Meet the Swinger

I picked this beauty of a camera up at Value Village a month or so ago and am sad to finally confirm the fact that it is completely useless.

This version of the Polaroid Land Camera, called the Swinger Model 20, was produced between 1965 and 1970. It sold bazillions, in part due to it's cheap sales price of $19.95,as well as its youth centered advertising campaign (as evidenced by this vintage tv ad).

The interesting thing about the Swinger model was that it took Type 20 film, which was the first roll film to develop outside the camera. Unfortunately this type of film was discontinued decades ago, making this camera completely useless. The story of my life.

p.s. I've read mention that the Swinger can be modified to take other types of film. If anyone can find me more info on how to do this, I will be forever grateful.

Single white atheist seeks an emotionally detached female, intellectual and angular faced with jet black hair and defined pale calves, whose turn-ons include depressing subtitled b&w Swedish films and 1920's women's hats. o.b.o. Box #4235

The problem with personal ads is that people aren't nearly specific enough. They use vague terms like "attractive" or "caring" when really they want someone who will add more melted butter to their Orville Redenbacher Microwavable Movie Butter Popcorn or finds it creepy when adolescent children wear jeans. So while there may only be one other person in your city who agrees that it's hilarious when old people slip on patches of ice or prefers 1920s bathing suits to modern day string bikinis, if these things are important to you then include them in your personal ad. Whether you publish it or keep it to yourself.

And remember, your standards are only too high if no one lives up to them. In which case it's their fault.

"A little off the top, please."

It's fast become an ongoing in-joke with my brutish Greek barber. He absentmindedly nods before I suddenly feel one of his arms encircle my forehead, the other tightens around my neck. What the?! Could it be? Is my barber putting me in a sleeper hold?? But wh.... zzzzzzzzzz.

As the barber shop dims I swear that I hear an adolescent child's voice behind my ear whisper, "Grab me that straight razor, Dad."

When Sampson had his hair chopped off by that foul temptress in the bible he only lost his strength, got captured by the Philistines, and had his eyes gouged out. When Pizza Diarist gets his hair chopped off by his masochistic Greek barber, he loses his self esteem, gets ridiculed by his friends, and goes into hiding.

I came
I conquered
I ate too much Chinese food

or
My afternoon of ping pong and beef & broccoli with the one and only Nick W.

You would think that a racquetball court could only really be used for racquetball. Well in actual fact it turns out that if you rent one while giving the impression that your intention is to play racquetball in it, but instead you quickly wheel in a ping pong table when they're not looking and lock the doors from the inside so that no one can come in and stop you, a racquetball court can quickly become a very good ping pong court indeed.

And that's just what happened to Court #1 at Dalplex at 2:15 this afternoon. Nick W and I put on our best headbands and wrist bands, our shortest short shorts, whitest white shoes, tallest black knee high socks, and safest safety goggles, grabbed our little wooden paddles and tiny white balls, and gave'er.

And boy did we give'er. We started easy, with a few toos and fros, but quickly I pulled out a couple of my patented "In-Your-Face!-ers". Nick W.'s serves skittered across the net like water spiders on a pond, making it near impossible to return. The nice thing about a sealed racquetball court is that no one can hear you cry, which saved both of us from a certain level of embarrassment.

Word to the wise: never put two 27 year old men into a locked room with paddles and a ball and expect them to follow "rules". Rules schmulze! Frankly, I'm surprised we used the table as long as we did. It was only inevitable that at some point we would disregard it altogether and make use of the four surrounding walls. Pretty soon we were leaping and diving for shots (well, more like walking quickly and leaning over to pick up errant balls), and bellowing like men (ok, giggling like schoolgirls) as the competition heated up (that, or we were just getting tired).

When the light knocking on the door became continuous banging then changed into someone yelling for security, we decided we had had enough fun and exercise for one afternoon (more like an hour and a half) and snuck out the back door, pleased at the feeling of healthiness coursing through our veins after an afternoon of sports and recreation.

Then we went to a Chinese fast food joint and pigged out on chicken fried rice, deep fried egg rolls, fried beef and broccoli, and fried hunan chicken.

You know what? There is something to be said for a healthy lifestyle after all.

Advance warning

Considering my luck with Modern Relationships (MR), I've decided to move on from their archaic rules and idealistic expectations and open myself up to what I've dubbed the Post Modern Relationship (PMR).

