23 Easy Steps to a Healthier You

You've all heard it, so I don't have to go into it and give all the gory details..... smoking is bad for you.  Red meat is bad for you.   We should all chew gum and eat antibiotic-free organic chicken instead.  But vices are vices for a reason, and sometimes it's hard to give those things up even when we know we should.

Well today is your lucky day, loved ones!  I have kicked the red meat and smoking habit, and I'm going to share my secrets with you.  Get ready to be transformed!!

How to Give Up Smoking and Red Meat in 23 Easy Steps:

1.  Go to law school.

2.  Develop an inferiority complex from the unrelenting mindfuckery imposed upon you by your professors for 3 years.

3.  Graduate cum laude regardless.

4.  Get a job at a Big Firm making Big Money for Little Exposure and Experience.

5.  Further develop your inferiority complex watching your peers get more work than you and get treated like you didn't just graduate cum laude from law school.

6.  Go to lots of firm dinners where they feed you red meat to make you feel better about the fact that you are a mere cog in their machine which they will promptly replace with one just like you when you wear out.

7.  Go out during the week after you get off work at 11:30 pm so you can have some chill time before you have to deal with your spouse who rides your ass for working all the time, yet enjoys spending up the money you earn.

8.  Start smoking cloves while you drink at the after-work-but-WAY-past-happy-hour gatherings with all the other lawyers and law students just as worn out and browbeaten as you.

9.  Get separated from your spouse, causing you to not just smoke cloves when you are out, but all the time due to the emotional stress.

10.  Leave your Big Money Big Firm job because you are tired of dying on the inside a little bit every day.

11.  Scrimp (not to be confused with shrimp) by doing contract work and temp jobs for a year, slowly decreasing the amount of red meat you can afford to eat (but still keep a steady supply of cloves).

12.  Vote for Obama.

13.  Get a job at a Small Firm making BIGGER money.

14.  Increase your consumption of red meat because once again you can afford to go out and eat steaks.

15.  Increase your consumption of cloves due to the stress of the insane work environment where there are absolutely no checks and balances or legal protections when there are fewer than 15 employees.

16.  Leave Small Firm and increase clove consumption even more because you're sitting at home applying for jobs all day (and sleeping).

17.  Get a job making 1/4 of what you used to make and decrease clove consumption because you are in an office all day and don't have the liberty to come and go outside for smoke breaks because you are treated like a peon, but increase clove consumption outside of work while you wonder whose life this is.

18.  Stop going out to eat because you can't afford it, but still have the occasional ground beef in a fast food burger off the dollar menu.

19.  Try and hate the new and unimproved Djarum Black clove cigars because regular clove cigarettes have been banned by President Obama.

20.  Buy whatever leftover stock of ANY variety of cloves you can find, including Cherry and Reds, which are okay but aren't the Blacks.  Smoke less to make them last longer.

21.  Stop eating burgers altogether because you can't afford to eat out AT ALL.  Instead eat soup (cuz that's only $1.62 a can).

22.  Eat the occasional random charity cheeseburger or steak from a friend or loved one and notice how angrily your stomach reacts to the re-introduction of beef, even though it tasted good going down.

23.  Stop buying cloves because you're too broke to buy those, too.... that's even assuming you can find the old ones, which are now technically illegal for vendors to sell so they won't get any more stock.

And there you have it.  Clove cigarette and read meat free.  Simple, right?

R.I.P Cloves

*Disclaimer: Yes, I know that smoking is bad. And growing up I always said I would NEVER smoke after watching my dad smoke for the past however many decades.  Thus I am not encouraging ANYBODY to start smoking cloves or any other type of tobacco product.  I'ma quit eventually..... I swear I will.

It's been 19 days since the law banning clove cigarettes went into effect.  For those of you not aware, Congress passed a law that bans the sale of flavored cigarettes...... except for menthol (I'll get to that later).  The law authorizes the FDA to ban all flavored tobacco products, but as of right now it just applies to cigarettes (no worries, your local hookah bar is safe).  The principle behind the law is that it is intended to discourage kids from smoking with the whole "gateway" theory that says that flavored tobacco appeals more to kids, and thus entices them to smoke. 

What a buttload of crap.

Clove smokers make up 1% of the smoking population.... ONE PERCENT.  You mean to tell me that all the teens that smoke are in that 1%?  I didn't know about cloves until I was about 28, but I sure saw PLENTY of teens smoking regular old cigarettes.  This law was a half-hearted swing at the tobacco industry that missed by a mile, and only served to piss us neo-hippie folks off. 

And did you know this? The bill was backed by Phillip-Morris.  That kind of explains why the ban excludes menthol cigarettes (even though they are flavored), because that's what Phillip-Morris sells.  Phillip Morris doesn't sell cloves.... those are primarily made and imported by Kretek International, an Indonesian company.  So basically the U.S. Government just gave Phillip Morris a $140 million per year gift by squashing a portion of their competition.  If Congress were REALLY concerned about the health of the American youth, they would have included menthols in the ban as well, because I seem to recall an awful lot of kids in high school smoking menthols.....

So for the clove smokers out there, we were left with a few options:

1. Stock up on Djarums and keep them in an Army bunker (but at $70 a carton, I don't know too many of my folks who did that...... maybe DJ Limelight, but I'm sure he can write that off as a business expense)
2. Switch to regular cigarettes (gwoss)
3. Stop smoking altogether (the most idealistic of the choices, but not very realistic)
4. Switch to the new and unimproved Djarum Black filtered cigars.
   

Option number 4 was the one I kept hearing from my clove smoking brethren, saying that Djarum Blacks weren't really going away, just being repackaged and there wouldn't be any change.

What a second buttload of crap.

My assessment of the new and unimproved Djarum Blacks is that they suck lemur nuts.  I bought one pack and that was enough for me.  They come in a smaller package and are cheaper that the old cloves, and they are slightly bigger in diameter.  The change that makes them legal to sell is that they are wrapped in tobacco instead of paper, and thus considered a cigar.  Well, they taste like a cigar and NOT like a Djarum Black.  Smoking one made me feel like someone kicked me in the chest, and then forced me to lick their ashtray clean.  I've yet to find anyone who actually likes them.  I went to my favorite little smoke shop in the white hood that has the drive thru window, and they said they weren't even going to carry them because nobody likes them.  Damn. 

So basically all Congress did was 1) piss off the people who probably all voted for Obama in the first place  2) left us with a MORE harmful alternative that contains more tobacco than their predecessors and 3) did Big Tobacco a huge favor.  Thanks for looking out for my best interests, Government.

Right now I'm left with a few Djarum Cherrys/Reds that I managed to find from a retailer that was trying to get rid of their stock.   They're not Djarum Blacks, but they're not those shitty Djarum Black cigars either.  Presently I'm looking into a 5th option and researching the legality of purchasing them online directly from the importer. Goodness knows I have no desire to break any federal laws over some dumb ish that I really shouldn't be doing anyway. But supposedly the law only bans the sale of cloves by US distributors, not their purchase or possession.  I don't trust everything I read on the internet, though, so we shall see.