Be Excellent To Each Other

Oh, I get it! It's about smoking. Um, I don't like smoke.

Oh, was it something like this poster?

Cos if so, your first post makes perfect ironical sense now.

However, whilst searching for what could be the one you're on about, I found this little beauty:



I reckon the competition was fixed, if she only came third.

Poké... mon. Trainers of.

Right?

Or is this the super thing to do with Grim... that you were talking about? Or maybe it was the BETEO 'super offer', and you offered to turn people into celebrities with an amazing poster campaign and CRUELLY turned it around against them. With the letter K somewhere in the middle of it.

I suggest being less cryptic in future. And past.

That reads like a threat...


Very much this.

It absolutely is of course absolutely, and the very spirit of your question sir is exactly what I have been attempting to in any way provoke, inspire, or tediously bore from out of folks. You are a lawyer again.


Yes, that didn't go well at all. Which is a shame because it's actually just me trying to have some fun (good clean fun that everyone can enjoy) with tedious forum technical stuff, but ah well.


Mmm, nor that. Still, I'd have hoped that the Party Favour since posted would have added some meat to the skeleton of the idea in your mind*. Okay, I'll tell you now - it's genuinely a really cool thing, of limited but hopefully popular interest, and it's coming next week. It's not *quite* as hard to acquire as I thought, but this seems a recent event. So it's not quite as awesome, but it is still pretty awesome.

The thread itself was absolute bobbins though, and I apologise for such shitness.


Noted. Not so many fans of the cryptic here, then. Hey, we live, we learn. I hope.

* Some Meat To The Skeleton Of The Idea In Your Mind is the best album title that never was.

Nope. I can't find it anywhere, and I'm not going to try and describe it. It's from Keep Britain Tidy, which adds another level of hilariousness to it, maybe even two levels. Oh, three levels, ha-ha-ha. No, four! Ahahahaha!

That was a jolly reference (but obviously rewritten as a solo piece) to A Bit Of Fry And Laurie. I realise that if you haven't watched it then it might seem instead like I was just going mad, and further evidence of whatever you - I don't mean you specifically, I mean the general you used when someone is being a loudmouth twat as I am now - want to make it.

Oh. *noticing something* Hey - this wasn't some attempt to bring about "OMG YOU SAID PAKIS" tediousness or such. I hadn't even thought of pikeys. Full credit to forumite andyb for 'getting it', without needing to see the poster in question. Apologies to forumite andyb if you don't want my credit. I now feel justified. If only one person understands, then this will all be worth it.

Who is andyb?

So, smoking, eh? Or, we can not bother. Or, you can start again in a different thread.

I smoke. I like smoking. It is good as I commute so much and live alone in depression, wishing I could get a girlfriend near me. However, I'm fucking off somewhere soon, and I will be hardly commuting at all. This is excellent news, and I am going to therefore QUIT smoking then, as I won't "need to" anymore.

I look forward to calling all smokers cunts and generally being a horrible person, some time after then (oh, I'm just joking!!! )

Oof, that's not very cool is it :?

Also, I should probably say that the word isn't actually "smoking" or "smokers", although that it is a two-syllable word with a 'k' in the middle.

I smoke, and certainly feel a pang of guilt exhaling whenever small children walk by me on the street, but I can't help but feel the dangers of passive smoking have been massively over-stated by the anti-smoking lobby. "Passive smoking" is a very nebulous subject to do credible academic research on, and it's striking how rarely you see claims about the terrifying threat of passive smoking being backed up by real statistics.

Undeniably, smoking is an unpleasant habit, and something that all of us would be better off not getting involved with. That governments are keen to stop us doing it should come as no great surprise. However, I'm also sick of the modern preoccupation with longevity of life over getting on and living life, and so will always have a certain respect for those who were stupid enough to take up the habit in the first place.

I suspect the only argument that's going to get me to give up is the financial one (i.e. saving myself hundreds of pounds every year).

Passive smoking is not over-stated.

I'm hoping to leave the house I'm living in asap as the passive smoking there is making me cough up chewy shit.
I also get more coughing bouts and headaches there...I want to leave before something else happens. Not good.
As for children, yes the merest hint of smoke imo is veh bad.

I'm stating facts mind...the only thing that will make you give up is yourself.
I smoked 20-30 a day for quite a few years and tried several attempts at giving up. I finally did on my last attempt, 5 years ago this summer.

Huh - smoking. I told you it was too cryptic.

I smoke, have done for twelve years without a break. I reckon I've done it now, and I'm a bit fed up. I've always liked smoking, if not the fact that I was 'a smoker'. Besides, I promised my dad I'd quit before I hit 30.

GRIM... IS CONFUSED

The capitals match your avatar nicely though.

I, for one, enjoy your crypticality.

Cryptic is fine. Do, however, expect for it to be countered with whelks.

I'm not a biologist or a doctor, so obviously feel free to ignore absolutely everything that follows. For the purposes of disclosure, I quit smoking 5 years ago, but do not despise smokers. Although I do think you're all weak willed fools who may as well just be burning £5 notes every day

Passive smoking may well be a nebulous subject to do research on, but one wonders why one would need to.

Here's my thinking (such as it is).

Inhaling smoke from cigarettes indisputably damages the health of the smoker. Lots. Indisputably. Lots and lots.

I therefore cannot see how that same smoke, either after being breathed in and exhaled out by the smoker or just wafting off from the tip, fails to be harmful to the person sat next to you just because they're not holding the cigarette.

Logically, if smoke = harmful for the smoker, then that very same smoke must be harmful to the person sat next to you breathing it in. For me to be wrong, your lungs must somehow magically purify the smoke of all toxins and carcinogens before you exhale it, which doesn't happen.

