Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 08:58 AM

Perhaps if it were not for the smokers, Tim Hart would still be alive today.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 09:40 AM

Subject: Lyr/Chords Add: CIGARETTES (Ron Trueman-Border)
From: GUEST,Suzi Z
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 09:45 AM

Happy New year ...Mudcatters all...as a smoker and driver
little ditty ..a Ron Trueman-Border song ...Blue Skies ..Suzi

CIGARETTES Key of Eb Capo 3rd

C          Ebo      Dm7 G7   C         Ebo       Dm7 G7
You can club a baby seal; deny a starving man a meal
C          C7             F             Fm                   C      Am      F    C      G       C    G
You can say prince Edward's queer, but you can't smoke that cigarette in here

You can steal a baby from a pram, put broken glass in Waitrose jam
You can urinate in your best friends beer but you can't smoke that cigarette in here
                F             Fm   C                      F          Fm    c
BRIDGE:Same old story everywhere and it's beyond a joke
                         F             Fm      C          A7      D7                      G
                Even lepers get treated better than us folks who like to smoke

You can lace your neighbours tea with acid, speed and ecstasy
But tobacco is taboo my dear you can't smoke that cigarette in here

You can blaspheme you can curse take a joy-ride in a hearse
Worship satan no one will care but you can't smoke that cigarette in here

BRIDGE:Same old story everywhere and its getting out of hand
                Incest is o.k. they say but they want smoking banned

You can let it all hang out; you can wave your magic wand about
Hang naked from the chandelier but you can't smoke that cigarette in here

INST AS VERSE:

You can make a grown man weep, be intimate with flocks of sheep
Be loud. uncouth and insincere but you can't smoke that cigarette in here

BRIDGE:Same old story everywhere and what chance have we got
                They'd like to see us nicotine fiends taken outside and shot

When I die don't you weep for me I'll be happy down in purgatory
'Cos up in heaven all you'll ever hear is,'You can't smoke that cigarette in here'

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Dave Roberts
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 10:26 AM

Now that IS funny!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Dave Roberts
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 10:31 AM

...and to save a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, I didn't say I agreed with the sentiments, I said the song was funny.
This is how to go 'over the top', be outrageous, be satirical and above all be funny.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,non-active member
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 10:52 AM

LOL! that really is funny!

Thanks suzi, I found some gentler songs on Ron's myspace page too here

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,Carol
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 10:58 AM

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,Carol Denney, the author
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 11:16 AM

Hey 999, Thanks for the kind words - so far you are the only person who has appreciated that the song changed policy, and a friend and I were wondering if anybody on this thread would concede that much, even if they can't seem to crack a smile over it. I loved the other song just posted. May songs fill the air. But another group of people I played "Smokers Are Scum" for last night found it funny, so I hope this group can acknowledge, even if it is not their cup of tea, that some people like it. Humor is pretty personal, and also very regional, so there's always a wide range of options for reaction, and it's interesting how much hostility it seems to engender for a perky little vaudeville number. If you hate it, that's fine with me. I posted it here, as I said before, because there had once been a thread asking for anti-smoking songs, and this is the most virulent, over-the-top, and (to me) funny one I've ever heard.

"i dont see why people couldnt smoke wherever they wanted"-- quite aside from the moral issue of poisoning children at a holiday street fair, the location we were located in as a street band is in a smokefree business district. Even if that had not been the case, I had specifically asked a smoker not to smoke near me due to a lung condition I have, a leftover from chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease, and his response was to hold the cigarette as close to my fiddle as possible without getting in the way of my bowing arm. I finally nabbed his cigarette (still holding the bow), dropped it on the ground near my boot, twisted my boot on it, and kept playing. It was a nifty move. I wish I had it on video.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Dave Roberts
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 11:26 AM

Carol,

At last we're getting to it. I was horrified to read what had actually happened to you during your performance. What you did was completely justified. Quite restrained, in fact, I would have said. I'm surprised you didn't wrap your fiddle round his neck. Then again, why ruin a good fiddle?
As for the song itself, I think we've established that the humour comes from the performance of the song, and the contrast between the dark content and the jaunty delivery.
I think if I saw you perform this song, and you prefaced it with the story in the post above, I would be cheering too.
And now, I rest my case again.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 01:51 PM

Can Carol please clarify exactly what change of policy she has achieved through this song. If the area where the street fair is held was already designated as smoke free, what has changed? What will be done next year that wasn't done this year to stop those smokers who think that the rules don't apply to them?

