their own homes and that any staff carrying tobacco will be subject to disciplinary action. Should we smokers pay more to be shat on harder?
The NHS is of no use to me at all now. They will not treat what's really wrong with me, they'll assume that no matter what I present with, from scrofula to rabies, it was caused by smoking. They'll demand that I change my lifestyle to the approved one or I won't get treatment, and I see no point extending my life if it is to be as a drone. 'Live long and stagnate' is the medical mantra now. It's not for me.
They are planning to refuse to treat me at all unless I obey the 'give up' diktat. Don't get smug, smokophobes, especially if you are a little overweight or like a drink, or just don't fit the BMA's British Standard Human. You're on the list too. Obey or die. I don't know about you, but I can only choose 'die'. Obey is simply not an option.
I'm still working on the other reasons why I wouldn't use the NHS even if they'd let me. The free-at-point-of-infection diseases they supply. There's a lot to say but it needs to be carefully worded. I am a microbiologist and that's not the safe occupation it used to be. There was a time when we just worried about infecting ourselves. Now we worry about visiting the woods.
And now, I have to go and do something else. A publisher has just requested a full manuscript of a novel. It's the first time that's happened so I have to reply and celebrate with whisky. It requires concentration because I really have to do those things in the right order. So I'll shut up for the night.
...maybe.
A collection of those sayings the smokophobes like to regard as fair and level argument (I'm not going to call them antismokers any more. They are sufficiently deranged to warrant a 'phobe' term. They've invented enough of their own).
Things like 'kill all smokers' and other sayings that can only come from dangerously unbalanced minds. Things that, if applied to any other group at all, would get them arrested.
Such a collection could be published and sent to all those politicians who support the ban, with a note to the effect of 'These are your supporters. This is how they think and you approve of this. Can you explain why, or should we start sewing on the yellow badges now?'
The smokophobes demand that we stop buying from Man with a Van and pay that duty so the NHS won't have to be cut. The NHS already treats smokers like lepers, they have decided that none of their staff will be allowed to smoke even in their own homes and that any staff carrying tobacco will be subject to disciplinary action. Should we smokers pay more to be shat on harder?
The NHS is of no use to me at all now. They will not treat what's really wrong with me, they'll assume that no matter what I present with, from scrofula to rabies, it was caused by smoking. They'll demand that I change my lifestyle to the approved one or I won't get treatment, and I see no point extending my life if it is to be as a drone. 'Live long and stagnate' is the medical mantra now. It's not for me.
They are planning to refuse to treat me at all unless I obey the 'give up' diktat. Don't get smug, smokophobes, especially if you are a little overweight or like a drink, or just don't fit the BMA's British Standard Human. You're on the list too. Obey or die. I don't know about you, but I can only choose 'die'. Obey is simply not an option.
I'm still working on the other reasons why I wouldn't use the NHS even if they'd let me. The free-at-point-of-infection diseases they supply. There's a lot to say but it needs to be carefully worded. I am a microbiologist and that's not the safe occupation it used to be. There was a time when we just worried about infecting ourselves. Now we worry about visiting the woods.
And now, I have to go and do something else. A publisher has just requested a full manuscript of a novel. It's the first time that's happened so I have to reply and celebrate with whisky. It requires concentration because I really have to do those things in the right order. So I'll shut up for the night.
...maybe.
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
No nudes is good nudes.
Certainly for North Norfolk District Council. They don't like the Unclothed on the walls, and have taken down an artist's work because of 'complaints'.
Those mysterious 'complaints' seem to crop up a lot, don't they? All it needs is one and the thoughts of the remaining population can be dismissed. One complaint and the politicians swing into action. Well, when it suits them. If it doesn't, then entire online petitions can be ignored. Yes, Little Nicky, I do mean you and your 'great repeal pretend consultation'.
Here's Norfolk's council spokesthing with the usual trite nonsense:
"Whilst respecting the fact that art, by its very nature, is open to subjective interpretation, on this occasion the council made the decision to remove the paintings from display.
Forgetting that the council had already agreed to the display and had seen samples and approved them.
