Smoking: What are You Waiting For?
Recently I jokingly asked someone if they could recommend a brand of cigarettes, because I needed a hobby, and I planned to take up smoking. This was met with a glassy-eyed stare and an earnest lecture against the evils of smoking.
I felt it was time to revisit an old post extolling the many reasons people should start smoking.
Note: so many of my jokes are met with glassy-eyed stares, I could use them to hypnotize people.
The plight of tobacco executives in our country.
With the combination of class action lawsuits and the implementation of restrictive legislation, the poor tobacco executives in our country have taken a terrible beating over the past several years. It has resulted in a precipitous tumble in their social standing; they have gone from being filthy stinking rich, to being only extremely well off. If we don’t take immediate action, where will it end?
The word emphysema is really fun to say.
It’s a word that just rolls off your tongue. Em-phy-se-ma: one syllable just flows into the next. Try saying it once. Try saying it several times in a row. Try saying it quickly. Try saying it quickly several times in a row (unless you have emphysema: you might pass out).
The great thing about emphysema is that once you have it, it never goes away. And emphysema will affect nearly every aspect of your life; so you will have no trouble working it into daily conversation:
- The doctor diagnosed me with emphysema.
- I’m taking this medicine for my emphysema.
- I’d love to play with my grandchildren more, but I can’t because of my emphysema.
- I climbed two flights of stairs and collapsed in a sweaty quivering mass due to my emphysema.
- I won at scrabble when I played the word emphysema. Thank goodness I can still play board games.
Not only will you have fun with the word emphysema, but so will your friends and family, long after you’re gone:
- What a nice funeral. I guess the doctor said he would have survived the pneumonia if hadn’t been for the emphysema.
- He certainly died young, but his quality of life wasn’t very good with the emphysema.
- Remember that time he coughed up a piece of lung and we all laughed for hours; crazy thing that emphysema.

In a twist of irony, you won a scrabble tournament playing the words, healthy alveoli.
(image source: snapdesign.com)
You need to know what they’re talking about.
You’ve seen them huddled together, enjoying their cigarettes, with their furtive glances and secretive whispers.
They’re outside of the bar, the restaurant, the bank. They’re outside any and every place of business. They assemble in the wind, the rain, and the snow. They assemble regardless of scorching heat or an F5 tornado. Nothing deters them.
What can they be talking about? It must be of incredible importance. They must be solving the puzzles of the universe.
You’ve tried approaching them, but without a cigarette in your hand, they just regard you with disdain and disgust.
It’s been eating at you; you need to know what they’re talking about.
Note: It’s a little known fact that Albert Einstein developed both special and general relativity, while huddled with a bunch of coworkers outside of a patent office, in a brutal German snowstorm.

“Get lost, we’re discussing important things. We’re discussing a possible cure for cancer or emphysema. Hey, emphysema, that’s fun to say.”
(image source: sodahead.com)
To stick it to that know-it-all the Surgeon General
You’re a rebel and you don’t appreciate anybody telling you how to live your life. You certainly don’t need some preachy Surgeon General constantly yapping at you about lung cancer, heart disease, or 32 known carcinogens.
There are tons of dangerous activities out there that the Surgeon General has said absolutely nothing about:
-
Poking yourself in the eye with a stick.
- Dropping a brick on your toes.
- Insulting the wife of a tattoo laden biker dude.
- Juggling knives.
- Attempting to re-attach your fingers with a sewing needle and some thread following some ill-advised knife juggling.
- Hitting yourself repeatedly in the face with a hammer.
Why don’t hammers come with an explicate warning from the Surgeon General; you don’t have to hit yourself in the face more than five or six times with a hammer, to do some real damage.
If we’re going to make any real changes, it’s up to all of you out there to light up and start puffing away.
I’d start smoking today if my jaw wasn’t wired shut.
I love your replies to the comments as much if not more than your posts, I must say!!! 🙂 🙂
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So you’re saying I’m much more tolerable in small doses.
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😃😃
You’re smart.
And funny!!
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Damn! I gave up two days ago, and now you’ve given me all these cool reasons to keep going? THANKS A BUNCH.
Can you do a post on the benefits of heroin next?
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I could do a post on heroines. I thought I might start with Jane Eyre.
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Dude. You totally convinced me that I’ll be a cooler kat if I start smoking. But those @$& @& humans won’t sell me cigarettes! *(tail FLAP)!*
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You can’t get your paws on some catnip?
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Oh sure i can! I have nip with my fancy feast every morning!! 🌿
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Stepping out of the work place for a smoke coupla times a day is well worth losing 10 years off your life. Hey, everything’s a trade off.
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The Surgeon General has warned against second hand blogging.
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I liked this better the second time, just like I like my cigarette smoke.
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Gee, you missed the most obvious benefit of smoking: Becoming a total chick magnet. After all, what woman can resist a guy whose manly tobacco-smoke reek makes their eyes water? And kissing? You wouldn’t believe how many desperate women spend their lonely days licking ashtrays because they can’t find a man who tastes of that marvelous combination of stale nicotine and tar. (No; I mean you really wouldn’t believe it. Or rather, you shouldn’t.)
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I’m already a chick magnet.
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Better not take up smoking, then. You’d have to install a barbed-wire fence around your house to keep out all your crazed groupies.
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I’m little disappointed you waited so long to start smoking. It shows me you aren’t devoted to your writing craft. The next thing I know, you will just start to drink whiskey. Please, tell me you have at least started drinking whiskey?
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I’m not Hemmingway. I have neither his talent or addictions.
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Nothing like a little emphysema, coronary heart disease, and lung cancer to make a new hobby tempting…
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Don’t forget gum disease. Gum disease always short shrift.
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Absolutely perfect satire! And I think this makes the point better than any preaching ever could. Thank you for this! 🙂
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You’re too kind. I am assuming you don’t smoke, otherwise your moniker would be Wheezing Betty.
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