Tacky: The Worst That Pop Culture Has to Offer, Part Two

I finished the book! What I got out of it was that, after her parents divorced, Rax King used to live with her mother in the same apartment building I did in Woodley Park, and I think she used to work at the Starbucks where I wrote porn.

Also, I get the sense that she was able to balance her professional life with her sex life because she was addicted to Adderall. Which is fair. Adderall is the most "I lived in Washington DC during the 2010s" substance that anyone could possibly be addicted to.

In conclusion, I'm happy that both me and Rax King escaped from DC and are in better places now.

While I'm on the topic of substance abuse

I was chatting with a friend on Instagram the other day, and I was saying that I was surprised that there was a referendum to legalize marijuana in Pennsylvania on this year's ballot.

What this means is that legislators from Philadelphia are trying to demonstrate popular support to the state legislature. Possession of small amounts of marijuana has been decriminalized in certain parts of Pennsylvania, but it's not legal for distribution or recreational use.

I was surprised because New Jersey just started issuing business licenses to sell marijuana in September, and New York is at the point where they have stores in Times Square. You can smell weed almost everywhere you go in Philadelphia, so I thought it was already legal here. That's why I was surprised that we were being asked to vote on a referendum.

Anyway, my friend was basically like, "I don't think the tax money they'll get from legalizing narcotics is worth the trouble." I liked her message and put down the phone, because that's not a conversation to have over Instagram. My friend is a defense attorney, and her perspective is probably informed by knowledge and experiences I can't even begin to imagine.

Still, though. While I can't deny that any given lawyer sees some truly horrendous shit on any given day, it feels like a stretch to put weed in the same category as, say, oxycodone. I get that there was a campaign to make marijuana seem dangerous and edgy during the 1990s, but the vast majority of the weed you can get in America doesn't do more than alleviate joint pain and relieve tension headaches. Like, if you want to get high off pot, you really have to work for it.

Meanwhile, it's totally legal to grow magic mushrooms in the United States, and there's no law regulating the distribution of spore cultures. I don't know if they're actually easy to grow, but you can get starter kits on Amazon. If your goal is to get fucked up, there are better and easier ways to do it, I'm just saying. Personally I run cheap vodka through a Brita filter and mix it with cranberry juice, and that does me just fine.

ETA: I was doing some research, and I found that you can also buy datura seeds on Amazon. Amazing. It's probably easier to grow mushrooms, though.

Axolotls

The other day I got very depressed for reasons I don’t care to talk about, and I tried to cheer myself up by going to the aquarium in Camden to see the axolotls.

If you’re not familiar with axololts, they’re neotenic salamanders with tiny eyes and big smiles.

If you’re not familiar with Camden, it’s the city across the Delaware River from Philadelphia that is not Cherry Hill. While Cherry Hill is known for its giant mall, its gourmet diners, and its cheap weed gas stations on the way to the Jersey Turnpike, Camden is famous for having the second-highest murder rate in the United States. In 2008, the city was given almost a hundred million dollars in revitalization money by the state of New Jersey, and they used about half of this to build an aquarium, which I understand has not improved the situation.

The axolotls on display in the Camden aquarium were clearly the new subspecies that’s been crossbred with tiger salamanders, but they were still very very very cute. The staff of the Camden aquarium were clearly a bunch of baby gays from Philadelphia, and they were very cute as well.

Driving through Camden to get to the aquarium was not great and did not improve my mood. The aquarium itself seems to be going for a “family friendly” theme park vibe but comes off as trashy, and it felt a little cringe to be there. I’m not sure what I expected from New Jersey. The friend I went with made the observation that “New Jersey is the Florida of states,” but that feels unfair to Florida.

Anyway, here is a picture of some axolotls:

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