From one of Michael’s links:

For example, a church with 200 members will be in a one-hour church service for 12,000 collective minutes, Chapman said.

With that sort of creative accounting, I smell a job at the OMB in that man’s future. He can exercise the anointing of the Holy Spirit while telling lies with statistics. Factually inaccurate? No. Useful? Hardly. Imagine how much time the pastor of 25,000-member Prestonwood Baptist Church must have to spend on each sermon by this standard!

Canada made the BHT possible. Of course! We invented the telephone, the snowmobile, the green garbage bag, basketball and now this

Michael – RE: The Red Sox – I care, man! Just a half game away! How I’d love to be back in New England right now.

Scott: Thought you were about to have a Joe Pesci moment there for a second. “You think I’m funny….? You find me humorous? Am I a clown?”

JS: Thanks for the html advice. I’ll see what is happening here. Now that I have to abandon my Linux machine to write IM, I am confronted with the decision of whether I actually want to use html so I can write on the Linux machine.

BTW- I now know what is wrong with your love life. YOU’RE J.R.R TOLKIEN!!!!!! Drop those Yivrian pick up lines! Seriously, very impressive. Feel free to speak your native tongue here at the BHT.

Baptist Press has a headline down the page that is something “Holy Spirit Needed For Kingdom Growth.” Wow. That’s a major discovery! Did George Barna come up with that one?

Thanks to everyone for the encouragement regarding my sister. I hope to keep in phone contact with her over the next few months, though I won’t be able to actually see her until December, at which point she’ll probably be showing. That’ll be strange.

Michael, as a nonsmoker, among other things, you are not priveleged to correctly interpret the Bible. If you examine the text, you’ll notice that every time Jesus supposedly speaks in Aramaic, it’s written in Greek letters with a Greek text surrounding it. The only possible conclusion is that Jesus spoke Aramaic in Greek. For your blasphemy, you are hereby excommunicated, though you may be readmitted if you recant. (JN)

Michael: I’m funny. Thanks. Now I know why people giggle every time I enter the room – and it has absolutely nothing to do with my fly being open.

I’m feeling pretty parental at the moment. Not a lot of opportunities for me to experience that, since the wife and I have no kids and are actively avoiding parenthood at the moment. I just had to lay the smack down at a kid on a message board I moderate, who got way out of hand over the Creation vs. Evolution argument.

The guy’s basically a young earther a la Michael’s earlier description. He calls theistic evolution “the worst of all possible options”. When I asked him to explain how a belief that starts with “God created the heavens and the earth” could possibly be Biblically worse than atheistic evolution by random chance or chaos, he went off the deep end. He called me a heretic and went on to tell me how prideful I was and how spiritual I wasn’t.

I guess I should model my spiritual life off of him, then, huh? Then pride would be absolutely no problem whatsoever.

It’s weird. It’s one of those situations where I genuinely respect the guy. He’s got a good heart, most of the time, and is usually not so volatile. But part of my job is to disallow that kind of behavior, and so… SMACK. So, at yon board, Creation vs. Evolution has been declared a verbotten subject. The horse is not only dead, but it’s tenderized and ready to go in the oven with some potatoes and garlic. BAM!

Some reasons to feel good.

School out tomorrow for 9 days. That rocks.

Come ON Bill and you closet Red Sox fans. Who freakin’ cares!!!! This is a fun Red Sox team, and if if if if if if if they did it you would kick yourself for not caring. (Really, these guys have the best offence in baseball. They can do amazing things, and about half of them are crazy.) It’s ANYBODY BUT THE YANKEES time people! (So what if they took the Twins this year 13 games to none! Ya gotta root for the Twins, the A’s and the Sox. It’s morally required in a just universe.) You do realize that we could see a Cubs, Red Sox Series?

BLOOM COUNTY IS COMING BACK!!!!! Is that great or what?

It may be the coolest NR cover ever: HELL- The Case Against Howard Dean’s Vermont.

Men are reaching new lows, enabling moderately decent jerks like me to feel OK about myself.

Finally…there is still time to call the Cincinnati Reds front office and suggest they hire me as general manager! Seriously—I should have this job. I’m all for putting Larkin out to pasture. I’m for sending all the overpaid babies to other teams and hiring the blind, lame and hopeless who just happen to fill out my hidden scorecard of Jamesian statistics and can’t help but win more games next year than this year on less money. I am the MAN. Hire me John Allen!!

