And They Say Smoking Is Bad For You!
by Paul Griffin
Copyright Paul Griffin 2016
Vision Books
Table of Contents
1. And They Say Smoking Is Bad For You
2. Global Warming For Real Dummies
3. How To Become A Successful Author
4. Music Business Managers
5. The Local Drinkers
6. Dentists and Medical Phobias
7. Hunting/Ecology
8. Dating Websites
9. The Ageing Process
10. Nuclear Warfare
And They Say Smoking Is Bad For You?
Apparently smoking can take ten years off your life expectancy-luckily this is the horrible end bit. So instead of being a decrepit demented ninety year old with no future and hardly any memories of the past either, you will already be dead and gone.
It's a hard one isn't it? not really. The amount of NO2 (Nitrogen Dioxide) we now have in the atmosphere from traffic fumes will kill all of us long before the smoking- and if not, the Russians are modernising their Nuclear Weapons Arsenal, North Korea is controlled by a barking mad despot determined to launch a Nuclear Missile at somebody, well anybody handy and the USA will probably at some point elect an equally barking mad President willing to shoot back. Then of course China not wanting to feel left out will join the party......
Factor in the insane weather conditions caused by climate change, rising sea levels, the ever increasing strange viral infections all over the place and the view amongst some that it's only the grace of God holding things together, and he's getting extremely fed up with us and might pull the plug at any time, not to mention all the other hideous possible scenarios facing us, and you might as well sit down, light a nice cigarette, open a beer and kiss your backside goodbye anyway.
Well that was a bit negative you are thinking, so am I. Have hope folks, in the end that's all there is left, and the truth about cigarettes is they do screw you health! I know your Uncle Joe lived until he was a hundred and he smoked forty a day but he also spent sixty of those years a wheezing pasty faced miserable physical wreck, who only managed his last gasp with the help of a nurse pressing on his chest!
Global Warming-for real Dummies/ Current Affairs/Science 2016
If you are reading this after 2016 then History/ past affairs......if you are reading this from the new seaside resort of Lewisham or Austin then Prophecy/current affairs..'A good read for your beach holiday' This is more of a thought provoking piece than a scientific document- the main thought it will provoke is 'what is this idiot talking about and secondly why am I reading it'...( because it was a free book my friend)
Global Warming
There have been millions of words written about global warming, how, why, the effects and so on- so I will only linger for a while on this interesting subject. Most of the science here I have made up just like the real scientists, but what do I know?
Is Global Warming man made? probably yes is the answer but there again was global cooling i.e. 'The Ice Age' man made? Probably not due to the lack of people.
Then what about the time the Dinosaurs existed it was hot then wasn't it? So it would appear the planet goes hot and cold in cycles. It appears now we are going hot and cold and wet and dry at the same time- so something is obviously not quite right! I have no real idea what is going on in truth which sort of fits with everyone else.
As a last thought before moving on, I would have thought the Sun ( for UK readers- The big orange light in the sky- it can be seen on rare occasions in the summer months allegedly) has something to do with it- after all it's not an electric light bulb putting out a constant amount of solar energy, it has weather and solar storms and seems to be generally all over the place, so perhaps it has an affect?
I have the feeling my article so far lacks the gravitas of a top of the range scientific research paper
so feel it appropriate to move on to dealing with the situation we now, and will find ourselves in at a future date. I hope the advertisement below will be useful.
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The House Specifications
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Fracking.............
Fracking has been carried out all over the world with no ill effects so far; So far is the operative phrase. The scientific bods say drilling bloody great holes in the ground shoving pipes and what not filled with high pressure water and sucking out the gas is harmless to the environment. Some how or other all this deep below ground ( in other words out of sight out of mind) poking around all settles down on its own, making a natural adjustment to the intrusion.
Most people are worried about pollution of the rivers and water supply from the chemicals used in the process. Because this has not been done on such a scale before no one can be certain as to the effects on the structure of the subterranean stuff below- subterranean stuff below is as scientific as I am going to get at this point. However, in twenty years time when huge areas of the landscape disappear or drop ten or twenty feet as a consequence I am sure things living on the surface, or what used to be the surface will make an equally natural adjustment, as will the people living in their new environment, where the ground could disappear from under you at any moment- trees in the back garden go from forty feet to ten overnight and the entire landscape looks like it has been attacked by an infestation of giant moles.
