I'm now on my last pack of cigarettes. Sometime around midnight tonight, after half a century of smoking, I'm giving them up.

There are two very good reasons for doing this. Health, however, is not one of them. For nearly as long as I've been smoking, doctors have been telling me that smoking is bad for my health.

Bull puckey. There's more old smokers than there are old doctors. I rest my case.

Here are the two reasons why I'm quitting:

1. I'm really, really tired of paying taxes to support the local, state, and federal governments. By my quitting, the federal budget deficit will grow by more than a thousand dollars. Tough. Our government should learn to live within its means. Or disappear entirely.

2. Bad times lay ahead. My ESP has never been very good, so I don't know if it will be an economic collapse, societal collapse, civil war, invasion from outer space, or something else entirely. But regardless, I don't want to try surviving these bad times while going through nicotine withdrawal. It is far better to ditch them now.

I've got my patches, nicotine gum, regular gum, Tootsie Roll Pops, and the motivation. I'll be posting my progress here. Feel free to chime in.

Onward and upward,
airforce