The knee-jerk responses to my post quoting Florence King on smoking couldn't have illustrated her point better had they been scripted. How can you get away from this crap in 21st Century America? Suicide would be pusillanimous and mass homicide would be rude (not to mention a logistic nightmare), but maybe if I keep riding motorcycles, eating undercooked red meat, smoking, and drinking like a fish on weekends, I can get an extra ten or twenty years of blessed peace and quiet without the steady background drone of nagging to drive me nuts.
Perhaps I'll take up skydiving.
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These little Stalinists, the kilgors and Timmeeees of the world, exemplify contemporary nannyism.
"Never mind what you want to do. Here's what you should do. And if you disagree, you're obviously not rational."
Well, this non-smoker (other than the occaisional stogie) respectfully retorts, mind your own fucking business. It's fine with me if you don't like what I do. Just keep your hectoring and finger wagging to yourself.
Makes me want to run for the nearest bell tower.
Could be that people wish you to be alive longer because they enjoy your company. They are voicing their concern, not expecting that you'd get angry at them for it.
If memory serves, eating steak rare isn't just a better way to glean its nutrients, its easier to digest. Don't think that's going to do you in.
... not expecting that you'd get angry at them for it.
That is why in some quarters they are referred to as oblivions or idotarions. Unfortunately ignoring the little shit for brains won't make them go away.
I was very careful NOT to comment on that particular post, because smoking pushes all my (personal) buttons-Mom and Grandpa both died of cancer, Mom was only 53, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Point is, it IS your life, and as long as you don't smoke in my house or in my car, it's none of my business!
Apparently my previous comments were misunderstood.
Smoking is stupid and people smoke for stupid reasons. Trying to defend smoking is irrational.
However, I never advocated banning smoking, I never advocated government regulation of smoking.
So for someone to lump me in with Stalinists and nanny-staters is also irrational. And a knee jerk response.
For the record, I don't believe it is any business of the government what we put in our own bodies, whether it is tobacco, cannabis or even heroine.
So smoke away, give your hard earned dollars to the tax man. Just don't do it around me.
BTW Tam, how about the occasional post on GUNS or even bikes?
"Could be that people wish you to be alive longer because they enjoy your company."
Bullshit.
They're telling my how to live my life. Never mind that the actions they want to proscribe don't affect them directly in any way. It's just too much to know that someone out there may be enjoying themselves in a manner of which they don't approve.
"BTW Tam, how about the occasional post on GUNS or even bikes?"
Yeah, Tam. Seems this isn't an appropriate subject for mixed company. Let's not have all this free thought and expression. You know, here on your own blog?
Now where's that bell tower again?
"want to proscribe" -- I don't wish to proscribve anything, I bet that most folks who post on smoking don't, either. Their comments are more along the lines of "if you play in traffic, you might die young." I don't really have a dog in this fight, so I'll bow out of the conversation now.
Could be that people wish you to be alive longer because they enjoy your company. They are voicing their concern, not expecting that you'd get angry at them for it.
Good on ya, Oleg. Yes, we do care, believe it or not. I've buried too many friends and family, and I'd like to think Tamara's unique style of writing would stay active a bit longer. I'd rather if she chose to check out by her own hand, it would be ala' the James Dean style of Physics Experiment, not the horribly lingering death that is lung cancer or emphysema.
And no, I don't wish ill on smokers, as long as they don't become a burden on society, or come up with some silly revelation on their deathbeds that they didn't know smoking was bad for them...
And that, folks, is about as knee-jerk as I'm gonna get for today, because it is indeed Tamara's blog. I can pick up where I left off over on mine.
At the risk of pissing some people off, here is my .02.
If someone wants to smoke or drink, or whatever, that's fine with me. Personally, I do neither. I had at least two brothers who both smoked and drank at one time, as well as a third who just drank. His now ex wife used to joke that he personally supported one of the Budweiser Clydesdale's.
Now for my caveats, as long as you don't drink and drive, I have no problem sharing to road; as long as I don't have to breathe in second hand smoke, I have no problem. I believe that everyone has a right to choose to put into their bodies whatever they want, since it's there body, but when I have that choice made for me, that's where I draw the line.
Tamara, I love your blog and I do read it everyday, even though I don't often post in the comments. Thanks for sharing your pithy wisdom with the world. :-)
3yellowdogs,
Your ad hominem attack against me is over the top. I never said anything about laws or anything like that.
Perhaps you should take up smoking. From your irrational anger it seems you could use a "release."
Oh, and if you do get to that bell tower, please do us all a favor and keep running when you reach the top.
