"Nocturnal Stumblebutt" by Loudon Wainwright III, from the Attempted Mustache album, waaaay long ago.
I haven't checked if it's downloadable, but here are the lyrics:
Well it's 3am, and so I creep
Around the house 'cause you're asleep
I can't sleep, I gotta smoke
I think I left some in my coat
No they're not there, but there's a chance
I left some in a packet in my pants
Bumped into the table, just below the belt
If you were a man baby you'd know how that felt
Just one thing I don't want to do
And that one thing is to wake up you
My hands are shaking, my brow it is damp
Bumped into the chair, knocked over the lamp
Bumped into the chair, knocked over the lamp
Sure I know where some cigarettes are
But it's too cold outside to go to the car
I know this habit of mine, it's gotta be fed
I'm gonna get down I'm gonna scrounge around under the bed
Under the bed, down on the floor
Up on top baby I can hear you snore
Snore baby... ooooooh
Snore baby... ooooooh
Eureka! I'm in luck
I found some matches and a crumpled butt
And just to show I love you
I'm not gonna look for an ashtray baby, I'm gonna use your shoe!
Cigarettes have a way of making the socialists come out of the closet. You know, the ones that think it is the government's responsibility to tell free individuals what they can and can't do with their own bodies. The ones that think smokers "cost society" more than people with children do and so should have to pay $4 per pack taxes. The ones that think people who smoke should be stuck in a cage and that private property owners should not be allowed to administer their property the way they choose. Cigarettes help us find the authoritarians.
Cigarettes are sublime and wonderful. We all know how life is full of little periods of time where you have to wait.
Cigarettes allow you to reward yourself for every inconvenience, every distraction and every annoyance with a blast of soothing freebase nicotine -- only seven seconds from the lit end of the cigarette to your brain. Cigarettes are also social occasions. Cigarette smokers share information on smoke breaks. Smokers are also doers. They break up their work into manageable segments and then reward themselves for success in their incremental steps.
If it didn't give you emphysema, cigarette smoking would be the greatest thing since sex.
Maybe -- just maybe -- you love cigarettes because you never had the opportunity, or paid obligation, to work with color photographs of autopsied lungs taken from other smokers who were already rotting in their graves by the time you got to see what had happened inside their bodies all those years.
Or all those Chicago years in your life, you never had a chance to visit the pathology section of Cook County Hospital, where the corpses are cut up and some of the best gruesome photography you probably have never seen is done.
Back in 1972, I was a writer with a small PR firm specializing in public health topics. One of our key clients was the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), whose main focus included what I was paid to get a terrible education about. All within a few months that spring and summer.
Driving up Western Avenue on Chicago's north side one day that summer -- in June, to be exact -- I took a drag on the unfiltered cigarette I was smoking, thought long and hard, and flicked it out the driver-side window onto the street with the characteristic snap of index finger against thumb of ten thousand other Chicago drivers.
It was the last occasion in which any smoke entered my lungs.
The first week was a tough one, my body saying to me over and over and over and over: Give me a fucking cigarette, Harris!
I took to chewing gum, furiously, like a caricature of a World War II GI in a Hollywood epic, facing screen combat. That, and eating this and that kind of crap, of the type you can buy along just about any commercial street in Chicago.
But I fought my body that week, and I won. Afterward, I would puff on cigarettes for a while. But never again inhaled the stuff.
One day -- and I don't even remember how many years ago -- I forgot to buy smokes. It had completely fallen out of my consciousness.
A true story. (Just ask Stefi, my wife.)
Any of the above help you in any way? Probably not. But if you still smoke, that's your problem and not the world's, isn't it?
Entertainment value. I swear I didn't do it on purpose, but its a riot: I taught my boys that smoking is BAD because it can make you very sick and then kill you. They're 3 and 5 years old. They really take it to heart, meaning: they will tell random strangers loudly and earnestly in public that cigarettes are BAD (etc)! I try to tell them that sometimes people make foolish choices and that is their own decision. This does not stop them from their crusade. See, they are convinced that when they see people do naughty things (like wearing their caps inside a building) that its only because those people don't know any better and that once you tell them they'll see reason. Oh, the faith in humanity!
