While walking past a convenience store last  week, I noticed a sign that borderline panicked: “Get your vanilla cigarettes before they are banned!” The sign nearly inspired my non-smoking self into stockpiling like it was 1999, but it appears I am too late. The FDA has banned the sale of flavored tobacco, three months after President Barack Obama agreed to let the FDA regulate tobacco products. What’s so wrong with having a little “Warm Winter Toffee” with your lung cancer? According to the New York Times, 17-year-olds are three times more likely than those over 25 to smoke the flavored cigarettes.

There’s been a mysterious spike in shoplifting around Dupont Circle. One clerk told WJLA: “The kids have gotten out of control…don’t they have supervision?”

There was also some young and restless vigilante justice on U Street recently when three 20-somethings chased down a would-be mugger and tackled him in front of Nellie’s Sports Bar. A witness told the blog Borderstan: “I would not want to be that mugger when word gets around that he was turned into a bitch in front of cheering queens.” Smart? No. Awesome entertainment for U Street's tipsy hipsters (tongue twister...)? Undoubtedly.

There were three homicides in the District last weekend, in SW, SE and NE. All three victims were under the age of 20.

Arguably over-played Brooklyn Indie gods MGMT played a free concert on Sunday at KIA Warehouse - to get tickets, you had to test drive a KIA Soul. Eyewitness reports indicate people were lined up for hours to do just that, which doesn't explain all the teeny boppers in the audience...

The New York Times helpfully offers “5 Easy Steps to Stay Safe (and Private!) on Facebook." My personal favorite: “Keep your profile to friends only.” Great in theory, but how am I supposed to stalk other people? Should be replaced with: “Never, ever become friends with your parents.”

For those of you who are too cool to quit, join me in asking Michael Kinsley to extend to us his blessing of President-Elect Barack Obama's addiction.

Kinsley's opening graf is great:

It is still okay to discriminate against one group of Americans. This discrimination is not only legal, it is encouraged. You see members of this oppressed minority huddled outside in rain and snow, forbidden to seek refuge. No one feels sorry for them. And yet we may have just elected one of these pariahs as president.

As is his reasoning for leaving Obama be:

Obama's steely calm is now one of our country's major assets. If he needs an occasional cigarette to preserve it, let's hand him an ashtray, offer him a light and look the other way.

Everything in between those two points, which come at the beginning and end of Kinsley's essay, is tsk-tsk white noise. (If I may be so bold, Why do talking heads refrain from haranguing overeaters with the same ferociousness that they attack smokers? I know the answer, but it's worth pointing out--at every available opportunity--that public health nuts are inconsistent with their bullying.)

I did a quick poll of two of Washington City Paper's former smokers, and neither believes that smoking is the only means of preserving Obama's "steely calm" (though one of them suggested that it would be a rough week in the country if Obama decided to quit cold turkey). The argument is bunk for another reason: "whether to meddle" shouldn't be decided on a sliding scale of importance. If the president is important enough to be left alone, we all are. And if he's not, we're all fucking doomed.

In honor of the day, I've unearthed a delightful rebuttal to the "those things will kill you" crowd, and it comes courtesy of the poet Graham Lee Hemminger:

Tobacco is a dirty weed.  I like it.
It satisfies no normal need.  I like it.
It makes you thin, it makes you lean,
It takes the hair right off your bean
It's the worst darn stuff I've ever seen.
I like it.

I like it, so I do it.

Good luck to all you quitters. Today, I'll smoke your 'baccy for ya.