"This is not a case of political correctness.
I think you'll find it is, you know. Just saying 'oh no it isn't' no longer works as an argument ender. Ask the Climatologists.
Rather, it is a balanced reaction to some members of staff finding the artwork offensive.
No, it is pure political correctness. Did those who were offended, those who liked the work and those who didn't much care either way get a chance to have a say? Or was it just 'Ooh, a complaint, ban them'?
Was there any point where the council officials might have said 'Oh grow up. It's not porn, it's art.'? I very much doubt that such a reaction would even have occurred to them.
"It should be noted that artwork has been removed from display for similar reasons in the past and clearly, with artwork being displayed in publicly accessible areas, if we receive complaints in the future, we may decide to take similar action again."
No doubt. As long as the complaint involves banning something and does not involve a complaint about a ban, you are all fine with that. Complaints that something has been banned unfairly are just sneered at, even if thousands complain. Complaints calling for further bans are supported fully, on the basis of just one complaint.
Pretty much how it works at all levels of government these days.
Those mysterious 'complaints' seem to crop up a lot, don't they? All it needs is one and the thoughts of the remaining population can be dismissed. One complaint and the politicians swing into action. Well, when it suits them. If it doesn't, then entire online petitions can be ignored. Yes, Little Nicky, I do mean you and your 'great repeal pretend consultation'.
Here's Norfolk's council spokesthing with the usual trite nonsense:
"Whilst respecting the fact that art, by its very nature, is open to subjective interpretation, on this occasion the council made the decision to remove the paintings from display.
Forgetting that the council had already agreed to the display and had seen samples and approved them.
"This is not a case of political correctness.
I think you'll find it is, you know. Just saying 'oh no it isn't' no longer works as an argument ender. Ask the Climatologists.
Rather, it is a balanced reaction to some members of staff finding the artwork offensive.
No, it is pure political correctness. Did those who were offended, those who liked the work and those who didn't much care either way get a chance to have a say? Or was it just 'Ooh, a complaint, ban them'?
Was there any point where the council officials might have said 'Oh grow up. It's not porn, it's art.'? I very much doubt that such a reaction would even have occurred to them.
"It should be noted that artwork has been removed from display for similar reasons in the past and clearly, with artwork being displayed in publicly accessible areas, if we receive complaints in the future, we may decide to take similar action again."
No doubt. As long as the complaint involves banning something and does not involve a complaint about a ban, you are all fine with that. Complaints that something has been banned unfairly are just sneered at, even if thousands complain. Complaints calling for further bans are supported fully, on the basis of just one complaint.
Pretty much how it works at all levels of government these days.
Foamy coffee.
I never visit Starbuck's. They won't let me smoke with my coffee and even if they did, it is a silly place. When I feel like a coffee, most of the time I just want 'a coffee'. Often, I'll define it as an espresso (always a double), once in a while a cappuccino but the volume in those things is usually a bit much. Mostly, when I ask for 'coffee', that's all I want. Just coffee. No fancy names, no special cups, no logo and no frills. I don't even care if the mug is cracked as long as the coffee is hot and the mug doesn't leak.
So I would probably react in much the same way as a certain Professor Rosenthal, if faced with staff who insist I learn a language so local it only exists in their shop and if I don't, they won't sell me anything.
Not quite the same way. There would have been no need to call the police to get me to leave and promise never to return. That part would have been automatic. I don't want an espresso in a 'tall' cup, I refuse to regard a medium sized cup as 'grande' and I have no idea what 'venti' means. So I never visit Starbuck's. There is a small Italian deli in Aberdeen with outside tables and coffees named with Italian names - because the owners are Italian. Not because it 'sounds good'. Damn good espresso, too. They don't have 'venti' and they don't have corporate speak. They speak English to the customers and rage at each other in Italian.
I really should get around to learning Italian. Everyone speaking it sounds annoyed, all the time. No other language seems to express rage quite so well, in fact they can get so annoyed that they run out of words and have to extend the language into hand signals.
These modern chain cafes seem to be staffed with the obsequious and the insane. You have to speak their lingo or they'll ignore you, and it's unlike any language anyone learns in any school anywhere. I think they just make it up on the spot.
