BLOWING SMOKE

The anti-tobacco crowd is getting out of hand. Nay, foaming at the mouth even, and baying for blood.
One cannot smoke in public anymore, offices and restaurants are now non-smoking environments (understandably so!), and even bars are now pristinely healthy environments where wheat-grass and protein shakes are common, but not tobacco.

I can understand non-smokers wanting most public places to be smoke-free. And, as a smoker, I will willingly segregate myself from them - those of them that I like are well worth a bit of self-control, those of them that I dislike I would naturally avoid anyhow.


But some non-smokers deserve to be attacked with broken bottles. Or have poo flung at them, along with mouse-cadavers and kitchen-waste.
[Rhetorically speaking, of course, as I do not advocate violence. I am merely expressing an opinion - if anyone ends up with faeces in their eyes, please remember that as an adult I advised against it.]


Some anti-smokers are in fact complete pustules.
Please see this article in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/nyregion/09ansonia.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
Suing the Smoker Next Door
[You might not be able to see it after clicking, because the NYT has some kind of registration thing.]


To quote:

"Galila Huff, a chain-smoking restaurateur from the Upper West Side, always thought that when it came to smoking, her apartment was her sanctuary."

"Her neighbors, Jonathan Selbin, a class-action lawyer who has honed his skills suing major corporations, and his wife, Jenny Selbin, also a lawyer, are irate..."

"In a lawsuit filed on Thursday, they are demanding that she "cease and desist from causing smoke to enter into the common hallway" "

"Ms. Huff, 57 (who has live in her apartment for fifteen years) -- considered selling her apartment and moving elsewhere because of pressure from the Selbins. She even offered, in writing, to sell it to them" "


In other words, two self-righteous blisters are trying to either make a fast buck OR chase someone out of her own home.
The problem, as these pampered puritan creeps have expressed it, as that smoke from her apartment enters the common hallway and then enters their apartment, where their whelp (4 year old Charlie) ends up breathing it.

At this point I should point out that the Ms. Huff keeps windows open for ventilation, has sealed the bottom of every door with rolled-up rugs, and has two "Oreck XL air purifiers, double the number the manufacturer recommends for her 635-square-foot apartment" cleaning the air. Additionally, building management has even sealed off ducts that could spread the smoke.

And yet, her reptilian neighbors insist that they are under siege.


Remember, the little smoke-whisp has to fight its way into the common hallway through closed doors and rolled up carpets (rather than simply going out the window to freedom), travel single-mindedly down a ventilated hallway, struggle into the apartment (roomy and no doubt well-ventilated) of her odious neighbors, and then, weakened and dilute, force itself by sheer will-power into the lungs of their precious little son-and-heir. An Olympic event, even for asbestos dust and paint-chips. So an epic victory for a tiny little whisp of smoke that had to battle against impossible odds. Truly inspiring. Great literature is made from material such as this. I need to wipe away a tear.


No, my sympathies are decidedly not with the Selbins and their brat. A pox on them, and a pox on everyone who takes their side. I wish them ill.