Nicofiend: Why smokers are the lepers of the world.

I couldn’t be described as anything but a regular and heavy smoker. It is not something I am particularly proud of, nor is it something I feel too much shame over- it is simply, for the moment, how it is.
And of course, lectures come in both ears about how it is killing you and how its costing you money and how you should quit right now, if at all possible.
This harassment comes, more often that not, from non-smokers; those who can’t possibly comprehend the joy of a cigarette, from time to time.
I hole no illusions that it is a cool or glamorous habit, that all died with Bogart, but it is something that helps me level out, and in my mind at very least, eases some sort of tension.
Well, besides life being to stressful to ever quit, and the fact that of course all smokers know of the dangers it is not simply a matter of chucking away the cigs.
As any smoker knows cigarettes are to be enjoyed with an array of other activities and substances, and it is for this reason, I can’t quit. These activities and substances are:

1. Coffee-
As much of a nicofiend as I am, caffeine is right there with it. If I go the day without a cup I can be expected to be asleep by the mid afternoon. And there is nothing better than a cig with a hot cup of coffee, so, if I were to give up cigs, id also have to give up coffee.

2. Booze-
The drunker you get, the more smokes you crave. I am at my chain-smoking best when I am 10 beers for the better. How often do smokers wish to be outdoors at the various drinking venues they frequent, for no other reason than to puff, puff, puff. So, id also have to give up drinking. Shucks!

3. Sex-
Having just enjoyed the most carnal of delights, feeling drained and happy is the perfect time to light up. As your nerves tingle and twitch and you come back to earth…in and out. Ho Hum.

4. Food-
As a passionate smoker, you find your interest in food goes. But when you are hungry, the best way to cap off a meal is with a cigarette.

5. Anxiety Attacks-
Of course I would love to be rid of these pesky devils, but as it is, it is out of my hands. And so, when one strikes, I must be sure to have my Bensons for medicine.

To give up those things would be a virtual impossibility for someone as stuck in life as I am. I have no doubt though, one day, the world will be more balanced and I will be able to throw my dirty little habit down the shitter where, most would argue, it belongs.
Of course there are natural drawbacks to;
Stairs are now my enemy, I break a sweat when I check the mail, I am the leper of high society and smell like an ashtray 24 hours a day, my fingers and teeth are a healthy yellow and the shower is as much a means to stay hygienic as a daily coughing fit.
Still, oral fixations and turbulent times as they are, this isn’t enough to break the habit. Yet.
NP.

Action movies: Sheer enjoyment or Sheer Hysterics

For one reason or another, most people like those cheesy 80s action movies, the kind where the hero is actually a badass with his heart in the right place, super-duper mobile phones the size of egg cartons and the guy with the glasses is usually the weak computer guy who fucks shit up with data.
I have, in my extensive…research, come across two schools of thought regarding these cinematic works of genius and why we watch them.

1. The genuine enjoyment.
This is the school that watches the movies for no other reason than they enjoy them. It is not as if any of them take what is happening as ultra-realism, or even think they are particularly well made. It is simply that disbelief is suspended (or perhaps retarded) to such a degree that they genuinely enjoy the stories. Whats not to enjoy about Steven Seagal killing the odds and the foes?
This is the method that most people watch movies. They watch them as they were intended to be watched, as an 80s audience might have watched them before technology made their look redundant and rules on safety curbed the absurdity of the stunts.
This group, is in my opinion, the minority; the real purists who can overlook the plot-holes and technical flaws and enjoy the movie for the movie.

2. The action as a comedy.
This is the majority of us who watch “Commando” to see Arnold row a boat to Mexico faster than a sea-plane (in leather undies no less) and laugh our balls off at it.
In contrast to the above group we thrive on the absurdity, the poorly thought out stories, budget limitations, technical errors and shitty acting. It isn’t an action so much as a black comedy, where hundreds of people die but their lives don’t seem to matter when compared to the hilarity of the slapstick lead.
What could be funnier than a hyped up action oozing with melodrama? I don’t know…

NP

Spendaholic.