Well, it's their premises and if they want customers to learn Orcish before getting served, that's up to them. I don't like it so I won't go there. That's the full extent of my reaction, I don't want them pressured into letting customers relax, I just won't buy my coffee there. There's another place just around the corner.
Now I come to think of it, I haven't actually been to any cafes for a long time. Months of cold winter followed by a wet summer haven't left many days when I'd be willing to sit at an outside table - and I'm not allowed to smoke inside, so I wait until I'm home for my coffee.
If the fine weather returns, I'll stop off for a coffee somewhere. It won't be Starbuck's.
I'll let Foamy explain...
So I would probably react in much the same way as a certain Professor Rosenthal, if faced with staff who insist I learn a language so local it only exists in their shop and if I don't, they won't sell me anything.
Not quite the same way. There would have been no need to call the police to get me to leave and promise never to return. That part would have been automatic. I don't want an espresso in a 'tall' cup, I refuse to regard a medium sized cup as 'grande' and I have no idea what 'venti' means. So I never visit Starbuck's. There is a small Italian deli in Aberdeen with outside tables and coffees named with Italian names - because the owners are Italian. Not because it 'sounds good'. Damn good espresso, too. They don't have 'venti' and they don't have corporate speak. They speak English to the customers and rage at each other in Italian.
I really should get around to learning Italian. Everyone speaking it sounds annoyed, all the time. No other language seems to express rage quite so well, in fact they can get so annoyed that they run out of words and have to extend the language into hand signals.
These modern chain cafes seem to be staffed with the obsequious and the insane. You have to speak their lingo or they'll ignore you, and it's unlike any language anyone learns in any school anywhere. I think they just make it up on the spot.
Well, it's their premises and if they want customers to learn Orcish before getting served, that's up to them. I don't like it so I won't go there. That's the full extent of my reaction, I don't want them pressured into letting customers relax, I just won't buy my coffee there. There's another place just around the corner.
Now I come to think of it, I haven't actually been to any cafes for a long time. Months of cold winter followed by a wet summer haven't left many days when I'd be willing to sit at an outside table - and I'm not allowed to smoke inside, so I wait until I'm home for my coffee.
If the fine weather returns, I'll stop off for a coffee somewhere. It won't be Starbuck's.
I'll let Foamy explain...
Gonnae no' dae that?
With all the 3D movies around now, I suppose it was only a matter of time.
I won't be going to see it. You just know what's going to be swinging over the heads of the audience and poking you in the eye. No. Just... no.
Even so, I wonder at some of those porn stars. If they put enough blood into that thing to pump it up, how come they don't pass out?
It's almost an armful.
I won't be going to see it. You just know what's going to be swinging over the heads of the audience and poking you in the eye. No. Just... no.
Even so, I wonder at some of those porn stars. If they put enough blood into that thing to pump it up, how come they don't pass out?
It's almost an armful.
Timeslip
I started the smokophobia post last night but ran out of wakeyness, so I put up the theme tune and finished the other one tonight. That's why they are out of order and why the early mentions of 'today' should really read 'yesterday'.
And yes, I was at work all weekend. Sixty samples generates a hell of a lot of clearing up and the lab has to be ready to go again next week. I'm just thinking of the money...
And yes, I was at work all weekend. Sixty samples generates a hell of a lot of clearing up and the lab has to be ready to go again next week. I'm just thinking of the money...
Monday, 16 August 2010
Smokophobia.
(That 60-sample thing is going to happen again next week so I have to get as much out of my system as possible).
An interesting conversation at the bus stop today. One of those that isn't enclosed, just one panel up and a roof. They are illegally designated 'no smoking' because they are not enclosed.
The harridans normally fake some kind of lung seizure if they pass me smoking in the open air. Now they are becoming more bold, encouraged by the State-sanctioned abuse of anyone the State disapproves of. They expect smokers to cower when confronted, to tug the forelock and apologise for being offensive. This particular harridan met me.
