"It'll help me quit? So, what, I can smoke the book? Is that what you're saying?"

Thursday, cigarette #1

David, the Largehearted Boy, has posted his favorite graphic novels of 2007. Included on the list is Emily Flake's These Things Ain't Gonna Smoke Themselves. The subtitle, "A Love/Hate/Love/Hate Letter to a Very Bad Habit," doubles as a description of this blog.

When asked to come up with a playlist to suit her new book, Flake went to town:

"Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray" - Patsy Cline
Wry little tune about some woman interpolating on Patsy's nice smoke break with her man and stealing him away, leaving Patsy with just one sad, lonely cigarette in said ashtray. Shoulda put that one out in that bitch's EYE, Miss Cline!

"Cigarettes and Alcohol" - Oasis
Remember that time you were looking for some action, but all you found was cigarettes and alcohol? And cigarettes and alcohol were totally enough?

Anything, really, by Tom Waits
Yeah, I know, smoking is evil and that cool factor is bullshit and evil evil blah blah blah, but you try and imagine a world where Tom Waits was a non-smoker and see if you want to live in it.

"What She Said" - The Smiths
Which was: "I Smoke, 'cause I'm hoping for an early death, and I need to cling to something—" Touche, Mozzer.

The fact that her book made this playlist possible almost makes up for the fact that it also provided neo-Puritan book reviewers an opportunity to feel superior. ("These Things is drop-dead hilarious — as hilarious as a book that's about the good chance that a smoker might drop dead from her allegiance to a nasty vice can be..." Oh? And exactly how hilarious is that, C-Ville?)

A shorter version of These Things Ain't Gonna Smoke Themselves was published in C-Ville as "Smoke Break":





As true today...