Hector Bannister presents … Cigarettes Day

 

“I sat there and poisoned myself with cigarette smoke and listened to the rain and thought about it.” — Raymond Chandler

“This cigarette or this box of matches contains a secret life much more intense than that of certain human beings.” — Joan Miro

“The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared, you are both in that parenthesis.” — John Berger

 

 

Cigarettes in contemporary art: Jac Leirner ‘Lung’, Yang Yongliang ‘Cigarette Ash Landscape’, Tom Wesselmann ‘Smoking Cigarette’, Richard Prince ‘Untitled (man’s hand with cigarette)’, Xu Bing ‘Tobacco Project’, Marcel Duchamp ‘Couverture-Cigarette (Stripped-Down Cigarette Tobacco)’, Chris Jordan ‘Toxic Forest’, Julian Opie ‘Ruth with Cigarette 3’, Jon Pylypchuk ‘Cigarettes’, Pavel Büchler ‘Work (All the cigarette breaks)’, Robert Larson ‘Quantum Marlboro’, Chris Jordan ‘Running the Numbers, An American Self Portrait (2006-2007)’, Wilhelm Sasnal ‘Girl Smoking (Anka)’, Roy Lichtenstein ‘Cigarette’, Maria Nordman ‘Filmroom, Smoke’, Donna Conlon ‘Step on a Crack’, Camilo Rojas ‘Flavor’, Paul Erschen “Newport Room’, …

 

 

Historians have long concurred in identifying professional authors as the occupational group most prone to habitual tobacco use.

Writers are most closely associated with the practice of smoking in particular, as if, in the general consensus, the scribe could find inspiration in a tobacco pouch or pry the muse from her hiding-places with a few puffs of poisonous fumes. Other stimulants have found favor among the authorial class; a special example being coffee—Voltaire and Balzac were known to have downed prodigious quantities on a daily basis—but no substance, except for printer’s ink, has been seen to play so important and intimate a role in the life of the workaday wordsmith.

History has preserved only the slimmest visual record of other fads and fashions of tobacco-taking, such as snuff-inhalation and wad-chewing, perhaps because of the unattractiveness and perceived vulgarity of the sniffing and spitting attending these methods of ingestion, although posterity has left many prized examples of sterling silver snuff boxes and gleaming brass cuspidors. Archives abound, on the other hand, with groaning files of photographs of this or that celebrated author taking a deep, satisfying drag from pipe, cigar, or cigarette. (continued)

 

 

Cigarettes is identified by Harry Mathews as his only “purely Oulipian novel.” Its method of composition has not be revealed beyond a statement that it is based on a “permutation of situations”.

‘During this time, I decided to write an Oulipian novel. And I created this abstract scheme of permutations of situations in which A meets B, B meets C, and so forth. There’s no point in looking for it now because no one will ever figure it out, including me.’ — Harry Mathews

‘In the Oulipo, there are two schools of thought. People like Calvino and Perec said that the author should acknowledge the methods he’s been using. And the other clan, which included Raymond Queneau and myself, thinks it’s much better not to let on, because this will keep the reader straining to find out.’ — Harry Mathews

INTERVIEWER: Cigarettes… Why that title?
HARRY MATHEWS: The question, “Why is the book called Cigarettes?” is a question that should be asked.

 

 

‘Jessica Price was assaulted in the street by Carl Powell, who attempted to strangle her and dragged her to a remote spot to kill her. But she asked to share his cigarette, which convinced him not to harm her. After the 23-year-old called police to report her ordeal, she learned that he had killed another young woman in almost identical circumstances just a month earlier. She had recently returned from travelling overseas and was enjoying a reunion with friends on the night of the attack. Although the evening did not wrap up until 3am, she decided to walk the 40 minutes to the family home alone, as she was very familiar with the route. She listened to her iPod on the walk, but when she noticed a stranger catching up with her she turned down the volume in order to be on the alert. Seconds later he lunged at her, wrapping his hands around her neck and throttling her. ‘I noticed he was smoking a cigarette,’ she says, ‘and with the little breath I had left inside me, I managed to say “Can I have a drag?” I don’t usually smoke, but I asked for a drag, if only so he could see I had something in common with him. He gave me a drag and even apologised for scaring me. After a while, I just said to him, “Look, you’re headed in the same direction as me. Let’s walk together”.’ He clutched her hand as they started walking back up to the main road, with Mr Price making a mental note of where Powell dropped his cigarette butt. ‘I told him I needed to get home as my mum would be frantic. Then he said to me, “At least feel what you’re doing to me,” and he shoved my hand down his trousers. I squirmed as he smiled. I thought quickly and said, “But we shared a cigarette!” That seemed to confuse him, and he let me go. “You’re right,” he said, almost sheepishly. Then I escaped. I hope he burns in hell.” — Daily Mail

