Tag Archives: cigarettes

Emphysema? Worth Every Penny…

Posted on by Frank
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One of my lung cells...

I have to stop smoking.  I realize that that particular theme has returned a few times in this blog but that’s probably all the more reason to quit. Before cementing an image of myself as any other redundant, recidivist jackass nicotine fiend always bellyaching about the chains of addiction.  On the other hand, I’ve been a remarkably good boy, healthwise, lately.  Dropped liquor from the diet, cut back (a wee bit) on coffee intake, lowered my diastolic blood pressure big time and eradicated thirty-five pounds of unsightly flab. Heck, having been a stout bastard for more than a decade I’m now a full cruiserweight;  hitting the gym hard enough to feel like I could start slapping twenty-somethin’s around.  Except that they’ve starting acting very polite around me lately, going so far as to offer up benches or ask me to spot them on heavy exercises. That tends to suck the sneer off my face. Oh well, no harm in goodwill I guess. So adding this brighter attitude into the account, why the hell should I have to quit smoking?  A man needs a vice doesn’t he? Right? No? Oh, alright.  Back the fuck off me all you head-shaking bastards; I’m sticking a patch on my chest right now.

There’s another cause worth quitting for.  The mood swings.  The unseemly mental shifts which occur whenever the nicotine intake falters. One minute the sun is shining out your ass with a chemically balmed soul and the next fire is blasting from your ears.  Your senses go weird as the environment attacks with a barrage of warming light and burbling coffee pots and people saying “hi” and kittens purring and fresh air and all other manner of annoyance. Temporary insanity, nicotine withdrawal is, and you can’t even think unless it’s about murdering whoever is asking you to.

And thus we arrive at the story of the day – the struggling quitter and family relations in the early hours of a Wednesday morn….

I actually woke up in a hell of a fine mood.  A tad overtired from all the acute bronchitis and sleep deprivation, but I still dragged myself downstairs in with a smashing, sunshiney flippin’ attitude.  The kids were wrapped up in their snuggies, watching Curious George.  Good Morning, Guys and Dolls! Everyone sleep okay?

   Silence.  Heavily lidded gazes locked on the TV set as though the cartoon monkey had snared their eyeballs with fishhooks and monofilament line.

MORNING ELSIE!!! MORNING JACKO!!!!

Bellowing like a walrus snapped them to into some sleepy giggles, instilling them with the proper frame of mind to enjoy their father as he pulled on little girl noses and whipped sofa pillows at the boy’s head. A hap-hap-happy morning, righty-o!  A blissful fifteen minutes of daybreak like they all are…until the children gather enough consciousness to figure out what the fuck it is their first argument ought to be about.

This morning it was a rerun of yesterday’s starting battle:  Halloween candy.  Halloween is still right up there with the best of all days of the year – I could complain about the preparations and the inescapable demand for our “Haunted Garage” but the former is just part and parcel of any fun holiday and the latter is a laborious Hell of my own creation.  What I have come to hate in the last couple of years is the first day of November. That’s when the aftermath of Halloween starts to reek like a beer soaked carpet after a frat party. By the time a kid turns 4 or 5, greed has a begun looking for rootholds in his/her heart.  The sudden influx of candy-coated wealth speeds up the evil growth as pillow cases stuffed with bite-sized pieces of hyperglycemia turn children into hoarders, swindlers, thieves and hedge fund managers.

It wasn’t long before nicotine deprivation kicked in full,  re-flavoring everything they said as well as every ill I began to wish upon them.  What started as trivial crap like “Hey Jack, do you know you still have 12 Kit Kats?” and “Stop stealing my Kit Kats, Elsie – I’m telling Dad!” soon sounded more insane:  “Hey Jack, I’m gonna set fire to your face and smash all your Kit Kats!”  “STOP IT, Elsie!!! I’m gonna rip your eyes out with a fork…DAD!!!! Elsie just cut off my arm!”  “No I did not!  Daddy, he started it!  Jack just blew my head off with a shotgun!”

