The Big Smoke

Who the fuck cares about my health so much that it bothers them I smoke at home, or in the alley behind my work? For all the ever-loving care they exude upon me, for the healthy decades they want to add to my life, where are all these people when I need it? If all of you anti-smoking activists really want to do me a favour, give me some money when I’m broke. Fill in for me at work. Help me do my taxes. Because from my point of view, all you folks are doing is condemning me to an extra-long life of shit and stress, and taking away my primary form of relaxation.

I know second-hand smoke is unhealthy, and you’ll catch me dead before you catch me smoking around non-smokers. And I’d never smoke in front of kids. If I see a kid, I hide my cigarette, even if it burns my hand. And if I smoke in public, I find a hidden place to do it. I don’t want to blow smoke in people’s face - it’s rude to make people smell you.

A) Smoking Makes You Hot. B) Ugly People are Bitter and Complain about Stupid Shit that Doesn’t Affect them Personally. C) ??? I don’t want to draw any conclusions based on what we educated people call a "syllogism" but I’m just sayin’…

I’m young, so I haven’t been in the workforce for decades, but I remember when I was guaranteed, by law, five minutes an hour. Now I get thirty minutes every four hours unless I’ve got a boss who smokes as well and feels some sympathy.

There was a time when people who worked office jobs were not only allowed to smoke, but to drink. Seriously. They weren’t allowed to get pissed, but they could sip on something to calm their nerves. Us modern folk are working the same jobs, same hours, and we can’t smoke or drink? All we have is coffee, and I don’t know about you but coffee makes me a fuck of a lot more fucking tense, man. You expect me to do quality work, and you provide me no means of marginalizing the stress and focusing on what I’m fucking doing? Fuck you, man.

Why do you think people spend all day at work not doing shit but surfing the net and sending knock-knock joke e-mails. If you’ve got a four+ hour stretch of nothing but work, you’re not going keep your focus that long, without some kind of release. I can sip a drink as I work, and I can run out for five minutes to smoke, but if I loose my focus and start sending retarded joke e-mails, I’m done for that four hours. There’s your productivity issues right there man.

And fuck a long life. You know, I still have a longer life ahead of me smoking than most of humanity has ever been gifted - longer than most people alive today can expect. Ever been to an old-world museum with graves? The average peasant (nearly everyone) was damned lucky to make it to thirty years of age. If I can make it to even 45 smoking, that’s still a blessed gift from modern civilization. I’m not gonna get greedy and beg for eighty.

So here’s my question to you, internet: Who are these people who don’t want me to smoke in an alley, or in the comfort of my own home, or to drink at work? They must have stress. They must live in the real world. How do they let it out so they can live their lives? I’ll tell you: They fuck shit up for other people under the bullshit excuse of ‘caring about humanity’. Those pussies who care about humanity are doing nothing but laughing with schadenfreude.

Crybaby Bitch Blog: For Your Consideration

You don’t need to read it. All it says is "waaa! I hate everything about Republicans!!!" 

I’m not American, so I don’t really give a shit about American politics, but I do consider myself slightly left-wing, and it’s dumbfucks like this that make my opinions look stupid by being drooled from the mouth of a fool.

Dear Crybaby Bitch Blog Blogmaster,

Cry more, pussy.

-Caio

I’m pretty fucking boring. How boring? I’m boring enough to write websites about George Bush in which I create hilarious subtle social commentary image macros saying "I’m A Pedo" in order to vilanize him to the point that it’s hard to take his actual wrongs seriously because his detractors are such big fucking morons:

I’m actually boring enough to criticize bands for selling out. For example: REM sold out because they apparently realized their jobs are going to have to make them enough money to eat. Suicide or living off your parents at the ripe old age of 50 are the only true ways to be a socialist. MUSIC WILL CHANGE THE SYSTEM! …..ZIIIING!!!

But I’m still not boring enough to complain that Christmas has been commercialized. But I will say this: It should not take me eight fucking hours to buy a 50 cent stamp. Do you know how much money I could make in eight hours, even at minimum wage? More than a fucking fifty cent stamp is worth. Fuck you Christmas.

On another note, this page doesn’t get many interesting comments that aren’t about making your penis hard in one way or another, but when it does they’re whoppers. Ok, seriously, I believe the ethics guy was the actual ethics guy, because he wrote like he writes on his site: With basic English literacy. But I find it hard to believe that Norm MAcDonald would actually ego-search his name, or, for that part, have enough time between ‘thinking about Penis’ and ‘thinking about penis’ to actually fucking BlogSearch his fucking name, or for that matter, learn how to use the internet, home of 4chan and Space Ghetto. HAY NORM MACDONALD, PENIS.

In all seriousness, the real Norm MacDonald actually made semi-decent and very underrated movies. The fact that someone would pretend to be the real Norm Macdonald in order to cyber with me is depressing at the very least. Fuck You, Fake Norm MacDonald.

 Penis,

Caio 

Do you know what pisses me off? When people don’t realize that books don’t work as movies. Books are experienced differently from films. A good adaptation is always possible, but it’s going to have to be changed to suit the very, very different medium.

That famous director dude people love that made "The Shining" understood this. I always hear bitchy fanboys/fangirls bemoan how oppressively oppressive and life shattering the film was. You know what? I saw that movie without having read the book, and I thought it was one of the best horror movies ever. I read the book a few years later, and I said to myself, "Yeah, they changed it a lot, and took out half the book, but what an ugly convoluted movie a loyal adaption of this very nice book would have made."