Characteristics of a PMR

1. Perhaps better thought of as performance art than any real form of a lasting and intimate relationship with another person, the PMR relies on irony, not love, for its appeal.

2. All public contact between PMR participants must not exceed levels reached at the time of entering the PMR. To even the most intimate acquaintances, visible interaction between PMR participants must remain consistent with pre-PMR behavior.

3. PMR participants must maintain a false sense of surprise at their seemingly coincidental meetings at predetermined locations. Mention of the other PMR participant's name during conversations with non-PMR participants must be kept to a bare minimum.

4. In all outward appearances, PMR participants must maintain the impression of being happy that they are not in a relationship of any kind. In aid of this it is recommended that while discussing matters of the heart with family and/or friends, PMR participants must consistently appear bitter over past relationships. The idea of forming an intimate bond with another individual should result in the rolling of eyes and/or a remark to the affect that one would prefer to contract a highly visible and long lasting sexually transmitted disease.

5. "Behind closed doors", as they say, the rules involved in a PMR become quite flexible. As long as the public impression of detachment remains, the level of intimacy displayed privately may vary. It is of this author's opinion that anyone attempting their first PMR would be best advised to maintain a certain level of emotional detachment during both public and private interaction. Thus a private focus on physical pleasure alone is highly recommended, as the ability to show a high level of emotional intimacy in private followed by a robotic detachment in public comes only with years of training and experience. A high level of private romantic behavior should only be attempted by those with strong dispositions, as emotional osmosis between the private and public spheres has been noted in many cases.

6. Both parties must maintain the knowledge that a PMR is not an MR and thus must not be governed by the same set of rules. Expectations should not only be lowered but removed altogether. Those entering into a PMR do not do so in the hopes of finding what is often referred to as "the one". Quite the opposite, those entering a PMR often do so with "any one".

7. A PMR lasts only as long as both participants stay within the guidelines laid out above. Once either participant crosses a line it is up to the other to decide whether to dissolve said relationship, attempt to reconstitute a new agreement, or regress to the MR state with all its accompanying bugs and glitches.

8. Be advised: a PMR should only be entered into by two individuals with relatively similar levels of bitterness and pessimism. A high level of emotional and physical control must be maintained at the start of a PMR as to not appear suddenly optimistic or have increased spring in one's step.

9. On top of all else, keep in mind that what attracts people to a Post Modern Relationship is not the chance to have their cake and eat it too, but rather to appear to have no cake at all but secretly work in a bakery.

Smurf Name Generator

Nine Songs That Give Me Goosebumps and Make Me Want to Give up Music When I Hear Them Because I Feel Like Dirt Next to Them

Story by Malcolm Middleton, Arab Strap

If I were a betting man and a gambling addict with no morals or conception of decency, all of which I am sadly this close to being, I definitely wouldn't put any money down on my grandmother winning this round of chess with death. Apparently she's on what is commonly referred to as a "death bed," which you think would be peaceful and comfortable but in actual fact is made up of whirring machines, tubes that alternate between sucking and pumping, and a tv stuck on endless repeat episodes of Oprah and Dr. Phil. And here you thought hell was somewhere you arrived at after death.

The nice thing about being an atheist is that there's no real need to spend too much time preoccupied with death. When death is nothing, one has nothing to worry about. You're freed from concerning yourself with fate, destiny, karma, tea leaves, chicken bones, or whatever means you use to comfort yourself about the unknown. When you see life as walking blindfolded across a 6-lane highway covered in zooming automobiles driven by senile old people and drunk underage drivers, you can't concern yourself with whether God is on your side. Your only thoughts should be that when the bumper inevitably hits, that it hits hard and fast enough so that the end will be quick and painless. Who needs to know what make of car it was?

So when it comes to my grandmother, who's 96 and has lived a "full life" (whatever that means), what I feel saddest about is that the metaphorical car that hypothetically hit her barely figuratively nicked her. Instead of flipping her into the air and having her lifeless body crash through the windshield, she's been spun around and left limping confusedly back from whence she came.

T-Shirt Review.com

“We can’t wear blank T-shirts,
it’s like admitting we’ve got nothing to say."

That kind of day...

Sunday Jazz

Django Reinhardt

Tom Waits

I'm always thankful to find at least one thing interesting in Saturday's newspaper to distract me from the carpet covered cubicle walls that surround me and all you assholes from the public that ceaselessly interrupt nap time during my one day of brain numbing work per week.

