The Iowa Department of Public Health is using a "spooky" video — which looks a bit like the movie "Cloverfield" — as part of a new anti-smoking campaign designed to appeal to teenagers.
The premise is that everybody in the eastern Iowa town of Springville disappears. Springville population = 1200. Number of people that die each day from tobacco use = 1200. The message of the campaign is that a town of the size of Springville disappears everyday because of tobacco use." [Radio Iowa]
Qwitter lets you keep track of how many cigarettes you smoke each day; keep a journal of your thoughts an feelings ("I’d KILL for goddamn cigarette!"); view your progress and follow and support other fiends.
All kidding aside, I can see how this might actually work. If I tweet, "It’s three o’clock and I have not smoked all day" …and my friends George sees that, it might help him hang on.
I could see this working for any number of support groups. "I’ve lost 5 pounds this week and had 3 Ritz crackers for lunch."
Keep Cigarettes Safe from Water! Water causes wetness, and wetness can keep your cigarettes from properly igniting and efficiently delivering scientifically calibrated doses of totally non-addictive nicotine into those sticky little air sacks way at the bottom of your lungs!
Bedtime Smoking Smarts! After bedtime prayers, nothing relaxes like a cool drag from a hot Winston (brand) cigarette.
Keep Cigarettes Safe from Breaking! A sturdy and stylish cigarette case is what all the cool kids have!
Let the Buyer Beware! When choosing an adult to ask to buy you cigarettes at a cruelly authoritarian, liberal-managed convenience store that won’t sell tobacco to persons under 18, make certain never to speak to anyone who looks like s/he might be on the Federal welfare rolls – they will steal your cigarettes, leaving you craving (in a purely nonaddictive way) a smoke ! !
Remember: Fresh = Tasty! Never forget that an important part of the exclusive appeal of cigarettes is their highly perishable nature; they stay smokably fresh for only three to four hours after their cellophane seal is broken.
Keep it Clean! If your preferred brand is filterless, your fingers and teeth may become pleasantly discolored by stubborn, yet fashionable nicotine stains.
The new novel by Christopher Buckley proposes a way to fix the Social Security mess. From the BusinessWeek review:
“As the baby boomers shuffle into their sunset years, Uncle Sam will hand them a bundle of juicy tax breaks and assorted perks in return for agreeing to a painless lethal injection at age 65. Too draconian? Not to worry. A second option would give slightly less generous benefits to those who prefer to hang around to age 70.”
Only the genius who gave us Thank You for Smoking (the novel, not the movie) could make us laugh at something so serious. And, just so you know, I never trusted our government enough to think there would be anything in the fund by the time I need it and I’m not counting on it.
Oh yeah, the main character is “Cassandra Devine, a 29-year-old Washington public-relations executive by day and diva blogger by night.” (talk about a great stripper name).
Jefferson City has a new watering hole and Scott Brandon led a contingent of Learfielders downtown this evening to check it out. We’ll let the proprietor, Andy Neidert, give you the elevator speech (video).
This is a different kind of place and –if opening night is any indication– a big hit. It’s a tiny place, in the best tradition of Big City hot spots but nobody seemed to mind. Nice ratio of servers to clientele. Never had to wait for a drink. Non-smoking. Micro brews. My new Favorite Place to Have a Drink in Jefferson City.
More than a third of smokers who had surgery to remove early stage lung cancer were smoking again within a year. That’s one of the findings of a new study involving patients who were forced to quit smoking for surgery. Many were puffing away within two months of the surgery, and nearly half eventually resumed the habit. [LiveScience]
Just when you think you’ve seen every possible take on the subject of smoking… If this little ditty doesn’t scare the butt out of your hand, nothing will. You don’t always die from tobacco. Gulp. [via Doc Searles]
The folks at Healthbolt think one of the main reasons it’s so hard to quit smoking is because all the benefits of quitting and all the dangers of continuing seem very far away. So they’ve provided a little timeline about some of the more immediate effects of quitting smoking and how that will affect your body. Why not put these on the back of every pack of smokes?
So I got a little carried away with this this weekend’s video project. 12 minutes (or whatever it was) was too long and my favorite bit was at the end and my strung-out smoker pals couldn’t sit still long enough to see the money shot.
As I drove back from lunch today, it seemed every other driver was smoking. Doing that little ash-flick thing out the open windows on a warm spring day. I found my self wondering how they all got started. Did they just decide one day to go to the convenience story and buy a pack of smokes? Or did someone give them that first cigarette? That seems more likely. A friend, maybe?
Maybe your brother or sister gave you your first cigarette? Perhaps your wife or boyfriend. I’d like to think no parent ever gave a child their first Lucky Strike, but who knows.
Here’s my point: What would it be like to watch a loved one dying of cancer and know that you introduced them to the joy of smoking? How could you live with that?
“Hey, he’s an adult. He can make his own decisions. I didn’t make him light up.”
“Come on, she wanted to try it. If she hadn’t gotten it from me, she would have gotten it somewhere else.”
So here’s my question for all my smoking friends: Did you ever give someone their first butt? Are you sure?
“As the baby boomers shuffle into their sunset years, Uncle Sam will hand them a bundle of juicy tax breaks and assorted perks in return for agreeing to a painless lethal injection at age 65. Too draconian? Not to worry. A second option would give slightly less generous benefits to those who prefer to hang around to age 70.”
Just when you think you’ve seen every possible take on the subject of smoking… If