One week to go until Black Friday, and I am just chomping at the bit to find out what super deals will be out there . . . and how I have to get up at 3:00 a.m. to fight for the one plasma television in the store they put on sale for $529.00. It’s funny how much of a shopping culture we have become, which is evident from the one million websites and television commercials counting down to Black Friday.

Oh well. I am actually really counting the days until Cosmic Saturday. Do you know what that is? Well you’ll have to wait until tomorrow and catch the commercials on my site to find out.

No on to today’s Friday blog . . .

It’s interesting. A lot of people who smoke think it’s a great way to meet people. To them it’s always the easiest way to meet people. Ask any smoker, and they’ll tell you so.

They will tell you that the greatest thing about smoking is that you can always walk up to someone of the opposite sex and ask to bum a cigarette. All you have to do is walk up to someone and say, “Excuse me. Do you have a cigarette?” or “Excuse me. Do you have a light?”

Let me tell you how you are perceived when you use the “Excuse me, do you have a cigarette?” line. You are bumming a cigarette, which means you are a bum. It means that you cannot afford your own cigarette (and hence you have to bum one), or that you are one of those people who are perpetually quitting and thus never buys your own cigarettes.

Either way, it really doesn’t look good. Picture this. There is a woman you want to meet standing across the room. So you decide to walk over and bum a cigarette off her as a means of initiating conversation with her. When you ask her if you can bum a cigarette, you are basically telling her “Listen, I was too cheap to buy my own cigarettes tonight, so I decided I was going to bum, steal and borrow cigarettes from other people.”

Being a non-smoker, and having recently spent some time in Europe, I have to say it’s nice to travel and not have to smell smoke wherever you go. Granted, there are smokers all over the place — outside and puffing away outside the doors of restaurants and so forth.

Here’s something, though, that I always wonder about with smokers. Why do smokers feel like it’s a right to throw their cigarette butts on the ground? You’re basically polluting the Earth.

No, this isn’t one of those blogs where I’m going to talk about saving the planet and the oceans, but why do smokers seem to feel entitled to litter their cigarette butts everywhere. If you look around your average city, there are cigarette butts all over the place.  

Now I know that some of you think it’s wonderful that you can go out there and meet people by asking for a cigarette or a light, but this isn’t a pick up blog about smoking. If it was, the only thing I’d be telling you pickup is cigarette butts.

I’d tell you to get down on your hands and knees and pick up was all the cigarette butts you see on the ground. It’s really disgusting to walk down the street and see all the cigarette butts.

I also love all the gum chewers out there who think the world is one giant ashtray to discard their chewed up wads of gum. When you look down at the ground, it seems like all you see are cigarette butts and old gum. We’ve become inhumane, dirty and disgusting.

Don’t worry. I am still going to tie this into dating, because I know some of you hate when I rant and rave . . . or when I vary even the slightest bit from the topics of pickup and how to meet people.

So the next time you see a smoker throw a cigarette butt down on the ground, I’ve got a great pickup line for you. Say, “Excuse me. Do you realize that thing doesn’t decompose? What gives you the right to throw that butt down on the ground?”

You want to start a relationship off on the right foot. So you might as well start it off arguing.