This is Why People Smoke
Sure it ruins your health and if you’re bad about it it’ll even kill you, but when everything that can go wrong can in a day, including:
CDR Salamander - Morris’s horrendus posterus
This will make you want to take your medication.
He laid out the political future: “Hillary will be the next president, and she’ll be the worst president we’ve ever seen.” No matter what happens, the situation in Iraq will “assure that the GOP gets massacred in 2008 congressional elections.” In 2010, the Republicans will take back the Congress — “Hillary will give Republicans the same gift she gave them in 1994” — and they’ll win the presidency in 2012, but thanks to demographic shifts favoring Republicans (namely the rising Hispanic and African-American populations), “that will be the last Republican president we’ll ever see.”
Why the hell not? But now I can’t even move to France to be chic about it. Augh!
I don’t think his version of the future will turn out like he thinks. I can see how he got there. Politics has a way of shifting in ways you wouldn’t think. Could Morris’s future happen? Sure. Will it? I doubt it. It still can make you want to stay involved though…..
Augh!
As for the other things going wrong: If you spend half your teen years and the entirety of your adult life so far looking forward to fulfilling a dream that could only be achieved properly in your latter, more financially solvent years, and finally that day has arrived thanks to just skating in between the limits of time (discontinued products after all that time) and money (Amazon marketplace sellers laying their hands on alternate printings), just know that “complete” and “uncut” doesn’t necessarily mean “complete” or “uncut” and that your dreams shall be dashed and you’ll find yourself caught in the twin grips of the same time (needing that discontinued item) and insufficient solvency (used copies of which going for at least $150) you moments earlier had thought to have escaped.
Update:
On the bright side, my box hedge is sprouting, and the way I wanted it to after pruning it last fall.
Update II!
And then I went down to the International District and was standing there with a backpack full and two shopping bags full of assorted Japanese foodstuffs, including the four burdock roots sticking a foot out of one of them, and a bus that goes straight up to my bus stop which shouldn’t have been in that part of town at all pulls up and it’s an express so it never fills up and there’s just nice people and no crazies like on the way down like the guy who ripped off four or five bags of chicken, pork and beef from a grocery store and was trying to sell it, and the bus driver was great and dodging cars and getting all the lights (I love Russians (or Poles, or …Latvians for all I know)) and one of the old guys that got on at the bottom of the hill (who were speaking Russian or something to each other (they were soft and the bus was loud) helped me into my backpack when my back was turned to him as I tried to wriggle back into it as we approached my stop and suddenly it started levitating onto my back and I turned around and he was lifting it with a big grin and he had a hat on and I love when old guys wear hats and even though my head’s killing me from the vicodin withdrawal and my finger still twinges I think God took pity on me.
I’m adding a link to a picture of burdock roots (aka gobo) so you appreciate it fully. Those, but remember they’re 3-4 feet long.
February 1st, 2007 at 11:39 am
thanks to demographic shifts favoring Republicans (namely the rising Hispanic and African-American populations), “that will be the last Republican president we’ll ever see.”
The whopper typo was in the original, I discounted the hole thing.
February 1st, 2007 at 11:42 am
And yes, when perky Katy announces that the comet is now only 2 days out I will be investing in several packs of Salems and perhaps a fine table-lighter, if such is still available.
February 1st, 2007 at 11:59 am
It doesn’t take a seer to predict a Republican wipe-out in ‘08. Our bench for President is not deep, and twice as many Republican Senate seats are up in ‘08 as Dems, so it wouldn’t be a hot year for the GOP in the best of times.
On the “bright” side, however, the Dem bench ain’t that deep, either; I see the Presidency as a toss-up. And the House will go the way of Iraq. If by some miracle of grace and stubbornness we pull it off, the House will be ours.
And if Morris turns out to be right, hey, at least if the Dems are in power they might be FOR the country after being against it.
February 1st, 2007 at 12:00 pm
But by all means smoke if you got ‘em.
February 1st, 2007 at 12:04 pm
But I don’t got ‘em. I depleted my reserves years ago.
A table lighter. I like that. I’ll keep it with my supply of nuke pills. Open In Case of Coming Apocalypse.
February 2nd, 2007 at 2:08 am
So that’s what burdock looks like! The local soda of choice where I come from used to be dandelion and burdock, but I’d not the foggiest idea what they look like. Ten months of not smoking now. Can’t do a table lighter, but I’ve got a nice selection of ash trays.
February 2nd, 2007 at 2:47 am
Did Mrs Red kick the habit at the same time?
So that’s what something I have never heard of looks like! Fancy that!
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:56 am
Mrs Red had never smoked in the first place and so was delighted to get rid of the paraphernalia.
Can’t help thinking dinner chez ninme could get a bit exotic. Worth having a net with the chopsticks beforehand, I reckon.
See the Aussie cricketers, who’d clearly been dying of boredom, let England win one.
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:58 am
Then of course there was the 60s nuclear war thriller “Fail Safe” by Eugene Burdock and Harvey Wheeler.
February 2nd, 2007 at 7:27 am
I don’t believe this. Dandelion and burdock is the favourite drink of The Hoff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandelionandburdock I really don’t believe this.
February 2nd, 2007 at 9:14 am
Dinner chez ninme is certainly not what most mid-twenty-year-olds eat on a daily basis.
Apparently, and I only discovered this last night looking for a picture (there aren’t a lot out there), it’s the most “yang” vegetable in Zen macrobiotic cooking. I just think it’s really good.
(Continuing the theme from the other day: You should try Japanese. The weight just oozes off of you. Peter hadn’t weight himself in a while but his pants were really loose so he weighed himself and had a minor heart attack. I reassured him that it had been happening gradually and perfectly healthfully and he was just surprised.)
I love ashtrays. A lost art that you can get pretty cheap since no one wants theirs anymore.
February 2nd, 2007 at 9:25 am
Well I’m eating tinned oily fish and 10-bean salad for lunch most days now so that must help. Not that keen on cold rice, somehow.
Art deco ashtrays are the best.
February 2nd, 2007 at 10:52 am
But there’s lots of oil in a bean salad. I can cook for a week without using a drop of oil. Though I usually don’t. But even that’s just a little rice bran oil. And who said anything about cold rice?
I’m fond of the lacquer ashtrays in Chinatown. I remember though when I was young even we had an ashtray, though no one ever smoked in our house that I can remember. I wonder if that thing’s still there…
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Viva la box hedge!
You know, I saw that typo on the orig and did not correct it. My bad Ninme. Sorry.