Please dear reader don't worry this is mere flippant fiction. I am sure we can all sleep peacefully in our beds at night in the Fracking regions until some underground fissure opens up and catapults both you and the bed through the ceiling that is.....! As for the earth quakes these are a naturally occurring phenomenon, I know you never used to have them before, but they are only small 'itsy bitsy' ones aren't they?
How to Become a Successful Author
'Stephen King -JK Rowlings William Shakespear- YOU! '
Stage 1 'Write a book!' You've been working on your master piece using all the cognitive powers you can muster. Having turned to the brain stimulating, intellect boosting herbal medications in a last ditch effort to squeeze all you can from your
now exhausted mind- your body has now diverted 99% of its blood supply and oxygen to your brain, you are hardly able to physically move, all your other body systems are now struggling to function but thank God your fingers can still type to complete the task. Do these herb things really work... yes they do actually I've been using Ginkgo Biloba and it does seem to have a very strange effect on my thought processes they do seem faster - can't you tell............
Now it's finished, sixty thousand words of blood sweat and tear stained manuscript waiting to be unleashed on the unsuspecting world! Your heart flutters with excitement, partly from the thrill of it all, but mostly from having to pump all this extra blood upwards. It's time to gather your thoughts and proceed to stage 2. what do I do with this wonderful creation.
Stage 2. You could try a book publisher, there are lots advertising for new books on the internet.
I will tell you from personal experience what will happen- If you are lucky the book people will like your initial submissions and send you a very encouraging email asking for the full manuscript which will be passed on to the book board/panel whatever that is. You will be told this takes up to six weeks.
Next you will receive an email saying the book board/panel didn't like your book. They liked it to start with but now they don't, why? Sorry, this is standard procedure for all books submitted by sad desperate individual authors?
So how do I get a deal? Easy, you hire a slick money grasping corrupt Book Agent who could sell sand to the Arabs, get offered a percentage so low you would need to sell five million copies to earn a living, and kiss their backside for the privilege. Oh dear...
Stage 3. Self Publish why not? Your Mum thinks you are a genius of an Author and the family legend is she read a book once, so have faith. The brain operation you need to repair all the damaged arteries blown apart by all the cognitive enhancing herbal medications is going to cost a fortune so you need to do something.
It's best to self publish an eBook first and see how you get on. Unfortunately there are now probably more people publishing eBooks than there are people who read them, which is a bit awkward.
Be warned. Do not rely on your friends or family to support your book writing efforts, and never your pretend Face Book friends. They would show more interest in an unusual bug they have found under a rock in the park than your book- Trust me on this.
A Serious Bit- yes really!
Get a few people to read your book and give you a serious honest opinion, re- edit if you need to. Make it work for the reader. If you are serious you need a promotional budget of some kind to get things moving a bit. Face Book and Google Ads are not cost effective- flyers are good.....
The best of luck. How's my book doing ha ha ha! same as yours....?
' How To Become a Successful Author' from my forthcoming 'How To' Series
Other books in the series include:
How To End All Wars- How To Turn Lead Into Gold- How To Find A Much Younger Spouse
How To Find The Secret Of Eternal Life (part1)
Currently at the research Stage- contributions welcome ASAP
Music Business Managers (circa 1988 -True stories)
Based on my own personal experiences.
Only the Music Industry could harbour such a bunch of delusional fraudulent individuals. I have met people that should have been in padded rooms or at the very least padded offices.
Why is it a lot of these people claimed to have either managed Kate Bush or Pink Floyd. If it were true then both acts would have had a management team to rival the cast of Ben Hur. There was even a bloke on Pointless (a BBC TV Quiz Show) the other week who claimed to be a music act manager, asked if his current acts were known he dodged the question but he had managed Kate Bush and Pink Floyd at some point. Even I was involved with a management team who claimed to have managed Pink Floyd........ In pure mental health terms some of these people make the Moors Murderers look like Laurel and Hardy.