Michael: I said “What Michael said” in response to Jesse – doesn’t that count for something? Frankly, you bored me by going on and on about pacifism, and I forgot to pay attention to you again. (JN)

I’ll wait until you let loose with both barrels later today, and then I’ll say something back. And since it’s been a while, I’ll be sure to find something with which I disagree. Even if I don’t, I’ll spin my agreement in a disagreeable way.

And it’s not even Friday. ;-)

Ever just read Revelation 20 and notice what it does and DOESN’T say?

Mark Steyn says Clark is a seat-warmer for Hillary, who won’t be able to resist going after a weakened Bush. More evidence the iMonk’s Hillary/Clark prediction has credibility.

In a matter of hours we will be losing an employee. At the departure of this individual, I am going to be free to blog in a manner that will miraculously give massive amounts of mental health to all those around me. Stay tuned kids. The iMonk is dusting off some powerful old brew.

I am only marginally hacked off…..that no one noted the crap my daughter was almost duped into putting into her brains….no one told me how to fix the IM html/Regular Mozilla bug….more people didn’t say nasty things about the Missions article…. rigney didn’t admit to being the model for the Donald Sutherland character in Animal House….that Scott is so dxxxed funny.

Jesse: What Michael said. Forgiveness and acceptance are easy to talk about, but life is hard, and doesn’t get any less hard as far as I can tell. Pain and consequences aren’t wrapped up in 42 minutes plus commercials, either. We’ve all screwed up at least as badly as your sister has, and I’ve personally screwed up in exactly the same way as well as far worse things. Providentially (see, there’s a dark side), I’m not bearing the consequences in quite as exquisite a fashion as your sister will, though I sure bear less-visible burdens years after some bad choices.

Michael: Since I enjoy the New King James translation, I guess that’s like enjoying the blogger-style BHT, right? The AV1611 guy would rather spit than talk to me, are you gonna playa-hate the same way?

Someone I knew back in my working-for-a-televangelist, going-to-a-word-of-faith-church days used to drum for the church band. He would laugh about how the band “worked the rubes into a worshiping frenzy,” all the while chuckling about the gross immorality of his life before and after services. Of course, it’s easy to poke fun at people who worship differently than oneself, but it could be argued that seeking emotional release through song is no more wrong than singing hymns without passion. One can be similarly unchanged and unrenewed after either “experience.”

I happen to think it is harder to resist transformation by the Scriptural content of many hymns, but there are plenty of people who spend their entire lives surrounded by hymns and still grow up to be Bishop Spong or Pat Robertson. (JN)

Wait a second. I want to gripe about worship music :-/

In today’s selection of contemporary “I’m gonna Praise and Worship” songs, there was a generous sprinkling of references to ‘Your presence.” We seek Your presence. Your presence is a treasure. We’ve come into your presence. Show us your presence and so on.

I sat there wondering if this is the modern “I’m gonna Praise and Worship” movement chasing its own tail? Is the “presence” of God mentioned in these songs largely a code word for the experience called “feeling God’s presence” that is roughly the equal of having a really good band/group lead in some highly emotive praise choruses? In other words, are the songs saying “We are really excited about getting the feeling that God is around, and the best way to get that feeling is these songs.”?

JS: It’s an Aramaic only movement. You are hereby exiled from your own movement.

Quite actually, I’ve been through this (unplanned pregnancy, if one may use such absurd language) with quite a few people down through the years. I’d say the important things at this point are:

1. Practical acceptance. Unconditional acceptance – sure but that is mostly yada yada yada. How about dealing with the details. Whatever direction they go there are lots and lots of problems starting out parenting this way. The more mature people need to unfold their arms and help out. It’s a done deal, and if you can’t say anything profound then do the right thing.
2. Prayer. This is a very redemptive situation for a lot of people I’ve known. Yeah, there have been some horrible messes, but on the whole it has a wonderful affect on people with the right core values. They grow up and act like parents and adults, finally, and it ain’t bad at all. On the other hand, a lot of Christians find it hard to deal with the constant reminder of immorality, and they choke. That’s a shame. God’s sovereign plans of how to bring children into the world do not always need preapproval by the righteous, believe it or not.
3. The child must always know they were wanted 100%, and never doubt that or sense doubt about it. Gosh I have a lot of kids- and adults- here at OBI who have been told “You were a mistake” or “I wish you’d never been born.” That is a bad one.

