Thank you for smoking

An ode to "the smoky veil of the American dream and feel the mighty fume coming out of the American land, a Native genie rising from the bottled mysterious desert of endless imagination."

My family knows all too well the death embedded in the evil weed. Still, I break out a cigar once or twice a year, and bars just aren't the same anymore without secondhand smoke.

The blog post is very well written, so just forget all that stuff about cancer for a moment and enjoy:

Burning tobacco became like burning sacred incense on the altar of freedom, the special effects of the American Spirit, a uniquely American substance which, as with everything uniquely American, can either liberate if used consciously or destroy if used in excess.

(via AlexC)