 
I just found out that Terry Gilliam, of Monty Python/12 Monkeys/Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas-fame, was J.K. Rowling’s first choice as director of the Harry Potter films, and he wanted in. But, the studio refused and instead went with Christopher Columbus, of Home Alone/Bicentennial Man fame. Why? Probably because Christopher Columbus has no fucking imagination, and would make movies for the book fans, and not try to make a good movie.

I’ve never read the books, and I fucking hated the first three Harry Potter movies, though I was dragged to them all by fangirls. Do you know why the fanboys liked those movies? Because it reminded them of how good the books were. They didn’t have to enjoy them as films because they knew every fucking detail anyway. Now, Goblet of Fire I really liked. It was really well paced, for one, which the other movies lacked entirely. It was a movie in it’s own right, not mearly a shadow of a book. But how did the fanboys react?

The greatest disappointment of all though? I just found out that in the Tim Burton Batman film, The Joker was supposed to be played David Bowie. I don’t know what part of otherwise talented Tim Burton’s brain compelled him to not follow up on this inspiration, but I’m guessing it’s the same part that lead him to make Planet of the Apes. Whatever, I blame the comic book fanboys.

I keep seeing things like this article.

Get it straight. Six million Jews died in the Holocaust. At least nine million people died in the holocaust. My own grandfather, a Catholic Pole, was in a concentration camp. About half the European population of Gypsies died.

I hate to be nitpicky, but that’s just something everyone should know. Is the holocaust not an important enough event that we should be making this kind of mistake?

Do you know what I hate about blogs? How much they block communication. I mean, I could read a book, and it would be a lot less half-assed than most blogs out there (including this one), and the author would be so distant from me they might as well not even exist, right?

Now, I mostly made this blog as release for my spam gland, which plagues the sites I frequent to no end, but surprisingly, according to Google, it actually is getting readers after only a few weeks on line. That’s pretty fucking cool.  I also got a shiny new comment way at the bottom there, and it probably would be lost forever, as happens on Blogs. But I’m not going to let that happen. If someone actually takes the time to write something well thought out and interesting here, I’m going to take the time to reply. But here’s the trippy part: Apparently this post was made by Jack Marshall, proprietor of a site I read and get angry at often, but also love (link here). Is it? Maybe, maybe not. Doesn’t matter for the purposes of this, but if it is, cool.

Jack, who I’ll assume it is for now, responded to this post and said something very interesting on a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about lately:

It doesn’t matter what bile they may hold in the darkest corners of their souls. Are you saying that it’s cowardly not to act on your worst biases? People also say stupid racist things to friends and families to blow off steam, to joke, to avoid arguments…so what? What matters is what people DO.

 Touché. Honestly, I’ve been trying to think of an honest argument against this, but I can’t come up with anything solid enough for my liking.

 Say I disagree with a taboo, and let’s say, for the sake of argument, that this is a good taboo to agree with, and I’m just an asshole. Now I may never break this taboo, or at least try not to, because I don’t want to offend my good company. But can I easily separate my actions from my beliefs? Or am I just going to channel my actions subconsciously, maybe even without realizing it? I mean, my only motivation for not breaking the taboo is public shame, not inner guilt. And if I don’t get caught, so what? Right?

 What’s the best motivator to be on your best behaviour: Shame or Guilt? We all have dark impulses, and those are pretty much the only two things keeping us civilized, when it comes right down to it. From personal experience, and what I’ve seen of others, I would say guilt.

I’ll spare you some long stories, but I live in a part of Canada with a lot of Natives - a lot more than you tend to see in other parts of North America - and when I think of white people saying racist things in casual settings, but acting perfectly respectful otherwise, it’s usually about the Natives. Of course, in the big city, no one is going to say those kinds of things, say, at work, or to a Native. But to a friend while having a drink? Sure, all the time.

George Bush often uses a phrase I love, "The soft bigotry of low expectations."  You just don’t hire a Native. They’ll get drunk and not show up one day. Now, I’ve been to a few different reservations in two different provinces. What do you find there? Drunks. But also doctors, and other people who work regularly and stay clean. One of my favourite people in the world is a Cree elder who has a PhD in psychology and a long career in social work. But the Natives who have their lives together almost without exception work on (and usually for) the reservation and at low wages because in the city people treat Natives very respectfully and never let them get past an interview.

So, for that and other reasons, I really have to think that guilt, not shame, is the driving factor for ethical behaviour. I really do believe that people act on what they feel, not on what society accepts or demands. Disagreeing with a taboo just leads you to be a little more clever at breaking those taboos.

 As for Sasha Cohen having balls… well, he has the balls to do things I would never do in exchange for millions of dollars, and people’s reputations. And I get to sit back and enjoy it comfortably without taking those same risks, or hurting those people. Not as great as I made it out to be.

  Then on the other hand, he’s not "the Beverly Hillbillies", and out just to make fun of rednecks. He makes something that’s ugly, and that makes you uncomfortable, and is just there, for the world to see. At the risk of sounding like a angry hippy idiot university student: Everything good about Western Civilization has been ugly, has made people uncomfortable, and has been right out in the open, from Socrates, to the Declaration of Independence. We need to be made uncomfortable about our problems, or else we ignore them, and let them fester and get worse. I’m not saying Cohen is going to change the world, but he is going to make some people think about things they’d rather not think about.

 I have a whole other rant here, but I think I’ve ranted enough for the time being.