And I have decided my movement is “The original Blogger BHT is the only Real BHT. All others are of the devil.” In accordance, I have sent JN to Landover Baptist for punishment.

I saunter into the bar and demand a beer on the house in light of recent events in my life. When it rains, it pours, eh?

I am also starting a Greek-only movement, which will deny fellowship to any and all who haven’t learned the Language Jesus Spoke. We will also restrict inspiration to a particular set of manuscripts, to be decided based on which have the hardest handwriting to read. Proper interpretation will be infallibly decided by a panel of Calvinist pacifist smokers.

Jim: I’ll counter your NIV movement with an Amplified Bible Only movement. Anyone want to throw in on a Scofield-Only movement.

I’ve decided to start an NIV-only movement, to counter the insideous evil that is the ESV.

Bill: Silly man, there are no pacifist Calvinists! How can light have fellowship with darkness? How can such perfect doctrine coexist with soft-headed inanity?

Oops, sorry. Dead horse. Never mind.

(JN)

PWinn: I too was “outed” by a classic book. Mine technically wasn’t a re-read for me (Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train), but there were few choices on the quiz.

Scott: It has been a looong time since I’ve actually interacted with a KJV-only lunatic. Thanks for a big laugh. Are you sure this website has been updated in the last, say, five years? No, wait! The copyright notice on the main page is for 1995! Make that eight years!

Thanks for the biggest laugh I’ve had in a while. Your essay was hilarious already, and poking around av1611.org is about to hurt me, I’m laughing so hard.

A Response to AV1611.org.

AV1611.org, one of my favorite KJV-only fundy sites, has a series of questions posted at its website. Since I’m feeling bored today (it’s United Way day at work), I’m going to respond to all of his 10 questions. He probably won’t ever read my responses, but that’s OK. He probably wouldn’t pay attention in the first place.

1. Since you’re smart enough to find “mistakes” in the KJV, why don’t you correct them all and give us a perfect Bible?

Well, well, well… right out of the box, eh? Well, I, for one, don’t find “mistakes” in the KJV. It’s a perfectly good version of the Bible, if your hobbies happen to include languages that haven’t been spoken since the 17th Century. Maybe it’s my upbringing, but I just don’t use the word “Thee” anymore, unless I take off an “e” and use it as an article. Call me nutty.

2. Do you have a perfect Bible?

Me personally? Well, I don’t know if I’d call it perfect. I’m still waiting for the Left-Handed Mountain Climbers NIV advertised on this site earlier.

3. Since you do believe “the Bible” is our final authority in all matters of faith and practice, could you please show us where Jesus, Peter, James, Paul, or John ever practiced your terminology (“the Greek text says…the Hebrew text says….the originals say…a better rendering would be….older manuscripts read….” etc.)?

Sure. Right after you show me where Jesus, Peter, James, Paul, or John practiced yours. In fact, if you can find any reference to Christ speaking 17th Century English during His 33 years on this earth, I’ll buy you a beer.

4. Since you do not profess to have a perfect Bible, why do you refer to it as “God’s word”?

Frankly, I don’t use that phrase. However, I would refer to Christian scripture in general as “God’s Word”, and everything that came after that as “man’s translation of God’s Word”. Including the KJV. In fact, I call the KJV, “man’s translation of God’s Word ordered by a raving homosexual”.

5. Remembering that the Holy Spirit is the greatest Teacher (John 16:12-15; I John 2:27), who taught you that the King James Bible was not infallible, the Holy Spirit or man?

Uh, look. We’re not getting along well here, so let me just repeat myself. Apparently, you’re having difficulty hearing me with your hands on your ears and your screaming “LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA” while demanding I purchase that KJV over there that someone slapped a cheesy gold inlay of a sword on. So here it goes: I don’t dislike the KJV. It’s a perfectly good version of the Bible for people that sailed on the Mayflower and wore funny hats and thought “bundling” would let teenage lovers sleep together without having sex.

6. Since you do believe in the degeneration of man and in the degeneration of the world system in general, why is it that you believe education has somehow “evolved” and that men are more qualified to translate God’s word today than in 1611?

