Smoking

Cigarettes fascinate me.

This may seem a strange thing to say, and don't misinterpret it for me being a fan of smoking. I think it a pretty unpleasant habit, mostly on account of the way it colors and odorizes things. But still many facets of the idea of smoking fascinate me.

One thing that makes me think are athletes who smoke. Now, I'm no smoker, but I will confess to having smoked a bit while in China. When I was in China, for the brief period I was smoking semi-regularly, I felt like I got out of breath a whole hell of a lot easier. True, it could have just been the air, and just breathing smog or whatever, but I don't think it was. So it confused me to think that people who were trying to be competitive in something such as running cross country could at the same time be regular smokers.

Another thing is relationships where one person smokes and the other doesn't. I'm not saying that this is unfathomable to me, just a bit perplexing. I mean, I'd find it really frustrating if somebody was smoking around all my stuff and getting it kind of gross. In these cases does the non-smoker think that they're capable of changing their significant other's ways? I don't want this to be taken the wrong way, but it can be pretty irksome when I feel like somebody is trying to get me to change these longstanding habits of mine, which so far as I can tell are mostly only affecting me. This isn't in reference to smoking so much, since I can see how that would have more of an effect on others. But I'm digressing here.

There was more I wanted to touch on, but I'm tired now, and I don't feel like opening those cans of worms now anyway.