smoking and libraries

does enjoying smelling like smoke make me a smoker? does enjoying smoking in a country where tabagisme is a dirty word and thinking it is a very pleasurable thing? i once saw a documentary about a frenchman visiting the usa. his aim was to visit american states where smoking is effectively banned in public spaces, the key place being ny city. his indignant attitude seems to me however to be a wasted opportunity. to pleasure of smoking in front of passers-by who hold their hand to their mouth as though the carcinogenic fumes emanating from my cigarette never ceases to amuse me. do the same people do this when in submitted to car fumes? either case to me seems to be ridiculous behaviour that might or might not be extended into other realms of such peoples' public or private life in any number of ways. this is not an elegy to smoking. it just seems to me that smoker disdain is as pleasurable as smoking itself can be.



the fryer library at uq is a panopticon and for some reason this helps me to work, in the same way perhaps as the mobile social panopticon phenomena of smoker disdain is only serving to make me want to continue to smoke.

reading = thinking

as much as i like 'to read and to watch films that make me think' (ass pro hainge), i also like to enjoy pretty descriptions and laugh at silly characterisations.

[...] mon ami Lord Robert Cecil que j'appelle Bob, et lui parlant toujours anglais de même qu'à ma gracieuse souvraine que j'accompagne en tube gris aux courses élégantes de chevaux que nous adorons, elle et moi, Royal Ascot, Derby of Epsom, that is the question, Bank of England and House of Lords in tomato sauce, fish and chips in Buckingham Palace, yours sincerely, God Save the King, n'est-ce pas votre avis?

--C'est que ze n'ai pas compris

--Ne vous troublez point, mon enfant, c'est notre mignon travers, à nous autres aristrocrates anglais, de parler tout à coup sans y penser dans la langue que Shakespeare illustra mais qu'ignorent les personnes sans instruction