An irregular, irreverent, post-modern account of the surreal, the ordinary, and the bizarre happenings on and around the Felia lavender farm in Crete

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Thanks for crapping on my life

I'm not quite sure who this is addressed to but ... Thanks for ruining a great portion of my life outside of home. I've always valued quality over quantity and never more so than when it comes to life itself. People have long lectured me about losing 20 years of my life to cigarettes. I would reply that the 20 years that the cigarettes were getting were crap anyway: years of dependence, incontinence, illness and pain ~ great, take them ~ I'll take 60 enjoyable and self sufficient years and cash in the 20 crap ones for the sake of those cigarettes. The cigarette with my first coffee in the morning at that warm little cafe on the corner as I gaze out of the window as the day develops. The one over the rich port at the end of a fine meal in good company. The cigarette after sex, good, bad, or just plain indifferent. Some body of jerks has taken steps to take them all away from me - well two of them so far but I don't doubt that the mean spirited intolerance they have shown so far will not stay their hand from the last one in time.

A week's stay in Italy was less enjoyable, and less enjoyed, than it could have been because of those jerks. Standing outside cafes and restaurants in February: foregoing coffee after dinner so that I can get out and get my cigarette put a serious crimp in my fun; drinking coffee in the rain with gloves on likewise. And you know what? The anti smoking jerks, those self righteous naysayers, really couldn't give a tinker's cuss, a flying fuck, a twopenny damn. They don't care whether I ever enjoy breakfast, or dinner, or sex again because they'd rather hand me back those 20 discarded years (yeah sure, it's all motivated by a concern for my longevity). Those 20 shitty years that I don't want and that, thanks to our jerks, will be yet more miserable and unbearable than even I had anticipated. Thanks a bunch.

1 comment:

  1. Actually, Derek, it's not all about concern for your health. It's about second-hand smoke, which non-smokers perceive as a foul stench and a hazard to them. This is one of those classic "Whose rights should prevail?" conundrums. In this case, the power seems to be with the majority. How often does that happen anymore?

    Ciao,
    Wayne

    P.S. If you ever want to light up around me, better give me a cig, too. It's first-hand smoke for me, or nothing. :)

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