 

 

‘The flip-top cigarette pack is one of the most successful pieces of packaging design in history. Tank Books pay homage to this iconic form by employing it in the service of great literature. We have launched a series of books designed to mimic cigarette packs – the same size, packaged in flip-top cartons with silver foil wrapping and sealed in cellophane. The titles are by authors of great stature – classic stories presented in classic packaging; objects desirable for both their literary merit and their unique design. Titles: Joseph Conrad “Heart of Darkness”, Ernest Hemingway “The Undefeated” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, Franz Kafka “The Metamorphosis” and “In the Penal Colony”, Rudyard Kipling “The Man Who Would Be King”, “The Phantom Rickshaw” and “Black Jack”, Robert Louis Stevenson “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, Leo Tolstoy “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and “Father Sergius”.’ — Tank Books

 

 

Message boards say that Winston’s are the closest a person can get to an unfiltered cigarette that actually has a filter. This note is listed with a picture of a 1974 ad that says, I smoke for one reason. I don’t smoke a brand to be like everybody else. I smoke because I enjoy it…Real taste—and real pleasure—are what smoking’s all about. Winston is for real.

I wonder if they know what “real” is. Real is having a mother who might have cancer. Real is her fear of being buried alive and her fear of fire. Real is your mother requesting to be Saran-wrapped in her recliner with a cigarette in her hand to preserve her legacy.

That what’s real about Winston’s. (continued)

 

Irving Penn

 

Breakfast
by Jacques Prévert

He poured the coffee
Into the cup
He put the milk
Into the cup of coffee
He put the sugar
Into the coffee with milk
With a small spoon
He churned
He drank the coffee
And he put down the cup
Without any word to me

He lit
One cigarette
He made circles
With the smoke
He shook off the ash
Into the ashtray
Without any word to me
Without any look at me

He got up
He put on
His hat on his head
He put on
His raincoat
Because it was raining
And he left
Into the rain
Without any word to me
Without any look at me

And I buried
My face in my hands
And I cried.

 

 

‘Candy cigarettes predispose children who play with them to smoke the real things later, new research concludes. The look-alikes made of candy or gum are marketing and advertising tools that desensitize kids and open them moreso to the idea of smoking later on, says study leader Jonathan Klein of the University of Rochester. Candy cigarettes cannot be considered simply as candy, Klein said. The study is the first to show a statistical link between a history with fake cigarettes and adult experiences with real smokes—22 percent of current or former smokers had also regularly consumed candy cigarettes, while only 14 percent of those who have never smoked had eaten or played with candy cigarettes often or very often. Candy cigarettes reportedly have been restricted or banned in Canada, the United Kingdom, Finland, Norway, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, among other countries. Legislative bans also have been proposed in several U.S. states and in New York City over the years, but all these failed except in North Dakota where a ban stood from 1953 until it was repealed in 1967. In the United States, candy cigarettes are typically sold next to bubble gum and trading cards, but some retailers refuse to sell them. For instance, Wal-Mart bans the sale of tobacco and tobacco look-alike products to minors in its stores nationwide.’ — livescience.com

 

 

“Did the game of stealing please many? Here, on the other side, they were in sync, their bowls of muesli crooning to the sidelong bats of evening, and then they were let out to smoke a cigarette in the meadow.” — John Ashbery

