When I’m stressed, I hit the nicotine. I’ve never been a smoker since my lungs can’t stand it. I’ve also used snus on occation but the potential mouth/tooth rot potential for it scares me. I won’t say vaporizing is harmless, as cigarettes were harmless for a long long time. Perhaps sometime in the future we’ll find all the propolol-glycol we were putting into our lungs had a hidden impact. Out of all the ways to get a bit of calm-down in the day I feel it’s one of the least harmful.
1996 – The Year Alternative Rock Died a Messy, Forgettable Death
Some phenomenal hindsight of grunge, alternative rock, and how it became the very thing it stood against. I remember this year vividly. I was 15, at the height of my angst, and this caused me not only to re-live the period but it also provided a unique subtext I was completely oblivious to. On the radio, Goo Goo Dolls’ “Name” bled into Tonic’s “If You Could Only See” into Dishwalla’s “Counting Blue Cars” into The Verve Pipe’s “The Freshmen” into Matchbox Twenty’s “Push” in a watery bouillabaisse of quiet-loud-quiet song structures and sad-bro earnestness. This has to be the most…