Oh, I also love to watch the guilty smokers sneak around the bushes trying to smoke without getting caught by family/friends/neighbors. I had one co-worker who was Mr. Conservative but the new neighbors thought he was being a pervert sneaking around in the lilac bushes. He was trying to sneak a smoke without his toddler seeing him because he didn't want to be a bad example, so he went out in the yard in the rain and tried to find shelter under a bush so the boy wouldn't see him from a window. I laugh everytime I think about it. I try not to think about how he's going to die so nastily. I had an uncle that died of lung cancer. Its a slow creepy way to go. I had several cousins that used to smoke. My uncle demanded practically on his deathbed that each one of them spend one day taking care of him before he died. Every last one of them quit. Cold turkey.
The cigarette is my oldest friend. I started smoking when I was 10, nobody has been with me as long as the cigarette.
Cigarettes never let me down. When I went to war, they went with me. When my car broke down in the middle of a blizzard and I had to walk or die, they walked with me. When I had the best sex of my life, the cigarette was there.
Through large crises and small, through the good, the bad, the ugly and the mundane, the cigarette was there. Whenever I needed that little rush, to celebrate or console, or just mark time, the cigarette was there.
Might kill me, might not, but I should have died in February of 1970, and every minute since then is free and clear. Not borrowed time, free time, to do with as I please. And I do.
Well, they taste good. Thats the real answer; of course, its an acquired taste, as is anything highly civilized.
I quit for 18 months. None of this heroics shit, either; decided that I'd take a stab at not smoking, crumpled up that last pack and went about my business. One evening, 18 months later I was drinking a beer in a bar and realising that this is like pizza without cheese - I went to the cigarette machine and bought a pack.
Cigarettes give a person a chance to think in a calm and unhurried way. This is why I hold it highly civilized. It also, of course, grates upon our modern-day Puritans and that alone if justification for smoking.
Started when I was 13; that 18 month period was from when I was 22 to 24; I'm 38 now and happily smoking...though I do think I might quit in the future; tentatively set the date as my 40th birthday. Might not, though. We'll see.
I love cigars, partly because they taste better than cigs, but mostly because lighting up a big stogie never fails to piss off non-smokers, and a fair amount of cigarette smokers as well. At the end of the day I relish the extra amount of people I piss off because, frankly, I'm an asshole :)
I don't care about the cost to society, or some puritan holier than thou ethic. I care when you interfere with my right to enjoy breathing. Otherwise, knock yourself out.
As Gary indicated, there is in fact a spiritual component to cigarettes, too -- it reminds you not to get too attached to this world, that we are all fellow travelers to the grave (and to the next world), and that we should stop and savor the finer things in life.
Wasn't for the risk of emphysema, I never would've quit.
I love cigarettes because they enable my state legislature to raise tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue and, since I don't smoke, I don't have to pay for any of it!
That reminds me, here in Illinois where I abide, they
canceled funding for the IDecide anti-smoking ad campaign. The news item was on the same page of the local newspaper that had an article about how they were raising cig taxes to help overcome the state's budget shortfall. I wish I would have scanned that page, it's like hypocrisy on parade.
For its sheer laxative value, a smoke makes for a good dump. It's a lovely relaxant, and it beats putting other things in my mouth: like food, or pencils.
the reason i love my cigarettes is that its one step to be political incorrect. i love the way they full my lungs. and it makes me feel more rock n rol of cours
Because they're full of burny goodness?
I don't see why we should tell you why you love cigarettes, though. Don't you know?
For the adrenaline rush of knocking the cherry into you shirt as you're driving 70 mph down a crowded highway at night. Ahhhh.... that's fun.
"Nocturnal Stumblebutt" by Loudon Wainwright III, from the Attempted Mustache album, waaaay long ago.