Uh… I don’t believe in the degeneration of man or of the world system. See – that’s the problem – you’re sooooo negative. Here, take this. It’s a happy pill. OK, it’s Xanax. You’ll like it. It’ll help. Trust me. There. Now listen – the world is NOT getting worse and worse. Christians are not being set on fire and crucified and fed to lions for the sake of entertainment. If they are, it’s special effects. More people have heard the Gospel message today than ever before. It doesn’t mean that things are getting better… we still live in a world that’s governed by the Fall. It’s still as filled with corruption and evil as it was 500 years ago… or 2,000 years ago. Jesus didn’t come into a perfect world – He came to show us how to get to a perfect world when we die.

Now frankly, I do know that there have been interesting discoveries since 1611. We’ve found papyruseseseses that are older than the ones that the KJV was based on. They give us a clearer picture of what the scripture originally was. OK? No? Well, here. Have another happy pill. Enough of these, and you won’t care.

7. There is one true God, yet many false gods. There is one true Church, consisting of true born-again believers in Christ, yet there are many false churches. So why do you think it’s so wrong to teach that there is one true Bible, yet many false “bibles”?

I do believe there is one true Bible. It’s the one that was originally written, not the one ordered by a homosexual king.

Also, if the KJV is the one true Bible – what about the other 5 billion people on the planet that don’t speak English – much less a version of English that George Washington would have called “Old Skool, Homies”.

8. Isn’t it true that you believe God inspired His holy words in the “originals,” but has since lost them, since no one has a perfect Bible today?

That would be correct. No Bible is perfect. There’s too many differences in the languages, too many mistranslations, interpretations, etc. The miracle is that most of the Bibles agree 99 44/100% of the time, and the disagreements are usually matters of tone or grammatical.

9. Isn’t it true that when you use the term “the Greek text” you are being deceitful and lying, since there are MANY Greek TEXTS (plural), rather than just one?

Well, let me ask this… since there are at least 4 versions of the KJV prior to the Revised Standard Version, aren’t you being deceitful and lying when you refer to the King James Version, instead of the King James Versionsssss?

10. Before the first new perversion was published in 1881 (the RV), the King James Bible was published, preached, and taught throughout the world. God blessed these efforts and hundreds of millions were saved. Today, with the many new translations on the market, very few are being saved. The great revivals are over. Who has gained the most from the new versions, God or Satan?

There are probably more Christians alive today than there have been people in the past 400 years. Unless you mean Christian to be “KJV Onlyists”, in which case, you’re correct. There are exactly 372 of you, not including Jack Chick.

Church youth group causes evacuation of City Hall

Can you think of a worst place for a wedding?

Phillip: No prob. I actually don’t overeat… often… ahem… I guess I should have put the (SW) on that, huh?

However, I will confess that bad food choices when I was younger, combined with genetics and a low-energy lifestyle have left me pretty large. I’m roughly the size and shape of a Carolina Panthers linebacker. Fortuntely, Mrs. Ward doesn’t mind and is happy to help me lose some of my bulk.

I’ve already cleared this with Michael:

Hunting season in NY begins Oct. 1st. If anyone wants to pray for a safe and successful season for yours truly, there may be jerky in it for you. (you may have to drive to NY to get it. Jim did.)

I’m looking into recipes for pepperoni and summer sausage also.

Smoking per se, as it has been pointed and and generally agreed upon, is not a sin. It does appear to be however, a part of our culture that is becoming unacceptable to that culture. The costs, the image, the health effects, are all adding up to push smoking into the twilight of its popularity, at least in this country. That happens with a lot of things. But defying the law is a sin, so I don’t applaud those establishments who are doing so and don’t think we should encourage them to. But Tim’s post looked like it might be (JN)’d a little.

If drinking Coke or overeating ever become culturally unacceptable, I’m sure they will fade also. That doesn’t seem to be a near future possibility.

Michael: You see what we’re reduced to? Too many taboo topics. Let’s talk about pacifist calvinists who support abortion while performing paedobaptism.

BTW: If you see Mrs. Miriam MacKinnon, wish her a happy 40th birthday. As one of her cards so thoughtfully pointed out to her, now she doesn’t have to fear dying young.

Scott: Oh no! I suddenly can’t remember if you’ve ever said you have a problem with overeating! In any case, I’m sorry, that comment was definitely at my 220-pound self, not anyone else.

While I can certainly think of some human bodies that might cause me to have a near-religious experience, generally I think that the verse should probably only be applied the way Paul applied it. Whew! That’s one less passage gnawing at me every time I take “just one more bite…”

Phillip, on Force-Feeding Rat Poison to the Temple of the Holy Spirit: I’ll ignore your statement on overeating…

And I wonder if treating your body like a temple means letting Benny Hinn slap you around with his jacket like a cheap wh… sorry.

