Monday, November 07, 2011

RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT SMOKING


No wonder people smoke. Smokers look sooooo cool!!!!


Unfortunately smoking can also make you mean. The reason is an aesthetic one: cigarettes and mean expressions just go together, why I don't know. In his quest to look good the smoker finds himself practicing mean smoking expressions til they inadvertently become permanent. 


I feel sorry for cruel and heartless people because they're forced to smoke whether they want to or not. If they don't, other cruel people won't hang out with them. 


Me (above), demonstrating how girls smoke. The cigarette is always held at the tips of the fingers. The 6th finger of the other hand is always raised.


Here's a smart smoker (above). He smokes in the shadows and lets the smoke drift up and develop in a shaft of bright sunlight. I imagine smart smokers also pick a part of the room with minimal air currents. Dead air favors the development of strings and spirals. Moving air destroys them. 



How do you create strings? It's the easiest thing in the world! A properly held filterless cigarette will create strings all by itself. Here (above) a cigarette has strings coming from both ends!



After a smoker masters his strings, he'll want to work on his crawls (above). The smoker learns to push out the smoke rather than blow it out. He learns to allow the smoke to crawl  up his face. On the first try, the smoke will probably go around the nose. That's not good because it then heads straight for the eyes, and becomes an irritant.



The smoker will need to train the smoke to go over the nose, and not in it, or around it. He'll want the smoke to rise over the nose, and up the forehead to the edge of the hairline. Observe how beautifully this smoker (above) does that.


Man, this (above) is Olympic level smoking!  Here she allows the crawl to split over the nose then she directs it outwards, like bull's horns. How on Earth does she do that?

BTW: Thanks to commenter Shawn Luke for the great quote about smoking, which I'll print below. I still don't recommend smoking because of the health risk, but this positive statement about it deserves to be heard because of the beauty of its expression. From Ayn Rand:

“I like to think of fire held in a man's hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind--and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression."


9 comments:

Joshua Marchant (Scrawnycartoons) said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
zillustration said...

again - your study of smoke is second to none... other than the U.S. Fire Administration. I think the bottom sequence of smoking is more "smoking for effect" rather than mere nicotine delivery. A smoker has to be very aware that they're sculpting air, rather than blasting vapor out their blowhole.

Shawn Luke said...

Hi, Eddie! Here's a great Ayn Rand quote about smoking that I think you'll appreciate. “I like to think of fire held in a man's hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind--and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression. "

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Shawn: Thanks much for the geat quote! I added it to the post!

Alberto said...

I used to smoke and the one thing I always wanted to learn to do (but couldn't figure it out) was the French Inhale.

John Waters shows us how it's done at the end of this clip on smoking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnpofBtijF8

Ian Merch! said...

If I may posit a theory on why smokers always seem to have a scowl of sorts: I think a downward expression gives the cigarette a better grip while still being able to suck in smoke.

Anonymous said...

Have you seen this cartoon before? I know it has nothing to do with the post in question, but I found this interesting. I remember seeing it a few years ago. The song is great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ognOTu_NIw4

Lots of other Columbia cartoons on there I haven't checked out yet.

pappy d said...

To put out a cigarette on someone's forehead is cruel & heartless. Spitting chewing gum in my hair is just mean.

Anonymous said...

By the way, I forgot to thank you very much for the response you gave me on the other post. I didn't even know you replied to it until today. Luckily, shortly after I made the comment and experienced some powerful scary stuff, I realized that taking such a drastic route would only make things way worse than they had to be. I really didn't know what I was thinking that day, and felt ashamed that I had stooped down to this level after all the stuff I had accomplished and worked so many years of my life for and I didn't want you to think I was a mental nutcase, but I've accepted that I'm in another slump, kind of how I stopped drawing for a long while a few years ago, but eventually bounced back from it. I'd rather have less than average grades this time than causing heartache for everyone, especially since I was really scared to do it myself to begin with. Again, thank you, and I hope I'm not wasting any more of your time.