“We sure live in a bizarre and furious galaxy, but now it’s up to us to make it into an environment for maps to sidle up to, as trustingly as leeches. Heck, put us on the map, while you’re at it. That way we can smoke a cigarette, and stay and sway, shooting the breeze with night and her swift promontories.” — John Ashbery

“There is a great deal on the ground today, not just mud, but things of some importance, too. Like, silver paint. How do you feel about it? And, is this a silver age? Yeah. I suppose so. But I keep looking at the cigarette burns on the edge of the sink, left over from last winter. Your argument’s neatly beyond any paths I’m likely to take, here, or when I eventually leave here.” — John Ashbery

 

 

THE CIGARETTES by D. Foy: That Saturday, on his way home from the Quik Stop where he’d blown his allowance on sweets, near the edge of the field, he saw a pack of cigarettes. Had the brand been Benson and Hedges, or Vantage, or Pall Mall—anything short of Marlboro or Camel, which to his mind even then were the only cigarettes worth their smoke—he might’ve kept on. But in fact they were Marlboros, and not Marlboro Lights, in the white and gold pack, but Marlboro Reds, in the soft pack, totally superior. It wasn’t that he could not not look at this package in the weeds. He could not not stop looking at this package in the weeds.

Already the cigarettes had him, already he was theirs.

Blue skies ruled, sunshine ruled, summertime would come with its water balloons and swimming pools, milkshakes and barbeques, mornings late in bed his father gone to work, cartoons daily, mischief with his pals in the afternoons, baseball practice and baseball games, the A’s on the tube, the Paradero’s hideout, camping in Yosemite, and—best of all!—firecrackers and firewheels, roman candles, M-80s, bottle rockets and Piccolo Petes, smoke bombs and sparklers and cakes . . .

On the street now and then a car hummed by, the drivers thoughtless of his schemes—some stupid kid staring at a field as he gummed his lollipop and farted.

Three or four robins bounced through the sprinklers on a lawn, and cabbage moths roamed the field at whose far side, near the eucalyptus by the freeway, stood a fort, actually just a big bush in whose hollow boys pretended they were gunners in their nest or hunters in their hutch, and older boys banged their girls or jerked off to the honeys and bunnies on the pages of Playboys and Hustlers left behind for fledgling crooks like him. The old willow before the Elks Lodge up the way had begun to bloom. Late last summer Mike Paradero had bared his ass from a fork in its branches to shit down on him and Paul Paradero and Pedro Jones, that weird redhead kid who just a few weeks back had led them to his yard to peer through the window as he, Pedro Jones, sneaked up to his fat mother snoring naked on the couch and plucked one of the hairs on her belly and thighs. A block past the Elks Lodge, a lab at his heel, an old dude dumped a catcher of grass into his pickup truck. The sun was shining. The sky was blue. Some doves swept by, then circled round to settle in the willow at the lodge. The sun was really shining. The sky was really blue.

The pack was still half full, he could tell, or thereabout. He picked it up, and, by golly, there they were, eight of them, just as he’d thought, almost half a pack of real-life actual cigarettes. (continued)

 

 

Cigarettes in the feed: History’s Dumpster: Forgotten Cigarette Brands, Bird Starts Fire With Cigarette, Burns House, My Strange Addiction: Eating Cigarette Ashes, Check Out These Weird Russian Cigarette Brands That Target Young Girls, Cigarette Butts Help Bird Nests Repel Parasites, Patent: Cheese-Filter Cigarette, Camel “Crush” cigarettes spray menthol from internal capsule, Electronic cigarette explodes in man’s face, blows out his teeth, part of tongue, ‘Vaping’ culture ridiculous, Tobacco advertising in the 1920s was weird, Cigarette Smoke Tricks, Cigarette-Smoking Monkey Weds Fellow Primate, Would You Drink Tobacco Flavored Vodka?, Medicinal uses of tobacco in history, Polar Cigarette Cards, Dad’s plea to litterbugs fuelling son’s cigarette butt habit, The Cigarette Century, School allows kids fag breaks to stop them bunking off, “Fu King” Smoke Shop Name Has Residents Fuming, Artist creates Brad Pitt portrait using cigarette ash, Smoking While Pregnant May Lead To Gay Babies, …

 

 