Today's distraction almost made the whole ordeal worthwhile. It was a fascinating article in the Globe & Mail by Ian Brown about funeral homes that illegally harvest bones from bodies before their burial and sell them to tissue suppliers. One man was contacted by police after his recently deceased father's name appeared in the records of one of the funeral homes in question. He agreed to the police request to have his father's body exhumed as part of the investigation. X-rays revealed that his father's leg bones had been removed by the funeral home and, in order to hide this fact during the open casket wake, had them replaced with PVC pipes, usually only used in drainage and plumbing.

But wait. Perhaps the best part of the story (or worst, depending on how you look at it) is that the son is a full-time construction worker, forced to handle PVC pipes on a daily basis.

Which leads us to our quote of the day...


"Everytime I see PVC I think of my father."

Thursday I don't care about you
It's Friday, I'm in love

(and apparently an elected representative of my university graduate program as well)

The evening begins with my surprise nomination to represent my program in the university's association of graduate studies. The laughter that fills the room at the mere mention of my name was stifled as the nomination was quickly seconded and... thirded? When asked whether I accepted the nomination, the only response I could make was, "How much does it pay?" More laughter. Apparently it pays nothing, though the monthly meetings I'm required to attend feature free pizza and pop. Sold! Apparently I now demand respect. Go figure.

Plans to meet The Girl in the Beret for drinks causes time to slow to a crawl as class nears its end. You would think that at some point in life the butterflies in your stomach would finally digest and cease to be an issue. But, as it stood, the fluttering of their indigestible wings led to me having hadn't eaten all day... always a good idea when drinking was on the schedule.

We meet at her place and head to the Hammer and the Tailbone pub. There we split poutine with real cheese curds. OMG! Cheese curds.. where have you been all my life? Thursday I didn't care about you, but now its Friday and all I want to do is spread your gooey goodness all over my chest and have someone lick it off. (was that outloud?) I take back all those jokes about you looking like curdled semen. While you may still look the part, you definitely don't taste it. At least I hope not. Because... yum!

Perhaps it was my hair, which thanks to handfuls of glue and the desperate need for a trim looked especially tangled. Or maybe it was the magic cardigan that I removed with gloved hands from it's protective lead box and carefully doned for the evening. More than likely it was the multiple pints of beer followed by numerous glasses of wine. But I felt charming. That is, until I failed to give the waitress enough cash to cover our tab and she was forced to catch us at the door and ask for more money. Classy.

Walking home from her place later that night, listening to a mix cd... Beat Happening, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, New Order.... 4 minute songs fly by in 4 seconds. This is bad. I realize I'm setting myself up for disappointment, but just can't help it. All signs read "Platonicville 5KM," but excuse me if I enjoy the scenery along the way.

Sigh. With a capital S.

Billy Bragg singing A New England...

The Tube, 1987

Late Night with Conan O'Brien, 2006

Robocop was released in 1987. I was 9. So I guess the memory of me seeing it in the theatre is a false one. Give another year before it was out on VHS and maybe another year after that before my parents went out on one of their annual nights on the town and I could be alone to sit through a restricted film without having to fast forward sex scenes, and this takes me up to roughly the age of 11 when I first saw Paul Verhoeven's masterpiece of social commentary. And a masterpiece it is, though thinly cloaked in silver spray painted fiberglas, stilted acting and extreme violence.

Shoot ahead, sigh, 16 years.

The evening begins with thai peanut coated skinless and boneless chicken breast, steamed rice and broccoli, and a side of spinach salad. Library Girl brings beer to lower my defences and forces me to sit through CSI New York and American Idol. In retribution I put on Robocop.

Not having seen the film for close to two decades, I wasn't really expecting it to stand up. I've done my best to rekindle my pre-teen passion for such classics of 80s action films as Big Trouble in Little China, Cobra, and American Ninja, but apparently my desire for plot, character development and, oh I don't know... production value, has gotten the better of me.

So consider my pleasant surprise when the classic synth theme ques and the Robocop logo, probably designed on a computer the size of my bedroom, skyrockets onto the screen. Suddenly my voice cracks and I have a bad pre-pubescent moustache again.

The film itself, if you can believe this, is actually better than I remember it to be. Previously unnoticed themes bubble to the surface such as the commercialization of not-for-profits, the dangers of alternative service delivery, and dehumanization through technology. Verhoeven has always been more Gilliam than Bruckheimer to me, and Robocop is more akin to Brazil than Commando.

