Corner on Coca!

Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass

Corner on Coca!

collect nature's godsend medicines while protesting the War on Drugs!

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

April 11, 2023

Corner on Coca is more than a fun game: it's a creative new way to protest America's hateful War on Drugs, which has outlawed godsend medicines in violation of Natural Law. Just ask Thomas Jefferson, who rolled over in his grave back in 1987 when the DEA stomped onto his Monticello ¹ estate and confiscated his poppy plants!

2025 Update

The game is as easy as stomping down the doors of minorities and poor people or shooting socialists in Central America under the pretense of "fighting drugs." In fact, if you've played the game called Pit, you already know the rules. There are six different sets of cards, each featuring a different godsend of Mother Nature: cannabis, coca, peyote, poppies, shrooms and ibogaine. (For those who don't know, ibogaine is the dual-purpose African drug that helps folks talk with their ancestors while also curing them of any unwanted addictions!)

Game is in the design phase!

Watch this Space

Game available in Spring 2023

Author's Follow-up: November 18, 2023

follow-up on essay by the Drug War Philosopher

Well, it's Summer 2023 now and the game in question has not yet materialized. [sigh]

What happened, you asked? Ask rather what DIDN'T happen. I mean, don't get me started! For I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy presumably young blood, make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres, thy presumably knotted and combined locks to part, and each particular hair to stand on end -- kind of like those what-cha-call-'em quills on the fretful porpentine (whatever that is).

But I'll spare you the blood and guts. Suffice it to say that a poorly conceived and ambiguous Microsoft OneDrive icon on my PC led me to accidentally erase half of my hard drive six months ago. How was I to know that when I deleted files in my OneDrive FOLDER that I was simultaneously deleting the original versions of those files in OTHER folders???

But as Shakespeare was wont to say: omittance is no quittance.

So how about watching this space for another year or so -- say, checking back in July of 2024, inshallah.

I kid you not: the folder "OneDrive" is not to be messed with. You delete a file there and it is history. And could Microsoft help me? No. All the king's horses and all the king's techs could not put my hard drive back together again.

Author's Follow-up: April 3, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up

It has been a year and a half since a deceptively designed One Drive interface caused me to erase half my hard drive, and with it the painstakingly designed assets for my Corner on Coca game. I could only salvage a handful of graphics, including the following mockup of the product's box.

+88+

I may as well be honest here and aver that my completion of this game is unlikely now barring a small miracle, such as the arrival of a forward-thinking venture capitalist at my door. When I debuted online 30 years ago, I thought such eventualities were highly probable occurrences, whereas today I would be stunned if I were to receive so much as an email of any kind, favorable or otherwise, with regard to any of my online efforts, let alone an offer of palpable assistance on this particular game. But then you can call me Onion Head. You can keep unraveling forever and one never seems to come to the end of my charming naivete. It's really quite precious, when you think about it.

But have no fear, you silent and anonymous supporter of mine who may or may not exist! I now plan to impose on my techie nephew for his help in learning C++, so that I can eventually make a virtual version of Corner on Coca -- and other games designed to bring the idiocy of drug prohibition front and center in the mind of the game-playing North American.

I picture a parody of the Game of Life. It will also be called LIFE... er... but with a sort of subtitle. The game will be called "LIFE... (in prison?)"

No, seriously, JB, you're gonna love it!

Here's the idea: you tool along in your plastic car toward the Pearly Gates, right? trying not to have your life ruined by unconstitutional and inhumane drug laws. But watch out for those LIFE cards, JB!

"Daughter commits suicide ² thanks to the outlawing of godsend substances that could have cheered her up instantly. Remove one pink child from your plastic car!"

And watch out for the Christian Science Heretic Card!

"Busybody lab techs discover traces of godsend medicines in your body. Return salary card to bank!"

May I digress for a moment? Who on earth decided that One Drive should imitate a regular drive precisely -- and yet be so designed that all delete operations applied to identically named files everywhere on your computer? That is obviously NOT how a normal drive behaves. Is it not incredibly easy to inadvertently erase files entirely in such a setup? There should be digital fireworks displayed every time one goes to erase a file on their One Drive: a full-screen display reading: "Warning: When you delete these files, they will be deleted EVERYWHERE!!!"

One Drive is a sort of anti-backup program -- at least that is the way that it functioned in 2023 when one single delete operation in one directory on my computer (which happened to be the One Drive directory) deleted files in multiple directories across my computer -- completely removing those files forever and without hope of recovery.

Notes:

1: The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation DWP (up)
2: Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use DWP (up)

read more essays here

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

If there were no other problem with antidepressants, they would be wrong for the simple reason that they make a user dependent for life -- not as a bug (as in drugs like opium) but rather as a feature: that's how they "work," by being administered daily for a lifetime.

Wade Davis wrote in Rolling Stone that cocaine was outlawed because 400 people consumed toxic doses worldwide. SO WHAT?! 178,000 people die from alcohol every year in America alone.

The most addictive drugs have a bunch of great uses, like treating pain and inspiring great literature. Prohibition causes addiction by making their use as problematic as possible and denying knowledge and choices. It's always wrong to blame drugs.

We should place prohibitionists on trial for destroying inner cities.

His answer to political opposition is: "Lock them up!" That's Nazi speak, not American democracy.

When people tell us there's nothing to be gained from using mind-improving drugs, they are embarrassing themselves. Users benefit from such drugs precisely to the extent that they are educated and open-minded. Loudmouth abstainers are telling us that they lack these traits.

Psychiatrists keep flipping the script. When it became clear that SSRIs caused dependence, instead of apologizing, they told us we need to keep taking our meds. Now they even claim that criticizing SSRIs is wrong. This is anti-intellectual madness.

When Rick Strassman and Michael Pollan call for continued prohibition to protect young people, they ignore the ENORMOUS fact that prohibition has destroyed inner cities around the world. Wake up, guys! Prohibition is evil, not drugs! Ignorance is evil, not education!

It's funny to hear fans of sacred plants indignantly insisting that their meds are not "drugs." They're right in a way, but actually NO substances are "drugs." Calling substances "drugs" is like referring to striking workers as "scabs." It's biased terminology.

Imagine the Vedic people shortly after they have discovered soma. Everyone's ecstatic -- except for one oddball. "I'm not sure about these experiences," says he. "I think we need to start dissecting the brains of our departed adherents to see what's REALLY going on in there."

Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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tombstone for American Democracy, 1776-2024, RIP

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