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.
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