The Smokescreen
Monday, 11th January 1999DENVER, COLORADO [NotS]
Y’know, it’s ironic. Everyone seems to think I’m this complete and utter bastard. Good; great; I’ve never really given a damn what everyone thinks. But here’s the real irony: I’m far nicer to these idiots than I should be. If you really think I’m less than nice to people, factor that, unusual at the practise may be, I actually think about things before I do them. Yes, it’s true: I’m perfectly okay with the extermination of at least nintey percent of the world’s population. Simply because they’re functionally retarded little lemmings.
And why, you may be wondering, am I suddenly willing to admit this? It’s very simple, really: I am now officially pissed. This is why:
I live in Denver. Three million of the dumbest bastards in the world live here with me. Want an idea how dumb these losers are? Okay. Denver, Colorado–the last remaining frontier with a population. People here still hate them thar injuns and Chinese; they still think that horses are an efficient mode of transportation; they still think that I’ve got a bloody crocodile. People here are very very very very dumb.
People here embrace the idea of affixing emissions gear to their silly little Toyotas to prevent the spreading of carbon monixide, yet Commerce City–the Detroit of the west–expels more smog into the air in a day than any car could ever hope to within a year. Then the Denver Zoo, just down the street, has banned open-air smoking, so that the animals–those cute fuzzy things kept captive by sonic warfare–don’t inhale anything yucky a mile above sea level. What a brilliant idea.
The malls are smokefree environments now. Just so those cute fuzzy shoppers don’t inhale anything yucky, either.
Half of the restaurants, and even a number of pubs, are now smokefree environments.
The flight back to London–that land of oppression from which these bloody idiots fled to create nationwide freedom–is a smokefree environment. That, and the UK’s odd prohibition of captive alligators, are the only reason I haven’t booked a first class concorde the hell out of the United States of Duhmerica.
So let’s assume, for an instant, that there’s a benefit to living in this benighted country. What could this reason be. Outside of the bit about the alligators and Uzis being kinda frowned upon back in London, a pack of Dunhill are going for about two pounds fifty, last I knew. For the Duhmericans I’ve decided may be exterminated, get someone to help you multiply that against one hundred sixty percent, and you’ll have a price in Duhmerican money.
Then again, don’t bother; it’s just become irrelevant.
A couple of weeks ago, cigarettes went, in Denver, from one seventy-five to two seventy-nine a pack. And that was disturbing to both of us smokers. But the Duhmerican majority aren’t satisfied with our perserverence. So, at midnight tomorrow night, in twenty-one hours, a pack of Camels will sprint from $2.79 to $4.50ish. Each. What a great example of taxation without representation.
But wait, there’s more….
The money generated by this government-sponsored ratehike will go to A) fund the MediCaid programme, to help smokers get over cancer, and B) build concentration camps for delinquent youth who sell meth at each other. Yeah: we’re coming to Duhmerica.
And this is neat: I found out about this an hour ago. Then I called KBPI here in Denver to confirm it with Steph, the graveyard DJ; it’s true. They–the Duhmerican Establishment–decided not to announce it to anyone at all. The only reason the ratehike leaked at this late date was that the employees of 7Eleven were kinda hinted to that the prices were about to nearly double, and, since a nonsmoking 7Eleven employee is nearly as ubiquitous as an intelligent Duhmerican, were encouraged to hoarde as many cartons of whatever they could find as possible. The grapevine made it to me. And I’m now officially pissed.
See, I’d like to believe that this is a great idea, and that smoking is terribly bad for you, but unfortunately, I can’t quite get myself to be that utterly stoopid. See, I’m a genius. Sorry if that belittles ninety-six percent of Duhmericans, but it’s true. I’m not the only one, and there may still be a chance for those ninety-six percent to get better. I have a simple formula for becoming a genius. Ready? Here it is:
Learn Stuff.
