backstory

i posted a few days ago about my usernames here and on LJ, and i had a request to explain something else--why my blog was called "the last refuge of the persecuted crack smoker." i've been tardy in getting to the topic...but here i go.

first of all...even though i refer to myself as the persecuted crack smoker occasionally, i don't smoke crack. i've never tried crack. i have no interest in smoking crack. crack is wack.

but, the blog name is an amalgamation of two things:

• there's a liquor store in st. louis called dirt cheap. they have the greatest Bad Locally Produced Ads ever, including a guy dancing around in a chicken suit--the Dirt Cheap Chicken.¹ their tagline is "cheap! cheap! fun! fun!" (hence the tagline on the top of the blog page on blogger, and on my user profile on livejournal.) and, they refer to themselves as "the last refuge of the persecuted smoker."
• i like to joke around about crack. i like to tell people to stop smoking crack, and one night back in august of 2004, some friends and i started a thread on perjuries.com entitled "Stop Smoking Crack." sometimes friends have alleged that my body must naturally make crack, because i'm so consistently weird and crazy. i also like funny stories about stupid crack smokers.

my blog wasn't always called this. until the beginning of august, 2005, it was called "alone with all my wrongs"--a line from the song "letters" by stroke 9. but, i thought that title had become out of keeping with the actual material in my blog. it used to fit, really well--from summer 2003 until some point later. i realised by august 2005 that the name wasn't quite right. i was in a much better place in my life, i was moving to st. louis to start law school later that month, and i didn't quite think of myself as nearly the eternal screwup i thought i was in the summer of 2003.

the phrase "last refuge of the persecuted crack smoker" popped into my head one day when i was working at that awful library barcoding job and i was very, very bored. i was deciding between that and another name, "mississippi classroom"--a reference to "here's to the state of mississippi" by phil ochs. but, looking back, that would have been a misnomer for the same reasons that my old name was; according to phil ochs, "every single classroom is a factory of despair." and...my blog wasn't a factory of despair anymore.

i posted both potential names up here, and one of my friends egged me on that i should really be "the last refuge of the persecuted crack smoker"--because i could be described as "cheap! cheap! fun! fun!" i can't quite disagree...so that became the name of this little corner of the internet.


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¹ this is what i'm referring to whenever i muse that if i fail out of law school, i will be the dirt cheap chicken. that's still my plan b, if something crazy happens--i do have relevant experience, after being my mascot in high school!