Yeah fine I give in

It has long been an issue of contention as to whether smoking in the media directly affects whether people grow up to become smokers, and as articles from both 1993 and 2009 show, the lines of argument involved haven't really changed:

BBC article

Some other article

In all seriousness, the issue of portrayal of smoking in films and television is an insane one. Films such as Thank You For Smoking pointedly refuse to have anyone smoke onscreen. However go any earlier than the late 90s and every lead role is defined by their ability to casually hold a cancer stick. But I will do some wild dismissal in the form of 'kids are influenced by anything and everything, as are most adults, and the television and film industries are obviously central to this, especially when they are the increasingly preferred form of recreation to spending time with your family.'

I choose to level cynicism instead at the desire to be cool, which smoking seems to have become attached to. No one can deny the flawless effervescence of such people:

Susan Sontag

Rita Hayworth as Gilda

But you can definitely argue that their qualities of beauty, intelligence, charisma, and so on, definitely don't stem from smoking. Smoking is something they get away with because of or in spite of, their beauty, intelligence, etc etc. It could be more pertinent to ask how many bad guys smoke in films, and if this adds to their role as the vice of the piece. Does the good guy smoke if the bad guy does? Does the bad guy always smoke cigars? Scrolling through some articles right now, the surveys taken on the subject revealed that it doesn't matter who is shown smoking: as long as they are smoking, teens and yoofs are influenced.
I guess smoking is cool, after all.

Not an orginal post, but I found this incredibly moving.

This video shows the winner of 2009's " Ukraine 's Got Talent", Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a strange... one, is mesmeric to watch.

The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about $75,000.

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.

It is replaced by a woman's face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman's face appears.

She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.

This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house.

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye...

The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million.



An art critic said:
"I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me. The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there's surely no bigger compliment."

Sand Drawings

We Are The Ocean

Another Lovely Review


and more stuff later.......

Obssession, etc

R.I.P J D Salinger from Friday. At the age of 91, no less. Well done sir.

I wasn't actually aware he was still alive: when an author like that goes into reclusive hiding, most sensitive literature fans get the hint. (Alright, so I wanted to stalk him, go and bang on his door, and then cry about the broken record and how I always judge people by how they clip their fingernails, but I've not yet made it to America.) It was strange to suddenly be reminded of him, however, as he had been preying on my mind anyway. I was reading The Collector, by John Fowles, which very much has the same vibe as Catcher does, not simply the lonely male protagonist but the tone of skewed and warped perceptions, and a deep oppressive feeling stemming both from the situations of the characters and their own trapped, introspective mindsets.

Ironically the main character in The Collector is compared to Holden Caulfield by his captive, and is convinced, by her, to read the book, although he is unimpressed. Book within a book, it's all very clever. Could be seen to be labouring the point somewhat considering I had drawn those conclusions anyway, but it's part of the beauty of the story that the increasingly sociopathic captor of a young woman entirely fails to see how he could be similar to this other powerful example of alienation.

Also interestingly, the entire novel is set in Lewes, so I may well be grabbing my bike by the handlebars and my Ordnance Survey map by the plastic outer bit, and having a scour of the countryside. If I think I find the cottage I'll GoogleMap it up here.

There's Something Special Going On

If you're familiar with Simone Weil (and I wasn't til last week) then she is most definitely worth a look. Although I disagree with a lot of her theological directions (as an atheistic type, I'm not keen on needing to have spiritual nourishment of a particular sort to necessarily be kept away from base desires, but I will elucidate another time).
I do however feel profoundly strongly over a lot of what she says about the human condition, or human nature, I'll be discussing it on Monday with some friends so hopefully can settle on the correct phrase for it. What we are and how we feel.

This is something she said about love, and I find it terrifyingly true of how I feel when I love someone:
"Love on the part of someone who is unhappy is to be filled with joy by the mere knowledge that his beloved is happy without sharing in this happiness or even wishing to do so."
The ability to feel happy when knowing that those you love are happy... I think that's one of the most important things in life.

Updatey

So, my new years resolutions.

Well, I dont think I'm my mother, so far so good. I'll never really be able to tell, I suppose, unless my brother points it out to me when we're both in our 50s. But I don't think I'm on the road to have kids. Thus far in my life the people I have fallen most in love with have shared my views on that subject, so I imagine if I ever did 'settle down' with anybody, kids would be the last thing on the agenda. That way, at least if I did become my mother I'd only be inflicting it on my hapless partner.

Managing my diabetes is actually going incredibly well, which is pleasing. I'm still not on track all the time - my jobs really take it out of me so if I'm not careful I start wanting sugar highs all the time. But there have definitely been days where avoiding sweet things has meant I don't want them. That sounds a bit sketchy, but it's only been a few weeks that I've really been working on it. I'm definitely finding out what I eat that can have the amount of sugar in it halved, and without those sharing it with me complaining either. That reminds me, last week I made a rather good blackberry and apple pie. I haven't heard back from one of the recipients of a slice, but considering the rapidity at which I saw the rest of it consumed by Tom, I think it was a winner. It wasn't just because he's Northern and likes pie, at least. I'm getting very good at pastry, soon I will venture into more elaborate stuff methinks. I'm also experimenting with the bags of frozen berries you can get from supermarkets - great for smoothies, a nice nutritious and slow-burning source of deliciousness, if only we had a blender that worked...

Finally, toning down the crazy. Well, it's all going onto this here blog instead, by my estimation. I can't necessarily say that, just under a month into this year, I've managed to be that well-behaved. But I'm showing serious signs of looking after my own well-being much more, not just physically but emotionally. I know I can torture myself over silly things but I'm learning how to a) harness the silly into some nice writing and b) get advice from other people about why I'm not wrong in the majority of my behaviour.

Essentially, I'm hiding my heart, and hoping that the right person comes looking. And that's difficult for me, because there is very rarely a lack of someone in my life that I would readily show my emotions to. This time, I am empowering myself to have the freedom to move slowly. And it's funny, but it allows you a lot more hope. Either something happens because you slowly build on these wonderful feelings, or something doesn't happen because those wonderful feelings build into a friendship. I genuinely have never taken this tack before. Scary but overwhelmingly exciting.

Haiti

I got a bit of teasing/sarcastic admonition recently for over-excitedly announcing the return of Puppy-Cam when Haiti was a far more pertinent and important piece of news. I don't have a didactic angle here and I'm not going to comment on any particular aspect of the tragedy, but I guess I want to mention it because, well, it's happening and no matter the levity of everything else I talk about, it's at the forefront of many many people's minds at the moment.

Tomorrow I'm going to submit a story for this project:
100 Stories for Haiti

Although I presume that the calibur of material will mean mine probably won't be selected, in which case I'll post it up here. Also I wish I had known about it earlier, to recommend to other writers out there! But I'll also post up a link when the book becomes available, so please think about buying it.

Also go here to donate to the Haiti Earthquake Children's Appeal.
We're all thinking of you.