It’s just that simple, people. Learn stuff like ratios, and percentages. Yes, it’s true: smoking is bad for you. Duh. But, statistically, less than twenty percent of lung cancer can be traced to any form of cigarette smoke, first hand, second hand, coach, whatever. Looking for another ‘smoking gun’? Commerce City–just so that three million of the worlds dumbest mobile livestock can wedge their deplorable little Japanese jokes between my Formula and my destination. And, of course, the number one cause of lung cancer in Duhmerica today are [drum roll] Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus. Now, I know what you’re asking yourself right now: ‘where can I get some derma–dermi–duh…them thar bigworded thingimujiggers of my very own?!?’ Chances are, you already have. Yes folks: Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus are them thar little dust mite thingys you’ve seen in the ductcleaning adverts. Spooky looking things, aren’t they? They measure about one two-thousandth of a millimetre in size, and live on epidermal residue, which Duhmericans call ‘dead skin’, which comprises ninety percent of household dust. Then you inhale this dead skin, along with millions of nanometric spiders, who freak out about the inside of your lungs, and try to escape by digging their ways out. Trouble is, they rarely make it before they die. Then, they begin to decompose, and become malignant. We call that cancer. Some seventy-odd percent of lung cancer cases, actually.
So isn’t it uplifting to know that we smokers–the villans of Duhmerica–are now being charged more than you lot spent at McSalmonella’s today, to discourage us from smoking at you.
One problem with that.
See, smoking has a number of benefits, as well. Yup: it interrupts the biochemical imbalances in paranoid schizophrenics, which, for Duhmericans in general, are Big Nasty Scary Crazy People with Weapons. By all means, let’s discourage these lunatics from taming their sociopathic insticts with cancersticks.
Granted, they might not find you in particular before they and their chainsaws are apprehended, but it won’t matter. See, there’s a black market out there; it’s not just a rumour or an old joke. It works like this: Duhmericans raise the prices of cigarettes so that the majority of smokers can’t afford them anymore, so a minority of capitalists steal them from 7Eleven, and then sell them for half the price that the stores have to charge in the first place. That creates a bit of a problem for the 7Eleven corporate office, which is paying for cigarettes, and then not getting paid back when you buy them from a guy in a trenchcoat in an alley. And that, boys and girls, leads to what we call inflation. Ooh.
At the moment, inflation is holding at an annual increase of approximately six percent. The bitch of it is that minimum wage is only increasing at an average of about four percent. Right now, minimum wage is about a thousand bucks a month–about the same as rent, on average.
So what happens if inflation goes up because a black market develops over cigarettes? More inflation. Which ultimately leads to less income. Great: raise minimum wage again. The only way the employers can pay the employees more is to raise their prices, resulting in more inflation.
And just as that becomes unbearable to the Duhmerican economy, the y2k bug hits, and whatever effects come from that merely compound the problem. Great. Wonderful. Bring it on. We’ll hope it brings an end to the human race. Rah rah rah.
So, here’s a prediction:
June Cleaver may think it’s a great idea to build concentration camps for those poor inner city meth resellers, but it’s not going to help. See, I know these kids. They do what they do because they want to, and because they have to. Concentration camps only create a convenient captive market for them.
And Medicaid? Cigarettes used to be seventy-five cents. I remember that clearly. And even then, they had big warning labels mentioning something about cancer. In fact, at the time, they even mentioned how much ‘tar’ the things had in them. So guess what: if you didn’t know that smoking could lead to cancer, and then got it, you deserve to die, you bleeding idiot. No one could possibly be that dumb. I mean, two hundred sixty million Duhmericans can’t all be that brainless, can they?
Now, I realise that some of you are nonsmokers who don’t really care whether we smokers smoke. I get that a lot. ‘It doesn’t really bother me’. Good. Great. You get to live. But for all those idiots who don’t wanna get cancer from us, or just don’t like the smell, or whatever cookiecutter excuse they cling to as if it made any sense at all, they’re the first to go extinct in the new world order.
What new world order? The one beginning now. The one in which those of us with brains restructure civilisation. Capone, and others, made a killing during the prohibition of the thirties. It will happen again. Be very, very afraid.
Because a few of us aren’t these troglodytical lemmings out to prevent the unavoidable. And we are the last people you want to make angry. And you know what? We’re getting angry now.
Raise the prices of cigarettes. We don’t care. We’ll break into your houses and fence out all your stuff to buy them on the black market. Is that really what you wanted? That’s your smoke-free society. Enjoy it.
That’s just my opinion; you’ve been warned.
–Gremlin