For some, perhaps questionable reason, the only time I seem able to save a dollar is when I don’t have one. In times of financial strain I will, every once in a while, think to myself; ‘wow, I could be saving a lot now’. Then, true to my nature, I get two dollars to rub together and they are out of the palm as soon as they came.
For a 21 year old male with only a smoking and mild drinking habit (and none of the get-broke-quick ghastly vices that send people to the poorhouse in the blink of an eye) I burn through money with a frightening pace.
I couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause of my excessive spending, but I do have a number of theories.
One of which is a deep seated mental issue, perhaps a dire need to distract myself from the horrors of living with expensive shiny things. As one with a nervous disposition and a personality resume clogged with worried hang-ups, it is only natural that I should want to fill the void. Thus far, the presence of ‘stuff’ has soothed many of this worry-warts mind burns, at least in the short-term.
It also seems to be associated with a need to be completely fulfilled at all times; free from yearning for even a single thing within the realms of possibility, so that most times of day I have each and every thing I am after. If I want something I don’t have, I am hardly realistic about it. I preoccupy my thoughts and bargain with myself, and indeed my bankroll, to figure out a possible way I could attain said item.
Another factor is my childishness. I am unable, on most days, to see things reasonably. I throw an emotional tantrum within myself until I get that which I desire. Much like a toddler bartering with his mother for a frozen treat, though I am both parent and child. The parent is the small grown up fragment of myself, the responsible one, the one that always loses the battle with the persistent and needy child.
The final major contributor to my economic recklessness is my prolonged exposure to life as a bachelor. It was, for a long while, my standpoint that if something couldn’t be bought at a smoke-shop, service station or convenience store it wasn’t worth having.
Couple with this my, until recently, student status and you have the makings of one who won’t go within one hundred meters of a supermarket or green grocer.
God forbid I give up on my literary ambitions and become gainfully employed, as there is nothing a spendaholic enjoys more than a regular stream of income. In some twisted way it’s better to squander a stockpile than a series of instalments; as I suppose the idea is that instalments coincide with the regular things that need paying.
After many a spending binge I have often wondered where the money went. I have appropriate guilt about it, but not so much guilt it will stop me doing it again. It is certainly a vicious cycle, by which I get money, spend it immediately and wait for more. It is not conducive to assets or responsibilities, and that is regrettable.
Still it is enjoyable enough, it is not until the money is gone that I really fret about it, and even then it is a momentary thing. It could be worse, I could be gambling. At least this way I have a bedroom floor of empty booze bottles and cig packets to show for it. Though I suppose a floor cluttered with dead horse track tickets is no more pathetic.
And, as a good friend once enlightened to me of his own voracious attitude toward money, ‘that is what it’s for’.

On the commonwealth games; sham or scam?

Is it me? Or are the Commonwealth Games a big croc of bullshit? It is that time of year again, sports fans, or more appropriately that time of four years. The games that people make too big a deal of, each and every time.
Now, admittedly, I am not the most sports savvy. As a general rule, if its not womens tennis, I don’t want to know about it. But these games must be seen as they are; a nonsense sporting event with too big a support network.
I can see it now, some 70 years ago, a group of sporting fat-cats sitting around dreaming up events that can fill the void between Olympics.
Oh, and America is the only nation of any promise and potential that is denied entry.
Finally, I hear scores of Canadian, British and yes, even my fellow Australians crying, it is our time to shine.
Perhaps my ill-feeling toward these prestigious and celebrated games comes from my ill-feeling toward the queen, monarchy and commonwealth itself. I don’t, and never will, understand why her majesty merits a place on our currency, why her flag deserves a place on ours and why we need to celebrate her faux birthday each and every year (in which an Independence Day would serve the same purpose).
My lack of love for Lizzy comes, undoubtedly, from my hatred of people being undeservedly praised. I dislike her as I dislike Paris Hilton, besides being rich she has no entitlement to any sort of fame or power (and it is just as well the old bat is just a figurehead, as she certainly doesn’t understand those who break their backs for a living).
The games have taken the sting and glory out of the Olympics, an event that definitely warrants more fan-fare and is at very least an equal playing field.
The hype around the games is entirely too much, people give way too much of a shit. Add to this there is the Commonwealth Youth games and winter games, it seems just a way for people to clog the sporting arteries with lackluster events that are entirely over hyped. So the money can keep rolling in and the athletes can win more gold.
Its all mutton dressed up as lamb, and I am sure the market men think long and hard about how they can con people into believing that this is some sort of big deal.
NP.

On Internet Acronyms and Altered Words: Making People More Retarded.

If you are even the slightest bit internet savvy, or indeed have been on the internet even once and haven’t been in a cave for the last decade you would’ve experienced these acronyms; hell you may have even used some yourself.
In my more youthful days I was, like most members of this tech generation, well versed in all of these ridiculous misappropriations of the fine English language. I used them recklessly and in most even somewhat available occasions.
In recent years I have regained control and began to speak like a civilized human, but it was certainly touch and go for a while there.
Of course, the time saving aspect and main justification for their existence is valid. But as with most things designed to make human life more bearable, they have gone too far.
While using them in internet conversation is still slightly tolerable, its when people begin to treat them as real words and litter their speech and manner with them that the problems really arise.
In case you are unaware, or in massive denial, about these bothersome little wannabe words, I will run a few of the more common ones down for you:

