As a dedicated smoker, I see no place where I should not be allowed to puff down one of my ciggies free from the annoying coughs of young children, gross complaining elderly people, or rent-a-cops who yell at me to go outside.

“Get the hell out of the hospital! Your polluting the lungs of these sick people!”

These are words I heard only a few days ago, merely trying to find a warm place to indulge in a nice, refreshing cigarette right before class.

Apparently some do-gooders started putting up a fight about cigarettes, and now I can’t smoke in public buildings anymore.

But I can handle that, its the thought that I may be stopped from puffing in bars which is intolerable.

If your all alone at the emergency room, or a bar, smoking keeps one from seeming like a sleazeball.

I would look extremely cool, and other people in the bar may be less apt to typecast me as some deranged crotch grabber. “He’s not a weirdo, he’s a smoker.”

That means that I’m terribly hip, and the only reason I’m not socializing is because I don’t feel like anyone else is worth my time. If I wasn’t smoking in that situation, I would just have been some lonely bastard in the corner, with none of the mystique of the cigarette smoker.

What happened to the days when it wasn’t cool to be a total nerd? Smoking should continue in all Burlington bars, lest discover we have created a town devoid of any mysterious, jaded, yellow fingered badasses.