Gas Prices Aren’t Too High

That got your attention, huh?

As evidence I submit my venture to Sundown in the City on Thursday.  Sundown in the City is a series of outdoor concerts put on each summer in Market Square.  There’s no charge for admission, and they draw insane crowds.  I haven’t been to Sundown in the City in a couple of years, but I went on Thursday to see Robert Earl Keen.  Huge crowd, and an unbelievable amount of smokers.

Before I go any further…I don’t care if you smoke.  You have every right to do so, and I think the ban on smoking inside is a bunch of crap.  It’s your body-trash it if you want to.  If I don’t want to be around it, I can (and do) choose not to be around it.  That problem is easily solved.

But I didn’t realize that so many people still smoke.  What is this, 1978?  Maybe they were smoking so much because they aren’t allowed to do it inside anymore?  Maybe they are all nervous about the fact that gas and food prices are so high?  Maybe they spent the money they would have spent on fuel for this years family vacation on cigarettes since they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere this year?

I don’t know.  But I started thinking that, while gases prices are high, they aren’t so high that people can’t afford the luxury of cooking themselves from the inside.  I mean, this is literally just burning money, and a lot of it.  To be fair, I didn’t hear anyone complaining about gas prices in between puffs, but I’d bet dollars to donuts that some of them had complained in the last 24 hours, probably the last time they filled up and bought a pack of smokes.

So as high as prices are, I think we’ll survive–at least long enough to demand in our old age that someone give us free health care to take care of all those problems caused by smoking.

Smoking Still Legal Near Hospitals

From the KNS:

Burchett and the House sponsor, Rep. Johnny Shaw, D-Bolivar, said the measure would help protect the health of hospital patients, their families and medical staff.

That’s funny, because every time I drive by a hospital I’m utterly amazed at the number of supposedly educated health care professionals who are standing outside puffing away and turning their faces into catchers’ mitts and cooking themselves from the inside.

The real shame is that hospitals don’t currently have the legal right to decide where people can smoke on hospital property, right? Right?

Hospitals already have the power to block smoking on their property if they wish, he said.

Power? Wish? This guy makes it sound like the hospital could handle this on their own. How preposterous! How can anything be decided or handled without the gov’ment?

I’m not complaining…this measure failed. I just can’t believe it was ever even considered.