Please Snort Responsibly

A story about (among other things) our alcohol and drug use...

The cartoon you just looked at was inspired by a Kansas City Star headline which said U.S. manufacturing was in decline and my immediate response was “bullshit” because as the cartoon indicates I believe we still manufacture all kinds of stuff.

As you can see I also fulfilled my Socialist Political Cartoonist Contractual Requirement to criticize Donald Trump at every opportunity and if you’re thinking, “When’s he going to lay off Trump?” the answer is not anytime soon because guess who’s the frontrunner for the Republican nomination and guess who has a pretty decent chance of beating Joe Biden?

After all the crap he pulled the first time, we could wind up with President Trump again and if that happens we pretty much get what we deserve.

But right now I want to focus on the last panel in the cartoon because I needed six examples of things we manufacture to make the cartoon balance out visually and the first five came pretty easy based on current events, but I was scuffling to come up with a sixth one until I remembered reading about personal income in Burundi.

According to the internet, Burundi is the poorest country in the world and the average yearly income per capita is $216, but the article I read also warned that things cost a lot less in Burundi so if you go to your local Burundi Costco you can expect to pay a lot less for all the products they don’t have.

I drew the rich guy pretty much based on Hugh Hefner, but compared to much of the rest of the world most of us are “rich” and I’m guessing if I tried to explain to the average Burundian that I own a house, a car, three TVs, can pay all my monthly bills with money left over and don’t have to walk half a mile to get some clean water and carry it home in a bucket, but still don’t consider myself “well off” the average Burundian would want to kick me in the nuts.

We should all remember that despite all our problems, compared to a lot of other people in the world, we’re doing OK.

(I hope you enjoyed that and feel uplifted by my positive outlook because that portion of today’s program is over and we’ll now get back to my usual whining and complaining.)

According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon said it was taking steps to change how classified information is accessed and do a better job of tracking “insider threats” because a junior member of the Air National Guard revealed a bunch of national security type stuff on a messaging platform called Discourse and right about here I should add the word “allegedly” so the Air National Guard guy doesn’t sue me although I’m pretty sure he currently has bigger problems to deal with.

Also according to the Post, the military intends to step up its efforts to track what documents are being viewed and whether the person who’s viewing them has a valid reason to do so.

But not once in the entire Post article were the words “Donald” or “Trump” mentioned which seems like a huge oversight and if the Pentagon really wants to crack down on blabbermouths, I figured I’d give them some unsolicited advice, which when you think about it, describes almost all advice because when we’re busy fucking up – which in my case is pretty much a fulltime job and I believe this essay proves it – we don’t need some Tuesday Morning Quarterback telling us what we should have done differently. 

And if you’re thinking, “Shouldn’t that be Monday Morning Quarterback?” remember what I said about unsolicited advice?

My imaginary team played on Monday Night Football so Tuesday Morning Quarterback is completely appropriate and you need to get off my back before you drive me to drink which in my case is a pretty short Uber ride and we’ll talk about drug use and alcohol in a moment.

They found a powdered substance in the Biden White House which turned out to be cocaine and lucky for Joe he was at Camp David so he couldn’t be blamed, but he probably had a lousy Camp David vacation because he left his Bolivian Marching Powder behind.

(OK, that’s a joke and as the cartoon indicates, I think it’s a lot more likely that Joe snorts Metamucil.)

And now some completely unnecessary and overly-revealing stories about my past drug use:

Like pretty much everybody that lived through the 60s and 70s I tried smoking marijuana because it was the Hip Thing to Do and when a joint was being passed around I’d take a hit and unlike some Weaselly Presidents totally inhaled, but fortunately for me I didn’t enjoy it because I don’t need all that much help feeling drowsy, slumping on a couch and polishing off a box of peanut butter Ritz-Bits while watching The Price is Right.

That’s what I want to do when I’m not smoking marijuana and didn’t find the industrial-strength lethargy all that appealing.

Cocaine was a different matter.

I tried it a few times and enjoyed it because it gave you energy and made you want to talk a Blue Streak and you could have conversations that lasted all night in which the Meaning of Life and the Cosmic Ramifications of the Designated Hitter Rule were dissected and resolved, although nobody listened to anybody else and the next morning you wouldn’t remember a word of those great conversations and I once wrote down all the terrific ideas I was having at 3 AM, but the next morning the notes were incoherent gibberish so at least I was taking accurate notes.

And that gets me to the problem with cocaine: the next morning.

You take some cocaine because it makes you feel good temporarily and you take some more cocaine because you want that good feeling to last, but unless you’re Al Pacino filming a reboot of Scarface you probably have limited access to cocaine and the more you take the worse you’re going to feel when you run out.

You’re digging a hole and the deeper you dig it the longer it will take to climb out of it.

You’ll be exhausted, but can’t sleep because your brain is going a million miles an hour and bouncing off walls and meanwhile it feels like you swallowed a bicycle inner tube so you can’t eat and you’re going to feel shitty all the next day and I only had to go through that a couple times before I realized that Nighttime Lee was writing checks that Daytime Lee couldn’t cover. Plus cocaine is expensive, so thank God for that because it gave me one more reason not to snort the yearly income of a Burundian family of four up my left nostril.

Let me be perfectly clear: using cocaine is definitely wrong especially when you can get 5-Hour Energy much cheaper and it’s legal.

I never got that deep into any kind of illegal substance abuse, but nevertheless I’m happy to announce these days I’m totally free from drugs and if you ever see me in a bar you can buy me a drink to celebrate.

Our National Hypocrisy about Alcohol

Let’s face it: we deplore some types of drug use, but are totally OK with alcohol (the drug you drink) although these days after they spend 98% of a TV commercial convincing you to drink, they’ll spend at least 2% of the same commercial asking you to “drink responsibly” which is pretty much a contradiction in terms and you know the people selling you booze don’t really want you to go to a bar, have one cocktail and then wait two days to drive home.

Plus, when I see those ads where George Clooney is sitting around sipping tequila in a field during the day with a bunch of farm workers he probably met 15 minutes before they started filming, everything about it seems pretty unlikely because if I’ve reached the point in a bender where I’m drinking tequila I’m definitely not drinking responsibly; I’ve reached the Fuck-It-Point of the bender plus in my experience pretty much nobody sips tequila. You slam a shot, do a full-body shudder, try to keep from barfing and then bite on a lime hoping to kill the taste of what you just swallowed.

(There’s a sex worker joke available right here, but I’m on a roll so let’s ignore it.)

One of my sons accurately observed that even the most expensive hard liquor doesn’t actually taste good; it just hurts less when you swallow it which in some cases is money well spent.

Anyway…

Here’s what Life had taught me about alcohol: if six beers make you feel good, 12 beers won’t make you feel twice as good and that’s not speculation, I actually tried it so I know for sure and before I finish I’m going to urge you to “drink responsibly” and I’d love to give you more unsolicited advice about alcohol consumption, but it’s time for me to go snort a couple lines of Metamucil.

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