Issue 164

News: Thoughts on smoking.
I'm not a smoker, and I'm not even pro-smoker, but I certainly consider myself anti-anti-smoking. I got inspired to write a piece on smoking after hearing a message about how Anti-smoking groups criticised Avatar for having Sigourney Weaver smoking; I shudder to think of the minds of somebody who walks out of Avatar and thinks "I can't believe that Ellen Ripley was smoking!" Simply put, I think a big reason I dislike the Anti-smoking movement is that their movement hinges upon two things: one) explaining to people something that I'm sure most of us have known well from the age of five: that smoking kills, and two) the assumption that everybody who hears the facts will give up. The fact is that, by this point, all the movement has done is separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff; keeping potential smokers who care for their healths from smoking, but leaving a strong subculture of people who smoke despite knowing full well that it will ultimately kill them. The way I see it, the smoking industry thrives today not by lobbyists who try to downplay the effects of smoking, or people who claim that smoking is cool, but by an impulse of slow and steady self-destruction that no amount of recapitulations of "Well you should care, but I don't care" or laws that restrict opportunities to smoke (restricting opportunities being a very poor way of stomping out a problem) will end. Really, I must admit that if a person has a desire to speed up the inevitable, I see no reason to stop him, and by the inevitable, I am not just referring to death, but also to cancer. I learned in my genetics class last semester that even if we could get rid of every other disease, cancer would still kill us. And incidentally, cancer isn't just a slow-killing disease caused by environmental factors; it is ultimately caused by faulty replication of DNA that makes cells diseased, immortal, and willing to infect any other . Even if we got rid of smoking entirely (and I'm not even talking about a Prohibition of cigarettes; I'm talking about a time when we cease to feel the need to smoke), cancer will still be inevitable. In short, I think that if we put everything into perspective, and keep at the forefront "memento mori," my perspective begins to make a lot of sense.

Film Idea of the day: A story I'm in the process of writing: a man walks down North Pier in Chicago, and is followed by another man and jumps into the water, drowning. The puesued is a former Nazi commandant and the pursuer is a camp survivor. This is told from several perspectives; a police report, two witnesses, and the two men involved.

Film Review of the Day: Sherlock Holmes. Well, this movie has certainly shown its work and is, for all its stylised nature, probably has the most accurate performances of Holmes and Watson, even keeping his actual straight pipe and losing the deerstalker. Admittedly, I was somewhat disappointed that they didn't keep his cocaine habit, but considering that he only uses it in two stories (out of 60), and his use of a tincture would be so alien to modern audiences that it wasn't that much of a big loss. And for that matter, I kind of winced at the portrayal of Irene Adler, considering that the movie turned her from the archetypal femme fatale to the resident analogue to Molotov Cocktease from the Venture Brothers, and while I tend to dislike sequel hooks in movies, especially when it leaves the movie as it is incomplete (like in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film), I do think it is justified when there really is a sequel in the works, and as it turns out, there is.

Leon the Professional- I recently came across this film while doing research for my Hitman story, and surprisingly, there is little writing on the inner life of the hitman, and I can count the number of nonfiction books I could find centered around hitmen on one hand, but there are a lot of movies about hitmen, and probably, this is one of the best, except perhaps Pulp Fiction, but even Pulp Fiction had surprisingly little actual focus on the hitmen doing their jobs, but this one does. Perhaps this may be the film I draw on the most for that project.

Quote of the Day: "The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide."
_______________Kurt Vonnegut

Link of the Day: Bad Webcomics Wiki. I have just heard of this site reviewing some of the most brain-breakingly insane ideas for webcomics, from stories about wolves who molest children because of their brain tumors, to a very poorly researched Mafia story that rips off Twilight, to incoherently done PSA Comics about law (one sample panel is here. Try to figure out what they're doing.) to just plain inane Anti-semitic propaganda. Please prepare to be offended by the horrors within, both by the subject matter and the supreme awfulness of style.