I want something else. To get me through this. Life. Baby.

After returning my rental car to Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (the Jackson part was added (see October 2003) to honor Mayor Maynard Jackson, who's dead now and was also the first black mayor of any southern city ever.), I took MARTA to Arts Center, and imbetween the College Park and East Point stops I saw this ad:

There are just too many variables involved in a scenario where a person is geeked in a dirty bathroom losing their virginity for it to be presented as such an unequivocally negative experience. It's like these guys were like, "OK, time to make a decision! What's more important? (1) Perpetuating creepy ideas about the impossible magic and romance of losing one's virginity (Which I believe is the scenario that this ad is trying to offer as the alternative to getting fucked while bent over a toilet bowl (Sounds pretty hot, right?). I could be wrong though. I have been before.) or (2) Making a flashy ad that does little other than trigger former meth-users and terrify children in an effort to aid in harm reduction?" EASY! FLASHY IDEAL-COMPROMISING AD WINS!

I mean, it just seems kind of counter productive. Unfortunately, I'm plagued with an impulse to assign almost everything with the same level of importance, and therefore, am deeply disappointed by this anti-drug effort which uses humiliation of other non-drug related deviations to nonsensically associate the perverted with mortally unhealthy.

So, like, am I supposed to think I'm not gonna look super hot smoking meth out of a broken light bulb at the Texaco station before I go to the punk show? I mean SERIOUSLY! THIS PHOTOGRAPHY IS GORGEOUS! It doesn't even make me think about drugs at all, it just makes me wonder which advertising agency is responsible for the aesthetic and which one of my friends they ripped off to achieve it.

In conclusion:
DRUGS ARE NOT THE ANSWER, BUT POOPY GROSS PUBLIC BATHROOM SEX MIGHT BE.

There have been a bunch of commercials on TV for it too. The organization responsible for this anti-meth campaign is called The Georgia Meth Project. You can see more of these crazy intense ads on their website. I highly recommend it. No pun intended.

Wait. What was the question?

I was about to watch a movie and pass out after drinking what actually turns out to be a small quantity of booze (for Atlanta), but instead decided to reread Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic. I realized two things while reading:

1. This poetry is so bad that it's insulting, even to children. In fact, I remember being a child and reading this to myself and expecting one day that I would understand it. That day has come.
2. I should start drawing again. And showing you. Or someone.

I then remembered two things:

1. Shel Silverstein is actually some crazy jazzbo pervert who likes to talk about double penetration or something. And that's OK by me.
2. I wish "we" (my mother and I, or my dad, or my dogs Timmy and Big Shot, or whoever) still lived in my childhood home.

• It was a smallish cookie-cutter house in what I like to call the OG Suburbs of Atlanta (which means it was closer to downtown than Dunwoody and farther away than Lenox Mall). I had no friends in the neighborhood and ran away frequently to the playground of the Korean Baptist Church, which was so close, it was practically in our backyard. The carpet was longish corn-blue and I always thought there were monsters (or hot guys) floating outside my giant window. This window is where I first began my casual exhibitionism. Which I'm sure you didn't know about until now.
• I miss that home and that life deeply. As with so many children with typically boring divorced/separated families, I associate the exit from this house with the beginning of the end for me (OK? Deal with it.) and also, more specifically, the beginning of the end of my trust in reliable housing. More on this later.
• I still dream about this house. A recurring dream is that my father (To whom I am almost identical, except for, duh, I'm not. He's my dad.) and I are trying to destroy a giant mud dauber to no avail, of course. In this dream, his impotency as my protector cripples me and I always wake up crying. More on this later (much later).