“Blackey” is def racist, yeah. Ignoring that, it probably works better as a sight gag. I’d swear I heard a version of it about an MI6 agent in Northern Ireland as a kid.
The punchline is very sloppy, too, both ponderous and on-the-nose. Hard to think of a way to tighten it up without making it extremely racist, though - like a stereotypical name or making it about his hair or something.
Yeah no question. I say that as a former smoker too.
It’s pretty huge in the CR but the younger generation here smokes way less than the middle-aged and older generations.
It is pretty bizarre. That and the flag. It’s pretty crazy how pervasive the flying of the American flag is. The respect directed at it is way beyond what I’ve seen in any other developed country. I went to get a haircut while in America and I was draped with a barber cape that had an American flag design. Behind me was an American flag pinned to the wall. That’s the type of shit you see in dictatorships.
You’ve never had a coworker who uses chewing tobacco, I see.
Would way rather have someone chew than smoke near me. It’s not close.
It’s been amended just 15 times in the last 200 years. One of those was written solely to cancel another one out.
Smoking is wonderful. Some of the best moments of my life involved cigarettes. If I’m ever diagnosed with a terminal illness I am absolutely going to start smoking again.
I’m planning to quit soon and my God, when I think of what I’m giving up. It’s going to be brutal. Has to be done, though, the lungs can’t take it anymore.
Pretty good point. Like there are other countries who fetishize the flag and nationalism and so on, but the religion around the Constitution seems unique.
I considered trying out a nicotine-based vape, but based on my experiences with smoking, it took a few seconds for me to conclude that would very quickly turn into a problem.
Transitioning from tobacco to vaping over a couple months, and then slowly dialing down the nicotine in the vape to zero over a couple years was a stress free soft landing for me that I highly recommend.
Interested if you guys can articulate what is good about it. Like there are far better drugs around than nicotine and inhaling burning shit is objectively bad. I suspect your attempts are going to amount to “it feels good to feed my addiction” but curious if you can do better.
Nicotine is more effective than caffeine for me for concentration. However, I vape, I quit cigs a while ago.
I tried vaping a few years ago, it worked for a while. I think the problem was that I went nuts on the flavours - I used to mix Cherry and Cola flavour to make homebrewed Cherry Cola, which was delicious - but then if I was drinking at a social event, I’d eventually bum a real one, and the difference in taste lured me back. Taste and sheer impact - I could abstain completely for years and I know a vape would never make my mouth water in that way. Definitely going to go full boring-ass Regular Tobacco flavour this time around, I’m hoping it’ll make the contrast less marked (let’s be real, I’m going to bum some smokes no matter what).
Do you seriously believe that hundreds of millions of people did a thing and only begrudgingly stopped doing so en masse when it became unambiguously clear that it was likely to kill them just because they were addicted to nicotine?
I know we’re supposed to keep this on the down low now because The Children, but um yeah, smoking is incredibly enjoyable. That’s why people do/did it.
It’s ultimately the same as any pleasure-pattern response, where certain actions are just associated with pleasure or relief. There’s firstly the straightforward satisfaction of the urge to smoke. After that is the flavour, and then the satisfying actions you take in order to smoke - inhaling, exhaling (which cycle is completely different from merely breathing), tapping the ash. Even stubbing one out is fun.
There’s also something I can only compare to acting - actors talk all the time about needing ‘business’, something to do, some action to be engaging in while delivering the lines or conveying the emotions or whatever. I think it’s culturally ingrained; I imagine even lifelong non-smokers might be able to understand this. The precise timing of taking a drag just before or after making some point in conversation (or selling a wordless reaction by taking a drag), the sheer expressiveness of a big exhalation - those things are a part of me, now. Quitting smoking means giving up small, but quite significant parts of myself.
There’s also a whole social aspect of the like Secret Brotherhood of Smokers, but I’m sure you’ve picked that up from observation. Bans on smoking in public places made that obvious to non-smokers, before that we hid in plain sight.
I smoked for years and always thought it was gross and I hated that it affected my aerobic fitness, (I was doing a ton of alpine climbing back then), but it took dozens of attempts before I finally succeeded in quitting. I think that was mostly all addiction? I mean the enjoyable part was sparking up and feeding the addiction.
Idris Elba and the James bond joke was similar
Never heard that one, but I suppose I don’t need to, lol.
When we were messing around with cigarettes in junior high, I got a hold of a Marlboro Red and tried to give myself the ultimate head rush. An hour of extreme nausea later - no more desire to smoke. I highly recommend forcing this on your kid if you catch them smoking.
I will smoke socially when I’m fairly drunk and everyone around me has a cigarette (like maybe 2-4 cigarettes a year).
Funny thing is the dividing line for all the epidemiological studies is the SMOKE100 question: “Have you smoked more than 100 cigarettes in your lifetime”. The lawsuit/academic research industry had to pick a definition of a smoker vs. non-smoker - so they picked that one. I guess by that definition I’m a smoker.
That is what I think, yes. I think it’s pretty obvious that the act of smoking isn’t what confers any pleasure because nobody smokes things which don’t have a drug effect.
Yeah, I get all that. It’s ritual. Drug use is frequently associated with ritual (think about the ceremony of removing a champagne cork) but it’s all just learnt. I totally understand that there are aspects of smoking which take on pleasure independent of the drug effect, I just don’t think any of them are innately pleasurable in a world where nicotine did not exist.