Mel Logan
I first came across this character through the Melody Maker ( Popular UK Music Paper) classified ads. Back in the day the Melody Maker had a really good classified section. To be honest the rest of the paper was rubbish, sorry MM. If you wanted to read endless articles about Iggie Pop or other similar talentless artists discussing the amazing and deep artistic merits of their music and its influence on humanity generally it was fine, if you did; most of its readers only looked at the classifieds.
Back to Mel, his advertisement read 'Mega Music International seeks new artists' The only people more delusional than the music mangers were us would be pop stars/songwriters, grasping at any straw after the endless reject letters from the mainstream industry, it was always 'This is not what we are looking for at the present time'. Did they know what they were looking for, of course not. If Island Records had a Pop artist that was selling they all had to have someone similar, if EMI had a Mongolian Nose Flute act all the majors went on the look out for something similar. Has it changed I have no idea probably not. What has changed thankfully any artist that can get their material recorded to a reasonable standard can get a global digital distribution deal these days and then face the horrible truth that there is no real money in the industry for most artists.
Back to Mel again........................At the time I was working with my brother we had written some nice stuff and had found am inexperienced vocalist but one who had a voice similar in some ways to Enya who was extremely popular at that time. We got in touch with Mel and arranged an appointment at his office, which for some reason was in a furniture manufacturing factory. The office was OK, no gold discs adorning the walls we noticed. Mel was Australian, not his fault just the luck of the draw I suppose. He was about forty years old medium height and build with a neatly trimmed beard and an expensive nicely layered haircut and very bright blue piercing eyes. It was lunchtime we suggested lunch out, Mel said 'I don't do lunch' fair enough.
He went on about the people he managed, there seemed to be dozens of them, this one was doing this and another one that, we'd never heard of any of them. The other thing these would be music managers say is 'I'll just run this by the CEO of the then CBS or Polygram EMI' or whoever, in truth the only thing they were likely to be running by was the tea trolley or pass them by jogging in Hyde Park. As we found out to our cost this was all part of the sad fantasy world these people inhabited. I wonder if there was a book called 'How to impress as a Music Business Manager' a must read for all Would Be's.
After a couple of meetings we soon gathered that Mel was a complete idiot who couldn't manage his own eyebrows let alone control someone's career in the music industry, at one my point my brother came came close to hitting him as Mel continued to spout complete nonsense. It was nonsense believe me, he never stopped going on about this name or that at BBC Radio making comments and suggestions about songs he was aiming to get Play Listed, obviously complete garbage or making remarks about our demo's which was rich considering his Hi Fi system looked like it had last been used by Captain Nemo on the Nautilus and the the acoustics in his office for some reason were similar to a mix of the Grand Canyon & St Paul's Cathedral.
The last advertisement I saw from Mel read 'Mega Music Universal Seeks New Artists' planet earth was no longer enough, his inherent madness was now expanding into the cosmos God help us all ! Poor old Mel had finely lost it. We did find out that the furniture factory was owned by Mel's family they obviously knew he was completely crazy and let him have the office space to play out the fantasy. The reasoning being, this was cheaper than a private clinic I presume.
Reg from Mitcham
Absolutely classic this man was completely in his own crazy world. Back in the day before the internet the only way you could find people to approach in the music industry was through a Music Directory, they would list the companies, contact details, labels owned and various other details, it wasn't perfect but as a way to make a first contact was useful. Reg had more friggi
ng listings than virtually any other company in the book including all the majors, very impressive.
We gave Reg a call and got an appointment. We were working with another girl singer at that time, more of a pop thing than our other project.
Prepared and dressed to kill we headed off to see Reg, this was his actual name by the way. Reg what, I cannot recall, 'Fool' is a name that would fit! For some reason it was an evening appointment, as we got closer it became evident this would not be an office address, so a home visit was on the cards. We finally arrived at a very run down council estate in Mitcham, and more finally arrived at the house. It was a wreck, a complete wreck, it had paint peeling off the outside walls, a broken front fence and gate, a very overgrown garden with a rusty bicycle with a wheel missing propped up against the front wall. Hopefully Reg was some kind of Howard Hughes recluse type who didn't go in for flashy exteriors, we were right only Reg didn't go in for flashy interiors either!