It's not always the economy.

I am downright sick of observing photos or videos of people complaining about not having enough money for basic things such as food, rent, or gas money while they have a freaking cigarette in their hand or dangling from their slack jaws.

Now, if someone wants to smoke, that's their business. They can suck down those cancer sticks all they want, as long as their afterburn doesn't get anywhere near me. Go America. But quit complaining that the economy sucks so bad that you can't afford the bare necessities. It's apparently not that bad if you can still drop anywhere between $15 - $50 a carton. Seriously - on my way to work a Marlboro sign sitting outside a 7-11 caught my attention advertising the phlegm ball chopsticks at $48.50 a carton. The purchaser is paying almost a quarter for every cig they light up. Moron. Why don't they save time and help out the needy? I'm sure they could give some kid the cash and then let the kid stomp on their chest. It'd have the same effect a heck of a lot quicker and then maybe a poor kid can go buy shoes or whatever.

I'm also sick of people trying to pry my thought on this apart by saying that they are addicted to cigarettes and 'can't help it'. At one point, I began to hear the plea until these people started trying to convince me that nicotine addiction was a 'disease'. No, cancer is a disease. I like coffee, soda, and energy drinks. If I don't have one or the other, I'll get a headache. By that standard I'm addicted to caffeine. I'm not freaking diseased, I'm addicted. There's a difference. So, I take a frickin' Tylenol and get the heck over it.

But again, I don't really even care if you smoke. Like I said, what you do with your money isn't my business, and if you like to smoke to relax then, hey go ahead and enjoy a smoke. I don't even have problems with smoking sections in restaurants or no smoke bans in bars. But don't expect me to listen to your falsetto financial plights. Because if you're dropping $2.50+ a pack and think that the only reason you can't afford food and clothes for your kids is because "Bush frak'd the economy" for you, then you're either unhinged, unwilling to take responsibility for your own choices, just plain stupid, or a combination of all three.

Oh, and the same goes for cable/satellite. Honestly, lets say that you smoke a pack a day and have a really good monthly deal on cable and only spend $30 a month on cable (which is all but unheard of anymore). You're dropping $105 a month that you'll never see again - unless you consider stained teeth and an in-depth of knowledge on reruns of Full House. After all, how many times do you flip through the channels complaining that nothing is on? Do you know what you could do with that $105? Here's a short list I've composed of things that are better to do with said money:

• Buy your kids a few books. They might, I don't know, learn something without having the public school system taking care of it for you.
• Spend it on food that was once actually grown or raised. I hear vitamins are actually better than chemicals...
• Convert it into pennies and dive into them Scrooge McDuck style.
• Convert it into singles and strap it into underpinnings of a morbidly obese belly-dancer.
• Burn it.

I'm going to simply stop here, because the research I did for this entry led me into long comment lists on people complaining about taxes on cigarettes going up and how this is such an infringement on their rights... which naturally causes me to think about my rights to not have to pay for other people's self-induced medical bills. No one wants to go there.


Something tells me I'm going to get hate mail for this.