I agree about the crucial difference between her song and the Bogle one (neither of which I have heard sung, and neither of which I had met in any form until this thread). Bogle exaggerates the opinions of his target in order to highlight how wrong they are. Denney exaggerates her own opinions.

Personally I do my utmost to avoid cigarette smoke, so the very very small amounts that I can't avoid will have a negligible effect on my health. My reason for avoiding it is that it hurts, especially out of doors where any wind generates more side smoke. 50 yards downwind from a smoker is too close for me. One whiff can cause my nose to sting for half an hour afterwards.

The phenomenon that most annoys me nowadays is that the smokers who have been evicted from shops, pubs, offices etc hang around just outside, assaulting everyone who walks pass or goes in or out. I would like to see designated smoking areas on the roofs of buildings.

If I had one wish from a genie, it would be for all the smokers in the world to gradually find their smoke becoming as horrible for themselves as it is for me.

Richard

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,Carol Denney, the author
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 02:49 PM

Hi Richard,

What's different is that the smokefree business district policy and compliance with it will be included in all the vendor and performer contracts next year, so that people who violate it will not be able to work future fairs. This happened because the song and the story about it was traded around online by people who thought it was funny enough to send to the tobacco control policy director. According to her, the Mediterranean Cafe's group of young in-your-face smoking scofflaws were well known, and she decided it was time to step up a combination of education and enforcement.

The city will also do a walking campaign, merchant by merchant, to make sure they, their employees, and their customers all have clarity about not only what the policy is but also why it is good for both public health and for business. Part of the import of this is so that city staff can make sure that employers don't instruct their smoking employees to stay near the doorway (which they sometimes do) for the exact reason you pointed out- the smoke comes right inside, smokes up the supposedly smokefree street, etc. It sounds like you need one of those 25-feet-from-a-doorway laws where you are.

What's funny is that fellow who stuck his cigarette right over my fiddle probably will do the same thing.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Charley Noble
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 03:14 PM

Carol-

Maybe we need to send the Mudcat Flying Squad over to teach the "scum" a lesson he will remember, assuming he survives the experience.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 04:21 PM

Some further clarifications from Carol, please.

"What's different is that the smokefree business district policy and compliance with it will be included in all the vendor and performer contracts next year, so that people who violate it will not be able to work future fairs."

Were the offenders last time vendors or performers, to whom that will apply? Even if so, what about other smokers who just attend the fair?

"city staff can make sure that employers don't instruct their smoking employees to stay near the doorway (which they sometimes do)"

Is smoking allowed further away from the doors (and therefore still just as much of a problem for other people in the street), should the employers be sending the smoking employees up to the roofs, or what?

Returning to the original subject of debate: I agree (sorry, Carol) with those who find that the humour doesn't work for them. Possibly the song would benefit (like many others before it) from some folk processing. It could perhaps be made more obviously satirical and more obviously focussed on the unacceptable behaviour of some smokers rather than on apparently condemning smokers in general.

Richard

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,Bruce Michael Baillie
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 04:55 PM

...What an absolutely shit song, I don't smoke but I certainly don't think it's right to abuse people in this way at all. Grow up for fucks sake!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Smokey.
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 06:32 PM

Perhaps if there was a link to the song, as performed, people could actually judge it as a song rather than just a set of (to me, unpleasant) lyrics which convey nothing more than what the words actually say. I'm assuming the people who found it funny were privy to a prior explanation and an actual performance, which I'm sure would make an essential difference to their perception of the song as a whole.

Maybe a little modesty might endear people to it, and you, as well..

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Dave Roberts
Date: 01 Jan 10 - 07:06 PM

Smokey,

Indeed. It would appear, as I have said before, that the appeal of this song must lie in its performance. It was written after the incident described by Carol and as a direct reaction to that incident, information we were all lacking at the beginning of this fascinating thread. Without that information the lyrics just read like an indiscriminate attack on ALL smokers, whether thoughtful or thoughtless. So, yes, a link to a video of it being performed, preferably with an introduction explaining the circumstances, would be very interesting.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 07:00 AM

More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette Priceless!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,Carol Denney, the author
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 11:25 AM

Hi Richard,

It's nice to hear from people interested in the practical aspects of policy and enforcement. If people like the song, or don't like the song, it's really fine either way. There's plenty of music I don't particularly care for, so I'm not sure why some people's tone is so hostile. I wish there was at least equal vehemence being vented at the fellow who held his cigarette right next to my nose when I requested he step back a bit.