Next up: Starship Troopers, with it's satire of American militarism, critique of fascism, and its revelations of the unpreparedness of human civilization to an all out invasion by a race of giant bugs that shoot digestive acid from their mouths.

All that, and it stars Doogie Howser!

No more whammys.

Peter Tomarken

1942-2006

Bizarre Love Triangle

or
I'll take one big slice of love, please

(hold the commitment)

My love is like a powder keg
in the corner of an empty warehouse
somewhere just outside of town
about to burn down.
- The Mountain Goats

What you see above is Sternberg's Triangle of Love. Allow me to explain...

Love can best be understood in terms of its three components, each represented by the points of the triangle: Intimacy, Passion, and Commitment. Intimacy involves feelings of closeness, passion is the desire for sexual communication, and commitment is both the decision that one is an love and the wish to maintain that love. If your relationship is stuck at any one point on the triangle then I'm sorry to break it to you, but it's lacking two of the key ingredients for it to be true love. If you are located on any line connecting two points than you are doing a little better, but still lacking one key ingredient. If, however, you are lucky enough to be smack dab in the centre, congratulations you glassy eyed morphine addict. You've hit the fucking love jackpot.

A lot of my relationships can be boiled down to this pizza slice shaped diagram. I tend to start in the Passionate bottom left corner. Gradually, as intimacy increases, I shift up and actually begin liking the person, but all the while losing my passion. I now think the problem is my inability to stop at second base. As I round the corner and start heading towards Empty Love, my bum knee from the war kicks in and I begin to hobble. Companionate Love (aka "let's just stay friends") trips me up and I fall face first into the dirt, stuck eating astroturf somewhere between Intimacy and Empty Love.

If Passion, Intimacy and Commitment add up to equal Consummate Love, than my divide and conquer method is perhaps not the best one to use. Lately it seems I've been spinning my wheels somewhere between Infatuation and Romantic Love. In other words, the passion is there, along with a small amount of intimacy, but it's utterly lacking in commitment.

Oh, and I've decided on the title for the term paper I'm writing on workplace romances and their affects on productivity, motivation and job satisfaction:

Love in the Time of Cubicles.

Make Your Own Damn Gravestone

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. "- Woody Allen

Having worked in an obituary department for a few years has caused me to doubt any and all post mortem eulogizing. I've been forced to deal with family members bickering over the ordering of their names in the list of survivors. I've had long meaningful conversations about how best to slip the name of the deceased's mistress in without making it too obvious to his widow. I've had to apologize profusely for mistakenly adding the image of an anchor to the obituary of a man that drowned. And I've spent far too many hours arguing over the finer points of grammar with sobbing widows.

Like Sean Penn spouted in The Thin Red Line, it's all about property.

On the front page of today's paper is a colour photograph of an old classmate of mine that, as of last week, became the most recent casualty of Canada's military involvement with Afghanistan. I hadn't even recognized him until today, even though he's been all over the news recently, and I probably would have went on not recognizing him had it not been for the school photograph that accompanied today's article. I recognized immediately the familiar faux bookshelf used as a backdrop in my own collection of early nineties school photos.

The article, which chronicles his funeral that was held yesterday, reads like a high school reunion. Familiar names that I haven't thought about in years follow quotes that glowingly speak of his kind heart, empathetic nature, and devotion to his country. Which, I'll admit, is not the guy I knew in school. Where was his empathy when he would blow plastic shoelace ends with pins sticking from them into the backs of my legs through a straw? And where was his kind heart when he was shitting on Kenny's jogging pants after shoving them deep into one of the boy's gym locker room toilets?

But I digress. People change, bygones, water and bridges and all that.

When I die, though, do me a favour. After the doctors have removed every ounce of useful flesh, flush the rest and go to the Triangle for a few Stella's. Focus on my faults. Talk about how shitty it was when I ditched you for some new girl in my life. Make hilarious references to how lazy I was. Make sure you mention my poor posture and how I would wear the same clothes until they were just a couple threads barely covering my nipples.

And if for some reason I die in a way that makes the newspapers, for the love of God don't let them use any photograph of me in front of a faux bookshelf backdrop.

