Where are we going with this?

There's a nice little article about smoking over at the Guardian. Less about smoking maybe and more about the craze to eliminate it from this world as though it were evil personified. This happens to be a pet peeve of mine, this whole anti-smoking bullshit. I hate not being able to smoke when I see a movie or eat at a restraunt. I didn't mind the smoking/non-smoking sections, but the nonsmoking areas started to spread, and then like suburban sprawl, they took over. You can barely smoke outside of your own home. Bars are banning it, and that makes no sense to me. When you drink, what do you want to do? SMOKE. They go together like peanut butter and jelly.

So, you ask, why am I talking about this here? How is this possibly relevant? Well, here, from the article:

Can you think of any good movies without smoking in them? March of the Penguins, anyone? If you discount historical films such as Barry Lyndon or Ben-Hur, a diet of non-smoking films would be almost unwatchable. But what would be most tragically lost are the great black-and-white smoking films of the 1940s - Casablanca, Now, Voyager, The Big Sleep - where wreaths of smoke are an essential and beautiful part of the cinematography, and where smoking quite clearly stands for sex. The Big Sleep (1946) opens with a title shot of two cigarettes smouldering in an ashtray that suggests more strongly than flesh scenes ever could that Bogart and Bacall are having an affair. And we learn a lot about the intimacy between Paul Henreid and Bette Davis in Now, Voyager from his habit of lighting two cigarettes at once and handing one to her. Cigarettes in movies are about far more than just whether the characters happen to have a nicotine addiction.

So, hah! See! See! I know what I'm doing. It all makes sense. Who are you to question me!

Look, my Uncle Ben always told me...With great power comes great responsibilty...now shut up and eat your fucking rice!

Wait, where am I?

I know the article is refering to England. Great Britain. The United Kingdom? That country over there (who are they anyways??), but with all the BS in the world and REAL problems, why does it MATTER if I want to have a cigarrette. Why do I need to walk across the entire office and go outside in the freezing cold. Bastards. You want the fresh fucking air. You go outside. You stay home and wait for the movie to come to DVD. I'm the one that's going to go nuts sitting for 3 hours without a smoke through a shit movie like King Kong. Not you. I pay my taxes (more so cuz I have to pay a billion dollars in taxes on a pack of camels), why am I shunned?

Smoking goes hand in hand with entertainment. It always has. And every day, we get closer and closer to losing that. Without smoking in movies, how will you know who the drunks are? Or who just fucked someone? Who the cheating wife is? It's one less thing for the suspected murderess to leave her lipstick on.

Look, all I'm saying is that we play a role in society and in movies. And in the end, to all you nonsmokers, I ask this: When we're all gone, and your smoke free world exists, who are you going to feel superior to?