But I'm not really as interested in discussing that as I am in policy and public health. There's nothing immodest about posting the song, which, I said before, was in response to a request for anti-smoking songs. This is one, for sure. I've used it in four performances so far and for the first time in my life last night had to pause til laughter died down enough to continue singing the next verse. I'm about to go play it at the Noe Valley Farmer's Market.

Some of the smokers were vendors, some were employees with a problem similar to mine regarding having to be at a particular station, thus the walking informational campaign. Smokers who attend the fair can step outside the fair, some half-block away. There are no tickets, it's all free.

Berkeley does have a 20-feet-from-the-door perimeter policy, but the operative policy in this case was the smokefree business district policy which covers the entire business district, the length of the street. People who can't make it very long without a smoke can step outside the fair, but also there are a variety of patches, gums, even nicotine lozenges for, for instance, people on long flights, etc. It isn't as though there are no alternatives to exposing other people.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Dave Roberts
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 11:40 AM

Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog: you understand it better, but the frog dies in the process.
—Mark Twain

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Dave Roberts
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 11:42 AM

'I'm not sure why some people's tone is so hostile.'

Hollow (ironic?) laugh.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Smokey.
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 03:05 PM

If people like the song, or don't like the song, it's really fine either way.

We haven't heard it; we've only seen the lyrics, which appear to be very hostile to a minority group of which you are not a member. There's nothing immodest about posting the lyrics, but you've done little else but brag about the song (which we haven't heard) ever since.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,Carol Denney, the author
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 08:19 PM

Quite the contrary. I'm interested in talking about policy, and have said quite a lot about tobacco policy, secondhand exposure, and public health both through the song itself and through the discussion of its context. I invite you all to tiptoe back to the policy issues.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Effsee
Date: 02 Jan 10 - 11:18 PM

Carol, I invite you to apologise to me for calling me scum! I smoke in the privacy of my own home, or on the street in probably the windiest County in Scotland, Caithness.
The behaviour of your acquaintance was apalling, I agree, but don't class me as scum.
And your song can no way be classed as "gentle"!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Smokey.
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 12:29 AM

I invite you all to tiptoe back to the policy issues.

Does this mean we don't get to hear the song then? The bare lyrics of which you started this thread with? Your views on the issues are clear enough and probably even right, but we don't really know whether the song is good or funny without hearing it. Quite a few people are a bit sensitive about having their dead friends and relatives written off as 'scum' in the name of comedy, and it would be interesting and educational to see how you manage to turn it into a source of amusement merely by the act of performance.

Who or what, exactly, are you satirising? I'm afraid I just don't get the joke..

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,non-active member
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 09:50 AM

"My band is going to pose with squirt guns, fire extinguishers, and of course Powder Fresh Glade Air Freshener"

Pleased to see you don't believe in provoking people who indulge in a (still) legal activity - note that is irony!


I had the experience some years ago of someone deliberately walking 100 feet of so down a narrow jetty overlooking the Atlantic ocean to complain that my cigarette smoke was 'in their face' - it's strange how that kind of behaviour is likely to provoke a reaction in even the most considerate smoker - almost as much as being called 'scum'!


Like effsee I smoke in the privacy of a room in my home
Fortunately I am a home owner as I see, Carol, that you strongly support the policy 'advising that all public housing should be smokefree

How generous of you to point out that 'That doesn't mean smokers wouldn't have access to housing. It only means they can't smoke there, or that eventually they won't be able to, because of the impact on their neighbors.'

