Saturday 2 April 2011

Pity The Pathological Anti-Smoker

You may have heard of US broadcaster Rush Limbaugh. If it was on the BBC or CiF, his name would have been uttered in the same vein as would David Icke's or Nick Griffin's since he is unashamedly tabloid (as has been levelled at your host on occasion), and far from 'progressive'.

Still, whatever the source, anecdotes are just that - anecdotes - whoever tells 'em, so I don't see why this one shouldn't be retold with an admitted relish. Especially since it involves e-cig use {pauses to take generous vapour} and highlights further the anti-social nature of your friendly neighbourhood, pompous, dictatorial, mentally-disturbed, anti-tobacco freak.

You know, I'll tell you a little funny story. In fact, it happened in Hawaii.

It was an outdoor thing. Seven or eight of us are standing at the bar and we're having adult beverage, and I have one these electronic cigarettes going.

It wasn't long before the general manager of the place came over, very polite, and said, "Mr. Limbaugh, you know, really. I'm sure you know that smoking isn't permitted. We're serving food here but generally smoking in public isn't permitted."

I said, "I know, I totally understand, but this is not smoking."

"It isn't?"

"No. This is not a cigarette. This is water vapor," and I took it apart, I explained it to him. I said, "What looks like a cigarette to you is a battery. What looks to you like the filter is where the nicotine is in a fluid and it ends up as water vapor."

"Ohhhhh, is that all it is? It's water vapor?"

I said, "Yeah, here, let me smoke it and you tell me if you can smell it." So I blew some in his face. It happened to be chocolate flavored that day.

"Oh, no problem!"

Ten minutes later, the guy comes back.

"Mr. Limbaugh, our customers are still complaining. You're enjoying it too much and they think that you're setting a bad example. They say it looks like a cigarette."
We're a long way from health concern here, aren't we?

When someone vaping an e-cig; outdoors; nowhere near the complainant; is still subject to an overwhelming urge to object from someone who has presumably had the nature of the device explained to them, one has to surmise that the person concerned has serious mental issues to contend with.

I'm beginning to think that, instead of vilifying such disgusting berks, we should be pitying them for the frailty of their social and coping mechanisms. Let's face it, they've probably been understandably punched in the face so often that they're deeply terrified of life itself.

Bless.


18 comments:

Unknown said...

I had the same response a few weeks back in one of our local boozers. But this time I asked the landlady if I could use my ecig, (after explaining what it was.)

"No" was the reply, the customers might think you are smoking and light up!

It beggars belief.

Bucko said...

I just bought an e-cig last weekend. Looks like Im going to have some fun with pillocks like that around )-:

Anonymous said...

Hawaii is very anti-smoking. Like strictly anti-smoking cities along the west coast of CA which nearly all have outdoor smoking bans these days, Hawaii also has implemented strict indoor and outdoor smoking bans.

Hawaii implemented extreme indoor and outdoor smoking bans a few years ago and immediately realized a tremendous overnight drop in tourism from Japan, where a large segment of the population smokes, some of the longest lived people on the planet in fact. Japanese simply stopped going to Hawaii, because of the hateful divisive bans.

In Hawaii, I have read that the only places left to smoke is out in the back alley by the garbage dumpster and even then one is taking one's chances with law enforcement out looking for "the smokers".

Along with anywhere in California, Hawaii would be another tourist destination I would mark off my plans and never go to again in my life.

Let the price of everything from hotel rooms to restaurant meals to bar drinks double, triple and quadruple to make up for the loss of the smoking tourist who simply stops going there. Let the smug hateful self-righteous anti-smoking bigots pay the extra cost for keeping everyone unpure and unclean from their sacrosanct politically correct but no more or less healthy surroundings.

Beware of Geeks bearing GIFs said...

DP - have used my ecig in a couple of pubs - have asked before vaping and they've all been ok about it.

The only thing I have noticed every now and then is a few (normally drunken) idiots lighting up thinking that the landlord has allowed smoking inside.

As for Les Miserables, well they would wouldn't they? They hate life and themselves in extremis and if they very dare see someone enjoying something, it is simply anathma.

Dick Puddlecote said...

TBY: I tend to use it without asking and dare them to approach me. After all, I'm not breaking the law. It's what I did Thursday at a place on Victoria Embankment, I got a couple of funny looks from the bar staff but nothing else.

Anon: I'd heard that Hawaii had gone back on their ban a touch after someone stood in their elctions on an anti-ban ticket. Is that ancient history now?

Gifs: Good that you've found pubs that are OK with it, they're probably the kind of place I grew up in - no pretensions (and thus probably no beardy CAMRA types in attendance). ;)

For anything more highbrow, the above approach works best, I find.

Anonymous said...

The Hawaii ban came in 2006, by 2007 tourism had plummeted, especially from Japan and has not gone up to pre-ban levels since. Many Hawaiin bars closed as a direct result of the ban destroying business. After the indoor ban went into effect, new legislation came out a year later to ban all outdoor smoking in and around beaches and it may have extended to sidewalks and various outdoor areas and venues. There was a proposal in February 2011 to issue $1,000 yearly smoking-license fees to some bars that would want to permit smoking, but I do not believe that legislation was passed. So as far as I know I do not think they have rescinded their bans one bit and anti-smokers still hold Hawaii's bars, restaurants, outdoor venues and beaches hostage to smoking-bans. These strict anti-smoking festering hell-holes still need to be taught an economic lesson or two by way of losing tourist dollars for their vehement attack on individuals regardless in my opinion and even if Hawaii did give some slight minor concession, I would still not flock back there immediately but let them sit and stew on it for a while first, also my personal opinion.

