Just have to have one last..."

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You know when I do actually get the motivation up to update this thing (bet you thought it would never happen, eh? Eh? Pff!) I do have to strain the working of my mind on what precisely I should write about. Booze, sex and smoking right? Still, I can stand to be a little more creative. I was going to write up a rather elaborate post about the nature of New Year's Eve, and just how virulently everyone's expectations seem to rise towards having a good time just this once to the point where the night's activities never really fill the void. Actually How I Met Your Mother does an excellent job in one particular episode illustrating just that. Actually the whole series does a particularly excellent job illustrating many of Life's ups, down, all-arounds and overwhelming realities and truths - whether it be specific to relationships, personal goals, or even career paths. Even touching on minute social phenomenon like the art of "winning a break-up" or quitting smoking manage to reflect periods of our lives with surprising solidity.

Having said that, I'm going to do precisely what I said I was trying not to and talk about smoking. I watched the latter episode with one of my younger brothers John, and we immediately afterwards went out, bought and pack, and shared a cigarette. Why? It's hard to say. There's a certain weight of social gratification which comes with the act of sharing a cigarette with someone - in some obscure way it makes weighty subject matter weightier when it must be done silhouetted in smoke or punctuated by long and solemn drags that break up the story or problem like brooding paragraph breaks. Ironically, the more the government and purists attempt to segregate and typecast smokers the more I'm inclined to have a cigarette just to- literally - blow smoke in their fat fucking faces. As a disclaimer, I'm aware of all the death toll statistics and tar measurements and cancer risks (moreso than most non-smokers I would go so far as to say), but right now I'm 22 and I really don't fucking care. I'm also aware cancer can just fucking happen whether you were following all the right healthy roads of not. The fact is I'm always going to know and I will eventually quit but by God it won't be now. It's all about moderation, I guess, or not, whatever, I've spent nights on spectacular drunks and have had my succeeding hangover hurt all the more compounded with the awe-striking realization that I smoked two whole packs that night (that's fifty, count 'em, I'm even forgoing good Canadian Press rules to illustrate the point).

It's hard to quit. Not in terms of "craving" the nicotine, but in walking outside and having a smoke with your buddies. I'm part of possibly the only institution which unwillingly but almost religiously promotes the act of smoking - the Canadian army, which proverbially runs off "cigarettes and coffee". All the long-standing cliches of yester-year stand proud and celebrated today. We smoke when we get orders, we smoke after a firefight (hell we smoke after emptying a mag), we smoke because we're scared shitless, we smoke because we're pissed, we smoke because sometimes it's hard to get everyone in one place any other way. Hell, sometimes you go off and have a smoke as an excuse to get away from your buddies. When someone looks at you and grins that grin and says "let's go hack butts" you grin right-the-fuck back and light up with all the eagerness of a toddler playing with his new toy. We're people, like the creatures we evolved from we're social animals. If there's one thing that will never disappear on this earth it will be smoking and alcohol because both are systematically ingrained in our consciousness as the simplest way to get people together. Hell, my mom starting smoking at the age of fifty - when me and my brother were on our way overseas, and that act alone drew the entire family into itself until the six of us would get up and leave together to all smoke and chat on the patio. It says something about our lack of communication when really that's what it took to bring us all that much closer together, but it still managed to.

The ironic part I guess is that I don't sit at home and want a smoke. I have no urge to have one right now, didn't yesterday, and probably won't until I see the boys again. Or someone asks me to go out for one. My roomate (thankfully) doesn't smoke so neither of us are dragging the other into it. But bars? My god. He hangs out in the smoking area just to pick up women. I don't want to make exaggerated and probably factually baseless statements like "smokers are more fun" or "smokers are happier", but smokers are more fun, dammit! At a crowded bar where the music is too loud, the cover band sucks too hard, or the guidos are trying too hard to swell outside their Tapout t-shirts, going out for a smoke is probably the most rewarding experience there. And whether it's suffering through the biting cold, the torrential rain, or just the asshole stares of those offended by your collective habits, everyone in the smoking area is brought ingeniously together as a loose-knit group of people ready to make friends. Bumming smokes, passing them out, refusing to take offered money, it's common ground less tumultuous than alcohol over which to meet people. And picking up women? We had a whole series of elaborate conversation-pieces revolving around the act of being professional "cigarette-lighters" on their first day wandering around lighting up smokes for the hottest babes. Or asking for a lighter to no avail only to light your and everyone else's cigarettes with the one you had all along. People reading this (women especially) probably think this "ruse" or whatever low-brow description might be used is offensive and unrealistic but the genuine fun-loving honesty of coming up to a group of girls and establishing conversation with a laugh is just outstanding fun at its best. It's all about being charming, and honest - and if you think lying isn't being honest, find me the person who actually believes any of the lies perpetrated by men in establishments of drinking on sex's direct behalf and I will snicker impolitely. If you aren't slightly amused by lavish and made-up careers like "deep-sea bulldozers" or "hot-air balloon pilot", you don't need to look around because you killed fun and you suck for it.

There's enough iconic movie images related to smoking out there that I could fill this post up with nothing but, and the irony is that anti-smokers will debase these as nothing but advertisements for the Tobacco giants when really the fact that you can't show people in smoking as often these days always struck me as unrealistic in itself. The Ghostbusters smoked because people smoke. Get over it. And if I ever find a copy of the movie where the cigarettes are airbrushed out I will fucking throw a pie.

Going off topic, you know I find it ironic that everything I love about being in the military has never been (at least to my knowledge) shown in cinema except by movies that.. well, aren't war movies. I mean, combat or psychological issues aside, you never get a really good glimpse of the sitting around the locker room shenanigans I'm trying to flesh out here. The tv series Rescue Me prevails not because of the scenes directly relating to firefighting - but through the in-house interactions (the smoking, natch) and kitchen-table conversation. In fact, scenes like this have always been the most powerful to me: the opening scene from Reservoir Dogs, the crew of the Nostromo gorging themselves at the dinner table over cigarettes and financial debate, Alec Baldwin and his crew huddling bleary-eyed and stressed over rolled-up shirt-sleeves and loosened ties trying to pierce Jack Nicholson's criminal empire in The Departed... (I'm going to omit the fact that most of these scenes involve smoking in some sense or another). All of these speak to an ideal kind of work-ethic in my mind. I was never and desk-jockey and don;t really have the chops to be. Despite taking English in university (and history, and archaeology, and that sort of thing) my calling has always been work work not customer service work. The scene in Ghostbusters that made every kid want to be a Ghostbuster (or even actually made them firemen, paramedics, soldiers, or even exterminators) is the scene when they walk out of the ballroom holding their captured ghost in its trap admiring out loud a whole slew of specifics meant to classify these different "vapours". The fact that they wearily drudge through their work-load in filthy overalls with used-up equipment and a lack of sleep just speaks to a kind of inborn respect for five-day-a-week labour. My work-load involve knocking walls down with sledgehammers, axes and ice-picks, trekking through ditches so pregnant with afternoon heat they baked the sweat from your forehead, processing local nationals, and firing my weapon empty at distant, amorphous enemies, all in a pair of combats so run-through with filth and sweat they could stand up on their own. And half that time? I had a smoke in my mouth, and so did everyone around me.

In any case, that's all I'm dropping. I'll try and put some outstanding stories of debauchery on paper the next time. I also hope no non-smoker lights up after reading this - although I do like the idea that a smoker just might.