So smoking on the street is banned, smoking in open public spaces, and now smoking in your own home if it happens to be 'public housing'

I'm curious…... is this an invitation for children and neighbours to denounce the deviant smoker in their own home to the police?
And why should the sound of that possibility ring some disturbing bells?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Dave Roberts
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 09:55 AM

Smokey's right. We've been very patient and very kind in this thread, and given you the benefit of the doubt. Try as I might I can't find your song funny or satirical and it certainly isn't gentle.
I have hesitated to mention this before, but here we go - my brother died ten years ago from smoking related lung cancer.
Was he 'scum'?
Despite your own hostile attitude, we are giving you the chance to convince us that this song is worthwhile by letting us hear it performed and put into some kind of context.
And please don't tell us we're being 'hostile' and 'tiptoeing away from the issue'.
The issue is this song, as printed in the opening post, and most of the hostility has come from your direction.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,Carol Denney, the author
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 11:33 AM

Again, I posted the song in response to a request for anti-smoking songs, and I'm not really concerned about people who don't get it or don't enjoy it. The world is wide. I'm sure you'll all find something you do enjoy, and we can all raise a glass to that. I'm thankful a few of you realize how silly people look denouncing a song without hearing it. You're welcome to hear it, but at present you'd have to come to California's Labor Heritage Festival to hear it, since I wrote it right after the Christmas Eve street fair, I haven't had a chance to record it yet, and it's not really my top priority. But calling a song titled "Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song..." is an accurate use of irony.

The scum referred to in the song are smokers who smoke in street fairs around other people, in this case a street fair where smoking was supposedly prohibited. The subject of both the song and the thread is secondhand smoke exposure and related policy. I have no apology to make for calling people who would smoke and expose others at a children's holiday fair scum. Children, as I hope you all know, are particularly at risk, as am I.

I would never have taken the gig if I had known it would involve hours of dedicated tobacco exposure. Again, I've survived cancer twice, and since my lungs shut down from the chemotherapy (not the lymphoma) last time, I no longer have the treatment options the rest of you may have if you are diagnosed with cancer. I did try to tell this to the most adamant smokers, who clarified quite consistently that they did not care. Scum, my friends.

All, and I do mean all of the other people with my disease at the hospital where I was treated are dead. I have no embarrassment at all speaking up from an admittedly relatively unique perspective, that of a cancer survivor having someone hold a cigarette over my fiddle while I played, and I hope other cancer survivors, however few we are, will speak up as well when smokers pretend to be oblivious to the impact they have on the health of the people around them.

I spent a month hooked up to machines, which everyone thought would be the end of me, and then after beating the machine odds I spent a solid year being able to walk or talk, but not both, and still having to work, function, etc. I never thought I would be able to play and sing at the same time again, so now that I can it only fires me up when people try to bully me out of speaking my mind. Secondhand smoke, as I've mentioned before, is 6-12 times more toxic than what the smoker is inhaling. The surgeon general puts it simply - "there is no safe dose."

Most people who have their own homes and of course only their own health to impact have never thought much about the difficulties that arise in public or shared housing when a smoker's and a non-smoker's units share common halls, common walls through which air is traded through electrical outlets, heating ducts, poorly insulated windows and walls, etc. If there's a playground there, for instance, parents aware of the risks to their children would have to keep their children away if there area is frequented by smokers. There are now powerful studies available on the very real health risks to children in these settings.

I'm delighted to hear those of you who smoke speak with pride about moving away from other people to take a puff on a jetty, and share your bewilderment at people who would go out of their way to give you a bucket of unpleasantness for doing something so thoughtful. You ought to get a medal, as I've said before.

But there has been very little patience and kindness in this thread. Not really a complaint on my part, just an observation. I am going to do my best to continue to converse with people about second and thirdhand smoke exposure and the changing policies worldwide. If you think you're scum there's not a lot I can do about it. I've made my own point as clearly as I can. I have a song I can sing directly to the next smoker who decides to dose my fiddle with tobacco and nicotine, and I'm practicing watering my plants with the most comic array of squirt guns shaped like dolphins and flamingos. If I can acquire a certain level of accuracy I hope I can extinguish out of place smoking materials without spilling a drop while avoiding an assault charge, despite the self defense implications of the 1994 Ohio case - thanks, Carter.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,Crow Sister
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 11:38 AM

CD: "I'm interested in talking about policy,"

Sheesh, I was too busy having New Year to keep pace with the Authors subject swerves on this thread.

We're no longer discussing how rubbish everyone else's sense of humour is then! Jolly Good, we've finally ascertained that Carol's lyrics are neither clever, witty nor satirical. But they are good ol' foot-stompin' hilarity in a bar where people fall off their stools and smash their glasses (I'm sure said event had nothing whatsoever to do with any other legal drug! Tee Hee..). And as we've concluded that C's lyrics are not satirical, they are evidently simply a colourful example of her own personal attitudes about another group of human beings. Nice one Carol!