-LOL (Laugh Out Loud)
By far the most common and I must confess I still use this in internet conversation, much to my frustration. Old habits die hard I suppose.
Naturally, meant to be used when something is funny or you are indeed laughing out loud, all too often it is used when there is nothing else to be said. In this way it has replaced the vacant ‘yeah’ when you’re not hearing someone, or don’t care enough about the subject manner to listen, in face-to-face conversation. It is a nothing ‘word’ and I estimate that a good 80% of people aren’t Laughing Out Loud as they profess to be.
For the record, it is L-O-L (Not Loh-l), each letter has a meaning and it is not a word.
There is nothing more frustrating than in face-to-face conversation when someone says ‘loh-l’ after a humorous anecdote or a joke. They are saying ‘I found that amusing’, well fuck-face, just laugh…the way regular humans do.

-BRB (Be Right Back)
This is the second most common of these, and possibly the most useful. Used when, in those rare instances, you have to leave the computer to take a piss or get coffee. Trouble is most people just leave, so the most useful is useless as it is not used, funny old world.
The other comforting thing about this is that it can’t be easily used in regular conversation, due to a splendid lack of vowels. Retarded people are too retarded to attempt its pronunciation, and there is comfort in that.

- GTG (Got To Go)
What ever happened to ‘Goodbye’, I would like to know. When one doesn’t have the time to say a simple goodbye, things are very wrong. This one exemplifies how making things easier makes it seem as if they were hard to begin with, thus highlighting humanities stupidity. Luckily though this one can’t be turned into a word either, or I imagine there would be more murders committed by English scholars.

-ROFL (Rolling On the Floor Laughing)
This one is really stupid. It seems to have faded a little in recent years. I suppose the concept is that when something is more than a LOL it’s a ROFL, though in my 21 years I have never Rolled On the Floor Laughing, and if I were ROFLing, I would be too incapacitated to mention it on the internet chat, again when people say ‘RohFuL’ I just want to stab them.

Then there are the words that are altered, for no real reason other than to save a letter here or there, though those letters come at the cost of ones perceived intelligence and are, in my opinion, not at all worth it.
It is often teenage girls who implement this, though not solely. Here are a few, and only a few, as there are far too many to mention in full:

-Love becomes Luv
There must have been something wrong with the spelling of ‘love’ for those hundreds of years it was spelt that way, or, people are just dumber in this century. What is it worth saving that extra letter when you look dumb? Oh wait, you are dumb.

-Hate or Great becomes H8 or GR8
I can understand this in a text message, when the letters are restricted and it takes multiple punches on a key to get them, but on the internet when you have access to a full deck and unlimited characters, it is just stupid.

-You becomes U.
U is not a word, enough said.

The consequences of there various acronyms and abbreviations are more than you might imagine. When I was heavily into my acronym and ‘net language’ phase I found myself misspelling things on school essays and exams, resume and in letters. If, like most net jockeys, you are on the internet using this kind of language more often than not, its like a lie that you tell for so long it becomes truth.
While we have much more access to information than our parents did, if we keep spelling and speaking in this ridiculous manner we will reap none of the benefits.
So Sht Tha Fuk ^ n Stop tlkin like Kidz.

NP.

On 21st Presents: Practicality vs. Fun.

