The World Is My Ashtray

Right now I’m burning off seven minutes of my life. After I finish with this seven minutes, I’ll light up another cigarette and take care of another seven shitty minutes of old age. And I will love it just as much as this one.

I love smoking. All the cool people smoke. Me, Johnny Depp, Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson, Denis Leary, Bill Hicks. Okay, so Bill Hicks died in his forties, but that’s only because he quit smoking. And he died of pancreatic cancer, not lung cancer or a heart attack. That was his body’s big “fuck you” for all of those smoking and health nut jokes he told. You want to quit and be a huge hypocrite? Okay, bam, you’re dead. And, sure, Denis Leary quit and lost his sense of humor and started making movies like “Dawg.” But Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is pushing eighty and still inhaling Pall Malls like a dying man sucking on oxygen in a crashing plane. He knows what I know. Quitters never win.

If you’re not smoking you should be.

It’s like Denis Leary said back when he was still funny and not putting fifty percent crappy music filler on his comedy albums.

“Smoking takes ten years off your life. Well it's the ten worst years, isn't it folks? It's the ones at the end! It's the wheelchair, kidney dialysis, adult diaper fucking years. You can have those years! We don't want 'em, alright?”

My grandmother has spent the last seven years wasting away in a nursing home, unaware of who she is and who her family is. When I go see her, she doesn’t have a clue who I am. She can’t get out of bed because her hip keeps breaking. I love my grandmother dearly, but I don’t think that’s living. That’s why I’m smoking for my health. So I never have to go through that. When I keel over of a heart attack at fifty something like my grandfather did, I’ll still be a virile and cognizant bastard. And I’ll have a big fucking smile on my face because I never had to wear Depends. People will remember me as a force of nature rather than some frail, brittle-boned old man with translucent skin.

Don’t let anyone tell you that smoking makes you look old either. That’s bullshit. I’m thirty-five years old and look younger than most non-smokers. It isn’t smoking that makes you look old, it’s growing up. I mean look at Johnny Depp. Look at Brad Pitt. Do either of those guys look forty?

If anything smoking keeps you young. Colonel Depp hasn’t aged a day in the last twenty years and that’s because he smokes.

What? You think I’m making this stuff up?

Back in the fifties Rod Serling would smoke in his intros for Twilight Zone. That’s how fucking cool he was. He was from our grandparents’ generation where all the men worked eighteen hours and smoked four packs of cigarettes a day. They did us all a huge favor and died young before they could drain Social Security dry.

Not our generation. We’re making all of these fucking smoke-free environments. We have some sort of complex where we think we’re going to live forever if only we eat right and quit smoking and quit drinking and quit having any sort of fun what-so-fucking-ever. In some places, like California and New York City, you can’t even smoke in a bar anymore. In a goddamn bar. Bukowski is rolling in his grave right now.

We’re a selfish, weak-willed bunch of assholes that have let the non-smokers make all of the decisions for us. Those same non-smokers who drive gas-guzzling SUVs that burn through petroleum and pollute the fucking environment like there’s no tomorrow, screaming, “Second-hand smoke kills! Second-hand smoke kills!”

Because it’s okay to kill the world ecology as long you’re not indirectly killing people.

And what’s so bad about indirectly killing people? That’s one of my favorite reasons for smoking. That makes me want to smoke more. It makes me want to blow smoke in the face of every baby on the planet.

Bill Hicks said it best about non-smokers when he said, “Obnoxious, self-righteous, whining little fucks. My biggest fear is if I quit smoking I’ll become one of you.”

The only thing worse than someone who’s never smoked is someone who’s quit smoking and points that out to you every time you light up. You know what, asshole? That was your choice to be a goddamn quitter. I don’t quit anything. Here, have some second-hand smoke, you fucking Benedict Arnold.

Sure, there are some drawbacks, but even the drawbacks can be a plus. Your teeth will turn yellow and everything you own will smell like an ashtray. But when you smoke, you don’t smell any of that anyway. Every nasty smell that every non-smoker has to suffer through, you’re automatically exempt from, including your own cigarette smoke. And you can always get your teeth bleached like I did. I have whiter teeth than a lot of coffee-drinking non-smokers. Now there’s an oxymoron if there ever was one.