PS. Carol - isn't it about time you reminded us all (yet again) that you're a lucky "cancer survivor"? Unless you've failed to notice (though I'm certain you're intellectually above such commonplace observances) the 'poor me' victim plea kinda fails totally, because *you* fortunately lived while sadly other people (such as the smokers you are wishing an early death to in this song, for example) sadly don't.

PPS. As far as 'policy' is concerned, well unfortunately I did already know we were living in 1984 - but I do so just hate having my hippy dippy fantasies about freedom and human liberty disabused by Brown Shirts.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,Crow Sister
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 11:39 AM

Oh bugger, I cross posted!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Dave Roberts
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 11:41 AM

Ah well. The things you have said in this thread speak for themselves, and I'm quite prepared to let others judge whether or not you've been treated with patience and kindness, and whether you have reciprocated in like manner.
I wish you well for the future, and I look forward to hearing your song.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,Crow Sister
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 11:54 AM

Carol, it's bad news that you were born with shitty genes. Just the same for everyone who has CANCER writ large in their genetic code (like me too), but for all that you appear to want to, you can't load that off (or your appallingly unfunny song) onto smokers!

I just fucking wish I had my Mother's dog-ends around the place to remind me of her. She smoked and died, and other family died (before fifty) around her of cancer who *didn't* smoke.

Hey ho. such is life.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Paul Burke
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 12:38 PM

I wonder if there's a song coming up about "nose breakers are scum" after CD squirts someone....

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,Carol Denney, the author
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 01:23 PM

The smokers I am wishing an early death are those who deliberately expose other people to a known carcinogen, especially those who expose children, cancer survivors, or people with vascular or pulmonary disease. I do so wholeheartedly.

I'm not mentioning my own history to get any sympathy out of this group, and I knew that compassion would not be forthcoming. People hate having to think about cancer, and smokers especially hate having to think about the issue of exposure. Which is why I continue to respond with germane information about the very real connection between secondhand smoke and cancer, asthma, heart disease, etc., rather than gratuitous personal remarks about any of you. I don't know you, and you're probably all very lovely people.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 01:47 PM

"It starts off intemperate, and just gets worse. "Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song" is just plain funny to people with a sense of humor"

I've a rollicking great sense of humour, but I don't find that song funny...I find it aggressive.

Smokers aren't scum.   

My father was a smoker. He smoked around me, as did my Mum, when both my brother and I were children. In those days, people didn't know how addictive or dangerous smoking was.

My dearest Dad was the gentlest of men....and to see those words upsets me very much.

As a child I never suffered any bad effects from smoke inhalation, despite 60 a day often being smoked by each parent..and my grandmother too, when she came to stay.

I feel that some of those facts on smoke and its effect on children are way over the top, actually. Yes, long-term smoking around children can affect some of them, but it doesn't affect every single child.

I actually think Smokers have now become the new Communists, preyed upon by neurotic people, made to stand outside in pubs...Sheesh! Just have a smoking room from heaven's sake! 'Non-Smokers Not Allowed' on the door should do the trick.

Also, it seems to me that someone on here, who admits to being a smoker seems far more the kind of person I'd prefer to be stranded on a desert island with...than others who claim to never smoke, because they seem far gentler and far more accepting of others than the up-their-own-arses-non-smokers.

My Uncle Grey used to smoke a pipe and a cigar now and then..OH, how I *loved* the smell of those cigars...and I'd sit and watch him load up his pipe, then bang it clean...He had a collection of them.

Auntie Eileen smoked like a chimney every day of her adult life, until she died in her late 80s. She was as fit as a fiddle all the way through.

My Dad, and Uncle Grey (not the one who smoked the pipe, he was married to Auntie Eileen....keep up!) ;0)....Uncle Grey who was my Dad's twin brother...well, they both got emphysema in the end..and it was pretty awful for them both. But it's strange, isn't it..how some can smoke all life long and it never affects them, and others can't.

Of course, drinking is a major problem these days, far more so than smoking, I'd say...Here in England, we have two generations who are well on their way to being alcoholics..and the National Health Service is FINALLY admitting it's being taken to the edge of bankruptcy because of it...but I don't hear the non-smoking drinkers complaining about that.

