If You Give a Mouse a Cannabis Cookie...

Plus, Poe's Triple Crown and the Flagged Clearance Section at B+N

Hello, readers.

“I don’t want to get too political here…”(proceeds to get too political).

A lot of accounts that I follow on social media have recently started posts with that tired disclaimer. For whatever reason, they are taking a break from their normally scheduled programming to deliver some political endorsement that will only end in a hatemail and a loss of followers.

I prefer to withhold a political endorsement (but if you read even a smidge of my posts here, it’s obvious who I am voting for) and rather critique the false sense of idealism which seems to be poisoning the feed and diminishing the “brand” of America.

One of our first mistakes is thinking we are inherently superior to other countries. We are just trying to figure shit out like anyone else. Democracy is susceptible to fail just like any other government, if not more so, because governing depends on the will of the people. People are ugly, vain, hate-filled, and flawed.

A second mistake of our idealism is the tendency to represent things as they “should be” rather than they are. The idea that we need “to get back to these values or beliefs” is a dangerous one, rooted in nostalgia and fantasy. There is no going back, but you can uproot and rip out decades of progress in the name of recapturing some glory that might or might not have existed.

To me, American idealism is more about us living “under the influence” of our own romantic invention: we have a preconceived notion about who we were and how we looked, but like anyone trying on clothes from the past and hoping that it still fits, we are now questioning how this was ever in style to begin with.

So where does patriotism end and nationalism begin? When does nationalism become national socialism? How much of our American bravado and posturing is really just insecurity that we are not as great as we think we are?

These questions beg an answer that I am not equipped to answer here, but I hope we continue to move forward in our ongoing quest to figure this whole America thing out.

One thing is for sure—we can’t afford to go back.

And now, our regularly scheduled content.

Please, just take it. 

A new clearance section at Barnes and Noble has shoppers questioning just how far they'll go to get a deal. Starting this month, there will be an entire section of the store dedicated to discounted items that have been taken into the bathroom.

Flagged items range from books to toys, and even stationary. The company will not see a profit from any of these items and just want them out of their stores altogether. 

Strangely enough, interest from customers has been high. One customer said they were going to get their holiday shopping done early and another had a few upcoming coworker birthdays they were going to knock out. 

So the fact that a stranger had these items in the bathroom doesn't bother them at all? 

"You just have to make your peace with it," said one eager shopper. "I mean, how many items from the public library are regularly read on the shitter?"

The unholy trinity.

Rather worse for wear, Edgar Allan Poe died an ignominious death on October 7, 1849, wandering drunk and delirious around a public house known as Gunner's Tavern, used as a polling station, in Baltimore, MD.

Hey, it could have happened to any of us, especially if you believe that Poe was the victim of voter cooping, where victims are kidnapped, made drunk, and disguised several times in order to cast multiple votes. Pretty typical experience in Baltimore hanging out with the fucking Whigs, if you ask me.

He spent the next several days at the hospital until his death on the morning of October 7th. During the autopsy, doctors discovered that he suffered from a number of conditions, ranging from diabetes, to cholera, to syphilis. Rabies was also explored, but doctors left his official cause of death as "a congestion of the brain." 

Thanks for not publishing the part about the syphilis, Doc.

It's a slippery slope...

If you give a mouse a cannabis cookie, he is going to ask for some coke. When you give him the coke, he will probably want to do it with a straw. When he's finished, he's going to want to watch cartoons. Then, he'll want to stare at himself in a mirror and yell and laugh.

He might see himself for the first time, and realize that he's wasting his life. He then might get carried away and start trashing every room looking for something he swears he lost but can't name.

When he's done, he'll probably want to take a nap. You will read to him, and then he'll be reminded that he's got some really interesting theories on things. He'll tell you all about them aaaaaaalllllllll night. 

Now he's amped and wants more coke. To come down, he's going to need to mellow out with another weed cookie.