My love life is like the airline industry. I get date about as often as a plane crashes. And when it happens it makes all the papers, which leads to it seeming like it happens all the time. But if you take into account all the planes in the sky at any one moment and the number of those that actually burst into flames and plunge to earth killing everyone on board, the chances of it actually happening are about that of winning the lottery. Which is to say, the chances of me having a date.

Speaking of plane crashes, it would appear that I've taken my theory of doing the exact opposite of what I would normally do just a tad bit too far. Like B.A. once sang, some cat should write a manual to tell you how long you should wait. And my recent behavior should be a case study in such a manual as to how soon you should not wait. So I've decided to put my theory to rest and stop looking to the sky for falling planes.

Intriguing; adjective
1 Capable of arousing interest or curiosity;
i.e. "Hanging out with you lately has reminded me of how intriguing I found you all those years ago"
2 Disturbingly provocative;
i.e. "It's intriguing that you would say that. Please don't ever contact me again"

This may come as a surprise to many of my readers, but I am not much of an athlete. I mean, I was always really good at Ice Hockey for the original Nintendo. I could even win using only the fat, slow players with the wicked hard slap shot, but put a real hockey stick in my hand and I'm using it to scratch that part of my back that I can't reach.

I still wake up screaming with cold sweats from nightmares involving flashbacks to the highbeam routine I performed for the school during gymnastics week in grade seven. And I still have a dent in my chest from when I was involved in an interesting version of dodgeball that involved the football team holding me spread eagled against a wall.

Though I will admit that there are a few sports that I'm surprisingly good at. Usually these sports are ones that involve pure instinct and little to no physical effort. And if the instruments used are as light as possible, well that helps too.

For example, I was once teamed up with a star athlete during badminton week under the assumption that I would be as good at it as I was at dodgeball. Well, I showed them by manhandling those birdies like no other. I'd dive down to my knees to dig the cock out. It would shoot straight up and I would slam it down in their face. I left many an opponent sweaty and blushing.

Table tennis was my specialty, though. I'd twirl the ball around in the palm of my hand, all the while starring my opponent directly in the eye. Then, with a quick jerk of the wrist I'd send it squirting across the net. They'd often stare in disbelief at how fast I could make it come.

So what if all the sports that I am good at tend to involve cocks and small balls.

Have a Pleasurable
International Women's Day

When did my blog become my short term memory?

I realize you probably thought you were making fun of me when you said that I should start posting upcoming live shows on the sidebar of my blog. Well.. taa daa.

I know I've said this many times before, but this time I really mean it...

BEST. THING. EVER.

(and of course this, which I'm sure you've all seen)

In case you're like me and can't make it to the South by South West festival this year (or any year for that matter) this site has a couple torrents up that contain over 1000 mp3s from various bands that are playing over the next few weeks. It's the soundtrack to today's procrastination.

Like sands through the hourglass...

or
When did my life turn into
a poorly acted daytime soap opera?

My kitchen counter this morning tells most of the story. Empty whiskey, scotch and wine bottles, littered highball glasses with the yellow tinged water of melted ice cubes, an oven tray of half eaten chocolate brownies, two darts, and strewn Morrissey 12-inch singles.

My body fills in the blanks. Sore arm, sore head, sore heart.

The evening began with baked salmon fillet marinated in honey, brown sugar and balsamic vinegar, steamed rice and green beans, with a side of Caesar salad. Guests arrive shortly thereafter, which leads quickly into endless rounds of electronic darts and copious amounts of increasingly strong whiskey and gingers. I knew it was time to go when the Moz singles came out. That, and the dartboard suddenly has four bullseyes.

We head to Old Man Ludecke's cd release. The bar quickly fills. The crowd is an even mix of those bobbing to the banjo and those bobbing to the girls in their laps. Banjo is officially the second sexiest instrument, just behind the violin. But banjo pickers just seem a much calmer bunch than those crazy violinists.

Then the real show starts. The Cardigan Appreciater arrives, comments on my cardigan and stands to my left. The Girl in the Black Striped Dress (from here on in known as The Girl in the Beret) arrives, comments on my tie and stands to my right. Suddenly I'm on channel 12 at 2 pm. I make brief eye contact with Library Girl from across a sea of people. She looks to my left. She looks to my right. She laughs straight at me.

Perhaps it's because by this point the whiskey has stolen my ability to bend my knees, or better yet, maybe my body was telling me something by making the room spin, but I end up spending most of the evening wedged in beside The Girl in the Beret discussing Woody Allen and my recent fetish for suspenders.

