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it is day three of not smoking…
and that has been my biggest mistake all along is not doing anything… i’m sitting here just not smoking…
not smart…
in fact, i smoke sooooo much more since i moved here than i did back home…

see, back home, i got to the point that i didn’t even leave the house with them… and the only time i REALLY felt like smoking was at the end of the night… but, here, i’m just not busy like i was back home… so, i ended up smoking more and more and then, when i tried to cut back — well, it was unpleasant… that was, what? may?
but, see, this time i am doing the cold turkey thing…
i last smoked friday night, say, around midnight, maybe? and it is 7p on tuesday… and, so far, i have been a jerk to all the important people in my life…

i have refrained from reading up on info about quitting (that’s worse than not smoking) but i did look up a couple things and i have classic symptoms… i am, well, irritable hardly even begins to describe it, more like transmogrified into some sort of werewolf… i have this terrible taste in my mouth and everything smells funny… i think the world stinks too much to not smoke… you say cigarettes stink? i’ll come back to that in a minute… and i am having the damndest time keeping a thought… i lose my train of thought continually and i don’t notice it nearly as much as when i try to talk to someone… i find that words don’t come out the way i was thinking them and that i forget what i was saying…
that’s just weird…
the others are one thing, but, don’t mess with this dude’s ability to cogitate and communicate… anything but that…

i mentioned something about cigarettes stinking…

i agree…

see, i don’t smoke these nasty american things like camels and marlboros, i have, since i was about 21, smoked only kreteks, as they’re known in their home country – their friends here just usually call them “cloves”… you know, the things the goth kids smoke… though, they usually smoke the american variety… see, kreteks are a product of indonesia… i order mine over the internet straight from there… and in indonesia, they do make some just to sell to americans and canadians… they are nowhere near as good as the real thing…
yes, this is one of those many “snob things” with me… kreteks are a sort of gourmet item… the short version of what they are would go something like cigarettes made with very high quality java tobaccos (american tobacco tastes like cardboard) and ground cloves (like your mom put on ham) and frequently a “flavoring sauce” – kind of like what they do with cavendish pipe tobacco…
the bottom line is they have very little in common with what 99% of people in this country think of when they think of cigarettes… they actually taste GOOD and the scent is kind of ‘incensey’ and, most nonsmokers would say, not offensively unpleasant…
i, for a long time, have been devoted to Wismilak Diplomats… the flavor is everything i ever started smoking cloves for… they are very different from every other variety i’ve ever had, but quite reminiscent of the much-loved but long-lost Sampoerna X-Tras…

anyway, what they DO have in common with a run-of-the-mill yankee cancer stick is the stuff that’s bad for you… and therein lies my problems right now… indonesian kreteks have a good double dose of the nicotine – you know, the addictive stuff in there… and more than double, sometimes triple the amount of “tar”… ahem, it is the tar that makes ’em taste so good… it is a very moist, flavorful smoke… i mentioned the made-for-american varieties that the people who have seen cloves have seen – the Djarum Specials, the Djarum Blacks, etc. – those are made to american specs; e.g. they make the levels of nicotine and tar acceptable by non-indonesian standards…
unfortunately, i gave up the americanized ones long ago because the indonesians are so much more flavorful… so, here i am having REALLY bad withdrawals… i didn’t mention the trembling and depression before, but, yeah, i got those, too…

btw, even the americanized ones are illegal in this state… yup, three states have outlawed the sale of cloves (maryland and utah are the other two)… there are many urban myths-sounding stories why but the most believable is that they are allegedly attractive to kids – flavored cigarettes, “candy cigarettes”… and there has been a rumor for years that people are pushing for this to be a nationwide thing…
anyway, i get mine directly from indonesia… i think i mentioned that…

hey, i said i’m writing this instead of smoking and already made clear i’m not able to concentrate, so, this will be a long-ish, rambly kinda’ post…

i’m sitting here with a glass of water, with a straw in it as per someone’s advice…
do the math… detoxing, water; straw, oral fix; etc….