?????

Lizzie (A non-smoker)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: CarolC
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 01:47 PM

Carol, I enjoyed your song. It provides me with an emotional outlet for the anger I feel about having been subjected to constant cigarette smoke in our home while I was growing up, the emotional bullying that comes with a smoker's bellicose defensiveness when others express their distress at having to breathe their smoke (some of which we see here in this thread), and the health problems I still suffer even now in my 50s because of it. Thanks.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 01:49 PM

"I'm not mentioning my own history to get any sympathy out of this group,"

Tsk.. such false modesty is unbecoming of you!

Anyway, as you'd say yourself: "Thank you for sharing"

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 02:08 PM

"The smokers I am wishing an early death are those who deliberately expose other people to a known carcinogen, especially those who expose children, cancer survivors, or people with vascular or pulmonary disease. I do so wholeheartedly."


You know...this is like the 'ALL dogs are Scum!" brigade!

You get those who have real hang ups about dogs calling for them to be outcasts in society, not allowed here, there or anywhere...This new law, that new law....

Protect our children! Protect our children! They'll go blind! They'll die! They'll get this! They'll get that! Take the evil dogs away from them! Seperate them for life..and beyond!

Well, you know what?

I'm one of the few people who've had Toxicara, Carol....and I lost part of the vision in my right eye, but do I blame dogs for it???? Nope!

It just happened.

I came to terms with it, I was lucky, I got better...and I moved on.

What has happened though, is that children and animals have become far further apart than ever once they were, brought up by neurotic parents who've been brainwashed into believing their children are going to die if they sit next to a dog..and both children..and dogs..have suffered because of it.

We cannot live in a Super Sterile World.

I don't want dogs banned.


We get things in life. We get terrible things in life!

Yeesh...I lost two 'little souls'..and the first was due to a cancer scare, something called a Hydatidiform Molar pregnancy. Very rare, very 'orrible, but I learnt a great deal from it, learnt to love life, whilst The Big Cancer sat waiting on my shoulder, deciding whether to go deeper inside or leave me alone.....

I didn't blame smokers for it though..or anyone else...

It simply happened.....and it happened to me.

Things do.

It's called Life...and you have to cope as best as you can...

The best way to cope is my opening your heart up, not closing it down.



I really wish you well...and I hope that you make a full recovery, but it will help you more to not get so angry with a bit of cigarette smoke floating your way now and then.   It's not **that** harmful.

We get cancer for so many reasons...

It is not anyone's 'fault'....

Take the best from it...the love of your family, the care of the medical workers around you.

Learn to see the Beautiful World in which we live through eyes that know the meaning of 'The Last Day', because it brings with it such an incredible gift...and the simplest things, which once you never noticed, become immeasurably wonderful, like a raindrop on a leaf, a frosted spider's web..the colours of car oil in a puddle..a sunny day....a robin, a squirrel jumping from tree to tree, an old lady's face, wizened with wrinkles, that lights up like a diamond when she smiles........

All so beautiful...


Save the word Scum for those with Exploding Underpants, who deliberately choose to kill and maim as many as they can...

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 02:10 PM

Well, of course smokers aren't "scum"...but it's hyperbole. It's deliberate overstatement, which is one way of being humorous...depending on the context.

Remember this Randy Newman song?

Short People

Short people got no reason
Short people got no reason
Short people got no reason
To live

They got little hands
Little eyes
They walk around
Tellin' great big lies
They got little noses
And tiny little teeth
They wear platform shoes
On their nasty little feet

Well, I don't want no short people
Don't want no short people
Don't want no short people
`Round here

Short people are just the same
As you and I
(A fool such as I)
All men are brothers
Until the day they die
(It's a wonderful world)

Short people got nobody
Short people got nobody
Short people got nobody
To love

They got little baby legs
That stand so low
You got to pick em up
Just to say hello
They got little cars
That go beep, beep, beep
They got little voices
Goin' peep, peep, peep
They got grubby little fingers
And dirty little minds
They're gonna get you every time
Well, I don't want no short people
Don't want no short people
Don't want no short people
'Round here


Now, amazingly enough a LOT of prickly people took great offence at this Randy Newman song...they took it literally! It's incredible that anyone would, but they did...although it should be obvious to any sentient being that it's not intended to be taken literally.

