marketing 101
these cigarette companies think pictures of cancer patients will turn the youth off smoking, but the youth are actually pretty smart. they know that beauty is on the inside, unless you look or dress or speak a certain way. maybe if the box had a picture of some dork with greasy hair and a minecraft tshirt with eggstains running down it, maybe that would deter the youth from smoking. but right now the picture of the thin sickly man just makes smoking seem vaguely cool and byronic, hence the continued popularity of smoking.
and i remember watching the lord of the rings, and the way the old wizard man blew smoke into the shape of a pirate ship and then capsized it with his hand- that probably did more for big tobacco than any doomed figure, black lung or gangrenous foot, because it demonstrated the the artistic possibilities of smoking that we are all trying to reach.
luckily, thanks to the invention of vaping, blowing a pirate ship has never been more possible. vaping allows you to create ten times as much smoke as a cigarette, which means you can blow an infinite number of shapes. but smoke-bending is not easy- this is why vaping is considered not a craft, but an art. i still can barely do an O shape.
my friend harley, who only smokes e-cigars, has an advanced smoking trick where he blows smoke into a cocktail shaker, shakes it over his shoulder, pours it out into a martini glass, and then hands the glass to the hottest girl in the room. he walks behind her, kisses the back of her neck, takes back the smoke-filled glass, pinches his nose and knocks it back in one gulp. it’s very classy and sophisticated, and makes us other boys look like alfred e neuman. for the record, i have told him that he probably shouldn’t hold his nose when he drinks the smoke because it undermines the suavity, but he says he can’t not do it– he hates the taste of smoke and hates smoking, but you only get one party trick and this is his. my party trick is magic tricks. tom can wiggle his ears and tim can do the worm. mal can do a yoda voice and al can do a michael jackson. no one ever asks us to bring anything to a party because our presence is their presents. party tricks, choose one and choose wisely.
one time at a smoking party, harley suffered a lung collapse and couldn’t move without screaming. we had to take him to swan district and there was a big operation where they put a hose through his ribs connected to a bucket that he had to carry around so the fluid would drain out and the lung could reinflate. it was gross. he kept asking for his e-cigar but the nurses wouldn’t let him smoke indoors, so he was crawling out of his skin for the whole two weeks. the nurse felt bad for him and brought in her son’s old fidget spinner, which became harley’s new party trick, but we all considered him a sellout.