‘In Cigarettes are Sublime, that great elegy to smoking, Richard Klein predicts a time when there are no smokers left anywhere in the world: ‘What was once the unique prerogative of the most refined and futile dandies, having become the luxury of billions of people, may abruptly vanish. Will anything have been lost? On the day when some triumphant ‘antitabagist’ crushes under his heel the last cigarette manufactured on the face of the earth, will the world have any reason to grieve, perhaps to mourn the loss of a cultural institution, a social instrument of beauty, a wand of dreams?’ Well, something will have been lost – the entire 20th-century movie canon for a start. Can you think of any good movies without smoking in them? March of the Penguins, anyone? If you discount historical films such as Barry Lyndon or Ben-Hur, a diet of non-smoking films would be almost unwatchable. But what would be most tragically lost are the great black-and-white smoking films of the 1940s – Casablanca, Now, Voyager, The Big Sleep – where wreaths of smoke are an essential and beautiful part of the cinematography, and where smoking quite clearly stands for sex. All these symbolic nuances will be lost once smoking is abolished. Already, I think they are being distorted as modern audiences view smoking with new, health-conscious sensibilities. There is a great scene in The Graduate when Mrs Robinson draws on her cigarette just before Benjamin suddenly kisses her. She holds the smoke in until the kiss is finished and then exhales, with just the slightest hint of contempt. At the time (and to me still), it seemed the ultimate proof of her sophistication, but I suppose to modern, non-smoking audiences it just seems disgusting.’ (cont.) — Lynn Barber

 

 

Q:Why do a lot of writers and musicians smoke cigarettes?

A: Stress. Unfathomable, breathing down your neck stress.
A: That, and usually some sort of a death wish, but in a very odd sense. Or even a wish to have some control over your own destiny.
A: Because contrary to popular belief, creating art, literature, and music does not come easy. Creating something of actual relevance and substance is often an intensive struggle, and can inadvertently create a lot of stress. Some even go as far as to say that any good artist must suffer.
A: Because artists like to be intoxicated in one way or another. Perception is everything in their line of work.
A: Nicotinic receptors in the brain. Nicotine helps to stimulate the neuro-muscular junction. It also helps to stimulate awareness and short term memory function.
A: smoking has always been an intellectual activity. historically, the smoking of tobacco to the smoking of fine herb was done by someone with at least enough knowledge to identify usable plants, usable parts of plants, and proper preparation of herb to make it smokable. my guess is this is primarily because the psychoactive effects smoking of certain substances has on the mind puts one in a adjacent state of mind to normal states of conciousness. This juxtaposition in the mind creates friction between the two experienced states, allowing for interesting thoughts, feelings, and perceptions to be formed. These effects could easy be seen as going hand in hand with the goals desired by writers and musicians. Since smoking weed is illegal and cigarettes are legal and highly addictive, it makes sense that writers and musicians would utilize cigarettes to help create desirable states of mind for the creative process.
A: cuz lower/middle-class life sucks.

 

 

How to inhale a tornado: ‘The trick works best with a hookah, so fill the hookah’s cone with tobacco just as you would with weed. Do not put anything in your base except water. Milk will ghost it and cause mold even if you clean it. A few ice cubes and cold water means less flavor but a potential for thicker clouds. Use shisha with a high glycerine content, like fantasia. Use a vortex, phunnel, or bowl that stops the juices from dripping into the base. Manage your heat well and you should get thicker clouds. Another option is to skip the hookah and use an electronic cigarette, or personal vaporizer. If you use an eLiquid that’s high in vegetable glycerine on a low-resistance device, you produce very thick clouds of vapor that are slightly heavier than air. In any case, whether using the e-cigarette or hookah method, take a huge drag and hold it in your lungs. Basically, let out the smoke slowly from your mouth directly onto a flat surface. If it’s milky the smoke will just sit on the table top. Make sure the table is clean and it should be cold. Also don’t forget to make sure theres no air current (fans). Basically your face has to be touching the table to be able to get a nice plane. You can also freeze a marble slab and chill the smoke by breathing it into a frozen beer mug then pour it on the marble. The smoke will sit low and react like this. Then in a fluid motion slide your hand (in a karate chop position) through the smoke and raise it quickly. You can rotate your finger above the vortex to get a better tornado but after awhile you can get good enough where you don’t need to. I shit you not the entire plane of smoke shot up vertically into a perfectly cylindrical 1.5 inch diameter vortex about an inch off the table. We just looked at each other in awe afterwards to confirm that we weren’t tripping and just freaked the fuck out. Craziest shit I’ve ever seen. This is a marvelous form of sorcery.’ — trees

