Pull -, Break- , Hook-

(Title Hint: you know that game where you get three words, and you have to figure out what letters or word can be added before or after each to make three new words? This is essentially that. )

"I put two and two together and I got 'IV'..."

Et tu, Loud?

Nothing stings worse than a cold knife in the back.

...Actually, I suppose that if you took the nest or hive of each and every stinging insect on the planet and then screamed loudly while smashing them together that it would sting worse....

Right, right, Knives in the back, I was getting to that!

I have just been informed that my Ex - yes, she's my Ex now, get over it already - has been smoking for the past few months. You'd think she might have said anything about it? Actually, this was the first I'd heard of it. It would have been nice to know before, it would have forced me to wake up and smell the rancid tobacco stench of a relationship long past its expiery date. Years ago, I struggled to pull her away from the jaws of self-harm, at the cost of many a sleeping hour. Now, it seems that she has conspired to slowly expunge any lasting positive effects I may have had on her. While our relationship could never be repaired to any state resembling that of a "healthy" one, I took some comfort in the knowledge that I had made a difference when it counted, as if following some relationship-campsite rule. This lapse of hers, then, seems the ultimate betrayal: it's a natural continuation of those early behaviours. Bad enough that I've been effectively set back two years by this break-up, does she now seek to erase it so that none who lay eyes on us from this day hence might ever guess as to what once was?

Perhaps, of course, this isn't about me at all. She could have started smoking on a whim, on a dare, on some stressful night when nothing else offered a hope of respite. Perhaps she didn't tell me because she didn't believe it to be my business. Perhaps if I didn't notice, I wasn't worthy of being informed. Attempts to discern her motivation and intent bear a remarkable likeness in tone to those long slogs of the early days. Her defeatist attitude, my callous rationality...we haven't changed a bit.

Do I want to be angry? No, I don't want to be angry in the slightest. I want to believe that everyone can make educated choices about what substances they choose to use BUT NOT abuse. Are people capable of this? Yes, and I've met some who are or seem to be. Are ALL people capable of this? My faith in humanity is tested this way. I always wonder, when I see some twentysomething taking a drag on a cigarette, WHY? Why do you foul your mouth with smoke and choke your lungs with tar? I'd like to rationalize why this is different from someone taking E at a rave, and maybe it is. I've never smoked or taken E, so I haven't the slightest clue. Point is, they're both chemicals that act on the brain and nervous system. Incidentally, I am not above the occasional coffee, and I've taken Ritalin for years. Now I take it when I know that I need to concentrate (and yes, it IS perscription!). Is THIS any different from someone who smokes because of how it makes them feel? Well, I have to say that my pills don't come with a bigass YOU WILL DIE warning on essentially half of the container. I don't necessarily take it daily anymore, and when I did it made the difference between an out-of-control kid without a lot of friends, and the guy that you (and you know who you are) befriended. Either way I think my quirks were the same, and as it is said by doctors and mothers alike, Ritalin doesn't change who you are. I believe that, I'm still me on or off the drug, but to a 3rd grader, let me tell you that being able to sit still long enough to be taken seriously (combined with being placed in a congregated gifted class) was what let me get anywhere in life. Can anyone say this about smoking? Maybe some can; their first pack of cigarettes could have been the path to the in-crowd, or maybe they could have fallen in with some of the rougher folks, whatever. Maybe cigarettes have helped people gain social acceptance in the past. There's also that episode of House where he perscribes cigarettes to the man with a bowel problem, which I assume to be true because 1) FALSE advertising of cigarettes by popular anything stirs up some intense shit, and 2) the whole point of the scene is the "strange but true" angle. If cigarettes didn't actually help in some cases, why risk the potential shitstorm when you could just make up some nonsense about avocado-juice enemas? I'll grant that there is the possibility that a large payoff and a widely-believed urban myth could have collided to produce the same effect, but that's not really in the spirit of the irreverent House. Then again, maybe the Suits knew this, and plotted their viral marketing around it...

Conspiracy theories aside, maybe there's an argument to be made that smoking cigarettes isn't as bad as modern society sees it. The policymakers driving the anti-smoking campaign certainly haven't helped, what with their eerily manipulative "denormalization" strategy. It's old news, of course, but it still irritates me that those fighting what I see to be a good fight have essentially co-opted the tactics of the enemy and reversed the message. I'm sure Sartre would not approve.

I almost wish that I hadn't found out, because while I may not be overly happy with the person, she inhabits a body that I have long cared for. To learn that for months of our relationship she defaced it with poison smoke, and continues to do so makes me want to act, to root out the cause of the behaviour, and make things right again.

But that's not my job now, or it shouldn't be. Maybe in a month, perhaps a year, but don't flaunt your destruction of the person/body that I loved, not now.

"I know....I've got nothin' to say / Someone has taken my place..."
- Fleetwood Mac, Second Hand News

Speaking of other great music, I managed to dig up our Moxy Fruvous cassette. Again, I'm not overly fond of pasting up page after page of song lyrics, but here is one song that you should hear. It's called Gulf War* Song

* The first one, now that it needs clarification

"We got a call to write a song about the war in the Gulf

But we shouldn't hurt anyone's feelings
So we tried, then gave up, 'cause there was no such song
But the trying was very revealing
What makes a person so poisonous righteous
That they'd think less of anyone who just disagreed?
She's just a pacifist, he's just a patriot
If I said you were crazy, would you have to fight me?

Fighters for liberty, fighters for power
Fighters for longer turns in the shower
Don't tell me I can't fight, 'cause I'll punch out your lights
And history seems to agree that I would fight you for me

So we read and we watched all the specially selected news
And we learned so much more 'bout the good guys
Won't you stand by the flag? Was the question unasked
Won't you join in and fight with the allies?
What could we say...we're only 25 years old?
With 25 sweet summers, and hot fires in the cold
This kind of life makes that violence unthinkable
We'd like to play hockey, have kids and grow old

Fighters for Texaco, fighters for power
Fighters for longer turns in the shower
Don't tell me I can't fight 'cause I'll punch out your lights
And history seems to agree that I would fight you for me
That us would fight them for we

He's just a peacenik and she's just a warhawk
That's where the beach was, that's where the sea
What could we say...we're only 25 years old?
And history seems to agree 
that I would fight you for me
That us would fight them for we

Is that how it always will be?

On a final note, I'm sorry if this post doesn't go much of anywhere. It's therapeutic, mmmkay?

Thank you for bearing with me,
LOUD