Attraction and Repulsion
As often happens, I do some of my best thinking in places where its not terribly conducive to recording that brilliance. For example, the shower is my best place to think but to do it properly I'll need my own stenographer. Or when I'm riding my motorcycle, I've been seen pulling over to the side of a highway just so I can write down a few notes. And I'm truly such a tremendous geek that I carry a small notepad with my everywhere I go so I can keep my notes.

Anyway, this morning I had my thought close enough to work that I was able to hold it until I'd gotten inside and could jot it down.

I rode in today and was sitting at a stoplight right down the street from work. I'd noticed a potentially very attractive woman walking away from me down the short street to the movie theatre. She had nice hair, long straight and blond, was dressed nicely though casually and carried herself with a confident air and I was thinking to myself that she was probably a very good looking woman who'd be fun to get to know (yes, I'm engaged to Paula and happy as heck but I am still human, Paula's cool with it though so relax).

And then there is fateful movement, a single move that effectively stamps a monstrous X across her. She bent her arm up to her mouth to take an indulgent puff on her skinny little cancer stick. Smoking a cigarette. Inhaling burned tobacco smoke and coating herself in its stench, staining her fingers, poisoning her lungs and aging her skin at ten times the speed (or whatever the current multiplier is).

There is no better or faster way to go from potential 8,9 or 10 to a 4,5 or 6. Just light up a cigarette and watch your attractiveness quotient plummet into the basement. At least in regards to me, which means that pretty well no one will give a damn in any case, but perhaps there are others out there that think as I do? Its certainly possible, I know that much.

I just don't get cigarettes, can someone please explain their attractiveness? They cost a quarter each now (20 to a pack, $5 a pack equals $.25 each), they make people smell awful, they make things around people smell awful, they litter the roads (which is another post but why in the hell do smokers think its OKAY to throw the nasty little butts out the window?), they pile up in gutters, they poison people, they make people look old before they have to, they profit old fat white men who are racists and they killed my father. Need more proof, heck, check out The Truth to hear and read about some of the truly reprehensible things that Big Tobacco has done in the name of killing their customers.

So this pretty girl became an untouchable just by the simple act of inhaling more burning plants (well, the wrong kind of plants). Does she care in the least? Heck no because there are millions and millions of men who would still worship her regardless of the fact that she smells like ash and tastes like the bottom of an ashtray.

Yuck, just the thought of kissing a smoker makes my stomach turn and churn. But hey, I'm taken so its not a big deal either way and Paula knows how strongly I hate smoking so there are no worries there. Just my random thoughts while riding in this morning.