SIRIUS STUFF – POT – AND PUNS

July 3 is both STAY OUT OF THE SUN DAY and the official start of the DOG DAYS OF SUMMER, the period (July 3-August 11) during which Sirius, the Dog Star, rises at the same time as our star, the sun. The Dog Star, for your information and mine, was so named for its prominence in the constellation cluster Canis Major, which was in turn named for its prominence in the constipation buster* Cannabis Maximus.

• https://www.royalqueenseeds.com/blog-can-cannabis-relieve-constipation-n713

The point is, this is one smokin’ hot season, when (assuming you’re not a mad dog or Englishman) you’d best stay indoors all day with an ice chest full of cold ones within reach, and drink to mistermuse’s posts. What could be cooler than that?

Friends, by staying inside, I’m not prescribing letting yourself go to pot, but the clime this time of year in the Northern Hemp-isphere isn’t fit for a dog (mad or not). It’s simply….

How hot is it? Today I saw two birds using potholders to pull worms out of the ground…. not only that, but after the birds swallowed their prey, I could swear I saw steam coming out of their rears….er, ears. Talk about being madder than a birddog in heat–those birds were so steamed, the eggs they laid were hardboiled.

Speaking of laying an egg, all booed things must come to an end; however, for those fans who think my yolks weren’t so hot, I leave you with these:

POT CAUSES POT BELLIES

I read in this morning’s paper a USA TODAY article titled STONED AND STARVING? HERE’S WHAT FUELS YOUR FEEDING FRENZY, reporting on a finding about “the insatiable hunger that strikes marijuana users.” According to the article, scientists at Yale University School of Medicine have identified brain cell circuits called POMC neurons which, under the influence of pot, switch from signaling “Don’t eat” to “Eat.” It seems that when researchers dosed mice with an imitation marijuana chemical, they (the mice, not the researchers) gorged on 3 or 4 times their normal amount of food.

This is certainly welcome news to expansion-challenged men and women who are sick and tired of being accused of lacking the willpower to curb their appetites. Now, like a drunk driver who denies liability for crashing into a building such as that all-you-can-eat restaurant gluttons often patronize (because alcohol rendered him not responsible for his actions), you too may claim no responsibility for being unable to stop shoveling food into your mouth — you can claim to be a pot head (of which your mouth happens to be a part). Naturally, if you live in a state where marijuana is legal, all the better.

Of course, being neither a fat head nor a pot head, I take but a passing interest in the above report, by way of passing said news on to those of you for whom the following poem may suggest the need to defend your, shall we say, appetites:

JUST DESSERTS

One day I looked down at my tum-tum,
And found, to my great chagrin,
That in place of what was my tum-tum
Was a blob of fat with skin.

“How could this have happened?” I wailed —
But I knew the answer well….
For my will power had come up short,
And my tum-tum had gone to hell.