Ashes on my riding jacket. After a ride. Not all that uncommon. I never really paid much attention to it before. I mean yeah I knew that I’d been hit by another cigarette, but it wasn’t until I noticed a burn hole in a new (and fairly expensive leather riding jacket) that I paid it any mind. If you spend any time on a motorcycle you will at some point get hit by the cigarette of the person in the car in front of you. Hell it might be from the person in the lane right next to you. (you know, the guy your about to beat to near death for being a dick)
Well I was having a conversation with a friend who is looking for a new apartment. Seems that his building just went non-smoking. This leads into a rather long conversation that starts with smoking, goes to civil liberties and just spirals off to extremism. Now I won’t bore you with the details, but allow me to rant here a bit.
Smoking… I don’t smoke… Cigarettes. Gave them up many many moons ago. I will on occasion smoke up a nice cigar. It comes and goes in cycles. Not many people know that I had smoked in the past and seem to think, having heard me complain about insensitive drivers flicking their butts out the window, that I was anti-smoking. Not true. Actually, I don’t care if you do or don’t smoke. None of my business really if you smoke or don’t. What I am against is the asshat that flicked the butt out the window and hit me. I don’t wanna hear that you didn’t see me. Not a good answer as you should be looking into your mirrors fairly often in traffic, so not seeing me just makes you inattentive which puts you firmly into the bad driver category. What I am really against is the way our government is regulating our lives. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Seems I have heard or read that somewhere before… Seems like it was important for some reason… What is going on? How is it that we have let the government come to control what and how we do things? Then again it wouldn’t be fair to ask that question without asking if we are doing this to ourselves. No seriously. I mean just who is electing these characters? Do they accurately reflect the will of the people? Is it that we tend to surround ourselves with like minded people so have no realization of what is going on on the world around us? It is a fair question. In looking at the surfing habits of several friends (ah, keyloggers and ettercap, how I love thee.. Ahem sorry) I have noticed that they tend to gather at site and interact again with similarly minded people. Again seems like it would keep you out of the loop of the groups you didn’t like for whatever reason. So again, perhaps and it frightens me to no end that this is really the will of the people, that we have really degenerated to the point that we want or need the government to regulate our daily lives. What do YOU think?
