The Best 15 Cigarettes

Smoking is fun, despite the warning signs on every single of packet; smokers still puff away to their lungs content everyday. Of course there are numerous different types of cigarettes, I’m not talking brands, although there are plenty, I’m of course talking about different cigarettes. Here I have compiled a list of the best cigarettes.

1. The First Cigarette (of the Day).
The best way to start your day is with a cigarette. That is a proven scientific fact. The nicotine helps you wake and gets the brain juices flowing anti-clockwise, so you are able to function 78% better than if you woke up and didn’t smoke. FACT!

2. The Cigarette with your Tea/Coffee.
Hot drinks and cigarettes go together like dog shit and the bottom of new trainers. There’s nothing like scolding your mouth and feeding the cancerous growth in your lung at the same time.

3. The Stepping Outside Cigarette.
Upon stepping outside, you are suddenly hit with fresh air; it quickly creeps into you nostrils and mouth and begins to circulate into your system, much like a virus attacking your computer. Of course, the way to combat this is with a cigarette.

4. The Waiting for a Bus Cigarette.
If you’re waiting for a bus, it can be boring, so you need to whittle away the time by doing something exciting, like smoking. Everyone knows that smoking a cigarette will increase the speed of the bus you are waiting for and it will arrive earlier than expected. This is because all bus drivers smoke and they attempt to get to bus stops early in the chance of claiming twos of a lit cigarette.

5. The After a Meal Cigarette.
The definitive one. The one that all smokers love. After shovelling god-knows-what down your gullet you have to get rid of that disgusting taste that seems to stick around after, a mint would probably do the job, but mints are for cunts. Instead smoking a cigarette to rid your mouth of the horrid taste of food and usher in the delicious flavour of smoke is the best choice.

6. The “Hey, didn’t you just have one” Cigarette.
The classic; smoking back to back. You have one, enjoy it, put it out, and then instantly pull out another. They’re your cigarettes; you can smoke as many as you want and when you want.

7. The “Oh shit, I forgot about that” Cigarette.
You’re all out of cigarettes, the shop’s closed, and it looks like you may have to ‘nub-up’, but wait! What’s in that packet over there? In the corner of the room! You go to investigate. You find a packet of cigarettes, you open it up, and one juicy looking cigarette looks up at you, inviting you to suckle on it.

8. The Beer Cigarette.
Drinking and smoking go hand in hand, like two unashamed homosexuals walking down the street, despite the fact that God is JUDGING THEM AND THE SICK AND FUCKING TWISTED LIVES THEY LEAD. Lord, have mercy on their homosexual souls! Anyway, what could be better than one drug; alcohol? Answer: Including another drug with it; tobacco! Drinking makes smoking more fun, smoking makes drinking more fun, drinking makes women better looking.

9. The Post-Sex Cigarette.
Sex is brilliant exercise, so after I’ve had a two minute romp with some lucky girl it’s important to balance out the act of ‘love making’ (as some deluded individuals call it) with a cancer stick, as to keep the body in perfect balance of something healthy and something delicious.

10. The Waiting for Cancer Results Cigarette.
Waiting for cancer results is a little like waiting for a bus (#4 on the list); it’s boring, although it will probably have more of an effect on the rest of your life than waiting for a bus. You’ll be nervous and twitchy, panicking over what the results will be, so the best idea is to just light up, do it in the waiting room if you want.

11. The “I think I’ve just seen a Ghost” Cigarette.
Sometimes if you’re only half awake or perhaps high on a powerful hallucinogenic you may think you have seen a ghost. This can be a massive ordeal for you, so the best bet is to find your cigarettes and smoke one. Ghosts are afraid of smoke, that’s another scientific fact.

12. The Post-Murdering a Prostitute Cigarette.
It’s well known that around 70% of the British public has Jack the Rippered [murdered] a prostitute at some point in their mundane lives. Of course before disposing of the body, it’s important to take a step back and analyse the situation, congratulate yourself and have a cigarette.

13. The ‘I’m Struggling to Reach 15 Cigarettes’ Cigarette.
Sometimes you find yourself in a position were you’ve decided to comprise a list of 15 cigarettes, yet while you sit in front of your computer not able to add anymore and you come to the realisation that 15 is too many, so you have a cigarette in a pathetic attempt to be inspired by it’s smokey-goodness.

14. The Pub Lock In Cigarette
Before some fascists came and decided it was against the law to smoke in closed off, public places the whole country used to smoke in pubs and clubs, now the smoke has been removed and the stench of body odour is now pumped into these places via the air-vents. Yet sometimes you can be lucky enough to partake in a lock in, when this happens the bar staff with come to your table and place an astray down. You are now able to smoke in a pub. Fuck the Smoking Law! Power to the People … that smoke!

