I would really like to keep writing about my love for junk politics but I find myself disctracted. You see, the freegan/hippie/artist/psychonaut barista at the coffee shop I am currently writing from has begun to blare the emotionally stunted screechings of some hellish new Mike Patton "music" project which is about as distracting as having a four hundred pound autistic toddler poke you in the ear with a Crazy-Straw full of yogurt every ten seconds. Can I just say, it's none of my business if you wish to drop eight-plus hits of acid every day of your life and then drink some opium tea with your pot brownies. I would normally have no problem with anyone turning their heads into tapioca through excessive drug use EXCEPT when said tapioca head grabs a guitar and an effects peddle and makes a beeline for the recording studio. If you want to take a magical mystery tour through canyons of raping babies and oceans of three headed kittens with no eyes on a boat made out of rat skeletons that is being piloted by and anthropomorphic syringe full of AIDS who is wearing clown makeup and vampire teeth, that is entirely your business. Would you be a peach though and keep it to your fucking self? It's generally considered bad form to drag as many people as you can with you when you slip off the raft of sanity.
This is not some Nancy Regan, stick in the mud anti-drug rant. I've done my share, as well as a few other people's share, which is also considered bad form. I just hit a certain point with the whole "third eye" scene where I paused a moment, took a long hard look at reality, and decided that I was good to go. Sure, I still dabble from time to time and alcohol is still my constant traveling buddy, but there really is a line you cross with the drug use, booze included, that you aren't coming back from.
I'm as excited as anyone else to hear news of pot decriminalization and California's Prop. 19 and any other general ceasefire in the war on drugs. The part I'm not so stoked on is that these moves give rise to people who think things like this are funny:
When I read that, I put my back out from cringing so hard. There's always someone with either poor impulse control or overzealous fervor who will actively wreck anything worth doing. Vegans take the fun out of eating, Tea Baggers take the hope out of politics and druggies actively kill any buzz I might have been working on. There seems to be some kind of unspoken race to the bottom within the druggie community. For example, you think that flag is bad? Check this one out:
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| I believe the term you're searching for is "doucheflag". |
When confronted with that image, my first reaction was to hit. There was nothing in particular I wanted to hit, just punch the air like a teenager with Tourettes. It's rather hard to keep in mind that the author of that lovely bit of verse probably had more drugs in them than an urn full of Mitch Hedberg's ashes and, therefore, should not be hunted and killed for sport in retaliation for their crimes against the English language.
Legalizing pot is going to be such a double edged sword. Should this country ever have the collective common sense to actually legalize marijuana (good), smoking weed will probably become necessary, if for no other reason than to blot outhete towering tidal wave of stoner/druggie-themed marketing (unspeakably evil) that is headed for shore even as we speak. Here are some things to look out for:
1) Anything having to do with Alice in Wonderland.
We get it. Lewis Carrol was a wacky motherfucker and and you're all "down the rabbit-hole" and "through the looking glass" and totally amazed that the guy was writing drug references into a children's book. That's really great. Now stop. And leave Willy Wonka alone while you're at it.
2) Things that are unnecessarily "freaky".
"Yeah, man, my company is totally weeeeeeiiiiirrrrddd! We don't think like you do! We're totally so out there that we have to go to these really great lengths to let you know that, this ain't your dad's shitty beer, man! This is only for people who are totally, like, into stuff that's totally...weeeeeeeeiiiiiirrrrrdddd!"
3) Aliens
OK, so this one is from Roswell and therefore makes some sense as far a marketing gimmicks go. As for the rest of it, aliens have gone from terrifying invaders to little, green (like weed, dude!) intergalactic stoners that want to put on one of those insufferable Dr. Seuss hats, lie under a giant mushroom and light up a doob. I'm with the rednecks on this one. Shoot them sumbitches! And last but not least:
4) The completely obvious.
Wow,Ralph Steadman designed your label? Tommy Chong endorsed your product? Cherry fucking Garcia?! No thanks. I'll just muddle through with my usual choice and it's "boring" packaging.
You know what all these things have in common? They are, to a one, fucking terrible. Really. None of the products that pictured here are in any way good to consume, but I'm sure they all do a great job of separating stoners from their money. I mean, hell, if I wandered into a 7-11 while tripping balls and saw a six-pack that had a body pierced caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland chilling with an alien as imagined by Bob Masse, I'd probably gravitate (slowly) in it's general direction, stare at it for a bit, forget how money works and wander away, secure in my knowledge that, when I finally come down, there is a beer out there made just for me.
So brace yourself for the nonstop train to Wacky Land we're about to unleash on ourselves. If we're lucky (and I think I've already established how bad mine is) it's not going to get any worse than this:
But those are some long odds my friends.
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