Stop Stoptober!

There’s a lot I hate more than do-gooders believing they’re doing you a favour by asking, demanding and nagging you to stop smoking, but this takes the Boston Bun: yesterday in London a group of out-of-work actors (or rather, too proud to put their talent to good use – really: any idiot can act like a zombie, as evidenced by how many flashmobs have been staged over the years where fools with nothing better to do ape the dance moves to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and take up space on footpaths) paraded round in zombie masks to drive the point home to innocent smokers that, hey, you might just end up like them. Well guess what well-meaning zombies? We’re all going to die! (Sooner the better for some)

As part of a campaign by a mob called HealthExpress (no doubt a glorified WebMD with staff) who are offering free consulations to assist people who want to bow out from the baccy because, panic of panics, of some lark in Blighty called “Stoptober” – only three things should be celebrated in October: 1. Oktoberfest 2. Choctoberfest and 3. Labour Day if you’re unfortunate enough to live in Queensland.

Stoptober is a campaign by the NHS that boasts that it already has over 200,000 who have “pledged” to give up the Gold Flake. Whenever people “pledge” to do something makes me squirm – most likely those sad American teenagers who pledge to remain “pure” – i.e. no fumblings for them behind the bikesheds unless Daddy or “the Lord” (much the same really) “allow” them to. Interestingly people are signing up to raise money for charity while stopping for Stoptober. Why not just write a cheque? There’s always the money angle when people stop smoking, isn’t there? We’re constantly being told that if we were to pack in the Pall Malls, “Think of how much money you’ll save [by not smoking]!” Hello? How many people have nixed the nicotine only to spend the money on something else? I’ve been told quite a few times that I could afford a holiday to Bali. That’s right, holiday in a fundamentalist stronghold with (of course) disgusting records on human rights and safety and facing the indignity of being bombed while in the same room as a bunch of bogans on a package holiday – the type of drunks who give drunks a bad name – or stay at home in a peaceful democracy with a carton of Rothmans? Sadly, there’ll be people who have to think about that.

A quick look at HealthExpress’s website shows how boring they are, specialising in middle-class gripes such as weight loss, impotence, hair loss, etc – in other words: drugs for mugs and alleviation for the vain.

Just looking at the zombie masks chosen by HealthExpress doesn’t scare me a bit – they’re like something out of Bo’ Selecta! I’ve seen scarier people at the milk bar – or rather, I was affronted by the sight of a sixty-something tranny who was wearing a primary school girl-sized school uniform and he decided to bend over repeatedly to display his saggy old arse bulging out of a pair of My Little Pony pants. Now that’s a real horror!

Look here you holier-than-a-colander hypocrites, because that’s what you are. HYPOCRITES. How dare you have the unmitigated gall and tut-tut-tut temerity to tell me to stop smoking for my own good when you’re usually already morbidly overweight, voting Liberal and then complaining about them after and volunteering when you’ve got so much to sort out in your own lives before you start with somebody else’s. I smoke because I can. I enjoy it and am very skilled at it. I can even smoke White Ox without wanting to throw up. What are you good at besides scrapbooking, or rather, ruining perfectly good photos by afixing cardboard and stickers to them?

And Doctors accusing smokers of “murdering” themselves or committing a really slow and drawn out “suicide” – aren’t you doing the same by advocating that people unfortunate enough to be in a vegetative state and doubly unfortunate to not have an Advanced Health Directive should be kept alive anyway?

Of course I know the “risks” – but everything’s got a risk. Who’s to say that you won’t be hit by a car simply by walking on the side of the road? Or won’t be electrocuted while making toast? I made a conscious decision to smoke fully aware that I’m in line to receive cancer, strokes, heart disease, etc. Gotta die of something. In fact, in moments of all-out snark and hatred of the world, I entertain the idea of having an iota of fame and then getting cancer, just so I could mindfuck a lazy sub-editor who wants to print that I’m “fighting” a “battle”, because nothing would give me more pleasure to say to a hack, “Actually, no. I’m not fighting. I’m not in a battle. To carcinogenics I’m a conchy. Have fun printing that.” But of course they won’t. With any luck they’ll ask if I “have a death wish?”

“Yes, you!”

Finally, the NHS spent £5.7 million on last year’s Stoptober – how about letting people who choose to smoke face the consequences themselves and spend that money on actually improving, oh I dunno, hospitals and the quality of care?

Next thing you know there’ll be Aspartame-pril, Auglutenust and MaySG, created for only a few but paid for by all.