Blowing smoke up your ass.

OK, so I filled out a NCAA tournament bracket. I did it as though I knew what I was looking at and even though I haven't watched 5 minutes of college basketball all year, I filled it in with all the confidence of an expert - which, of course I am. Although, with 64 teams and at least 10 possible tournament winners, ask yourself the odds of actually picking enough winners to actually win. Give me 8-4-6 straight and boxed.

It's that lottery-winner in me that makes me do it. Even though I'm usually out of contention by the end of the third round (curiously called the Sweet 16) it keeps me interested in life long enough to survive another couple of weeks on this miserable planet. For ten bucks it saves me the added cost of shotgun shells.

Maybe that's the allure of baseball season tickets? Five months of games that are already paid for, thereby lessening the possibility that I'll cash-in early for fear of missing some important September games and, Lord willing (geez, why drag Him into this?) some October playoff magic. Nice marketing by them.

But when we talk of nearly suicidal addictions, we can't stray too far from the cigarette smokers here in the Garden State. By April 1, the tax on a pack of cigarettes will be $3.79, making a 20-box of smokes cost around the $8.50 mark. That's a mighty price to pay for lung cancer and brown teeth. All the while, the state and federal governments move to ban smoking everywhere except your bedroom and tell you (right on the pack) that the stuff will kill you - eventually. After they collect their tax.

Consider the pack-a-day smoker (lots of them) shelling out $8.50 a day for their habit. Some simple mathematics will tell you that's $3,000 a year blown out of your face. I could do a lot with $3,000; up to and including paying for a full-season of Phillies tickets. I was stupid enough to believe that they'd give up the habit when cigs got to a dollar a pack. That was 20 years ago, so we see that I'm not always right.

Smokers will tell you (and have told me) "I have to have something" to do with their addictive personalities. OK, so if that's the case, you could give it to me and I'll spend it on pot or something else that would actually benefit me. That would save me a lot of money on alcohol.

But, I'd have to have fuzzy Glaucoma eyes or be in pain from some cancer-induced surgery for the state to give me marijuana, so I guess I'll just have to keep drinking.