Sure, the "no smoking Web site" is a joke. But it's a good one, isn't it? Of course I cannot control whether you smoke while visiting my Web pages, and you cannot disturb me by doing so.
If you are indeed smoking, though, you're probably thinking about giving up, aren't you? This should be a good time to start. So why don't you kill your cig now?
As you might have gathered by now, I don't smoke, and I am pretty rigorous when it comes to passive smoking. Nobody smokes in my rooms, or in my car. My car has a pristine, never used ash can. I do have some frieds that are smokers -- I am not so anti-tolerant as to select my frieds by their smoking habits -- but they honor my wishes by smoking on the balcony only.
I'm not too militant about not smoking, though. Sometimes, I wish I was. One day dream of mine involves going around Frankfurt's "no smoking" subway stations and subways in a Smokebusters costume (as in the Ghostbusters movie) with a large water tank on my back and a Super Soaker in my hands, squirting those who ignore all non-smoking signs until they're dripping wet. I guess I would never have the nerve to put it into action.
When I was in California, one thing I love about it is that you can go out in the evening (for dinner or anything), and when you wake up in the morning, the clothes are still wearable. Don't you just hate smelling the cold tobacco stink from your clothes when you've been to a non-no-smoking bar or restaurant? I do. In Germany or France, it's not very common for restaurants to have no-smoking areas.
As a - well, call me "extreme" - non-smoker, I think that present smoking policies are the wrong way around anyway. Currently, smoking is allowed in all areas that are not explicitly designated by a no-smoking sign. I think that you should have designated smoking areas, and smoking should be forbidden elsewhere. Actually, this design is already implemented at the Frankfurt Airport - I hope that this precedent will be duplicated elsewhere.
How I came to be an extreme non-smoker is probably because of my childhood, where I had asthma and terrible difficulties to breathe whenever smoke was in the air. This does not happen any more, but I have cultivated not smoking ever since, and avoiding passive smoking wherever possible.
Still, I think that my "no smoking" Web page is a nice touch, and I think it was pretty unique back then (in 1996). I had hoped that maybe the idea would catch on and that it would be copied by other sites, but no such luch. There are some other Web pages using similar ideas, but very few (I found some by looking for "nosmoking.gif" using a search engine).
But enough of my ramblings. If you don't smoke, enjoy the fresh air while browsing my pages. If you do smoke, then maybe you will honor my request to kill your cig, and maybe you won't.
Either way, have fun on my Web site!
The no smoking image above is from the Iowa Department of Public Health