Quitting smoking

Today is February 12th. A not-so-signficant day that's two days before Valentine's Day, but this particular Feb 12th is worthy of being noted.

30 years ago today, I stopped smoking.

It was something I needed to work up to. I certainly needed to get rid of the collection of pipes, which were pretty darned cool (I was into meerschaum). But the big thing was just to stop smoking.

Every junkie knows his drug. Tobacco is my drug.

Every junkie can tell you everything there is to know about his drug: how it felt, which varieties they liked, what it was like the first time that day, times when it had felt really good, and so forth and so on. Me, too.

Every junkie can tell you how hard it was to give it up. Me, too.

And every junkie will tell you that they didn't give it up because they wanted to; they gave it up because they knew they had to... but if they had their druthers and it wasn't going to kill them, they'd all still be doing their drug regularly.

Oh, yeah, me, too.

I made the mistake of lighting someone's cigarette five years after I'd quit. The smoke curled around in my mouth. I didn't inhale (I'd probably have coughed my head off), but nicotine soaked in through my mucus membranes. I was jonesing for a cigarette for a week thereafter. I ain't done that since.

I have dreams periodically, usually in August for some reason, where I'm at a party and someone is saying to me, "Oh, it's safe now! You can smoke all you like and it's no big deal." And someone's hand holds a pack out to me and I take one of these newfangled cigarettes.

I had a dream last night, on the eve of this anniversary, about smoking. I smoke a lot in my dreams. It feels great.

God, I miss smoking. But I know better than to start again.

Quitting smoking

What sports car are you?

I'm a Chevrolet Corvette!

You're a classic - powerful, athletic, and competitive. You're all about winning the race and getting the job done. While you have a practical everyday side, you get wild when anyone pushes your pedal. You hate to lose, but you hardly ever do.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

What sports car are you?

Weirdness

Susan the Wonder Child has been making her quota of weirdness today. First, she shared with me the following YouTube video about Charlie the Unicorn that's twisted and really funny. It's a bit on the noisy side, but it's definitely office-safe.

The other thing is that she phoned me up to tell me that Anna Nicole Smith had died suddenly of unknown causes. While all the news services are going to be playing "Rush to Judgement," I'm sad. I did like her, even if she was dumber than a jar of Miracle Whip.

Weirdness

Which tarot card are you?

You are The Sun

Happiness, Content, Joy.

The meanings for the Sun are fairly simple and consistent.

Young, healthy, new, fresh. The brain is working, things that were muddled come clear, everything falls into place, and everything seems to go your way.

The Sun is ruled by the Sun, of course. This is the light that comes after the long dark night, Apollo to the Moon's Diana. A positive card, it promises you your day in the sun. Glory, gain, triumph, pleasure, truth, success. As the moon symbolized inspiration from the unconscious, from dreams, this card symbolizes discoveries made fully consciousness and wide awake. You have an understanding and enjoyment of science and math, beautifully constructed music, carefully reasoned philosophy. It is a card of intellect, clarity of mind, and feelings of youthful energy.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Which tarot card are you?

Tacky but Funny; the i-Squeegee

I wish I'd come up with this. It's something to be proud of for its out-and-out NSFW-ness.

Tacky but Funny; the i-Squeegee

A couple thoughts about the music business

For no particular reason, I wanted to add a couple of fun thoughts about the music business:

Q: What separates sound engineers from the scum of the earth?

A: A big sheet of plate glass.

And, from the late Hunter S. Thompson:

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.

A couple thoughts about the music business

Hanging Saddam

I'm actually not sure how I feel about hanging Saddam. Oh, I have no doubt that he deserves to be hanged for what they convicted him of and a lot of other things they didn't even try him for, but I'm not entirely convinced we should do it. Like everything else about our involvement over there, this is feeling... hasty. I'd be really curious to find out what the possible ramifications are going to be before we do this. If there's just one thing this administration doesn't grasp--and God knows they don't grasp anything--it's forethought.

The other thing I keep thinking is this: Saddam Hussein was convicted of basically invading part of Iran unlawfully with a cheap excuse, killing people because it suited him, overthrowing the existing government, letting loose his army to terrorize the region, and generally ignoring everyone else's opinion of proper behavior. For which it looks like he's going to be hanged in fairly short order.

Well, gee, thank goodness no-one thinks that our President's done that! Otherwise, we'd have to convict him and hang him for crimes against humanity, too. Quickly.

Hanging Saddam

Really nasty song (mwahahahahaaaaa!)

