Up Front: No Smoke
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More and more I want advisories to warn me that a programme is very stupid, or that a film is excessively formulaic, or that Nastassja Kinski ca. 1988 is not in it so really what's the point? But it just doesn't happen.
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"Contains strong horror violence" -- as opposed to the romantic type that makes you want to run out and French kiss kittens?
As opposed to realistic violence, which some films carry a warning about - I suspect you're much more likely to be bashed by your partner than fall into a room full of needles.
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As opposed to realistic violence, which some films carry a warning about - I suspect you're much more likely to be bashed by your partner than fall into a room full of needles.
OK, that was a fair come back to the snark. But that's where I start getting nervous -- to be very literal about it, there is no "realistic" violence in movies or television. Jodie Foster did not get gang raped on top of a pool table in The Accused, any more than Grace Park and Tricia Helfer were in the Pegasus/Resurrection Ship arc of BSG, or Rutina Wesley seems to in every other episode of True Blood. Yes, I know Cylons and vampires don't exist, while The Accused is based on a true story. But I'm not at all comfortable with the value judgements implicit in a lot of these labels the MPAA (and other ratings bodies) put on their product.
To use my own example: In all three cases, I'd be perfectly happy with a label along the lines of "contains depictions of rape/sexual violence". Labeling one "realistic violence" and another "fantasy violence" (which I've seen) not so much. I've probably caught liberal Femi-Nazi cooties off PAS, but I don't want to even start drawing up that kind of league table for sexual abuse. How about giving viewers useful factual information that they can base their own value judgements on. (Which is probably too big a call where the truly bizarre MPAA is concerned, but that's a whole other can of live bait...)
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And who's ever had a joint and giggled, that's ridiculous. They should be... actually, I can't remember what the negative consequences of marijuana are. Is that one of them?
All I'm sayin' is, don't harsh my buzz.
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but I don't want to even start drawing up that kind of league table for sexual abuse.
*cough* That should read "for depictions of any form of sexual or physical abuse". Really stupid to FUBAR my own argument with imprecise wording.
And Russell, Simone Horrocks is a very smart woman. I'd have loved her to ask the Smokefree Coalition mouthpiece if she also thinks the documentary about Goddard and Truffaut that screened at the Film Festival this year should have been rated R, unless all footage of the subjects smoking was excised. It would have been an incoherent short, but never mind... (Personally, I'd be damn impressed if any child of my acquaintance showed any interest in the Nouvelle Vague, let alone wanted to settle down and watch a subtitled documentary for an hour and a half.)
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back when Wellington was looking at banning smoking on footpaths (at cafes and things), I had a massive hissy fit at several co workers, pointing out that I breathe in a damn sight more cabon monoxide walking down Courtenay place from all the buses than I do from the odd bit of passive smoke from outside a bar.
Grump.
Facts about cars as a health problem.
# 1.27 million people are killed worldwide in traffic accidents ever year
Pedestrians face traffic in all directions
# Half of them are not in cars, but are pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists
# 50 million people are severely injured each year
# More people are dying in road accidents worldwide than die of malaria or diabetes
# At this rate, by 2020 road accidents will become the third most serious threat to human health.
# The Asia-Pacific region accounts for about 60% of global road deaths, despite having only 16% of the world’s vehicles
# Road injuries kill more children aged 5 to 14 in poor countries than malaria or AIDS
#They are the single biggest killer of 15- to 29-year-oldsFrom the the First Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety
Yeah, it's ridiculous. And those figures, to the best of my knowledge do not include the very serious health burden imposed by pollution, the rightly noted bugbear above. Pollution from cars kills over 300 people every year in Auckland alone. That side of the car-death ledger is still almost unrecognised by anyone except ARC transport planners. China is slowly getting a handle on it, but only because the scope of their problem is so huge. The changes they force on their population may eventually be picked up in the rest of the world.
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albino albedo...
...to walk around the city at night in winter with someone white tied over their mouths.
would that be Johnny (or Edgar) Winter ?
or just Johnny Walker?