I was under the shelter, next to the illegal 'no smoking' sign. It's only a matter of moving a yard to get out from under the shelter so it's no effort to avoid that sign, and the constant rain has finally stopped here. As a non-smoker once said when I explained this - "so you can't be in the shelter blowing smoke out, but it's fine to be outside the shelter blowing smoke in?" That's about the size of it, yes. This time the harridan started even before I had finished rolling a cigarette.
In her best 'I am Righteous' voice, she pronounced: "This is non-smoking, you know."
"Good thing nobody's smoking then," I said and licked the paper.
"That's a cigarette."
"Your powers of observation are impressive indeed. Do you work for MI6?"
She folded her arms. "Don't you get cocky with me. You can't smoke that in here."
"Actually, I can, but I wasn't planning to. In fact I had planned to move downwind of you before lighting it but I think the upwind side of the shelter is closer." A yard, that's all I had to move. No longer under the harridan's personally-declared dictatorship zone, I lit up.
"That's disgusting." She waved her hands around and wrinkled her face which gave her the appearance of a bulldog having a fit. "I don't want your cancer."
Now this one, I have practiced for, long and hard. So I can now deliver it deadpan.
"I don't have cancer. Smokers don't get it. The smoke has to be metabolised in the smoker's lungs before it becomes cancerous. Only the smoke coming out is dangerous and I'm blowing that away." Well, the Righteous have conditioned people to instantly believe any old tosh so why not make up some of my own?
"You're blowing it at me!"
"No, the wind is doing that. I'm just blowing it away from me because it's really dangerous."
The look on her face made it very difficult to hold my composure. It was somewhere between realisation and terror. "You're giving me cancer!"
"No, you're getting it yourself. I'm just blowing it away from me." Now, keeping a straight face was really hard. She was, genuinely, trying to dodge smoke. Harmless smoke that would blow right past her if she just let it alone. Smoke that, if she had left me alone, wouldn't even be heading in her direction. I'd have gone downwind of her out of general decency if only she had not taken it upon herself to accost me.
"Don't you care?" I think the last word was 'care'. It was delivered at a frequency that's at the very limit of my hearing range.
"No." I took another puff.
Still doing her little dodge-the-smoke dance, she came out with 'How can you do this to me?"
"Because you want me to. Because you consider me subhuman and inferior. Because you think it's fine to attack me when I have never done anything to you. Well, now I'm doing something. I'm acting like this because it's what you expect. It's what you wanted. Now you have it."
Her bus came at that point and my, she was sprightly when it came to boarding it. I didn't get the chance to point out that all I was doing was messing with her mind, that second-hand smoke has never done more than inconvenience anyone, that she really wasn't going to get cancer from the few molecules she might have inhaled as the wind took it past her.
Thinking back, I'm not even sure I would have. I might instead have expanded upon the various lingering deaths she could expect from that one picogram of tobacco smoke that might have stuck in her hair. Antismokers have had it all their own way and I'm not playing that game any more.
They deserve the stress and the fear. They deserve to worry themselves into psychosomatic illness. They believe that we can kill them with a breath, so let's do it. Compromise? We tried that. They refused and now there can be no compromise. Talking to Government? We tried that too. They deleted us.
All we are, are human beings who happen to smoke. Some people don't like the smell and that is the total of their reasoning for treating us as filth. There is nothing else. So act like filth. They expect us to be selfish, so be selfish. They expect us to give them a long and agonising death, so let's do that.
It's what they want from us. Give them what they want. Give them terror, give them high blood pressure, give them heart attacks and yes, give them cancer. None of it caused by smoking, all of it caused by their own terror of smoking. Smokophobia can kill. It's better than Kung Fu. You don't even have to touch them.
Practice is essential. Nobody can deliver those lines cold and keep a straight face when you see them believing it.
Oh, I am sure antismokers will be along to call me evil and twisted but again, that's what you expect from a smoker, isn't it? I'm only acting the way you want me to act. I'm only doing what you want. I don't want to disappoint.
You made me, antismokers, and every day you reinforce the monster you created. Every day you make me more twisted, more evil, nastier and less caring. So my made-up nonsense could make some of you ill and might manage to kill a few. Watch me not care. I will treat you as you treat me. With utter and absolute contempt.
