The long-awaited Transformers movie premieres tonight. If you're in your late-20s or early 30s, and watched the Transformers cartoons as a kid, you probably have a desire to see this "PG-13" action extravaganza.

But beware: According to Susan Linn, a psychologist who co-founded the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Transformers is being marketed towards children. Brooks Barnes of the New York Times said in an article this morning that the live-action film is packed with cars and planes that turn into "blood-thirsty alien robots." In a PG-13 fight between good and evil, do you expect anything less?

The problem, according to Linn, is that Dreamworks and Hasbro, Inc (NYSE: HAS) are going after preschoolers with their "widespread and irresponsible" marketing of the movie. "Movie studios have been using toys to market movies in unfair ways for a long time," says Linn. "But this is a movie that was designed from the beginning to sell toys and that makes this case particularly egregious."

Cigarettes can kill you, or at least assist in the project. But, in the interest of equal attention I must mention that french fries, alcohol, stress, and overexertion can assist in killing you also. Perhaps now this blog post needs a rating of X. In the ever-present mind-set of those who are paid to protect you from the bad choices you can make that might harm you, the Motion Picture Association of America has again taken up the daunting task of sculpting artistic creation to better fit within its own concepts of what you need protection from. This time the MPAA wishes to include certain smoking scenes as criteria for an "R" movie rating.

As a smoker I haven't minded being relegated to the status of second-class citizen while being summarily tossed to the street in the interest of protecting others from my habit. In fact, I don't even smoke in my own home because I don't want to expose my daughter to secondhand smoke. It's my habit, it's dangerous and I have no right to expose anyone else to the stuff. I do however find it disconcerting that a regulatory agency wishes to take it upon itself to demonize approximately 30% of the American population by declaring that our nicotine addiction is unfit for general public viewing. Excuse me please but I'm a human being too you know, and 90 percent of the nonsmokers I know have no problem with my habit as long as I do not force them to inhale my smoke.

So here's my answer to the MPAA's declaration that as smokers we are evil people who need to be labeled so that parents may protect their children from looking at us:

The American Medical Association has determined that obesity is at least as detrimental to the public health as smoking is. In fact, a majority of health studies make clear that people who are overweight face greater health risks in a shorter time span than even the heaviest smokers do. Obesity places a greater burden on health care resources than tobacco does, and being chronically overweight exposes one to more vast and varied health concerns than smoking ever will. Additionally, excessive consumption of calories assists in depriving the rest of the world from adequate nutritional sustenance. Therefore, it is my solemn duty to inform the MPAA that being overweight is a life choice that poses greater risks to society than smoking does, and I demand that it does something about it. Never mind the fact that probably two-thirds of its own board meet the criteria for being chronically overweight. MPAA owes it to society to protect us from the dangers of being overweight, and it should restrict the viewership of motion pictures that display obese people.

Now stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

If any company should be more interested in the fierce net neutrality debate that continues to heat up on Capitol Hill than Google, will it please stand up? I didn't think so -- in fact, Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently published an open letter to Google users on the subject.

After reading what Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf  had to say on the subject as well, Google probably has the most to lose should the money-grubbing big telecom firms win in their wishes to control Internet access with tiered services and such. Cerf is widely considered as the "father of the Internet" and is now in the employ of Google. Read Cerf's letter to the U.S. Senate here (PDF).

Should big telecom just give customers big and tall a "data pipe" in which to do anything and everything they need? Well, this is what's been great about Internet access until now -- it's open to everyone and anyone with just a slow or fast data connection. What you do over that connection is nobody's business but your own.