I have a problem.
Well, actually I have two. The first is that I originally wrote this up already, but then had a spastic attack and inadvertently pressed the wrong key and irretrievably deleted the text in its entirety, but that’s unrelated.
The reason I’m here – the reason I’ve returned from an unintended absence – is that I have a problem. It’s a moral dilemma I’ve been wrestling with and my opponent is all muscle and sinew and tendons of steel. I’m logically disposed to one course of action and yet ideologically compatible with the opposite; especially when it’s opposed by the puritanical zealots and the usual holier-than-thou brigade.
It’s perhaps unsurprising that I’m referring to smoking.
Let you fill you in: For the last month or two, I’ve been on one of my periodical yet uncharacteristic health-kicks. This phenomenon usually occurs every two to three years, instigated by an event preceding the realisation that an existence of office drudgery moving to pub, to laptop, to guitar, to bed *repeat* doesn’t really do much for one’s physique, stamina, strength etc. And so, in order counteract the weakling within (or without) I’ll throw some weights around in a half-arsed fashion, usually before nipping for another pint and another fag.
This time, however, there’s a difference? No, don’t worry, this isn’t that ‘it’s gonna be different this time’ cry of the wife-beater, or scag-head. The difference this time is mainly She, The Provider of Sexual Frivolities. Yep, she’s not only been on my case – precariously balancing like a circus seal – she’s been jumping up and down on it like a coke-fuelled (whichever, both work) child at a birthday party who’s had too many blue Smarties (you know, the old ones that had additives instead of water-colour paint) and probably a surreptitious swig from Auntie Edna’s hip-flask. Usually such behaviour would just get her another spell in the cupboard, but to be fair to her, I had been meaning to actually do something for a while.
So off to the gym it was for us, to pay many pennies and sign our souls away for access to a building housing heavy things and healthy people.
So I’m eating better, following a structured routine, cut back (note: NOT cut out! I refuse to become one of those joyless, poe-faced, self-righteous fuckwits that will interminably drivel on about what they’re abstaining from this week. Life, like alcohol, is there to be enjoyed!) and as a result I’m losing fat and slowly gaining some much needed muscle. Hooray for me!
The problem reared its ugly head the other day when I decided to up my cardio. Now, anybody that knows me is aware that I’m hardly the most energetic bastard on the planet, so I was pretty surprised that I can actually spend more than two minutes running like I’m being chased by a randy Frenchman without collapsing into a pile. What I did notice though was that if said Frenchman could keep the pace up for about 20-30 mins, I was fucked . . . literally. It became quite clear that if I’m going to increase stamina and endurance I’m going to have to knock the fags on the head.
Of course, I could always not do it and get healthier regardless – but quitting is just logical since I’ll be getting more benefit from killing meself in the gym.
Yet it feels like such a big concession when faced with things such as this and this.
The first is a clear demonstration of not only how politicised, but also, like climate change before it, also how much of a religion it has become. Indeed, The Righteous are more often than not paragons of everything from keeping their doorstep tidy, to recycling, anti-smoking and rubbing your face in how much more ‘perfect’ they are than you. We all know these people.
This is just exacerbated to an indefinable degree, however, once you think about it for a second. Here we have an institution which should by rights be committed to adherence to the scientific method in the pursuit of knowledge. The very thing they should not do is effectively excommunicate someone when his scientifically conducted research doesn’t end up justifying whatever wishy-washy belief system someone somewhere has probably received a brown envelope to tout.
Much in the same vein, the second link initially made me laugh but pretty soon I was crying, weeping once again for the loss of the human mind. These complete fuckwits – these worthless cunts who are so ready to swallow the salty goodness of whatever idiotic sermon they’re told are justified by the actions of places like the UCLA. It supports their idiotic views in the same way that the ‘learned men’ of the Church supported witch-hunts in years gone by. When left to the idiotic rabble, how long do you really think it’s going to be before some scally scum ‘parent’ takes it upon him or herself to stab, glass, suffocate with their rolls of fat some poor bastard who’s enjoying a fag outside his local (because some backwards fuckwit said he couldn’t enjoy two legal drugs at the same time)? And what’ll be his or her warcry? "Think of the kids!!!"
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