And yes, passive smokers will inhale smoke at a lower rate and in smaller quantities than the smokers, but:

(a) passive smoking exposure obviously builds up with time and density of smokers, and bar staff (before the ban) were at a reasonably worrying risk of lung cancer and all that, as they were surrounded by hundreds of smokers for hours on end. We've all been in busy bars where merely breathing in is like smoking a fag, for heaven's sake. See also people who live in a smoking household where everyone smokes indoors.

(b) you only need to smoke one fag to develop lung cancer anyway. You'd have to be mahoosively unlucky, of course, but as there is (as I understand it) a running percentage chance of the carcinogens triggering a cancerous mutation each time they're inhaled, it's a risk. So therefore the same risk applies to a one off passive smoker, and much much more so to those who are repeatedly exposed to passive smoking. And it's not a risk that they're chosing to take. It's one that the smoker is inflicting on them.

As we've now banned smoking in enclosed public spaces we've probably done enough to reduce as far as is reasonably possible the risks to the general public of passive smoking, short of banning smoking outside as well (which would be taking things unecessarily too far). There's still the matter of people who smoke in their own houses around their children - these people are absolute 100% cunts, of course, but if we start mandating that they can't smoke in their own homes we've pretty much banned smoking, which I think we'd all agree would be a silly thing to do (see also every other attempt at prohibition). We should, however, ban smoking whilst pregnant. This has documented ill-effects to the baby, and if you can't get yourself together enough to quit smoking for just 9 months for the sake of the health of your unborn child, you may as well just repeatedly punch yourself in teh bump, too. It makes me very, very sad when I see pregnant women (usually young women/girls) smoking.

So, there we are.

The passive smokers won the legislative argument, and it's just the poor kids (born or yet to be born) living with smoking parents that are left carrying the can(cer) for the rest of us.

It's quite opposite where I live - flyposters everywhere inciting Isamic fundamentalism. The most common is 'GLOBAL WAR ON ISLAM' and I'm always tempted to scrawl 'Where do I sign up?' underneath.

What annoys me about passive smoking and the medical community is that it's one of those areas where people you would like to rely on as dispassionate scientists don't behave that way at all. They have a definite agenda and many will openly admit that the dangers of passive smoking have been exaggerated beyond what is really supported by the evidence in order to further their crusade to see smoking consigned to history altogether. Having said that I still support the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces as there is certainly enough evidence for it to be a prudent and entirely justifiable course of action. I just hate being lied to and patronised.

THIS IS LOTS OF FUN YES. (I'm the kid before you get funny.)

On the "crazy posters" from, have any of the London BETEOers seen this little beauty?

Courtesy of the English Democrats, whose candidate looks like he really deserves a slap in the picture on their home page.

Or an advertisement for a specialist fetish event.

YOU MUST DO THIS

I once woke up to the slogan 'Islamic brothers! Rise up to the white bastards and slaughter them like pigs' on the door to my flat and on the bus stops and walls all over my street. It did make me feel a tad bit edgy.

You're completely right there son.

Jeez, that would scare the crap out of me. I've always been very "why can't we all get along?" and have pretty much dismissed fears of immigrants and muslims and such as an over-reaction. However, something like that would instantly turn me into a xenophobic wannabe vigilante. Some of the stuff people here have had to deal with makes me hugely grateful that I live in quiet inoffensive suburbia.

Ditto, in Whitesville countryside.

Mind you, I never had any problems whilst living in Londonistan either, so there we go.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

I was almost more amused than anything else - I took a few pictures and emailed them to Craig. A couple of weeks later it was gone and I more or less forgot about it, but I know that a lot of residents of the older generation were quite shook up by it and then the fear turned to anger and resentment. I am sure that it was only their age that prevented it from turning into a little vigilante uprising, but within time those feelings died down, too. It was around the time of the London bombings, which I think just compounded feelings in the area and was what made me feel edgy about it as I was al to close to the 'action' when the bombings took place.

Some points.



1 - There is a MASSIVE one of these at London Bridge, and it genuinely annoys the hell out of me to the point where I want to actually file some sort of complaint against it, on the ground that the person who created it must be some sort of subhuman craphead.



2 - Please do. Then take photo. Then try not to get killed.

3 - The topic was a little overly cryptic.

4 - Smokers do smell.

I might just do that. Just have to remember to carry a marker pen around with me when I'm pissed.

Both my parents smoke, and when growing up I tried to get them to stop, I managed to get them to stop smoking in my room and that was about it.

Recently I went to spain to visit them (when my dad was ill) and stayed in their flat. They openly smoke around the house. And it was horrible sitting around the flat (especially the living room), this is probably due to living in a non smoking house for the past 10 years or so. After a few days of being there, I started getting a nose bleed every morning, sometimes 2 or 3 in a day. It was really unpleasant. I didn't really say anything because at the time my mum was going through a tough patch.

When I came back home, it took 3 washes before the clothes I was wearing stopped smelling of smoke.

So in summary, if the original post is about smoking, then yes, they do stink.

Malc

I don't smoke (except once every six months when I'm very drunk and randomly decide that I do) and I never have done. I don't really care if people want to, it's up to them. As a non-smoker it's nice that I don't reek when I go out to the pub anymore, or if I spend time behind a bar (I'm at the bar-working age) I don't feel like I'm going to cough my lungs out. Plus passive smoking makes me VERY ILL, so I don't have that to worry about these days - unless I go to visit my parents, because they both chain-smoke, and my mother smoked (and fell down the stairs in 4-inch stilettos....) when she was pregnant with me, and I'm _fine_.

After all that, I think the vilification of smokers is a bit ridiculous, because everyone knows smoking is cool

Erm... Weren't you ill recently?