Kiss My Ash

after about 15 years, my mom quit smoking again. i say "again" because she had started smoking at, about, age 16 and then quit when she got pregnant with my brother at 24. she didn't start again till some 16 years later; why is a blog in and of itself. i've been trying to get her to quit for years, before it killed her. she's overweight, and has both asthma and a heart problem. needless to say, i couldn't be happier when she told me that she was quitting (though i feigned indifference). she knows i support her 100%.

i bring this up because while sitting on the bus this morning, i was shocked at the number of people who were smoking, on the streets of manhattan, at 7 am. i'm barely conscious at that hour, and can barely manage working my razor. i can't even conceive of having a flaming stick hanging from my lip or between my fingers.

mind you, i'm not a smoker. i've never been a smoker; except for one ski-weekend in college, and that didn't end well at all since i inherited not only mom mom's big brown eyes and sauce making skills, but also her crappy lung capacity. it never really appealed to me growing up and as i got older, it wasn't the smell of smoke that turned me off it was that i equated smoking with dirt and litter.

smoking is probably the only socially acceptable addiction/habit that almost always ends in littering. it drives me nuts when i see some one flick a still smoldering cigarett in the street, especially if they don't stamp it out afterward. i mean you rarely see a heroin addict shoot up and then throw their still-dripping needle on the sidewalk, right? even we coffee addicts toss our cups in the trash. if a cop saw us throw a cup of hot coffee in the street, you'd get a ticket. ever see someone get busted for ashing on the sidewalk? i didn't think so.

despite all these smoking bans across New York and New Jersey, i must say i'm not happy. smoking's not my thing, but i'll be damned if i'm gonna tell somebody else they can't do it. i honestly don't think it's fair to ostracize people who pay such outrageous taxes on their method of addiction. if you don't want people smoking, make it illegal all across the board. it's also forced all the smokers out of the bars, clubs, offices and restaruants and into the streets where they've started chanelling their agression by flicking butts at passers-by. oh they say it's an accident but you can just tell...

i'll be honest, if i was forced to pay $7 a pop for my coffee and then told where i could drink it, you'd better believe there'd be alot more people out there with scald marks and foam on their lapels.

"Cigarettes and chocolate milk/These are just a couple of my cravings/Everything it seems I likes a little bit stronger/A little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me"~Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk (Rufus Wainwright)