Note: If you're easily offended, skip this post. If you're not easily offended, read on!

I actually wrote this song over a year ago, but I've debated putting it on the blog. Recent events and seeing still more of the damage fundamentalists are doing to the world has prompted me to post this. Mockery's an exceptional political tool and it works all the better with people who have no sense of humor... which'd be these folks.

The backstory is this: This song was actually inspired by an abortive attempt to have a constructive discussion with a self-anointed Christian columnist named Mel who every week attempts to be profound (generally without any success, though I did see one or two columns that bordered on "cogent") in a wee, tiny little newspaper in Minnesota. I've seen his mailing list—he's not very ept with computers and didn't seem to grasp the idea of blind mailing lists—and he's got a very small fan club, but like most of his brand of twerp, he's enormously self-important.

I really wanted to find out how he got from the Bible to the nasty, judgmental, small-minded positions he took in his rather sloppily-written columns. It seemed like such a wild leap, and finding fundamentalists who are actually willing to talk about things to anyone who's not already assimilated into the mindset is very difficult. Unfortunately, having promised that he wanted to talk to me about what he was writing, he then proceeded to spout his peasant version of politics and then refused to talk to me after I started asking him a lot of questions. It was the usual line of drivel, sadly; I'd hoped for something new. (Shoot, I'd have settled for conversation that demonstrated self-awareness and not something generated by an "Eliza"-like program set up to run in "Christian drivel" mode, but no luck even there.)

He even lied to me about getting back to me in a week; I dropped him a couple emails reminding him of this promise about 2 years later, but he didn't even acknowledge them. Pity he doesn't have the courage of his supposed convictions… but I do have to thank him for one thing: he inspired a wonderful song!

The song is entitled "You Can Tell a Christian..." and it's really kind of a natural. You're welcome to spread it around in its current form (the link will download a PDF file).

Remember that there really are good Christians out there who are to be known and praised--I've known a couple myself and they're great people!--but far, far too many of them in this country are loudmouthed, ignorant little peasants who have no reason for continued existence on a planet that's discovered penicillin. They're the ones I wrote this song about.

(BTW, if you're a fan of this sort of thing, you might also enjoy the classic music video, "Keep Your Jesus Off My Penis" by Eric Schwartz, who coined the lovely term "hypo-Christianity.")

Really nasty song (mwahahahahaaaaa!)

"Help, we're being oppressed!"

This cogent little graphic comes from Kooks 'R Us:

"Help, we're being oppressed!"

"Stranger Than Fiction" -- who knew he could act so well?

We went out bowling last night... or at least we headed to the lanes to bowl, but we discovered that it was a league night. Well, a movie then? Sure! The girls and I went off to see Stranger Than Fiction, the new Will Ferrell movie.

I loved it. I mean, I know that Will Farrell does good comedy and has pretty good timing and that comedy is much harder than drama... but I found myself moved to tears on a couple of occasions. Emma Thompson was brilliant as a self-absorbed, rather depressive author, Dustin Hoffman made a great professor of English Lit., Maggie Gyllenhaal is scrumptious, and, hell, I'd totally follow Queen Latifah around just because she's so hot. But Will Farrell really has untapped talents as a good dramatic actor with the bulk to carry a leading role. It was much akin to the pleasure of seeing The Truman Show, discovering that Jim Carrey could turn in an effective and serious performance as well as do the same physical humor over and over again. But I think that Will Farrell may have more depth.

Interestingly, Jim Carrey is about to do a film called The Number 23, in which a man reads a book that appears to be based on his life, but the book ends with a murder that hasn't happened in real life... yet. Well, it's not the first time an idea was taken in two different directions by two contemporaneous films, and this could be good, too.

But in the meantime, everyone should go see Stranger Than Fiction.

"Stranger Than Fiction" -- who knew he could act so well?

Great banjo joke from Reader's Digest

The Babe read this today in Reader's Digest of all places.

The best noise I ever heard a banjo make was when an accordion landed on top of it in a trash can.

Great banjo joke from Reader's Digest

Atholl brose and Thanksgiving

I had forgotten about atholl brose for quite a while. It's been close to 30 years since I last had any. Today, I was telling a friend in England about it while we were discussing scotches and she said "What's that?" and I found a recipe. This stuff is Scottish mother's milk; it goes down smoother and better than anything you've probably ever had.

After almost 30 years since I last had it, I can still remember how good it is. Since Turkey Day's coming up, I'm going to use that as an excuse to make a batch of it. You ought to give it a try as well.

Atholl brose and Thanksgiving