Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for June 18, 2022

Hilarious

Fun fact…. Even some of the brightest among us have been smokers. Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud loved cigars for example. It’s not always a question of knowing…

P.S… I can’t stand tobacco.

Not the sharpest fork in the electrical outlet…

Tobacco, guns, and most recreational drugs.

Tell St Peter at the Golden Gate

That you hate to make Him wait,

But you’ve just gotta have another cigarette.

When I was around 15, I used to imagine that I would be one of those scientists who smoked a pipe. Not cigarettes - my parents were then 2 pack a day smokers, with my dad smoking a pipe now and then and more rarely a cigar,But my freshman class in physics was taught by a young (early 30s) guy who smoked a pipe — or rather who was constantly fiddling with the pipe during lectures. It seemed a lot of repetitive work, and by that time, even pipe smoking was known to be dangerous to your health. So, I never smoked anything (including grass) despite the picture of my 15 year old self holding one of my dad’s pipes to my mouth.

My dad eventually reduced his smoking to an occasional pipe, while my mother continued her 2 pack a day habit until she was 62 and quit cold turkey and never smoked again. I was shocked, amazed, and proud of her! I’d known smokers who tried to quit but kept lighting up after a month or so. For her to successfully quit after 45 years was great. It’s not quite up there with the two times she saved a child from imminent death, but close.

I started smoking pretty much at the same time my aunt was dying from lung cancer…17 year olds think they will live forever…quit when I was 25, hardest thing ever did

Huh. I thought that Native Americans gave Europeans tobacco as a form of revenge. Many seem to think that applies to the origin of syphilis as well. It wasn’t around in pre-Columbian Europe…

There is a certain level of logic – from a certain point of view.

Sadly, the US Army hooked a generation with free cigarettes in wartime.

Fortunately there isn’t an IQ test for entering heaven… They may ask you about some of your activities while here on earth, but you can be intelligent (or at least think you are) and not pass the qualifying exam.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the increase in adults who smoke lately (especially since the pandemic started).

Ah – so Peter was the guy on the phone with Sir Walter Raleigh, played by Bob Newhart.

Addiction isn’t related to intelligence.

My uncle had an addictive personality. He was also a double doctorate who spoke about 10 languages.

They don’t call ’em coffin nails for nothing.

“Cigarettes are a blight on the whole human race A man is a monkey with one in his face; Take warning dear friend, take warning dear brother A fire’s on one end, a fool’s on the t’other.” – Cigareets and whusky and wild, wild wimmin.

These trolls, if they just kept quiet, we wouldn’t notice their stupidity.

We, as a society, have made great progress in reducing tobacco abuse. So much so, it’s odd now to see someone smoking. See what we can accomplish, when we work together?

I suppose there’s no smoking in heaven. Probably no drinking, though Jesus seems to have been a supporter of wine. Probably no sex in heaven either. …hummm. I don’t know how I feel about sitting around listening to angels sing for eternity.

The guy standing before St. Pete kinda reminds me of the doctor from Piranha Club.

Good lord! It’s a comic strip. Leave politics out of it, you troll.

FUN FACT:

20 comments on the strip itself averaged less than one reply; and most got none. One comment that may have suggested a liberal reference got, to date, 17 replies attacking the comment. A classic case of the “butwhataboutthe” defense. Hmmm.

Man do you have a bug up your butt

I took a single puff of a cigarette when I was a kid and immediately decided I did not like my lungs being on fire. Then in college I once smoked a cigar, which at the time had a pleasant, toasted marshmallow flavor (though I realized the hard way why my grandfather always used a cigar holder when he smoked), but the next day I had a horrible ash taste in my mouth.

My mom told us about how her dad caught her trying to smoke a cigarette when she was a kid. Grandpa said if you’re going to do it, do it right. He made her smoke a whole cigar. She was throwing up sick for 3 days – and never touched tobacco again.

In addition, my mom used to bring home stories from hospitals where she worked as a nurse: long-time smokers’ perspiration was yellow from the nicotine, and their sheets were. . .

“If I can’t smoke in heaven, I won’t go.” Mark Twain

Ummmm, it’s a cartoon…

We are the one species on earth with the brains to solve problems, look and plan ahead, invent machines, accumulate knowledge, and change the world. But we are also the one species with egos that ignore all that knowledge when it applies to self. We know that eating sweets, snack foods, and fast foods cause weight and health problems, but we still hit the drive throughs and pull out the beer, soda, chips and dips when we sit down to watch a ball game. We understand that smoking and air pollution lead to lung diseases, but we still smoke and we resist doing things to clear up the air. We seem to be the only species that views ‘self’ as outside the laws of nature and physics.

