Happy Birthday To Me

What kind of shameless attention whore announces their own birthday on their blog in an attempt to garner the best wishes of strangers? The MelWuv kind.

Whoop it up, b*tches.

I'm Blaming Andrew

Listen to this, and tell me that Prodigy hasn't been ruined forever. I dare you.

Christ is Dead, Christ is Risen, Christ Has Come Again

Happy Easter everyone! In celebration of the Lord rising from the dead, eat your way into a diabetic coma. Just like it says to do in the Bible.

Smokers of the World Unite - We'll Be Outside On The Fire Escape

I'm a smoker. I apologise for that, but in my defence, I will say that:

• I don't smoke in outdoor areas where food is being consumed - I understand that non-smokers probably won't enjoy the smell wafting over their crudites
• I don't smoke in areas where there are children, e.g. public playgrounds, schools, neo-natal units. Just because I've made the decision to smoke doesn't mean I'm going to expose impressionable youngsters to it
• I don't smoke in ppls' houses; further, I ask for permission to smoke on their property - it's just good manners, really
• I try to move away from open doorways/windows, to avoid blowing smoke into buildings

BUT IT'S NOT ENOUGH. I'm not sure when 'smoker' became synonymous with 'kiddie fiddler', but Christ, we're hated. Hated. Nothing else I do in life - and believe me, I do plenty of weird and wonderful things, as this blog will attest to - seems to invite the angry wrath of total f*cking strangers the same way lighting a Marlboro does.

I usually walk across campus with a fag on. This, apparently, is akin to crucifying Christians along the Appian Way - the number of times I've been addressed directly, or just had other pedestrians stand near me and fake cough is bizarrely high, with 3 occurrences in the last 6 weeks.

WHAT ELSE CAN I DO, PPL? We've been banned from smoking in

• hospitals (well, that makes sense, even to a pack-a-day habitual like me)
• public buildings (fair enough - with air conditioning systems, you just cannot contain it)
  
• on planes (agreed - a smoking section on a plane is about as useful as a peeing section in a pool)
• restaurants (you go for the meal, not the charming 'smoky French bistro' ambiance)
• pubs (what? Hang on... Surely the whole charm of the pub is in its smoky atmosphere?)
• in parks (I understand that we shouldn't hold small children down and exhale in their faces, but are you f*cking serious?)
• on beaches (hello, I'd like the police, please... Yes, public common sense seems to have taken off, and I just can't find it).

IF MY SMOKING BOTHERS YOU THAT MUCH (you big jessie), GO INSIDE, YOU SILLY F*CKER! Visit any one of the millions of places where I can no longer legally smoke, and leave me to it. Really, we'll both enjoy our private moments that much more.

And please, don't give me any more shrieking tirades about how your tax dollars will fund my death. Cigarettes are highly taxed items. I'm happy to pay the asking price. However, it's MY tax dollars fm this that will fund my medical treatment. Really, end-stage emphysema patients usually last less than 5 years. Seriously, we get really sick, then we die. We're so cost effective when it comes to medical treatment that cigarettes should be subsidised. There'll be no need to long-term aged care, let me tell you. Of course, the most likely scenario is, I'll quit smoking, and my tax dollars will fund your interminable treatment for a degenerative mental illness, such as Alzheimer's Disease (NB. This is one of those conditions where the ill don't even have the good sense to move along quickly, with physical health continuing long after the patient has reached the point of requiring 24/7 care to stop them from setting their hair on fire. In some cases, we're talking decades.)

I'm not asking you to smoke. I'm not asking you to like or support the fact I smoke. But if you feel the need to treat me like a second-class citizen while I'm quietly smoking in the last purgatorial areas left for this exercise, I'll have to point out that you, being at least 10 kilos overweight, and driving a car, are no paragon of good health either. Then I will ask you to f*ck off. But nicely. Very, very nicely.

Me Talk Pretty One Day, Pt. VI*

Nostalgia is a funny beast. Somehow, with a little time and space, all that's gone before seems a little less rough around the edges. Sure, He had the inexcusable penchant of playing his Bananarama CDs without either shame or irony (or indeed, recourse to the 'reduce volume' button), but he also smelt nice whenever you went out together. She spoke with a voice that had a lot in common with an angle grinder, but she remembered your Mum's birthday, and bought lovely presents which you were allowed to take credit for. With nostalgia in play, these attributes suddenly seem worth revisiting. Except for the fact that the reality would be rite back to the place of Bananarama and angle grinders.

It's best summed up by Harriet the Hottie - she's both gorgeous and clever, leading me to ask, Why remain friends with such a person? I mean, apart fm having it reinforce my own glowing sense of mediocrity?

Because she's 100% freakin' awesome, and can, without prompting, bestow such gems as:
It'd be like if Angela Merkel was offered the opportunity to establish a German military base in Stalingrad. She'd totally say yes, if just to revisit the good old days...

Pure. Freakin'. Gold.



* A nod to David Sedaris - he comes up with the genius, I merely steal and degrade it.