Cracker by Damian Christie

So after 18 years, I’ve given up smoking.

And to be honest, it wasn’t that hard.

Yeah okay, it’s only been a month, but I’m feeling pretty relaxed about things, I’ve gone out numerous times and gotten myself into a state fit for an ALAC advert (it’s definitely ‘how we’re drinking’ – and how), surrounded myself with chain smokers, placed myself in stressful situations – all the usual triggers – and come out the other end unscathed. Well, apart from my long-suffering liver, natch.

I didn’t need to call Quitline. I didn’t cover myself in patches, chew gum filled with tar or whatever that stuff is. I didn’t get needles stuck into me, I didn’t get hypnotised and I didn’t read that Allan Carr book that entices one to keep smoking until you finish the last page (which seems to be a very cunning ploy by the Tobacco Industry – best case scenario the smoker loses the urge to give up by the time they’ve got through the book, worst case you’ve at least screwed them for one last week).

But my method, or rather my variety of methods, seem to have worked. Yes, only for a month and I don’t want to get all smug and complacent, but I’ve never found it quite as easy as I did this time. This time there’s no lingering inner nag.

What are these methods I hear you ask? Where can I buy a copy of your fabulous new treatise on kicking the habit? To whom should I make out my money order for $99.95 (including postage and handling) for a three-month supply of whatever it is you’re selling?

Well, given how much you, dear Cracker reader, have given to me over the years (although strangely your subscription cheques seem to keep getting lost in the mail) it seems only right that I gift you this one, gratis. But you owe me, remember…

Cracker’s Guide to Giving Up Smoking #1: Replacement Therapy.

This one is brilliant because of its simplicity. And 100% guaranteed if you stick to it. Foolproof. You don’t need anything, no special props or supplements, it costs nothing and you can use it anywhere.

What I do, is every time I would normally have a cigarette, whether it’s first thing in the morning, on the way to work, after dinner what have you, whenever I’m normally tempted to have a cigarette, I don’t.

Want to see that again in slow motion, perhaps from a different angle? Whenever you’d normally have a cigarette, instead of having one, don’t.

Cracker’s Guide to Giving Up Smoking #2: Replacement Therapy 2.

This one is a little more hard-core, and has got me in some trouble at work, at least until I pointed out to HR that if they refused to fully support me in my quitting-smoking endeavours they would be as bad as the tobacco companies and would likewise find themselves on the receiving end of a whopping great lawsuit.

What I do, is every time I work normally go outside for a cigarette, I replace it with something that I like as much as smoking. For you that could be chocolate, masturbation or casting yet another vote for Good Morning’s “Win a Wedding” promotion. For me it’s drinking. Scotch to be precise. Fine single malt, cask-strength preferably, if you want to be even more preciserer. Nothing extreme, just a wee nip of scotch every time I’d normally have a cigarette. No more than half a dozen or so times a day. Or maybe a dozen. Once you get started it’s quite more-ish, I tell ya. But certainly try and keep it down to one bottle per working day.

While HR might not see it that way, you think they’d see that unlike smoking, which requires popping down to the carpark every half-hour, drinking is able to be done at one’s desk. Productivity 1, Smoking Nil.

Cracker’s Guide to Giving Up Smoking #3: The Laziness Theory.

This only works for people who are incredibly lazy, or can do a good imitation of being such. It hasn’t worked particularly well for me, because while I can be a son-of-a-procrastinator, I always tend to be doing stuff of some description. But I’m sure it’s a pretty sound theory, if you’ve got the requisite lack of inclination.

The theory goes like this. Smoking requires effort, right. First you have to go down the road and buy the cigarettes, matches, lighters etc. Don’t even get me started on people who smoke rollies, constantly having to keep tab of how many papers and filters they’ve got left.

Then there’s the effort involved in smoking. Finding the ciggies, pulling them out, finding a lighter, borrowing a lighter when you realise someone nicked yours… what an ordeal. Right down to sticking the thing in your mouth and sucking on it, you are expending more energy than if you simply didn’t. View it that way.

Start saying things to yourself like “I’d love a cigarette… but I can’t be arsed getting up to get them”. This works even better if you’ve intentionally left them in the other room, or better still, at the dairy.

When you feel like a cigarette, say “I can’t be bothered even lifting my hand up to my mouth, I’m just going to stay on the couch a while longer completely flaccid. I’ll have one in ten minutes, I promise.” Just remember smoking requires effort.

This method can also be incorporated with method #2 above. By leaving your substitute item closer than your cigarettes, you can use it as a form of procrastination. Leave the cigarettes on the coffee table, but the chockie bickies on the couch next to you. See how that works?