i don’t like water…

this is when it would be nice to have a 9 to 5 like back home, so i have a routine to just go get in…

and, jeez, what a rotten time to have an espresso bar as my big hobby!!!! the moment i even SMELL coffee, i want to smoke! coffee and cloves – it’s just a given… so, if i go play at my bar to take my mind off of it, it will just make me want to smoke more than i did before…
and, when i do feel like eating, which isn’t often, i have to have it pretty much bland… see, i love everything spicy… i add lots of black pepper to everything, hot sauce, etc…. well, i love eating spicy food, then popping open a (diet) coke and drinking that bubbly, acidic drink with all that spicy, acidic sensation really bringing home the rich, nutty, chocolatey, coffee-ey, taste of the clove… oh, it’s amazing…
sigh…
so, now i don’t want anything spicy!!!

no coffee, no spicy food…

and have i mentioned that i’ve never really done this before? i mean cold turkey… not that i can remember anyway… i started smoking the usual age – you know, sneaking them at like 14 or whatever, moved out in the late teens, had a few months i could have walked away from them but i didn’t and been hooked ever since… well, sort of… most years, i wouldn’t DIE without them… i could make it a long time without one, in fact… erm, long time in smoker time – like half a day… iow, i wasn’t usually one of these smokers who would go nuts if an hour passed and i couldn’t smoke… sure, there were times i was that bad off (my couple of years with amy comes to mind), but, most years i could go a few hours pretty easily…
it all started after my wife left that i started smoking hard… but, after two or three years, even that subsided and the last few months before i moved here – as i said above – i was down to one or two a day and fine with it…

so, what happened here?
well, stress, sure… being a caregiver for your dying father is not a carefree life… and he was a smoke-once-an-hour kinda’ guy (hey, i wonder if he’s got a forgotten pack of smokes around here?) and i would help him go outside and so i would usually smoke with him… so i guess that increased my frequency a bit… then, he died in december and there were a few stressful months… and the last few have been only two gears – either full-speed stressful or sitting here… i think the sitting, boredom part makes me want to smoke more than the stress…

i need to call billy… but talking on the phone makes me want to smoke… anytime i call someone or answer the phone, i always light a clove…
driving, of course, makes me want to smoke… you know – i remember that was my first real test, quite a while back… when i had convinced myself that i was down to minimal smoking, i had to drive down here to visit mom and dad – about a four hour drive – and i made that drive no problem… that’s when i knew i had it under control…

ohhhhh, i can hear some of you now…
the kind who say there IS NO acceptable kind of smoking… that if i REALLY had it under control, i would have quit altogether… that is the american/canadian/whatever concept of smoking… that it is merely a delivery method for nicotine… well, that is a consequence of the trash that passes for cigarettes in this part of the world… you have to LEARN to enjoy the taste of those things… force yourself is more like it… no one every smelled a burning marlboro and said “yum, that smells nice”… well, no non-smoker anyway… (btw, in a move i predicted, there are now marlboro cloves in indonesia…)
many pleasures aren’t particularly good for you – and one who takes pleasures to an extreme are the ones doing true harm to themselves…
more than that later…

and i have heard it all, especially from the church crowd… telling me about defiling the temple and addiction… these are the same ones who drink legal speed all day and openly joke that they have headaches if they go too long without a cup…
no, i’m talking about hypocrisy, i don’t believe in it – “do as i say, not as i do” is perfectly acceptable to me, as long as you are right… my point is they don’t notice that they are equally as guilty with pretty much clear conscience but don’t see how i could be… yes, i have a clear conscience about enjoying a clove…
and that’s part of why i decided to quit… because it is controlling me – i am thoroughly addicted… if i could have one, once a day, after dinner, i would go right on… and i MIGHT be able to bring myself back to that point, but, as i said wayyyyy above, i tried that back in june… and as much as the addiction is screaming in my body and brain right now, i know i’m doing the right thing… same as with a child, if they are so spoiled that they scream when they don’t get their way, you need to take all reward and pleasure from them until they regain perspective…
in fact, one reason i DON’T want to quit is because it will make the wrong people happy… there are people who are going to say that i am getting right with god by giving up cloves and that just irritates the heck out of me… i went through the same thing when i cut my long hair off… people saying i looked so much more godly now… man, i tell ya’, that made me want to invent a time machine and go right back and not do it… and i am likewise preparing for all the comments now in the church… it is one of a few reasons why i am not telling anyone except terra, sarah, and you reading this… (fortunately, almost no one reads my stuff, so, i’m not really running a risk of people i know finding out…) i don’t want them scoring one of their self-righteous, being-more-like-me-is-being-godly points off of me…