I have just gone through that other now redundant milestone; the 21st.
Of course legally speaking this birthday means exactly nothing in this country, perhaps the only slightly positive legal aspect is that I can get a drink in most countries I would want to get a drink at, and that apparently I can marry in India, Hong Kong and Nepal without parental consent which is quite the thrill.
When it comes to the question of presents for a 21st, each and every person has the battle of whether to play on the novelty of the outdated tradition or to treat it as any other birthday. Luckily, most obey the former.
It perhaps could’ve helped too that my party consisted of eighty percent middle aged aunts and uncles. In this respect the tradition is not dead yet.
The first ‘gifts’ I got were varying amounts of cash, useful to one who is, by a large majority of definitions, unemployable and out of work. It seemed each time I squandered one lot of birthday funds another was shortly to arrive. The timing was splendid and it has kept me going over the last few weeks.
I suppose when people give you such amounts of money they expect you would buy yourself a present with it. And I suppose they class a present as something you wouldn’t have bought yourself anyway, such as a nice pair of socks or a 80s compilation CD.
However, as none of these suppliers specify, I made the judgment call to spend the money on things that make me happy or, at worst, less miserable. Namely; drink and cigarettes, I am a class act.
The other early present I received was a book voucher. Vouchers are more specific, if someone really knows you and your spending habits well they will give you a voucher. It is something that says ‘I know you will waste money if I give you money, so I am giving you this’.
Certainly not a bad move, and its nice to have funds designated to the good side of your brain. Another thing is that in Use vs. Fun a book voucher is utterly useful to someone like me; an avid reader with his books locked in a box 4 hours away.
At the party the presents truly flowed. I will break them down based on their practical employment versus their novelty.
-A nice, sturdy canvas bag:
I don’t know how it goes with you fine folks, but a bag is only ever a practical item in my world. I am a hoarder of all kinds of junk, and more often than not I am taking that junk somewhere. So, throughout these travels I have gained an appreciation and a fondness of a good bag. It isn’t the funnest thing, but it certainly has its use.
- A 21st Beer Glass:
Perhaps a typical 21st present in most respects. Then again, its not really a 21st if you don’t get some sort of drinking apparatus. It is the rarity in that it fits equally into both Fun and Use. First of all, drinking is fun, and there is something manly about drinking from a purpose built glass. On use, as a drinker of Hahn Super Dry I was overjoyed to find the glass in question held a standard SD bottle perfectly, not a drop over or a drop under.
-A Kaleidoscope.
This one could be seen as inappropriate for a 21 year old, and in any other case would be. However, I immersed many hours in the world of the crystal lense as a youngster and associate memories of the twisting colors and shapes with happier more carefree times. Perhaps of note also is that the only kaleidoscope I ever properly used belonged to my Uncle, who gave me mine. Naturally this one is purely fun.
-A silver Celtic pocket watch”
I have always wanted a pocket watch. They are classy, manly and suave. So when I opened the lid on this fellow, I was delighted. It is a very practical gift for one who has no proper concept of time, due to an addled memory. However, it also has an element of fun and uniqueness to it. Plus, it’s the kind of thing I can own forever and will always remember my small moment in the sun when I look at its shiny engraving.
- Slick Black Dress Pants:
I am usually staunchly against clothing as presents. It has no fun to it, nothing you can really do but wear it (although, there once was a time that I would only have socks and undies when my grandmother got them for my June commemorations). Though, with the winds changing and my sense and interest in fashion and dressing well growing, and my need of new pants this is an apt gift. Black is certainly my color and, after tearing the crotch out of countless stretch jeans, it is always nice to have a slim but loose fit.
- A giant double ended dildo and g-string with cock sock.
If I were a bolder man, a more out loud and proud type, then these would be useful. But I garauntee that the friend who bought them didn’t have use intended, infact I think he would be disgusted if use resulted. The novelty is not lost on me, put it this way; if you own a giant double ended dildo and black g-string with a cock-sock, you have done some partying.
- A Giant 4.5 Liter bottle of Chivas Regal Scotch Whisky.
This thing is great. It is 142 standard drinks or, in my terms, 1 great weekend. It has its own stand to tip from and is almost novelty in size. I am really unsure of who these things are marketed at, but I am glad I have one.
The thing is, Scotch whisky isn’t my favourite. So perhaps my desire in owning one is for the gimmick of it. Though I have gained an appreciation for the fine drink and it is going steadily. I often have half the mind to buy a refill, as I don’t want it to run out.
I shant mention price, but these things aren’t cheap and it was truly sweet of my brother and sister to shell out for it.

As for now, I may not get another present until I am 50, which I fine by me. Much as I have enjoyed my various gifts, I am not very materialistic, not anymore. The best thing about this list of gifts as a collaborative effort is they all come from different aspects of life. Fashion, drink, novelty, travel, childhood fun and life need are all covered. I couldn’t be happier and more thankful to all those fine people who bought me gifts.

Until I am 50….
NP.

On Childhood Delusions and Things Unsaid.

It has become apparent, with each passing year that the dreams of mine are running faster than I am. All too often I am left at the starting gate while they take the ribbon.
Sooner or later you have to be realistic about it, I mean when your young your folks tell you that you can do whatever you want. That no dream is too big and they just want you to be happy.
I suppose they do this so you’re not disappointed from the very beginning. I think this has a lot to do with how carefree childhood is also, and likewise why so many children (yours truly included) are impatient and can’t wait to grow up and achieve all these good things.
Of course what they fail to mention is that the dreams you have are, the majority of the time, only accomplished by those with either talent or good looks and that you have neither of those.
It would be much simpler if as soon as you could comprehend, they told you something along the lines of the following;
‘I was once like you, and my parents never told me this, but you can’t do anything you want. There is probably four or five things you’re capable of that wont make you want to kill yourself, and most of them are simple and boring. So, darling child, aim low’.
It’s a bitter situation, to say the least. But I have learnt this lesson more thoroughly than most. At 21 I am back at home, with an utter lack of faith and delusions of grandeur.
NP.