 

 

“He who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation, next to that which comes from heaven.” — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Tobacco, divine, rare, super excellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosophers’ stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases … but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, ’tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health; hellish, devilish and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.” — Robert Burton

“The smoke is inhaled very sharply and the teeth are bared. Then the head turns to give you a profile and the smoke is exhaled slowly and deliberately and the grey jet stream becomes a beautiful blue cloud of smoke. What are they trying to tell us?” — Jeffrey Bernard

 

E-cigarette explodes in man’s pocket in New York

E-cigarette explodes in man’s pocket

E-cigarette explodes in man’s pocket in New York

 

At our center, from October 2015 through June 2016, we treated 15 patients with injuries from e-cigarette explosions due to the lithium-ion battery component. Such explosions were initially thought to be rare, but there have been reports, primarily in the media, of 25 separate incidents of e-cigarette explosions from 2009 through 2014 across the United States. More recently, there have been case reports in the medical literature.

‘Injuries of the Face, Hands, and Thighs Caused by E-Cigarette Explosions.). Patients have presented with injuries to the face (20%), hands (33%), and thigh or groin (53%) — injuries that have substantial implications for cosmetic and functional outcomes. Blast injuries have led to tooth loss, traumatic tattooing, and extensive loss of soft tissue, requiring operative débridement and closure of tissue defects. The flame-burn injuries have required extensive wound care and skin grafting, and exposure to the alkali chemicals released from the battery explosion has caused chemical skin burns requiring wound care.’ — University of Washington Medical Center

 

 

 