You, antismokers, are subhuman and must be denormalised. No, don't get hysterical, I am not proposing to force smoking on anyone. Nonsmokers who are not antismokers are not the enemy. The harridans and the Righteous are the enemy and the fewer of them I have to contend with, the happier I will be. If that means scaring them to death well, so be it. I have no other recourse. The government has declared me an unperson. They will not listen. The councils will not listen. Even the pubs, places I used to be able to go, decry their losses while pretending that the absence of smoking customers has had no effect.
There is no alternative avenue open to me. No more options. Direct retaliation is all that is left and no, I am not going to resort to violence. I'm too old for that. All I have are words and words can cut deeper than any knife if wielded correctly. I did not condition these people to believe in utter rubbish but they are conditioned now and I will make use of that.
Today's stitch in the monster's skin comes with the news that a 70-year old woman has been fined for littering for dropping ash. Not a cigarette. Ash. Sterile fragments that disappear on the wind and are lost in a moment among the natural dust of the world. I put mine in the compost along with cigarette ends. It's good fertiliser and it contains a natural insecticide. Everything in a cigarette is of plant origin. It's vegetarian and biodegradable.
If it comes to court, Anna Raccoon plans a fund to pay her fine. I'll be donating.
I didn't start out as an enemy of antismokers. I didn't set out to start a war. I was happy with smoking and non-smoking segregation. I didn't demonise or denormalise anyone. I never considered anyone as subhuman and I never took it upon myself to decide anyone else's life choices for them.
You antismokers did that. You made me.
I hope you're happy with your creation.
UPDATE: Another stitch. Building a big monster, aren't you?
An interesting conversation at the bus stop today. One of those that isn't enclosed, just one panel up and a roof. They are illegally designated 'no smoking' because they are not enclosed.
The harridans normally fake some kind of lung seizure if they pass me smoking in the open air. Now they are becoming more bold, encouraged by the State-sanctioned abuse of anyone the State disapproves of. They expect smokers to cower when confronted, to tug the forelock and apologise for being offensive. This particular harridan met me.
I was under the shelter, next to the illegal 'no smoking' sign. It's only a matter of moving a yard to get out from under the shelter so it's no effort to avoid that sign, and the constant rain has finally stopped here. As a non-smoker once said when I explained this - "so you can't be in the shelter blowing smoke out, but it's fine to be outside the shelter blowing smoke in?" That's about the size of it, yes. This time the harridan started even before I had finished rolling a cigarette.
In her best 'I am Righteous' voice, she pronounced: "This is non-smoking, you know."
"Good thing nobody's smoking then," I said and licked the paper.
"That's a cigarette."
"Your powers of observation are impressive indeed. Do you work for MI6?"
She folded her arms. "Don't you get cocky with me. You can't smoke that in here."
"Actually, I can, but I wasn't planning to. In fact I had planned to move downwind of you before lighting it but I think the upwind side of the shelter is closer." A yard, that's all I had to move. No longer under the harridan's personally-declared dictatorship zone, I lit up.
"That's disgusting." She waved her hands around and wrinkled her face which gave her the appearance of a bulldog having a fit. "I don't want your cancer."
Now this one, I have practiced for, long and hard. So I can now deliver it deadpan.
"I don't have cancer. Smokers don't get it. The smoke has to be metabolised in the smoker's lungs before it becomes cancerous. Only the smoke coming out is dangerous and I'm blowing that away." Well, the Righteous have conditioned people to instantly believe any old tosh so why not make up some of my own?
"You're blowing it at me!"
"No, the wind is doing that. I'm just blowing it away from me because it's really dangerous."
The look on her face made it very difficult to hold my composure. It was somewhere between realisation and terror. "You're giving me cancer!"
"No, you're getting it yourself. I'm just blowing it away from me." Now, keeping a straight face was really hard. She was, genuinely, trying to dodge smoke. Harmless smoke that would blow right past her if she just let it alone. Smoke that, if she had left me alone, wouldn't even be heading in her direction. I'd have gone downwind of her out of general decency if only she had not taken it upon herself to accost me.
