Reading This Blog May Be Hazardous to Your Health

You've heard by now, no doubt, because you're a cultured, sensitive, informed individual that the feds are rolling out some new images to augment the existing Surgeon General's warnings, that have been plastered on cigarette packs since 1964.

The images include, in no particular order:

* A freshly-autopsied corpse

* An individual smoking a cigarette through his tracheotomy

* A withered, nasty-looking, shriveled up old fucker

* A pair of diseased lungs

* An artistic rendering of someone shoving a cigarette into his arm, a la heroin (clever)

* An artistic rendering of a mother blowing cigarette smoke into her newborn's mouth

* An artistic rendering of a smoker on puppet strings (presumably worked by big tobacco)

* Some nasty teeth and other nasty shit

I'm not going to go through and talk about all of them, because there are thirty-six of them, for Christ's sake, but I think you get the idea by now. Of course, one would have thought that smokers would have gotten the idea by now, but, evidently not, because, according to the American Council for Drug Education, there's 47 million cigarette smokers in the USA, officially making us the stupidest country in the universe.

Now, before you accuse me of being judgmental: fuck you.

Okay, moving on...

I am very much in favor of these new warning pictures, but not, perhaps for the more traditional reasons one might come to expect from traditional people. Do I think these pictures are going to stop people from smoking? No. I support the U.S. Food & Drug Administration's campaign because, let's face it, we're in a recession, and the jobless rate in this country stands at an unsettling 9.6%, and this is a great opportunity for advertising specialists, graphic artists, and models who get paid to lie on metal tables pretending they've just been autopsied to make some serious bucks.

I mean, Uncle Sam's no skinflint, and I'm sure the people at work creating these new warnings are being handsomely compensated-- and as well they should be. I am a bit curious, though, about one thing-- apparently, there are 36 new warnings, but I read that only nine are going to be chosen.

I mean, however are they going to choose between this one:

and this one:


Seriously? That's a tough call in my book. The more conservative part of me likes Ad 1 because the gentleman depicted there is in a shirt and tie, nice, traditional, 1980s era eyeglasses-- clearly meant to be an accountant or a local-level politician. I particularly like that they chose to have him wearing a wedding band so you look at it going, "Oh, no-- his poor, middle-aged wife!" I would be tempted, though, to vote against this particular ad because it seems like he can't quite make up his mind about whether he's having a heart attack, or a stroke, or a brain aneurysm, or all three. And it's like, dude, make up your fucking mind, you know?

Ad #2... well... what can I say? If smoking cigarettes means I'm going to have facial hair like that, then forget it.

The other reason, though, that I am staunchly in support of this new advertising campaign is that I am convinced that there is a significant portion of the population in this country that is illiterate. So, if you can't read, then the text-based Surgeon General's warnings are not going to be very effective for you.

I mean, look at this:

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy

Are you serious? "Emphysema"? "Complicate"? "Surgeon"? Be fair-- how many people do ride the Greyhound with who can understand, let alone pronounce 0r spell those words? If we have any shot in hell at defeating the tobacco companies, we've got to appeal to the fastest-growing majority in this country: illiterate dumbshits. McDonalds caught on years ago, with their implementation of picture and number-based menus.

God, I love me my Number 7.

Oh, and, by the way-- you should know that continual reading of My Masonic Apron is indeed hazardous to your health and could contribute to any number of fatal and/or socially undesirable diseases, and has been shown in clinical studies to cause Autism. (And you thought it was pregnant mothers eating sushi-- stupid.) For those of you, though, who cannot read (of course you're here-- where else would you be?) here's brief pictorial representation of what happens to people who read My Masonic Apron on a regular basis:




Remember: you've been warned.

The Problem Is Right Under Your Nose

First of all, there have been requests by a couple of my readers for a pictoral representation of my nose after I made several unflattering references to it a couple posts ago.

Well, since I do whatever you whackjobs want, here it is:

Satisfied?

Good. Now we can all move on with our lives.

Sheesh.

Attention all black-lunged bastards (that may have been Mulder's greatest line ever, by the way) the Food & Drug Administration is soon going to be in charge of overseeing cigarette companies. I can just see Benson & Hedges quaking in their boots.