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p.s. Hey. A very fine fellow and reader of this blog who might or might not also comment here occasionally under another name, I’m not entirely sure, made us this versatile and relatively noncommittal paean to the legendary cigarette, and smokers as well as non-smokers are in for a wonderful time, should you allow. Please do allow and also express something to Hector in your comments that make him feel like his efforts weren’t for naught. Thank you, and especially you, HB! Also, if you haven’t yet seen the trailer for PERMANENT GREEN LIGHT that was released yesterday, you can watch it here. ** Have ANiceLife, Hi. Oh, no, no, weighing in on anything that comes up here is legit and welcome, and I appreciate your comments, and I apologise for making my general cautionary explanation in my response to you. I hope I’ll get to see you here again. ** H, Hi. Thank you. We go up to Rotterdam on the early morning the premiere day, the 28th. I think that trio of filmmakers is a wonderful pick, and I’m an admirer of them all. I did a Curtis Harrington Day here on the dead blog that I need to restore and will. And maybe a Sonbert Day too, I can’t remember. ** Tomk, Hi, Tom! The mysterious project is only mysterious because I’m not allowed to announce what it is until certain contracts are signed, andsthe contract signage is taking for-fucking-ever. Transcendental meditation, nice. I mean I’ve never done that, but friends of mine do, and they radiate the positive results. Whoa, your new novel gets ever more craveable. And thanks a zillion for the taste. I’m not going to subject the excerpt to my scattered p.s.-composer attention span, but I’ll read it closely when I’m freed. ‘Cameraperson’, yeah, such a good film. I forgot all about it. ** Steve Erickson, That’s very weird: that banning. As you said, that film of all her films. ‘Paul’s Boutique’ is unimpeachable for sure, but, for me, their masterpiece is ‘Check Your Head’. I don’t know what ‘Lionheart’ is, but I’ll go find out. Everyone, Mr. Erickson has weighed in publicly on ‘Lionheart’, an album by H. C. McEntire, right here. Yes, superfan that I am, I do already know about the new GbV video. That amazing kid in the video is, or claims to be, or wants to be, the world’s biggest GbV fan. I believe him. ** Jonathan, Hey, man! Mega-awesomeness to see you, pal! Gothenburg! Dude, if you haven’t yet, you ‘have to’ go on a mission for me to the mighty theme park Liseberg and ride their two new incredible looking rides — Valkyria and Loke. And the rest of their great attractions too, of course. Special recommendation re: Gasten Ghost Hotel and AtmosFear. Why are you in Gothenburg, and for how long? Paris is its great self. I had two buches, both mega. Wow, great about your performance. Feb. 1st, I assume. Will it be streamed or anything? Very sweet about the hang out with Joanna Walsh! Man, fingers so entangled-y crossed for your Paris residency. It’s been too long since you were a neighbour. When would the residency be? Love, hugs, me. ** James Nulick, Oh, right, you’ve been there already, my space out. I’ll angle for October for Tokyo and see where the chips fall. If/when I go, it’ll be with Zac. The project’s mystery is just enforced silence on my part due to it not being ‘official’ yet. Don’t get too excited about the mystery. It’s a cool thing, but don’t overly believe mystery’s hype. You sound like a writer possessed, which is in the running for the ultimate sound. In my book. ** Jamie, Hi! Awesome, I’m really glad you like the trailer. Yes, it’s the trailer Zac and I made that we like a lot. The same one our film’s sales agency thinks is too ‘not normal’ and ‘not what you see in the market’, etc. In fact, I think the agency was secretly planning to try to keep us from releasing that trailer, but the Rotterdam festival leaked it, so ha ha. I’m good. Work, work, essentially. I wouldn’t say the assigned project is ‘cherished’ necessarily, but it has become fun anyway. Oh, I send Zac what I’m doing all the time, every time I create a new scene, and he has been going over the draft and adding/subtracting, making changes, all along. In fact today we have a big meeting to go over what we have and then come up with a ‘final’ version. Then we send it to Gisele, who is the project’s boss, or one of them, and we’ll meet and find out if we’ve given her what she wants. I am a fan of Breillat’s writing, yes. I do think I like her films a little better, if I had to choose. I was a lucky young lad who saw Black Sabbath at the very beginning at a tiny club in LA, and it was a slam dunk. May Friday turn everyone within your vicinity into extremely charming animation characters of your choosing until night arrives and sends them scurrying back into their human forms. Shiny orange pill love, Dennis. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. Interesting: the Bataille comparison. I enjoy her films, but I’m fucking weird, ha ha. ** Nick Toti, Hi there, Nick! How’s LA? That is some kind of coincidence. Thanks about the trailer. I think the powers that be will try to find an interested festival in LA first, and, if that doesn’t work, I guess we’ll figure out a showing. I suspect US distribution is probably an awfully long shot, but … who knows. You know the drill. Take good care! ** Cal Graves, Hi, Cal. My pleasure, of course. Thanks a bunch about the trailer, and, yeah, I can’t wait for you to see the film. I would be very thrilled and grateful for a guest post, very much! My email is: denniscooper72@outlook.com. Thanks a lot! Also in a rush but happily posting and p.s.ing, Dennis. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks, Ben. Yeah, that was our idea: make a trailer where people would go, What is that? Or at least that’s the kind of trailer that works on us. Yes, we’ll see how the film shows in the UK. A release there would be amazing. The sales agency handling the film’s ‘sales’ seems pretty pro, so maybe. Great day to you. ** Jeff J, Thanks, man. Whoa, obviously honoured to the bone by having ‘My Loose Thread’ written about in the same breath with Bernhard. Thank you. Breillat’s most recent film is the one at the bottom of the post, and, yes, I have seen it, and it’s very interesting. I have not yet seen ‘The Other Side of Hope’. Are you seeing it? I’d love to hear about it. Thank you about the trailer, Jeff. Very cool. Good luck with the book finalizations. ** Misanthrope, Hey. I’m staying away from the WA issue, like I said. Uh, oh, tooth pain. Nip it in the bud while it’s still a bud, man. Eek, re: the rework. Maybe the second time around your eyes and lips will be able to move much faster? ** Right. Have a cigarette-filled day. See you tomorrow.