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.

Hip hypocrisy gives way to stupidity

The last of the cool kids?

I came across this article by Vex News, correctly titled OUTRAGE: MIA about the hypocrisy of the left to try and boycott “oppressive” (in their words) Israel when they could be doing much more by taking aim at the oppressive world of fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East. What really grabbed my attention (and guffaw) was the description of BDS supporters and protestors of Max Brenner stores as:

be-scarved local private-school brats, Hamas-niks and anti-Semites raging against the chocolate machine.

Bravo, VEX! It’s always struck me as hypocritical that those who denounce Israel with anti-Semitism and stand up proudly for the torturous and actually oppressive Islam “be-scarf” themselves with the keffiyeh. Do they not notice the irony of wearing a keffiyeh when it’s the fashion accessory of choice for oppressors?

I’m sick of these bloody hipsters running around and wearing and doing stuff without a thought for it’s origins or the deeper meaning. And hipsters are now everywhere. Remember when cool kids used to be, actually, cool? A quick Google of “keffiyeh and hipsters” took me to this blog called (and the jury’s still out on this) Taking Life Seriously, and a post titled: The Keffiyeh: Modern Symbol of Hipster Ignorance. Oh, how my heart swelled when I read that title alone – a kindred spirit?

From the post, describing hipsters:

Their THC-drunk smiles relaying a kind of superficiality and ignorance usually reserved for the offspring of Hollywood celebrities.

and:

The keffiyeh began its ascent into Western fashion culture in the early 1980s when it caught on as a symbol of support for Palestinian freedom amongst politically-active non-Arab American students. Wearing the keffiyeh was a potent political statement to make too: The Independent called the keffiyeh “a symbol of Islamic militancy” while Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero was criticized by opposition parties after posing with a keffiyeh and was accused of “anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and Israelophobia”.

Most beautifully, the author sums up with this gem:

Dumbass hipsters wearing keffiyehs is equivalent to gorilla-brained gangster rappers spouting ineloquent and violent lyrics while wearing giant crucifixes and, better yet, encrusting them with diamonds and rubies.

Although one anonymous commenter wrote:

Even if it is “clueless hipsters’ wearing the keffiyeh’s then at least the discussion of this should lead to conversation on the plight of the Palestinians. If complimented lots of ‘hipsters’ keffiyehs and questioned them on knowledge of palestine. The majority are aware of the symbolism of wearing a Keffiyah and wear it in solidarity. The few that don’t know will generally be interested and then research the situation and the history of palestine themselves. Surely that is a positive thing.

Oh come on! They’re hipsters! They’re never going to willingly learn anything other than what’s new and decrying it by saying they liked it before it was popular. Duh! Though that wasn’t nearly as bad as this other comment:

I’m jewish but I hate Israel because it kills people in the name of jews.

Which is basically saying I love Palestine because it kills people in the name of Islam.

I’ve never heard of a Jew raping, torturing and murdering their five-year old daughter due to doubts over their virginity. Have you?

There’s always been cool kids, and some of them have actually been pretty cool, but these hipsters are only cool to themselves. What’s cool about dressing in the latest high-priced threads that make you look like a kid playing dress-ups? Imitation Wayfarers that look like kids’ sunglasses, trousers that are glorified “babygros” and t-shirts with cartoon characters on them? I was confronted with this cartoon couture in 2009, when I went shopping for clothes in Myer (a half-arsed Marks & Spencer down under) one day  and all that was on offer were t-shirts with Sesame Street, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the most juvenile manga. I hated it as a kid, so why wear it now?

I first saw hipsters en masse in 2010, going to a gig on a friend’s free ticket at the Brisbane Hipster’s venue of choice, the Hi Fi Bar – home to overpriced poor-quality beer (Carlton Draught, anyone?) and on the bill was the hipsters’ favourite bands: the Hungry Kids of Hungary (rivals to Chilly Kids of Chile or Island Kids of Ireland?) All these hipsters were there, dressed in their best op-shop sourced and Enid Blyton-inspired finest, having forked out $40 per ticket they simply sat around on the floor talking to each other – why not save your (parents’) money and stay home instead? I was trying to take notes on the night in an attempt at a review and all I scribbled was: Sarah Blasko called, she wants her wardrobe back.

