Posted on 02/09/2007 6:33:28 AM PST by rellimpank
Some years ago, when I was freelancing at a mutual fund company, I took a break to go downstairs and smoke my pipe. On my way back upstairs, I found myself sharing the elevator with one of my co-workers in the corporate communications department.
"Ewww, smoke!" she exclaimed. "Let me out of here! I don't want you to give me cancer!"
Let's absorb this slowly. My fellow worker thought that: 1) Cancer was contagious. 2) She could "catch" cancer from the smell of tobacco smoke clinging to my clothes -- not from the smoke itself, which was long gone outdoors, but from the smell alone.
She was a dish, too. Pity.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Not only that, but it's a well known fact that if you smoke, when you die, you go straight to Hell.
Did you know that?
Great read..
I would have replied "eew cold sore I don't want your damn herpes"
All the bridges have been built. All the mountains have been climbed. All the challenges have been met and overcome, and in the minds of some, that leaves our world with nothing to do, no reason to go on. So they either invent "causes" or start movements that will tear it all down so they can start over.
It's no surprise that the anarchist movement has re-emerged, and that generations in Europe and even here in the United States are turning their backs on historical notions of "success." We call them "slackers" and "Gen Y" and a host of other disparaging names, but they reflect the emptiness that defines the post-modern world.
Something will move in to fill the void. Nature abhorreth a vacuum.
No, you'll only smell like you did.
(Har, har, har. We've never heard that one before.)
I think you're right.
The forerunner in the race to fill the vacuum is Islam.
It's going to be an exciting finish!
Well said.
I really enjoyed this piece. Very true.
A wise man once said, "I would rather date a 6 that I agreed with than a 10 that was a liberal."
No, she was either incredibly stupid, or insufferably rude. As are your comments. I thought people from the South were renowned for their politeness, but apparently none of it has rubbed off on you.
I think you nailed it. Add to your list, the occasional fire in your pants pocket from spilled ashes.
All good points.
Excellent. Really excellent. I especially like the Primatene mists reference. Nicely scientific sounding, and complete nonsense.
The challenges are gone. The height of civilization has been reached. Bored silly, we need SOMETHING to rail against, view as life-threatening, hate, oppose, worry about.
Interesting how some fiction captures the concept well:
Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.and while I can't find the quote offhand, H2G2 notes that future medical science reaches the point where all injuries and diseases are eradicated, boring everyone to the point that artifically induced injuries are provided to motivate people again.
- Agent Smith, _The_Matrix_
LOL. I don't smoke, but I dated a girl once who smoked about two packs a day. Everytime I kissed her it was like kissing a dirty ashtray. Even with rinsing, she couldn't get that taste out of her mouth. Didn't seem to bother her, though.
The paradox of utopian dysfunction is a common theme in science fiction. Like so many lofty goals, paradise only draws us until we reach it. The thrill of the hunt ends with the capture.
Smokers stink, their breath stinks, their clothes stink, and they stink up the air around them wherever they are.
Always good to hear from you Eric!
Today, we seem to believe we have some Constitution right not to be offended by the smell of another person. Our ancestors would have thought we were completely insane. Life was a lot 'stinker' back in the "good old days", but probably much friendlier.
And yet, even when I've quit smoking for a period and can smell it - and I don't like it either - I'd still rather have a smoker around me than an anti-smoker.
Your operant conditioning is showimg.
Ah, an ex-smoker, the most insufferable type of anti-smoker.
Look, I can fully appreciate that you don't like the smell of cigarette smoke. Heck I'm a smoker (and sometimes non-smoker), and I don't like the smell of it either. I also don't care for the smell of B.O., coffee, and many perfumes and colognes. In fact, an too much of the latter, like in the perfume area of a department store, sets of my asthma (but cigarette smoke doesn't, strangely enough). But I wouldn't dream of making as ignorant of a comment in an elevator as the one in the story above, regardless of how much some smell bothered me.
Reminds me of what the poet Edgar Lee Masters said; "You don't need the state to impose tyranny when the (hysterical) mob will do it for you."
I forgot to mention that when smokers have their own special little smoking areas, they turn their own "havens of refuge" into stalls of unimaginable filth.
Concur. And, BTW, I'd feel pretty much the same about the young lady if she was awash in perfume.
Keep trying, someday you will win. Then you'll eventually get your true sense of smell and taste back as well as fell better everyday. I still shudder to think of how my days used to start, having to clear out the previous days intake, then starting it all over again. Good luck and health to you!
Very good point!
But you're forgetting about the benefits of smoking, like how it keeps petty little busybody control freaks at a nice comfortable distance.
:-)
I quit cold turkey in March of 1986. I had smoked red Winstons, then gold Winston Lights, then the white package Winston Ultra Lights. The Ultra Lights had so many perforations in the paper that I think I was smoking mostly air and thus increased the volume of packs per week. Smokes were $.50/pack back then. I added 2 or 3 inches to my gut but got rid of this in about a year. Food tasted so good after getting my taste buds back !
What if the "stink" because they eat a lot of curry or garlic, but are clean as a whistle and have never touched tobacco.
Are you still offended?
There's that conditioning.
