Lippard.Multics 1985-11-12 14:57:25 mst Tue
Subject:  Dave Barry on Smoking
Date:  Tuesday, 12 November 1985 14:54 mst
From:  Charlie Spitzer <Spitzer>
To:  {mbx >udd>m>jjl>misc>misc}

Date: Fri, 8 Nov 85 10:28 EST
From: Nancy Connor <nancy@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>

                            NUTS TO THE BUTTS
                              By Dave Barry

Attention, nicotine addicts:  Today is the Great American Smokeout, a day
when we nonsmokers all over the country join with you in a sincere effort
to make you realize what jerks you are.

Of course, we don't put it that bluntly.  What we say is that we're
concerned about your health and happiness, and your influence on your
children, and the effects of smoking on the nation's productivity, and
fires, but really we just think you should stop being such jerks.

Here is a surefire method for quitting smoking.  First you go around for
most of your adult life claiming you don't really smoke, only in truth
you smoke all the time.  What you do is buy maybe a pack a day, smoke
five cigarettes, then throw the pack away and swear you will never buy
another pack, which means you have to borrow cigarettes for the rest of
the day.

After maybe 15 years of this, you go to Hannah Gardner's annual Christmas
eggnog party and consume enough eggnog to fuel a conventional aircraft
carrier for a year, and then, suddenly, in the kitchen, you have a massive
guilt attack wherein you realize, in a blinding flash, that you are like
unto the lowest form of toilet-clinging bacteria, unworthy of being spat
upon by diseased goats.  I used this surefire method to quit smoking last
Dec. 17, and I haven't had a cigarette since.

Guilt is what does it, smokers.  You'll never quit smoking if your only
motivation is that you want to feel good about yourself.  Hell, if I wanted
to feel good, I'd have a cigarette right now, because they taste great, as
you know if you smoke them, you jerk.

Those of you who never smoked, of course, probably do not agree that
cigarettes taste great.  You may even be fond of saying, in a snotty tone
of voice, that cigarettes are disgusting.  My advice to you is to shut up.
I mean, I happen to think that eating olives is disgusting, but I doubt
that I could convert any olive eaters by going around announcing that olives
resemble raw toad organs, although they clearly do.

Also, you cannot get people to stop smoking by appealing to their reason.
The most reasonable person I know is my father, who happens to be a clergy-
man.  As long as I can remember, people have come to him for advice when
their marriages were breaking up, or their daughters wanted to run away
and catch venereal disease, or whatever.  My father would discuss their
problems in the most rational way imaginable, all the while smoking like
a fiend.

From time to time he would announce that he was going to quit, but what he
would actually do is carry two kinds of cigarettes: some normal ones,
such as Winstons, and some really wimpy low-tar-and-nicotine ones, such as
Carltons, which give you all the smoking enjoyment of sucking on a Bic pen.
Dad would smoke a few Carltons.  Then he'd say, "I think I'll have a
cigarette," and he'd smoke a Winston.  So he was smoking constantly, but he'd
count only the Winstons.  Then he'd claim--this Presbyterian minister, now
famed for his honesty--that he was down to a pack a day, when the truth was
that he couldn't have smoked any more cigarettes unless he started using
orifices other than his mouth.

So forget about reason, smokers:  Massive guilt is your only hope.  I urge
you to arrange to be overcome by shame and humiliation in the kitchen
during Hannah Gardner's eggnog party.  I haven't checked with Hannah yet,
but I don't imagine she'll object.  By about 7 p.m. there are so many
eggnog-infused people at her party that another hundred thousand or so
wailing in the kitchen would never be noticed.

I'm not saying it will be easy once you've quit, but there are some things
you can do.  The main one is to sit in the smoking section on trains and
airplanes, where you can lean over and inhale other people's smoke,
which means you can get some nicotine AND feel self-righteous at the same
time.  If you don't have a job that requires you to take trains and planes,
I suggest you get one.

And for those of you olive-eaters who are about to write in and tell me
that second-hand smoke is dangerous, too, let me suggest that you shut up.

                                         - The Boston Globe, 17 November 1983