In light of the recent debate about the definition of a planet, I’m wondering if good luck can be revoked ex post facto—my history of coincidence of astrological events and personal milestones is causing a disturbance in my superstitious mind.

As astronomers debate to codify the elements of such astrological events, rare souls have emerged in phone calls and emails to me and others. I feel we’ve arrived at a point in the narrative that demands a restatement of the elementary relationships between the characters before proceeding to the next act like human observers of celestial bodies laying down language for discoveries beyond the Kuiper belt.

There’s an article in Wired on the Indian Space Research Organization and its work in the space immediate to Earth’s atmosphere for humanitarian needs as opposed to NASA’s distant exploration initiatives (I’d rather not comment on the illness of the international space station and space shuttles). If a ‘planet’ is worth defining, if stars can be taxonomized into giants and dwarves of various colors and mass, then what about the human network of voluntary relationships—friends, acquaintances, flirtations, and so forth? Given the disaster that befalls inequitable relationships, couldn’t an early revelation of defined expectations—social taxonomy with universal definitions—avert the disasters that happen when one in a pair thinks ‘lab partner’ while the other swoons ‘life partner’?

Well, aside from the idea being absolutely cold, getting to know people is a weird and delightful process, and it is one that conforms to no pattern I’ve yet discerned. But there’s a process to it, and there are common elements—the August daydream that inspires a phone call, the deluge-like visitation of memory at the precipice of a sea change, the edge of the unknown future.

‘Conventional wisdom’ is my new favorite oxymoron.

A coworker told me a story today about his experience at a lobbying firm for whom RJ Reynolds was a client, particularly about the bowls and trays of free cigarette packs in their lobbies and offices. At the time he didn’t smoke, and he felt ashamed taking them until he saw that wealthier and more powerful visitors habitually stuffed their pockets full of free cigarettes, at which point he started stockpiling smokes for his mother and sisters.

Now, around this time, RJ Reynolds acquired Kraft and their American-cheese singles empire and thus diversified the gratis platter in their lobby, at which point in the story I quipped that my coworker had at least once in his past “a safari jacket stuffed with Velveeta and cigarettes.”

And then I observed that following any plural noun with “and cigarettes” renders it wonderfully absurd and melancholic, like a linguistic sidekick that hangs on the phrase like a perpetual cartoon cloud. Consider: Coffee and Cigarettes and Romance and Cigarettes (a further search of IMDb yields Bread and Cigarettes and Buttermilk and Cigarettes).

Clowns and cigarettes. Bullets and cigarettes. Reindeer and cigarettes. Eyeglasses. Carpenters. Tampons. Meat pies. Bass guitars. Dadaists. Attorneys general. Feather dusters. Crackwhores. Geometric solids. Athletic socks. Snakes. Toss pillows. Legal precedents. Tourniquets. Lima beans. Web developers. Evildoers. And cigarettes.