Smokes: The brand (Camel Lights) is not as important as the price. I left the newsroom to head to a borough council meeting I was covering, and realized that I had left my smokes sitting on my desk. I stopped at an Eckerd’s Drug store to pick up a pack.

Oh, it sounds so simple…

I knew that the Pennsylvania General Assembly had raised the state tax on cigarettes by 31 cents or something in that ballpark. In theory, I have no problem with that kind of tax increase, especially because Gov. Rendell stipulated that much of the money was to be given to public school districts, as an expansion of their regular subsidies.

So I ask the girl at the counter for a pack of Camel Lights.

She smiles, turns to the racks behind her and retrieves my smokes.

She punches buttons on the register.

She looks up and smiles again. “That’ll be $5.50.”

Five. Dollars. And. Fifty. Cents.

And then I no longer care about the goddamn kids and the goddamn schools and outdated textbooks and underpaid teachers. It suddenly occurs to me that I’m about to start paying upwards of $40 a week to pump carcinogens into my lungs.

Generally, I have no problem admitting that I’m a total moron.

Now, I have proof.

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What I really wanted to say is that I’m going to spend the next day or two delving into the mysteries of this internet stuff. Specifically, I’m going to take a walk through Blogger’s help pages and see if I can’t make this page considerably more nifty. I’ll let you know how it goes.