Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The Price of Pleasure

Due to a tax hike, a pack of smokes in NYC is now $8.50. Well, in my neighborhood they're $8.50, but I hear that they're $9 in the East Village. This fucking sucks! My addiction is going to put me in the poorhouse. I won't be able to make rent, I'll get kicked out of my apartment, have to go live in a shelter or pretend that I'm 17 and try to get into one of those wayward LGBT youth houses. I'll end up eating white rice for dinner and giving hang jobs on the Lower East Side for 5 bucks a pop (pun intended). Anything but give up my beloved cigarettes. I know they're very bad for me, but cigarettes and I have been through a lot together.

Yeah ok, so maybe the city needed more tax money to, I don't know, plant rose bushes on upper Park Avenue or bring an art installation to the South St Seaport called Cat Anuses: the Exhibit. And so, to minimize mass backlash, they choose to tax a group that is hard for most people to sympathize with - smokers. My group gets the fucking shaft because others think that our cigarette smoke is obnoxious and detrimental to their health (as if living in New York City hasn't already rotted all of our lungs past the point of no return).

But you know what I find obnoxious? Babies. Babies are loud. Babies are messy. Their strollers take up half the fucking sidewalk when I'm in a hurry to get to the train. And there's all these things you're not supposed to say around them, like, "Hey last night I got double penetrated and holy fuck did it spread me open like a Thanksgiving turkey!" As if they even understand what a Thanksgiving turkey is! So why don't we raise the tax on, oh, say....baby strollers?? Or disposable diapers, which not only make it easier to take care of babies, thereby encouraging people to have more of them, but they're also bad for the environment. Or why not just put an extra tax on a woman upon conception? NYC is no place for kids anyway. It's how Jesus would want it. You never heard of Jesus having a kid, did you? But, damn, did he love his smokes.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Too bad you don't have the buy-one-get-one luxery up there. I buy anything if its buy one get one. If they were selling actual shit from an old smoker who cant control his bowels, id prolly buy if it were buy one get one.

do you have the people from like camel who go around to clubs and give away free packs of ciggys as a promotion? we have those sometimes, you just have to look hard. maybe you could bar hop to look for the free ciggs?

whatever you do - dont give up! :)

Ray said...

Have you tried ordering cigarettes online from overseas? I've done it several times in the past, but not recently, so I don't know if they've cracked down on that or not...Christ, I thought paying $45 a carton here was bad!

Justen said...

Ray: yeah i always hear about these internet deals from reservations and such, just haven't taken the initiative to check it out. I'm lazy like that. Good luck with your own blog!

Anonymous said...

Oh wow I can soo totally understand. In pa, cigs are 4.30ish, and when i moved up here to new york, I'm paying 10 bucks a pack. It's ridiculous. All my money these days either goes to cigarretes or alcohol. Ahhhhh

Btw, I hope you had a great time at the NYC pride! (assuming u went...)