Bottom line is that a legal activity is being drummed out through repetitive hysteria. Why is everyone, even conservatives who theoretically favor individual responsibility, so eager to scream at the new demon Tobacco?
Unless you sit in a small box with a chain smoker you or I are not going to get enough smoke to affect our health. Yes, you can choose to be offended at the smell. Congratulations, I guess - welcome to the ranks (pun intended) of the perpetually offended.
I'm far more tired of the people who are offended by cartoons, movies, drink, smoke, food, cars, dress, and the thousand other ways in which people choose not to behave exactly alike or in some scientifically-determined optimal life pattern than I am of people's poor choices.
Oh, and for your edification: I'm an ex-smoker, long since quit. I'm just the rare type, one who doesn't believe that once I've made a choice that therefore everyone else had better make the same choice.
You have nailed it on the head. Back a few years ago, I got into a minor disagreement with my vegetarian nephew. He was telling me how evil it was to eat meat. I explained one of the reasons he and so many of his generation have gone that way is because it's trendy and is an easy lifestyle in America. No problem going to the local supermarket and buying boca burgers and other easily prepared stuff. It's simple to live out these kinds of beliefs when one does not have to waste time on surviving like so many poor in this world that would be grateful to have any food, whether animal or vegetable. These newfound beliefs of so many are a product of a culture that has a lot of time on its hands.
Muzzies are the cause of Global Warming. Everybody knows that.
We must eliminate muzzies.
If you are a smoker - you can't smell it.
I smoked 2 packs of Kools a day for 20 years - I quit on the day of my massive heart attack (most people do not know that for every one smoker who dies of lung cancer or emphysema - 19 die from tobacco related heart attacks). It took me two years to be able to smell that smell that nonsmokers always talked about.
It doesn't smell like stale smoke - it smells like a broken sewer pipe. It is very nasty.
That smell can linger for years. Last spring I pulled a jacket out of the back of my closet. (I have not smoked for 9 years.) On my way to work I kept smelling smoke, I finally realized it was coming from the jacket. After eight years, it still reeked!
You are so right. Most people take what we have for granted but actually it is relatively new to our culture and society. What was a real eye opener to me though was when I got stationed in Naples, Italy in 1977. Taking a crammed city bus, I was amazed and sickened at how bad it stunk. No concept of bodily hygene.
I never smoked but used to drink. Hung out in a lot of bars and my clothes carried the smoke smell.
And no moral framework in which to apply that time.
A surfeit of riches and a dearth of spirituality.
It's no coincidence that one of the things prisons used to do -- and boot camps STILL do -- is to work their charges like field hands. Get 'em up early, put 'em to work, stay on 'em all day long, and put 'em to bed when they're dead on their feet. Why? Because they don't have time to feel sorry for themselves. They don't have time to miss Mom and Dad or the Gang or the carefree life they used to live. They don't have time or energy to plot and scheme or think of "better ways." It's all they can do to make it through the day.
And at the end, they can look back and say that that day wasn't wasted, that regardless of how trivial the accomplishment, it wasn't directed solely for their own benefit. Their labor went to some goal beyond themselves, even if it was digging a ditch that the next squad had to fill in or chopping weeds out of a roadside ditch.
I don't mean to sound Goebbel-esque, but arbeit can macht frei under the right circumstances. And if it can't, then ennui can't either, that's for certain.
I have met many vegans who are overweight. I try to gently break it to them that Twinkies are not a vegetable.
How can you hate the smell of coffee?? The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup, you know.
Lets say a different concept. It's really only in the last several decades (and only in a few places on this planet) that perfectly normal body oder has became an obsession.
"If you are a smoker - you can't smell it."
Look, don't tell me what I can or can't smell. For one, I have quit for a fairly long period, so that my sense of smell became more sensitive. Even as a smoker, however, I can also smell it in an elevator that another smoker has just ridden up in after having a smoke outside. I fully understand that non-smokers find it to be an offensive odor. To which I say "get over it". It's just one of the many annoyances in life that we all have to live with. Smokers have been driven out of offices, bars, restaurants, malls, and every other public space, including many open-air spaces. If that's not good enough, then make tobacco illegal and deal with all the unintended (but predictable) consequences of that.
I don't know, but I find the smell of coffee offensive. Roasting beans really stink. When someone sits down next to me in a conference room with a fresh, steaming cup of coffee it just about makes we want to gag. However, I realize that a large proportion of my co-workers are addicted to caffeine and need their regular coffee fixes all through the day, and I have the civility and respect for others that some on this thread lack, so I don't make a big deal about it.
You don't sound Goebbel-esque at all. I think people have a lot of time to feel sorry for themselves nowadays, especially the non-working poor. In fact, even when I have found myself getting into a funk about something, the way I usually get out of it is to turn on the radio and get cleaning! Nothing like washing a dirty floor to get you out of the doldrums (he he).
I don't find anything offensive except hippy stink. There's a guy who uses the same classroom as me in college. He is trying to grow dreads and he and his stinky hippy girlfriend leave a cloud of ganja-stink and patchouli wherever they go. Now I know why the 60s anti war protesters got hit with the firehose.
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