a smoke and a pancake

Well, it's July 1st 2007 and therefore, it is now illegal to smoke in Victorian public venues (ie. bars, clubs, pubs, etc).
I'm thoroughly ambivalent about this.
We live in a nanny state that does its best to tell us what's good for us and uses law in an attempt to enforce consequent ways of doing (and thinking). This is bad. Very bad. Government is bad. So no surprises there.
But I must say that I am looking forward to going to pubs and being able to breathe, as well as not reek of filthy cigarette smoke, when I get home. That will be wonderful.
But then, am I going to have to sit outside in the Winter cold with my friends who do smoke whenever I go out with them?
As a reformed smoker (I quit on October 16th 2004, after about eight years of chain smoking and have never looked back), I understand the priority, the demand for indulgence, that smoking makes. So, I wouldn't want to insist addicted friends refrain from smoking when we're out. I remember, I would tolerate the worst kind of conditions to satisfy my smoking needs: rain, hail, sleet, gale force winds. I can foresee sitting outside in the freezing cold for hours, talking to smoking friends, when we could be sitting inside in smoke-free warmth. In fact, that already happens and I'd rather it didn't
Guess I'll have to make some demands.
a) If I were still a smoker, in all probability I would be blogging right now about how fucked the state is and how we live in tyrannical times and how awful it is that my smoking rights are being curtailed.
b) The best I can do as a non-smoker is to complain about how we live in tyrannical times and how the state is just as much a health hazard as cigarette smoke.
Conclusion: we should ban both.
now playing: shellac - boycott

the writing's on the wall

I snapped this photo in the underground of Flinders Street Station, here in Melbourne, just tonight.
Nice one!
The offical poster reads, 'every piece of information helps' so somebody has jammed this one with the appropriate use of the word 'paranoia'.
It's a big up yours to John Howard and the fear mongers who are drubbing up nationalism, racism and anomie in the interest of increasing state surveillance here in Australia and therefore control over its population.
This country has been turning more and more into a police state over the last ten years and at an alarming rate in the last four or so years in particular.
It's sickening and frightening but wherever there is power there is resistance so I hold out hope.
I know, I know; I've said it all before and probably more eloquently than this.