Million-Dollar Idea #3

Pomegranate juice + vodka = a crimson fez.  For example: "Excuse me, bartender, I'll have a scotch and soda over here and a crimson fez for the lady."

This is gonna be SO popular.  I'm a fucking genius!

My Smoky, Little Hole

I live in a tiny one-bedroom apartment…more like a largish studio in which someone foolishly erected a wall and doorway to partition the space up 60-40.  There’s also a hallway, a kitchen, and a bathroom.

All winter long, I heat the apartment with my stove.  I’ve got a series of fans with which I circulate the hot air from the kitchen out toward the other rooms.  I just leave the stove and fans on all of the time, and my place stays nice and toasty.  The kitchen is super hot, and the rest of the apartment stays comfortable.

All of my windows open up onto (into?) a light well, around which my apartment wraps at a right angle.  I leave my windows open for ventilation, but I think that the same air is just going out through some of the windows and into the light well and then coming back in through other windows.

Ventilation is a persistent issue as I’m an avid smoker, at least a pack a day, and I do most of my smoking at home.  (Like many smokers, I find I’m more likely to indulge in a refreshing cigarette when away from the disapproving eyes of a society that’s fixated on shaming me for my tobacco habit, a habit that’s been socially acceptable among Western cultures for centuries but is now suddenly likened to the serial murder of children.  Have you seen this anti-smoking TV ad where a woman is outside smoking a cigarette on the porch of her duplex at night?  When she exhales, her secondhand smoke wafts up into her neighbors’ second story window.  The smoke moves behind and past an adult couple, who are on a couch watching TV, and travels down the hallway to a bedroom.  Then the smoke somehow pushes open the partially open bedroom door, and it rushes over to a crib in which a baby’s peacefully sleeping.  The smoke hovers over the baby, gathers itself up into a vaguely anthropomorphic form, a menacing ghost with outstretched claws and a sinister face, and attacks the baby.  It’s outrageous!  Talk about demonizing a segment of the population…it’s fucking hate speech!  And it’s on TV all the time, every day, funded with tax dollars.  First Five California is probably involved.  I blame Rob Reiner.  I hate that guy so much.  Spinal Tap was good, as was The Princess Bride, but, still, Rob Reiner should burn in hell or, at the very least, get off of smokers’ backs and pick on someone his own size, the fat bastard.  What an asshole.)  Also, I smoke loads of weed, sativa in the daytime and indica at night.  I have an impressive collection of ashtrays and when I have company I prefer that my guests smoke cigarettes (I don’t insist, of course, but I do gently frown upon not smoking in my home).  As a result of all of the smoking, my apartment is pretty much always obscured in a thick, rich fug.  Well, “obscured” isn’t really the best word; actually, it can be quite brilliant when the lamplight dances with the billowy smoke just right, like phantoms of quicksilver humping.  “Immersed”…my home is immersed in a fug.  I am enveloped by a constant fug that floats throughout my apartment.

My air quality is so poor that I get lightheaded.  I tried doing Falun Gong exercises (there are five basic positions, and they’re all designed to open up your channels and get your humors flowing freely).  But I found that after each session of Falun Gong my system would be all cranked up and I’d breathe more deeply, and so I’d inhale even more smoky air, which just made me woozier.  So now I just try to remain as still as possible in whatever position in which I happen to be.

Going outside to smoke in the fresh air isn’t much of an option.  My neighborhood is too dangerous.  The other week I got mugged at gunpoint, right in front of my building.  It was barely 9:30 at night!  They took my MacBook Pro.  They’re animals out there…best to stay inside with my door locked.  Safety first, that’s my motto.

I’ve a taste for meat snacks, like Li’l Smokies or Slim Jims, and I’m particularly fond of biltongs and jerkies.  Perhaps I could use my smoke-filled living environment to my advantage by drying and smoking my own meats at home.

I have this folding, wooden rack that’s meant for hanging wet laundry to dry.  I could lay strips of thinly sliced, salted meats across my rack and maybe I could make homemade, gourmet jerky.  If I drew chalk circles around the rack’s feet, the ants wouldn’t be able to get to the meat.  I’m hoping that high temperatures are good for making jerky as I’d want to put the meat rack in the kitchen, which is the only room that really has any available floor space.  If not, I can wait till spring, when I turn off my oven.  It’s almost springtime anyway.