A few weeks ago, I fell off the wagon and started smoking again. As I sit here at my computer, a pack of American Spirits in my pocket and a fresh dose of nicotine pumping through my bloodstream, I realize that if i have any sense at all (which I often ponder), I’d best quit soon before it starts getting really difficult…again.

Prior to my starting back up again, I’d been having inexplicable cravings to smoke. After quitting for something over a year, I found myself resisting daily thoughts and urges to smoke, which caught me out of the blue. After several weeks of subconscious needling, I broke down and on a random impulse, telling myself it was the stress of the day, I smoked. Naturally, it all went downhill from that point.

Now I’m smoking about a half a pack a day, nervously contemplating my imminent and unavoidable millionth attempt at quitting. Will I cold-turkey it? The patch? Will I go postal, tear out my eyes and stuff the bleeding holes with loose tobacco and set myself aflame? I do not know.

What I do know is that smoking really fucks with my mood. Specifically, it makes me about ten times the asshole I normally am. Whether I’ve just smoked a cigarette or not, my temper becomes a bit trigger-happy, much to the displeasure of everyone who deals with me on a daily basis.

In the interest of peace, not to mention my health, I better quit again. Lying in the mud, looking up at the wagon I’ve fallen off of, I think…soon. Just let me smoke this butt real quick.

I was reading this article last night about a bunch of white trash hillbillies getting into a brawl over a pack of cigarettes. When a convenience store clerk refused to sell a pack of butts to a 21 year old girl with a damaged ID, a fight broke out, resulting in backup being called in to the tune of 10 family members, the store being locked and a big-ass fight breaking out while customers waited outside and the security cameras filmed everything. You gotta fight for your smokes, dammit!

Having originally come from a rural setting, I can admit that I am intimately acquainted with the teeming, overweight masses, clad in K-Mart, clutching Big-Gulps and Marlboros as they wade their way through polyester-filled box stores. Contrary to the national image of Vermont as this idyllic hotbed of liberal, latte-drinking, yoga-stretching bohemians, I can attest that the reality of it is the complete opposite. The predominantly caucasian state of Vermont is stuffed to the gun rack with white trash. The image held by most of the nation is culled from a few scant locations throughout the state and even then, these places owe a good chunk of their population to the trailer park masses. It is sheer intestinal-twisting horror to wade amongst these buffalo, but living there, unfortunately, you become used to it. While this brawl over a pack of cigarettes happened in Charleston, S.C., it could have easily occurred in Burlington, Vt. Somewhere deep in the Old North End, no doubt.

I’ve always been a pompous, snotty asshole with unwarranted megalomaniacal and dictatorial leanings. A string of neutered, powerless jobs has left me with a delicate Ted Bundy-like shade of passive-aggressive traits. Mixing with these heathens just didn’t work out, so I moved myself to New York City which is full of angry, useless, and evil people. Naturally, I fit right in. Had I stayed in Vermont, who knows what horrible scenarios I’d be facing now. I’d probably have children which means I’d probably be in jail for at the very least trying to kill them.

Often, being the Napoleon-like person I am, I’ve fantasized of returning to Burlington, not as the twisted, bitter gnome I am now, but as dictator-for-life. I’d build a bunker, and set up shop, declaring that the bloated white buffalo of the north is soon to be extinct. I’d rain fire and brimstone, making the Walmart-browsing maggots subsist off of eating their children. I’d sneak in some nice things, like introducing real cuisine and Jewish delis, but this is about me and me being evil, so mainly I’d just make people suffer for my jaded and petty amusements. I’d also be content with just blowing the entire place to high hell.

Unfortunately, neither of these scenarios seem likely to occur, barring me suddenly becoming filthy rich or stumbling across a cache of nukes on the way to work one day.