Monday, May 28, 2007

Brain Food..

So today I was remembering how in grade school and middle school when we were being taught the ills of smoking we were told that every cigarette smoked would take 6 minutes off your life...

What if you could pick which six minute segments you wanted removed from your life? Rather than having a cigarette just taking 6 minutes off the end of your life, what if you could pick with each one the six specific minutes you wanted taken away? Not a minute here and a minute there. You'd have to pick in 6 minute segments. Wouldn't cigarette smoking be a bit more appealing for some of us?

12 comments:

Snooze said...

I think I'm going to run out and buy a pack now...

St. Dickeybird said...

I don't worry about that. I believe that it's taking the six minutes from what will likely be the worst time of my life:
Senile, in diapers, toothless, being fed babyfood in a 'home', lonely if I'm lucky enough for occasional lucidity...
I'd rather spend those six minutes now, sucking in carcinogens.

St. Dickeybird said...

And after some averaging and quick math, I have taken approximately 456.25 days off my life.
Of course, if I get hit by a car, shot by a jealous husband, or find a magic genie, none of that will matter.

Susan as Herself said...

Everytime I hear cigarette fact like this, I recall an old woman I saw at a bus stop once, years ago. She walked up to a young man smoking nearby and poked him in the ribs and said, "Coffin nails, my boy, coffin nails."

I thought he was gonna punch her, but he just walked away.

Perplexio said...

Snooze: Best to start early, I s'pose. :-)

Dickeybird: So you've taken about a year and a third off your life? It kind of reminds me of one of Bill Hicks jokes. He said he didn't gauge how much he smoked by how many cigarettes he went through, he gauged it by how many LIGHTERS he went through a day.

Susan: That reminds me of the movie The Road to Wellville when Anthony Hopkins (as John Harvey Kellogg) says, "An erect penis is nothing more than a flagpole on your grave." That line always cracks me up along with the "Oh, I'm afraid it's not going in THAT end!" line when Matthew Broderick laments that he can't eat 30 gallons of yoghurt.

LoraLoo said...

Gosh, if that were only possible! I'd start smoking a lot more...

David Amulet said...

Ohhhh ... I like that idea. Except I wouldn't choose smoking to take out those segments.

I'd just power-nap.

-- david

Bar L. said...

Interesting question. I've been smoking one Sherman (I refuse to call them cigarettes cause they are different) a day for the last 5 years....I love it.

Perplexio said...

loraloo: Yeah I'd start up again too. But I was always more of a stogie smoker than a ciggy smoker... and even then I only smoked socially.

david: Power-napping through the parts of life you'd rather forget? Didn't Rip Van Winkle try that once?

layla: Sherman as in Nat Sherman? If so, you're right, those aren't cigarettes, those are like the caviar of tobacco products. I've smoked a few of those in the past and they were decidely much smoother than Marlboro Reds/Cowboy Killers or just about any other tobacoo product I've tried (although I do have a weak spot for Macanudo Cigarillos-- those are bomb-diggity-- do people say that any more?)

Soup Waiter said...

6 minutes off? It takes a minute to get from the office to the smoking area, 4 minutes to smoke a cigarette, 1 minute to get back to my desk. I'm even.

The next two hours answering email from some bloody idiot who's just going to ask the same dumb questions again tomorrow, back to the smoke area. Fuck it, I've lost nothing, cigarette break is the only part of my day I get to stop wasting my life on those arseholes.

Jay Noel said...

Yeah, if you could do such a thing. Waiting in line at the DMV...that's a good 6 minutes I would love to remove.

Oh, and there was that bad date in high school...

dantallion said...

That would be great. My choice would be anything to do with talking to tech support.