you've got to be an ass to flick your butt!

ok, so i smoked when i was younger. in fact, i smoked more than anyone i knew. a whole pack and a half a day at one point. yeah, i know... holy shit! a pack and a half a day. i started really young and was allowed to smoke at home at a certain point at a relatively early age. i think i was twelve when i started and i smoked about a pack a month back then. but it progressively got more and more addictive until i was a smokin' fool. i must have looked like a total idiot. more embarrassingly, i must have smelled like an idiot. i tried to quit four times to no avail before i decided to quit the fifth and final time. i had told my friend that i was quitting and she just laughed at me. she sounded like Fran Dresher from the Nanny when she laughed and that was all it took to prove her wrong. i finally quit for good!
a few years later i moved to austin. i was sitting in my car at a light and i noticed a young girl driving a convertible in front of me had flicked her cigarette butt to the ground beside her car. a young man on his bicycle politely bent over, picked up the butt and handed it to the young lady and said, "excuse me m'am, you dropped this." she grabbed it and sped off and was extremely pissed off. i could not believe what i had witnessed. this was way cool and i knew then that i LOVED austin and knew that i had made an excellent choice in moving here.
last sunday i joined the many people in austin in the Keep Austin Beautiful campaign and headed down to help clean up the shorelines and waters of austins many parks on lake travis. when i got to the center where they handed out maps and trash pokers and poison ivy cream etc. i realized that no one had chosen hippie hollow. for those of you who might not know, hippie hollow is a park on lake travis that allows total nudity. i've lived here for 13 years and have never visited this particular park. i guess i never wanted to feel silly around a bunch of old fat dudes floppin' around the park. but i signed up to help clean up hippie hollow anyway. i mean, at the time, no one else was going to do it.
when i got there i got all set up with my trash poker, poison ivy cream, bottles of water and trash bags and headed on down towards the banks of lake travis. it was early and there were not many people there yet. however, it was only time before the nakeds would be all over. or so i thought. in reality there were just over a dozen nakeds in the entire park. another handful were clothed and some were even women. all in all it was not so bad and uncomfortable like i had imagined. the thought that permiates my mind from that morning was not the nakeds walking by rather, the lack of trash in the park as a whole. i mean, i was there to clean but it was a little hard to find trash to clean up. i really worked for it too. i found some beer cans wedged in the rocks near the bottom of the cliffs near the water but other than about a half bags worth of trash... nothing. except, of course, fucking cigarette butts!!!! they were everywhere. alllll along the trails. in the coves where people tanned on the flat rocks near the water. by the rest rooms. in the parking lot. everywhere! it was sad at first. then i just got pissed. i mean, i was there to make the park a better place and all i could think of was that smokers suck and i can't stand them. i have never been a jerk about smokers because i would be hypocritical in doing so. whenever someone would smoke near me while i was eating i would simply move to another table or whatever. playing in a band i have been to hundreds of clubs, bars and venues that were filled with smoke all over the world. and if you think it's bad in the US just go to europe. every place over there is like the worst smoke-filled dive over here. but again, i can't complain. but when you go to a park to get away from everything and there are white cotton-like cylinders littering the trails and places where you sit and relax... taking in all that nature has to provide and you are surrounded by disgusting little reminders of peoples inconsideration. it makes me sad and mad all at once. and you know people like this. i love people that smoke and i would never tell them to quit or talk down to them. but just about everyone that smokes throws their butts on the ground when they're done. what's up with that? so you didn't want to follow through with your nasty habit and throw the butt away, now i have to deal with it! and don't even get me started on those intersections where you're sitting there and you look at the median and there they are... symbols of idiots. that's what it is for me. a reminder of how inconsiderate and weak and idiotic people can be.
but i can't complain can i? well fuck that! you smokers suck! and you look stupid sucking. and remember this saying, because one day it will be written on a billboard and you'll know who came up with it.... YOU'VE GOT TO BE AN ASS TO FLICK YOUR BUTT!!!!!

thank you and have a pleasant tomorrow.