I haven't checked if it's downloadable, but here are the lyrics:
Well it's 3am, and so I creep
Around the house 'cause you're asleep
I can't sleep, I gotta smoke
I think I left some in my coat
No they're not there, but there's a chance
I left some in a packet in my pants
Bumped into the table, just below the belt
If you were a man baby you'd know how that felt
Just one thing I don't want to do
And that one thing is to wake up you
My hands are shaking, my brow it is damp
Bumped into the chair, knocked over the lamp
Bumped into the chair, knocked over the lamp
Sure I know where some cigarettes are
But it's too cold outside to go to the car
I know this habit of mine, it's gotta be fed
I'm gonna get down I'm gonna scrounge around under the bed
Under the bed, down on the floor
Up on top baby I can hear you snore
Snore baby... ooooooh
Snore baby... ooooooh
Eureka! I'm in luck
I found some matches and a crumpled butt
And just to show I love you
I'm not gonna look for an ashtray baby, I'm gonna use your shoe!
By the way, the cigarette smokes you, slave.
(Three years and forever tobacco-free. Hypnosis.)
I do it because I can't drink beer without smoking.
Cigarettes have a way of making the socialists come out of the closet. You know, the ones that think it is the government's responsibility to tell free individuals what they can and can't do with their own bodies. The ones that think smokers "cost society" more than people with children do and so should have to pay $4 per pack taxes. The ones that think people who smoke should be stuck in a cage and that private property owners should not be allowed to administer their property the way they choose. Cigarettes help us find the authoritarians.
Hmmm....don't you need a few days off from posting? :-)
Cigarettes are sublime and wonderful. We all know how life is full of little periods of time where you have to wait.
Cigarettes allow you to reward yourself for every inconvenience, every distraction and every annoyance with a blast of soothing freebase nicotine -- only seven seconds from the lit end of the cigarette to your brain. Cigarettes are also social occasions. Cigarette smokers share information on smoke breaks. Smokers are also doers. They break up their work into manageable segments and then reward themselves for success in their incremental steps.
If it didn't give you emphysema, cigarette smoking would be the greatest thing since sex.
But alas ...
Quit in 1998. On the patch.
Maybe -- just maybe -- you love cigarettes because you never had the opportunity, or paid obligation, to work with color photographs of autopsied lungs taken from other smokers who were already rotting in their graves by the time you got to see what had happened inside their bodies all those years.
Or all those Chicago years in your life, you never had a chance to visit the pathology section of Cook County Hospital, where the corpses are cut up and some of the best gruesome photography you probably have never seen is done.
Back in 1972, I was a writer with a small PR firm specializing in public health topics. One of our key clients was the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), whose main focus included what I was paid to get a terrible education about. All within a few months that spring and summer.
Driving up Western Avenue on Chicago's north side one day that summer -- in June, to be exact -- I took a drag on the unfiltered cigarette I was smoking, thought long and hard, and flicked it out the driver-side window onto the street with the characteristic snap of index finger against thumb of ten thousand other Chicago drivers.
It was the last occasion in which any smoke entered my lungs.
The first week was a tough one, my body saying to me over and over and over and over: Give me a fucking cigarette, Harris!
I took to chewing gum, furiously, like a caricature of a World War II GI in a Hollywood epic, facing screen combat. That, and eating this and that kind of crap, of the type you can buy along just about any commercial street in Chicago.
But I fought my body that week, and I won. Afterward, I would puff on cigarettes for a while. But never again inhaled the stuff.
One day -- and I don't even remember how many years ago -- I forgot to buy smokes. It had completely fallen out of my consciousness.
A true story. (Just ask Stefi, my wife.)
Any of the above help you in any way? Probably not. But if you still smoke, that's your problem and not the world's, isn't it?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb
Cigarettes are just infantile substitutes for something more sublime.
Cigars.
godammit! Are you smoking again?
