Around the blogoworld this morning
Bitch, Ph.D., does not quit smoking:Don't congratulate me, please.
Because, in defiance of all the crappy advice out there about how to quit smoking, I did not set a "quit date"; I did not get rid of my lighters (or even the empty packs, which are still sitting in the porch); I did not tell anyone I was doing it. (Mr. B. didn't notice for three days.) In fact, I did not decide to quit, and I don't think I actually am quitting.
What I think is this. 1) Having run out of the brand of cigarettes I prefer last Wednesday; 2) being unable to get them in Tinytown; and 3) not having a car that's reliable enough to drive to Big City, I am A) too goddamn lazy to take a bus in order to buy fucking cigarettes; B) too goddamn picky to continue to spend money on crappy smokes; and C) too stubborn to allow myself to smoke for any reason but pleasure. Oh, and PK started bugging me to quit a while back, and I told him I would.
This is almost (except for the influnce of a pseudonymous kid) exactly how I ended up quitting smoking. The grocery store which I habituated for its low price on Winstons as much as for its convenience closed, and I was too obstinately stingy to pay drugstore prices for cartons, and too lazy to figure out where the next cheapest merchant was. And, indeed, the first serious temptation I've had in a year was when I saw a gas station here in Memphis advertising cartons at twenty-four dollars. I could party like it's 1997!So I need to get myself back to the point of being a "social smoker." Which means not smoking lame cigarettes just for the sake of smoking. Only smoking one or two occasionally, when I'm out with someone who happens to have my brand (yes, I know that "social smokers" are the bane of real smokers everywhere, but tough shit: I've always been a generous smoker to my "non-smoking" friends, so now my smoking friends can be generous to me). Only buying a pack my own goddamn self once in a blue, blue moon and then making it last for a couple of weeks.
Of course, I was better positioned than Dr. B. for the next important step: not having friends.
Meanwhile, over at Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen presents his symmetry thesis, which is cheering and jovial and possibly entirely wrong; I'm quite taken with the phrase "low-key intertemporal seduction."
Because, in defiance of all the crappy advice out there about how to quit smoking, I did not set a "quit date"; I did not get rid of my lighters (or even the empty packs, which are still sitting in the porch); I did not tell anyone I was doing it. (Mr. B. didn't notice for three days.) In fact, I did not decide to quit, and I don't think I actually am quitting.
What I think is this. 1) Having run out of the brand of cigarettes I prefer last Wednesday; 2) being unable to get them in Tinytown; and 3) not having a car that's reliable enough to drive to Big City, I am A) too goddamn lazy to take a bus in order to buy fucking cigarettes; B) too goddamn picky to continue to spend money on crappy smokes; and C) too stubborn to allow myself to smoke for any reason but pleasure. Oh, and PK started bugging me to quit a while back, and I told him I would.
This is almost (except for the influnce of a pseudonymous kid) exactly how I ended up quitting smoking. The grocery store which I habituated for its low price on Winstons as much as for its convenience closed, and I was too obstinately stingy to pay drugstore prices for cartons, and too lazy to figure out where the next cheapest merchant was. And, indeed, the first serious temptation I've had in a year was when I saw a gas station here in Memphis advertising cartons at twenty-four dollars. I could party like it's 1997!So I need to get myself back to the point of being a "social smoker." Which means not smoking lame cigarettes just for the sake of smoking. Only smoking one or two occasionally, when I'm out with someone who happens to have my brand (yes, I know that "social smokers" are the bane of real smokers everywhere, but tough shit: I've always been a generous smoker to my "non-smoking" friends, so now my smoking friends can be generous to me). Only buying a pack my own goddamn self once in a blue, blue moon and then making it last for a couple of weeks.
Of course, I was better positioned than Dr. B. for the next important step: not having friends.
Meanwhile, over at Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen presents his symmetry thesis, which is cheering and jovial and possibly entirely wrong; I'm quite taken with the phrase "low-key intertemporal seduction."