Other bizarre things hipsters call “clothes” (much like Vivienne Westwood‘s haute couture) include the trend of guys walking round with “salmon” coloured pants, and it’s not just me who’s noticed this – there’s even a site on Tumblr (the hipster’s own social media) White Boys in Salmon Shorts. Why pay money to look like a walking, talking salmon terrine? If hipsters were actually dedicated followers of fashion, wouldn’t they realise that the general concensus (even the uninspiring Vogue) is pastels went out in the 80’s?

Hipster males are also known for growing beards yet shaving their pubes, as if they’re constantly living Opposite Day. They also wear “plaid” (read: flannelette) shirts not seen since the early 90’s. When I was a litt’lun, anything called “vintage” was usually a vintage car, i.e. made before 1940. Now, these 90s leftovers or anything more than five minutes old are called “vintage”, and we’re poorer for it. Thanks, losers.

And hipster television sucks too – I don’t hate Girls because it is written by an intelligent, educated and switched-on woman, I hate it for pampering to the hipster ideal of having more clothes and money than sense. Why was there all the hype about it being so “white” and not casting anyone of a darker than hipster-pasty hue, but nothing about how they all seem to be still living off their parents? This is best shown in the pilot episode when Hannah (played by creator, writer and producer Lena Dunham) whines over her parents refusal to fund her badly-dressed and going-nowhere life. Think she’s got problems because Mama and Papa won’t give her a few grand whenever she wants? I can’t get $20 out of mine!

The only hipster-related thing I like is the song ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ by Foster the People – in a perfect world, I’d listen to this as I walked down the streets of Fortitude Valley, Fitzroy, Surry Hills, Hoxton and Williamsburg, taking pot-shots at the hip and stupid with a well-loaded rifle. Although next thing you know it will be a “hate crime” to discriminate against young, salmon-wearing fools.

As hipsters love to whine, “FML!”

Bill Cosby and his plague of arrogance

“The Offending Article”, from nypost.com

It’s time for a rant and I hope you’ll agree that we all need to speak up on this.

I’ve just read Bill Cosby’s op-ed in the New York Post – a pale imitation of the New York Times – and what he thinks is a “plague of apathy”. It’s the usual Cosby schtick: go to school, get a job, respect your elders and pull your own weight. All admirable qualities to strive for but Cosby’s now gone and thrown a clanger in the mix, saying that the only people who live up to these ideals are Black Muslims. Yes, that to have a cosy little family-centred up-bringing, we must all take note of a religion whose fundamentalist side is rooted in the patriarchy: women are nothing more than bits of meat, stonings and torture take place over a fair trial and, sorry Bill, but I’ve never known a Christian or Jew to behead others for daring to have different beliefs.

Never mind that the piece is hyperbole anyway (of course), but I’ve read it three times now and it still doesn’t make any sense. It rambles from stories of people growing up and being strung about by controlling parents to mentioning the deaths of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston and then to how we all should emulate Muslims, and that cigarettes and alcohol are more harmful than extremism.

Cosby likes to get in a snit over the smoking of cigarettes (and yes, I’m an out-and-proud chain-smoker, so have a puff on that, Bill) but didn’t cigarettes as we know them today come about after the British soldiers serving in the Crimean War were inspired by the tobacco-smoking Turkish soldiers, and how many of the Ottoman Empire’s armed forces were Muslim? Please correct me if I’m wrong, but could this not be a streak of hypocrisy on Cosby’s part?

There is no such group of “Black Muslims” – it’s instead an umbrella coterie including the Nation of Islam, United Nation of Islam and the Five-Percent Nation – not a land of “mates rates” but a splinter group of the Nation of Islam. If the Southern Poverty Law Center is against them, then shouldn’t we all? Is Mr Cosby happy to sing the alleged praises of these groups’ anti-Semitic and anti-gay and above all, racist, rhetoric?

The Nation of Islam believes that Jewish people are ‘responisble’ for ” … the filth of Hollywood that is seeding the American people …” which smacks of Joseph McCarthy’s mad reign of witchhunts and “reds under the beds”. They even believe that Hitler was “a great man” and leader Louis Farrakhan is noted as saying

“[I’m] not proud of Hitler’s evil toward Jewish people, but that’s a matter of record. Well, in a sense you could say there is a similarity in that we are rising our people up from nothing.”