"Don't you care?" I think the last word was 'care'. It was delivered at a frequency that's at the very limit of my hearing range.
"No." I took another puff.
Still doing her little dodge-the-smoke dance, she came out with 'How can you do this to me?"
"Because you want me to. Because you consider me subhuman and inferior. Because you think it's fine to attack me when I have never done anything to you. Well, now I'm doing something. I'm acting like this because it's what you expect. It's what you wanted. Now you have it."
Her bus came at that point and my, she was sprightly when it came to boarding it. I didn't get the chance to point out that all I was doing was messing with her mind, that second-hand smoke has never done more than inconvenience anyone, that she really wasn't going to get cancer from the few molecules she might have inhaled as the wind took it past her.
Thinking back, I'm not even sure I would have. I might instead have expanded upon the various lingering deaths she could expect from that one picogram of tobacco smoke that might have stuck in her hair. Antismokers have had it all their own way and I'm not playing that game any more.
They deserve the stress and the fear. They deserve to worry themselves into psychosomatic illness. They believe that we can kill them with a breath, so let's do it. Compromise? We tried that. They refused and now there can be no compromise. Talking to Government? We tried that too. They deleted us.
All we are, are human beings who happen to smoke. Some people don't like the smell and that is the total of their reasoning for treating us as filth. There is nothing else. So act like filth. They expect us to be selfish, so be selfish. They expect us to give them a long and agonising death, so let's do that.
It's what they want from us. Give them what they want. Give them terror, give them high blood pressure, give them heart attacks and yes, give them cancer. None of it caused by smoking, all of it caused by their own terror of smoking. Smokophobia can kill. It's better than Kung Fu. You don't even have to touch them.
Practice is essential. Nobody can deliver those lines cold and keep a straight face when you see them believing it.
Oh, I am sure antismokers will be along to call me evil and twisted but again, that's what you expect from a smoker, isn't it? I'm only acting the way you want me to act. I'm only doing what you want. I don't want to disappoint.
You made me, antismokers, and every day you reinforce the monster you created. Every day you make me more twisted, more evil, nastier and less caring. So my made-up nonsense could make some of you ill and might manage to kill a few. Watch me not care. I will treat you as you treat me. With utter and absolute contempt.
You, antismokers, are subhuman and must be denormalised. No, don't get hysterical, I am not proposing to force smoking on anyone. Nonsmokers who are not antismokers are not the enemy. The harridans and the Righteous are the enemy and the fewer of them I have to contend with, the happier I will be. If that means scaring them to death well, so be it. I have no other recourse. The government has declared me an unperson. They will not listen. The councils will not listen. Even the pubs, places I used to be able to go, decry their losses while pretending that the absence of smoking customers has had no effect.
There is no alternative avenue open to me. No more options. Direct retaliation is all that is left and no, I am not going to resort to violence. I'm too old for that. All I have are words and words can cut deeper than any knife if wielded correctly. I did not condition these people to believe in utter rubbish but they are conditioned now and I will make use of that.
Today's stitch in the monster's skin comes with the news that a 70-year old woman has been fined for littering for dropping ash. Not a cigarette. Ash. Sterile fragments that disappear on the wind and are lost in a moment among the natural dust of the world. I put mine in the compost along with cigarette ends. It's good fertiliser and it contains a natural insecticide. Everything in a cigarette is of plant origin. It's vegetarian and biodegradable.
If it comes to court, Anna Raccoon plans a fund to pay her fine. I'll be donating.
I didn't start out as an enemy of antismokers. I didn't set out to start a war. I was happy with smoking and non-smoking segregation. I didn't demonise or denormalise anyone. I never considered anyone as subhuman and I never took it upon myself to decide anyone else's life choices for them.
You antismokers did that. You made me.
I hope you're happy with your creation.
UPDATE: Another stitch. Building a big monster, aren't you?
CAMRA: denormalisation beckons.
