OK everyone! Time to gather the children around and anoint them with lotion and make sure they're all bundled up in their neckerchiefs and bloomers. It's time for another of Kafkaesque's Great Ideas!

It goes a little something like this:

Ever since I can remember, there have been really impossibly lame campaigns against drugs. One clue as to how effective these campaigns have been is that they come out with a new one every 6 months or so. if any of them had been even marginally successful, it would still be around. You'd still be seeing ads with that guy chasing a vial around a bathroom stall, or the exciting 'I do more cocaine, so I can work longer, so I can get more money, so I can buy more cocaine..." which must have been made into a club dance mix at one time or another. But you don't see those anymore. Or the laughable "Brain on Drugs" thing, or Rock Against Drugs.

I think if Lou Reed or Iggy Pop or Keith Richards is telling you not to do drugs, they're only doing it to make up some community service time from last time they got caught sleeping naked in a stranger's guest room or something. I mean Lou Reed looks like he's been keel-hauled every Thursday at 5 for the last ten years. It would be more effective if Lou just said "Look kids, if you don't want to look like you've been dead for six years, lay off the hard stuff. Oh, and don't settle for walking." Or maybe they could just play some of his back catalogue of 70s and 80s solo releases for a while and say "Don't do drugs or you too could end up writing songs called 'Disco Mystic'".

But I digress. I have the ultimate way to keep your kids from doing drugs: do drugs in front of them. That's right. Spark up a bowl while little Johnny has his friends over for his fourteenth birthday party and then (and this is the real key) act really embarrassing and dull. After the bowl is depleted, the bong has bonged its last, put on some sweatervests and play your Helen Reddy albums. Sing Karaoke to Britney Spears songs. Suggest that all of Johnny's guests join you in a knitting circle, or maybe make God's Eyes out of popsicle sticks.

Johnny will be so traumatized he will stay away from that devil weed for the rest of his life. This plan's beauty is in its simplicity: kids will do whatever you don't want them to do, so remember to constantly reinforce the message. "Johnny!" you can yell from the converstion pit "Come in here and play Connect Four with your parents! We're hopped up on goofballs and ready for fun!"