Archive for October 19th, 2007

As thick as a plank

October 19th, 2007

Those f*cking builders next door are really getting on my nerves.

Not content with power saws and hammers, they are now hefting huge sheets of plywood around. They have been at it since half eight this morning. They are throwing them around with gay abandon, and when one lands in roughly the right place they bang dozens of nails into it.

I have just spent half an hour in the garden. I know my licence says I’m only supposed to shoot tourists, but there are limits.

I have already accounted for four. They went flying off into the garden the other side.

What is amazing though is that no one seems to have noticed! The others just wipe the blood off the plywood and carry on throwing it around.

Now I know the origin of the expression “as thick as a plank”.

Smoking is good for you

October 19th, 2007

Whenever there is a survey about health, they invariably ask if you smoke.

They then ask how many cigarettes a day.

But they never mention a pipe. And I often wondered how pipe smoking equated to cigarette smoking. I meant to ask the Doctor. And then it struck me – why not look it up on the Interweb?

So I did.

And what I found surprised even me.

Apparently, a pipe-smoker who smokes up to four bowlfuls of tobacco a day can have a longer life expectancy than someone who doesn’t smoke at all.

Several reports have shown this. Including one by our friend the Surgeon General of the United States.

Of course the Anti Smoking Nazis would have us believe that even thinking about tobacco is enough to bring on a brain tumour, so the idea of smoking prolonging life is pure heresy.

So how can the pipe be healthy, if tobacco is so evil? Simple.

The key to the whole issue lies in stress.

When calculating a persons expected lifespan, there are many factors to consider – heredity, lifestyle, general health and mental well-being.

Of these, mental well-being is considered to be one of the greatest factors. Being happy and relaxed in you life is enough to add years onto your life expectancy. Relaxation is the key. Stress is the killer.

To me, every aspect of cigarette smoking screams of stress – frantically jamming the fag in the mouth; the rapid dragging on it and the final stabbing of the cigarette in the ashtray. Pipe smoking is a ritual. By its nature, it’s a relaxing process – the careful packing of the tobacco into the pipe; the ritual of lighting it [a quick stab of a lighter isn't good enough here], and then sitting back and enjoying it. I even find the process of cleaning a pipe relaxing. People even say that the sight of another person smoking a pipe is relaxing.

People accuse me of inventing the stuff I write about. I’m very hurt by that, but I’ll let it pass.

I will quote from the Surgeon General of the United States in his report on the dangers of tobacco.

Specifically, this report confirmed what had been suspected for quite some time, that cigarette smoking could be dangerous. However, the conclusion drawn from several studies about pipe smokers was that they tended to live longer than the general population!

So. Throw away those damned cigarettes. They stink, and they are dangerous.

Put it in your pipe and smoke it.