One life saved from Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT), many more to left to save.
I am pleased to announce that I have saved one soul from the curse of nicotine lozenges and their threat to the health of good people. A few days ago, I was greeted by an acquaintance, who lifted their cigarette towards me, gave me a hug and told me that they had taken my advice and quit sucking. Hallelujah!
This reformed NRT user informed me that they felt good about it and were glad they had quit sucking because the lozenges are very unconscious and habit-forming in comparison to cigarettes. I agreed. Anything that is kept in the mouth like a candy for long periods of time becomes thoughtless and unconscious. Smoking a cigarette is very conscious and not a habit.
A habit is something that one doesn't think about, isn't aware they are doing, but does with no pleasure. A habit is similar to knuckle-popping, nose-picking, hair-twisting, nail-biting, gum-chewing and other annoying habits people are prone to do. It's very difficult to quit a habit and retrain one's patterns. But a cigarette user cannot make an unconscious habit of smoking, thus if one chooses to quit they have more control over their ability to do so.
Over the week I have encountered a few interesting people. One, a Vietnam vet about to retire from the Postal Service in California. He looked clean cut and fatherly, but was a typical drug-infused, closed minded person of his generation. He lives on marijuana, mushrooms, and peyote (which he said cured him of his LSD use). He's had several heart surgeries, and along with the hallucinogenics takes what the doctor deals him too: statins and a host of others. He thinks tobacco is evil. Hmm. That drug regimen is quite effective.
The Postal Vietnam Vet informed me that he is moving from California upon retirement to get away from the airport because it gives him flashbacks (sounds like he's nicotinic acid deficient). He said California was the most open-minded state in the Union and where I live is infested with "Tea Baggers." Nice. I love it when I meet open-minded people trying to leave the places they've destroyed to come and destroy my state with their open-mindedness.
Why is it that people who call themselves "Open Minded" are always unhappy, angry, doped up on drugs and medications and judgemental hypocrites? And why is it that this man's generation, in their 60's got to party it up with the Grateful Dead and the Loving Spoonful, have "Free Love," tobacco, beer, and marijuana; but my generation is told these are all sins? Sounds like greed to me.
Many of the 60s generation are still drug addicts and still immature. They fried their brains on all of the acid and now, prescriptions; and are paranoid freaks. They pass many of the laws against freedom, calling it "protection," and think that driving hybrid cars saves the planet even though they had to rip apart the land in China to obtain the rare metals required in those land-raping hybrids so their exhaust won't stink in the U.S. Anyway, this guy made me angry with his arrogance. Maybe, if he stopped the hallucinogenics he'd stop having flashbacks.
Thankfully, my faith in the older generation was restored after a conversation later with another older man who was in a wheel chair because his leg was missing. I don't know if he was a Vietnam Vet too. He came rolling out onto the pavement after the kind bartenders helped him out the door so that he could have a cigarette break (tobacco bans are particularly discriminatory to those with handicaps). Here was a person with a physical handicap, yet far less handicapped than the Postal Californian.
The man in the wheel chair had no bitterness and seemed quite happy. He could carry on an intelligent conversation without being arrogant. I told him to read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, a fantastic feat of American literature about a character that most readers and academics are trained to believe is a Savior type. In my estimation Invisible Man is about ignorance and our blindness, even as readers, being deceived into believing that a great and ignorant orator is a savior, although he's the greatest evil on the street. The man in the wheel chair laughed when I described the book and the brilliance of Ellison's main character, saying, "So, the character's like Obama?"
And then, there is the "subversive" activity. I encountered a person that informed me that we have three years to get ready. Three years. He's building fuel cells in preparation. He told me that his uncle is working for the government at an abandoned asbestos mine, welding shackles into rail road cars. I don't know what to say about things like this. What am I supposed to believe?
I don't believe there were shackles in the cattle cars used to haul the Jews and Gypsies to the German chemical and pharmaceutical industry's camps. When people are packed in tightly there is no need for shackles, which offer far too much comfort and individual space, things antithetical to a Marxist or other fascist Utopia's mode of operation. I think someone's uncle was telling tall tales. I hope so.
And then, there is the Apocalypse, which is actually an eye-opening. I've had some plague activity here. I'm not sure which Bowl Judgement hailstones are. But I've had them. It looks like the heavenly host descended upon the land and whacked everything into shreds with baseball bats. There are more leaves and branches on the ground than on the trees and shrubs. My car got beaten, the trees have had their bark stripped, and several people lost windows in their homes. The gardens are decimated. And another Plague Storm game is scheduled for later in the day.
And I wonder, when these Acts of God, as Nature's violent tempers are called, strike a nation already bowed under the burdens of over taxation, joblessness, rules, and regulations; can it stand? Will the people groan, unable to make the State Pyramid Scheme Bricks without straw? How will we function when there are not enough hours in a day, and no money to pay our taxes with? How will those in their 60s afford their drugs if the young Israelites can't support them? Cattle cars? I hope not.
All of you older hippies, now turned yuppie, beware how much law you pass onto us younger ones, beware how much behavior modification, and regulation and unconstitutional fascism you lay upon our backs. When young people aren't free they feel burdened and bitter, and the elderly are among the first to disappear. Have mercy on us young ones and we'll have mercy on you.
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