(Warning: Extended periods flaccid on the couch eating Toffee Pops may result in Morbid Obesity – please consult your physician if you experience Cankles or Bed Sores)

Cracker would like to thank Dominic Bowden and the Guy from 48 May for telling me via signs at the bus stop that smoking isn’t cool any more. Truly the straw that broke the camel’s back.

FRIDAY LINKS:

The new Phoenix Foundation video for the song, Bright Grey, directed by Taika Waititi

Beautiful Book Autopsies

When asked what they like to see in their news and current affairs, focus groups invariably say “more investigative journalism”.

So with this in mind, and hoping to break a big story for the readers of Cracker, I have dutifully spent not only my working days, but also every night this week in strip clubs all around Wellington waiting for politicians to come in. No luck yet, but as long as Russell keeps approving my expense claims, I’ll keep doing the hard yards.

Seriously though, who would’ve thought “have you ever visited a strip club” would be 2007’s answer to “are you now or have you ever been a Communist?” Well, for a few days anyway. Um, hello, they’re legal. Even if you want to apply something of a moral standard, why not ask when they last visited the Casino? Did not Christ cast the pokie players out of the temple, or something?

I find all this even more surprising given that over the past few years strip clubs seems to have become somewhat normalised as an acceptable form of entertainment. I’d hazard a guess that of the half dozen or so times I’ve been to a strip club in the past couple of years, it’s been with a mixed group of males and females. And this almost seems to be the rule now. I don’t know why, whether it’s curiosity, some post-feminist reclamation, or the fact these women grew up idolising Demi Moore in [EDIT: 'Striptease', not 'Showgirls', ka pai Michael] instead of Julie Andrews in 'The Sound of Music'.

(Although having said that, Julie Andrews played a Nun who abandoned her sacred vows because she couldn’t keep her hands off her boss, right? Dodgy. And while we’re at it, what sort of moral should we take from 'Grease'? If you want to get your man, you should dress like a prostitute?)

Anyway, the point being, these days your modern day strip club is more like Cobb & Co than anything seedy and forbidden. They’ll start offering kids meals next. Traffic Light anyone? Blue Devil? Pink Panther? Anyone?

Personally I miss the old days a little bit, when strip clubs were seedy and being there felt dodgy. Wasn’t that the whole point? You don’t have sex in a public place because you enjoy having a pinecone jutting into your back, and it’s Playboy, not NZ Naturist Magazine that teenagers hide under the mattress. The modern strip club is really just a bit ho-hum.

So it’s not just male politicians we should be looking at, the Alexander Downers, the John Keys and Dover Samuels. If Katherine Rich is hip enough to go to the Cure last week, then who’s to say she isn’t popping down to Mermaids with the rest of the National caucus of an afternoon? I also note that as with the “yes, but I didn’t inhale” defence, it seems that most politicians quizzed decided it was okay to say “yes, a very long time ago when I was young”.

(Barack Obama’s response to the “have you used marijuana?” question is a classic. “I inhaled. Frequently. That was the point.”)

I’m not saying politicians should go to strip clubs, I’m just saying if they do, so what? If it’s good enough to be sold legally on Courtenay Place and Queen Street, then who are we to judge? Why should <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darren_Hughes
" target="_blank">Darren Hughes, a young man in his twenties, with blood presumably as red as his hair, be made to feel ashamed if he decides to accompany his friends down to Sante Fe of a Friday evening? He shouldn’t.

(For the record, I’m sure Darren Hughes has never gone to Sante Fe on a Friday evening. He’s an MP after all, and knows we expect better from him.)

(For example knowing that Tuesday is cheap beer night at Sante Fe, not Friday)

____________

A couple of administrative matters.

1. I was interviewed for National Radio's Mediawatch the other weekend. Here's the podcast, my interview is towards the end.

2. My Metro piece on Wellington, 'Capital Punishment' is now online. If you didn't mange to buy a copy you might want to read it for free there.

3. TV3 once again doesn't disappoint by providing extended Boobs on Bikes coverage on its website. Enjoy.

Maybe it’s the jetlag from my (cough, cough) recent excursion to Seoul (on which more later, clearly) but I kinda agreed with a lot of what Graham Reid wrote in his I Can’t Believe it’s Not a Cure Concert Review before I realised it was a parody. Not reading being much of a Herald reader I hadn’t read the Dylan Review in question, so I sorta missed the joke.

For anyone else similarly suffering from being dense, can I assure you in advance that my own thought’s on last night’s Cure concert are a) honest, b) without irony and c) probably worth skipping altogether, since the concert was a day ago now and even if I say it was really good you can’t travel back in time and go to it on my recommendation…

…or can you?

