So I saw something on TV that pissed me right the hell off today.

It was another one of those ‘truth’ anti-smoking ads. You know, the ones filled with those punk teenagers that you just want to hit in the face with a fucking brick. Anyways today’s group of asshole kids were running around unsupervised in a busy intersection (which ordinarily I would encourage) with a clock. Every 8 seconds they handed a random person an orange thing. Looked like a coaster you get in a bar. It seemed to have writing on it, but it must have had as much relevance as the rest of their info because they never give you a chance to read it. Presumably, it had the same bullshit statistic that they spewed at the viewing audience, which was “Every eight seconds an American dies a tobacco related death”. Their website says “Someone in the WORLD”, but the commercial clearly says “In AMERICA”.

In any event, this seemed a little off to me.

So I did a little research and I found out that the birth rate in America is also about one every eight seconds. So according to ‘truth’ tobacco is killing the American population at roughly the same rate as it’s being replenished. So when you factor in the more popular categories on the top ten causes of death like suicide, homicide and my favorite, accidental death, we should be EXTINCT. Someone might want to check on that though. I’m not exactly a math whiz. (Yes Sham, I’m talking directly to YOU.)

Seems to me they must be using the term ‘tobacco related’ awfully liberally.

Say you’re a non-smoker, but you work in a cigarette company and a machine breaks and you’re crushed under two tons of Marlboros. Is that a ‘tobacco related death’? What if a non-smoker is out jogging and gets run over by a cigarette truck, also for the sake of argument driven by a non-smoker. Is that a ‘tobacco related death’? Actually that could be considered ‘tobacco related manslaughter’. I wonder if they have a statistic for THAT? I’d check, but that website makes me nauseous. You notice I didn’t put up a link to it. I don’t want to encourage anyone to go there

This is part of a growing trend in our country that really bothers me. It seems that the powers that be have decided that it’s OK to outright lie to people if they deem it’s for our own good.

It’s OK to tell us that if just one of us could have gone without that one joint back in ’01 then 9-11 wouldn’t have happened because God knows all the marijuana in the world comes from Afghanistan. (Bill Maher pointed it out first that diamonds fund terrorism, but there are no ads telling us not to buy diamonds are there? No, there’s actually ads telling us that we should blow two months salary on the goddamn things! But back to my point.)

It’s OK for celebrities to tell us that our cars, and more recently our SUV’s, are killing the environment before they climb into their private jets and fly away. And yes, it’s OK to tell us that smoking will make you impotent and that secondhand smoke kills and all that other bullshit they throw at us.

I have to admit that, yes, smoking is bad for you, but you know what? I don’t give a shit. Want to see my feelings on smoking? Check out Zombie’s blog.

I think everyone goddamn knows that smoking is bad for you. And if people chose to smoke anyway they have a right to do it. So why do I have to keep fucking hearing about it?

The ideology is that the tobacco companies lie about their product to make it sound safe. This was a point. In the 60’s. Back then there were cigarette commercials by fucking doctors, but since 1970 everyone has known that it’s bad for you. I know it’s bad for you, so STOP FUCKING TELLING ME.

And if you’re one of the kids in those commercials and you’re reading this, I just want you to know that I genuinely want something bad to happen to you. That, and I want you to know that your commercials have INSPIRED me to smoke. But more than that, I really DO want something bad to happen to you.

I want to see those kids die in a fire. A 'tobacco related' fire.