Who can love coffee and not smoke?

For that matter, who can love beer and not smoke?

There’s nothing better than throwing back beer after beer and chain-smoking a night away. It’s sublime. It’s one of the reasons mankind crawled out the muck.

It’s okay that I wheeze like an eighty-year old man, because I look fucking great when I’m smoking a cigarette. No non-smoker will ever look as cool as I do sitting here writing this right now.

Even the coolest fictional characters smoke. Where would Marla Singer be without her chain-smoking? Tony Soprano never looks more menacing than when he’s lighting up a big fat Cuban cigar. Wolverine smokes. John Constantine smokes.

So, kids, take my advice and start smoking.

It’s like Dennis Hopper said in Waterworld.

“You’re never too young to start.”

My Balls Are Bigger Than Yours

I have bigger balls than Maddox.

I used to have a lot of respect for everyone’s favorite pissed off pirate and his self-proclaimed “Greatest Page in the Universe.” I used to read his entries and laugh out loud. And even though he’d gotten lazy lately and started posting boring bullshit like “Video Games You’ll Never Play,” I kept reading, hoping he’d return to some of his comedic greatness. Then I read the biggest blow to his credibility, his latest entry about Websense. Man, I really liked that idea. I really liked it back when I wrote about it two fucking months ago and called it “Fuck Websense in the Ear.”

Maybe a few of you will remember the entry. It was a poignant, touching piece with veiled threats of burning down Websense’s corporate headquarters. It was about how Websense deemed my site “tasteless” and I went into one of my trade-marked angry rants about “who decides what’s tasteful and what isn’t.” Because we all know Websense and its employees are the ultimate purveyors of good taste in the business world.

One part of my entry, I talked about how I’ve blocked anyone from Websense from ever reading my site. I thought that was a nice touch of irony. Obviously, Maddox thought the same thing, as he copied the idea and called it his own.

Thanks for ripping me off, Che Guapo. Next time, can you maybe come up with your own ideas?

I know it sucks to be blocked by Websense. Like I said, I was there. But, unlike Maddox, I had the nerve to call up their corporate headquarters and bitch at their employees. You know, the ones who actually make the decisions to label sites things like “tasteless.” I argued that my personal thoughts being deemed “tasteless” was an insult to my own very moral viewpoints which are expressed in everything I write.

And even though one of the Websense employees that I spoke with said he actually agreed that I was “tasteless”, two days later my site was removed from that category. I’m not sure if my threats had anything to do with it, but I’ve always found that people respond well to threats. And this didn’t seem to dispute that fact.

This is why you can all read my site at work and school and at your local public library, but a lot of you, those of you with Websense baby-sitting your impressionable little minds, can’t read Maddox. It’s not because he’s any more “tasteless” than I am. It’s because my balls are bigger.

I fought The Man and I won. Maddox just whined and accepted defeat. Sure, he threw out a few good insults, but they’ll never be read by a bunch of his readers because he couldn’t do what I did and defeat those evil corporate cock-sucking thought police.

I can’t read the Misanthropic Bitch or Maddox at work anymore. (Though with the frequency both of them are updating, it’s not like I’m missing much.) But I can read the genius of Smotlock.

And that’s because I am better than both of them. I defend my readers’ rights to read my free fucking speech to the bitter end. This country may be turning into a fascist version of Disneyworld, but I will never take it lying down.

I’m glad you’re all so fucking gracious about it and everything. Thanks for all the comments on the last entry. All fucking six of them. It’s good to know all of this writing isn’t in vain. You ungrateful fucks can all go read Maddox when he updates in about two months. I’m sure he’ll have some crappy children’s art you can enjoy or a movie review that basically says “this sucks.” Or maybe he’ll have another topic he stole from me. You never know.

Now go fuck yourselves. I’m going back to writing my novel, you goddamn ingrates.

Tell me how great I am or go read the ongoing chronicles of the cutters.

Because I don’t have time for your fucking apathy.

My ego will never allow it.