Seriously, just kill yourself…

Bill Hicks had a great routine about advertising executives who could only think in terms of market demographics, even co-opting rebellion as one more marketing tool.

It came to mind as I watched a discussion about cigarette advertising restrictions on Newsnight last night: two not very bright but highly confident marketing whores chortling away because they could see that if cigarettes are literally put out of sight and sold in plain packaging, the cigarette companies would use social media to sell smoking: going for the rebellious dollar. Watch it here from 34.27.

Kids: smoking isn't rebellious. It kills you and the money doesn't go to cool nonconformists. It goes to massive global corporations and the men in suits give the money to the Republicans, the Tories and other unpleasant types.

Name that Colleague!

This is from George Orwell's 'Clink', a short essay about his failed attempt to be sent to prison for research purposes. He got hammered on whisky and spent a weekend in the cells. Afterwards:

I had only twopence and had had nothing to eat all day except bread and marg., and was damnably hungry; however, as always happens when it is a choice between tobacco and food, I bought tobacco with my twopence.

This exactly describes the situation of one of my colleagues. Any guesses?

PS. Orwell died at 47, of TB. I doubt the smoking helped.

Don't mind me, sometimes I get a little cranky

I like people. Most people. Some people, anyway. What I'm trying to say is that I'm not an undiscriminating misanthrope. There are groups with a permanent place in my Top Ten for Summary Execution - Tories, hippies, SUV-drivers. I'd like a t-shirt to flash reading 'you are an arrogant, selfish, polluting, greedy, egotistical, inadequate, shortsighted bastard (unless you're a farmer or builder)' but fear that they wouldn't be able to read the whole thing as they flash past en route between suburban home and suburban prep school. 

So anyway, apart from them, I like most people. Except for the three teenage girls who casually dropped their fast food wrappings on the floor in front of me as though there's no more natural place for rubbish - inconceivable to them that bins even exist, let alone should be used by the likes of them. 

No, the only person who really got to me today is a complete stranger I see every Monday. I queue up to get into the pool, so I'm already feeling slightly cranky. Waiting my turn, I idly gaze out over the car park where he sits in his highly-polluting car, warming up for his swim by having a cigarette. So he's driven to the pool and smokes as a preliminary. I want to smash his headlights in and then calmly explain that a walk and no cigarette would help him no end, and would leave the congested lanes for people who don't intend to poison themselves (and others), before dying expensively on the NHS. OK, so he's finished his cancer-twig. Then, EVERY WEEK, he strolls to the front of the queue and pushes in so aggressively that nobody says a thing. After that, he races to get changed first, grabs the widest lane and swims down the middle so that nobody else can share it. 

The final straw was after I left the pool today. Trying to cross the ring-road, who should shoot straight through the red light while I was on the road but this utter, utter wanker. At least I'm compensated by the knowledge that a fat smoker, dangerous driver and non-seatbelt wearer is probably going to die younger than me. Does that make me a bad person?

Urge to kill… rising. 

Health fascists ruin a little boy's fun

Poor kid. The Welsh three-year-old's only joy in life (like most of the working class, according to Health Secretary Alan Johnson MP) was the occasional cigarette with his mother, and now she's been convicted of child cruelty because a so-called friend filmed the little tyke sparking up! It's political correctness gone mad! In earlier days he'd have been down a mine or up a chimney anyway, so no doubt his Cambrian little lungs are adapted to huge amounts of poisonous particles anyway.

I wandered past a nasty pub today. It annoyed me, as it always does, because it's called 'The Moon Under the Water', which is the name Orwell gave his imagined perfect pub in one of his essays (I'm a lazy man and can't be bothered to find the reference for one reader). It isn't the perfect pub, it's a run-down Wetherspoon's. I wouldn't begrudge this theft if the chain made the effort to follow GO's prescription, but it's horrible, although the beer is very good. 

Anyway, outside this pub was a smoking Goth. Or rather, a Goth, smoking. I like Goths, having lived with some gentle, vegetarian Goths in Bangor. This one annoyed me because smoking was clearly a part of his rebellious image. I know Goths have, like all subcultures as Hebdige pointed out, been appropriated and diluted for marketing purposes, but they think they're rebellious. I wanted to point out that in a corporate world, smoking is the ultimate act of non-rebellion. Sure, governments tell us not to smoke, but they're far less important than corporations as far as our daily lives go. Governments should be far more intrusive but they've been captured by corporate interests. Deliberately shortening your life and reducing your physical strength (and financial power) by smoking just make you a slave. I have more respect for kerb-crawlers: at least both sides are getting something out of that transaction.