After School Special: Booze Lotto Parenting
World’s greatest mom.
Sure, you love kids, so you gleefully punched out one, two or even octo-quantities of them. (Hint: Almost as many as a nine-round ammo clip.) But then, like a baby chick a few days after Easter Sunday, they stick around and are always underfoot, demanding attention and care.
What then?
It’s not like you can make a chicken-and-egg scrambled omelet with them and viola! Problem deliciously solved! (Although an amazing number of parents do find a way to carry out filicide but that’s decidedly outside the scope of this post.)
Like the vast majority of my blog posts, it all started when I decided to set foot out of my house…
Looking for some dinner my wife and I drove into the parking lot of the divey Chinese restaurant. The lot was amazingly full. What gives? The food must be awesome here, eh?
But when we walked into the dining area, only two tables were occupied. Huh?
That’s when I slapped my head and yelled, “D’oh!” I almost forgot I live in Oregon. That’s where they have a state-run lottery and run a continuous stream of commercials urging the citizenry to go out and gamble because doing so accomplishes “good things.” (Like increasing revenue into state coffers.)
Sure, they simultaneously run anti-gambling ads but that’s only because they like a mixed-up, dazed and confused populace. Let’s blast ’em with a hot mix of pro-gambling and anti-gambling messages … at the same time, they seem to be saying whilst rubbing their hands together in glee. That’ll learn ’em a lesson!
Indeed. What’s not good for the individual is apparently good for the state.
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Positively freedom
Freedom!
Once or twice a year I get up early, haul myself down to the donut shop and get something not good for me. What can I say? We all have our vices, right?
A short time ago I made the trip. Along the way, around 9:15am, I passed a tavern. Out front was a guy leaning against the building not far from the front door. It was a cold, wet, gloomy morning and an arctic 30 degrees (not counting any damn wind chill).
The man was smoking away.
Look on the bright side, I thought. At least I’m not him.
Who says I can’t have positive thoughts? Apparently all of mine come tinged with a wee bit of judgement. Perhaps that’s not ideal but I can live with. It makes the donut that much more delicious. At least I have taste buds.
As you probably know a pharmacy called CVS recently made big news by announcing they were phasing out sales of cigarettes (and other tobacco products) in their stores. Now I don’t know CVS from a hole in the ground. I’ve never been in one. I tend to avoid places like that.
Still, I welcome this bit of news. It feels like a step in the right direction to me. I actually heard something on the news about tobacco companies are hurting due to reduced sales. Is that supposed to be troubling? In the United States sales of cigarettes have reportedly dropped by 31.3 percent from 2003 to 2013.
Some, like me, thinks that’s a pretty good sign.
Then there’s that other group. You know, the people on Twitter who embrace the #boycottcvs hash tag. I guess you could call them the yin to my yang.
Hang on to your hats, space cowboys. It’s time, once again, for the epic battle between good and evil. Anyone know if George Lucas is a smoker?
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Candy Crushing
Hey, have you heard the latest? There’s a game called Candy Crush Saga for your handheld device.
Behold! I give you the ultimate evil in the galaxy!
I installed the damn thing once. By doing so I think I earned a few “Dino bucks” in my dino wranglin’ game, but that’s another story.
I opened the game and played a level. I found the motif totally inane and annoying. The game itself was vapid and uninspired. I said to myself, “Hey, self! Isn’t this game just a rip-off variation of those 42 million other games where you match and line shit up so more shit will fall down?”
I promptly deleted it from my device. What a stupid piece of shit, I thought. Luckily I’ll never have to hear of it again.
Wrong!
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Thinking About Drugs Makes Me Want Drugs
I rarely drink but when I do it’s something unusual.
Vicodin! Oh, my poor wee bairns.
Credit: A Guru’s Lament
First things first. I hate drugs*.
*Per the Drug Subsistence Manual (DSM) III: A definition of “drug” that excepts caffeine and alcohol.
As I was saying, I hate drugs. I almost never take them. Present company of alcohol and caffeine excepted, of course. I have to be in some dire straits to even consider it and, even then, I generally take less than the recommended dosage.
I don’t like ibuprofen and I don’t like Tylenol. I even eschew aspirin. My wife knows a lot about prescription medications she’ll often respond to my whining by saying something like, “Take four of these horse-sized pills.” I’ll usually only take one or two.
Topping my list of things I hate is nicotine and marijuana. Gross and pointless. I understand life is hard. My advice? Eat it. (Life, I mean.) If you’re not going to live in the reality of the here and now, why bother? What’s the point?
I do admit, though, that Walter White’s “blue ice” looks tempting. I wouldn’t mind taking some of that fictionalized meth for a spin. Just one time.
And yet…
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Lassie Laphound
This is day three of The Dog Days of Summer, a Blogdramedy writing challenge. If you came here looking for quality content you are decidedly barking up the wrong tree. -Ed.
Lassie Laphound
by
Tom B. Taker
The face in the mirror was hers and yet… it wasn’t. Occasionally, in lucid moments, even she boggled at what she’d become. Fortunately for her those moments were increasingly rare.
She was suffering from the unintended consequences of too much life. Too much work done, her former beauty now permanently marred by narcissistic overindulgence. Too much partying. Too much alcohol. Too much mainlining catnip.
84 minutes in a kennel. A $2,500 collar.
Too much life.
A once promising future reduced to this.
It was time. Her fans were waiting.
She stepped out and the cheers and jeers of the gathered throng nipped at her bones.
“Lassie! Go home!” they yelled.
Blogdramedy’s The Dog Days of Summer writing challenge commands victims participants to author ten stories, ten days in a row, consisting of exactly 110 words each. All stores are themed based on dogs that she has pre-selected. For more information about the challenge and to view the work of other participants, please click the link. But only if you want stories that have real teeth.
I’m One In A Million
“What is the nature of existence?” no one asked me.
“You asked,” I replied. “So I’ll tell you…”
Imagine being born into a society. Congratulations! You were the sperm that won. (Unless the fertilization process was technologically interfered with and/or took place inside of a test tube. In that case, here’s your “participant” ribbon.)
For most of thus that’s exactly what happened. We came into existence and then, presumably sometime later, we attained some sort of consciousness. And without knowing what we were doing we began to absorb. Mostly from the idiots who surrounded us.
Nice plan. Now you’re totally fucked.
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Gambling For Jobs
With the invention of The Lotto, the government become a bookie. The state is now a purveyor of legalized gambling. Proponents tie the organization to positive benefits like funding schools and other governmental activities like parks.
But where does that money come from? People who gamble, methinks.
Governments have turned gambling into, what I like to call, “unfair taxation of the stupid.”
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Shouts from the Abyss 
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