Entertainment value. I swear I didn't do it on purpose, but its a riot: I taught my boys that smoking is BAD because it can make you very sick and then kill you. They're 3 and 5 years old. They really take it to heart, meaning: they will tell random strangers loudly and earnestly in public that cigarettes are BAD (etc)! I try to tell them that sometimes people make foolish choices and that is their own decision. This does not stop them from their crusade. See, they are convinced that when they see people do naughty things (like wearing their caps inside a building) that its only because those people don't know any better and that once you tell them they'll see reason. Oh, the faith in humanity!
Oh, I also love to watch the guilty smokers sneak around the bushes trying to smoke without getting caught by family/friends/neighbors. I had one co-worker who was Mr. Conservative but the new neighbors thought he was being a pervert sneaking around in the lilac bushes. He was trying to sneak a smoke without his toddler seeing him because he didn't want to be a bad example, so he went out in the yard in the rain and tried to find shelter under a bush so the boy wouldn't see him from a window. I laugh everytime I think about it. I try not to think about how he's going to die so nastily. I had an uncle that died of lung cancer. Its a slow creepy way to go. I had several cousins that used to smoke. My uncle demanded practically on his deathbed that each one of them spend one day taking care of him before he died. Every last one of them quit. Cold turkey.
The cigarette is my oldest friend. I started smoking when I was 10, nobody has been with me as long as the cigarette.
Cigarettes never let me down. When I went to war, they went with me. When my car broke down in the middle of a blizzard and I had to walk or die, they walked with me. When I had the best sex of my life, the cigarette was there.
Through large crises and small, through the good, the bad, the ugly and the mundane, the cigarette was there. Whenever I needed that little rush, to celebrate or console, or just mark time, the cigarette was there.
Might kill me, might not, but I should have died in February of 1970, and every minute since then is free and clear. Not borrowed time, free time, to do with as I please. And I do.
Well, they taste good. Thats the real answer; of course, its an acquired taste, as is anything highly civilized.
I quit for 18 months. None of this heroics shit, either; decided that I'd take a stab at not smoking, crumpled up that last pack and went about my business. One evening, 18 months later I was drinking a beer in a bar and realising that this is like pizza without cheese - I went to the cigarette machine and bought a pack.
Cigarettes give a person a chance to think in a calm and unhurried way. This is why I hold it highly civilized. It also, of course, grates upon our modern-day Puritans and that alone if justification for smoking.
Started when I was 13; that 18 month period was from when I was 22 to 24; I'm 38 now and happily smoking...though I do think I might quit in the future; tentatively set the date as my 40th birthday. Might not, though. We'll see.
I love cigars, partly because they taste better than cigs, but mostly because lighting up a big stogie never fails to piss off non-smokers, and a fair amount of cigarette smokers as well. At the end of the day I relish the extra amount of people I piss off because, frankly, I'm an asshole :)
I don't care about the cost to society, or some puritan holier than thou ethic. I care when you interfere with my right to enjoy breathing. Otherwise, knock yourself out.
(not the same Owen as above)
Hooray for the eloquent Gary Utter! Well said.
As Gary indicated, there is in fact a spiritual component to cigarettes, too -- it reminds you not to get too attached to this world, that we are all fellow travelers to the grave (and to the next world), and that we should stop and savor the finer things in life.
Wasn't for the risk of emphysema, I never would've quit.
I'm not even a smoker, but this is almost enough to make me start.
I love cigarettes because they enable my state legislature to raise tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue and, since I don't smoke, I don't have to pay for any of it!
That reminds me, here in Illinois where I abide, they
canceled funding for the IDecide anti-smoking ad campaign. The news item was on the same page of the local newspaper that had an article about how they were raising cig taxes to help overcome the state's budget shortfall. I wish I would have scanned that page, it's like hypocrisy on parade.
It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it a thousand times.
For its sheer laxative value, a smoke makes for a good dump. It's a lovely relaxant, and it beats putting other things in my mouth: like food, or pencils.
the reason i love my cigarettes is that its one step to be political incorrect. i love the way they full my lungs. and it makes me feel more rock n rol of cours
It is not good to smoke or drink or use other drugs , but it is EVERY ONES right to do so !
That is why I love my cigarettes . . .
Anyone try to stop me . . .