Stumbling home after a long day in the PR salt mines yesterday, Imagethief was surprised to see an interesting display inside one of the gates to his apartment complex. Leaning against the walls, near a tiny and seldom used police notice board, were eight enormous panels on the evils of drug use. Specifically, the panels covered the history of opium and heroin use and poppy cultivation. Several boards had cartoon illustrations showing in cartoony, illustrated ways just how being a junkie can screw up your life.

Imagethief, a graduate of that den of libertines, the University of California at Santa Cruz, has seen first-hand how drug abuse can lead to fascination with Jimi Hendrix, naked conga lines, and a hunger for Doritos that can never be satisfied, among other evils. He therefore respects the need for drug education.

He is, however, surprised to discover that his luxurious, international apartment building should be the target for such a campaign. Try as he might, Imagethief can find no sign of crack houses or marijuana or poppy cultivation in the complex. Not a used syringe or discarded box of Zigzag papers in sight. There is a nearly complete absence of crack-whoring (at least since the gates went in). Even the bar that tried to make a go of it in our building closed for want of business recently, although that might be because they charged highbrow beer prices but provided conspicuously middlebrow service and environs. The West African hash dealers that prowl the drinking areas seem to cut our place a pretty wide berth. We do have two new Xinjiang restaurants across the alleyway. As everyone knows, Xinjiang is on the heroin road from the poppy fields of Central Asia, so it is remotely conceivable that the chuans and beers could be nothing more than a cursory front for warehouses bulging with top-quality Afghanistan skag. But it seems more likely that those restaurants would benefit from food hygiene propaganda than drug propaganda.

If Imagethief had to guess, he'd say his apartment complex is conspicuously inconvenient for dopeheads.

So why the boards? If the police want to conduct a public education campaign at Imagethief's apartment, let's not make it a wasted one. Imagethief can make the following campaign suggestions based upon close observation of fellow residents:
  • Turn that TV down, pinhead, the walls are like cardboard.
  • Dogshit: where it belongs and how to dispose of it.
  • Lean on that car horn again and we'll beat you and leave you for dead in an alley.
  • Necking: better in a room than the courtyard.
  • Hold the gate open for the person behind you; it's really not that hard.
  • Don't spit on the walkway unless you want to lick it up.
I feel more civilized already. Don't you?


  Hold that gate open, punk!