# Like Beethoven? You'll love cigarettes!



## Polednice

Here's something I just saw on Reddit, from a 1952 concert programme:


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## sospiro

Unbelievable now


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## Weston

I think the expression on Beethoven's face says it all.


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## Edward Elgar

Comparing Beethoven's 3rd with a cigarette? Besides the obvious ethical problems, it's total blasphemy!


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## Sid James

Weston said:


> I think the expression on Beethoven's face says it all.


Good one! :lol:

I've always found it strange how smokers profess to "enjoy" the taste of cigarettes. In reality, they taste absolutely horrible. In the past (as these kinds of ads show) the tobacco companies were very good at brainwashing people that cigs actually taste and maybe even smell good despite obvious evidence to the contrary. I was a smoker, quit a year ago & I think I'll stay quit this time after many attempts. Whenever I had my first cigarette of the day it literally made me feel nauseous. Then as the day went on, I got more accustomed to this rubbish. But after having no cigs for 8 hours while I slept at night, my body readjusted to normality, but then I would start the whole poison inducing process all over again the next day. I'm very glad that I was able to break this vicious cycle. I now am in contact less with people who were in my life who were smokers. But then, I was able to find people who are non-smokers. Basically, I had to change or adjust some aspects of my life.

& as for the red poster with the doctor that sospiro posted saying "Luckies are less irritating" - the first thing that came to my mind was "Smoking no (zero) cigarettes is the LEAST irritating."


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## Art Rock

Link to pic (does not allow direct linking in post).

And here we have the future president of the USA recommending to reduce the life expectance of all your friends by about 10 years as a christmas gift..............


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## Sid James

Art Rock said:


> ...And here we have the future president of the USA recommending to reduce the life expectance of all your friends by about 10 years as a christmas gift..............


That's the wierdest one so far...


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## jhar26

Andre said:


> I've always found it strange how smokers profess to "enjoy" the taste of cigarettes.


It depends on how long you've been without one. When you're a smoker you tend to smoke a cigarette before your addicted body starts to long for it's dose of nicotine. You basically smoke at more or less regular intervals out of a habit and they are almost completely tasteless. But if you have a habit of smoking one every hour (or whatever) and you have been without one for, say, eight hours, a cigarette tastes very good and smoking one is almost an orgasmic experience.


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## eorrific

Beethoven on that poster looks like a hobbit.
How sad. They even got Beethoven to sign that poster.


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## kv466

eorrific said:


> Beethoven on that poster looks like a hobbit.
> How sad. They even got Beethoven to sign that poster.


lol...Beethoven van Baggins from The Shire! Light 'em up


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## Krummhorn

sospiro said:


> Unbelievable now


Not really ... I used to be married to a RN and we would regularly attend doctors/nurses parties. Talk about your chain smokers and boozers ... the very same medical professionals who are telling everyone else, "don't smoke, don't drink, it'll kill ya!" What they were really saying was "don't drink, don't smoke, leaves more for us!" :lol:

Interesting to see the number of professional classical musicians who do smoke these days, not that I have anything against those who do ... that's their choice, and I respect that.

I quit smoking 6½ years ago (cold turkey) ... haven't missed it one bit.

Kh


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## Jobe

Wills' cigarettes once had a load of composers on those cards that they used to promote... I'm glad I'm as young as I am, for I may have succumb to temptation.










Ah... the more I look at Brahms, the more I think Karl Marx crossed with Santa.


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## superhorn

Yikes ! Those damned cigarette companies will do anything to sell their cancer sticks.
That's about as distasteful as you can get !


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## Elgarian

Andre said:


> I've always found it strange how smokers profess to "enjoy" the taste of cigarettes. In reality, they taste absolutely horrible.


But we're not all the same. The first cigarette I ever had, at the age of 16, was a life-changing, wonderful experience. I couldn't have articulated my response then, but if I'd been able to, it would have been something along the lines of 'this could completely solve my problem of moment-by-moment existential unease and discomfort.' And it pretty well did for the next 20-odd years, while I steadily progressed towards becoming a completely addicted 40-a-day smoker. I loved cigarettes.

But then my grandfather died of lung cancer; then my father (heavy smokers, both). And I watched how they ended their lives and decided that I really didn't want to end up like that. So I stopped. Hardest thing I ever did. Even now, 20 years later, I still quite often feel like a smoker who's in the process of giving up. But I made a choice between being addicted to cigarettes on the one hand, and loving books, art, and music on the other. I saved the money I'd have spent on cigarettes every month (adjusting for inflation each year) and made sure that every penny of it was spent it on books, art, and music instead. I became so addicted to buying books that I couldn't have afforded to start smoking again. And now I get a kind of satisfaction from knowing that all the thousands of books on my shelves, and the works of art that cover my walls, and my large music library - all these have been paid for not by me, but by the tobacco companies who'd have had the money instead if I hadn't given up smoking: the equivalent, in total, of more than £70,000 in today's terms. So far.