I mean it went mental really fast; blowing my dandy mood and sending me on a blitzkrieg into the living room.  I was in a blistering tirade of threats, hollering about throwing all the candy and weaponry into the trash and bellowing that they better mop up all that goddamned blood and brush the gore off their fangs before school. And the little demon-winged, spider children of mine just flashed those multiple crimson eyes at me with all the derision their brimstone hearts can muster.  Then they go back to dismembering each other with hatchets while Mrs. R just shakes her head at me in unsympathetic pity.  Well, screw her too, okay? She hasn’t quit the Parliaments yet.

Eventually things settled down.  Right after a cigarette, mind you.  And we all set to whistling while making and eating breakfast.  A jolly, plump broccoli and cheese omelet for my charming lad, a sliver of blueberry coffee cake for the chain-smoking missus and some piping hot Vietnamese chicken broth with rice sticks for the youngest lass of this merry freaking brood.  Jack got on the bus so clean and fresh the bus stop moms had no way of knowing steaming entrails had been dangling from his ears only an hour before.

And now I’m back here at my laptop with the nicotine patch tingling above my left tit.  And I’ve been typing up my little riff about my day.  And now Elsie is in the kitchen. She’s coating the kitchen blackboard in a solid coat of pink chalk, scribbling fast and loud…Yahtzee!!! She might as well drag her dainty little fucking fingernails across it at this point because I’m about to tear this damned patch off, put a big gash into my pectoralis major and pack it good and fucking full of tobacco.

Jet Lag and Transit Scuzz

Posted on by Frank
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Oct. 2 @ 11:00 AM – Land in Frankfurt.  We are beat-up exhausted already. T & S head for Duty-Free shopping. E & I look for the nearest ashtray.  Praise be to Jesus for Germans and their views on public smoking. Everybody has a cancer stick dangling from their lips including children and pregnant grandmothers with oxygen tanks as their carry-on. We treat our tummies to some nice ham & butter sandwiches and Deutsch cafeteria greasewursts.

 12:35 PM – Take off for Singapore & 11½ hours or airborne confinement.  The beautiful thing here is that Singapore Air is a great way to go anywhere – especially if you’re among those of us who fly coach.  They take a few extra steps to make the flight as painless as possible. Free-flowing booze is the major one, actually the only step which matters, and yet I skipped it entirely this time.  Getting liquored up is for the first leg hemisphere-length flights.  My sleep/awake schedule played out perfectly, returned to hamstering broken cigarettes in my cheek, making for a rested, unlagged touchdown in Singapore at

 6:30 AM, Oct. 3 – Stumble out on creaking knees and swollen feet into the hot, soaking air of the outdoor smoking deck at Changi International Airport. The Singapore air was so much like a steam bath, exhaled smoke would get stuck dead in the atmosphere, suspended in pillowy blocks around your head. The newlyweds make for the Duty-Free shopping; there seems to be a trend starting there. Not exactly able to grasp the shopping bug which bit them – with one duty-free splurge behind them and three weeks of Bali ahead their bags oughta be impossible to lift to the plane home. It isn’t like the selections vary much between airports, though Frankfurt does lack a selection of Chinese and Malaysian Christian Hip Hop cd’s… Can’t say that smoking tops over-shopping among needless endeavors, but when we all wrapped our habits up we stuffed our carry-ons into a couple lockers, hire a cab & head to town.

   With few hours to spare there’s no way to give Singapore a good scan to grasp why so many American acquaintances see it as the end-all-be-all of South East Asia.  But T & I took a solid, instinctual guess:  Singapore is as close as you get to an American city AND it’s on the equator on the other side of the planet.  Picture Miami with a little Chinatown every few blocks and lots of American stores.  If you went to South Beach on a record hot summer day, walked up Lincoln St, ate bowls of Mee Hoon on Washington instead of Media Noche sandwiches, bought film and Banana Republic cashmere wife-beaters back on Lincoln, then down Ocean Drive to look at tan chicks in tiny skirts you will have experienced Singapore – with less over-privileged dipshits from Ibiza and Luxembourg but still with plenty of fat people from the Midwest.

