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.

Oh for a teen idol worth some idolatry

I’ve never held much truck for teen idols. When I was a newly-minted (if not maddened) teen, proper pop music died it’s tragic death and I veered off the path to music that had mostly been released before I was born or I’d never heard before. At the time my peers were idolizing every hip-hop wannabe or anyone who could “rap” despite being a skinny white boy from a good background (really, it was just like Vanilla Ice for the new millennium) or the most manufactured and sickeningly “crowd-pleasing” (read: boring) singers around, thanks to Mr Cowell in his t-shirt and the advent of Idol, X Factor et al – not that they don’t have their merits, I just know that was the time I was supposed to admire the output of these programmes but just couldn’t care. Instead of Eminem and Green Day (which everyone my age had some unthinking admiration for), I didn’t just buck the trend but fucked it right off by getting into Kate Bush and (not sorry) Morrissey. Yes, while all the other kids were trying to, like, be in touch with their emotions, like with the whole “emo” lark of adenoidal complaining (My Chemical Romance); I was having my own little PROPER pity parties to the tunes of Mr Morrissey and yes, I did have a fave to be miz with: because I just hadn’t earned it yet. Baby.

Which brings me to the dearth of “teen idols” today, they being mainly Justin Bieber and One Direction (YUCK!) – has there been any greater musical crimes against humanity since Rebecca Black’s Friday (true story: the best thing to ever come out of that tuneless trust-funded track was me walking down Smith Street, Collingwood, and some guy was singing it at the top of his lungs “IT’S FRIDAY! FRIDAY!” and some kind soul put us all out of our misery by running up and king-hitting our atonal abuser. It could’ve been assault, but then it was Melbourne and so was more likely performance art in the tradition of Barry Humphries hitting his (pretending to be) blind friends with a stick). What I can’t fathom is why so many teenage girls swoon and lust after these fresh-faced and (damn them) clear-skinned pretty boys who in all honesty still probably haven’t fully developed. These are supposed to be teen idols?

See, those guys had actual talent – well, except Ringo – come on, Octopus’s Garden?

At least back in the day the teen idols had talent and were actually fully grown. My own grandmother wagged school to go see and scream at The Beatles when they were in Sydney. My mum swooned over Bruce Springsteen – see, grown up and TALENTED (actually, she’s still got the shits over not going to the concert yet her sister got offered a ticket to go and she wasn’t even a fan)! I passed any age-appropriate teen idol for me by but if anything I would’ve loved to have been around to fully appreciate Marc Bolan or David Bowie in their prime.

(And a quick check by text with Mumsie confirms that she was also into Leif Garrett (cut me a line, Leif!) and “Michael Jackson before he was white” – see? TALENT!)

So what’s the appeal of Bieber and 1D? They’re machine made and processed. Bieber started off looking like the stereotypical lesbian (as said to me by a lesbian, so don’t sue) and the boys from One Direction are just plain old middle-class bores. So much for Janet Street-Porter saying Harry Styles should teach philosophy to get kids learning, I doubt he’d even have the brains for that after being subjected to so much hairspray with that (GUFFAW!) Hugh Grant-esque flop on his head.

Just like that doco a while back about the fans of One Direction, where it was pretty much verified how nuts they are. The girl who allegedly killed her own dog so she could directly tweet the band that her dog died and so deserved a retweet for validation. And what’s with all those girls who fire off hate and invective – including death threats – to any potential female suitor of the boys? It’s not just jealousy, it’s psychopathy. Although I do think it’s interesting how so many of their fans dream of Harry and Liam getting it on in a homoerotic tryst. So it’s wrong to be with any other girl but fine for them to get it on amongst themselves? A small step towards equality? Boom boom.

I’ve recently started tweeting again – @thejoshholley for those who enjoy abusing conservative politicians in 140 characters or less and taking the piss out of ridiculous hashtags – and have been dismayed to find the hashtag “BumpMe1DLastTix” (I’m against it because I could never beg for anything, whether alms or 1D tickets) trending all hours of the day and night. So I used the tag to ask why don’t these girls just buy the tickets themselves and got a reply from a girl stating: “duhh we are poor white girls.”

Now, I identify as a pro-feminist (and yeah that probably seems patronizing but I’ve been given the go-ahead by the best “old-school” feminists around, including the aforementioned lesbian – and clearly, the O.S. type are the best) and so pointed out that perhaps, for a poor white girl, an education might be more worthwhile than screaming at a bunch of fops who’ll never even know they exist. Which of course gave me the adolescent response of “how bout no?”

So I decided to politely and out of genuine curiosity ask why it was OK for the boys to be gay with each other but not have a relationship with any other female. Is it a case of “I can’t have them then nobody else can” or just a petulant example of forbidden fruit?

A nice little chat.

So, I guess that particular fan still had some sort of smarts to know of The Beatles and a sense of humour too.

Twats of Twitter

Since rejoining the Twitter fray I take great joy in taking the piss out of any hashtag trending, the stupider the better. The best was last week when that paparazzo in New York rode his bicycle into Nicole Kidman, which for some unknown reason was treated as a big news story. Once it was trending I of course decided to go in for the kill and declared Kidman to be a “fake” and an annoying actor whose skill is to deny surgery and stare into the middle-distance in boring films (though To Die For and The Hours were FAB!) – cue the old joke about the guy just wanting to park his bicycle somewhere but she turned round the wrong way (and next, Bernard Manning on his mother-in-law). Cue me being called a “bitch” by some Twit Twat who took umbrage to my jibes.

Now, I don’t “feed trolls” and only engage when somebody has tweeted me first, and originally I did think this person was either a) a misguided teenage girl who should know better than to talk to strangers or b) a fat, sad old troll. So I had a bit of fun and traded insults with a somewhat worthy opponent. It’s a shame they stopped before I could ask them if actually were Muslim, because I’d JUST LOVE to know how they can call themselves that whilst enjoying all the trappings of Western materialistic excess.

Yes, wrong I know, but really I had nothing better to do and where else am I going to meet a 15 year-old bisexual boy who possibly may be Muslim and is a starfucker for teen idols (there they are again!) and Hollywood hell?

Tweet away, twits and twats and twunts!