If you're smoking, you're still breathing, right?

I’ve noticed that most smokers over a certain age are fat.

They aren’t morbidly obese. They aren’t generally the super-fat, embarrassingly large, I-can’t-believe-they-don’t-love-butter types. They’re the soft ones. A little pudgy with rounded doughy shoulders, a conspicuous absence of muscular architecture, and a hint of jowliness. More than the exhortations of the Truth folks who apparently stage die-ins in front of the building of a major tobacco corporation (as I have learned from several movie previews)…the specter of becoming (more of) a bag of wet cement with cankles is much more effective in cutting down my smoking.

Maybe it’s because when we were younger, smokers still hadn’t stopped growing and reaching their sedentary low adult metabolism…or that people who can’t resist the sublime allure of tobacco also can’t resist the irresistible tractor beams of butter, beer, and watching TV on the couch. (Personal note: Eating a stick of butter with a cigarette in one hand, a hearty brew in the right, and watching The Office on television….awesomeness.) I honestly don't know what it is, but the more fat smokers I see, the more uneasy I get about this lovely habit of mine.

Ahh....the Good ol' Days.

For good measure, just in case this post was boring, here's a picture of a Starfish eating a mussel. Hardcore! (and terrifying and blegch!)