Moxie: No, *now* I've seen everything, Vol. 124

Highly Recommended

Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi: The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke
Reading this book explained a whole lot of things about why so many families I know are struggling financially, even though we don't spend extravagantly. Simultaneously enlightening and nauseating.
Elizabeth Warren: All Your Worth : The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan
If other personal finance books have frustrated you because they assume you have money to invest and you don't even have enough money to buy a large coffee, this is the personal finance book for you. Reading this book showed me that it's not that I waste money on stupid things--it's that our basic expenses are too high to begin with. Reading this book is the end of financial guilt and the beginning of getting out of the hole.
Adele Faber: Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too
Lots of great ideas to think about and put into practice about not assigning your kids roles and how to approach fights. Also goes over some of the stuff from the How to Talk So Kids Will Listen book about making kids feel understood. Because, really, that's all anyone wants--to be understood. And kids are people, too.
Anne Lamott: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
Just perfect. A beautiful, funny, sad, accurate account of what the first days, weeks, and months with a baby are like. This is exactly what your journal would be, if you could write as well as she does.
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc: Random Family : Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
LeBlanc's writing and pacing makes you want to keep reading despite the tragic story. Think you have an informed opinion about welfare reform and how to strengthen families in this country? Not until you've read this book.
John Taylor Gatto: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
This is the red pill. Don't read it if you want to stay comfortable with the American school system. Gatto goes into why government-owned schools were created and the things they actually teach us.
Ellis Avery: The Smoke Week: September 11-21, 2001
If you have any curiosity about what it was like for New Yorkers during the World Trade Center attacks, this is the book to read. A brilliant, crystalline, spot-on memoir of the week or so after the attacks, this book is an ode to New Yorkers. Realistic, clean, and completely un-maudlin, it's just the story of what it was like for us. This is what should go into a time capsule to represent September 2001.

Every day after school we go to the playground. A few days ago as we were walking there I noticed that the man who sells incense along the way sells a scent labelled "Cannabis."

I'm not sure I really understand, but it would seem to me that burning cannabis-scented incense would make your house smell like you'd been smoking pot, but you wouldn't be enjoying any of the effects of actually smoking pot.

This makes even less sense to me than non-alcoholic beer does. I get that sometimes people want the taste of beer without getting tipsy. But why would you want your house to smell like pot? Maybe you'll burn the incense for months to get your mother used to the scent, so when you start smoking actual pot she won't realize it? Or maybe you can try to impress that Phish-loving guy in your office by coming in smelling like you've been to a show? Or maybe you want to feel lazy and pseudo-intellectual and deep, but are on a diet and don't want the munchies.

I may have to actually strike up a conversation with the vendor to see if I can figure this out, because I can't stop thinking about it.

Comments

Maybe he sells more than incense,

Posted by: Lisa V | November 03, 2006 at 09:46 AM

Lisa's headed where I was going with my guess - wouldn't pot-scented incense be the best cover-up for, um, pot? 'It's just incense!'

But then again, most incense smells like it's designed to cover up the scent of pot anyway, so hasn't this been done?

Posted by: Her Bad Mother | November 03, 2006 at 10:10 AM

HBM, exactly, on all counts. It's not like it's hard to buy pot on the street in New York anyway. Heck, you can get it delivered to your apartment, along with firewood and ice cream.

The more I think about it the more confused I get.

Posted by: Moxie | November 03, 2006 at 10:28 AM

I have a cranberry/mandarin candle in my office that smells like beer. Weird, I know. But I burn it and let people wonder.

Posted by: Jill | November 03, 2006 at 11:21 AM

Maybe it's one of those good luck incenses, the ones named things like "Money House" or "Black Love" that are supposed to attract said item to your home.

Of course, all cheap incense kinds smells the same, no matter what it's called.

Posted by: Summer | November 03, 2006 at 11:22 AM

I'm not sure that anyone wants to know this, but a few years ago I was in a convenience store in WI that sold (and I quote) "p@ssy scented incense." I don't even want to think about what kind of questions that raises.

Posted by: Bella | November 03, 2006 at 01:01 PM