   And the Penang Peninsula Street food?   Ohhhhhh, mommy! If the trip terminated in Singapore I’d be happy as a pig’s intestine in soup.  Super spicy soup loaded with chit’lins, that is!  Zhu Zha Tang – best guts I’ve eaten this side of Kenya… (If anyone reading has a recipe, please forward immediately)

   2:00 PM -> Airbus Three Hundred Something Something, the one from the first page of this log, and 2.16777777 hours to Bali’s Ngurah Rai Airport.  We’d been thinking that this island would be temperate, a belief derived from a little misinformation on Indonesian Octobers from our guidebook. Temperate must have a relative meaning to travel-writers out here because it is quite freaking hot. In a great way, mind you, and a bit humid though far less so than Singapore.  And Heavens to Betsy, if it ain’t gorgeous as all get out.  A speedy exit thru customs and a driver was waiting to take us to our hotel, the Risata Bali Resor (internet booking rate, no t included) in Tuban.  Pretty place.  Bathrooms could use a little work if they decide to increase their prices. But 60 skins a night makes pointing out flaws seem unnecessarily bitchy.

   Interestingly, our freshly wedded friends hadn’t made a motel reservation anywhere before leaving the States. Since the Risata had rooms we suggested they stay for the night and rest up. But S, close to an exhaustion-induced breakdown, wasn’t even considering staying anywhere but this swank joint she’d heard of in Nusa Dua.  It was about 15-20 minutes away on the nub of Bali’s southern peninsula. They split with their anxiety-smeared faces and left us to stretch out, smoke a few fags and shower out our travel staled fannies. 

Observation – After the first two Anker beers here it dawns on me that some of the best lagers on Earth come from its East Side.

   Tiger – from Singapore. Crisp and floral, grrrr – errrr. Roar. Arf.

   Singha – Thailand. High Ethyl, lightly yeasty. The Haffenreffer of the East, oughta come in 40’s.

   Steinlager – New Zealand. Zippy, hoppy and light. Suitable for drinking while playing rugby.

   Anker (Bali) and Bintang (someplace else in Indonesia) – interchangeable with each other.  Both pilsner styles, very clean and perfectly bitter.  Wish Pabst would switch to their recipes.

   Even Vietnam’s 33 & Hue are tasty treats.  I can understand good fuzz juice originating in New Zealand. Maori’s notwithstanding, they’ve got the same beer-swilling crackers as Australia.  But what’s with the stuff from the South China Sea?  Musta been the Dutch, having got to those parts early.  Who knows?  But I do know that good American lagers are rare, if not extinct, back home.  This has a lot to do with the Big-Boy brewers not really giving a fuck and the microbastards not actually making lager, choosing rather to “interpret” it. 

   6 PM (Or was it 7, or 8, or something. No, not 8.)

     Suppertime.  Out to the covered patio-hut bar for a pre-eating cocktail.  I had a passion fruit, coconut, vodka & blue curaçao deal. Elisa drank a Piña Colada.  Both very tasty, nudging me towards the candy wonders of becoming a girl drink drunk.  Fresh exotic fruits & coconuts, see. How could I not succumb?

     Then there was dinner: Nasi Goreng, the common Malayo-Indonesian fried rice dish, fried seafood with fries & a separating tartar sauce (f’n hurrah for those Typhus inoculations!)  There might have been a third dish. Yes, I’m sure there was. A couple of Anker beers each.  Good enough meal – six beverages and supper for two: under twenty bucks.

  Off to the Internet Café at the hotel lobby. Two bucks for half an hour of web time?  Some insanely cheap rate like that, though I can’t remember.  Could barely remember the lady I was writing to, my mother perhaps, as I typed out a Here we are, all’s well note.  We were bushed. Real down home, cross-eyed beat. Shoulda emailed everybody for that rate but the weight of the air was becoming an intolerable strain on our eyelids.