Leg bone connected to the butt bone...Hopefully they take up jogging and they
go away quicker.This exercising restraint link is dedicated to
Peter Ashby, who I still feel was unfairly
castigated and cast out...
many people come to this forum with a spectra of axes to grind, agendas and enthusiasms - hell, some people will twist any old topic, serious or otherwise, just to make a cheap pun... </mea culpa>
personally I thought a better (and more diplomatic) solution to his well-intentioned (but occasionally badly-timed) interlocutions would've been
to ask him to write a guest post on personal
fitness and wellbeing...
just sayin', not that it's my place...if yer out there Peter, long may you run...
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Yes, but if we start watching it now, we'll have missed all the cool stuff in between. We need to catch up on the other seasons first.
If you do get it out, be warned, the rude sex in it can actually spread beyond the screen.
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And yet no annoying busybody ever comes up to me and tells me to remove my 'cancer wagon' from the road, as they do to my outside-smoking mother.
Dude, you're just not hanging around with the right kind of pro-cycling activitists. I've heard attitudes way more virulent than this expressed about cars.
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When I smoked in Oz we had a little old building caretaker Nazi who seemed to take especial pleasure in ordering us not to stand within the eaves of the building when we smoked. If it was raining, we were meant to get wet, that was his rules. Indeed it was mostly when it was raining that he would come to check, because generally everyone complied with his arse-hattery the rest of the time.
Then one day I was walking down a back alley on the way home, and I rounded a corner and came across the guy standing in the eaves of a restaurant chugging down a fag like it was life support. "HAH! BUSTED" I yelled at him and he went scarlet with an sly embarrassed smile.
He never hassled me again.
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Dude, you're just not hanging around with the right kind of pro-cycling activitists.
I think my only response to that is 'thank heavens'. If I'm ever in that situation, they might have to put a warning on *me* for 'realistic violence'.
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Ian Dalziell- I agree, on 23rd afterthoughts, apropos Peter Ashby...
he pissed me off big time personally (re his comments related to osteoarthritis) and for others (his truly embarrassing comments on Emma's CFS, and others in that thread.)
But - waving feelers* feebily - he does come from a scientific perspective (which can be useful, sometimes) and I remember his very pertinent rebuttals over on sci.arch when that was alive and well...
*On the Net no- one knows you're a cockroach...
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As one of those dirty smokers I have a vested interest in this conversation I suppose, so here goes...
I wouldn't dream of smoking in my house or car, or anyone else's house or car. Gross. I used to live in a 7th-floor flat with no garden and so all four of us smoked indoors and my god it smelled revolting on a Sunday morning after a heavy Saturday night on the fags.
When I bought my house 10 years ago I decided it would be a no-smoking zone, so I go outside for a cigarette, which is perfectly fine and pleasant. If it's raining I have a porch I can shelter under, otherwise I smoke in the garden.
I also (obviously) go outside to have a cigarette if I'm at work, and I'm very careful not to sully any passers-by with my second-hand smoke - by which I mean if I'm leaning up against a wall somewhere having a fag and someone walks past me on the pavement, I'll hold in my mouthful of smoke until they've gone past.
I prefer places where smokers congregate rather than just standing at the edge of the pavement, because you're less likely to invade a non-smoker's air that way.
I don't generally smoke while I'm walking, because I don't like walking behind a smoker myself (it's no fun getting lungfulls of someone else's smoke, even if you're a smoker). I don't smoke in crowds generally either - like at an outdoor concert or whatever - I'll move out of the crowd and away from people first.
I try not to smoke in front of my friends' kids, and if one does catch me having a sneaky fag in the garden they get the "don't ever start smoking, it's a disgusting habit, I wish I'd never started because now I can't give up and it's gross" speech.
I wouldn't dream of smoking on the dancefloor - even at an outdoor dance party - because I think it's horrible to get smoked on in that situation where you're breathing heavily anyway, and I don't like it when it happens to me, therefore I wouldn't inflict that on anyone else. Again, if I want to smoke I'll go somewhere away from people before I light up.
I really like the fact that bars and restaurants are non-smoking zones, I think it makes for a much more pleasant atmosphere, and I don't mind going outside for a cigarette at all. That's fine by me. But I do think it's reasonable for me to expect to be able to do that without being yelled at or lectured to by non-smokers when I'm outside in the open air.
I think I've gone just about as far as I can go in terms of being a considerate smoker to the majority who don't smoke, but I'm not prepared to give up the fags entirely just yet, so perhaps anyone who feels like they want to give me a lecture about how disgusting I am and how I'm killing myself by choosing to smoke can just shut.up and go away. I know that, thanks very much.