No, you can’t.

The Cure: Vector Arena, Auckland, 14 August 2007.

First let me state: Big Cure fan. Or certainly I was a big Cure fan, I haven’t bothered with the past couple of albums. I’m sure they have their moments, but they have been sounding a bit samey-samey, which was one thing I liked about albums one through ten.

I used to be in a Cure covers band. Which as a keyboardist was a lot more successful than the two weeks I spent in an AC/DC covers band. Although it wouldn’t have done me last night, as the Cure circa 2007 have four members, one more than the early days, and one fewer than at another time.

So to the gig. Three hours was the rumour, and three hours we got. Graham says he could’ve done with half an hour less, I’d push that up to an hour, but then again I’m also acutely aware of my MTV-generation attention span. And also, with the Cure meaning so many things to so many people, I’d just be removing the songs I’m not so fond of, which could well be the tunes the couple beside me fell in love to (particularly if they’re younger and have a better appreciation of the last few albums).
But even so, there was what felt like a generally poorly-received lull that started with “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep” and ended a few songs later. The beer line certainly grew exponentially during that time.

The songs seemed loosely grouped together by album – three of the four singles from Disintegration (Lovesong, Lullaby and Pictures of You) were all played in a row, although they needn’t have been. And here’s my one main complaint. Maybe they’re trying to fill a gap left by having no keyboardist providing underlying atmospherics, but could they just tone down the flanger/phaser/delay effect on the guitars occasionally? With almost every song receiving the same treatment, it felt like the whole concert was being staged in a flooded coal mine, and many songs lost the dynamics that made them unique in the first place, two examples being The Blood and Hot Hot Hot!!!

I can’t remember whether it was three or four encores we were treated to, but the inclusion of Faith as an end to one of them was either a rare treat for die-hard fans, or a drawn-out dirge for those unfamiliar with the song from 1981’s eponymous album. But I think the same could be said for much of the evening. Three hours is a fan-only affair. If you like Friday I’m in Love and “The One about the Spider” (one of two songs the Stuff’s reviewer couldn’t get right – where are those Fairfax subs/Cure fans when you need ‘em?) then you would be bored after an hour – about the time I was jiggling in my seat to one of my vaguely-obscure personal faves, Push.

Even my attention was waning a little towards the end, and without repeating the All Blacks ahead by 60 analogy Graham has already poked fun at, my date did point out the similarity to the Blues trouncing someone at Eden Park – as the encore began, those eager to beat the traffic fled.

But oh what they missed! Finally the overblown effects units on the guitars had something of a short-circuit, and the Cure emerged if not looking, then sounding something like their late-70s selves (of which, it should be noted for accuracy, Smith is the only remaining member). The energy was well up, and bassist Simon Gallup, who had spent all night looking like he’d be a better fit in a punk band – lanky, toned, stooped and tattoed – finally made sense, as they whipped through almost a medley of tracks from the first album, including Fire In Cairo, Jumping Someone Else’s Train, 10:15 Saturday Night and Grinding Halt.

I’m thinking that even if you didn’t know those tracks word for word, you’d still have had as broad a smile as I did when the final chords rang out.

(PS: I have no sub, nor claim to. This post is bound to be riddled with mistakes.)

I don’t know exactly what’s happened, but a number of people I’ve spoken to have noticed it as well – Facebook has gone postal.

After a nondescript childhood as the poorer, but better-looking cousin of MySpace and the unmemorable sibling of Bebo, LinkedIn, Tagged et al, in the last week Facebook simply exploded.

I generally refuse email invitations of the “someone has added you as their friend, if only you’d sign up there’s bound to be more virtual friends for you…” variety. For a start, I don’t think any of these sites have my best interests at heart. And when they ask me to enter my Gmail address and password so they can trawl through my contacts and invite everyone I’ve ever emailed to join – with me as their reference, I run faster than from a Scientologist offering me a free IQ test on Queen Street.

Maybe I’m no longer the young, urban ‘early adopter’ I once was. I might have been rocking a Mickey Mouse digital watch way back in 1982, before any of you muthaf**ckers, but these days I can’t work my dishwasher. Point being that it took any number of emails and general harassment from colleagues and friends before I clicked that Facebook was really taking off.

So I signed up on Monday and since then I’ve been poked more than a [I had various tries at not trying to break the PG rating with this metaphor and eventually gave up. Suffice to say most of them involved fourth form and the back of the bike sheds - Ed]

Anyway, so now I’m in there. I’ve been bitten and turned into a Zombie, had unflattering photos tagged, and re-established contact with old friends, ex-girlfriends and Ones that Got Away.

