Thursday, January 27, 2005

Reasons to start smoking

The world is a funny old place. There are all those people out there who are trying to stop smoking, whereas I find myself increasingly wanting to take it up. The latest reason I want to start smoking is so that I could not be employed by Weyco. How utterly ridiculous is it that this company thinks they have the right to ban people from smoking, even when they are not at work. It is absolutely terrifying what companies think they can, and in this day and age they are probably correct, get away with. If my employers told me that I wasn't allowed to smoke I would be straight down to the 7-11 and have gone through a carton and half by the time I got back to work, coughing and smelling like a crematorium.

I can, almost, understand those laws which prevent people smoking in enclosed public spaces, such as the forthcoming Franklin County ban on smoking in bars. But to force people to give up a habit that gives them pleasure just because the powers that be currently frown upon it, is very very wrong and very very scary.

I am still adamantly of the opinion that smoking is not hazardous to your health. Sure if you smoke, you're going to have an increased chance of catching some nasty, maybe deadly, disease down the line. But who's to say what would have happened if you didn't smoke? Something you do for ten, twenty, thirty, fifty years and then you die is not hazardous to health. Hazardous to your health is something you do for twenty minutes, with a very serious risk of death or damage (like driving the wrong way down the freeway, as I've been known to do from time to time, although usually for less than twenty minutes).

I'm particularly scared because if they can do this for smoking, then what next? Drinking? Eating too much? Not being white? All of which are likely to decrease your life expectancy, or so I'm led to believe. (On the subject of eating too much, don't a significant number of people put on weight when they stop smoking? And if they do, isn't that hazardous to their health?)

Yeah you guessed it, I'm at work (for the first time in three days, and I actually had a very productive day, go team me), it's gone six o'clock and I wanted something to rant about. Back in the good ol' days I would have gone outside and tried to smash beer bottles with a football (of the spherical variety), but now that I'm cooped up in frigid Ohio, I have to find alternative means to relieve my excess aggravation. After all how many swear words can you write on a little yellow notepad?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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