Kilgor
Hey, go freelance. You get to do it every day of the week AND make drunken posts to blogs.
Happy S'n'Paddy's. Slurgg.
"Timmee said...
BTW Tam, how about the occasional post on GUNS or even bikes?"
This is her blog, Princess. Hey, here's an idea: Start your own blog, weenie boy. See if you can attract a third of the traffic she does. I suggest trying to not wallow in douchebaggery if you'd actually like to meet the goal.
"Just don't do it around me."
Yeah...I just can't imagine you surrounded by people at any given time outside of work, so I don't think it'll be a problem.
Those same sanctimonious do-gooders would soil themselves forthwith if they had to suddenly be responsible for coughing up a replacement for the tremendous monetary lubricant to our enconomy/government yielded by cigarettes and the confiscatory taxes wielded like a cudgel against the folk who smoke them.
I bitched on my blog earlier this week because when my car was being repaired, the rental agreement dictated I not smoke in the rental car, and yet it smelled like a saloon. OK, it smelled like a smoky brothel, but anyway, I took umbrage at being browbeaten with this "thou shalt not smoke in this car" when they clearly had no way to enforce such a thing.
Oh, and about the "burden to society," if people die younger as a result of smoking, they tend to do so while still productive, thus not having the opportunity to drain the public coffers as old folk on social security and medicaid. If people did their research, they'd learn that insurance companies finally figured that out and changed their tune about not insuring smokers.
Why do some people get cancer and not others? This is a mystery. Lots of non-smokers get lung cancer, too, for no obvious reason. There also is no end of anecdotal evidence of people who eat a slab of bacon every morning, smoke 2 packs a day and live to be 95. The fact is unless we are in an accident, most of us will die of the genetic time-bombs in all of us so lovingly engineered by our forbears. Might as well enjoy the ride.
But all this is really how many angels can dance on the head of a pin- what is wrong with these jerks who want to prevent other people from pursuing their personal joy? ROWR!
And most importantly - Florence King totally rocks - LOVE. HER. MADLY.
Oh, for Christ's sake. The anti-smokers insist that lighting up is a death sentence. Your risk for lung cancer increases (3X over that of a non-smoker) but it's not a foregone conclusion. Y'all hate the tobacco, but you're probably fine with the weed, right? Cos that's "natural..." Please.
And I'm not buying that second hand smoke crap for a minute. Let the lady smoke, and keep your weepy anecdotes to yourselves.
Hey 3Pissdogs and anon, the blog is called Books. Bikes. Boomsticks.
And I was just making a suggestion not telling her how to run her blog.
So keep yer attitude to yerselves.
"And I was just making a suggestion not telling her how to run her blog."
As was I to you. See how that works?
"So keep yer attitude to yerselves."
As soon as you follow your own advice. Again, see how that works?
Just in case you're serious about trying skydiving, Tamara, just so happens we have some of the best skydivers in the nation right here in Knox. Just say the word if you would like to be "hooked up" for a jump. SURGEON GENERAL WARNING: Skydiving may prove as highly addictive as any substance you have experienced!
Tams ~
I don't smoke. I freaking hate the smell of the stuff. More important, every time I get so much as a small whiff of tobacco smoke, my asthmatic lungs shut down my airways and breathing becomes very, very difficult and uncomfortable (it is possible that is why I hate the smell of the stuff, you think?)
Nevertheless, you've got a right to run your life however you wish.
Someone wrote to Ann Landers years ago, saying that every woman who loves her husband should nag him to eat better, exercise more, drink less, give up smoking, etc. Ann's reply was to the point: "Who'd want more years like that? Sorry, I don't agree."
Some quotes for you...
I like cigarettes .... I like to think of fire held in a man's hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind – and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression. – Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home at Weston-super-Mare. -- Kingsley Amis
There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable,drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry. -- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Wait a minute, cigarettes are bad for your health? I had no idea, this must be a big secret. Thank God for the internet.
Someone alert the media, we need to let people know!
oops, sorry for double post.
The problem with those who claim to have your best interests at heart is that they refuse to leave well enough alone.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-C.S. Lewis
I've become increasingly fond of that quote.
I rarely smoke. Less than ten times a year, if that. But I think I'll light up a Cohiba on my lunch break, just because its the sort of activity that drives the prohibitionistas up the wall.
Cigarettes, Sexy to Deadly...
Funny posters, too!
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/health/20essay.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
"The knee-jerk responses to my post quoting Florence King on smoking couldn't have illustrated her point better had they been scripted" - Tam
*snork* Not only that, they did it twice. :)
I suspect they jest can't help themselves...
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