Take your Camel to bed...or wherever else you furtively smoke. It's been too hot for too long my brain is baked, too lazy to switch the station, too conscientious to fiddle with the car radio and thus be distracted...pick any one of those reasons why I, of all people, was listening to Rush Limbaugh today (any day!) but here's the skinny. Apparently, in at least one region, Al-Qaeda has decided to cut off the middle finger of any Iraqi found smoking. The big "L" suggests that we...WE!...conduct serious midnight airdrops of cigs to the about-to-be dismembered smokers that we might gain better and bigger support from the nationals. HAH! Us?? We who...from the government down to the anti-smoking legions of friends, family and neighbours... turn our own peace-loving, contented smokers into pariahs, having us furtively sneak around like the twelve year old behind the barn for a quick puff? We who have to special order a cigarette lighter in our cars? We to whom smoking has become only one step away from criminal conduct? Seems to me it's more likely than not that this time we just may take a leaf out of Al-Qaeda's Koran. I can hear the brigade now..."Why haven't we thought of that?" Oh, well...my guess is that being non...or recovering-smokers they didn't know or had forgotten that it's almost impossible to hold a cig between index and third finger. Unless, of course, they ramp up the circumference of smokes or we all switch to Havana's.
Could we ever become so hypocritical? You know...somehow I don't think so, if only because we may just realise the one-finger salute could be the next victim of lost liberties and justice for all. And that would never do.
