Quit smoking, dammit

I doubt the name Michael Nyqvist is going to jump off the page – create an aura of instant recognition for those who see the name in print. But you might recall him if I tell you that eight years ago he played the journalist Mikael Blomkvist in the original and still popular "Girl Trilogy" — The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. (It’s the same character that Daniel Craig played in the American remake of Tattoo.) Or you might even remember him as the lead villain Kurt Hendricks in Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol or as Viggo Tarasov, another lead villain, in John Wick.

Regardless, I just learned he died yesterday. Of lung cancer. And he was only 56-years-old. C’mon people. Wake up! Twenty-seven years ago, I kicked a three-pack-a day habit and I smoked unfiltered Camels for the previous 25 years and I did it cold turkey, without patches or any other form of medication. If I — someone without an ounce of will power — can do it, anyone can.