Foreplay with a Tree Shredder

I know that the undereducated cretins who preside over your public school classes tell you that guns are bad, but I'm telling you that guns are your friends.

Look, there's Mr. Ruger over there! Why not shake hands with him? And, why, if that isn't Ms. Smith-Wesson taking her dog for a walk!

Hi, Ms. Smith-Wesson, how are you today? This is my little friend Timmy. Why don't you give him a kiss on the cheek?

Now, what was I saying, Timmy? Oh, yes, put the gun to your head. I know that everyone tells you that guns are deadly, and that they can kill you.

Rosie O'Donnell doesn't want a cutie-patootie like you getting hurt. You might be the next teen father to provide her with a child!

But don't listen to them. They don't know what they're talking about. (wink) Go on, Timmy, put the gun to your head. You've seen it done on television numerous times. You know how it works. Really, Timmy, you can take your pick of head shots. Put it to your temple. Put it under your chin. Put it in your mouth. It's your choice. I support you. (wink)

Yes, Timmy, I know that your mom marched on Washington so that you would be safe from your future goth classmate's bloodbath, but you can trust me. Trust your instincts. Guns are fun. They won't hurt you. I promise. Just fellate it a little. You'll like it.

(bang)

Damn, kid, I was joking. Everyone knows that you shouldn't play with guns. You could get hurt. What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you listen to someone you don't know?

That's the stance taken by the smokers who won a $145 billion judgment against the tobacco companies.

"Everyone told us that cigarettes were bad, and against better judgment, we ignored the empirical data and scientific evidence because our supplier told us all was fine. And then they put a gun to our heads, and made us purchase the products we erroneously assumed would make us look 'cool'."

The main argument of the lawsuit was that the tobacco companies were guilty of fraud.

''These companies make a lot of money, and they kill a lot of people,'' says juror Gary Chawst, 30, a former postal worker. ''If they could have admitted, 'Smoke my product and you're going to die,' then fine. But they never gave people the facts.''

What company is completely honest? Does Seagram tell consumers that alcohol can destroy one's liver? Has anyone heard a meat processor explain the dangers of red meat? They want us to buy their products, and they'll do what they what they can to convince us to do so.

Companies regularly lie and exaggerate about their products. Consumers know it, and we take advertising with a grain of salt. No company will say, "This product will send you to an early grave, give you a huge gut, and make you fuck fat chicks with chlamydia."

My cousin is a drug dealer, but he claims to sell "happiness." I haven't seen many happy heroin addicts, so perhaps they can get a class-action lawsuit together and sue him for fraud. He's selling a lifetime of addiction, not a path to Nirvana.

Mr. Rosenblatt, are you listening? There are disgruntled heroin addicts in New Jersey who need your help. They've been lied to. Had my cousin not told them that happiness comes from a needle jab to a vein, they surely would have had turned to alcohol -- a far less insidious product.

Really, now.

It's been known for centuries that tobacco causes illness. "Coffin nails" is not new slang. By the 1880s, it was a phrase regularly used to describe cigarettes. And tobacco companies didn't need to beat people over the head with the message.

An anti-smoking campaign was launched in 1914 -- well before packages of cigarettes were stamped with "These fuckers will kill ya and make your children queer."

People didn't need a surgeon general to figure out that Grandma Mary was coughing up a lung because she smoked five packs of Pall Mall before her morning cocktail. Even if the tobacco companies did claim that smoking was no more harmful than feeding the kids asbestos and lead paintchip omelets.

Tobacco companies were wink-winking their way through decades of advertising. Executives knew smoking wasn't healthy. Smokers knew smoking wasn't healthy. And everyone else laughed at the outrageous claims -- smoking prevents impotence; smoking makes one beautiful; smoking cures sinus infections; smoking makes everyone leave you the fuck alone, so you can eat in peace.

No, wait, that last one is probably true, and it explains why smoking is still popular. It's one of the few ways to get people out of your face. Nothing makes parents scurry to the far corners of T.G.I.Friday's faster than lighting up a cigarette.

But it's not acceptable to be wantonly anti-social in today's society. Rugged individualism means you're plotting against the government, your school chums, or those yappers in your cubicle who won't shut up about prolapsed uteri and thrush.

Wanting to be alone makes one a social pariah. Why do you want to be by yourself? Why do you want to be alone with your thoughts? Why do you not want to be part of the group?

Join us. Become one of us. Throw away the cigarettes and guns. Watch "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." (She's just so damn spunky.) Run headfirst into a wall a few times, and lower your IQ. Don't you want to be a team player?

Let the government be your guardian. Thinking is so painful. You didn't have a choice in the matter. They tricked you.

You don't really want to smoke. You don't enjoy it. You're addicted. RJ Reynolds made you their bitch. Those poor bastards who were forced to provide slave labor for the Nazis are getting $5 billion! Don't you think you deserve more? Haven't the tobacco companies enslaved you? (wink) We're here to help you. Don't you want our help?

Unfortunately, millions of Americans do want their help. These kinds of lawsuits will continue to clog the courts because people don't want to admit that they're stupid, greedy and irresponsible -- and lawyers are happy to prey on that denial.

"Publishers Clearing House implied that if I subscribed to Seventeen, Reader's Digest, and Aquarium Fish, I'd have a better chance of winning the Swiss cuckoo clock. Now my house is cluttered with magazines I don't read, and all I 'won' was a cheap pendant. It's not fair."

"My son was innocently standing on a street corner at 2 a.m., when he was caught in the crossfire of warring gangs. His life was snuffed out at such a young age, and now his five children will never know their daddy. It's not fair."

"I bought my first pack of Marlboro's in 1955, during my junior year of high school. My parents told me that smoking was bad for me, and they'd whip my hide if they caught me with 'those damn cancer sticks,' but I just they were exaggerating. You know, like when Father Michael told us boys that jerking off and diabetic retinopathy were the leading causes of preventable blindness. Now I'm toking on a nebulizer five times a day to help with my emphysema. It's not fair."

Yeah, no shit. Life isn't fair, but red flags litter the the highway of life. If you don't notice them, you deserve to spend the remaining years of your life hooked up to oxygen, surrounded by back issues of Maxim and watching TheTruth.com commercials as your grandkids make swiss cheese out of each other.

Providing jack-off material for white misogynists since 1997.

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