The monster ASH created.

Once again, Pat Nurse has destroyed the insane assertions of the smokophobes on live radio. Frank has a transcript.

If I was asked on to such a show, I’d say ‘no’. Pat is different from me, as are many of the others, because they care. I don’t, not any more. I have long since given up trying to talk to the smokophobes and now prefer to terrify them with third hand smoke, pets walking through the invisible tobacco residue that coats every outdoor surface and to watch them turn breathless while I explain the effect my proximity will have on their lungs. Save them? Sod them. They believe that all outdoor dust is cigarette ash. I will not disabuse them of that notion, I will reinforce it.

Instead of continued attempts at changing this ridiculous world, I have chosen to adapt to survive in it. I’ve been outside society before. I was homeless for a time (nobody was to blame but me, I borrowed more than I earned and landed myself in the crap, and learned not to do that again) so I’ve been one of those invisible people you don’t see when you walk down the street. Denormalisation is not a new experience.

That does not mean it’s a pleasant experience. It’s not. Last time I was to blame but this time, there are hordes of people who are deliberately forcing me out of society. They don’t want me in public places or on public transport, they don’t want to treat me on the NHS I’ve paid so much into and so rarely used. So does that mean I can stop paying taxes and NI? No, I still have to pay to support all those services I am excluded from and I am expected to pay extra taxes on any UK-bought tobacco even though I am treated like a leper if I go to those shops.

This is very, very different from the times the Real People pretended that homeless-me didn’t exist. Those people did not put me in that situation and were not responsible for my state at that time. They might have ignored me but very few of them actively hated me, and the law did not support nor encourage that hate. Sometimes, lately, I have wondered whether all the effort I put in to clearing all my debts and climbing back aboard society was actually worth it. Especially since they’ve now thrown me out again.

But then I look at what they’ve thrown me out of and realise that if they hadn’t, I’d have left by now anyway.

We now have teachers claiming that there is no need to teach facts because children can look them up on smartphones. Don’t bother remembering things because your memory can be faulty. Facts are whatever the phone says they are today, and what it says they are tomorrow depends on on what the facts will be tomorrow. No need for Winston Smith cutting up newspapers and no risk of a copy being missed somewhere. A few keypresses and we have always been at war with Eurasia. If you think you remember a time when we weren’t, your memory must be faulty. Check the facts on your phone.

In Spain, a town mayor has passed 65 things that should just be good manners into law. Children will be in trouble with the authorities there if they don’t visit their grandparents often enough. Good manners are important but really – laws?

In America, Arizona has declared that being a bit naughty on the Internet is now punishable in law. How far will they take that, and how is it enforced? Does the offensive stuff have to originate in Arizona, be targeted at someone in Arizona, merely pass through a computer in Arizona or just be visible in Arizona? What constitutes ‘offensive’, which is a highly subjective thing? That US/UK extradition treaty could get a lot of use over this.

In France, Nick the Sarky Frog has declared he’s staying off the cheese and wine because he’s watching his weight. If he drank wine he’d be branded an alcoholic and if he ate too much cheese his spreading waistline would be front page news. I still think he’s mostly an idiot but in this instance, it seems he just can’t win. Neither can anybody else, Sarko, and you helped it happen.

People are now crying out for the Mk. 1 Borg eyepiece. A device that you can wear while outside and it will describe the weather you’d be able to see if you didn’t have that thing over your eye. Apparently it’s unfair that only the inventors have them so far. If everyone can’t have them, nobody should. When they are available and they start getting stolen, the drones will clamour for implants.

It’s a sad and infantile world out there, where anyone feeling insulted can run crying to Nanny and get the insulter punished, where people are actively discouraged from remembering anything so that they will accept the Fact of the Day, where policy is based entirely on made-up numbers which every drone accepts without question, and where toys must be shared or Nanny will put them on the high shelf where nobody can play with them.

Many of us tried, for years, to show the antismokers where their support of the New Inquisition would lead. It was a waste of time. The future has arrived and they still don’t see it. More and more restrictions and controls appear daily and still they don’t see it. I say, let them wallow in the crap world they have made for themselves. My only interest in ‘society’ now is in how much further I can push their credulity and how much more terrified they can become. I can’t fix it so I might as well enjoy it.

Once I was interested in trying to save this world. Now I just want to watch it burn.

I’ll use it to light a cigarette.