Ross - this:
But then, as I keep at my friends who do smoke, "Which part of 'you are fucking nuts' don't you understand?".
...would quite possibly encourage me not to be such a good friend of yours, were I your friend in the first place. I'm not 12, I'm a grown-up and I don't think that being lectured endlessly about "being fucking nuts" would have any effect on my habit whatsoever, in fact it might make me want to light up more often when you were around, just to annoy you :) Either that or not hang out with you so much any more...
Anyway... I find it interesting that I'm slightly shocked when I see old telly progs or movies where people are smoking indoors - at home or in the workplace or at the local bar or whatever. It shows how far we've come in such a relatively short time.
And as for censoring or R-rating stuff with smoking in... good grief. To me that's way over the top, but then I guess I'm biased.
I certainly would consider it to be the height of nuttiness to go back to old movies, posters, artworks, TV progs and the like and edit out the demon weed. Good lord.
Perhaps those that would approve of that kind of carry-on should make an appointment with Winston Smith at the Ministry of Truth - I'm sure he'd do a bang-up job for them.
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webweaver, as a smoker (one to 3 cigars a month, a couple of pipes maybe) I concur with all you've written - with this exception: I smoke when I like in my own home, and - after requesting permission- in my mother's home (she loves the smell of cigars.)
I have no intention of giving up my very moderate smoking habit for any reason whatsoever (and yes, I watched one my beloved rellies, Uncle Bill, while he was dying of emphysemia - he lived until he was 80, and he started smoking ciggies at 8...)
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I always wonder if those people who give me lectures realise it just makes me want to smoke more. (Yes, I am 12.) And that goes for most anti-smoking ads, too.
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Re: Peter Ashby. I think he genuinely was trying to help, and his crimes were fairly minor. But his punishment was too, merely a number of people telling him to change the tune. If he brings a new tune I really do want to hear from him and did actually find what he was saying about exercise to be spot on for me. But he did need for people to hear that he was shitting them off, and if he did actually not care about that as much as he seemed to make out, then he'd still be here merrily cohabiting and shitting people off. So I hold hopes we'll see him again, after he's cranked out a few thousand kms, a few dozen heartbeats, and found a more diplomatic voice.
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That lecturing shit is hardly ever about 'concern for you' anyway. It's usually a cocktail of some other less altruistic motivations.
(I've never smoked, but I am also 12.)
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Addenda to webweaver- I happily smoke in my own home when there are kids about (unless they are lung-compromised) because it is my home and this is what I sometimes do...I have had 3 of the older generation of nephews (I have a lot of nephews but only 2 nieces) return *just for the smell of your house" (which includes tobacco, odd plants, and the wierd of the Coast (sea/rain/driftwood smoke et al...)Um, 12 yr olds -
I really love what you both say-
(cockroaches believe in nothing)
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All this talk of smoking has caused me to roll up and check my lighter fluid. 'evening all!
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Dude, you're just not hanging around with the right kind of pro-cycling activitists. I've heard attitudes way more virulent than this expressed about cars.
If it was up to me, cars would be decorated like cigarette packets - much like this.
I think that's something we can all agree on. Right?
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Ur, living in an extremely rural/remote area - No, actually, George-
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I think that's something we can all agree on. Right?
No. In fact I think that when they started showing grisly medical pictures on cigarette packets I might have made the point that it would be like painting pictures of cars wrapped around trees on the side of vehicles - but not because I thought that either was desirable. And I neither drive nor smoke.
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Sorry, tongue firmly in cheek there, I should have been more clear.
I'm not presumptive on the internet, and if I'm going to tell others how to behave (quite rarely), I'll do that directly.
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Sigh. Seems I can't quite quit. I'm addicted to health statistics.
Deaths from traffic accidents: +/-400 per year
Deaths from traffic related pollution: +/- 1200 per year (as estimated here http://www.transport.govt.nz/research/Documents/health-effects-of-vehicle-emissions.pdf)
Again, deaths from tobacco use: +/- 5000 per year.
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Maybe, Lucy Telfar Barnard, look at clustering-
I am pretty well certain that you will find a really different imbalance when you look at rural deaths-
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