Work. Consume. Die.

I am becoming quite fond of Twitter. It allows a quick break from writing, with a bit of practice thrown in. Captioning images needs some quick thinking – they go past the screen quickly. Also, if I call up Twitter and there are a few hundred new tweets, realistically I am only going to look at the first 10. I miss a lot, but I also learn a lot.

For instance, yesterday’s announcement by the NHS that they will refuse to treat those who pay most into the system has spurred a frenzy of antismoker stories today.

Smokers have something wrong with their brains. We just won’t do as we are told. Therefore we must have our self-control brought under control so we can be good little compliant drones and live exactly as our masters direct.

Next step: compulsory incarceration in a mental health institution where nobody is allowed to smoke. Because we smoke.

The idea that maybe, just maybe, we smoke because we like it never enters the Healthfinder-General’s heads. People actually enjoying something other people don’t enjoy? Impossible! They are obviously improperly assimilated and their deviancy must be corrected. Set the drones on them. Force compliance. Peer pressure…

Well, peer pressure doesn’t work unless we give a shit what the indoctrinated drones think. I suppose ‘what’ they think is somewhat premature because I’m still trying to work out ‘whether’. One thing I do know – I really don’t want to live like them. Even if, one day, I should decide I don’t want to smoke any more, I never want to live under the direction of pompous asses.

It’s quite likely that, if I do decide I don’t want to smoke any more, I’d keep doing it anyway just to annoy them.

Tipped by Email (Chris) and Twitter (Roobedoo) – Worse than having an illegally-wired brain, we smokers have no Y chromosomes in our blood! Imagine! Big hulking building site workers with girlie blood in their veins! The horror!

For some reason, these researchers think that the Y chromosome carries a gene that prevents cancer, and that if it isn’t in your blood then you are destined to become one huge slobbery lump of cancer and then die.

They do not wonder why women, who have no Y chromosomes anywhere in their bodies at all, are not routinely turning into Jabba the Hutt with boobs on (I know, but I had the image in my head and the only way to get it out is to pass it on).

They must be talking about white blood cells. The immune system cells. They cannot be talking about red blood cells because those have no nucleus, and therefore no chromosomes of any kind. Don’t get all pernickety about mitochondria, you know what I mean. No human-DNA chromosomes.

That means their premise must be based on the activity of a gene within those immune system cells that lets them attack cancer cells. This gene must also only be on the Y chromosome. Women don’t have it.

If their premise is true then women must be far, far more prone to cancer than men, and smoking men only increase their risk to nearly the same level as a woman, and smoking makes no difference to women at all.

These things are testable. There are figures somewhere (too tired to be bothered looking it up right now, besides, if GaryK comes along he probably already has them) showing the cancer rates for women and men, smoking and non-smoking.

My bet is that there is no real difference between women and men. That women do not get cancer at the same rate as smoking men. That there are figures showing an increased risk to women who smoke. Therefore the whole Y-chromosome theory is blown out of the water without having to do a single extra experiment.

It’ll be a tight call though, because when you look at real numbers rather than percentages, cancer rates for all those groups are low numbers. It’s hard to apply stats to low numbers (but they do anyway) and get meaningful results. If you have a 50% increased risk of cancer it sounds very scary, but if the real figures show that you increase your risk from 2 in 1000 to 3 in 1000, well that’s not quite so scary, is it? Yet that is what a 50% increase can look like.

So far, smokers are demonstrably insane and men who smoke have girly pink blood in their lumpy veins. Yes, that is how far down the insanity hole we have now fallen. I don’t know how the reporters typing this stuff up manage to keep a straight face because I didn’t while reading it. Maybe they didn’t read it, just copy/pasted a press release and added a few ‘Shock Horror Drone Frenzy’ lines here and there.

Where the antismoke crusade inevitably leads (tipped by TheMorrigan on Twitter) is now apparent in Utah, home of the loony Mormon cult. I mean, come on. More than one wife means more than one mother-in-law. You’d have to be insane to even consider it.

You have to pay for clean energy. You are not allowed to go into the woods and pick up sticks for free. Is that, perhaps, the ultimate aim of it all?

Ah, but Electrofag burns nothing and produces only flavoured steam. So it’s not included in this hate-fest.

Hahahaha. Dream on.

One of these came from Jredheadgirl on Twitter but I can’t remember which. I have Parents visiting (they brought Penderyn and five Portuguese 50g packs of Amber Leaf so they get to sleep in the house) so I have to be as sociable as I can manage and have left tabs open all day.

Electrofag scares the Righteous because it might re-normalise smoking  Newsflash, pompous asses, smoking is re-normalising itself. It was always normal, just as climbing mountains with nothing at the top or jumping off bridges tied to a rope made of elastic bands is normal. I don’t do the last two things there and never will but differences between people’s choices of how to spend their lives is normal.

Early Electrofags looked like actual cigarettes. Those kinds of Electroag are now in Poundland. It soon became apparent that it didn’t have to look like anything else and modern ones look like Dr. Who’s sonic screwdriver with extra features added.

So they do not affect real smoking at all. They are nothing like real smoking. They feel like smoking but of all the amazing flavours they have produced (including roast chicken, try it, it actually works) the one they have not got right is tobacco flavour.

That’s because there is no ‘tobacco flavour’. There are many kinds of tobacco and many more blends of tobacco. It’s like whisky. Some blends (such as Monkey Shoulder) are very good and others (such as Bells) are awful. That’s my opinion. Yet Bells sell a lot of whisky so a lot of people have a different opinion. That is no problem. Shops can fill the shelves with Bells, I just won’t buy any. Other people will.

Tobacco, cigarettes particularly, range from Consulate/More to Player’s Navy Cut/Capstan. If you smoke Consulate yrou will hate Navy Cut and vice versa. It is not possible to produce a generic ‘tobacco flavour’.

None of the current flavours, including the terrible ‘tobacco flavour’, will induce anyone to move on to real smoking. Whichever brand they try, it will not taste like Electrofag and the new vaper will not try it again. Electrofag does not renormalise smoking any more than riding a bus renormailises driving a car. It is an entirely different thing.

That does not stop the Righteous from banning it. It looks a bit like smoking and might destroy their Pharmer funding so it has to go. Facts? We don’ got no facts. We don’ need no steenking facts.

Smoking is just one aspect. You have to be healthy. You have to be compliant. You have to be a good little tax-generating worker drone like the ones they have already indoctrinated. You must work and produce and consume to keep the New God, Economy, in sacrifices and cash. You need nothing. Economy is God and needs it all. Serve and be happy.

And when you can’t work any more… ‘retirement’ awaits.Obamacare has much to learn from the NHS but it’s learning fast.

Don’t be a sheep. To pinch a current advertising meme, ‘Be more smoker’.