I was in the company of friends last night -- three incessant cigarettes, one cheap cigar, and a pipe that was emitting the cloying yet indecisive stench of something akin to that of a cheap air freshener combined with a six-day-old corpse that had been left to lie rotting in the gutter. And all this in a room the size of a walk in closet.

All the while (me, a loudly indignant, self-righteous reformed smoker who sucked it up and bit the bullet when cancer sticks hit $7.50 a pack six years back) my eyes were hot coals turning to cinders. And when I at last escaped to home I had to re-shower and shave, trim what had surely become radioactive nose hairs and double bag my clothing to await pickup by a hazardous waste removal team, hopefully, for everyone's sake, to be entombed with spent nuclear waste in an underground crypt located somewhere in a remote corner of an Arizona desert.

This morning I awoke to experience a hacking cough and a raw throat -- which, on top of the self-induced monumental Johnny Walker hangover, ain't no f'n picnic.

IMO, smokers should be compelled by law (and threat of life-imprisonment in an Edmond Dantes type dungeon -- no smoking allowed -- with only a filthy digging spoon to seek wiser counsel and without any possibility of parole) to confine their addiction to standing naked in the median of an interstate at rush hour where their disgusting emissions would blend in little noticed with the exhausts of single-occupant SUVs and farting eighteen-wheelers.

I would think that when even the thought occurs of needing to duck tape your windows and doors against the possible escape of smelly carcinogens, it would maybe be time to reassess priorities. :evilgrin: