I’m a logical mammal. Too much so, probably. Like right now, I’m on the train with my earphones cranked so loud it hurts, and yet I can still hear the annoyingly loud people that are sitting across the aisle from me. Logically, it would be easier to smack the offending party upside the head with a fiberglass fishbilly, resulting in a resounding and self-satisfying *thud*. Ethically, morally, and legally this is impractical. OK, well maybe just legally as the other two -ly words there are subjective; I know “legally” has some staying power with me because holding cells are no fun at all.

Geek – n – 1. A member of society that is well wired into technology, using their knowledge to earn a living beyond the means of their probable profession if PC’s/Software were not to exist. 2. [insert picture of Randy here]. Also see UberGeek, known to be the pinnacle of Geekdom, akin to Ultra-Geek.

Nerd – n – 1. A dependent of society that is well wired into technology, using their knowledge only for personal pride, as a hobby, and/or as Chat-Roominus Interuptus. 2. [insert a pre-high school picture of Randy here]

Um, moving on. Logical. One would think that if you stick by logic, you could make your way through life with relative ease… ain’t “One” a remarkable idiot? Example? Logic has no bearing on my workplace – if anything, logic says that we should have been gone a long time ago, yet we survive. Logic has no bearing on the emotional attachments/relationships to others; that’s self-evident. Logically, I should not be finding a completeness in my iced mocha latte, but at the moment, I’m rather enjoying the physical relationship of caffeine, cocoa, and my body.

What I’ve been noticing lately is that I find myself perplexed by the actions of others. I grew up in the era of Nancy Reagan’s Just-Say-No campaign. I’m not saying it had much to do with my being drug-free (so far, anyway) – that was a personal choice – but what it did do was cause a massive bombardment of information on the drugs of the day. For example, crack is known to be inherently dangerous because it’s “instantly” addictive to most people and there’s always a risk that it could be improperly mixed, resulting in instant OD and/or death. This is known. Documented. Shoved at countless people, available to all that read and/or speak English (and Spanish for that matter.) And yet, people still try it. Are people really that stupid? As an example, take a young child at a stove. Kid goes to touch the lit/running and hot stove; parent says “Don’t touch! It’s hot!” Kid waits for parent to turn away, mocks parent, and touches the stove. Kid gets burned. Massive crying episode will now commence. I would think the kid wouldn’t be so dumb as to try it again… if we were talking about people and their thoughts on crack, shortly after getting burned the first time, the kid would have head-butted the stove and put his tongue on the burner, and still wonder why it was hot in the room. I just don’t get it.

I digress. My original intent for this was for Tobacco. I know I’ve blurbed about ‘bacco before, but that was about the pre-teen and early teen smoking. This is a little more generic. Smokes are known to be insidious little beasties. Not only is there the whole chemical issue, there’s also the “put something in my face” habit. There’s support chemicals for the physical dependency now a days… however, show me someone that quits smoking and I’ll show you someone that gains some weight in the process of quitting because of the now-missing habit. That’s just human nature at work. What I don’t understand is how someone starts and how the FDA has let this go on for so long.

Starting is one thing. Kids start in their youth in most cases. It’s something that makes you feel good, once you get past the first experience of stomach retching pain and issues. I mean, think about it: you’re inhaling smoke – can’t be a good thing. The whole “cool” aspect is bunk these days. The idea that James Dean is going to treat you as an outcast or a square because you don’t smoke… gimmie a break. There might be some “acceptance” issues, but it’s all about the crowd you run with – besides the acceptance due to sex (having or not having) would be more powerful. In my own experiences, just as many of sports type kids smoked as did the other groups. It was universally evident, but not required, like anti-smoking ads would have you believe. The number one reason why people smoke, aside from habit, is the way it makes you feel. For women, this might be superceded by the ability to keep weight off by smoking more – I’ve seen this in a number of episodes: it’s real. There’s chemical reasons for it, but most women would rather smoke a 1/2 pack than eat a meal.

