In which the topic of cigarettes leads to some seriously dark thoughts -- be warned before reading.

I was at the gym yesterday, talking to a Spaniard who had come over to help me finish off a set on the bench press. I told him that I loved la vida aquí -- the life here -- in part because people are so friendly, amable. I've never once had a stranger come over to help me push out the final few reps of a set in the United States, but here it's happened three times in as many months.

As we got to talking, it turned out that my new friend was a doctor at a nearby hospital, and had grown up here in Córdoba. As I've noticed that every Spaniard and their mother smokes cigarettes, I asked him if the habit was popular even among doctors. His response was telling, though unspecific -- ''si, casi la mayoría'', he said -- ''yeah, almost the majority of them.''

And yet in terms of European life expectancy rates, Spain (79.78 year avg to the U.S.' 78.06) is right there at 19th with the leaders: Italy (a Mediterranean companion), France (another country heavy on the smoking), Switzerland (yeah, we know about your health care system) and Sweden (ditto on the system; the leader in Europe, at 80.63, only 8th worldwide).

I know the two or three people who will ever read this are curious to know which country heads the list. That would be Macau, a southeastern province-city of China which officially loses its semi-autonomy to the Big Red in 2049. Why? Macau was both the first and last Chinese city to be colonized by a European country. Portugal originally settled there in the 16th century, but in 1999 agreed to officially bequeath Macau to the people of Macau, with the stipulation that fifty years later it would be swallowed up by China. How did we get here again? Oh yeah, Macau's average life expectancy -- 84.38 years -- leads the world. I wonder how popular tobacco is there.

I hate to end this on a down note, but it must be noted that Swaziland has the worst average life expectancy in the world, and is the only country in which one is not expected to live past forty. Their average is 39.6. A tiny former colony of the UK in southeastern Africa, Swaziland also, not coincidentally, has the highest rate of AIDS in the world. In 2004, a study found that 38.8% of pregnant women tested positive for the merciless disease. Please, someone throw them a frickin' bone.

Of the forty countries between 155th and 195th at the bottom of the life expectancy rankings, thirty eight are in Africa. That stretch runs the hellish gamut from Madagascar, at an average of 59.4 years, down to the inferno of misery that Swaziland must be. The notable non-African outlyer is Afghanistan, 188th on the list with an average life expectancy of 43.8 years.

This global tragedy reminds me of a strangely lucid dream I had last night, in which an anonymous, legless, wheelchair-bound man was pleading with his family members to undergo some kind of fantastical operation which would give him legs at the cost of a few inches of height from each of them. With little pretense of remorse, the fully endowed humans stood around the desperate man as the fireplace lit the room with flickers of a dim, frigid glow. I can still hear his tearful wails as they faded away into the night.