15. The Last Cigarette … Ever.
It’s a sad reality, but people do quit smoking for some reason. Maybe it’s because they have children or cancer. But in the end we all quit for our own reasons, death probably being the major one. But as we lay dying in a hospital bed or on the street after being hit by a bus we will remember our whole life and all the great cigarettes we smoked. Eventually we will begin to lose grip on life and slowly drift away with the thought of that last cigarette, at this point we will accept that that cigarette was the best one, out of all the hundreds of thousands we’ve smoked in our lifetime, the last one was the best, now we can die happy.

Ben Broughton's Guide to Finding a House

It’s that time of year. You’ve finished University and have to live in the ‘real world’. No more student accommodation! You have to find a real house. Now, being the sophisticated individual I am, I had thousands of offers from friends to have me move in with them to make their miserable lives more tolerable with my divine blend of wit and harsh put-downs. Yet, some people I know haven’t been blessed with personalities most would deem likable and they have had to go out and attempt to find a house themselves. Of course, being on the outside looking in, it’s so easy to tell when they have made mistakes and find errors in their judgement. As I’m so sick and fucking tired of hearing people bitch about finding a house I’ve put together some key points, the most important things to consider when looking for a place to rent.

• Must be Furnished
Face it people, you’re straight out of University, you have no money and you have a crippling debt that you have to drag around forever like your deceased Siamese twin. If you think you can move into an unfurnished house you’re either mentally retarded or you like making things really hard for yourself or you’re still scrounging off of your mother and father. Beds, washing machines, fridges, freezers, sofas … these things aren’t cheap, even second hand. What you have to think about is; “Do I have a couple of hundred quid to buy this stuff?” Because more than likely you don’t. I’m not saying live in furnished houses forever, just start making some serious money first, save up, and then buy these things.

• Get over Yourself
Look, you need to realise you’re scum. In the eyes of society; you’re no-one, a miniscule pleb on the face of the Earth, a waste of space, just another soulless human breathing all the good air. With your low-earning, shitty job. So get over yourself. Stop looking for the perfect house; it doesn’t exist, especially on your tiny budget. You need to think financially; cheap, shitty houses are best, plus they’re more in tune with your cheap, shitty life. Sorry to break it to you but after University you’re supposed to live in crappy accommodation. So put a halt to finding that 3-double-bedroom house, with a large back garden, sufficient parking, study room … Bite the fucking bullet and live a shack. You’re not starting a family; you won’t be living there forever. Plus think about what your life is going to consist of from now on, the days of sitting around the house smoking weed and playing with your dick are over, you have to work. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you work 9-5, five days a week; you’ll only be in your house evenings and weekends. Evenings will consist of cooking and sleeping, weekends will consist of going out. So this hunt for the perfect house is simply a hunt for a place to cook and sleep. Cook and Sleep, that’s all you need a house for. As long as you find somewhere that has a cooker/microwave and a bed/loads of pillows on the floor, you’re fine. Plus, why the fuck do you need a garden? They’re only useful around summer time, other than that they have no real function, it’s just a chore; having to mow it and scare of the neighbour’s cat so it stops crapping everywhere.

• Need a Big Bedroom
Do you really need a big bedroom? Or are you just selfish? As long as you can fit a bed in it you’ll be fine. “But I spend loads of time in my room!” That really lets on to the calibre of people you live with and is offensive to your future housemates. You may as well just say; “I’ll live with you, but I NEVER want to see you!” to their face. “At home I had a big bedroom.” Move back then. You also had a mother that cooked and cleaned for you, do you think someone else will do that? I share a box room with my brother when I’m back home. That’s two people in one tiny room. We manage to get by, so if you think you can’t have a small room to yourself you’re a fucking idiot. For what reason do you need a big room? Are you sacrificing goats to Satan regularly? Are you a break-dancer, that needs room to practice? Are you mating Tigers? Or raising Elephants? No, you’re fucking not. You’re sleeping in your bedroom, that’s what it’s for, the clues in the fucking first three letters of the word; bed, it’s where you’re bed goes, so you can sleep. Plus the bigger the room the more cleaning and tidying you have to do.

So there we have it, that’s my tiny insight into finding somewhere to live, by live I mean cook, eat and sleep. I hope these tips have helped you on your way to finding somewhere, possibly a shack, to live.

Being Ticklish … The Other Disability

I fucking hate being tickled. Hate it! I’m not extremely fond of being touched in the first place, there are a few exceptions of course; making sure I’m still alive, giving me CPR or shaking me out of a deep sleep because the house is on fire, they’re all fine reasons. More intelligent readers will notice that these reasons are all linked to the continuation of my existence; less intelligent readers still might have still not made the link even though this sentence is pointing it out to them.

You see the thing is I’m extremely ticklish, it is my disability. Most people don’t believe it to be a disability but I assure you it is. My great-grandfather was extremely ticklish and he was granted a Blue Badge (for disabled parking), so there’s undeniable proof. He’d also lost his legs in WWII while fighting the Jews … or the Nazi’s … or the Nazi Jews, I can’t quite remember, I always used to tune out when he spoke. But let’s face it coffin dodgers don’t have much to teach us young and cool adults.

