Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
"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
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
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', ...
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
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.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
'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
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
'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
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Irving Penn
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
'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
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
"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
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
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, ...
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
'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
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
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.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
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
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
“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
*
p.s. Hey. ** Zach, Hi, Zach! Yeah, the Magcon thing is very mobius/Escher/black hole/multi-headed svengali. They beg to be the setting of a meta-novel or a French theorist's tome. Ha ha, Ruckus, I know, ouch. I'm so glad you're here, and yeah, as often as possible would be way sweet, obviously. So, what's up and going on in your head and world? ** David Ehrenstein, Morning. Oh, yes, I've seen the hyperbolic US press stuff. Well, here's the real deal as best I understand it. First, the new Paris mayor is a plus re: Hollande since she's Socialist, so she/that is not a problem at all. The thing is, these were regional elections in which towns and cities elected new mayors, essentially. It wasn't a mid-term election/ congress type thing. The UMP, which is the French equivalent of the Republican party but without the Tea Party element, did well, no surprise, given that Hollande is very unpopular. As for the FN (National Front), whose name is singlehandedly generating the US press's textual hysteria, candidates from their party were elected mayor in 11 French towns, most of them very small towns, and only one of which I had ever even heard of before. That's not good, obviously, but think about this way: if there was an FN party in the US, there would hundreds of small US towns with FN/far right mayors. If the Tea Party, which is basically the American FN without official party status, were a bonafied political party, ditto. Prior to that election, there were FN mayors in 4 French towns, and it went up to 11. That's what happened. Hollande has had to shuffle his 'cabinet' and replace the Prime Minister because the Socialists didn't do so great and because the French government always does that when their party does less than stellar in the regional elections. So, the FN is gaining popularity, yes, and the press, even here in France, knows a scary story that they can forefront, play with, filter through scare tactics, etc. when they see one. Long story short, Hollande is unpopular. Thus, the middle- and far-right wing parties are benefitting, the left wing parties are benefitting (they did better in the regional elections than they ever have before too, which, of course, the US press isn't even mentioning), and the Socialist party is suffering. France slides from middle left to middle right all the time, just like the US does. The incremental success of FN in that election is ugly, but that success in and of itself does not mean the country of France is turning to the Far Right in some broad sense. Headlines proclaiming such, and even the less doom-enhanced ones I've seen like 'Far-Right National Front Drubs President Francois Hollande's Socialist Party' (Huffington Post), are bullshitty and very spun. ** Sypha, Hi, I haven't read 'Blue Nights'. I have it. McCullers is great. I haven't read 'Clock Without Hands'. I'd love to know what you think of it. That Liberace Fan Club thing is very sweet to think about. ** Cobaltfram, Hi. I read a little bit about 'The Great Beauty'. Sounds curious. I'll check to see if it gets a release here. Ah, full time at the job, right, I see. That would fill up the schedule for sure. Nice about the new money, though. And the city adjustment period makes sense and seems natural. Even shifting from LA to Paris was a super adjustment for me, writing-wise. What if they say they've never read Proust at all? Does that help qualify or help disqualify them? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Oh, cool, I'm glad you're reading the Mikesch and liking it so far. What's your day like? Shit, yes, RIP: Frankie Knuckles. I just saw that awful news a moment before I started the p.s. Very sad. He was killer. ** Steevee, Hey. Yeah, I know Verhoeven's Dutch films, or most of them. I like some of them pretty well, 'The Fourth Man' especially. I guess not enough to see them as founts of developing genius or anything. I mean, early Von Trier is pretty good too. Early Wolfgang Petersen too, for that matter. I just don't get or don't buy, I guess, the line of thought whereby 'Showgirls' or 'Hollow Man' or 'Starship Troupers' are meta-critiques, etc. I just think that take on his work involves a whole lot of reading-in, projection, imaginative input, etc. And I've never read an interview with Verhoeven that proves he's doing all that stuff consciously, only interviews in which he nods his head with his mouth when interviewers suggest his work has that multi-facet. I have heard Strypes, yeah. Maybe I feel about them like you do. The way their stuff is locked-in with the '60s model is kind of fun, but their conservatism doesn't interest me, and their fan base seems fueled by some kind of wish to feel nostalgia for something they were too young to experience and have heavily romanticized or something. I think there's charm there, etc., but there were enough dimensions to make me go past the testing phase with them. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Oh, I don't know what Artist wants either. I guess that's what intrigued me about his text. I mainly like the confusing spaces and hinted/undeveloped aspects of those slave texts, I guess. Or something. Thank you for paying such good attention to them. That always makes me happy. Snow, wow. We've made it into an identifiable spring over here without having had a bit of snow. Sad. ** Rewritedept, Uh, yeah, I stayed for the encores, Oh, gosh, I've seen GbV and/or Pollard sans GbV a lot. I don't think I could count those times up, at least at the moment. Hope the jamming with your drummer went good. Do you literally 'jam' with him? Does 'jam' still mean what it did when the Grateful Dead did it? Ha ha, Steve Marriott is so incredibly not from Yes, ha ha, that's hilarious. Lindo, cool. Gracias in theoretical advance. ** Misanthrope, Art can definitely save the artists. I'm not sure if it can save anyone else. Well, wait, of course it can. *raises my hand*. I always write in fragments even when they're not fragments. I agree with you that those four actresses are guaranteed amazing no matter the circumstance in which they are doing their things. ** Okay. Do you like Cigarettes Day? My idea is that you don't have to like cigarettes to like their Day, but maybe it would help? I don't know. See you tomorrow.