Cigarettes Are Sublime

http://www.salon.com/health/feature/2000/02/08/i_smoke/index.html

I remember, incidentally, when one of the aforementioned hippies who attempted to colonise the countryside away from its true owners was made the mayoress of Aberystwyth, which tells you all you need to know about the spiritual and mental weakness of the Welsh people.

(from www.globeandmail.com)

Gzowski dead at 67

Peter Gzowski was one of Canada's best-loved radio personalities

By JOHN SAUNDERS Globe and Mail Update

Peter Gzowski, whose tobacco-cured radio voice helped to give English- speaking Canada a sense of itself, died Thursday, apparently of the effects of a three-pack-a-day habit he kicked less than two years ago. He was 67.

As host of the CBC's This Country in the Morning in the early 1970s and then Morningside for 15 seasons in the 1980s and 1990s, he became one of the nation's best-loved broadcasters, projecting an affectionate view of Canada as a place of down-to-earth, often quirky but generally reasonable people.

A heavy smoker most of his life, he spent his last year hooked up to what he called a stroller loaded with an oxygen tank. He suffered from emphysema, in which the lungs lose elasticity and capacity to feed oxygen to the blood, causing shortness of breath and difficulty in exhaling.

Your patriotism is a hollow sham. A true Englishman of any breeding smokes only a pipe or a damn good cigar. Cigarettes are for women and servants. As for Thatcher, not only was she a woman, her politics, compared with those of King Edward VII or Lord Haw Haw, were craven commie tosh -- like yours, you scoundrel.

Back to Birkbeck with you, you permissive cur!

with any luck i might have grown a beard by then.

he has his own website so he must be!

his most cited paper returned by web of science (probably not the best source):

EXPRESSIONIST EDUCATION SCRUTON R OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION 13 (1): 39-44 1987

Document type: Article Language: English Cited References: 0 Times Cited: 4

Addresses: SCRUTON R, UNIV LONDON,BIRKBECK COLL,DEPT PHILOSOPHY,MALET ST,LONDON WC1,ENGLAND Publisher: CARFAX PUBL CO, ABINGDON

IDS Number: G3372

ISSN: 0305-4985

I think yes is the answer.

The headmaster in the Mole books = *Reginald* Scruton, who I always thought had been named by Sue Townsend in reference to Roger S, played by Freddie Jones in the 1985 TV adaptation as a memorable Thatcher-worshipping grotesque. "Shut up, Braithwaite!"

Well knock me down with a feather.

Good times.

I'm actually re-reading that 'Cigarettes are Sublime' book that came out some years go.

http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=15

“I have actually been listening to quite a bit of heavy metal lately, and Metallica, I think, is genuinely talented. ‘Master of Puppets’ I think has got something genuinely both poetic – violently poetic – and musical. Every now and then something like that stands out and you can see that people have got no other repertoire and have a very narrow range of expression, but they’ve hit on something where they are saying something which is not just about themselves. Pop music is so concentrated on the self and the performer that it’s very rare that that happens, I think. It never happens with Oasis or The Verve. It did happen much more of course with the Beatles, and in the old American songbook, Hoagy Carmichael and Cole Porter and all that. That was a popular music which was about communication of often quite gentle feelings. So I’m not as prejudiced as I seem. I would like to be more prejudiced because it would prevent me from listening to this stuff.”

so very many today

i feel i am becoming a real smoker as i got up and wanted a cigarette

$70 a week??? Even at my most puffingest I was only up to $50 or so. I salute you, sir.

― electric sound of jim, Thursday, January 24, 2002 12:00 PM (7 years ago)

a lot changed in 7 years! a pack a day would be closer to $100 now

really? i go through a carton a week, and it's only $60 - and the brand i buy is on the expensive side.

what is brand!

American Spirits

haven't all you tripsters switched to rollies by now

$60 for a carton of american spirits is amazing

they're perpetually on sale for that (a little bit less than that, actually) at Walgreen's around here.

god I remember when a carton of smokes cost like twenty bucks. lol nineties.

yeah so do i.

i remember when i was in highschool, i could get a gallon and a half of gas and a pack of cigarettes for $5.

dag

my parents didn't know i smoked until i was in college, so when they'd give me $5 for gas to go to Santa Cruz to go used book/record shopping, and i'd buy just enough gas to get there and back, and could buy a pack of cigarettes with the difference.

they were really shitty generic brand cigarettes - but the gas station wouldn't card me. I actually got carded at that gas station a few years ago when I bought cigarettes there while visiting my parents.

