The Hog Blog

I don’t smoke. But my dad does.

Smokers start smoking because they are free birds. Let’s get reckless!

(Or because they are teenage girls who are rebelling against white teeth and fresh breath.)

As a kid, my dad would smoke while driving us in the car.

My dad gets cold easily, so he would be smoking in the car (AKA The Ashtray on Wheels) with the windows closed.

The car would fill up with smoke. As a kid sitting in the back, I would imagine I was in a Rock music video. I would wail on my air guitar as the smoke rose above the stage.

Oh, and my dad actually kept a rag on top of the dashboard to wipe off the film of yellowish tobacco that developed on the inside of the windshield.

Yeah, gross. The inside of the windshield was the same color as his underwear.

The memory of Dad coughing up a lung and digging for left-over cigarette butts in the car ashtray with the enthusiasm of an 1849er in a gold rush was the greatest anti-smoking commercial ever.

Thank you dad. I know you did that all for me. Because of your visual lesson, I will never, EVER smoke.

Smoking is definitely an addiction — a real addiction. That’s why I hate when girls are like, “I’m addicted to chocolate.”

No you’re not.

When nicotine addicts see cigarette butts on the street, they smoke them!

Would you pick up a half-eaten piece of chocolate off the sidewalk and put it in your mouth without hesitating?

Didn’t think so.

My good buddy is a super environmentalist (other than that, he’s really cool Here is the conflict:

He’s leaving his job. Has to clear out all his stuff.  To transport his stuff he’s going to use a …. CAR!!! Oh my God! This is the guy who walks to work in the spring. He feels bad when he takes the BUS. “But at least it’s mass-transit” he rationalizes.

The guy recycles EVERYTHING. I’m pretty sure he hand-washes his used toilet paper and recycles that with the newspapers.

So this is a BIG deal.

And for me, it’s a great chance to tease him.

I was like, “Dude, I can’t believe you will use a Ve-hell-icle (environmental-speak for car) to move your belongings! You can load everything into the basket on the front of your
bicycle! Just make 1,487 trips!”

That would be awesome… to see him biking down the street in the Seattle rain, trying to look over a stack of binders and framed pictures loaded into his white basket, while he furiously rings the bell on his handle-bar.