Charming! The Nation of Islam even has a “Health Minister”, not just a spokesman, accusing Jewish doctors of injecting African-Americans with AIDS. Do you believe that, Mr Cosby?

The United Nation of Islam’s founder is Royall Jenkins, a guy who believes he spent time on a spaceship with angels. And yet Scientology too is based on other unbelievable sci-fi schlock and is espoused by Cosby’s fellow A-listers. And the Five-Percenters are mostly profligated by the dullest hip-hop “artists”, Wu Tang Clan, Nas and Queen Latifah.

Surprisingly the best criticism of Cosby’s half-arsed rant I’ve seen is from a Republican Congressman, Allen West of Florida, who is African-American and tweeted:

“Bill Cosby said we should [be] more like Muslims,” West wrote. “[You] mean honor killings, beheadings, suicide bombings? Hope [you’re] kidding sir.” 

Despite being before my time, The Cosby Show always looked like it was for saps anyway. Rubbish for touchy-feely wimps who need to be slapped into the real world. Come on, how could that show have beat Cheers and Roseanne in the ratings? I wonder if the Huxtable kids were schooled not just in respect and common courtesy but Sharia law, too? I’d hate to see an argument between the kids in that house. I’d also check out your own life, Bill. You’ve had quite a few lawsuits and are an adulterer yourself despite your crazed preaching like Pauline Fowler or Peggy Mitchell that family is everything.

It’s not just kids who say the darnedest things, but Bill Cosby too, and why should he get away with it?

My brush with the loony left

People can talk of “skeletons in the closet”, whether they are personal or familial indiscretions. My shameful act was to join the Socialist Alliance a few years ago. Wanting to join a political party (lefty that I am) I naturally plumped for the ALP, but being skint (unemployed) I chose to join the S.A. because membership was cheaper for the jobless. I wasn’t sure I’d last long anyway, being a pro-Israel and Philosemite. It’s obligatory to barrack for Palestine in all matters as a lefty, no matter the circumstances.

Proof of my shame.

Invited to the first meeting of the Melbourne branch for 2011, I went into town one Saturday afternoon, pushed out of home by a friend who encouraged me to go out and meet people instead of sitting on my arse watching box-sets of Weeds. The most memorable part of the day wasn’t meeting all my new upper-case-s Socialist friends, but the train into town – as I sat in my seat with sunglasses on and headphones pumping out a playlist of Deborah Conway’s “Consider This” and the Huxton Creepers’ “My Cherie Amour” (my “Melbourne music”), watching the suburbs along the Frankston line fly by, a girl a few seats away kept staring at me and as soon as I noticed would instantly look away, as if caught doing something untoward; which by all accounts it is untoward and unusual if someone casts an eye in my direction – I’ve no delusions. Before I disembarked the girl made a call and asked, “Have you ever had that weird thing happen when someone keeps staring at you on a train?” WELL, YOU STARTED IT! (“I have no issues. Really, I’m fine … I’m fine … don’t touch me!”)

Anyway, I made my way to the so-called “Resistance Centre” at the top end of Swanston Street opposite RMIT. A few floors up the branch meeting had just finished and, wallflower that I am, pretended to browse over books about Unionism in Eastern Europe in the 18^th Century, Communist tomes and of course, the essential Marx and Engels, etc. Finally introducing myself, we all walked up to Carlton to a pub – this brightened my mood no end, friends and beer! Well, I was hoping I would make some friends after already committing a political faux-pas when asked what my thoughts were on socialism, “I’m a bit green at all this.” Cue lefties recoiling in horror at the name of another (and a damn-sight more organised and popular) political party. Thankfully the beer flowed and I did end up enjoying myself despite a few O.P. (other people’s) smokers – I aimed to please with my mercy dash to the nearest corner shop on a Saturday evening.