When someone tickles me, it’s as if they’re inducing a spasm. My body tenses up; a natural defence, my arms flail around like I’m some sea creature unaccustomed to the air that land mammals breathe. If the tickling continues, I begin to hyperventilate. Even still, if the sick, sadistic son of a bitch that is inflicting this torture continues, I eventually piss my pants; another natural defence mechanism to warn off the predator.

Many child psychologists define tickling as an integral bond between parents and their bastard children. This was never the case for me, as my absent father nor my alcoholic mother never tickled me; they used to beat with red hot fire pokers instead. So, instead of tickling, violence was an integral bond between me and those that produced me.

Acarophilia is the name given to the sick sexual practice of tickling fetishism. The pure thought that someone could be turned on by being tickled makes me question the sanity of civilisation, it makes vomit slowly creep up the back of my throat. Acarophilia is much worse than necrophilia, bestiality or beasti-necrophilia (a combination of the two). If anyone you know is in to acarophilia it’s best to cut off any contact with them, as this is a sign that their mentality is questionable. You’ve been warned.

Stuck out in the Sticks

I recently spent sometime in the countryside, in the Lincolnshire, Scambulsby to be exact (at least I think that’s what it was called, Google seems to be no help whatsoever on the matter of producing me with the village’s name, it’s near Louth anyway, and that’s probably no help to you either). This village has one pub; The Green Man, quite an apt name as any non-local probably gets alienated when entering. I didn’t take that risk. But I got to thinking that if a local was to be barred from that public house, they’re pretty much fucked. No where else to go in the town, sorry; village. They could always catch a taxi somewhere else I suppose, yet that’d cost at least £10 there and back, leaving them with little money for drinks. And forget drink driving, those country roads rack up more deaths than Israeli military.

Upon entering the sticks, what first hit me was the silence. Now, I’m don’t live in a majorly busy City like London, Birmingham or Manchester, so I have no idea of that life, but I do live Derby, which to me is not a real city, it’s like a big town, which is one of the reasons I like it, but I don’t class myself a city-type of person. But compared to Scambulsby Derby’s like New York (for busyness, not culture, entertainment or iconic status in the World). Living in a city (or town for that matter), you become accustomed to the constant noise surrounding you without realising; cars, sirens, people, civilisation … there’s always something. In the country silence is like a wall that just crashes into you, much like being hit by a bus. It leaves you disorientated. I thought I was deaf several points across the weekend. It reminds me of the tag line for the film Alien … “In the countryside, no-one can hear you scream” … quite terrifying really.

Another aspect of the country I noticed was a large amount of county folk have signs outside their homes selling things. I saw endless amounts of them, offering a wide range of material things; eggs, lettuce plants, ferrets and I’m quite sure I saw a sign offering a plough for sale. Is this entirely legal? Surely these people should be taxed on what they sell. I’m no expert in the field of taxation or in any other field to be precise, but this doesn’t seem right to me, especially with the Tories in power. Surely these people should be paying something on what they make.

Because the roads are such a death trap in the country there are endless amounts of warning signs dotted along the county roads. I saw one with the warning drivers to be alert of motorbikes, with the tag line; ‘Think Bike’, although some little rascal had took a marker pen to it and altered it. The guilty party had crossed out ‘Think’ and written “F*uk”. That is not misspelled on my part that is actually how someone spelled ‘fuck’. Of course one of the things when vandalising a sign is you can put whatever you want, you’re a little rebel with a marker pen or some spray paint, if you censor yourself with an asterisk the whole point of vandalism is void. Polite vandalism is oxymoronic. We all know what the word is, it’s not like people are driving passed thinking “Fick Bikes, yeah, those bikes are think!” Speaking of moronic, spelling a four letter word wrong is stupidity at it’s finest. Especially ‘fuck’, come on, it’s such a simple word. Although this does remind me of taking exams at school, we had to sit on single desk that only got broke out at exam time. The desks were old a ‘f*uk’ and filled with scribbles from years passed, so I decided to add mine. So I’d inscribe my tag (my name written in a certain type of way, still present on every book/scrap of paper I own) and also I’d write; “I can’t speel”, which at the time I thought was hilarious and in fact I still find the irony funny today. Yet this ‘F*uk Bike’ sign was not ironic, people don’t get irony in the country, much like phone signals. I took my BlackBerry and found it almost impossible to get a signal or update either Facebook/Twitter, the only use it could of possessed was to throw as a weapon to fend off some horny farmer, luckily that didn’t happen.

So, out in the sticks, it’s interesting, it’s fun. But I’ll stick with the city life; noise, pollution, a wide range of places to get pissed, low pollen counts, homeless people, diversity, culture, the possibility of getting stabbed for no reason … all these things make life more exciting.