OK – so why does it feel good? Ever wonder what makes up a cigarette? If you’re a smoker, you want no part of knowing that. If you’re not, odds are it’s just “ewwy”. I usually end up with knowledge about something before I reject it, so I know a bit about this, and this is where the government comes into play. The most visibly addictive substance in a cigarette is nicotine. That’s well documented. Nicotine is in fact a pesticide. And I don’t mean like Saccharine is “bad” for you, if had100 kilograms an hour for 50 years for it to possibly show up as cancer in a human – I mean it’s really a pesticide. Nicotine is in fact a powerful pesticide; it kills most things it comes into contact with, in small undiluted amounts. It’s a poison. When imbibed by a mammal in small and diluted, it causes a dependency – hence the addiction. So, the government finds it OK to sell poison to it’s citizens. In fact, at least here in Connecticut, there are huge taxes associated with the buying of it; one pack of smokes in CT is about $5 now. True story! Nicotine – addictive; government gets cash if they sell more of it – hmmm. But what else is going on in this little tube of paper? Well, smokes are known to make you feel sorta giddy. Why is that? Take caffeine to the 10th power and pop it into your system, it instantly taking effect. There ya go. It jacks up your heart rate – more blood to the brain – causing a warm and fuzzy feeling. That is assuming you don’t puke the first couple of times! This makes you feel good, right? Right! So there’s incentive to continue. Because the smoke goes through the capillaries in the lungs, there’s a high and fast absorption rate; that’s just a biological fact. For a drug to work well, it needs in the blood stream quickly, and smoking does that well. Take dip as another example. Dip, which goes between your gum and cheek, is known to contain a certain level of fiberglass to cause very fine (and unnoticed) cuts in your tender oral parts, so more tobacco juice can get absorbed directly into the blood stream. Neat, eh? And yes, the government knows that too. Call it naivet or whatever, but I’m still pretty bothered by this whole bit. I mean, I’ve known about it for a while now. At least about ten years or so… yet nothing has changed. Well, some stuff. A number of my family members have had heart problems, attacks and what-nots, over the years… smoking the cause? Not exclusively, but it didn’t help either. Again, that’s also known by the public… and yet people still light up.

Well, now let me ask you this. If the most effective part of the whole process is nicotine, both for addictive and euphoric side effects, then there should be other sources of it, right? I mean it’s the “extra stuff” of the cigarette that helps maintain the addiction… the bad side effects of the “something in the mouth” habit, the damage to the lungs/mouth due to smoke/dip, and the added benefit of yellowing teeth, yellowing skin, and bad smell are also included in the smoking part. Chemically speaking, it’s the nicotine that poisons the blood and that’s what’s people are after here, right? If you took that out of the cigarette they wouldn’t be effective in making you feel good, and since that’s mostly why you would smoke, it’s the “good” part. And lo! Science throws a curve ball. Nicoderm CQ. The Patch. It’s a 3-step process for weaning someone off the chemical dependency. The longer you’re on it, the smaller the patch, the less you need the nicotine. Hm. Neat concept… um, but wait. Why not replace smoking with these things, right? Instead of lighting up, you could start with the small patches, and as your body gets to be immune to the small ones, you step upwards to bigger patches. Or adding more. Think about it! This is a whole new industry! No second hand smoke issues. No issues about smell. It’s a hidden abuse! Well, granted you could have a whole back full of patches under your shirt by the time you’re 40, but who cares! The government can make ultra-patches: more substance with smaller sizes! And Virgin with MTV could get involved with marketing and make them stylish – think about the girls going ga-ga over a boy-band patch. Think about where they could put their favourite boy’s face! This could be a whole new industry!

Logically it makes sense. Less issues. Self inflicted harm without the guilt of polluting the people around you. No “oppression” of the smoking/non-smoking section. Hell, people that don’t like the smell or taste of smoke might jump on bought this as it’s a cleaner habit. More private and less side effects. Of course it’s also a lot of rubbish. Whoever heard of such bunk in all their days? But it supports my case: logic isn’t always enough. Give it another five years and you’ll hear:

“Hey buddy, gimmie 2 packs of Marlboro Red-Patch, hard pack…”