Friday Fitness Funnies: Stopping Smoking

by Heather Long | More from this Blogger

10 Nov 2006 09:44 AM

You had to know this is where my focus would be this week and for me, writing about these things, poking fun at them, sharing the torment and the pride and the success - they are all positive ways for me to channel trying to defeat this addiction. I've been winning the battles, but I'm not ready to declare the war won yet. So for now, here are some Friday Fitness Funnies that focus on smoking and stopping smoking.

Quotes on Smoking

• For thy sake, Tobacco, I would do anything but die. -- Charles Lamb, 1775-1834
• I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he had read of the effects of smoking that he gave up reading. -- Henry G. Strauss, 1892-1974

A doctor asked his patient trying to quit smoking, "Do you smoke after sex?" She responded, "I don't know. I never looked."

Found this following set of gems at a Performance Management Training site.

Tobacco Money

Q: Could you please explain the recent historic tobacco settlement?

A: Sure! Basically, the tobacco industry has admitted that it is killing people by the millions, and has agreed that from now on it will do this under the strict supervision of the federal government. Q: Will there be monetary damages assessed?

A: Yes. To compensate for the immense suffering caused by its products, the tobacco industry will pay huge sums of money to the group most directly affected. Q: Lawyers?

A: Yes. Q: Will the federal government also receive large quantities of money?

A: Of course. Q: How will the tobacco industry obtain this money?

A: By selling more tobacco products. Q: What if consumers stop buying tobacco products?

A: That would be very bad. That would mess up the economics of the whole thing. The government would probably have to set up an emergency task force to figure out ways to get people smoking again in order to finance the historic tobacco settlement. Q: If the government really wants people to stop smoking, how come it doesn't just make cigarettes illegal?

A: Because people would smoke them anyway. Q: Then how come the government makes crack cocaine illegal?

A: That is an unfair comparison. The tobacco industry is merely selling a deadly product; the crack cocaine industry is guilty of something far far worse. Q: Failure to make large political donations??

A: Yes. Q: Many people started smoking because they watched classic movies in which glamorous Hollywood stars were always inhaling and exhaling vast clouds of smoke and looking totally cool. What will be done to correct this under the historic tobacco settlement?

A: By mid 1999, all classic movies will be digitally reprocessed by special Food and Drug Administration computers so that - to cite one example - in Casablanca, when Humphrey Bogart makes his dramatic final speech to Ingrid Bergman, he will have the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel. Q: Whose voice will the late John Wayne have?

A: The late Lucille Ball's. Q: What will happen to all the tobacco institute scientists, who, despite decades of dedicated research, were never able to find a single shred of evidence proving that cigarettes cause cancer?

A: At the request of the White House, they will be reassigned to the Whitewater investigation. Q: Speaking of administration scandals, if President Clinton actually winds up in court over this Paula Jones thing, what steps will be taken to prevent the trial from turning into a grotesque and demeaning pubic spectacle?

A: Mr. Clinton's face will be covered at all times by an electronically superimposed dark blob, underneath which will be an electronic label identifying him only as "A United States President." Q: How will the historic tobacco settlement affect the aliens whose spaceship crashed near Roswell, N.M. in 1947?

A: Millions of dollars will be paid to their lawyers. Q: I guess that covers it! Thanks! Smoke?

A: No, thank you. I have my own.

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Learn more about Heather Long

Heather Long is 35 years old and currently lives in Wylie, Texas. She has been a freelance writer for six years. Her husband and she met while working together at America Online over ten years ago.

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