A Brief on Boxers

Posted on by Frank
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   Hell of a morning to try posting anything here.  Crummy night’s sleep as rest attempts were pulverized by contorting and kicking children.  Elsie’s robust, barf-inducing night cough landed her in the big bed with mom.  I bunked with Jacko who slept like a giant, bony starfish. When Elisa got up early I limped my crooked back back to my bed which proved just as violent an experience. My tiny 3 yr old’s version of snuggling involves climbing, burrowing head-first beneath me and kicking daddy in the jimmies.  I oughta go to bed plastered so I can sleep through these assaults.  Or at least fight back with snores and flatulence.

   Nevertheless, I got up in a fair state of mind.  A cup of coffee and I was whistling the soundtrack to a happy day.  Did a little writing, had a little breakfast, said nice things to the kids and decided Hey, I’m gonna blog some shit!  I finished the end of a post handily.  ‘Cause it was cut & pasted from something written ages ago.  When I shot for some opening sentences, however,  those slumbertime demons became the Hadean goblins of writer’s block. 

First it was all the “happy screaming”.  You can’t let that go on too long since it always presages ”mad screaming” which invariably leads to “She/He-kicked-me-in-the-eye screaming.”  I got flat out ignored when telling them to cool it a bit. They had filled a little pop-tent with every pillow in the house, embedded themselves within and were trying to roll it around my room.  Pretty cool, I thunk for a second. But the screaming hadn’t stopped and since Jack was blasting his baby-talk at the top of his lungs I lost it. My own barking included a nice string of invective; adult words my little boy might now use in place of his baby-blabber.

   A cigarette was called for. I’ve been quitting again, down to a few a day.  But nicotine fits run in direct proportion with frustration so I stomped into the garage, ripped open the Parliaments with my teeth and jammed a fag into my face.  Except that it couldn’t be lit because there wasn’t a goddamn lighter to be found.  My neck was about to rupture from the tension and I started to dig my nails into my skull, thinking about tearing it open to let the insanity out. I was gonna shave the heads of my precious bastards and looks for the Mark of the Beast, because it was certain that Satan was in my freaking house and he was dicking around with me big time.

   All that just to write a ridiculous little piece on underwear….

   In the previous post there was a tangential mention of my view on boxer shorts, which caught the attention of a reader. It felt like it deserved an expansion. The whole notion of the Boxers v. Briefs argument seemed awful silly once upon a time. It’s just underwear, yes?  You wear whatever you want or what the girl you’re into says she prefers.  Since the chicks I’d been swinging with never laid out a preference I just kept on with my comfy favorites – briefs. Boxer briefs, that is, though they should not be confused as a hybrid.  I was at peace with my panties in my early 20′s until a friend called that choice into question:

   You still wear briefs?! Jesus, how old are you?

   Crap, yet another indication I was failing to mature.  I even considered switching, for a couple of minutes, before concluding my pal was a jackass. On his way to law school; and lawyers are all connected by serious character flaws. At least the male ones, who suffer from a frat or beehive sense of the world. No matter how creative they are when shredding law they can only see the rest of the world as they’ve been instructed to.  The best music is what the radio plays the most; the best wine is the most expensive; and you wear boxers because the upperclassmen clones at Chi Beta Jerk wore them. 

   Lucky for me, I soon moved into an apartment with best friend and his boyfriend.  Among the many things I learned from gay men it was that boxers were not only for clones and idiots – they we were meant to be worn by the fat, the ugly or the nerds.  My lawyer buddy was probably right in the idea of boxers being a mature choice as well. The mature, mid-life crisis guys in the gym locker rooms all wore them.  They wore them austerely even though their over-stretched, pendulous testicles dangled past the lower hem. Gravity got them because their undies failed to protect them.

   So I eschew boxers. With that we arrive at one of the few philosophical constants to my worldview. Men wear them to their peril either as fashion fuck-ups or under misconceptions of mature manliness. It’s an ugly mistake which will see them slurping crybaby soup through weakening teeth as their testicles reach mid-thigh by middle age. The retention of elasticity is paramount not only to the waistband of your undies but to the scrotum they protect. Nuts enjoy cradling in the restful restraint of briefs and, dammit,  I will pull my dick from the slot in my skivvies when I want it out – not because some flimsy underwear fabric can’t keep it in.