I've been to some beer festivals in the past. The one in Aberdeen about fifteen years ago wasn't very good. The most recent one (just outside Aberdeen) was so bad, with a poorer selection of beers than the average supermarket, all bottled and at vastly higher prices than the supermarkets, that we actually left and went to the pub instead. That was roughly five years ago and I haven't been to another one since.
Way back in the late seventies/early eighties, I visited the Bristol beer festival on two sucessive years. Beer there was in barrels and nobody could have sampled every one of them and survived. The entrance fee included a glass with the beer festival logo on it - a half pint glass so we weren't wasted too soon. Even so, half-pints of some of those beers were enough. They had been brewed to strengths thought impossible back then, when 'average' beer was around 2-3% and 5% was reserved for Stella Artois and other expensive beers.
Nowadays it's going the other way. I note that Gold Label barley wine has declined from 11% to 9% and the varieties of Chimay on offer no longer include the really strong ones. The price is still going up but the strength is going down.
I still have one of the Bristol glasses. The other met with an unfortunate accident involving a shelf I couldn't reach properly. Well, it was old.
Beer festivals seem to have gone downhill over the years. They used to make a real effort but that one with the bottled beer was the last straw for me. Morrisons has a better selection of bottled beers at a fraction of the price. Banana beer is an interesting experience. Rhubarb beer is something to try once too - but only buy one bottle. You might never open the second one.
In the days when I, as a smoker, was allowed in pubs, I enjoyed a pint of Caffrey's from the hand pump. The proper pump, not the electric thing. In the days when proper pumps were common, you could spot a barman/barmaid in the street because they had one huge right arm for pumping and a little left one for holding the glass. They looked a bit like hermit crabs. But I digress.
Caffrey's is available in cans with that widget thing that makes it explode if you haven't chilled it enough. It looks the same but it doesn't taste the same. The pub version is better and well worth the extra cost. The fact that I haven't been in a single pub this year has nothing to do with the price of beer.
With my tastes, I'd be a natural CAMRA supporter. I love the small-brewery beers. I have several of the Wychwood T-shirts. There's a Scottish beer called Fraoich, made with heather, that is wonderful. I've never seen it on a pump but if it is available I'd really like to try it. It's damn good even in a bottle.
I could have been a beer snob... but I like to smoke and therefore CAMRA despise me. They support my exclusion from the pubs, even the ones that have no real ales, they will be happy to see me banned from the beer gardens and they have accepted without question the lies of the antismokers. They are part of the enemy.
Even so, I did not derive pleasure from reading this.
I don't want the pubs to close faster. I want to be allowed back in there. That cannot happen if they all close. CAMRA, as far as I am concerned, can go to hell. They have chosen their side in this war and they cannot, and will not, change sides now.
Drinking is in the process of being denormalised and has been for some time. CAMRA don't see it, just as smokers didn't see it when one non-smoking carriage appeared on trains and smoking apartheid was first introduced on buses. Now we have parks where uniformed freaks can confiscate the bottle of wine you brought for your picnic and buses have, in addition to 'no smoking' signs, no drinking and no eating. Yes, you can't even have a sandwich on the bus any more.
Not that long ago, people would get on the bus with a can of beer to drink on the way home. They weren't driving, after all. In fact, I remember seeing folk doing that just last year. Now you can't drink anything, not even water, on the bus. Argue with the driver all you like. He's Polish and won't understand you.
It's early days for booze and earlier still for food, but it's the same technique. Even those pubs that have turned into restaurants will find that they still can't survive when drinking is banned. The levels of control on the food they serve will kill all but the big chains. Paying for one test that covers a hundred outlets is easy. Paying the same amount for the same test that covers one outlet is not.
You know, various smoker blogs have pointed out for a long time that the methods used on us are the same slow, methodical erosion of freedoms that is now being applied to all sorts of other aspects of life. All the antismokers ever saw was 'smoker' and their training took over. He smokes. He is an addict in denial. He is subhuman. Don't listen to him. It won't happen to you because you don't smoke.
CAMRA fell for that hook, line and sinker. Now it's happening to them. Exactly the same way.
Are you next?
