Now

Part and parcel of the SmokeEnders program is the weekly stepdown to a weaker cigarette.  Now that we're in the final week, we find ourselves smoking Nows, which have exactly .1 mg of nicotine.  It's like smoking the ghost of a cigarette.  To make matters worse, Now is a brand marketed to women.  We would smoke Carltons, the equally weak male-targeted brand, but we can't find them anywhere.  Oh well.  Things could be worse.  We could be smoking Virginia Slims.

We suspect the SmokeEnders people think that making us smoke cigarettes that taste like heated air will give us the impetus to quit.  How foolish of them.  We would smoke cigarettes that taste like heated shit, if that's all that was available.  Smokers smoke, it's what they live for.  If desperate, we become remarkably unchoosy.  We will stand outside in a blizzard and smoke sticks wrapped in yak hair if they are all that's available. 

Used to be all our friends smoked.  One by one they quit, in the face of the mildly alarming fact that smoking could kill them.  Could!  To quit in the face of a mere possibility strikes us an act of extreme cowardice.  But be that as it may.  Now we smoke on, alone, a pariah.  We alone have the gumption to pursue, even unto death, an ephemeral pleasure that does not satisfy.  All we ask for is a few puffs every few hours to keep us from going crazy. 

Fact is we live closer to the edge than most people.  They require a good push to go flying off the cliff of sanity.  We require the mildest nudge.  Something inside of us is broken, in addition to our moral compass.  Still, we intend to give it our best.  Come Friday, we will try to go on without our greatest source of solace, besides Mrs. UF and our dogs.  Who had better hide under the bed, lest we try to light up their tails. 

 

Comments

[Jeffers]

Howdy! Glad to see your back. Soldier on, McDuff. Loves you,

Jeffers

[The Good German]

Now is for girls.
The agony AND the humiliation. SmokeEnders sounds terrible.

[UF Mike]

When you're down in the ditch, all that's left to do is sing. Love you too, Jeffers. Good German, SmokeEnders is terrible. I'm pretty sure Hitler invented it. They don't mention him on the packaging, but the booklet keeps saying, "Your lungs need Lebensraum! Lebensraum!"

[Jan Martin Löhndorf]

Endsieg over smoking, finally.

[gillian]

"You've come a long way, baby!" http://www.smokernewsworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/V-slims.jpg

[UF Mike]

She looks like she's being attacked by a giant frilly shellfish.

[gillian]

Yah, I couldn't figure out what was going on with that ad. By the way, I tried posting it here the other day and it didn't work, but although I don't like smoking, I LOVE vintage cigarette ads. Especially the xmas ads, but they are all pretty fantastic.

[Dan]

They tell you about the reduced risk of cancer with the low-tar sticks, what they don't mention is the increased risk of hernia associated with trying to get a draw out of the damn things.