I should think it would be obvious that the lyrics which say "Smokers are scum" could not possibly be intended literally either...because there are billions of people who smoke, and anyone who is capable of thinking at all knows perfectly well that you can't just categorize them all as "scum".

To imagine that the writer of the song really believes that all smokers are scum is just silly. Therefore the song must be satirical in intent.

However, it was bound to raise hackles in some people. Were it my song, I'd be careful who I sang it around. ;-) I destest smoking, but I'd still be careful who I sang it around, because some people would be bound to take offence.

I've written anti-smoking stuff myself which is about equally intemperate, but I did it mostly for my own satisfaction since I had to suffer other people's smoke helplessly for most of my life. Writing the songs gave me some sense of striking back after all that, but I seldom sing them in public.

I'd have to actually see this song performed by the writer to decide what I really think about it. The tone of the performance would determine whether it works or not.

Lizzie - I think raw tobacco smells lovely...but I have to say that I absolutely detest the smell of the stuff when it is burnt! Yuck. Some pipe tobacco, though, does have a sort of neat flavor if you catch just a tiny whiff of it at the right distance...up close, not so good.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,Crow Sister
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 02:12 PM

Me there above.

As far as kids are concerned **thread drift** one of the most worrying things I see today is severe child obesity.

I've no idea how our culture can address this trend, but it breaks my heart to see such an almost inevitably short life determined - for such young kiddies - by early parentally-determined dietary habits.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Dave Roberts
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 02:18 PM

I promised myself that I wouldn't put another post on this exasperating thread, and I guarantee this will be my last.

Carol,

For Christ's sake, can you not see what the problem is with your song, and why people are so offended by it?

It does NOT target smokers who smoke at your open air market gigs or wherever, it targets ALL smokers, whether considerate or inconsiderate.

Read your own lyrics. The intro does mention that you are playing open air gigs, but there is no link between that fact and the rest of the song which (please God, don't let me have to say this again) targets ALL smokers indiscriminately.

THAT is why people are offended, and for no other reason. They are offended beacause we all have friends and relations who have died because of smoking (without, in many cases, inflicting their smoking on others).

If the thrust of the song was 'people who smoke in front of me, despite a ban on smoking, and despite being told not to, are scum' fair enough, but THAT IS NOT WHAT THE SONG SAYS!

(sorry about the shouting, but this is just getting too stupid).

To save us all going nuts, could you at least acknowledge that you understand what we are talking about?

If not, then I really DO give up this time.

Sorry for the rant, everyone, but this is just getting ridiculous.

Bye.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Effsee
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 02:21 PM

I remember when all the scare statistics about AIDS were being bandied about when it all started, my brother said "Life is a Sexually Transmitted Disease, with 100% fatality."

Kinda sums it up really!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 02:31 PM

No, no..... ;-) Life is a stage play. It has a beginning: birth. It has an ending: death. In between you get to do all the drama which can really be fun if you do it in the right spirit and don't take the tragic parts too hard.

Then when it's over, you get to do a curtain call and afterward you get together with all the other actors from the play and have a big celebration. And after awhile you contact your agent, line up another part in a new play, start rehearsing your lines, meet the other actors who'll be in it, and the whole process starts over again.

What's so awful about that? Seems to me that the worst thing possible would be to be trapped in a play that never ends! Dorian Gray was faced with that, and he got pretty fed up after awhile, didn't he? He got "sick of all this repetition" (Dylan quote)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 02:53 PM

"I've no idea how our culture can address this trend, but it breaks my heart to see such an almost inevitably short life determined - for such young kiddies - by early parentally-determined dietary habits."


Actually, CS...that's a very interesting point.

I found a video the other day, on Youtube..a Top of the Pops one, that I put on here, on another thread...and one of the comments on there was about how skinny everyone in the audience was, not one overweight person at all...Got me thinking back to the 70s, and it was true, people were so much thinner back then..(er....myself included!) :0)

Simple, home-cooked food and one helluva lot less alcohol back then, I guess...and it wasn't considered 'OK' to be huge either, which now it is...In fact, you couldn't even by large clothes, apart from in the occasional 'outsize' shop...(such a catchy name that)

And here's that very video, again...Skinny Times..