"Oh, no! Not the FDA! We're so scared to be regulated by the same people who lord over Centrum Cardio and Tucks Medicated Pads!"

Maybe, though, those mothafuckas should be scared.

The new regulations that are being set up aren't going to bode well for the tobacco industry, whose once-powerful lobby apparently needs a dose or two of Levitra these days. The colorful and large displays that right now grace the local CVS and Walgreens will soon be gone, replaced by black & white text-only advertising. The warning labels will now be even more ominous than before, and every single ingredient will have to be listed. (I wonder if the cigarette boxes will now have to contain calorie counts and sodium levels.) Warnings on cigarette boxes will now take up 3/4ths of the entire box, leaving no room for Joe Camel, the Marlboro Man or Betty White or whomever they've got advertising ciggysticky these days.

Also, stores that are located 1000 feet away from a school won't be able to advertise that they sell cigarettes. Bummer.

Here's the thing: this is all window-dressing, and I guess that's why Big Tobacco isn't sweating its leaves about this too much. All of these new regulations don't change the fact that an addictive product is being peddled to people who are already hooked. It wouldn't matter if cigarette packets just bore the word "DEATH" in 36-point font. It just doesn't matter. If you think people who smoke crack don't know it's going to kill them, um, then you probably haven't smoked crack lately.

I was at Rite-Aid this morning and the woman in front of me wanted a pack of Benson & Hedges Premium Filter. The hen-pecked, blue-vested clerk was having trouble locating that particular iteration of cigarette. There were Benson & Hedges Special Filters, Benson & Hedges Deluxe Ultra Lights, Benson & Hedges Golds, Benson & Hedges Gold 20s, Benson & Hedges Menthol Milds. But this crackhead wanted her Premium Filters, and her knuckles were turning white as she was gripping onto her car keys with enough force to cause herself an aneurysm or stigmata. I thought she was going to pop a gasket when, finally, the clerk found her goddamn cancer-twigs. Praise be.

At another drug store this morning (I was running errands for work-- hey, at least I wasn't wasting away in front of the Xerox machine at Staples) I stood behind a grammaw who had just purchased a carton of cigarettes. Like most addicts, she was a regular at her locale of choice. Had she been a heroin addict, this pharmacy would be her street corner. An alkie, her Cheers. The clerk addressed her by name and advised her to, "Watch out for that heat out there" and encouraged her to, "take care of yourself."

After selling her the equivalent of slow-release TNT-- watch out for the rain? Take care of yourself? Why bother with such niceties? I would have said, "Why don't you try the Guns & Ammo shop down the street and save yourself a lot of time?" But I don't work at a drug store, and there are no guns & ammo shops where I live. There are, however, gourmet pet food boutiques and high end automobile accessory shops.

I think people who smoke should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want to themselves, but I don't think we as a society should be tricking ourselves into thinking that anything we do is going to make a damn bit of difference. Trying to scare the bejesus out of smokers with warnings like, "Smoking Will Turn Your Unborn Baby into Adam Sandler" or "Smoking Cigarettes is About as Intelligent as Sucking on a Hog's Anus" or "Stop Smoking, All the Girls Think You're a Fucking D-Bag" just doesn't work. Seriously, FDA: scaring people doesn't work. If people scared easier, nobody would fly on airplanes, get in elevators, attend NASCAR races, pick their scabs, or fuck girls from Des Moines.

This just in: People Don't Scare Easily-- They're Too Dumb.

The only thing that motivates people is money so, until a pack of cigarettes costs $187.50, we're still going to have an assload of black-lunged bastards running around our college campuses and our sidewalks. I'd love a society where only people with Oprah-sized bankrolls could afford to smoke habitually. Frankly, we could do with a few less multibillionaires.

So let's just forget about trying to scare people, okay? Let's just insult them. I want to see legislation passed enabling the FDA to require cigarette manufacturers to emblazon cigarette their cigarette packs with

"YOU'RE A DUMB TWATLICK. GO SMOKE ON THAT."