A week later I was asked to participate in a march to support Wikileaks, this being the summer of diplomatic discontent, and rocked up outside the State Library to find hundreds of people there of all different lefty backgrounds. There was a guy in a grey wig – to symbolise Julian Assange although he looked like Mrs Doubtfire – making speeches and was probably the organiser. Whilst milling at the edge of the crowd, lo and behold – another attractive girl came right up to me in her lovely purple ‘I SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE’ t-shirt and tried to sign me up to another group, the Socialist Alternative. (I bet you all just said “alternative to what?”)  So we got talking and as the march set off down tourist-filled Swanston Street on a warm Sunday afternoon, I quickly got into the screaming of
“FREE BRADLEY MANNING!” and endless rhymes starting with “2-4-6-8!” Equality Girl and I talked of my reasons for coming, my support of lefty things (“I just do it because I hate Tony Abbott”) and becoming political through reading the works of Frank Hardy – strangely, she hadn’t heard of him – how can you call yourself “political”, much less a “socialist” and live in Melbourne without knowing of Frank Hardy? Odd, I thought as we marched on complete with police escorts and blocking tram access to Flinders Street. I even ended up in the very front row too, but of course sod’s law came into play and I didn’t get my mug in any papers at all. So embarrassing.

We suddenly turned off Swanston into Collins Street and came to a stop outside the British Consulate. Why? I don’t know – surely it would have made much more sense to picket the Yanks instead? And that’s when the lefties tried to cram every single one of their causes into the afternoon by having an Aboriginal smoke-ceremony, the (only way to say it) “token Indigenous” person, everyone’s favourite lefty fool, Stephen Jolly from Yarra City Council and other larks that had nothing to do with Wikileaks at all. One of the marchers had grabbed a megaphone and started singing “Burn, baby burn!” Yes, hell is a socialist disco.

I bunked off with Equality Girl after an invitation to attend Trades Hall, where the Alternative’s set-up. I managed to stay for an hour despite not getting a single lefty joke – something about Condoleezza Rice or Donald Rumsfeld or some Bushite that was neither topical nor funny – and praise heaped on the beginning of the Arab Spring – I think Tunisia had just come through it and Egypt was about to kick off. When I got to Trades Hall I was met someone and said I’d just been on my first march, only to be asked, “Do you feel like a radical now?” Um no, I lived in Parkdale. Come on, like one bullshit march makes you a revolutionary leader. If true then a cake walk would be called a show of solidarity and consciousness-raising exercise. And why are the words “consciousness” and “collective” bandied about by hardcore lefties so much? They’re a worse cult than the Brethren! At least that time my mention of Frank Hardy was understood, before the motion was passed that to celebrate the Arab Spring they’d spit-roast a goat. Yeah, to celebrate the oppressed getting rid of their oppressors, they were going to cook a goat in a backyard in Fawkner. It’s like when they want to show solidarity with refugees locked up in detention centres – I don’t see the protesters sewing their lips and self-harming in protest.

A week later I returned to the Trades Hall mob for a free six-week course on learning all about socialism. Needing (and still) to know a lot more, I enthusiastically went along, only to be given a lecture on communism (which I can differentiate) and more “consciousness” and “collectives” being said. Me being me I started to take the piss but my barbs went unnoticed. So what more was there to do then just stop going? I’m glad I did – I’d have happily broken rank to condemn the BDS groupies and shame them for the anti-Semitic thugs they are. And so many middle-class members too – take this any way you want, but why try to change things on the other side of the world when there’s tonnes to do here – but of course, they’d be NIMBYs wouldn’t they? NOT IN MY BACKYARD! And I “love” NIMBYs. They’re the people who hate to see a block of housing-commission flats in their own street (“don’t want any riff-raff to come in”) but will happily snap up “investment” properties left, right and centre, charge exorbitant rents and thus create homelessness in the first place.

Like the Occupy movement, especially in Melbourne – what did the participants do for a living? They wouldn’t get the dole because they’d refuse to leave their pile of tents and squalor to attend appointments at Centrelink. I believe any hardcore and brainwashed member of a two-bit political group will always have a trust-fund or ready cash from Mummy and Daddy, especially if Pater works in the mines. How great to protest about minerals and natural resources being sent overseas when you’re living off the money your father gets for raping and pillaging the land and exporting said resources. It’s got to be true – when was the last time you saw a member of a political group other than the big four (Labor, Liberal, National and Greens) work from nine-to-five?

As much as I identify as a “lefty” (I believe in equality, free healthcare, education and public transport and less privatisation), I’m not a real one because I support Israel – and if I choose to support people who are holistically attractive instead of the other side with their tea-towels, hankies and policies of torture and abuse – then all the more fun for me!

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• Why I hate the BDS movement (thejoshholley.wordpress.com)