I have something too, asthma or bronchitis or however they are spelled. But not from smoking probably from all the pollution or the allergies I have. Speaking of allergies, I have them ALL. Everything you can imagine except for food allergies, I can eat anything. So when you wear your wool suit to church, you are invading my air space and my allergies.. boo hoo hoo, get over it, I did.. Some people really need to get over their narcissistic holier than thou attitudes..

Everyone wants to wine about something, I’d rather drink it.. damn those smokers and their ruin of the world.. all the while we drive our oil burning cars and allow the pollution of our waters. I say gas should be 5 a gallon, maybe then people would get off their fat duffs and ride a bike to the video store.

My neighbor is on an anti Caffeine kick,, I offered him a coke and he said “no way man, I will not let that poison to enter my body”, then he lit a cigarette and smoked it. I see the paradox, I wonder if he did?

It’s so easy to slam those evil devil worshipping smokers while not realizing how offensive and wrong things you do are to others, they just are not some leftist cause yet so you haven’t heard about it yet,, your day is coming though, I assure you of it. I am all for those bars that are defying the law in allowing smoking. I do not want to live in California, soon they will drive all the people out of there and I don’t want them here.

hahahahahaha.. man I wish I had a smoke now, I sure feel better..

oh,, I should also say that this was not directed at anyone in here,, I might be just a tad frustrated at work,, maybe….{:>)

I have to echo Kurt’s statement that I don’t believe that smoking is a sin (nor is drinking, but that’s a completely different topic).

My problem is smoking is this; it bothers me. It really does. I even tried it three times, but being around it bothers me. Why did I try it? I was in my first year at college and VERY stupid. I’ve improved some, though some would deliberate that.

Anyway, I found out about two years ago that I have borderline asthma. It doesn’t really bother me unless I have a cold or some sort of infection, I get really really winded, or I’m around smokers or very strong smelling stuff (sometimes, even the Bath and Bodyworks stuff I really like bothers me). Smoke if you want, just don’t do it around me, don’t do it around my house, don’t even do it outside my house. You have a right to smoke, but I have a right to breathe smoke-free air and not have to wheeze.

Okay, I’m shutting up now.

On the various types of smoking…

Tobacco:
Well, I don’t think it’s any kind of sin. If you want to put burning leaves into your mouth and suck on them, that’s your perogative. However, once your smoke gets into my lungs, that’s a sin. ;-) I’m fully behind any kind of legislation that keeps second-hand smoke away from non-users. Some of this, no doubt, stems from the fact that Amanda gets sick around smoke, and nothing ruins a nice dinner faster than smokers nearby. For the record, pipes and good cigars smell a lot better than a cheap, nasty cigarette.

Marijuana:
I think I side with Scott on this issue. I can’t think of any compelling argument to keep it illegal, so long as its tightly regulated. And the rules on second hand smoke apply, doubly. I don’t, of course, approve of breaking the law to smoke it now. And, even were it legal, I would discourage my friends and loved ones from its use. Sort of a paradox there, huh?

Dad earns his pay. One of my daughter’s professors told her to go hear Tim Wise, a “conservative” (ahem) speaker, for a class. So she asks what I know about him. I look him up. Check this out, and see what my kid was headed for. Unreal comments about moral equivalence of Bin Laden and America. College ain’t easy. Thank God my daughter trusts me. Now, maybe a note to the prof would be in order.

I smoked for a few years and then quit, not by a nicotine patch but with Copenhagen ;) (I know the feeling Ken. I love that smell.). I finally did kick dipping and occasionaly enjoy a cigar, pipe, and cigarette, but not all at the same time ;) I think I’ll pour myself a glass of fine single malt scotch and call it a night.

Here’s a couple of paragraphs from Charles Spurgeon, who once told a man that he hoped to smoke a cigar to the glory of God before he went to bed that night…

“I demur altogether and most positively to the statement that to smoke tobacco is in itself a sin. It may become so, as any other indifferent action may, but as an action it is no sin.

“Together with hundreds of thousands of my follow-Christians I have smoked, and, with them, I am under the condemnation of living in habitual sin, if certain accusers are to be believed. As I would not knowingly live even in the smallest violation of the law of God, and sin in the transgression of the law, I will not own to sin when I am not conscious of it.

