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Vices have been good to me recently. First it was beer giving me all manners of cool things . Now it's cigarettes.

So I was hanging out with my SO Jenn on a Wednesday at a bar again, because at this point it's a tradition. The only difference was Chris was with us this time. And it was a different bar. And there was no Yankee game on in the background to distract me. OK, so there were a lot of differences. But they were mostly minor.

Anyway, a man who we later learned worked for a cigarette company came up to us and asked us if we'd like a very slick, cool-looking cigarette lighter. Of course we would, we responded! Well all you have to do is answer some questions, so his company has a better idea of its customers, he said! Sounds easily, we shot back! And that was it. No beer-tasting, no cigarette-comparing, no nothing. Just a cool cigarette lighter for us all, and a happy memory to share!

Oh wait, there was one thing. He SCANNED OUR DRIVERS LICENCES.

You see, he had this crazy PSP-shaped doohickey on which he wrote and recorded all our information with a stylus. Also included in this doohickey was a very futurstic looking alternating green/red light which scanned our driver's licences and, I can only assume, stole our identities. He said it was for data purposes. Mm-hmm.

We all agreed that it was a bad idea in retrospect, and when he got to the part of the "study" which involved directly recording information off the most important government-issued ID we had, we should have politely declined. But hey, at least we have cool cigarette lighters. Even though I don't smoke. Sigh.