I was a restless, often-insolent teenager, so when I was thirteen Dad got me a summer job on a tobacco farm. It is amazing how reality “crystallizes” around you, when you are out on your own like that.

I worked in the fields on the hottest of days picking the leaves. Your sweat was embued with stinging tars of the plant and continually dripped into your eyes. Every evening I literally scraped away tar from my jeans where I had been brushing against tobacco leaves all day. I learned that tobacco is so toxic there is only one bug that will even eat it. Believe me when I say I was permanently cured of any desire to smoke or use other tobacco products.

My parents smoked plenty when I was a child. My older sister took up the habit too. Various rooms of the house smelled of the smoke all the time. By the time I was of the age when, stereotypically, peer pressure would have sent me in that direction, I found the smell repellent enough that I never had the slightest urge to take a puff.

I did indulge a bit in cannabis during and just after my college years, and a bit more a decade later with my wife. We found it very hard to get used to the process of smoking, and fell out of the habit as we found ourselves developing symptoms of asthma. Fortunately, there are other ways of ingesting THC, with which I’ve experimented just a little since my retirement.

The commenters are insane.

I can think of at least a couple famous people that would still be alive today if they had just laid off the cigarettes.

Smokers have essentially chosen their means of death

As Bugs Bunny might say about whatever kind of semi-sentient creature “B4ItNs” is…What a maroon!

Curious as to when in history people first began to make the switch from eating things to smoking things.

“Hell we have enough food now, let’s fire this puppy up”

As Bugs Bunny might say about whatever semi-sentient creature “B4ItNs” is masquerading as, “What a maroon!”

I’d love to see this posted billboard-size all over the country!

Another fun fact: If you use tobacco only for certain societally prescribed social and/or spiritual rituals, as the First People did, you don’t get addicted to it.

That’s why drug abuse is called abuse.

An IQ test I failed , I’ve been a Pipe smoker for 51yrs. And I agree ya’ll politically wannabes (left or right) need to get a life and let the rest of us enjoy cartoons for what they are – entertainment!

Wow! Get a life! Critiquing Comic strips??

Why 55 people dignified B4ItNs with responses is beyond me. Rule #1 of user comments groups is DON’T FEED THE TROLLS!

The best thing I’ve ever done to stay healthy is to never have smoked anything. When I was a child, both my parents smoked, and I was in charge of tidying up the living room, which included disposing of the cigarette butts and washing the filthy ashtrays. That put me off smoking for the rest of my life!

I wonder how long St Peter will have to spend with Danae before he admits her?

Tobacco has a laxative effect in cattle, and so at one point many farmers would actually grow a small quantity of tobacco on their properties for just such a purpose.

Basically, if they suspected that one of their cattle had a stomach parasite or the cow was otherwise in distress, they’d feed the cow a tobacco leaf and let nature take its course.

It was never meant to be smoked.

both my parents were chain smokers. My father smoked “El Producto” cigars, and my mother rolled loose tobacco in papers. Both smoked until the day the died. My father tried to get me to smoke too. at age eight he insisted on my sharing a cigar with him. It was not a habit I chose to stick with. I just wish it had been as easy to give up the gin, since he gave me my first shot of that on my 7th birthday, and I still get the cravings.

He got there early because he worked it out faster than others .. wha??

To the 64 comments to B4ItNs, keep feeding the trolls and they’ll come back. Just flag him and make your comments to the main thread.

Not all habitual life long smokers get cancer. I know of two people who were heavy chain smokers who lived beyond 65. One died from COPD, which is not cancer. Some people are genetically able to have their immune system attack cancer cells before they develop. My brother seems to be one of them. He was a two to three pack a day smoker for over 40 years. He’s tried to quit many times but has failed so far.

Winston tastes good,like A cigarette should.(GAK!)

Over at MARVEL COMICS,I’m still waiting for The Kingpin to get cancer.

The cigarettes were provided “free” from the tobacco companies and the Army thought it was a nice gesture. The tobacco companies also paid big bucks to Hollywood to incorporate smoking scenes in every movie, particularly patriotic ones. Look at films from the period such as “Dive Bomber” , “Fighting Lady” and “The Best Years of Our Lives”. Only in the last one did the genius of William Wyler turn the tables and actually incorporate it into a plot development.