One O'Douls and a spleef of Spice, please

I heard this week that a criminal defendant was pulled over and about to be arrested for DUI when the arresting officer found him driving amidst a cloud of pot smoke. Later I learned from his probation officer that he was not charged with a drug offense when it was determined that he was not indeed smoking pot, but instead smoking Spice, a weedlike substance that is, in fact, not weed. It looks like weed, smells just like pot, and is available at local headshops for purchase. I had to ask the probation officer I had been speaking to "Wait - this here weed is for those who aren't cool enough to smoke pot but want others to believe they are cool enough? Who wants to be thought to be that cool, but really isn't cool enough to smoke pot? Who??" I spent some time pondering what the purpose might be - not wanting to fail a drug test at work but not wanting to lose face with homies? Is it like a pregnant woman who misses beer and gets an O'Douls out of sentimentality? I pictured a woman who has fake breasts, fake nails, dyed hair, and an O'Douls out on the lawn at a summer concert, sending a Spice joint down the row, smiling and saying "pass it on!" Um, I laughed. A lot. Because I am too cool to smoke fake pot in order to be thought cooler than I am.

It all got a bit less funny when we realized it is actually a drug which is impairing and which contains some variant of cannabinoids but is different from dope on a molecular level and is therefore dopey but not dopey enough to be illegal. Yet. So it is way less funny and one more thing for parents to be concerned about, as it now gives a basis for those wacky younguns to insist a water pipe really is for smoking something legal. Twenty five years ago I might have saved up my babysitting money to buy Spice, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.

My kitchen clock is meant to look Victorian, with scrolly letters and an aged look, which is demonstrated by its representation of fake mold. Yes, fake mold. I realized this some time after I hung it on my wall. I decided I had to keep it until it wore out but I vowed then not to ever buy anything that represented fake decay. Real decay maybe, but no more fake decay.