Drug Dealers Demand Stimulus

(Washington, DC) – Members of Congress spend a great deal of their time inundated by requests and pleas from lobbyists.  Lately, they’ve been just a little bit more harried as lobbyists for a secretive group that calls itself Citizens For The Protection of Pot Dealers (CFPPD) has made their presence felt in Washington.  What do they want, you ask?  They’d like a economic stimulus package aimed at getting people back to work … rolling joints.

Pot Dealers

It seems that the auto and retail industries aren’t the only ones affected by the deepening economic turmoil.  It’s also taken a toll on sales of illegal drugs.  Anecdotal evidence on this topic has been rumored for the past few months, but it has been difficult to confirm because of the illegal nature of the business.  Now, the CFPPD has stepped forward to confirm this and to ask for help.

They say that the nation’s marijuana trade may die off without dramatic assistance from the government.  The plan that they’re proposing would cost American taxpayers about $400 Billion in the short term.  Tentatively called Temporary Assistance to Needy Pot Dealers (TANPD), the bill would mandate that the Treasury send every pot dealer in America a check for approximately $89,000.  Advocates are also pushing for a provision that would force the Treasury make each check out to Pot Dealer X so that the bill doesn’t compromise the fifth amendment rights of pot dealers.  Banks would then be required to cash the checks without identification.  Banks in cities like Boulder, CO would have to stockpile billions in cash.  The CFPPD intends to act on behalf of the individual pot dealers in requesting checks from the government.

The plan is not without its detractors though.  Opponents of the bill worry that it won’t stop here.  Grover Norquist, of Americans For Tax Reform, worries that the bill would improperly shift the burden of people involved in a criminal enterprise onto the American people and set a dangerous precendent.  “What’s to keep the crack dealers and the heroin dealers from coming to us next with their hands out?  Nothing, that’s what.”  Another sticking point seems to be the lax enforcement.  Some in the Senate have pointed out that the role of CFPPD in this makes it possible that all of the money goes to one person.  Ted Kennedy was quoted as saying: “how, era, do we know that all of this money isn’t going to one guy that wants to buy a truck full of Bob Marley albums and Cheetos?”

Good News/Bad News

I fucked up.  It was bound to happen.  I just finished a really stressful week.  I was on the road almost all week.  I was driving home last night and I was really tired and stressed.

So I started thinking … I’m an adult.  I should be happy.  If I’m stressed, is it so bad if I have a cigarette every now and then?  Of course, I concluded no and stopped at the next rest stop to buy a pack of cigarettes.  As I stood in line to buy them, for the first time in six months, I was depressed and defiant.  Part of me felt like a loser, and the rest of me felt like: ‘fuck it, I’ve earned it’.  I got over, got outside, and on the road again.

As I put a cigarette in my mouth, it felt really weird.  Oddly smaller and quite more foreign than I remembered.  I lit it and took a pull.  The smoke came slower and rougher than I remembered. I didn’t cough; I’m not a douche after all .  It really made me feel like … this:

I felt exactly like a monkey smoking.

It was gross, it didn’t feel right.  Honestly, I don’t know how I ever did it in the first place.  The fact that I felt sick to my stomach for an hour afterwards only added to this.  Blech.

So the news is:

1. I’m a fuck-up.  But we knew that.

2. I had a cigarette

3. It was nasty.

And all of this got me to thinking about the way that we can idealize things in our minds.  It insane.  I’ve spent six months being intermittently miserable because I missed smoking … and it’s really, really gross and stupid.  How much of the pain that we have, the things that we yearn for, how many of those things would we actually want if we got them?

Clarity

The most awesome thing about my mind is that it keeps me in check, on point, and on message … whenever it’s not wandering to the point that it seems impossible to finish a … sentence.  To wit, this morning was one of those mornings where I actually thought to myself: ‘maybe, just maybe I’m not a completely useless douchebag.  It is possible, I suppose, that I do have something to offer the world.’  But then in a flash, my mind forced me to compute the percentage of my time that I spend singing Rob Base songs aloud … and that idea went right out the window.

Good job, Brain!

And to be fair, this is Rob Base‘s world.

Oh yeah and …  fuck the Big Mac.

Odds & Ends

Sometimes, the smegma-like detritus that clogs my brain needs to be lanced and it isn’t large enough for its own post. For instance ….

Raw Food

We’re bombarded with diet and clean-living advice each January as the year dawns anew. The more flowery the intro … the funnier the stupid thing you’re segueing into … or at least I hope. Anyway, so this year I’m hearing a lot about eating ‘raw’. The concept behind eating raw is, from what I can tell, that somehow eating food that hasn’t been cooked is automatically better. I don’t really get that, but fuck the hippies; they never make any sense anyway. The point being though, if I go raw … can I still eat Captain Crunch? I promise never to put it in the oven. What? I love the Cap’n. How can I live without him? Further, how do you talk to an angel?

But then I’m being silly … this is like asking vegetarians if they can still give head. That was funny the first 200 times that it was said in the history of the world. By my watch, it hasn’t been funny since 1918.

Another thing that always seems to be connected to the raw thing … colonics. I don’t know if I could do that. The practical reason for this is that it seems silly to pay someone to make me shit a lot without feeding me. I mean, I could go to Taco Bell and at least [theoretically] enjoy a meal as well. Seems inappropriately decadent in these troubled times.

The impractical reason that I could never get a colonic comes down to a fear that I’ve always had. I’ve always been afraid that Lilliputians live in my colon. Frankly, I don’t want to piss them off. They’re just waiting for a reason to get mad at me. Little fuckers are all Napoleons.

Lottery Loser

I don’t have the exact statistics available offhand, and Google seems like a lot of work this morning, but I’ve heard that 95% of all people that win the lottery lose all of their money at least 40% of the time. I’ve known how I’d lose mine for a long time now.

I have this [admittedly immature] thing that I do because it amuses me. I sometimes buy intentionally amusing combinations of items just so that I can watch the checkout clerk’s face as she mentally fills in the backstory. For instance, this morning I purchased Liquid Plumbr along with a 24 pack of toilet paper because I’ve got a big weekend planned. Apparently?

It’s not that I do this. Because … I did need both of those things, but I wouldn’t have bought them both in the same place were it not funny to me. I was going to separate stores – the toilet paper would’ve been cheaper at the second.

If I were to win the lottery … oh it’d be motherfucking on.

Some of the things I plan to buy…

1. Cucumber and Vaseline – technically, I’ve already done this one so …

2. Wine coolers, sleeping pills, and a See-And-Say – Come on! That’s funny!

3. Handcuffs, a feather, a leather strap, and a tennis ball

4. A Hanger and a pregnancy test

5. Gerbil and KY Jelly

6. A length of rope and a copy of The Bell Jar

7. Suppositories, a shoe horn, and a birthday card

You get the point. The list goes on forever. I always think … maybe the money would make me grow up a bit, but that fantasy fades out in seconds.

Braingames are now over.