“There is growing up in society a Pharisaic system which adds to the commands of God the precepts of men; to that system I will not yield for an hour. The preservation of my liberty may bring upon me the upbraidings of many good men, and the sneers of the self-righteous; but I shall endure both with serenity so long as I feel clear in my conscience before God…

“When I have found intense pain relieved, a weary brain soothed, and calm, refreshing sleep obtained by a cigar, I have felt grateful to God, and have blessed His name; this is what I meant, and by no means did I use sacred words triflingly.

Webster’s defines a smoker as:

1. One who smokes tobacco.

It’s not subtle at all. There are light smokers and heavy smokers and occasional smokers. But people that smoke are smokers.

Anyway, enjoy your cigarette next year.

uh..Bill,
A person smoking a cigarette is by definition smoking, not neccessarily a smoker, the difference is subtle, but still there.
And only to the easily irritated self righteous non smoking is a cigarette a thing to loathe. I will have one next year, and enjoy it a lot.

While poking around on the RUF (Reformed University Fellowship) Website, I found this: The RUF Hymnal project. These guys are taking hymns, putting them to contemporary tunes- mainly for guitar- and using them for worship with those darned twenty-somethings. The site is, well, amazing. MP3 samples, guitar chords, overheads, lead sheets, and a growing list of piano music. Quite a treasure trove for people who like the hymn texts.

JS’s church- Mars Hill- has the coolest web site around. I’m sampling some sermons.

Uh Tim: A person smoking a cigarette is by definition “a smoker”. To a non-smoker, a cigarette is usually a thing of loathing.

I think if we were to dig up verses against smoking I’d probably drag something out of Proverbs. Get wisdom and understanding, yada, yada, etc, et al (I never know which one to use).

Smoking can be great, unless you have an addictive personality. I do not have an addictive personality, mine is more irritating..{:>).

They make pipe tobacco in cigarette form, often they are called Jharms. Like all things, if you buy the cheap store bought brands they will stink.. go to a real tobacco shop and get some higher grade tobacco. Just like a cigar, there are better ones out there if you look somewhere besides 7-11. I compare store bought cigarettes to Pabst Blue Ribbon beer,, yeech.

I never smoke in a car or indoors unless it’s a bar and I cannot remember the last time I was at a bar, I define bar as a place that has NO food..!!

I disagree that there is no effect of tobacco, maybe once you are hooked it is maintence, but for a non smoker a cigarette has a great smooothing effect.

Scott: Despite my own progression similar to your own on the subject of smoking, I do remember the supposed Biblical basis for the injunction. It all rested on a spectacular misapplication of 1 Cor 6:19. If your body is to be free from sexual immorality, as the passage suggest, then surely it should be free from carcinogenic particulate as well, right? Would you force-feed rat poison to the Holy Spirit, Scott? Well? Would you?

Sorry, it was just a short flashback. I’m okay now. Suffice to say that it’s dumb, and those that defend the practice cause me to question their mental faculties, but if 1 Cor 6:19 is the best anybody can do from Scripture, it doesn’t rise to the level of sin as much as say, overeating does.

Um, I really am just kidding with the mental faculties bit, Jesse. I question your wisdom, not your intelligence.

Ken: Who knew that re-reading an old classic book would get me a single point on the metrosexual scale? Sigh.

Jesse: My chief arguments against inhaling burning plant products include (but are possibly not limited to):

• The stench is sublimely objectionable (with the singular exception of pipe tobacco, which pleases olfactorily).


• People with burning sticks in their mouths look like idiots (pipes exude a superior image, and are so excepted).
  
• The malodorous effects of even moderate-to-light usage of burning leaves are very near to permanent, lasting long after the pleasurable (or otherwise) effects have ended. Pipe odor, as mentioned previously, is pleasing, and so the aftereffects are pleasing as well.

As mentioned above, there may be more. With only a trivial amount of mental efforts, I have produced three traits of burning cancer-sticks of any variety which are not endemic to all semi-licit substances including alcohol, but are rather uniquely tied to the ingestion of carcinogenic smoke. With half my brain tied behind my back, no less! Perhaps if you toked a bit less, your mind would work as sharply!

Gee, after all that, it’s a shame that I’ve never smoked a pipe!

Er, and some of the above is (JN)ed, but I’ll leave it as an exercised for the inebriated reader to determine which part!