Got a light?

Halt! Who goes there?

Smokers are well used to being hectored in public and private about the evils of their habit. We are variously accused of stealing from honest taxpayers by placing a burden on the health system, bludging on the job by taking a ciggie break, giving others cancer by our second-hand smoke, ruining the environment with discarded cigarette butts, and being utterly selfish by deliberately harming ourselves and hastening our final departure from our loved ones.

To those who put forward these arguments loudly and self-righteously in newspaper 'letters' columns and on blogs, in bars and in office tearooms around the globe, I just hope you never are on a plane full of pious, card-carrying non-smokers when it crash lands on a remote Pacific atoll and it comes time to light a fire.

All the shortcomings of the evil incosiderate smoker are conveniently forgotten when there is a sudden need for fire. Besides the fondly imagined plane-crash scenario, who does the non-smoker turn to when all other lights go out? The answer is not the Star of Elindel. No, it's the brow-beaten, berated bunger-bandits who are asked to dig in the trouser pocket and save the day.

When it's too dark to find the keyhole, all talk of cancer is set aside. When it's time to light the barbie and the matches are forgotten, the smoker is ushered back into into the inner sanctum from the cold with a sheepish chuckle and a pat on the back. And what would police do without cigarettes? It would be pretty hard to pull off the good-cop bad-cop routine with a packet of milk arrowroots.

The reason I raise the subject was not to engage in a lively debate about the issue with a bunch of health nuts, because they can just get fucked. Yesterday my pocket arsenal was doubled when I purchased a lighter that also has a torch in the bottom. And it cost just 79 cents. I plan to use it to disorientate a pilot, bring down a 737 and then deny all the survivors use of the lighter. I will also burn anyone that pipes up about the perils of smoking, because I've had just about e-fucking-nough of their furrowed snit-line brows and righteous anger.