yes, i know that’s pride…

on the subject of not telling people and there being more than one reason, it is also a humility thing, as well as a pride thing…
let me explain…
see, god says we are to “be excellent to each other” and i don’t see him make exceptions for people quitting smoking… he says that his grace is sufficient for me and that his strength is made complete in my weakness and that definitely sounds like it applies to trying to quit smoking… so, if i go around telling people they need to cut me some extra slack and expect the worst because on whatever date i am going to quit smoking, i really feel that i am making excuses to be a jerk when god says i should be kind, tender-hearted, forgiving, etc. and again, i don’t see him make exceptions for people quitting smoking…
i know there are other arguments, but, i’ve prayed about this and that’s what i feel god has told me i need to obey…

now, i like to bring a little something to offend everyone and here is one i know will get most people… i refuse to say i will never smoke again! i will someday once again have the pleasure of smoking… same as i have freedom to have a drink now and then and that is coming from a former drug addict… and, before you even think it, i am not just saying this to make myself feel better and cope with the feelings of finality – no, i will have the luxury of smoking a fine indonesian kretek again… perhaps with an espresso or after a particularly excellent meal… and i fantasize that i will smoke less than i have ever smoked in my life… that it won’t even be a daily thing… it will be a special occasion… though, once you open a pack, they go stale in a matter of days…
but, as i have used my one-of-life’s-simple-pleasures argument to myself, it occurs to me that i am NOT here to have a good time… this is supposed to be a missionary-type thing, my being here… i have a job to do and i have gotten way too comfortable and am making way too many excuses for “simple little pleasures”… i think i can live without one that has certainly gotten out of hand and ain’t exactly cheap…
and, all my friends right now are church friends and they complain about it, each in their own little way… so, it will shut them up… and, i usually live right on the fringe of what is “acceptable” in the church with my dislike of xian music (and probably my use of the abbreviation “xian” 😛 ) and my long hair (now fancy hair) and my painted toenails and my smoking and all this stuff that makes them say all the things about how i’ve “got one foot in the world and one foot in the church” or whatever, which is a refrain i heard ad infinitum in the old baptist church i grew up in but never expected i’d hear so quickly at a calvary chapel… so, anyway, i could certainly use the points…
of course, i’ll lose more points than i gain when they read this post 😛

anyway, i have dealt with depression all my life and i have sort of become attuned to feeling those brain chemical tides turn and i predict i will be feeling better about life in general tomorrow…

in fact, i feel better just writing this post…

but…

i still wish i could smoke…

it’s not as odd as it sounds…
there are a few movie directors i really trust… and a handful of people whose taste in movies i trust…

so, let’s say my friend jennifer tells me i absolutely must see The Unbearable Lightness of Being or Pieces of April or Garden State… ok, i trust her taste – she has good taste… she knows my taste – she loves Silence of the Lambs and i don’t, i love American Beauty and she doesn’t… she knows me well enough to be pretty accurate about what i will like and, if she says i will love some film, i trust her…
AND SINCE I TRUST HER, I DON’T WANT TO KNOW A THING…
just give me the title, i don’t want to know what it is about, i want to go in completely clear minded… i don’t even want to know if it is a comedy, romance, western, nothin’, i trust you – just give me the title…

and there are some directors that i have seen enough of their work to know they do good, pretty much every time… so, i don’t want to know a thing…
Darren Aronofsky, PT Anderson, the Coen brothers are three great mainstream examples… i have pretty much loved everything they have done, so, when i know there is a new film coming, man… i spend month avoiding reviews, dodging trailers, steering clear of conversations, etc…. it is really hard sometimes…
of course, within a year, all three let me down… The Fountain, There Will Be Blood, and No Country For Old Men really left me scratching my head… they all deserve more viewings – i never make up my mind about a well-made film after only one viewing, but, i unreservedly love Aronofsky’s previous two films, and only PT Anderson’s Hard Eight was less than breathtaking – his others were nearly perfect, and while i would not say the Coens acheive perfection on a regular basis, i always like their films much more on a first viewing than i did NCFOM…
i will add that Pixar really let me down during the same time period, too, with Ratatouille… sure, it was beautiful, but, the hair-control thing stretched credulity to a breaking point and i thought the story as a whole was kind of insipid… weakest Pixar offering ever, i said at the time and still do… but, i still avoid any info about every Pixar film and they more than made up for it with Wall-E, which is nothing short of a masterpiece…

