As I sat in my aerie overlooking the masses, watching Black Friday dawn over Southern Arizona in all its go-buy-some-shit-fast-be-afraid-of-the-terrorists glory, I felt like I was going to puke.
The sheeple started lining up on Thanksgiving, if not before, so they could dig deep into their all-American jeans (made in Mexico) and shopshopshopshopshopshop. When they are done shopping, they will stop and buy (shopshopshop) a huge, fattening lunch laced with a deadly mix of chemicals, salt, sugar and animal fat—and then shop some more.
Some of them will shop for 30 days straight, shooting their retail-bank-corporate-greed jizz all over everything. Then the day after Christmas, they will go shopping again, slipping around in the jizz for a week or so more before collapsing on their backs in a sweaty, post-coital meditation, gently holding hands with their banks and staring at the ceiling.
Now, don't get me wrong. I am in no way against money. I use it daily when I have some. I don't hate shoppers or banks or corporations or the rich people who run them or the low tax rates they enjoy. All that money changing hands is a good thing, in some sense. It isn't love making the world go 'round, sunshine. It's the shopping fuckfest.
Occupy that.
While Americans and their stores and banks and corporations are pooping all that cash back and forth, they are leaving out a partner who would like very much to come along for the orgy.
Marijuana.
The state of Arizona has, in a small way, recognized the legitimate potential of Big Bud Business. A search for "marijuana" on the Arizona Corporation Commission website turns up 16 companies, including Marijuana Inc. and The Marijuana Mall. Most of them were pending corporations that expired, premature ejaculations spilled on the sheets. A couple of them are trade names.
Four of the listings—Marijuana Distribution Systems, Inc.; Marijuana Dispensaries, LLC; Marijuana Marketing Strategies, LLC; and Marijuana Medical Dispensary, LLC—are active corporations.
All of Arizona's medical-marijuana businesses are in good standing. Good standing? WTF? Marketing aside, none of them even exist. Where is this distribution system, Gov. Jan? Where are the dispensaries? Where's my pot mall?
I am not likely to line up before dawn on Black Friday to thrust myself repeatedly into corporate America, shooting cash deep into store after store in our nation's great retail bathhouse, leaving a spent, exhausted Patriot who is Providing Jobs. But you might persuade me to line up at The Marijuana Mall to lay down some Black Friday cash for some Purple Urkle.
In California, where they have had MMJ since 1996, pot is big business, more than $1 billion big. People have jobs there because of medical marijuana. But even there, where The Man has been looking away for almost a decade, and state and local authorities recognize the importance of legitimate medical-marijuana businesses, things look grim.
According to a New York Times story on Nov. 24, California's largest dispensary, Harborside Health Center, has been threatened with a raid by federal authorities. The place has 120 employees, takes in $22 million per year and ranks as one of Oakland's top 10 taxpayers, the story says. But the feds put it on notice, nonetheless.
It's happening across the nation—in Washington state, California and Arizona. Good businesses, where people work, are being enticed into existence by state laws, and then snuggled and teased and licked to arousal, only to be left blue-balled and throbbing when The Man snatches the cash from the nightstand and bolts for the door.
It saddens me that we are willing to shopfuck each other to exhaustion over trinkets and bullshit baubles from Chinese factories, but we won't let a legitimately local and apparently well-hung playmate into the party. So, I didn't go to the Black Friday orgy. I'm having some trouble getting it up for Best Buy and Target and Nordstrom.
They just aren't my type.
