Cigarettes, Coffee and Bomb Shelters

Man, enough about my bad habits already!

Let's discuss the bad habits of others.
One thing all addicts do is steal stuff. To illustrate my point, I have stolen a photograph from a blogpal's site:

Obviously, what you see is coffee and cigarettes , two of the building blocks of the American Nutritional Pyramid- what could be wrong with that?
Well, that's another thing addicts do- they talk shit about everything- I have only good things to say about Barb - and I freaking love coffee- but that's my point. Addicts even mess up stuff they like.

I'm trying to hold them in, these heartless coffee comments...but I am helpless...forgive me...please...we all say hurtful things when we are in our cups.

... *sputtters*...if you read Barb's post, you will see that there isn't coffee in that cup- at least not the good ol' Joe I was raised on.
I saw the words 'latte' and 'mocha' and 'vanilla' - I know vanilla is a flavor of ice cream, but what is that other stuff?
Is it what the coffeeshop girl struggles with for ten excruciating minutes while I wait in line for my refill of black coffee?

Is it even coffee?

Doesn't sound like coffee.

Coffee should be called manly, Greatest Generation names like 'Joe' and 'Java', not 'frappe latte grande'. My G.I. Grandpa didn't trade howitzer rounds with Rommel's Afrika Korps so we could have 'grande lattes'- he commanded a Sherman tank in WWII and he drank good ol' Joe, brewed in the gunner's helmet or a spent 75mm shell casing, whichever was cleaner.
The African sun was so hot, they'd just put the beans in the helmet, add liquid and it would boil itself. They didn't have water back then, so they had to use their own sweat, which was already boiling when it left their pores. That's how Granpa and his crew invented instant coffee- he later lost the patent in a game of mumblety-peg while being held P.O.W. in North Korea, but that's another tale...
Granpa's coffee also doubled as a passable scorpion and reptile repellent - try holding a nest of frenzied scorpions or hostile pit vipers at bay with a mocha latte. Lotsa luck!

The coffee that G.I. Granpa drank would dissolve that cup- looks like one of them new-fangled thin foam thingies- in about five seconds.

In those days nobody ever asked you : " would you like room for cream in that?"
That's like the world's dumbest trick question- what they are really asking you is: "would you like less coffee?"
Less coffee is always the wrong choice.

Granpa would've recognized the Camel logo on the cigarettes, but he would've looked at the word 'Lights' and thought, " hey, what a great idea- they packaged matches (lights) with the smokes!"
He wouldn't know what to make of a filtered cigarette, much less a Light one- back then the real men (and the sophisticated dames) smoked Lucky Strikes and unfiltered Camels. The best of them developed heat-resistant callouses between fore and index fingers, allowing them to smoke the entire cigarette without leaving so much as a 'butt' behind.


See that slogan at the bottom? L.S./M.F.T.?
Back then, everyone knew what L.S./M.F.T meant.
Today, it sounds like some sort of left-wing gay-agenda flag-burners association:
Lesbian Socialists Mean Flag Torching .

In the Good Old Days, tobacco was good for you- like vitamins- and advertisers didn't waste time wringing their hands in fear of offending this or that minority or special-interest group. If you didn't smoke Old Gold, you were clearly a primitive savage with a war drum and a hacking cough.
No 'medical war whoops' from Old Gold- it was those other brands that caused cancer, not Old Golds.
If they made Old Golds today, smoking would still be safe.



The text at the very bottom reads : " For a Treat instead of a Treatment, treat yourself to Old Golds". By 'treatment' I can only imagine that they mean an early form of chemotherapy, iron-lung sessions or some equally horrific medical treatment. Unbelievable.


If you really felt the need to smoke a filtered cigarette, you used to have the option of choosing Micronite, a miracle filter endorsed by scientists and educators, Micronite was-"the greatest health protection ever-"
made with all-natural asbestos fibers- what could be safer than tobacco smoke filtered through asbestos?
The industry stopped using asbestos filters - or admitting it, anyway- in 1957.
Until then, smoking Kents was actually safer than not smoking at all.




In the event of Atomic War , you were encouraged to inhale through unlit Kent Micronite filters to protect yourself from harmful radioactive fallout particles.
Schoolchildren were issued Kents during Atomic Fire Drills. The typical American backyard bomb shelter would contain a 30 day supply of food and water, but at least 60 days worth of cigarettes- at the recommendation of the American Medical Association.



Duck, cover , reach for a cigarette- all clear!