The United States of America is a giant piece of poo!

There, I said it, that three letter word that might bring me down for good one day. Who knows, I may go down like the rest who spoke the truth, like Tommy Chong; former seller of glass water pipes. He was brought down by the Federales because he got rich selling bongs but moreover, he was Tommy Chong, the one from the movies and old Cheech & Chong records, who made a living poking at paranoid government officials like Sargent Stadanko.

I still remember the scene in Up in Smoke where Stadanko and his crew keeping surveilance on the party-happy duo, using an old laundry truck as a decoy vehicle. On the outside was a pair of blue jeans and the bumbling detective would pull the zipper down from the inside and shout out "Shoot the Moon! Shoot the Moon!" Movie watchers laughing their asses in theatres, and now, in living rooms around the world.

As funny as that scene in Up and Smoke was, what isn't funny is that that kind of attitude, that paranoia from our government has leaked over from Nixon's seventies through the 21st century. Chong did time, (nine months federal time) for selling glass! Glass. America will arrest you for selling glass. Not only will being in the glass business get you busted, but if you have a successful comedic career and play a landmark role that is arguably more memorable than John Wayne cowboy movies, you may have to serve time. After watching the documentary "AKA Tommy Chong" I am reminded now that our constituional rights are not worth the paper they are written on. It's a facade, a sham. To see Federal prosecutors spend 12 million dollars to bust Mr. Chong is absolutely ridiculous; this makes Sargent Stadanko look like Columbo.

Now, obviously, the title of today's blog is an attention grabber (a device I teach my writing students) to not only make a statement but to reel the reader in. My only question to my readership, do you believe that statement. Should I be arrested and charged with being unpatriotic, for being a traitor for claiming that this country is a piece of poo? I might. Accoriding to the U.S. Patriot Act, Section 802, which states that domestic terrorism intends to "(i.) intimidate or coerce a civilian population" so, with that said, if any citizen of this country finds that language intimidating and offensive I may be subjected to federal prosecution under the Patriot Act. In Up and Smoke, Chong fires up a giant joint, Cheech takes a hit and asks what he's smoking.

"You're smoking Labrador. My dog ate my stash and I had to follow the little mother fucker until I got it back."
"You mean we're smoking dog shit?"

Dog shit. Poo. Tommy Chong getting busted for glass pipes and his movie career and America laughs because they see through all of this; the haze, the gall of Federal prosecutors and other politicians who have linked Marijuana use w/ terrorism; who have linked Tommy Chong, a true hero of free speech as an outsider. The irony is not that the U.S. government got its man, the number one on their hit list, but rather, that common everyday Americans (many of them avid smokers) are saying, with hands raised in surrender, "Country, what are you smoking?"

I imagaine Tommy Chong, with that sly, troublemakers grin, his horn rimed glasses of the seventies getting fogged up in a cipher of smoke saying, "Their smoking Labrador, man, dog shit!"