English Pensioner said...

When I was a child we used to have sweet cigarettes. From a few yards away, they looked like the real thing, and as you sucked the end in your mouth they got shorter.
I can't remember seeing them since I was about 15, presumably they were banned in case they encouraged children to start on the real thing.
Wish that I could get some to see the effect!

Anonymous said...

I think I can better this; a few months ago my wife and I were on an Easy Jet flight and we bought a packet of "Similar" smoke-free cigarettes (essentially you just suck on them and the nicotine in filter comes through). Despite being advertised as being usable on board (they certainly don't generate any smoke or vapour of any kind), immediately after purchasing them the cabin manager told us that you couldn't actually do so as people might think that we were smoking a real cigarette and get upset. So that's what it has come to -the mere sight of someone using something that looks like like a cigarette seems to strike fear into the brainwashed public who think that even the slightest whiff of cigarete smoke, or perhaps just even seeing a smoker, will kill them stone dead. Heaven help us all!

James said...

Anonyous

"These strict anti-smoking festering hell-holes still need to be taught an economic lesson or two by way of losing tourist dollars for their vehement attack on individuals.."

But who are going to be the ones to suffer, the politicians who put the law into place or the owners of local businesses just trying to make a living?

Anonymous said...

Some years before the ban, but well after smoking had been banned on aircraft, I read an article written by a famed rocker who said that on any flight he would always, always take out his cigarettes and keep them highly visible to the aircraft crew. He’d have the packet on the table in front of him, hold a cigarette smoking-style in his hand, wave it about when talking, and hold it between his lips and “pretend drag” on it, and flick his lighter on and off every now and then so that everyone within earshot could hear it. If anyone was brave enough to come over to “remind” him that smoking wasn’t allowed, he’d just say that he was a nervous flyer and it helped him to relax to have a cigarette in his hand, even if he wasn’t smoking it. Always with a smile, and always with a reassurance that he had no intention of lighting up.

Not once did he ever light one up, but he said that even so, it drove the cabin staff to distraction. They couldn’t actually tell him off, because the cigarette remained unlit, but he said that they’d constantly be sauntering past to check up on him and hovering about “doing things” close by to keep an eye on him and make sure that he didn’t try and sneakily spark up.

Not only did it give him great satisfaction to wind them up for enforcing such an unfair rule, but he said it had the added advantage of enabling him to attract their attention very easily whenever he wanted another drink!

Furor Teutonicus said...

XX English Pensioner said...

.....sweet cigarettes.....presumably they were banned in case they encouraged children to start on the real thing.XX

I seem to remember in the dark and distant past, that that is indeed the case. Sometime in the early 80s.

Anonymous said...

James said...
Anonyous

"These strict anti-smoking festering hell-holes still need to be taught an economic lesson or two by way of losing tourist dollars for their vehement attack on individuals.."

But who are going to be the ones to suffer, the politicians who put the law into place or the owners of local businesses just trying to make a living?
------------------------
What will happen is enough businesses start to slump, enough pressure gets built up among the business owners to stand up for their private and business property rights and it is THEY who will rise up against the intolerants at the top who install these bans. It puts pressure on the whole system and is no different than saying why bomb the Axis during WWII, is it the citizens who will suffer or the oppressors at the top? The citizens suffered but it puts pressure on the leadership when they see their empire bombed and destroyed (travel and tourism boycotts) and ultimately puts pressure on the groups living under these crooked hoodlums who institute the bans to rise up and demand a change. Is it better instead to keep feeding money to a corrupt system? To me, the boycotts send a stronger message - plus they are happening regardless of there being any official boycotts - in the case of Hawaii, people simply stopped going - period. It wasn't organized - they just didn't want to be where they weren't welcomed. Nor would I want to go spend money where I was not welcome either. If pub owners and tobacco companies had some balls to begin with then this whole ban never would have started here.

Anonymous said...

I fully agree with Anon 19:57.
It is the only way, sad though it seems.
There is a further element to the reasoning, and that is that, at present, there is little or no incentive for entrepreneurs to open new bars to replace the old fashioned 'magnificent edifices'.

We need a major pubco to go bust. Maybe then the powers-that-be may see the light.

Mjolinir said...

"Candy Sticks" (Made by BARRATT - white hard candy cylinders, 5 in a flip-top pack )- are often on sale at those 'old fashioned sweetie' stalls and markets. http://www.aquarterof.co.uk/candy-sticks-p-385.html)

Smoking Hot said...

@Anon 00.51

Take a couple of cigarette butts in a small plastic bag onboard a flight.
Leave them in toilet, then return to your seat and wait for the show to begin. :)

Unknown said...

Now that's a show I'd like to see. Sure would break up a tedious flight, wouldn't it.

James Higham said...

Whatever you do, under no circumstances may you ever have fun or enjoy yourself. If you do, you're doing something wrong.

Anonymous said...

These people are puritans and as the great H L Menken put it: Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.