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You know what band I like?

Steely Dan.

Just about every time I go out, I hear one of their songs on MOR canned radio, and I smile to myself, because behind the immaculate production and tasty guitar solos are left-field jazz harmonies and Talmudically esoteric lyrics about terrible people with cocaine problems.

No, seriously: you can stick “Hey Nineteen” between Huey Lewis and James Blunt all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a song about a middle-aged man romancing a teenage girl who alternately entices and disgusts him, and with whom he shares nothing save a predilection for tequila and blow. That’s a tune made for the minivan and the Target if ever there was one.

And on that note, I greatly enjoy this site.

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Why is marijuana the only drug that leads to the fetishization and aestheticization of paraphernalia? Junkies don’t keep around hand-crocheted red-gold-’n'-green tie-off belts. Cokeheads don’t carry around tie-dye-colored blown glass snorting tubes. Methheads are far more likely to chase the dragon from a lightbulb than a $500 vaporizer they ordered direct from the Netherlands off the Internet. And no crackhead has ever collected enough pipes to fill a display case – and of the pipes they do have, not a single one has ever been named after a Hobbit.

Clearly, there’s a missed opportunity for merchandising here. Imagine, whatever mysterious company markets this shit: a junkie cooks a hit in his trusty spoon, and smiling out at him from beneath the bubbling black tar is the Grateful Dead teddy bear. Or Lou Reed’s face. The possibilities are endless!