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## HarpsichordConcerto

Smoking is one of the most repugnant public habits, like spitting, in public spaces. Fine, you can smoke all you want; I don't care, but I do care when I become a passive smoker.


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## Elgarian

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> Smoking is one of the most repugnant public habits, like spitting, in public spaces.


Hasn't that been more or less eliminated now, though, HC? Or are the laws about smoking in public places in Australia more lenient towards the smoker than here in the UK? Here, passive smoking is virtually non-existent now, unless one deliberately seeks out opportunities; by comparison, the motor car puts us at far greater risk I should think. I don't like to think about what I'm inhaling every time I go shopping in a busy street full of traffic.


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## HarpsichordConcerto

Elgarian said:


> Hasn't that been more or less eliminated now, though, HC? Or are the laws about smoking in public places in Australia more lenient towards the smoker than here in the UK? Here, passive smoking is virtually non-existent now, unless one deliberately seeks out opportunities; by comparison, the motor car puts us at far greater risk I should think. I don't like to think about what I'm inhaling every time I go shopping in a busy street full of traffic.


Yes, much eliminated. The major annoyance now remain crowded/busy streets, especially outside of buildings, or in semi-enclosed places like car parks and other rather urban areas where you happen to walk behind/near a puffer who exhaled the poison, and then you inhale their ****. They simply blow it out with no regard to folks sharing the same walking path/space as they do.

Other folks literally smell like an ashtray, even when not smoking.


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## Elgarian

Yes, although speaking purely personally, if I _have_ to breathe in anything secondhand, I'd rather inhale the smoke from burning leaves than the fumes from burning petrol expelled from a car's exhaust.

I also sometimes can't help pondering the slightly discomforting thought that in a crowded room, even when no one is smoking, I'm still breathing in air that all those other people have breathed out ....


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## Potiphera

I agree with HarpsichordConcerto. :tiphat: Only I would say more but I will probably get booooeed off the forum.


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## Vaneyes

Camping will be eliminated, because of second-hand smoke. No more airplanes or vehicles. Bring this world to a stop, so we can breathe cleaner air. Getting us back to our roots or caves, before fire. Amen.


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## Moscow-Mahler

In Berlin I was shocked to see (only once) a guy, smoking a cigarete on the "Zoo" undeground station (I mean, downstairs, on the platform). Even in Russia it is unusual (but here some people smoke in the lifts in my house, which is awful).

I usually don't care about smokers on the streets, but in the closeted place it can be annoying.


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## GoneBaroque

superhorn said:


> Yikes ! Those damned cigarette companies will do anything to sell their cancer sticks.
> That's about as distasteful as you can get !


One of the cigarette companies (don't recall which one) ruan advertisements with the tenor Jan Peerce endorsing their product. I remember reading that Peerce did not smoke. anything for a dollar, I guess.

Rob
0


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## waldvogel

Here's a few classic cigarette ads. First of all, one to get the kiddies interested:










A real commercial for cigarettes with cartoon characters.






Nothing like having a pro athlete endorsing cigarettes. They really help your lungs when you're running...


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## Art Rock

Elgarian said:


> Yes, although speaking purely personally, if I _have_ to breathe in anything secondhand, I'd rather inhale the smoke from burning leaves than the fumes from burning petrol expelled from a car's exhaust.


Speaking as a chemist, I would say that there far more potentially harmful chemicals in burnt tobacco than in in burnt petrol, which has gone through immense clean-up in refining and then passes a catalyst in the car's exhaust.....


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## Kopachris

Art Rock said:


> Speaking as a chemist, I would say that there far more potentially harmful chemicals in burnt tobacco than in in burnt petrol, which has gone through immense clean-up in refining and then passes a catalyst in the car's exhaust.....


Besides which, I actually prefer the smell of burnt petrol... and burnt rubber. _Such a thrill when your radials squeal..._


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## Rasa

The smell of a cigar though...


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## Yoshi

What a strange ad. Then again I'm not surprised, I've seen weirder cigarette ads before.


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## clavichorder

Though the days of weird cigarette adds in the U.S. seem to have moved on to the days of equally strange anti cigarette commercials though, don't you think?


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