Smoking starts out as sublime, then it becomes merely enjoyable, and then necessary, and finally a chore. This can be a cycle, too. Especially if you "quit" for like two weeks.

i've never found it a chore. sometimes it's been a chore to orchestrate a cigarette break at past jobs

have you been smoking for over ten years?

between 18 and 19 years

Wow. Maybe some people never experience that "over-smoked" feeling.

i experience it as a non-smoker! when i am around too much smoke.

oh there are definitely times when i feel like i'm smoking too much or have smoked too much - generally in social situations where a lot of other people are smoking, too, and drinking.

For me it eventually became a permanent feeling except for the first morning smoke. I suppose it was for that reason that it wasn't too hard for me to quit.

quitting is one of those things i know i will have to contend with at some point in the future, but i'm not looking forward to it.

I only smoked for a year, and quitting was almost impossible for me! Now the only time I miss it is with my morning coffee, and sometimes when I'm reading.

I'm 36 and I've never had a drag of a tobacco cigarette.

Tonight I realized I have been smoking for more than half of my life. And after reading this thread, I do remember when cigarettes were 2.25 a pack. Seriously I should quit.

I haven't smoked for a good-ish while now, and have no desire to (thoracic surgery will do that to a man I guess) but goddam I miss the cigarettes you have when

1) Having a break in writing something, or any form of mental exertion. The smoking of the cigarette provides a much needed mental relaxtion, but you are focused, in an abstracted sort of way, on the smoking of the cigarette, so your mind doesn't start thinking about other things (this place is a tip, do I want a drink? I really ought to this, I must do that), and because the smoking of the cigarette is of a fixed length, things like staring out of the window do not end up using half the day. Quite often new ideas will occur during the smoking of this cigarette, and even if not, you return to work with the mental fibres suitably relaxed.

2) Smoking while reading in a pub. Accepted this would no longer be possible anyway, but pint and book feels slightly self-conscious, and you can't really look up from the book without catching people's eyes. Pint, cigarette and a book however, and if you want to have a momentary break from reading or a brief moment of contemplation you can look at the wreaths of smoke and take a pull on your pint quite happily, still in your internal world. Especially effective in a dark pub on a sunny day.

3) After a meal, the perfect digestif, the burnt tobacco and puffs of smoke a handy moment of relaxation but also preparation (for other activity, or the start of drinking, rather than drinking and eating). Cuts through the last, lingering tastes of richness still in the mouth, which can, if left there too long, sour. All good things must come to an end.

4) Popping out for a stroll and a cigarette at night. I seem to do this less having stopped smoking - possibly the cigarette gave it sufficient purpose to impel me from out my domicile.

I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones that I really miss. I don't miss the post exercise/sex cigarette, which although pleasant at times, I think are overrated. Nor do I miss the first of the day, which too often had me running for the toilet (once causing an extreme crisis on a torrential day in Berlin), or brought about a day of indolence, through the undue slackening of the nerves.

I suppose I might include the

5) Meeting people cigarette, especially girls I suppose, but also work colleagues (from all levels), and indeed random people. I'm sure this is my fault, but I just find it harder to do without.

Now I miss smoking.

Seriously!

xxxpost - this post was paid for by Phillip Morris.

Real Cig Reviews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoJkHt3IJt8#t=78

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoJkHt3IJt8#t=78

"I don't know about rich, but definitely smooth and mellow"

I love cigarettes and really wish they weren't catastrophically unhealthy. I haven't had one for months.

Working on my French inhale

cigarettes are great. i'll smoke one for ya tonight cal

I feel extremely fortunate that I can smoke them on occasion - like, if I happen to be hanging out with friends who smoke - without ever buying my own packs. I've known people who can't sleep through the night without one.

smoking 1-2 packs a day here, but your arrangement sounds ideal

i find cigarettes meditational tbh

I once got up to 5-6 smokes a day w/ my own packs (I picked it up working in kitchens, like so many others) but my asthmatic tendencies made me feel like shit constantly when I hit the upper limit, which really helped to keep it at bay as a consistent habit.

jealous