Way back in the late seventies/early eighties, I visited the Bristol beer festival on two sucessive years. Beer there was in barrels and nobody could have sampled every one of them and survived. The entrance fee included a glass with the beer festival logo on it - a half pint glass so we weren't wasted too soon. Even so, half-pints of some of those beers were enough. They had been brewed to strengths thought impossible back then, when 'average' beer was around 2-3% and 5% was reserved for Stella Artois and other expensive beers.
Nowadays it's going the other way. I note that Gold Label barley wine has declined from 11% to 9% and the varieties of Chimay on offer no longer include the really strong ones. The price is still going up but the strength is going down.
I still have one of the Bristol glasses. The other met with an unfortunate accident involving a shelf I couldn't reach properly. Well, it was old.
Beer festivals seem to have gone downhill over the years. They used to make a real effort but that one with the bottled beer was the last straw for me. Morrisons has a better selection of bottled beers at a fraction of the price. Banana beer is an interesting experience. Rhubarb beer is something to try once too - but only buy one bottle. You might never open the second one.
In the days when I, as a smoker, was allowed in pubs, I enjoyed a pint of Caffrey's from the hand pump. The proper pump, not the electric thing. In the days when proper pumps were common, you could spot a barman/barmaid in the street because they had one huge right arm for pumping and a little left one for holding the glass. They looked a bit like hermit crabs. But I digress.
Caffrey's is available in cans with that widget thing that makes it explode if you haven't chilled it enough. It looks the same but it doesn't taste the same. The pub version is better and well worth the extra cost. The fact that I haven't been in a single pub this year has nothing to do with the price of beer.
With my tastes, I'd be a natural CAMRA supporter. I love the small-brewery beers. I have several of the Wychwood T-shirts. There's a Scottish beer called Fraoich, made with heather, that is wonderful. I've never seen it on a pump but if it is available I'd really like to try it. It's damn good even in a bottle.
I could have been a beer snob... but I like to smoke and therefore CAMRA despise me. They support my exclusion from the pubs, even the ones that have no real ales, they will be happy to see me banned from the beer gardens and they have accepted without question the lies of the antismokers. They are part of the enemy.
Even so, I did not derive pleasure from reading this.
I don't want the pubs to close faster. I want to be allowed back in there. That cannot happen if they all close. CAMRA, as far as I am concerned, can go to hell. They have chosen their side in this war and they cannot, and will not, change sides now.
Drinking is in the process of being denormalised and has been for some time. CAMRA don't see it, just as smokers didn't see it when one non-smoking carriage appeared on trains and smoking apartheid was first introduced on buses. Now we have parks where uniformed freaks can confiscate the bottle of wine you brought for your picnic and buses have, in addition to 'no smoking' signs, no drinking and no eating. Yes, you can't even have a sandwich on the bus any more.
Not that long ago, people would get on the bus with a can of beer to drink on the way home. They weren't driving, after all. In fact, I remember seeing folk doing that just last year. Now you can't drink anything, not even water, on the bus. Argue with the driver all you like. He's Polish and won't understand you.
It's early days for booze and earlier still for food, but it's the same technique. Even those pubs that have turned into restaurants will find that they still can't survive when drinking is banned. The levels of control on the food they serve will kill all but the big chains. Paying for one test that covers a hundred outlets is easy. Paying the same amount for the same test that covers one outlet is not.
You know, various smoker blogs have pointed out for a long time that the methods used on us are the same slow, methodical erosion of freedoms that is now being applied to all sorts of other aspects of life. All the antismokers ever saw was 'smoker' and their training took over. He smokes. He is an addict in denial. He is subhuman. Don't listen to him. It won't happen to you because you don't smoke.
CAMRA fell for that hook, line and sinker. Now it's happening to them. Exactly the same way.
Are you next?
Sunday, 15 August 2010
Prophecy fulfilled.
About forty years ago, this was just a song.
Now it's a serious contender for the UK National Anthem.
I will set you free
If you will vote for me
All you have to vote for
Are the things you'll never see
Hot Chocolate - prophets. They saw the Cleggeron Coagulation coming.
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