Get your hot dogs—made out of nine percent real meat! All right, all right, maybe it’s more like two percent. But nine sounds so much better. And get your foam fingers, crafted in my very own basement—ahem, my mother’s basement! 

Old Shred’s got a get-rich-quick scheme selling swag themed after the fast-approaching pot trials that start next month. I bought my tickets ages ago, the day after the Narcotics Task Force tossed 15 so-called pot dealers in the back of a paddy wagon. What can I say? I’m a big fan of the theater of the absurd, and Edward Albee ain’t got nothin’ on District Attorney Gerald Shea who’s using my—well, your—tax money to incarcerate people for selling medical marijuana.

I mean, typically with such theater you get to watch people turning into rhinoceri or chattering nonsense—did I ever tell you I was a theater major in college?—but Shea is giving us something all of those supposed literary geniuses could only dream of: realism. I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, which I picked up during a schoolyard game of telephone last Thursday. At least, I think it was Thursday. I was wearing my Thursday underwear, so it must have been.

Here’s the big reveal: Those nine people set to stand trial—three of the 15 weren’t local and three have already been dismissed—are real people. Some of them have children, who were taken into custody. And they had bank accounts. The operative word being “had” because they still don’t have access to their possessions seized during the raids.

I can’t really say what it’s like to have any of those things—kids, beloved possessions, a bank account—so I can’t really imagine what it’s like to have someone swoop in unexpectedly and smash your organized life to pieces. Actually, I’ll bet it’s something like how I felt in third grade when Timmy McJerkFace threw my precious doll in the mud. No provocation! Just flung it clean across the playground. She was never the same after that. And I’m willing to bet there’s a good chance the 15 people caught up in those raids—let’s call them the Doobie Dozen; if the bakers get a dozen, so should the MJ crowd, right?—feel much the same way.

So we’ve got this doobie collective—I mean dozen. Our buddy Shea, the DA—I sense a limerick coming on; what rhymes with sphincter?—doesn’t want any reference to medical marijuana in the courtroom. In fact, on March 9 he filed the “people’s motion to exclude medical marijuana defense testimony as irrelevant.” Now, I learned a lot reading that motion—or actually, I learned a lot listening to my think tank of interns summarize the contents of the motion to me. I learned, for example, that Shea has people. It is, after all, the “people’s motion.” And the people in that motion couldn’t possibly be the general public, the yous and mes who did not, in fact, support the raids. The yous and mes who voted—I’m not allowed to vote anymore, but I get a dirty, patriotic tingle talking about it—to legalize medical marijuana via Proposition 215 waaaaaaay back in 1996.

So when Shea filed the “people’s motion” he was referring to his own people, right? Like the “have my people call your people” kind of people? Peons who fetch your coffee and shine your shoes? I’m guessing the geniuses behind the Salem witch trials had people, too, just so they could argue that they were carrying out the people’s will. Which they were.

I wouldn’t want to live next door to a witch, by the way, unless she had a love potion powerful enough to convince David Beckham to make bedroom eyes at me. Make that happen, and then we’ll talk. You know, my people will call your people.

   According to Shea’s motion—which I thought would be quite titillating, what with the pot and the undercover shenanigans, but in reality lulled me to sleep faster than CSPAN—one undercover detective by the name of Amy Chastain purchased marijuana from one Peter Miller of the Harmonic Alliance. Yes, she had a medical marijuana recommendation provided by a doctor. And yes, the woebegone Miller asked her to sign a form stating she was, in fact, “a qualified patient.” But tossing around terms like “patient” and demanding a doctor’s recommendation is apparently no indication the marijuana was medicinal.

I mean, anyone can play doctor—and should, especially if they can get their hands on real medical tools. Just because someone signs a legal document stating he or she is sick, and a doctor signs a legal document agreeing that he or she is sick, doesn’t mean someone else has to give the sicko something to make the allegedly yucky feelings go away, right? Next time, Miller, wait until you see the “patient” coughing up green phlegm. Or better yet, blood! Then you can play “French courtesan with consumption” as well as doctor. It’s like hide and seek and doctor all rolled into one, but with corsets!

So the fact that the marijuana being sold was medical is “irrelevant,” according to Shea. Which is a lot like saying the fact that the people Dan De Vaul has been housing are homeless is irrelevant. Hasn’t that been done? Yes, they desperately need shelter and help, yes, they desperately need medicine, but that’s all beside the point.

It’s probably also irrelevant that one of the defendants was held captive in the back of a paddy wagon until he pissed himself. Unless, of course, these trials reach a pitch of absurdity that forces me to soil myself more solidly—not for the first time, and probably not for the last. And judging by Shea’s idea of “irrelevant,” I’d say there’s a reasonable chance of that. After all, the District Attorney has to one-up the Narcotics Task Force somehow—even if he seems quite content to play the role of trembling teacup poodle nestled contentedly in their approving lap. ∆

The Shredder could use some more Darjeeling with a hint of canine. Send two lumps to [email protected].