A tobacco roundup

CIVILIZATION REQUIRES ASHTRAYS

Smoking bans lead to more indoor fires!

AND YOU THOUGHT JIM MORRISON WAS A REBEL

Alt-rock band/mellifluous troupe of conspiracy theorists Muse was very nearly banned from performing anywhere in Australia for smoking during a show last week.

I'M ONLY GONNA BREAK, BREAK YOUR PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC ANTI-SMOKING CONCEIT

"In contrast with smaller regional studies we find that smoking bans are not associated with statistically significant short-term declines in mortality or hospital admissions for myocardial infarction or other diseases. ... An analysis simulating smaller studies using subsamples reveals that large short-term increases in myocardial infarction incidence following a smoking ban are as common as the large decreases reported in the published literature," (emphasis mine).

More here and here.

NOW THIS IS THE KIND OF ADVERTISING I OBJECT TO

I Love You, Phillip Morris is in no way about cigarettes.

THIS IS A PRO-SMOKING CIGARETTE SONG/

SO EVERYBODY LIGHT ONE UP AND FUCKING SING ALONG

"More intelligent American children are more likely to grow up to consume more tobacco, while more intelligent British children are more likely to grow up to consume more illegal drugs." This is because Americans are inherently superior.

SECONDHAND SMOKE AND MIRRORS

A one-time niconazi is converted! Also, John Banzhaf continues to be the worst person in the world.

YOU MANIACS, YOU BLEW IT UP! AH, DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

What has become of NYC that police officers can not only mistake a man smoking outside a window for a potential jumper, but bring him in for a psych eval against his will? Have New Yorkers already forgotten what cigarettes look like?

A SONG

"Ashtray Heart" - Captain Beefheart (RIP)

"You used me like an ashtray heart

You picked me out, brushed me off

Crushed me while I was burning out

Then you picked me out

Like an ashtray heart"

A PICTURE

The way to an atheist's soul is through her stomach?

Decorated cookies with Leah of Unequally Yoked yesterday. Don't think we made any breakthroughs regarding her crypto-gnosticism or apparent fondness for Jane Austen, but I did get some sweet cookies out of the deal.

Had a lot of fun being the sole conservative at this get-together. Left to right: paying homage to the 'Pythagorean Brotherhood', an apparently rabies-infected GO-pachyderm (couldn't resist, sorry), and John Galt's pig.

Vaguely Soviet looking star, a snowman-shaped cookie reimagined as a cannon, Russian patriotism as baked good, and a Cairn terrier.

(Yes, Russian patriotism as baked good is probably stuffed with mushrooms and looks like this, but cut me some slack.)

Merry Christmas!

Vaguely related: here is a lovely story about Saint Silouan and atheists (start at "After his experience of the tortures of hell...").

"I will not cease from honoring that matter which works my salvation."

“Our teacher simply commanded: 'Stand up!' and we put our pointe shoes on our bare feet and started the class. At the end of the lesson the slippers were covered in blood. I don’t consider them to be relics, but I could never throw those pointes away. They are a very touching reminder of childhood — like my first essays and my first math exercise books, which are covered in scribbles.”

- Yekaterina Kondaurova, Mariinsky ballet soloist

I was going to try to turn this into an extended post about "memorialism", pneumatic presence, gnosticism, veneration of relics, Christian attitudes toward burial, and ultimately the centrality of contingency and immanence/beauty (together with, if not outright contra in some cases, transcendence/sublimity), but really, I think (as I so often do) that David Hart says it best: "surfaces are always more complicated than 'depths'."

(If, however, anyone is somehow interested in me spouting off on those topics, do let me know.)

The Sieve: The Third Policeman

The following is an excerpt from Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, a "brilliant comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence," which I happen to be enjoying rather perversely on this bitterly cold day. The italics indicate what the narrator has dubbed his soul (whom he has named Joe) speaking to him.

"I smiled at him in good-humoured perplexity and said:

'Tricky looking man, you are hard to place and it is not easy to guess your station. You seem very contented in one way but then again you do not seem to be satisfied. What is your objection to life?'

He blew little bags of smoke at me and looked at me closely from behind the bushels of hair which were growing about his eyes.

'Is it life?' he answered. 'I would rather be without it,' he said, 'for there is a queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night of porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed-jars and foreign bacon.'

'That is a nice way to be talking on a grand lively day,' I chided, 'when the sun is roaring in the sky and sending great tidings into our weary bones.'

'Or like feather-beds,' he continued, 'or bread manufactured with powerful steam machinery. Is it life you say? Life?'

Explain the difficulty of life yet stressing its essential sweetness and desirability.

What sweetness?

Flowers in the spring, the glory and fulfillment of human life, bird-song at evening--you know very well what I mean.

I am not so sure about the sweetness all the same.

'It is hard to get the right shape of it,' I said to the tricky man, 'or to define life at all but if you identify life with enjoyment I am told that there is a better brand of it in the cities than in the country parts and there is said to be a very superior brand of it to be had in certain parts of France. Did you ever notice that cats have a lot of it in them when they are quite juveniles?'"

"It won't be my fault if I die an Old Maid"

My mother pretends for a wife I'm too young,

and says that men will deceive me.

But let her look back, she'll soon hold her tongue;

if not, 'tis no matter, believe me.

Sweet gentlemen, don't be a moment in fear,

and suffer a damsel to keep singing here,

remember a thought to no girl is so dread,

as the terrible one--that she may die an old maid.

Mother preaches forever against men, the vile sex,

and says every look is alarming,

but, between you and I, this she says only to vex,

for I know that she thinks you all charming.

Three husbands she has had in the course of her life,

now I only want one, sir, "Pray who'll have a good wife?"

Now men don't be stupid and look half-afraid!

Speak boldly, or else I must die an old maid.

Men boast they are kind, and easily had,

and lovers are willing and plenty,

I vow it is false, for I've not got a lad,

although I'm turned one-and-twenty.

The man I love best now stands in full view--

don't look so sharp, sir! I did not mean you,

but that handsome man there--O, what have I said,

but it won't be my fault if I die an old maid.

- The Quaver; or, Songster's Pocket Companion:

containing upwards of One Thousand of the most popular Songs, Toasts, Sentiments, and Recitations