Little note to my nonexistant subscribers

Due to the fact that my old email account is currently so overused that I wouldn't be able to find most of the emails I wanted to see, I decided to use my alternate email address forthis blog from now on.

My smoking habit, and how I'm trying to quit.

Or a long stream of thought on my habit.

I am, I admit, a smoker; I smoke menthol cigarettes in the main, Benson & Hedges to be exact. I have always been aware of the dangers of cancer from it, but once you start and get used to it, it's rather hard to stop.

Really, smoking isn't really all that pleasant, the smoke stinks, stings your eyes, and clings to your clothes! And all before you even inhale. After you start inhaling the smoke into your lungs: your mouth starts to taste like ash, your teeth feel filthy, your throat burns and you start to choke. Yet even with all this, it's so hard to stop!

It's odd, every time I've tried to stop smoking, it's never really been the after effect of a smoke that's made it hard to stop. The pleasant floaty high that comes after you've had a good cigarette is nice, but it's only really been part of it. Every time it's been the ACT of smoking that's made it hard to stop. The feeling of raising it to my lips inhaling and the sensation of something heavier then air going into my lungs...

So, for a while, I gave in, stopped trying to quit, and just went on with it, bought myself a nice cigarette holder which made the smoking more comfortable, cooled the smoke down before it hit my throat. I didn't even smoke at work! just every day afterward I'd go to the beach and have a fag or three while I sketch or watched something on my iPod.

Eventually though, I started to smoke at work, I'm not sure why, maybe because my supervisor and manager both smoke and get to go out for five minutes and relax. So my habit changed from 2-3 cigarettes a day to 4-5, because I still went to the beach to have a smoke after I went home. Then one thing changed, my cigarette holder broke, and I had to go back to smoking cigarettes straight which was so uncomfortable I began once more to try quitting.

I tried gum, lollipops and caramels; but I already ate them a lot so they didn't distract me from my cravings. I tried distracting myself long enough that it was too dark to go the beach and have a smoke; I ended up just taking walks in the dark and smoking. I couldn't do any of the nicorette gums, patches or inhalers. I live and work in a small town where none of these are available. I tried simply getting so drunk that i didn't think about smoking; unless I drank so heavily so fast I fell unconscious, I simply ended up giving in and going for a walk and having a smoke.

And so I turn to my last resort, an electronic cigarette, which are harder to get in canada, but one I had to turn to. So far it seems like it will work, it's not that heavy, especially compared to a tobacco pipe, inhaling it brings a pleasantly cool mist, though the flavour isn't as strong as I'd like it to be. I still feel a strong urge to go for a walk and smoke as I write this, but it's not as strong as it usually is. The e-liquid I got with it, menthol and a vanilla one, dont have any nicotine in them i believe, so I'll have to see if using a e-liquid with one will help more.

The E910 electronic cigarette

Time travel

I don't know how many people who might read this read fanfiction, but one of the usual themes for it is having the main character go back in time, sometimes as adults, but more often sending their personality/memories/soul back into their younger body. Now, the way msot of theses stories go follows the, as a favourite author described, 'changing desert, stable mountains' pattern, that is, certain things might be changed, but some events happen no matter what changes. Given what I know about chance and chaos, this is probably impossible, but for the convenience of my subject I'm going to follow it.


If I was to be sent back to my kiddie self, I think the thing I would miss most would be music. Not books, there are all sorts of books that came out when I was a kid that i'd love to own. Not tv, because I frankly think there are a whole bunch of better tv shows when I was a kid that are far superior to what is on now, cartoons especially; watching men In Black from beginning to end is my favourite childhood memory, especially since I cant seem to find any copies now a days. But music, ahhh, music. With a father who seems stuck in the 80s when it comes to music, and a mother who is a music fan, if I was stuck in my kids body I'd end up hearing, over and over and over again, music that i had  heard a thousand times before. Dave Mathews Band, disturbed, bily talent , apocoalyptica, the Darwin song project, I'd have to wait and wait and wait for all of these to come out. BUT THERE WOUL BE NO GUARANTEE THAT THEY WOULD COME TO EXIST AT ALL! Sure, it'd be very LIKELY that they would come to exist, but no CERTAINTY.

What if I decided to focus on learning how to play and sing guitar this time around? Would I be able to resist from playings songs I knew as an adult? if I didn't, and they were released and owned by me, what would happen to those who wrote them originally? The best i could hope for is that they became inspired by my songs and wrote even better ones.

Oh well, it's probably impossible that such a thing would happen anyway, and I certainly hope it doesn't. I guess this is nothing but an intellectual exercise.

Minecraft

There is something to be said for a game that makes you think. Most of the time when I play an rpg or any of the slower none FPS games I listen to an audiobook or a music album., but when I play Minecraft the thought of doing so just goes away. It's not it's a complicated game, the only point is to keep on digging, and explore as you will. Everything made of blocks which can, in most cases, be smashed into pieces, and then reused as you like. Even Lava and Water can be picked up and moved around, with a little work.

The only time I'm tempted to find something to distract myself with is during the night periods, which cannot be fastforwarded, and last 7 minutes, during which skeleton archers and zombies spawn by the truckload, and your only hope is building a shelter, and making sure they don't know you're there, cause otherwise the Creeps will arrive, and blow themselves, and everything around them, up in a pretty darn decent explosion.

One of the neat things is that only a few blocks obey gravity, sand, gravel, water and lava sort of; but the other ones merely require that they be placed against any of the six sides of another block, and then they'll remain there until destroyed. I myself, in one of my worlds, am building myself a floating castle. This is a much more difficult undertaking, because balancing my character on the edge close enough to see the side of it, so I can place another block, often leads to falling. which when you're foolish enough to do it at night is a death knell really. Happily death does nothing more then send you back to the spawn point, which you cant move, at the same time of day as when you dies, which sucks when you die at night.

Night does not always restrain you though, if you're lucky enough to find flint and steel early enough to make a fire starter, and you can figure out how to make eternal flames, all you need is a block of wood, and you can keep on doing what you like. Even mining, so long as you make sure to put enough lights that monsters dont spawn. expect to come back to see you shelter populated by animals when you return though, they do not have a light requirement for spawning, merely a distance from you.

That's all I have to say for now. I ment to merely post some musing and ended up writing a small review... oops?