imagine if you went to Spiderman (blech) and had no idea what the movie was about… or Wall-E or Alien or The Notebook… i didn’t know anything about From Dusk ’til Dawn when i first saw it and nothing could have prepared me for the last half 😛

annnnyway, there are so many films/movies out there that i know all about, i read the review sites, i hang out at the message boards and read the discussion, i listen to the podcasts, sure… but, there are the people who i trust and i try to do the impossible with their work and know absolutely nothing, but life is too short and popular media is too pathetic to “blind buy” everything, which is why i am always keeping my eye out for directors i can trust and people whose taste i really trust…

“What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.” – W. H. Auden

yeah, that’s the stuff Terra and i watch on our “slumber party night” on friday nights – movies to eat junk food to… when i know i have a trusted source of exceptions to the rule, i want as pure an experience as possible…

so, i haven’t lost all trust for Aronofsky, i’ll still go see The Wrestler (and i’ve avoided finding out anything), but as i said on twitter a little bit ago, he needs to win my heart back, i’m going to be guarded after what he did on our third date… and i know i’ll like There Will Be Blood a lot more the second time… as for No Country For Old Men, some Coens films only work once you know the rules of the universe the film takes place in… and i could write a whole lot about that… i even really like The Ladykillers – the one no one else does, it seems – but, i had to see it a few times and get comfortable in the setting before the characters made much sense to me… and that could describe most of their films… they create self-contained mini-universes and, if you expect the rules of the real world to apply, the films don’t make sense… sure, all art does this to some extent, but, the Coens are one (of many) example of this idea taken to a sky-high extreme…
the thing that bugs me, i guess is that i didn’t see any juice in NCFOM… let me explain… i said i like The Ladykillers, but it took me a few viewings… while i didn’t like the film, i liked some of the moments and a lot of the dialogue… i kept putting it on while i cleaned house and such, just to catch those things enough times to really get them in my mind, since i had every expectation that i wasn’t going to see the movie again after these few viewings…
see, i was sucking the juice out of the orange and then was going to throw the orange itself away…
but, next thing i knew, i loved the movie, even though that wasn’t my intention…
so, when i watched No Country For Old Men, there was no juice to make me want to come back and suck out… i can’t think of anything i want to go back and see for fear i never will again… that being the case, it may not get the chance to grow on me like The Ladykillers and a couple of their others have…
but, i will still go see their new one, Read Before Burning…

when did this turn into a post about the Coen brothers???

i couldn’t help it – i just kept coming back and tinkering…

i once heard someone say that photoshop should only let you work on a pic for ten minutes – something like that… i definitely overworked the last two, to varying degrees…

anyway, have a look and feel free to comment…

yeah, this is just a snapshot – taken with a flash no less (eww), but i kinda’ like it…

i tried to touch it up and make it a little bit better, though… unfortunately, i made a big mistake… his arm… see, i was trying to take a flat pic and draw more attention to the pizza face, so i decided to desaturate all around, except for his face and his plate and soften the focus all around as well… well, i initially also re-uh-saturated(??) his arm and then decided it looked funny and it took emphasis away from where i wanted it… after i softened the whole pic and then sharpened his face and the plate, it occured to me that i should have went ahead and colored his arm and the softened focus on it would have been enough to de-emphasize it…
if it had been a real photo, i would have started over but i didn’t want to put that much effort into something that wouldn’t ever be better than just a snapshot that only a relative would care about 😛 and, if i had been doing all this stuff in gimp/photoshop, i would have been able to fix it without starting over, but, i have been exploring the picnik editor thingy integrated with flickr just to check it out, so, oh well…

anyway, there it is…
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(here is the original)