I still don’t really see the point of it though. You message someone, then a message goes to your email saying you have a message so you log in and check the message and then respond to it, in turn sending a message to that person’s email to check their messages.

Doesn’t that take the absolute simplicity of the concept of email, and make it only slightly less arduous than writing your message down on paper, walking to the post office for a 45c stamp and posting it?

Facebook is also interesting (and different from MySpace at least) in that you get updated with what your friends are doing. Things like their ‘status’: Simon is flat-hunting, Aaron is listening to music in his room, Jen is researching how to cook meth in her garage; Heath has been bitten and turned into a Ginge. There’s also photos they’ve added recently, groups they’ve joined – even changes in their relationship status.

Such as this morning. Now I’m hoping it was just my colleague correcting an administrative oversight, or filling in a detail she hadn’t previously bothered to enter – in the same way as I received an update about another friend yesterday, informing me he is “now in a relationship”. No doubt this will come as news to his wife of ten years.

But my colleague’s little broken heart icon suggests so much more. At quarter to seven this morning, a young woman known and loved by us all rose from her bed.

Yes, she had work to go to, but that could wait. So could the shower and the brushing of the teeth. Breakfast was definitely the furthest thing from her mind – how could she eat at a time like this? And it was with tears streaming down her face and the dawn light beginning to seep through the window, she knew what needed to be done before anything else.

She logged on to Facebook, and updated her status.

_______________________

[EDIT: While we're at it, I'd like to take suggestions:

As I'm all for neologisms, can anyone tell me whether the process of going through your friend's friends to see if they know anyone hot is called?

My, er, friend wants to know.

I can’t remember if I’d told this story before, but if I can’t remember telling it, you probably can’t remember reading it, so we’re sweet. And it’s timely enough to bear repeating.

I was in a taxi from Auckland airport to TVNZ’s Death Star on Hobson Street. The taxi driver was an older (say late 50s, early 60s), gentleman driving for a very respectable firm.

As we got into the CBD, we drove past a big billboard for some BZP packed preparation.

“So…” he starts up, “…these ‘party pills’…”

“Yyyyyes?” I answer hesitantly.

“What are they like?”

So I launch into a description of sorts, struggling to put it in terms the old fella will understand. “Well – apparently – they make your heart race, keep you awake, umm… give you energy, can make you feel a bit warm and fuzzy… umm…”

“Right…” he says, mulling over what I’ve told him. “….so are they anything like E? Because those are great!”

I have a hard time believing Matt Bowden, the man with the vested interest from the snake-oil salesman sounding ‘Social Tonics’ Association. (“Care for a Refreshing Social Tonic ma’am? It cures what ails ya!”) I have a hard time believing him full stop, but even more so when he claims that banning party pills will only drive them underground. Unless he’s planning on doing it himself, that is.

(If it's any consolation, I should point out I also don't believe the authorities when they tell us people have started injecting party pills... and it's even less credible when the MSM reporting this 'alarming new trend' continue to refer to them as 'herbal highs').

Party pills are already quite pricey for what they are. If the BZP black market operates like any other black market in existence, ever, the product will be sold at a higher price than it was if it was being sold legitimately. Presuming that the street price of Ecstasy remains static, won’t users prefer to go for the real thing rather than the now-illegal fake version of the thing they only bought because it was slightly cheaper and easier to find (but in most other respects inferior) than the thing that it was a simulacrum of?

I don’t think banning every product necessarily creates a black market for that product. That product has to continue to be desirable now it's illegal, and also has to be more desirable than the other illegal alternatives out there.

I don’t see people loitering around carparks to buy asbestos for their ceilings, or looking shifty in alleyways searching for thalidomide for their morning sickness, nor I suspect, will they keep buying cattle drench in capsule form for their Saturday night’s fever once the shops go. But I reserve the right to be completely wrong, who can tell with kids these days?

Me, I’m back on the whiskey. And I’ve decided to stop arguing against the prohibition of various substances on the basis that it’s hypocritical compared with the fact alcohol does so much harm to so many. Because one day Jim might listen, and take my bottle away from me too.

PS: My first ever article for Metro is out in this month’s issue, and I’m quite chuffed with it, if I say so myself, but also thanks to the great photos they commissioned for it. It’s called ‘Capital Punishment’ and it details my (often not flattering) JAFA thoughts on this past year spent as an exile on Cuba Street. Please read.

Oh, and check out this entry for the 48 hours. It’s not mine, but it’s by a bunch of my friends down here, it made the Wellington final, and hey, it's a way to waste some time on a Friday.