At some point I look up and not only is the band gone, but so is The Cardigan Appreciater. I make noncommittal plans to see Match Point (again) at some point later this week with The Girl in the Beret. I then head to the Apple Barrel for the worst club sandwich east of Montreal.

I can't say that I really know what I'm doing, whether I'm doing it right, or if any of this is going to actually amount to anything. But aside from the club sandwich, last night was good.

One Giant Step for Pizza Diarist
One Humongous Leap Forward
for Elbow Patched Kind

Elbow patches are the new tube tops. Take my word for it.

The evening starts with a stomach ulcer and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Nothing like 11 hours spent studying for an economics midterm to cause one to spit up blood. And nothing like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to... what? Realize what a sad and sorry life one lives?

After what I assume is either a complete and utter failure or a pass by the skin of my teeth, I head to the campus pub to toast my mediocrity.

I take off my chesterfield. And there she was. Standing beside me like she wanted to get by. Which tends to be the only reason why an attractive women would ever stand beside me. So I apologize and stand to the side but she doesn't move. Instead she compliments me on my cardigan. I roll my eyes and sarcastically say it was the only thing that was clean. But instead of using that as an out, she cups my elbow patch and indicates her appreciation for all things defective that are covered by circular strips of suede. I blush. I stammer. I stare at my feet and take my seat.

Meanwhile I imagine what our children would look like.

The bad luck of potentially failing out of my program changes when I see a hand made poster scotch taped to the wall beside me advertising that members of Gypsophilia would be playing that evening as part of a fundraiser. The next hour is spent trying my best to follow what my classmates are talking to me about while making occasional eye contact with The Cardigan Appreciater and keeping my eye out for my friends in the band. You can just guess where my priorities lied.

To make a long story short (because i'm drunk and tired), I take the advice of a previous post and do exactly what I normally wouldn't. I strike up a conversation. And, by golly, it works. We chat. We chat. We smoke. We chat. And in my left hand pants pocket rests a strip of a Pogue Fado ad with a phone number scrawled on it.

An Extraordinary Act
of Civil Obedience

Make Your Own Snowflake

(i think i need more practice)

When's your next origami tree decoration making party?

A few weeks ago in Tribeca, in a Margritte-like twilight, I saw a woman in a lighted window on a high floor of a loft apartment building. She was standing on a chair and lowering the window's upper sash. She tossed her hair and did something complicated with her arms which I recognized as the lighting of a cigarette. Then she leaned on her elbow and her chin on the sash and blew smoke into the humid air outside. I fell in love at first sight as she stood there, both inside and outside, inhaling contradiction and breathing out ambivalence.
- Jonathan Frazen. Sifting the Ashes

Alongside my attraction to women with deep seeded emotional problems, smoking remains the most illogical of all of my vices. I've given up attempting to understand the former, but this occasional bad habit of mine of purposely inhaling smoke into my lungs, which has unfortunately recently returned, is a curious one. Even firefighters wear oxygen masks and, while I'd be the first to admit that my track record in relationships, if it continues on the same course, will drive me to my grave much faster, I have decided I would rather die bitter and alone than bitter, alone, and filled with cancer.

The first girl I "loved," she smoked. She smoked a lot. Her mouth tasted like an ashtray and I guess that explains why I picked up the habit in the first place. When she wasn't by my side I could light up a cigarette and it would bring me back to the previous night in my parent's basement with her laboured aromatic breath on my neck. Perhaps it's because the first female to see me naked since I started bathing myself smoked, but whatever the reason, ever since I seem to have an innate attraction to those with tendencies towards self destruction.

It could be just the recent rash of Film Noir I've been watching, but I'm hard pressed to think of anything sexier than nicotine addicts of the fairer sex. But why? Do I see their future onset of lung cancer as a potential "out" when the intimate relationship inevitably fizzles? Or do I still believe that only those who would allow toxic chemicals into their bodies would allow me into their bodies?

It's no doubt something I'll be struggling with even while I'm hitting on bar whores using my voice prosthesis after my laryngectomy.

Either way, I'm sure this new bout with Benson & Hedges will end once the pack's empty. Here's hoping that in the meantime my half cancer eaten rectum doesn't slide out during a bloody bowel movement or my lungs aren't hacked up and spat out as a black gelatinous mass. At the very least I pray for a heavy dose of memory loss.