Published Oct 29, 2006
For some reason I don’t fully understand, every time I go to my neighborhood McDonald’s1, there’s some methampehtamine addict waiting in line for a vanilla cone. Is it that vanilla cones are the outside equivalent of cigarettes in the joint, a convenient medium of trade in the absence of cash? Apart from the presence of cash on the outside, that is? Are McDonald’s cones a good substitute for Tylenol, now that Tylenol is a controlled substance? Is there something special in the vanilla cone itself? If so, can just anyone get a special cone, or does one have to be visibly tweaking to get the “special dip”? Either way, I’m allergic to milk, so I’ll never find out.
Part of me wonders if this is just an artifact of my neighborhood. Maybe normal people taking the drive-through get cones too, but I only see the people who walk to the restaurant and go up to the counter to get cones, and the ones who go up to the counter in my ‘hood are all twacked out.
It’s great entertainment; they shuffle in place as they wait in line, then get to the front and order a cone, paying with what’s clearly one of the last few dollars they have left. Then they’ll do a little dance in a circle while they wait for the cone, adding in maybe a some quiet muttering as their hands move to their shoulders and elbows and back. But I never see them pick at their faces, either while waiting for the cone or after getting it. A tweaker waiting nicely and not picking for 5 minutes — must be a world record. Think I could patent the concept and sell it to recovery centers? “Your son has a very serious problem, Mr. and Mrs. Jaworski, but, with a residential setting, group therapy twice a day, and a vanilla cone three times an hour — chocolate-dipped on Saturdays — we’re sure he’ll be fine in a month. You should probably hide the oxycontin before he comes home. I’ll see you in two weeks for an update, you can leave your check with billing on your way out.”
Another free business model, courtesy Juniorbird.com. Don’t thank me, I do it because I care. Now go forth and replace the twack with the trans fat!
1 Yes, I know it’ll kill me faster than a crazy North Korean with nuclear weapons (ed. note: soon to be determined experimentally), but I only hit the MacDo, as the French call it, when I’m having a bad day. The presence or absence of bad days is, of course, not the topic of this entry. Maybe later. Or maybe I’ll write about CVS and SVN more. We’ll see; bet you can guess.
“Bad days” are for microwave dinners!