'The Resurrection Shuffle - Top of the Pops - Youtube


(By the way, that 'play' bit was beautifully put, Little Hawk)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,snoutcast
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 04:30 PM

Doesn't scum always rise to the top?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: olddude
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 04:35 PM

small gentle suggestion, Please Please don't feed trolls.   It was very well explained in elaborate details why the song is offensive. Either they doesn't get that generalizing all people in such a manner is disturbing, or they are just thick, or they simple do it to Troll on ... suggestion ... don't feed trolls

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: CarolC
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 04:39 PM

Some of us like the song, as is our right, and it is also our right to say so.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: GUEST,Carol Denney, the author
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 05:24 PM

"long-term smoking around children can affect some of them, but it doesn't affect every single child"

This kind of remark is why I wrote the song, and why this discussion is important. Even a small amount of secondhand smoke makes a dramatic, and measurable impact on healthy adults -- measurable vascular damage in twenty minutes in healthy adults (UCSF,Glanz study). Children's rapid cell division puts them at extreme risk for physical damage and disease, and that applies to every single child. "It's not **that** harmful..." someone remarked. Yes, it is. If you see someone smoking around a baby, you should speak up.

In areas where smoking restrictions become law, the incidence of heart attacks drops by 17%, and by 37% within three years in eight replicated studies. It doesn't bother me at all to remind this group of this information because it helps people understand that people with heart disease, like children, are more at risk than others and often don't realize their own condition until the attack.

I agree that there are other ills in the world, but this thread is not about drinking, and not about dogs, but rather about smokers who deliberately subject others to deadly secondhand smoke, and the policies which are changing public health for the better.

Smokers do not have to be outcasts or excluded in any way from anything. They can quite simply smoke outside the pub, or the fair, and even slap on a patch on a long flight, etc. There are plenty of smokers in my crowds who seem able to appreciate that its subject is secondhand and thirdhand smoke exposure, its target a behavior, rather than everyone who smokes.

Anyone who hears this song while smoking is by definition smoking near me, and that not only makes it useful to me as someone who performs a lot, but as I mentioned before, this song changed policy because of its comic, aggressive perspective. I think the song deserves some respect for that, but I get a big kick out of those in this discussion who are adamant about trying to bully others out of laughing at it, liking it, or appreciating that it has been very effective in both the policy change and tip jar category.

People constantly tell cancer survivors that they are playing for others' sympathy by simply mentioning that they survived cancer in an effort to intimidate them from mentioning it at all, another bullying tactic. You can have any emotional reaction you wish to have to this simple fact in our lives. But you won't shut us up, and there's nothing inappropriate about mentioning it. It is as much a part of our lives as our names, and most relevant to a discussion about secondhand smoke exposure, because that is the subject of the song.

I don't really worry much about people who deliberately misinterpret the song and then hop around demanding an apology. They're getting good exercise, after all.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 05:36 PM

That's what I always figure when the Dachshund gets upset about something and jumps around hollering about it. At least he's getting some good exercise. ;-)

If people find this thread bothers them, why do they keep coming back to it?

There was a thread that bothered me on the lower half of the board, because it was so full of hostility, and I haven't opened it in ages. I just glance at the title as I pass by and I feel sorry for the poor sods who still can't seem to resist the impulse to get pulled back again and again to something that puts them in a rotten mood every time they go there. I suspect they are pursuing some kind of "final victory"...kind of like the USA in Vietnam or Afghanistan.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Smokey.
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 06:53 PM

I think I agree with OldDude - don't feed them.

Life's too short.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 07:02 PM

"People constantly tell cancer survivors that they are playing for others' sympathy by simply mentioning that they survived cancer in an effort to intimidate them from mentioning it at all, another bullying tactic."

They do? Gosh, did you get cancer of the Hypocriticus? Ever thought of being a politician?

In point of fact I thought it was *you* who was repeatedly leaning on your delicate victim status (being lucky enough to survive the disease yourself) in an attempt to deflect criticism from your *lyrics*, whilst simultaneously complaining about "irony failure" in other people who found your *lyrics* both un-funny and unpleasant.

You're not some little 'Child of Courage' to be wheeled out on at prime time TV for a charity marathon Carol: you didn't die of a disease you wish upon others - who just as you wish, do of course die from it. Good for you.

Bleat about it all you like, but do not expect appreciation of your vitriolic abuse (aka funny song), of others who unfortunately for them, do not and will not experience your good fortune.